Throughout history, Jewish communities have traditionally been closed societies,
socializing largely with their own type and only interacting with the outside world when
necessary for reasons of business. World War II largely destroyed this. With the Nazi
efforts to annihilate the Jews of Europe, entire communities vanished and European Jews
were forced into greater social interaction and reliance on the outside world. In the United
States, Jewish communities attempted to cope with this upheaval by establishing cultural
centers where they could have an oasis of familiarity in a largely unfamiliar world. The first
of these centers is the synagogue.
The synagogue is a place of worship, learning and socialization. It is where religious
services are conducted and ceremonies take place. It’s also where men come to talk about
religious theory and continue their Talmudic studies and where children come to begin
their religious instruction. It’s also where the community comes together to celebrate and
to mourn, and it is the center of a religious community. However, as a closed place intended
only for Jews, it tends to isolate Jews from their surrounding community and creates an air
of mystery around the community.1 As the rest of the world became more curious about
Jews and Judaism after the Second World War, a new type of cultural institution emerged:
the Holocaust Museum.
While World War II ended in 1945, Holocaust museums did not begin emerging
until the late 1970s. This is primarily due to Jewish immigrants concentrating on rebuilding
their lives in a new country and all of the nations involved in the war rebuilding their
economies and infrastructures. Two events spurred the creation of Holocaust museums in
Grace Cohen Grossman, “Jewish Museums of the World: Observations on the Cultural
Politics of Interpreting the Jewish Heritage,” HUC-JIR/New York, 23 November 2004.
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the United States: the Six Day War in Israel and the Civil Rights Movement.2 The Six Day
War amazing the world with the newly established Israel decisively defeating much
stronger nations and showing the world that Jews do not have to be helpless victims. The
Civil Rights Movements brought race and race relations to the forefront of the American
consciousness, and began to make people wonder what other minority groups were living
in the United States. Jewish communities began to take advantage of this curiosity to plan
ways to educate the public about the history of the Jews and the contributions that they
have made to the world, as well as their recent struggles during the war. By the year 2000,
almost every state in the United States had a Holocaust museum, memorial or learning
center, mostly, but not exclusively, maintained by the local Jewish population.3
Holocaust museums have had to negotiate the tensions between sameness and
uniqueness. By calling it a Holocaust museum, Jews make the emphatic claim that the mass
murder of the Holocaust was a unique event in history and should be marked as such.
However, they also have to wrestle with the presence of the other victims of the Nazis
(homosexuals, Roma/Sinti, political prisoners) and with obvious examples of other
genocides in the 20th century.4 Many international Holocaust museums have focused solely
on the six million Jewish victims, rendering the other groups targets by the Nazis as mere
footnotes. American Holocaust museum have taken a different path, one that can be
illustrated by examining the Museum of Tolerance.
The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles is one of the oldest Holocaust Museums in
the United States. First conceived in 1977, the founders (a local Orthodox Jewish group)
Ibid
Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora (New York: New
York University Press, 2005), 76
4 Ibid
2
3
wanted a museum in which the development of identity around a tragic event would take a
backseat to the most universal messages of the Holocaust, namely tolerance, acceptance
and integration.5 The Museum makes an effort to educate about the history of Judaism, the
process and path that the Holocaust took, and relates a message of tolerance that it uses to
educate about other acts of prejudice and violence that have taken or are taking place
around the world. The Museum of Tolerance emphasizes the idea that it takes all different
groups of people to create our rich and diverse world, and only through acceptance can we
all live peacefully together. The museum often draws comparisons between the Holocaust
and other genocides, as well as parallels between Nazi atrocities and past historical events
such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Apartheid in South Africa.
This goal exhibits the fundamental differences between American Holocaust
museums and most international Holocaust museums. As Michael Berenbaum, former
director of the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, said, “If Israelis turn to the
Holocaust as proof that the whole world is against them, American Jews reinforce their
commitment to pluralism by recalling the atrocities that sprang from intolerance.” 6 While
museums like the Yad Vashem in Israel make the claim that Jews are eternal victims,
American institutions like the Museum of Tolerance and the United States Memorial
Holocaust Museum celebrate the survival of a targeted group, and strive to educate about
the consequences of intolerance in an effort to ensure that the Holocaust can never happen
again. These museums strive to be at the forefront of efforts to sustain and nurture a
meaningful, responsible, relevant Jewish present and future, rather than to just present a
The Museum of Tolerance, “Our History and Vision,”
http://www.museumoftolerance.com/site/c.tmL6KfNVLtH/b.4866027/k.88E8/Our_Histo
ry_and_Vision.htm (accessed 3 November 2011).
6 Aviv and Schneer, New Jews, 85.
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lachrymose version of the past.7 In addition to educating about the Jewish victims of the
Holocaust, American museums also include the other victims of the Nazis. Much of this
information comes from interviews with victims.
Video testimonies play an incredibly important role in Holocaust museums and
remembrance. The atrocities that people witnessed and suffered through are so horrible
that it is a common belief that they can only be expressed in a victim’s own words,
augmented by their facial expressions. While most museums and learning centers use and
gather testimonies, the organization that has had the most success with this is the USC
Shoah Foundation Institute. Established in 1994 by Stephen Spielberg after filming
Schindler’s List, the Institute currently has 51,285 processed interviews in thirty-two
languages from fifty-six countries.8
While most of those who give testimony are Jewish survivors, the Institute also
interviews homosexual survivors, Jehovah’s Witness survivors, liberators and liberation
witnesses, political prisoners, rescuers and aid providers, Roma and Sinti (Gypsy)
survivors, survivors of Eugenics policies, and war crimes trials participants. It has also
begun collecting testimonies from survivors of other genocides.9 The Institute creates
lesson plans from these testimonies that are available to museums, schools and learning
centers, and these are free. Anyone can view the entire archive of testimonies from an
access terminal, which is usually located in an archive, library or museum (there is a search
feature on the website).
Grossman, “Jewish Museums of the World.”
USC Shoah Foundation Institute, “About the Institute,”
http://dornsife.usc.edu/vhi/aboutus/ (accessed 3 November 2011).
9 Ibid.
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