Different Trains: Holocaust Artifacts and the Ideologies of Remembrance

Using four Holocaust-era railway cars displayed in four distinct museological settings, this article examines Holocaust symbolism and memorialization. In the context of a broad, cultural understanding of religion, an understanding that goes beyond theological reflection, the author investigates the relationship between religion and the Holocaust by closely analyzing these boxcar displays in their institutional contexts. Considering the placement and presentation of the railcars, he argues that each railcar defines a distinct memorial ideology: initiatory, integrative, ambivalent, and monumental. Furthermore, each ideology reflects and reinforces a symbolic strategy for Holocaust representation and memorialization in contemporary society. By correlating the four ideologies developed here with four classic theological responses to the Holocaust, the author offers a typology for analyzing Holocaust memorialization.