From Representation to Presence
Holocaust in History and Art Museums in Poland and Lithuania
Julija Mockutė
University of Amsterdam
Graduate School of Humanities
Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture
MA Thesis Heritage Studies: Museum Studies
From Representation to Presence:
Holocaust in History and Art Museums in Poland and Lithuania
Author Julija Mockutė
10605754
julija.mockute@gmail.com Thesis Supervisor Dr. Ihab Saloul
I.a.m.saloul@uva.nl
Second Reader Dr. Boris Noordenbos B.Noordenbos@uva.nl Date March 1, 2019
Abstract
The Holocaust in Western imagination occupies a special place as a horrific manifestation of modern civilisation. However, in Eastern European countries like Lithuania and Poland the memory of the genocide is seen as an afterthought after the national trauma that was caused by the communist regimes that prevailed over the countries for decades after World War II, despite most of the murders of the Holocaust being carried out in these two countries with fellow nationals mostly as bystanders. The progress on memory work on the Holocaust has been varied in the two countries, but the struggle is still present as it directly competes with the national narratives that position Lithuanians and Poles as victims of both Nazi and communist regimes. In this thesis I inquire how two national museums in Poland and Lithuania, POLIN, Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, approach representation of the Holocaust and how they localise it in their national narratives. As many scholars have argued, the Holocaust is impossible to represent, and in this analysis I propose that contemporary art offers an alternative to representation: presence. In this thesis I show how a temporary exhibition at the National Art Gallery presences the Holocaust by asking the audience to determine for themselves what does the trauma mean for them in the present, rather than trying to represent what actually happened. As national museums are a place where identities are stabilised, such an approach enables the visitors to define what is their identity together with the works presented, offering a new perspective on how to collectively create meaning and do memory work in museums.
Introduction. Why We Need to Talk About the Holocaust in Museums in Eastern
Europe
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Museum, Nation and Memory 14
POLIN and NDG: Identity Stabilising or Negotiating Belonging? 17
Research Question and Methodology 26
Chapter 1. The Holocaust in the Core Exhibition in POLIN
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Particularist and Universalist Holocaust Representation Through Testimony and Absence 30 Part of our History, Part of Us: The Localisation of Polish Jews 33
Testimony in the Core Exhibition 41
Spatial Experience and Authenticity in the Holocaust Gallery 44
Chapter 2. Presence of Trauma at Citynature: Vilnius and Beyond in NDG 48
Encountered Sign and Affective Knowledge 49
Citynature: Vilnius and Beyond 53
Dialogue and Viewing 57
Different Knowledges and Embodied Experience 60
Multidirectional memory 63
Chapter 3. Spatial Temporality and the Holocaust
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Conclusion
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Bibliography
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Appendix
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Appendix 1: Images of POLIN 86
Appendix 2: Images of NDG 89
Appendix 3: Interview with Eglė Mikalajūnė on Citynature: Vilnius and Beyond 96 Appendix 4: Interview with Vytenis Burokas on Citynature: Vilnius and Beyond 99 Appendix 5: Interview with Kamila Radecka-Mikulicz on POLIN and Holocaust gallery 103 Appendix 6: Email from Joanna Fikus on POLIN temporary exhibitions 108
Introduction. Why We Need to Talk About the Holocaust in Museums in Eastern
Europe
In the Stockholm Declaration the Holocaust was established as a common European memory: as the biggest atrocity produced by modernity, which should be remembered in order for it to ‘never again’ happen. However, in Eastern Europe this view is not commonplace, despite many countries signing the declaration after the fall of the Communist bloc. There are many reasons why this memory failed to be adopted as it was in the Western European context, including the emergence of communist regimes that ruled in most Eastern European countries after World War II and the understanding of the Holocaust being very different in countries like Lithuania and Poland compared to the West. But the main reason, I would argue, is the incompatibility between the national narratives of Lithuania and Poland and the idea of the Holocaust as the biggest trauma of the modern world. These nations each cast themselves as victims, following the double trauma of the Nazi occupation and the Soviet regime. Thus, acknowledging the collaboration of Polish and Lithuanian nationals in the Holocaust feels like a direct threat to their national identities.
Aleida Assmann argues that the main obstacle for the memory of the Holocaust becoming 1 universal is the communist regime that reigned over Eastern Europe for half of the twentieth century (2010: 108). Theodor Adorno argued that the communist system, which was undemocratic and 2 3 economically constraining, resulted in a politically immature post-Soviet individual (1986: 124). One could rephrase this by saying that there has not been enough time for ‘memory work’. It was not 4 until the 1980s that a discussion of the significance of the Holocaust became prominent in the West – more than thirty years after the event; and, since memory work is suppressed in totalitarian
regimes, post-communist countries could only start ‘working through’ in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Lithuania the topic of involvement in the Holocaust resurfaced in the public sphere in 2016 through literature and public events, but as a framework for interpreting the
In The Holocaust: A Global Memory? Extensions and Limits of a New Memory Community (2010)
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Under Bolshevik rule the Holocaust was not discussed as a specific and unique event but rather as just one more fascist
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crime, with no emphasis on the tragedy having mainly targeted Jewish communities. The idea of singling out one ethnic group as the primary victim was incompatible with the universal, anti-nationalist ideology of communism.
In What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean? (1986)
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Memory work is the act of negotiating between different parties in a society (historians, government officials, civil society,
Holocaust already exists, the memory work is very different. According to Joanna Wawrzyniak and Malgorzata Pakier , the academic discussion of the Holocaust was mostly developed in the field of 5 memory studies, which is a discipline that was mainly created in the West, for a Western population 6 (2013: 260). Since their independence, and due to the subsequent de-Sovietisation, countries such as Lithuania and Poland have been very nationally oriented. Extensive memory work has been done since 1990 on the experience of the Soviet occupation and the accompanying crimes, but the Holocaust memory has not been considered as a priority (Wawrzyniak and Pakier, 2013: 262). As the academic and political discussions around the Holocaust have been ‘monopolised’ and
instrumentalised by the West, it has resulted in resistance when introduced in a different context, where they can be seen as cultural colonisation. However, the discussion of the Holocaust should be different in Eastern Europe as the Holocaust was carried out very differently there. In Western Europe Jews were excluded and marginalised and later deported to Eastern Europe. The Holocaust as the mass extermination of Jews mainly happened in Poland and Lithuania. It was carried out in these 7 countries under the eyes of its nationals, resulting in the manifestation of an extremely complex and difficult memory of the event. The foreignness of the discussion on the Holocaust, together with the different experiences of the events, explains the incompatibility of the ‘never again’ narrative in Lithuania and Poland and results in the need for memory work to be done in the present and in a localised way.
In ‘Memory Studies In Eastern Europe: Key Issues And Future Perspectives’ (2013)
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Western Europe, North America and in this case Israel. The hegemony on Holocaust interpretation from the West crossovers
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to other fields from academia: the idea of “human rights” is directly connected to Western enlightenment philosophers, while “crime against humanity”, now used in international law is a consequence of Holocaust studies (Assmann, 2010: 109). The spread of these concepts, as something everyone has to be held accountable for, could be seen as an example of Western domination, as countries that want to join the European Union or the United Nations have to comply with them. Furthermore, if a country does not recognise Holocaust, it is to be perceived not yet in ‘modernity’ in Judith Butler’s terms (Assmann, 2010: 108).
