From August 30th to 31th, 2017, Prof. Jiang Pei, Prof. Li Jinzhong, and Prof. Song Zhiyong were invited to attend the international conference in Macao with the theme “World War II Memories in Europe and East Asia”. About 25 scholars from Austria, Germany, England, Japan, Korea, and China attended the conference, which was co-organized by Austria Academy of Sciences, Department of East Asian Studies in the University of Vienna, and Modern History Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
One major characteristic of the conference was to compare the European and East Asian memories of World War II and find differences and similarities. As Prof. S. Weigelin-Schwiedrzik stated in the opening ceremony of the meeting, even though Europe’ s reflection on the Second World War was relatively profoundly, there were still many problems in the war research. Human beings could do well and avoid blundering into war again only when they reflected on the cause of wars. During the conference, European scholars reflected on the wounds of Nazi and World War II，which profoundly caused division of countries and migration of ethnic groups. Chinese and Korean scholars criticized Japan's denial of the war crimes. Prof. Jiang Pei, Prof. Li Jinzhong, and Prof. Song Zhiyong also presented papers and engendered a heated debate among the participants.
