Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum

by Edward Tabor Linenthal

A chronicle of the fifteen-year fight to build the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Genres: History, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Grad School, American History, Historical, Jewish

352 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

Edward Linenthal is a Professor of History and Religious Studies at Indiana University: Bloomington.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there's something we can all get together on, it should probably be that the Holocaust sucked, and we should both remember and respect that. Right? So you would think. As it turns out, it isn't exactly, entirely that simple.

In creating America's Holocaust Museum, all of the above things were considered. But as Linenthal explains there were a lot of issues defining exactly what all of those things meant. Linenthal describes the evolution of the museum, from its beginning mandate during the Carter administration (touched off by Carter needing to balance out his sympathies to the Palestinians with some gesture towards the Jewish community), through the various stages of forming the committee that conceptualized the museum, the arguments over that concept and the people included, the process of locating the museum in Washington, getting a design, deciding on its orientation, and most importantly, what would and what would not be included in the final museum, especially what would be included in the permanent exhibit.

The majority of the book is spent on essentially one question and its different aspects: "What, exactly, was the Holocaust?", most importantly, "Who do we count as victims of the Holocaust, who 'deserves' a place there?", "What is the purpose of this museum, who is it for?", and rising off of that question, "How do we portray the events for a diverse American audience in an American museum on the National Mall?"

Just to deal with the biggest things that stayed with me:

The biggest controversy was about defining who exactly were victims of the Holocaust and where one draws the line. Was it the 6 million Jewish people who were killed, only? Did it include the 5 million "others"? If it was all 11 million, how should that be expressed? Should the museum have a "Jewish core," with all others reeling out from the Jewish experience? Was the "Holocaust" museum to focus on those persecuted by the Nazis throughout their time in power, or should it expand to other examples of "Holocaust"? Are there other examples of "Holocaust", or is this a unique event that would be diminished by comparison? There were apparently many conversations on the museum's overseeing council to this effect, and some really sick comments made along the lines of "my people's suffering is worth more than your people's suffering." For example, the Romani argued for their inclusion in the museum as "equal" to the Jewish population because they, too, were singled out for destruction, just like they were. And then you get into the issue of "equality" of suffering, which is just... so twisted and dark and so very hard to watch people grappling with. I both understood what people were going through, trying to understand the experience and make it meaningful for themselves, and was repulsed by what turned into a weird competition for bragging rights about who suffered the most at times. There are emotional appeals from all sides, and Linenthal does a very good job of showing how hard it must have been to deal with all these objections from all sides while trying to state coherently what this museum was and what it was not.

Then there was the whole issue of what is the museum for- is it for merely the memory of the victims, or does it mean to serve as a warning, to speak of genocide and try to help show a moral imperative to prevent it in the world? If it is the latter, then shouldn't we be willing to share the museum with other instances of genocide, to show that it continues to occur today? There was a heartbreaking issue with the Armenians, who begged for a place, any place, in the museum, for someone to support them in their quest to have the genocide of their own people remembered and legitimized. As one Armenian representative put it, "If you won't support us, who will?" And you know why they didn't include them (except for one quote by Hitler about the Armenians)? This was one of the more twisted parts of the book: 1- a lot of people didn't want to "share" the museum with other instances of genocide (seriously, people made a slippery slope argument along the lines of- well, if you include the Armenians, where does it end? Do we include every genocide in the world? To which I say, sure, why not, but that's a different argument), and 2- the state of Israel. yes, the state that bases part of its reason for existence on the Holocaust, that leads the cry of "Never forget!", told them not to. Why? Because Israel has a military relationship with Turkey, and Turkey often acts as an intermediary between them and Arab countries, and there was no way they were going to upset that relationship by saying anything that even sounded like the word "genocide" in connection with the Armenians. Politics just make me boil sometimes.

Anyway, I'm being really negative on it, but truly, it is a very interesting read that is affecting in more ways than inducing anger or shame. And there are heartbreaking issues on all sides, about the artifacts included and how hard it was to deal with them, the debate over whether to show people a pile of human hair from one of the concentration camps or not (this was vetoed as being too shocking), the debate over how to make the American audience experience the camps in a way that would allow them to absorb the experience and not reject it as too much or too overwhelming, the project of including the pictures of an entire village wiped out by the roving Nazi death squads and how to depict these people (the woman who donated the pictures wanted them seen as people, not as victims), how to end the museum (should it end on a note of hope? should it speak of continuing genocides and work to be done? Should it emphasize the relationship between the US and Israel?, how is the museum affected by its location on the Mall (how does it be a 'good neighbor' to the buildings nearby that deal with patriotism towards the state and speak of great founding fathers and ideals?, and since it can be read as a national statement on the issue, how political should it really get?), how the project changed when it moved from ideas to the practical building (the "dreamers" left the council, and the people who needed to worry about permits and aquisition of artifacts arrived), and how the project was affected by changing politics over time.

