INTRODUCTION

By Rebecca Grinblat

Memory in the form of oral testimony has become increasingly important to museums in recent years. It is being utilised in various forms, where appropriate, to enhance exhibitions. Video interviews, guides who provide personal testimony and the inclusion of personal quotes in textual information are some of the devices increasingly to enhance exhibitions. This thesis examines three museums, the Sydney Jewish Museum, the Jewish Museum of Australia, and the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre Melbourne, and explores how they have made use of oral testimonies in their permanent and temporary exhibitions. The final chapter of this thesis explores the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to understand the future of memory in museums.

One of the key issues is that of memory, since memory is the basis of personal testimonies. The first chapter raises questions about memory; what it is, different types, its in forming identity, and how accurate it is. All of the organisations studied in this thesis are Jewish organisations (three museums and a Foundation), and as three of the four case studies focus mainly on the Holocaust, part of this chapter analyses Traumatic memories, with a particular emphasis on Holocaust memories.

It is pertinent to discuss here why I chose each of these museums, and how I came to this topic. My maternal grandparents are Holocaust survivors, so I have heard many stories about their experiences and those of their peers. As a descendant of survivors, I have inherited many memories, but more than this, I have undertaken a duty to help safeguard these memories from denial or distortion or, even worse, annihilation. My duty has led me to question what memory is and how it will be preserved in Jewish community museums when the survivors have all passed away.

My maternal grandparents worked in the Sydney Jewish Museum for a number of years as volunteer guides. The library was named after my late grandfather, and my grandmother still works there. My grandfather’s name appears in one of the memorials, along with the names of his late family and my grandmother’s late family. I have visited this museum numerous times, and have always felt a very strong connection with it and all of the people who work there. I also know that the museum has always utilised oral testimony as its major educational tool. An examination is made of the Sydney Jewish Museum’s current practice of oral testimony, and questions are raised about the strategies which will need to be utilised to address the arising problems of the decline of the live guides and therefore, live testimonies.

The first time I went to the Jewish Museum of Australia, in late 1995, it was to see an exhibition entitled In the Footsteps of Monash: Jews in the Australian Armed Forces in World War 2. It is a beautiful museum, and I particularly liked their permanent exhibitions - they explain the same material as many Jewish museums portray, but had set it out in an attractive and innovative way. When I decided to include it as one of the case studies, I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose this museum with the others, because it relies less on oral testimonies than the others and also because it does not focus on the Holocaust as the others do. The Jewish Museum of Australia offers an experiential visit to its visitors. The question in this museum then became what does oral testimony add to the exhibitions and how effective is it?

The Jewish Holocaust Museum and Resource Centre Melbourne takes a different approach again in that it relies on its volunteers not only as guides, but also, to contribute to the exhibitions in very personal ways. For example, one volunteer made a miniature replica of Treblinka, another made the stained glass windows, and another made a large map which dominates one of the walls. Others have contributed paintings and sculptures. The museum has been collecting Holocaust testimonies for years, first on audiotape and later, on videotape and its guides give testimonies to every group that visits; oral testimony is plainly the major component of this museum. Once again, there is the important question of what to do once the survivors are no longer able to maintain the museum and contribute their live testimonies. As with the Sydney Jewish Museum, the guides bring the visit to life. What will be the major attraction when the guides are no longer available in person? Will these museums need to utilise computer technology such as that which is being developed by the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation? Will they need to make the lectures and testimonies virtual in order to keep the survivors at the centre of the experience? Would this even be acceptable to their audiences?

The final case study is the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Since March 1997, I have been one of its interviewers. This has given me a special insight into the interview experience, and access to survivors who have been interviewed, so I am familiar with the pre-interview and interview processes. I have been given access to videos and people that an outside researcher would not yet have. I am familiar with Foundation procedures, and, I have had access to the Press Kit which is the information the Foundation broadcasts about itself. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate any critical studies of the Foundation. Hence, I have relied on my own knowledge, contextual reading about contemporary museum and oral history practice, the information which the Foundation has provided for me, and I have attempted to examine the Foundation in an analytical manner. The development of the Foundation has opened issues about virtual museums and traditional museums. Can testimonies such as those that the Foundation has collected attract and hold interest for long enough to educate viewers if they are widely available in libraries or even in people’s homes? Should they rather be placed in an artefact based context such as a museum to have a strong impact? Will Foundation video-testimonies be satisfactory replacements for the live guides? Is the Foundation, with its virtual testimonies and on-line information the museum of the future?

The Shoah Foundation is also the Commissioning Agency for this thesis. This thesis will enable the Foundation, as well as other Jewish museums, to understand how memory has been represented in Jewish museums in the past, and to reflect on how best to utilise it in the future, particularly with the aid of the Foundation testimonies. The Foundation has already begun the second phase of its development (the archiving and cataloguing), having nearly completed the first phase (recording the testimonies), and will need to consider how to implement the third phase (installing the terminals where the testimonies can be accessed) most effectively and in the most effective environment.

MEMORY, ORAL TESTIMONY AND JEWISH IDENTITY

Once reawakened, they never rest again. I pray for forgetfulness.[1][1]

Memory is central to our identity and our sense of self. Our cultural, religious, and personal identities are shaped by our own private memories and by the public memories of the communities in which we live. These memories are the basis of oral testimony. Naturally, when dealing with memories and oral testimony, we must also deal with the question of accuracy. Time, emotion, and even interviewing techniques can distort memories and the way they are expressed in testimonies, as can pressure to conform to public memory when it differs from the private memories. This chapter will examine these issues of identity (private and public) based on memory, the accuracy of memory, and the effects of different types of memories on identity.

This chapter is divided into three sections; memory formation through the neuroscience perspective, memory and testimony as a central part of Jewish identity, and memory and testimony as a process which is both public and private. This thesis has taken an interdisciplinary approach to memory - a combination of the medical, scientific and historical, rather than the purely humanistic perspective which has been widely relied upon in debates about oral history.

Before exploring and debating the various aspects of memory, a definition must be established.

Memory as a function of the living personality can be understood as a capacity for the organization and reconstruction of past experiences and impressions in the service of present needs, fears and interests.[2][2]

In other words, memory involves capturing and recreating moments from the past which relate to a more present experience.[3][3] Memory is quite different from testimony and it is important to understand this distinction. Testimony is the expression of memory. It is the memories of a certain event (in the instance of the following case studies, the Holocaust) expressed in a narrative form, for the benefit of an audience, whether it be an interviewer or unknown viewers around the world. Memory is the private recall of the events, whereas testimony is the public expression of it.

It is important to understand how memory is constructed, and how memories relate to a person's identity. Memory is very complex and can be categorised in many different ways. One way of dividing it is into Short Term Memory and Long Term Memory. These two types of memory are interdependent although a person can suffer some sort of brain injury and lose their Short Term Memory, but still retain a fully functioning Long Term Memory, and vice versa. Baddeley mentions several cases in his studies.[4][4] Other categories used to describe memory are Explicit and Implicit memory. [5][5]

Explicit memory is a conscious awareness of events that have involved the individual. It is an active and constructive process. Explicit memories are integrated into existing mental schemes and become unavailable as totally separate and isolated memories. In other words, Explicit memories are the memories of events, people and situations, and are stored in the brain, and retrieved in conjunction, with other associated memories. They will never be separated from other memories. They can be distorted by associated experiences and by the person’s emotional state at the time of recall. Implicit memories are the memories of skills, habits, emotional responses, reflexive actions and conditioned responses. Each Implicit memory is associated with a particular area of the central nervous system. These types of memories are the memories of the brain’s and body’s responses to certain people, events and situations. Traumatic memories (which will be discussed later in the chapter) are Implicit memories. It is important to note that,

...[the] Accuracy of memory is affected by the emotional valence of an experience. Studies of people’s subjective reports of personally highly significant events generally find that their memories are unusually accurate, and that they tend to remain stable over time.[6][6]

In other words, if an event or person is highly important to an individual, their chance of remembering it accurately over a long period of time increases.[7][7]

The way ordinary, or everyday memories are constructed is an extremely complex issue, and much work is still needed to understand it. What is known (through neuropsychological studies) is that people can be prevented from creating or storing information in their Short Term Memory if they are prevented from rehearsing the information to themselves.[8][8] For example, if a person is shown a list of words in quick succession, and then made to perform another task immediately after this, the repetition of the list within the person's mind cannot happen, and therefore, they will be unable to reproduce the list only moments later. The reasons for this are not yet understood and still the subject of research. Long Term Memory functions differently. Any rehearsal needed has already taken place long ago. Experiments show that Long Term Memory can be manipulated in certain circumstances, and sometimes pieces of information will be forgotten. The forgetting or blurring of certain facts can often be a result of the person's values and the importance they place on certain things. For instance, at an oral history workshop, Lesley Alves spoke about an oral history project she worked on in which people were questioned about their memories surrounding the Depression.[9][9] In some cases, people collapsed surrounding eras into the Depression era because they had suffered in those times as well. This was inaccuracy in their memories, but it also showed how strongly they associated suffering with the Depression. The association was so strong that the suffering could not be separated out into the eras in which it really belonged. This shows that caution must be used when relying on personal testimonies for information. It also shows that Explicit memory can be extremely creative - collapsing layers of memory into one, and grouping associated memories together into an inseparable group because the owner places the same sort of value on each of them, and different value on other memories in other groups.

It is believed that Traumatic memories, such as those of fragments of the Holocaust, are stored and accessed in a different way from ordinary memories, such as those from everyday life.

Terrifying experiences may be remembered with extreme vividness, or may totally resist integration. In many instances, traumatized individuals report a combination of both. Whereas people seem to assimilate familiar and expectable experiences easily, and whereas memories of ordinary events disintegrate in clarity over time, some aspects of traumatic events appear to become fixed in the mind, unaltered by the passage of time or by the intervention of subsequent experience...These recurrent observations of the apparent immutability of traumatic memories has given rise to the notion that traumatic memories may be encoded differently from memories for ordinary events - perhaps because of alterations in the focusing of attention, or perhaps because extreme emotional arousal interferes with hippocampal memory functions.[10][10]

In other words, Traumatic memories (sometimes called Adrenal memories by psychologists) are stored in a different way and place within the brain from ordinary memories.[11][11] This is evident because the Traumatic memories never become associated with other events in memory - they are stored alone; and because they are either remembered vividly for the rest of a person’s life, or only remembered with great difficulty. The fact that they are stored separately gives them an unusually accurate quality that remains undiminished with the passage of time. Despite this accurate recall, a Holocaust survivor may be unable to relate their experiences to another person.

...during conditions of high arousal, ‘explicit memory’ may fail. The traumatized individual is left in a state of ‘speechless terror’ in which words may fail to describe what has happened. However, although the individual may be unable to produce a coherent narrative of the incident, there may be no interference with implicit memory; the person may ‘know’ the emotional valence of a stimulus and be aware of associated perceptions, without being able to articulate the reasons for feeling or behaving in a particular way...During the provocation of traumatic memories, there is a decrease in activation of Broca’s area - the part of the brain most centrally involved in the transformation of subjective experience into speech...Simultaneously, the areas in the right hemisphere that are thought to process intense emotions and visual images show significantly increased activation.[12][12]

In other words, the survivor may still remember perfectly what happened to them, but may be unable to form the words necessary to describe the events to anyone else.[13][13]

Not only are Traumatic memories recalled differently from ordinary memories, but they are also created differently.

When people are under stress, they secrete endogenous stress hormones that affect the strength of memory consolidation...Mammals have memory storage mechanisms that modulate how strongly a memory is laid down according to the strength of the accompanying hormonal stimulation. This capacity helps organisms evaluate the importance of sensory input in proportion to how strongly the associated memory traces are laid down: Emotionally significant material, laid down in states of high arousal, is accessed more easily in subsequent states of high arousal. In traumatized organisms, the capacity to access relevant memories appears to have gone awry: They access trauma-related memory traces too readily, and hence they tend to ‘remember’ the trauma too easily - namely when it is irrelevant to current experience.[14][14]

The memories are etched into the brain with a large dose of hormones, and have a tendency to re-emerge at inappropriate times. Van der Kolk has argued that these implicit memories are stored unattached to other memories, but that any subsequent event which produces this same hormone in a large amount, has the capacity to cause the traumatised individual to remember their traumatic experience, either as the memory itself, or as the associated feelings, and to retraumatise them or catapult them back into the original trauma.[15][15] He cites the ‘Positron Emission Tomography Studies’ (which measures Neuronal Metabolic activity levels) on a group of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patients, in which patients were exposed to the detailed and vivid narratives they had written about their own traumatic experiences.[16][16] During the exposure, heightened activity was recorded in the right hemisphere of the brain, in the areas most involved in emotional arousal (these were the parts of the limbic system associated with the Amygdala). These are otherwise known as the ‘worry circuit’ because they are the sites which register anxiety. This activity was accompanied by heightened activity in the right visual cortex, from where flashbacks are thought to originate. At the same time, Broca’s area, which converts experiences into communicable language, showed little to no activity.[17][17] These patients were re-experiencing their traumas much like a silent movie. They could ‘see’ the events, but could not narrate them.[18][18]

Langer has discussed the idea that the memories dominate because many people have, in their minds, never left the places and the events of the Holocaust behind.[19][19] They have not had a chance to forget because they relive their experiences daily. Mark Baker agreed with this idea when he said, ‘It is not the voice that was there, but it is the voice that is always there.’[20][20] This seems to be a common theme in many survivors' testimonies too. Many of them admit to being unable to forget, as they constantly relive their experiences through their memories. ‘Something happens and you feel breathless, or you start cringing. Seconds later, you realise there is no need for the feeling of panic or fear. It's a feeling which skips past quickly. It's important only at that moment. Then it passes.’[21][21] This indicates that Holocaust survivors are often in the process of reliving their experiences at inappropriate moments, and often in the process of re-experiencing their traumas, because the memories are Traumatic ones and have the tendency to re-emerge without warning.

In the Medical Journal of Australia, Joffe, Joffe and Brodaty discussed a variation of this idea. ‘Old age has the capacity to retraumatise survivors...short term memory weakens, allowing earlier memories to re-emerge more starkly, forcing survivors to face feelings and thoughts that they have spent years trying to avoid.’[22][22] In other words, even if the survivors appear to have forgotten, the long-term memories of the Holocaust may have been merely locked away within them and re-emerge with the disappearance of the short-term memories.[23][23] It is a re-remembering.

At this point it is important to note that although it is very difficult to narrate Traumatic memories, Holocaust survivors have had fifty years to think about and remember what happened to them, and as such, have often learnt a way to narrate their experiences to an audience. Narrating an experience or giving a testimony is often a way of making sense of the past and the specific experience being discussed. However, many Holocaust survivors, having experienced incomprehensible events, and suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, have not been able to make sense of their experiences.[24][24] Perhaps the only reason they have been able to narrate their experiences is that they have seen them countless times in the form of flashbacks and dreams. Gradually, they have learnt the words to describe at least part of what they underwent. It should also be noted that not all of the survivors’ memories are Traumatic memories. Life during the Holocaust may not have been consistently traumatic. At times, people may have been so concerned with surviving that they may have felt anxious, worried or depressed, but not highly traumatised. Therefore it is also possible that the Holocaust may be remembered in a combination of Explicit and Traumatic memories - making it easier for the narrative process to develop. It must also be noted that the process of narrating, whilst trying to come to an understanding of the past, can change the memories, and make them more susceptible to distortion. This is because some people will notice gaps in the memories and try to fill them in and complete them.[25][25]

On a more fundamental level, it is interesting to consider what Damasio has written about the workings of memory.[26][26] Convergence zones in our brain store the instructions for the ‘neural firing patterns’ which are held in other parts of the brain. When we recall a person or event, the convergence zone instructs the required neurons on the correct parts of the brain to reassemble in a firing pattern which is similar to that of the original experience. However,

They are replications, not duplications, of the original event... ‘Whenever we recall a given object or experience,...we do not get an exact reproduction but an interpretation, a newly constructed version of the original’...When an object or experience is recalled, the neural pattern corresponding to that memory flashes through the brain as clearly and as quickly as a lightning bolt. But like lightning, it is as swiftly gone. And the next time that same event is remembered the pattern will be different... ‘It is a perpetually recreated neurobiological state, so continuously reconstructed that the owner never knows it is being remade’...[27][27]

This demonstrates that although Traumatic memories may be recalled very accurately, the physical pathways to those and other memories within the brain can constantly change.

Having explored the workings of memory, it is important to understand why memory is so important to Jewish people, as the case studies that follow all deal with Jewish Museums. There are two aspects which need to be discussed. The first is the group of commandments given throughout the Bible which instructs the Jews to remember their past. The second deals specifically with Jews remembering the Holocaust. There are six highly important remembrances that Jews are commanded to remember from the Bible, three of which are most indicative of this. They are commanded to remember their departure from Egypt every day of their lives. This is formally commemorated every year at Passover, where the same stories are told in the same format by every person to every other person sharing their dinner table. The commandment to remember Passover is so powerful that it instructs that ‘the Wise son, the Evil son, the Simple son and the Son who is unable to ask’ all be told the story of the Jews’ redemption from Egypt and slavery, whether they are capable of understanding or not.[28][28] The Jews are commanded to remember, together with their children, the wonders of what their forefathers saw at Mount Sinai when the Torah was handed down.

