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Between the different museums and the
guided tour, I was extremely impressed with the aim of Buchenwald--education. I think this is most important today since the majority of the
audience at these concentration camps will have only ever read or heard
about the Holocaust and it is important that they receive factual
information, as well as an emotional understanding, and I believe this is the
aim of Buchenwald.
As compared to other memorials we visited, I think it would be closest to
the Schöneburg sign memorial--it is interactive, and you participate only to
the degree you wish. You can walk around the grounds or you can stay in
the museum. You can have a tour or you can just read a guide book. It is
forcing you to take memory into your hands and decide how far you want to
go with it, making the experience a more personal and, therefore, more
memorable one. Unlike Neue Wache or the Topography of Terror or Wannsee (is
this a memorial?) there is no text or pictures forced on you unless you
choose to enter the doors of the museum. I personally believe there is
nothing more powerful than site-related memory--that is why Topography of
Terror works and why Neue Wache fails in my eyes. And site-related memory
that forces you to take responsibility for memory and the burden of the
knowledge of the atrocities committed is the most useful kind of memorial
of all.
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