Posts

Posted on

Holocaust museums more than public history

Edward Rothstein has written a number of reviews concerning Holocaust museums and education centers over the last few months for the New York Times. The series includes the Museum of Tolerance, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, and the Illinois Holocaust Museum. In each article, he discusses the complexities of presenting the history of the Holocaust and finds a number of problematic issues as he visits each institution.

Eventually, each of these articles circles back to the trend in Holocaust museums to tie their narratives to prejudice, intolerance, and genocide, rather than merely following a straightforward historical account. For example, during his article on the Illinois Holocaust Museum he comments:

This approach is also used to justify the inclusion of the Holocaust in school curriculums. And it is strange. We wouldn’t expect a museum about World War II to end with lessons about the evils of all wars. We wouldn’t expect an examination of American slavery to end with platitudes about the many despicable ways people treat others as objects. Why then here? Why the reluctance to study history in its context instead of diluting it with generalities and vague analogies? This path also ends up encouraging those always ready to invoke wild comparisons to Nazism and the Holocaust.

As it happens, I was recently at the National World War II Museum, and while they do not attempt a message about the evils of war, they do conclude with a rather somber and reflective look at America’s decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan. In addition, at various points in the exhibit, they discuss how the Axis and Allies used propaganda to represent their enemy as well as the United States’ role in interning Japanese-American citizens. In other words, they do in fact draw visitors into important ethical debates which they hope will challenge and inform their guests.

What Rothstein is missing is that Holocaust Museums in this country are often not founded with the intention of being traditional public history museums. Germany, Austria, and Poland can easily accomplish this, and do so, by providing stark reminders of the dark hour they share while pinning it against the larger backdrop of their respective historical narratives. Instead, museums in this country are often founded as reminders of how societies, even supposedly civilized ones, can devolve into barbarism because of ethnic hatreds.

Which leaves us with the question of “why” give the public a reminder? The answer to that question is simple – because these atrocities continue to take place. This idea is often reflected in Holocaust museum mission statements.

Illinois Holocaust Museum’s mission statement:

The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Holocaust by honoring the memories of those who were lost and by teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice and indifference. The museum fulfills its mission through the exhibition, preservation and interpretation of its collections and through education programs and initiatives that foster the promotion of human rights and the elimination of genocide.

Holocaust Museum Houston:

Holocaust Museum Houston is dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust, remembering the 6 million Jews and other innocent victims and honoring the survivors’ legacy. Using the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides, we teach the dangers of hatred, prejudice and apathy.

Museum of Tolerance’s mission statement:

The Museum of Tolerance, the Center’s educational arm, founded in 1993 challenges visitors to confront bigotry and racism, and to understand the Holocaust in both historic and contemporary contexts. It hosts 350,000 visitors annually including 130,000 students.

Thus, the real problem Holocaust museums in the United States have been grappling with is the opposite of what Rothstein points towards; even though each hopes to serve as a reminder of what can happen they were often designed around a single event, which provides little evidence for the historical continuum that is genocide. The solution to this for many museums, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has been a rethinking of how they deliver their message, leading to expansions where instances of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and human rights violations are discussed.

While Rothstein makes a number of good points in these articles, it is important to note that these museums are not designed as traditional public history institutions and frequently blend history with education and activism. This should not be seen as a flaw though as the message they are attempting to impart is an important one.

Posted on

Turkish Coalition sues over website

The University of Minnesota is currently facing a lawsuit from the Turkish Coalition of America. According to the Minnesota Daily, the University is facing seven charges related to freedom of speech, due process, or defamation.

The University of Minnesota faces a federal lawsuit after displaying on one of its websites a list of sources deemed “unreliable.”

Until Nov. 18, the list of sources, designated “unreliable” because of their views on the Armenian Genocide, could be found on the University’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Web page. The Turkish Coalition of America was the first site on the list.

The real crux of this problem is how it might shape academic discourse. Even putting aside the troubling ramifications for the Armenian genocide, scholarly debate should be proven through convincing argument of facts rather than lawsuits.

A similar case was brought against the Massachusetts Board of Education for not including Armenian genocide denial sites on its list of recommended websites. The suit was eventually dismissed, finding that the Board of Education had the right to judge what was appropriate for the State’s curriculum.

Posted on

The Destruction of Texts

As part of Banned Books Week, I thought it might be appropriate to share a brief list of the libraries that have been destroyed over the centuries.

