I have just returned from the 6th international conference on Holocaust Education at Yad Vashem, Israel. Eight hundred educators packed in almost four days of discussion arond the topic 'The Holocaust: Fighting Racism and Prejudice.' The purpose of the topic was to assess if it is appropriate to teach about the Holocaust as a means to tackle racism, and if so, how.
One would have thought that this was going to be a largely Jewish affair. Holocaust centres, Jewish museums, authors, well established Holocaust educators from all around the World were there doing what they do best, many of them were Jewish institutions or represented by people with Jewish backgrounds. But whereas ten years ago it would have been a wholly Jewish affair, this was far from the case. In fact among the fifteen or so Britons at the conference, poor old 'Caroline' had to put up with being the only member of the Jewish community repesenting the field of Holocaust education from the UK.
So whose Holocaust is it?
The conference organisers had origianlly put a question for moderators to address during break out sessions. 'Is it appropriate for non-Jews to teach about the Holocaust?' There was such a puzzled look from the moderators - Jewish and not - that such a question should even be contemplated, that it was sidled off into the waste bin of Holocaust discourse. So it is now a given that we all teach about the Holocaust, but that is a different thing to whose provenence it is. We can all go to the cinema to enjoy a movie, but that does not give us the intellectual rights to the movie. In the same way, just because we teach about the Holocaust does not mean we automatically have the right to interpret it how we wish. Whose provenence is it?
There is an assumption that Israel, and in particualr Yad Vashem, is inheritor of Holocaust memory. After all the founding of the Staate of Israel was so closely allied to the end of the Holocaust. It was the home the victims never had, new home to the surviving victims who wanted to be there, and as the Jewish homeland is guardian of their memory. Yehuda Bauer spoke at the Holocaust about relationship between the Holocaust and the founding of the state of Israel. He contests there is no causal link between the two events. His justification for this assertion is largely based on the fact that those ultimately responsible for making the decision would not do so for emotive reasons and would only reach such a decision on the of the real politik of the time. He takes the thesis to an unjustifiable extreme perhasp. He knows full well that whatever the politics of the time, there is a continuum of interconections between the events as they unfolded. But his principle is right, the two are not part of the same direct historical continuum.
Yad Vashem has a special place as guardian of memory. If it only existed to collect and protect the names of the victims - which now number almost 5m - it has done its job well. In retrieving the victims from anonymity and giving them back their idenity, it has perfromed a sacred task. But still that does not mean that the Holocaust belongs in Israel or to Israel even.
In Europe the presence of literally thousands of sites where Jews and a range of victims of Nationa Socialism were persecuted and murdered are in their own right places where the history is documented, retrieved, interpreted. Each site has the right to document, exhibit, publish its own interpretation of the history as expereinced locally. They too are guardians of memory.
The proliferation of Holocaust museums, school curricula, training courses, and field trips to authentic sites, means that now more than ever those who have conection to the Holocaust are engaged in learning, interpreting, disseminating. Whatever the need to teach more and disemminate more, it is a fact that more people than ever know about this history and own their own their interpreatations, often in a deep and personal way. There was a time when I would get to know a person before I would tell them about my line of wrok, because the Holocaust was a conversation killer as often as not. I now never avoid telling people what I do by way of introduction. It is my expcetation that they will know what the Holocaust was and want to engage in furthe discussion. Now this level of awareness does exist, it is also ripe for myths, politicisation, trivialisation, relativisation, manipulation and general bad practice. As these layers of reinventing the Holocaust become an increasingly visible part of the landscape it means that more than ever we need grounding and the memory of the victims protecting.
We do not do that by creating new icons though. Yad Vashem, Auschwitz, the United States holocaust Memorial Museum and other institutions cannot and indeed do not represent the overwhelming complexity of the Holocaust. To make Auschwitz an icon of 'mans inhumanity to man' may well work as a brand, but it doe snot do justice to the victims of Auschwitz, let alone the victims of the the other 1600 camps and countless ghettos and killing sites right across Europe. There is adnager that in our rush to uphold a dignified and undisputed memory, that we will ourselves become myth makers and brand developers.
The real provenence of the Holocaust lies buried deep in the struggle and the suffering of those who faced inevitable death for no reason than who they were, its provenence is in the tears of frightened mothers, the helplessness of depserate fathers. It belongs in the split second between life and death, the grinding hunger, the fight to survive when all is lost.
The Holocaust belongs to no one, except those who truly are prepared to put themselves in that dark place and stay there in silent vigil. We need to give up our claims on the Holocaust. We still need to talk, to share our thoughts, to struggle together, but the moment we link our conversation to politics, religion, ethnicity, power, land or ideological narratives, then we lose our legitimacy to represent its dark heart. The Holocaust is not about what we think, it is about how we think. It is not proof text to our own ideas of humanity, but rather stark proof that we have little to say about human nature, because we understand it so little.
It is not about what we think, but how we think. It is not about what we say but why we say it. It is not about us, it about them, thos whose lives were wiped out by its irrationale. We only have claim to any form of interpreatation when we stand alongside them, know them. Theologian Paul van buren created the image of the open pyres at Auschwitz and said 'make sure you your theology is able to be stated in the presence of burning babies'.
In the presence of burning babies we are silenced.
There is no claim, no ownership, no prevencne, just pure sorrow and silence.
And maybe silence is the best form of truth we will ever have.
