Even the need to commemorate the victims of the holocaust and National Socialist brutality has been, and still is, disputed in Germany. The difficult search for an adequate medium to articulate memories reflects the ambivalence of German memory itself. Memorials, and monuments even more, traditionally act as legitimizing devices celebrating national achievements; as James E. Young discusses here, this creates particular problems for a nation seeking to commemorate the millions of victims of its own acts in the past.
