Every time a death penalty is commuted or a government repeals the death penalty anywhere in the world, the Roman coliseum is lit up. The initiative originated with the Community of SantEgidio.

The colisseum is notable as having served for centuries as a site for public executions of various kinds. This is an example of an historical site being used to mobilize sentiment for values exactly the opposite of those it was originally built to promote. Where once thousands were executed in front of cheering crowds, a ceremonial lighting draws smaller crowds of anti-death penalty activists and various dignitaries. To mark the abolition of the death penalty in New Mexico, the governor of that state came to Rome and met the pope and anti-death penalty activists and even a few citizens of New Mexico who happened to be in Rome and heard about the event.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/20/gov_richardson_activists_honored_in_rome

It is always notable when countries choose to honor foreigners as heroes. Often, this is done for religious leaders, such as the various Luther memorials. Washington, D.C. has several memorials to foreigners who came to lead American soldiers in the Revolutionary War. Sometimes such memorials are gifts from the native country of the hero, such as the memorial to Muhammad Taragai Ulugbek in Riga, a gift from Uzbekistan or the memorial to Benito Juarez a gift from Mexico and to Bernardo de Galvez, a gift from Spain, both in Washington, D.C.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the death of Howard Baskerville, an American martyr for constitutionalism in Iran. He is still honored in Iran in that he is known throughout the country and there are several schools named after him. Baskerville died in Tabriz in 1909 during a protest against the new shah's repeal of the 1906 constituion. He had gone there after graduating from Princeton to teach for the Presbyterian school. He lead a 150-man contingent of soldiers and students in the nationalist side in a brief conflict with royalist forces. There is a small memorial at his grave in the Armenian cemetery in Tabriz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdSO6N7b2Z8
http://www.iranian.com/History/Aug98/Baskerville/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/opinion/18calafi.html?th&emc=th

At the official webpage of the USS New York (http://www.ussny.org/) you can read about how this new amphibious assault ship was built to include seven tons of steel from the ruins of the World Trade Center.

While it has become common to build memorials to 9/11 using remains from the destroyed buildings - even at locations very distant from New York - the tradition is of course even older. This is the kind of remembrance that conjures up authenticity from having a real, physical connection to the event. This is done with places - whether it be real like a battlefield or Independence Hall or even fake likeThoreau's hut which is at the right place - as well as with pieces of military equipment. Soviet memorials often feature a T-34 Tank. U.S. memorials do this too, like this artillery piece in Minnesota or these two guns below a doughboy statue in Maryland. The USS San Francisco memorial uses damaged siding from the battles the ship fought. In some ruins, like the sunken hull of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, the damage and the ruins make up almost the entire memorial. That is also the case when ruined buildings are left standing as they are in several European battle locations.

The difference here is its resemblance to the older form of this kind of "magic" - the use of holy relics. Much as a splinter of the cross (a sign of defeat tranformed theologically into a symbol of victory) could be carried into battle to defeat the enemies of Christianity, the World Trade Center ruins can be transformed into a weapon to avenge the perpetrators of that act of terror. The ruins here do not just work their magic through remembrance. They do not mobilize sentiment simply through memory in moments of ceremony or in a specific memorial location, but actually take on a new physical form and turn into a weapon. This reinforces the politically desired connection between 9/11 and any war that the ship might be involved in. It also builds on the local patriotism often felt for these ships in their patron states by infusing the state's trauma into the physical structure of the vessel itself.

The annual celebrations of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany held at Victory Park across the river from down town Riga, Latvia, (memorial shown here) have been growing in popularity in recent years as Russian confidence grows and more and more of Latvia's Russians recover from the despondency of the period immediately after the Soviet collapse. There are large, active Russian youth groups in Estonia and especially Latvia with strong nationalist sentiment and ties to Putin's Russia.

Both Victory Park and the 9th of May are contested sites of memory. Baltic participation in the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the victory over Naziism was ambiguous - then Latvian president Vike-Freiberga went to the Moscow event only to explain in a public forum the ambiguous results of the war for Latvia - the ending of one horrid occupation and the beginning of another. Violent protests were the result of the removal of a memorial and the re-interring of the remains of Soviet soldiers from down town Tallinn, Estonia, two years ago.

