Abstract: The filigree ground mosaic is placed at the heart of the Grindel neighbourhood in Hamburg, Germany. Tracing the footprint of the former synagogue that once stood there, proudly, it demarcates an absence. It is a reminder of what the Nazis destroyed and sought to extinguish. The fact that the synagogue will finally be rebuilt, in the same place, with the support of the Federal government and the city, is anything but a matter of course. This will be the first reconstruction project of a synagogue of this size in Germany since the Second World War. Yet the project has been controversial in some respects. The two main concerns expressed in the public debate about the form of reconstruction and whether and how to integrate the Synagogue Monument at first sight appeared to be in irreconcilable competition: the importance of maintaining a culture of remembrance, and the legitimate claim of the Jewish Community to recover and rebuild its former place of worship. This would not merely be, as is often said, a sign of Jewish belonging, of identity and representation, in the urban society. Rather, it is about modes of existence that the architecture itself, in the materiality of its form and its presence, embodies and makes possible. To the people, architecture is what makes the difference. It thus shapes the political landscape.
Abstract: Despite the increasingly diverse societal landscape in Greece for more than three decades within a context of migration, understandings of its fragile histories are still limited in shaping a sense of belonging that is open to ‘otherness’. While Greek communities have utilised history as a pathway to maintain identity, other parallel histories and understandings do not resonate with ‘Greekness’ for most, such as the case of Greek Jewry. Critical historical perspectives can benefit from tracing ‘re-membering’ as a feminist practice in the reassessment of societal values of inclusivity. Histories of violence and injustice can also include elements of ‘difficult histories’ and must be embraced to seek acknowledgement of these in promoting social change and cultural analysis for public humanities informing curation and curricula. Between eduscapes, art heritage spaces, an entry into contested and conflictual histories can expand a sense of belonging and the way we imagine our own connected histories with communities, place and nation. Greek Jews do not constitute a strong part of historical memory for Greeks in their past and present; in contrast to what is perceived as ‘official’ history, theirs is quite marginal. As a result, contemporary Greeks, from everyday life to academia, do not have a holistic understanding in relation to the identities of Jews in Greece, their culture or the Holocaust. Given the emergence of a new wave of artistic activism in recent years in response to the ever-increasing dominance of authoritarian neoliberalism, along with activist practices in the art field as undercurrents of resistance, in this intervention I bring together bodies of works to create a dialogic reflection with historical, artistic and feminist sources. In turn, the discussion then explores the spatiotemporal contestations of the historical geographies of Holocaust monuments in Greece. While interrogating historical amnesia, I endeavour to provide a space to engage with ‘difficult histories’ in their aesthetic context as a heritage of healing and social justice.
Topics: Memory, Jewish Neighbourhoods, Jewish Space, Jewish Heritage, Oral History and Biography, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors: Children of, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: Facing and coming to terms with the past in post-Holocaust Europe has not only been a moral imperative but also a challenge in scientific, political and social senses. This process was delayed significantly in socialist countries. A part of the development of a post-socialist commemorative structure was the establishment of Holocaust museums which not only serve as a memento of the past but also provide an institutional framework for memorialization, research and education about the Holocaust. However, nationalist political forces jeopardize this process by attempting to whitewash the past in order to preserve a positive picture of the nation. In this paper, I compare the permanent exhibitions of three museums from Slovakia and Hungary in order to illuminate how this struggle influences their exhibition narratives and activities. After examining the narrative strategies of the exhibitions and conducting interviews with museum personnel of the Holocaust Memorial Center (Budapest), the House of Jewish Excellencies (Balatonfüred) and the Sereď Holocaust Museum, it can be inferred that especially the way collaboration, perpetration, and in general, the role of the local non-Jewish population is depicted (or obscured), is inextricably intertwined with political agendas.
Abstract: In August 1942, a majority of Bochnia’s Jewish residents were deported to the Bełżec death camp by the German occupying forces – this was the beginning of the direct extermination of Bochnian Jews which lasted for over a year. To commemorate them, as well as all other Jews murdered during the German occupation of Bochnia, the Stanisław Fischer Museum in Bochnia organised an exhibition, inaugurated on the 80th anniversary of this tragic event. The exhibition showed the presence of Jews in the town, remembered important figures whose roots came from Bochnia, and presented the activity of some contemporary descendants of former Jewish inhabitants of the town. The items on display were, in part, property of the museum, Judaica on loan from other museums, scanned documents from the National Archive in Kraków, and also materials submitted by families, descended from Bochnia residents, who live abroad.
