Leiden University Master Arts & Culture Specialization: Museums and Collections Master Thesis

Memory is the Foundation of the Future: Holocaust Museums Memory Construction through Architecture and Narrative, Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

By Lucrezia Levi Morenos Student Number: 2231719 2018-2019

Supervised by Dr. Mirjam Hoijtink

Word Count: 17725

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments III

Introduction 1

Chapter I Yad Vashem 8

I.1 Geographic Significance and Architecture 9

I.2 The Holocaust History Museum’s Narrative 13

Chapter II The Jewish Museum in Berlin 21

II.1 Geographic Significance and Architecture 22

II.2 Narrative of the Jewish Museum in Berlin 27

II.3 Old Permanent Collection Design and ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ 33

Chapter III Comparing Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Exploring Current Events Surrounding the Two Institutions

III.1 Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin 38

III.2 Current Debates 41

Conclusion 47

List of Illustrations 50

Bibliography 58

II Acknowledgements

Writing this thesis has been a gratifying experience and there are some people I would like to thank for helping me shape this project.

First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Mirjam Hoijtink for always being available to help me and giving me suggestions on how to improve my work. In particular, I would like to thank her for introducing me to the field of memory studies; thanks to her advice I developed a work much more critical and I discovered a new field of studies that fascinates me.

The topic of Holocaust museums is very complex and this thesis gave me the opportunity to explore questions that have been in my mind for a long time. The first time I visited Yad Vashem was in the summer of 2017, and the Museum, as well as the land of Israel itself, left a big impact on me. It was an incredible experience that left me with many questions; with this thesis, I managed to answer some, and raise other new ones. I am also glad that with this work I was able to research the history of the Jewish Museum in Berlin as well as the construction of the national memory of Germany after WWII. Approaching the two museums after studying and researching national and collective memories allowed me to explore their narratives more in depth.

Vorrei ringraziare i miei genitori, Elisabetta e Luca, e anche i miei nonni, Gipi, Gian Maria e Mario per essermi stati vicini quest’anno un po’ difficile. I would also like to thank my English friend and author Connor, who helped me proofread my thesis for the second time. My friends Hannah and Juliette: this year in Leiden would not have been the same without you two, and also Kilian who always supports me.

III Introduction

Over the last decades, Holocaust and Jewish Museums have been opened all around the world. Jewish Museums preserve the memory of the past, as well as the future of Jewish communities.1 Some museums are focused directly on the Shoah, others show aspects of Jewish life before and after the Second World War.2 While in the past Holocaust museums were focused on the sensitization of the Shoah, nowadays some of these museums relate to other ethnic minorities too, like the Jewish Museum in Berlin. One of the purposes of the German institution is to respect and recognize other minorities, such as Muslims as religious minorities in Germany, to fight prejudices.3 As of June 2019, its permanent collection is being renovated: the reopening is scheduled for 2020. In the meantime, the floors dedicated to the Holocaust as well as some temporary exhibitions are open to the public. The Jewish Museum in Berlin is the leading Jewish institution in Germany, the perpetrators’ country. One cannot speak of Holocaust museums without mentioning the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the biggest research center in the world to remember the Shoah. It is a very interesting example because of its geographic location and the way it relates to Jewish-Israeli memory. The study is dedicated to show how the Shoah is perceived by the victims as well as by the perpetrators nowadays in the two main Holocaust museums in Israel and Germany. ‘It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and everywhere… thus we must sharpen our senses, beware of the charmers, those

1 The difference between Jewish and Holocaust museums: while both types of museums deal with the Holocaust, Jewish museums mainly focus on Jewish life and rituals. For example, the Jewish Museum in Venice concentrates on their collection of textiles and goldsmith objects made between the 16th and 19th centuries, as well as on the life of Venetian Jews. Holocaust museums instead center their narrative around the event of the Holocaust, and even when giving background information on Jewish history or religious life, it is always in relation to the Shoah. This thesis will discuss the Jewish Museum in Berlin as a Holocaust museum since it has been long associated mostly with the Shoah. 2 The terms ‘Shoah’ and ‘Holocaust’ are both used to talk about ‘the genocide perpetrated by German Nazis during World War II’, however the words have originally different meanings. ‘Holocaust’ comes from Greek and it originally referred to an ‘offering burnt as a whole’ and it was a Greek religious animal sacrifice; the word can also mean more generally a massacre by fire. The term was previously used to describe other Jewish massacres in history such as the anti-Jewish violence during the reign of Richard I of England, it was also used to describe the Armenian genocide. ‘Shoah’ is a Hebrew biblical term that means ‘calamity’ and is more closely related to the genocide of Jewish victims. ‘Holocaust’ is a more common term in Anglo-Saxon countries, while ‘Shoah’ is generally used in Europe. ‘What is the difference between Holocaust and Shoah,’ About the Holocaust, Accessed June 5, 2019, https://aboutholocaust.org/facts/what-is-the-difference-between-holocaust- and-shoah/. 3 ‘Academy Programs,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed April 23, 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/academy.

1 who say nice words not driven by good reasons.’4 This sentence written by Jewish-Italian author Primo Levi offers an explanation on why Holocaust Museums are always relevant and how they can contribute to prevention by engaging with history and personal experiences of survivors like Levi.5 Whereas in Europe, Holocaust related sites like the former concentration camps became increasingly professional museums, in the United States and Israel, Holocaust museums and monuments arose for reasons more related to a Jewish need to connect to this dramatic phase of its history.6 In fact, when the Nazi regime came to power, many Jewish people emigrated to the US and Israel to seek safety, their lives were completely disrupted as many lost family and friends in the Holocaust, therefore Holocaust and Jewish museums helped them cope and deal with what happened in Europe. Developing this thesis in present times is especially meaningful; right-wing movements are rising in Europe and the survivors of World War II are almost all gone, therefore we will rely more and more on Holocaust museums to understand the Shoah.

In the last decades, many discussions about Holocaust institutions have been raised. This thesis examines material written on Holocaust museums, historiography and memory studies discourses. In order to discuss both Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin (JMB), Jewish authorship provides a first approach to these museums’ architecture and narrative. Rotem,7 in her book Constructing Memory discussed the power of architecture for Holocaust narrative. She wrote a chapter on Yad Vashem, and one on the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Neuman8 wrote about Yad Vashem, focusing on the new museum building opened in 2005, in Shoah Presence. ‘Museum architecture as spatial storytelling of historical time’ by Lu examined how architecture can become a form of storytelling of the Holocaust.9 Lu argued that

4 Original text: ‘È avvenuto, quindi può accadere di nuovo: questo è il nocciolo di quanto abbiamo da dire. Può accadere, e dappertutto ... occorre quindi affinare i nostri sensi, diffidare degli incantatori, da quelli che dicono belle parole non sostenute da buone ragioni’ my translation from Italian. Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati, 165. 5 Primo Levi was a Holocaust survivor. He was captured in 1943 and escaped from Auschwitz in 1945. He died in 1987, unclear whether his death was an accident or suicide. 6 Edward van Voolen ‘Shaping Memory in Judaism’ in Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, eds. Angeli Sachs and Edward van Vollen, 18. 7 Stephanie Shosh Rotem, Constructing Memory: Architectural Narratives of Holocaust Museums. Stephanie Rotem got her PhD at Tel Aviv University and is currently teaching there. 8 Eran Neuman, Shoah Presence: Architectural Representations of the Holocaust. Eran Neuman (1968) studied at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and got a Ph.D. from the University of California in Los Angeles. He is now the director of the David Azrieli School of Architecture at Tel Aviv University. 9 Fangqing Lu, ‘Museum architecture as spatial storytelling of historical time: Manifesting a primary example of Jewish space in Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum’.

2 ‘the idea of spatial storytelling contributes toward a unique embodied experience for the general public to support the process of “self- learning,” as well as interpreting and mediating memory through tangible artefacts and architecture.’10 Silke Arnold-de Simine also highlighted the ‘importance in the contemporary memorial landscape.’11 As these authors create a background for an architectural discussion, regarding the narrative, Edward Rothstein12 in 2016 wrote a piece titled ‘The Problem with Jewish Museums’ in which he controversially argued that many Jewish museums have lost the sense of Jewish identity itself, and ended his essay provocatively arguing that we need to ‘start to think about what it would be like to create a new Jewish museum in the first third of the 21st century.’13 Appelbaum,14 answered to Rothstein’s essay with an article titled ‘Why Are There So Many Jewish Museums?’15 where she also recognized that the ‘apparent inability (or unwillingness) of Holocaust museums to address the uniqueness of antisemitism, which Rothstein analyzes so well, is a problem.’16 Even though Rothstein refers mainly to general Jewish, and not particular Holocaust museums, he raised a critical point for this thesis, which is the importance of narrative in Holocaust museums. To support why this thesis will analyze the Jewish Museum in Berlin as a Holocaust institution, Sodaro17 explains why the JMB is often considered a Holocaust museum: ‘in rejecting the categorization as a memorial museum and in focusing on a celebration of German–Jewish culture and history rather than the tragedy of the Holocaust, the Jewish Museum is what we might call a counter memorial museum. […] At the same time, the museum often seems to conflict with Libeskind’s building18, which is infused with Holocaust symbolism and meaning.’19 A core part of the discourse of the research is memory studies and this thesis deals with some key concepts taken from different authors. Through essays such as Assmann’s ‘On the (in)compatibility of guilt and suffering in German history’, this thesis introduces the notions

10 Ibid., 443. 11 Silke Arnold-de Simine, ‘Memory Museum and Museum Text: Intermediality in Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum and W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz,’ 14. 12 Edward Rothstein (1952) is an American-Jewish critic who writes articles for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Mosaic Magazine, a conservative Jewish magazine. 13 Rothstein, ‘The Problem with Jewish Museums,’ Mosaic, February 1, 2016, https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2016/02/the-problem-with-jewish-museums/. 14 A conservative Jewish writer and historian. 15 Appelbaum, ‘Why Are There So Many Jewish Museums?’ Mosaic, February 9, 2016, https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2016/02/why-are-there-so-many-jewish-museums/. 16 Ibid. 17 A scholar in memory studies who is specialized in memorial museums. 18 Libeskind designed the two new modern buildings of the Berlin Jewish Museum. 19 Amy Sodaro, ‘Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,’ 77.

3 of guilt and suffering and analyses how Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin deal with history and national memory in their exhibitions.20 In fact, there is a very strong relation between Yad Vashem and the State of Israel as Steven Erlanger writes that ‘the Holocaust is the cornerstone of the Israeli state, and Yad Vashem is its guardian.’21 This thesis uses Assmann’s notion of memory from ‘Canon and Archive’ adapted to museums: cultural memory is based on the tension between remembering and forgetting, its contraction and its expansion.22 The concepts of trauma and conflict are also introduced by Thomas in ‘Collective Memory of Trauma’23 where he explores the trauma and suffering dynamics in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Svetlana Boym’s definition of nostalgia as a longing for a home that no longer exists or never existed is adapted to analyze Yad Vashem’s exhibition.24 Rob van der Laarse’s competing memories concept is also used to investigate memory dynamics in Berlin and Eastern European countries.25 In order to understand the JMB’s past and present, this thesis is based on the reading of German historiography, German victimhood and Holocaust memory in Germany pre and post-unification. The Berlin cityscape is analyzed by Sandler in ‘Counterpreservation’26, the German historiography debate discussed in ‘German historiography and the Holocaust’ by Von der Dunk 27 and in ‘Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the "Jewish Question"’ by Kulka are the starting point of the second chapter.28 Amos Goldberg,29 analyses the narrative used by Yad Vashem, ‘the museum presents the story of the Shoah from a uniquely Jewish perspective.’30

20 Aleida Assmann, ‘On the (in)compatibility of guilt and suffering in German Memory.’ 21 Erlanger, ‘Museum in Jerusalem exhibits Holocaust horrors anew,’ The New York Times, February 16, 2005, https://global-factiva-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/ga/default.aspx. 22 Aleida Assmann ‘Canon and Archive’ in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook eds. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. 23 Shannon Andrea Thomas, ‘Collective Memory of Trauma: The Otherization of Suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’. 24 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia. 25 Rob van der Laarse, ‘Competing Memories: Interview with Rob van der Laarse.’ 26 Daniela Sandler, ‘Counterpreservation.’ 27 H. W. von der Dunk ‘German historiography and the Holocaust,’ review of Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung, by Nicolas Berg. 28 Otto D. Kulka, “Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Jewish Question’”. 29 A liberal Jewish writer who recently published the groundbreaking book The Holocaust and the Nakba. 30 Amos Goldberg, ‘The “Jewish narrative” in the Yad Vashem global Holocaust museum,’ 192. Associate Professor at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and a fellow at the Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

4 He also focuses on problematics arising from the historic narrative defining it monochromatic.31

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the role of Holocaust museums in the past, from when they were first instituted, and in the present, focusing on two Holocaust museums: the Jewish Museum in Berlin, in the perpetrators’ land, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, situated in the victims’ country. This dissertation studies the geographic location of these museums because of its great influence on the narrative of these museums: Yad Vashem, being situated in Jerusalem, follows a Zionist narrative derived from the State’s national memory, while the Jewish Museum in Berlin sometimes falls into a guilt-induced narrative because it is in the capital of the country that perpetrated the Holocaust. Sodaro highlights the shift of the memorial museum from a dark nostalgic memory of the past to a new celebratory memorial museum.32 This thesis explores whether it is really the case for the JMB and emphasizes the strengths and weaknesses of the JMB and Yad Vashem in order to narrate the Holocaust to spread a message of compassion and prevention. The dissertation analyzes the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Yad Vashem to make a statement on how much of need Holocaust museums are today, not just to remember what happened in the past, but to prevent it ever happening again in the future. This does not apply solely to Jewish people, but to all the minorities.

The main research question that this thesis will explore is: how do Holocaust museums, such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Yad Vashem, incorporate the past into the present memory through their narrative and architecture? Therefore, the purpose of this project is to focus on architecture and memory construction in Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin and discuss the problematics arising from this research. Since antisemitism and violence against minorities are still part of our society today, this thesis argues that after commemoration, prevention should be one of the purposes of Holocaust museums around the world. Do Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin include a prevention and tolerance message in their narratives? From the statement of the Jewish Museum in Berlin regarding the future opening of the new display of their permanent collection, they state how ‘We will be incorporating the latest research and allocating more space to the period after 1945.’33 Therefore, they will give

31 Ibid., 193. 32 Sodaro, ‘Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,’ 77. 33 ‘Permanent Exhibition,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed December 5, 2018, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/permanent-exhibition.

5 a bigger space to the present, to what happened after the Shoah. Is giving more space to the present the best way to improve Holocaust museums’ narratives and effectiveness in fighting antisemitism and discrimination?

