Holocaust Museums

Perhaps above all else, the purpose of a Holocaust musuem is to provide an unencumbered observation of facts. Both the Houston museum and that in Washington attempt to convey truth, not a truth of moral application or insight, but a simple one of actuality. Sixty years ago the Holocaust happened and to understand it is to realize that it is not understandable. It can unsettle, it can mystify, it can horrify, but what it can teach is debatable. Mostly, one can only remember, and often enough the memories themselves are inaccuracies seperated from the events by years, miles, and traffic from eye witness to second hand witness. The memorials, therefore, catalouge, comine, and preserve memory and free from didactic expectations are perhaps able to do so more accurately. The Holocaust begins in stories of individuals, but a memorial by definition must become a generalization, and to do so, it must remove individual sentimentality. Perhaps, the most it can hope to accomplish is to evoke certain abstract emotions that render the facts it contains more potent. Such emotions may have no moral application, but they make memory more poignant, sharp, and less easy to forget, and preserving memory is the chief purpose of a memorial. 1

Niether museum is designed to be a place of comfort or quiet contemplation. Many would consider them raw or even abrasive. Brick, stark metal, wire, and bleak, hard colors combine to tremendous effect. They feel heavy and immovable, unable to be altered in their presence like the actuality of the Holocaust itself. At the same time they press in to create a sense of confinement and isolation. They are sterile and efficient like the industrialized death camps of the Nazis, designed not to sastisfy aesthitic sentiments but to fulfill a physical purpose. They become dehumanizing and depersonalizing in their monotony. Everyone inside is reduced to a number in a line between brick and steel walls, a monochromatic part of a monochromatic background.2

The effect is unsettling and uncomfortable. It gives one a feeling a restlessness, but with an inability to do anything or go anywhere. It gives a feeling of weightyness and significance to everything learned inside, but presents no explanation as to what that significance might be. One is left with a feeling of disquiet, a desire for a sense of resolution that never presents itself. The facts are turned over and over in the mind in a search for answers that may be never be discovered, but the facts themselves and the memory remains even without the closure. At the same time, the bleak surroundings make the few human moments leap up all the more powerfully. Stories of survival or heroism jump out even more given the nature of the surroundings. They are instinctivley grasped at like a lifeline, and because of the emotional effect is exagerated, the memory remains. 3

The memorials unbalance their audience even as they present their facts. Very few people can probably claim that by visiting the memorial they were entertained, enligtened, or comforted. They will likely feel unsettled and plagued with unanswerable questions, but they can say that they remember and that they are not likely to forget. Even when the memories fade with time, some sense of them will likely remain. In this way, the memorials might not be able to teach lessons or draw conclusions, but through their ability to create certain emotional responses, they help to ensure that the memories they contain are not only preserved, but that they persist as more than a mere list of facts.