Not only did the biggest percentage of the local Jewish populations not survive World War II but Jews from other countries
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were brought to these Eastern European countries to be murdered. This was because most of the concentration camps where in Poland and the mass shooting sites were in Lithuania. These mass shootings, referred to as ‘Holocaust by bullets’ are not as widely known in the West as the concentration camps of Poland. However, this was how the Holocaust was mainly carried out in the Eastern European countries, with villages all around Poland and Lithuania having mass graves where all the local Jews were shot. In Paneriai and the Ninth Fort in Lithuania local Jews and those brought from countries such as Germany were murdered en masse. These shootings were more visible to the local communities than what was happening in concentration camps, and local people were enlisted to carry out the killings, resulting in a completely different collective memory of the event (Van der Laarse, 2013). The reasons for the different conceptions of the Holocaust in Eastern and Western Europe were the actions by Nazis and the different levels of assimilation of the Jewish communities in Western European countries and in Lithuania and Poland. The Nazi government decided there would be less public outcry if the mass-murders were to be carried out in these countries, where, not so coincidentally, the biggest concentration of Jews in Europe lived, making it a convenient choice logistically (‘IX Fort Memorial’). Moreover, compared to Germany, the Jewish communities were less assimilated in Poland and Lithuania, which lead to widespread anti-Semitism based on Catholic myths, as well as in Lithuania the myth of the Bolshevik-Jew that betrayed Lithuania in the first Soviet occupation (Torbakov, 2011).
It was evidently not possible to engage in a meaningful discussion on the topic during Soviet times, and it has even been difficult to have these conversations since the countries regained
independence in the 1990s. Through this research I argue that this is due to the double trauma of the totalitarian communist regime and the Holocaust in parallel. According to Wawrzyniak and Pakier (2013) and Rob Van der Laarse (2013), the traumatic past of communism is still very present in 8 Lithuania and Poland, which hinders the possibility of acknowledging and being sympathetic with other traumas. Most inhabitants of Lithuania and Poland have lived through the occupation, and the next generation is ‘traumatised’ by it through post-memory – a concept Marianne Hirsch identifies as a traumatic memory passed on to the descendants of the trauma survivors in The Generation of
Postmemory (2008). According to Stefan Rohdewald , remembrance of the Holocaust is 9
marginalised, or employed to reinforce the national narrative of victimhood. The Soviet trauma is still prominent in the present, both in culture, with museums such as the Museum of Occupations and
Freedom Fights focusing on Soviet oppression of the soviets, and in politics, with individuals that 10 were victims of the communist regime receiving reparations from the government and collaborators being barred from actively participating in politics. The Holocaust, on the other hand, is seen as a trauma with only victims, most of whom have died, leaving the conversation one-sided and peripheral.
There are memorials and museums dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust in Eastern European countries, yet most are in provincial areas and, according to Rohdewald, are an
afterthought of commemorating the ‘core nation’s’ victims of the Communist regime (Rohdewald, 2008: 181). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, post-Socialist states had to create a new 11 identity as a way of legitimising the contemporary boundaries of the nation-state. This was accomplished through the creation of an overpowering national narrative, based on the selective
In Beyond Auschwitz? Europe’s Terrorscapes in the Age of Postmemory (2013)
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In Post-Soviet Remembrance of the Holocaust and National Memories of the Second World War in Russia, Ukraine and
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Lithuania (2008)
The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights is on one of the main streets in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is dedicated to the
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genocide of Lithuanians under the Soviet regime. The museum is in the building which was the previous headquarters for both the Gestapo and KGB, yet the victims of the Holocaust have only one room in the exhibition, which does not even focus specifically on the Jewish communities’ losses. The permanent display consists of a KGB prison, the yard where death sentences were implemented and an exhibition on the repressions of the Soviet regime.
An example of such marginalisation is the term ‘Holomodor’ being used for a famine in Ukraine that was caused by Stalin’s
remembrance of history: “in remembering ‘the glorious dead’, ‘imagined communities’ have been (re-)invented since perestroika” (Rohdewald, 2011: 173). Rogers Brubaker classifies the post-Soviet 12 states as nationalising, meaning that their national narrative is based on the idea of the existence of a ‘core nation’, which has rightful ownership of the country. This results in the nationalisation of cultural, political and even academic life, all of which contribute to the shaping of the memory of the Holocaust. The ‘core nations’ are perceived as victims of the oppressive regimes that have ruled them and their land for half a century, thus heavily basing the countries’ national narrative on the perception of themselves as victims (Rohdewald, 2011). Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider explain 13 that collective memory is usually created in relation to a social group, most often a nation (2002: 465). As Holocaust memory crosses national boundaries and could even be seen as a basis for cosmopolitan memory, when the collective memory is based on the idea of a ‘core nation’ the proliferation of a transnational memory fails. As Sznaider and Levy argue, the remembrance of the Holocaust as a cosmopolitan memory is based on acknowledging the pain of the ‘Other’, thereby diffusing the boundaries between perpetrator and victim and resulting in a shared agreement of ‘never again’ (2002: 467). As most post-Soviet countries developed nationalising identities based on the idea of a ‘core nation’, any recognition of an ‘other’ is unlikely, since the idea of the Holocaust as the greatest tragedy of the modern world, with its main victims being Jews, is in direct competition to the narrative of post-Soviet countries as victims of both communism and fascism. Many
Lithuanians and Poles participated in the mass-murder of Jews – a fact which, if recognised, would contradict the narrative of victimhood. Remembering the Holocaust, therefore, often disregards the collaboration of locals with the Nazi occupiers and presents the Holocaust as one of several tragedies that happened to the ‘core nation’, creating a nationalistic distortion of the trauma, described in Rūta Vanagaitė’s book Mūsiškiai (2016: 280). Jeffrey C. Alexander claims that through 14 the process of constructing cultural traumas – the memory work done to conceptualise them – social groups like nations can not only identify human suffering but also take responsibility. And through this process the definition of who belongs to the ‘core nation’ can be revised: “insofar as traumas are
In Nationalizing states revisited: projects and processes of nationalization in post-Soviet states (2011)
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In Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory (2002)
so experienced, and thus imagined and represented, the collective identity will become significantly revised. This identity revision means that there will be a searching re-remembering of the past, for memory is not only social and fluid but deeply connected to the contemporary sense of the self.” (Alexander, 2004: 22) To remember the Holocaust in Eastern Europe thus is not just to commemorate it, but to include the Jewish community and other minorities into the ‘core nation’, revising what the ‘core nation’ is.
