Arguing About Another Third Reich Remnant

In July, I read Brian Ladd's Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (1997). Ladd's book successfully combines historical background with contemporary debates concerning the ongoing evolution of the city and it's public spaces. Unlike Karen Till's The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place, Ladd's text is highly readable and never gets bogged down in jargon or discipline-specific language. Till, in contrast, has an approach she refers to as "geo-ethnography", wherein she seeks to better understand the intersections of "personal hauntings" and "social hauntologies"; she informs the reader that her text is "unconventional" because she didn't want to "create an artificial narrative coherence defined by an ethnographic present" and that it reflects her "shifting positionalities". Ugh.
These texts share a reoccurring postwar meme: Germans arguing about the historical and moral significance  of a particular geographical site. These arguments often expand into debates about the very essence of German national identity. In America, we see these kinds of arguments less frequently--and most vociferously when development threatens to encroach on former Civil War battlefields. Should we allow a casino to open its doors in Gettysburg? In Berlin there are multiple layers of ruins, each layer as fascinating and fraught with moral significance as the last. For my money, almost no site is as spectacular as that of the Reichstag, with its Italian Renaissance design, bullet-scarred facade, and ultra-modern dome. The fates of other structures/spaces have evoked greater passions, however, such as the now demolished East German Palace of the Republic (to be replaced by a reconstruction of the old Hohenzollern Royal Palace).

In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kulish describes another confrontation over the fate of a Berlin landmark. Kunsthaus Tacheles--a former department store and magnet for artists (and tourists)--faces development. While the Nazis used it to house prisoners of war,  the fate of this site is less about Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung than it is about the city's future identity. Will Berlin maintain it's "edginess", or will development transform it into a more bourgeois city like Hamburg.

Damage to Majdanek

AP reports that a fire burnt down half of one of the barracks buildings at Majdanek last night. Majdanek was one of six Vernichtungslager or "extermination camps" that the Nazis constructed in 1941. At this point, the cause of the fire is still under investigation, with the likely culprit a recent power outage. The most upsetting result of the fire was the loss of approximately 10,000 pairs of shoes belonging to former victims.
Earlier this year, flooding threatened Auschwitz-Birkenau as well. I suppose it's inevitable that these strucutures ultimately succumb to the elements. I wonder how long museums to Auschwitz and other death camps will stick around? Will they have the longevity of sites like the Dome of the Rock or Trajan's Column? Will future generations still want or need them around?

Above is the memorial to the victims of Majdanek. It also houses the ashes of the dead.