Tag Archives: United States Holocaust Museum

The United States Holocaust Museum: an example of Exhibition and Memory

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Exhibition and memory have had an unbreakable connection since the beginning of the recording of history. The medieval age saw the creation of formal archives by aristocrats and royals and the early modern age saw the beginnings of public libraries and archives. The display and exhibition of an historical event can affect the interest of the future public and the preservation of the event.

In October, the “Historian’s Workshop Seminar” ventured to Washington D.C. to visit the United States Holocaust Museum located on the National Mall. The museum (and the event it captures) is dedicated an ultimately foreign tragedy, yet its influence and the education it provides can be deemed more than useful for the modern day American public. The museum not only gives insight on the horrors of humanity but provides a fascinating example for the relationship between exhibition and memory. Continue reading →

What makes a bowl more than just a bowl?

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One of the objects on display at the United States Holocaust Museum is a copper bowl used in the Treblinka concentration camp.  There is nothing aesthetically special about this bowl unless you consider its imperfections–the dents in the bowl or its rust orange color–to be unique.  There are many bowls that were used in the Treblinka concentration camp.  The question becomes what makes this bowl special, and why was it this bowl taken away from the camp?  One bowl can lead us to the bigger questions about what makes any object significant for display in a museum? Why is one object chosen over similar objects to represent history? Continue reading →

Using photography to shape historical interpretation

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I recently undertook a class trip to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC to examine how the museum tells the story of the Holocaust. What struck me most was the way the museum used photographs to convey the horrors of the Holocaust to visitors. Walking through the exhibition, I was confronted continuously with close-up, small portrait photographs of the faces of holocaust victims, generally placed at eye-level so as to force a realization of the human face of the Holocaust. This pictorial narration of the human face of the holocaust is punctured throughout by large, striking photographs which illustrate the ‘other side’ of the Holocaust : the Nazi  state machinery, soldiers, rallies and propaganda. These large photographs dominate their allocated exhibition space, and their very size represents a psychical metaphor for the sheer dominance and power of the Nazi regime. Continue reading →

The Holocaust Memorial Museum

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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum presents visitors with a carefully designed, poignantly illustrated narrative of the most fatal genocide in human history. Its prominent location, alongside the Mall in Washington D.C, reflects its position as the official national recognition of and tribute to those who died in the Holocaust. Furthermore, its proximity to the nations leading commemorative monuments and political institutions conveys an implicit message that Holocaust has become enshrined as a part of the national memory forever, lending both a permanence and a prominence to memory of the Holocaust that would seek to defy any historical reinterpretation over the passage of time.