Only take heed to thyself...best thou not forget the things which thine eyes have seen...but teach them to thy sons, and thy son’s sons; specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy G-d in Horeb [Sinai] when the Lord said unto me gather me the people together and I will make them hear my words that they may...teach their children...[29][29]

The third remembrance is the blotting out of Amalek. The Amalekites tried to wipe out the Jews by attacking the weak and weary at the back of the group after they left Egypt. As punishment for their actions, the Amalekites were to be wiped out in action and in name, and in a paradoxical commandment, the Jews are instructed, ‘Remember what Amalek did unto thee...Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens: thou shalt not forget...’[30][30] Although this commandment is extremely important, it is also impossible to fulfil. One must remember what they did in order to blot out their memory, but having remembered, it is impossible to forget. It is this third remembrance that can also be equated to the Holocaust. The Nazis have been compared (in some modern Jewish teachings) in their attack to Amalek - first disempowering the Jews and then attacking them once they were weak. There is also the same paradox associated with them. People want to forget the Nazis and concentrate on the victims and survivors, but to show the proper respect for the dead victims, survivors must bear witness, thereby constantly remembering the Nazis and their actions. It seems that in this way, the Nazis and the Holocaust remain part of the modern Jewish identity. Whilst some survivors do their best to forget, the rest of the Jewish community desperately clings to the memories in order to honour the victims. The atrocities are forever linked to the victims - if one side of the equation is remembered, so is the other, and if the atrocities are forgotten, so are the victims.

There are many other instances in Judaism where memory is required and commanded. On High Holy Days, prayers are said for the dead in order to remember them, and all people who have lost one or both parents say prayers of remembrance on the anniversaries of their deaths. The culture of remembrance even extends to children. As a young child at school, I was taught a folk belief that all Jewish souls are taught all of the laws and customs of Judaism before they are born. In the moment before birth, they are touched on the top lip (just below the nose) and they promptly forget all they have learned.

A child is born

with infinite memory.

It remembers,

the secrets of creation

the fruits in the garden

the place of the hidden key

the wounded martyrs

the breathless bones

Job’s lament

his own cry.

Until an angel flies into the infant’s mouth,

touches its unformed lips, so that nothing,

not a word, a sound or fragrance, is remembered.[31][31]

According to this belief, from the moment they are born, all learning about Jewish laws, beliefs and customs then becomes an act of ‘re-remembering’ as opposed to learning. Jewish history, from Biblical times to the present, is taught at all Jewish Day Schools, perpetuating the culture of remembrance. It also demonstrates the belief that the dormant memories with which a Jewish child is born are the key to its identity, which lies dormant in the child and is gradually reawakened through the relearning of the Torah and Jewish customs. In this way, it is believed that a Jewish child is already born with an identity which has been created from the collective memories of all Jewish people and their experiences. These experiences include many years of antisemitic persecution at the hands of various groups, and memory is used as a tool to reinforce a distinct and positive identity. It is also used as a weapon against assimilation.

There is a new type of remembrance which has only begun since 1945 - Holocaust remembrance. Since Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite[32][32], Jews have buried their dead and used the gravesite as a place to remember and honour the dead. The Holocaust deprived six million Jews of a proper gravesite, and deprived their surviving relatives of a proper place to visit, honour and remember them. Because this type of remembrance is so important, a type of substitute has been provided to allow it to continue. Public memorials have been built, which sometimes include the names of murdered relatives (as at the Sydney Jewish Museum, and at many Synagogues). In addition to this, Yizkor books were written after the Holocaust had ended, which contained the names, and short life stories of people who were killed. These were organised by town and have become substitute grave and headstone; another place that survivors and relatives can use to commemorate and honour the dead. It is understandable then, that Mark Baker’s mother and others like her feel extreme distress when no Yizkor Book exists for their relatives and home town.[33][33]

There are two types of memory - majority and minority memory, or private and public memory. Individual identity and memory are formed from public memory. As historians, Samuel and Thompson tell us,

Just as public or national myth can weigh heavily on private tradition and experience, it particularly threatens those of minorities. So the collective memories of minorities need continual active expression if they are to survive being absorbed or smothered by the historical traditions of the majority...This is why for minorities, for the less powerful, and most of all for the excluded, collective memory and myth are often still more salient: constantly resorted to both in reinforcing a sense of self and also as a source of strategies for survival.[34][34]

In other words, in order to survive and to retain their own version of events, the Jewish people need to tell and retell their experiences, or they may be swallowed up by a more popular version of what happened. But looking at the different types of Holocaust memories, there are various versions of what happened, and this is where there is potential for difference - between the public and the private memories of the Holocaust. It is a similar situation to that described by Thompson in his chapter on the memories of the Australian soldiers, now known as Anzacs.

...the ‘distortions’ produced by the effect of ‘public’ on ‘private’ memories became the key to understanding the powerful role of the past in the present...From the moment we experience an event we use the meanings of our culture to make sense of it. Over time we re-member our experiences, as those public meanings change. There is a constant negotiation between experience and sense, public and private memory. In another sense we ‘compose’ memories which help us to feel relatively comfortable with our lives, to give us a feeling of composure. Some memories are contradictory, painful, and ‘unsafe’. [We try to make them comfortable by repressing the memories that are too difficult]...the apparently private process of composing safe memories is in fact very public. Our memories are risky and painful if they do not conform with the public norms or versions of the past. We construct and contain our memories so that they will fit with what is publicly acceptable; or we find safety in smaller ‘publics’ or peer groups, which may be socially or politically marginal. This is a necessary process of personal repression, as the cost of exclusion can be psychologically devastating.[35][35]

This is something that must be kept in mind when speaking to survivors. They may shape their testimonies in order to make them more publicly acceptable. For example, many survivors have been reluctant to give their testimonies to the Shoah Foundation because they were not in Concentration Camps, and they feel that the Camp experience is the only one worthy of testimony.[36][36] Once these people have been convinced to give their testimonies, they often punctuate them with comments like, ‘It really wasn’t so bad - not nearly as bad as the Camps were’.

Mark Baker, as mentioned above, has highlighted an aspect of the struggle between public and private memory in his search for his parents’ past. His father was a survivor of Buchenwald, whilst his mother was one of only three known survivors of an Aktion in Bolszowce in Poland. His father, being a Camp survivor, has an acceptable set of memories which fit with the public memories, whereas his mother has to struggle with her memories because no-one is able to corroborate them for her.

My father’s fate was not possessed of the same urgency as hers [his mother]. His was a past written on a page of history shared by other survivors... ‘He was in Auschwitz with me,’ my father often told me, ‘in the same barracks’; or, ‘He’s one of the Buchenwald boys.’...I had just finished reading my father’s Yizkor book, named from the Biblical word for remembrance...But who will remember for my mother? There are 896 Memorial Books in the Yad Vashem library. There are thick books for the ‘Jewish mother cities’ of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lwow, Vilna; tomes for the centres of Torah in Belz and Ponevizh, albums for the hundreds of hamlets and towns in the Ukraine, in Belorussia and in Lithuania. There are even collections on the entire region of Galicia, but none of them recognise my mother’s town as a place which was also transformed into a city of slaughter...Here and there, a single paragraph...mere snippets, hardly amounting to a dignified remembrance.

‘I’m telling you,’ she repeated into the phone, ‘I was the only young survivor from Bolszowzce. I and my parents, and maybe one or two others who hid in the forests with us. So who is going to write such a book? Who is going to read it?’...Who is going to believe her story?.[37][37]

This is a theme that re-emerges repeatedly in Baker’s book; keeping a memory alive and widely known even when it is not collaborated by others, and is therefore not part of the popular or public history.

Langer has posed an interesting question about Holocaust memory. ‘How credible can a reawakened memory be that tries to revive events so many decades after they occurred?’[38][38]

There is no need to revive what has never died. Moreover, though slumbering memories may crave reawakening, nothing is clearer...than that Holocaust memory is an insomniac faculty, whose mental eyes have never slept. In addition, since testimonies are human documents rather than merely historical ones, the troubled interaction between past and present achieves a gravity that surpasses the concern with accuracy. Factual errors do occur from time to time, as do simple lapses; but they seem trivial in comparison to the complex layers of memory that give birth to the versions of self...[39][39]

Langer argues that the human memory is not able to retain all of its Holocaust memories, but that the memories it loses are far more important in showing what was important to the survivor, rather than showing what is fact and what is not.

One factor which may make memory appear to be malleable is the difference between one testimony and the next. Just as an individual's testimony can differ from one interview to the next, so too can several people's testimonies differ from each others', even when they have had a common experience. This is not evidence of lies or of faulty memories. This is merely a reflection of the fact that every person perceives their life according to their culture, religion, gender, upbringing, personality and values. It should therefore be no surprise that each person experiences the same event, and explains the experience in a different way to every other person. We should therefore bear in mind that there is never one absolute "Truth" about the past, but rather, a range of truths as varied as the people who experience and witness them.

An interviewer can elicit markedly different responses from the one person about the one event by asking leading questions, or by asking open-ended questions. Although the memories may remain the same, they may be expressed in different, even contradictory ways. This is because the interviewee is responding to the unarticulated expectations that the interviewer has placed on them. They may feel the need to please the interviewer, and so give only the information that they feel will achieve this end. Alternately, they may only give information which they feel will elicit a certain sympathy or fear from the interviewer. If the interviewer obliges, the survivor may well continue doing this, and in doing so, give what appears to be a different story.[40][40] It is not necessarily the memories which are changing, but rather, the expression of them or, the testimony. It is also possible for the perspective to change. A person’s understanding of the world and the events of the past can change at any time, thus changing the way they deliver their testimony, and possibly even determining which stories they include and which ones are left out as irrelevant.

Like myth, memory requires a radical simplification of its subject matter. All recollections are told from a standpoint in the present. In telling, they need to make sense of the past. That demands a selecting, ordering, and simplifying, a construction of coherent narrative...[41][41]

Traumatic memories are difficult to verbalise due to the paralysis of Broca’s area of the brain, according to van der Kolk’s theory discussed earlier. It is therefore possible that the survivor would only be able to narrate a very limited version of their experience to an interviewer. It would also be possible that not all of the experience could be given as a narrative at one time - that the survivor could only focus in depth on limited parts of it at any one time. If this is so, the testimonies we are hearing from survivors are only small segments of what really happened. Large parts of their experiences are too Traumatic for others to comprehend, and for them to be able to describe in any language.

Bearing all of this in mind, memory is interesting as it is confounding. It differs from one person to the next, and from one narrative to the next. The events, places and people that are forgotten are no less important than those which are remembered, because they tell us what a person considers important to their being and their identity. The neurosciences tell us that memory, particularly Traumatic memories are extremely vivid, often accurate, and always powerful. They can dominate a person, even preventing them from living a normal life. Memory is central to Jewish identity and culture, dominating its Laws and customs, and inspiring a culture of remembrance. The interaction of private and public memories can lead to a reshaping of memory, particularly in the context of interviewing. Oral testimony based on memories is extremely interesting and although the memories may not always be accurate, the scientific and cultural understanding of them points to their importance, especially in relation to identity.

CASE STUDY 1: THE SYDNEY JEWISH MUSEUM

The Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) was officially opened on 18 November 1992. It is within the premises of the old Maccabean Hall, which was opened by Sir John Monash in 1932, in order to ‘commemorate the service of N.S.W. Jewish men and women and to honour the memory of those who had lost their lives in World War I’.[42][42] The brief of the SJM is realised in the contents of the museum, its exhibitions, its associated educational lectures and functions, and in its architecture and layout. This chapter will explore its brief, aims, and layout, and then move into an examination of how the SJM relies on oral testimony based on memories to enhance its temporary and permanent exhibitions.

The SJM has a simple but extensive Mission Statement which outlines the aims of the museum as follows.

The Museum aims to make each visitor aware that this unique historical event [the Holocaust] has universal applications. The most important of these are seen to be:

· · The understanding of the potential for evil in totalitarian regimes and, by extension, the need to cherish the individual freedoms freely provided to each citizen in democratic Australia.

· · The understanding of the potential for good and evil within each individual human being and the power of the individual to make a difference.

Within this context, the fundamental purpose of the Sydney Jewish Museum is to document and teach the history of the Holocaust so that these events will never be repeated.[43][43]

The specific exhibition aims of the Museum are an extension of the Mission Statement.

· · To illustrate the richness of Jewish life;

· · To tell the story of Jews in Australia;

· · To serve as a witness to the Holocaust;

· · To serve as a memorial to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust;

· · To honour the courage and the suffering of all those who were caught up in the Holocaust;

· · To honour those who attempted to resist evil for the sake of what was right;

· · To appreciate the importance of religious and cultural tolerance so that these events will never be repeated;

· · To pay tribute to the individual rights and liberties we enjoy in democratic Australia.[44][44]

Story telling and illustration, are the essence of both oral testimony and the SJM. Oral testimony allows ordinary people (the guides at the SJM) to tell the stories of their lives and their experiences.[45][45] However, these survivors are doing more; they are bearing witness to what they saw and experienced and many are doing so at the instruction of Holocaust victims who did not survive. The act of bearing witness is fulfilled by each of the volunteer guides every day and visitors also help them by listening to their testimonies, walking through the museum, absorbing the entire experience, and then relaying it to other people. It has been mentioned earlier that bearing witness is an imperative task for Jewish people which keeps the memories of Judaism and the Holocaust alive. In the SJM, it is a near-obsession for some of the survivors, who feel that the sole purpose for their survival was to tell the world what they experienced and witnessed during the Holocaust. As a natural extension of bearing witness, the guides and visitors also memorialise those who did not survive.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) fulfils a similar function, and, like the SJM, is a memorial. ‘The US Holocaust Memorial Council was established in 1980 by a unanimous act of Congress and was mandated with the task of creating “a living memorial to the six million Jews and millions of other victims of Nazi fanaticism who perished in the Holocaust.”’[46][46] Unlike the SJM, the USHMM does not use any guides to memorialise the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, but relies solely on its exhibitions and the building structure to fulfil this function. The building itself memorialises in the same way as the building of the SJM. It has been described in various articles how the design team and architect collaborated to make the building of the USHMM in itself a tool in the memorialisation process.[47][47] The building materials that were chosen, and the manner of their use were all part of the design of a memorial. Additionally, the placement of the building is significant; three other monuments can be seen from it, ‘The Washington Monument is just across the way and speaks of a consistency of purpose. The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials speak of freedom nearby. Our memorial is distinct from these heroic monuments, but joins with them as one of the figurative agents through which a society reaffirms its values.’[48][48] The juxtaposition of the four monuments show what extreme consequences can result when people are deprived of every basic human right. Young poses an interesting question about the motives of people in building large memorials.

...rather than embodying memory, the monument displaces it altogether, supplanting a community’s memory-work with its own material form. ‘The less memory is experienced from the inside...the more it exists through its exterior scaffolding and outward signs.’ If the obverse of this is true as well, then perhaps the more memory comes to rest in its exteriorized forms, the less it is experienced internally. In this age of mass memory production and consumption, in fact, there seems to be an inverse proportion between the memorialization of the past and its contemplation and study. For once we assign monumental form to memory, we have to some degree divested ourselves of the obligation to remember. In shouldering the memory-work, monuments may relieve viewers of their memory burden...As a result, the memorial operation remains self-contained and detached from our daily lives. Under the illusion that our memorial edifices will always be there to remind us, we take leave of them and return only at our convenience. To the extent that we encourage monuments to do our memory-work for us, we become that much more forgetful. In effect, the initial impulse to memorialize events like the Holocaust may actually spring from an opposite and equal desire to forget them.[49][49]

Clearly this is not the intention of the survivors who built the Sydney Jewish Museum, as they continue to work there every day telling visitors and each other of their experiences. It may be that the rest of us rely on this and other Holocaust museums to remember for us, but if all visitors contemplate this, an effort can be made to not rely on the museum alone to retain the memories.