In the end, it just shows how hard it is to both remember and move on.

[Alison Fong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed history of the creation of the American Holocaust Museum. Actually a very interesting read

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. New York: Penguin USA, 1995. $27.95, U.S.A; $36.99, Canada.

First published in The Ecumenist.

Throughout this spring, there have been several solemn commemorations marking the 50 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camps. In January, contention marked the Polish government’s ceremonies of the Soviet liberation of the most notorious camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Jewish groups contended that Lech Walesa’s government down-played the essential Jewish dimension of the massive suffering and death at Auschwitz. Serving as President Bill Clinton’s representative, Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel tried to impress upon public consciousness the distinction he had long defended that “not all the victims were Jews but all the Jews were victims.” A separate service was held at Auschwitz-Birkenau for Jewish survivors; there Wiesel urged that all present pray to God not to “have mercy for those who created this place.”

Survivors like Wiesel have long feared both an ever-encroaching Holocaust revisionism as well as their own approaching mortality: Testifiers such as themselves will not be around much longer to dismiss first-hand the obscenities of the neo-Nazi nay-sayers. From the survivors’ point of view, then, direct attacks on the Holocaust’s historicity only increases the urgency of recent efforts to institutionalize the memory of the Holocaust. While the remains of the concentration camps themselves have often been pilgrimage sites for international tourists, Jewish communities all over the world — as well as governments in Germany and Poland — have erected monuments and memorials to the victims.

After years of struggle and debate, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum finally opened in April, 1993 in Washington D.C. Though it focuses on one of the darkest chapters in human history, the museum and memorial have been well attended since its opening, with over 5 million people (a majority of them non-Jews) visiting in two years. In Preserving Memory, Edward T. Linenthal, a professor of religious studies at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, narrates the fascinating story of the creation of the memorial to the victims of the European Holocaust. Based on extensive interviews with the many key players involved in creating the Museum, he examines the tense and creative interplay between the memory of the European genocide and the dictates of American pluralism, the sensibilities of Jews and those of other ethnic groups, as well as Jewish and Christian advocates of remembrance and U.S. politicians committed to realpolitik.

The Politics of Remembering

Linenthal begins his study with an overview of the place of Holocaust memory in recent American culture. He notes, for example, that the emergence of the Holocaust as a formidable public issue in the U.S. coincided with the 1967 Six Day War (9). He then goes on to explore the politics of representation and the issue of “ownership of the memory” of the Holocaust. Jimmy Carter began things by appointing the President’s Commission of the Holocaust in 1978, the mission of which was to present recommendations on the how the Holocaust should be remembered in and by the United States. Linenthal acknowledges that the initiation of the Commission has often been seen as a shrewd manifestation of Washington politics: By making this initiative, Carter could placate a Jewish constituency made testy by his Mideast policy.

A first political question was the appointment of the chairperson of the Commission. Elie Wiesel was the person regarded as the best representative; Linenthal quotes former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg that “in addition to [Wiesel’s] identification with the Holocaust, he also would be a ‘non-political’ appointment and virtually free of attack from most sources” (21). At its infancy, this quest to remember was marked by controversy and disputation. Also, an early debate revolved around who was to serve on the Commission’s Board. Jewish survivors had an obviously esteemed place but, as news of the project got out, representatives of other ethnic minorities pressed for the inclusion of their story of suffering.

The President’s Commission delivered a report with their proposals to Carter in 1979. In an Executive Order that proffered a definition of the Holocaust, Carter referred to 11 million victims, which was a scandal of sorts among some survivors. Wiesel was extremely wary of this indiscriminate blending of Jewish and non-Jewish victims. Linenthal describes how Wiesel and colleague Monroe Freedman wanted to amend the Executive Order in the following way: “They proposed an alteration of language that would separate Jewish and non-Jewish victims grammatically, by the use of two dashes. The crucial part of the definition to be used in any executive order or council literature would thus read, ‘six million Jews — and the millions of other Nazi victims in World War II.’ This would, in their view, maintain a link between Jewish and non-Jewish victims but not equate them” (50). Once the President’s Commission made its proposals — for a memorial, educational center, monument, and national days of remembrance — a United States Holocaust Memorial Council was charged with carrying through the work of designing and building the memorial. Noted Christian scholars such as Robert McAfee Brown, Harry James Cargas, and Franklin Littell participated on this council.

