The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning

by James Edward Young

In Dachau, Auschwitz, Yad Vashem, and thousands of other locations throughout the world, memorials to the Holocaust are erected to commemorate its victims and its significance. This fascinating work by James E. Young examines Holocaust monuments and museums in Europe, Israel, and America, exploring how every nation remembers the Holocaust according to its own traditions, ideals, and experiences, and how these memorials reflect their place in contemporary aesthetic and architectural discourse. The result is a groundbreaking study of Holocaust memory, public art, and their fusion in contemporary life.

Among the issues Young discusses how memorials suppress as much as they commemorate; how museums tell as much about their makers as about events; the differences between memorials conceived by victims and by victimizers; and the political uses and abuses of officially cast memory. Young describes, for example, Germany's "counter monuments," one of which was designed to disappear over time, and the Polish memorials that commemorate the whole of Polish destruction through the figure of its murdered Jewish part. He compares European museums and monuments that focus primarily on the internment and killing process with Israeli memorials that include portrayals of Jewish life before and after the destruction. In his concluding chapters, he finds that American Holocaust memorials are guided no less by distinctly American ideals, such as liberty and pluralism.

Interweaving graceful prose and arresting photographs, the book is eloquent testimony to the way varied cultures and nations commemorate an era that breeds guilt, shame, pain, and amnesia, but rarely pride. By reinvigorating these memorials with the stories of their origins, Young highlights the ever-changing life of memory over its seemingly frozen face in the landscape.

Genres: History, Holocaust, Nonfiction, World War II, European History, Architecture, Grad School

415 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 1993

Reviews

[Jenny.p]

This is THE book on Holocaust memory and memorial history. Totally inclusive--Young explores the memorial impulse from its beginnings. It looks at the memorial impulse across the world, not just in Europe and respects both regional approaches to memory, group and individual mean-making. It is dense, and difficult to digest if a readers has no prior experience with the topic. But truly brilliant and worth wading through.

[Lexi Kupor]

read for a class but sooo interesting

[Yemoss]

Lessons learned here are about appreciating artwork - specifically, memorials dedicated to the Holocaust. Multinational examples focus on Israel, Germany, Poland, Austria and America. What is the difference between a monument and a memorial? What did the artists intend and how is that absorbed by the general public? Most interesting is the how the process of creating Holocaust memorials vary among countries and their populace; three identical monuments may engender very different meanings in America, Israel and Germany. What is the difference between common or shared memory and collective memory? With a very difficult subject matter at hand, I enjoyed discovering the philosophical viewpoints of the author on how meaning is ultimately attributed to these very special symbols of reflection and what that says about human behavior - all conveyed through pillars of stone, bas reliefs in bronze, spacious plazas of emptiness and the flowing of water.

[Chris]

Looks at the meaning of memorials overall, with a strong emphasis on Holocaust memorials. Really makes you take note of the landscapes around you.

[Kyle]

Fascinating read about how we remember tragedy.

[Christopher Walls]

Slow read, but chalked full of information about monuments, and their impact, throughout Europe.

[L]

loved the description of the disappearing monument in... was it Munich?