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

·&nb