This is a book about memorials--specifically about a new type of memorial that commemorates experiences of survivors. These new memorials acknowledge loss and trauma that people have lived through, rather than died because of. It is also a book about why people feel the need to remember such difficult experiences. As such, it combines a topic that has strong scholarly interest with human stories of pain and resilience from Australia's recent history. The first half of the book outlines the emergence of this new genre of commemoration in three stages from the 1980s through the mid-2000s. The book includes six case study chapters, each of which tell the story of the development of a different Australian memorial.
A badly injured Callery pear tree discovered under the rubble of the Twin Towers is nursed back to health over a number of years. She becomes known as the 9/11 Survivor Tree and is planted at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza in New York City.
This is a book about memorials -- specifically about a new type of memorial that commemorates experiences of survivors. These new memorials acknowledge loss and trauma that people have lived through, rather than died because of. It is also a book about why people feel the need to remember such difficult experiences. As such, it combines a topic that has strong scholarly interest with human stories of pain and resilience from Australia's recent history.The first half of the book outlines the emergence of this new genre of commemoration in three stages: early explorations through community and public art projects in the 1980s and 90s; the adoption of traditional memorial forms from the late 1990s; and the creation of government-funded and commissioned memorials as part of the adoption of transitional justice practices of symbolic reparations since the mid 2000s.Alongside international interest in the field of memory studies, there is local interest in the stories behind these memorial projects. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has already been the catalyst for a number of new memorial projects, and has produced clashes between survivors and church groups about the best ways to acknowledge their suffering. This book, therefore, is timely, as it offers an opportunity for people to learn from past experiences.The book includes six case study chapters, each of which tell the story of the development of a different Australian memorial. The background to each of these projects is a heart-breaking story of loss and trauma, but many of the stories of the memorial development are stories of resilience, and of unlikely friendships and connections.
The Callery pear tree standing at the base of the World Trade Center is almost destroyed on September 11, but it is pulled from the rubble, coaxed back to life, and replanted as part of the 9/11 memorial.
Named a Best Book of the Year by The San Francisco Chronicle "Survivor Café . . . feels like the book Rosner was born to write. Each page is imbued with urgency, with sincerity, with heartache, with heart.... Her words, alongside the words of other survivors of atrocity and their descendants across the globe, can help us build a more humane world." —San Francisco Chronicle As firsthand survivors of many of the twentieth century's most monumental events—the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Killing Fields—begin to pass away, Survivor Café addresses urgent questions: How do we carry those stories forward? How do we collectively ensure that the horrors of the past are not forgotten? Elizabeth Rosner organizes her book around three trips with her father to Buchenwald concentration camp—in 1983, in 1995, and in 2015—each journey an experience in which personal history confronts both commemoration and memorialization. She explores the echoes of similar legacies among descendants of African American slaves, descendants of Cambodian survivors of the Killing Fields, descendants of survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the effects of 9/11 on the general population. Examining current brain research, Rosner depicts the efforts to understand the intergenerational inheritance of trauma, as well as the intricacies of remembrance in the aftermath of atrocity. Survivor Café becomes a lens for numerous constructs of memory—from museums and commemorative sites to national reconciliation projects to small–group cross–cultural encounters. Beyond preserving the firsthand testimonies of participants and witnesses, individuals and societies must continually take responsibility for learning the painful lessons of the past in order to offer hope for the future. Survivor Café offers a clear–eyed sense of the enormity of our twenty–first–century human inheritance—not only among direct descendants of the Holocaust but also in the shape of our collective responsibility to learn from tragedy, and to keep the ever–changing conversations alive between the past and the present.
As the children of the Holocaust reach adulthood, they often need professional help in establishing a new identity and self-esteem. During their childhood their parents have unconsciously transmitted to them much of their own trauma, investing them with all their memories and hopes, so that they become 'memorial candles' to those who did not survive. The book combines verbatim transcriptions of dialogues in individual and group psychotherapy sessions with analyses of dreams, fantasies and childhood memories. Diana Wardi traces the emotional history of her patients, accompanying them on a painful and moving journey into their inner world. She describes the children's infancy in the guilt-laden atmosphere of survivor families, through to their difficult separation from their parents in maturity. she also traces in detail the therapeutic process which culminates in the patients' separation from the role of 'memorial candle'.
Thornton brings more than a decade of experience in human resources and financial education to an extremely emotional issue--that of what a person needs to know when someone close to them dies.
A family plants an American elm on the Great Plains of Oklahoma just as the capital city is taking root -- the little tree grows as Oklahoma City grows until 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, the day America fell silent at the hands of one of its own. With her branches torn and tattered and filled with evidence from the bombing, the charred elm faces calls from some that she be cut down. In the end, as the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Building is cleared, this solitary tree remains -- but only because of a few who marvel that, like them, she is still there. The next spring when the first buds appear proving the tree is alive, the word spreads like a prairie wildfire through the city and the world. And the tree, now a beacon of hope and strength, is christened with a new name: The Survivor Tree.
In the wake of recent protests against police violence and racism, calls to dismantle problematic memorials have reverberated around the globe. This is not a new phenomenon, however, nor is it limited to the Western world. De-Commemoration focuses on the concept of de-commemoration as it relates to remembrance. Drawing on research from experts on memory dynamics across various disciplines, this extensive collection seeks to make sense of the current state of de-commemoration as it transforms contemporary societies around the world.
