Memorials and Objects

Question 1

What are the details around ‘Shoes on the Danube promenade’? Who created it, when, why etc?

Answer 1

Created by sculptor Gyula Pauer, and film director Can Togay in 2005.
60 pairs of bronze shoes on the banks of River Danube.
300 meters from Hungarian Parliament building Budapest.Memorial commemorates the shooting of people from the Jewish ghetto in Budapest in 1944-45.
10K people thought to have been killed here by Arrow Cross Hungarian Fascist militia.
(p.208)

Question 2

What are feelings are the ‘Shoes on Danube promenade’ evoking? Why, what are important contributors?

Answer 2

Context: The bronze shoes are not ‘authentic’ (i.e. not the actual shoes from the historical event), they are a representation of events. Here the context is important because people are aware of the Arrow Cross atrocities.

Location: The location is also important, as the monument sits on the spot were people were shot.

Representative: Monument is highly emotive; the shoes look like just been worn, and we can intuit a range of identities associated with them, such as gender, age, social and professional categories.
(p.209-10)

Question 3

What are the details around the Shoes displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. What feelings are evoked?

Answer 3

The shoes were confiscated from murdered prisoners (mostly Jewish) at the Majdanek concentration camp (in occupied Poland). The location is very different as the are on display in the US, but the shoes are authentic. These are discarded shoes, one might say dead shoes. impossible to ignore volume of people killed by Nazis. (p.211)

Question 4

What are the details around the rusted Milk churn on display?

Answer 4

Buried by Emanuel Ringelblum (1900-1944) in Warsaw Ghetto during the uprising in 1943. It contained diaries, documents, posters and papers documenting life there. It is considered as ‘perhaps the Washington Holocaust museums most important historic artifact’. The Ringelblum Archive

Ringelblum, a university professor and historian put together a team of people to document life in the ghetto, they buries several milk churns and metal boxes, two were discovered in 1946, and 1950 - this is the one displayed in Washington, in front of a bit of what from Warsaw Ghetto. So two authentic everyday items that now have significant meaning because of the context is which they are displayed (p. 212)

Question 5

How is the Warsaw Ghetto Milk Churn displayed, with what other objects, and what feelings does this evoke?

Answer 5

It is displayed covered in sand still, creates a wonder, similar to an archaeological remain. The churn is displayed on its own, like a work of art or relic. The object itself does not explain its meaning, that is done with the museum presentation, captions, audio guide, catalog information, which makes the churns value comprehensible.

The churn is displayed with a piece of wall from the Ghetto (which was almost totally razed to the ground). It is framed with two big pictures from the Ghetto, showing a bridge, as the visitors walk on a similarly constructed wooden bridge to churn. Gives and effect of being there, threatening sense of being channeled into a narrow corridor - sense of anxiety.

Context and display work directly on the emotions to support the message conveyed more rationally by the objects. (p. 214-15)

Question 6

What are some features seen in the module materials used to evoke different feelings in museum objects?

Answer 6

• Danube shoes shows range of identities, such as gender, social and professional categories. (p.208)
• The Majdanek shoes display sheer volume of shoes, and they are decayed and look dead p.209)
• The Milk Churn display gives a feeling of being there (p. 214) Similarly with the replica Auschwitz gates in the same museum.
• The iron masks in Memory Void - show physical expression of irretrivable loss.
  etc etc

Question 7

What are some relationships between features of objects on display in museums?

Answer 7

Some objects are authentic, but the location is different - such as Majdanek shoes. (p.210).

Sometimes the location and the context are authentic, but the objects are replicas, such as the Danube shoes (p.209)

Question 8

List the museum objects in Chapter 5

Answer 8

Milk churn from Warsaw Ghetto in Washington DC in the United States Holocaust Museum.
Reproduction cast of the Auschwitz gates in Washington. Arbeit Macht frei.
Danube bronze shoes.
Authentic shoes from Majdanek concentration camp in Washington.
Tower of faces in Holocaust Museume Washington.
The Bronze Urn - Memorial de la Shoah in Paris.
The Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr, Paris.
Wall with engraved names of Jews deported from France to German-run concentration camp, Memorial de la Shoah, Paris.
Room showing card indexes of Jewish People collected by the Vichy regime. Memorial de la Shoah, Paris.
Side wall from Hut 6 from the Beaune-la-Rolande interment camp, Memorial de la Shoah, Paris.
Treblinka stones and granite stone, Poland.
Mauthausen carpet of stone, Austria
You are my witness hall and Wall, Washington DC
Towers Washington DC
Axis of continuity (axis of holocaust, axis of exile)
Farm Grinder in Paris
Document Archive in Paris