In 2016 Rūta Vanagaitė published Us (Mūsiškiai), a book in two parts, dealing with the collaboration of Lithuanians with the Nazi occupiers in perpetrating the Holocaust. The first part reviews the history of who and how the murders were carried out by the local population, while the second contains dialogues between the author and Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter, as they visit the grave sites where Jews were killed in Lithuania. Reviews of the book have been mixed, with some thanking the author for bringing up the topic in accessible language for the general public, while others claim the author was bribed by the Jewish elite to diminish Lithuania ("MŪSIŠKIAI - knyga, sukrėtusi Lietuvą! Skandalingas liudijimas apie tai, kas Lietuvoje iš tikrųjų žudė žydus, Rūta Vanagaitė: Knyga [9786090122082]"). In the West, especially within the Jewish community, the author has been praised for uncovering this overlooked topic, with the Conference of European Rabbis presenting her with an award for shedding light on Lithuanian civilian collaboration with the Nazi project. However, in Lithuania the reactions have been less positive, with many people discrediting her whole book due to a remark she made while promoting her subsequent
autobiography. She claimed that Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, a general in the partisan fight against the Soviets considered a hero in contemporary Lithuania, had collaborated with the KGB (adding that Zuroff believes he took part in the Holocaust as he belonged to a group that assisted the Nazis). The Lithuanian journalist and bestselling author Andrius Tapinas demanded that Alma Littera, the publisher of both his and Vanagaitė’s books, withdraw Us from bookshops. The same day the publisher declared it was taking all Vanagaitė’s works out of circulation. This led to the author losing her main source of income, as Us was removed from the shelves. This reaction shows how, in Lithuania, talking about Lithuanian participation in the Holocaust is still a sensitive, if not taboo, topic. Vanagaitė infringed upon the narrative of the heroic resistance to the Soviet regime, and the
consequences were dire. In an interview with Masha Gessen, the author said that in the street people would call her “pro-Putin whore” after her comment about the partisan general, leading her to leave the country, and later to return to face prosecution (even though no official charges have been brought) (Gessen, 2017). The book was withdrawn not due to government pressure but by what could be considered civil society. At the time, Tapinas was one of the most popular writers in the country, with a crowd-funded late-night talk show, representing many Lithuanians, who live in constant fear of Russia and regard everything that does not correspond to the narrative positioning Lithuanians as victims of both the Soviet and Nazi occupations as anti-patriotic. In 2018, referring to the discussion of the Holocaust, the government said there was nothing more that needed to be added, as Lithuania as a country has a constant and rich dialogue with the Lithuanian and
international Jewish communities. In response to a suggestion by the European Jewish Congress to fundamentally review the role of Lithuanians in the Nazi occupation and to stop respecting those who collaborated with the occupiers and actively contributed to the killing of Jews in Lithuania, Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said that only historians could look into the topic as they would look at the facts rather than interpretation. He claimed Lithuania had done everything to maintain a good relationship between the country and the Jewish community (‘Lietuvai Nereikia Peržiūrėti Pozicijos Dėl Lietuvių Vaidmens per Holokaustą’). However, this could be easily disputed, as the legislation of memory in Lithuania is very significant, with Nikolay Koposov in Memory Laws, Memory
Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia calling the Lithuanian Law “an extreme example
of the tendency to use memory laws to promote national narratives and shift the blame for crimes against humanity to others” (Koposov, 2018: 72). These laws were enacted in the prosecution of a Lithuanian diplomat who said that the Russian forces that attacked unarmed citizens in January 1991 were aided by Lithuanian collaborators. The conversation on the Holocaust can infringe this law as 15 it challenges the narrative of Lithuanians as victims of the Nazi regime. Thus the rethinking of the Holocaust has not been very successful in Lithuania since its independence from the Soviet Union and, from a policy perspective, will not be in the near future as the current ruling party bases its ideology on a very traditional and nationalistic perception of Lithuanian identity. However, the topic is
On 13 January 1991, in an already independent Lithuania, Russian tanks drove into the city of Vilnius and tried to occupy the
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being picked up by writers, such as Vanagaitė, institutions and in the art sector, signalling the possibility of change.
The topic of the perpetration of the Holocaust is surfacing in different public spaces in Lithuania: the arts, civil society and museums. For example, the summer of 2018 saw ‘the wrap’ on the first Lithuanian film on the subject, Isaac (‘Filmo “Izaokas” Kūrėjai: Turime Susitaikyti Su Savo Tautos Istorija’). In 2016 Lithuania’s first Stolpersteins were installed in the old town of Vilnius. In 16 2016 a ‘Memory March’ was organised in the town of Molėtai, with over a 1000 people marching to commemorate the murder of the Jewish population there (Antanavičius, 2016). In Šeduva, another small town, the construction of a museum, The Lost Shtetl, is due to be finished in 2020 (Šiuparys, 2018). In May 2018 the Museum of Genocide Victims was renamed the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in response to criticism of its misrepresentation of genocide and specifically the diminishing of the Holocaust in comparison to Soviet crimes against ethnic Lithuanians (Beniušis, 2017). These small steps show a tendency within civil society and cultural institutions to start talking about the Holocaust in Lithuania through a more critical lens rather than just victimhood.
In Poland the situation is a bit different. Paweł Śpiewak, the Director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, told a Lithuanian newspaper that a reinterpretation of World War II had been underway for the last 20 years in Poland, while in Lithuania it started only a couple of years ago with the release of Vanagaitė’s book (‘Žydų Ir Holokausto Istoriją Tiriantys Lenkai Ragina Aktyviau
Įsitraukti Ir Lietuvius’). A book that had a similar impact in Poland, Jan Gross’s Neighbors: The
Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland was published in 2001. The opening of
POLIN, a museum exclusively dedicated to the history of Polish Jews is a great example, as it was the result of a long process. The Holocaust has also been portrayed in film, as in the Oscar-winning
Ida, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, which was the first film to depict a Polish character admitting to
killing Jews. However, the most recent developments in the Polish government and civil society 17 suggest a regression in the memory work. In 2018, with an absolute majority in parliament, the ruling party adopted a law making it illegal to state publicly that the Polish government or nation is guilty of Initiated by German artist Gunter Demnigs, small concrete cubes with brass plates, bearing the names and dates of victims
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of Nazi persecution, are set in front of the places they last lived or worked freely (‘Home’; ‘Vilniaus Senamiesčio Grindiniuose Holokausto Aukas Įamžino “Atminimo Akmenys”’). Stolpersteins are crowdfunded; anyone can buy one and install it for a set price, making it a commemoration based on the participation of civil society.
Nazi crimes, or to use the phrase ‘Polish death camps’ (‘Dėl Lenkijos Priimto Holokausto Įstatymo Izraelis Iškvietė Lenkų Diplomatą’). This entails that Holocaust survivors or witnesses could be punished for their testimonials, if the Institute of National Remembrance deems it anti-Polish. As the institute states that responsibility for the Holocaust is entirely to be attributed to the German Third Reich, any claims of Poles having participated in it can be seen as contravening the new law. Initially the punishment was incarceration for up to three years, but, due to international pressure, especially from Israel and Ukraine, the punishment for infringement is now a monetary fine. Anyone making a claim that would break this law through artistic or scientific activities are supposed to be exempt from prosecution. The Polish president, who also had to sign the law, addressed the international condemnation. He argued that, officially, neither Poland nor its people had participated in the
Holocaust but that while a few had been cruel to their Jewish neighbours, he would not allow anyone to diminish the name of Poland and Poles (‘Andrzejus Duda: Lenkija Nedalyvavo Holokauste’). This controversial law shows a shift away from the conversation on the Holocaust in Poland, and it can be seen not only in the government but also in civil society, with fascist remarks on social media and the National Radical Camp, an ideological descendent of the pre-war anti-Semitic movement in Poland, waving their flags in cities on national holidays (‘Europos Žydų Kongresas: Lenkijoje Antisemitizmas Tampa Norma’). According to a University of Warsaw study, young Poles were more tolerant of hate speech against Jews in 2016 compared with the statistics of 2014. The passing of the law and the general climate show a growing discontent with the Holocaust being part of the Polish narrative, and suggest that even though progress has been made, especially in scientific research and with the opening of POLIN, there are still unresolved issues for it to be included in Poland’s national identity.
