The Biography of a Memorial Icon: Nathan Rapoport's Warsaw Ghetto Monument Author(s): James E. Young Source: Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring, 1989), pp. 69-106 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928524 Accessed: 02-09-2015 13:27 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Representations. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Wed, 02 Sep 2015 13:27:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JAMES E. YOUNG The Biography of a Memorial Icon: Nathan Rapoport's Warsaw GhettoMonument Up to now, theJewish artist has not displayedany specificinclination in thefield of modernplastic art, and now he will stridethrough the arts of all nations and create a synthesisthrough the prism of his specificmaterial. -Joseph Tchaikov, 1921 Could I have made a stone witha hole in it and said, "Voila! The heroismof theJews"? -Nathan Rapoport, 1986 Introduction OF THE THOUSANDS OF MEMORIALScreated afterthe war to com- memorate aspects of the Holocaust, Nathan Rapoport's Warsaw Ghetto Monu- ment emerges as possiblythe most widelyknown, celebrated, and controversial of all. It was the firstmemorial after the war to markboth the heroismof Jewish resistanceto the Nazis and the complete annihilationof theJews in Warsaw.But in its use of the broadest of cultural archetypes-i.e., the lumbering mytho- proletarianfigures of the Stalinistera and the typologicalimage of Jewsin exile, somewhere between the Arch of Titus and Samuel Hirszenberg'sepic painting Golusl-the Ghetto Monument has found littlecritical consensus. Hailed by war- scarred criticson itsunveiling (19 April 1948, the fifthanniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) in all of itsheroic splendor,it has been scorned subsequentlyby curators as kitsch figurationand by "cold warriors"as proletarian pap. Early European reviewersinsisted that the gloriesof the Uprisingdemanded as literal an articulationas possible; many guessed that, as the firstrebellion in Nazi- occupied Europe, the Jewish revolt would come to stand for all others. Since then,however, others have found such figurativeheroic art so farremoved from contemporaryaesthetic discourse as to be archaic and even irrelevantas art altogether.2 In itsfusion of public art and popular culture,historical memory and political consequences, however,this monument demands a critique that goes beyond questions of high and low art, tastefulnessand vulgarity.We mightask not only how the monument reflectspast historybut, most important,what role it now plays in currenthistory. The Warsaw Ghetto Monument,in fact,has continued REPRESENTATIONS 26 * Spring 1989 (C THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 69 This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Wed, 02 Sep 2015 13:27:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions to suggest itselfas the basis for politicaland communal action. In its forty-year life, it has endured as a kind of screen across which the projected shadows of a world'spreoccupations continue to flickerand dance. As itsmaker's hand initially animated cold, amnesiac clay,the monument has since been revitalizedby the parade of public figuresmarching past it and by the ceremoniesconducted at its base (figs. 1 and 2). With the state'sblessings, it is now as much a gatheringplace forPolish war veteransas forJews;to the government'sconsternation, the Ghetto Monument's square is also a gatheringplace for Solidarityand other dissident groups, who have turned it into a performancespace for protests.The monu- ment has been extravagantlyvisited by touringpresidents, prime ministers,and even the pope. Everyonememorializes something different here, of course; each creates differentmeaning in the monument.Elsewhere, its individual figures are echoed in dozens of other monumentsto thisera throughoutEurope and Israel, its images exported as distinctlyJewish martyrologicaland heroic icons. The monumenthas been recastand nationalizedin Israel; itis picturedon both Polish and Israeli postcards and stamps; and it has been animated to the half-tonesof Arnold Schoenberg's Chorusof the Warsaw Ghetto Survivors in a shortPolish film.3 FIGURE 1. Polish national commemorationsof the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,with honor guard layinga wreathat the monument,flames burning in menorot; c. 1983. Photo: estateof Nathan Rapoport. 