Holocaust memorial museums in America
美国大屠杀纪念馆
James E. Young
The grandest Holocaust museum in America is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, set on the National Mall in view of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, a neighbor to the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Institute. "What is the role of this museum in a country, such as the United States, far from the site of the Holocaust?" Charles Maier has asked. "Is it to rally the people who suffered or to instruct non-Jews: Is it supposed to serve as a reminder that 'it can happen here'? Under what circumstances can a private sorrow serve simultaneously as a public grief?"
美国最大的大屠杀纪念馆是位于华盛顿特区的美国大屠杀纪念馆，坐落在国家广场上，可以看到华盛顿纪念碑和杰斐逊纪念堂，杰斐逊纪念堂与美国国家历史博物馆和史密森学会相邻。“在一个远离大屠杀遗址的国家，比如美国，这个博物馆的作用是什么?”查尔斯·迈尔问道。“这是为了团结受苦的人们，还是为了教导非犹太人:这是不是应该提醒人们‘这里也可能发生’?”在什么情况下个人的悲痛可以同时作为公众的悲痛?”
The official American justification for a national memorial in the nation's capital came in former President Jimmy Carter's founding statement for the US Memorial Council:
美国在前总统吉米·卡特(Jimmy Carter)为美国纪念委员会(memorial Council)发表的成立声明中给出了在首都建立国家纪念馆的官方理由:
Although the Holocaust took place in Europe, the event is of fundamental significance to Americans for three reasons. First, it was American troops who liberated many of the death camps, and who helped to expose the horrible truth of what had been done there. Also, the United States became a homeland for many of those who were able to survive. Secondly, however, we must share the responsibility for not being willing to acknowledge 40 years ago that this horrible event was occurring. Finally, because we are humane people, concerned with the human rights of all peoples, we feel compelled to study the systematic destruction of the Jews so that we may seek to learn how to prevent such enormities from occurring in the future.
虽然大屠杀发生在欧洲，但它对美国人来说具有重要意义，原因有三。首先，美国军队解放了许多死亡集中营，并帮助揭露了那里发生的可怕事实。同时，美国成为许多能够生存下来的人的家园。然而，第二，我们必须分担40年前不愿意承认正在发生这一可怕事件的责任。最后，因为我们是有人道的人，关心所有人的人权，我们感到有必要把我们的人权保护起来
In creating the President's Commission on the Holocaust in November 1978, Jimmy Carter effectively introduced the destruction of the Jews in Europe into the heart of America's civic culture. Not only would this Museum depict the lives of "new Americans," but it would reinforce America's self-idealization as haven for the world's oppressed.
1978年11月，吉米•卡特(Jimmy Carter)创立了总统大屠杀委员会(Commission on the Holocaust)，有效地将对欧洲犹太人的毁灭引入了美国公民文化的核心。这座博物馆不仅将描绘“新美国人”的生活，还将强化美国作为世界受压迫者的天堂的自我理想化。
This is what the Museum's project director, Michael Berenbaum, has termed the "Americanization of the Holocaust."
这就是该博物馆的项目主管迈克尔·贝伦鲍姆(Michael Berenbaum)所说的“大屠杀美国化”。
In Berenbaum's words, the Museum's story of the Holocaust is told in such a way that it would resonate not only with the survivor in New York and his children in Houston or San Francisco, but with a black leader from Atlanta, a Midwestern farmer, or a northeastern industrialist. Millions of Americans make pilgrimages to Washington; the Holocaust Museum must take them back in time, transport them to another continent, and inform their current reality. The Americanization of the Holocaust is an honorable task provided that the story told is faithful to the historical event.
用贝伦鲍姆的话说，博物馆讲述大屠杀故事的方式，不仅能让纽约的幸存者和他在休斯顿或旧金山的孩子产生共鸣，还能让亚特兰大的黑人领袖、中西部的农民或东北部的实名家产生共鸣。数百万美国人前往华盛顿朝圣;大屠杀博物馆必须及时把他们带回过去，把他们带到另一个大陆，并告知他们当前的实相。如果所讲述的故事忠实于历史事件，大屠杀的美国化是一项光荣的任务。
Of course, as Berenbaum also makes clear, the story itself depends entirely on who is telling it — and to whom.
