Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory

by Janet Liebman Jacobs

How do collective memories of histories of violence and trauma in war and genocide come to be created? Janet Jacobs offers new understandings of this crucial issue in her examination of the representation of gender in the memorial culture of Holocaust monuments and museums, from synagogue memorials and other historical places of Jewish life, to the geographies of Auschwitz, Majdanek and Ravensbruck. Jacobs travelled to Holocaust sites across Europe to explore representations of women. She reveals how these memorial cultures construct masculinity and femininity, as well as the Holocaust's effect on stereotyping on grounds of race or gender. She also uncovers the wider ways in which images of violence against women have become universal symbols of mass trauma and genocide. This feminist analysis of Holocaust memorialization brings together gender and collective memory with the geographies of genocide to fill a significant gap in our understanding of genocide and national remembrance.

Genres: History

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to give this more than four stars, but not quite five. While I know it was written in research format, I feel it could have been written a little more "softly" so as not to have to go back so frequently.

I found it interesting to follow on a journey of the research by a Jewish female. This was important to note as gender representation was the focus of her study.

She was very descriptive in what she saw at the various locations this journey took her on. So much so, that there was little need for pictures.