The methodology of this thesis includes my personal visit to Yad Vashem and the JMB as primary sources. I will use different methodological approaches as secondary sources such as close reading and analysis of the museum. From my own experience of the museums and the literature previously mentioned, I developed a method of analysis focusing on the narrative. For the first and second chapters I introduce the history of the museum, study its location and the significance of it, then I consider their architecture and architectural narrative, and finally their exhibitions and display techniques: Chapter I discusses Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum (YVHHM). After giving a general introduction of the Museum, this thesis considers the meaning of the geographical position of Yad Vashem in the heart of the Biblical Promised Land, Jerusalem. ‘Promised Land’ is a concept at the center of Zionist discourse stating that Israel being the homeland of Jewish people is a Divine right from the Thora. Then, this thesis analyses the architecture of the Museum in relation to its location. The final part of this chapter is dedicated to the YVHHM’s exhibition narrative and the architectural interior of the Museum. In Chapter II the Jewish Museum in Berlin is examined starting from its location in Berlin, then analyzing the ideas behind the architect of the JMB, the Polish-Jewish Libeskind, who shaped the Museum according to his own experience of the Holocaust as the son of two survivors. The second sub-chapter is dedicated to the narrative of the architecture and exhibition, these are particularly connected and united thanks to Libeskind’s Holocaust architecture. Since the permanent collection of the Museum is currently being renovated, the last part of the chapter is dedicated to the old display of the permanent collection and to the temporary exhibition ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ (11 December 2017 – 1 May 2019): ‘dedicated to a city that for two thousand years has been revered as a holy place by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike: Jerusalem’34. Therefore, it does not focus only on the Jewish perspective on the city, but also on other cultures living in the city.35

34‘Permanent Exhibition,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed December 5, 2018, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/permanent-exhibition. 35 Since the end of WWII, Berlin’s population became increasingly more multicultural. The Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) government incremented the Russian and Polish population, and the second nationality in Berlin after German is Turkish. From ‘Statistischer Bericht: Einwohnerinnen und Einwohner im Land Berlin am 31. Dezember 2017’ [Statistical Report: Residents in the state of

6 For Chapter III, this thesis uses comparison to analyze the two museums together, and then uses discourse analysis to examine current debates surrounding Yad Vashem and the JMB based on Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore the power relationships between State and museum through these current debates.36 Both the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Yad Vashem have vast online catalogues on past exhibitions, publications, collections, and an online library easily accessible. Literature related to memory studies is the base of discussions on memory, trauma and suffering. Museographical and museological methodologies are adopted in order to study the museums and their exhibitions and architecture. Museological methodology refers to the description of more conceptual aspects of the museums, while museographical approach involves more practical elements of the museums. Klausewitz argues that applied museology includes the more theoretical questions of collecting, documentation, museum education, etc., while museography deals with techniques and methods on a day-to-day level, for example security and exhibition techniques.37

Berlin on 30 June 2018] (PDF). Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg (in German). 4, 13, 18–22. Retrieved 20 December 2018. 36 Julianne Cheek, ‘Foucauldian Discourse Analysis,’ in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods ed. Lisa M. Given. 37 Peter van Mensch, ‘Towards a methodology of museology,’ 50-57.

7 Chapter I Yad Vashem

Established on the 19th of August 1953, five years after the State of Israel’s independence in 1948, on the Mount Herzl, also called the Mount of Remembrance, the Yad Vashem Remembrance Center masters on the hill (Fig.1). It is dedicated not only to the victims of the Holocaust, but also to ‘the Righteous Among the Nations, honored by Yad Vashem, the non- Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. Rescue took many forms and the Righteous came from different nations, religions and walks of life. What they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbors at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed.’38 Yad Vashem was named after a verse in Isaiah’s 56:5, and it literally means ‘a place and a name’. Biblically referring to promising ‘a memorial even to the pious eunuchs’ whose name will not be carried after their death. By naming the Holocaust Remembrance Center ‘Yad Vashem’, the institution aims to carry on the names, and therefore the essence, of the forgotten victims of the Shoah.39 Yad Vashem is not only a Holocaust museum, but includes the Museum of Holocaust Art, an Exhibition Pavilion, a Synagogue, a Visual Center, a Learning Center and, of major importance, the Archives. The Hall of Names, one of its main memorials, was opened in 1977; in the 1950s, the institution began collecting the names and all the biographical information available of the hitherto unnamed victims of the Holocaust, in order to commemorate and remember them. Today, there is an impressive number of more than 2.5 million names catalogued in the Hall of Names. On the shelves of the memorial, there is space for millions more names, a space that will never be filled. In 2004, the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names was launched, free and accessible for everyone to research lost relatives’ and friends’ names.40 The new museum complex was inaugurated in 2005 with new buildings and with the museums’ exhibitions completely renovated. When the Holocaust History Museum reopened, the Hall of Names became part of the exhibition. This chapter focuses on the way in which the Holocaust is represented throughout the Holocaust History Museum. Its aim is to inform and commemorate, therefore the permanent

38 ‘Righteous,’ Yad Vashem, Accessed March 2019, https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/about-the- righteous.html. 39 Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, 22. 40 ‘Hall of Names,’ Yad Vashem, Accessed March 2019, https://www.yadvashem.org/archive/hall-of- names.html.

8 exhibition at the YVHHM is very educational and deeply rooted in both historical facts and personal experiences. How does Yad Vashem weave the past into the seams of the present through the architecture and the narrative of the Holocaust History Museum? This question is explored through this first chapter.

I.1 Geographic Significance and Architecture

Engraved into Jerusalem’s land, the Holocaust History Museum as a symbolic construction is embedded in Jewish history. Mount Herzl, named after Theodor Herzl (Budapest 1860- Austria 1904), the father of the Zionist movement, who is buried on the Mount dedicated to him, is also called the Mount of Remembrance and it does not only host Yad Vashem, but also the Israel Military Cemetery and Herzl Museum.41 This already positions Yad Vashem in a Zionist narrative, as the Shoah institution shares the mount with two of the most meaningful places for Zionism and for the Israeli State.42 The building, designed by the Jewish-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, cuts Mount Herzl from one side to the other, resulting in most of the museum being underground. As Neuman argues, ‘Safdie often indicated that the Holocaust must be represented in Jerusalem although it did not take place there, because many survivors live in Israel and the event is part of the local consciousness.’43 A matter to consider and analyze when dealing with Holocaust museums is its geographic location. Positioning the Israeli Holocaust main institution in Jerusalem, in fact, has a political agenda behind it. As Levin writes, ‘The Holocaust plays an important role as a justification for an independent Jewish state.’ 44 In fact, since the first Zionist rulers like David Ben-Gurion, Zionists are still justifying nowadays the establishment of the State of Israel in name of the Shoah. Rotem points out that ‘the collective memory of the Holocaust bears a prominent role in both the construction of Israeli identity and in the political and cultural struggle over its specific form.’45 Thus in 1953, building Yad Vashem on Mount Herzl in a city with such a layered history and present, was an affirmation of ownership on that land. Young argues that ‘ironically, however, by linking the State’s raison d’etre to the Holocaust, the early founders also located the Shoah at the center of national

41 Theodor Herzl was the father of Zionist movement, he is buried on Mount Herzl, dedicated to him. 42 Zionism is the movement of Jewish people who wanted to create a Jewish state in the Promised Land of Israel. Inspired by nationalist movements in the 19th century and motivated by antisemitism. Today Zionism defends the right of existing of the State of Israel after its foundation in 1948. 43 Neuman, Shoah Presence, 69. 44 Levin, ‘Jewish Identity in Architecture in Israel’ in Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, 38. 45 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 9.

9 identity: Israel would be a nation condemned to defining itself in opposition to that very event that makes it necessary.’46 Therefore, this raises important questions such as ‘how to remember the Holocaust in Israel without allowing it to constitute the center of one’s Jewish identity?’47 The Museum deals with such questions through its narrative, helping Jewish people all over the word to not only commemorate a tragic past, but also define themselves in the present and future. The cultural memory of the Holocaust in Europe and in Israel took, and takes, very different forms. However, as Gelernter pointed out in the article mentioned in the introduction, many representations of the Holocaust can easily fall into the kitsch/fetishistic area. Architecture is an appropriate medium of Holocaust expression, as Rotem writes.48 Neuman analyses Holocaust commemoration architecture: there are ‘larger questions about Holocaust commemoration places, sites and architecture. After all, the Nazi atrocities against Jews, Romas, homosexuals, communists and all others they defined as non-Aryan took place in space, in architecture and sometimes even through the active agency of architecture.’49 Although architecture was a silent witness to Nazi’s atrocities, in present days it is transformed into a relief agent. Jewish architecture shapes the identity of Jewish people; after centuries of exile, Jewish people affirm their existence through their buildings, their schools, their synagogues. Yad Vashem is an anthem of survival, or rebirth, not just a place of commemoration and mourning. The architecture of the Holocaust institution has the duty to convey both hope for the future, as well as remembering the past for it to be imprinted in the collective memory of the world. Safdie’s architecture complies with the Zionist narrative by turning the landscape into part of the museum exhibit, as Neuman argues:

‘On the northwest side of the prism, where it breaks out of the mountain, its edges part completely and spread to the sides, revealing the mountainous Jerusalem landscape. At this point the landscape is appropriated, objectified and turned into another exhibit in the history museum; what began with the display of the events in Europe ends in the Jerusalem landscape. The building itself supports this process and marks an act of liberation, both symbolically and experientially. The visitors are liberated from the past, from the building, as they move toward the present, to the contemporary Jerusalem landscape.’50

46 Young, ‘Jewish Museums, Holocaust Museums, and Questions of National Identity’ in Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, 49. 47 Ibid. 48 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 10. 49 Neuman, Shoah Presence, 4. 50 Ibid., 68.

10 The museum is not only situated on the top of Mount Herzl, but it invades the landscape as it becomes part of it. The journey of the visitor inside of the underground museum is rewarded with a view of Jerusalem at the end (Fig.2). However, the underground space is not a claustrophobic dark atmosphere, but, as Lu argues, ‘the design of underground space not only contributes to creating a harmonious atmosphere between the natural and built environments but also makes interior space of the museum mysterious and unpredictable.’51 This effect is achieved through the high triangular ceiling with windows at the top (Fig.3). Safdie’s building, in comparison with the previous Holocaust Museum’s architecture, highlights its geographical position as it is not only on the top of the mount, but it is an integral part of it, not a guest as much as the owner, invading and adapting to the territory at the same time: it is the museum architectural peak of the Zionist ideology. Yad Vashem is a national institution, sponsored mainly by the Israeli government as well as by many organizations, such as the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the American Society for Yad Vashem, and privates. Its claim is that the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other genocide in history. A claim so strong that in 2009 the Museum fired an instructor, Itamar Shapira, who compared the Shoah to Nakba, the 1948 Palestinian exodus.52 According to the online edition of the newspaper Haaretz, the man violated the extremely strict policy of its employers not to discuss political issues or use the Holocaust for political uses. Shapira mentioned the Nakba because from the hill visitors can see the ruins of Deir Yassin, the village that saw the 1948 massacre. Looking at the Judean hills some see the redemption of Jewish people, others are reminded of the most egregious acts of violence against Palestinians during the Nakba.53 The Nakba, which means ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic, is the 1948 exodus of Palestinian people from their homes in former Mandatory Palestine after the end of British mandate in 1947 during the Israeli-Palestinian War 1947- 1949. In national Israeli memory, the Nakba is called War of Independence and is celebrated every year as Independence Day. Shapira argued in the article that ‘Yad Vashem talks about the Holocaust survivors' arrival in Israel and about creating a refuge here for the world's Jews. I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation.’54 Yad Vashem follows the State narrative and as Thomas argues, ‘by emphasizing and silencing different events, Israel has managed to create a

51 Lu, ‘Museum architecture as spatial storytelling of historical time,’ 447. 52 Stern, ‘Yad Vashem Fires Employee Who Compared Holocaust to Nakba,’ Haaretz, April 23, 2009, https://www.haaretz.com/1.5041498. 53 Thomas, ‘Collective Memory of Trauma,’ 203. 54 Stern, ‘Yad Vashem Fires Employee Who Compared Holocaust to Nakba.’

11 hegemonic, authoritative narrative of its history while allowing for collective amnesia to erase the Palestinian counter-narrative.’55 Both Palestine and Israel based their national memory on the ‘otherization’ of each other’s suffering. As Israel ignores that the Nakba ever happened, the State created a collective amnesia banning Nakba commemoration from 2011.56 At the same time, Palestinians are not made aware of the events of the Holocaust. As Thomas writes, when discussing both Yad Vashem and the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit (25 km from Jerusalem) neither of the museums are ready to ‘take steps to recognize the mere presence of the Other, let alone to formally acknowledge the other side’s narrative.’57 Therefore, as this wall of indifference of both countries stays up, the reaction of Yad Vashem to the educator’s comment is not unexpected. However, when it comes to politics, Yad Vashem is politicized by the State of Israel often, as Matti Friedman analyses in his article in The New York Times, as State leaders from all over the world always visit it during their diplomatic stays in Israel. Therefore, while its employees are not allowed to mention politics because of Yad Vashem’s politics, it becomes ‘a tool of Israeli Realpolitik’58 in the hands of the State. Yad Vashem argues that its ‘position is that the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other event and that every visitor can draw his own political conclusions.’59 Yet, visitors are presented from the very beginning with a Zionist narrative, first of all through the landscape architecture. Tom Segev, an Israeli writer and historian who is part of Israel's New Historians,60 commented on the new opening in 2005 in an article by Chris McGreal. The Jewish writer argues that the reason beyond the complete renovation was not purely to attract more audience and update their exhibit, but ‘The new museum's a statement of two things. It tells you that nowhere in the world should there be a more magnificent Holocaust museum than in Jerusalem, not in Washington, not in Berlin. This is the reason why it was built in such a way. There's an element of competition here.’61 Therefore, Israel positions itself at the center of Holocaust narrative in the world, and it needed

55 Thomas, ‘Collective Memory of Trauma,’ 201. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 206. 58 Friedman, ‘What Happens When a Holocaust Memorial Plays Host to Autocrats’ The New York Times, December 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/yad-vashem- holocaust-memorial-israel.html. 59 Stern, ‘Yad Vashem Fires Employee Who Compared Holocaust to Nakba.’ 60 Israeli’s New Historians is a group of scholars challenging many concepts that are part of Israel’s narrative. 61 McGreal, ‘This is ours and ours alone’ The Guardian, March 15, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/mar/15/heritage.israelandthepalestinians.

12 the appropriate architecture and museum to affirm its dominance in the field. And it was successful, as it is the leading institution dedicated to the Shoah in the world.

