Memory of the Shoah: the Case of Berlin

In the framework of memory, this paper investigates the interaction between remembrance and oblivion at a philosophical level, as well as on a historical concrete level in relation to the German memory of the Shoah. In the first part, an analysis of this problem is carried out in dialogue with selected philosophers, sociologists, and historians. In the second part, this question is dealt with in the context of the great public debates which occurred in Germany in the nineties, particularly the debate, in 1993, on the remodelling and re-signification of the "New Guard-House" in Berlin, the polemics provoked by Martin Walser's discourse in 1998 in Frankfurt, and the debate, from 1989 to 1999, on the plan to build a monument in Berlin for the victims of the Shoah. The paper concludes with a discussion of the force of the Berlin monument in present time.