| Abstract | This thesis explores the comparative historicization of Holocaust memory in Holocaust museums in the United States and Germany. This study compares four different museums – two German, two American – that have not previously been the subject of monographic, comparative investigation: the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the Holocaust Museum Houston; the Jewish Museum Berlin; and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt. I explore the way in which museums memorialize the Holocaust and are shaped by national histories and patterns of collective memory. Discourse analysis is used to analyze the text panels of the four museums to determine the differences between how the American museums and how the German museums compare the Holocaust, and offer reasons for why these differences occur. The use of text panels yields universality to the study, since each of the four museums utilize text panels to display the main educational information to the public.In this study, I argue that the Americanization of the Holocaust in the American museums and the different national memories of the Holocaust in the United States and Germany account for many of the major differences in the museums. To demonstrate this, evidence from three different parts of the museums – the sections that cover anti-Semitism, Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, and the conclusion of the Holocaust museums or exhibits – is employed.
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