One of the most demanding tasks was reconciling Jewish survivors’ awesome sense of the undertaking — their solemn duty to remember their murdered families and people — with the dictates of American pluralism and politics. Elie Wiesel’s own sense of the Holocaust was that it is a sacred mystery impossible to understand but which must be remembered, nonetheless. Many Jews and their allies on the Council wanted to keep the project pure from the profane, tasteless bickering of Washington politics. For example, survivors were easily and frequently offended by the attempts of Eastern European ethnic spokespersons to claim an equal billing in any prospective Museum, and so resisted honoring the dead of countries that aided and abetted the Nazis in their persecution of Jews. The survivors were also chagrined by politicians who had to maneuver and respond to the claims — and threats — of these other ethnic constituencies. Throughout, the Council was busy “Americanizing” the Holocaust, in the expression of Michael Berenbaum: linking the European catastrophe not only with the American monumental landscape on the National Mall but with American ideals and audiences (44). The Holocaust Memorial would serve, then, as a warning of what could happen if the democratic values cherished by Americans are subverted. Linenthal frequently notes that people on the original Commission and subsequent Council saw one of the functions of the memorial to be a goad to “civic enlightenment” and individual responsibility indispensable to the health of the country, by signaling the dangers of being a bystander.

From the original mandate to the Museum’s opening, the Commission and Council had to wrestle with other vexing and volatile issues. The Council continued to face persistent challenges to the definition of the Holocaust and the centrality of the Jewish experience. For example, Linenthal raises the crucial issue of the fate of Gypsies (or Romani people), stating that the Gypsies “asked the council to extend the boundaries of memory beyond representation in a story shaped by others and to recognize their ‘right’ to appropriate location at the center, alongside Jews, for both, according to the Gypsy argument — one shared by many historians — were primary and unique victims of the Holocaust” (240). In addition, the Council culled through a variety of architectural designs to select the one that could create the space that could take the tourist and visitor out of Washington, D.C. into another, utterly disturbing world. Robert McAfee Brown summed up this challenge: “How are we going to get people to come back and back and back [to the Museum]? Because the one thing that could be destructive would be that it would be labeled as a horror museum; people would stay away from that” (116). In addition, the externals of the building had to meet all the criteria of those agencies given the charge to maintain harmony and decorum among all the buildings on the National Mall. The council also had to decide how to focus on the closure of the permanent exhibit on the history of the Final Solution: Would the visitor be left aghast at the human capacity for evil, or would she be inspired by a sense of redemption manifested by the birth of the State of Israel? Throughout, Linenthal expertly illumines the variety of struggles over the boundaries of memory: Who is included, who is excluded, whose suffering is affirmed, challenged, defended, and honored?

Memory Mobilized

In an compelling concluding chapter on the lessons of mobilizing memory, Linenthal emphasizes that there has been a plurality of ways in which the memory of the Holocaust is invoked. There is no simple, univocal meaning to be wrenched from the genocide of Europe’s Jews: The “lessons of the Holocaust” reveal varying interpretations and diverse applications. First, Linenthal explains how Holocaust memory can be burdensome for policymakers when the urgent equation is made between remembrance of the Holocaust with, say, an imperative for state intervention in Bosnia. Indeed, at the opening ceremonies of the Museum, Elie Wiesel issued a moral appeal to President Clinton to do something to stop the killing of Bosnian innocents. Furthermore, this lesson from the Holocaust against being a bystander may conflict with other historical lessons, as in a commitment not to risk American lives in a quagmire à la Vietnam.

Second, the dynamic of mobilizing Holocaust memory can be treacherous when it induces in U.S. citizens an amnesiac sense of our own violent and oppressive history. A frequently made criticism about this project to remember the Holocaust was why wasn’t there an official effort made to remember the genocide of the native Americans or the slavery and suffering of blacks. Third, Linenthal correctly points out that Holocaust memory can be mobilized by those not simply concerned with people being victimized today or citizens renouncing indifference, but by aspiring perpetrators — state agents who see an inspiring or viable precedent engineered by the Nazis (for example, Salvadoran and Guatemalan military and political figures in the 1980s openly esteemed Hitler and Nazi methods). Fourth, Linenthal illustrates that Holocaust memory can be mobilized in hopeful ways today when small-town citizens quite consciously remember the Holocaust to side immediately with Jews who are viciously impugned and attacked by right-wing hate groups in Montana.

