s, experienced without the intervention of much historical knowledge. The conservation of relics serves historical purposes, of course, but, in many cases, those who present a preserved site are perfectly aware of how uninformed much of the audience will be. This raises many questions about preservation. These are not questions about the value of relics to historians or to those who have, or will gather, enough information to place the relic in some broader context. They are questions about what preservation groups, governments, communities, and individuals are saying about the past when they select, conserve, relocate and/or present these relics. And they are questions about who the audience is believed to be and how the actual audience responds to what is preserved.
Winks notes that there are numerous differences between preservation movements in different countries because each of them is "the product of a unique historical world-view" (141). But such subdivision of constituencies continues all the way down to the individual viewer. Preserved relics can carry entirely different messages, and several messages simultaneously, depending on who is looking at them or how they are presented. Lowenthal cites the example of France's preservation of Oradour's ruins. The survivors believe that such preservation is necessary "to convey conviction of the horrendous Nazi massacre" that happened there (Lowenthal 247). The death camp at Auschwitz is similarly maintained in order to "serve as a monument to the suffering of martyrs," and the National Holocaust Museum in Washington serves, as Vice-President Bush said at the ground-breaking ceremony, as "a testament to man's moral imperfections" (Lowenthal 347). But is there a perspective for all visitors to such sites--or even some aspect of their reactions--that is universal? French visitors to Oradour may all, indeed, contemplate the horror of the massacre. But some may also be rein...