President's Commission on the Holocaust

[m_rag...@comcast.net]

The President's Commission on the Holocaust

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Jimmy Carter first announced the formation of the President's
Commission on the Holocaust in 1978, a fifteen year process of
brainstorming, negotiation and compromise began. Originally consisting
of fifteen members, the President's commission was charged with making
recommendations for a suitable memorial to the victims of the
Holocaust. These recommendations were to be implemented by the United
States Memorial Council, to be appointed later. In April 1978, Carter
announced the original fifteen members. By September of that year, the
total had ballooned to twenty-one, with a twenty-four member advisory
board. The next month, the number stretched to twenty-four members of
the commission. Almost a year later, the commission was finally sworn
in, and the controversy it would face (and generate) was only
beginning. Disagreements over the nature of the Holocaust, the proper
memorial to its victims, and, especially, the geographical and ethnic
make-up of the commission (and eventually the council) would hinder
the project's progress for the next fifteen years.

The first meeting of the President's Commission on the Holocaust was
held on February 15, 1979. Its Report to the President was released on
September 27 of that year. The commission issued four recommendations,
including the creation of a "living memorial" with spiritual and
educational components, the national recognition of Days of
Remembrance in honor of the victims of the Holocaust, ratification of
the Genocide Treaty pending before the Senate, and U.S. pressure on
foreign countries to prosecute Nazi war criminals and to care for
Jewish cemeteries. The next battle would occur over the appointment of
the United States Memorial Council, tasked with implementing these
recommendations.

The appointment of the Council would bring to the forefront a struggle
that would distract the planners of the memorial for the next decade.
The White House wanted a group of people who were geographically and
ethnically diverse. This issue unearthed the question of who true
victims of the Holocaust referred to. Were the six million Jews killed
by the Nazis the only group being memorialized? What about the other
five million people (Gypsies, homosexuals, Ukrainians and others)?
Elie Wiesel, the first chairman of both the commission and the
council, wanted the memorial to, first and foremost, remember the
Jews. Because the Jews were killed due to biological identity, rather
than societal identity, many people considered them pre-eminent
victims. Other groups felt that equal representation was necessary and
the politics of representation on the Memorial Council were intense.
The White House was the focus of lobbying from all sides, ranging from
foreign governments concerned about the depiction of their citizenry
to survivors who were resentful of any attempt to dilute the magnitude
of suffering by the Jewish people.

Over a year after the President's Commission on the Holocaust issued
its Report to the President, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council was
finally appointed. There were fifty members plus ten members of
Congress on the Council, representing a diversity of region and
ethnicity. Within months, a subcommittee on site selection was
delegated, and this subcommittee chose Washington, D.C. as the ideal
site for the memorial. The Auditor's Complex, next door to the Bureau
of Printing and Engraving and adjacent to the Mall, was ceded to the
Council by the U.S. government. In August of 1983, George Bush
presented chairman Elie Wiesel with the keys to the buildings. The
site sparked yet another controversy: African Americans and Native
Americans felt that their interests were being slighted, and that
museums memorializing their struggles should precede that of the
Holocaust Museum. This was the politics of representation on a larger
scale-- that of the Nation's Mall rather than the Memorial Council.

A model of the memorial building and its neighbors on the Mall.

After briefly considering plans to adapt the existing buildings on the
site, the Council received permission to raze the Auditor's complex in
December, 1984. Several architects were successively commissioned to
produce a plan for the nascent Holocaust memorial. The council had a
difficult time deciding the optimal scope and nature of the space. The
first architects contacted were the firm of Notter, Finegold and
Alexander. They presented a plan to the council in December 1984 that
was smooth and curvilinear, with a facade of red and gray stone. It
was reminiscent of Washington architecture, but featured a fractured
oval shape to symbolize the fullness of life interrupted by the
Holocaust. Another design, prepared by a staff architect at the Tower
Construction Company named Karl Kaufmann, had a Hall of Remembrance
suspended over the entrance. After the council expressed a preference
for Kaufmann's plan, original architect Finegold reluctantly agreed to
work with Kaufmann's design. The U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, which
has vetoing authority for all official architecture, found the design
pompous, strident, and inappropriate. Maurice Finegold eventually
termed the Kaufmann plan as "neo-classicism worthy of Albert Speer,"
the architect of the Third Reich (Linenthal 83). In 1986, the council
approached I.M. Pei, who was too busy with the Louvre annex to take on
the project, and finally retained the services of Pei's partner, James
Ingo Freed. The eight years of negotiation and preliminary planning
were over, and, with the retention of Freed, the work of planning the
physical building would begin. The nature of the permanent exhibit was
still undecided.