The Sydney Jewish Museum’s brief has remained unchanged since the Museum's 1992 opening, and it has consistently pursued these aims in various ways since that time; by arranging the permanent exhibitions in their current structure, by creating the physical space of the museum as an effective framework for the exhibitions, and by the temporary exhibitions it has staged. These temporary exhibitions have included: The Book of Fire, Liberation, A Family at War, Prisoners of War, The War Crimes Trials Exhibit, Exile and Alienation - Austria's Lost Jewish Writers, Children of the Holocaust, The End of the Road - Hungary and the Holocaust, A Candle in the Dark, and A Generation Lost. The SJM has also used its permanent exhibitions, its theatrette, and its resource centre to pursue the aims. Each of the exhibitions, permanent and temporary, fulfils the aims because they all show the consequences of the Holocaust for various people, but mainly, the victims and survivors, the bystanders, and those who acted to save lives (Righteous Gentiles). The theatrette shows a 10 to 15 minute film on racial and religious intolerance and their consequences, focussing on the history of Anti-Semitism and culminates in the Holocaust, but also using the images of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Los Angeles Riots of 1994 to underline its arguments. The film contrasts the mob violence of the United States examples with the systematic violence of the Holocaust. It is important to note that although the Holocaust is perceived to be a unique event, parallels are frequently drawn with other situations and events involving violence and racial intolerance. The resource centre has an excellent collection of books, most of which focus on the Holocaust, but including many that explore the related topics of racial or religious intolerance. For example, there is a very interesting text which examines the discrimination experienced by several black soldiers in the United States army during the Liberation.[50][50]

The layout of the museum is designed to hold the attention of visitors, as the exhibits draw them along on a logical and emotional journey from the entrance on the ground floor, to the uppermost floor. Visitors enter through a porch which commemorates the NSW Jewish men and women who served in World War I and World War II. The list of names covers the wall facing the entrance, and subtly reflects the sombre nature of the contents of the Museum. In this reflective mood that the visitor enters the Museum itself where the feature that immediately demands attention is the design on the floor - that of a large Magen David (Star of David).[51][51]

The large, bright ground floor contains a permanent exhibition entitled Culture and Continuity which explores Jewish life in Australia from its convict beginnings, explains Jewish festivals and traditions, and portrays modern Australian Jewry. Due to a lack of exhibition space, the diversity of modern Australian Jewry is not fully portrayed. Other museums (in particular the Jewish Museum of Australia) have overcome this problem by representing one or two traditions in the exhibition, and explaining several more traditions in their extensive program. This allows the visitor to read about other traditions without occupying valuable exhibition space.

A number of different exhibition components are used in this exhibition. An interactive computer program about famous Australian Jews is available to all interested visitors and text panels are used extensively as are facsimiles of documents. Miniature model dining rooms are set up in glass cases to demonstrate Jewish home observance.[52][52] These are augmented with audio tapes. The most captivating display on this level is entitled George Street in the 1840's.[53][53] It is a Streetscape complete with sound effects, which recreates this group of Jewish shops as they were described in Sydney in 1848.[54][54] A visitor is able to walk down this street, flanked on both sides by shops, and hear the taped sounds which are designed to recreate the atmosphere of George Street in 1848. There is enough variety in this first section to keep visitors interested. The text panels are short and precise, and the changes in medium from sculpture, to models, to photographs, to artefacts, to documents, to computer screens and to a streetscape allow the visitors a diverse experience which engages more than one sense through a variety of media, as recommended in modern museology texts.[55][55]

Having been shown the basic tenets of Judaism, the visitor to the SJM begins the ascent through the museum. Each Mezzanine of the permanent exhibition takes the visitor to a different aspect of the Holocaust, beginning with Hitler's Rise to Power, and moving through The Ghettos, Transportation to the Camps, The Camps, Liberation and After, and finishing in Mezzanine Six with Reflection and Remembrance. All of these exhibits are placed around the Magen David which provides a common convergence point for all of the exhibitions and a space which, although empty of artefacts, is meaningful. It also helps to draw the visitors through the exhibitions in a pre-determined sequence. As one walks through the Museum, one is conscious of being drawn towards the top-most level up a large spiral. This has been designed to mimic the movement of the Jewish ashes in the chimneys of the Crematoria in the Nazi Death Camps. This is rather like the giant chimney in the USHMM; visitors walk through the bottom of it, only to see the seemingly endless photographed faces reaching up and disappearing into the sky.[56][56]

The visitor to the SJM is given some relief because the exhibitions do not end with the Final Solution but go on to show how the survivors rebuilt their lives, and who assisted them. Similarly, the USHMM also places its exhibition depicting survival, righteous gentiles, and emigration on its last floor. In this way, the visitors leave the museum contemplating the difference that each righteous gentile was able to make. They are also able to leave with the positive images of Jewish survivors setting up new homes all over the world.

Although the SJM does use photographs in sections, it is ‘...not manipulating people with aggressive visual material’ and so it relies on other methods with which to draw in its audience.[57][57] It poses questions without always offering answers; it allows visitors to peruse newspapers of the day so they can see for themselves contemporary reports about the Holocaust; it uses photographs and life-size cut-outs of photographs to create impressions of crowds in the Ghetto section.

Photographs can be unreliable; we must bear this in mind when they are offered as proof of anything. For example, the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre displays a photograph of a young boy Artur Siemiatek, which is widely published in accounts of the Holocaust. He is shown here as a symbol of the captive Jewish people during the Holocaust; afraid, alone and powerless.[58][58] However, the complete photograph shows us that his mother was with him; he is afraid and powerless but not alone. We know too, that photographs and films were used for Nazi propaganda purposes and that nowadays, through the use of computers, every detail of an image can be manipulated.[59][59] Just as we ask ourselves questions about the conditions surrounding an oral testimony, so we should also ask about the circumstances surrounding a photograph: Why was it taken and by whom? What was the purpose of the photograph? How is it being used in its present context and why? What is happening outside the frame of the photograph? Is it a candid shot or was it posed? Was the photographer an observer or a participant? These questions may help the viewer assess the photograph and determine if any distortion, even unintentional, has taken place.[60][60]

The SJM has three separate memorial spaces which try to develop some understanding in the visitors of just how profoundly the Holocaust affected the Sydney Jewish Community and all humanity. On Mezzanine Five, is the memorial space called The Alcove. It is all painted black and is dark save for many tiny lights which hang from the ceiling like stars in the night sky. A few photographs with very brief explanations are mounted across the back wall of the Alcove. There are two objects in glass cases; a candle holder and a piece of barbed wire, and a sculpture of a pile of children’s shoes made from fired clay and entitled All That Remained, ‘recreates the pile of shoes that had to be discarded outside the doors of the gas chambers’.[61][61] A soundtrack of prayers plays continuously in there. Many people are moved to tears.

The second memorial is the Electronic memorial on Mezzanine Seven.[62][62] Whereas The Alcove has been set up to portray the mass murder of the death camps, this memorial displays images of people who died in the Holocaust, and who were related to Australian survivors. In a brief explanatory note, a message is given to visitors. ‘If all 6 million were to be recorded here, it would take 25,000 hours, or nearly 3 years to read all the names, thereby reinforcing the magnitude of this genocide.’[63][63] Because individuals are shown here, the victims of the Holocaust are given a human face, enabling the visitor to relate to the victims and their families, and to feel what a tragedy it was. This is much like the Tower of Faces at the USHMM, which personalises the tragedy of the Holocaust by showing the photographs of the people of an entire village - most of whom were killed in the Holocaust. They are suddenly given their own identity in the eye of the visitor.

The third memorial is called the Sanctum of Remembrance. In this room, survivors are able to memorialise their lost relatives on wall plaques. These are the only gravestones for these people, and create a place that their relatives can visit to honour them and pray. There is a stone sculpture in this simple black room entitled Hatikvah - The Hope. It is a hand holding the Eternal Flame.[64][64] This memorial is the most personal memorial space of the three. While the memorials are extremely powerful, and allow visitors to contemplate what they have seen in the exhibitions, the oral testimonies of the guides are even more powerful.

Personal testimony, of which oral testimony is one form, is utilised in several different forms at the SJM. Firstly, personal documents such as diary excerpts and letters are displayed on the walls. Whilst these are not, strictly speaking, oral testimonies, they are personal testimonies recorded during same time period as the events occur. The most famous example of this type of testimony is the diary of Anne Frank, excerpts of which have appeared in SJM exhibitions. When reading these types of testimonies we must remember that they were normally not written for an audience. They were personal documents written to loved ones or, in the case of diaries, for their own satisfaction. Although Anne Frank wrote that she was hoping to publish her writing when she grew up, it is unlikely to have been such a personal piece of writing. This is important because we must always consider the intentions behind the testimony so that we understand what we are really being told. Another example of this comes in the paintings, drawings, and occasional poetry of Child survivors, some of which were created during the Holocaust and some of which were created in retrospect after Liberation. These children were either unable to find the words they needed, or simply unable to describe their experiences and feelings. Some of them were simply too young to know anything other than their feelings at the time of the experiences. It has been said that the younger a child is at the time of trauma, and the longer it is sustained, the more chance a child has of developing amnesia of the actual events, but they often retain memories of the feelings and of the physical sensations associated with it. For reasons that are not yet fully understood, ‘The younger a person was at the time of trauma, and the more prolonged the trauma was, the greater the likelihood of significant amnesia’.[65][65] In these cases, even as adults, some of these children are unable to articulate their experiences in words, but they have found expression through non-verbal, or artistic means. Their paintings, drawings and poetry are both a legitimate way for them to express their experiences, and an effective way for audiences to understand the experiences at some level of their being. These artworks have been used in exhibitions such as Children of the Holocaust and have been effective in showing people how children felt about their experiences during the Holocaust. Personal expressions in the form of quotes from testimonies, and statements by leading statesmen and jurists who went to see the Camps after the Holocaust are used as short text panels throughout the exhibitions.

Even more effective are the videotaped segments of interviews (which, like the Foundation interviews, were taken in recent years) shown in various parts of the SJM. For instance, interviews are used to describe the effect of Liberation on people and their families, as well as how they felt during Transportation to the Camps, and even in the Ghettos in comparison to their own homes. The questions are not included in the videos so the viewer does not know what the survivor is responding to at any time. The videos are highly polished, and have been edited. This can be a problem because we do not know what has been excised. However, unedited interviews would be too long and lose the interest of the viewers. The edited videos engage the attention of visitors, who can always be found sitting in front of the screens watching them with a keen interest.[66][66]

Still more effective than this are the guides, the majority of whom are themselves survivors. They often reveal part of their own experiences as they conduct groups through the SJM, and as much as people find these stories painful, they find them inspirational. This in itself is fascinating, as the more often survivors tell the stories of their survival, the more practised the stories can become, until the spontaneous aspect of the story disappears altogether. Despite this, according to visitor comment cards and the visitor books, visitors to the museum rarely find the stories slick or boring, but rather, they find them raw, painful and impossible to ignore. The fact that the guides take through so many school groups probably helps them to retain a candid testimony as children often ask unexpected questions, as indeed do some adult visitors. Often the questions will cause a survivor to think differently about an aspect of their experience, even if only briefly, and prevent their lapse into a recital of their testimony. It is important to consider whether the guides have edited their testimonies at all to match the public version of events. It is impossible to know this but, there have been some guides who have given important information during the course of their testimony which they themselves did not witness.[67][67] Why do they do this? Is it because these pieces of information link their stories to the more common version of events? One answer to this is simply yes. All of the guides survived the Holocaust. Most European Jews did not. Therefore the common story is that of not surviving. Every survivor’s testimony must therefore contain at least one section which does not coincide with the prevalent version of events. In order to make the Holocaust an experience common to the survivors and the victims, certain links must be established and it is possible that this is what the guides are doing when they offer parts of other people’s testimonies along with their own. There is a strict code of conduct which the guides are bound to follow; they must be cognisant of the museum’s aims and guidelines, they must not compare the Holocaust to other genocides, and they must speak from personal experience rather than trying to act as historians. Above all, the guides are there ‘To inform, to build bridges, and to inspire.’[68][68] It is this set of aims which drives their testimonies, in addition to their own personal desire and need to communicate about the Holocaust and help prevent any recurrence.

So far only the permanent exhibition has been examined. As mentioned earlier, the SJM has staged a number of temporary exhibitions. Many of these included oral testimony components which enhanced the other objects and documentation by giving visitors the faces to associate with the stories being told. For instance, There was an exhibition entitled Prisoners of War - Pacific Theatre. This mini-exhibition opened on 13 August, 1995, on the 50^th Anniversary of VP Day, and told the stories of three Australian Jewish servicemen who were prisoners of war of the Japanese Imperial Army. The exhibition consisted mainly of objects of that period, but also included push button interactives which allowed visitors to hear the men tell the stories of their own liberations. One of the SJM's more recent and major exhibitions was entitled Liberation, and coincided with the 50^th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Camps. At the entrance to this exhibition, a video played. It allowed survivors to reveal to visitors not only the happiness about the end of the Holocaust, but also the deep despair that so many felt on returning to what used to be home, to find that no other family members had survived. It allowed the survivors to express in their own words, how they felt about home, beginning a new life, and when, if ever, the emotional liberation finally occurred.[69][69]

‘Oral History is [the basis of] about 80 to 90 per cent of what you see here’[70][70] and all of the visitor responses reflect how the survivor guides enriched the SJM experience (although, as will be discussed later, comment books are not considered to be an effective evaluation tool).[71][71] Many of the comments in the Visitors' book are emotional and clearly show the effect the SJM had on them. Some comments from senior students have included, ‘I still recall vividly a guide struggling to control her tears...Learning of the Jewish people's struggle and pure determination is inspiring...’[72][72], and, ‘Survivors - thankyou...Your stories have given us an insight into life during the Holocaust. It must be hard retelling a story such as yours, and in return, I hope I can repay you by helping to prevent something of the Holocaust's magnitude ever occurring again...’[73][73]. One senior student was moved by his experience of the SJM to write four poems.[74][74] The younger students, of course, respond to some of the very basic issues, but nevertheless, also show the effect the SJM had on them. One young student wrote, ‘...When you talked about...your experiences during World War II, I was very astonished...’[75][75]. Another wrote, ‘I...think that the "selection process" at the death camps was unfair and people under fourteen and over thirtyfive aren't useless. I would hate to be a twin in those times especially an identical twin as they were treated So badly...’[76][76]. Many of the younger students also spent a lot of time drawing and writing on the response cards in response to their time at the SJM. The effort that has clearly been invested shows that their authors were powerfully affected by the stories they heard during their visits. Of course, the guides are effected by retelling their stories too. ‘There is no enjoyment in remembering the concentration camps, but I feel that I owe it to my parents and my friends and to all who were murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust, to tell their story and mine’[77][77]. As discussed in the previous chapter, bearing witness and remembering are highly important aspects of Judaism as a religion and within the culture. It therefore follows that survivors will feel an overwhelming need to tell the world what they saw and experienced, no matter how much pain this duty causes. Despite this, there are survivors who are unable or unwilling to share their testimonies. As discussed in chapter 1, van der Kolk has explained why some people are unable to remember what they experienced and others are unable to articulate their memories.[78][78] Langer has explained different types of Holocaust memory which could prevent a person from giving their testimony.[79][79] He categorises them as: Deep Memory (the buried self), Anguished Memory (the divided self), Humiliated Memory (the besieged self), Tainted Memory (the impromptu self), and Unheroic Memory (the diminished self). The names alone inform that they are all negative, painful, shameful and humiliating and some people are unable to overcome these negative feelings even for the purpose of educating others.

So far, the only visitors discussed in detail have been the school children, and these are a major proportion of visitors.[80][80] However, it is important to understand that many other people come into the SJM. The museum has been host to local and overseas dignitaries and it has hosted many other overseas and local visitors, including survivors. The only place for general (non-school group) visitors to record their impressions of the museum are in the visitor books placed in the museum exit and next to the library. The only formal questionnaire used is for school students.[81][81] In the comments books, no formal questions are posed, and this may not invite any in-depth responses from visitors. In recent literature on museum evaluation comment books are not considered to be an effective evaluation tool; they do not require a great deal of thought from the visitor, nor any amount of honesty. Far more effective for evaluation are questionnaires, interviews and behaviour mapping.[82][82]

The SJM uses oral testimony to further enhance its exhibitions. What visitors already begin to feel from looking at the objects, the photographs and the text, and from the design of the building itself, is magnified to a much greater extent by the memories that the guides on the floor and the interviewees on all of the videos are able to convey. It is a serious issue for the SJM to consider how it will be able to compensate for the loss it will inevitably feel when the survivors themselves are no longer able to be there telling their experiences and their stories in person, and indeed, it has already begun to consider this. The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation may provide link-ups to its archival database to various museums (including the SJM), which would enable them to offer a service to visitors, whereby they could access people's testimonies at will by either name or subject. Another option the SJM may need to consider would be to record the testimonies of all of its current guides on video and use excerpts at appropriate points in the exhibitions. Something like this will be necessary if the SJM is to retain or increase its current levels of interest from the public into the next generation and beyond. How will a museum which is essentially based around the experiences of its guides survive when its guides are no longer there? One thing is certain: based on visitor reactions to the guides' testimonies, it will need to retain their presence in some way.

