ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the legacy of a select group of post-World War II monuments and their timelessness, rather than exhaustion of them, as a function of the relationship between memory and place. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe belongs within that new tradition of monuments that reject tradition while, paradoxically, retaining the formal and even biblical links to the past. Pierre Birnbaum describes as a 'profoundly Catholic' country dotted with abbeys and churches, France's traces of Jewish memory are, 'piecemeal, scattered, shattered', to the point that there exist thousands of plaques and monuments commemorating the tragedies of World War II without coherent links between them, yet assembled as if part of a homogeneous whole. If we examine the ideas, as they are located in this particular place, that hover around the consideration of personal and collective memory and national and cultural heritage, much of the discussion settles into a closer scrutiny of concepts of community.
