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The Holocaust Template – Memorial Museums in Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Anali 15 (1) 131-154 (2018) 2 13 Anali Hrvatskog Politološkog Društva 2018

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The Holocaust Template – Memorial Museums in Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Anali 15 (1) 131-154 (2018) 2 13 Anali Hrvatskog Politološkog Društva 2018 THE HOLOCAUST TEMPLATE – MEMORIAL MUSEUMS IN HUNGARY, CROATIA AND BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA1 Ljiljana Radonić Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History, Austrian Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.20901/an.15.06 Vienna Original scientific article E-mail: [email protected] Accepted: December 2018 15 (1) 131-154 (2018) 131-154 (1) 15 Abstract In this article, I discuss how memorial museums in Hungary, Croatia Anali and Bosnia-Herzegovina reference trends set by the US Holocaust Memorial Mu- seum and Yad Vashem. Museums, which have tried to prove their Europe-fitness in the course of EU accession talks by highlighting the Holocaust, and those, which have sidelined the Holocaust to prevent its memorialization from compet- ing with that of communist crimes, both incorporate elements from "western" Holocaust memorial museums, indicating how universalized Holocaust remem- brance has become. I argue that these museological trends have also "travelled" to museums dedicated to the post-Yugoslav wars. In the last part I analyze how the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in Sarajevo and the Sre- brenica-Potočari Memorial Center reference trends stemming from Holocaust memorial museums. Keywords Memorial museums, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jasenovac, Srebrenica 1The Holocaust Memorial Center in Bu- D.C. (USHMM) as their role model.2 dapest and the Jasenovac Memorial Mu- These are two of the five memorial mu- seum in Croatia – both permanent exhi- seums in Hungary and the former Yu- bitions opened in 2006 – show striking goslavia I will discuss in this article. All similarities. Both feature dark exhibition of them refer to the USHMM and Yad spaces and a strong focus on the victims' Vashem in Jerusalem as their role models individuality: the stories of individual or cooperate with them directly. victims, survivors' testimonies, and vic- tims' belongings in display cases domi- As I will show, the "universalization nate the permanent exhibitions and the of the Holocaust" (Eckel and Moisel names of the victims are presented on 2 The Croatian daily Vjesnik reported a black background. While there are no already in 2004 that the Jasenovac Memo- direct links between the two institutions rial Museum planned to devote the whole j. Radonić, The Holocaust – Memorial Template Museums in Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, both explicitly reference the US Holo- exhibition to the victims – "even more than L caust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash- ington or the Anne Frank House" (Vjesnik, 1 This work was supported by the Austrian March 7, 2004). For the Hungarian case see 13 Science Fund (FWF): V 663-G28. Seewann and Kovács 2006a: 198. 1 2008) has rendered the "memorial mu- website, the exhibit could just as well seum" the dominant paradigm for insti- have been installed anywhere else in the tutions dealing with twentieth-century country. atrocities, especially in post-communist Focusing on examples from Hunga- countries striving to become EU mem- ry and Croatia, I will begin by showing ber states. The Israeli Holocaust Memo- how the concept of the "memorial muse- rial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the um" was imported at three very different USHMM in Washington were the first in situ sites dedicated to the memory of institutions to be designated "memorial crimes committed in the World War II museums" in order to distinguish them era: two antithetical Budapest museums, from their in situ counterparts located the House of Terror and the Holocaust where the crimes were committed. They Memorial Center, and the Jasenovac have emerged as the two principal role Memorial Museum at the site of the models. This trend combines textual former Ustaša concentration camp in and aesthetic elements. They include, Croatia where Serbs, Roma, Jews and first, a universal moral orientation and political prisoners were imprisoned imperative (Alexander 2002), based on and killed. The majority of Hungarian the "lessons" of the Holocaust, to respect Jews were deported to Auschwitz and human rights and prevent new atroc- the Holocaust Memorial Center in Bu- ities and "human suffering"; second, a dapest is located at the site of what was strong focus on individual victims, their a minor "internment camp" in 1944/45 personal stories, testimonies, and pho- (HDKE 2018). At first glance it therefore tographs from their "lives before" the hardly seems comparable to the site of atrocity, as well as auratic objects; and, the Croatian death camp where, only third, aesthetic musealization standards 100 kilometers from the capital Zagreb, pioneered in the US and Israel. These the Ustaša killed up to 100.000 people.3 include darkened rooms, victims' au- Yet