Preserving Memory is a riveting narrative and analysis of this institutionalization of remembering the Holocaust. Throughout, Linenthal explicates the political, social, religious, aesthetic, and psychological context that gave rise to such a federal museum. From a study of this work, one sees that the act of remembering is never neutral, and that whatever lessons derived from a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, they must be embodied in organized action and even resistance to the crimes of state. This book is an excellent starting point for religious scholars and activists to understand more lucidly the state’s power to colonize such potentially disruptive memory and memory’s power to inspire citizens to challenge unjust government policy. I will offer one example of this tension between memory and the state.

In his acceptance of the Commission’s Report, President Carter offered the following rationale for the importance of Holocaust remembrance to the United States: “…we must share the responsibility for not being willing to acknowledge forty years ago that this horrible event was occurring. Finally, because we are humane people, concerned with the human rights of all peoples, we feel compelled to study the systematic destruction of the Jews so that we may seek to learn how to prevent such enormities from occurring in the future.” At that very time, the Carter “human rights” Administration had a major opportunity “to prevent such enormities.” In 1978, his Democratic Administration continued to support its staunch ally Indonesia, which was then waging a near genocidal assault on the people of East Timor, half an island and a former Portuguese colony invaded and annexed by Indonesia in 1975-76. Human rights and church groups have long held that around 200,000 people have died from killings and starvation since the December 1975 invasion, roughly a third of the pre-invasion population. On the U.S. contribution to the destruction of the East Timorese, scholar John G. Taylor comments that “[w]hether they were F1-11 jets, A-4 bombers or Bronco OV-10 from the United States, or Hawk ground-attack planes from Britain, they all met particular military needs at specific moments in the [Indonesian] campaign. The encirclement and annihilation operation required saturation bombing, hence the A-4 and the Hawk, both supplied in 1978.” The U.S helped water-down U.N. resolutions opposing Indonesia’s illegalities. Also, the Western media almost totally ignored the tragic testimony of Timorese refugees who fled to Australia or Portugal. Unconscionably, then, the West was “silent:” The media and uninformed citizens stood by, and the U.S. government aided and abetted the killers. The persecution of the East Timorese proceeded smoothly while politicians intoned with grave seriousness the necessity to remember the genocide of European Jews.

The predominance of “reasons of state” over “reasons of memory” is remarkably clear in this case. The U.S. government’s official embrace of Holocaust memory was irrelevant to its pursuit of Cold War interests, one result of which has been the sacrifice of the East Timorese people. Linenthal gives other examples of this pattern in which the sacred memory of the Holocaust is neutralized by U.S. strategic considerations, concluding that “[c]learly, Holocaust memory was to be taken seriously when it was convenient to do so, and ignored when other priorities intruded” (263). A related issue in this conflict between memory and power mentioned but not developed at any length by Linenthal is how Holocaust memory in the United States has been mobilized to blunt criticism of the Jewish state, to the grave detriment of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation since 1967. Israeli politicians have their U.S. intellectual and political counterparts who deploy Holocaust rhetoric to demonize their Palestinian enemies as Hitler’s successors and assure steadfast support for Israeli policies.

Many who worked to give birth to the Memorial Museum have asserted that it should galvanize Americans to responsible citizenship. It is especially here that the U.S. churches have a critical role to play in repudiating the kind of indifference or complicity that largely characterized European Christendom, precisely by continuing to monitor and resist U.S. foreign policy driven in defense of multinational profits. Recently, Robert McNamara’s retrospective admission of U.S. “wrong-doing” in Vietnam has provoked a tremendous debate about U.S. policy in Indochina. But, as James Young has noted in reference to Holocaust memorials in Germany, the Germans are rare in that they have been forced over the decades by triumphant, external powers to remember and repent their crimes against the Jews and humanity; there is no such external pressure on the U.S. to remember and repent its crimes against the Vietnamese people. The responsibility of the churches, then, is to keep up the vigilance and the pressure, as they did against U.S. policy in Central America during the 1980s, and so to make a prophetic engagement with our victims. An issue rarely confronted by those engaged in official Holocaust memory is the extent to which the United States government is not merely a “guilty bystander” (as with Bosnia) but an active perpetrator or complicit ally.

