The Memory of the Holocaust in Australia, Tom Lawson and James Jordan, eds. (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), 152 pp., pbk. $29.95

Abstract

A few years ago I attended a conference sponsored by the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. One of the plenary speakers was a highly placed official from the recently opened Imperial War Museum North—a state-of-the-art, cutting-edge institution that relies more on modern technology and interactive displays than it does on the more traditional display of artifacts, framed documents, or photographs. In his address he remarked on the reaction to a statement he had made at the opening of the museum a few weeks earlier. Addressing the veterans who sat before him, he had said that “this museum was not created for you, ladies and gentlemen, but for your great-great-grandchildren.” The comment created a furor. The idea that veterans would not have a say in how their experience of war was remembered, but that control of this memory would instead reside in the hands of computer artists, audiovisual technicians, and educators, was appalling to many members of the older generation. It was a salutary moment in the appreciation of how memory can be stimulated and events recalled many years later.