Holocaust memory is a fraught topic. In this post based on the reading for Monday, March 26, please address some of the particular difficulties of Holocaust memory in Poland and Israel, and compare the memorial practices that you read about to the phenomena of countermonuments in Germany.
* address some of the particular difficulties of Holocaust memory in Poland and Israel
ReplyDeleteThe Holocaust memory in Poland is complicated because it involves memories of two nations that both suffered great losses of their people during the Nazi occupation: Poles and Polish Jews. The WWII and Holocaust influenced their histories and formation of their national identities in a very big way. The particular monument that James Young discusses in the reading is a Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He calls it "a Jewish monument in the country bereft of Jews" - which makes it interesting, because the people that were honored in it have left the country where the monument was built. By placing a monument to one nation inside another nation's space definitely makes the memories of the two nations "compete" with each other. Young talks about how the space around the monument became a place of public resistance, opposition, protest. Polish people who saw Jewish resistance as an inspiration to their own uprising against the occupants, started to regard this monument their "fighting icon", almost like a universal monument to the human courage, strength, resistance. In all of that, the true Jewish meaning of the monument was in danger to be forgotten, or getting mingled with other meanings and memories. Young mentions that it is unavoidable that the memory of the Jews has become a part of Polish heritage. The existence of many Holocaust memorials and museums in Poland is how Poles remember their own suffering during WWII.
I think that the difficulty of the Holocaust memory in Israel lies in the fact that the actual Holocaust wasn't taking place there. Young talks about the difference between the Jews living in exile in Europe and Jews refugees who came to "the promised land" the territory of the future Israeli state and were able "to observe" the Holocaust events from a far. Young says that these Jews saw Holocaust tragedy not as the end of life but as the end of their life in exile, an event on the timeline of the history of their nation, that would be followed by liberation, redemption and renewal, because it was something that would later motivate the Jews around the world to come back to their homeland and create their own country. He talks about the difference of perception of the people who died in Holocaust as martyrs and as heroes, and how in Israel, the Holocaust memory was more associated with the images of life, strength, and resistance, rather than martyrdom. Another interesting thing mentioned in the article is the parallels between the fighters of the ghettoes of Europe and the Kibbutz fighters in the founding of Israeli state.
For example, there has been installed a monument to Mordechai Anielewicz (a leader of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, one of the places where battles for the Israel independence took place. I think it can be said that they wanted to commemorate courage of the fighters representing it through Anielewicz who was regarded as their role model or a national hero. It also can be said that the whole idea of Holocaust is viewed as a representation of Jewish courage.
* compare the memorial practices that you read about to the phenomena of countermonuments in Germany
ReplyDeleteIn WWII, Germany was the enemy, and Poland and Israel were the heroic victims. German people have to deal with guilt and shame of awful crimes their preceding generations have committed against humanity, and find the way to remember the victims of those crimes, while the victim-countries have to find ways to honor their heroes of war. In another words, Germany doesn't have heroes to commemorate, while Poland and Israel have plenty. Germany deals with guilt, while Poland and Israel deal with grief. (of course i'm really simplifying it, and it is much more complicated than that)
I think the difference of memorial practices is in the aim and function of the monuments: German artists like Gerzes wanted to create a monument that would challenge, provoke, and will be a monument against the past of their nation, while Polish Jew Nathan Rapoport wanted to create a monument that would commemorate, honor, exalt the memory about the heroes who fought and died "so we could live". Basically, Rapoport's monument in a way is a classic example of a traditional didactic hero monument, while German counter monuments are complete opposite.
I completely agree with Ira's last sentence in this response. All the decisions and rejections i found to be the most interesting. How the first couple of times Rapoport sculptural designs were rejected from being "too jewish". And to add to Ira's comment about the location of the monument placement being questioned I also agree it is a conflicting problem both nations would butt heads over the monument for what it represented and being in a place it is not necessarily representing, but I think simultaneously it is another way to cram both together in a positive approach. As for Rapoport his hard work of trying to develop a structured monument to be accepted in approach to representing a public monument everyone and anyone can be able to relate to. With this example from page 168, first paragraph beginning at sentence 2, Rapoport explains his train of thought he put into his design. This is the part that I found to be interesting since it kind of relates to Maya Lin VVM memorial in a some what opposite approach.
