Otis Graham - National Council on Public History

The Showa Hall is a public museum and exhibition space in downtown Tokyo that purports to
document the experiences of Japan’s civilians in the 1930s and 1940s. The Hall has become a
contested space both for those who seek to inspire pride in the nation’s past as well as for those
who demand a fuller acknowledgment of the Second World War’s legacy in Asia and at home.
This review essay explores the Hall’s use of themes of sacrifice, struggle, suffering, and
citizenship to connect the exhibited history of the war years with the present day.
Author(s): James E. Young
Article Title: Germany’s Holocaust Memorial Problem – and Mine
Special issue or section title: Essay: Beyond <strong>National</strong> History: World War II Recollected
Volume: 24
Issue: 4
Season/Year: Fall, 2002
Pages: 65-80
Key Terms: memorials, museums
Abstract:
Once, not so long ago, Germany had what it called a "Jewish Problem." Then it had a paralyzing
Holocaust memorial problem, a double-edged conundrum: How would a nation of former
perpetrators mourn its victims? How would a divided nation reunite itself on the bedrock
memory of its crimes? In June 1999, after ten years of tortured debate, the German Bundestag
voted to build a national "Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe" on a prime, 5-acre piece
of real estate between the Brandenburger Tor and Potsdamer Platz, a stone's throw from Hitler's
bunker. In their vote, the Bundestag also accepted the design--a waving field of pillars--by
American architect, Peter Eisenman, which had been recommended by a five-member
Findungskommission, for which I served as spokesman.
Like many others, I had been quite satisfied with the insolubility of Germany's memorial
dilemma. Better a thousand years of Holocaust memorial competitions in Germany than any
single "final solution" to Germany's memorial problem. But then I began to suspect that the
never-ending debate over Holocaust memory in Germany was itself becoming a substitute for
taking any kind of action on behalf of such memory.
In this report, I tell the story of Germany's national Holocaust memorial and my own role in it,
my evolution from a highly skeptical critic on the outside of the process to one of the arbiters on
the inside. I find that as the line between my role as critic and arbiter began to collapse, the
issues at the heart of the Germany's memorial conundrum came into ever sharper, more painful
relief.
Author(s): Martin H. Blatt
Article Title: Holocaust Remembrance and Heidelberg
Special issue or section title: Essay: Beyond <strong>National</strong> History: World War II Recollected
Volume: 24
Issue: 4
Season/Year: Fall, 2002
Pages: 81-96
Key Terms: memory, memorials
Abstract: