The Voice of the Individual:

The New Holocaust History Museum

by Leah Goldstein

• Straight to the Heart: The New Holocaust Art Museum

At an historic ceremony in the presence of heads of state, survivors, leaders in Holocaust remembrance and supporters, Yad Vashem’s new Holocaust History Museum will be inaugurated on 15-16 March, under the patronage and in the presence of H.E. Mr. Moshe Katsav, President of the State of Israel. The pinnacle of Yad Vashem’s Multiyear Development Plan, the new Museum has been a decade in the making, and combines the best of Yad Vashem’s expertise, resources and state-of-the-art exhibits to take Holocaust remembrance into the 21^st century.

The new Holocaust History Museum occupies over 4,400 square meters, mainly underground. Both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, it tells the story of the Holocaust using original artifacts, documentation, testimonies, film, literature, diaries, letters, and works of art. The synthesis of all these channels of personal expression enables the visitor to absorb the wealth of information through a multi-sensory and multidimensional experience.

In advance of the inaugural events, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate and Chief Curator of the new Holocaust History Museum Avner Shalev and Director of the Museums Division and Curator in Charge of the new Museum Yehudit Inbar reflected on the creation of this unique Museum and its role in imparting the memory of the Shoah: 

A Unique Jewish Perspective

Shirt belonging to Helen Ryba, prisoner in a slave labor camp near Leipzig, Germany. Helen tied an orange bead onto the collar as an “ornament.” Gift of Helen (Ryba) Katz-Lichtbroun, Miami, Florida, USA: Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection

As a museum of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, the new Holocaust History Museum presents the events—though not exclusively—from the Jewish point of view. “It is impossible to understand the Holocaust and absorb its meaning without learning about those who were most directly affected: the victims and the survivors,” says Avner Shalev. From the opening chapter—dedicated to the pre-war European Jewish world—until the epilogue—portraying original manuscripts written by Jews during the Holocaust period—the artifacts, writings and artwork of the victims tell the story of the Holocaust from a unique Jewish perspective, emphasizing the Jews as subjects, rather than objects upon whom the Nazis conducted their genocidal policy.

Yehudit Inbar explains: “Most of the documentation and film footage of the time came from official German sources, portraying Jews through the eyes of the murderer as vile and humiliated—sub-human—creatures. The way Jews experienced these events cannot possibly be understood using these materials alone. We decided to use these photographs and film clips as the framework narrative of what happened, but also to search for ways to tell the Jewish story. This search was assisted by the expert and devoted team in the Museums Division, which contributed greatly to the establishment of the exhibition in the new Museum.”    

The Voice of the Individual

Shalev explains how this idea was developed, by using personal artifacts, testimonies, diaries and artwork to present the experiences of the individual victims. “The perspective of the individual is another keystone of the Museum,” he explains. “As the visitor proceeds through the narrative, the displays emphasize the unique human stories of the Jewish population in Europe during those terrible years.”

Inbar continues: “Since the Jew was the victim and most of the Jews were murdered, materials conveying their story are difficult to find. Most of their property was confiscated, and what remained was considered “anti-material”—unsuitable for display, because it doesn’t make an impact. This is especially true when compared to the plentiful material left by the Nazis.”

The most important and unique way to give voice to the individual was through symbolic means. That was the idea behind locating the Hall of Names—which houses the Pages of Testimony and photographs of individual victims—inside the Museum exhibit, as part of the narrative.

“In addition,” says Inbar, “we included personal stories throughout the Museum. Some 90 brief accounts of specific individuals are woven into the narrative using whatever means available—personal belongings (sometimes only a button or a broken toy), photographs, recorded testimonies, drawings or quotes from diaries or letters that survived.”

Haviva Peled-Carmeli, Senior Artifacts Curator, and Nina Springer Aharoni, Photograph and Film Curator collected any material that could build a more complete picture of the people involved. Their experiences are written in a more intimate, human style, and portray not only leaders and famous figures, but also the ordinary men, women and children from different places and diverse backgrounds, most of whom perished. These displays effectively convey their impression and understanding of what was happening and the appalling events they experienced. Inbar points out that even in the model of Auschwitz, which is used to explain how the Jews were murdered, the artist gave individual expression to the 3,000 figures contained in the display. 