Abstract: The Holocaust monuments in Poland commemorate this historical event in the place of its occurrence. This empowers the commemoration, its meanings, and messages. However, the monuments also reflect the way the Polish state’s collective memory consolidates over the years. The memory of the glorious and significant Jewish past in Poland is in the form of ruined synagogues, displaced or neglected gravestones in cemeteries, warehouses full of relics, and ruins of concentration and extermination camps. The memory of this Jewish past remained in the hands of the Poles and became part of the Polish national landscape. One of the ways to commemorate the magnificent and rich Jewish past, the way the Jewish communities were destroyed, and the community members were murdered, is through monuments. Holocaust monuments in Poland were erected right after War World II and continue to be constructed until the present. What is the character of the commemoration presented in the monuments, Polish, Jewish, or universal? Which themes are commemorated, and which artistic expressions were chosen for this purpose? In this chapter, I will discuss Holocaust monuments erected in Poland through the years with tombstones, at the event sites, and former concentration camp sites, addressing their historiographical context, and the variety of visual expressions.
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors: Children of, Holocaust Survivors: Grandchildren of, Memory, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Jewish Museums, Jewish Heritage, Museums
Abstract: Amsterdam’s National Holocaust Museum is due to open in March 2024. It is the first and only museum to tell the story of the attempt by the Nazis to eradicate Jews from the Netherlands, a history of segregation, persecution, and murder. Yet the story is also one of rescue, survival, and solidarity. One of the museum’s main goals is to engage visitors by involving them in a learning experience, in particular, to encourage young people to study and to develop the skills they need to be able to understand the past, to see how this impacts the present, and to recognize and challenge discrimination and antisemitism today. This article begins by sketching the presentation in the new museum and examines how the museum’s educational facilities (presentation and programs) encourage audiences to think about what they can do to combat discrimination in general, and antisemitism in particular.
Abstract: The starting point for the present study is the thematization of the concept of “Jewish cultural heritage” and, in this context, the outlining of the role and position of cemeteries in Jewish tradition. The case study focuses on the Hungarian village of Apc, which was home to a Jewish community of just over a hundred people before World War II. After the Holocaust, only a few survivors returned to the settlement; some of them emigrated, while others remained in Apc for the rest of their lives. In recent decades, what has become of the cemetery, one of the most important sites for the former Jewish community of Apc? This paper explores the process of the heritagization of the local Jewish cemetery, one of the activities carried out by the Together for Apc Association, a civil society initiative launched two decades ago. In 2003, the dilapidated and abandoned “Israelite cemetery” was the first of the settlement's deteriorating assets to be declared as local cultural heritage. With the involvement of various actors from the local community (volunteers and local entrepreneurs), and in contact with Jewish organizations (the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, the Foundation for Hungarian Jewish Cemeteries), the cemetery was restored over a period of two years and was “inaugurated” in 2006 in the presence of a rabbi, a cantor, a Jewish secular leader, Holocaust survivors and members of the local society. In the fifteen years since then, care has been taken to ensure that the achievements are sustainable and maintained, and the cemetery has been kept open not only for the descendants of the Jewish community but for all interested parties. But the salvaging of the Apc Jewish cemetery is not only an example of the preservation of the built heritage of a single community: while for the village residents it forms part of their local identity, for the Jewish organizations it represents part of their Jewish identity. What happens when two communities stake a claim to the heritagization of the same site? As a shared goal, or “cause,” the “bipolar” process of the heritagization of the Jewish cemetery in Apc has provided an opportunity for dialogue, collective thinking, and problem solving between Jewish and non-Jewish society, even if the various heritagization goals, coming from different directions, have in many cases generated tensions.
