Do you know of another site that could be included on this list? It might be a large official memorial or a small personal one. Are there other traumas that still need memorial sites?
Do you know of another site that could be included on this list? It might be a large official memorial or a small personal one. Are there other traumas that still need memorial sites?
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The site of the assassination of the generals and judges on the beach near Tema, Ghana.
I would say the new WWII memorial they built in DC about 5 years ago. The fountain is just mezmoring and allows those visiting to get lost in its beauty. Its amazing how you can just walk around and really get lost in a memorial that is built in the middle of a big city. Although it took a long time for it to be built, it was definetly done right.
(Are there other traumas that still need memorial sites?)
Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Will it ever become just a memory?
Igreja de N.S. de Candelaria- This church in downtown Rio doesnt exactly fit the bill of trauma tourism site since there are no memorials there, nor do most local people seem visit for the purpose of tragedy commemoration but for prayer, noon mass, etc. It feels almost like just another church- but taxi drivers and tour guides are quick to point out that Candelaria, whose doorways and lawns used to be home to many of Rio’s street kids, was also a place where they were massacred, allegedly by police in July of 1993. Most of the tourists I talked with there came not for the architecture or dim, candlelit paintings of saints, but because they remembered the ‘trauma’ from the documentary film Bus 174.
The Garden Of Rememberance, Dublin Ireland. The sculpture is by Oisin Kelly
North Field on Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, where the atomic bombis dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were loaded onto B-29s. The bomb-loading pits are located in a stark clearing. Each is covered by a shell that allows visitors to look into the pit, where photos of the bombs are displayed. It’s a quiet, somber site, a bit challenging to reach and find. Nearby is Runway Able, where the Enola Gay and Bockscar took off.
The Marpi Region of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, is filled with sites of remembrance, where Japanese soldiers and civilians jumped off cliffs rather than be captured by American troops in July 1944. There’s also the fortified cave that served as the Last Japanese Command Post during the battle for the island. A somber mood hangs over the entire region. At the top of Suicide Cliff (an 800-foot drop), there are messages in Japanese carved into every segment of a cactus plant.
I would like to suggest a small memorial to a BIG tragedy, one of the major tragedy and one of the greatest losses of human life in 20th century! It’s in Kyiv, Ukraine. It’s a memorial to Holodomor – The Great Famine (Genocide) in Ukraine 1932-1933. It was a man-made famine that took around 10 million people ((or from 7 to 10), about 25% of Ukrainian population)!
If you would like to read more, you can for example visit Human Rights website: http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/Ukraine_famine.htm
Holocaust Memorial in Boston
There are 6 “gates” which the viewer tranverses , each representing a million deaths. Steam roles from above & names, quotes & numbers are sandblasted into the glass walls of the gates.
In the middle of busy city Boston, this memorial created a gaping wound in the abrupt manner it affronts the viewer. I was with a group, loud & boisterous & upon seeing the memorial all joy leached from everyone creating a massive void. I relived my knowledge of the horrors through the looming gates. The enclosed spaces, the rolling smoke& the words of the dead engraved. It was very somber & tear awakening, more powerful for its protrusion into everyday life.
Spruce Knob, WV
“All my changes were there.”
Omaugh, Northern Ireland
–Six people (?) if I recall correctly were killed in a bombing.
Memorial sites provide a sort of closure in response to an out of the ordinary tragedy. I guess humans are compassionate people, and even those non-affiliated with the tragedy at hand can feel a monumental-sort-of-collective power of emotion.
–When I go home to visit—
Is my favorite memorial site
I would suggest another location: VENEZUELA
Based on a TV program about the history of women & how they were treated over the centuries—I recall hearing there was a town in Germany where all (nearly all) the women were burned at the stake for being witches. There should be a trauma memorial there.
Trinidad & Tobago were the 1st Carribean nations to be free from slavery and colonialism.
Anywhere you go in rural Ireland, you see traces of the homes & stone walls & farm plots abandoned by those who died or fled during the Famine—it wasn’t always the “Celtic Tiger.”