I.2 The Holocaust History Museum’s Narrative

The narrative of the Holocaust History Museum is strictly connected to the architecture of the building. Therefore, this subchapter is going to analyze how the display and architecture work together in the telling of the Shoah in it. The importance of Holocaust collective memory has increased in these last years. In fact, most of the Holocaust survivors are now dead. Therefore, it is our duty to make sure that their stories and memories are recorded and presented to the public. Holocaust museums contribute to the way the Holocaust collective memory is presented to their visitors. Collective memory is made of different voices and opinions, and Yad Vashem, as well as all Holocaust museums are responsible for showing different sides and perspectives of the Shoah. The importance of the connection between Holocaust collective memory and Holocaust museums is also addressed by Rotem who writes that ‘the generation of survivors has been passing on their personal legacy to the museums, which will construct a collective memory by molding their autobiographical recollections into a constricted narrative to be remembered by future generations.’62 The 2005 new YVHHM took the need of the visitors into consideration for a more personal display. As The New York Times reported on the day of the opening, ‘rather than the dry history and emphasis on photographs of the old museum, the new one relies on more modern techniques of film and recreation of reality through artefacts, concentrating on the stories of individuals caught up in the horror of a previously unimaginable world.’63 For years Holocaust survivors lived without ever mentioning what happened to them, their children almost unaware of the events. Neuman talks about it at the beginning of his book, Shoah Presence: ‘I woke up the next morning and I could not recall a single detail of my father’s story. I had completely repressed it, unwilling to deal with the narrative, with the horrific details and their significance. I completely rejected my father’s representation of his Holocaust story. […] It was a failure of representation; the mind could not absorb the details.’64 Segev explains how at the beginning what Jewish people went through in Europe was

62 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 16. 63 ‘New Holocaust Museum Opens in Jerusalem’ The New York Times, March 15, 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/international/middleeast/new-holocaus-holocaust-museum- opens-in-jerusalem.html. 64 Neuman, Shoah Presence, 3.

13 considered a taboo in Israel, however as the years went by, especially with the trial of Adolf Eichmann in the 1960s, there was an increasing urge to break the silence around the Shoah.65 Apart from the trauma, horror and pain surrounding the genocide, another reason why Holocaust survivors did not openly initiate a conversation on what happened is that as soon as the European Jews started to live in Israel, the Jewish people living there saw them as weak and their stories were met with disinterest. Shannon Andrea Thomas writes about this, stating that for some years right after the Shoah, the Jews of the diaspora were seen as ‘Old Jews’ and they were in antithesis to the ‘New Jews’ who were living in the Biblical land and were considered superior Jews. He also points out that the Yishuv66 textbooks written between 1930 and 1948 used the same anti-Semitic stereotypes applied in Europe in those years. ‘Old Jews’ were depicted with very prominent ‘Jewish noses’ and hunched backs in opposition to the ‘New Jews’ who were strong and handsome. Some of these books even implied that the diaspora Jews were punished because they did not recognize Zionism.67 ‘This contributes to a separation or a strange wall between Holocaust survivors and the native Israelis... Ben Gurion called it “a barrier of blood and silence and agony and loneliness.”’68 Therefore, before the Holocaust became one of the explanations for the founding of the State of Israel, Jews escaping from Europe and Holocaust survivors were marginalized. As the second-generation Holocaust survivors grew up, it became clear how their parents’ trauma was passed on to them, for example Samuel Juni discusses in his essay ‘Identity Disorders of Second-Generation Holocaust Survivors’ or Art Spiegelman in his Holocaust graphic novel, Maus. Thus, in the new museum they shifted the narrative from a historical-chronological one, to a personal and individual story based one. This was in reaction to a need to help young Jews find their own identity in a post-Holocaust world. The following paragraph describes and analyzes the Holocaust History Museum, alongside narrative-atmosphere-architecture-display, from the entrance main gate to the terrace on Jerusalem at the end of Safdie’s building. The description and analysis is based on both my personal visit to the museum and written material on it. The YVHHM ‘presents the story of the Shoah from a unique Jewish perspective, emphasizing the experiences of the individual victims through original artefacts, survivor

65 McGreal, ‘This is ours and ours alone.’ 66 Yishuv: the old Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel before the founding of the State of Israel. 67 Thomas, ‘Collective Memory of Trauma,’ 207-208. 68 Segev in Thomas, ‘Collective Memory of Trauma,’ 208.

14 testimonies and personal possessions.’69 Visitors enter the museums through a wooden bridge that, as Rotem points out, is meant to detach them from daily life in favor of entering the realm of memory.70 Since the exit is not visible from the entrance, the visitors seem to enter in a place where there is no escape. The prism building is designed according to an evolving narrative, beginning with an overview of the prewar life of Jewish people in Europe, and ending with the previously mentioned terrace of Jerusalem. Visitors are forced to follow the chronological narrative of the museum because the possibility to just walk straight towards the end is blocked by transition barriers guiding you through the different galleries (Fig.4). Therefore, as visitors zigzag the rooms, the triangle of light becomes closer and closer. As Rotem reports the words of the exhibition’s designer Dorit Harel, ‘Visitors should experience every part of the exhibition, without short cuts or abridgements.’71 The lighting differs in the main corridors and in each room: at the top of the prism there is a glass skylight which allows the main corridor of the museum to have natural light even if underground. The lateral galleries get darker as the theme gets more dramatic, but they are all still softly illuminated by natural light through small slits. Safdie’s building is built so that the floor of the underground structure goes downhill until it rises again at the end when the visitors reach the terrace. This is especially clear from Sadfie’s sketches of the museum (Fig.5). The dark years of the Holocaust are therefore depicted as a downhill path that is saved by the light of Jerusalem and the rise of the floor towards safety: Israel. Lu highlights the importance of the landscape of Yad Vashem for its engagement with historical time.72 One thing that Yad Vashem emphasizes is how, differently from most Holocaust museums, their exhibition is based on authentic objects.73 Although not mentioned in the landscape analysis by Lu, this use of original items also speaks about the historical time concept the museum works with. As the museum narrative progresses in the museum, a strong sense of nostalgia is felt by the visitors in the rooms. Nostalgia as Boym discussed it, in the sense of a longing for a place that does not yet exist, a sense of completeness in other historical times.74 By the end of the museum, that nostalgia is fulfilled by the Zionist narrative: the ‘Promised Land’ idea of a Divine right on the land of Israel from the Bible is permeated with

69 ‘Holocaust History Museum,’ Yad Vashem, Accessed March 2019, https://www.yadvashem.org/museum/holocaust-history-museum.html. 70 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 63. 71 Ibid., 64. 72 Lu, ‘Museum architecture as spatial storytelling of historical time,’ 446. 73 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 66. 74 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia.

15 nostalgia and is also a very problematic aspect of Zionist politics as it critically is a colonial attitude. Just like chapters in a book, each gallery of the Museum has a different title. The first room, ‘The World That Was’, presents a video made by Michal Rovner called Living Landscape. Made specifically for Yad Vashem, the exhibit covers the entire thirteen-meter-tall triangular south wall of Safdie’s building. Perry analyses the work as an in-between space between life outside and the museum, it initiates the visitor to the visit. She further argues that, ‘Not only does the piece welcome us into the museum, it also thematizes hospitality in returning to the motifs of home/land and the address/greeting. Positioning its viewers alternately as host and guest, it presses us to an ethical reflection on our relationship to the history and memory of the Holocaust and its victims.’75 Living Landscape introduces the visitors to two concepts beyond the museum: the idea of home for Jewish people, before the war Europe and today Israel, as well as individuality. Jewish people were never all the same, each victim of the Holocaust has their own story and they all differ from each other. Thus, Rovener’s video portrays the diversity of the lives of Jewish people in order to show how it was not just six million murders, but six million individual victims. Holocaust museums often include literary Shoah narratives into their exhibitions, the use of literature in the telling of the Holocaust in museums gives more power to the narrative and shows an individual unique perspective. In the room ‘From Equals to Outcasts’, that discusses the rise of National Socialism and anti-Jewish policies, Yad Vashem’s curators reported a well- known poem written by pastor Martin Niemöller on the wall. Niemöller at the beginning of the Nazi regime was a Nazi supporter, but he later opposed to Hitler risking his life: he was captured by the Gestapo and for eight years he was a prisoner in different concentration camps.76 His poem is a warning on the dangers of apathy:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

75 Rachel E. Perry, ‘Holocaust Hospitality: Michal Rovner's Living Landscape at Yad Vashem,’ 89. 76 ‘Galleries: From equals to outcasts’, Yad Vashem, Accessed March 24, 2019, https://www.yadvashem.org/museum/holocaust-history-museum/galleries/from-equals-to- outcasts.html.

16 Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.77

Like pastor Martin’s story, Primo Levi as well as Anne Frank have their own view of the Shoah events, and museums incorporate their talent of expression to highlight the horror of the genocide. Yad Vashem creates a narrative in which individual and common views are united in order to present many different Jewish perspectives on the Shoah to the visitors, who are presented with both the Nazi-German environment at the end of the 1930s as well as with the testimonies of the survivors. The display of the second room focuses on 1938 and the Kristallnacht as the point of realization that life in Germany for Jewish people was not possible anymore, and it was never going to be the same. While the room presents a deep insight into the rise of antisemitism in Germany, it skips the historical background and it directly starts from the rise of Nazism. Goldberg in fact argues that:

‘It is obvious that the decision to skip almost all introductory explanations regarding the European and German context from which Nazism arose is deliberate. This decision introduces a very significant gap at the beginning of the narrative. Consequently, the whole story begins in its very middle. […] Modernity racism, former genocides, colonialism and imperialism, the development of discourses and practices of exclusions in the sciences, totalitarianism, fascism, the First World War, the Weimar Republic, mass society, modern nationalism the modern nation-state and so on are all omitted.’78

Here, Goldberg highlights a very problematic aspect of the YVHHM, that is its monochromatic portrayal of the Holocaust. The display narrative shapes the so called Final Solution as a decision that was made already when Nazism came to power. YVHHM’s narrative implies that antisemitism was almost the only cause of the Holocaust when it alone cannot be the only historical background to explain it. Otherwise, it is not clarified why, since antisemitism was already rooted in Europe for centuries, it happened in the 20th century and not before. Goldberg further argues that the Museum does not provide the visitors with information on why the persecution got worse. As an example of how the YVHHM creates this misleading

77 ‘Martin Niemoller: First they came for the Socialists,’ Holocaust Encyclopedia, Accessed April 12, 2019, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the- socialists. 78 Goldberg, “The ‘Jewish narrative’ in the Yad Vashem global Holocaust museum,” 193.

17 representation of the Final Solution, Goldberg chooses an installation in the second room of the museum, which is a clip from “Hitler’s infamous speech of January 1939 is presented. The visitor cannot avoid this clip, which repeats over and over again Hitler’s words that ‘if international finance-Jewry. . . should succeed in plunging the nations into a world war yet again, then the outcome will not be the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!’”79 However, as Ian Kershaw argues, this ‘prophetic speech’ is much more complex than the Museum suggests and it cannot be identified as the definitive moment when National Socialist planned the Final Solution.80 This omission of the museum is identified by Goldberg as an anti-representation of history.81 In fact, visitors without an extensive historical background on the Holocaust are brought to see the entire narrative of the Holocaust Museum as a simplistic path that leads to the genocide. While the Museum offers an emotional Holocaust history, its lack of a text or video explaining the complexities of the Shoah is problematic. In fact, the objects and installations of the Museum offer a unique experience to the visitors, piles of silver Menorahs stolen from the Jews, original photographs taken in concentration camps, first-person testimonies presented with various medias, the focus on antisemitism of the institution commemorates the victims in a respectful and engaging/interesting way. Nonetheless, the Museum is not transparently dealing with the omission of historical information leading the visitors to gain a misguided historical view of the Holocaust. This is problematic because historical inaccuracy on the Holocaust is what the Yad Vashem Remembrance Center fights against. This dissertation argues that an introductory text briefly explaining how multi-layered and complex the events of the Shoah are, and how the narrative focuses on the rise of antisemitism in Europe would improve the museum overall narrative and experience. At the end of the YVHHM’s exhibition, Hansen-Glucklich focuses on the banner that says, ‘Remember what Amalek did to you!’ explaining that the Amalek nation is the Biblical paradigmatic enemy of the Jews, therefore knowing this shows how the curators of the exhibition create a controversial link between the Holocaust and Biblical tales of Jewish suffering and persecution and inscribing the Shoah as a climactic point into a larger Jewish

79 Ibid., 195. 80 Ian Kershaw, ‘Hitler’s prophecy and the Final Solution,’ in On Germans and Jews under the Nazi regime, ed. Moshe Zimmermann (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2006), 49– 66. 81 Goldberg, “The ‘Jewish narrative’ in the Yad Vashem global Holocaust museum,” 197.

18 narrative.82 The banner and the lack of in-depth information on the Holocaust perpetrators and bystanders in the narrative creates a religious Jewish and Zionist idea that of the Shoah as a pre-determined event to lead to the foundation of the State of Israel, and highlights how the Museum sees the diaspora as an unnatural event that had to be overcome. According to this narrative, the victims of the Holocaust are not always defined as victims, but as martyrs. Under the first banner, a second one reads: ‘Jews, do not forget the victims among the Jewish people. Your participation in the unveiling of the memorial stones honors all 6.000.000 Jewish martyrs’. Hansen-Glucklich differentiates between a victim and a martyr: a martyr has agency and the power to choose, they die for something, for a greater cause. A victim dies for nothing because they have no choice.83 This is highly problematic because if the Holocaust victims become martyrs who died for a greater cause, for Judaism or for the founding of Israel, then Yad Vashem changes history. The reason behind this choice is that they want to give to the victims their power back, to make them less weak following the Zionist idea of presenting Jewish people as strong and independent, not as helpless victims. Another example of this Zionist martyr-victim narrative is the focus that the museum has on the Ghetto uprising during WWII, in particular on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, as a proof of martyrdom instead of victimhood. The problematic misuse of the word martyrs in Yad Vashem to reinforce the Zionist narrative is also controversial because of the Israeli history during the Holocaust. As Thomas analyzed, at the beginning the European Jewish survivors living in Israel were marginalized by the Israeli Jews. The last ones saw the first ones as weak and powerless, therefore Yad Vashem not acknowledging this first refusal of Holocaust survivors by the Israeli people and the use of the name martyrs becomes even more problematic, however it is specific of the Zionist narrative in the museum and the Zionist ideal of Jewish people as strong and powerful in order to defend themselves against antisemitism. To conclude this chapter, the Yad Vashem’s decision of omitting part of the historic narrative compromises the informative qualities of the museum, that is restricted to a narrow Jewish-Israeli point of view. Because of this, the lack of both multiculturalism and recognition of other genocides results in the museum not being able to transmit larger values such as the importance of tolerance and empathy towards each other which, according to this study, should

82 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Rituals of Remembrance: How We Remember the Holocaust’ Filmed 23 January 2019 at Mary Talks: University of Mary Washington, USA. Video, 59:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObBTgWgGcrI. 83 Ibid.

