The limits of what can be shown and the invisibility of what is shown. Photographs of the Ausschwitz Sonderkommando as exhibits in Holocaust exhibitions
The negotiation of memory in relation to the crimes associated with World War II continues to be as topical as ever. This can be seen today, for example, in the debates surrounding the World War II Museum in Gdansk and the experiences of that museum’s former director, Paweł Machcewicz. Other examples include Dariusz Stola’s as yet undetermined fate as director of the POLIN Museum in Warsaw and the resignation of Peter Schäfer as director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. Against this backdrop, this dissertation project, which is titled “The limits of what can be shown and the invisibility of what is shown. Photographs of the Ausschwitz Sonderkommando as exhibits in Holocaust exhibitions”, explores questions relating to the mechanisms and power structures involved in exhibitions thematising the crimes of WWII and all related knowledge production.
The Holocaust is a subject conveyed in museums to a great extent by means of the medium of photography. This reproducibility makes it possible to exhibit objects simultaneously as part of different exhibitions in different locations. For this reason, this dissertation project begins by focusing on one particular series of photographs as a mobile object in the micro-networks associated with exhibitions and the macro-networks associated with the overall museum environment.
The series of photographs examined here were most likely taken in secret by Alberto Errera at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. They show scenes of naked women and the burning of corpses. The negatives are housed in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. Copies of these photographs are on display at memorials in Paris and Berlin and in the Jewish Museum in Warsaw, where they are often altered, sometimes partially enlarged, trimmed or separated from one another. In each of their object neighbourhoods, they create different narratives and fulfil different tasks. A comparison of these micro-networks makes it possible to explore questions as to how narratives are constructed in an exhibition, while also simultaneously revealing the changes made to mobile objects as a result of each different exhibition context. This investigation of networks even has the potential to provide insights into the functions and modes-of-impact created by exhibition strategies, such as individualisation and personalisation. One of the most important aims here is to foster approaches drawn from the didactics of history.
In addition to looking at exhibition micro-networks, the project sets out to decipher a macro-network of individual institutions that includes the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, the Information Point at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the POLIN Museum in Warsaw and the exhibitions at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. This macro-network emerged at the moment these institutions came into being. The negotiation processes that accompanied the conceptions of the exhibitions displayed there will also be examined. Bijker and Pinch’s thesis regarding the social construction of technology (SCOT) will aid in rendering visible all relevant target groups and conflicts. As an extension of this approach, this dissertation project will seek to visualise all alliances and conflicts among the institutions themselves. The project will also look at the many other actors involved and their related needs and demands. This approach will serve to shed light on the processes and paradigm shifts that affect and often change the object networks within the exhibitions themselves and their resulting narratives.
On the one hand, the goal of this project is to contribute to the development of concrete tools for use in exhibition analysis. On the other hand, the aim is to expand the view of power structures and the construction of narratives in museums by illuminating the effectiveness of actor-networks in the context of exhibitions and also revealing the institutional macro-level among leading museums.
Project supervision: Prof. Anke Hilbrenner, Department of Medieval and Modern History – East European History, Georg August University Göttingen
Museum: ŻIH - Żydowski Instytut Historyczny (JHI Jewish Historical Institute)