Place of memory
Oradour-Sur-Glane in France
Lieux-de-memoire
NOLA
Indianapolis, where I live, has more war memorial downtown than any city I’ve seen (except perhaps Washington D.C.). You should definitely check it out. The WWI memorial has a room inside that is very strange (as was the whole war) but in another area of the memorial is a quilt by schoolchildren about Japanese internment camps.
We went to a dedication ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial there. My wife’s uncle had been killed in Vietnam. Our feelings included grief & pride, but also anger at the gov’t that sent him to his death & cynicism over this country’s glorification of war. That’s what I fear memorial sites often do—glorify a horrific human practice.
Los Alamos—where the world first moved into the Nuclear age (first bomb was tested).
I didn’t see any memorial site for the Battle of Stalingrad?
1) Emotions… thoughts of the event that occurred there and how those people were effected.
2) the bridge that fell in Minneapolis
3) Mourn: Reflect, grieve, accept, love, be silent
4) Out of respect for those lost…those who are loosing, for those still here.
5) We couldn’t live without it
Peace and love.
Did you ever see the WTC memorial at the New York New York casino in Las Vegas? That was a weird sight & site. It was a t-shirt memorial along an outer fence, an odd bit of sincere (?) emotion for Vegas?
At the Taos Pueblo they have the remnants of a bombed church. People thought it was a sanctuary, but were bombed anyway. Now it’s part of a tour. The guy I spoke with didn’t mention the bombing until we were right there. They buried folks around the church, very close to where they fell.
Cambodia
When I go to Siem Reap, I see people with red circles on their foreheads. They heat a glass placed there, this to draw out the chukbal- the bad memory stress headache.
I like to go to Wat Bo. You can see pictures from the epic Reamker. I like to visit our school. The children are very happy there.
I like to go to Phnom Kulen. There is a footprint of Buddha there. The river there runs over rocks. You can let it pour over you for good luck.
I visit there because of all the stories people have told me. It is amazing what people can endure and still be human.
Sikh massacre, Punjab, India. 1984 “Operation Blue Star”
Have you seen the new Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem in Israel. Definitely needed as a museum. Especially when survivors are dying and extinct.
Nickel Mines, PA, site of the murder of several Amish school children.
The Amish razed the building and reconstructed a new one. Interested to consider this form of memory site as opposed to out and out memorializing.
Darfur. (Thank you for doing this project)
TRAUMA=New Orleans, LA, Aug 31, 2005
Can you please include the most traumatic urban American event in history? Put up a memorial quickly—the city will be a new Atlantis by 2070 or so. Interact with the art community there to set the location and theme—
Mexico; Chapas State; outside of San Cristobal de Las Casas & village of Chomula.
100% indigenous, with typical remnants of colonial power: Catholic church & cemetery on hillside, with burned carcass of automobile. It is pointed out on my eco tour as the legacy of two journalist’s attempt to film documentary. They were from the capital city. The Indians didn’t appreciate their project. The carcass just stays.
the 2/28 peace park memorial in Teipei, Taiwan where civilians were massacred by, I think, either Korean or Japanese forces
Your display is disappointingly Western –(or American) centric. Yes, 4 American religious women were killed in El Salvador, but around the same time and entire village of 800 was wiped out by the army (exactly one survivor). There is now a memorial at this village, El Mozote, which is quite significant for being one of the few memorials of this kind in Latin America.
D-Day Landings: same blindness here. So many more French people died in this war, and there are numerous monuments. Even more true for WWI.
India—in Amritsar, entire park is a memorial for hundreds killed there by the British.
The Black Holocaust Museum—Milwaukee, WI. Founder (who still leads tours) survived lynching.
Muy Bueno, Laga Atitlan, Guatemala. 12 villages named after the apostles. 1976 earthquake: 10,000 dead.
Arlington National Cemetery, Washington D.C.
Mankato, MN, Sioux massacre
Cobh, Ireland; A memorial & museum to all those who immigrated from Ireland. The museum also has memorial on the Lusitania—the bodies were brought there.
