Holocaust Memory as Cultural Code: The UK National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre as Case Study

Abstract

This research focuses on the proposed UK National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre as a vibrant site of discursive contestation, investigating the heated public and political debate on this memory initiative that took place between 2019 and 2022 through a twofold analysis of elite intention and public reception. Findings demonstrate that Holocaust memory in the UK is infused with ambivalence and contradictory understandings of what the meanings of the past hold for the present. Bursting from the sphere-specific boundaries of memory, however, the debate soon turns into a social problem, one that illuminates broader societal issues that the contemporary British collective struggles with. Insofar as British Holocaust memory, in cultural terms, is bound within a sacralizing discourse, identified and characterized as linked to values such as freedom, democracy and equality, the proposed memory initiative breaks open a Pandora’s box that illuminates and underlines polluting qualities such as ambivalence, intolerance and inequality. The critical discussion currently going on in the UK around the memory initiative is so much more than merely a problem of commemoration or location; rather, it embodies the broader identity crisis that affects many in the British public nowadays. Contributing to memory studies and cultural sociology, this research demonstrates how a collective’s narrative of self is constantly negotiated, mediated through public discourse in ways that could potentially pave the way to civil repair.