Linenthal, Edward Tabor. 1995. New York: Viking.
ISBN 0-670-86067-0. HB $27.95.
Contrary to popular impression, a museum can be understood as both a dynamic process as well as a relatively stable place. Indeed, a case can be made that much of its “soul,” so to speak, is endlessly in flux, albeit a museum’s bricks-and-mortar substance makes its own unique statement. Taken together a major museum’s dynamic process and relatively placid place help shape much of a host culture’s national memory.
To learn about a museum’s process is to uncover its unofficial, as well as official story. This entails learning its history (improper and formal), its present state of affairs (private and public), and finally, its plans for its foreseeable future (wild-eyed and plausible). As museums have a dizzying number of good (and bad) reasons to “play cards close to the chest,” getting to know their process is not easily or rapidly accomplished. Library bookshelves of relevant titles are thin, though thanks to computer-based research tools long-buried or newly unsealed archival materials are increasingly accessible, and museum process is thereby rendered increasingly transparent.
A model here for emulation is an iconic 1995 history book aptly entitled Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. Written by Edward Tabor Linenthal, a Professor of Religious Studies, it provides a behind-the-scenes story of controversies in the founding of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), one of the foremost of such institutions in the world (rivaled only by Yad Vashem in Israel and the Shoah Museum in Paris). Dramatic commentary traces a 15-year long process during which architects, historians, museum specialists, politicians, and Holocaust survivors (Jews and non-Jews) achieved hard-earned compromises and resolved complex matters, many of which were new to museum decision-makers.
Early on Linenthal clarifies his complex mission: “This is a story of boundaries defined, attacked, defended, preserved, redrawn, and re-established. It is a story of the still-continuing negotiations over the boundaries of memory … [and it asks] to what end, finally, the museum.” (p.4) That question was underlined at the Museum’s dedication on April 22, 1993, a day when, according to the author, “the Holocaust became an event officially incorporated into American memory … Too important a story to be bounded by ethnic memory, it was, by virtue of its awesome impact, its poisonous legacy, and its supposed valuable ‘lessons,’ worthy of inclusion in the official canon that shaped American’s sense of themselves,” worthy, that is, of a permanent high place in national consciousness. (Pp.1, 12)
This biography of the founding of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) shies from lavishing praise on its subject or attributing its realpolitik development to crass political purpose (such as pro-Israel advocacy). Instead, in recognition of historical memory being fragile and vulnerable to political expediency, it focuses adroitly on hard-fought struggles to “define and delimit the ideas, objects, persons, and representations that best capture the meaning of the Holocaust.” (p. 3)
Led with passion by Elie Wiesel, the museum’s planners were endlessly embroiled in often-heated controversies: Linenthal notes “it was often difficult enough to maintain civility.” (p.117) Typical were extended arguments over who should be a member in 1978 of the President’s Commission and Holocaust Memorial Council, the body that conceptualized USHMM (Armenians? Romani?). Which city should host the museum (New York or DC)? What type of architectural design was most appropriate (Traditional or Modern)? What other holocausts should be represented (American Indian? Armenian? Romani)? What artifacts were or were not suitable for the permanent exhibit? (A display of women’s shorn hair was rejected; a walk-through German Boxcar was approved). What should be shunned as sensationalizing or simplifying (“Disneyification”)? And what should be a visitor’s take-away (lasting unease or moral transformation)?
Especially difficult to resolve were such tough questions as how was USHMM to portray shocking nightmarish horrors without being viewed as a “house of horrors”? To portray perpetrators without glorifying them? To expose the cost of bystander indifference without alienating bystanders among the visitors? To appropriately represent very different victim groups (as by gender, ideology, nationality, politics, religion, etc.)? To tell the story of non-Jewish victims? To avoid being too Jewish or not Jewish enough? To defend taking a stand regarding disputed historical issues? To “end without enshrining either despair or redemption.” (p.4) And to get people to want to make repeat visits?
Looming above all was the politically–sensitive matter of positioning America in the entire convoluted matter. Not surprisingly the USHMM design process wound up highlighting the nation’s redemptive role: focus was placed on the American Army “liberating” some Nazi Camps, strategically aiding the rehabilitation of close-to-death prisoners, assisting in developing and managing Displaced Person Camps, and so on. While accurate as far as this went, the museum’s honorific version sidelined such disparaging matters as State Department resistance to efforts to save Jewish lives, both before and during the war, along with the military’s debatable decision not to bomb railroad tracks leading in and out of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp. Accordingly, USHMM’s politically expedient formulation wound up casting a long shadow over the validity of its historical narrative.
Especially valuable is Linenthal’s decision to relate both sides of an argument; e.g., “One can empathize with those who wished the museum would not be defiled by the presence of killers, that it would focus attention on the victims … [Others, however, felt] the faces of the perpetrators offer visitors the opportunity to reflect on the moral choices made by ordinary people who were not victims.” (p. 210) Some planners wanted attention paid to three million Polish victims who were not Jewish, along with efforts by Poles to save Jews. Others, however, would only agree if any such exhibit included the “long, sad, and documented history of Polish anti-Semitism.” (p.117) In this same vein, some planners wanted USHMM to tell the whole truth about Christian complicity, including active engagement in the legitimization of Nazism. Others warned against making Christian visitors feel too guilty, lest this cause “resentment about Jews in ‘their’ museum blaming Christians for the Holocaust.” (p.228)
In his own turn Linenthal does not blame any of USHMM’s planners for anything. Indeed, he only very rarely comes forward with a thought of his own, choosing instead the objective, cool role of academic historian. One departure stands out – “When I stood in the gas chamber at Majdanek, and on the ruins of the crematoria of Auschwitz, and even to some extent at the mass graves at Chelmo and Belzec, I felt myself an intruder.” (p. 210). Consistent with this hint of personal involvement in such “deep” matters, this reviewer would have preferred the book closing with a Coda in which Linenthal offered his own preferences among the many options that confronted those good people he studied and brought alive in his fine book.
It is to be hope Linenthal or someone with his merit will soon offer an updated edition or version of this 22-year old book, as since it’s 1995 publication much change regarding the production and use of Holocaust memory has occurred worldwide. USHMM, in particular, has vastly expanded the amount of attention it now pays to other holocausts (Bosnia, Darfur, Ruanda, Sudan, etc.), and it has greatly enlarged its role in Holocaust education efforts in the nation’s public schools.
Taken, however, on its own terms, this “insider” exploration of dilemma resolution in the development of USHMM amply rewards attentive reading. Written as it is in an engaging and thought-provoking way, it underlines how important it is to get behind the scenes and assess how a museum construes and conveys its own version of history, one which it can and does alter over time. Only as this process is brought forward for our assessment in books as good as this one can museums warrant the trust and respect a society wants to pay them.