Here I recall being asked in several cases to help revive memorial processes in Boston , Berlin , and Buenos Aires that had gotten bogged down in what their organizers perceived as a morass of dispute , bickering , competing agendas , and politics . With the impertinence that only an academic bystander can afford , I always replied , Yes , it ’ s true . You thought you were bringing a community together around common memory , and you found instead that the process is fraught with argument , division , and competing agendas . In Boston in 1988 , I gently suggested that the New England Holocaust Memorial Committee stop hiding the issues that divided them and instead make them the centerpiece of a public forum on their proposed memorial . Let debate drive the memorial process forward , I advised . Let the memorial ’ s “ memory-work ” begin with the committee ’ s own heated discussions , public symposia and community education , even in public challenges to the very idea of such a memorial in Boston .
In Berlin , when asked by the Bundestag in 1997 to explain why I thought Germany ’ s 1995 international design competition for a national “ memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe ” had failed , I answered that even if they had failed to produce a monument , the debate itself had produced a profound search for such memory and that it had actually begun to constitute the memorial they so desired . Instead of a fixed sculptural or architectural icon for Holocaust memory in Germany , the debate itself — perpetually unresolved amid ever-changing conditions — might now be enshrined . And then just to make sure they grasped my own polemic , I offered the reassuring words , “ Better a thousand years of Holocaust memorial competitions in Germany than a final solution to your Holocaust memorial question .” A day later , I was invited by the Speaker of the Berlin Senate , Peter Radunski , to join a five-member Findungskommission whose mandate would be to run yet another competition for a suitable design for the Denkmal . When I asked , “ Why me ? I don ’ t think it can be done ,” Herr Sprecher Radunski answered with an Hegelian glint in his eye , “ Because you don ’ t think it can be done , we think you can do it .” Thus hoisted on the petard of my own polemic , I agreed to serve – but only on two conditions : First , that we could make the process itself publicly transparent , so that it might be regarded as part of the memorial design for which we searched ; and second , that we invite artists and architects not to solve Germany ’ s paralyzing memorial conundrum in their submissions , but rather to articulate the problem formally in their designs .
Aktion T4 memorial at 4 Tiedrgartenstraße , Berlin , to victims of Nazi ‘ euthanasia ’ | EUROM
Observing Memories ISSUE 1
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