CASE STUDY 2: THE JEWISH MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA

In 1982, the Jewish Museum of Australia (JMA) was established in the premises of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and in 1995, relocated to its own premises. As the museum's collection and requirements have changed, so a new layout has become necessary to reflect this. The mission statement and aims of the JMA are currently being rewritten, but they have not changed significantly since the museum transferred to the new building. This chapter will examine the mission statement and the aims and objectives of the JMA as set out in their business plan, and will then discuss the use of oral testimonies and memories in its permanent and temporary exhibitions. It is important to note that the JMA is different from the other museums. It does not have a permanent Holocaust exhibition, but it has had temporary exhibitions which have dealt with aspects of it, for example, David Rankin: The Auschwitz Poems, Witnesses in the Anteroom to Hell: The Theresienstadt Drawings of Paul Schwarz and Leo Lowit, Courage to Care: The Righteous Gentiles, and Art and Remembrance: Addressing the Holocaust. Therefore, although this chapter will look at the role of the guides in the overall oral testimony component, this role is less important than in the other museums.

The new mission statement of the JMA says:

The Jewish Museum of Australia is a community museum, which aims to explore and share the Jewish experience in Australia and benefit Australia's diverse society.

The Jewish Museum of Australia is committed to being a respected and innovative cultural centre, recognised nationally for its excellence in exhibitions, education programs, and collection management.[83][83]

The JMA has outlined some aims and objectives which lead to the fulfilment of the mission statement:

Exhibitions and Education

· · to display the creativity of Jewish custom, religion and culture and to share the legacy of more than 4,000 years of Jewish history, with particular emphasis on the Australian Jewish experience.

Through our exhibitions and programs the Museum aims:

· · to educate the general public by acting as a window on the Jewish world, a bridge to greater understanding and tolerance of cultural diversity;

· · to strengthen the sense of Jewish identity within the Jewish community by exploring the multiple facets of its special heritage and to celebrate its unity and the diversity which enriches the Jewish experience; and

· · to help shape and define a uniquely Australian Jewish identity.[84][84]

The mission statement continues with an outline of the JMA's Collection Management objectives and the strategies which are to be utilised in achieving all of its aims and objectives. The statement and policy are quite different from those of the other museums. Whereas the other museums have been set up to deal primarily with the Holocaust and racial intolerance in order to help establish more tolerant attitudes, the JMA has chosen to focus on the positive aspects of the diverse Australian Jewish religious and cultural experience, and on the positive aspects of the ancient Jewish history and culture, and use these as a tool to educate and increase tolerance. It is interesting to note that although the stated aims have a positive focus and centre on the modern Australian Jewish experience, many of the JMA’s exhibitions deal indirectly with the Holocaust. This is intriguing, and is probably the result of the fact that the Australian Jewish Community has the highest proportion per capita of Jewish Holocaust survivors outside of Israel.[85][85] Consequently, much of the Australian Jewish community has been influenced by the Holocaust (either directly or by association). As a result of this, the Holocaust is central to the modern Australian Jewish identity and experience. This is what the JMA reflects.

The JMA has shown many temporary exhibitions which have included, 500 Years of Jewish Books; Arrival and Survival: Jews in Victoria 1835-1985; The Jewish Marriage; Archaeology of Ancient Israel; Gefilte Fish on the Barbee: The Art of Australian Jewish Children; Women of Worth: Women in Jewish History and Religion; Jews of Ethiopia: Impressions of a Visit; Chagall and the Bible in Australian Collections; Louis Kahan: A Portrait, and many more. In this chapter, five will be investigated to see how oral testimony has been used to enhance them. They are: Freud and Friends: The Jews of Vienna; The Dunera Experience; Courage to Care: The Righteous Gentiles; In the Footsteps of Monash: Jews in the Australian Armed Forces in World War 2; and The Moveable Feast: A Celebration of Jewish Food. The first three of these exhibitions were displayed in the old premises of the museum, and the others were mounted in the new building.

The exhibition Freud and Friends: The Jews of Vienna was part of the festival "Mahler, Vienna and the Twentieth Century" in 1990. It was, like most other JMA exhibitions, object oriented, and used oral testimony to enhance it, rather than as the basis. There was a large variety of presentation styles to keep the interest of visitors, in addition to a section where visitors could directly experience the information being presented. Flyers, concert and theatre programmes from the pre-Holocaust period, some dating back to the early 19^th century, and photographs were used, along with text panels, to establish the background and to give the audience the information that was pertinent to the exhibition. Against this background there were many artefacts - sculptures, portraits, paintings, books, documents, posters, caricatures, religious books and items to help establish a sense of the period. The most important effect used was the layout of the exhibition. The axial hallway leading to the main exhibition spaces was lined with photographs of well known sites in Europe, anti-Semitic posters and other flyers from the era. The bulk of the exhibition was housed in two rooms. The first room was divided in half. One half of the room was a reconstruction of a Viennese living room (in a typical Jewish bourgeois house), complete with furniture of the period, books and even food on the table. As can be seen in the photograph, visitors were not able to walk through the room, but had to look in from the periphery.[86][86] They were, however, able to stand close to the artefacts with no separators and feel involved with the material. The other half of the room was a Viennese Cafe House, fitted with programmes on the wall and pictures of well known Jewish actors such as Adolf Ritter von Sonnenthal, musicians such as Emmanuel List, and literary figures such as Felix Salten.[87][87] This part of the exhibition also explored Jewish religious and cultural life, and the profound impact that many Jews had on politics, history, philosophy, music, theatre, visual arts, architecture, the press, and medicine. This part of the exhibition enabled visitors to immerse themselves for a moment in pre-war life in Vienna. They were able to sit at the cafe tables and read newspapers and information pamphlets.

The second room was a replica of Freud's study which had many of the books which were in his actual study, and many sculptures and archaeological relics from the same periods that were represented in Freud’s own collection. Once again, visitors had access to the objects in this room, even being able to sit in a chair in his study and look at the books on his shelves. As has been recommended in so many texts, and confirmed through many successful exhibitions, the experience at the JMA is experiential, allowing people to interact with the exhibition at a sensory level as well as an intellectual level.[88][88] The oral component was introduced into this exhibition at the end, where a video entitled "Yesterday We Danced" was set up in an adjoining room.[89][89] The video featured several people who narrated their own experiences of living in Vienna and of having to leave. They are heard against a musical background, and the visuals showed newspapers, paintings, sculptures, and photographs of Vienna as these people remembered it - with a vibrant, wealthy Jewish community. Many of them were nostalgic as they talked about the Vienna they remembered - the highly cultural Vienna where Jewish people were able to make a wonderful life for themselves with sporting, cultural and religious activities. One lady even cried at having missed out on growing up in the culture of Vienna. The questions were edited out of the video, so the commentary was very polished, but the audience was left wondering how the question was framed and what question elicited the answers given. It also wonders how much nostalgia has determined the memories of these people, and how much their memories and testimonies have been influenced by the fact that many of them were exiled from a place they loved and had not chosen to leave, even if some of them had been exposed to some form of anti-Semitism.

The Dunera Affair was published to coincide with The Dunera Experience exhibition in 1990/1991. The Dunera Boys were a group of men who were deported from England to Australia in 1940.[90][90] The book was launched by Klaus Loewald (himself a Dunera Boy), who made some interesting remarks about his experience with this exhibition and oral testimony.

What strikes me about such contributions as derive from reminiscences and memoirs is what makes the entire subject of history so wonderfully unreliable. It was the shock that a memory, a sequence of events I knew and for the accuracy of which I would have sworn sacred oaths, was shown to me to be erroneous, which made me embark on writing memoirs...if you give...general thought to the fact that, of what we learn, or even remember, about past events, even if they directly and sometimes painfully concerned us, much is factually wrong, you may get an inkling of the unreliability of history books and official statements. This should not lead you to be overcome by general cynicism or to abandon history books; on the contrary, rejoice in the variety of human memories, emphases, inventions, and omissions. All histories in effect, and in modification of Ranke's famous if misinterpreted dictum, relate to the readers...all are approximations, and if one bears this in mind, reading history becomes more intriguing than if you knew that each described event, statistic, official statement, and certified report was a fact. All history is opinion; it distinguishes between events to be included or left out, between emphasis and indifference; and each reader will be impressed by, and perhaps remember, different details.[91][91]

Loewald raised an interesting point in this section of his speech. He was saying that ultimately all official histories are also based on people’s perceptions of events - the archives and official documents are still written and created by people, and even if these people are accredited by or employees of the government, their perceptions are as open to fault as the perceptions of any other person. This would mean that official history can be inaccurate, and that we should therefore look at what the testimonies and stories reveal about the story-teller, rather than just what they reveal about history.

Oral testimony and sound in general played a significant role in The Dunera Experience exhibition. As visitors to the museum walked up the stairs to the exhibition, they could hear the background tape (of music and waves). As soon as they entered the exhibition room, they became involved in the exhibition and interacted with it. It was set up into three huts (one for Orange, one for Hay and one for Tatura - each of the internment camps).[92][92] In each hut, there were bunks set up which contained cases filled with artefacts provided by Dunera Boys such as drawings, paintings, programmes from their concerts, camp money and ration tickets. There were also earphones set up on each of the poles through which people could listen to Dunera Boys telling of their experiences of arrival and daily occupations within the camps. The visitors were then directed into a tent standing in another room. The tent was a replica of those used by the 8th Employment Company; visitors could sit in the tent and listen to tapes of Dunera Boys singing the songs they sang in camps and reminiscing about those days. The final section of this exhibition was a room in which there was a video that only had one narrator, who told the story of the Dunera Boys whilst music played, and paintings, I.D.Cards, and other items used and produced in the Camps were shown on screen.[93][93] According to JMA Director, Dr Helen Light, the decision was made to have only one narrator because most of the Dunera Boys' general experiences were so similar, and if each of them had been given the opportunity to speak, there would have been considerable overlap between their stories.[94][94] In addition to the tapes and personal artefacts, Dunera Boys were invited to wander around the exhibition and answer people's questions about what they had experienced. The emphasis was not only on oral testimony in this exhibition but, as with all of their exhibitions, experiential learning.

This exhibition was very popular with audiences, particularly because the Dunera Boys were sometimes there to speak to visitors. ‘We were privileged to meet some of the Dunera Boys who shared their experiences with us. The “Dunera” exhibition was also very interesting and left a vivid impact on our students. Thankyou for a rewarding experience.’[95][95] This response is similar to those sent in to the SJM, where the guides’ personal testimonies were nominated as a highlight of the visit. I asked Dr Light whether the well-documented doubts that exist in relation to the accuracy of oral history and memory presented a problem to the museum in planning this exhibition. She responded that the facts are only one perspective and that each memory is one aspect of the truth. If the museum maintained this, they would have no false claims to authenticity, but rather, they would be portraying a mosaic of the views of the Dunera Boys offset by documentary sources.[96][96] Because the evaluation questionnaire is not specific in its questions about any exhibition, it is hard to know whether this was in fact a concern for audiences of this exhibition.[97][97] Most of the comments in the visitor books are very general and there are only a couple of comments such as the one above that pinpoint what the visitors enjoyed within the exhibitions.

Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust was an exhibition which ran over 1992/1993. This exhibition was assembled with the help of the Wallenberg Unit of B'nai Brith and the Jewish Holocaust Museum on the 80^th anniversary of Raoul Wallenberg's birth.[98][98] The walls and floor were specially covered with grey material, making the layout of this exhibition quite dark.[99][99] Many different techniques were used in this exhibition. Pictures of famous rescuers, along with famous quotes lined the wall of the corridor into the exhibition room, and the room itself was dominated by shadowy cardboard figures, which were used as text panels for the personal testimonies of the rescued about the rescuers. As Dr Light explained, the figures had a candle-like shape to them.[100][100] They were a subtle imitation of the Candles of Life at the Yad Vashem museum in Israel, which symbolised the giving of life from the rescuers to the rescued. There were maps mounted on the walls, text panels explaining the Holocaust in different countries, and some glass cases with objects and documents, such as false papers and passports in them. A tiny room replicated of Anne Frank's hiding place, complete with the sound effects of a family living there. Once again, different colours, shapes, and devices were used here to hold the interest of visitors. There was also a video, entitled "Courage To Care" playing in another room. This video used several unseen narrators to tell their experiences of being saved, and displayed photographs of righteous gentiles and the people they saved, and photographs of the places and events from which these Jews were saved. This video added an immediate oral component to an exhibition which was already based on a collection of personal testimonies.

The Exhibition In the Footsteps of Monash: Jews in the Australian Armed Forces in World War 2 took place in the new building of the JMA in 1995.[101][101] Part of the "Australia Remembers" campaign, it coincided with the 50^th Anniversary of the end of WWII. Despite that, it included a small section on World War I, as well as other wars in which Australian forces have been involved. It gave information on numbers of Jews fighting for other Allied Forces, as a comparison for the Australian statistics and there was also information about Prisoners of War and their experiences. This exhibition was mainly object-based, making use of medals, documents and photographs, but it too included an extensive oral testimony segment. Books were created and scattered around the exhibition with written versions of oral testimonies of several members of the armed forces from this period. In addition, four videos were produced and playing in different sections of the exhibition. There was "The War Against Japan" (parts one and two), "War Over Europe", and "The War in North Africa and the Middle East". Each of these videos featured several different members of the Australian Armed Forces retelling their experiences. As in the video "Yesterday We Danced", the questions were edited out, once again leaving the audience with questions about how the responses were elicited, and what biases may have influenced the answers.

The Moveable Feast: A Celebration of Jewish Food was staged in conjunction with the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 1996.[102][102] This was another exhibition which relied heavily on objects. Prop foods were used extensively in this exhibition, along with old plates, utensils, and kitchenware designed for specific uses and foods in a Jewish home. Paintings and drawings were used, as were extensive text panels for the explanations of various customs and laws as they are pertinent for different parts of the Jewish community. The only part of this exhibition which relied on oral testimony was the video, which was a light-hearted look at how Jews view their food in relation to their religious beliefs and customs. Rabbis from different sections of the community were approached for their interpretations, and Jewish customers of two Jewish restaurants were asked to comment on this. Questions were included at the beginning of each separate section, so as not to interrupt the flow of the narrators, and the voices were accompanied by some traditional Jewish tunes. The video was really just a touch of fun to add some variety to the exhibition.

The two permanent exhibitions at the JMA, The Jewish Year and Belief and Ritual, are beautiful and very detailed, and rely on oral testimony to create the feeling and the mood that cannot be created by text and objects alone. Each of them uses a variety of devices to explain in a small space what could take up a much larger space. The Jewish Year is set out in an enclosed circle, in which festivals are set out opposite the month they fall in the Jewish Calendar. Artworks, paintings, religious objects and books, documents, text panels, a scroll that the visitors move themselves, a miniature kitchen with cutlery and food, photographs, and a flag are all used in this section. But by far the most involving section is that for the festival of Passover. Not only does it have a life-size model of a family seated around a table with the appropriate festival plate and books, but it also has a tape of the family singing festive songs and talking about the festival and their customs. This is something that most Jewish people experience at least once in their lifetime if not each year, so this tape involves the Jewish audiences straight away. As for the non-Jewish audiences (which make up about 60% of the JMA visitor numbers[103][103]), it provides a clear explanation, and does this much more effectively than a text panel ever could. Once again, there are bright colours, varying degrees of light and audio communication components to give the visitors a stimulating visit.

Belief and Ritual also relies mostly on objects and text to explain Jewish beliefs, rituals, and the life-cycle, but other methods are also used. The wedding, within the life-cycle, features a life-size bride and groom with an explanation of the Jewish wedding. Immediately next to this is a small model of a bride and groom under the Wedding Canopy with a wind-up handle. As a person winds the handle, the bride begins the customary seven circles around the groom, and an audio tape is activated to play a recording of the wedding ceremony. In the section on Jewish religious writings, there is an explanation of the Talmud (explanations and extensions of the Torah) and the Talmudic debates. One then has the option to pick up the earphones provided and listen to a debate and lesson on the Jewish beliefs about abortion and a range of other topics. Each of these exhibition sections line the walls. In the space in the middle of all of them is a model of a Synagogue. As visitors walk into the model, a tape of a Synagogue service is activated, educating visitors without subjecting them to lengthy explanations. Once again, the emphasis is on the experiential learning, and oral communication, gaining an understanding from the exhibition and the atmosphere that has been created around it, rather than through lengthy explanatory captions.