Question 9

Museums use different kind of objects together to reinforce each other. Give some examples of this

Answer 9

The milk churn from the Warsaw Ghetto is displayed with a piece of wall that survived from the ghetto, in a room with photos from the Ghetto, with a walk way matching that of the picture.

2500 photos of children in Paris memorial.

Mini stories of people next to a linked object, like spoon or garment to evoke a personal response p. 229

Question 10

How many memorials were there in Berlin in 2010 to the period of Nazi dictatorship?

Answer 10

312, ranging from plaques to full-scale museums. (p. 217) Increase in last 20 years - de-nazification people retiring (book written in 2015)

Question 11

List museums and memorials to Shoah in the module materials.

Answer 11

Shoes on the Danube Promenade’ in Budapest, Hungary
United States Holocaust Museum, Washington DC
Memorial de la Shoah, Paris
Holocaust Memorial, Treblinka (Adam Haupt, Franciszek Duszenko, Francizek Stryniewicz)
Jewish Museum, Berlin (Daniel Libeskind) 1998- completed 2001
Aschrott fountain - 1984 (Horst Hoheisel) Kassel
Biblothek monument, Berlin 1993 (Micha Ullman)
German national memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin (Peter Eisenman)
Mémorial des martyrs de la déportation, Paris 1962 (Georges-Henri Pingusson)
Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr (1956) Paris
Yaffa Shtetl Collection, Ejszyszki 1890-1941.
Mauthausen, Austria.
(Bavaria State Library - Shoe picture for soliders on the front)

Question 12

What are the details around the ‘Yaffa Shtetl Collection’?

Answer 12

It supplied photographs to the Tower of Faces in the US HM in Washington DC. Well established Jewish community in Ejszyszki, Lithuania was wiped out by an SS death squad on 25-26 September 1941. 4000 jews lived there, only 29 were left alive., Dr Yaffa Eliach (b. 1937) became trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Council, and began collecting 1000s photographs of Jews who had lived there 1900-1944. (p 219-20)

Question 13

What feelings does the Tower of Faces evoke?

Answer 13

It combines individual identities with large numbers, vertical space that creates a feeling of awe and unease. Images are presented with scratches and dust marks transmitted through the processes of copying and enlarging personal photographs. Similar display in Paris but not much detail about it.

Displays like this cause us to pause and reflect on the importance of juxtaposition (the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect). The whole display as a whole has a quite different meaning from that of the multiplication of individual representations. (p. 219-20)

Question 14

Expand on the us and them feeling when visiting Holocaust memorials

Answer 14

Groups are where victims are us, or victims are them. This is because active or passive acceptance of Nazi race laws that were imposed universally.

Aim of most Genocide memorials is to bridge gap, showing how we could become victims, or perpetrators (p. 221-222)

Question 15

Describe Treblinka Memorial

Answer 15

Treblinka memorial represent the 900K people who were there, most died and also because the concentration camp was ploughed to the ground it represents two levels of absence. The people and the site itself. It uses 17k roughly shaped stones leading to a massive granite structure. Quite harsh and hard looking. Stones are set in a circle to symbolise a cemetery (from internet) (p. 230)

Question 16

Describe Mauthausen memorial

Answer 16

This is build on the site near a granite quarry where people from the concentration camp would do forced labour. The memorial is a carpet of stones, with double significance, representing Jewish victims and quarry workers. Many of the prisoners here were intellectuals and political opponents from countries such as Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy. Towards end of war more Jewish people sent here as Auschwitz-Birkenau was emptied before arrival of Russian troops. 28 monuments represent different communities. p. 231

Question 17

Describe history of The Jewish Museum in Berlin

Answer 17

Original Jewish museum opened 1933, but was closed by National Socialists in 1938. Jewish museum was planned as extension to Berlin museum 1988, but Berlin senate voted to scrap idea in 1991. Global opposition, new museum open in 1999, over 350,000 visitors.
Zigzag concrete labyrinth, echoing spaces, jagged slashes of windows and open voids. Three floors of museographic displayed, installed 2001.

