Australian Holocaust Museums: From Particular to Universal

Abstract

Australian Holocaust museums are at a crossroads regarding their exhibitions and educational programming. Originally survivor driven initiatives, they now face the dual challenge of negotiating the loss of the survivor generation and interpreting the goals of Holocaust education in light of their absence. To do so, they must confront the question of what Holocaust education seeks to achieve and, most poignantly, whether it can continue to speak to succeeding generations of Australian student and general visitors, now far removed from the event both historically and geographically. This article examines how this moment of intergenerational change has and is being negotiated at the Sydney Jewish Museum through reflection on the development and implementation of its newest permanent exhibition, The Holocaust and Human Rights. An explicit attempt to bring the intimate histories of the survivors into dialogue with broader, more universalistic concerns, the exhibition provides a microcosm of both the potential and problematics such ventures entail.