ABSTRACT
HOLOCAUST MEMORY AND MUSEUMS IN THE
UNITED STATES: PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTATION
by Jennifer Faber
Despite the fact that the Holocaust took place in a distant location and involved but a few
Americans, numerous communities and local governments have chosen to memorialize the event
within the United States. This paper will address issues of representation of the Holocaust,
specifically in museums, and will contemplate possible alternatives for museum exhibitions.
Museums provide a unique opportunity to investigate Holocaust memory. Museum visitors not
only learn through their experiences in exhibitions, but they also walk away with some sense of
themselves and the world around them. Suggestions for alternatives or alterations to the narrative
style of Holocaust museums, such as an atmosphere that encourages and demands visitors to ask
questions of themselves and the knowledge that is presented to them, will also be considered.
Such questioning by both museum visitors and historians is essential in effectively representing
and attempting to understand the Holocaust.
HOLOCAUST MEMORY AND MUSEUMS IN THE UNITED STATES:
PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTATION
A Thesis
Submitted to the
Faculty of Miami University
in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Department of History
By
Jennifer Faber
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio
2005
___________________________
Advisor: Dr. Allan Winkler
___________________________
Reader: Dr. Mary Kupiec Cayton
___________________________
Reader: Dr. Helen Sheumaker
Introduction
Holocaust memory is a unique phenomenon within the United States.
Since the Holocaust involved a fraction of one percent of the American
population and occurred thousands of miles away, the question arises why this
country would take up such a topic and devote hundreds of museums,
institutions, films, and dollars to commemorate such an event thirty years after it
happened.1 Numerous hypotheses have tried to explain why it took Americans
so long to remember and become interested in the Holocaust, without even
questioning how such an event could have occurred at all. Perhaps the biggest
and most important question is about how to depict and represent the Holocaust,
particularly in a museum setting in the United States. What role do collective
memory and survivor testimony play in museums dedicated to the Holocaust?
How can one create an experience that not only tells the story of the atrocities of
the Holocaust but also recognizes the need for visitors to interpret and mediate
their own experience? What should they take away with them? This problem is
of central concern to many museum creators, particularly those who helped
construct and develop the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, D.C. The challenge for this group was not only to justify the
existence of a Holocaust museum in the nation’s capital by making America’s
involvement clear at the outset, but also to determine how to portray the
Holocaust through the use of artifacts and narrative while at the same time
leaving room for personal interpretation by visitors.
The issue of narrative within the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum is especially significant. Presenting information in the form of narrative
within the museum imposes a beginning and end to an event, and leaves little or
no room for questioning. What, then, is the alternative? In what ways can the
1
Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 2.
1
Holocaust be properly memorialized and depicted? Questions such as these
surround the monumental effort to construct and develop the museum. As the
Holocaust has become more pervasive and commonplace within American
culture through books, movies, documentaries, museums, and memorials, issues
over depiction and representation have moved to the forefront, forcing scholars,
Jewish communities, and the American public to face not only the Holocaust, but
also the questions it poses about American society itself.
The roots of the Holocaust can be traced to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in
the 1920s and 1930s. Fiercely anti-semitic, Hitler was determined to eradicate the
Jewish population from Germany and the surrounding areas. After taking power
as chancellor in 1933, Hitler and his National Socialist Party aimed to remove the
Jews from German society in a plan called the Final Solution. The first policy,
initiated in 1933, boycotted Jewish businesses, and two years later Hitler
announced the “Nuremberg Laws,” which attempted to define the Jewish race.2
Three years later, in 1938, the Nazis required Jews to carry special identification
cards. If arrested for non-compliance, the Jews found themselves “temporarily”
sent to concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen. In
November of that year, the Nazis burned synagogues, destroyed Jewish
businesses and homes, and arrested Jews at will. The event came to be called the
night of glass, or Kristallnacht, and signaled the beginning of the end for Jews in
Germany and its acquired territories. Deportation and removal of Jews from
German territory escalated and continued until the end of World War II.
Although theories of modern racial “science” were prevalent during this time
period, naïve bystanders believed that western civilization was above any action
based on these principles.3
2
Jackson J. Spielvogel, Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice
Hall, 2001), 274.
3
Donald Niewyk, The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2003), 2.
2
In his effort to exterminate the Jewish communities across Europe, Hitler
enlisted the help of his brutal SS division and its leader, Heinrich Himmler. In
1941, Rudolf Hoss, first a leader within the SS and later commander at
Auschwitz, traveled to Auschwitz, then only a small camp intended for Polish
political enemies, and worked to enlarge the camp into an arm of the Final
Solution. Five additional extermination camps - Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor,
Majdanek, and Treblinka – did the same deadly work in or near Poland.4
Efficiency was a top priority for the Nazi leaders, who met in January 1942 at the
Wannsee Conference to better plan and implement the tools for the deportation
and extermination process. Among these leaders was Adolf Eichmann, who
assumed the task of creating efficient transportation for the Jews to the camps
and did so with the attention to detail that expedited the killing process. The end
of World War II brought an end to the Holocaust as well, although many -ravaged and emaciated -- continued to die following the liberation of the camps.
In the end, six million people lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis. Survivors
returned home or fled to other countries, such as Israel and the United States, in
an effort to begin their lives again. Particularly in the United States, survivors
were silent about their experiences and struggled with what they had had to do
in those years to hang on.
The Holocaust and the United States
The United States could have done more to help the Jews. Anti-semitism
in the State Department led the American government to adhere to strict
immigration restrictions and quotas put in place in 1924. Assistant Secretary of
State Breckenridge Long, the worst offender, effectively prevented any
4
Spielvogel, 281.
3
liberalization of the restrictive policy. For those trying to enter the country, the
administration demanded documentation of good character from the very
German government that was trying to exterminate the Jewish population,
preventing numerous refugees from entering the safe haven of the United
States.5
Many Jews felt raw after 1945. Immediately following the conclusion of
the war and the liberation of the death camps, Jewish refugees and immigrants,
now allowed to enter the country, were interested in putting their lives back
together and forgetting about the atrocities they had witnessed and experienced
over the last decade. They clung to what Jeshajahu Weinberg, the original
director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, called a “conspiracy
of silence” as they struggled to forget what they had been through and to move
on with their new lives.6 Abraham H. Foxmann came with his parents to the
United States in 1950 at the age of ten, and explained later, “I think that survivors
felt guilty that they had survived. They were embarrassed about things they had
to do to live through those years.”7 Academic interest in the Holocaust was also
limited; one scholar, Raul Hilberg, began work on the topic in 1948, but could not
get his work published until 1961, and then only with the help of a survivor
family.8 Liberators, specifically American soldiers, were also eager to forget what
they had seen as they encountered the camps. Despite the overwhelming need to
forget, General Dwight D. Eisenhower immediately requested photographic
documentation of the concentration camps, recognizing the need to confront and
remember what happened. Similarly, General George S. Patton forced German
citizens in towns surrounding the death camps to visit and see for themselves the
5
President’s Commission on the Holocaust, Report to the President, September 27, 1979, 12.
Jeshajahu Weinberg, The Holocaust Museum in Washington (New York: Rizzoli International
Publications, 1995), 18.
7
Judith Miller, One, By One, By One: Facing the Holocaust (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 221.
8
Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler how History is Bought, Packaged, and
Sold (New York: Routledge, 1999), 2.
6
4
horrific death and destruction that had taken place.9 American liberators quickly
realized the magnitude of the Holocaust but still struggled with what happened
and how to deal with the consequences.
