Holocaust Memorial Analysis

Following the conclusion of World War II, Nickolaus Lehner, who had once been incarcerated at Dachau, settled there after liberation. After some years Lehner visited Auschwitz, which bore stark contrast to Dachau; following liberation the barracks and structures at the camp were destroyed, leaving behind a barren landscape with only foundations to mark the former locations of the barracks. On the other hand, the barracks of Auschwitz still stand and the landscape of the death camp is still dominated by barracks, the ruins of former gas chambers, and the train tracks that would bring nearly one and a half million people to their deaths. The contrast between these two equally horrific sites was not lost on Lehner. “I visited Auschwitz a few years ago. The barracks there have been left exactly as they were. They are made of wood and are collapsing into ruins. It is a natural process of
Over time the use of symbolic stone was incorporated into many memorials; the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris features a memorial to the victims of Mauthausen made from the granite from a quarry near the concentration camp where prisoners were used as slave labor. The marble used in the Jewish memorial at Dachau was mined from the city of Peki’in in Israel, which is believed to have been a continuous Jewish settlement since biblical times.5 Many Holocaust memorials, such as the mausoleum at Majdanek, incorporate the ashes of victims as a way to both honor the victims but to give testimony to the crimes