In Fitting Memory Sybil Milton, Ira Nowinski

In Fitting Memory Sybil Milton, Ira Nowinski Published by Wayne State University Press Milton, Sybil & Nowinski, Ira. In Fitting Memory: The Art and Politics of Holocaust Memorials. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2018. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/61448 Access provided at 29 Aug 2019 18:24 GMT with no institutional affiliation This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. C> N E THE MEMORALIZATION OF THE HoLOCAUST L& ,I\, /\1). I The Chronological and Political Contexts Many Americans are familiar with the Holocaust as parative multinational history and evolution of these a European tourist attraction from visiting the Anne monuments and memorials since 1945. Frank house in Amsterdam, the Dachau concentration The word monument derives from the Latin verb camp memorial in suburban Munich, or the archeologi monere, meaning simultaneously to remind and to warn. cal remains of Auschwitz-Birkenau near Cracow. Holo This linkage of liturgical and didactic elements in most caust memorials, monuments, museums, and centers memorials is reflected in an ideologically diversified have in fact proliferated all over the world in recent dec fashion in various changing national historical memories ades. In continental Europe they have evolved rapidly that are concerned as much with the past as with the from special places with limited audiences to major cen present and the future. ters of public education. Most visitors, however, have Although European memorials, de facto secular seldom considered the complex interaction of compet shrines, reflect different political orientations and artistic ing interests reflected in the design of memorials and styles, they share one common feature regardless of public sculpture installed at these sites as a reflection of their location. The sheer environmental power of the national culture, political ideology, and artistic merit. site relegates most postwar artistic monuments to sub Moreover, there is virtually no serious analytical litera sidiary roles. In fact, the preservation of these sites ture in any academic discipline that discusses the com- as such, even without additional monuments or public 7 IN FITTING MEMORY sculpture, is an act of memorialization. Since there are structed in the mid-1960s, when chronological distance thousands of former concentration camps dotting the from the events probably allowed more latitude for in European countryside, the very selection of former novative architectural and landscape design (photos 57- camp locations for preservation is often filled with 62). It was also the response of a new generation trans conflict. Thus, the French have built a memorial and lated into more abstract architectonic solutions. museum at Natzweiler-Struthof because it was the only Since Holocaust monuments and memorials are concentration camp built by the Germans on French not built in a political or geographical vacuum, they also soil, whereas they have ignored the internment and invariably reflect selected aspects of national style, reli transit camps built and run by the French at Gurs, Les gious tradition, public expectation, and artistic skill. The Milles, and elsewhere since these sites raise uncomforta absence of commonly accepted definitions of the Holo ble questions about French xenophobia and collabora caust and the lack of consensus about appropriate ritu tion. als and symbols for its victims have in turn provided ad In contrast, at locations where no substantial ditional ground for volatile confrontations. Thus, in Israel ruins remain, such as the Warsaw ghetto or the Tre the Holocaust is seen as part of a continuum of anti blinka killing center, the role of the sculptor and land semitic persecution and provides moral justification for scape architect is essential to the symbolic representa the creation of the state. In contrast, in the United States tion of mass murder. Thus, the florid and histrionic antisemitism is placed in a broader historical context Warsaw ghetto monument, located in a square sur that also includes racism, thus also focusing on the mur rounded by modern high-rise apartment buildings, der of other racial victims in the Holocaust, especially differs radically in style from the powerful forest of the Romani and Sinti (Gypsies). Further, in Germany the 1 7,000 sharp stones-many inscribed with the name Holocaust is perceived as part of the continuity of Ger of a community destroyed during the Holocaust-de man history; in Poland and the Soviet Union as part of signed as a symbolic cemetery at Treblinka in north the barbarity of World War II; and in Japan as a link to eastern Poland. Despite their common purpose and the contemporaneous nuclear apocalypse at Hiroshima. governmental patronage, these two Polish memorials Despite certain common elements, these nations and reflect qualitatively different aesthetic choices and ico sites do not reflect all victims of the Holocaust on their nographies. The Warsaw ghetto memorial, built in the soils nor do their public monuments show sensitivity to late 1940s in situ at the ruins of the former jewish quar all aspects of the subject. ter, merged neoclassical and Soviet realistic styles (pho In the immediate postwar period neither conven tos 105-7), whereas the Treblinka monument was con- tional nor innovative public sculpture seemed adequate 8 The Memorialization of the Holocaust to the awesome artistic and social challenges involved serving, attributing a national identity to the victims not in commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. Most granted to them in their lifetimes. Thus, a posthumous European nations had not developed styles or conven acknowledgment transforms Polish jews into Poles and tions to mourn the mass dead of World War I. Further French jews into French (photo 91 ). more, traditional funerary art in most war cemeteries This obfuscation of jewish victims, who frequent used predominantly Christian iconography commemo ly are not separated from other categories of the perse rating heroism and patriotism usually associated with cuted, which are organized by nationality, stands in military casualties. These symbols were inappropriate sharp contrast to American and Israeli memorials, where and even offensive to the victims of Nazi mass murder the reverse exclusion applies. Because the major impe -Jews, Gypsies, the handicapped, and others-who tus and financing for memorials in those two countries frequently had neither specific grave sites nor known has come from jewish survivors, it is uncommon to find dates of death. The traditional portrayal of death as an explicit acknowledgment of Gypsies or the handicapped individual or familial event did not fit the Holocaust, as victims. which required new styles of memorialization. jean After 40 years, we should at least be able to ar Amery felt that the experiences of surviving the concen ticulate our expectations of what memorials might look tration camps "led to the collapse of the aesthetic idea like at European sites where the Holocaust had once of death." 1 Nevertheless, sculptors, architects, and land occurred and at distant localities that were not directly scape designers had to find individual and collective involved. Ought a monument built in Australia, Israel, symbols that would facilitate an understanding of the japan, South Africa, or the United States look different past in order to represent it for the present and the fu from those built in Europe? Are there appropriate icono ture. Memorials for the Holocaust thus had to be de graphic traditions applicable to such monuments and signed as special places separated from the flow of memorials? There are no definitive answers to these and everyday life while simultaneously communicating emo similar questions, although the patterns of the existing tion and instruction. memorials provide several possible options for memo It is well known that many East European memo rialization. rials do not mention Jews explicitly, thereby reflecting Let us consider the chronological development the ideological views of Communist regimes, which em of continental European memorials since 1945. It is phasize political resistance; similar approaches in non hardly surprising that in the first phase, the late 1940s Communist countries in the West are not common and the 1950s, general conditions as well as the enor knowledge. These national memorials are often self- mity of recent events did not permit elaborate com- 9 IN FITTING MEMORY memorations or exhibitions attended by a broad public. The situation of the Neuengamme concentration Initially, many former concentration camps housed sur camp memorial in suburban Hamburg is probably typi vivors and displaced persons (DPs). Nevertheless, during cal. It was not protected as a landmark or historic site in the first postwar decades nascent concentration camp itially and thus the terrain was not preserved intact. In memorials were established at selected concentration 1948 the city of Hamburg built a maximum security camps, often using only a portion of the camp terrain; at prison adjacent to the first memorial, and in the 1970s it the same time survivors built the first museums and constructed a juvenile correction facility adjacent to the public monuments in Israel. prison. The two jails incorporated the former guard tow The first European memorials fell into one of two ers, barracks, Appel/platz

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