Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders? Witnessing, Remembering and the Ethics of Representation in Museums of the Holocaust

Abstract

Intersecting discourses situated in historiography, museum studies, education, trauma theory and photography, this article explores the possibilities and ethics of making sense of representations of the Holocaust in the Imperial War Museum London. The argument challenges assumptions about learning, witnessing and memorialising in Holocaust museums and explores ethical implications of the deployment of visual evidence of the Holocaust for educational purposes. Rather than providing answers to these challenges, the article seeks to initiate further interrogation of learning strategies in Holocaust exhibitions through the engagement of different academic disciplines in an interdisciplinary context.