Courage, resistance and vulnerability in memory culture: Swedish Museum education and the representation of the Holocaust survivor at the turn of the twenty-first century

Abstract

This article provides a Swedish perspective on critical memory culture and the use of difficult history in museum education. It is based on a detailed study of the educational resource the Teacher’s Guide, published by the Swedish Museum of Cultural History in Lund named Kulturen in 2006 in connection with their permanent exhibition, To Survive. Voices from Ravensbrück. The Guide shows how women, imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, found ways to resist their situation and overcome their victim position. It also relates to the role Sweden played in the rescue of the women from the camp. First, the article explicates the narrative structure of the guidebook and examines how it characterises the survivors as resistance heroines and presents their story as a story of courage. Then, the article relates the Teacher’s Guide to two contemporary phenomena in Sweden: a governmental educational campaign to raise young people’s awareness of the Holocaust and foster engagement in resistance to present neo-fascism and a historiographical debate taking issue with negative and difficult aspects of Sweden’s involvement in the Second World War. The Teacher’s Guide is discussed based on Aleida Assmann’s concept of self-critical memory culture, Judith Butler’s notion of vulnerability and the concept of difficult history in museum pedagogy. It is argued that by emphasising courage and neglecting vulnerability in its story of resistance, the Guide deprives the audience of the opportunity of responding adequately to the difficult history of surviving the Holocaust as a history of ambiguity. Ultimately, it is argued that the Guide constitutes a hindrance to the emergence of a self-critical memory culture on the Holocaust in Sweden.