Igor Torbakov argues that instrumentalising and politicising history, which seems to be 18 resurfacing with the adoption of the recent law in Poland, usually has two main objectives: to construct a cohesive national identity and to avoid guilt (2011: 210). These are interconnected, since it is hard to identify with a morally difficult past. In the European memory of World War II, Torbakov says there are three narratives: a Western European one, which could be said to be realised through the Stockholm Declaration, the Soviet one, which is mainly followed by Russia as the only country
In History, Memory and National Identity: Understanding the Politics of History and Memory Wars in Post-Soviet Lands
that identifies with the Soviet Union, and the Eastern European one (2011: 214). The first two similarly interpret the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides during the war: the ‘good’ Allies and ‘bad’ Nazi
Germany. However, in Eastern Europe the main trauma that is focused on is not the Nazi occupation but rather the subsequent communist regime and its crimes. This is due to the communist regimes having lasted ten times longer and pervading the lives of multiple generations. However, as I have shown before, the interpretation of the war by Western Europe and Russia has become a basis for a pan-European and transnational history through the proliferation of the term ‘never again’. The devastating narrative of Eastern Europe should be included in the general European historical narrative as it is done in books like Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2012), which contextualises the experience of the war in Eastern Europe by looking at how the Nazi and Soviet regimes abused the lands in between them. However, the West’s nostalgia for and idealisation of the Soviet regime, as exemplified by Adidas having to withdraw Soviet-themed shirts in Lithuania (‘Adidas Withdraws Soviet-Themed Shirt in Lithuania’), shows that the memory of the crimes committed by the Soviet regime is not internalised beyond the borders of Eastern Europe. The swastika is banned from public spaces in most countries while the hammer and sickle is a fashionable accessory (Fedorova, n.d.). Eastern Europeans thus push to integrate their traumatic experience of the Soviet terror into the general European narrative – in part by making it central in the construction of their national identity. However, this often leads to an emphasis on this tumultuous time in their political history, as Torbakov explains: “Most Eastern European nations now view the wartime and postwar period as a ‘useable past’ – crucial for strengthening separate identity, giving a boost to populist nationalism, externalising the Communist past, and casting their particular nation as a hapless victim of two bloodthirsty totalitarian dictatorships.” (2011: 215). This national narrative of victimhood excludes the idea that the Eastern European nationals themselves could have done anything wrong, as every action can be justified as self-defence. Therefore, the narrative of the Holocaust, or more specifically perpetrating it, becomes incompatible with that of the nation and is forced out of the public sphere, whether by the government or civil society.
Michael Rothberg in Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of
zero-sum game: if someone’s past is acknowledged, it does not mean the other’s should not be. Rothberg argued that rather than marginalising other traumas, cross-referencing and borrowing in memory work is productive rather than diminishing, as it enables subordinated memory traditions to be recognised as well. However, this does not work in only one way; the process of ‘memory conflict’, where different traumas are negotiated, is dialectical. As an example, Rothberg (2009) suggests that Holocaust memory has been used as a way of talking about other cultural traumas, while Holocaust memory itself was mobilised by de-colonialism and thus traumas of slavery and colonialism. The final conclusion of Rothberg’s theory of multidirectional memory reiterates Alexander’s (2004) idea that, through negotiation, traumatic memory and group identity can be reshaped and expanded. Furthermore, collective memory is created in the first place, coming into being through memory work, by negotiating which memories are worthy of remembrance. Thus multidirectional memory enables solidarity with overlooked groups within the nation, rather than diminishing the ‘core nation’s’ memories. With the difficulties that the double trauma of communism and Nazism impose in remembering the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, multidirectional memory seems like a way of incorporating the trauma of the Holocaust in the national narrative and thus expanding the definition of who belongs to the nation or what constitutes it.
The art piece that inspired this research was Kader Attia’s cinematographic poem entitled
Reflecting Memory (2016), which I saw at the National Art Gallery of Lithuania in Vilnius (Nacionalinė Dailės Galerija [from here on referred to as NDG]). This artwork was part of the exhibition, Citynature: Vilnius and Beyond, one of the case studies of this thesis. Attia’s 48-minute work compares a
phantom limb to a cultural trauma. Surgeons, neurologists and psychoanalysts are interviewed about the ‘phantom limb’, which is when an amputee still feels the amputated limb. Specific to humans, the feeling of the phantom limb is compared to dub music – a genre originating in Jamaica that is based on the subtraction of sound. These physical and audio presentations of absence, referencing personal and collective traumas, compare physical and immaterial pain, which point to the traumas of contemporary history, such as the Holocaust, but also colonialism and communist dictatorships, and the inability to repair them by refusing to acknowledge them. While making the work, Attia asked the curators of the exhibition to find experts from different fields: doctors, psychotherapists, cultural
studies scholars and also priests who could be interviewed on themes like physical, psychological and cultural traumas. This was done both globally and in reference to Vilnius, as he wanted to react to the history of the city. Due to illness, he asked a colleague to film abandoned locations in Vilnius to add to the video work. Attia then edited the interviews with scientists and dub musicians, images of abandoned places and people with amputated limbs, creating an image of them in mirrors. The final result was a cinematographic poem comparing a personal physical trauma to a loss within a community, or cultural trauma – whether slavery in Jamaica or the Holocaust in Vilnius. This work is a commendable example of multidirectional memory and encourages visitors to realise the productivity and urgency of speaking about this topic in the Eastern European context today.
To carry out research on the presentation of the Holocaust in an art space I chose to compare it to a more traditional place to represent it: a historical museum. As a celebrated museum that incorporates the history of the Holocaust in Poland into their narrative, POLIN was chosen as the historical example. In their permanent exhibition, called Core Exhibition, the Holocaust is presented as one of the chapters in the history of Polish Jews. The Core Exhibition consists of eight different chapters that take the visitor through 1000 years of history. Visitors are told the story of the arrival, prosperity and almost complete annihilation of the Jewish community in Poland from the Middle Ages to today. It begins with a fictional legend that inspired the name of the museum and finishes with contemporary times, which often continues in the temporary exhibitions. Thus I chose to compare POLIN’s Core Exhibition and the Holocaust chapter with NDG’s exhibition Citynature:
Vilnius and Beyond and Kader Attia’s Reflecting Memory. As the museum is one of the few spaces
where the discussion on Holocaust is resurfacing in both countries, and national museums play a part in national identity construction, a comparison of representations of Holocaust in different spaces can allow for an inquiry in how the discussion on the Holocaust can influence the national narrative and vice versa.
