Site Specific Infrastructures: Post-Memory and Photographic Evidence in the Iași Pogrom Museum

• In Event: Exhibitions on Difficult Pasts and Their Infrastructures

Abstract

The Iași Pogrom Museum, opened in 2021 in Iași (Romania), commemorates the 1941 pogrom in which more than 13,000 Jews lost their lives. Most of the victims were killed in the courtyard of the Police Headquarters, where a part of the exhibition of the Iași Pogrom Museum is now located. After its renovation, the former Police Headquarters was transformed into a museum complex called the House of Museums, under the auspices of the Museum of Literature. In addition to the Iași Pogrom Museum and the Museum of Romanian Literature, the building also houses the Museum of Jewish Theater and the Museum of Childhood in Communism.

The need to preserve the character of the Iași Pogrom Museum as a public memorial site revealed several infrastructural factors that influenced its curatorial narrative, which was shaped by conflicting demands. It was constrained by the ethical imperative to mark the outdoor site of mass murders, while also preserving fragile documents in spaces suitable for their conservation. It also had to provide visitors ample time for visitors to read the testimonies, while sharing the interior space with other museums due to financial regulations and constraints.

Therefore, the courtyard of the former Police Headquarters is now lined with commemorative photographs, while in the basement, the building documents, photographs, survivor testimonies, and various artifacts are displayed in several exhibition rooms. The exhibition was also shaped by a social, transnational infrastructure: it was created with the logistical and financial support of the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust Elie Wiesel, in collaboration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Curatorial and technological choices, such as the materials used for printing and the type of lighting, were made in response to environmental conditions, both outdoor and indoor. These decisions were also influenced by the transnational exchange of models and curatorial knowledge. In addition, financial decisions to operate the museum as a smaller unit within an integrated management structure that includes three other museums dedicated to both Jewish memory and the memory of everyday life under communism are key infrastructural elements. These factors significantly influence the museum’s narrative.

The paper examines the museum’s infrastructures – technological, financial and curatorial – through interviews with the museum’s management, founders, researchers, exhibition custodians, and the director of the museum complex in which it is located – the Iași Museum of Literature. It also includes an analysis of its architectural conditions, spatial limitations, and technological constraints.

Author

• Cristian Emil Nae, George Enescu National U of Arts (Romania)