Holocaust Memory and National Museums in Britain

Description

This book explores the Holocaust exhibition opened within the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in 2000; setting out the long and often contentious debates surrounding the conception, design, and finally the opening of an important exhibition within a national museum in Britain. It considers a process of memory-making through an assessment of Holocaust photographs, material culture, and survivor testimonies; exploring theories of cultural memory as they apply to the national museum context. Anchored in time and place, the Holocaust exhibition within Britain’s national museum of war is influenced by, and reflects, an international rise in Holocaust consciousness in the 1990s. This book considers the construction of Holocaust memory in 1990s Britain, providing a foundation for understanding current and future national memory projects. Through all aspects of the display, the Holocaust is presented as meaningful in terms of what it says about Nazism and what this, in turn, says about Britishness. From the original debates surrounding the inclusion of a Holocaust gallery at the IWM, to the acquisition of Holocaust artefacts that could act as 'concrete evidence' of Nazi barbarity and criminality, the Holocaust reaffirms an image of Britain that avoids critical self-reflection despite raising uncomfortably close questions. The various display elements are brought together to consider multiple strands of the Holocaust story as it is told by national museums in Britain.  Acknowledgements Contents About the Author Abbreviations Chapter 1: Introduction: Holocaust Memory, National Museums The Chapters Theoretical Frameworks: Memory and the National Museum Museology and the National Museum Setting Narrative and Story in the National Museum Material Culture and Object Biography British National Identity and Memory of the Holocaust in the National Museum Setting the Scene: Britain’s First National Holocaust Exhibition Bibliography Chapter 2: Establishing a Permanent National Holocaust Exhibition The Holocaust at the Imperial War Museum: A History ‘Man’s Inhumanity to Man’: Planning an Exhibition on Genocide in Our Time The Imperial War Museum Holocaust Exhibition Bibliography Chapter 3: Holocaust Photographs Photographs of ‘Victims’ Within the IWMHE The First Victims of Nazism Atrocity Photographs Photographs of Perpetrators Within the IWMHE Photographs of Liberation Within the IWMHE Personal Stories of the Holocaust Within the IWMHE Bibliography Chapter 4: Holocaust Objects Acquiring Holocaust Objects Narrating the Holocaust Through Artefacts Biography of a Table: Representing the ‘Horrors of Euthanasia’ Contextualising the Table Exhibiting the Table in London Holocaust Objects in a British Context Bibliography Chapter 5: Holocaust Testimony Constructing Memory Through Testimony Testimony and the IWMHE Narrative Bibliography Chapter 6: Holocaust Education Debates in Education and the Educational Provision for the IWMHE School Visits to the IWMHE Presenting Brits, Jews, and Nazis to students visiting the IWMHE Bibliography Chapter 7: Reshaping Holocaust Memory in the National Museum, Post-2021 Political Inheritance Holocaust Memory on the Political Agenda: Holocaust Commission Updating the IWM Holocaust Galleries Bibliography Chapter 8: Conclusion Bibliography Index