There were, however, some who were willing to remember the event. The
first public American commemoration ceremony took place in December, 1942,
as five hundred thousand Jewish workers stopped work in New York for ten
minutes to remember the victims of the Holocaust, still going on across the
Atlantic. This ceremony was unique, in that most of the American population,
including the Jewish community, was still unaware of the Holocaust. In 1944,
many members of the Jewish community took part in the largest single
Holocaust memorial event on the first anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising, in which Jews spontaneously resisted their oppression in what was a
brutal and ultimately deadly protest. Subsequent rallies and protests urged
American participation in stopping the extermination. In 1947, Mayor William
O’Dwyer of New York dedicated the future site of a Holocaust monument in
Riverside Park, New York. On a stone slab were the words, “This is the site for
the American memorial to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Battle, April-May
1943 and to the six million Jews of Europe martyred in the cause of human
liberty.”10 The memorial, however, was never built though the slab remains.
Many argued that the site was too big and would not set the “right” precedent
for subsequent Holocaust memorials, and contended that erecting a monument
such as this might encourage other minority groups to want a memorial of their
own on public land.11 Struggles like these illustrate the uncertainty within the
United States about where, when, and how to commemorate an event such as the
Holocaust.
9
President’s Commission, 13.
James Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1993), 288-9.
11
James Young, “America’s Holocaust: Memory and the Politics of Identity,” The Americanization of the
Holocaust, Hilene Flanzbaum, ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 70.
10
5
Nevertheless, the Holocaust slowly seeped into American consciousness.
Perhaps the most widely recognized source of remembrance in the decades
immediately following the Holocaust was Anne Frank and her diary, published
in 1952. Anne was the Dutch girl whose family hid successfully in the back of a
house for several years, only to be caught in the end. Sent to a concentrationt
camp, Anne died of disease just three weeks before the end of the war and
liberation of the camp. Her father, a survivor, found her diary and published it
for the world to read. Author Hilene Flanzbaum, in her introductory essay on the
“Americanization of the Holocaust,” notes her surprise at the widespread
knowledge of the Holocaust, especially in the 1950s, through knowledge of the
diary. The public may not have known yet of the real atrocities of the Holocaust,
but people were somewhat aware of the event as it was portrayed through the
characterization of Frank.12 This awareness only grew as the next few decades
wore on, with the public trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Lothar Hermann, a
member of the Jewish community in Argentina, discovered Eichmann in 1960,
and after his capture and transfer to Israel, the Nazi was subsequently tried and
convicted in Jerusalem. The Six Day War in 1967 and the Israeli victory provided
another significant impetus for knowledge of the Holocaust, as many Jews feared
another mass extermination. Protestors of American participation in Vietnam in
the 1960s also used the Holocaust as a reference point. As Edward Linenthal, a
scholar in public history, culture, and religion, notes,
American actions in Vietnam were framed as only the latest eruption in a long, dark
narrative that directly contested the righteousness assumed to have been at the core of
American culture. The Holocaust provided people an example of evil seemingly unlike
any other, against which this nation’s – or any nation’s – actions could be measured.13
12
Hilene Flanzbaum, “Introduction,” The Americanization of the Holocaust, Hilene Flanzbaum, ed.
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 1-2.
13
Edward T. Linenthal, . Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust
Museum (New York: Penguin Books, 1995),10-11.
6
Another catalyst in increasing public awareness was the NBC miniseries,
The Holocaust, shown in April 1978 to 120 million viewers. This, too, provided a
filtered sense of the reality and atrocity of the Holocaust, but, nevertheless, gave
the American public familiarity with the event. Also in 1978, American Nazis
marched in Skokie, Illinois, creating a further wave of fear within the Jewish
community of another catastrophe. That same year the American government
established the Office of Special Investigations to search out and find former
Nazi criminals to bring to trial and deport. President Jimmy Carter also
established the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in 1978, in Linenthal’s
words, to “do something many would perceive as ‘good,’ and, at the same time,
reach out to an increasingly alienated constituency” within the Jewish
community.14 The Holocaust embedded itself within American culture as more
and more Americans grew familiar with the representations with which they
were confronted.
As part of American culture, the Holocaust became more than an ethnic or
religious issue, and seemed to teach valuable lessons that echoed American
values.15 Bombarded by images and representations of the Holocaust through
television, newspapers, and photographs, Americans took mediated forms of the
Holocaust as historically accurate. Tim Cole, in his book on Selling the Holocaust,
examined the myth surrounding the Holocaust within the United States. Cole
defines the myth as a story that creates a strong emotional response from those
who experience or interact with it in some way. At the same time, the myth
reinforces basic societal values. In the United States, Cole argued, the Holocaust
became a window through which Americans could view their own values and
mistakes, but at the same time the Holocaust that Americans accepted to be
historically accurate was instead a combination of mediated images delivered
through television and popular culture. Cole aimed to answer how and why the
14
15
Linenthal, 17.
Linenthal, 12.
7
Holocaust was and is remembered in America, and why a Holocaust myth has
emerged.16 With the emergence of Eichmann and his trial, the world saw a
perpetrator of the Holocaust brought to justice, but within the United States, the
trial also sparked the beginning of the myth of the Holocaust. Following the trial,
over one thousand scholarly and sensational books on Eichmann emerged.17
Raul Hilberg, once the only scholar to write about the Holocaust, began teaching
a Holocaust class in the 1970s to both Jewish and non-Jewish students. Although
the Holocaust was becoming more visible, Coles cited the 1980s and 1990s as the
most explosive time of Holocaust remembrance. In fact, 1993 became the “year of
the Holocaust,” with the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum and the release of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, a powerful film
about Oskar Schindler, a German factory owner who used Jewish workers and
saved hundreds from extermination. According to Cole, “it seemed as the
Holocaust had become as American as apple pie.”18
Memory
The role of Holocaust memory in shaping the identity of Jewish
Americans is especially significant. For historian Peter Novick, “a memory, once
established, comes to define that eternal truth, and, along with it, an eternal
identity, for the members of the group.”19 For many of the members of the
second generation (the children of survivors), the Holocaust provides an
opportunity for a renewed sense of identity. According to Flanzbaum, because of
the “complicated nexus of issues surrounding cultural and religious identity in
America in the last several decades,” many members of the second generation
are attached to the Holocaust. Steven Spielberg is one example. When asked why
he was the first Jewish director to make a movie about the Holocaust, he replied
16
Cole notes here that the term “myth” is not meant to imply that the Holocaust did not occur. His intention
is to get at the representations of the event, not the event itself. Cole, 3-4.
17
Cole, 8.
18
Cole, 13-4.
19
Novick, 4.
8
that many of the previous directors wanted to possess only an American, rather
than purely ethnic, identity.20 Only recently has the American cultural
environment provided the freedom and comfort level necessary for ethnic and
religious identity development in its population, allowing the tension between
being both Jewish and American to disappear.
All of these developments signal an increased interest in the Holocaust
within the United States. Although the motivations for this interest are varied,
the Holocaust was and is a pervasive component of American culture, and
Americans have responded by making it their own. Because the Holocaust took
place in foreign lands, the United States could also more easily utilize it in order
to negotiate its own national catastrophes, such as the destruction and removal of
the American Indian, racial segregation, and Japanese internment. For Cole, this
negotiation process commodifies the Holocaust, further complicating Holocaust
memory and proper representation of the Holocaust in American culture. 21
Holocaust memory within the United States remains a controversial and
complicated topic. As part of both collective and individual memory, the
Holocaust has become the subject of numerous scholarly works, memorials,
museums, and commemorative events.
