Shoah Part 2 - Objects and Memory

Question 1

Where did the rusted milk-churn relic come from?

Answer 1

Warsaw Ghetto

Question 2

What did the milk-churn contain?

Answer 2

diaries, posters, documents and papers documenting life in the Warsaw Ghetto

Question 3

Who conceived the idea and buried the milk-churn?

Answer 3

Emanuel Ringelblum (1900 - 1944)

Question 4

When was the milk-churn buried and under what circumstances?

Answer 4

Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943

Question 5

where is the milk-churn now exhibited?

Answer 5

Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum

Question 6

Why did Weinberg & Elieli refer to this as ‘perhaps the Museum’s most important historic artefact’?

Answer 6

scale of the tragedy of the Warsaw Ghetto - gave details of life there

Question 7

Before the war - how many Jewish people lived in Warsaw?

Answer 7

375,000 - 30% of the population

Question 8

Where did the people come from who were forced to live in the Ghetto?

Answer 8

towns and countryside around Poland

Question 9

How many people died of starvation in the ghettos?

Answer 9

approximately 10% of inhabitants

Question 10

What were the dates of the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto

Answer 10

January 1943 - April 1943

Question 11

Why was there an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto?

Answer 11

increasing maltreatment of the Jews including mass deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp in July - September 1942

Question 12

How was the uprising defeated?

Answer 12

systematic firing of the ghetto

Question 13

what happened after the Warsaw ghetto uprising

Answer 13

raised to the ground - area turned into a concentration camp for the survivors who were then deported to Treblinka and murdered

Question 14

Who was Ringelblum?

Answer 14

a university professor and historian

Question 15

When were the milk-churns discovered?

Answer 15

only 2 found one in 1946 and 1 December 1950

Question 16

where is the milk-churn discovered in 195- now?

Answer 16

Holocaust Memorial Museum Washington

Question 17

How is the milk-churn displayed?

Answer 17

in front of a fibreglass facsimile of a section of wall from the Warsaw Ghetto which survived

Question 18

How does the display of the milk-churn create meaning and emotional impact?

Answer 18

sand and earth adhere to it - representing its hiding place underground
displayed on its own
meaning supplied by the museum via captions, audio guide, catalogue information

Question 19

How does the museum display create meaning for the milk-churn?

Answer 19

framed by two huge photographs
left hand side - Jewish people with yellow stars on their coats
Right-hand side - bridge from the Lodz ghetto

Question 20

What is the effect of the display of the milk-churn?

Answer 20

being there - as a witness of the forced separation of people
threatening sense of being channelled into a narrow corridor - physical sense of anxiety

Question 21

Who was the founding director of the Holocaust museum in Washington?

Answer 21

Jeshajahu Weinberge

Question 22

How does the founding director explain the importance of authentic objects?

Answer 22

a direct link to the events

‘silent witnesses’

Question 23

Name a reconstruction housed in the Holocaust museum and what is it’s impact?

Answer 23

gate to the main camp as Auschwitz - not authentic but chilling stage prop which puts the visitor in the shoes of the victims of the holocaust

Question 24

what is the most obvious kind of object commemorating an absent person

Answer 24

tomb

with photo, textual inscription, religious symbol

Question 25

What is meant when it is said that a tomb needs human nourishment?

Answer 25

relatives and friends to keep the grave clean, replenish flowers

Question 26

How do memorials retain meaning?

Answer 26

regular ceremonies and participation of people for whom the memorial has meaning

Question 27

What do memories in the brain require if they are to be remembered

Answer 27

stories

Question 28

How can memories be maintained

Answer 28

memories can fade unless rehearsed - particularly with others shared memories are important in the maintenance of memories

Question 29

who argues that all memories, including personal memories are social because without the opportunities for exchange and rehearsal they fade?

Answer 29

Sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1980)

Question 30

Why are memories often seen as unreliable?

Answer 30

construct memories around what we think should have happened as well as what we think we heard or saw

Question 31

what are memories often attached to?

Answer 31

objects - they stimulate memory

Question 32

who said that processes of forgetting are necessary if people are to 'move on' after painful experiences?

Answer 32

Forty and Kuchler (1999)

Question 33

how do memories of the departed change?

Answer 33

from reflection on loss to celebration of happier times

Question 34

why does collective memory make it difficult to forget?

Answer 34

tensions especially where involve acts of war and genocide

Question 35

Why has it taken so long for the widespread memorialisation of the Shoah to develop?

Answer 35

due to questions of guilt, blame, compensation and criminal proceedings

Question 36

How many memorials were there in 2010 in Berlin?

Answer 36

312 | simple plaques to full-scale museums

Question 37

What other term is used for collective memory?

Answer 37

social memory

Question 38

what is collective memory?

Answer 38

communities may share collective myths or stories, of which each individual may have some direct experience but which goes beyond personal memories

Question 39

what objects can help preserve and rehearse collective memory?

Answer 39

Objects, museum displays, photographs, films, novel, memorials with associated ceremonies

Question 40

What did the French historian Pierre Nora argue in relation to collective memory?

Answer 40

oral traditions in rural communities keep social memory alive

Question 41

What did Pierre Nora say in relation to why collective memory might be lost?

Answer 41

mass migration to cities leaving a vacuum

Question 42

What did Pierre Nora suggest to protect collective memory?

Answer 42

he founded a project for historians to write about 'places of memory' - creating a sense of identity

Question 43

What puts national identity under stress according to Pierre Nora?

Answer 43

wars and sporting events - compounded in the face of racist ideologies and definitions of ethnicity

Question 44

What concern did American Professor of Religion and Culture, Eduard Linenthal express?

Answer 44

the millions of individual deaths of the Holocaust would be lost in a story of mass death and a fascination with the technique of destruction

Question 45

What did the Holocaust Museum in Washington consider when looking to represent the story of mass death?

Answer 45

wanted visitors to be as bystanders - therefore created a link with the faces of Holocaust victims - whilst painful would provide individual representation

Question 46

What did the Holocaust Museum in Washington create to show both mass death and individual deaths?

Answer 46

The Tower of Faces in one of the three-storey towers in the museum

Question 47

What does the Tower of Faces represent and where did they come from?

Answer 47

1000 photographs from the Yaffa Eliach Shtetl Collection taken between 1890 and 1941

Question 48

What is the history of the faces in the Tower of Faces?

Answer 48

Jewish community in Ejszyski, Lithuania wiped out by SS death squad on 25-26 September 1941. Of 4000 Jews only 29 were left alive

Question 49

Who created the collection which makes up the Tower of Faces in the Holocaust museum in Washington?

Answer 49

Dr Yaffa Eliach - survivor from Jewish community in Ejszyski. Pictures of those from the community between 1900 and 1944

Question 50

How are the images presented in the Tower of Faces?

Answer 50

images are presented with all the scratches and dust marks transmitted through the processes of copying and enlarging personal photographs

Question 51

where can similar displays such as the Tower of Faces be seen?

Answer 51

Yad Vashem centre in Jerusalem - designed by the architect Moshe Safdie Memorial de la Shoah in Paris

Question 52

What do the Tower of Faces look to achieve?

Answer 52

to pause and reflect - recognising the huge numbers but realising that each was an individual lost.