19 be a priority of Holocaust museums. Thus, in the YVHHM there is no prevention for the present and future and there is no space for anyone else’s suffering. However, the information and documents of the YVHHM are accessible and effectively engage the public, the lack of a broader view is because they have such a specific agenda with the Zionist narrative. The Yad Vashem Historic Holocaust Museum reaches its goal to commemorate the Holocaust victims as individuals rather than nameless victims where the names in the Hall of Names are presented as in their natural homeland (Fig.6).

20 Chapter II The Jewish Museum in Berlin

While the first chapter focused on Yad Vashem, a museum built according to the point of view of the victims, the second chapter of this thesis analyses a museum located in the capital of the country of the perpetrators of the Holocaust. The Jewish Museum in Berlin is not defined as a Holocaust museum. However, like Rotem argues, naming a Holocaust museum ‘Jewish’ represents a political stand and cannot, therefore, be a deciding criterion by which to exclude the museum from the study of Holocaust museums.84 In the case of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, one of the main reasons why the museum is perceived by the public as a Holocaust museum is based on Daniel Libeskind’s building, inaugurated in 1997.85 The building creates a disrupting and intense experience through its sharp metallic shapes. As Rotem writes, ‘this building is possibly the most persuasive example of the tremendous influence that an architect can have on the museum’s narrative and the messages it conveys.’86 The importance of its architecture is demonstrated by the curatorial choice of leaving it empty for the first three years since the building was completed; the curators were having difficulties organizing an exhibition for such a unique space, therefore visitors toured the empty building until 2001, when the exhibition was opened. The first Jewish museum in Berlin, opened in 1933, was located next to the New Synagogue. The museum became soon a significant part of the life of the Jewish people living in Berlin, as it was sponsoring Jewish artists. With the increasing antisemitism, Jews became increasingly attracted to Jewish culture. Nevertheless, after the Kristallnacht in 1938, the museum was damaged and closed, and the director was imprisoned by the Nazis. In 1971, during the Bonn Republic, the exhibition Leistung und Schicksal87 on the Jewish history of Berlin was highly successful, therefore the idea of building a second Jewish museum in West Berlin was born. Rotem highlights the struggle of the Jewish congregation wishing to both build an independent display on their history and culture, as well as wanting to integrate

84 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 139. 85 Daniel Libeskind is a Polish-American architect and he is the son of two Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors. In Between the Lines he says that ‘my sense of Jewishness has nothing to do with either fundamentalism or rebellion.’ Apart from the Jewish Museum in Berlin, he also designed other Jewish Institutions: the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen. The Jewish Museum in Berlin was his first project. Daniel Libeskind, Between the Lines. 86 Details on the first Jewish museum in Berlin in Rotem, Constructing Memory, 141. 87 Translation from German: Achievement and Destiny.

21 their story to the city’s general historical narrative. Thus, they decided to create a separate Jewish Museum as part of the Berlin state museum, however during the years of construction, it became an independent institution, separated from the Berlin Museum.88 As the website states, ‘In 2001, responsibility for the Jewish Museum Berlin passed to the German federal government and the museum became a foundation under direct federal supervision.’89 This chapter examines how memory is constructed in the JMB, focusing on Libeskind’s building as architectural narrative and exhibition narrative of the Shoah, as well as on the temporary exhibition ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’. The aim is to analyze how the JMB deals with perpetrators’ guilt and explore whether the Museum really manages to be what they define themselves as: ‘a vibrant center of reflection on Jewish history and culture as well as about migration and diversity in Germany.’90 How does the JMB weave the past into the seams of the present through the architecture and the narrative of its collection?

II.1 Geographic Significance and Architecture

Jewish Museum, Berlin

A zinc shell Housing a history Of terror In its emptiness. A giddiness Of uneven ground. Propels you forward In zig-zag light Towards inevitable Darkness. A forest of stone Pillars brings Escape into air, Into exile. Lotte Kramer91

88 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 142. 89 ‘Museum History,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed January 19, 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/history-our-museum. 90 ‘Who are We,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed January 19, 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/who-we-are. 91 Lotte Kramer, ‘Jewish Museum, Berlin,’161.

22

The history of German Jews is a difficult one to tell, and narrating it in the Third Reich’s Capital is even more complex. While the Jewish Museum in Berlin is not per se a trauma site,92 like Auschwitz as a concentration camp is, its position in Europe, and more specifically in Berlin, is very significant, especially when placed in comparison with Jerusalem. Situated in Lindenstraße, the Museum was built in the former West Berlin, and it is very close to Checkpoint Charlie, the main crossing point between East and West Berlin after the construction of the wall in 1961, now part of the Mauer Museum.93 Collective memory was constructed very differently in West and East Germany, as argued by Wolfgram, but a common theme was German victimhood: they saw themselves as victims of the war and Jews were victims of Nazism.94 Therefore, a figurative wall was built between the good Germans and the evil Nazis. Both West and East Germany, not ready to face the perpetrators’ narrative, created the myth of Nazi-terror. Wolfgram explains ‘a myth is not necessarily untrue, but rather a specific narrative about the past invested with symbolic power.’95 The Nazi-terror myth is the claim that the Nazi Gestapo terrorized the entire German population equally, and this is why they remained passive to the Holocaust events. However, like Johnson’s studies reveal, the Gestapo was too weak to do investigations alone and it relied massively on popular collaboration, only specific minorities like the Jews and the Communists were targeted and more than 75 percent of Germans broke laws without being afraid of punishment.96 East Germany, under the DDR government, prioritized the remembrance of the November Revolution (1918) over Kristallnacht. The East German population saw themselves as victims of both Nazism and the DDR, leaving no space to address German antisemitism and their role as perpetrators of the Shoah until the late 1980s, before then, Holocaust commemoration was absent.97 In West Germany, the perpetrators’ narrative was recognized in the late 1960s, sooner than in the East, however they also struggled to face the Holocaust. The Shoah was not as muted as in the East, it was discussed, but the state, individuals and media first never discussed who the perpetrators were, and then they started discussing ‘the victims of National Socialism’,

92 Patrizia Violi, ‘Luoghi della memoria: dalla traccia al senso.’ 93 ‘History,’ Mauermuseum, Accessed June 4, 2019, https://www.mauermuseum.de/en/about- us/history/. 94 Mark Wolfgram, ‘Getting History Right’: East and West German Collective Memories of the Holocaust and War, 26. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid., 26-27. 97 Ibid., 29-30.

23 thus taking distance from the perpetrators and avoiding a discussion on the Jewish persecution.98 Berlin was the center of Holocaust discussion because it had the largest Jewish population after the war. This Holocaust memory background is used to show the importance of historiography to understand the momentum of Libeskind’s building as a reflection of historiography and why a Jewish museum was first built long after WWII ended. The JMB is a site of commemoration, of penitence, of celebration of the Jewish culture and minorities that quickly became one of the most visited museums in Berlin. The words of the poet and Holocaust survivor Kramer establish the concept that is at the core of Libeskind’s building: emptiness and absence. Hansen-Glucklich discusses the ‘Architecture of Absence in the Jewish Museum in Berlin’ in her PhD project ‘Holocaust Memories: Visuality and the Sacred in Museums and Exhibits.’99 She highlights the power of Libeskind’s architecture writing that some critics and visitors wanted the museum to stay empty as a memorial to the victims of the Shoah rather than a museum. However, the Polish-born architect designed the building as a space to hold a narrative and exhibition, not as a memorial.100 The Museum is structured in two different buildings: the Old Building, a ‘nineteenth century courthouse destroyed during World War II but later restored and subsequently used to house the Berlin Museum’s main collection’101 and the Libeskind Building, one of the first examples of deconstructivist architecture. The Old Building is the main entrance to the Museum, and it hosts the café, the ticket office, the clock room on the ground floor, and the exhibition ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ on the first floor. Libeskind’s building shows the broken cityscape of Berlin. Sandler explains how Berlin’s roughness is not just a sing of the WWII bombing: in the nineteenth-century the city quickly grew because of industrialization, creating dirty buildings, slums, pollution. The Nazi regime also contributed to the decay of the urban environment between demolitions and new projects, left unfinished because of the war.102 Even after the war and reunification, Berlin continued, and continues, to show signs of its broken history. Therefore, the modern building of the JMB contrasting with the reconstructed Baroque building is a disruptive view that fits into the Berlin’s cityscape (Fig.7).

98 Ibid., 43-44. 99 An assistant Professor at the University of Mary Washington and specializes in German-Jewish literature and Holocaust Studies. 100 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories: Visuality and the Sacred in Museums and Exhibits,’ 29. 101 Brent Allen Saindon ‘A Doubled Heterotopia: Shifting Spatial and Visual Symbolism in the Jewish Museum Berlin's Development,’ 25. 102 Sandler, ‘Counterpreservation,’ 689.

24 Libeskind also created the Glass Courtyard where the Café resides six years after the opening. The architect was inspired by the sukkah, made with branches and leaves.103 The sukkah in the JMB is a modern representation of a real one, it is closed on three sides and open on one which leads outside, it is a permeable construction that references nature and reminds us of other Jewish traditions that are part of the Jewish Museum. Visitors can look up the glass ceiling cut by white metal branches and see the sky through them; this is the same experience that Jewish people have during Sukkot, when they look up to the sky through the roof of the sukkah. Libeskind argues that the Glass Courtyard is a symbol of life and tradition: visitors standing in it can still see the Old Building, but they also see the life in the Museum moving forward.104 From the Old Building, visitors access the permanent collection through an underground staircase. Visually, there is nothing connecting the Baroque building together with the new building (Fig.8). In the audio guide, the architect argues that ‘there is no bridge between the old baroque history of Berlin and the new museum: there is no obvious bridge, that bridge is underground, is lying in darkness, and the darkness represents the darkness of what happened in Berlin: it is a violent entrance.’105 Hansen-Glucklich, based on the discussion on the semiotic possibilities of architecture by Robert Venturi and Charles Jencks, defines two impressions for visitors approaching the museum: ‘The first consists of the irregularly spaced, jaggedly incised window bands that appear like sudden fault lines or cracks and destabilize the continuous, smooth zinc façade of the museum and create the image of a shattered Star of David. The second impression is that of the contrast between the Libeskind building and its neighbor.’106 The contrast represents the broken history of Berlin Jews, broken but still alive, healing through the underground bridge uniting the two buildings, healing through its cathartic architecture. In the twentieth century, an architectural debate on modern museums started. On one side, the German architect Ludwig van der Rohe argued in favor of the neutrality of architecture as a container to the museums’ content. On the other, Frank Lloyd Wright believed architecture should have a starring role to engage with the public.107 Libeskind’s deconstructivist building,

103 The Jewish sukkah is a temporary celebratory structure, a small house built with autumnal harvest material like leaves and branches. It is used for eating and sleeping under it during the Sukkot festival that commemorates the Exodus and also celebrates the end of the harvest in Israel. 104 From the audio guide of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, April 2019. 105 Libeskind in the audio guide of the JMB. 106 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 34-36. 107 Lucia Cataldo and Marta Paraventi, eds. Il Museo Oggi, 35.

25 fairly inspired by F. L. Wright, not only defines the collection, as it presents “unexpected architecture that was both non-cohesive and ‘unfinished’”108, but it also contrasts directly with Michael Blumenthal’s decision of creating a Jewish Museum, not a Holocaust one. Blumenthal, the first director of the institution, argued that ‘It was never intended as a Holocaust Museum… it was clear that what it was to be was a history museum whose principal mission is to trace the 2000 years history of the presence of Jews on German soil…’109 However, Libeskind’s unsettling architecture is what visitors mostly remember, therefore it is publicly known as a Holocaust museum. When visiting the museum today, one can argue that the architecture indeed is so dominant that, especially with the permanent collection being renovated, the JMB is a Holocaust museum. What Libeskind created in Berlin is a memorial museum; while it has an exhibition, the museum plays with the strong emotional impact that the architecture has on the public. Libeskind’s plan for the museum was called Between the Lines: ‘The official name of the project is Jewish Museum but I have named it Between the Lines because for me it is about two lines of thinking, organization, and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments; the other is a tortuous line, but continuing infinitely.’110 From the bird’s eye picture of the museum, its shape can be either a lightning bolt or a broken Star of David (Fig.7). The windows and lines on the titanium-zinc façade are also seen as shattered stars of David. Berlin is the starting point of his design: Libeskind explored the history of Berlin and he found the addressed of Jewish and non-Jewish Berliners such as Walter Benjamin, Heinrich Heine, Mies van Rohe, and Arnold Schönberg. He marked the places on a map of the city, drew lines to connect the different locations. Then, he traced a Star of David, which he decomposed to form the windows and the silhouette of the building. As Rotem analyses, the idea behind Libeskind’s Jewish topographical map is invisible to the visitors, but it shows the importance that the architect gave to the city’s geography; it is not a museum anywhere, it is in Berlin.111 The Jewish architect, reconnecting with his music studies background, was also inspired by the unfinished opera by the Jewish composer Schönberg titled Moses und Aron that climaxes in silence.112 Therefore, when visiting the museum, the audio guide is an essential tool to understand the Museum’s architecture. Hansen-Glucklich writes how Schönberg only completed two out of the three-act opera. Moses’ last words in it are ‘Oh word, thou word, that

108 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 152. 109 Blumenthal in Rotem, Constructing Memory, 143. 110 Libeskind, Between the Lines, 10. 111 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 145. 112 Ibid., 152.

26 I lack!’ while he collapses on the floor. Libeskind thus wished to complete Schönberg’s opera: Moses looks for a word and ‘attempts to give presence to an absence--in this case, to make the void and absence of Berlin's missing Jews visible.’113 Therefore, the JMB can also be interpreted as the third act of Moses und Aron. Libeskind’s building is based on three principles: 1. The impossibility of understanding the history of Berlin without mentioning the contribution Jewish citizens have made in many different fields, such as cultural, intellectual, and economic. 2. The necessity to integrate the meaning of the Holocaust into the consciousness and memory of Berlin. 3. The need to fully acknowledge the erasure of Jewish life in Germany in order to secure a more humane future.114 Therefore, Rotem argues that Libeskind built a Holocaust museum from the first time he thought about the project as he puts at the center of the architectural narrative ‘absence’ and ‘the void’.115 The voids and absence are constructed by the architecture. Relating this architecture of absence with historiography, absence can be seen not only as the erasure of Jewish life from Berlin and Germany, but also as the absence of Holocaust recognition and discourse after the end of the war due to the struggles that German people had to face after the war, and the consequent inability to accept a perpetrators’ narrative.116 The path in the Museum and outside is a labyrinth that causes confusion and instability; the floor and the concrete walls seem to be out of place as three different paths appear in front of the visitor right after the staircase. These are called Axes of Memory. There are three of them for the three aspects of the Jewish German experience during the Third Reich. The three forces paths are: the Holocaust, Exile, and Continuity, which is also history (Fig.9). Only the last one leads the visitor to the permanent exhibition.