Abstract: This article examines an under-researched artistic practice of Holocaust memorialization, which, emerging in Poland in the early 1990s, combines elements of theater, performance art, and religious ritual and invites a high degree of civic participation. I argue that these artistic practices are similar to traditional practices of lived and embodied transmissions of memory referred to by French historian Pierre Nora as milieux de mémoire. This article will challenge Nora's view that milieux de mémoire have been permanently replaced with lieux de mémoire (sites of memory). To counter this claim, I invoke the memorialization activities of the grassroots and Lublin-based cultural institution the Grodzka Gate – NN Theater Center. Through the series of artistic actions called Mystery of Memory (2000–2011) and Letters to (2005–present), this institution is actively involved in creating and sustaining Polish milieux de mémoire dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust. The ensuing milieux de mémoire have a practical, civic and social function to establish a sense of shared community among younger generations of Poles. Therefore, these actions look toward the future, rather than solely remembering the difficult past, and encourage participants to acknowledge and celebrate difference and multiculturalism, rather than singly confronting unsavory moments of Polish–Jewish relations.
Abstract: In 2009, the Romanian government unveiled a $7.4 million Holocaust memorial to commemorate over 280,000 Jews and 11,000 Roma who died as victims of the Ion Antonescu regime. Located in central Bucharest, the monument is part of a national agenda, outlined by an international commission, to study the crimes of the Holocaust in Romania and to help the country come to terms with historical atrocities. Under communism and in the early post-communist period, the Romanian state denied its role in the Holocaust. In this article, we explore the representation of the Holocaust and, in particular, Roma victims in the dominant historical narrative and the Holocaust memorial. We delve into discourses around this monument, which feed into a larger dialogue of victim recognition and contested national narratives about the Holocaust. We highlight the construction and contestation of the Holocaust memorial, considering in particular the paradox of Roma victims and suggesting that Roma are simultaneously represented, unrepresented and misrepresented in the historical story and memorial of the Holocaust in Romania.
Abstract: As the ethical barriers surrounding ‘digital Holocaust etiquette remain contested, scholars like Daniel Magilow and Lisa Silverman question whether there can be unwritten rules of behavior at sites of historical trauma. Because of
significant shifts in the digital arena, too, legacy types of memory formation, such as collective memories associated with physical spaces, are being challenged by a new type of digital archive that is both active and passive. This article seeks to interrogate the socio-psychological aspects of selfies taken at Holocaust memorial sites and of their subsequent shaming. We wish to juxtapose current research findings with the public audience’s reaction to these photos after they have been posted on social media. In many respects, commenters may offer insight into a larger phenomenon outside of what is deemed appropriate in terms of Holocaust memory. Our article may not provide solutions or easy answers, but this is not our goal. Rather, our research aims to point to the complex, often
uncomfortable, nature of this topic due to the fact that selfies encapsulate both micro and macro histories, reality and virtual reality, and a shift in traditional types of memory formation.
Abstract: Holocaust memory in Europe is shifting and diversifying, often in conflicting ways. This report is the culmination of a comparative and multidisciplinary study aimed at exploring these contemporary shifts in Holocaust memory in five European countries that played very different roles during the Holocaust, and whose post-WWII histories differed too: Poland, Hungary, Germany, England and Spain.
The study took place from 2019-2022 and offers a snapshot of Holocaust memory at the start of the 21st century. In addition to the rise of far-right political parties, antisemitic incidents and crises around immigration and refugees, this period was also overshadowed by the Covid pandemic and its ensuing economic instability. Our central guiding question was: How do experiences of the present relate to the memory of the Holocaust? Do they supersede it, leading to the gradual fading from memory of the mass-murder that shook the twentieth century? Do they reshape it, shedding new light on its lessons? Is the meaning assigned to present-day events shaped by its metaphors and symbols, or perhaps the present and the past engage in multidirectional dialogue over diverse memory platforms?
To explore this question and other questions about the extent to which Holocaust memory is present in European public discourses, the circumstances in which it surfaces, and the differences in its expressions in the countries we examined, we focused on three complementary domains that serve as memory sites: the public-political, Holocaust education and social media.
We used a between/within analysis matrix of the countries and the domains, to understand how Holocaust memory is expressed in these countries. We found that while the memory of the Holocaust remains alive, in some places
it is struggling for relevance. A common memory practice that surfaced across domains was “relationing the Holocaust,” a variant of multidirectional memory. We also found that a distinguishing aspect of Holocaust memory relates to the political left-right identification of subgroups within countries. There were also interactions
between domains and countries, for example, in the countries we explored in Western Europe, teachers’ attitudes about the Holocaust corresponded to those of their political establishment, but this was not the case in Central and Eastern Europe.