Museum, Nation and Memory
The creation of museums is inherently connected to the nation state. Hans Belting identifies 19 museums as places where collective memory lies, as past time is ‘stored’ there. Andreas Huyssen 20 links the creation of nationhood and museums. In the nineteenth century, when the first museums were starting to be established, nation states were in the process of shaping their national histories so that they would create and legitimise the nation state itself (Huyssen, 2003: 2). In Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson uses his
concept of ‘imagined community’ to describe the nation as a unity that exists in the imagination of its constituents. Individuals create their community by believing themselves to belong to it (1998). This ‘imagining’ of a nation is based, among other things, on remembering (and selectively forgetting) a shared, common past. Kevin Walsh argues that by presenting heritage as an objective 21
representation of the past museums are key in rationalising the past (1992: 176), and thus the imagination of the nation itself.
Although Anderson’s definition of nation as ‘imagined community’ might suggest the imagining was done in the past, in reality the nation state is constantly being reimagined, and so are museums, both their narratives and how they are presented. However, in museum presentations there might often seem to be a sense of continuity, as collective memory is constantly being updated to match present views, as David Lowenthal explains in Fabricating Heritage (1998: 16). Belting calls the museum an ‘autopia’ – a place where identity is stabilised through the process of updating (2001: 78). However, identity is not just updated (or remembered) but rather invented in the first place. Julia D. Harrison claims that tradition, history and individual expression all play a part in this process, 22 and the understanding of it takes place in museums, where representations of identity are created (1994: 163). This can be presented in the form of heritage, itself often created rather than preserved from the past, which usually serves better for the transmission of the identity than a historical object (Lowenthal, 1998: 14). It is not surprising then that the belief in heritage as attesting to (national)
In Place Of Reflection Or Place Of Sensation? (2001)
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In Present Pasts (2003)
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In The Representation Of The Past (1002)
identity is based on belief rather than rational proof (ibid.: 7). Thus, the purpose of heritage is not to learn something but rather to become something – to connect to the identity that the heritage represents. To facilitate this connection and create strong community bonds, the representation is often based in prejudiced pride in ‘our past’ (ibid.: 8). The denomination of ‘our’ also creates an ‘in-group’ and an outsider group, or the Other. The national museum, whether or not it employs heritage (although heritage is the most often used tool), shapes national identity through representation while legitimising the nation state itself as a place to make memory accessible. Walsh argues that the ‘successes’ of heritage must be evaluated in the present, where post-material values are developed and the nation state and its power are being threatened (1992). Memory is everywhere now, which could be understood as an outcome of the uncertainty that rapid globalisation poses to stable identities, and it is becoming a way to anchor oneself (Huyssen, 2003: 18). Huyssen argues that in the past our lives were neatly organised through the structures of family, community, nation and state. These structures, especially in the Western world, have been weakened, with national memories and histories losing their grounding in politics and geography: “this may mean that these groundings are written over, erased, and forgotten, as the defenders of local heritage and
authenticity lament. Or it may mean that they are being renegotiated in the clash between globalising forces and new productions and practices of local cultures.” (ibid.: 4) In the case of countries like Lithuania or Poland, where the nation state is relatively young compared to the countries of Western Europe, and they have experienced dictatorship and oppression, they are faced with the task of creating a national narrative and memory in a time when they are being challenged, and throughout it to find ways to deal with past wrongs through commemoration or other means (ibid.: 16).
What can or should museums do now, in this changing world? There are two specific points in which the museum faces fundamental, interrelated choices: is it dedicated primarily to
preservation or presentation, and is it a research institution or does it serve the public? Harrison 23 says that museums must not just present collections, but, more importantly, they must present ideas (1994: 164). And, to be successful, Walsh argues that a museum must be based on the idea of local democracy; it must involve the public through education and interactive displays and create a
In reality, they are not mutually exclusive, but I am choosing to divide them into categories, since the way each is prioritised
dialogue with the displays. More importantly, the public must be involved in the production of their own pasts and the production of the displays themselves (1992: 161). The museum is not (and never was) supposed to simply transmit knowledge, but should be a place where it is created for and by the visitors through dialogue and experience. The contemporary world is crucial in these
presentations, as people want to see manifestations of their own world (Belting, 2001: 73). Belting says this kind of approach makes it possible to present exhibitions based on theme, which challenges the previous notions of ownership in the museum: “exhibitions of a new kind which placed the ownership of a museum in a new light; not in the light of art history, but that of a society concerned with itself.” (2001: 76). So a ‘new’ museum is supposed to present ideas that have been 24 created by and for the public, a place where people can engage with their own culture and see what has been forgotten in the process of nationalising the museums.
One of the approaches to this is through experience. As everything around is being
commoditised, what is missed are experiences, which Joseph Pine and James Gilmore describe as 25 “memorable events that engage them in an inherently personal way.” (2007: 76) This is often
achieved through authenticity, which museums must be able to render (Pine and Gilmore, 2007: 76). Through photography, or the mechanisation of making images, Walter Benjamin claims that art has 26 changed its evaluation from authenticity and aura to politics and reproducibility. In other words, it is not due to the artistic quality of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa that it is often considered the best painting in the world but to the ubiquity of the image. With growing access to internet, when most of a museum’s artefacts and images can be accessed online, often on its own website, why should people pay money to go inside the museum and see what they have on show? It could be said that creating an experience is the way to do it, and especially embodied experience, which Pine and Gilmore say is to be done through architecture (2007). Pine and Gilmore are talking about spatial
experience, as the visitor must be in the space, but the experience is still perceived through sight
rather than the body. I argue that spatial experience, although useful as a term, excludes information perceived through senses other than sight and thus excludes many aspects of how to approach
I would argue that this applies for all kinds of museums, but, instead of art history, in an archaeological museum it would be
24
archaeology; in a historical museum it would be history, etc. In Museums & Authenticity (2007)
experience in an exhibition, as embodied experience is crucial in creating a dialogue with the audience through different knowledges, which I will discuss in detail in chapter 2. Belting sees the 27 future of museums similarly, arguing for “more space for reflection and the critical public than the experience-hungry visitor” (2001: 75).
POLIN and NDG: Identity Stabilising or Negotiating Belonging?
In their mission statements POLIN and NDG show that they are engaged with the ideas of New Museology and critically examine their role as national and also city-related museums. However, their conclusions on the museum’s role in contemporary society are quite different, which is unsurprising considering that one is a historical museum and the other is devoted to art. However, despite this fundamental difference, their divergent approaches are due to their visions of how to create the representation of the past they both claim to present to their visitors. Although the museums have different approaches to representing the past, they both claim to represent it, and through that shape the national narrative. POLIN and NDG are national museums, and that entails that their narrative has a dialectical relationship with national identity, each shaping the other. Both of the museums in the exhibitions I have chosen to analyse, Core Exhibition in POLIN and Citynature: Vilnius and Beyond in NDG, present the Holocaust and attempt to incorporate it into the national narrative. In my research I will inquire how they do it, and how that affects the national narrative. To investigate the way the Holocaust is represented in the exhibitions, one must look into how the museum constructs
narratives in the first place, and how it aims to represent the past, which can be done by looking into their mission and vision statements.