II.2 The Narrative of the Jewish Museum in Berlin

This second sub-chapter is dedicated to the architectural and exhibition narrative of the JMB. As previously noted, the base of Libeskind’s building is ‘Absence’, thus this part thoroughly examines how this absence is perceived by visitors and how the concept of “perpetrators’ guilt”

113 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 40. 114 Libeskind, The Space of Encounter, 23. 115 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 146. 116 Annette Seidel-Arpacı and Helmut Schmitz, ‘Introduction’ in Narratives of Trauma: Discourses of German Wartime Suffering in National and International Perspective, eds. Annette Seidel-Arpacı and Helmut Schmitz, 2.

27 expands in the lower floors of Libeskind’s building. The permanent exhibition begins with the Holocaust in the lower and ground floors; from there, the history of Berlin Jews begins from the Middle Ages. Thus, the exhibition begins at the point of maximum destruction in order to affirm German Jewish identity despite the Shoah. With the JMB, Germany is embracing the perpetrators’ guilt narrative as the country that was responsible and allowed the genocide of over six million human beings. Starting the visit with the Holocaust is also the consequence of the German 1990s being a decade dedicated to Holocaust remembrance in German culture. After the 1990 reunification, the country was finally ready to fully face their participation to National Socialism.117 The ‘secondary suffering’ of German people analyzed by Schödel, was repressed by the ’68 generation to rightfully give space to the Holocaust; it was in the 2000s that the question of German suffering and victimhood resurfaced.118 German suffering is important to understand the initial refusal of Nazi past and how Holocaust memory developed in Germany and in the JMB. Schmid writes that this suffering includes: ‘the expulsion of the German population from the Eastern territories, the bombing of major German cities, and the raping of German women after the invasion of the Red Army.’119 Today is generally recognized that the Holocaust and German suffering are not competing memories, but, as Schmid writes, that ‘German narratives of victimization are legitimate as long as the German responsibility for the outbreak of World War Two and the Holocaust is accepted.’120 As Arnold-de-Simine argues, in visiting memorial museums, ‘empathy is seen either as a prerequisite or as an outcome.’121 Before the permanent collection was opened in 2001, studies with the public showed how visitors wanted to have an historical exhibition engaging with the German past, but not pointing fingers and making them feel personally guilty.122 As Hansen-Glucklich argues, the exhibition designers ‘have been careful not to reduce the German Jewish experience to persecution and to avoid giving the impression that the museum is a frightening, negative, or guilt-inducing place for non-Jewish German visitors.’123 In order to connect with both a Jewish and non-Jewish German public, the curators made two choices:

117 Ibid., 1. 118 Kathrin Schödel “‘Secondary Suffering’ and Victimhood: The ‘Other’ of German Identity in Bernhard Schlink’s ‘Die Beschneidung’ and Maxim Biller’s ‘Harlem Holocaust,’ in Germans as Victims in the Literary Fiction of the Berlin Republic, ed. Stuart Taberner and Karina Berger, 219. 119 Ulrich Schmid, ‘Nation and Emotion: The Competition for Victimhood in Europe,’ in Melodrama After the Tears: New Perspectives on the Politics of Victimhood eds. Scott Loren and Jörg Metelmann, 290. 120 Ibid. 121 Arnold-de-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, 42. 122 Cox in Rotem, Constructing Memory, 143. 123 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 31.

28 first, in the Holocaust-dedicated part, to follow Libeskind’s design built according to his own Jewishness and Holocaust memory and thus focus on the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, not discussing in depth German ‘perpetratorship’, but showing stories of Jewish people and their struggles. His building wants to show visitors the three tough paths that Jews were forced to take in WWII. Secondly, by making the old permanent exhibition a celebration of Jewish- German culture, the JMB aimed to show how essential Jews were for Germany throughout history. The climate in the Holocaust floors is not controlled; therefore, it changes with each room and each season: it can be very cold or very warm especially in the voids.124 The first axis on the right side of the building is the Axis of Exile, once called the Axis of Emigration. The corridor is filled with objects that relate to the Jewish emigration away from Germany, and names of cities where Jews were forced to flee to after 1933, when the Nazis seized power in the country. Legal antisemitism brought the German population to boycott Jewish businesses, therefore many Jews emigrated.125 Personal memorabilia of immigrants are displayed in order to empathize with victims. As Hansen-Glucklich points out:

‘Axis of Exile, for example, an emigration pack containing works of Goethe and Gabriele Reuter, which a German Jew took with him to the Promised Land, is displayed is a glass case. These books testify to the bond that German Jews felt with German culture even when forced to leave their homes (an aspect of resonance that contributes to the Jewish Museum's overall narrative of a long and often mutually beneficial relationship between German Jews and Germany).’126

The JMB’s narrative creates a strong link between Germany and Jews, showing that they were an invaluable part of the Nation’s culture. However, while it reflects on antisemitism during the Second World War, it does not explore how deeply rooted it was in Germany and Europe already from Medieval times and Romantic period.127 Therefore, if visitors do not know that antisemitism was already a known issue in the country, they would end up thinking it was only a twentieth century problem, and that before then, Jews were living in German land without discrimination.

124 ‘Libeskind Building,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed March 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building. 125 Information from JMB audio guide. 126 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 122. 127 Albert S. Lindemann and Richard Levy, ed., Antisemitism: A History.

29 The audio guide also focuses on personal stories of Holocaust survivors. As the narrative of the Axis progresses towards salvation in a foreign land, the floor starts to rise: the journey to exile is a very challenging one, between financial difficulties128 and leaving home for the unknown, Jews struggled to leave Germany behind. For this reason, Libeskind created an ascending path, but it offers hope. At the end of the Axis of Exile, the visitor leaves the building to enter the Garden of Exile. Libeskind writes how he wanted to create a sense of disorientation, of being uncomfortable because that feeling is exile.129 It is a symbolic garden with a tilted floor and it is a perfect square, walking through the garden creates confusion and dizziness in the visitors because of the uneven floor and the different height of the pillars. Robert Mugerauer argues that the environment of the garden triggers and connects the haptic and visual dimensions.130 The garden represents the dichotomy between uncertainty and rescue. 49 concrete pillars tilted at 12° symbolize ‘the total instability and lack of orientation experienced by those driven out of Germany.’131 Here, Libeskind connects Israel and Germany by filling 48 pillars with earth from Berlin, and the last one with soil from Jerusalem. This way, the architect relates 1948, the year when the State of Israel was founded, with the history of Berlin. He also planted olive willows in every pillar because these trees are a symbol of hope and renewal.132 Mugerauer further argues how this is ‘the only outdoor space to be experienced, […] and the only geometrically ordered space in the project. After moving around a bit in the space, you realize that you need to go back inside through the same door and then back along the axis in reverse, back to the main intersection’s crossroads.’133 The second axis is the Axis of the Holocaust; a series of personal objects such as letters and family photos are displayed, many letters mention the final trips to concentration camps as a ‘journey’, unaware of what they were going to face. The names of concentration camps are written on the walls. Libeskind built this path to become narrower and narrower as the floor rises and the ceiling remains at the same height creating an increasingly claustrophobic and dark corridor that end with a big iron door. Through it, visitors can access the Holocaust Tower, also called the Voided Void, where the public can feel Absence more than anywhere else. The

128 The Nazis robbed Jews from most of their valuable property, and without financial resources many countries did not accept them. 129 Libeskind, The Space of Encounter, 115. 130 Robert Mugerauer, ‘Art, Architecture, Violence: Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum Berlin’ in Responding to Loss: Heideggerian Reflections on Literature, Architecture, and Film, 84. 131 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 147. 132 Ibid. 133 Mugerauer, ‘Art, Architecture, Violence,’ 85.

30 building is ‘an isolated building splinter whose sole connection to the Libeskind building is underground.’134 The walls are extremely high (24 meters) and made of concrete: the only light comes from a thin slit. This space makes the destruction of Jews and the memory of the Shoah especially tangible (Fig.10). As Murgerauer writes, ‘you feel small and alone, even when there are others there, because of the unusual severity of the space - intimidatingly large and confined all at once - and the silence.’135 Libeskind uses sharp lines to highlight the harshness of the space. The tower is a symbol of the ability of the abstract architecture of Libeskind to convey a message, in this case a message of hopelessness and anxiety, and it is empty, it does not contain or need any exhibit as it speaks for itself. Then, the visitor goes back to go through the Axis of Continuity and enter the permanent collection. This is the longest axis and it is intersected by the other axes; Libeskind designed them as communicating as they all connect or meet as some point: mass murder and survival, exile and continuity, hope and death. The Axis of Continuity leads visitors to the Sackler staircase, which consists of 90 steps that lead visitors to the ground floor and light, but it is very straight and does not change direction, therefore it feels like a journey to the day, to safety. The last steps of the ladder do not lead to a big first room of the museum, but they lead visitors in front of a big white wall. The architect defines it as a symbol of history, because we cannot know what the future holds. He wanted to avoid a moment of epiphany at the end of the Shoah-dedicated lower floor and raise questions with a more subtle lateral entrance to the exhibition. The staircase shows us that there is not only a past, but there is a present and a future, there is hope in Berlin, even after the devastating event of the Holocaust and the consequences of it. While the permanent exhibition of the JMB is currently under renovation, the ground floor with the Eric F. Ross Gallery and the Memory Void exhibit is still open to the public. The Memory Void is not left empty like the other voids in the museum, but it hosts the walk-in installation “Shalekhet” (Fallen Leaves) made by the Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman to commemorate the victims of the Shoah.136 The exhibit consists of 10.000 iron faces that cover the floor. Visitors are invited to carefully enter the void and step on the metal (Fig.11). They cover the floor like autumn leaves, however they do not fall silently, instead they make an unsettling loud metallic noise that resonates throughout the tall concrete walls. If visitors take

134 ‘Libeskind Building,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed March 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building. 135 Mugerauer, ‘Art, Architecture, Violence,’ 82. 136 ‘Fallen Leaves,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed March 22, 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/shalekhet-fallen-leaves.

31 a closer look, the iron faces that seemed to be all the same, will now appear all different. This shows how unthinkable it is for humans to imagine a number as high as 6 million individual people being murdered; what seems to be a mass of the same faces, is instead a pile of 10.000 singular victims. Kadishman’s installation does not want to accuse, he wants to make tangible what is lost: every single victim of the Shoah was someone, and their death should never be forgotten. Saindon analyses ‘Fallen Leaves’ using Foucault’s concept of ‘Heterotopia’ to apply it to the JMB. He writes that the iron faces are ‘anonymous faces’,137 however, even if they appear to be such at first, they are revealed to be different which is an important part of Kadishman’s exhibit. Saindon further argues that the installation ‘produces a rhetorical slippage between the Holocaust, understood as a particularly German and Jewish historical phenomenon, and a more generic understanding of perpetrator and victim relations.’138 The dedication to other victims does not take away from the Holocaust focus, but ‘it “doubles’’ its memorial function while maintaining the singularity of the experience of the Holocaust as a devastating event in German-Jewish relations worthy of primary consideration.’139 Stepping on the faces is seen by Saidon as a perpetration of violence, as the metallic noise resembles the ones of forced labor camps. By opening up the Holocaust memorial to other kinds of violence, the artist creates a personal connection with every visitor, even the ones who do not directly relate to the Shoah. As this exhibit ends the tour of the JMB during these years when the permanent exhibition is closed, there is a strong link with Yad Vashem’s last room of the Holocaust Museum: the Hall of Names. One of the aims of both Holocaust museums is to highlight the importance of not generalizing the victims of the Holocaust as a crowd of people, but to put names and faces to them in order to commemorate and prevent a horrible genocide like the Shoah from ever happening again. Kadishman in fact dedicated his installation first to the Holocaust victims, but also to every victim of war and violence in the world, spreading a message of compassion and tolerance. The perpetrators’ narrative adopted by Germany is a painful one to embody: in fact other countries in Europe struggle to accept their role as perpetrators. For instance, Hansen- Glucklich points out how the older generations in Hungary and Poland refuse to acknowledge the guilt of their own people’s involvement in the Holocaust as they tell a narrative in which

137 Saindon, ‘A Doubled Heterotopia,’ 39. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid.

32 the enemy is always the German Nazis.140 This is a problematic approach to history and the new generations are trying to change this by recognizing that it was the Hungarians and Polish too who shot their own people. Older generations still have this notion of ‘the other’ who did it, while the younger generations are ready to face a more truthful history. This ‘otherization’ of the persecutors is a part of the memory-trauma process that has to overcome different kinds of resistance before the true, but more painful, narrative is accepted. This process becomes even longer in Poland and Hungary since the popularity of right-wing parties is increasing. Therefore, there is a contrast between people of younger generations trying to acknowledge the Polish and Hungarian role in the Holocaust, and the rising nationalism in both countries. Poland and Hungary deal with the concept of double victimhood, victims of Nazism and of the Russians, which brought to a denial of ‘perpetratorship’ that is hard to overcome. This is further explored in Chapter III.

II.3 Old Permanent Collection Design and ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’

On the 11th of December 2017, the two upper floors of the Libeskind Building were closed to the public for reconstruction.141 In fact, since the museum opened in 2001, the curators realized that the permanent collection needed to be modernized. Especially in the last decade, Germany has embraced multiculturalism. Even if racism, antisemitism and prejudices are still present in the country, the government and institutions such as the JMB work towards a more inclusive and empathetic society. The JMB embraced a very difficult task recently, which is to connect Germans, Jews, and Muslims while focusing on the importance of being tolerant towards minorities. Kluth brings up the hard relation between Muslims and Jews living in Germany.142 He argues that for how much Germany justly focused on building a tolerant society for the Jewish minority, ‘at the same time, Germany for a long time pretended that other minorities pose no major dilemma. Muslims started coming to Germany in large numbers in the 1960s, mainly as Turkish “guest workers.” […] Today about 5 million Muslims live in Germany.’143 A study by Marc Helbling and Oliver Strijbis for the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a neoliberal leaning

140 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Rituals of Remembrance’. 141 ‘Permanent Exhibition,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed March 22, 2019. https://www.jmberlin.de/en/permanent-exhibition 142 Andreas Kluth is the editor-in-chief of the Berlin based Handelsblatt Global and ex-correspondent for The Economist. 143 Kluth, ‘Germans, Jews, Muslims and the paradox of tolerance,’ Handelsblatt, June 6, 2018, https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/opinion/the-other-germans-jews-muslims-and-the-paradox-of- tolerance/23581762.html?ticket=ST-1256880-1QqWJagrQIjqJ7G5rBt6-ap2.

