Learning Difficult Histories: The Role of Monuments and Museums

The history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust is a history of different cultures, which explains the diverse and growing efforts to remember these phenomena. This chapter compares how the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust are studied using memory culture. Specifically, it looks at the availability of monuments in Germany and Ghana to represent the Holocaust and slave trade, how they are taught and discussed in schools, and student’s reactions to its discussion. To do this, various Holocaust and slave trade sites were visited within Ghana and Germany to elicit information on how these monuments help people learn about and embrace the past. Interviews and focus group discussions revealed that monuments allow people to provide their interpretation of the past, which promotes a discussion of the past. However, agents like tour guides, teachers, and even family can be a barrier to objectively analysing and discussing the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust. Further, though the Holocaust and Transatlantic Slave Trade are taught at lower stages in schools in Germany and Ghana, little room is given for discussion. We recommend that curators and teachers provide students with an opportunity to objectively analyse and discuss the difficult past.