ABSTRACT
The nature of Holocaust collective memory among Jews in Israel and the United States was constructed in a significantly different manner than in Europe. In Israel in particular, the Holocaust became a civil religion of sorts, a principal source of Jewish identity and cohesion, although it also has been the object of considerable domestic and international contention. After the war, in 1953, the Israeli Knesset unanimously passed the Yad Vashem Law, which established Yad Vashem with a mandate to explicitly link the memory of Jewish victimization with the memory of Jewish heroism. The first film to make an impact on Holocaust memory was The Diary of Anne Frank, which evolved "from a European document of World War II into an Americanized representation". In many respects, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), which opened in April 1993, represents the ultimate American usurpation of Holocaust memory.
