January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, is marked in many countries as the international Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is an occasion for commemorative ceremonies, educational programs, and other initiatives. Monuments and memorials are also dedicated.
This year an imposing memorial was inaugurated in Bologna, Italy, and a memorial was also unveiled in Suwalki, Poland. Stolpersteine (stumbling stone) memorials were installed recently in Venice, the latest place to commemorate the deported in this way.
Bologna Shoah Memorial from Visual Lab Bologna on Vimeo.
In Bologna, the guidelines published by the city for the monument’s design competition stipulated that “If we wish to fight racism, we must learn to put ourselves in the place of others, to believe that what happens to our neighbor could also happen to us. Bearing this in mind, we are called upon to build new cultural policies, both in Italy and the rest of Europe.”
The Memorial interprets this objective, expressing it as a spatial structure that can engage our citizens, inviting them to enter a different dimension, in a journey that moves from the historic drama of this extermination to the contemplation of beauty in the urban landscape: from violence and death to life. Those who cross this space will participate in a personal and intimate experience, which, linked to the concept of memory, will raise questions, yet the site will offer no preconceived answers.
So the Memorial does not aim to provide the visitor with information on the historical facts it refers to, nor does it aim to tell or explain the story of the Shoah or what was happening in Bologna at the time. Archives, libraries, research centres and documentation will do that, both in the city and online.
A major concern, more than 70 years after the end of World War II, is the care and preservation of Holocaust memorial sites — the death camps and other places where the Shoah was carried out, but memorials and memorial spaces, too.
The Bologna monument guidelines made this clear:
Precisely because of the square’s nature as a place of transit and relations, the project must tackle the issues of the use and duration of the Memorial, the issues linked to its protection and maintenance over time.
Bologna’s Shoah Memorial should “stop the passerby” in a space that we must imagine as monumental in its entire length and breadth. An evocative place, where History, recalled to Memory, becomes a message to Mankind. In an era when the direct witnesses of the time are disappearing, it is the job of society to treasure the memory: life goes on and our children will guarantee that memory.
Some of the concerns are physical, for example, more than 1.7 million people visited Auschwitz in 2015 — a record — putting strains on fragile infrastructure.
We thought it fitting on this occasion to repost a link to the full text of a PhD thesis (University of Timisoara, Romania) by Florence Luxenberg-Eisenberg, that focuses on the preservation and management of Holocaust memorial sites. (We first posted it ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2014.)
Called Protecting Truth—Combating Denial: The Challenge to Manage and Preserve Holocaust Memorial Sites, to Safeguard Authenticity and Perpetuate Memory, the work investigates “the challenges to manage and preserve Holocaust memorial sites on their original locations.”
This is an important topic as time moves forward and the survivor generation is passing away. How to preserve these sites? How to preserve memory? How to preserve authenticity? How to use the site to combat Holocaust denial? How to ensure the history told in on-site (and off-site) museums is accurate?
Luxenberg-Eisenberg carried out her research in 13 Holocaust sites: Terezin (Theresienstadt), CZ; Dachau, Sachsenhausen, & Ravensbruck, Germany; Auschwitz-Birkenau, Plaszow, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec, Stutthof, & Majdanek, Poland; and Babi Yar, Ukraine. She also consulted and carried out research at a number of museums and other institutions.
She writes in her introduction:
The research explores the management challenges faced by those (some under great difficulties) who work on the subject of the Holocaust on a daily basis, on authentic ground, as seen through their eyes. And it is this that makes this research unique. It supports the following statement: Preservation of the sites would safeguard authentic evidence, protect truth, and keep Holocaust memory alive while combating deniers of atrocities—that Holocaust remembrance is not just one element but a huge network, all part of a ripple effect which expands while managing it.
There are many questions that are answered in the research through the investigation and they are discussed in the methodology and procedure. In order to get a clear picture of the challenges to manage and preserve memorial sites while at the same time doing the research authentically and thoroughly, I felt the necessity to travel to the actual locations where the events took place and to speak directly to the museum heads, managers, and directors on the sites themselves—to see for myself with my own eyes what the condition of the sites are today, what problems there are for the directors and museum heads, and to come up with suggestions for the future. This allowed for a reexamination of what exactly is involved with the management of Holocaust remembrance—that it does not involve one thing but a blend of different elements. As a result, locations were chosen very carefully and for different reasons. The journey[…] was as spiritual as it was physical and arduous (former greater than latter).
She considers questions such as:
What is Holocaust remembrance and how can something abstract such as remembrance be managed? Where do we go from here? What can be done so we remember not to forget? Who is responsible if not all of us? What are the challenges faced by museum heads in the management and maintenance of the site in the face of economic woes, Holocaust denial, and anti-Semitism? What are the differences in the challenges for museum heads on sites left with artifacts such as Auschwitz and those that were completely decimated like Sobibor?
Read the full Thesis (in English)
1 comment on “International Holocaust Remembrance Day — January 27”
Memorial sites and sculptures;
Amsterdam ,the fifties,location: Weteringplantsoen
As a child many times,at least once a day walking to my favorite uncle and aunt,just over a bridge,a tiny ,silent municipal park got a small sculpture of stone,representing lying figures carved out in one massive rectangle,knowing the history what happened over there,it became for me quite normal
to sit there for a while before continuing my stroll.Just knowing what happened over there :
just killing at random some people,not out hate or revenge,just because it was an order.It frightened me and up to this very day.The impact in my childhood was enormous ,also because I knew what happened to my people,hate and betrayal never that far away.For my childhood friends it was just a block of stone,a piece of stone you may like or not.It was not part of their history.
So I suppose remembrance sites are far too high up ,however a sculpture may deeply move by own memories.
Thanks and my appreciation for the article !