303 Diocletian decrees the burning of the scriptures.
644 – 656 All Qur’ans are destroyed by ‘Uthman.
1281 The Taoist libraries are burned by Kublai Khan.
1515 The Lateran Council ratifies the burning of all erroneous books.
1529 All Aztec books in Mexico are destroyed.
1789 The Bastille library is captured and a book massacre begins.
1814 The Library of Congress is burned by the British.
1914 The Louvain Library is burned by German soldiers.
1933 The Nazis burn books in Berlin, followed by several other sites.
1981 The Jaffna Library in Sri Lanka is burned.
1992 The Sarajevo Library is burned by the Serbs.
1998 The Pul-i-Khumri Library is destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

This listing comes from Lucien X. Polastron’s Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries Throughout History.

While almost everyone might know about the book burnings carried out by the Nazi regime, other genocides include the destruction of books and sacred texts as part of their assault on a given “victim” group. As I often discuss during my lectures, genocide is not simply an attempt to kill a people, it is an attempt to eradicate entire cultures. This is why we often see book burnings during genocidal massacres.

Posted on

Obfuscating on genocide

STAND posted a message today reporting that Senators Russell Feingold (D-WI) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are sponsoring new legislation that calls for “the development of an interagency genocide prevention strategy.” The bill’s short title reads:

Recognizing the United States national interest in helping to prevent and mitigate acts of genocide and other mass atrocities against civilians, and supporting and encouraging efforts to develop a whole of government approach to prevent and mitigate such acts.

The emphasis is my own and was added in order to draw attention to the soft wording. If you read the entire resolution you will see that it carries no force and effect; rather every subsection begins with urges, encourages, affirms, or supports which leaves it fairly toothless. Compare this to S. 1067 (Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009) which was also sponsored by Sen. Feingold:

SEC. 4. REQUIREMENT OF A STRATEGY TO SUPPORT THE DISARMAMENT OF THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY.

(a) Requirement for Strategy- Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall develop and submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a strategy to guide future United States support across the region for viable multilateral efforts to mitigate and eliminate the threat to civilians and regional stability posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army.

As you can see, S. 1067 has a defined action required within a specified timeframe.

From the proposed language, it’s difficult to see how this will change the government’s approach toward genocide. While Feingold’s efforts on this and past legislation should definitely be applauded, true progress in preventing genocide is only going to come if we make combating it a priority rather than a sound bite.

Posted on

Obama, not likely to stop genocide

The Museum started a sort of book club — which is really more of a topic-based discussion group — and during our first meeting (last night) I made a comment that I don’t think went over well. The subject of this first meeting was Samantha Power’s A Problem From Hell, and in a broader sense the United State’s lack of involvement in cases of genocide.

During this discussion, I commented that I suspect that very little is actually going to be done by the Obama administration to curtail the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The reason for me saying this is actually enumerated in Power’s conclusion:

Knowledge
Obama is certainly coming into the job with a tremendous amount of knowledge about the current situation. Even if he weren’t receiving an intelligence analysis, it would be hard to overlook the various national activist groups that have organized around stopping this particular genocide. Nonetheless, for reasons I’ll discuss a few points down, I suspect this administration will wind up hiding “in the fog of plausible deniability.”

Influence
As Power points out, perpetrators are often keeping their eyes on Western reactions in order to gauge if they should take the next step. Having seen little reaction from Washington over the last five years, it’s unlikely that Sudan is going to suddenly reverse course because of a new administration. If the United States decides to do anything less than overt (which I think is highly doubtful) Khartoum is going to continue unfettered.

Will
This is, without question, the real problem. Regardless of whether Obama’s administration has the “moral will” to act, his policy makers are going to have an incredibly tough time convincing Congress to commit to ending this, or any other, genocide. Even if they could, the real crux of a solution in Darfur lies with China.

Basically, no force, sanction, or relief is going to be successful without the backing or cooperation of China and, unfortunately, the United States has little leverage to apply in order to make this happen. Not only has China rebuked any attempt through the United Nations, but their continued oil interests in the region makes force and sanctions utterly untenable from a diplomatic and economic standpoint (to say nothing of the physical).

Accountability
This last point is probably not even worth mentioning. No sitting President has been held politically accountable for inaction and considering the economic and domestic problems, it certainly won’t be starting with this administration.

Truly, this is one of those times when I’ll happily be wrong. I hope that Obama does intervene in Darfur; and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t voted for him with the hope that he would reverse our position on stopping genocide. But at the same time, I approach this from the long lens of a genocide researcher, and it’s from that vantage point that I suspect no real impact will come from a new administration.