The guides are important to the JMA, although in a different way from the guides of the other museums. The guides of the JMA are not given specific guidelines as to what to say when they show people through the museum. It is not appropriate for them to give personal anecdotes or testimonies; the notable exception being The Dunera Experience. The breadth of the exhibitions makes it rare for the guides to have a personal connection with all of them, although many do have the connection to the Holocaust-related exhibitions through their family or friends. JMA guides all undergo special training sessions which equips them with the required factual knowledge, much like the Museum of Victoria and other large museums.[104][104]

It is difficult to tell just how much visitors appreciate the oral testimony components of the exhibitions. The comments in the visitor books are generally positive, with varying degrees of analysis which range from ‘Fine’ to specific comments about specific exhibitions. Some visitors send letters praising specific exhibitions, but most do not. Once again, as with the visitor books in the other museums, it is difficult to know whether all visitors liked the museum, or whether those who had a negative impression did not bother writing in the comments book. Either way, the question of how much visitors learn from the exhibits, or from specific components of them is still unanswered in the visitor books. As the JMA does not use the behaviour mapping technique whereby they choose visitors at random, follow them discreetly around the museum and question them about the exhibits before they leave (possibly due to a lack of staff to carry this out initially, and then analyse the results), they must rely solely on the visitor surveys and comments books.[105][105] We know from the comments that most visitors enjoy the exhibitions, but that does not mean that they leave the museum with more knowledge than they brought in with them. The JMA does have a questionnaire that they distribute to visitors to find out where they heard about the museum, why they visited, and what they have gained from their visit, and their public relations committee analyses the results on a regular basis.[106][106] This type of visitor evaluation is known to elicit much more specific information, because it forces visitors to analyse aspects of their visit much more closely than a visitor’s book.[107][107] By directing questions to certain aspects of the Museum and specific sections of exhibitions, the museum can understand what visitors are responding to and why. In this way, they know what they should improve or cut out of the exhibitions altogether.

Clearly, the Jewish Museum of Australia does not face the same dilemma as the other museums examined in this thesis - there is far less danger of their exhibitions being undermined by the inevitable disappearance of Holocaust survivors. The emphasis is on the experiential much more than the oral aspect, although oral testimony does play an important part in many of their exhibitions.

CASE STUDY 3: JEWISH HOLOCAUST MUSEUM AND RESEARCH CENTRE MELBOURNE

The Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre (JHMRC) was opened in 1984, as a consequence of the combination of two groups: the Kadimah and the Federation of Polish Jews. The Kadimah was established in 1916 as the ‘Yiddish cultural centre of Melbourne’ and its purpose was to maintain the links between sections of the Melbourne Jewish community and their culture and tradition from their original homes in Eastern and Middle Europe. It provided Yiddish theatre, a library and recently a primary school.[108][108] The Federation of Polish Jews was set up in order to assist Polish Jews who migrated to other countries.[109][109] Three men, Bono Wiener, Aron Sokolowicz and Robert Zablud, were particularly active in the process of setting up the museum, and have been recognised for their work in the JHMRC's commemorative book.[110][110] These men, along with other members of these organisations decided that a museum was necessary in order to ‘keep... alive the memory of European Jews murdered by the Nazis between 1933-45’, and to answer Revisionist claims.[111][111] Bono Wiener summed up some of the aims when he said that,

...Jews and non-Jews alike would not only see with their own eyes the cruelty and destruction that stemmed from the Nazis against European Jews in Nazi occupied Europe, but also be able to study Jewish heroism in the Ghettos and concentration camps. It would be a starting point to see the destruction of all forms of Jewish life, and help to fight the so-called ‘scientists’, who were trying to deny the biggest Holocaust in Jewish history... ‘Today when some of the world's conscience is trying to forgive and forget - it is the duty of the survivors, from Australian Jewry and all decent Australians, to help the work of the Museum so that future generations will never forget.’.[112][112]

The aims of the JHMRC have remained unchanged since its establishment and, as with the SJM, visitors seem to leave feeling responsible to pass on the knowledge gleaned to as many people as possible.

The humble and small exterior of the JHMRC building does not intrigue or inspire curiosity. It does not stand apart from any of the other buildings in any remarkable way, as the SJM or the JMA, or indeed, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[113][113] A small plaque next to the doorway is the only indication of the function of the building.[114][114] This building does not memorialise in the way that the other museums do - in the architecture and even the building materials themselves.[115][115] The JHMRC memorialises through its contents, which seem, in some ways, to be completely unattached to the building structure itself. In a way, this innocuous exterior makes the contents of the museum even more shocking and horrific. The equally ordinary building next door contains administrative areas, and the archives. As visitors enter the main building, they step into the entrance foyer where information sheets are available. The visitor book is also located here, so that people can write their comments as they leave. Between the foyer and the exhibitions is the Information desk and the JHMRC shop, where books on relevant topics are available for sale to the public. Often, two or three guides can be found sitting behind the desk, and while this can be daunting for members of the public the guides are so eager to help visitors that the fear and reluctance vanish almost immediately, and the museum experience can begin for an individual visitor.

The exhibition area, located on the ground floor, is much less sophisticated than the SJM or the JMA, consisting of two large rectangular rooms, into which the permanent exhibition is fitted.[116][116] The exhibition is set out in two rooms on the ground floor - the old staircase leading to the auditorium. Because the building was not constructed as a museum, the architecture cannot be used to express a message to visitors. The exhibition is divided into fifteen sections: The Vanished World (1 and 2), The Rise Of Nazism, Execution, Terror And Humiliation Before The Final Solution, The Ghettos, Deportation, Extermination Camps, Medical Experiments, Righteous Among The Nations/Rescue Or Abandonment, Non-Jewish Victims, Jewish Resistance, Yad Vashem, Displaced Persons And Hopes For A Jewish Homeland. Each section of the exhibition consists of photographs, both captioned and uncaptioned mounted on cardboard and hung on the walls or on divider panels. In addition, glass cases filled with documentation and artefacts from the Holocaust display passports, identification papers, Stars of David and Ghetto money.[117][117] There are also sculptures, paintings, a life-size model of a section of a camp, a miniature replica of Treblinka (a Labour camp and a Death camp), and stained glass windows, depicting one artist's feelings about life and the Holocaust. Powerful quotes are displayed on the walls and panels in appropriate places.[118][118] All of these artefacts and artworks work on two levels. Firstly they involve the visitor in looking at interesting objects. Secondly, they appeal to the visitor on an emotional level. Unfortunately, as accompanying information is sometimes scarce, they can appeal to very little else - there is no variation from these two levels in the museum. Contemporary museology texts, such as Shapiro’s, recommend that these useful ways of engaging and holding the interest of the visitors supply very little intellectual information to visitors.[119][119] What this can mean is that once the visitors go downstairs and move away from the live testimonies, there is nothing unusual or varied or intellectually informative in the exhibition to engage them in a meaningful way.

Perhaps one of the most noticeable differences between this museum and the two others previously examined is the nature of explanations that accompany the exhibitions. Whereas at the SJM and the JMA detailed text is included in the exhibition itself, and in the accompanying programs, to give the visitor more than a basic understanding of the content, the JHMRC offers only short explanations at the beginning of each segment, and beyond that, generic captions under each photograph or item which may promote emotional learning, but less intellectual information than can be found in the other museums. For example, there is a caption which reads, ‘Humiliating a Religious Jew’[120][120]. This is typical of the captions in this museum and we can see that it does not give any factual information about the photograph or its contents. This lack of attention to the details attached to photographs would indicate that the JHMRC relies heavily on the oral testimonies of the guides for details, and that they expect the testimonies to provide the sole information base for the photographs that follow in the museum, rather than the testimonies providing additional evidence to that presented in the exhibition.

Another important difference is the fact that the main focus of this museum is the ‘Polish Jewish experience’, because that was the focus of the two founding groups. The JHMRC is therefore (like the SJM) not representative of large sections of the Jewish population, and this is rarely pointed out to visitors. It would be easy to leave with the false impression that one now knows the story of the Holocaust as it affected every Jewish victim. Of course, it would be impossible for any museum to represent every type of experience - particularly as every experience, no matter how closely it may seem to follow a well-known story, has differences which are personal, and which make it unique. However, the JHMRC should explicitly acknowledge somewhere, either in the introductory lecture or in the exhibition, that it only represents one segment of the survivor population, and not the entire European Jewish population.

In the second floor auditorium, several paintings of aspects of the Holocaust within the seasons of the year are on display as well as a large wall-mounted map of Europe showing the locations of Death camps, Concentration camps, Ghettos, Euthanasia houses, Partisan activities, and other notorious sites from the Holocaust.[121][121] This map has taken shape over several years, and is still being developed by Janek Schnall, its creator. The fact that this map has been made by a survivor prompts questions about his motives. Is he, as a survivor, trying to liberate his memories by plotting a detailed and vivid map? Are all of the survivor guides trying to free themselves of their memories by giving daily testimonies to groups of school children? Does this give them, as Samuel and Thompson suggest, a sense that their memories and experiences are valid, or that they are, at least, amongst the accepted public memories?[122][122] It is interesting to note that one of the guides is not a Polish Jewish survivor but rather, a Hungarian Jewish survivor who did not live for any period of time in either a ghetto or a camp.[123][123] Why does she work at the JHMRC, presenting her testimony along with the other survivors who are almost all Polish survivors? Does working with and identifying with this group validate her memories and experiences as a survivor? Does the opportunity to publicly testify allow her the comfort of feeling that her experience is part of the ‘public memory’ and therefore acceptable as an experience and acceptable to even remember?

It is on this second floor that the visit begins for any group of visitors. They are seated in the auditorium with the map behind them. An introductory talk is given by one of the guides.[124][124] Topics covered include: why the Holocaust centre was built, and why the Jewish victims of the Holocaust are the main focus rather than victims of other racial and ethnic communities. Students are told that the JHMRC was set up in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, to pay tribute to Righteous Gentiles, and to pay tribute to the millions of non-Jews who also perished during the Holocaust.[125][125] In other words, the JHMRC was created as a memorial to all of these people, although it does not succeed in this message or memorial. From their written responses it is clear that visitors are able to apply the lessons they learn here beyond the Jewish community, but the museum itself succeeds in being a memorial for the Jewish people only. It is a museum built to tell the stories of people who are unable to tell a story anymore, such as the dead victims or the unwilling such as in the Righteous Gentiles.

The students are also told that the reason that Jewish victims were different from non-Jewish victims was that the Jews were killed as a result of their Jewishness and for no other reason, whereas the non-Jews were generally killed resisting German occupation or aggression. We know that other groups also suffered for no other reason than the fact that they were born within a certain group. For instance, Gypsies, homosexuals, and intellectually disabled people were also persecuted for being who they were. It is possible that the guides emphasise the Jewish people as the only people in this category because they believe that if they do not, others, both Jewish and non-Jewish, will try to deny the tragedy and importance of the Jewish victims. It is also possible that, as many of the guides did not come into contact with these other groups, they do not think of them as suffering because of who they were. This is the problem with using survivors as guides and not providing them with any formal guidelines. Unlike the SJM, the JHMRC does not train its guides in what they can and cannot say, nor does it stipulate that they must either give a history lesson or their own personal testimony. Therefore, the guides try to present both - their own experiences and a more general history of the Holocaust. Clearly there is the possibility of confusion for visitors - what is mainstream historical narrative and what is personal testimony, and beyond that, what is neither of these but rather hearsay? We must ask whether it is possible for a survivor guide to present a formal history lesson that can be separated from their own experiences? Is it wise to attempt to do this? Is this an accurate representation of history for visitors or should the history lesson be presented by a person who was not directly involved in the Holocaust? As discussed in the first chapter, as soon as memories (ordinary or Traumatic) are given narrative form, they are susceptible to distortion.[126][126] This rather general introduction is followed by an account of the guide’s own experience of the Holocaust. Details are modified to suit the age group, so that more detail is given to older students, and a less harrowing version is told to younger students. Students are then shown a short film about Auschwitz.[127][127]

The film is followed by two more survivor testimonies. Many students seem to be overwhelmed when given the opportunity to ask questions of the guides about their experiences, and about the film. I observed four classes and noticed that most did not ask questions at this point.[128][128] Some were beginning to look haggard from the emotional impact of the information, and some did not seem to understand or care about the significance of what they had been told. They may have been suffering from an overload of information by this time. Of course, without proper visitor evaluation, it is impossible to know how they really felt. Following the question time, the students turn to face the map, and are given a lecture about it by the initial guide. They are shown locations of camps, ghettos, partisan areas, and Euthanasia houses. They are told of specific incidents which happened in many of the highlighted areas, and shown various escape routes that were used, and those which were blocked by various governments. Not a long lecture, it is filled with so much information that it seems that the students must have been unable to comprehend any more from listening to so much without writing anything down. After this session, the students are again given the opportunity to ask questions related to the map. It is important to note that the guides constantly emphasise that the lessons that should be learnt from the museum visit are not those of renewed hatred and violence, but rather, an understanding of what this hatred leads to, a commitment to avoid these feelings and all that results from such feelings, and even a commitment from those who are able to give it to teach other people about the Holocaust. Then the students are taken downstairs and are given the opportunity to browse through the exhibitions at their leisure. They have the option to ask their guide questions, or to be talked through the exhibition by the guide, but most of the students I observed chose to wander at their own pace, some stopping to read the captions.

It must be said that the students who I observed all displayed much more interest in the oral testimonies than in the artefacts. The personal story is much more immediate and engaging; much harder to shrug off than a photograph. The fact that more information was made available to them with the guides giving personal testimonies than with the photographs also added interest. They were able to ask questions directly of an eye-witness in the historical event they were studying, instead of reading transcripts of interviews or watching static videos of interviews recorded years ago.

Above all, in contrast to any other historical document, oral evidence comes from a living source. If it seems misleading, it is possible to ask more. And an informant can also correct a historian who has misunderstood. Documents cannot answer back, but oral history is a two-way process...And living people can offer a historian more than mere evidence.[129][129]

The groups that I observed listened closely to the personal testimonies of the guides, but were not so attentive when they went down into the museum afterwards. Once the personal element was removed from the content of the exhibition, and once the interest of several senses being engaged concurrently was removed, they seemed to lose the ability to identify with the events being portrayed. After this happened, they were able to walk seemingly unaffected through the exhibition without really seeing anything at all, and they seemed to be unable to connect with the information being presented. This is not only an issue that bears discussion now, but will become a more serious issue in future when the survivors are no longer able to give their testimonies to visitor groups. What will capture the interest of visitors and hold it? Once the survivors are gone, how will visitors learn about the personal aspects of the Holocaust? In particular the JHMRC needs to address the question of what will attract visitor interest once the live testimonies are gone because the information they offer in the exhibition does not engage the visitor. From the visitor letters, it seems that the survivors make a large impact with their testimonies, but the information contained in the exhibition is never mentioned. The artworks and photographs can still have an emotional impact on visitors even if they are extensively labelled and explained, and it seems that this is what is needed here. For what will the visitors write about, and indeed, even come for, once the survivors are no longer there?

Some of the responses that have been written into the visitor comments books, or sent in by mail, point to the power of the oral testimonies given personally by the guides[130][130]: ‘...it is wonderful that you are able to educate us with your amazing stories. We could not read what you have told us out of a text book, and we would never have known of this history’[131][131]. A common theme in many of the letters is that of bringing the facts alive and making it all seem real: ‘Meeting people who have actually experienced the Holocaust makes everything more realistic’[132][132]. Another student said, ‘I believe everyone was touched by the personal accounts of Sarah and Arnold, yet felt horribly shocked at finding the events we had only ever read about in text books were true.’[133][133]. Another student sent a letter saying, ‘...the most important thing I have learnt from my visit to your Museum is that we as the future adults of this world can never let such a thing happen again.’[134][134]. One student from Tecoma felt so moved by what the volunteers had to say that he wrote, ‘...In a time when racism seems to be rearing its head in Australian society, your lecture was like a breath of fresh air - intense, educational and highly poignant. There is no doubt in my mind that I, and my fellow students, will never participate in any kind of discrimination after hearing you speak. The memory of the atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust will not pass into the oblivion of history, but will remain with us forever as a warning of where prejudice leads...’[135][135]. Older groups are affected in similarly powerful ways. ‘The personal stories tell so much more than the numbers and figures regarding the Holocaust. Thankyou for sharing them with us.’[136][136] A different type of response from school groups has been to send their school flag to the museum to be hung up with the others.[137][137]

Once the survivors are no longer able to carry out this work, what method will be effective in capturing the interest of the many school groups and individual visitors who come through the museum? If the photographs used in the current context are not sufficiently compelling to demand the attention of these school children and other visitors they must be changed now. Videos, which are held by the museum, of the survivors giving their testimonies are plentiful at the museum, thanks to the work of Phillip Maisel and the other videographers and interviewers, but will they have the immediacy and the power to command the interest and respect that the live guides currently command? Further, if the information in the exhibition remains unchanged, will visitors bother to come just to watch video testimonies? These issues are important for all Holocaust museums, and indeed the entire Jewish community, to resolve as the number of survivors who are able to take on these active roles decreases. We must learn to rely on different museological methods other than the live testimonies from the guides if Jewish Holocaust museums are to have a future.

