Space and Time: The Context of Museum and Locations with Holocaust Thoughts
Images from
the Internet
The way one approaches a space can be affected by its
history, and especially time. It can also be warped by our own perceptions of
context.
We have all visited museums, a place where objects are
taken out of its original space/framework, and placed in an unrelated location
where it becomes a collection of objects, often transforming it into something
else devoid of meaning. For example, at the British Museum, there are a number of dead bodies on display,
from the “Bog Man” (also known as Lindow Man) to Ancient Egyptian mummies. Museums
can be, in fact, cemeteries, but because there is no tomb, no hole in the
ground, the meaning of the persons’ life and especially death, becomes trivial
for the observer. Their existence transforms into a museum art object rather
than the corpse of someone who had a life that was either recognized or not at
its time. But more about this later.
In 1993, while my partner was at a conference in
Washington, DC., I visited the newly opened Museum of Jewish Heritage –
Holocaust Museum. Being the age I am, and that I grew up in a neighborhood with
Middle-Class Jews like myself, the Holocaust was not unfamiliar to me: for
example, the couple who ran the local grocery store of my childhood had numbers
tattooed on their forearms. As I managed my way through the museum, I saw the
edicts showcased on the walls, the photos and videos strewn here and there, and
felt, honestly, nothing much. It was all so out of context, bright and shiny,
soaked in neon lights, and familiar at the same time.
Making my way along the pathway, it took me through a
boxcar, one that was used to transport the Jews to the death camps. As soon as
my foot hit the bare wooden floor, suddenly everything changed. I was no longer
in a museum, but in an actual place. Truthfully, I immediately felt different.
The context had changed. No longer was it images posted on a wall, or videos on
closed circuit televisions, I was in the place. Frankly, it took me by
surprise, how uncomfortable and disoriented I felt about my surroundings. When
I crossed to the other side, and stepped back onto the polished linoleum museum
floor proper, the feeling instantly vanished. Deep down, I did not understand
what happened, or what intergenerational trauma was at the time.
During the Summer of 1998, I had the opportunity to
visit the beautiful city of Krakow, Poland, the buildings of which mostly were
untouched by World War II. Charming houses, squares, and parks are for the
locals and tourists on which to marvel.
From Krakow, we took bus tours to various destinations, such as a 22-minute ride southeast to the Salt Mines that were, indeed, turned into amazing works of art.
We also went to Auschwitz, the German death camp, which was an hour west of Krakow. I was surprised by how green it had been transformed. Rather than keeping it in the state of mud and dirt that pervaded it while 1.1 million Jews, gays, Gypsies, and political dissidents were systematically killed, the land was full of grass and flowers. I found that odd and almost uncomfortable that they would try to make it peaceful, like it was a living non-sequitur.
During the tour of the camp, some of the buildings
were filled with luggage, others with hair, shoes, or eyeglasses, and the like.
I noticed at least three bags that had the name “Weiss” on it. In grade school,
I had a friend named Joel Weiss who lost much of his family to the camps, and I
wondered if any of these belonged to them.
There was a lot of unease, as one might expect in a
place like that, but it was more the way the space was projected and described.
At one point, we passed a wall that had been used as a backdrop to a firing
squad to execute people. Our tour guide, a middle-aged woman, pointed to it and
said loud and plain, “Against this wall, they shot the great Polish martyr [his
name].” And then in a lower, quick voice as if it were secondary, “And 10,000
Jews.” Going to another building, there was a cell, and she announced, “In this
cell, the great Polish poet [his name] was tortured and brutally killed,” and
again lower, “…and 30,000 Jews.” I found it quite startling.
Towards the end of the tour, we approached the gas
chambers. I stepped inside, and for a few moments, I was the only one in there.
It was quite profound for me, looking around this surprisingly large room with non-functioning
shower heads and numerous finger scratchings along the walls. This felt
incredibly visceral to me, and I had the thought, “If I was here in the 1940s,
while I would have been conscious walking in, I would not be aware going
through the back door,” which led to the crematorium.
I stepped through that back door and there was a
younger couple already ahead of me. The woman was pointing to the oven like
Vanna White when she just-turned a letter on “Wheel of Forturn,” with a big grin
on her face, while her boyfriend was taking some vacation snapshots. I was
appalled, and my partner and I had a long talk about it on the bus ride back to
Krakow.
What I have come to realize is that there is a
difference between the space in a museum and the actual location where an event
happened. A museum tends to be safe, its dangerous material like weaponry or
other material of a violent past is removed from context, and it becomes benign,
turned into artifacts. That certainly is its goal, I would wonder.
Despite it being before the big Internet boom, that
young couple who were taking the vacation photos in the crematoria was
separated from that real/museum dichotomy, and did not really comprehend the
difference. They had grown up with museums, and for them, this was merely one
of them, a site they had probably heard about in class from teachers that were
as far removed from reality as the tour guide. That’s part of culture, that the
Other is distanced from the every day. There was no connection for them as
it was for me, who had also lost family to this death machine. It went beyond
mere history books to a personal, instinctive
level for me, but not for them.
Since moving to Saskatchewan, I have wondered if the
local First Nations and especially Metis people have that intergenerational trauma experience when they
visit Batoche, the site of the Louis Riel Rebellion of 1885, or the stone
circles near Eastend left by First Nations peoples who were starved by the North-West
Mounted Police. Do the Settler generations react the same as that couple, that
it is a story from a book, even though they are in the actual spot where a
rebellion occurred? Do the tour guides discuss the brave Canadian soldiers, and
blithely mention the genocide that let up to the rebellion?
It is all in the context of the place and how it is
approached as either a museum or a location of angst. It is also in the perspective
of the person viewing it, and their relationship to the events, if any. In her 2012
book, A Geography of Blood, I believe that author Candace Savage, though
of Settler stock, was tuned in enough to the land to realize of what the rock
circles were indicative. If I went to Batoche, I am not certain I would feel
that, but I would hopefully be more aware of my consciousness and take a check
on my own placement in its violent history.
It should be noted that I did take a single picture of
myself on the grounds of Auschwitz: on the way out, I stood under the gate sign
that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work will set you free). I did this in
defiance, to say in my own way, “You didn’t get me, you Nazi bastards!“
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