Today I received this call to prohibit the demonstration in my e-mail inbox. I have translated it from the Latvian:

The 9th of May is approaching. That is the day that the Soviet regime celebrated as the "Day of Victory." Every year various events happen in Latvia organized by pro-Russian groups. These events don't only recognize those who fell in battle, but also praise the Red Army, the Soviet regime and its symbols. In previous years the participants in these events haven't just used Soviet symbols and uniforms, but even decorated Stalin's portrait with flowers.

The world recognizes the end of the Second World War on the 8th of May. The 9th of May is a Russian/Soviet imperial holiday. For Latvia that day means the renewal of the Soviet occupation of Latvian territory. The older residents of Kurzeme clearly remember remember the atrocities committed by the Red Army soldiers immediately following the collapse of the front held by Latvian and German troops still holding out there. Rape, robbery, and arson were the true fulfillment of the 9th of May.

That is why we, the signatories, call for an end to the situation that is perceived as an insult to the tens of thousands of victims of the occupation and for Latvian statehood and call for:

- the Riga city council to prohibit the mass celebration on the 9th of May
- the institutions responsible for maintaining justice to vigorously assure that totalitarian symbols of the USSR regime are not used
- the police to see that in the Pardaugava part of town and in Victory Park where celebrants usually meet on the 9th of May there is no mass consumption of alcohol and no loitering in the area
- the lawmakers to change the laws to make the selling of regime symbols of the Soviet regime or the glorification of its leaders or policies a criminal offence.

The Club of Latvian Nationalists

The political party “Visu Latvijai” (Everything for Latvia)

(Read the original Latvian at http://www.visulatvijai.lv/news.php?readmore=1156318651.)

I will try to keep abreast of events as they unfold in Riga.

Justice is blind, as the saying goes. But sometimes it can be blind to its own best interests – or to those of the public it is meant to serve.

This certainly appears to have been the case recently in Bavaria when Bavarian state authorities found themselves in the unenviable and ultimately untenable position of attempting to ban a new publication in what involved, on the surface at least, a conflict over copyright limitations but which, in a broader and more significant sense, raised questions about German officialdom’s role in shielding the public against “undesirable” thought.

The publication at which Bavarian authorities directed their judicial ire, entitled Zeitungszeugen (literally “newspaper witnesses”), began appearing in January of this year with the stated purpose of offering readers historical instruction and insight by means of reproductions of Nazi-era newspapers. Each issue of Zeitungszeugen provides commentary and analysis by respected historians directed at the facsimile copies of Nazi publications included within the paper’s outer sleeve, publications such as the Voelkischer Beobachter or Der Angriff (as well as of other, non-Nazi newspapers from the era). Many well-known German historians, including Hans Mommsen and Hans Ulrich Wehler, applauded the effort. But Bavarian authorities took a dim, unapproving view of the publication’s use of undiluted Nazi materials. Acting on orders from the state attorney’s office, police in January fanned out across the land to confiscate copies of Zeitungszeugen from newsstands while civil proceedings were prepared against the British publisher, Peter McGee, and his publishing house, Albertas. The offense, according to the official complaint, was twofold: first, infringement of copyrights claimed by the Bavarian Finance Ministry for Nazi publications from the period; and, second, the illegal display (within the facsimiles) of “symbols of unconstitutional [i.e. Nazi] organizations.” The larger concern, however, had to do with the alleged dangers posed by the distribution of “unfiltered” Nazi propaganda and its potential misuse by neo-Nazi groups.

