Never too late to remember

Why has New York City, the largest center of Jewish culture and home to more survivors than any other city in the United States, taken more than half a century to begin implementing plans for its Holocaust memorial? Because the process of memorializing of any historical event, Rochelle Saidel explains, is inevitably political, and she gives a detailed analysis of how various groups within the American Jewish community, local power brokers, real estate developers, and major political players have all influenced the memorial's progress. Never Too Late To Remember traces the history of the numerous attempts to create a Holocaust memorial in New York City that began in 1946-47, and focuses on the present project, A Living Memorial to the Holocaust-Museum of Jewish Heritage, facing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in lower Manhattan and scheduled to open in 1997. Saidel is frank in attributing the many false starts and delays to conflicting political agendas, tensions among project organizers, and broken promises and commitments. More than a story of back-room politics, Never Too Late To Remember places New York City's project in the broader framework of Holocaust memorialization, thereby examining the dynamic between memory, ideology, politics, and representation.