Nicaragua has a park in memory to victims of Hurricane Mitch
In France; a completed preserved village (in ruins) were all inhabitants were killed in WWII. Is a national memorial.
I’d like to suggest a location—Seoul, Korea. There was the March 1st movement (1919) against Japanese colonial rule. I think this could be included…
Pogrom of 1919, town of Jitomer, near Kiev
did you read a recent piece in the New York Times about “El Valle De Los Caidos” the memorial to Franco on the outskirts of Madrid? It’s supposed to contain the remains of both Republican and fascist soldiers.—
Maui
Kalahari. It was amazing the first time I got there and it is still very cool!!! I love Kalahari.
Chandigar, India. Visited 2—’08. The Nek Chand Garden. The sculptures are made from the refuse of the city of Chandigar when Le Corbusier (sp?) designed the “new India” model city. The remnants of dishes, bangles, light fixtures & pots still have a sense of their previous owners. The new city identifies itself as “commerce in sector 17” and living quarters in sector 22, where the garden memorializes the culturally rich and now destroyed heritage of what once stood.
Mankato, MN is my hometown and shares the distinction of being the site of America’s largest mass execution. On December 26, 1862, 38 Native Americans were hung on what is now the location of the library. The hangings were in response to an uprising which was in turn a response to the Native Americans not being given food and annuities, a promise made by the whites after uprooting and relocating the Native population.
Originally there stood a large stone slab simply stating “Here were hanged 38 Sioux Indians, Dec. 26, 1862.” This was removed in 1972 and in an effort by friends Amos Owen (a Dakota spiritual leader) and Bud Lawrence (a Mankato businessman) to bring two communities together, the spot was renamed “Reconciliation Park” and is home to a sculpture of a Dakota elder (dedicated in 1992) and of a bison (dedicated in 1997)
AND to continue a more Dakota way of commemorating there is on December 26, the anniversary of the hanging< a run from Fort Snelling in Minneapolis to Mankato.
In September every year there is a wacipi in commemoration of those hanged. And connected to the same genocidal events, there is every other year a commemorative march from Morton, MN to Fort Snelling honoring the men, women and children rounded up after the Dakota war of 1862 and force marched to a concentration camp at the site of what is now Fort Snelling State Park. There is a memorial at the prison site, but more important to the Dakota are the ceremonies that are held there honoring the ancestors who suffered there.
Another place could be the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee WI.
Also, I haven’t personally been there, but my mom described the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, how all the names of those who died are etched into one big wall made out of black marble, and the point is to run your hands over the wall and over the names as you go by it. It sounds like a very moving experience, to feel the empty spaces where the names are. She go choked up as she described it.
The thing that comes to mind is not a specific place, but rather people who need to be remembered and for whom I am not aware that there is one specific location that honors or remembers them all. It would be a site for all the disaparacidos of Central and South America, people who have disappeared at the hands of government oppression in many different countries. Several countries have their own memorial to specific places or time frames, but there so many people all over these countries who are just gone, not in jail, not shot and killed and their bodies found, just no longer with us, disappeared. I’m not saying a site like that is even possible or that I would even want it to be a “site”…I don’t know.
I would have to say the Holocaust museum in Washington DC is one of the most moving places I have ever been to. When you arrive you receive a mock passport with the story of someone who went through the holocaust. Every floor you get to read a new page and at the end you find out if you survived or were killed. Not only is the museum very moving, the addition of the passport creates another way to see how horrible everything was.
I am aware of several sites of trauma in Colorado.
In eastern Colorado there is the site of the Sand Creek Massacre, where military forces, under the command of Col. John Chivington, attacked a settlement of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians on November 29, 1864. Over 160 individuals were killed, mainly children, women, and elders. The descendants of people at the massacre have organized Healing Runs, which traces the route from the site of the Sand Creek Massacre to Denver.
There is a memorial to the victims of the Ludlow Massacre, in southern Colorado. On April 20, 1914, in the midst of a strike of miners against the coal company, the National Guard opened fire on a tent colony. Twenty-five people were killed that day, including a group of women and children who smothered to death in a cellar, where they had taken shelter.