Aside from the fact that these same materials (including Hitler’s Mein Kampf – the publication of which is also banned in Germany) can be easily accessed via the internet, there is also the question of whether the German public still needs to be protected from Nazi thought – or, indeed, any thought deemed hateful or in some fashion objectionable. As Zeitungszeugen editor-in-chief Sandra Poweronshitz asks on the paper’s website, have Germans reached a point of political and cultural maturation sufficient to allow them to be presented with raw, undigested material from the historical record? Obviously she believes they have. But through their actions, Bavarian authorities demonstrate that they continue to have doubts. The only other possible objection might lie in the tastelessness of the material. But, beyond considerations of fundamental public decency, should the state assume the role of determining what is tasteful and what is not? Or might the best means of confronting any lingering threat posed by Nazi ideology lie in exposing that ideology to wide-spread public scrutiny? I, for one, have recently begun playing recordings of excerpts from Nazi addresses to my son, who is now studying the Nazi period in school. This seems to me the most forceful way of revealing the loathsome and inhuman character of the Nazi regime. Its own words serve as the most effective tool against it.

In any event, Bavaria’s efforts to stop Zeitungszeugen have since encountered their first significant roadblock. In late March, a court ruled on the narrow question regarding copyright restrictions, saying that limitations on materials published before 1 January 1939 no longer apply. Therefore, Zeitungszeugen is free to continue reproducing publications printed prior to that time. The court chided Bavarian officials for attempting to use copyright law to impose a ban on publications like Zeitungszeugen, strongly suggesting that the legal status of the historical materials it employs should be codified in new law. So it is possible that we have yet to hear the last word in this affair.

www.zitungszeugen.de
www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/324/455995/text/print.html
www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/456/456126/text/
www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/877/456545/text/
www.sueddeutsche.de/,ra4m1/kultur/756/461382/text/
www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/309/462921/text/

A cooperative amateur history initiative in Bremen, Hamburg and Volgograd - Deutsch-russische Geschichtswerkstatt Stalingrad, part of http://ost-west-trikster.org/de has spent the last two years exploring "Stalingrad as a site of memory." The documentation of the completed project is now available as downloadable pdf file or book order in German or Russian: http://ost-west-trikster.org/de/projekte/geschichtswerkstatt/alle-ergebnisse/dokumentation.

The project will also be presented publically on April 6 in Hamburg (see http://ost-west-trikster.org/de for details in German). Part of the project was the making of a documentary film Stalingrad-Reloaded by Rebecca Blum. She wrote an article about the project in English in kultura (1/2008).

There is now a bill before the United States House of Representatives to establish a new, official "Honor and Remember" flag to honor people who die or have died while serving in the armed forces. See the initiative at http://www.honorandremember.org/index.html.

There, it says:

Mission: To create, establish and promote a nationally recognized flag that would fly continuously as a visible reminder to all Americans of the lives lost in defense of our national freedoms. All Military lives lost not only in action but also in service, from our nation's inception.

Rationale: In our over 200 year history there has never been an official national symbol that recognizes in gratitude and respect the ultimate sacrifice made by members of the United States military in service to our nation. The Honor and Remember Flag was created for that purpose.

There is a petition to sign to support the flag initiative. They are aiming to get as many signatories as military dead throughout history: 1.6 million. The flag would fly over military cemeteries and other appropriate sites as an official U.S. flag. Also, each living parent of a military fatality (not only battle deaths) would get a flag.


Some comments on this initiative:

- It is purely symbolic. After World War One, the first time that lots of memorials were being built shortly after an American conflict, and again after World War Two, there were discussions about the appropriate material form of remembrance. In many localities, those who didn't want a symbol in a cemetery, but wanted something useful in a more prosaic sense won out. The result was that many cities and towns got memorial halls or memorial stadiums or memorial parks and other such things instead of the statues more typical of France and Germany. This flag initiative has no "practical" aspect to it at all: There is no "buy a flag and support veteran care" or "sponser a flag and donate in a the name of a veteran to some cause" aspect. It is purely symbolic.

- As such, without any civilian purpose, it is a form of military "cult" (I use the term the way cultural anthropologists use the term, not critics of wacky religions). It is another way to re-invigor the military spirit and increase the prestige of things military, but interestingly without any real additional sacrifice being asked beyond the possible aspect of its use as a recruiting tool.

