The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War (review)

There has always been a connection between the destruction of buildings and the killing, deportation, or subjugation of the people who built them. This book, however, examines architectural destruction not as collateral damage, but as a medium for waging war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Architectural destruction creates a new physical reality and is a means of destroying people and rewriting history. Using a thematic approach, the focus is on the most brutal cases of architectural destruction in the last and current centuries.

The first theme examines the role of architectural destruction in genocide and ethnic cleansing. Destruction in the former Yugoslavia created a new ethnic reality with the loss of multiethnic communities and Islamic heritage. The Nazis attacked Jewish architecture as a prelude to the holocaust, and Turkey continues to eradicate Armenian architecture after their genocide to prove they never existed. The second theme is terror attacks on architecture by terrorist groups and nations to lower morale and defeat opponents. The 9-11 attackers selected targets symbolizing American hegemony to cause terror to force policy changes. The Allies bombed historic German cities without military significance to cause terror, needlessly destroying cultural heritage, a "vindictive vandalism" (p. 82). Terror attacks against architecture seldom lower morale or cause defeat, but do have propaganda value. Another theme is destruction to reorder conquered territories or to establish new governments. In Israel, architecture was destroyed to reflect a continuous Jewish presence—whole Arab villages have been demolished, "the desire of the conqueror to leave nothing recognizable for the exiled to return to" (p. 104). For revolutionary regimes, such as the Soviet Union, the destruction of buildings associated with former governments was immediate evidence of change. Alteration of architecture to create partition is explored in such cases as Berlin, Belfast, and Israel. Partitions create homogeneity and dislike, ultimately leading to instability.

Further discussed are rebuilding and commemoration. Should the World Trade Center be rebuilt or should the site be memorialized, what evidence should remain in Germany of Nazism, and should the giant Buddhas in Afghanistan be restored? Whatever the answers, when rebuilding occurs, it usually does not reflect the pluralistic past, as in Bosnia and Kosovo. The book concludes with arguments that laws regarding the destruction of architecture should be more strongly enforced, and that the crime of cultural genocide should be recognized; a crime without mass killing, but encompassing the destruction of the architectural record.

I recommend this book. The writing is passionate. In describing, for example, Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes as retribution for terrorist attacks, the author writes —"It is as if the stones themselves are culpable" (p. 145). There are a few faults. Many of the cases do not readily fit into one theme and are repeatedly discussed, and some do not fit at all. For instance, the author places U.S. failings to protect Iraq's cultural heritage following the U.S. invasion in the chapter on terrorist and state attacks to cause terror. Even with these minor shortcomings, this book, which promotes cultural tolerance, is needed.