THE SHOAH FOUNDATION AND MUSEUMS OF THE FUTURE[138][138]

The Shoah Foundation defies present categories. Is it a new type of museum in itself? Is it a new type of archive? It is a mixture of an on-line museum and an archive of the living. As computers and the Internet become more accessible to a wider audience, more on-line or virtual museums are becoming available to the public. The Foundation will not be quite as accessible as other on-line museums. Before examining the differences and similarities, it is important to understand how it came to be. The Foundation, established in 1994 by Steven Spielberg in the United States has as its purpose to ‘...videotape eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust and develop the most comprehensive multimedia archive of survivor testimonies ever assembled.’[139][139] To date, over 38,000 interviews have been conducted in twenty-nine different languages all around the world.[140][140] More are being collected still, in a bid to capture as many testimonies as possible before the survivors’ numbers are further diminished. Although this sounds like a large number of testimonies, it is really a minute proportion of the total. If 2,000,000[141][141] Jews survived the Holocaust, 38,000 represents only 1.9% of the survivor population, and only 0.5% of the entire Jewish population of pre-Holocaust Europe. Bearing these figures in mind, it is quite remarkable that the Foundation’s collection will be the largest collection of Holocaust testimonies ever put together.

Steven Spielberg established the Foundation as a result of his experiences during the making of the film “Schindler’s List”. The testimonies with which the “Schindler Jews” bombarded him during the filming inspired the creation of the Foundation. As Spielberg himself said, ‘The stories were too valuable to be told just to me and not shared with the rest of the world.’[142][142] He has emphasised the importance of the Foundation time and again. In one of the publicity brochures, his reason for establishing the Foundation is recorded as such,

This archive will preserve history as told by the people who lived it, and lived through it...It is essential that we see their faces, hear their voices, and understand that the horrors of the Holocaust happened to people, just like us...Sadly, racial, ethnic and cultural hatred and intolerance are not just history. They’re current events...This project stands as a monument to remembering the past, and to always examining our present.[143][143]

Three of the aims used in this explanation are common to the aims and objectives of all of the other museums that have been discussed. They are preserve, monument, and remembering. These are the aims which bind the Foundation to the other museums. Whilst the Foundation speaks of preserving, creating a monument, and remembering, the SJM aims to ‘tell the story’, ‘serve as a witness and a memorial’, and to ‘pay tribute’. The JHMRC seeks to ‘never forget’ and to ‘keep alive the memories’. The JMA aims to ‘share the legacy’. Each of these museums aims to keep the message alive forever, but in different ways. The three museums display objects, photographs, pictures, diaries and other artefacts in a specially designed museum space, but the Foundation will offer a computer terminal in any space it can and show multimedia footage of people, documents and artefacts.

The Shoah Foundation has a formal structure, with Steven Spielberg being the Founder and Chairman. Apart from him there is a President and Chief Executive Officer (Michael Berenbaum), and Executive Campaign Director, a Board of Directors, Founding Executive Directors, and a Founding Advisory Committee. The main office, in which all of the policy decisions are made by the CEO, and where the world-wide practices are begun, is in Los Angeles. However, most countries that are involved in the project have their own regional offices. The regional offices are staffed by a Regional Coordinator, an Assistant Coordinator, and sometimes, by other voluntary staff. The Regional Coordinator is the one who arranges the dates and times of interviews, and matches up appropriate interviewers for each interviewee. The coordinator also arranges interviewer gatherings, at which interviewers and videographers can discuss their feelings and share solutions to any common problems which have arisen.

There is regular contact between the regional offices and Los Angeles, with the latter sending out regular updates of statistics (how many interviews have been completed and the breakdown according to country). The Regional Coordinators are able to call Los Angeles with any problems they have, as are the interviewers. There is a special “coaching line” that has been set up, which allows interviewers to call Los Angeles toll free for coaching on a particular interview which is unusual or difficult in any way. There is also regular feedback given to all of the interviewers whereby some of the most experienced interviewers watch other people’s interviews and then call them with advice on how to improve and what to work on in the future.

The Foundation was initially funded by Steven Spielberg and a host of other people and groups including ABC Inc., EMC Corporation, MCA Inc., NBC, Sony Corporation of America, Time/Warner, Wasserman Foundation, the Samuel Bronfman Foundation, The David Geffen Foundation, United States of America, and many others.[144][144] Donations have continued to flow in to enable certain parts of the project to continue. For example, the Pratt Foundation in Melbourne funded a trip for nine interviewers from Melbourne to fly to New Zealand and to interview fifty people in ten days.[145][145] This was vital for the New Zealanders, as no regional office is to be opened in New Zealand, and these testimonies would not otherwise have been captured for the Foundation’s archives.

The Foundation has had contact with many other Holocaust museums and oral history projects. In Australia, the contact has not always been amicable with all of the projects, particularly with the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Resource Centre, and the Foundation has had to work hard to prove it is serious about creating historically accurate testimony rather than sentimental stories. In addition to worrying about the Foundation’s intentions, it is possible that the local Jewish museums may have had a problem with the Foundation coming over from America and ‘taking over’ the memories of local people. This question of who owns the past and who has the right to own the past is explored by Baker in his book about his parents’ Holocaust memories.[146][146] Many Holocaust survivors choose to record their testimonies, and until recently, the main organisation doing this in Melbourne was the JHMRC.

The Foundation has consulted with several historians such as Paula Draper, and with all of the museums and universities which are to be its repositories, and has developed a training package for its interviewers in conjunction with them.[147][147] This package teaches them to ask questions which are designed to give rise to testimonies which are historically accurate, and relatively free of any interviewer bias. For example, interviewers are taught to ask open ended questions such as ‘Please explain to me.../how did you feel when.../do you remember how that made you feel...’, which encourage the survivors to tell about their experiences and how they felt about them at the time. It must be noted that the Foundation’s interviewees have all volunteered to be interviewed. Interviewers are told, ‘Use your historical or other knowledge to elicit, rather than provide information.’[148][148] In other words, they are never to ask leading questions such as ‘You must have felt/been/seen/known...’. Interviewers are also taught to refrain from interrupting a testimony unless it is imperative, and also to refrain from physically comforting the survivor both on camera and off, and to refrain from verbally comforting on camera. The purpose of the testimonies is to record the survivors’ unique experiences and reactions to them rather than to record history lessons, so interviewers are also instructed to ‘Focus on the interviewees’ personal experience and emotions rather than generalizations or hearsay’.[149][149] Training is always coordinated from Los Angeles, and the trainers either come out to teach in person, or videos of their lectures are provided and local experts are invited to make their own contributions to the training sessions. The experts provided by Los Angeles include such people as Paula Draper (historian), and Bonnie Gurewitz.[150][150] Locally, Dr Sandra Neil (psychologist) has attended a training session to explain the psychological processes involved in an interview. In addition to this, at the most recent training session, survivors also attended to allow interviewers to practice their interviewing techniques on them.[151][151]

Whereas Virtual Museums are available to anyone, The Foundation’s archives will be available initially to people using specially set-up terminals in a limited number of libraries and museums in order to ensure some level of security and privacy for all of the interviewees. At present those organisations are: Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority (Jerusalem), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, D. C.), Simon Wiesenthal Center (Los Angeles), Fortunoff Video Archive For Holocaust Testimonies (Yale University, New Haven), and, A Living Memorial To The Holocaust Museum Of Jewish Heritage (New York). It is interesting to note that all but one of the initial repositories are located in the United States, and it again highlights why small local Jewish museums may feel excluded or threatened. A large Foundation which sets up its headquarters in the States, along with most of its repositories, and sets the agenda for all of its international branches may be intimidating. It may also lead to an anxiety that the ideas, questions, and experiences which are appropriate to survivors in the United States, may not be so appropriate to survivors elsewhere, and although interviewers are given specific training for their area by local experts, the apprehension may still be there that certain memories will be emphasised or ignored. It is hoped that very soon, information will be available on-line all around the world, including Australia. The information will be ‘user friendly’, being indexed by interviewees’ names, place names, dates or keywords. Each repository will cater to a different target group, and will present the appropriate information to its specific audience. It is anticipated that a university-based research archive such as the Fortunoff archive will have access to all of the information in a standard database form. By contrast, museums, catering as they do to an audience of widely different abilities and educational standards, may be able to use touch-screen technology.[152][152]

It is also anticipated that educational packages including CD-ROMs will be produced from the content of the interviews and distributed to schools and other educational institutions to teach various age-groups about intolerance and the Holocaust, and the need for tolerance. In addition to this, documentaries will be produced for television and schools, along with study guides. Eventually, there may be access on the Internet, with people being able to watch interviews, and even take part in some sort of virtual reality exercise. It is likely that this will only come to pass many years from now, when most of the interviewees have died, thereby protecting them from unwanted exposure in their lifetime. All of the objectives of the Foundation show that it is geared towards educating as many people as possible about the Holocaust and intolerance based on race, religion and culture.

As discussed in the above paragraphs, there will be a range of products available to the public, which can be divided into two main categories. Firstly, there will be the interviews themselves (available on-line through the repositories), and secondly, there will be the more commercial products. There are vast differences between the two. The interviews are recorded on half hour tapes, sent to Los Angeles together with the pre-interview and release form documentation, and transferred onto normal length video tapes. No editing is permitted in order to allow viewers to see that no manipulation of footage has taken place. All mistakes, background noises, stilted moments, and other inappropriate interruptions are left untouched on the tapes, and the survivor may record a specific message at the end if they wish. One complete copy of the interview is sent to the survivor so that they have a record of it, and the other is stored in the Los Angeles archive, to enable future access from the repositories. The more commercial products are polished and edited and consist of the documentaries, educational packages and CD-ROM packages which will be sent to schools, libraries, and other places around the world. The documentaries move more quickly than oral testimonies because they can use the most compelling sections of several different testimonies, and in that respect, are more effective in a classroom because they can hold the students’ attention on the message of tolerance. The testimonies enhance the Foundation’s messages, but the survivors have no input as to whether their testimonies are included in these or how they are used.[153][153] Additional commentary is always used, and musical soundtracks are also added. In other words, the documentary is a much more constructed version of memory than the interviews, which are themselves constructed by the interviewer and interviewee.

With the Foundation collecting this information, and then disseminating it to so many people in so many places around the world, we must ask ourselves this: has the initial interest, which centred equally on the Foundation and on the fact that Spielberg was setting it up, continued throughout the world, or has it remained largely within the Jewish community? Whilst much of the interest has been about Spielberg himself and his involvement in the Foundation, interest has also been shown in the purpose and success of the Foundation’s work.[154][154] It is the largest oral history ever to be undertaken, spanning approximately fifty countries, and it is history as told by those who have lived through the experience. If it was a collection of documents and photographs on film, it would be the official version, but it would not tell even half of the story. This history is oral history, the history of ordinary people during an extraordinary period of time, told by them in their own words. If their stories were only expressed in writing, they would not be as effective, interesting, or involving as they are in their current form.

...writing reduces language to segmentary traits only - letters, syllables, words, phrases. But language is also composed of another set of traits, which cannot be reduced within a single segment, but are also bearers of meaning. For instance, it has been shown that the tonal range, volume range, and rhythm of popular speech carry many...connotations which are not reproducible in writing (unless it be, inadequately and partially, in the form of musical notation). The same statement may have quite contradictory meanings, according to the speaker’s intonation, which cannot be detected in the transcript but can only be described, approximately...By abolishing these traits, we flatten the emotional content of speech down to the presumed equanimity and objectivity of the written document.[155][155]

The type of technology which is being developed by and for the Foundation is extremely advanced, and is all designed to preserve the testimonies for many generations to come.[156][156] It is designed to allow future generations to see and hear testimonies directly from the participants. It is designed to allow this collection of oral testimonies to continue reaching people as the years go by. ‘...the idea of the Holocaust was to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth; with the videotape testimonies, the survivors live forever.’[157][157] This is particularly important to the Jewish community. Hitler’s aim was to kill all Jews, and all memory of their existence, seen in his attempts to collect photographs and artefacts for an eventual display on an extinct race - the Jews. The longer the testimonies are able to be passed down, the longer Jewish people defy Hitler and survive.

For the more traditional types of museums, modern museology texts now emphasise the importance of evaluating audience responses to exhibitions, and of engaging them entirely in the exhibitions, rather than just looking at exhibits the way they will be with Foundation testimonies. [158][158]

· Museums are people places. They should make every effort to afford visitors with comfortable, rewarding experiences. Wayfinders, adequate facilities, and public-oriented exhibitions will help people feel that they belong and give them a sense of ownership.

· Exhibitions should capitalize on their strengths as places for personal encounters with collection objects. It is the appeal of the ‘real thing’ that brings most people to museums.

· Use strong visual impact to ‘hook’ visitor curiosity. Bright colors, large graphics, varied shapes, and similar visual elements will attract a visitor’s attention.

· Use graphics that tell stories and engage visitors in mental activities. Activate the visual/mental manipulative capability of the human brain by asking questions and providing demonstrations.

· Use sensory stimuli - sound, smell, touch, taste - to reinforce visual images. Whenever possible, use all the senses, but always try to involve at least two or three.[159][159]

The older-style ‘traditional’ didactic museums worked very differently from this. People could visit on the condition that they remained behind the barriers and the artefacts remained behind glass. Some technical text was supplied, which was written by the experts, and visitors were obliged to learn what was there, whether it was interesting and stimulating or not. The exhibits were not put together with the same sense of target groups and audience that are now standard within the museum industry. At the other end of the scale, on-line museums can offer many of the experiences that are outlined above such as the good signage, bright colours, large graphics and varied shapes, they can engage visitors in mental activities, and use sounds to enhance their exhibits. The major differences between the on-line museum, and the new type of museum is that the visitor can interact with the physical space of a real museum, the people around them, and the other senses such as smell and touch can be utilised in the exhibitions. For instance, the JMA allows people to walk through and even sit within some of their exhibitions so visitors interact closely with the exhibition material, with other visitors, and with the space in which the exhibition is placed. The SJM, like the JHMRC, has guides talking visitors through the exhibition so that they have the interaction of live testimony with the exhibitions which they are exploring. When exploring an on-line museum, a “visitor” can never forget that they are sitting in front of a computer, as opposed to being in a particular place and space.

These same museology texts, as mentioned above, teach curators to allow museum visitors to touch, smell, hear and experience parts of the exhibition, rather than merely look at artefacts and read captions. They encourage curators to place artefacts in ways that attract the eye and make the visitor think, and to use the exhibition space in such a way that visitors interact with it and learn more while they do so. For example, space, lighting, and object placement can all influence the way a visitor feels about the museum, and how much attention they pay to the exhibition.

Being lost in a vast space carries the emotional sensation of being less able to control the environment. The less control a person has, the more impressive, awe-inspiring the space becomes...[whilst] spaces that are small and tight engender crowded, oppressive, smothering feelings...Not only do people react to the space around them, but also each carries a sense of space with him or her as an extension of the body and psyche.[160][160]

Using this knowledge, and some understanding of the concept of body space, and human behaviours in the museum, curators are able to gently lead the visitor through an exhibition space only using lighting and space, rather than physical barriers and signs. These same exhibitions also allow visitors the experience of seeing others interact with the exhibition, thereby giving the visitor a feeling of community.

Evaluations have shown that where visitors have physically involved themselves and interacted with an exhibition and its space, more information is absorbed, and the visitors have stayed longer and learned from the exhibition for a longer period of time.[161][161] This being the case, it is fascinating that so much interest has been shown in the contents of the Foundation archives - history that is accessible by computer only, and where no opportunities for physical interaction or communal experience exist. It will certainly be interesting to see how successful the Foundation is in educating children once the packages are made available to the schools. In the case of school students, they will still have the communal experience of watching the testimonies together as a group, but it may be that they will have to recommend a visit to an actual museum to supplement and reinforce what the Foundation tells them, and to give them that shared experience and the balance of a museum with artefacts.

It has already been mentioned that the Foundation is different from other virtual museums. A virtual museum has been defined as,

...a collection of electronic artifacts and information resources - virtually anything which can be digitized. The collection may include paintings, drawings, photographs, diagrams, graphs, recordings, video segments, newspaper articles, transcripts of interviews, numerical databases and a host of other items which may be saved on the virtual museum’s file server. It may also offer pointers to great resources around the world relevant to the museum’s main focus.[162][162]

In other words, it can consist of anything which can be photographed and transferred onto a computer. Of course, these ideas would be combined with the accepted ideals and aims of museums which are to educate people and preserve artefacts and cultural objects. The Foundation is different from the other museums, not because of a physical difference, but rather, because of its reason for being, and the educational campaigns which are created alongside it. The hope and desire which accompanies every Foundation interview is that of educating and changing the world. Certainly every museum, virtual or traditional, wants to educate its visitors, but rarely does this include a desire to change the world as well. In addition to this, the mood within the organisation is quite unique. Interviewers, videographers, interviewees and all involved, feel that they are part of an immensely important mission which must succeed within a short period of time. There is a feeling of awe at how large the task is, but also a feeling that this can be accomplished because the work load is being shared with people all around the world. Viewers of the Foundation interviews will have access to a person narrating their Holocaust experiences, with pictures occasionally illustrating a place or a particular person they may have mentioned. Not only will viewers have access to these testimonies, but they will have a great degree of control over what they see and hear. Unlike a traditional museum which has a physical space (which in recent times has ceased being so rigidly structured) designed by the curator and design team, the viewer of a Foundation testimony will be able to chose a section of testimony, (which has usually been structured more by the interviewee than the interviewer) and watch it. The viewer will be able to control which sections of which testimonies they watch, for how long they watch, and how many testimonies they will view. This is perhaps where the Foundation is more similar to an archive - in the amount of control the user has, rather than the authority or expert who designed the contents. This is, of course, the same sort of control that a virtual museum visitor exercises in a virtual museum.

