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.
Author(s): Emily-Jayne Stiles
Series: The Holocaust and its Contexts
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 233
City: Cham
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
