Stephanie Shosh Rotem: Constructing Memory: Architectural Narratives of Holocaust Museums (New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2013)
How do we remember the Holocaust? What role do museums play in constructing a collective memory of the Holocaust? Almost seventy years after the end of the Second World War, the need to commemorate the victims has not diminished. Indeed, it is more important than ever as the number of survivors decreases, and the link with first-hand knowledge of the event is lost. Inevitably, it will become the responsibility of Holocaust museums to commemorate and educate future generations.
Stephanie Shosh Rotem’s Constructing Memory analyzes the architecture of Holocaust museums in Israel, the U.S., and Europe, and explains how architecture often conveys important, symbolic messages. Unlike traditional museums, whose main function is the storage and display of valuable and historically important objects, the objects exhibited in Holocaust museums often have little monetary value, because Holocaust victims were looted of these possessions. The symbolic, abstract effect of architecture is, therefore, intensified, and adds to the didactic role of the institutions.
As Shosh Rotem explains, the symbolic message of Holocaust museum architecture is often political or ideological, and varies depending on the nation. Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust Museum of Israel, is a key site of commemoration of the genocide of European Jews. It disseminates a Zionist message symbolically through its design. Moshe Safdie, the architect of the rebuilt Yad Vashem (2005), designed the site to emphasize the rebirth of the Jewish people in Israel after the horrors of the Second World War. Visits typically begin in the dimly lit underground section of the building, symbolizing the darkness of the Nazi period, and emerge in a light-filled room dominated by panoramic views of Jerusalem’s hills. Contrasting elements of darkness and light are, therefore, used for dramatic and symbolic effect.
The real strength of the book is in the author’s comparison of the diversity of Holocaust museums. European Holocaust museums in particular have several, often conflicting, political messages at the heart of their designs. Although the theme of the Berlin Jewish Museum, for example, was meant to be Jewish history, the public perceived it as a Holocaust museum, mainly because of its design. Originally built in 1933, but badly damaged during the Berlin Kristallnacht of 1938, the museum reopened in 1997, but with no collection on display. For three years visitors walked through an empty museum, a so-called memory void that was interpreted as a powerful symbol of the destruction of Berlin’s Jewish community.
The Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest is briefly discussed, but the book omits mention of the persistent problem of antisemitism still facing Hungarian Jews. News reports consistently mention antisemitic events in the nation: from the far-right Jobbik party, Hungary’s third-largest political party, which is considered by Jewish groups to be a neo-Nazi organization, to the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. The book should have focused on the role of Budapest’s Holocaust Memorial Center to inform its visitors of this alarming trend. As the Holocaust increasingly becomes part of our collective memory, it is imperative that future Holocaust Museums also inform visitors about the reality of the Shoah and all its geographical sectors, and about the ongoing dangers of antisemitism.
(Rob Coles is CIJR’s Publications Chairman)
