David Cesarani and the Creation of the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Exhibition

Abstract

David Cesarani played a key and much-valued role in the development of the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Exhibition, developed between 1996 and 2000. He was a member of its six-strong advisory group and one of just two historians on which the project drew for regular advice. This chapter describes that contribution, touching, among other things, on the apprehension felt both inside and outside the Imperial War Museum (IWM) with regards to such a delicate and demanding subject being rendered in exhibition form in a museum of war; on the politics of representing Britain’s response to the news of atrocities from Europe, which although mainstream history by this point, nonetheless caused concern in some circles; on the challenges of bridging the understanding between the design team and Holocaust historians; and on the contribution Cesarani made to the many events held at the IWM in the years which followed the exhibition’s opening.