70 REPRESENTATIONS This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Wed, 02 Sep 2015 13:27:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE 2. Privateceremony by a group of PolishJews and friends,laying flowers and wreaths and reading Kaddish at the monument's base, 18 April 1986. Photo: Monika Krajewska. The Warsaw Ghetto Monument'slife, as narratedhere, mightthus consistin several parts: its literalconception and constructionamid historicaland political realities; its finishedform as public memorial;and itslife in the mind of its com- munityand of theJewish people over time.Through a criticaltelling of thismon- ument'sconception, construction, and reception,I would like to reveal the activity of Holocaust memorializationthat takes place firstbetween events and memo- rials, then between memorialsand viewers,and then between viewersand their lives in lightof thismemorialized past. "There is nothingin thisworld as invisible as a monument,"Robert Musil once wrote. "They are no doubt erected to be seen-indeed, to attractattention. But at the same time they are impregnated with something that repels attention."4It is as if a monument'slife in the com- munal mind grows as hard and polished as its exteriorform, its significanceas fixedas its place in the landscape. And it is this"finish" that repels our attention, that makes a monument invisible.Unlike words on a page, always gesturingat somethingbeyond the ink and paper givingthem form,memorial icons seem to embody ideas, invitingviewers to mistake material presence and weight for immutable permanence. If in theirglazed exterioritywe never reallysee them, then I would attempthere to crackthe eideticveneer, to loosen meaning,to make visiblethe activityof memoryin monuments.5 The Biographyof a MemorialIcon 71 This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Wed, 02 Sep 2015 13:27:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Life of the Monument Maker On enteringNathan Rapoport's studio six monthsafter his death, one is still struckby the sheer vitalityemanating fromthe scatteredmaquettes and sketches.The studio smells not of death and decay but of wet clay and soil. As the door opens, clusteredfigures and sketchesaround the room all seem to pause in mid-movement;illumined by the skylightoverhead, statues and maquettes seem to turn on theirpedestals ever so slightlyas clouds pass over. It is almost as if the sculptorwere stillhere, reenactingcreation itself, breathing his life'sspirit into these clay sketches,some of them stillwet and shiny,as if freshlymade. As the life of any one of these sculpturesmight be regarded as an extension of the sculptor'sown, the life of the WarsawGhetto Monument as it was conceived and constructedby its maker is no less an extension. To know the monument,we mightturn firstto the human being-living in inhuman times-who created it. Nathan Rapoport was born in 1911 to relativelypoor, working-classJewish parents in Warsaw. It was by financialnecessity, he has said, not artisticchoice, that he trained in childhood as an architecturalapprentice and renovatorof the King's Palace in Wilanova,just outside the city.6When at age fourteenhe applied to a drawingclass at the municipalschool of art,hoping to studyportraiture, and was told there were places leftin sculptureonly, he adapted quicklyto his new medium. Almost immediately,the young sculptorgravitated toward the monu- mental aspect of sculpture; its size, drama, and social vision all moved him on a purelyvisceral level, he has said. In fact,he fairlyprospered as a young student, being commissionedfrequently by local familiesto do busts of theirchildren, so that he could eventuallyafford to enter the Academy of Art in Warsaw.Within monthsof enrollingat the academy on scholarships,Rapoport was winningprizes for his architectural,metal, and sculpturalwork. He eventuallyreceived presti- gious scholarshipsfrom the academy to studyat the Fine ArtsAcademy in Paris and to travelin Italy. In Rapoport's words,there was nothingparticularly Jewish or contemporary in his sculpturesduring this period; he feltneither very ethnic nor fashionable. From the outset,in fact,both hisJewish and artisticidentities were subsumed in a more capacious social and politicalvision. As a member of Hashomer hatsa'ir (Young Guard of the Zionist Left Wing) and the grandson of Chasidim (one grandfatherwas a cantor,the other a shohet),he remained acutelyaware of the second-commandmentprohibition against making graven images-even as he resisted the taboo as a young, progressivethinker. When he turned to art and sculpture,therefore, he feltcompelled to locate his work