As the US Army was advancing across Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945, its divisions encountered dozens of concentration camps. Although German forces would surrender on the 8th of May, they left the camps overflowing with sick, dead, and dying prisoners. According to the US Army’s protocols of liberation, the survivors were provided with medical care, local citizens were mandated to tour and witness the horrors of the camps, and the dead received public burials conducted by military personnel. In addition, army divisions erected memorials to commemorate the death and suffering of the inmates—as did the German people in the years following World War II. In this presentation, I will examine a number of German concentration camp memorials in terms of their inscriptions and design. I will pay particular attention to the differences between those memorials constructed before, and those constructed after, the reunification of Germany in 1990.
About the presenterPatricia M. Radecki
Patricia Radecki is Professor of English at Nassau College, SUNY, where she teaches composition, applied linguistics, and folklore—as well as helps coordinate ESL curriculum. In addition to the topic of death in American culture, her research interests include Old Regular Baptist hymnody and the Bible as literature.