This article examines the difficult relationship which societies have with their past and the dangers of this confrontation. It deals with saturated memory, instrumentalised memory, one which is revised according to the needs of the immediate present and one which could be a perverted form of forgetting. Historical phenomena destabilise memorial symbols. How and why does the past re-emerge ? How and why has it been modified ? Historians no longer have a monopoly on reading and interpreting the past and it is important today to look more closely at how the latter is transformed and shaped, the evasion from responsibilities and the way by which yesterday’s executioners are able to represent themselves as today’s victims.