POLIN was inspired by the Holocaust Museum in Washington, which opened in 1993. 28 However, the JHI decided they did not want another museum of the Holocaust but rather a museum of Jewish life in Poland, with the Holocaust being only a part of it (History: from the Idea, through the
Different knowledges as knowledges understood through different senses and different ways of learning.
27
The idea for POLIN originated with the NGO ‘The Association of the Jewish Historical Institute’ (JHI), soon gaining support
28
both locally and abroad. JHI was founded in 1951 to preserve and commemorate the culture and history of Polish Jews. As well as maintaining their library, their current activities are mainly supporting POLIN and the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. From 1995 work on the project of the museum was carried out as a social initiative. In 2005 it was formally institutionalised by the then president of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski. The first public-private initiative in Poland, the museum was created by the NGO that initiated the project, the local government of Warsaw and the national government of Poland. The governmental part was responsible for the building and equipment, while the JHI was in charge of the Core
Ohel, to the POLIN Museum). This could be interpreted as the localisation of the Holocaust within the
national narrative, or rather the localisation of Jews within Polish national history. In 1996 the 29 Committee for Planning the Museum of the History of Polish Jews was established, and they began their work in collaboration with committees all over the world. In 1997 the municipality of Warsaw allocated a site for the museum, to be built in front of the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. 1998 marked the start of the programming for the museum, which was a difficult task as there was almost no collection to work with. Thus the idea of making a narrative museum was born, moving away from an indexical way of presentation (apart from the location being indexical). In the years leading up to the establishment of POLIN in 2005, a museum council was created, and London-based design company Event Communications was hired for the design of the Core Exhibition (History: from the
Idea, through the Ohel, to the POLIN Museum). After institutionalising the museum, a contest was
held for the architecture of the building, which was won by Rainer Mahlamaki from Finland. In 2009 construction started, with an unofficial opening for representatives of Poland and international guests in 2013, a public opening in 2014, attended by both Polish and Israeli presidents, as well as the mayor of Warsaw.
The recipient of many awards, the museum’s design incorporates many symbols in an attempt to be a ‘museum of life’. Built at the very heart of the former Warsaw ghetto, it faces the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, built in 1948, creating a juxtaposition between a monument to remember the dead and a museum to celebrate the living and the life of Poland’s Jews throughout the ages (The Building). The outside of the building is covered with glass panels, on which the word ‘Polin’ is printed, both in Hebrew and Latin letters. Meaning ‘rest here’ in Hebrew, it references the legend of two Jews arriving in Poland 1000 years ago, which is told in the introduction to the Core
Exhibition (ibid.). The interior is also designed with symbolism in mind: walls divide the building in
half to show the gap in history – the Holocaust, thus using the trope of portraying absence. At the same time the monumental hall has a massive window looking onto the park and evoking life and that the story of the Jewish people in Poland is not over. A bridge, connecting the two halves of the museum on the first floor, symbolises bringing the past together with the present, which is what the
It was rumoured that creating a museum of Jewish history in Poland rather than a museum dedicated solely to the
museum aims to do. The architecture plays with the dynamic history of both the locale and the broader history of Jews in Poland, calling out the questions that the museum wants to ask its audiences as they approach the museum. As in the Jewish Museum in Berlin, absence is used to represent the Holocaust – the big gap within POLIN’s interior – but there is more focus on the life and prosperity section, as the museum is bright and spacious when one enters it. As in the core
exhibition, the Holocaust is only one gallery of eight, the museum’s design shows that it was only a chapter – horrific and crucial to remember, but only a part of the rich history of the Jewish
communities in Poland. The building and the design of the exhibition have key roles in conveying the museum’s message, as they attempt to embody it and also make visitors feel they are in the time and place depicted, whether the main message in the hall or the specific moments of history throughout the core exhibition. Both the exterior and interior are successful in conveying the
message through experience-based design and offer a different interpretation of the Holocaust from most museums that are specifically dedicated to the genocide, aiming to contextualise it within the still-existing life of Polish Jews and broader Polish society.
POLIN’s innovative re-contextualisation of the Holocaust and more so Poland’s Jewish community has not gone unnoticed in the museum community: POLIN won the European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA 2016). The jury concluded that, “the museum rose to the challenge of creating an engaging and persuasive core exhibition without a substantial collection of artefacts. The programme of temporary exhibitions, educational activities, conferences and academic and artistic residences make the Museum a vibrant platform for dialogue and spreading knowledge of Jewish history and heritage” (About the Museum). Notwithstanding the international praise, however, the museum has encountered disapproval from the local community, as shown by a headline in the tabloid newspaper Super Express, ‘Does POLIN propagate hate speech against Poland?’ (Boruciak, 2016). According to curator Radecka-Mikulicz, the disapproval has not been visible until recently, but since the Institute of Polish Remembrance bill was approved in the Polish parliament there has been a noticeable shift to a more negative reaction. As I will discuss later, the museum talks about the participation of Poles in the Holocaust, thus it can be seen as breaking this law. A concern for the
museum and for Holocaust studies in Poland, the law shows a general trend of resistance to incorporating the Holocaust into the narrative of Polish history.
On the website and in the museum, POLIN claims that its mission is “to recall and preserve the memory of the history of Polish Jews, contributing to the mutual understanding and respect amongst Poles and Jews as well as other societies of Europe and the world” (Mission and Vision). I would argue that ‘recall’ here entails memory work, meaning it is up to the museum itself to determine what is to be remembered and preserved. Jean-François Lyotard warns that 30
memorialising the Holocaust could lead to its being forgotten, since the function of remembering will be fulfilled by memorials and museums. By taking on the task of recalling the memory of Poland’s Jews, the museum seems to take this work from its audiences. Moreover, it is the memory of Polish Jews that is to be recalled, to promote understanding between ‘Poles and Jews’, implying a mutual exclusivity. As a national museum is a place where identities are stabilised (Belting, 2001: 78), it could be said that rather than including the Jewish community in the national narrative it reinforces the divisions. However, as there is a tendency in Eastern European countries to overlook Jewish suffering during World War II over the ‘core nation’s’ experience, it is important to emphasise the Jewish experience in the museum, and the inclusion of the Jewish community into the national narrative is done through the narrative of the museum and the use of the definition of ‘Polish Jews’. The whole narrative of the core exhibition is about how the Jewish community has lived in the lands that now constitute Poland for over 1000 years and how it has contributed to Polish culture, thus showing that even though they were a distinct group, they have always been part of Poland. Through the centuries a group that can be called ‘Polish Jews’ has developed, implying that the Jewish community was shaped by their compatriots as well. This is particularly visible in the Encounters with
Modernity chapter, which, next to Zionism, presents Jewish groups opposing the idea, with Poland
as part of their identity. Thus the mission of POLIN, as I have argued, shows that representing the Holocaust is problematic within their framework as they claim to do memory work rather than inviting their visitors to do it, but they succeed in localising the Jewish community in Poland without
prioritising the ‘core nation’. However, as Kamila Radecka-Mikulicz, senior specialist for core exhibition content and a curator of the museum’s Holocaust gallery, said when I interviewed her,
POLIN aims to be a museum of the living, not of the Holocaust. Rather than representing the Holocaust, their goal is to locate the Jewish community in the national narrative of Poland – a goal POLIN achieves. Radecka-Mikulicz adds that the museum aims to show a common past for the local community, so people understand the history of the Jewish community as an integral part of
Poland’s history, as well as learning from the past in order to live together in the future (Radecka-Mikulicz and Mockutė). The museum’s vision suggests that, although the Jewish community is not considered part of the ‘core nation’ in Poland, it still was and is an integral part of Polish society.
