Grassroots Holocaust Museums in Israel

• In Event: Designing Holocaust Museums: Objects, Form and Ideology

Abstract

In the past decades small, non-institutional museums have sprung up in Israel to display overlooked, or unrecognized aspects of the Holocaust. These museums, which I have termed “Grassroots Holocaust Museums”, challenge the hegemonic narrative of Holocaust memory and commemoration that has been ingrained in Israeli society since the establishment of the State in 1948. This paper will present examples of such museums and question how they reflect on contemporary Israeli society. The “Salonika and Greece Jewry Heritage Center” for example, was created by a group of Ladino speaking Holocaust survivors residing in a Home for the Elder; the “Museum of Jewish Soldiers’ Heroism” was established by Russian immigrants who are WWII veterans; and the Prager Center was created by the haredi Holocaust researcher Rabbi Moshe Prager in Bnei Brak. Each of the museums displays either a unique aspect of the Holocaust, or appeals to a particular audience. They are different in every way except in their common goal to challenge the existing Israeli meta-narrative of the Holocaust set by the State and inscribed in Yad Vashem, its National museum. Today, with Israel at seventy, what can the recent eruption of these previously hidden voices teach us? Is this a sign of a permanent and stable society that has established a cohesive meta-narrative and collective memory and can now accept the undercurrent of other voices? Or, in contrast, should we view this fragmentation as a sign of fragility?

Author

• Stephanie Rotem, University of Virginia