This report is intended for Holocaust and memory scholars, educators, commemorators, policymakers, journalists and anyone interested in deciphering the complex intersections of past and present. The report culminates with a series of recommendations for various policymakers, NGOs, educational organizations and social media moderators.
Abstract: Visitor Experience at Holocaust Memorials and Museums is the first volume to offer comprehensive insights into visitor reactions to a wide range of museum exhibitions, memorials, and memory sites.
Drawing exclusively upon empirical research, chapters within the book offer critical insights about visitor experience at museums and memory sites in the United States, Poland, Austria, Germany, France, the UK, Norway, Hungary, Australia, and Israel. The contributions to the volume explore visitor experience in all its complexity and argue that visitors are more than just "learners". Approaching visitor experience as a multidimensional phenomenon, the book positions visitor experience within a diverse national, ethnic, cultural, social, and generational context. It also considers the impact of museums’ curatorial and design choices, visitor motivations and expectations, and the crucial role emotions play in shaping understanding of historical events and subjects. By approaching visitors as active interpreters of memory spaces and museum exhibitions, Popescu and the contributing authors provide a much-needed insight into the different ways in which members of the public act as "agents of memory", endowing this history with personal and collective meaning and relevance.
Visitor Experience at Holocaust Memorials and Museums offers significant insights into audience motivation, expectation, and behaviour. It is essential reading for academics, postgraduate students and practitioners with an interest in museums and heritage, visitor studies, Holocaust and genocide studies, and tourism.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Visitors at Holocaust Museums and Memory sites
Diana I. Popescu
Part I: Visitor Experience in Museum Spaces
Mobile Memory; or What Visitors Saw at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Michael Bernard-Donals
Visitor Emotions, Experientiality, Holocaust, and Human Rights: TripAdvisor Responses to the Topography of Terror (Berlin) and the Kazerne Dossin (Mechelen)
Stephan Jaeger
"Really made you feel for the Jews who went through this terrible time in History" Holocaust Audience Re-mediation and Re-narrativization at the Florida Holocaust Museum
Chaim Noy
Understanding Visitors’ Bodily Engagement with Holocaust Museum Architecture: A Comparative Empirical Research at three European Museums
Xenia Tsiftsi
Attention Please: The Tour Guide is Here to Speak Out. The Role of the Israeli Tour Guide at Holocaust Sites in Israel
Yael Shtauber, Yaniv Poria, and Zehavit Gross
The Impact of Emotions, Empathy, and Memory in Holocaust exhibitions: A Study of the National Holocaust Centre & Museum in Nottinghamshire, and the Jewish Museum in London
Sofia Katharaki
The Affective Entanglements of the Visitor Experience at Holocaust Sites and Museums
Adele Nye and Jennifer Clark
Part II: Digital Engagement Inside and Outside the Museum and Memory Site
"…It no longer is the same place": Exploring Realities in the Memorial Falstad Centre with the ‘Falstad Digital Reconstruction and V/AR Guide’
Anette Homlong Storeide
"Ways of seeing". Visitor response to Holocaust Photographs at ‘The Eye as Witness: Recording the Holocaust’ Exhibition
Diana I. Popescu and Maiken Umbach
Dachau from a Distance: The Liberation during The COVID-19 Pandemic
Kate Marrison
Curating the Past: Digital Media and Visitor Experiences at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Christoph Bareither
Diversity, Digital Programming, and the Small Holocaust Education Centre: Examining Paths and Obstacles to Visitor Experience
Laura Beth Cohen and Cary Lane
Part III: Visitors at Former Camp Sites
The Unanticipated Visitor: A Case Study of Response and Poetry at Sites of Holocaust Memory
Anna Veprinska
"Did you have a good trip?" Young people’s Reflections on Visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Town of Oświęcim
Alasdair Richardson
Rewind, Relisten, Rethink: The Value of Audience Reception for Grasping Art’s Efficacy
Tanja Schult
"The value of being there" -Visitor Experiences at German Holocaust Memorial Sites
Doreen Pastor
"Everyone Talks About the Wind": Temporality, Climate, and the More-than Representational Landscapes of the Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes
Ian Cantoni
Guiding or Obscuring? Visitor Engagement with Treblinka’s Audio Guide and Its Sonic Infrastructure
Kathryn Agnes Huether
Abstract: In the early years of the 21st century it appeared that the memory of the Holocaust was secure in Western Europe; that, in order to gain entry into the European Union, the countries of Eastern Europe would have to acknowledge their compatriots' complicity in genocide. Fifteen year later, the landscape looks starkly different. Shedding fresh light on these developments, The Perversion of Holocaust Memory explores the politicization and distortion of Holocaust remembrance since 1989.