The Museum also uses genuine artifacts to give visitors an impression of the world that existed at the time. Near the beginning of the narrative, for example, visitors can walk around inside a typical living room of a Jewish family in Germany during the 1930s, recreated from belongings donated by a number of different families.

“One of the main principles in planning the new Museum was to incorporate multimedia presentations into the exhibits,” adds Shalev. The Museum has some one hundred video screens showing original film clips from before and during the Shoah, survivor testimonies, maps, and short movies produced especially for the Museum.

Understanding the events

Original bunks from prisoner barracks in Auschwitz and Majdanek camps. Loaned by Panstwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oswiecim, Poland, and Panstwowe Muzeum na Majdanku, Lublin, Poland

“In addition to helping the visitor internalize the human suffering caused by the events,” says Shalev, “individual accounts also deepen the understanding of what occurred and contend with its astounding, almost inconceivable components.” As such, general phenomena are highlighted through single-story examples.

Inbar explains: “At the end of the war, as the Nazi armies were retreating, the Germans led the last surviving camp inmates on forced “death marches.” These difficult journeys resulted in the deaths of many thousands of prisoners, often only weeks or days before liberation. To help visitors comprehend these terrible ordeals, the new Museum will focus on one such death march—which began with some 1,000 women. During their harrowing journey, they encountered a few locals who helped them, but many more who watched in silence or worse, actively participated in the murder of hundreds. The

Israel Alfred Glück (b. 1921), The Death March, 1945, charcoal on paper. Gift of Dr. K. Passer, London: Yad Vashem Art Museum Collection (exhibited in the new Holocaust History Museum)

display will include the names of these women, the places they passed through, their photographs affixed to survivor testimonies, and remaining objects from the march. Thus the narrative will move from the individual story to the general phenomenon and back to the particular, allowing visitors to gain knowledge of the historical event, while relating to the victims’ appalling personal experiences.”

“This is the strength of the Museum,” adds Shalev, “to elicit visitor’s empathy, understanding and compassion for the victims of the Shoah.”

Architecture and Design

In keeping with the challenge outlined in Yad Vashem’s Multiyear Development Plan—to maintain the character of the surrounding natural landscape, as well as the prominence of the Hall of Remembrance, the focus of commemoration at the site since its early years—world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie designed a prism-like triangular structure that penetrates the mountain from one side to the other, with both ends dramatically cantilevering into the open air. “The triangular form of the structure was chosen to support the pressure of the earth above the prism while bringing in daylight from above through a 200 meter-long glass skylight,” explains Safdie.

Another basic guideline for the Museum’s design was to create a visitor’s route dictated by the evolving narrative—with a beginning, middle and end. As such, Safdie devised a central walkway (prism) with underground exhibition galleries on either side. The visitor is guided into the adjacent galleries by a series of impassable gaps, created by Museum designer Dorit Harel, of Dorit Harel Design Inc., extending along the breadth of the prism floor Displaying items from different events, the gaps symbolize turning points in the Holocaust, and serve as chapter headings for the evolving narrative of the exhibition.

The building of the new Museum presented a challenge answered by many different bodies, including Tafnit Wind and Minrav. Coordinating the building project was Yad Vashem Director General Ishai Amrami, assisted by the volunteer Building Committee headed by Chaim Alon.

A Multi-Sensory Experience

Aside from providing information, Harel integrated an experiential dimension, giving visitors an overall impression of the time, place and atmosphere. Unique settings, spaces with varying heights, and different degrees of light accentuate focal points of the unfolding narrative. For example, together with the Museum curators’ perception of how to present the Warsaw Ghetto, one exhibition gallery is a symbolic reconstruction of the ghetto’s Leszno Street. Visitors walk through the gallery on original cobblestones, surrounded by sights and sounds of the street produced by personal artifacts, original streetlamps, film footage and enlarged photographs of that period (see cover).

Original soup vat from Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Donated by Muzeum Gross-Rosen, Walbrzych, Poland

The design of the building itself also took into account the multi-sensory exhibition within. Safdie explains: “The Museum’s planners requested the building not be immersed in darkness. The skylight allows gleams of daylight to contrast with darker areas required for multimedia presentations.” Within the galleries, light enters through localized skylights varying from diffused to clear glass, depending on the requirements of each exhibit.

