A Museological Approach to Collecting Oral Histories: A Case Study of the Holocaust Collections at the Imperial War Museum

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is a contextual analysis of the Holocaust oral testimony collections held by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in the UK. Through an examination of the development of the IWM Sound Archive and the historical processes that led to the inclusion of the Holocaust in the museum’s remit, the article argues that the material is best viewed as a curated collection of source material pertaining to the Holocaust that reflects the historical, cultural and institutional contexts within which it was gathered. The institutional setting of the museum dictated a particular approach to the collection of oral history that best suited its needs, involving both the active creation of its own oral material and the passive collection of relevant audio material produced by third parties. In addition to funding its own project interviewing survivors of the Holocaust, the IWM Sound Archive obtained copies of interviews with survivors conducted for the documentary series The World at War by TV production company Thames Television. The museum also commissioned production company October Films to re-interview a number of survivors for the UK’s first national Holocaust exhibition which opened at the IWM London in 2000. The article demonstrates how the diverse nature of the origins of each interview is reflected in their content and structure, which it illustrates via a comparative analysis of a select number of oral testimonies taken from the archive. In demonstrating the influence of context on content, the article makes an argument in favour of the (re)contextualisation of archived oral testimonies and posits that as a contextually produced corpus of material on the subject, this collection of oral histories can be understood as forming a contemporary response to the Holocaust.