A man stands frozen in the middle of the street in the act of handing money to a cabdriver. People stand at attention or with heads bowed, mourning or trying to show respect for those who do. Yet one person continues walking. The siren stops, followed by laughter and applause. As people begin to move, someone wipes away tears.
Girls smile and point to the camera as though they just noticed it.
The calendar continues for a week until it reaches the Israeli Day of Independence. The viewer may note the nationalist agenda revealed by the calendar, but he may also overlook it, thus acting out an important argument of The Texture of Memory about the public intent of the date and the private meanings allowed by its observance. Young's approach, honed on literature, shows its strength here. An art-historically trained scholar might have missed the significance of this motionlessness because it is not an object. 1 Like the Jewish Sabbath, the moment dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust is remarkable not because it is empty, but because this emptiness can still be filled.