Memory is indeed a construction, created out of images produced by
various forms of media, such as books, articles, movies, or photographs, “real”
images captured and manipulated by the mind over time. Highlighting the
“reality” of memory remains difficult; memories are always created out of some
other motive to remember an event in a certain way, or simply as a result of the
representation of an event remembered as the real event. This process of
representing memory is further complicated as people strive to remember and
memorialize the event as it happened, but at the same time want to serve their
own collective interests in its representation.
20
21
Flanzbaum, 10-2.
Cole, 15-7.
9
An analysis of collective memory is essential to an understanding of how
Holocaust memory is created and used in the United States. As Novick argues,
“Collective memory simplifies; sees events from a single, committed perspective;
is impatient with ambiguities of any kind; reduces events to mythic
archetypes.”22 Perhaps the most influential work on collective memory is that of
sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in his On Collective Memory.23 Collective memory,
according to Halbwachs, is defined as a collection of memories belonging to a
socially-constructed group which helps to shape who they are and how they
view themselves and the world around them. This sense of collective memory
gives people membership in a group, allowing individuals to use those
memories as part of their own identities. For Halbwachs, the terms “memory”
and “past” are very different, although closely related. Memory is something
that lives inside each person, holding his or her own individual recollections as
well as those that belong to the group to which they belong. Halbwachs argues
that the creation of the past by individuals is always influenced by present
concerns and problems. Halbwachs also sees memory as divided into two parts,
the historical and the autobiographical. Memories in the historical sense consist
of written records and photographs; these memories are then kept alive by use in
commemorative events, festivals, rituals, and tradition. Autobiographical
memory, on the other hand, includes events that have been experienced by the
individual in the past. This memory tends to fade over time if not reinforced
through contact with people of similar experiences. Autobiographical memory,
for Halbwachs, is always rooted in others in that without interaction and
affirmation of memories, they will fade away. According to Halbwachs, these
two forms of memory intersect in commemorative meetings with other members
of a group, who together recreate a past based on their collective memory, which
otherwise would have slowly faded away over time.
22
23
Novick, 4.
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
10
Within the United States, the collective memory of the Holocaust for Jews
and non-Jews alike, and its representations, have become increasingly embedded
within American public memory. This public memory, or any public memory,
according to John Bodnar, a scholar on American public history and culture, can
be used to mediate interpretations and presentations. Like Halbwachs, Bodnar
recognizes the role of the present in the construction of the past and the
construction of memory but is careful to point out that the formation of this
memory does not go unchallenged. Struggle is inherent in the formation of
memory. As Bodnar notes, “the shaping of a past worthy of public
commemoration in the present is contested and involves a struggle for
supremacy between advocates of various political ideas and sentiments.”24
Power, then, plays a central role in the formation and implementation of
memory. The struggle over this power has become central to Holocaust memory
and its implementation in museums in the United States.
In the context of Holocaust memory, both historical and autobiographical
memory play a role. Survivors who have experienced firsthand the atrocities
suffered in the ghettos and death camps invoke their own autobiographical
memory when recounting their past. Lawrence Langer, a prominent Holocaust
scholar, refers to these memories of life within the camps as deep memory. In
remembering, survivors call on themselves as they were in the camps. For
Langer, common memory encompasses life outside the camp, including memories
from both before and after internment, and “offers detached portraits, from the
vantage point of today, of what it must have been like then.”25 Historical
memory and common memory intersect at this point, allowing survivors, their
families, and the American public to learn about the Holocaust through written
sources, photographs, and survivor testimonies as representations of the
24
John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the 20th Century
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 13.
25
Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1991), 6.
11
Holocaust. These memories are reinforced, as required by Halbwachs, for both
Jewish and non-Jewish communities alike in public commemorations,
memorials, monuments, and ceremonies relating to the Holocaust.
The intersection of these memories is what museums strive for, as they
aim to give visitors an accurate depiction of what it was like for camp members
and attempt to provoke thoughtful understanding and contemplation of the
Holocaust. Alison Landsberg, a cultural historian, writes in her Prosthetic Memory
that the intersection of personal space and the historical narrative in which “the
person does not simply apprehend historical narrative but takes on a more
personal, deeply felt memory of a past event through which he or she did not
live…. has the ability to shape that person’s subjectivity and politics.”26 In this
way, argues Landsberg, Halbwachs’ collective memory is no longer adequate, as
technology enables memory to travel outside its specified imagined
communities.27 Museums, then, act as repositories for this memory, and, through
exhibits and representations can allow visitors to take on Holocaust memories as
their own and enable such memories to influence visitors’ thoughts and actions.
According to Landsberg, “prosthetic memories originate outside a person’s lived
experience and yet are taken on and worn by that person through mass cultural
technologies of memory.”28 Museums, as a result, become powerful institutions,
charged with representing and instilling a sense of memory for their visitors.
Historiographical Trends in Holocaust Scholarship
In recent years, historiography dealing with the Holocaust, its
perpetrators, and its representation, both in the United States and in Europe, has
come under increased scrutiny. Yehuda Bauer, a prominent Holocaust historian,
argues that historians need to weave the tales of Holocaust victims, Nazi
26
Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of
Mass Culture ( New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 2.
27
Landsberg, 8.
28
Landsberg, 19.
12
perpetrators, social organizations, and other outside influences together in their
narratives and explain the Holocaust, not simply describe it.29 For Bauer,
presenting only one side of the story is inadequate, but the combination of many
different sides is difficult and has yet to be perfected.
Other scholars, such as Dan Stone, argue that traditional methods usually
employed by historians to get at their historical subjects do not work in the study
of the Holocaust.30 Central to Stone’s argument is the notion that the past cannot
exist outside representation, therefore creating a problem in representing the
Holocaust in the traditional narrative format. Obviously representations of the
Holocaust are not the only examples of this problem, but Stone chooses to focus
on the historiography of the Holocaust due to its traumatic and recent nature.31
Stone argues that, “as narrative begins in the middle of things, and its
‘beginning’ and ‘end’ are arbitrary incisions into the infinite sequence of data, so
any attempt at memorialization relies upon an artificial creation of what it is that
is to be remembered.”32 Stone does not simply condemn the use of narrative
within Holocaust historiography, but instead argues that better methods of
writing the history surrounding the Holocaust must be employed after
contemplating the traditional methods. The study of the Holocaust, for Stone,
acts as a window through which scholars can further examine their
methodologies and improve not only the historiography of the Holocaust, but
also that of other historical events and processes. Narrative, then, should not be
completely abandoned, but simply rethought and improved. Because the
Holocaust and its Nazi perpetrators often acted and relied on non-rational ideals
and propaganda, so too should the narrative of the event reflect that irrationality.
Stone uses survivor testimony as one example of the lack of coherence in
recounting the past, and argues that historians should not attempt to inject
29
Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 118.
Dan Stone, Constructing the Holocaust: A Study in Historiography (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003),
xii.
31
Stone, 27.
32
Stone, 141.
30
13
coherence into their own narratives. Stone notes that, “The Holocaust presents us
with the clearest example of the need to find new narratives for experiences
which do not sit comfortably with the more comfortable platitudes of
tradition.”33 This rethinking of narrative with Holocaust historiography can also
be applied within Holocaust museums. Because museums provide Americans
with both historical knowledge and a sense of their own identity, the way in
which this information is presented and represented becomes significant. As
Stone notes, historical events become part of popular memory according to how
they are represented and mediated.34 The places in which these representations
and mediation occur then become battlegrounds of power and control. Holocaust
museums are no exception.
