Question:
What are the differences of the respective memorials mentioned by Young in his lecture and article, as well as in Auschwitz and in Erfurt? Do you find certain memorials more effective/ touching / appropriate than others?
The camps at Auschwitz function in themselves as a physical location for which tragic events took place. The exhibition provided online displayed a variety of images of the concentration camp. The representations neither attempt to recreate exact occurrences or show one kind of ideal, however uphold their symbolism of being a nightmarish place that also stands as an emotive reminder of the Holocaust. Especially as the very place in which countless lives were brutally stolen under wicked circumstances. However, with lesser ways of reproducing another kind of representation beyond this, the difference then lies in contrast to many memorials such as Young’s counter-monuments. These memorials, which elicit the burden of memory as forged by the maker, by deliberately illuminating a message from its artist, and this can be very ambiguous yet still powerful. This leads to a second point of difference, as the camp includes a wider and greater threshold of many kinds of visitors, certain visitors to these situated monuments bring many kinds of emotions and memories, as Young states that every nation remembers the holocaust according to its own ideals and ideologies.In his his lecture, Young references the room in Auschwitz filled with shoes belonging to murdered Jews. He raises the concern that by occupying this room with such an item, by examining memory through focusing in on an absence of the owner, those seeing this might reduce the lives of the victims lost to remnants of property things like shoes.In reference to Topf & Sons, builders of the Auschwitz ovens, and their remembering and acknowledging the responsibility over their constructions, I had never thought of the business behind this. Thinking that such practical matters of economy for the disposal of a human being is terrifying and it’s so sad to recall this. The memorials here are actual testimonies of the laborers who had worked inside the crematoriums. Although this kind of memorial differs from a counter-monument both deliver the sharp deliberate weight of memory. In overall reflection, I think all of the memorials can be responsible for eliciting a very strong effect on the visitor.