What should a permanent Swedish Holocaust Museum be?
An interview with Alice Greenwald and James E. Young
Stiskalo, Sandra - Feature article in the Culture Section, Dagens Nyheter, June 10, 2024
In the German public today, the culture of memory is a given. Peter Eisenmann's 19,000 square meter “Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe” was inaugurated in 2005 in Berlin. Photo: Jan Scheunert
DN's Sandra Stiskalo has spoken to two memory culture experts.
Nearly 80 years after the horrors of the concentration camps became apparent to the outside world, work is underway to establish a permanent Swedish Holocaust Museum. Many questions remain to be answered. One is particularly burning: How should a Holocaust museum – and the culture of memory in general – relate to the war between Israel and Hamas?
The entrance is discreet. A small sign - not unlike those that realtors usually display at viewings - directs visitors up a couple of stairs in a glass house in Vasastan in Stockholm. Sweden's museum about the Holocaust is housed there. It is a temporary solution.
In 2021, the government commissioned the State Historical Museums to establish a museum that preserves and passes on the memory of the Holocaust. Two years later, the exhibition "Sju liv" was opened, about Walter, Alice, Czeslaw, Lieselotte, Hanna, Kiwa and Eva who survived the brutal crimes of the Nazis and in different ways ended up in Sweden.
- People wonder: Why a Holocaust museum in Sweden now? I would rather ask the question: Why not earlier? says James E Young.
He is a retired professor of history and led the committee that worked to develop architect Peter Eisenmann's 19,000-square-foot concrete memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, which was inaugurated in Berlin in 2005. Along with colleague Alice Greenwald, former CEO and first director of the memorial and the museum about the September 11 attacks in New York, he is in Stockholm to share his experiences and knowledge before establishing a permanent Swedish Holocaust Museum.
Many questions remain to be answered.
Where should it be located? Who should it be for? And then by far the most difficult: What story should one actually tell?
Alice Greenwald shares, “In a Swedish Holocaust museum there is a unique opportunity to examine the concept of neutrality. Because what does it even mean to be neutral in a world where state-sponsored mass atrocities are committed?”
The official stance of the coalition government that governed Sweden 1939–1945 was that the country did not participate in the Second World War. In a radio address in 1940, Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson proclaimed strict neutrality. In the same year, Nazi Germany was secretly allowed to transport soldiers and weapons on Swedish railways.
- The non-participation of so-called neutral states like Sweden is a myth. It is usually said that Sweden did not participate in the Holocaust, but the Holocaust definitely participated in Sweden, which became a transit country for, on the one hand, military equipment, and on the other, refugees. It has taken a long time for Sweden to start embracing that history, but it is absolutely necessary, says James E Young.
- In a Swedish Holocaust museum there is a unique opportunity to examine the concept of neutrality. Because what does it even mean to be neutral in a world where state-sponsored mass atrocities are committed? fills in Alice Greenwald and continues:
- But there is also pride to be felt. Sweden was very right, we all know the white buses and Raoul Wallenberg.
The first attempts to document and collectively remember the crimes of the Nazis were made in the newly formed state of Israel where Yad Vashem, the world center of Jewish memory of the Holocaust, was founded in 1953. In Germany, it was the demand of the 68 movement for an open discussion about and settlement with the parental generation's involvement in National Socialism's genocide that paved the way for what in German goes by the name of Erinnerungskultur - memory culture.
This culture is today a given, if not dominant, element in the German public and through memorials, museums and the tens of thousands of Stolpersteine – stumbling blocks – placed in front of houses where people killed in the Holocaust once lived clearly visible in the streetscape.
Memory culture experts James E Young and Alice Greenwald visit Sweden's Museum of the Holocaust's temporary premises in Stockholm. Photo: Beatrice Lundborg
James E Young and Alice Greenwald call the German memorial culture a model that other countries, not least their own home country the United States, should follow.
- Germany has made a real effort to understand its history and made political commitments to ensure that similar atrocities are not committed again. Today's young Germans, of course, do not bear responsibility for the Holocaust itself, but they bear a moral responsibility for the memory of the Holocaust. In the same way that we Americans bear responsibility for the memory of slavery, says James E Young.
- But in that respect, the US has a problem. There are states that require school education to emphasize the benefits of slavery and that it developed people's skills. In other words, there is still a widespread distortion of American history going on. It's a shame and a shame! says Alice Greenwald.