The President’s Commission on the Holocaust
The American effort to commemorate the Holocaust reflected growing
interest in the almost unfathomable atrocity. The President’s Commission on the
Holocaust, formed in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter, consisted of thirty-four
members, led by Chairman Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate,
joined by five Congressmen and five Senators and a 27-person Advisory Board.35
Divided into various subcommittees, the members embarked on a series of
surveys and conversations with those directly affiliated with the Holocaust, as
well as those whose “historic experience make[s] them particularly sensitive to
the issues raised by the Holocaust.”36 The Commission members also traveled to
Poland, Denmark, Israel, and the Soviet Union in an effort to create connections
with and learn from other Holocaust institutions and museums, as well as to pay
tribute to the victims.
33
Stone, 224.
Stone, 140.
35
President’s Commission, 6.
36
President’s Commission, 6.
34
14
The Commission submitted a report to President Carter on September 27,
1979, in which it asked rhetorically why Americans should remember and
commemorate the event.37 The answer remained simple: to remember the dead
and to ensure that victims and survivors did not die in vain. The Commission
members argued that because numerous victims and survivors kept journals and
diaries of the atrocities, “They [the victims] wanted to remember and be
remembered.”38 The Commission also tackled the question of who would be
memorialized within the museum, noting that while Jews were not the only
victims of the Holocaust, the entire Jewish community was victimized solely
because of religious affiliation. The Holocaust, according to the Commission, was
“essentially Jewish, yet its interpretation is universal,” lending support to the
plan to erect a Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C.39 This question of how
and why to remember was the central focus of this report, guided by two
principles. First, the Commission wanted to recognize the uniqueness of the
Holocaust, defined as “the systematic, bureaucratic extermination of six million
Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators as a central act of state during the
Second World War.”40 Second, the Commission worked to uphold the moral
obligation to remember and memorialize the Holocaust, particularly within the
United States. According to the Commission,
Americans have a distinct responsibility to remember the Holocaust. Millions of our
citizens had direct family ties with its victims, our armies liberated many concentration
camps and helped rehabilitate their inmates, and many thousands of survivors have
since made their homes in this country. On the negative side although the United States
assumed a leadership role in rehabilitation after the war, our failure to provide adequate
refuge or rescue until 1944 proved disastrous to millions of Jews.41
37
President’s Commission, 2.
President’s Commission, 3.
39
President’s Commission, 4.
40
President’s Commission, 7.
41
President’s Commission, 11.
38
15
The Commission, in fact, dealt directly with the issues of American nonaction, recognizing that the United States officials “erected paper walls by rigidly
enforcing both quota regulations and obscure requirements of the immigration
laws so as to minimize the number of persons admitted to our shores.”42 The
United States did, however, according to the Commission, recognize early on the
atrocity of the Holocaust and was forceful in liberation. All of these perspectives
were to be represented in the museum, since it was to be a national institution
located in the nation’s capital. By constructing the museum/memorial in
Washington, D.C., fundamental “questions about government, the abuses of
unbridled power, the fragility of social institutions, the need for national unity,
and the functioning of government,” would be invoked.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Council
In 1980, the President’s Commission on the Holocaust dissolved and
reemerged as a Council, charged with carrying out the tasks set forth by the
Commission, which included primarily the construction of a museum/memorial
and the celebration of the Days of Remembrance during the month of April. The
Council had five years in which to complete the tasks of initiating construction of
a museum/memorial and commemorating the Days of Remembrance.43 In
contemplating the law that created the Council, members of Congress debated
the importance of remembering an event such as the Holocaust within the
United States. As Representative Philip Burton from California noted,
Of those few survivors of the Holocaust, many subsequently emigrated to the United
States and they and their descendants now form an integral part of our society. The
historic perspective of the nation has been clearly affected by this event in such a way
42
43
President’s Commission, 12.
House, 8081.
16
that historians generally recognize the holocaust as an occurrence of the history of the
United States.44
Representative Burton also noted the connection of the Holocaust to the
massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in the early twentieth century.
Adolf Hitler, in a speech preceding the first Jewish pogrom, questioned this
massacre and used it as a justification for his own actions of extermination.45
Council members planned to include Armenians in their Holocaust museum as
yet another example of genocide that was a precursor to the Holocaust.
Museums
The public landscape is one arena in which groups and individuals can
make use of memory, as physical places can provide ways to remember,
commemorate, and memorialize people, places, and events. Cultural historian
Dolores Hayden, in The Power of Place, examines issues in the use of these public
places, calling urban landscapes “storehouses” for memory and the past within a
specific region.46 For Hayden, memory and the past are synonymous, as people
use physical places to construct and represent both, often simultaneously.
Hayden also recognizes the significance of public rituals and festivals as “places”
where memory and the past are alive and used. In both cases, according to
Hayden, these places can provide a connection of the past to the present,
“connecting those meanings into contemporary urban life.”47 Particularly
important to Hayden is the issue of identity, and its formation within these
public landscapes. She argues, “Identity is intimately tied to memory: both our
personal memories (where we have come from and where we have dwelt) and
the collective or social memories interconnected with the histories of our
44
House, 8081.
President’s Commission, 10.
46
Dolores Hayden. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1995), 9.
47
Hayden, 78.
45
17
families, neighbors, fellow workers, and ethnic communities.”48 Both the past
and memory play crucial roles in identity formation and representation. As
cultural historians Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen argue, people often
explore the past to discover who they are and how to proceed; they use both the
past and memory to create a narrative of the past to shape both their present and
their future.49 It is within the process of identity formation that “the most
powerful meanings of the past come out of the dialogue between the past and
the present, out of the ways the past can be used to answer pressing current-day
questions about relationships, identity, immortality, and agency.”50
Museums, so important culturally, socially, and historically, act as
battlegrounds for controversial issues of identity. As historian Mike Wallace
notes, history museums have traditionally been one way for dominant classes to
exert control and power over others, as elites have determined and continue to
determine what and how objects and stories were portrayed and told with
museum exhibitions.51 As a result, perhaps inescapably, history museums exhibit
only representations and interpretations of history, making them, in Wallace’s
words, “a deliberate selection, ordering, and evaluation of past events,
experiences, and processes.”52 As distinctions among class, race, and gender
became less stringent within society, museums evolved to include not only elites
but, as historian David Lowenthal notes, “millions [who] now hunt their roots,
protect beloved scenes, cherish mementos, and generally dote on times past.”53
Museums can not, however, escape the political agenda attached to their
exhibitions, and are now battlegrounds over representations and meanings
48
Hayden, 9.
Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, eds. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American
Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 63.
50
Rosenzweig, 178.
51
Wallace, “Visiting the Past: History Museums in the United States”, Mickey Mouse History and Other
Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 24.
52
Wallace, 24.
53
David Lowenthal. Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York:
Free Press, 1996), 11.
