The paper considers the relationship between remembrance narratives on national heroes and proliferation of political attitudes, values and behaviours during democratisation. It discusses the impact of interpretations of the past on the development of civil society in the context of public education as an instrument of identity politics. Comparing the experiences of Chile, Estonia, Georgia, Poland, South Africa and Spain, the authors present the role of national heroes in the legitimisation of behaviours and attitudes, new elites and national unity. The discussed results prove that the establishment of a pro-democratic system of civic education increases chances for successful consolidation of democracy in post-authoritarian countries.

During World War II, Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Due to this atrocity, around 140,000 human beings lost their lives. Almost 20% of them were Koreans. It resulted in the sudden capitulation of Japan and caused the so called higaisha ishiki (awareness of being a victim) among Japanese society. Unfortunately, the question of Korean atomic blast victims has been forgotten and the Monument raised in Memory of the Korean Victims of the Atomic Bomb was placed in the peripheries of the Park. The aim of this paper is to analyze Hiroshima Memorial Park monuments, as locations that serve as political tools, with special emphasis on the issue of the Monument in Memory of Korean Victims of the A-bomb, which characterizes Japanese politics of remembrance towards Korea.

Heritage and memory. An essay on the absent culture of Polish Jews

The main research problem of the study is the question whether a culture that is already absent from the social space of a local community is the community’s cultural heritage. Has such a culture been remembered by the inhabitants of a small town and how does it fit into the context of regional education? The axis of the article is the Jewish culture that was present until World War II in two shtetls – “Jewish towns” – in the Świętokrzyskie region: in Włoszczowa and Chmielnik. These are two opposite examples of building a town’s cultural and social identity in the context of the almost complete absence of the Jewish culture and, in the second case, its extensive revitalization. The presented sociological and anthropological research shows that this context is socially and politically conditioned, and (above all) that in order to recall an absent culture from the controversial past, the emergence of social leaders, called leaders of cultural heritage, is desirable. They are organizationally able to initiate activities supported by a sound ideological basis.