Language:
French
Year of publication:
2004
Titel der Quelle:
Les Cahiers du Judaïsme
Angaben zur Quelle:
17 (2004-2005) 121-135
Keywords:
Jews
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Commemoration
Abstract:
Surveys the debate surrounding the creation of a national Holocaust memorial in Berlin, a project initiated by private citizens in 1989, approved by Chancellor Kohl in 1993, and due to be completed in 2005. The need for a national memorial, Berlin as its location, its dedication only to Jewish victims of Nazism, and its form, were all under debate. Shows how Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners" (1996) and a contemporaneous travelling exhibition on the crimes of the Wehrmacht shook the German self-image and marked the climate in which the debate took place. Traces the rocky road leading to Peter Eisenman's architectural concept, a huge labyrinth of steles, which was accepted by the Bundestag in 1999. Also describes other memorials built on Nazi "places of horror" and in neighborhoods where Jews used to live in Berlin. Concludes that the Berlin Holocaust memorial lies at the heart of a German re-examination of its responsibility and guilt for the events of World War II.
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