49
18
within politics, society, and culture. Steve Dubin, a scholar of American culture
and memory, argues that contemporary museums act as battlegrounds. Dubin
identifies what he terms “victory culture,” a belief system dominating American
life since colonial times that perpetuates the idea that savages have continuously
drawn the United States into war and acts of aggression. Upon the decline of this
belief system within the postmodern era, according to Dubin, Americans began
searching for a new identity, and museums presented Americans with an
opportunity to define themselves and the way they viewed the rest of the
world.54 As a result, museums have become places of bitter struggle and debate
over identity, representation, and power. Holocaust museums in the United
States have increasingly felt this tension as they strive to speak about the past to
not only the Jewish community, but also to the American public at large. As
Dubin notes, “museums are now noisy, contentious, and extremely vital places,”
existing not in a historical vacuum, but in a no man’s land of controversy.55
Because, as Halbwachs argues, collective memory is constructed with one eye on
the past and one eye always on the present, museums, as storehouses of memory
and the past, can never escape this struggle and their contested role within
society.
Because of this ongoing relationship and the connections between both the
past and memory and that of identity, the ways in which all of these concepts are
represented within museums and their exhibitions are especially controversial.
According to those 1,453 Americans whom Rosenzweig and Thelen interviewed
for their book The Presence of the Past, museums are the most trustworthy sources
on the past, particularly because museums transport visitors to the past,
encourage interaction, and avoid agendas, unlike the past within movies and
television.56 Despite the obvious political and social implications of any given
54
Steve Dubin, Displays of Power: Memory and Amnesia in American Museums (New York: New York
University Press, 1999), 188.
55
Dubin, 227.
56
Rosenzweig, 105.
19
museum exhibit, many members of American society trust and value the
opinions and interpretations dictated by museums and their creators. How, then,
do museum curators, historians, and visitors challenge their own perspectives on
the information being presented? What is the best way to construct a museum
exhibition that carries with it so much meaning for both individuals and groups?
Dolores Hayden argues idealistically for an equal partnership among historians,
curators, architects, and members of the community to create a public space that
appeals to all and presents a unified perspective.57 Mike Wallace, alternatively,
sees Hayden’s approach as problematic as it is increasingly difficult to define the
identity of a given community, making consensus within even the community
itself difficult. Wallace also notes that involving members of the community on
an equal level with that of scholars and experts may make the exhibit more
celebratory that interpretative, allowing for a sugar-coated version of the past.
Finally, Wallace notes that focusing on ethnic or cultural issues ignores political
and economic causes and ramifications.58 As a proposed solution, Wallace calls
for exhibitions that are ongoing, much like frames in a movie, that create better
connections between the past, present, and future.59 Other cultural historians,
such as Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine, encourage museums to gain more
knowledge of non-Western and minority culture, while at the same time
recognizing that questioning and challenging of visitors’ perspectives is difficult
because of the authority already vested in the museum by the visitors.60 Despite
this tremendous and perhaps insurmountable task, Karp and Lavine argue that
museums must continue to explore new ways to represent and portray historical
issues, as museums possess the possibility of acting as mediators between
competing groups or are capable of constructing a new national identity for
57
Hayden, 48.
Wallace, “Razor Ribbons, History Museums, and Civic Salvation”, 43.
59
Wallace, “Industrial Museums and the History of Deindustrialization”, 89.
60
Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetic and Politics of Museum Display
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 6.
58
20
Americans.61 By encouraging questioning of perspectives brought to museums
by visitors, museums are able to teach that the present does not flow neatly out
of the past, and that individuals can, for themselves, determine who it is they are,
who they want to be, and where they are going.
The past, memory, and identity are issues central to museum creation and
exhibition. Perhaps there is no single solution that will allow for a museum
exhibition to convey information about the past while at the same time
remaining void of political, social, and cultural implications. Despite this hurdle,
museums possess a unique opportunity to attract people from all walks of life,
force them to challenge their own perspectives, and perhaps walk away with
information and questions that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.
In pondering the issue of Holocaust memory within the United States and
the possibilities of representation within museums, one wonders: Why here?
Why memorialize an event that happened hundreds of miles away and did not
involve the United States directly? Some argue the United States was involved in
the Holocaust in that it did nothing to stop the extermination policies of the
Nazis, save defeating them in the war. One answer is that the United States also
provided a safe haven for many Jews refugees immediately after the war; next to
Israel, the United States boasts the largest Jewish population in the world.62 With
the eruption of the Holocaust onto the American scene, remembrance has taken
the shape of memorials and museums across the country, especially in the 1970s
and 1980s. Before 1974, fewer than ten Holocaust-oriented institutions existed;
between 1978 and 1985, forty-one institutions emerged nationwide.63 Research on
the Holocaust has also grown tremendously during this same time. In 1990,
eighty books existed on the Holocaust; the number grew to over one hundred
only five years later, not including numerous dissertations on the subject. As
Flanzbaum notes, the Holocaust has become “deeply embedded in the American
61
Karp and Lavine, 8.
Miller, 234.
63
United States Holocaust Memorial Council, Directory of Holocaust Institutions, February, 1988.
62
21
psyche,” as “Holocaust monuments and memorials have sprung up next to
tennis courts and teeter-totters in neighborhood parks across the country.”64
The United States Holocaust Memorial Council had the task of planning
and constructing a national Holocaust museum, as well as celebrating annual
commemoration days. Its most important task was “insuring that the memory of
this greatest of human tragedies, the Holocaust, never fades – that its lessons are
never forgotten.” 65 At its inception, there was discussion about whether this
museum would be a good thing for the American Jewish community.66 Would a
national museum devoted to the Holocaust further complicate Jewish identity in
the United States? Would it mean that all other aspects of Jewish life would be
swallowed up by the memory of the Holocaust? The Commission, and
subsequently the Council, were well aware of these issues, although they were
unsure how to solve them. Many people also kept returning to the question of
why Carter chose to create the commission in the first place . Edward Linenthal
argues that President Carter hoped the creation of the memorial would heal the
wounds between the White House and the Jewish community over the recent
sale of arms to Saudi Arabia.67 In a speech given at the National Civil Holocaust
Commemoration Ceremony in 1979, Carter noted, “Although words do pale, yet
we must speak. We must strive to understand. We must teach the lessons of the
Holocaust. And most of all, we ourselves must remember.”68 Regardless of the
reason behind the creation of the Commission, its task in creating and
constructing the museum proved to be difficult.
Struggles ensued over how to represent and depict the Holocaust within
the museum. Debates swirled around what the purpose of the museum was to
be, and how that purpose would be realized and conveyed within the exhibits.
The museum acquired artifacts from the State Museum at Auschwitz, including
64
Flanzbaum, 6-7.
United States Holocaust Memorial Council, pamphlet, 1987.
66
Linenthal, 13.
67
Linenthal, 52.
68
President’s Commission, 33.
65
22
suitcases, umbrellas, mirrors, toothbrushes, shoes, bowls, and nine kilograms of
human hair, to be considered for display within the permanent exhibition.69
Council members wanted to display the hair, as was done at the museum at
Auschwitz, but faced objections by both members of the museum staff and
survivors, who argued that displaying the hair would diminish its intimate
nature, making it more of a spectacle than a personalizing component to the
museum, especially one so far removed from the actual landscape of the
Holocaust. After bitter debate, museum creators decided it was best to satisfy
survivors and display instead a photograph of the hair. The debate serves as an
example of the struggle in creating the museum and the many voices that
participated in its creation.
