Holocaust Museums and Memorials

Abstract

Holocaust memorials can be categorized according to the evolution of the genre. The first type of memorials are the historical sites of discrimination and destruction themselves, such as concentration and extermination camps, transit camps, ghettos, forced labor camps, and sites of mass executions, as well as sites where hiding, rescue, and other life-saving operations took place. The second category, which developed immediately after the war, includes plaques and monuments dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims. In many cases, these monuments are erected in the places where the victims came from; the victims can be identified individually, with some personal details (e.g., age, occupation, etc.), or as part of a specific group (residents of a building, student body of a school, denizens of a town, etc.). These memorials, located all over Europe where the victims originated, follow traditional artistic patterns, such as plaques, allegorical sculptures, and rare figurative expressions. The third and more recent category comprises memorial museums, a complex combination of two institutions: a memorial, with its commemorative purpose, and a museum, with its collection, conservation, documentation, and educational missions. Such institutions are not necessarily located in cities where deportation and/or extermination took place, but may also be established where significant survivor populations settled after the war and took it upon themselves to commemorate the Holocaust: Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Argentina. Most recent memorial museums are also architectural artworks that add an artistic interpretation to the historical content: broken lines, voids, grids, narrow spaces, and dead ends are some of the design traits that contribute to express the loss and destruction in more abstract ways. Scholarship about Holocaust memorials has appeared and evolved in parallel with the memorials themselves. First came the historical accounts and testimonials about specific sites of destruction, then guides to monuments, followed by monographs about types of memorials (geographical focus with studies about public memory in Germany, France, or Poland, or artistic focus with counter-monuments). Later came the studies of memorial museums, whether as monographs or in a comparative approach, sometimes in a global perspective. More recently, a number of scholars have examined Holocaust memorials in relation with other phenomena, such as commodification and tourism, space, religious practices, memory politics, and appropriation.