Absence and presence: Interpreting moral exclusion in the Jewish museum Berlin

Abstract

This chapter describes research conducted in a museum that interprets injustice that occurred more than seven decades ago. From the vantage of the present, it looks back on the Third Reich, a period when the National Socialist Party (Nazis) gained adherents, power, and sought to exterminate Jews and other groups they denigrated as life unworthy of life (lebensunwertes Leben). Combining psychological theory with historical background, this chapter examines how museum professionals present this period that legitimated and then carried out a genocide of enormous proportions, The Holocaust. By examining how the Jewish Museum Berlin describes the Third Reich to the public, this chapter offers insight into representations of moral exclusion to engage museum visitors in reflecting on past injustice within their society. The museum's approach offers scholars of injustice an understanding of the representation of moral exclusion designed to reach people in the present so that they can better understand the past, the dynamics of moral exclusion, and its import for present social relations.