The Foundation could also be seen as similar to an archive because it offers ‘raw data’ in the form of the interviews. However, we must take care in saying this because there is a structure imposed on the interview, it is not a ‘stream-of-consciousness’ version of the survivor’s life. For the interviewer and the viewers to be able to understand the events of a survivor’s life in a timeframe, there is a chronological structure imposed on the testimonies. There is also a time limit in that most interviewers and videographers cannot live with a survivor and film them whilst aspects of their day-to-day lives spark memories of the small and insignificant memories that they had long-forgotten. Each interview begins with family background and pre-war life. The interview progresses to Holocaust experiences and finishes with life after the Holocaust to the present day. Inevitably, the interviewer later remembers a question which they forgot to ask and the survivor regains a memory, remembers a person, an act of kindness or cruelty that they always wanted to record if ever given the chance and forgot in their nervousness on the day. There is always the feeling that although the interview has been recorded and finished, it is never finished for the survivor. There are always snippets of interview that they mentally add in when they watch it again, and, as Langer discusses, newly awakened memories that they explore within themselves.[163][163] The Foundation interviews are raw data in that they are recorded by the witnesses and the victims and the survivors of the events, but there are always extra pieces of their lives that are left out because there is no appropriate moment to include them within the narrative or they simply came to mind too late.

There are many other museums around the world that are now offering the virtual experience to people all around the world. Some museums, such as the SJM, have a home page on the Web with a few pictures and information. Other organisations, such as The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, and the Internet Webseum of Holography, have set up entire virtual museums.[164][164] It is a strange feeling to access one of these museums. At the click of a button, you choose which exhibition you are interested in (sometimes with the aid of a floorplan) and you “walk” through it slowly. To look to the display area on the right or left, you just need to click the appropriate arrow. Most of these museums also give access to their archives over the Internet. Another unusual museum takes people on tours of archaeological sites and provides a map, pictures, and text explanation.[165][165] The strange thing is that you marvel at the collection unfolding before you, but never forget that you are sitting at home or in the library looking at photographs of a wonderful collection somewhere else in the world. It takes time for each page of images to load onto the computer, and it gives the impression of book pages being turned, rather than a particular physical space. Once again, there is a lack of the community experience as the lone visitor sits in front of the terminal. Sometimes a virtual guide is provided, who talks a visitor through the exhibitions, while in other cases written explanations of the objects are provided instead. New options are being created all the time for visitors to virtual museums; at Volcano World, and many other virtual museums, visitors are given e-mail contact with the curator and are able to ask questions and make comments about the exhibitions - so that more and more, the virtual museum is really a space for visitors to feel comfortable, and to feel that they have a degree of control and influence.[166][166] Just like in the conventional museums, when visitors feel they have some control over their environment, when they feel that their comments are heeded by curators, they are able to learn from and experience the visit more fully.

Will these virtual museums become very popular? Will they replace the more conventional ‘real’ museums? They cannot because conventional museums are made so much more involving by the presence of oral history testimonies and evidence whereas a virtual museum, with no physical properties, lacks that same balance. Traditional museums often use video footage to enhance exhibitions. The Museum of Sydney uses oral history videos in every section of its permanent exhibition to enhance and balance their artefacts. A virtual museum can be wonderfully exciting to look at, but the visitor can only look. A visitor cannot experience anything physical or communal within the virtual exhibition. A visitor does not work with the objects or interact with the physical space in any way that challenges them to think about them for a prolonged period. There is an interesting question posed about virtual museums,

How are any of these substitutes for reality different from ‘the real thing’ or ‘the right stuff’? What do we lose when we trade? When is virtual reality counterfeit? fraudulent? ersatz? plastic? pseudo? adulterated? phony? and false?...Whenever we embrace virtual experiences, we must ask whether we have protected the ‘virtue’ (essential nature or quintessence) of that experience.[167][167]

Virtual museums may become popular because they open up new experiences to those who will never be able to go to the real museum, but they will never be able to replace the experience of the real museums. People need to be able to go to a physical venue where they can see, hear and touch objects, and interact with the surrounding space and people, just as they need to hear about the human experiences within the historical events.

Many museums offer some interactive technology for their visitors to use, and provided it is well set up, it can be quite popular. This technology encompasses a wide variety of options, such as audio tapes, video tapes, slides, interactive laser discs, CD-ROM, PC displays, and others.[168][168] The Museum of Victoria used two highly successful programmes in their Antarctica exhibition (13 December 1994 - 8 October 1995). The first programme mainly attracted children, and allowed them to explore the Antarctic food chain. By touching an animal on the screen, it would activate the animal to eat or hunt for its food. As there were a few cute graphics and sound effects, children spent much time at this terminal. The other programme was situated at the end of the exhibit, and was popular with all age-groups. It gave a list of supplies that an explorer would need to survive in Antarctica for a year, but made the visitor choose the amounts of each item. The ship would then sail there, and visitors would be told how their explorer fared with the list they had made. People of all ages often did this repeatedly until they were successful. Both programmes, always had people playing them or observing the players on the specially mounted screens.[169][169] The rest of the exhibition was comprised of interesting objects and facts. Neither the technology nor the objects could have been presented independently. They balanced each other. It is the same in all museums. The Holocaust museums will not be able to go entirely virtual even when no survivors remain. Certainly a large part of those museums will need to include their recorded testimonies, although these will never be as satisfactory as having the story told in person, but a museum with computers only will not draw an audience. Artefacts will still need to be displayed too. This is why the Foundation interviews will need to be shown in the context of other museums. The power of the personal testimony can be richly enhanced by related artefacts being within touching distance.

CONCLUSION

It is evident that there are no comprehensive answers to many of the questions raised in this thesis. Rather, there are many issues which need to be considered by every museum that deals with oral history, and particularly by Jewish museums with a special emphasis on memorialising the Holocaust.

Firstly, we must understand that private memories can be influenced by many factors which include time, emotion and the public memories of the communities with which we live and interact. Both the memories and the distortions shape our individual identities and determine who we become.

Once we begin to take our private memories and narrate them (or give a personal testimony), our memories become susceptible to change due to the narrative process itself; interviewer techniques and wording of questions; the feedback we receive from the interviewer; the particular audience we are addressing; our own motives in revealing our experiences; what we imagine our audience will do with the information we reveal; the expectations of the people we are speaking to; and how much our experiences differ from the accepted public versions of events.

As explained in the first chapter, our Traumatic memories are less easily influenced than ordinary memories as described above because they are created and stored differently, possibly even in different parts of the brain. However, even Traumatic memories are not infallible, particularly when we begin to articulate them in a narrative form.

On the other hand, we also understand that the oral testimonies have been a vital part of the museum experience for many people in the museums reviewed in this thesis. The testimonies, with all of their possible inaccuracies, allowed school children and adults alike to understand what the Holocaust meant on a far deeper level than they had prior to their museum visits. They could see and understand, in a limited way, how the Holocaust had affected the guides. This, after all, is the purpose of the oral testimonies - to give the personal perspective of events and make the facts more understandable in a personal sense. The issue still remains, what will happen when all of the survivors are gone? How will museums cope without them there to tell their experiences in person rather than via video displays or text panels?

Just as we recognise that the testimonies can be distorted, we understand that accuracy is far less important than the identity that the memories give to people and their communities, and that the distortions can tell us as much about what happened and about the person as the accurate memories. The public and private memories which give people their heritage and identity are juxtaposed with the private memories that conspire to alienate them when they are in opposition to the accepted public memories. We also recognise that other devices used in museums such as photographs and films can be distorted and inaccurate. Films and photographs can be manipulated, intentionally or unintentionally. Circumstances surrounding films and photographs could always be manipulated by people in the position of power at the time they were being produced and hidden from viewers. Now, with computer digital imaging, the contents of the films and photographs can be altered and manipulated in a way that cannot be detected by most people.

Even though we understand that the testimonies and the photographs and films are all susceptible to manipulation, we also recognise that they are equally important to the success of the museums this thesis has examined. None of these museums can survive without artefacts, nor can they survive without the personal touch of the testimony.

All of this leads us to ask the question posed in the final chapter - where is the museum of the future heading? It is clear that a museum cannot just rely on testimony or on the virtual experience without artefacts and documents, because this deprives the visitor of the communal experience, and of the experience of interacting with the museum and its artefacts. It has also become clear that museums cannot simply present artefacts anymore. Audiences need more than this to retain their interest. This is the challenge for our future museums - to find the balance. The challenge is also to find a way of attracting the audiences and of exposing them to the testimonies once the survivors are gone. This is something that the Sydney Jewish Museum is already considering - whether to install a terminal and have survivors testimonies accessible at the press of a button. Ultimately, this still may not be satisfactory because viewers will not be able to ask questions and have the answers provided to them. The testimonies are ordered, organised and static, and very staid in comparison to the vitality of a living person. This issue still needs to be addressed fully by the museums.

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[1][1] Baker, M. R. A Journey Through Memory The Fiftieth Gate HarperCollins Publishers (Sydney, 1997) p. 148.

[2][2] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) p. 281. Italics added.

[3][3] I have chosen to rely on the definition as given by van der Kolk, B. A. in van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) p. 281. This definition seems to have provided the meaning which best complements the discussion of memory as presented in this thesis. Van der Kolk is the Director of the Trauma Centre at the Human Resources Institute Hospital in Brookline Massachusetts which is a centre for the treatment and study of Traumatised children and adults. He is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Past President of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies. He also helped develop the definitions of the Traumatic Stress Disorders for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition DSM-IV American Psychiatric Association (Washington, DC, 1994).

[4][4] Alan Baddeley is a Professor of Psychology at Bristol University, UK. Prior to this, he was the Director of the Applied Psychology Unit at Cambridge. He is best known for his research on ‘working memory’, and has written numerous papers on various aspects of short-term memory. He has been influential in the area of neuropsychology. Some of his more practical work has included working on easy-to-remember postcodes in the early 1960s, and work on why deep sea divers sometimes forget what they have been trained to do in certain situations. This information was made available by John Towse of the Royal Holloway University of London in a personal communication by email on 16 February, 1998. Copy held by author. Of particular interest is Baddeley, A. Your Memory: A User’s Guide Prion (London, 1993).

[5][5] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996).

[6][6] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) p. 281.

[7][7] Dr David Finkelstein has mentioned in a personal communication (9 February 1998) that neuropsychological experiments have been done with elderly people, and that a proportion of them have been found to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or Dementia. The debate presented in this thesis does not take these people into account. When examining memory, its accuracy, and what it reveals about identity, this thesis is only referring to healthy people who are not suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or Dementia, but rather, who are susceptible to a Dementia-free aging process.

[8][8] See Baddeley, A. Working Memory Oxford Science Publications (Oxford, 1986) p. 3ff for a full description of the experiments used to show this.

[9][9] Alves, L. "Oral History Workshop" presented by Oral History Association of Australia (Vic.) 4 May 1996.

[10][10] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) p. 282.

[11][11] See Appendix A figures 1 and 2 for diagrams of the Hippocampus within the brain.

[12][12] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) pp. 286-287.

[13][13] Please see Appendix A figure 3 for a diagram of the way this mechanism works.

[14][14] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) p. 291.

[15][15] Please note that this is the theory of van der Kolk, a psychiatrist. Mr Steve Polgar, a psychologist with the School of Public Health, La Trobe University, has disagreed with this interpretation in a personal communication 23 February 1998. Copy held by author.

[16][16] This is relevant to Holocaust survivors because in a personal communication, Leah Goldman, M.Ed.Psych, M.A.Ps.S. Psychologist, who specialises in Trauma counselling, advised me that many of them do suffer from this disorder. In addition to this, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder cannot be cured but rather, controlled, and only with professional help.

[17][17] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) p. 293.

[18][18] Please see Appendix A figure 4 for a picture of the Positron Emission Tomography Study.

[19][19] Langer, L. L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven, 1991).

[20][20] Baker, M. R. Lecture about his book The Fiftieth Gate at Glen Eira Town Hall, 14 May 1997 (Emphasis my own).

[21][21] White, N. R. "Marking Absences: Holocaust Testimony and History" in OHAA Journal Vol. 16 1997 p. 14 from White, N. R. From Darkness to Light: Surviving the Holocaust (Ringwood, 1988).

[22][22] Joffe, H. I., Joffe, C. F. & Brodaty, H. "Medicine and the Community" in MJA Vol. 165 1996 pp. 517-520.

[23][23] Mr Steve Polgar of the School of Public Health, LaTrobe University, has informed me that this is a contentious hypothesis in a personal communication, 23 February 1998. Copy held by author.

[24][24] There is an excellent definition and explanation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition DSM-IV American Psychiatric Association (Washington, DC, 1994) pp. 424-429.

[25][25] van der Kolk, B. A., “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) pp. 296-297.

[26][26] Antonio Damasio is the Head of Neurology of Iowa College of Medicine. He is quoted in Geary, J. “A Trip Down Memory’s Lanes” in TIME 26 May 1997 p. 65.

[27][27] Geary, J. “A Trip Down Memory’s Lanes” in TIME 26 May 1997 p. 65. Quotation marks indicate direct quotes from Antonio Damasio.

[28][28] This is recorded in the Passover Hagadah, which is the formula for the telling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt, which is told on the first and second nights of Passover every year.

[29][29] Old Testament Deuteronomy Chapter 4 verses 9 & 10.

[30][30] Old Testament Deuteronomy Chapter 25 verses 17-19.

[31][31] Baker, M. R. A Journey Through Memory The Fiftieth Gate HarperCollins Publishers (Sydney, 1997) p. 276.

[32][32] Old Testament Genesis Chapter 23 verses 1-20.

[33][33] Baker, M. R. A Journey Through Memory The Fiftieth Gate HarperCollins Publishers (Sydney, 1997) pp. 136-138.

[34][34] Samuel, R. & Thompson, P. “Introduction” in Samuel, R. & Thompson, P. (eds) The Myths We Live By Routledge (London, 1990) pp. 18-19.

[35][35] Thomson, A. “The Anzac Legend Exploring National Myth and Memory in Australia” in Samuel, R. & Thompson, P. (eds) The Myths We Live By Routledge (London, 1990) pp. 77-78. This chapter continues with an in-depth examination of the consequences for those diggers who were excluded because their memories did not coincide with the public memories.

[36][36] I learned this in my capacity as an interviewer for the Foundation. Speaking to survivors, I found that many were reluctant to take the attention away from the Camp survivors, even saying things such as “I didn’t really suffer in comparison to them”. Due to confidentiality, I am unable to give any specific names.

[37][37] Baker, M. R. A Journey Through Memory The Fiftieth Gate HarperCollins Publishers (Sydney, 1997) pp. 136-138.

[38][38] Langer, L. L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven, 1991) p.xv.

[39][39] Langer, L. L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven, 1991) p.xv.

[40][40] This scenario and other similar situations are discussed in: Sypher, H. E. & Hummert, M. L. & Williams, S. L. “Social Psychological Aspects of the Oral History Interview” in McMahan, E. M. & Rogers, K. L. (eds) Interactive Oral History Interviewing Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers (New Jersey, 1994) pp. 47-61.

[41][41] Samuel, R. & Thompson, P. “Introduction” in Samuel, R. & Thompson, P. (eds) The Myths We Live By Routledge (London, 1990) p. 8.

[42][42] Sydney Jewish Museum Mission Statement Sydney Jewish Museum (Sydney, n.d.) p.2.

[43][43] Sydney Jewish Museum Mission Statement Sydney Jewish Museum (Sydney, n.d.) p.1.

[44][44] Sydney Jewish Museum Sydney Jewish Museum (Sydney, 1992). Italics my own.

[45][45] See Appendix B figure 1.

[46][46] Duffy, T. “The Holocaust Museum Concept” in Museums International (UNESCO) Vol. 49, No. 1 January-March 1997 p. 56.

[47][47] See Appelbaum, R. "Designing an 'Architecture of Information' - The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" in Curator American Museum of Natural History 38/2 1995 pp. 87-94. & Freed, J. I. "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - A Dialogue with Memory" in Curator American Museum of Natural History 38/2 1995 pp. 95-110. & Weinberg, J. "A Narrative History Museum" in Curator American Museum of Natural History 37/4 1994 pp. 231-9.

[48][48] Freed, J. I. “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - A Dialogue with Memory” in Curator American Museum of Natural History 38/2 1995 p. 98.

[49][49] Young, J. E. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning Yale University Press (New Haven, 1995) p. 5.

