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ABSTRACT
This article examines the Imperial War Museums’ (IWM) engagement with Holocaust survivors and their photographs. A key concern is photographs and testimonies' roles in the transformation of individual memory into the cultural memory of the Holocaust. Of concern is why and how private photographs are used as a significant resource in IWMs Holocaust Galleries and the impact that on the museum’s narrative of Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust. The article acknowledges the challenges faced by curators as they strive to accommodate the expectations of stakeholders whilst simultaneously maintaining historical accuracy and engaging the reflective capacities of visitors.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the individuals at Imperial War Museums who gave up their time to be interviewed and read drafts of this article: James Bulgin, Suzanne Bardgett, Lauren Willmott, James Taylor, Jess Talarico, and Lucy May Maxwell.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The development of the two Galleries was the second phase of ‘Transforming IWM’ the first resulting in the First World War which opened in 2014, ‘Transforming IWM: Phase Two: Second World War and Holocaust Galleries’ (online), accessed 16 August 2022, https://www.iwm.org.uk/sites/default/files/Transforming_IWM_London_Phase_2.pdf.
2 Jonathan Freedland. “Imperial War Museum Holocaust Galleries Review- History’s Greatest Horror.” The Guardian (online), accessed 16 August 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/oct/11/imperial-war-museum-london-holocaust-gallery-review. The Holocaust Galleries won Best New Permanent Gallery at the 2022 Museum and Heritage Awards and Best Exhibition Design at the Design Awards 2022.
3 Barry Toberman. “New Imperial War Museum Galleries Show Where Innocence Ended and Shoah Horror Began.” The Jewish Chronicle (online), 14 October 2021, accessed 16 August 2022, https://www.thejc.com/community/community-news/new-imperial-war-museum-THG-show-where-innocence-ended-and-shoah-horror-began-1.521440.
4 Interview with James Taylor, The Holocaust Exhibition Curator, IWM, 21 May 2019, online. This move away from large military objects to more personal objects was reflected in wider IWM practice, Tomasiewicz, “‘We are a Social History, not a Military History Museum’”.
5 Bardgett, “The Depiction of the Holocaust,” 155.
6 Ibid.
7 Interview with Taylor.
8 Interview with Paul Salmons, Holocaust Education Coordinator, IWM, 23 June 2021, online.
9 Edwards and Lien, Uncertain Images, 8.
10 Ibid.
11 Edwards, “Photography and the Business of Doing History,” 171.
12 Ibid, 181; Edwards, “Anthropology and Photography”; Runia, “Presence”, 5.
13 HET ambassadors are aged between 16 and 30 who have taken part in one of HET’s programmes for young people, see ‘Ambassador Programme’, Holocaust Educational Trust (online), accessed 15 September, https://www.het.org.uk/ambassadors.
14 Interview with Bulgin, 25 November 2020.
15 Bulgin. “IWM Holocaust Galleries Talk.” British Association for Holocaust Studies (online), 25 November 2020, accessed 10 September 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqMCRzgmZJg.
16 Bulgin referred to Holtschneider, The Holocaust and Representations of Jews.
17 Interview with Bardgett, 15 October 2020.
18 Interview with James Bulgin, 25 November 2020.
19 Interview with Lauren Willmott, Holocaust Galleries Curator, IWM 11 November 2020, online.
20 Ibid.
21 Interview with Helen Mavin, Head of Photograph Archive, IWM, 23 September 2022, online.
22 The Content Team recorded the interviews with two survivors: Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Eva Clarke.
23 Interview with Maxwell.
24 Interview with Jess Talarico.
25 Interview with Maxwell.
26 During the planning stages, the Content Team considered not following this contemporaneous narrative.
27 Baer, Spectral Evidence, 2.
28 Holtschneider, The Holocaust and Representation of Jews, 31–33.
29 Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Roland Barthes position photographs as a philosophical engagement with the historical process: Edwards, "Photography and the Business of Doing History," 172.
30 Hirsch, “Projected Memory,” 10.
31 Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory, 17.
32 Interview with Bulgin, 25 November 2020.
33 Edwaards, Photography and the Practice of Doing History, 180.
34 Cole, “Nativization and Nationalization,” 136; Other scholars examining the Holocaust Exhibition emphasized the nationalistic qualities of the Exhibition: Kushner, “The Holocaust and the Museum World in Britain,” 27; Lawson, “The Holocaust and Colonial Genocide at the Imperial War Museum,” 161.
35 Interview with Taylor.
36 Bulgin, “IWM Holocaust Galleries Talk”.
37 Erll, Media and Cultural Memory, 2.
38 Cole, Holocaust Landscapes, 8.
39 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 7.
