ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of museums in a place so rich in history and memory, and the relationship of museums to issues of memory. It suggests some of the challenges facing a Jewish museum in this extraordinary and almost Judenrein environment. Especially in this postreunification era, with its illusion of panEuropeanism, Germany is simultaneously a European country like any other, while permeated by a sense of its uniqueness. For successful communication, museums will need to understand something about how both history and memory fit into the needs of their visitors. Indeed, the expanded technological ability to provide so-called historical documentation is likely to prove a better resource for studies of memory and the influence of ancillary information of memory than for actual historical study. But all documentation are also subject to the effects of time.
