What's a Monument?

What is a monument? 

      With ink made of stone, brass, metal, and paper, humanity combats its own ephemerality; it writes a journal of its values, its heroes, and its most important events on the pages of the earth. Monuments are the words that tell the story. Like notes quickly scribbled on paper, monuments tangibly exists to remember—because humanity will collectively, inevitably, forget. 

      Like any story, monuments have an author and monuments have a reader. They are neither free from bias nor unaffected by interpretation. Still, monuments physically exist outside of humanity; they outlive, at least for a while, the human creators that bloom and perish around them. 

     Too many people have lived; too much history has passed. Memory has to fade—but monuments remember for us.  

       
      In the same way that an people feel the need to take photographs or keep a diary that will remember the most important days, people, and memories in their lifetimes, societies have left physical traces of their memories and stories on the earth. Monuments, in the official sense of the word, exist to substantiate events and heroes that the authors (usually those in power) deemed important enough for public memory. This also means that certain aspects of history must be selected and others omitted; therein lies the bias. (1)

    Because multiple authors contribute, the stories told through monuments on the landscape of a city do not necessarily thematically correspond—and I think this is especially true in Paris.

The fact that just up the Seine from the Memorial de La Shoah lies a monument to Alexander III of Russia, a notorious persecutor of the Jews, demonstrates the incongruity in ideology and values. 

     So what is a monument? A monument has an author, a monument has a reader, and a monument tells a story. I'd like to focus on the former of the two discordant entries in Paris' journal of history mentioned above, Le Memorial de la Shoah, and discuss why it is monument by this definition—and also what story it tells, how and why the author tells it, and how (if it matters how) the readers interpret it. 

  The Memorial de la Shoa

Le Memorial de la Shoah memorializes the Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews under German Nazi regime during WWII, in the following ways: 

     It serves, first, as a museum and source of archives about the history of the Holocaust in Europe, to pass along the memory to future generations in an accessible, educational way. 

     It also honors those citizens that were deported from France during the “Final Solution;” though most deportees perished in the Nazi extermination camps, the Wall of Names metaphorically immortalizes their memory and their identity.

     It serves, finally, to preserve the memory of the Holocaust in a more abstract way. In the crypt, visitors see a memorial symbolizing the grave of 6 million Jewish people—a black stone Star of David, with an eternal burning light to commemorate their lives and deaths. The Monument writes these words from the Hebrew Bible in the diary of  human history: “Young and old, our sons and daughters were cut down by the sword.” 

Why must this story be “written down” in this way—immortalized in stone? Perhaps those who designed the Memorial de la Shoah, the many authors of this monument, sought to ensure that the memory and lessons of the Shoah cannot pass away with the generation that experienced its horrors. A memory so strong, that has left such a scar on not just the Jewish community but the world, should not be forgotten. Collectively, the impact of its memory will be felt regardless, and perhaps monuments to the Holocaust should be constructed to remind us why.  

Perhaps the story told by this monument has also been written down so that it can be forgotten. As contemporaries of the Holocaust are replaced on this earth, at least vestiges of their memory have been preserved. By incarnating this story in the form of a monument—by saying that, of all the innumerable events that took place in our history, this is one worth remembering—the "authors" of this monument express their values and teach a lesson to future generations. 
  
     But can they truly be remembered? Can a monument remember for us, without the participation and interpretation of "readers"?

Or maybe the question is really for whom, the authors or the readers, is a monument built? In the case of the Memorial de la Shoah, which serves honor the lost and to educate future generations, I would argue both.
  
     Le Memorial de la Shoah provoked thought in me and moved me deeply. I could never, however, remember the Holocaust in its pure horror nor comprehend its magnitude and complexity simply by being a reader of the memorial's story. The Shoah, over time, will not be felt or understood in the same way. No matter how powerful and moving a memorial, no matter how thoroughly its history is taught, it will be, in a sense, forgotten; it is already becoming fuzzy in our collective human memory.

     But perhaps this monument, and all monuments, satisfy a human need to try, desperately, to leave something of ourselves on earth that lives forever, that continues, even though our part in the history of the world will end.

    And maybe sometimes, for the authors, that is enough.

    Monuments remain whether the stories they were written to tell lose their meaning or are ever read again. They remain like tangible markers driven to the earth as generations rapidly pass, like notes quickly scribbled in the pages of history. 

(1) ¹ I would like to point out, before I continue, that I don’t emphasize this bias to in any way discredit the story told through the monument that I intend to discuss later. I only think it necessary to establish that history, as told through monuments or any other media, is always, and must always, be told from a specific point of view.