Over the mid-term break, I stayed in Amsterdam, Netherlands and visited three Jewish sites: Anne Frank House, National Holocaust Museum, and Jewish Historical Museum. Each place had different characteristics, and their exhibitions made me think of what historical sites should look like to preserve and pass down history to future generations.
First, I visited Anne Frank House. Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and moved to Amsterdam at the age of 4. Anne and her family went into hiding in July 1942, and she wrote a diary regularly until she was transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. The house offered an audio guide in 9 languages and tried to make the place accessible to people from all over the world. Moreover, the house was carefully designed, and the front part of the house, Anne’s father’s former office, has been returned to the style and atmosphere of the hiding period to enable visitors to feel what happened at the location. In addition, Anne’s quotes from her diary were displayed on multiple walls and exhibitions served in strengthening personal account of the hiding period and of the deportation to concentration camps. There was also a section which explains life history of all people in a hiding place and descriptions helped visitors feel personally involved in Anne’s family.
Next, I visited National Holocaust Museum, and that museum focused on telling “the everyday story of the Jewish victims.” Most of the exhibitions ―photographs, letters, diaries, and so on ― were handed over for safekeeping by the children who owned them shortly before they were deported or left behind in the owner’s homes and have been carefully preserved. As written on a wall panel, the museum exhibitions are meant to make visitors think about the lives to which the Jewish people were connected and to commemorate the Holocaust victims. At the museum, I had a chance to talk with one of the museum curators, and she mentioned that the museum was built two years ago and they are still trying to figure out what they should exhibit to effectively tell people the story. Although the current exhibitions are mostly Jewish people’s personal belongings and the museum is trying to tell the story of the Holocaust based on personal accounts, they are considering to incorporate historical aspects of the Holocaust into exhibitions and to add a section which expresses political and historical background of the Holocaust.
Lastly, I went to Jewish Historical Museum. That museum focused on collective Jewish heritage and showed the general Jewish history with the emphasis on politics and culture, whereas the first two museums emphasized telling the history through personal accounts. There were some sections explaining about the German occupation of Netherlands during WWII and how the life of the Jewish people had been affected by that. A subject of descriptions on most of the wall panels was “they” without specifying a name of a person and the museum didn’t really select particular Jewish figures to expand on their personal history. I felt that the museum tried to educate people by providing basic historical background rather than sharing the victims’ sentimental and sad stories to evoke strong emotions in visitors’ mind.
After I visited three places, I was wondering whether museums should focus on emotionally connecting people with the past by using personal accounts and describing their everyday life (ex “They had life as we do, but war took the lives of millions of innocent people.”) or precisely explain what happened in the past with more academic terms (ex “Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and at the time, Nazi Germany was trying to XXX”). Even though I think it is important to understand history through personal accounts, too much emphasis on individuals’ stories and emotional connection with the past might skew the big picture and prevent us from correctly understanding what and why it happened. The biggest purpose of historical sites like the Holocaust museum is I believe to understand why humans made such horrible mistakes and to make people think what they can do not to repeat tragic history again, not just to commemorate the victims. Thus, museums should design space not only to help people relate to the past but also to enable them to face the past and understand why it happened.
Facing its Past: Memory Work and Museum Exhibitions
