Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum / Edition 1

by Edward Linenthal

Overview

Since its first year in 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has attracted more than 15 millino visitors, sometimes at the rate of 10,000 a day, each of whom has walked away with an indelible impression of awe in the face of the unimaginable. This lively, honest, behind-the-scenes account details the emotionally complex fifteen-year struggle surrounding the museum's birth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231124072
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	09/26/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.10(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Edward Linenthal is professor of history at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory and Sacred Ground: Americans and their Battlefields.

Table of Contents

Preface: Violence and American Landscape
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Locating Holocaust Memory in American Culture
1. The Decision to Remember
2. The Site of Holocaust Memory
3. Embryonic Thoughts: The Commission's Museum Beginnings: 1980-87
4. Interior Space: The Mood of Memory
Conclusion. Mobilizing Holocaust Memory
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Deborah Lipstadt

A masterpiece. It mesmerizes the reader.

— Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust

Raul Hilberg

A brilliant book, incisive and clear... reveals the tensions, plunges, and surges that led to this bold museum and the preservation behind its walls of one of the most painful memories of modern history.

— Raul Hilberg, author of The Destruction of the European Jews

Stephen T. Katz

An intriguing, highly informative, 'insider'account of one of America's most important new cultural institutions....Bravo.

— Stephen T. Katz, Cornell University

James E. Young

Every museum has its own hidden past. Edward Linenthal has succeeded not only in revealing the complicated, fascinating history of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum but also in making the origins of this museum part of our own Holocaust memory.

George L. Mosse

A superb book which tells in an exciting manner how the preservation of memory for the public must navigate between sentimentality and special interests in order to recapture the past.

Editorial Reviews

Since it opened in 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has been garnering much attention and many visitors. This book chronicles the plan to create and build the Museum, from early discussions through the careful decision-making and design process, in which the early questions of what exactly to commemorate and how to shape a Holocaust memorial of this magnitude were being continuously considered and debated.

Jewish Book World

Passages in this discussion of the selection of artifacts-children's shoes, leg braces, bundles of women's hair-to be exhibited in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington are harrowing to read. At the same time, the bureaucratic infighting and political tugging on the President's Commission on the Holocaust and its successor, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, tend to trivialize the raison d'etre of the museum: about what sort of building to erect that would be a ``good neighbor'' to others on the Mall, about whether to include articles that once belonged to Gypsies and homosexuals who were also victims, about commemorating other genocides like the slaughter of the Armenians in 1915. Ultimately, Linenthal's (Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields) carefully researched account seeks to answer the vexing question of the ``place'' of Holocaust memory in American culture. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Linenthal (religion and American culture, Univ. of Wisconsin, Oshkosh) describes the 15-year effort to create a national museum commemorating the Holocaust. He begins with the creation in May 1978 of the President's Commission on the Holocaust during the Carter administration. He then covers issues related to the location, design, and construction of the museum building. Linenthal's most significant contribution is the chapter on defining and representing the horror of the Holocaust. He skillfully describes the dilemmas facing the organizers of the exhibits, such as how to depict the story of mass murder and yet personalize it, how to represent the Nazis and other perpetrators of the Holocaust in the exhibit, and whether non-Jewish victims should be included. Linenthal tells the story of defining and representing America's memory of the Holocaust with sensitivity and thoroughness. For all collections.-Mark Weber, Kent State Univ. Lib., Ohio

Library Journal