Delete..."I need to show the heroism, to illustrate it literally in figures everyone, not just artists, would respond to. This was to be a public monument, after all. I did not want to represent resistance in the abstract: it was not an abstract uprising. It was real", and Rapoport goes on stating, "a clearly national monument for the Jews, not a Polish monument. I wanted to show the Polish people who we really were.' "Who ' we really were". And the part that to me makes Rapoport and our recent discussions about Maya Lin, James E. Young states in the same paragraph on page 186 that the design be developed from who they really were and through who, "Rapoport's own identity as it was referred through his mixed self- mythography as a Jew, socialist, and sculptor of heros. Which later became a place for Polish Jewish to visit even now giving respects by leaving wreaths and other things at the monument. I respect the final monument of how Ropopart went about his style and didn't create a sculptures appearance based on the era of art he was living in. His style was realism and which to me, is very strong style if he's whole purpose was to illustrate what was real at the time...really real.
Some of the particular difficulties with holocaust memory in Poland were based on the Jewish life and death in Poland. Only so many memories can be told and nearly 50 years after the holocaust, a new generation of people who are actively interested in the topic of holocaust memory can only learn so much because of the 3.2 million of Poland's 3.5 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. With that being said, finding people who were faced with being captured by Nazis and surviving are treasured because of the amount of information they have and the stories they can tell are helpful to people like James Young and many other historians. Also, many polish Jews fled the country and have never come back, this is a problem for memory and commemoration for the holocaust as well. Young states that"...Jewish time itself is measured in the distance between proto-catastrophe and present moment. In this way, both the impulse to remember the holocaust and the meanings engendered in such remembrance are to some extent prescribed by the tradition itself. To this day, history continues to assert itself as a locus of Jewish identity, memory as a primary form of Jewish faith." After reading this statement and gathered information and the idea that there might be a common thought that when people talk about something related to or about the Jewish population, one may think just...holocaust, murder, tragedy and the horrible actions that took place. This could ultimately become a problem with the remembrance of the holocaust because many Jewish people do not want to remember and do not want to tell the stories because of the tragedies they themselves experienced. In Israel, many memorials relate to both the past and present..even though just like what I have stated the need to remember vs. the need to forget.
ReplyDeleteI would I have to agree with Alexadra’s response. What caught my attention is the idea of the “need to remember vs. the need to forget”. Jewish life and the death in Poland, only fragments of memories and evidence of victimization remains. The evidence of victimization includes religious artifacts, concentration camp ruins, warehouses, etc. Between 1939 – 1945, Nazis and their collaborators killed 3.2 million of Poland and 3.5 million of Jews.
DeleteAs Young states in The Texture of Memory,
“Like holocaust memorials of other lands, those in Poland reflect both the past experiences and current lives of their communities, as well as the state’s memory of itself…. Unlike Jews Poland became a nation whose destructions would occupy as a central a role in national memory and identity as its relatively few triumphs.”
I believe such suffering and trauma due to the events of the holocaust, it is understandable the victims/survivors do not want to remember such tragic and horrifying events. Ways to avoid horrifying memories is to avoid/fled where the event/country had happened.
Anything relating to the holocaust is a powerful and touching subject. Generations now and newer generation to come…we won’t be able to fully grasp the concept of the “holocaust” unless we relive in the moment. In a sense, Holocaust memorials, Holocaust documentaries and survivors bibliography reflect both past experiences and current lives of the victims communities. It helps aid the viewer/an outside source of Holocaust memory.
Nathan Rapoport’s Warsaw Ghetto Monument :
Nathan Rapport was a Jewish sculptor from Warsaw who escaped to the Soviet Union when the Nazis invaded Poland. The sculptor made statues of working class “heroes” prior to the Soviet’s entry into the war. His sculpture of Warsaw Ghetto Monument built in 1948, is a widely known celebrated and controversial monument. It stood 16 ft high, made with granite blocks, the monument appeared on its “unveiling to rise out of the broken stones, emerging from them almost as congealed fragments of destruction itself” It was the “first to mark heroism of Jewish resistance to the Nazis and the complete annihilation of the Jews in Warsaw.” It also stood for, “the first rebellion in Nazi occupied in Europe in Jewish revolt that would come to stand for all others.” Rapoport’s monument contributes many aspects such as untie the past and present of heroism and resistance. The monument itself also invites the Israelis to remember parts of their own war experiences in the image of the ghetto uprising. In addition it depicts figures rising rise above and protect themselves and in doing so it represent “all the people” at all stages of life during the tragic event.