This innovative book opens with an analysis of events across Europe which buttressed confidence in the stability of Holocaust memory and brought home the full extent of nations' participation in the Final Solution. And yet, as Judith M. Hughes reveals in later chapters, mainstream accountability began to crumble as the 21st century progressed: German and Jewish suffering was equated; anti-Semitic rhetoric re-entered contemporary discourse; populist leaders side-stepped inconvenient facts; and, more recently with the revival of ethno-nationalism, Holocaust remembrance has been caught in the backlash of the European refugee crisis.
The four countries analyzed here – France, Germany, Hungary, and Poland – could all claim to be victims of Nazi Germany, the Allies or the Communist Soviet Union but they were also all perpetrators. Ultimately, it is this complex legacy which Hughes adroitly untangles in her sophisticated study of Holocaust memory in modern Europe.
Abstract: Raoul Wallenberg is widely remembered for his humanitarian activity on behalf of the Hungarian Jews in Budapest at the end of World War II, and is known as the Swedish diplomat who disappeared into the Soviet Gulag in 1945. While he successfully combated Nazi racial extermination politics, he fell victim to Stalinist communism – yet another barbaric, totalitarian regime of the 20th century.
Given Wallenberg’s biography, his mission and his unresolved fate it is no wonder that Wallenberg became a figure of mythic dimensions. It is the mixture of heroics and victimhood, as well as the seemingly endless potential of possible adaptations that secures this historic figure and his mythic after-narratives its longevity. While it is without doubt the man behind the myth who deserves credit – first the man’s realness gives the myth credibility – it is the myth that secures the man’s popularity. The man and his myth depend on each other.
In this article, I will give an overview of how Wallenberg was perceived and described by survivors, in popular scholarly literature, how he has been researched by historians, and how he has been presented in different media. It will become apparent that the narrators have sought to satisfy different needs, e.g. psychological, political, and commercial ones. The narrators’ intention and attitude towards the historic person and the myth which surrounds him is of primary importance. I will show how different approaches to, and uses of, the myth exist side by side and nourish one another. And yet they can all simultaneously claim existence in their own right. By providing examples from different times and places, I like to illustrate that the popular images of Wallenberg are far less one-sided, stereotypical and homogeneous than they are often portrayed and hope to draw attention to the great potential that the Wallenberg narrative has today, as his 100th anniversary approaches in 2012.
Abstract: Kristallnacht, 1938, was a defining moment, changing the course of history. Can the Jewish heritage destroyed before and during World War II be reconstructed? This paper will link eschatological thought and the relevant Mishnaic texts, in particular the value of holiness and its attributes both in time and place. Can a synagogue be de-sanctified? Is the value in the material or the use?
Reviewing these tragic events, the possible criteria for reconstructing the architectural components of Jewish life should be considered, through the evidence of history, the record of events, values of the past, and the new realities of the future. Another significant concern is not so much in understanding the changing and diverse values of a community but the approaches toward the interpretations of these values. In this debate, where existential or historical models play a major role, Judaism tends toward the former, recalling events over time and the allegory in the facts.
What remained in Europe were the ruins, the memory of places and events, and the resilience of the human spirit. However, there are compounded memories and multiple voices, ever changing, challenging the identities of real and virtual communities. How do we evaluate the facts and the extended contexts over time that demand renegotiation of their meaning and interpretation?
On current projections, the Jews may become an insignificant number in European society over the course of the twenty-first century. Can these buildings, as reconstructed, live without the spirit of the people; can new people inhabit the reconstructions, or is the ruin the true manifestation of the course of history? The divergent case studies of the three ShUM cities, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, in Germany provide a glimpse into the debate and an appraisal of the moment in time.
There are common attitudes facing recovery and reconstructions for uprooted communities after tragedies that leave scars on history. The case studies of Jewish heritage reconstruction and the considerations of impermanence provide another perspective to the restorations of the Bamiyan Buddhas and together a chilling evidence to the consequences of racism.
