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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Stone, 224. Stone, 140. 35 President’s Commission, 6. 36 President’s Commission, 6. 34

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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

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President’s Commission, 2. President’s Commission, 3. 39 President’s Commission, 4. 40 President’s Commission, 7. 41 President’s Commission, 11. 38

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES President’s Commission on the Holocaust. Report to the President. Sept 1979. Rich, Frank, “The Holocaust Boom: Memory as an Art Form,” New York Times, April 7, 1994. U.S. Congress. House. United States Holocaust Memorial Council. 96th Cong., 2nd sess., 1980. H. Doc 8081. United States Holocaust Memorial Council. “The United States Holocaust Memorial Council”, 1987. United States Holocaust Memorial Council. “The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum”, 1988. United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Directory of Holocaust Institutions, 1988.

SECONDARY SOURCES Bauer, Yehuda. Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Bernard-Donals, Michael and Richard Glejzer. Between Witness and Testimony: The Holocaust and The Limits of Representation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Bodnar, John. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the 20th Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Cole, Tim. Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler How History

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Rosenzweig, Roy and David Thelen, eds. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Spielvogel, Jackson J. Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001. Stier, Oren Baruch. Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003. Stone, Dan. Constructing the Holocaust: A Study in Historiography. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003. Wallace, Mike. Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Weinberg, Jeshajahu. The Holocaust Museum in Washington. New York : Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1995. Young, James. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

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