33 foundation, argues that ‘the public and political representation of intolerance has become greater, despite growing tolerance and a greater acceptance of diversity among the population’144 highlighting an increasing polarization between the elite and the rest of the population. The old design of the permanent collection of the JMB, as Rotem argues, always remained in the shadow of the lower floor dedicated to the Holocaust. Whereas there are hardly any artefacts in the basement, the two upper floors were filled with objects, ‘the abundance of objects on display creates a burdensome atmosphere that defies the desired balance between the exhibition and the structure. It is impossible to escape the feeling that the exhibition is almost a redundant afterthought to the emotive building.’145 Rothstein criticizes the JMB, he argues that the institution is ‘almost bipolar, with the building aggressively screaming about apocalypse as its exhibition affirms harmonious universalism, with neither making its case.’146 Libeskind’s design, as aggressive as it can appear, creates a sense of instability and anxiety that united with a message of tolerance can both commemorate the Shoah and warn about the dangers of prejudice and hatred. When visiting the permanent exhibition of the JMB before it was closed for renovation, the permanent collection was contrasting with the modern- minimalist display of the lower and ground floors. In fact, the narrative of the permanent collection was a guilty narrative supported by an overwhelming number of objects. As Hansen- Glucklich argues, ‘In contrast to the deliberate evocation of absence in the Jewish Museum in Berlin, some exhibits rely on an over-abundance of presence through a proliferation of objects.’147 The old narrative created a story of Jewish-German pride that did not explore the complex relationship of Jews and Germans throughout history, but it was a guilt-induced exhibition that did not pierce through the surface of antisemitism and Jewish history in Germany. Visitors could understand the exhibition as a result of the acceptance of German guilt from the 1970s, but today that narrative is outdated and it does not provide a satisfactory analysis of Jewish-German identity. However, the JMB’s curators were already starting to think about opening a deeper conversation on antisemitism and multiculturalism in Germany, since the last room of the museum used to present stories of Jewish people living in German

144 Unzicker and Grau, ‘The German population is becoming more tolerant of diversity, but polarization is increasing’ Bertelsmann Stiftung, https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/our-projects/gesellschaftlicher-zusammenhalt/project- news/the-german-population-is-becoming-more-tolerant-of-diversity-but-polarization-is-increasing/. 145 Rotem, Constructing Memory, 143. 146 Rothstein, ‘In Berlin, Teaching Germany’s Jewish History’ The New York Times, May 1, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/arts/design/02conn.html?ref=edwardrothstein&pagewanted=all 147 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 157.

34 speaking countries today, but also of other minorities such as Turkish people’s experience with xenophobia and racism in Germany. The temporary exhibition ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ (11 December 2017 – 1 May 2019) discusses the delicate topic of the city of Jerusalem, and it does not focus on the Jewish perspective, but instead tells the story of a multi-religious and multicultural city. The JMB describes its exhibition: ‘Synagogues, churches, and mosques shape our image of Jerusalem. The “Holy City” is an important center of faith for Jews, Christians, and Muslims from all over the world. Simultaneously, Jerusalem is home to extraordinary political tensions, claimed as the capital city by both Israelis and Palestinians.’148 The exhibition highlights the conflict embedded in the city. In Jerusalem, religious and political issues are inevitably indivisible and every solution to solve the conflict has failed. The JMB invites the public to enter the exhibition with a fresh look at the city.149 The narrative brings visitors through the history of the city by analyzing the three main holy sites in the city, starting from the Western Wall. By describing the Jewish rituals, such as Bar Mitzvahs, as well as how men and women used to pray together at the Wall while now women have a smaller section divided from men, here the JMB presents to the public Jewish rituals while the permanent exhibition is closed. The curators also explore Muslim culture starting from a model of the Dome of Rock, the third holiest site for Muslims after Mecca and Medina. The Christian section describes the Church of the Holy Sepulture and the Christian culture and history in the city. ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ examines the development of the city in the 19th century, since from the 1840s the Jewish and Christians population started to increase. By the 20th century, Jerusalem had a highly diverse and ethnic climate. The economic boom under the British rule after the First World War caused the balance between Jewish and Arab citizens to destabilize, therefore the plan to divide the city in two parts was first introduced. The exhibition also presents different Jewish groups such as ‘Women of the Wall’, who fight against the Orthodox patriarchal society and ask for social and legal recognition of equal rights in Jewish rituals, and ‘The Temple Mount Faithful Movement’, an ultra-Orthodox group who wants to rebuilt the temple destroyed by the Romans in the original place where now is the Dome of Rock, and creates more tension in Jerusalem. The exhibition also highlights how Jerusalem is much more than a city in conflict, but it is a magnificent city full of history and culture.

148 ‘Welcome to Jerusalem,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed March 22, 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/exhibition-welcome-to-jerusalem. 149 All information on the exhibition from the audio guide of the museum and from my experience of the museum.

35 ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ is a much-needed project that faces an extended conflict that is still far from being solved and is a current problem not only for Israel, but for Germany too as the country hosts both Jewish and Muslim minorities. ‘From January 2017 to May 2018, the education scholar Dr. Rosa Fava has been resident at the Jewish Museum Berlin as our second W. Michael Blumenthal Fellow.’150 Fava analyzed ‘secondary antisemitism—for example, the assumption that Germany pays enormous sums in compensation to “the Jews” and to Israel. Another new form that expresses anti-Jewish resentment is antisemitism related to Israel. This form often finds a foothold in the Middle East conflict, so educational opportunities addressing it seem necessary.’151 The exhibition is informative of all three religions living in the city and is very current, especially since the antisemitism in Muslim communities is rising;152 in Muslim communities, but also in extreme-right and extreme-left parties, antisemitism has risen as confusion remains on differentiating between Jews and Israeli politics. Educational programs such as the one developed by Fava are important for a better understanding of the Middle East Conflict, which is not really studied in schools leading to misconceptions over such a complicated topic. While the JMB’s exhibition of Jerusalem well analyses the three different religions in the city and it promotes liberal ideals, it does not create knowledge of the dangers of confusing anti-Zionism and antisemitism: in fact, often today in Europe anti-Israeli comments risk to create a climate where antisemitism is more acceptable. The essays in the catalogue of the exhibition focus on the history and conflicts in Jerusalem, bringing to attention the issues of the political situation in the city.153 Since the exhibition examines the problematics of Jerusalem, a further distinction on the differences between antisemitism and anti-Israel criticism would have made the exhibition a more useful tool to fight antisemitism in today’s society.154 The exhibition also does not discuss the Armenian community that lives in Jerusalem.155 The Armenian Quartier is one of the oldest Armenian settlements outside of Armenia, however it is now in danger of disappearing as the population deals with many

150 ‘Rosa Fava and her research,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed April 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/fellow-rosa-fava-and-her-research. 151 Fava, ‘Complex, interwoven, and emotional: Experts discuss political adult education on the Middle East conflict,’ Jewish Museum Berlin Blog, October 4, 2017, https://www.jmberlin.de/blog- en/2017/10/political-adult-education-on-the-middle-east-conflict/. 152 Kluth, ‘Germans, Jews, Muslims and the paradox of tolerance.’ 153 Welcome to Jerusalem, eds. Margaret Kampmeyer and Cilly Kugelmann (Jewish Museum Berlin: Wienand, 2017). 154 The concepts of antisemitism and anti-Zionism is explored more in depth in Chapter III. 155 ‘The Armenian Community of Jerusalem: Challenges and Realities’ Armenian Weekly, February 12, 2016, https://anca.org/the-armenian-community-of-jerusalem-challenges-and-realities/.

36 political and economic struggles to survive. One of the main issues Armenians face in Israel is how the State ignores the Armenian Genocide, refusing to recognize it as a genocide. Eldad Ben Aharon, a Ph.D. student at the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, analyses the policy of non-recognition in Israel as a ‘Zero-Sum Game in Israel's Foreign Policy’.156 He argues that ‘the lack of substantial parliamentary pressure by opposition parties, on successive Israeli governments to recognize the genocide […] has made it easier for Israel to come to economic, military, and arms trading agreements with Turkey and, in recent years, with Azerbaijan.’157 The Armenian Genocide was only recognized by Germany the 2nd of June 2016, when ‘the German Bundestag overwhelmingly voted in favor of recognizing the mass killings of Christian Armenians at the hands of Turkey, as genocide.’158 Therefore, the JMB builds a message of tolerance towards minorities, facing the Arab, Jewish and Christian sides, but with its ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ exhibition misses out on the opportunity to discuss more in depth both antisemitism today and the struggles of the Armenian minority living in Jerusalem.

156 Eldad Ben Aharon, ‘Between Ankara and Jerusalem: the Armenian Genocide as a Zero-Sum Game in Israel's Foreign Policy (1980’s -2010’s)’. 157 Ibid., 462. 158 Giannopoulos, ‘Guilt & Denial: Germany’s Recognition of the Armenian Genocide’, September 8, 2016, https://mackenzieinstitute.com/2016/09/guilt-denial-germanys-recognition-of-the-armenian- genocide/.

37 Chapter III Comparing Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Exploring Current Events Surrounding the Two Institutions

III.1 Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin

The aim of this last chapter is to analyze both Yad Vashem, as a commemoration site and as a museum, and the Jewish Museum in Berlin to discuss how their architecture and narrative present the Holocaust from two very different perspectives. What do Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin have in common? What do they differ in? Holocaust museums, along with other institutions, play a very powerful role in how the public approaches the Shoah. As Foucault writes, archives are ‘the law that determines what can be said’,159 and museums also control what can be said about the past as well as how to narrate it. Yad Vashem and the JMB are contrasting Holocaust museums. As discussed in the previous chapter, Yad Vashem offers a Zionist-redemptive narrative that culminates in the creation of the State of Israel. The JMB instead creates a space where the destruction of Jewish culture in Berlin and Germany during WWII becomes tangible. In terms of collective memory, both countries share a competitive national memory built around the Holocaust: Israel’s national memory is constructed around victimhood, while Germany’s national memory is built around the guilt of being the perpetrators of the Holocaust.160 The JMB’s location highlights how the Holocaust happened there, in the streets of Berlin, unlike in Yad Vashem, which discusses a tragedy that did not happen there.161 Hansen-Glucklich argues that the notion of time in the two museums is very different, and when visiting both museums, it becomes clear how: Yad Vashem’s time is linear, since the museum’s narrative is that of diaspora to homecoming, the narrative evolves from exile, to suffering and finally redemption/homecoming. Instead, the JMB’s sense of time is broken and essentialized, beginning with the Holocaust narrative, time and space both fracture the narrative by disorienting the visitors.162 The museums were both designed by two famous Jewish architects: Moshe Safdie and Daniel Libeskind. Safdie’s building, rooted in Jerusalem’s land, presents the disruptive history

159 Foucault in Assmann ‘Canon and Archive,’ 102. 160 Assmann, ‘On the (in)compatibility of guilt and suffering in German Memory,’ 198. 161 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 47. 162 Ibid., 21.

38 that effectively resulted in the foundation of the State of Israel with architecture. The grey stone walls and the natural light coming from the top of the prism transport visitors through a history of sufferance and exile, with the final ‘compensation’ in the form of a Jewish state. Libeskind’s building instead is based on the disruption of Jewish history in Germany and the fragmented architecture highlights the pain and absence created by the Shoah in the intent of exploring Jewish history in Berlin. Libeskind’s Holocaust building does not have a clear end to the narrative, it is not conclusive, while Yad Vashem culminates with the ownership of a Jewish land. The architectural experience in the two museums also differs: while both buildings are strongly grounded in the landscape, Safdie’s museum does not overpower the exhibition narrative as much as Libeskind’s building does. The Polish architect did not just create a building that can be adapted to the collection, but with his Between the Lines, he already created the narrative of the first Holocaust-dedicated part and doing so he intertwined the architecture with the narrative. Safdie’s modernist architecture also speaks of the Holocaust as it guides visitors through its windowless rooms, however the impact of Libeskind’s disorientating and uncomfortable building is more intense in order to follow the German national narrative. Hansen-Glucklich argues that while the JMB creates a tension between absence and presence, Yad Vashem creates a positive and redemptive narrative.163 The reason behind this is because of the guilt narrative in Berlin and the victimhood/Zionist narrative of the Jerusalem museum. The awareness of German guilt throughout the JMB and the recognition of the past as a void and open wound also is intended to shape future relations of the country with minorities.164 Analyzing the historic narrative of the JMB and of Yad Vashem, as Goldberg’s essay considered in the first chapter of this thesis, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum neglects introductory information on the historic context under which Nazism arose.165 This causes the historic narrative of the museum to be incomplete. The Jewish Museum in Berlin in its guilt narrative of the Holocaust also neglects to inform its visitors of just how deeply rooted in Germany antisemitism was, for already centuries before the Second World War. In fact, in the old permanent exhibition, after the first Holocaust-dedicated floors, antisemitism is disregarded in favor of a celebration of German-Jewish culture starting from the Middle Ages. The JMB’s official website announces the new permanent exhibition to include more space to the period after 1945, which is crucial for the understanding of today’s Jewish communities in

163 Ibid., 52. 164 Ibid., 191. 165 Goldberg, “The ‘Jewish narrative’ in the Yad Vashem global Holocaust museum,” 193.

39 Germany.166 However, the permanent exhibition would benefit from a deeper analysis of just how hatred of Jews was part of the German/European history well before the twentieth-century, especially since antisemitism is again rising in different states in Europe, including Germany. Therefore, both Yad Vashem and the JMB could increase the impact and potential of their narrative by incorporating a timeline that shows how antisemitism did not rise out of nowhere in the 1930s in their display. For instance, a Jewish museum that explores the history of antisemitism in Germany is the Jewish Museum in Munich. While this rather small institution is not as well-known as the two case studies of this project, its ability to communicate the history of the Jewish community in Munich is remarkable. In one room, the museum explores the Holocaust, Jewish rituals and culture, and the history of the Jewish community from the first reference to Jews in the thirteenth century until today. A timeline of German antisemitism in Munich presents to visitors the historic evolution of the hatred for Jews. ‘Beginning in 1229, when the first mention of Jewish people in Munich is made in a Regensburg document, in 1285 the Jews of Munich were accused of ritual murder, the Jews are killed and the synagogue is set on fire.’ The timeline continues throughout the various centuries during which ‘Jews are accused of causing the Black Death in 1349, they are banned from most jobs, expelled, readmitted in the city different times to then be expelled again.’167 The timeline also explores recent anti-Israeli events such as the 1972 murder of eleven Israeli athletes by members of a Palestinian terrorist group on the Olympic games in Munich. While it does not deeply discuss the background reasons why Nazism came to power in the twentieth century, it does show how problematic and complicated the Jewish history of Munich was in local and international perspective. Hansen-Glucklich further examines how Yad Vashem as a state institution ‘evokes images of national heroism and sacrifice.’168 Instead, the JMB ‘appears within an emerging memory district in Berlin dedicated to national guilt and the commemoration of Germany’s own victims—the first such space in a national capital.’169 In fact, ‘memory district’ is a fitting term to define the Lindenstraße area and Berlin in general. The decay and ruins of Berlin analyzed by Sandler,170 create a memory landscape that witness the history of the city, between buildings from before the WWII, preserved ruins of bombed buildings, Soviet buildings from the DDR in the East. When visiting the Museum today, the JMB is in a memory district because

166 https://www.jmberlin.de/en/permanent-exhibition. 167 Timeline from: Fleckenstein and Purin, Jewish Museum Munich (Munich: Prestel, 2007). 168 Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 217. 169 Till in Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 217-218. 170 Sandler, ‘Counterpreservation’.