[50][50] Potter, L., Miles, W. & Rosenblum, N. Liberation Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (New York, 1992).

[51][51] See Appendix B figure 2.

[52][52] See Appendix B figure 3 for A Jew Is... display and Appendix B figure 4 for Festivals.

[53][53] See Appendix B figure 5.

[54][54] Fowles, Joseph Sydney in 1848 Ure Smith in assoc. with National Trust of Australia (New South Wales) (Sydney, 1962).

[55][55] Davidson, B. & Lee Heald, C. & Hein, G. E. “Increased Exhibit Accessibility Through Multisensory Interaction” in Hooper-Greenhill, E. (ed.) The Educational Role of the Museum Routledge (London, 1994) pp. 179-94.

[56][56] This has been described in four articles: Appelbaum, R. "Designing an 'Architecture of Information' - The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" in Curator American Museum of Natural History 38/2 1995 p. 92. & Duffy, T. "The Holocaust Museum Concept" in Museums International (UNESCO) Vol. 49, No. 1 January-March 1997 p. 55. & Freed, J. I. "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - A Dialogue with Memory" in Curator American Museum of Natural History 38/2 1995 p. 107. & Weinberg, J. "A Narrative History Museum" in Curator American Museum of Natural History 37/4 1994 p. 233.

[57][57] Mrs Jane Wesley, Curator, Sydney Jewish Museum, personal communication, July 1997.

[58][58] See Appendix B figure 6.

[59][59] Such footage is available in “Where Death Wears a Smile” Directed by Frank Heimans for Cinetal Productions in 1985.

[60][60] Tagg, J. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories University of Massachusetts Press (Massachusetts, 1988) has several essays which discuss these issues in great depth.

[61][61] See Appendix B figure 7 for a photograph of the sculpture All That Remained.

Quote taken from Sydney Jewish Museum “Teachers’ Notes” in Sydney Jewish Museum Teachers’ Kit Sydney Jewish Museum (Sydney, 1997).

[62][62] See Appendix B figure 8.

[63][63] Sydney Jewish Museum “Teachers’ Notes” in Sydney Jewish Museum Teachers’ Kit Sydney Jewish Museum (Sydney, 1997).

[64][64] See Appendix B figure 9.

[65][65] van der Kolk, B. A., “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) pp. 283-85.

[66][66] See Appendix B figure 10.

[67][67] Mrs Marika Weinberger has said that she had once heard another guide tell part of her testimony to a school group, without acknowledging that it was not his own experience, personal communication.

[68][68] Mrs Eva Gertler, Education Officer, SJM, personal communication, 16 February 1998.

[69][69] A copy of the catalogue of this exhibition is held by the author.

[70][70] Mrs Jane Wesley, Curator, SJM, personal communication, 17 February 1998.

[71][71] I read about 100 visitor responses sent in by school students. Out of all of them, 3 were impersonal. They did not make any complaints about the visit, but no emotional response could be detected. All of the rest were full of praise for the guides and pledges to behave differently as a result of what they had learnt. Teacher intervention means that most students write something, but it is easy to see who has written because they have been forced to and who has wanted to write a response. Eva Gertler (Education Officer) has informed me that during the last 5 years, there have only been a couple of negative responses. Either most people enjoy and benefit from their visit, or those who do not also do not bother writing in the visitor book.

[72][72] Jason, Sydney Technical High School, Visitor Response Card. Copy held by author.

[73][73] Bradley, Thomas Reddall High School, Visitor Response Card. Copy held by author.

[74][74] Joely, Gorokan High, featured in Zachor: Journal of the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants Inc. AAJHS&D April, 1997 pp.14-15 Copy held by author.

[75][75] Yuki, School unknown. Copy held by author.

[76][76] Kieran, School unknown. Copy held by author.

[77][77] This was in a letter by Eddie Jaku which was included in the Sydney Jewish Museum’s Submission to the NSW Tourism Industry Association’s NSW Tourism Award for Excellence. The Sydney Jewish Museum won an Award of Distinction for Cultural Tourism in 1994, based on this submission. This submission has not been published and is held in the Resource Centre.

[78][78] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) pp. 279-302.

[79][79] Langer, L. L. Holocaust Testimony: The Ruins of Memory Yale University Press (New Haven, 1991).

[80][80] The proportion of students to adults is increasing, but in 1997 there were 9,500 students to 23,000 adults (or 41%).

[81][81] See Appendix B figure 11 for a copy of the questionnaire.

[82][82] Binks, G. & Uzzell, D. “Monitoring and Evaluation: the Techniques” in Hooper-Greenhill, E. (ed.) The Educational Role of the Museum Routledge (London, 1994) pp. 223-226.

[83][83] Jewish Museum of Australia Business Plan (Draft) (Melbourne, 1997) p.3.

[84][84] Jewish Museum of Australia Business Plan (Draft) (Melbourne, 1997) p.4.

[85][85] Medding, P. Y. From Assimilation to Group Survival: A Political and Sociological Study of an Australian Jewish Community Cheshire (Melbourne, 1968).

[86][86] See Appendix C figure 1.

[87][87] See Appendix C figure 2.

[88][88] See Davidson, B. & Lee Heald, C. & Hein, G. E. "Increased Exhibit Accessibility Through Multisensory Interaction" in Hooper-Greenhill, E. (ed.) The Educational Role of the Museum Routledge (London, 1994) pp. 179-94 for a case study which outlines this in detail.

[89][89] “Yesterday We Danced” was produced for the Jewish Museum of Australia for the exhibition Freud and Friends: The Jews of Vienna in 1990. A copy is held by the museum.

[90][90] The publication is: Bartrop, P. R. with Eisen, G. (eds) The Dunera Affair: A Documentary Resource Book Schwartz & Wilkinson & Jewish Museum of Australia (Melbourne 1990).

The Dunera Boys were a group of 2000 men who were shipped out from England on July 10, 1940 to Australia on the HMT Dunera. They were all of German and Austrian nationality (many were Jewish), between the ages of 16 and 60, living in England, and deemed by the British government to be ‘enemy aliens’. They were separated from their families and sent to Australia to be interned in three camps - Hay, Orange and Tatura. The irony was that many of the Jewish internees had gone to England originally as refugees from Nazism and anti-semitism, but they were treated as if they were loyal to the cause of Nazism, rather than victims of it. They were all released between June 2, 1941 and 1945. Some went back to England, some migrated to Palestine, but the majority stayed on in Australia and joined the 8th Employment Company of the Australian Military Forces. For further information, see the above-mentioned publication.

[91][91] Loewald, K. "Speech on The Dunera Affair" delivered at Toorak Road Synagogue, 3 September, 1990.

[92][92] See Appendix C figure 3.

[93][93] Please note that the narrator was not named within the video itself, although may have been mentioned in the closing credits.

[94][94] Dr Helen Light, Director, Jewish Museum of Australia, personal communication, May 1997.

[95][95] Sue Hampel Mount Scopus (On behalf of the Jewish History Staff) in the Visitor Book at the JMA (undated).

[96][96] Dr Helen Light, Director, Jewish Museum of Australia, personal communication, May 1997.

[97][97] Appendix C figure 12 is a copy of the questionnaire.

[98][98] B’nai Brith is a Jewish Service organisation which was founded in the United States in 1843 by German Jewish migrants. It works to help people in difficulty in all walks of life, and has groups for Jewish youth as well as adults. It also has an anti-discrimination and anti-defamation office concerned with human and civil rights. It has a special interest in the State of Israel. For more information go to: http://www.wej.com.au/bbrith/whatis.htm

[99][99] See Appendix C figure 4.

[100][100] See Appendix C figure 5.

[101][101] See Appendix C figures 6 & 7.

[102][102] See Appendix C figures 8, 9, 10 & 11.

[103][103] This statistic was provided by Dr Helen Light, Director, Jewish Museum of Australia, personal communication, February, 1998.

[104][104] I used to be a volunteer explainer at the Museum of Victoria, and special training sessions were given for each individual exhibition rather than an overview of the Museum policies. Dr Light informed me that they also use training sessions at the JMA for their guides, rather than giving them an overall policy about what to say.

[105][105] Davidson, B. & Lee Heald, C. & Hein, G. E. “Increased Exhibit Accessibility Through Multisensory Interaction” in Hooper-Greenhill, E. (Ed.) The Educational Role of the Museum Routledge (London, 1994) pp. 179-194 discusses this method of evaluation in depth.

[106][106] See Appendix C figure 12.

[107][107] Chapter 4 of Hooper-Greenhill, E. Museums and Their Visitors Routledge (London, 1994) has a detailed discussion of evaluation methods.

[108][108] Jones, G. J.O.I.N. Letters From Jewish Australia - ‘GUTE NAYES FOON AUSTRALIA’ at http://www.join.org.au/letters/yiddish.htm accessed 8 March 1998.

[109][109] Abram Goldberg, personal communication, 9 March 1998.

[110][110] Marks, S., Adler, R., Ajzenbud, M., Burstin, M., Feniger, S., Kalimna, F., Lewitt, M., & Sokolowicz, C. 10 Years Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre Melbourne 1984-1994 (Melbourne, 1994).

[111][111] Marks, S. et al 10 Years Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre Melbourne 1984-1994 (Melbourne, 1994) p. 11.

[112][112] Marks, S. et al 10 Years Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre Melbourne 1984-1994 (Melbourne, 1994) p. 12. Please note, the first part of the quote (ending with Jewish history) has been paraphrased by the book. The second part of the quote (Today when some...) was directly quoted from Bono Wiener.

[113][113] See Appendix D figure 1.

[114][114] See Appendix D figure 2.

[115][115] Freed, J. I. "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - A Dialogue with Memory" in Curator American Museum of Natural History 38/2 1995 pp. 95-110.

[116][116] See Appendix D figure 3.

[117][117] See Appendix D figure 4.

[118][118] See Appendix D figures 5, 6, 7.

[119][119] Shapiro, M. S. (ed.) The Museum: A Reference Guide Greenwood Press (Connecticut, 1990).

[120][120] From Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre, section 5 of Permanent Exhibition entitled Terror and Humiliation Before The Final Solution.

[121][121] See Appendix D figure 8.

[122][122] Samuel, R. & Thompson, P. “Introduction” in Samuel, R. & Thompson, P. (eds) The Myths We Live By Routledge (London, 1990) pp. 1-21.

[123][123] Susanne Nozick was born in Budapest and lived as a non-Jew amongst the local population. She was discovered and taken (via the Gestapo House) to the Danube with a group of people. All were shot at, but the bullets missed her and she was the sole survivor of this massacre. She gave her testimony to some of the school groups I observed.

[124][124] See Appendix D figure 9.

[125][125] Please note Italics are my own.

[126][126] van der Kolk, B. A. “Trauma and Memory” in van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (eds) Traumatic Stress The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society The Guilford Press (New York, 1996) pp. 296-297.

[127][127] This film is: Auschwitz An Exhibition produced in 1983 by the BBC.

[128][128] I observed several classes during July and August 1997.

[129][129] Thompson, P. The Voice of the Past: Oral History Oxford University Press (Oxford, 1978) p. 137.

[130][130] Although no official figures are available and no formal surveys are conducted, it seems that students are the vast majority of this museum’s visitors. Hence nearly all of the letters mentioned in this chapter are written by students.

[131][131] Elena, Genazzano F.C.J. College. Presented in JHMRC comments folder.

[132][132] Kathryn, Genazzano F.C.J. College. Presented in JHMRC comments folder.

[133][133] Kate, Reservoir District Secondary College. Presented in JHMRC comments folder.

[134][134] Vishal, Cranbourne Secondary College featured in Centre News Volunteers’ Committee of the Jewish Holocaust Museum & Research Centre Vol. 14, No. 1 April 1997 p. 19. Copy held by author.

[135][135] Leon, Tecoma featured in Centre News Volunteers’ Committee of the Jewish Holocaust Museum & Research Centre Vol. 14, No. 1 April 1997 p. 20. Copy held by author.

[136][136] Melbourne University Law School; Human Rights Class. Featured in the JHMRC comments folder.

[137][137] See Appendix D figure 10.

[138][138] Full title is Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation but it is more commonly known as the Shoah Foundation.

[139][139] Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation Project Overview Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (Los Angeles, 1997) p. 1.

[140][140] Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, “Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation - More Information”, at http://www.vhf.org/More_Information.html, accessed 11 April 1997.

[141][141] Gilbert, M. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War Henry Holt and Company (New York, 1985) p. 18.

[142][142] Shapiro, L., Miller, M. & Malone, M. “A Race Against Time” in Newsweek The Arts November 21, 1994 p. 98.

[143][143] Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation Untitled Brochure Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (Los Angeles, 1996). This was taken from various quotes given by Spielberg to the press in various interviews.

[144][144] Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, “Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation Contributors”, at http://www.vhf.org/Contributors.html, accessed 19 December 1997.

[145][145] Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation Letter to Interviewers dated 17 December, 1997. Copy held by author.

[146][146] Baker, M. R. A Journey Through Memory: The Fiftieth Gate HarperCollins Publishers (Melbourne, 1997).

[147][147] Paula Draper has a PhD in History, and specialises in Holocaust history and interviewing.

[148][148] Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation Quality Assurance Reference Guide Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (Los Angeles, 1996) p.4. (This is part of the training package given to all Foundation interviewers).

[149][149] Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation Topical Questions Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (Los Angeles, 1997) p. 1. (This is part of the training package given to all Foundation interviewers).

[150][150] Bonnie Gurevitz is well known in the United States for her work in Jewish studies, and in particular, for her work for the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

[151][151] I attended this training session in March 1997.

[152][152] Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation Repositories at http://www.vhf.org/Repositories_text.html.

[153][153] Please see Appendix E figure 1 for copy of release agreement which all survivors must sign after giving their testimony to the Foundation.

[154][154] Please note that no official Shoah Foundation surveys have been conducted into this at all. I have taken this information from reading newspaper articles about the Foundation.

[155][155] Portelli, A. “The Peculiarities of Oral History” in History Workshop A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Historians Issue 12 Autumn 1981 p. 98.

[156][156] This technology is being developed on two levels. Firstly, new indexing/cataloguing software has had to be developed to allow a new level of specificity for the archive user (for example being able to type ‘Lodz’ and find information about ‘Lodz’, rather than typing ‘Ghetto’ and finding the ‘Lodz’ entries themselves.) Secondly, there is a logistics problem in sending the vast amounts of information to all of the repositories instantaneously. The United States Defence Forces have developed the type of technology which can perform these tasks, but legislation prevents any civilian use of the same technology. Therefore, the Foundation has had to develop similar technology for its own use.

[157][157] Michaels, D. “Spielberg Scheme ‘Saving History’” in The Australian Jewish News November 8, 1995. This was a quote given by Mrs E. Scheinberg, who was herself quoting Steven Spielberg.

[158][158] Dean, D. Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice Routledge (London, 1994) and Hooper-Greenhill, E. Museums and their Visitors Routledge (London, 1994) are two such texts.

[159][159] Dean, D. Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice Routledge (London, 1994) pp. 30-31.

[160][160] Dean, D. Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice Routledge (London, 1994) pp. 42-3 & 49.

[161][161] See Davidson, B., Heald, C. L., & Hein, G. E. “Increased exhibit accessibility through multisensory interaction” in Hooper-Greenhill, E. (ed.) The Educational Role of the Museum Routledge (London, 1994) pp. 179-93 for an in-depth study of this behaviour.

[162][162] McKenzie, J. “Virtual Museums: Full of Sound and Fury Signifying...” in FromNowOn.Org The Educational Technology Journal Volume 5 No. 5 January 1995 p. 2, accessed December 12 1997.

[163][163] Langer, L. L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory Yale University Press (New Haven, 1991).

[164][164] Sydney Jewish Museum: Sydney Jewish Museum “Sydney Jewish Museum” at http://www.join.org.au/sydjmus/ accessed 11 January 1998.

Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum: Isamu Noguchi “Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum” at http://www.noguchi.org/ accessed 11 January 1998.

Internet Webseum of Holography: Frank DeFreitas “Internet Webseum of Holography” at http://www.enter.net/~holostudio/ accessed 11 January 1998.

[165][165] Archaeological Research Institute “Virtual Museum of Archaeology” at http://www//archaeology.la.asu.edu/VM/virtual_museum.htm accessed 11 January 1998.

[166][166] NASA “Volcano World” at http://volcano.und.novak.edu/vw.html accessed 11 January 1998.

[167][167] Editor “Monthly Comments” in FromNowOn.Org The Educational Technology Journal Volume 5 No. 5 January 1995 p.1, accessed December 12 1997.

[168][168] Lewis, P. N. “Touch and Go” in Museums Journal Museums Association February 1993 p. 34.

[169][169] Please note, the Museum of Victoria may have done formal surveys but I was unaware of any. I was a volunteer explainer at the Museum of Victoria at the time, and I worked as an explainer in this exhibition regularly. These comments are observations made by me during this period of time.