Because Jews are always conscious of the Holocaust, why are memorials and museums of the Holocaust so essential for them?

Answer 1

The topic is complex, but the heart of your question is in the value of physical spaces whose purpose is remembrance, or reminder, whatever you prefer. Speaking as a Jew, the Shoah ("Holocaust" being the Western term for it, Shoah being what Hebrew speakers named the event) is often on my mind (relative to other occurrences tied to my identity), as well as often on the minds of many other Jewish people.

That said, to understand the importance of the Shoah, one must understand that Jews were persecuted long before the Nazi party came into existence, and by many different groups. The Jewish people have lived in fear for a very long time, and clearly not without good reason. Throughout history, many communities and societies which have had Jewish members have ended up expelling or killing the people they once called neighbors, for no reason but that their faith set them apart.

The memorials and museums do not just serve to educate Jewish people to the Jewish history, though that is an important function, but also everyone else, who might not have learned, as I did, about the Shoah from a young age.

You also seem to be asking a question about the value of architecture as memory. For that I would say only that the spaces we exist within make us feel different based on their construction and appearance. A simple, lovely country home makes one feel calm, for example, but museums dedicated to those of us lost in the Shoah are designed to enhance the emotional impact of the stories we encounter while inside, so that we don't simply look at the photographs and panels and think and feel as an unfeeling observer but, perhaps due to the color palette or the feeling of walking down a long cramped tunnel (which I have seen in several different museums), we are far more emotionally impacted, even across all this time, by the tragic sense of loss. To someone who is just beginning to learn about the Shoah, I imagine the effect helps to drive home the seriousness of it all.

Hope that helped!