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The shared memories of the Second World War have played a crucial role in the process of integration of the European Union (EU). After the Enlargement to the East, the EU also sought to accommodate the historical experiences of the former communist countries. The result of this process was an EU memory framework that focused on shared suffering under totalitarian (both fascist and communist) regimes. This article examines the impact of this framework and its equalization of fascism and communism on Croatia (new member state) and Serbia (in accession talks). We conclude that the framework is used locally as an opportunity structure to renegotiate ideological conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research article traces the process of transition from spontaneous to ‘official’ memorialisation of the 2016 Brussels terrorist attack by questioning which factors trigger the heritagization process of spontaneous memorials and their contents. With a view to critically assess the significance of heritage values in relation to terrorism, this article scrutinises how these values are grasped, narrated and articulated by the local authorities, government and archival institutions in the preservation, conservation and heritagization of spontaneous memorials. There is an emphasis on the two facets of heritagization: how meanings attached to a memorial and its objects are created and expressed by the community of bereavement, and how the transformation of places, practices, objects into diverse forms of ‘heritage’ evolves. This article brings a new perspective on the heritagization of spontaneous memorials, seen as important in determining how a traumatic event such is a terrorist attack will settle in the collective memory on the long term, by becoming historicized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]