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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Remembrance and Representation / Workshop 2 on Remembrance, "The Role of Museums: Achieving a Balance between Documentation and Remembrance" / Presentation by Professor Bill Williams | |||||||||
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Report from Workshop 2 on Remembrance: "the Role of Museums: Achieving a Balance Between Documentation and Remembrance" Presentation by Mrs. Yehudit Inbar Presentation by Dr. Brewster Chamberlin Presentation by Professor Bill Williams Presentation by Professor Bill Williams Williams, William Presentation by Professor Bill Williams My presentation will outline the concepts around which a "Shoah Centre" is being designed for the Trafford district of Greater Manchester, as part of a cultural complex which will include also the Imperial War Museum of the North and "The Lowry," an institution designed to display and honour the work of the Salford artist, L. S. Lowry. In determining these concepts the founders are both drawing on their own experience of historiography in Britain (in particular the English Oral History Society and the History workshop movement) and reacting against some of the more traditional portrayals for the Holocaust in the world of museums. They wish, in particular, to move away from a "straight "narrative portrayal, which almost inevitably accords visual primacy to the perpetrators. Typically such an approach would move from the nature of anti-Semitism through the rise and policies of National Socialism, to the genesis of the Final Solution, the creation of the means of destruction and the chronology of genocide. More generally, they seek an alternative to any kind of "chronological" approach which reduces the Holocaust to a "series of event , however well related. Instead, they favour a "history from below": a history, that is, which would be built around the threads of individual experience and which would, inter alia, suggests in which what we now call the Holocaust was experienced and perceived at the time by th victims (a time of disruption, disorientation and confusion with an unknown and unknowable narrative thread), reflect the complexities and ambiguities of the Holocaust years, seek to accord the Holocaust experience and qualitative depth and promote reflection in the viewer. This could be achieved within the building designed by Daniel Libeskind by weaving a number of individual threads through the "splintered" world of Jewry, threads which would suggest the diversity of the Holocaust experience, and which would be constructed around oral and other personal testimony, personal photographs and personal artefacts. To counteract a negative and lachrymose view of the Jewish historical experience (the Jews encapsulated as victims), these threads would emerge from the Jewish world before the Holocaust and move on to the "renaissance "Explanations" in terms of perpetrators and their motives and the re which the phenomenon of the Holocaust would be a matter of debate I It seems important that a centre dedicated to the Holocaust should s and their implications for their own lives. Galleries dealing with the post-Holocaust years, apart from emphasising J orm the kinds of prejudice out of which the Holocaust emerged. Apart from its function as a documentation of the Holocaust, the Centr nd its relevance in the contemporary world. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||