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

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

Passages in this discussion of the selection of artifacts?children's shoes, leg braces, bundles of women's hair?to be exhibited in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington are harrowing to read. At the same time, the bureaucratic infighting and political tugging on the President's Commission on the Holocaust and its successor, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, tend to trivialize the raison d'etre of the museum: about what sort of building to erect that would be a "good neighbor" to others on the Mall, about whether to include articles that once belonged to Gypsies and homosexuals who were also victims, about commemorating other genocides like the slaughter of the Armenians in 1915. Ultimately, Linenthal's (Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields) carefully researched account seeks to answer the vexing question of the "place" of Holocaust memory in American culture. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Linenthal (religion and American culture, Univ. of Wisconsin, Oshkosh) describes the 15-year effort to create a national museum commemorating the Holocaust. He begins with the creation in May 1978 of the President's Commission on the Holocaust during the Carter administration. He then covers issues related to the location, design, and construction of the museum building. Linenthal's most significant contribution is the chapter on defining and representing the horror of the Holocaust. He skillfully describes the dilemmas facing the organizers of the exhibits, such as how to depict the story of mass murder and yet personalize it, how to represent the Nazis and other perpetrators of the Holocaust in the exhibit, and whether non-Jewish victims should be included. Linenthal tells the story of defining and representing America's memory of the Holocaust with sensitivity and thoroughness. For all collections.?Mark Weber, Kent State Univ. Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

President Carter created the President's Commission on the Holocaust in 1978. It then took 15 years of bitter and emotional debate to design and build the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Linenthal, author of Sacred Grounds: Americans and Their Battlefields (1991), chronicles all that went on during those painful and acrimonious years as Holocaust survivors, politicians, museum professionals, historians, and architects struggled to define "the boundaries of Holocaust memory." Linenthal deftly summarizes all the complex issues that had to be resolved. Jews believed that they should be the focus, but members of other groups victimized by the Holocaust demanded equal representation. Some felt the memorial should be in New York; others fretted over whether Washington, D.C., was an appropriate location. And what an agonizing task it was to create a memorial that both eulogized and educated without simplifying, sensationalizing, or offending. Linenthal portrays major players, including Elie Wiesel, Yaffa Eliach, and architect James Ingo Freed, who was finally able to visualize a building "expressive of the event" after traveling to Auschwitz. A sobering, yet fascinating, testament to the value of preserving memories with respect and creativity. Donna Seaman