Lithuania’s National Art Gallery is a subdivision of the Art Museum, which was founded in 1933 as Vilnius City Museum by the Vilnius Magistracy (History of the Lithuanian Art Museum). At the time its collection mainly comprised of works donated from various arts and science societies, which has changed and expanded throughout the years under different management. Nowadays the museum comprises nine distinct museums and galleries: Vilnius Picture Gallery, the Clock and Watch Museum, the Radvilas Palace Museum, the Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum, Pranas Domšaitis Gallery, the Museum of Design and Applied Arts, the Palanga Amber Museum, the Museum of Miniature Arts and the NDG. The Lithuanian Art Museum aims to collect, preserve, research and restore works, as well as organising exhibitions, conferences and educational programmes and publishing catalogues and art books. In 2007 the museum’s collection contained over 204,600 Lithuanian and foreign works of visual and applied art, as well as ethnographic and archaeological collections (History of the
Lithuanian Art Museum). The NDG was opened in 1993 as the National Gallery, in a building that had
housed the Museum of the Revolution during the Soviet occupation. Until 1999 it exhibited
Lithuanian folk art, as well as works donated by Vytautas Kašuba (Informacija Lankytojui). Due to the deterioration of the building it was closed in 1999 and reopened in 2009 with a permanent exhibition of twentieth-century Lithuanian art. This is gradually being expanded with works from the twenty-first century, and the museum has two spaces for temporary exhibitions that present various modern or contemporary art exhibitions.
The NDG’s stated goal is to collect and research Lithuanian art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and present it to Lithuanian and international audiences as part of international
our audiences, reveal the links between Lithuanian art and that of other countries, encourage new interpretations of Lithuanian art and develop a culture of understanding of the visual arts” (Visitor
Information). So its main aim is to gather and research Lithuanian art and present it to local and
global audiences, combining the idea of the museum as a research centre and public institution. The focus on a Lithuanian and international audience shows that the museum wants to engage with the national community as the ‘owner’ of the art (Lithuanian art for a Lithuanian audience) but also to show it to audiences outside of the national group, as the collection itself is part of a bigger international framework of modern art. Thus the museum simultaneously reaffirms a national belonging while situating it within a larger configuration of nations. One of its curators, Eglė
Mikalajūnė, told me that the museum’s main goal was to maintain and expand the collection so as to differentiate it from a gallery or kunsthalle. As it presents the collection, the museum inevitably presents the past – reflections of the past, connections to the past, especially being a civic museum. Vilnius’s history has been extremely multicultural, with ethnic Lithuanians becoming a majority only in the second half of the twentieth century. The NDG’s collection is said to be of ‘Lithuanian art’, which could have different connotations. The curators of the museum imply that it can be art by both ethnic Lithuanians and any artists in the geographic location of Lithuania (Mikalajūnė and Mockutė; Burokas and Mockutė). Currently the collection mainly contains artworks by ethnic Lithuanians, but they are working on expanding the collection to broaden the notion of Lithuanian art, including art from Polish and Jewish minorities that have been a strong presence in the nation’s cultural landscape throughout the ages. However, due to a lack of funding the collection is not expanding much (Burokas and Mockutė). The temporary exhibitions are funded separately through applications for project-based support (Mikalajūnė and Mockutė), giving them greater scope to acquire and exhibit art from outside the collection.
Mikalajūnė sees the museum as having a duty to present the past as a subject. As the permanent exhibition presents Lithuanian art chronologically, it is up to the temporary exhibitions, often of contemporary art, to fulfil this role, either by connecting Lithuanian art to international trends (one of the museum’s main goals) or by connecting art from different periods, both locally and internationally. The goal of establishing oneself in reference to art from other parts of the world,
which, when talking about modern art especially, means Western art, echoes the inferiority complex of nationalising nations. However, as official institutions, museums, especially those outside the West, must represent and engage with the concepts of modernity and contemporary and global life, as their role is to represent them, through their collection, for the local audience, as Hans Belting says in Contemporary Art and the Museum in the Global Age: "they must therefore offer a program which, in this case, clarifies the constellation and local meaning of modern, contemporary, and global” (Belting, 2012: 21). Consequently, while most exhibitions focus on the locale, the curators are keen to connect their narrative to global issues. These connections are mainly made in the temporary exhibitions, which often work with contemporary art, and not only bring a global perspective to the status of Lithuanian art but contextualise the art and the topics that are addressed.
To understand the approach of the temporary exhibitions, the museum’s educational role should be examined. Indeed, the education centre has a central role in the museum, as it attempts to make the museum an active and interesting place for communication, where audiences can meet artists, curators and museum staff. During the educational programmes, which include excursions, workshops and meetings, audiences can learn how artworks are created and come to be exhibited or added to the museum’s collection, as well as gaining a critical insight into art processes and their influence on everyday life (Education). The aim is that the visitor thoroughly enjoys, critically
evaluates and understands the artworks on show. The NDG sees ‘reading’ visual art as important as reading and writing; thus every participant in the activities is encouraged to get to know and interpret their own creativity (ibid.). By stressing the importance of this kind of education the museum implies that they expect the visitor to participate in its meaning-creation, with the museum merely providing ‘tools’ with which to engage with the exhibitions.
The NDG’s contemporary exhibitions run parallel to the goals of the education centre. Another curator, Vytenis Burokas, says that, as most art spaces in Europe have been doing for a while, the museum is moving away from the ‘white cube’ presentation that shows artworks as hierarchical, autonomous, modernist projects, to a more educational role, where the artwork is used as a medium to create dialogue on our contemporary condition (Burokas and Mockutė). That does not mean moving away from the artwork itself, but, since much contemporary art engages with
current social issues, it inevitably leads to reflection of these topics by the audience as well. Artists have different approaches as to how open and topical they wish to be towards the audience, but, for Burokas, it is the role of the curator of a museum as a national institution to address the viewers and bring them into the exhibition’s narrative. Mikalajūnė identified the role of curator as special in its relation to knowledge, as it does not have the constraints of academia or the scientific method. The creation of knowledge works in between research and creativity, which allows for experimentation and unexpected conclusions. As the curating profession is moving away from art history to different fields of academia and non-academic approaches, a space for new meanings and ideas is created. Indeed, the NDG’s mission statement includes activities that imply reciprocal interaction, so that, rather than informing or presenting, the museum aims to give its visitors the tools to understand what they are being shown. Thus, notwithstanding its responsibility to maintain and research its collection, the NDG wants its audience to invest the meaning itself, as Belting says contemporary museums should (2001).
