For as the shape Holocaust memory takes in Europe and Israel is constrained by political, aesthetic, and religious coordinates, in America it is no less guided by both American ideals and experiences of this time. Where European memorials located in situ often suggest themselves rhetorically as the extension of events they would commemorate, those in America must gesture abstractly to a past removed in both time and space. If visitors to German and Polish camp ruins are invited to mistake the memorials for the events they represent, those in America inevitably call attention to the great distance between themselves and the destruction. In this sense, American memorials seem not to be anchored in history so much as in the ideals that generated them in the first place. In America, the motives for memory of the Holocaust are as mixed as the population at large, the reasons variously lofty and cynical, practical and aesthetic.
Some communities build memorials to remember lost brethren, others to remember themselves.
Some build memorials as community centers, others as tourist attractions. Some survivors remember strictly according to religious tradition, while others recall the political roots of their resistance. Veterans' organizations sponsor memorials to recall their role as camp-liberators. Congressmen support local monuments to secure votes among their Jewish constituency. All such memorial decisions are made in political time, contingent upon political realities.