Lecture: Memory, Representation, Memorials
Outline
Familiar Images
/Problems with images
History and its Problems
Memory and Oral Testimony
Literary Approaches
- Hyperrealism
- Fiction
- Poetry
Music
-Karel Berman: Theresienstadt
Film
Performance Art
Monuments, Museums and Memorials
- Monumental memorials
- Representational Monuments
- Abstract monuments
- Architectural monuments
- Mediated monuments
- Re-representational memorials
Familiar Images
21. Inmates in the barracks of a KZ.
20. Soldiers ridiculing a Jew in prayer shawl and phylacteries.
16. Crematorium furnace, Dachau KZ
18. Jews flushed out of their bunkers in Warsaw Ghetto
History
Memory and Oral testimony
Hyperrealism
Fiction
Poetry
Music
Film
Performance Art
Monuments, Museums, and Memorials
Monumental monuments
23. Nathan Rapoport, Warsaw Ghetto Monument, 1948. Warsaw.
43. Nathan Rapoport's Warsaw Ghetto Monument, 1948.
44. Fritz Cremer's bronze group "Revolt of the Prisoners" in front of the Buchenwald KZ clock tower, 1958. (Close up.)
45. Memorial at Babi Yar. The original plaque made no mention of the fact that those who were slaughtered at Babi Yar were Jews.
46. Nathan Rapoport's "Liberation," a bronze memorial, showing an American soldier with a rescued KZ victim stands in Liberty State Park, New Jersey, within sight of Ellis Island and the statue of liberty.
Representational Monuments
26. Ze'ev Ben Zvi, To the Children of Exile, 1947. Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-Emek, Israel.
35. George Segal, The Holocaust, 1984. Lincoln Park, San Francisco.
40. A visitor ventures behind the barbed wire fence in Lincoln Park.
Abstract monuments
24. Franciszek Duszenko and Adam Haupt, Treblinka Memorial, 2, 3. 1964.
29. Horst Hoheisel, "Negative Form": Monument to the Aschrott-Brunnen, 1987. Kassel, Germany. Scale model, detail.
30. Actual fountain.
27. Karin Daan, Homomonument, 1987. Westermarkt, Amsterdam, Holland.
28. Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz, Monument against Fascism, 1986-93. Harburg, Germany. (Photographed in 1990).
36. Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz, Monument against Fascism, 1986-93. Harburg, Germany. (Photographed in 1990). When first installed in 1986, the lead-surfaced, steel column stood 12 meters high at a busy intersection in Harburg, an industrial suburb near Hamburg.
37. The column in 1990.
38. The column shortly before it disappeared into the ground in 1993.
39. A pedestrian etches his signature into the lead surface of the column. Photo from 1986.
Model for Berlin Holocaust memorial; Peter Eisenman (under construction 2003).
Architectural monuments
33. James Ingo Free/Pei Cobb Freed & Partners: Exterior rooftop view of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC.
41. Hall of Remembrance, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Young, p.88.
42. Hall of Witness, US Holocaust Museum. Note the use of brick and the resemblance of the center entrance to the crematorium doors.
Mediated Monuments
22. Tadeusz Augustynek's memorial to the deported Jews of Kazimierz-Dolny, near Lublin. 1984. Carved limestone fragments set in mortar.
34. Holocaust Museum three-story tower of faces (contains more than 1300 photo album pictures taken of the Jewish resident of Ejszyszki, Lithuania during the 1920s and 30s. In a two-day period in September 1941, 90% of the town's Jewish community of 3,000 people were murdered by Nazi firing squads.
Re-representational Monuments
31. Shimon Attie: Joachimstrasse 2, Slide Projection of Former Jewish resident, Berlin, 1991 (ca. 1930). Berlin.
32. Shimon Attie, Almstadtstrasse 43, Slide projection of former Hebrew bookstore, Berlin, 1991 (1930). Berlin.
Majdanek
Entrance gate to prisoner cells, Theresienstadt Gestapo prison
Perimeter wall, Mauthausen KZ
Camp main street, Birkenau KZ. Note the swampiness of the street.
Artificial limbs in showcase, Auschwitz KZ
Shoes of a single day, Auschwitz KZ
Spoons remaining after "Canada" was burned
Slogans on barracks rafters, Birkenau KZ. Note the slogans: "Cleanliness means health"; "Be honest"; "Keep order"; "Honesty lasts the longest."
Staircase of death, Mauthausen KZ
Autopsy table in medical barracks, Natzweiler KZ
Clay urns, Natzweiler KZ. For a payment of 39-100 RM the family of a dead KZ inmate could request an urn with their ashes. Urns were filled indiscriminately.
Mass grave monument, Bergen Belsen KZ. When the British troops liberated the camp in 1945 they found 13,000 unburied corpses. Anne Frank and her sister Margot perished here a short time before the liberation.