当然，正如贝伦鲍姆也明确指出的那样，故事本身完全取决于谁在讲述它——以及对谁讲。
As a national landmark, the national Holocaust museum interprets the Holocaust according to the nation's own idealized matrix, its pluralist tenets. In the words of the Memorial Council, therefore, the Holocaust began "before a shot was fired, with persecution of Jews, dissenters, blacks, Gypsies, and the handicapped. The Holocaust gathered force as the Nazis excluded groups of people from the human family, denying them freedom to work, to study, to travel, to practice a religion, claim a theory, or teach a value. This Museum will illustrate that loss of life itself was but the last stage in the loss of human rights." In being defined as the ultimate violation of America's Bill of Rights and as the persecution of plural groups, the Holocaust encompasses all the reasons immigrants — past, present and future — ever had for seeking refuge in America.
作为一个国家地标，国家大屠杀博物馆根据国家自身的理想化矩阵及其多元主义原则来解释大屠杀。因此，用纪念委员会的话说，大屠杀开始于“开枪之前，对犹太人、非国教徒、黑人、吉普赛人和残疾人的迫害”。纳粹把一些人排除在人类家庭之外，剥夺了他们工作、学习、旅行、信仰宗教、宣称一种理论或传授一种价值观的自由，于是大屠杀的力量越来越大。这个博物馆将说明，失去生命本身不过是生命的最后阶段
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum defines what it means to be American by graphically illustrating what it means not to be American. As a reminder of " the furies beyond our shores," in one columnist's words, the Museum would define American existence in the great distance between "here" and "there." In effect, in its place on the National Mall, the Museum enshrines not just the history of the Holocaust, but American ideals as they counterpoint the Holocaust. By remembering the crimes of another people in another land, Americans would recall their nation's own, idealized reason for being.
美国大屠杀纪念馆通过生动地阐释不作为美国人意味着什么来定义作为美国人意味着什么。用一位专栏作家的话来说，作为对“美国境外的愤怒”的提醒，该博物馆将美国人的存在定义为“这里”和“那里”之间的巨大距离。实际上，在国家大草坪的位置上，这个博物馆不仅记载着大屠杀的历史，而且与大屠杀相对立的是美国的理想。通过记住另一个民族在另一块土地上犯下的罪行，美国人会想起他们自己国家存在的理想化的理由。
Memory of historical events and the narratives delivering this memory have always been central to Jewish faith, tradition and identity. Having defined themselves as a nation through commemorative recitations of their past, the Jews continue to depend on memory for their very existence as a people. Over time, the only "common" experience uniting an otherwise diverse community of Jewish Americans has been the vicarious memory of the Holocaust. Left-wing and right-wing Jewish groups, religious and secular, Zionist and non-Zionist may all draw different conclusions from the Holocaust. But all agree that it must be remembered, if to entirely disparate ideological ends. As a result, while Jewish day schools, research institutes and community centers run deficits, millions of dollars continue to pour into Holocaust memorial projects and museums.
对历史事件的记忆以及传递这些记忆的叙事一直是犹太人信仰、传统和身份认同的核心。通过纪念他们的过去，犹太人定义了自己的国家，他们继续依靠记忆作为一个民族生存。随着时间的推移，唯一的“共同”经历是对大屠杀的替代记忆，使原本多元的犹太裔美国人团结在一起。左翼和右翼犹太团体，宗教和世俗团体，犹太复国主义者和非犹太复国主义者都可能从大屠杀中得出不同的结论。但所有ag)
By extension, Holocaust museums are increasingly becoming the centers for historical education, activism and fundraising. Consequently, instead of learning about the Holocaust through the study of Jewish history, many Jews and non-Jews in America learn the whole of Jewish history through the lens of the Holocaust. Without other kinds of museums to a Jewish culture, Holocaust memorials and museums tend to organize Jewish culture and identity around this one era alone. As a result not only will the Holocaust continue to suggest itself as center of American Jewish consciousness, but it will become all that non-Jewish Americans know about a thousand years of European Jewish civilization.
进一步说，大屠杀博物馆正日益成为历史教育、活动和筹款的中心。因此，美国的许多犹太人和非犹太人不是通过研究犹太人的历史来了解犹太人的大屠杀，而是通过大屠杀的镜头来了解犹太人的整个历史。由于没有其他类型的博物馆来展示犹太文化，大屠杀纪念馆和博物馆往往只围绕这个时代来组织犹太文化和身份认同。因此，不仅大屠杀将继续作为美国犹太人意识的中心，而且它还将变得更加强烈