TY - THES ID - 134510310 TI - Geheugenplaatsen als bouwstenen van een herinneringscultuur: de Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen. AU - Janssens, Margaux AU - De Cauwer, Stijn. AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Letteren. Opleiding Master in de culturele studies PY - 2014 PB - Leuven : K.U. Leuven. Faculteit Letteren DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:134510310 AB - After the end of the Second World War, the world had to deal with the aftermath of the war and the Holocaust. The Holocaust awareness evolved from almost being neglected and marginalized in the immediate post-war period to the core of European identity. The Holocaust has become an integral and crucial part of our collective memory. The nineties were marked by a real Holocaust boom, it became a hot topic in society. No other event in contemporary history has been so much debated and documented. The primary purpose of this study is to determine how a culture of remembrance is created through places of memory, in this case museums dedicated to the Holocaust. In the last three decades there has been an increased interest in the interaction between the ways we remember the past and how we use it to make sense out of the present and create our identity. Or, as David Lowenthal suggested: 'The past is essential and inescapable. Without it we would lack any identity, nothing would be familiar, and the present would make no sense.' (Lowenthal, 1985, 5) What Pierre Nora called the lieux de mémoire also became an important aspect in how we should remember the past. In the first part of this research, a theoretical framework is set up based on three different themes. First, the debate about remembrance and its importance for the way we deal with the past will be discussed. The second part will be more specific and will discuss the way the Holocaust has been remembered over the last 65 years. The third part of the theoretical framework contains an analysis of the Holocaust museum boom and the changing role of these museums in society. An important aspect here is the way in which survival testimonies are used in the museum setting. Over recent years there has been a shift in the way in which testimonies are used. The focus now lies on the desire to reveal the horrible experiences that the victims of Nazi genocide had to bear. 'Witnesses are guides to an experience most of us n... ER -