Fact box. Sweden's Holocaust Museum
Works to preserve and pass on the memory of the Holocaust and with the aim of reaching all of Sweden. In the summer of 2023, the museum opened its public operations at Torsgatan 19 in Stockholm. The museum will be housed there for at least five years while work is being done to find permanent premises.
At the moment, two exhibitions are on display. Part "Seven lives" about Walter, Alice, Czeslaw, Lieselotte, Hanna, Kiwa and Eva who came from different parts of Europe, survived the Holocaust and became part of Swedish society. Partly the smaller exhibition "Raoul", about the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who saved the lives of many Hungarian Jews.
Sweden's Holocaust Museum is part of the State's historical museums. Entry is free of charge.
For several years she managed the collection, education and exhibition activities of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. During our meeting in Stockholm, she emphasizes that the museum about the Holocaust, and the culture of memory in general, is just as much about looking towards the past and the future. At best, they serve as reminders not to take freedom and democracy for granted.
- In a Holocaust museum there is a built-in warning that it can happen again, even in apparently very stable countries. In this way, a Holocaust museum is a place of conscience, where one can and should acknowledge or warn of genocides while they are taking place, she says.
It's a little surreal, but half an hour into this interview, no one has directly mentioned the war that is currently ravaging Gaza and which is dividing both the Swedish and American public.
How has the Hamas attack on October 7 and the war in Gaza affected the culture of remembrance and Holocaust museums around the world?
James E Young collapses and then takes a deep breath.
- It has been a blow to the stomach. It is not without thinking about what all the attempts to teach about hatred and anti-Semitism really served, he says, adding:
- Many young people who visit a Holocaust museum ask questions about Israel and Gaza in particular. The museums often come up with technical and legal answers about how to define genocide. It can be perceived as evasion and avoidance.
So how, in your opinion, should a Holocaust Museum relate to the war between Israel and Hamas?
Everyone in the field is grappling with that question now, but unfortunately I don't have a direct answer to it, says James E Young.
- The debate is so binary, what is missing is conversation. I don't think there is a better place for conversations about Israel and Palestine than, for example, Sweden's Holocaust Museum, which can also contribute with an often overlooked context of the thousand-year oppression of Jews that culminated in the concentration camps, says Alice Greenwald.
But talking about the war between Israel and Hamas from a Holocaust perspective has proven to be political dynamite. Especially in Germany, where the Holocaust is regarded as a singularity and thus incomparable.
It became evident when Masha Gessen criticized the German memory culture in an article in The New Yorker last December . She argued that it has solidified into a culture of silence that denies the suffering of Palestinians, and compared Gaza to the Jewish ghettos established by the Nazis.
The violent reactions to the article were taken by some as evidence that the criticism was justified; Gessen was to have been awarded the Hannah Arendt Prize but the ceremony was canceled and Gessen herself was accused of obstructing work against growing anti-Semitism.
- Masha Gessen is far from alone in her stance. Among the German public and among German academics there is great sympathy and support for Palestinians, but officially, in politics, they are committed to protecting Israel because Israel as a state is a result of the Holocaust. The strong culture of memory has enabled a necessary self-criticism, but also prevented Germany from seeing things from multiple angles on the issue of Israel and Palestine, says James E Young.
Do you perceive that the culture of memory is abused by various political actors?
- Misuse of history occurs all the time, like when Putin calls Zelenskyi a Nazi. There is no way to regulate in law how different actors use the memory of the Holocaust. The only thing that matters is to persistently continue to correct inaccuracies and distortions.
Next year it will be eight decades since the end of the Second World War and the horrors of the concentration camps became known to the outside world. Soon there will be no survivors left to tell. Possibly it is an answer to the question of why a Swedish museum about the Holocaust has been established now. There is simply a rush to collect and save the stories before the eyewitnesses disappear.
- Another reason could be that even in a country like Sweden, people are beginning to realize how fragile democracy is. The Holocaust took place in what was seen as one of the world's most civilized countries, says Alice Greenwald.
There is still no proposal for where a permanent Swedish Holocaust museum should be located, what do you think would be a suitable place?
- The place has a meaning in itself. A Holocaust museum should be located close to central national institutions and decision-making bodies as a reminder of what can happen if those who are put to rule and manage the country do not carry out their duties responsibly.