As Linenthal notes, the volatility of the Holocaust created a rough road for
museum creators as they struggled over how to appropriately represent the
memory of the Holocaust and how to determine the way that representation
would affect the American public.70 This volatility depended on the inherent
struggles over how to represent Holocaust memory and the consequences of
these representations within the public realm. The tension between making the
museum a national institution while simultaneously portraying the attempted
extermination of a religious population was pervasive within Council meetings
and debates. At first, Council members contemplated building the museum in
New York, but feared that it would be perceived as purely a Jewish institution,
leaving Holocaust memory to only the Jewish community within the United
States. Instead, they settled on Washington, making the museum a national
structure but at the same time a battleground for who was to be included. The
museum was constructed on federal land and located in the heart of the nation’s
capital, so the architecture somehow had to fit into the existing Washington
69
70
Linenthal, 210-11.
Linenthal, 52.
23
landscape, but still reflect Jewish core of the Holocaust.71 The tension between
the location of the museum and its obvious religious affiliation played itself out
most significantly not long before the museum’s opening, as the Council
struggled over whether to ask Israeli President Chaim Herzog to speak at the
opening. Some argued that doing so would only further the notion of the
museum as a purely Jewish institution, while others could not envision the
opening without him. In the end, the White House decided that Herzog would
speak, arguing that the museum was to be both Jewish and American.72
The Council, in working to create and establish a national museum
dedicated to the Holocaust, encountered numerous obstacles such as location,
architecture, exhibit materials, and conclusion to the exhibit. In the end, it
managed to deal with all of those and to oversee the construction of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened in April 1993. Although the
museum was the largest and most comprehensive in the United States,
numerous scholars critiqued its exhibition and the choices in representations
within the museum.
The Museum Today
Upon entering the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM),
visitors are greeted by a museum representative, who escorts them onto an
elevator in which they view a short film about American soldiers discovering the
concentration camps. Following the film, the elevator doors open onto the first
exhibition room, and visitors immediately confront an oversized image of
American troops standing over burned corpses of camp victims. The connection
between the Holocaust and the United States is obvious within the first few
minutes in this museum, seemingly justifying the presence of this museum in
Washington. Upon entry, visitors have an opportunity to take an identification
71
72
Linenthal, 59.
Weinberg, 168.
24
card, describing the background and Holocaust experience of a victim or
survivor. Meant to make the experience more personal for the visitor, the card is
never again referred to throughout the exhibit, but is simply a token of one’s
presence at the museum.
As visitors traverse the hallways of the four floors within the permanent
exhibition, they encounter a constant barrage of images, artifacts, and
explanations about the Nazi rise to power, anti-semitism within Germany and
Europe, and the carrying out of Hitler’s Final Solution. Within the exhibition
room on the first floor, visitors witness the Nazi rise to power and the Nazi effort
to control the Jewish population. Images of Hitler and the fading leaders of the
Weimar Republic cover the walls. Once Hitler assumes power within the
museum narrative, the photographs instead depict mounting brutality and
discrimination against the Jews through boycotts of Jewish businesses and book
burnings depicted on a television screen next to a pile of outlawed books. Nazi
propaganda envelopes visitors as they listen to Hitler’s voice and Nazi music
echoing through the halls. Also within this first large room are two theatres in
which films depict Hitler’s background and rise to power as well as the history
of anti-semitism throughout the world.
Following the films, visitors then move into sections of the exhibit which
depict Jewish death and destruction throughout Germany. Perhaps one of the
most powerful objects within this portion of the exhibit is a vandalized
mantelpiece, taken from a Jewish synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis
during the Night of Long Knives, when German troops in June 1934 murdered
political opponents of the National Socialist Party at Hitler’s request. The
museum dedicates one portion of the exhibit to World War II, making sure
visitors recognize that this effort to exterminate was taking place alongside a fullscale war.
As visitors travel from one side of the museum building to the other, they
traverse hallways enclosed by glass walls overlooking the lobby of the museum.
25
Names of towns and cities destroyed by the Nazis are inscribed onto this glass,
forcing visitors to come to terms with the extent of destruction of both human life
and landscape.
Visitors then travel into the world of the ghetto and concentration camp,
bombarded with artifacts and images depicting the evacuation, deportation, and
eventual removal of the Jews from the newly acquired German territories.
Perhaps one of the largest and most memorable artifacts within the museum is a
boxcar, through which visitors must travel to reach the end of the exhibit.
Adjacent to this boxcar are images of Jews being escorted on and off boxcars as
they travel to their destinations. The result of using an artifact as part of the
physical landscape of the museum is powerful; visitors are forced to encounter
the small size of the car, and can realize what crowding into the small space must
have been like. The boxcar is not the only object with which visitors interact, but
is the only one through which visitors must travel to get to the end of the
permanent exhibition.
As USHMM visitors continue their journey, objects surround them as they
pass through rooms filled with shoes, brushes, tools, and the enormous
photograph of hair taken from Jewish women upon entering the camps. If
visitors have not yet made a human connection with Holocaust victims, it seems
that here is often the place where this connection can be made. One cannot
escape the smell of the shoes, for example, or the sheer amount of hair that is
shown in the photograph. Visitors then come upon a model, lining several walls,
depicting the journey of prisoners from the cars to extermination. The model is
colorless, but one can still make out the faces and bodies of the victims. Replicas
of barracks are in the middle of this room, although visitors do not have to go
into them to complete the exhibition. Three television screens, blocked by three
walls, approximately four feet tall, depict medical experiments by the Nazis in
which they used camp inmates, including the mentally ill and disabled. The
walls, meant to prevent some from viewing these clips, seem to entice visitors to
26
witness something particularly grotesque. In a room separated by glass walls,
benches are available for visitors to sit and listen to the voices of survivors from
Auschwitz; though seemingly a resting point within the exhibition, the voices are
powerful and again remind visitors of the human connection to the killings.
The final portion of the exhibit, entitled the “Last Chapter,” details the end
of World War II and the failure of the non-Jewish community to give aid of any
kind to those facing extermination. A white wall contains a list of those who did
help, and describes other efforts by Jews and non-Jews alike. Three television
screens, again partially blocked by concrete walls, depict liberation of the camps
by British, American, and Soviet troops, while voices from survivors of the
camps play in the background. A small section of the exhibit also depicts the
children of the Holocaust as both survivors and victims. Visitors can witness and
listen to portions of the Nuremberg trials, including the trial of Adolf Eichmann,
followed by accounts of displaced Jews, fearing to go home, but having no other
place to go. Finally, visitors come upon a large theatre with walls of yellowish
stone from Jerusalem. In this theatre, visitors can both see and hear survivor
testimony, although one can exit the exhibit without witnessing this film.
After exiting the permanent exhibition, visitors can enter the Hall of
Remembrance, which is meant to provide space for reflection and contemplation.
The Hall contains an eternal flame, under which soil from both Holocaust sites
and American military cemeteries is buried.73 The room is shaped hexagonally
and resembles the Star of David, echoing the obvious Jewish connection to the
space while at the same time encouraging reflection by all visitors regardless of
religious affiliation. James Ingo Freed, the architect of the museum, argued that
this space would provide a necessary opportunity for meditation before visitors
returned to the museum lobby.74
73
74
Linenthal, 94.
Linenthal, 104.
27
The physical environment of the permanent exhibition plays a significant
role in “transporting” visitors to the world of the Holocaust. Throughout most of
the exhibit, the landscape is filled with concrete floors, cage-like ceilings, and
dark corners. Any opportunity to sit entails trying to relax on cold, hard concrete
or wooden benches. Hallways, particularly those enclosed with glass and
looking over the lobby of the museum, allow the visitors to view the camp-like
architecture both inside and outside the museum, with its metal towers and
watchlights. At certain points within the permanent exhibition, rooms with
carpeted floors and bright, cushioned walls offer a welcomed escape for the
overwhelmed.