40 of its surroundings: the Museum is situated between 1970s buildings and modern apartment complexes, but also near other nineteenth century houses renovated, similar to the Old Building, and, interestingly, old buildings that were not renovated as such, but that are mixed with modern architecture (Fig.7).

III.2 Current Debates

Holocaust museums are often at the center of public discussion about antisemitism and events related to the history of the Shoah, and Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin in particular due to the vital importance of particular historical sites and the popularity of these institutions around the world. The JMB being the biggest and main museum dedicated to Holocaust remembrance in Europe and being located in Berlin, the German capital, gives to the institution a more authoritative voice. Yad Vashem as the biggest Holocaust remembrance center in the world and as it is geographically located in the heart of Jerusalem on the Mount Herzl becomes a site that can be compared to pilgrimage. In fact, Yad Vashem is, together with memory sites like Auschwitz, a place every Jewish person should visit in their lives.171 The aim of this sub-chapter is to consider different issues regarding Holocaust museums, especially regarding the two main case studies of this thesis. When looking for information on the ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ exhibition in Berlin (11 December 2017 – 1 May 2019), one comes across different articles on how the exhibition was highly criticized by the Israeli government. In fact, a letter seven pages long titled ‘German Funding of Organizations Intervening in Israeli Domestic Affairs or Promoting anti-Israel Activity’ demands that the German Federal Government should cut funding to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which is highly criticized for its supposed ‘anti-Israeli’ views, especially in their exhibition on Jerusalem. The New York Times and other German media172 report that the letter was handed by Netanyahu to Chancellor Angela Merkel when they met in October 2018.173 As Melissa Eddy and Isabel Kershnern report in the article, in Germany ‘Issues

171 Part of the Taglit-Birthright Israel trips for young Jewish adults, that are largely sponsored by the Israeli State, consists of a visit to Mount Herzl: to the Military Cemetery and then to Yad Vashem. More on Taglit-Birthright Israel: https://www.birthrightisrael.com. The March of the Living is another program that brings together Jewish people to visit concentration camps in Poland ‘to help inspire our participants to fight indifference, racism and injustice by witnessing the atrocities of the Holocaust.’ https://motl.org/about/. 172 Hagmann, ‘Schwere Vorwürfe aus Israel,’ Taz, December 12, 2018, http://www.taz.de/!5553564/. 173 Eddy and Kershner, ‘Jerusalem Criticizes Berlin’s Jewish Museum for Anti-Israel Activity,’ The New York Times, December 23, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/arts/design/berlin- jewish-museum-israel-bds-welcome-to-jerusalem.html .

41 involving Israel are especially fraught, given the country’s commitment to atone for the Holocaust.’174 The letter, that also argues against non-governmental organizations against the Israeli occupation, was also critiqued by a group of Israeli artists. They condemned the attempts of the Israeli government for trying to censor critical voices against Israel's occupation policy not only in their own country, but also in Germany.175 Although the letter was not signed, the Israeli officials agreed with the statements in it through social media. Germany and Israel have been strong allies after the Second World War, and despite differences, the two countries still have a very strong relationship to this day. The national guilt memory of Germany has an important role in this relation, especially when Israel’s victimhood is positioned at the center. The JMB’s exhibition is a way to unite Israel, at least in the museum, as the Haaretz article ‘Jerusalem Can Unite’ argues, however the Israeli-Palestine conflict keeps this union far from reality. As Shannon Andrea Thomas writes, the Israeli-Palestine conflict brings both countries to minimize the other’s suffering. Israel and Palestine’s have a collective memory of trauma which relies on the denial of the Other. Therefore, the letter against the ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ exhibition directly reflects both the relation between Israel and Germany, as well as the relation between Israel’s and Palestine’s collective memories.176 The 26th of January 2018, the Governments of Poland and Israel released an amendment to Poland’s Act on the Institute of National Remembrance. In 2016 Poland already created international outrage when the Polish government wanted to remove the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland given to one of the main scholars on the Holocaust, Princeton University professor Jan Tomasz Gross, in 1996 because he said that that Poles were complicit in Nazi war crimes.177 As this event predicted the 2018 statement, the law written in it makes it ‘illegal to accuse the Polish nation of complicity in the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities […]’178, like Marc Santora reports. Netanyahu and Morawiecki acknowledged this statement together, as the Israeli right-wing leader supported the Polish nationalistic prime minister in enforcing a victimhood narrative and an inaccurate version of history rather than admitting guilt. The

174 Ibid. 175 Reinecke, ‘Kulturschaffende gegen Netanjahu,’ Taz, December 23, 2018, http://www.taz.de/!5561778/?goMobile2=1550016000000 . 176 Thomas, ‘Collective Memory of Trauma’. 177 Smith, ‘Polish move to strip Holocaust expert of award sparks protests,’ The Guardian, February 14, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/14/academics-defend-historian-over-polish- jew-killings-claims . 178 Santora, ‘Poland’s President Supports Making Some Holocaust Statements a Crime,’ The New York Times, February 6, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/world/europe/poland-holocaust- law.html .

42 statement declared that “the wartime Polish government-in-exile tried to ‘raise awareness among Western allies of the systematic murder’ of Polish Jews”179 and that the Polish government controlled an underground system to help Jews. The Times of Israel reports that an historian from Yad Vashem was involved in the writing of the statement, however she never saw the final copy.180 The historians working at Yad Vashem had to respond to the joint statement of the two countries pointing out its incorrectness. In fact, many Israeli scholars, writers, and artists like Gal Weinstein and David Grossmann were outraged by the statement, and the Yad Vashem workers analyzed the statement pointing out all the incorrect information in it: ‘the joint statement contains grave errors and deceptions, and that the essence of the statute remains unchanged even after the repeal of the aforementioned sections, including the possibility of real harm to researchers, unimpeded research, and the historical memory of the Holocaust.’181 The main and most important task of the Yad Vashem Remembrance Centre is to make sure that the narrative of the Holocaust is not told in a wrongful way. Historical research shows that:

‘The existing documentation and decades of historical research yield a totally different picture: the Polish Government-in-Exile, based in London, as well as the Delegatura (the representative organ of this Government in occupied Poland) did not act resolutely on behalf of Poland’s Jewish citizens at any point during the war. Much of the Polish resistance in its various movements not only failed to help Jews, but was also not infrequently actively involved in persecuting them.’182

Therefore, as the Polish-Israeli statement caused many complaints, Yad Vashem stood up to the task of pointing out how incorrect the statement is by presenting the historical facts. After the remarks made by Yad Vashem and the shock of many liberal Israeli people in seeing Netanyahu supporting the Polish statement, many asked him to revoke his support for the

179 Heller, ‘Yad Vashem center criticizes Israeli-Polish statement on Holocaust law,’ Reuters, July 5, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-poland/yad-vashem-center-criticizes-israeli-polish- statement-on-holocaust-law-idUSKBN1JV2A6 . 180 Ahren, “Yad Vashem slams ‘highly problematic’ Israeli-Polish Holocaust statement,” The Times of Israel, July 5, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/yad-vashem-slams-highly-problematic-israeli- polish-holocaust-statement/ . 181 Silberklang, and Michman, and Dreifuss, ‘Yad Vashem historians respond to the joint statement of the Governments of Poland and Israel concerning the revision of the 26 January 2018, amendment to Poland’s Act on the Institute of National Remembrance,’ Yad Vashem, July 5, 2018, https://www.yadvashem.org/press-release/05-july-2018-07-34.html . 182 Ibid.

43 statement, however, as the Israeli newspaper reported, he refused an on-camera statement, but the only outcome of this was that the ‘Prime Minister's bureau says he was referring to 'Poles and not the Polish people or the country of Poland' after Warsaw objects to comment about cooperation with Nazis.’183 The Polish statement therefore remains unchanged, and even if the Polish government assured that scholars will be safe to write, many fear for the future of free speech in the country and for the spread of a false narrative being carried on. The Polish government statement is a type of Holocaust denial that is identified by Rob van der Laarse using the concepts of competing memories and double victimhood. In fact, as Van der Laarse argues, in Central and Easter European countries, the historical center of the Holocaust, Soviet terror is associated with terror and bloodshed more than Nazism. In countries such as Poland and Hungary the idea of double victimhood, or double genocide is deeply rooted in their national and individual memory as they suffered Nazi persecution and Soviet regime (competing memories). Therefore, these countries struggle to embrace their role as perpetrators of the Holocaust. Van der Laarse argues, ‘This is why it is so problematic to implement the Holocaust paradigm in Central and Eastern-European nations. These highly complex memory dynamics that are strongly related to processes of appropriation of national heritage, as well as the owning and disowning of memory sites, in particular those where the spatialisation of memory has created strong indexical links to past traumatic events.’184 Poland’s statement denies their role in the Holocaust giving way to a dangerous Holocaust denial narrative that is partly explained by this double victimhood idea. To conclude, the two events reported hereby both show how Holocaust institutions play important roles in politics and in public opinion, especially between Israel and Germany. In the case of the ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ event, Israel through its victimhood narrative shows no openness to the opposite part of the Israeli trauma, the suffering of Palestinians and since the Jewish Museum in Berlin is the main institution in Germany dedicated to Jewish culture, felt betrayed by the country that perpetrated the Holocaust when the Museum showed the other side of Jerusalem as an equal Holy place for Muslims and Christians. In the second case, a Yad Vashem historian was first erroneously mentioned as a political justification of the statement, however even if much of the funding of Yad Vashem comes from the State,

183 Landau, ‘After Refusing On-camera Statement, Netanyahu Clarifies Remark on Poland Holocaust Law’ Haaretz, February 16, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyhau-refuses-to-clarify- in-person-comment-on-poland-and-holocaust-1.6938571 . 184 Van der Laarse, ‘Competing Memories,’ 6-7.

44 the Remembrance Centre could not let the dangerously false historical information without spreading the truth.

UPDATE 16th JUNE 2019: On the 6th of June 2019, the Jewish Museum in Berlin shared via the social media Twitter an article from the left-wing newspaper Tageszeitung against the recent German Bundestag defining the non-profit organization BDS (Boycott, Deduction of investments and Sanctions) as anti-Semitic, using the hashtag #mustread.185 The article argues against the accusation of antisemitism of BDS and was supported by 240 Jewish and Israeli scientists.186 The German Central Council of Jews,187 wrote on their official Twitter account responding to the BDS petition shared by the JMB: ‘This is the limit. The Jewish Museum Berlin seems to be completely out of control. Under these circumstances, one has to think about whether the term 'Jewish' is still appropriate [...].’188 Following this, the director Peter Schäfer was accused of taking inappropriate political stands for a Jewish Museum and, together with the ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ exhibition and the invitation of a Palestinian scholar to give a conference, it was the final straw.189 On the 14th of June 2019, Schäfer resigned from his role as the director of the JMB ‘to avert further damage from the Jewish Museum Berlin.’190 According to the studies developed for this thesis and my personal visit to the ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ exhibition, as an institution that represents Judaism in Berlin, the JMB might have gone too far protecting the BDS, with their boycott stickers saying ‘Don’t buy’ on Israeli products in Germany which evokes the ‘Don’t buy from Jews’ Nazi slogan.191 A Jewish Museum should discuss heated topics such as the Middle-East conflict, but take into

185 jmberlin (@jmberlin) ‘#mustread Der Beschluss der Parlamentarier hilft im Kampf gegen Antisemitismus nicht weiter,’ Twitter post, June 6, 2019, https://twitter.com/jmberlin/status/1136633875411755010. 186 Hagmann, ‘240 Akademiker gegen BDS-Votum,’ Taz, June 5, 2019, http://www.taz.de/Bundestagsbeschluss-zu-Israel-Boykott/!5601030/. 187 A federation of German Jews instituted because of the German government’s interest in Jewish affairs. 188 Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (@ZentralratJuden) ‘Das Maß ist voll,’ Twitter post, June 11, 2019, https://twitter.com/ZentralratJuden/status/1138364310294540288. 189 Hickley, ‘Jewish Museum Berlin director steps down after a tweet misfires’, The art newspaper, June 17, 2019, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/jewish-museum-berlin-director-steps-down- after-a-tweet-misfires. 190 ‘Press Information Professor Peter Schäfer resigns as director of the Jewish Museum Berlin Foundation,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, June 14, 2019, https://www.jmberlin.de/presseinformation-vom- 14-juni-2019. 191 Landau, ‘Berlin Jewish Museum Director Resigns After Tweet Supporting BDS Freedom of Speech,’ Haaretz, June 14, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/berlin-jewish- museum-director-resigns-after-tweet-supporting-bds-freedom-of-speech-1.7369819.

45 consideration that it should feel like a safe space for Jewish people to be in, and when many Jewish people express concern over the validity of the name ‘Jewish Museum’ itself, saying it is an ‘anti-Jewish Museum’. Perhaps the controversy is just too much. I believe that the task of the JMB is to make sure that antisemitism is really understood today, by differentiating antisemitism, critiques of the Israeli state as you would critique any other state, and highlighting antisemitism hidden behind some anti-Israeli statements. The exhibition on Jerusalem as well as the invitation to Palestinian scholars are both examples of how the Museum can justly discuss Palestine and Israel together, not in competition with each other. This thesis saw ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ as a step forward to the recognition of each other’s cultures and struggles between Israel and Palestine in the land of perpetrators of the Holocaust. This event, followed by Schäfer’s resignation, is a step back. The promotion of an organization whose slogan recalls so much the Nazi slogan can make the Museum feel as an unsafe place to a part of the Jewish population that should be taken into consideration. A mistake that cost Schäfer his job. Now the JMB will have to regain the trust lost.