POLIN and the NDG have very different mission statements. Their collections are of different sizes and their approaches to the creation of meaning are different. POLIN is a historical museum, while the NDG is an art museum. It is therefore understandable that their collections differ: POLIN has barely any artefacts, while the NDG has a vast collection of artworks; it “collects and researches its collection”, while POLIN “recalls and preserves the past”. The NDG bases its exhibitions on art heritage, whereas POLIN focuses on immaterial heritage, offering visitors a constructed narrative. The main difference is in who gets to create meaning in the museum: while POLIN offers a recalling of the past, the NDG invites the visitor to join in the interpretation of the past, and offers the tools to do so. However, as POLIN presents a narrative, it necessarily offers an interpretation of the past. Moreover, in its mission statement POLIN localises the Jewish community in Poland, which the NDG does not, as it is not primarily concerned with expanding what it means to be ‘Lithuanian’. Rather than incorporating the Jewish community into the Lithuanian ‘core group’, the museum aims to position Lithuania in a global context.
POLIN further declares its vision: “to create a modern museum – an educational and cultural centre, a platform for social dialogue, an institution offering a profound, transformative experience
and promoting new standards of relating to history.” (Mission and Vision) The claim to create a modern museum is problematic: modernity as a concept of the linear progression of civilisations is racially charged and has fuelled colonialism, and in a universalist definition of the Holocaust can be seen as the enabler of the genocide. Thus the use of ‘modern’ as an adjective rather than a category (modern art implies a category of art) can be seen as self-colonisation, the prevention of which is one of the main reasons for the localisation of Holocaust memory: Wawrzyniak and Pakier argued that there is a need for a new way of representing the Holocaust in Eastern Europe – one that does more than adapt the vocabulary and conclusions of Holocaust studies as carried out in the West (2013). By describing the museum as modern, rather than implying that the museum is contemporary, it says it is stuck in a certain period and way of thinking that has already been critiqued extensively. POLIN continues its vision by naming itself an educational institution, and for the first time mentions reciprocal communication as part of the museum’s goals. It then uses the word ‘experience’ in relation to transformation: as Lowenthal said, one comes to the museum to become something (1998), and in the case of POLIN, to become a Polish national relating to the history of Polish Jews as to their own history. Thus the museum asserts that through an experience of a narrative claimed to be authentic the visitor will be transformed, following the ideas of Pine and Gilmore (2007). Even though there is a mention of dialogue, POLIN aims to change its visitors through experience, rather than allowing them to join in the creation of meaning through their reflection.
The NDG’s vision is focused on communication with its visitors: “NDG is a
contemporaneous, multifunctional centre for art and culture, seeking a dialogue with society. This is a space for active communication, where the audience can see the permanent and temporary exhibitions as well as participate in cultural events, lectures and educational programmes.” (Visitor
Information) In place of ‘modern’ it uses the word ‘contemporaneous’, with completely different
connotations, meaning simply ‘of the current time’. The museum mentions the services it provides: exhibitions, a permanent collection and a programme of events. This shows that it is constantly changing, and, since it claims to seek a dialogue with society, one can assume that it is changing with the input from its visitors. The museum aims to create a reciprocal relationship with its
communication, which demands action and intent not only on the part of the museum but also from the audience. I would argue this is moving away from Pine and Gilmore’s concept of experience (2007) to Belting’s idea of creating a space for reflection (2001). A museum should include its visitors in the creation of meaning rather than giving them an experience through rendered authenticity. From their mission statements, the NDG appears to be doing the former and POLIN the latter.
Research Question and Methodology
POLIN and NDG, as national museums face a similar challenge when exhibiting works on such difficult topics like the Holocaust. Although not a straightforward comparison, as national museums in a globalising world they both face difficult decisions in presenting their narrative and representing difficult themes like the Holocaust. The choices between experience and dialogue, artefacts and multimedia, influence the exhibitions and the processes of making them. The museums’ ‘missions and visions’ show the context in which the exhibitions are constructed and must be taken into account to understand their content and form. As POLIN and NDG have different positions on what they are trying to achieve as a museum, a comparison of how they represent the Holocaust is informative to understand how different museological strategies enable representation and meaning making. In this thesis, I investigate how POLIN and NDG represent the Holocaust in the context of the debate on the impossibility of representing the Holocaust. As NDG’s exhibition Citynature: Vilnius
and Beyond “represent” the Holocaust through contemporary art, rather than in a historical museum
setting like POLIN, I inquire what strategies that offers for the representation of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, where the “never again” narrative competes with national historical narratives of victimhood. As an alternative to “representation”, I argue that through contemporary art the
Holocaust is presence(d), as an artwork is never just a representation of something and the physical presence of the audience and the artwork is required for the meaning to be created and understood. A contemporary artwork on Holocaust thus is not a representation of it, but a possibility to generate an understanding of it in the present, connecting to the visitors own experience.
The research was carried out by participant observation of the exhibitions and a spatial analysis. In my visits to both museums I have carefully analysed the exhibitions, before carrying out interviews with the curators, so I could have the experience of a regular visitor. Afterwards, interviews
with curators Kamila Radecka-Mikulicz from POLIN and Vytenis Burokas and Eglė Mikalajūnė from NDG were done, either in person or via “Skype”. After the interviews the exhibitions were analysed again, with a separate screening of Kader Attia’s Reflecting Memory. Moreover, as one of the original interviewee Joanna Fikus from POLIN was unable to attend the interview I asked follow up questions over email. The transcripts of the interviews and email can be found in the Appendix in their original language. The findings from the observations of the exhibitions and the museums themselves and the interviews were then combined in an analysis of the exhibitions, based on the theory of representation of the Holocaust and its representation within artworks. The analysis was based on academic literature from memory and trauma studies and contextualised by journalistic publications as well as private tours in mass shooting locations in Lithuania, namely Paneriai and XI Fortas, to give an overview of the political climate in which the exhibitions are created and in which the
Holocaust is represented. The findings are a synthesis of the visual and textual information and gives an insight into what different museological strategies can offer in representation of difficult subjects, and how contemporary art can overcome most of the impossibilities of representing the Holocaust.
In the first chapter I will outline how POLIN represents and localises the Holocaust in its Core
Exhibition and Holocaust, and examine the tools it uses, which are mainly testimony and spatial experience. In the second chapter I will introduce concepts of presence as an alternative to the
representation of the Holocaust, which can be done through contemporary art, as well as temporal
localisation, which, rather than just contextualising the Holocaust in the broader history of the place,
also connects it to other cultural traumas internationally. I will use these terms to investigate how, by including Kader Attia’s Reflecting Memory, Citynature: Vilnius and Beyond created a multidirectional ‘representation’ of the Holocaust. In the third chapter I will compare the representations created in the different exhibitions, identifying the alternative possibilities that a representation in an art space brings to the depiction of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe in comparison to historical museums. In the conclusion I will show what the capacity to represent the Holocaust can tell us about different museological strategies. The discussion of the Holocaust remains difficult, and in my research I attempt to see how museums can be a place for this discussion. I look at how unexpected museums
