Exploring public and private versions of WW2 memory

This cross-disciplinary and cross cultural study examines the relationships between identity, ideology and propaganda and their influence over the production of private and public memories. This examination is carried out through a case study investigating various representations of the Czech RAF airmen from selected British and Czech WW2 newspapers approached as an archive of memory, and from individual recollections of the Czech veterans – the living archive of memory. These representations in the context of this research become interacting versions of public and private memory which in a unique way and yet equally contribute towards the historical construction of the Second World War. This book proposes that the various versions of memory, ‘multidirectional memory’, are a consequence of versioning, a constant creation and re-creation of different versions of memory due to numerous influences on the producers of such memory. However, this research also considers a presence of WW2 discourse, which underpinned public and private memory and transcended collective memories of the Britishness and Czechness forming a transnational or cross cultural WW2 memory.