P"'
■
Out ()t ithe Silence
The new Holocaust
Memorial Museum
in Washington will
assure that history's
worst genocide will
not be forgotten.
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
hen the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum was
dedicated in one of Washington's more
solemn ceremonies, it marked a turning
point in the transformation of the Holo-
caust.
First, the Holocaust was received with
shame, bewilderment and silence. Sev-
eral decades later, when the original pain
began to recede and people could speak
about it, it became a quasi-sacred event,
with its own day of remembrance (Yom
HaShoah) and its own saints: everyone
from the bard of the Holocaust — No-
bel laureate Elie Wiesel — to the least
celebrated survivor, who never attended
state dinners at Stockholm, but is still
accorded hushed, awed reverence from
those who never saw black, human ash-
es streaming from the chimneys at
Auschwitz, or whose arms do not bear
the tattooed numbers of the death camps.
And now, the museum will assure that
history's most fearsome genocide remains
in the nation's consciousness.
"We want to demonstrate to visitors
that this is what can happen when you
don't say anything," said Harvey M. Mey-
erhoff, chairman of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Council. "Our mes-
sage is that there is a choice and that you
can be part of that choice. And that those
who died and their children's children
will never go into this museum — as
mine will be able to do."
Washington will have the world's only
national Holocaust museum outside of
Israel. There are none in Germany or
Poland, on whose soil most of the Holo-
caust occurred. There are none in France,
whose collaborationist history is slowly
being revealed. There are none, even, in
such countries as England or Sweden or
Switzerland, which, because they were
not occupied by the Nazis or remained
neutral during the war, were not taint-
ed by the Reich's genocide.
By being on a well-worn tourists' path
in Washington, the $169 million, 250,000
square-foot museum will — at least,
physically — be unavoidable: Only about
400 yards southeast of the Washington
Monument, next door to the "Mint" (the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing), a
long block and a half from the Smith-
sonian, and almost hugging the eastern
shore of the Tidal Basin which frames
the Jefferson Memorial.
Such prominence to the Holocaust—
to the unthinkable — would have been
unthinkable as recently as 15 years ago.
Yet, there are now Holocaust-related mu-
seums in Los Angeles, Detroit, Wash-
ington and other cities. A $30-million
museum is slated to open at the south-
ern end of Manhattan in 1995. There are
Outdoor sculpture by Joel Shapiro In the museum's General Eisenhower Plaza: A
world fragmented and off-balance.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: A cold limestone that
embraces cruel memories.