- The claim that there has never been a national symbol to honor military sacrifice may be true in a narrow sense. But it gives the impression that no honor or gratitude has been offered while we have, in fact, arguably among the most pro-military service societies in the industrialized world. The flag combines several symbols from American memorial culture, demonstrating that such symbols are indeed already well established: the folded flag presented to bereaved family at memorial services, the eternal flame (associated with the unknown soldier in other countries), and the gold star. Nevertheless, the designers insisted on adding text along the bottom, banning all ambiguity, just in case people still don't get it: "Honor and Remember."

- Throughout the webpage, the message refers to military deaths as deaths "for freedom." This transports a justification for all our wars, all our missions, and indeed service in any time or place. Much like George W. Bush's dog - the same kind of dog as Roosevelt had - some of the mythos of moral clarity will hopefully rub off onto recent history which is understood to be somewhat ambiguous.

- It reminds me a bit of the "yellow ribbon" campaigns, at least in the sense of those campaigns which the Asylum Street Spankers make fun of. Nonetheless: The initiative began with the family of one of the men killed in Iraq, so it is unfair to dismiss it as a completely hollow gesture or one meant simply to raise our country's flagging military morale. It undoubtedly has significance for some of the families. Therein lies some critique from another angle, however: What is it about our society which gives so many people the impression that the fallen aren't being honored enough? Is a flag really the answer, or do we need to consider more deeply our whole relationship to things military?

The Folsom Disaster Remembrance Statue, designed by Keiko Totori, has been built in Folsom, California to later recall the names of those who will eventually be killed when the nearby dam breaks and floods the city. Space has been left on the memorial for the estimated 500-2000 people who are likely to die in the disaster. The larger number is only likely if the dam breaks during the annual jazz festival. Many of those at the dedication ceremony mourn their own deaths as they consider it likely that they will be among the victims.

Even though the dam is still intact and nobody is dead yet, one name, that of a man who works on the dam and will inevitably be killed, has already been etched in the memorial.

See the report at http://www.theonion.com/content/video/preemptive_memorial_honors_future

I attend many memorial events as a participant-observer. My emphasis is much more on the observer side of the formula. I keep low, sit in the back row, take my notes, and slink away.

That was not possible at the commmoration of 90 years since the armistice here in Tübingen. Amidst all the activity to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Reichskristallnacht, the plunder and burning of the synagogue on 9 November, local Australian national Bruce Allen wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, the Schwäbisches Tagblatt, calling for anyone interested in remembering 11/11/1918 and the end of the Great War to contact him. He wrote that would like to meet at a local war memorial at the exact moment of the armistice - 11:00 AM - and read poetry from the war. He told me that about five people had expressed interest.



When the time came, there was no thought of hiding in the back row. I know Bruce personally and there were only three of us total. I represented the Americans, Bruce the Australians and another acquaintance of Bruce, Lothar H., stood in for the surrounding German community. We met at 10:30 in front of the memorial to the 10th Württemberg Infantry Regiment (which has now been spray painted with ejaculating penises for over a year, still visible despite some effort to wash off the graffitti). We chatted for a while and hoped others might come. Nobody did. So at 11:00 AM Bruce put a rose down on the memorial in memory of the fallen of all belligerant countries and we held a moment of silence. The memorial is at an intersection and there was lots of traffic, so "silence" is probably the wrong word.



We then found a quiet spot to stand in the Thiepval barracks. Bruce passed out some English, Australian, American, Irish and German poetry that he had selected to illuminate different aspects of the war - from the early patriotism to the later disillusionment. I am usually not a fan of poetry and recognized very little of it. I found the readings aloud - we each took part actively and passively - quite interesting. Brecht's Legende vom Toten Soldaten was completely new to me - and a real treat, I'll have to admit.

Against the background of the broad popular and offiical municipal recognition of the Holocaust memorialization, this little ceremony pales to insignificance. I think I can say it was somehow significant for the three of us, despite the casual atmosphere and the (almost) total lack of sacral abstractions, speeches wringing, digging for some message, and formal ceremony.

(My grandfather's brother, Elmer Peterson, died exactly two weeks before the armistice and is still buried in France: http://hatlie.de/files/elmerpetersonsgrave.pdf. I don't think anyone from our family has ever visited him.)

