Young considers the public dimension of memorials, and of Holocaust memorials in particular. He notices that monuments refer us to the past, but that they can also play an activist role in the present, thus affecting the future. He quotes Marianne Doezema: “The public monument has a responsibility apart from its qualities as a work of art. It is not only the private expression of an individual artist; it is also a work of art created for the public, and therefore can and should be evaluated in terms of its capacity to generate human reactions.”