Richard Falk has been one of the most eloquent international legal scholars who has retrieved and applied to contemporary issues the post-war Nuremberg Obligation of citizens to oppose their government when it is engaged in heinous crimes. On this question of who remembers, and when, how, and why — which is so central to the engaging story narrated by Edward Linenthal — Falk made this perceptive comment several years ago: “It is certainly a sign of ethical sensitivity or more astutely of political cynicism (the legacy of Bitburg) for American leaders to visit the carnal [sic] houses of the Holocaust, as George Bush did a few years back, perceptively writing in the Visitors’ Book at Birkenau: ‘In remembrance lies redemption.’ But truly, to remember the atrocities of others is not redemptive at all. To visit the diseased survivors of Hiroshima might be redemptive for George Bush, if this occasion of the first atomic attack on a human settlement were then and there acknowledged without qualification as a crime against humanity.”

President Clinton once rightly observed that the Holocaust should be “‘ever a sharp thorn in every national memory'” (266). The same ought to be said — but presumably will not be by President Clinton this August — of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the long-standing U.S. support for oppression and repression in Central America. Nevertheless, religious communities should mobilize the memory of the Holocaust precisely to contest U.S. policies, and not solely to denounce Nazi crimes, horrific and unforgettable as they are. Linking the memory of the suffering of the Holocaust victims with the past and present suffering of Japanese, Vietnamese, Timorese, Salvadorans, and Palestinians is the task of an inclusive memory that goes beyond the self-serving rhetoric of state power to self-critical solidarity with our victims.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extensive overview of the process of creating the Holocaust Museum. I am really glad I didn't read this back in the fall when it was first suggested to me, because knowing something about exhibit design and development makes this infinitely more interesting -- I imagine large portions could be dry and boring if I didn't have a sense of context and perspective. It's fascinating to see what happens when budget is essentially unlimited and politics are the dominant force. There's a range of stories here, from the debate over the building's location, to its design, to exactly what story they are trying to tell. I even enjoyed all the time spent on the minute details of the council formation and creating definitions -- it really shows how insanely complicated a project this was. I wish it had been annotated more effectively, and it was hard to keep track of the dozens of people involved with no help from the author, but this is a great peek into an extreme example of museum logistics.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read on how the Washington DC Holocaust Museum came to be. Overall, this book was informative and honestly so surprising in a few different ways. I had to keep reminding myself the book was written in the 90s. I think this book could have been better organized & more thought out because there were so many times where it seemed like we were jumping from topic to topic without any transitioning and I had to read for a while before I got the link. I also found this book sooooo repetitive and just didn't see the need for that much repetition.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not expect this book to be as interesting as it was. The main point is that a society's decision to remember a specific historical event is a deliberate choice, carefully crafted through institutionalization, narrative creation, and memorialization.

Today, we think of the Holocaust as the most self-explanatory genocidal act that has happened in history. But as the book shows, the memory of the Holocaust did not carry as much weight immediately after the war as it does today. Through the creation of the Holocaust Museum and the many debates surrounding it (who should be included, how the chronology of events should be presented, etc), the author demonstrates that what we consider historical consensus is instead carefully constructed from considerations and debate that include competing historical memories and politics.

[Zoey Bornstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the moving parts of creating such a politically charged museum was enlightening. It was interesting to follow the thought processes of so many individuals and their vision for the museum that still stands today. I wonder if they will ever make upgrades to include more voices of those other 5 million.

[Melina Carino · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my history class - Really interesting to consider how much thought went into every decision, and a lot of interesting questions raised by following that process.

[Jackson Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easier read than I expected. Interesting piece.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another book from my graduate school's required reading list. It deals with the fifteen year journey to create the American Holocaust Museum. I have visited the museum once - many years ago, but it definitely left a lasting impression. I think many schools make a point of visiting this museum - and rightly so. This behind-the-scenes book is absolutely fascinating. It is straightforward and very illuminating. Clearly written and very engaging, I would be interested in hearing feedback on this book from the key players involved. Elie Wiesel's role surprised me in this. And I do wish that there had been more of a push to include more on the first stages of this slaughter - with hospitals, care facilities and asylums - an aspect that is often overlooked. The sterilization projects weren't even mentioned here. The exclusionary tone of the museum itself surprised me and I really didn't expect victims to snipe and minimize one another rather than banding together more tightly... I think that this will definitely lead to an interesting class discussion!