I submitted the following letter to the editor to the Schwäbisches Tagblatt 17 November. It was printed on 26 November:

Ich besuche alle möglichen Gedenkveranstaltungen im Raum Tübingen als Blogger (sitesofmemory.twoday.net) und "teilnehmender Beobachter." Es geht allerdings wesentlich mehr um Teilnehmen als um Beobachten, wenn nur drei Menschen anwesend sind! Ich gehöre nämlich zu den zwei Glücklichen, die Bruce Allen's Aufruf gefolgt sind, beim Vorlesen von Weltkriegsgedichten den 90. Jahrestag des Waffenstillstandes vom 11.11.1918 zu gedenken. Zu dritt vertraten wir durch unsere Anwesenheit gleich dreier kriegführenden Nationen - ein Australier, ein Amerikaner und ein Deutscher waren dabei! Während ich mich meist bei Kranzniederlegungen in der hintersten Reihe verstecke, war dies mit nur drei Teilnehmern nicht mal während der durch Verkehrslärm unterlegten Schweigeminute am mit Graffitti-überzogenen Kriegerdenkmal um genau 11:00 Uhr möglich.

Wir verzogen uns dann auf einen ruhigeren Platz und lasen einander von Bruce ausgewählte Gedichte in englischer und deutscher Sprache vor (u.a. Trakl, Brecht, Owen, Yeats). Sie reichten vom Patriotismus und Pathos des Jahres 1914 bis zu den traurigen und zynischen Stimmen späterer Jahre. Manche wirkten fern, anachronistisch und überzogen, während andere an Aktualität nichts verloren haben. Somit war locker und zwangslos für jeden etwas dabei.

Es kam mir in den Sinn, dass diese intime Form des Gekenkens, mit nur wenig Pathos und gespickt mit intellektueller Distanz und leichter Ironie, die sich allerdings nicht ganz durchhalten liesen, für Manche eine mögliche Alternative zu den gewöhnlichen Massenveranstaltungen wäre. Man treffe sich, unterhalte sich, und lerne sich und andere kennen.

Round anniversaries have a certain magic about them that lead to greater effort on the part of those who organize public memory events and draw more passive participants as well. The 9th of November in Tübingen was no exception. The 70th anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht swamped, to a degree even greater than usual, the other layers of meaning for this important date in German history. While a few letters to the editor, articles and academic lectures paid some attention to the events of 1918, 1923 and 1989, the city and the Geschichtswerkstatt strongly emphasized the events 1938.

The round anniversary of the 1938 Pogrom against Jews all over Germany was acknowledged in Tübingen with a wide range of events. The Geschichtswerkstatt ("History Workshop") organized its usual ceremony at Synagogenplatz, but because of the round anniversary and the fact that it was on a Sunday, many more people came than in previous years. Also, it was held several hours earlier than in the past, so it was still daylight during the ceremony. By my count, there were well over 100 people, perhaps 200.

Just before the start of the ceremony at 4 PM, just as the crowd was quieting down, someone yelled something about someone having invited "right wing speakers" to some event. Martin Ulmer opened the ceremony with the remark that more would be said about that at the close of the ceremony.

The choir of the German League of Unions ("Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund") from Reutlingen, Zwischentöne sang several Yiddish and Hebrew songs throughout the short event. Their first song was the most dramatic, a song from the Cracow ghetto from 1942, "Es brent." (sic - that's Yiddish spelling) The text that was repeated over and over was, "Our little city is burning."

Then Martin Ulmer from the Geschichtswerkstatt spoke about the history of the 9th of November. He did not mention the fall of the Wall in 1989, but spoke briefly about the declaration of the German republic in 1919 and the Hitler "beer hall putsch" of 1923 and, of course, the pogrom of 1938. He emphasized, as in previous years, that this was not a spontaneous event, but had been long planned. He recounted the chronology of events in the days before and how the Nazi leadership unleashed the terror at an opportune moment. Ulmer also spoke about the passivity of the population in Tübingen and the lesson the Nazis learned: They could do just about anything they wanted and the population would not interfere. He briefly touched on the history of the location of the memorial, Synagogenplatz.