46 Conclusion

This thesis has examined the ways in which Yad Vashem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin construct memory through architecture and narrative. It has also explored the influence of the national memory of Israel on the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, how Zionism in the country after WWII still controversially uses the ‘otherization’ of Palestine as a strength strategy, as Thomas argued.192 Yad Vashem’s position on Mount Herzl inscribes the Remembrance Center, as well as the Holocaust itself, into a larger Zionist narrative. Because of its very specific Zionist agenda, its point of view is restricted to a discussion solely on the Jewish-Israeli perspective of the Shoah. The architecture of the museum, designed by Safdie, creates a physical space dedicated to the Holocaust in the land of Jerusalem and it claims possession of the territory by engraving the Shoah through the Mount. Therefore, it is not in the program of the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum to spread a message of tolerance and compassion towards others and it does not consider other narratives on the Holocaust or other genocides, as the statement of the museum is that the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other event. This project discussed how the Palestinian Nakba events are not considered by the museum and any reference to it by a Yad Vashem employer can lead to instant dismissal.193 The ‘otherization’ of each other’s suffering is still at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict nowadays and the situation is very complex. Valuable attempts are being made such as educating Palestinians on the Holocaust and Israelis on the Nakba.194 Only understanding each other’s deeply traumatic and painful pasts can create a real dialogue and connection. This thesis analyzed how Yad Vashem’s narrative and exhibition creates an emotional experience for visitors highly focused on antisemitism during the Second World War. The museum successfully commemorates the victims as individuals and highlights the importance of never forgetting about the Holocaust, however the historic background is not sufficient to get a full understanding of the Shoah. The historic narrative is simplified, leading visitors without a good historic knowledge to think that the Final Solution was less complex than it was. Nostalgia is also felt throughout the rooms of the Museum, nostalgia for a State of Israel

192 Thomas, ‘Collective Memory of Trauma.’ 193 This thesis is in no way comparing the Holocaust to the Nakba, it is hereby mentioned especially because the terrace at the end of the YVHHM that is facing Jerusalem is represented as the liberation of the Jewish people from antisemitism and the end of the diaspora, but the land that the terrace faces is Deir Yassin, where the 1948 massacre happened under Mandatory Palestine government. 194 Hasson, ‘Palestinian Youth Make Rare Yad Vashem Visit’ Haaretz, July 28, 2009, https://www.haaretz.com/1.5082701.

47 before its political existence, the victimhood narrative is used in the museum, as well as by the State, to show the Holocaust as the pillar of Israel, the end of the diaspora. Sometimes, the Biblical references of Yad Vashem, such as Amalek, inscribe the Holocaust into a Jewish- Zionist narrative in which the Shoah was a pre-requisite to the foundation of the State of Israel, which is problematic. This thesis showed how the Jewish Museum in Berlin deals with the Holocaust by introducing the public to a very physical journey in the basement and ground floor of Libeskind’s deconstructivist building. The minimalist exhibition allows visitors to explore the museum mostly through feelings of anxiety and instability as visitors go through the Axis of Exile, Holocaust and Continuity. The concrete grey dark building with very little color or nature is Libeskind’s attempt to immerse visitors in the history of Germany and its Jewish population during the Second World War. Absence is the key of his design, the absence of Jewish people from Berlin during the Shoah, and the absence of Holocaust recognition in the years following the war. The trauma of German people and their suffering in the post-war period in fact delayed the recognition of perpetratorship, which developed first in West Germany and only in the late 1980s in East Germany. In the 1990s, Germany as a united country recognized its guilt and participation in the Nazi regime, giving way to more than a decade dedicated to Holocaust remembrance. Understanding German memory and historiography was helpful to this thesis in order to recognize the process behind the construction of the JMB by Libeskind. It is not a guilt narrative; it is a very personal way of the Jewish-Polish architect to deal with the loss of the Jewish victims. The JMB is engaging more and more with other minorities and its program is directed to spread a message of tolerance towards others, not only Jewish minorities living in Europe. In fact, an example was the ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ temporary exhibition that saw different points of view on Jerusalem, not only from an Israeli perspective. However, the Museum missed an opportunity to include the Armenian minority in the exhibition which could have been an interesting way to raise awareness of this minority living in Jerusalem today. The permanent collection is currently, as of May 2019, being renovated as it was in need of a renewal. The old exhibition was restricted to a guilt-induced celebration of Jewish- German people without exploring the historic roots of antisemitism and its abundance of objects disoriented the public. This narrative is explained by national memory and historiography as it was set up in 2001, soon after the full guilt recognition of reunited Berlin. It was very traditional especially compared to Libeskind’s architectural narrative exhibition on the lower floors. Regarding the new opening, through my correspondence with the JMB and

48 German articles, Director Peter Schäfer recognizes the weaknesses of the old exhibition such as its overabundance of objects and how was not in harmony with Libeskind’s building. Schäfer highlighted how the Museum was untouched by the criticism on the ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ exhibition and both the JMB and Monika Grütters195 rejected the allegations as political interference. The future of the JMB will explore more the topics of religion, antisemitism and the Holocaust. The new exhibition will be chronological and will have theme rooms for subjects such as Jewish Music and Jewish Scripture. The museum will analyze antisemitism by engaging with the public and answering the question ‘Is this anti-Semitic?’ throughout the rooms. The new Jewish Children Museum of Berlin is also going to open in 2020 as part of the JMB; Schäfer highlights how the purpose of this museum is to create a new and better world, because it is our responsibility, starting by educating the younger generations.196 Therefore, while Yad Vashem is not yet dealing with a broader tolerance and prevention message, the JMB with its ‘Welcome to Jerusalem’ exhibition shows how the role of Holocaust museums today should be prevention and commemoration. Prevention is not only for Jewish minorities, but for other minorities too. The Museum will focus more on antisemitism, and with fewer objects, it appears it will offer a deeper historic background to better understand the Holocaust and Judaism today. With the rising right-wing movements in Europe and the World War II survivors dying, it is important now more than ever to truly narrate the Holocaust history in a rightful and historically correct way. The reason why we should never forget is not only commemorate, but prevent. Therefore, this thesis argues that Holocaust museums briefly focusing on other minorities too neither takes away the memory nor the importance of remembering the Shoah, but it can help spread a message of peace, compassion and raise awareness of current genocides and injustices in the world. The resignation of the JMB’s director in June 2019 raises further questions about the future of the JMB less than one year from the reopening of the permanent collection. Is this move a strictly political choice or is the future design of the collection going to be impacted by the resignation of Schäfer? The Council of Jews complained that the director of the JMB should be Jewish. Is the next director going to be Jewish? Does it matter? However, what seems clear from this event are the difficulties and problematics of dealing with antisemitism today, especially in Israel and Germany.

195 German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as of May 2019. 196 Badelt, ‘Vor uns die Sintflut’ Der Tagesspiegel, March 14, 2019, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/veraenderung-im-juedischen-museum-vor-uns-die- sintflut/24099304.html.

49 List of Illustrations:

Fig.1 Bird’s Eye View of the Yad Vashem Remembrance Center, Jerusalem. Source: Yad Vashem official Website. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://www.yadvashem.org/museum/holocaust-history-museum.html

50

Fig.2 Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum’s Terrace, Safdie, 2005. Source: Safdie Architects Website. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/yad-vashem-holocaust-history-museum

51

Fig.3 Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum’s Corridor Interior, Safdie, 2005. Source: Safdie Architects Website. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/yad-vashem-holocaust-history-museum

Fig.4 Yad Vashem Map. Source: Safdie, Moshe, Joan Ockman, and Diana Murphy. Yad Vashem: Moshe Safdie - the Architecture of Memory. Baden: Lars Müller, 2006. Print. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://arkate9.wixsite.com/arc239project/b3

52

Fig.5 Moshe Safdie, Yad Vashem, sketch. Source: Reproduction from Rotem, Constructing Memory, 65.

Fig.6 Yad Vashem Hall of Names, Safdie, 2005. Source: Safdie Architects Website. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/yad-vashem-holocaust-history-museum

53

Fig.7 Bird’s Eye View of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, 2001. Source: Studio Libeskind Website, credits Guenter Schneider. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://libeskind.com/work/jewish-museum-berlin/

Fig.8 The Jewish Museum in Berlin, Old Building and Libeskind Building, 2001. Source: Studio Libeskind Website, credits BitterBredt. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://libeskind.com/work/jewish-museum-berlin/

54

Fig.9 The Axis of Exile and Axis of the Holocaust in the Libeskind Building Basement. Source: The Jewish Museum in Berlin Website, photo: Thomas Bruns. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building

55

Fig.10 Holocaust Tower in Libeskind’s Building. Source: The Jewish Museum in Berlin Website, photo: Jens Ziehe. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building

56

Fig.11 “Shalekhet” by Menashe Kadishman in Jewish Museum in Berlin. Source: Studio Libeskind Website, credits Torsten Seidel. Downloaded June 14, 2019. https://libeskind.com/work/jewish-museum-berlin/

57 Primary Sources:

The Jewish Museum in Berlin, Lindenstraße 9-14, Berlin, Germany.

The Yad Vashem Remembrance Center, Jerusalem, Israel.

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‘The Armenian Community of Jerusalem: Challenges and Realities’ Armenian Weekly, February 12, 2016. https://anca.org/the-armenian-community-of-jerusalem-challenges-and- realities/.

Badelt, Udo. ‘Vor uns die Sintflut’ [My translation of ‘Before us the Flood’] Der Tagesspiegel, March 14, 2019, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/veraenderung-im- juedischen-museum-vor-uns-die-sintflut/24099304.html.

Eddy, Melissa and Isabel Kershner, ‘Jerusalem Criticizes Berlin’s Jewish Museum for Anti- Israel Activity’ The New York Times, December 23, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/arts/design/berlin-jewish-museum-israel-bds-welcome- to-jerusalem.html .

Erlanger, Steven. ‘Museum in Jerusalem exhibits Holocaust horrors anew’, The New York Times, February 16, 2005. https://global-factiva-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/ga/default.aspx.

Fava, Rosa. ‘Complex, interwoven, and emotional: Experts discuss political adult education on the Middle East conflict’, October 4, 2017, https://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2017/10/political- adult-education-on-the-middle-east-conflict/.

Friedman, Matti. ‘What Happens When a Holocaust Memorial Plays Host to Autocrats’ The New York Times, December 8, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/yad-vashem-holocaust-memorial- israel.html.

Giannopoulos, Georgina. ‘Guilt & Denial: Germany’s Recognition of the Armenian Genocide’, September 8, 2016, https://mackenzieinstitute.com/2016/09/guilt-denial- germanys-recognition-of-the-armenian-genocide/.

Hagmann, Jannis. ‘Schwere Vorwürfe aus Israel’ [My translation, ‘Serious allegations from Israel’] Taz, December 12, 2018. http://www.taz.de/!5553564/ .

Hagmann, Jannis. ‘240 Akademiker gegen BDS-Votum,’ Taz, June 5, 2019. http://www.taz.de/Bundestagsbeschluss-zu-Israel-Boykott/!5601030/.

61 Hansen-Glucklich, Jennifer. ‘Rituals of Remembrance: How We Remember the Holocaust’ Filmed 23 January 2019 at Mary Talks: University of Mary Washington, USA. Video, 59:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObBTgWgGcrI.

Hasson, Nir. ‘Palestinian Youth Make Rare Yad Vashem Visit’ Haaretz, July 28, 2009, https://www.haaretz.com/1.5082701.

Heller, Jeffery. ‘Yad Vashem center criticizes Israeli-Polish statement on Holocaust law’ Reuters, July 5, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-poland/yad-vashem-center- criticizes-israeli-polish-statement-on-holocaust-law-idUSKBN1JV2A6.

Hickley, Catherine. ‘Jewish Museum Berlin director steps down after a tweet misfires’, The art newspaper, June 17, 2019. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/jewish-museum- berlin-director-steps-down-after-a-tweet-misfires.

‘History,’ Mauermuseum, Accessed June 4, 2019. https://www.mauermuseum.de/en/about- us/history/.

The Jewish Museum in Berlin Website. https://www.jmberlin.de/en/.

Kluth, Andreas. ‘Germans, Jews, Muslims and the paradox of tolerance.’ Handelsblatt, June 6, 2018. https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/opinion/the-other-germans-jews-muslims-and- the-paradox-of-tolerance/23581762.html?ticket=ST-1256880-1QqWJagrQIjqJ7G5rBt6-ap2.

Landau, Noa. ‘After Refusing On-camera Statement, Netanyahu Clarifies Remark on Poland Holocaust Law’ Haaretz, February 16, 2019. https://www.haaretz.com/israel- news/netanyhau-refuses-to-clarify-in-person-comment-on-poland-and-holocaust-1.6938571.

Landau, Noa. ‘Berlin Jewish Museum Director Resigns After Tweet Supporting BDS Freedom of Speech,’ Haaretz, June 14, 2019. https://www.haaretz.com/world- news/europe/berlin-jewish-museum-director-resigns-after-tweet-supporting-bds-freedom-of- speech-1.7369819.

‘Martin Niemoller: First they came for the Socialists,’ Holocaust Encyclopedia, Accessed April 12, 2019, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first- they-came-for-the-socialists.

McGreal, Chris. ‘This is ours and ours alone’ The Guardian, March 15, 2005. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/mar/15/heritage.israelandthepalestinians.

‘New Holocaust Museum Opens in Jerusalem’ The New York Times, March 15, 2005. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/international/middleeast/new-holocaus-holocaust- museum-opens-in-jerusalem.html.

62 ‘Press Information Professor Peter Schäfer resigns as director of the Jewish Museum Berlin Foundation,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, June 14, 2019. https://www.jmberlin.de/presseinformation-vom-14-juni-2019.

Reinecke, Stefan ‘Kulturschaffende gegen Netanjahu’ [My translation ‘Artists against Netanyahu] Taz, December 23, 2018. http://www.taz.de/!5561778/?goMobile2=1550016000000.

Rothstein, Edward. ‘In Berlin, Teaching Germany’s Jewish History’ The New York Times, May 1, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/arts/design/02conn.html?ref=edwardrothstein&pagewa nted=all.

Rothstein, Edward. ‘The Problem with Jewish Museums.’ Mosaic, February 1, 2016. https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2016/02/the-problem-with-jewish-museums/. Santora, Marc. ‘Poland’s President Supports Making Some Holocaust Statements a Crime’ The New York Times, February 6, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/world/europe/poland-holocaust-law.html.

Silberklang, David and Dan Michman and Havi Dreifuss. ‘Yad Vashem historians respond to the joint statement of the Governments of Poland and Israel concerning the revision of the 26 January 2018, amendment to Poland’s Act on the Institute of National Remembrance’ July 5, 2018. https://www.yadvashem.org/press-release/05-july-2018-07-34.html .

Smith, Alex Duval. ‘Polish move to strip Holocaust expert of award sparks protests’ The Guardian, February 14, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/14/academics- defend-historian-over-polish-jew-killings-claims .

Stern, Yoav. ‘Yad Vashem Fires Employee Who Compared Holocaust to Nakba.’ Haaretz, April 23, 2009. https://www.haaretz.com/1.5041498.

Unzicker, Kai and Andreas Grau. ‘The German population is becoming more tolerant of diversity, but polarization is increasing’ Bertelsmann Stiftung. https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/our-projects/gesellschaftlicher- zusammenhalt/project-news/the-german-population-is-becoming-more-tolerant-of-diversity- but-polarization-is-increasing/.

Yad Vashem Website. https://www.yadvashem.org.

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