Museums during war and peace: Places of protection and destruction

There are many museum exhibitions now that focus on war - depicting how nations, groups and individuals are affected by conflict, how they have remembered the devastation and how they have commemorated these events. However, over the past few weeks while one heritage site has been attacked another has reopened after 12 years - both during the current conflict in Iraq. It is intended here to examine how museums have been affected and how they have reacted to wartime circumstances by concentrating on WWI, WWII and current struggles. It can be argued that museums have played four roles during wartime conditions; they have been subjected to lootings and damage, they have been forced to close to safeguard their collections, but museums have also produced ‘patriotic exhibitions’ to inspire the nation and consequently exhibited works that have alienated other people.

With the outbreak of WWI ‘the very purpose and worth of museums in society [was] tested and met a response as diverse as the institutions themselves’. Gaynor Kavanagh has suggested that ‘some museums [in Britain] were able to adapt and support the war effort through ‘‘patriotic exhibitions’ and educational work’. These exhibitions were created to inspire men to enlist while encouraging those left at home to work towards victory. However, national museums closed during this period, which is highlighted by Kavanagh who expresses that ‘this was not done through concern for the safety of collections, but as a political gesture, a public example of economy during wartime’. Therefore, museums during WWI were to some extent connected to the war effort because their exhibitions encouraged the nation to believe in itself and closures symbolised how museums helped support the troubled economy at the time.

If we consider WWII with particular focus on museums in Nazi Germany the story of how museums are affected and react during war takes a different route. The Nazis created exhibitions that were only open to visits by ‘high-ranking SS officials’, which displayed the ideology that the Aryan race was superior to the Jewish race. These exhibitions were ‘arranged by the staff and presenting a selection of exquisite material objects owned by those murdered in the camps at that very time’. Sabine Offe, continues to state that ‘the staff – the Jewish archivists, librarians, architects, and art-historians were themselves deported one by one’. Similar to the examples of the WWI exhibitions they were designed to evoke nationalism however they did this by force by expelling or deporting Jewish people, who had up until the rise of the Nazis, considered themselves and were considered by others to be German nationals. Also as well as creating exhibitions that were influenced by the party’s beliefs the Nazis were ‘systematic campaign[s] to loot and plunder art from Jews and others in the occupied countries’. As previously stated museums are places of ‘salvage’ but during conflicts they also become places of conflict where the protection of their collections are threatened.

Debates were raised a few weeks ago at the British Museum which was ‘turned into a temporary court’ that discussed ‘the alleged illegal trading of an ancient Libyan statue valued at £1.5m’. As current conflicts in Iraq and Syria continue there is a growing necessity to protect museum’s collections. This has been emphasised by the need for an international conference at the V&A on the 14th April entitled ‘Culture in Conflict’. The main questions that have been asked are ‘what is the role of museums? Can we support people from these countries, whilst ensuring our own protection?’ Peter Stone, the chairman of the UK National Committee of the Blue Shield, has also raised the issue that advocates for the protection of cultural heritage in conflict zones. Evidently museums that are currently facing conflict are struggling to protect their cultural heritage. However, the museums as well as an international audience have concluded that they have a responsibility to act – lessons have been learnt after WWI and WWII but it has proved difficult to create a complete plan to protect museum objects during conflicts. On the other hand, there has been greater attention given to the looting of museums through heightened media coverage.

This post was written by Amy Williams. Amy is currently undertaking an internship at Culture Syndicates and studying for her MA in Holocaust and Related Studies at Nottingham Trent University. She is blogging about her experiences with Culture Syndicates on their Linked In page: http://linkd.in/1Mqo46v

Are we remembering to forget or are we keeping memory alive?

Recently there has been an increased focus directed towards how Britain remembers the Holocaust - emphasised by David Cameron’s launch of the Holocaust Commission. The pledge is that ‘the commission will work to ensure Britain has a permanent memorial to the Holocaust and educational resources for future generations’. As Andrew Pearce puts it - within the ‘last quarter of the twentieth century’ the remembrance of the Holocaust has undergone ‘a profound transformation in Britain’. However, Britain’s Holocaust consciousness is more complex than first thought because teaching aims within schools and within exhibitions, such as the Imperial War Museum, have adopted a national master narrative that limits our ability to ask difficult questions.

The focus at a recent conference “Between Obsession, Routine, and Contestation: Remembering the Holocaust in Europe today” revealed how some publications have suggested that ‘the Germans have had enough of Hitler and the Holocaust’. Harold Welzer has stated that, “Hitler can be forgotten”. While Ulrike Jureit has illustrated that ‘the Holocaust Memorial was more of the 1968 generation’s pathological identification with Jewish victims than of anything else’. There seems to be a contrast between Germany and Britain: is one forgetting while another is keeping memory alive? However, this question is too simplistic because Britain as well as other countries up until the 1970s experienced, as Barbie Zelizer points out, the ‘period of amnesia’. This period saw an increased interest in survivor’s memories that had largely been previously ignored. When we discuss remembering to forget it could be that through the creation of many memorials to the Holocaust we have grown to think more in-depth about their purpose and who is doing the remembering and on behalf of what group?

The next questions to consider are - will the current debates within Germany affect Britain and will Britain’s new energy to memorialise and educate impact upon Germany? Here we will consider the affect of transnational memory on these two countries, especially with regard to Britain. Today, survivor’s memories are now at the forefront of memory because we are able to watch them recount in documentary films, read their memoires and listen to them speak at events, which are produced in many countries. But with regard to memorialisation of the Holocaust has Germany reached a moment of fatigue? As previously stated there are numerous memorials in Germany but very few in Britain, although one memorial that is visible in Britain is the memorial to the Kindertransport in Liverpool Street, London. This memorial is physically imprinted onto Britain’s consciousness because it is outside a busy train station but is increasingly having a mental impact due to the national curriculum, the Holocaust commission and through the work of Beth Shalom, The National Holocaust Centre and Museum.

‘While countries around the globe are moving the Holocaust to the centre of their historical and memorial consciousness’, Britain has an opportunity to ask questions that have previously been too taboo to ask or considered too complex to address within schools and museums. However, Beth Shalom’s exhibitions are making us think about topics that have previously adopted the national narrative in a new way. It is important to keep this memory alive – the topic of the 2015 Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain – but we have to ask more challenging questions. For example, if we consider the Kindertransport how do we reflect upon Britain’s role as both a rescuer and a bystander? How do we ‘commemorate’ the perpetrator – we remember their crimes – but how do we represent this in a museum exhibition and in a memorial? 

This post was written by Amy Williams. Amy is currently undertaking an internship at Culture Syndicates and studying for her MA in Holocaust and Related Studies at Nottingham Trent University. She is blogging about her experiences with Culture Syndicates on their Linked In page: http://linkd.in/1Mqo46v