A high-profile Spanish judge has gone on trial accused of violating a 1977 amnesty law by investigating civil war and Franco-era crimes.
Baltasar Garzon is accused by two right-wing groups of overstepping his powers by trying to prosecute crimes committed between 1936 and 1975.
The case has reignited the debate about the way Spain has dealt with its past. (more…)
Bulgaria’s parliament adopted on Wednesday a special declaration condemning the forcible assimilation of the country’s sizeable Turkish minority under communism.
The declaration specifically centred on the so-called “revival process” in the mid-1980s when Bulgaria’s ethnic Turks were forced to change their Muslim names to Bulgarian ones.
(more…)
The heart of the former East German police state – the office of Stasi chief Erich Mielke – has been opened to the public in Berlin.
The original plush furnishings have been restored at “Haus 1” – the former communist secret police headquarters, which is now a museum.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 about 8,000 Stasi agents worked there, isolated from ordinary citizens.
Twenty-two years ago protesters stormed the HQ and saved many secret files. (more…)
Reconciliation of European Histories 