21st Century Holocaust Memorials in Ottawa and London as National Sacred Spaces

Abstract

This thesis critically and uniquely compares two recent national Holocaust memorial projects: the Canadian National Holocaust Monument, Ottawa, and the proposed United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, London. Using interviews with key figures involved in each project, the designs and the discourses surrounding them, I consider how these memorials fit within their broader national contexts, including with regard to Holocaust commemoration. In particular, this thesis examines how the two memorials can be understood as sacred spaces. I argue that they can be classified as sacred spaces, both in terms of how they are intended to function and how they are received, engaged with and experienced by visitors over time. They clearly manifest recurring characteristics of such sites and those involved in their creation perceive them as sacred spaces. This thesis also considers how the Canadian National Holocaust Monument and proposed United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre can be viewed as part of a lineage of existing Holocaust memorials and memorial museums around the world, including with regard to sacrality. Despite this, I demonstrate that these two new memorials also mark something different to what has gone before, as 21st century state-led projects, with limited Jewish community involvement, in countries where the events of the Holocaust did not take place.