How do we ethnographically chart the ways in which a recent war-ridden past features in everyday identifications of young adults, who have little or no direct experience of that past? One way is to treat this question as a matter of how everyday knowledge is constituted and transferred between individuals, as well as how historical legacies, cultural and political models enter their life-worlds, what they think and know, and who they are. These inquiries stood at the core of the study I con- ducted among two high-school classes between 2007 and 2009 in Novi Sad. This article will shed light on my main conclu- sions and problematize the notion of collective confrontation with the past. My contention is that arguments for collective confrontation with the past, together with official policies in- formed by this discourse, need to take into account social psy- chological mechanisms of identity construction in order to avoid the assumption that knowledge and moral insight can be mapped onto people’s minds.