Introduction

Abstract

This book explores action in a newly erected site of Holocaust memory in the center of Berlin called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It examines the political implications of memory work in and around the site, and asks in what ways and to what extent the discourse on remembering the Holocaust in Germany affects action at the memorial, and how this action, in turn, recasts old and new discursive modes about the past and present politics in contemporary Germany. As the first ethnographic monograph written on the memorial, it offers an analysis of the tension between the experience of, and action in, the site, its aesthetics and the discussions around it.