Question 18

Describe the initial objects displayed in the Jewish Museum in Berlin

Answer 18

Length of steel railways showing the transportation of Jews. Museum is three unconnected buildings via sixty bridges and numerous underground tunnels, suggests the Jewish history of exile and diaspora since Biblical times. route of Moses and the Israelite from Egypt towards the Promised Land – the zig-zag path of a people driven from one place to the next.

Piercing the whole length of the building are a series of voids which Libeskind refers to as the ‘embodiment of absence’. In this, the Memory Void, Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman has sculpted 10,000 open-mouthed faces from heavy iron plates, a physical expression of the irretrievable loss of those murdered in the Holocaust.
Libeskind wanted to unsettle visitors from the outset. No entrance of its own, confusing maze of corridors, so start to feel as if you have lost your bearings. two diverging corridors labelled the Axis of Exile and the Axis of the Holocaust, reflecting two possible fates of German Jews – exile or death.

Question 19

Describe Garden of Exile in Jewish Museum in Berlin

Answer 19

Garden of Exile. Libeskind says he designed the garden ‘to completely disorient the viewer’. ‘It represents a shipwreck of history’, he says. Forty-nine concrete pillars rise out of the square plot. The whole garden is on a slope and the pillars lean menacingly, giving visitors a sense of the confusion and instability experienced by Jews forced to flee the Nazis. Many thousands of Jews who managed to escape Germany to countries like France, Holland or Hungary were later rounded up and murdered. Others did reach relative safety but their lives were uprooted and their ties of family and friendship shattered. Nevertheless, the tops of the pillars have been planted, to symbolise hope.

Question 20

Describe Axis of holocaust in Jewish Museum in Berlin

Answer 20

Most terrible of all was the fate of those who didn’t manage to make it out of Germany. Virtually every single German Jew who was transported to concentration camps died, either as a result of starvation or in gas chambers.
This is the Axis of the Holocaust; as you walk down this corridor you see single objects in cases, showing tiny glimpses into the history of some of the millions whose lives were taken. like nightdress, mouthwash, family photos and letters. and dress receipt.

This corridor, the Axis of the Holocaust, ends in enclosure. In the claustrophobic Holocaust Tower you are cut off from life outside – only a sliver of light shows through a thin, vertical window high above and you can hear a few distant sounds. The Holocaust Tower works both as a space of private reflection and as an imposition of a sense of isolation and helplessness.

Question 21

Describe the concrete corridor away from the Holocaust tower

Answer 21

Retracing your steps, you find yourself back in the main corridor, the Axis of Continuity, which climbs gradually towards a three-storey staircase. It’s a long slog to climb, a deliberate reminder from Libeskind of the horrendous toil of concentration-camp slave labourers, such as the thousands who died building the staircase at the quarries of Mauthausen.

Question 22

Describe the traditional museum in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. And the purpose it fills.

Answer 22

The staircase eventually leads to the main museum collection. Libeskind had argued that the impact of the Holocaust memorial could be experienced in the journey through the architecture of the building alone, but in the end a traditional museum was installed in the top two floors.
This is intended to educate visitors about the richness and vibrancy of Jewish cultural history, including traditions of family and community life. It celebrates the significant contribution Jews had made to Germany: writers, artists and musicians, traders and entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors and intellectuals.

Question 23

What are some additional feelings evoked and techniques used in Washington Museum?

Answer 23

James Ingo Freed - ‘Feeling cut off from normal society and losing a sense of identity’. Intimidating scale in the Hall of Witness. Intimidating scale of the Hall of Witness and brutal materials in the lifts. Towers evoking guard towers of concentration camps, inject anxiety-making vertical spaces in between the main gallery space. Martin Smith was first Exhibition Director of the Holocaust Museum, film director and task was to tell a story. Display changed from documentary to increasing visceral techniques in which visitor share experience of victims; entering a ghetto and passing through polish cattle truck and under gateway of Auschwitz. Some authentic objects