Art and Video Art

 “Art can be an important medium, reflecting the multidimensional, inner world of the victims, while helping to depict historical events,” says Shalev. “Using art in the new Museum mirrors Yad Vashem’s multidisciplinary approach in perpetuating the memory of, and teaching about, the Holocaust,” he adds. Senior Art Curator Yehudit Shendar led the challenge of integrating works of art into the new Museum’s displays. Explains Inbar: “Art generates an emotional response, and that is why, in this historical museum, works of art not only document and illustrate the subject matter, but also increase the visitor’s emotional involvement.”

When designing the opening chapter of the Museum, portraying the Jewish world before the Holocaust, Museum designer Dorit Harel proposed using an audio-visual presentation to be projected on the 13-meter high triangular southern wall of the Museum. Boris Mafzir, media consultant for the new Museum, took this idea one step further by suggesting that the presentation be commissioned to an artist. Thus, at the Museum’s entrance, world-renowned artist Michal Rovner has created a video art display using original materials alone, which takes the visitor on a journey into the world of ordinary people within their communities; a world now vanished. The shortage of good quality footage documenting Jewish life before the Holocaust made the video’s creation difficult. “The challenge was to recreate the atmosphere of Jewish life,” explains Rovner. “I took different film clips and blended them into one background, just as the Jews blended into the fabric of life in the countries where they lived.”

The Museum’s epilogue is also a video art display, this time created by acclaimed artist Uri Tzaig, using original manuscripts—diaries, letters and notes—written by Jews during the Holocaust period and by survivors afterwards. In one corner of the gallery, a “virtual” album with turning pages displays the manuscripts in their original handwriting, while another wall shows floating letters that occasionally combine to form words and sentences—thoughts and reflections written by Jews during the Shoah. The letters seem to dart through a moving spotlight—echoing the spotlights used in the camps—highlighting the written texts. “This work symbolizes the human spirit that survived even in the inferno,” explains Tzaig.

The New Hall of Names

The new Hall of Names: room for six million Pages of Testimony

At the end of the Museum’s historical narrative is the Hall of Names—a repository for the Pages of Testimony of millions of Holocaust victims, a memorial to those who perished, and, in a separate room, a place where visitors can conduct searches of the digitized Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. The main Hall is composed of two cones: one extending ten meters skywards, echoed by a reciprocal well-like cone excavated into the natural underground rock, its base filled with water. Visitors enter the Hall in the circular space between the two cones onto an elevated ring-shaped platform. From here they can view the upper cone, where a display, designed by Dorit Harel, features some 600 photographs of Holocaust victims and fragments of Pages of Testimony reflected in the water at the bottom of the lower cone. Surrounding the platform is the circular repository, housing the Pages of Testimony collected so far, with empty spaces for not yet to be submitted—room for six million Pages in total.

From the Hall of Names, visitors will continue on to the epilogue and from there to the balcony opening to a panoramic view of Jerusalem.

Headscarf made by Yehudit Aufrichtig, a prisoner at Ravensbrück, from remnants of a Nazi flag. Shortly before liberation, her fellow women prisoners embroidered the headscarf with their names as well as sayings and illustrations from camp life. Gift of Yehudit (Aufrichtig) Taube, Rehovot, Israel: Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection

“It is Yad Vashem’s hope that the compassion generated by the new Holocaust History Museum will give visitors a more meaningful experience, raising their personal commitment to higher moral values today and in the future,” says Shalev. “The Holocaust is not a closed chapter in human history, but rather an integral component in the development of our culture and the fashioning of our existence. From the Mount of Remembrance (Har Hazikaron) in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem is both a warning beacon against repetition of the extreme evil of the past, and a light of hope for the future.”

Major donors to the Holocaust History Museum include: The Harry and Judith Wilf family (USA), the Joseph and Elizabeth Wilf family (USA), Franz Karl Hess (Switzerland), Arie and Jacqueline Becker (Mexico), the Braman Family Foundation (USA), the Clore Israel Foundation (UK), the Crown family (USA), Fondation pour la Memoire de la Shoah (France), Gianna and Max Glassman (Canada), David and Malka Bashe Gorodzinsky (Mexico), Zofia, Rachel and Miriam Landau (Venezuela), the Archie Sherman Charitable Trust (UK), Sol and Gloria Silberzweig (USA), and the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust (UK). The new Hall of Names was built through the support of the Caesarea Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Foundation.

Copyright ©2004 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority