A topography of memory : representations of the Holocaust at Dachau and Buchenwald in comparison with Auschwitz, Yad Vashem and Washington, DC

Abstract

There is a paradox inherent in any attempt to memorialize the Holocaust. On one hand, it can be argued that the Holocaust is fundamentally unrepresentable, indeed unimaginable, and that no human means of communication can adequately convey its enormity. On the other hand, any memorial devoted to the Holocaust is predicated on the notion that the only way to ensure that such a thing does not happen again is to bear witness and thereby "bring the living and the dead together." But how can something that cannot be represented be remembered or witnessed? Literary critic Andreas Huyssen asks us to consider how “the exclusive insistence on the true representation of the Holocaust in its uniqueness, unspeakability, and incomparability may no longer be adequate in light of its multiple representations and its functioning as a ubiquitous trope in Western culture.” These representations, after all, are rather representations of relations to the past than representations of the past itself. In recent years, there has been considerably more discussion in the united Germany and other countries about memorials commemorating the victims of the Nazi regime. At issue have been the ways in which artistic expression is related to historical meaning and consciousness, and whether memorials can adequately represent the memory of the Nazi mass exterminations. One reason why the debate about how to deal with the remnants of the Nazi past has widened is the generational transition currently taking place from people with a personal memory of the events to people whose memory is mediated in some way. Since the unification of the two Germanys, the “places of destruction" are furthermore often seen as a litmus test for how the new Germany will deal with its past. Fears have been expressed that the “German reunification has placed an unprecedented premium on forgetfulness.” What seems to me to be of primary interest are the controversies through which the memorials have come into being, and the ways in which the memorial-makers deal and have dealt with authenticity. To illuminate the different strategies at work at these memorials, I will therefore consider both their aesthetic form and their socio-political locations. I have chosen the term “Holocaust” here although I am aware of its limitations and its original Greek meaning of “a whole burnt offering" which can be seen as problematic in the context of the Nazi atrocities. The Hebrew term “Shoah” (“total destruction”), however, is often used only to refer to the Jewish victims while the term “Auschwitz” is confusing in its reference to the place and the symbol, to the site and the sign, and may suggest that the killings only took place in concentration and extermination camps. The difficulty of finding adequate representations starts exactly here, when searching for a word — in the case of “Holocaust” a foreign word — which necessarily is less precise than a specific explanation but which should not disguise the horrible crimes and the implication of German agency.