Individual and group identity in WWII commemorative sites

Abstract

Five sites commemorating large-scale mortuary events are compared in order to discover how individual and collective identities are created, maintained, and lost in memorials such as cemeteries and monuments. These five sites, the American Military Cemetery in Normandy, France; the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, USA; Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, USA; Auschwitz-Birkenau outside Oświęcim, Poland; and Treblinka outside Malkinia, Poland, are locations that memorialise thousands of people and are linked through their connection to the events of World War II. The creation of military and prisoner identities during the war is analysed and the factors affecting commemoration are identified. The sites are analysed according to their geographic location, headstone designs, organisation, and erected monuments. Four commonalities among these commemorative sites are identified: symbolic location, attention to symmetry, the heterogeneous nature of the dead being subsumed into the collective identity, and the dead being given an artificial equality.