it is precisely the similar appearance ratic objects, and the presentation of of these two museums in spite of their the names of the victims, generally in- very different locations that tells the scribed in white letters on a dark back- story. The House of Terror, on the other ground. hand, seems, at first glance, to be a dif- ferent case altogether. Located at a his- This trend has also come to influence torical site where people were detained, those museums located at the sites of interrogated, tortured and killed, first World War II atrocities in Croatia and under the regime of the Arrow Cross Hungary. These in situ museums tend to Party (1944/45) and subsequently under tap into the "global" language of forms the communist regime, it devotes only without much regard to the actual pres- two and a half out of more than twenty ence or suitability of relevant material rooms to the Nazi occupation and fo- traces at the respective location. At the cuses primarily on Hungarian suffering Jasenovac Memorial Museum in Croa- 3 The number of victims killed at Jasenovac tia, for example, the site of the former has been a constant battlefield for decades. concentration camp and the mass graves In Tito's Yugoslavia the official number was around it have not been integrated into 700.000, Serb nationalists claimed one mil- lion victims, Croatian historical revision- nali Hrvatskog politološkog društva 2018. the exhibit. Since it hardly references the A material aspects of the site or the daily ists until today come up with only a few thousands (Radonić 2010). The Jasenovac routine in the camp, and identifies the Memorial Museum has so far identified 13 camp commanders only on the comput- 83.145 victims by name (Jasenovac Memo- 2 er working stations and the museum's rial Site 2018a). under communist rule. Yet, it too has themselves that apply Holocaust memo- identified the USHMM as its role model. rialization and musealization as a kind It has, for example, adopted the model of template for their exhibitions – albe- of the "Tower of faces" in Washington by it in very different ways as I will show. exhibiting portraits of the victims on a This calls for a critical analysis of how wall that ranges from the ground floor this "Holocaust template" is applied also up to the roof. The "Hall of Tears" in the in the case of museums dealing with the basement is also strongly reminiscent of recent mass atrocities. the Children's Memorial at Yad Vashem. Importantly, however, in this case the The article draws from five years of specific aesthetics born of the turn to- research for my postdoctoral thesis on wards the individual victim in western the World War II in post-communist Holocaust memorial museums are uti- memorial museums. Methodologically lized to create a narrative of collective I combine discourse analysis, visual his- (Hungarian) suffering, primarily under tory and site analysis. The site where an 15 (1) 131-154 (2018) 131-154 (1) 15 communism. exhibition is realized influences the con- struction of the leading narrative and Anali Another case in point when it comes the storyline. The specific site of a mu- to various victim groups enlisting seum indicates how important the top- modes of Holocaust memorialization to ic is to society. The inscribed meaning claim that they too have suffered "just is obviously shaped by those in charge like the Jews" is the memorialization and of the museum and the content they musealization of the recent mass atroc- choose to prioritize. Relevant secondary ities of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia. literature apart, the site analysis focuses In the last and most innovative part of on the materiality of the site, exhibition this article I will analyze if and how the catalogues, publications by museum "memorial museum" concept has trav- staff, museum websites and news cov- elled to the private Museum of Crimes erage of the museums. The main source against Humanity and Genocide in Sara- for analyzing the core narrative and the jevo and the public Srebrenica-Potočari storyline are the exhibits themselves Memorial and Cemetery for the Victims (which were photographed in great de- of the 1995 Genocide. It might seem at tail for subsequent in-depth analysis). first glance that the case of Srebrenica The entrance and first objects encoun- does not belong to the comparison. Yet, tered often function as routing points, the Srebrenica-Potočari memorial de- which build up the storyline with the veloped its new permanent exhibition introductory texts. The end of the ex- from 2017 in cooperation with experts hibition determines if the storyline is from the Westerbork concentration self-contained or open. In the name of camp memorial (Memorijalni Centar which collective does the exhibit speak Srebrenica-Potočari 2018) – compa- and which sub- and counter-narratives rable to the Kigali Memorial Museum are excluded (but may nevertheless still in Rwanda which invited a UK-based be discernible)? Are historical photo- NGO that specializes on Holocaust ex- graphs used as huge installations evok- hibitions to curate its permanent exhi- ing emotions, as room dividers, por- bition (Brandstetter 2010; Ibreck 2013).
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