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Resistance, Countermemory, Justice

Memory doubles over itself in this letter from Miles Lerman, national campaign chairman for the Holocaust Memorial Museum, describing the transfer of objects for the museum from Poland to Washington, D.C. To begin with, Lerman’s statement that he “froze,” however accurate an account of his immediate reaction to taking hold of the Holocaust victim’s shoe, is pressed into a considerably different service once incorporated into a letter soliciting funds for the museum. Lerman is certainly no longer frozen; the experience presumably reinforced the reasons for which he placed himself in a position to receive the shoe (not least of which was the camera shot). Hence the letter. And however arresting he hoped the effect of this story would be upon readers of the fundraising letter in the spring of 1993, the year the museum was dedicated, that feeling was surely not intended to last among prospective donors either. Immediately following his confession that he “froze” holding the shoe, Lerman insists that his readers “bear in mind that I am a former partisan. I was hardened in battle and I deal with this Holocaust story almost on a daily basis” (“IPS,” p. 22). Memory at once arrests and impels action.