[cj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Linenthal's take on how Holocaust history was produced—and protected or challenged—by various stakeholders in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is informative.
His assertion that The Holocaust offers America a particular kind of redemption narrative that serves national needs regarding the re-visioning of our role in WWII is compelling. However, he doesn’t fully explore the history that redemption narratives allow us to avoid (i.e., the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Admittedly, this would fall outside the scope of his book. Still, this seems like the unacknowledged shadow.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and interesting. Can't say much (yet) as for any political bias in Linenthal's presentation of the events leading up to the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, but this certainly allowed me to appreciate the amount of planning, discussion, contention, revision, and political/philosophical struggle that went into the creation of this place. Particularly fascinating was the chapter on the process of deciding which Holocaust artifacts to include and how to use them to tell what kind of story. As Linenthal suggests, any "telling" of the Holocaust will be necessarily incomplete, and this book is an well-written account of one museum's attempt at that telling.

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Holocaust Museum is such an important place, and one that I have always wanted to visit. I ran across this book, and I was very excited to learn about the process of getting this museum started. I was very interested in learning how the items in the museum were acquired and what they were. I really wanted to love this book and be extremely interested in it. I just wasn't. I could not get into it. Maybe it was something going on in my life that kept me from really getting into it and enjoying it, so I don't want to be negative about it. The facts were great, but I just couldn't get into it.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book before working at USHMM and then a few years after I had been there, once I knew the people involved. Linenthal really explains the background of planning, designing and building a Holocaust museum in the US and all the difficulties, political and otherwise, involved. When I worked at USHMM, I always encouraged people to read it because the context of the building and its place on the Natl. Mall and in national consciousness, plus the debates and struggles that went into making it, are fundamental to the museum itself. I love this book!

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives the reader a great insight into how the Holocaust Museum in DC was conceived and created. It's amazing how much thought went into every minute detail of this structure and it's permanent exhibition. Because of the subject matter, it was a Museum that could not fail because of the millions of people they hoped to honor. One cannot visit this Museum without being moved and to discover how it began and how it was set in motion is truly an eye-opening read.

[Adina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Linenthal's book is a near-perfect work of public historical analysis. He is sensitive to every nuance of his subject matter, from the problem of narrative (a drive toward redemption, or at least satisfying "closure") to an acknowledgment of museum staff as stakeholder and the utmost importance of physical context to the work of museum exhibition development. I keep hoping that Linenthal will tackle the building of the 9/11 Memorial Museum. I'm not sure another scholar could do it justice.

[Jenny.p · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually love Linenthal--he seems to have a gift for communicating historical controversies and how they play out in a museum setting. However, this book was all over the place. He just rambled, emphasized the same two issues over and over and had a lot of trouble keeping any sort of structure to this account. Maybe he would have been better off consolidating this into a long essay?

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Linenthal’s Preserving Memory delves into the backstory of building America’s Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Describes how practically everything about the museum was contested: from its location on the Washington Mall, to which victims it would memorialize, to what artifacts it would display. Accessible and an excellent read.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. You'd think deciding how to create a Holocaust museum would be pretty straightforward but this book reveals just how difficult it was. A lot of the debates had me really frustrated, but I enjoy a book that can get a strong reaction from me (who doesn't?).

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book during a class about the Holocaust that I took during my undergrad years. It was interesting to me because I have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. It tells all about what went into creating the museum.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was excellent. I bought it after visiting the museum, and it is a fascinating account of the controversies surrounding everything from the building's design to the permanent exhibit's artifacts. I highly recommend it, even if you have not been to the museum.

[Mindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In light of the memorial at Ground Zero and the thought process in constructing a memorial....this book was informative. It took years to create this museum and it was interesting to learn of the struggles to create such a memorial.

[Hillary Borders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for Explorations in Public History. Great inside look at the difficulties that go into creating a museum about a difficult subject such as the Holocaust. Long/odd chapter arrangement, but over all I really enjoyed this book.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goes into great detail on how and why the museum was built. Loved it.

[Katie Brennan · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love me some good, thoughtful memory politics.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

By one of the most interesting profs I had in college. It details the creation of the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

[Bekki Fahrer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am very glad I visited the museum before reading this book. I do not think it would have packed quite the punch had I known about all the machinations that went on behind true scenes.

[stephanie]

rec: j. kaye, gluck, minnite.

(history of the creation of the us holocaust museum)