Daniel Felder from the Jewish organization Bustan Schalom spoke briefly about what 1938 meant for Jews in Germany. It wasn't the beginning of the end as it is often portrayed. That had been earlier. He urged us not to forget what happened, even as the last eye witnesses are dying off. He expressed his heartfelt thanks to the city of Tübingen for its collective stand against the Neo-Nazi demonstration in July. That drew applause from the crowd. One might remark that Germans have some sense of relief being complimented in a context such as this.

Before the final song by the Zwischentöne, Martin Ulmer spoke again briefly, this time about the need to maintain vigilance against anti-Semitism. He remarked that we do not need to point our fingers at eastern Germany to find problems. Right here in Tübingen there is right-wing extremist publisher. (I think he was referring to the Hohenrain Verlag).

After the final song, at the closing of the ceremony, Ulmer mentioned several recent public remarks by prominent politicians and other figures that show the vitality of right wing ideology in Germany today. He referred to several instances, including the remark by the head of Baden-Württemberg's water power association, Manfred Lüttke, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man executed in 1945 for his involvement in the plan to assassinate Hitler the year before, had been "a common traitor" ("ganz gewöhnlicher Landesverräter"). These kinds of remarks were like oil on the fire of extremism, Ulmer said.

At 5 PM, at the Tübingen Rathausplatz in the center of the city, the closing ceremony was held for what had been a full week of commemoration. Beginning on the 3rd of November, each evening at 5 PM a short ceremony had been dedicated to the memory of one of six Jewish citizens of Tübingen who had suffered under the Nazis (loss of property, exile, imprisonment and, in some cases, death): Ruth Marx, Hanna Bernheim, Margarete Arnold, Max Löwenstein, Simon Hayum, and Josef Wochenmark. Their potrait was projected onto the Tübingen city hall over one of the other faces that is painted there (Dann, Osiander, etc.) and their biography described. Now, on Sunday night, all six of them were presented.

Mayor Boris Palmer began the evening at the microphone. One of the victims displayed on the city hall had emigrated to America. Palmer welcomed and acknowledged the daughter and other family members of one of the victims who had come from America and were present on the market square. His speech then touched on several interesting aspects of collective memory in Germany and Tübingen:

• He finds it unfortunate that Germany did not choose the 9th of November as a national day instead of the 3rd of October. The November date would have provided greater opportunity to reflect on the contradictions of German history
• There has long been a debate in Germany about finally concluding the endless discussion of the Holocaust and war guilt (Schlussstrichdebatte). But right here in Tübingen there are reminders of how current the history still is. Referring to the faces projected on the city hall building to his left, projected over and outshining the faces painted along the bottom, he pointed out how the top figure on the building, Eberhard, was not covered, had not been erased by this display. He pointed out how Eberhard is famous for having founded the University that bears his name in 1477. But that is also the year he expelled the Jews from the city.
• He gave a quick overview of the history of Jews in Tübingen after their return in the 19th century up to the Third Reich.
• Palmer also mentioned the recent unveiling of the "Platz des unbekannten Deserteurs here in Tübingen.
• He spoke about the project by the Tübingen group "Kultur des Erinnerns" ("Culture of Remembrance") and their efforts to have a plaque put up at the city hall to remember those members of the city council who had been removed from office by the Nazis. On this issue he expressed concern that we still haven't found a proper form to remember incidents like this. The man who was mayor of Tübingen when the Nazis came to power in 1933 and who stayed in office until 1939 has a street named after him. But the victims still have no marker to their memory in the city's landscape. Related to this is also the question of whether or not to expunge the names of Nazis from the city's official list of Honored Citizens (Ehrenbürger), a move he opposes as "unhistorical".
• Finally, the response of the city and its citizens to the neo-Nazis in July of this year shows that this history is still a very current issue.

The event continued with a reading of all the names of Tübingen Jews by members of the Netzwerk 9. November and an short biography of the fate of each of the five whose faces were projected on the city hall, and a moment of silence.

Later, there was a commemorative church service and, at 7:30 PM, a reading of "Die Ermittlung" (The Investigation) at the local theater ("Landestheater Tübingen").

Pictures of these events will be posted soon.