40 Baer, Spectral Evidence, 3.
41 Reproducing images to the same dimensions of the original aimed to draw attention to the materiality.
42 Holtschneider, The Holocaust and Representations of Jews, 71.
43 Ibid., 63 and 32
44 James Bulgin, ‘IWM Holocaust Galleries Talk.’
45 Edwards, Photographs and the PRactice of History,
46 Crysler and Kusno, “Angels in the Temple,” 61.
47 Liss, Trespassing Through Shadows, 50.
48 Hirsch and Spitzer, "Incongruous Images."
49 Interview with Bulgin, 11 June 2021.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Interview with Maxwell.
53 Jordan, Leff, and Schlör, “Jewish Migration and the Archive.”
54 Interview with Bulgin, 11 June 2021.
55 Ibid.
56 Bardgett, “The use of Oral History.”
57 Cesarani, The Final Solution, xxvi; Agamben expresses a similar sentiment in, Remnants of Auschwitz.
58 Bal, “Performance and Performativity,” 110.
59 Holtschneider, The Holocaust and Representations of Jews, 61.
60 Williams, Memorial Museums, 53
61 Crane, “Photographs at/of/and Museums.”
62 Liss, Trespassing the Shadows, 4.
63 Holtschneider, The Holocaust and Representations of Jews, 58–60.
64 Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience, 279.
65 Edwards, Photographs and the Practice of History, 83.
66 Ibid, 84.
67 Edwards, Thoughts on Photography, 29
68 Cesarani, “Should Britain Have a National Holocaust Museum?,” 25.
69 Erll and Rigney, Mediation, Remediation and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, 4.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of all, 3–17.
73 Ibid.
74 Stone, “The Sonderkommando Photographs,” 132.
75 Ibid, 141.
76 Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 3.
77 Ibid.
78 Stone, “The Sonderkommando Photographs,” 133–34.
79 Grever, de Bruijn and van Boztel, “Negotiating Historical Distance,” 886
80 Didi Huberman, Images in Spite of All, 116
81 Ibid, 124.
82 Hirsch, “Projected Memory,” 9.
83 Interview with Bulgin, 11 June 2021.
84 The Forever Project’ at the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, Newark, England and ‘New Dimensions in Technology’ at the Shoah Foundation, California both use holograms of survivors to allow younger generations to interact with Holocaust survivors; Schultz, “Creating the ‘Virtual’ Witness”.
85 Umbach and Tofts, “Private Photographs and Testimony.”
86 Summerfield, “Culture and Composure.”
87 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 120–21.
88 Ibid.
89 Cooke and Frieze, “Affect and the Politics of Testimony in Holocaust Museums”.
90 Levinas and Malka, “Interview with Salmon Malka,” 48.
91 Anonymous HET ambassador, Donkey Field Participant Workshop Answers.
92 Runia, "Presence," 5.
93 Holtschneider, The Holocaust and Representations of Jews, 337.
94 Interview with Bulgin, 11 June 2021.
95 Holtschneider, “Holocaust Representation in the Imperial War Museum,” 400–1.
96 Interview with Bulgin, 25 November 2021.
97 Liss, Trespassing Through Shadows, 119.
98 Ibid.
99 Friedländer, “Trauma, Transference and ‘Working Through’ in Writing the History of the ‘Shoah’,” 52.
100 Steffi de Jong, The Witness as Object, 87-90.
101 Interview with Willmott.
102 Liss, Trespassing Through Shadows, 166.
103 ‘Interview with Stephen, Nic and Tim Locke’, online, Lewes HMD, accessed 3 September 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrJG2DKF64o.
104 Steffi de Jong, The Witness as Object, 89.
105 Ibid.
106 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 13.
107 The installation’s title was not revealed in the galleries and only referred to this internally by the Content Team.
108 Interview with Bulgin, 11 June 2021.
109 Baer, Spectral Evidence, 7.
110 Interview with Bulgin, 25 November 2020.
111 Edwards et al. Uncertain Images, 5.
112 Reproduced photographs are surrounded by a 10mm border as an overt acknowledgement of the fact that they are reproductions. Email exchange with Bulgin, October 2023 (private correspondence).
113 Interview with Bulgin, 25 November 2020.
114 Cox, No Innocent Deposits, 343; Grossmann “Versions of Home,” 98; Auslander, “Archiving a Life,” 131; Janina Struk, Photographing the Holocaust, 194-214, Freshwater, “The Allure of the Archive.” 739.
115 Edwards, Photographs and the Practice of History, 85
116 Anonymous HET ambassador, Donkey Field Participant Workshop Answers.
117 IWM, ‘Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors’, Imperial War Museums (online), accessed 1 October 2022, https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/generations-portraits-of-holocaust-survivors.
118 IWM, ‘One Story Many Voices’, Imperial War Museums (online), accessed 1 October 2022 http://onestorymanyvoices.iwm.org.uk/.
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Alice Tofts
Alice Tofts was a collaborative doctoral student affiliated with the University of Nottingham and Imperial War Museums This article is based on one of the chapters for her thesis with the same title.