I find Rapoprt’s Warsaw Ghetto Monument an interesting subject because the victims of the Holocaust did not ask to be victimized. As talked about last Monday in class, Holocaust happened unexpectedly and people do not acknowledge such tragic event until it had happened to the person or to someone they know. To memorialize heroism of the Holocaust for the first time and uprising from tragedy is an admirable thing to do.
One of the main difficulties of Holocaust memory in Poland is that the memorials are in Poland, but many other people dies there, especially Jewish people. More Jews died in Majdanek then any other group of people. So when memorials started going up to remember those that died, “Poland needed to remember a Jewish past”. This is difficult thought because the Poles think of themselves as the first victims of the Holocaust, and the Jews think of themselves as the only victims. Being an outsider, I can understand Poland’s reasoning and them (as a state) thinking that this memorial is theirs and they were the first victimized, there for everyone else is the “other”. However, I can also understand why those “other” would be offended, especially a Jewish person who survived the Holocaust. Out of Poland’s 3.5 million Jews, 3.2 million died, so they deserve something more then being listed under the “other”.
ReplyDeleteIn Israel, because it has become a custom to plant a tree when there is a death (along with when there is a birth, marriage, bar-mitzvah), I think it makes sense that there is a Martyrs’ Forest as a living memorial for all the victims of the Holocaust. The First six million trees were planted for the six million Jews who died, but more trees have been added, so there is one for each victim.
I think another difficulty of having a Holocaust memorial in different countries is that the believe system is so different with the people were victimized. “A Polish Catholic will remember as a Polish Catholic”, even when they remember Jewish victims. And the same goes with Jews. They built monuments that also tie in some of their belief system, and that always creates controversy.
These monuments are different from the countermonuments in Germany because the countermonuments are more in your face, like the “Point of Reference” that was reconstructed after a Nazi monument. Hans Haacke wanted it to be in your face, and make the German people remember what happened. And the Monument Against Fascism, as we discussed in class, was kind of a triumphal monument because if Fascism had succeeded it wouldn’t have existed. But it is also symbolic the way it was sunk into the ground, as if it was Fascism itself.
History has always been focused on remembering things in order to prevent them from having them again. However, what if this is the exact opposite of what we should be doing- what if by remembering we are more likely to repeat?
ReplyDeleteAs for Poland, and the preservation of ruins as memorials- I feel this is a lot more natural way of memorializing(as opposed to erecting a statue). It could be that only because this event had such a large magnitude was it possible to use it in this way. It is not often that the structural and architectural remnants are available and even rarer in the situation of this quote:
"When we recall that the Germans had rounded up 250 local Jews to build the camp at Auschwitz, we also realize that the memorial there was, in effect, built by the victims it would later commemorate."
Could it also be said that every monument is actually commemorating the people who built it instead of who it is referencing to or the label we put on it? What if all monuments were created by the groups that it was commemorating- would that make them more "pure"?
As for Israel, I think the use of gardens and trees to memorialize is very ingenious. However, there is such an intense one sighted view of "why" they are putting them up that it is problematic to me. It is in these quotes;
"History continues to assert itself as a locus of Jewish identity, memory as a primary form of Jewish faith."
"prove the Zionist dictum... Jews in exile would always be vulnerable to just this kind of destruction."
"Holocaust remembrance fosters a unity of identity between martyrs and a new generation of Israelis."
What is troubling is that a vast majority of the monuments are enforcing an internalized victim mentality to me. Really it's the exact opposite of a tree which is one of the most beautifully created specimens on earth. Trees defy gravity and rise into the sky effortlessly, strong and immovable- when it is dark their branches will reach towards the light and continue to live on. This is not how I see the Jews remembering those who died though... Maybe this is too insensitive for me though...
While I do agree with Young that the European monuments may "focus" on the destruction- Israel's monuments give a longer history of the Jewish Population.