There is a camp in southern Colorado, the Granada Relocation Center, also called Camp Amache, where Japanese nationals resident in the U.S. and U.S. citizens of Japanese descent were interned during World War II.
In Chautauqua Park, Boulder, Colorado, three Chicano activists were killed in a car bomb blast on May 27, 1974. Several days later three more activists were killed in another part of Boulder. These people have been called “Los Seis de Boulder.”
Gettysburg. It is a sight that has been a memorial almost since the actual battle. Part of the interest is how many monuments there are all over the place and back in the woods that have almost disappeared. A very haunting place that has contributions from both sides of the battle. I’m not from the South but I’m sure that there are many paying tribute to the battles and losses of the Civil War.
Anyone who visits the Alamo is surprised by one, it’s location- smack dab in the center of downtown San Antonio, and two, its size. It’s small, the Alamo is very small. You can also walk a 100 yards in any direction and buy a Starbuck’s, Ben and Jerry’s, or Big Mac- which I believe truly marks the sort of hard fought freedom for which those heroes gave their lives.
Fittingly, the coolest thing about the Alamo is the gift shop. On the official Alamo website, an advert for the gift shop states: “Here are the most sought-after items designed and specially chosen to honor the memory of those who fought and died defending liberty at The Alamo.” These honors, I might add, include belt buckles, coolie cups, bumper stickers, peach salsa, beer steins, chili mix, baby booties, and tie tacks.
The Lidice Memorial (The Children’s War Victims Monument)-
A memorial that I found particularly moving was in Lidice (Czech Republic), where there is an expansive memorial to commemorate the gestapo’s murder of the town’s inhabitants during WWII. The act was in retalliation for the attempted assassination of Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, the Reich Protector; the inhabitants there were in no way affiliated with the attempt, but the village was destroyed and hundreds murdered. Today, one can see just a museum and an open field where the victims once lived. There remain the foundations of homes and pannels with stories on them, as well as the remains of a church inside which dozens were burned alive. A cemetary and a few other elements of the town still exist, but for the most part the memorial is a vast, vacant area dotted by signs of destruction. One of the most moving things there is a bronze sculpture of the children of Lidice, 82 of which were shipped to an extermination camp and killed. The work depicts 82, life-sized children looking longingly, hopelessly over what used to be their homes off into the distance. I remember this memorial particularly well because of how life-like the children look, standing there, missing and alone.
ttp://www.lidice-memorial.cz/default_en.aspx
Depending on one’s definition of trauma… one might be interested in the current long list of toxic sites in the US, including many superfund sites that are disproportionately located near black citizens. Of course, if trauma is an experience of a passed event, this is still very much ongoing.
On January 30, 1972 – Bogside, Derry, Ireland
http://larkspirit.com/bloodysunday/
There has been a longstanding wound/healing process to the Socio/Political events surrounding Northern Ireland. I noticed there wasn’t note of this historical event.
Memorial
http://larkspirit.com/bloodysunday/skippics/index.html
Your idea is haunting, which reminds me of the silence filling the reflecting pool of the Oklahoma City memorial — visit at sunset and the long shadows mingling with the visitors is a silent … communion of sorts — The direction/axis of the site seems to take in the sunrise/sunset experience … I also wonder what role “silence” has with all of these sites … how do the sites contain silence? Obviously there is the purely visual dimension of horror, or the search for explanations … but what about the interaction of silences? Can you photograph silences?? May all your visits have a synchrony of ideas for you … living memory amid the unforgotten …
Every year on the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, thousands of mourning fnas gather outside of his out at 171 E Lake Washington Blvd in Seattle. There’s a park next door that has been dedicated to Kurt, and everyone has a giant party to celebrate him. It’s unbelievable. April 5-8th every year is a good time to look for the crowd (no one is sure what day he died on).