The presentation of the United States in the museum provides an
important perspective for those visitors unaware of an American role. The
United States appears in a portion of the exhibit called, “No Help, No Haven,
1938.” This section notes the lack of help on the part of the American government
in aiding the Jewish population in Germany, but the section is small and
disappears among photographs and explanations of the destruction of the Jewish
communities. One long hallway is also dedicated to America’s inaction, though
visitors are not forced to deal with this inaction; they can choose to sit at various
television screens and view documents and broadcasts of debates about
American involvement and relief but are not shown these documents and images
without some effort to retrieve them. In forcing visitors to seek out this
information, the museum masks the enormity of the American lack of action.
Some visitors may exit the exhibition still unaware of this inaction, leaving them
no opportunity to contemplate the mistakes of their country, as well as their role
in preventing genocides such as the Holocaust.
The USHMM combines both objects and media in its presentation,
creating an experience for the visitor that is both memorable and powerful. The
combination of historical objects, such as a Polish border marker and books
outlawed by the Nazis, as well as television screens throughout the permanent
28
exhibition, envelope the visitor in the world of both the Nazi perpetrators and
their victims. By exposing visitors to various types of media – photographs,
video clips, artifacts (both behind glass walls and in the open), and sound bytes –
the experience becomes more than simply retracing the steps of the Holocaust.
The visitor leaves the exhibit with some memory of his or her experience within
the museum, as well as some notion of what the Holocaust was as an historical
event. In the end, the permanent exhibition at the USHMM creates for visitors a
sense, or memory, of the Holocaust.
Objects such as suitcases, brushes, combs, mirrors, workshop tools,
scissors, gas pellets, and uniforms fill the museum’s permanent exhibition. As
historians Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer argue, objects by
themselves hold no value; it is only upon placement into some constructed
narrative that they hold some meaning. Even then, that meaning is interpretive
and decided upon by those who have written the narrative.75 To visitors, these
objects may act as evidence of the material presented within the narrative. Oren
Baruch Stier, a scholar in the field of Holocaust studies, has investigated the use
of artifacts in Holocaust museums, such as the USHMM, and recognizes their
inherent flaws. Artifacts, for Stier, imply authenticity and sacredness, and
participate in a narrative in an effort to teach visitors. Through artifacts,
museums such as the USHMM are able to promote their own narrative and
present it as all-encompassing, leaving visitors with little to no room to question
both the artifacts themselves and to ask what is said about them within the
exhibit. These artifacts exist simultaneously in both past and present, and
become sources of mediation and creators of memory instead of purely remnants
of the past. Stier recognizes the occurrence of a double displacement, in that
visitors leave American space through their museum experience, but also leave
museum space and travel into the space of the Holocaust. The museum’s
75
Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer, Between Witness and Testimony: The Holocaust and the
Limits of Representation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 142.
29
camplike architecture forces the visitor out of the Washington landscape and into
that of a concentration camp.76 This displacement fosters the creation of memory,
not the recreation of the historical event, for the visitor. Furthermore, artifacts, as
objects, Stier notes, are, “set off in a narrative we are asked to consider from a
spatial and temporal distance, even as, simultaneously, we are asked to reflect on
and identify with the story the objects purport to embody.”77 Articles such as
hats, glasses, shoes and larger items, such as the boxcar, “all fill up the void, the
yawning abyss of memory the museum struggles to express.”78 Artifacts do,
however, bring the visitor closer to the Holocaust, especially through objects
such as photographs, which Linenthal suggests, “reduce the space between the
living and the dead.”79
Alternatives
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provides only one
example of a memorial institution. But because of the centrality of the museum
located in the nation’s capital, it provides a window through which the museum,
as an entity of memory, can be examined. It should be noted that not all
museums follow the same path as that of the USHMM, although many are faced
with the same types of issues and controversies that surrounded it. The Simon
Wiesenthal Museum of Toleration in California and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust
memorial in Israel, provide alternate examples of problems associated with
memorializing the Holocaust, and can be used as a point of comparison and
contrast.
76
Linenthal, “Boundaries,” 428.
Oren Baruch Stier, Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust (Boston: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2003), 126.
78
Stier, 125.
79
Edward Linenthal. “The Boundaries of Memory: The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum,” American Quarterly 46, no. 3, (1994): 429.
77
30
The alternative to the problem of artifacts within museums is that of a
multi-media approach, specifically that used in the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s
Museum of Tolerance. The museum’s approach has changed over the years. Stier
discusses three separate visits and three different experiences gleaned from the
different approaches. First, visitors were greeted by a “manipulator,” an image of
a host created out of numerous television screens. Upon entering the exhibit,
visitors face the bombardment of images, sounds, and interactive devices, forcing
them to recognize, in Stier’s words, their “ingrained presuppositions,” about the
Holocaust and other acts of intolerance.80 No objects or material artifacts were
used in this portion of the museum. Upon a second visit a few years later, Stier
noted changes made in the museum exhibition. The “manipulator” still greeted
and guided guests through the exhibit. An interactive video diner in which
visitors sit at counters resembling those of the 1950s and interact with computer
screens, conveyed a story of drunk driving, in an attempt to force visitors to take
responsibility for their own words and actions. Stier argues that this display
created confusion on the part of the visitors as to what their experience was
supposed to be. One year later, Stier returned again to the museum to find the
diner still in use, although the stories were different. What, then, was the point of
the museum? What story or lesson was it trying to convey? Stier argues this
multi-media approach lends itself to forgetting exactly what the point of the
museum is, thereby confusing visitors about what the museum aims to do.81 In
the end, “we run the much greater risk of failing to remember because nothing is
there to remember – we are mediating our own experience.”82 The Museum of
Tolerance, then, is left with the same problems its creators aimed to overcome in
eliminating artifacts from the exhibits.
Likewise, Yad Vashem faces the same obstacles within its permanent
exhibition. Yad Vashem, located in Israel, stands as the state memorial to the
80
Stier, 131.
Stier, 129-134.
82
Stier, 144.
81
31
Holocaust. Creators decided that, unlike other memorials and museums, Yad
Vashem was to act as both “custodian” and “creator” of national memory.83
James Young argues that this memory works to “[bring] home the ‘national
lessons’ of the Holocaust… to bind present and past generations, to unify a
world outlook, to create a vicariously shared national experience.”84 Although
the aims and purpose of Yad Vashem are somewhat different than the USHMM,
both represent the Holocaust through narrative, beginning with Adolf Hitler’s
rise to power in 1933. At the conclusion of the exhibit at Yad Vashem, memorials
act as contemplative spaces for visitors, providing more time and space for
reflection, although there seems to be no catalyst for discussion by visitors.
The USHMM, Museum of Tolerance, and Yad Vashem provide very
different examples and approaches to the inherent problems in representation
and meaning within museums. What is the solution? On one hand, the use of
artifacts within the USHMM leaves room for individual interpretation and
negotiation of meaning; on the other, because of the sacredness in viewing these
artifacts, memory is mediated and created, leaving the past distorted or
seemingly out of the picture.85 Stier, unsure of the solution or alternative, argues,
referring to the USHMM and the Museum of Tolerance, that, “located between
presence and absence, mystery and revelation, these two very different museums
communicate, in the end, the precarious and paradoxical role of Holocaust
memory as reconstituted in the present, in America.”86
Endings within any museum are difficult and the USHMM is no
exception. One of many problems in representing the Holocaust within a
museum is the question of how to end the exhibit. Initially, many did not want
the feeling of a “happy” ending imposed upon visitors as they exited the exhibit,
as often occurs in a narrative approach. Some argued for a depiction of
83
Young, 246.