Question 24

Describe the Memorial de la Shoah Museum in Paris

Answer 24

Memorial Unknown Jewish Martyr was open 1956 Paris. Neighborhood Jews used to live and work. First walled in courtyard with giant bronze urn, bearing names of extermination camps, where so many french Jews had died. Underneath in crypt is ashes from murdered Jews from camps and Warsaw ghetto, and earth from Israel. Eternal Light. Inscription: Look and see if there is any suffering equal to my suffering, Young and old, our daughters and our sons cut down by the sword. Negotiation with Yad Vashem to open archive and museum here. Star of David. Wall of engraved names Jews deported from France, Document archive, showing the Vichy regime (french) collaboration with Nazis. Also outside is list of les Justes people recognised by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem helped Jews during Vichy period. The whole site is not controversial, it is reverential, apart from a couple shocking objects, such as hut 6 door from Beaune-la-Ronde interment camp, and farm equipment used to grind bone. and pictures of 2500 Jewish children p. 225-26

Question 25

List Shoah Counter-Monuments?

Answer 25

Memorial des martyrs de la deportation de Paris - 1962 - Paris.
‘Monument against Fascism’ by Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jochen Gerz’s - Hamburg - 1983
Aschrott fountain - Kassel - 1984 Horst Hoheisel
Bibliothek memorial - Berlin - 1993 Micha Ullman
The German national memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe - Peter Eisenman -2005 - Berlin

Question 26

What was Youngs concern regarding holocaust memorials?

Answer 26

That German people could safely lock up their collective memories in monuments and ceremonies which would let the brief cathartic moments of pity and shame obscure the continuing issue of racial prejudice. He doesn’t want a ‘final solution’ to Germany’s memorial problem, he wants 1000 yeras of memorial competitions and exhibitions. Presumably to keep the conversation going?

Question 27

Explore the difference between Museums, Memorials, Monuments, and Counter Monuments.

Answer 27

Museum preserves and protects and presents to the public (with bias from funders)
Memorial is a specific rememspecificlike war memorial jewish memorial
Monument usually is to an event - the holocaust , aberfan etc
Counter monument is to provoke and question in an abstract way because of not breaking conventions whichpplrns ppl off or is not allowed. A monumemt that reflects the desire to forgwt and move on but with thw underlying causes of the holocaust and hate causes still there - under the surface. Counter-monuments do not allow for emotional release.

Question 28

Describe the column counter-monument.

Answer 28

‘Monument against Fascism’ -Created by Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jochen Gerz in 1983, put in Harburg - Hamburg 12 meter high square section coloumn covered in lead. Busy shopping areas. Invited visitor to inscribe their names as a commitement to not forget the murder of Hamburg’s Jews. Monument covered in graffiti too. The artist considered this a fair representation of current attitudes.

As surface covered, column lowered into the ground. 1993 only top remain. With monument gone artist claimed ‘Each time you pass the spot, in the absence of the image, there is betrayal’.

The artist didn’t want a big pedestal with something where they told people were to think.

Question 29

Describe the unpside down fountain.

Answer 29

The Aschrott fountain in Kassel from 1984 by Horst Hoheisel.
1939 Nazi enthusiast destoryed a fountain given to the city by Jewish entrepreneur Sigmund Aschcrott in 1908.
Horst won competition in 1984 - he created a concrete hollow reproduction of the original fountain, then buried it upside down in Rathausplatz, or town square. Took place during document 8 contemporarty art festival.

All visible now is the base of the structure with a ring of water in flowing into the depth. Sound of water and partial galzing of water allow vistor to intuit the depth.

From a distance it looks decorative geometric form inlaid with marble. Ironic commentary on ‘forgetting’ could be understood challenging intellectual statement, or sealing off a distorubing memory under the cloak of artistic privelidge. Hoheisel has claimed that the fountain may one day be set the ‘right way up’ but only when German people have changed their attitude to what happened in Nazi period.

Question 30

Describe the book memorial.

