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Reflections on Holocaust Remembrance: History, Landscape, and Postmemory in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Berlin

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Reflections on Holocaust Remembrance: History, Landscape, and Postmemory in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Berlin Reflections on Holocaust Remembrance: History, Landscape, and Postmemory in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Berlin A Divison III Project May 2012 Ellen Van Benschoten Chair: Karen Koehler Member: Jim Wald Member: Mary Russo 1 Acknowledgments: I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to: my wonderful and encouraging committee chair, Karen Koehler; committee members Jim Wald and Mary Russo; Professor Jeff Wallen, who advised me through my second semester in Berlin and without whom I would never have gone to Poland; Meredith, Leticia, and Liv, the inspiring women of my life; George, for his encouragement and love; and the great city of Berlin, where this whole thing began. Most of all, I want to express the utmost thanks, gratitude, appreciation, and affection to my parents, who financed my education, paid for my plane tickets to and from Europe, encouraged me on all of my paths, supported (most of) my choices, read through my drafts, listened to my rants, and never let up in their love. 2 Table of Contents: Introductory Remarks --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4 Reflections: Arrival at the Memorial Site -----------------------------------------------------------------------7 Reflection 1: The International Memorial to the Victims of Fascism at Auschwitz-Birkenau ----------------------------------------------------------------8 Reflection 2: The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe -----------------------10 Reflections: Postmemory ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------14 An Index of Poland and German Holocaust Memory Since 1945 ---------------------------- 25 Poland ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Germany ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------39 An Index of Cultural Memory Terms --------------------------------------------------------------------------52 Reflections:International Memorial to the Victims of Fascism – Auschwitz Birkenau ------60 Reflection 1: Competition to erect an International Memorial at Birkenau------------------------61 Reflection 2: Oskar Hansen's Proposal: “Road Monument” --------------------------68 Reflection 3: Joseph Beuys' Proposal -----------------------------------------------------------72 Reflection 4: Landscape + Authenticity -------------------------------------------------------74 Reflection 5: Arie A. Galles + The Question of Site --------------------------------------81 Reflection 6: Tourism ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------85 Reflections:The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe – Berlin ------------------------------91 Reflection 1: The Competition: Site of Memory and Identity in Reunified Germany -------------------------------------------------------------------------------93 Reflection 2: Proximity Part I --------------------------------------------------------------------105 Part II ------------------------------------------------------------------111 Reflections: The Legacy of the Holocaust: Language, Metaphor, Appropriation ------------117 Reflections: Concluding Remarks -------------------------------------------------------------------------------130 Bibliography ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------133 3 Introductory Remarks: The following is a series of reflections on Holocaust remembrance – critical engagements with the memory of a horrific event as it has been constructed, represented, inherited and appropriated. Navigating between historiography and personal reflection, I hope to articulate a number of lingering problems inherent in remembering the Holocaust: What from the past has been chosen for remembrance? Who shapes cultural memory? Where and how does one locate Holocaust memory? Can or should memory be centralized or localized? Can the voids of history be filled by memorial structures? How do memorial sites shape collective versus individual acts of remembrance? How can the past be mourned within a contemporary landscape, amongst ruins, representations, and the persistence of life? There is a palpable disparity between the inexplicability and applicability of the Holocaust. It is here that memory has fallen – somewhere between its sacrality and pervasiveness. The unrepresentable has been represented millionfold. Rather than offer an historical reading of the Holocaust as it ends in 1945, I focus on the shifting narratives and representations that have emerged since. These essays engage with the Holocaust by considering how and by whom the past has been remembered, evoked, and entered. The horror that swept across Europe, affecting millions of lives and destroying millions more, has defied traditional structures of remembrance. Survivors, artists, and historians have for decades searched for the right language and images with which to convey the trauma and despair. But for the amount of words and images that have been employed to evoke the experience, there have been an equal number of explanations as to why such a task is impossible. What remains is an inexhaustible collection of accounts and representations, all of which are in some way inadequate. These approximate forms guide public memory of the Holocaust. The living are presented with pictures taken at the moment of the camps' liberation. They watch films that attempt to recreate particular episodes from the past. They read testimony – fragments of accessible memory. They visit former concentration and extermination camps, straining to see what is no longer there. The fact of this far- reaching crime, of gross inhumanity, of suffering, and of the disappearance of individuals, whole communities and cultures necessitates intense reflection – both for those involved and for those who have come after this time – the inheritors of memory, the carriers of its after-effects. In Reflections: Arrival at the Memorial Site, I direct my attention to two particular sites of memory: One is the International Memorial to the Victims of Fascism at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum, the other is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. My encounter with these memorial sites provoked my preoccupation with Holocaust memory, initially sparking such questions as, what is the relation between memory and memorials? Through reflecting on these sites I engage a number of questions about remembrance that continue to haunt contemporary approaches to Holocaust memory. As a point of entry, I address some tensions inherent in remembering the past within contemporary culture. It is the continued presence of memorial sites and Holocaust memory that has compelled me to adopt an approach that focuses on 4 postmemory, or inherited, mediated memory – this I discuss in Reflections: Postmemory. As time advances, it is increasingly necessary to explore the role of these memories and memorials within the lives of postwar generations. How do we approach inherited memory within contemporary society? Later generations must navigate between a culture of continued respect for Holocaust memory, and one that condones its normalization and misuse. In An Index of Poland and German Holocaust Memory Since 1945, I consider and recount the treatment of the Holocaust and Jewish memory in postwar Poland and Germany in order to frame my own engagement with and analysis of these sites. A brief overview of their histories is necessary to illustrate how memory has been widely contested, if not altogether repressed. Since 1945 both countries have been witness to shifting memorial landscapes – the reality of which ought to be documented here. Additionally, Poland and Germany offer themselves as thought-provoking points of comparison: they have approached the past in differing ways because of their respective political landscapes and conceptions of their role as either victim, bystander, or perpetrator. Working comparatively with these two countries allows for an engagement with these precarious notions of victimhood, complicity, and responsibility. Furthermore, both sites provoke reflection on concepts of “authenticity” as it relates to spaces of remembrance at or removed from the site where it happened. Along with a review of these historiographies, I include an overview of terms used in cultural memory studies in order to review collective and national forms of remembrance. In addressing these memorial sites, I consider, in Reflections: The International Memorial to the Victims of Fascism - Auschwitz-Birkenau and The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe – Berlin, the physical nature of these spaces: How is memory partitioned? How has history been displayed? How do visitors engage with these spaces? Can they challenge prescriptive modes of engagement? What in the landscape has been preserved, what has been affected? What constitutes the memorial landscape, its center and periphery? Does visitation – tourism – revoke these sites of their sacrality? Memorial sites plays a great part in the structuring of a cultural memory. They localize mourning, remembrance, and commemoration. How they are utilized reflects how memory is approached in the present. I return to the history of the commission for and erection of these memorials, focusing on the various concerns that arose from differing agendas and visions expressed throughout the competition process in order to illustrate
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