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Representing the Holocaust: German and American Museums in Comparative Perspective

Cady, Alyssa R.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1470051050

Abstract Details

2016, MA, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History.
This thesis explores the comparative historicization of Holocaust memory in Holocaust museums in the United States and Germany. This study compares four different museums – two German, two American – that have not previously been the subject of monographic, comparative investigation: the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the Holocaust Museum Houston; the Jewish Museum Berlin; and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt. I explore the way in which museums memorialize the Holocaust and are shaped by national histories and patterns of collective memory. Discourse analysis is used to analyze the text panels of the four museums to determine the differences between how the American museums and how the German museums compare the Holocaust, and offer reasons for why these differences occur. The use of text panels yields universality to the study, since each of the four museums utilize text panels to display the main educational information to the public. In this study, I argue that the Americanization of the Holocaust in the American museums and the different national memories of the Holocaust in the United States and Germany account for many of the major differences in the museums. To demonstrate this, evidence from three different parts of the museums – the sections that cover anti-Semitism, Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, and the conclusion of the Holocaust museums or exhibits – is employed.
Richard Steigmann-Gall (Advisor)
Shane Strate (Committee Member)
Mindy Farmer (Committee Member)
123 p.
History; Museums
Holocaust; museum studies; anti-Semitism; Jewish resistance; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Holocaust Museum Houston; Jewish Museum Berlin; Jewish Museum Frankfurt

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Cady, A. R. (2016). Representing the Holocaust: German and American Museums in Comparative Perspective [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1470051050

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Cady, Alyssa. Representing the Holocaust: German and American Museums in Comparative Perspective. 2016. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1470051050.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Cady, Alyssa. "Representing the Holocaust: German and American Museums in Comparative Perspective." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1470051050

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1470051050
1,501
© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.