Have you thought about places of personal trauma? like homes where kids were abused or trusted places, like churches, that become places to which one returns to for family celebrations that also evoke the memory of the abuse?
there are also the many, many mother-and-baby homes in Ireland –the sad places where the birthing process was used as an instrument of punishment for the women and children-yet-unborne?
thanks you for doing this
Terezinstadt in the Czech Republic
When you live in the city you grew up in, when memory spaces are alongside your daily life, time collapses strangely and unpredictably: when you pass by an old bus stop that you stood at in high school, or pass by the home you grew up in, the junior high you walked to everyday. The street you grew up on, played kickball on, burned leaves in a curbside bonfire: that street still returns to you in your dreams. It reminds me that time is an artifical construct.
A related thought I had several years ago and recorded in my journal: “I woke up from a dream about a past I never had that made me lie in bed thinking about the past I did have and the future I won’t have. The clock said it was 6:50 am, December 4, 2006. Says who?”
The Homomonument in Amsterdam. The pilgrimage/memorial sites for Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, Sakia Gunn in Newark, NJ.
Immediately I thought of lightpost memorials that appear in my Milwaukee
neighborhood from time to time. An outsider gets no explanation, and even must
figure out that it’s a memorial marker for someone who has died. Usually no
name, date, or explanation of how the person met their fate, just a colorful
array of flowers, etc. wrapped around the concrete light poles.
The objects that have cought my eye in particular are stuffed animals… blue
teddy bears, you know, that kind of thing.
Thing is it’s a neighborhood and cop issue — some neighbors don’t like them
around and some cops want them taken down quickly. Not sure where that all
stands, and I haven’t seen one in a while.
Two years ago, one of Macauley’s best friends, Sarah Tucker, was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Her friends made a beautiful memorial for her at the spot where she was hit. The memorial included a gold-painted bicycle, flowers, signs and other personal items. I think there’s a website that has some images at http://www.shooter.net/tucker/ and we might have some color photos somewhere. I hope this helps.
I still think the most impacting memorial I have encountered would
be the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington D.C. I visited it
again this summer and was overwhelmed with emotion. I think the
“architecture” is key here: the descent one physically makes, the
sense of a journey, its openness and visibility, as well as its lack
of hierarchy. What I found interesting this time around was the
figurative sculpture placed diagonal from the wall mid-point. I
believe it is three or four soldiers, maybe two holding up one other.
I do know know if it was supposed to depict soldiers lost in the war
or the idea of veteran’s more generally, but given its relative
youthfulness in terms of history, I wonder what the sculptor used to
model these figures? Images of dead soldiers, living soldiers, or
something made up? (Something about the intersection of the
general/abstract and specific/embodied).
By the contrast, the new WWII memorial lost me. It seemed from another
time, with its vertical arches and decorative emphasis, yet was built
recently. It recites traditional forms of memorial and commemoration,
to which I, and I would like to think, we as a culture, have grown
numb.
The NS Doku-Center and Reichsparteitagsgelände in Nuremberg, Germany should be included as well. I have been there several times and would love to write about my experiences.
I would suggest the Vietnam Memorial. I visited there when I was a little girl and still have vivid memories of seeing the memorial and relatives names. Also the background story behind the memorial is very interesting.
http://www.croagh-patrick.com/natfamine.html
Famine memorials also found in central destinations of the famine diaspora, like Sydney, Boston, New York, Toronto.
Norris Hall, Virginia Tech
Gainesville, Florida -site of a serial killer series of murders which terrorized this college town in the early 1990s. Living through this time was horrifying, and gave me a very small understanding of the horrific conditions under which many people in many times and places on your list have lived. Fear, mistrust, isolation, desperation – are no way to live.
This is getting a bit more subjective, but I much prefer the Zune Marketplace. The interface is colorful, has more flair, and some cool features like ‘Mixview’ that let you quickly see related albums, songs, or other users related to what you’re listening to. Clicking on one of those will center on that item, and another set of “neighbors” will come into view, allowing you to navigate around exploring by similar artists, songs, or users. Speaking of users, the Zune “Social” is also great fun, letting you find others with shared tastes and becoming friends with them. You then can listen to a playlist created based on an amalgamation of what all your friends are listening to, which is also enjoyable. Those concerned with privacy will be relieved to know you can prevent the public from seeing your personal listening habits if you so choose.