Class 18. 10/27 Preserving sites

Guest speaker in class via Skype: Yael Friedman, museum educator, Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust Links to an external site., New York.

James Edward Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (1993), ch. 5, “The Rhetoric of Ruins: The Memorial Camps at Majdanek and Auschwitz Download The Rhetoric of Ruins: The Memorial Camps at Majdanek and Auschwitz

What is at stake in the preservation of death camps? What messages are the exhibits designed to communicate? What does “the veneration of ruins” mean?

Yael Friedman has led group trips to death camps in Poland. Prepare questions to ask her about her experiences leading these programs inspired by the assigned reading.