Answer 30

Bibliothek memorial, 1993 Bebelplatz, Berlin.
Intended to commemerate burning of 20K books by fanatical National Socialist students in 10 May 1933 in Bebleplatz. Seen as a warning of the genocial programme to follow. Books selected on ethnic and political lines - works by well known Jews, and non-Jewish socialist or communist authors, linked to Judism in Nazi propaganda.
Winner was Micha Ullman in 1993. Bury room with empty bookshelves in Bebelplatz, which a bronze plaque embedded with a quote from poet Heinrich Heine from 1820 - ‘Where books are burned in the end people will burn’. Room illuminated at night, little can be see during the day. The absense of books cause people to pause to think.
Ullman, belive peering into space promt thoughts about if ideas can be destroyed. Monument looks forward from buring on books, to the extermination of Jewish intellectuals in Berlin. Ullman saw it as a camera obscura, regestering those engaging with it as the status on the nearby faculty buildings had witness book burning. Ullman shocked at car park build under there. He also wanted people to chill out by there, but mostly random tourist.

Question 31

Explore why Jewish memorials have turbulent history?

Answer 31

Former German-occupied countries issues memorials ebody are by no means resolved. Search for perpetrators of genocidal crimes continues to this day. Trials - 1961-62 Adolf Eichmann -architect of Holocaust. Many who held positions of authority in Nazi Germany and occupied countries passed through ‘de-Nazification’ processes to pick up the reins of industry, administration or government after the war. Explains whcy rapid growth of memorials of the show came about only 20-30 years after end of war, when these men and women had retired.

Question 32

Describe the German national memorial…

Answer 32

The German national memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. By Peter Eisenman in 2005 (and Richard Serra). 20K square meter site, located not far from Hitler’s Chancellery building and bunker. 2711 concrete pillars as same base size, differeing height. Visitor can enter from any side and do what they want. No explicit reference to the Shoah, apart from underground inforamtion center story of shoah dramatised and explained extremely selective set of displays highlighting the experience of the individuals and small groups in Berlin. Abstract form.

Question 33

Describe the memorial dedicated to the displaced Jewish refugees.

Answer 33

Memorial des martyrs de la deportation de Paris. 1962. Commemorate 160k deported from France to Germany and occupied territories for forced labour and and extermination camps. 76k Jews, Roma and Sinti, some German exils, but most French. 2.5k survived. 84k on political or non-racial grounds - half survived. Jean Cassou - Chief curator Modern Art Museum picked commite that selected Georges-Henri Pingusson (architect) and Raymond Veysset (sculptor). Site behind Notre Dame.
Should not stand out like statue or ordinary monument. fit into a site whose lines present characteristing harmony. Not break horizontal plane formed by terrece. Slab like tombstone, become roof of crypt. provide more intimate mediation.
Two narrow, steep stairs lead down to triangular courtyard, with low window overlooking sein (bars) Wroght iron scultpure icongraphy of triangular badges victims had to wear - brown for roma and siniti, pink for homosexuals, start of david yellow for Jews. Red for red for political.
Crypt entrace is between two massive concrete blocks, crush visitor - dark interior. Long corridor golden electric lights - representing mass of people deported. Poetic statements, poems (Robert Denos). No names or inscriptions. dark spaces - like chapels or prison cells. Barred doors lead to uknown desitnations. Concrete slab with triangular form, main Nazi-run concentration camps. Vichy regime ran cam in Drancy - for deportation to germany

Question 34

What are the tensions for Shoah memorials?

Answer 34

Wish to forget and the determination not to forget. the desire to be explicite and the need in some contexts to be ambigious. contradictory impulses to mourn, accuse, justify and learn.

Question 35

Explain some reasons for the need of Shoah monuments?

Answer 35

Absence of Jewish people, buildings, things and culture in former German-occupied territories, and continued anti-Semitic persecution in eastern bloc countries after the war, and continuing racial predjudice in most contries.

Question 36

What is biggest challenge for museums and memorials?

Answer 36

The pedagogic role usually fails to work effectivly unless an emotional understanding has been built first. The presense of doubters, both fantics and sceptical historians, provides pressure for statistical documentation - ethnic difference. Explanation, emotional egagement, quiet reflection and statistical demostration all have their place.

Question 37

Summarise the memorials vis a vis abscence.

Answer 37

Absecence of Jewish people and culture has been represented by architectural or abstract sculptoral means. In Germany and Eastern Europe - straightforward pedagogic strategy, of examplainging and documenting what happened has not really been accepted. The counter monuments in Germany testify to the ambiguiety of these responses and to the intellectual challege of exhibiting absence. Hiding, instead of showing can be powerful form of communication. Is it tantamount to covering over or forgetting, the monuments pose this question -keeping debate going.