| Summary: | This article discusses the authenticity of the experience of the Holocaust through museum architecture. This issue arose during the writer’s visitor research conducted at European Jewish museums with the aim of examining the effect of the spatial design on Holocaust memory construction. From Aristotle and Plato to Benjamin and Heidegger and with the support of psychoanalytic concepts of Freud, Lacan, and Jung, we acknowledge different theories that approach the experiential and existential dimensions of authenticity; pursuing self-discovery and overcoming experiential challenges are the two central axes that will help us identify the different categories of visitors according to the kind of authenticity they quest for and the cause of its necessity. Moreover, the juxtaposition between the Museum and the actual site, such as a concentration camp, apart from raising questions of veracity and representation- which one provides a “real” account of the past? - posits problems of ethics, appropriation, materiality, narrativity, and empathy and, finally, leads to a salient issue: how different is memory from commemoration and which “locus” represents better each one of them; the Museum or the site? Is such a question legitimate?
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