Sites of memory
August 2nd, 2014 marks the 70th anniversary of the final liquidation of the “Gypsy family camp” in the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during the Second World War. On this night Nazi soldiers murdered and incinerated the bodies of the 2,897 Roma children, women, and men who were living in the camp[1]. By the time the camp was liquidated approximately 13,614 Roma from the German Reich had been succumb to disease, exposure, malnutrition or death from “scientific” experimentation; 6,432 by lethal gas; and 32 shot while attempting to flee the camp[2]. Furthermore, throughout the course of the War tens of thousands of Roma were incarcerated in similar camps at Dachau, Hatburg, Furestenfeld, Mattersburg Roten Thurm, Lackenbach, Oberwart, or others throughout the occupied territories where many Roma were routinely killed in mobile gas vans or subject to other acts of genocide. How are these sites remembered seven decades later? How is the history and memory of the Roma Holocaust written on these sites through their commemoration?
The temporal distinction between history—as a specific representation of the past—and memory—as a fluid and potentially contradictory invocation of remembering in the present—converge in particular places. Here what Pierre Nora has called lieux de memoire (sites of memory) describes how this relationship is consciously crystallized and transmitted in certain sites[3]. Holocaust memorials are lieux in this sense because they are at once material, symbolic, and functional[4]. They are material insofar as they are physical entities that, at one time, housed the everyday realities of actual persons within their structural boundaries. Yet they are also symbolic in the ways they characterize the participation of the Nazis and their collaborators in the persecution of minority populations—Roma, Jews, homosexuals, etc. The importance of these sites then, is partially located in the ways that they function by embodying memories of the Holocaust in the present. These sites of memory are then spaces where particular visions of history and memory engage with the imagination of those who currently visit or view the space.
It is also important to note that English media reporting on the Roma response to the establishment of Holocaust monuments are difficult to find unless the building of the monuments was particularly controversial. It is therefore likely that some of this information is available in other languages and therefore absent from this section. However the information available about the controversies provides a crucial lens for understanding the complex and overlapping tensions that give these places such meaning for those whose memories are to be represented. Conflict over what the memorials should mean, or what the spaces they are built on should be used for suggests that, like the memories they represent, monuments are not uniform and the meanings attached to them are most certainly not confined to the past or to history. Instead they represent a living testament to the ongoing, fluid and oftentimes contradictory process of memory. Seventy years after the War these monuments are invested with memories of both past events and the day to day realities of the present. Therefore it is likely that their meanings are numerous and contingent on the changing relationships of those that view them to their own sense of identity.
[1]Figures quoted from the Auschwitz memorial website: http://en.auschwitz.org/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=8
[2] Milton, Sybil (1992) Nazi Policies Towards the Roma and Sinti, 1933-1945. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society 2(1), Pp. 9.
[3] Nora, Pierre (1989) Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.
Representations (26)1, [Special Issue] Memory and Counter-Memory, Pp. 7.
[4] Ibid, Pp. 18-19.
The temporal distinction between history—as a specific representation of the past—and memory—as a fluid and potentially contradictory invocation of remembering in the present—converge in particular places. Here what Pierre Nora has called lieux de memoire (sites of memory) describes how this relationship is consciously crystallized and transmitted in certain sites[3]. Holocaust memorials are lieux in this sense because they are at once material, symbolic, and functional[4]. They are material insofar as they are physical entities that, at one time, housed the everyday realities of actual persons within their structural boundaries. Yet they are also symbolic in the ways they characterize the participation of the Nazis and their collaborators in the persecution of minority populations—Roma, Jews, homosexuals, etc. The importance of these sites then, is partially located in the ways that they function by embodying memories of the Holocaust in the present. These sites of memory are then spaces where particular visions of history and memory engage with the imagination of those who currently visit or view the space.
It is also important to note that English media reporting on the Roma response to the establishment of Holocaust monuments are difficult to find unless the building of the monuments was particularly controversial. It is therefore likely that some of this information is available in other languages and therefore absent from this section. However the information available about the controversies provides a crucial lens for understanding the complex and overlapping tensions that give these places such meaning for those whose memories are to be represented. Conflict over what the memorials should mean, or what the spaces they are built on should be used for suggests that, like the memories they represent, monuments are not uniform and the meanings attached to them are most certainly not confined to the past or to history. Instead they represent a living testament to the ongoing, fluid and oftentimes contradictory process of memory. Seventy years after the War these monuments are invested with memories of both past events and the day to day realities of the present. Therefore it is likely that their meanings are numerous and contingent on the changing relationships of those that view them to their own sense of identity.
[1]Figures quoted from the Auschwitz memorial website: http://en.auschwitz.org/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=8
[2] Milton, Sybil (1992) Nazi Policies Towards the Roma and Sinti, 1933-1945. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society 2(1), Pp. 9.
[3] Nora, Pierre (1989) Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.
Representations (26)1, [Special Issue] Memory and Counter-Memory, Pp. 7.
[4] Ibid, Pp. 18-19.