Young, 247.
85
Stier, 146.
86
Stier, 149.
84
32
resistance, rescue, and the creation of Israel as the final exhibit. In the USHMM,
visitors are left with video testimonials of survivors, which provide some sort of
resolution to the narrative presented in the museum. Visitors may be left with
feelings of hope and determination not to allow a catastrophe such as the
Holocaust to occur again, but the end of the exhibition offers visitors no
opportunity to contemplate and question the material which they have been
presented. The problem arises, according to Timothy Luke, a political scientist,
since visitors’ experience within the USHMM is more like entertainment, in that
A photographic/televisual/cinematic product is repackaged in the museum’s peoplehandling system, narrative voice, and informational representations as an experiential
theme ride, carrying the visitor through a simulation of the Holocaust death machine as
if he or she were amidst the masses of its victims.87
Although Luke may take his criticisms too far in his comparison of the
permanent exhibit to that of a theme ride, he does recognize the museum’s use of
entertainment media to convey the narrative. For Luke, reducing an event such
as the Holocaust to images on television screens leaves no room for reflection
and contemplation by visitors and negates the goal of the museum as an
educational institution.88
The use of narrative within the museum also presents a problem. As
Linenthal recognizes in the work of cultural critic Hayden White, narrative
implies and demands a resolution, regardless of whether one existed in reality or
not.89 In giving visitors an ending, they are left with an imaginary sense, or
memory, of the Holocaust. As Cole notes, “Rather than revealing the confusing,
banal complexity of an event of ludicrous proportions, it is presented as an event
which can not only be comprehended, but also as one which can be
87
Timothy W. Luke, Museum Pieces: Power Plays at the Exhibition (Minneapolis: Uniiversity of
Minnesota Press, 2002), 54.
88
Luke, 64.
89
Linenthal, “Boundaries,” 426.
33
understood.”90 But what is the alternative to the narrative? Even White himself is
unsure of the answer to this question, which is further complicated within the
realm of museums which struggle with not only representation but also
contextualization and education about a historical event.
The issue of Americanization of the Holocaust is also a paramount
concern in representing and depicting the Holocaust. Unlike nations such as
Germany and Poland, the Holocaust did not take place on local grounds and was
not perpetrated by local people. Nevertheless, as Hilene Flanzbaum notes, the
Holocaust “has become an artifact of American culture.”91 The Holocaust has
become the topic of hundreds of Holocaust institutions across the country, each
different in its aims and presentation. According to Cole, “From a position of
relative ignorance about the Holocaust on the part of non-survivors and relative
silence about the Holocaust on the part of survivors, the Holocaust has emerged
– in the Western world – as probably the most talked about and oft-represented
event of the twentieth century.”92 As such, Americans have taken the Holocaust
and made it their own, manipulating and shaping it to fit their needs. The United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a case in point. Located in the heart of the
nation’s capital, the Holocaust appears as a crime against American ideals, as
photographs of American soldiers liberating concentration camp survivors greet
visitors as they enter the museum, which Cole argues hands visitors a “mental
map with which to operate.”93 At the same time, “we – like the U.S. troops – have
encountered someone else’s crime [in the museum] and stare – hands-on-hips –
with a mixture of disgust and fascination.”94 In this way, Holocaust
remembrance comes to Americans through a filtered process, allowing American
ideals to be injected into the representations.95 Max Kempelman, Ronald
90
Cole, 153.
Flanzbaum, 8.
92
Cole, 2-3.
93
Cole, 149.
94
Cole, 155.
95
Flanzbaum, 4.
91
34
Reagan’s central arms negotiator, argued that the USHMM would show the
tolerance in American culture and its empathetic abilities, as well as exemplify
America’s dedication to human rights.96 Were these American ideals actually
part of the historical event called the Holocaust? Many would argue that since
Americans acted as liberators, they, along with their ideals, played a significant
role. Others may argue the opposite, recounting inaction on the part of the
United States to act against the Germans or provide a safe haven for Jewish
refugees. In any case, representations of the Holocaust, however “Americanized”
they might be, need to be constantly evaluated. Although the Holocaust took
place over fifty years ago, it is very much a current event, given the amount of
time and money that is spent on research, commemoration, education and
memorial. As Frank Rich, a New York Times cultural critic, noted in 1994, “The art
of remembering the Holocaust is by definition a work in progress. The moment
that people start smugly pointing to long box-office lines and saying the job is
done is the moment to worry that the world is beginning to forget.”97
Conclusion
Holocaust memory remains a popular topic among scholars, as well as
with the American public, yet issues of representation and implementation in
museums persist. Should Americans remember the Holocaust, and how should
that remembrance, memorial, or education take place? Who is to be in charge of
these representations? Questions such as these apply not only to museums
dedicated to the Holocaust, but also to those dealing with other subjects.
Perhaps the most important question surrounding Holocaust
remembrance and memorialization in the United States pertains to ethics. If
Landsberg is correct in arguing that as visitors traverse the insides of museums
such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum they take on the
96
97
Cole, 149.
Frank Rich, “The Holocaust Boom: Memory as an Art Form,” New York Times, April 7, 1994.
35
memories and representations within it, should they be saddled with memories
of a horrific and catastrophic event in which they played no part? What is their
responsibility in this process? One option is that visitors, upon their entrance into
the museum, are charged with taking what they experience within the museum
as a reason to react against similar occurrences of genocide. Another may be that
they carry no responsibility; that is, visitors, aware of the Holocaust within their
own memory, adapt their identity accordingly, perhaps preventing them from
encouraging or participating in an event similar to the Holocaust. Visitors, then,
are crucial components to the museums that they visit, acting as carriers of the
knowledge they encounter.
In contemplating the impact of the museum exhibition on the visitor,
museum creators need to be especially aware of how they end their “story.” By
using narrative, one could argue that some sort of ending is implied and
expected. For many, the Holocaust represents an event for which there is no end;
survivors and their families continue to live with images and memories of the
death camps. Liberation signaled the end of life in the camps, but it did not mean
a return to life before internment. How, then, can museums effectively represent
and convey this notion? What alternative to the narrative within museums can
be used to effectively portray the Holocaust and its memory? These are questions
with no easy and obvious answers. Perhaps museums and their creators should
contemplate more critically their methodologies and narratives, as author Dan
Stone suggests for writers of Holocaust history. By using the Holocaust as a
window through which museum exhibitions can be critiqued, adjustments can
be made to the way in which they present information. Just as Stone suggests a
questioning of the traditional methodologies in Holocaust historiography, so too
can museum creators, historians, and visitors question and reevaluate traditional
approaches in presenting and representing information and knowledge in the
museum setting and develop new exhibits that promote questioning and debate.
36
This does not mean abandoning narrative completely, but readjusting it to
include various perspectives and leaving the end to the visitor to contemplate.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provides perhaps the
best example of a combination of both object-based and media-based exhibits
which, together, work to recount the events of the Holocaust as well as to
encourage some questioning and discussion of the event. But is this enough? As
the attention to the Holocaust continues to grow in American culture, museum
creators and visitors must continue to contemplate representations and their
implications for both Americans and their neighbors.
37
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