Tuesday, September 21, 2004

I went to Buchenwald and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

The management of Buchenwald has decided to sell souvenirs of the concentration camp beginning next year. The project organizers insist their motivation is not money -- they get enough funds to maintain the site from state and federal grants -- but to help 'the younger generation' connect to the period and take something away with them which is 'loaded with the emotions of the place.'
The souvenirs are being developed by art students at Bauhaus University. You can buy stationery embedded with tiny pebbles and twigs from the site, for example, and a potted beech (Buchenwald means beech). I can already see shopping lists, telephone messages and thank-you notes being written on the paper, and someone lovingly tending their beech tree, forgetting entirely where it came from and what some art student once dreamed it symbolized.
"Other students used Germany's postwar constitution as inspiration, copying quotations from the paragraphs dealing with human rights onto small plaques or wristbands." More to the point, but gimmicky.
Just about the only really good idea is a pamphlet about the life story of one of the camp's victims. This is actually important; personalizing the experience can be very powerful.
The problem is, none of the rest actually are 'loaded with the emotions of the place.' And so while I don't oppose 'souvenirs' (terrible word in this context) in principle -- I can imagine that some people would like to take home a reminder of the horrors or the lessons of the camp, other than a DVD or book -- I don't think they've hit on the right formula yet.

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