Gavriel D. Rosenfeld

Why Do We Ask “What If?” Reflections on the Function of Alternate History

The new prominence of alternate history in Western popular culture has increasingly prompted scholars to historicize it as a broader phenomenon. What has largely escaped notice until now, however, has been the question of the underlying function of alternate history as a genre of speculative narrative representation. In this essay, I argue that writers and scholars have long produced “allohistorical narratives” out of fundamentally presentist motives. Allohistorical tales have assumed different typological forms depending upon how their authors have viewed the present. Nightmare scenarios, for example, have depicted the alternate past as worse than the real historical record in order to vindicate the present, while fantasy scenarios have portrayed the alternate past as superior to the real historical record in order to express dissatisfaction with the present. The presentist character of alternate histories allows them to shed light upon the evolving place of various historical events in the collective memory of a given society. In this essay, I examine American alternate histories of three popular themes—the Nazis winning World War II, the South winning the Civil War, and the American Revolution failing to occur—in order to show how present–day concerns have influenced how these events have been remembered. In the process, I hope to demonstrate that alternate histories lend themselves quite well to being studied as documents of memory. By examining accounts of what never happened, we can better understand the memory of what did.

A Looming Crash or a Soft Landing? Forecasting the Future of the Memory “Industry”*

Back in the late 1990s, as I was just entering the job market as a newly minted PhD, I arranged a lunch meeting with the editor of a major university press to pitch my first book manuscript on architecture and the memory of Nazism in postwar Munich. After listening to me for several minutes, the editor, fidgeting somewhat, flatly asked, “Don’t you think the current infatuation with memory has already played itself out?” Taken aback, I replied that I thought the subject was only beginning to come into its own and had years of growth ahead of it. The editor, I must confess, did not look very convinced by my answer. He proceeded to shift our conversation onto a different track, and before long our exchange about the future of memory studies had come to a close. For my part, I continued to pursue my interest in the subject without a second thought. Not too long after our meeting, I published my first book on memory and have since published a second.1 By all indications, the editor’s skepticism about the prospects of memory studies failed to influence the subsequent course of my scholarly career. Of late, however, I have begun to think back on my conversation with the editor and revisit his skeptical thoughts about the future of memory studies. I have done so not because I have developed a sneaking suspicion that he was right—it is much too late for him to be vindicated—but rather because I have begun to wonder how much longer memory studies will be able to maintain its position as one of the more influential fields of interdisciplinary scholarship in contemporary academia. As is well known, the topic of memory has risen to an extremely prominent position within the humanities and social sciences over the course of the last two decades. So influential has the study of memory

Holocaust Commemoration: New Trends in Museums and Memorials

Holocaust memory, James Young reminds us in his preface to this special issue of Dapim, is always in flux, poised between painfully acknowledging past destruction and affirmatively pursuing present-day regeneration. A pioneering scholar of Holocaust commemoration, Young provides a timely reminder of memory’s complexities as we introduce the issue’s nine essays on ‘New Trends in Museums and Memorials.’ The essays explore the theme of Holocaust commemoration from an interdisciplinary perspective, presenting the insights of historians, sociologists, literary critics and museum curators. Their articles examine a wide range of Holocaust museums and memorials across the globe: in Germany, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, Israel, the United States and Australia. They address a series of significant questions involving the ethics, aesthetics and politics of representing the Holocaust: To what extent should Holocaust museums and memorials encompass other genocides and mass atrocities? How have artistic and architectural priorities shaped the designs of Holocaust museums and memorials? How do competing political interests and viewpoints shape Holocaust commemoration in different countries? Doron Bar’s essay, ‘Holocaust and Heroism in the Process of Establishing Yad Vashem (1942–1970),’ begins the issue by carefully analyzing the changing ways in which the twin concepts of the Holocaust and heroism are reflected in the architectural design of Yad Vashem in Israel. Through a close examination of archival material from the 1940s up until the early 1960s, he shows how the museum’s physical appearance reflects changing patterns of commemoration. Since its conception, the architects of Yad Vashem struggled with the question of how to design a meaningful national site of memory that would inspire future generations to study the painful past. Should the museum distinguish between the commemoration of Holocaust victims and those who fought the Nazis? The article focuses on debates among the institution’s management regarding the appearance of the museum and analyzes why and how the two projected sites of remembrance outlined in the original plan – the Holocaust Hall and the Hall of Heroism – were replaced with just one, the Hall of Remembrance. Dovid Katz’s article, ‘Is Eastern European “Double Genocide” Revisionism Reaching Museums?,’ provides an insider’s overview of current trends in Eastern European Holocaust memory. A scholar and activist committed to combatting apologetic and revisionist tendencies in Eastern Europe, Katz examines examples from the Baltic states, Ukraine and Hungary to show how the influential concept of the ‘double genocide’ (which equates Stalinist crimes against Eastern Europeans during World War II with Nazi crimes against Jews) has enabled Eastern Europeans to view themselves as historical ‘victims’ and evade wartime complicity for collaborating with the Nazis in the Holocaust. Katz’s attention to the role of museums and

Haunted City: Nuremberg and the Nazi Past . By Neil Gregor. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2007. Pp. 390. Cloth

Nuremberg a city associated with Nazi excesses, party rallies, and the extreme antiSemitic propaganda published by Hitler ally Julius Streicher has http://www.academia.edu/9118068/Haunted_City_Nuremberg_and_the_Nazi_Past

45.00. ISBN 9780300101072.

ion and the Holocaust, by Mark Godfrey Gavriel D. Rosenfeld Fairfield University, grosenfeld@fairfield.edu

Abstraction and the Holocaust, by Mark Godfrey

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Democratization and the Jews: Munich, 1945-1965, by Anthony D. Kauders

Preface. 1. National Identity and German History. 2. Landscapes of Memory. 3. Overcoming the Past in Practice? Trials and Tribulations. 4. Awkward Anniversaries and Contested Commemorations. 5. The Past which Refuses to Become History. 6. Collective Memory? Patterns of Historical Consciousness. 7. Citizenship and Fatherland. 8. Friends, Foes and Volk. 9. The Nation as Legacy and Destiny. Index.