Negotiating memory and identity : the Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial, London

In 1983, 38 years after the end of World War II, Britain gained its first public memorial dedicated solely to victims of the Holocaust: the Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial Garden. Organized by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, this campaign revealed the ways that memorialization of the Holocaust in Britain during the 1980s was cross cut with issues of identity, memory and history. In attempting to restore the «biography» of the memorial, this paper examines the way the memorial's relationship with its potential locations is important in the making of meaning and shows how debates over the perceived appropriateness of the sites were structured by, and in turn structure, various discourses concerning Anglo-Jewish identity.