On October 26, 2021 Swedish scholar Rebecka Katz Thor zoomed in for an Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies (HGMS) faculty seminar to present a fascinating talk entitled “Remember to Life: Vulnerable Memory in a Prospective Monument, Memorial, and Museum.” Her talk considered Sweden’s official plans for a Holocaust Museum as well as an art association’s push to remember Swedish colonialism in the Caribbean, and a grassroots movement to memorialize victims of a racist serial killer. This three-year post-doctoral project builds on her earlier doctoral research.
In her 2018 dissertation – Beyond the Witness. Holocaust Representation and the Testimony of Images. Three Films by Yael Hersonski, Harun Farocki and Eyal Sivan – Dr. Katz Thor undertook a theoretically sophisticated analysis of frame, voice, text and narration and the concept of witnessing and testimony, including as the Nazis showed their genocide. She is interested in virtual presence, the use of holograms as eternal witnesses, grieving and what lives are grievable, the relationship between time and memory, forms of remembrance and moral remembrance.
Her new Holocaust engagement is exemplified by the object seen below, created by visual artist Lenke Rothman (died 2008), a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust after being in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. When freed, Rothman was taken to Sweden where she studied art and became a citizen (see also here).
Rothman’s words upon the birth of her son, were that this “miracle remind[ed] me of life, of everything I had forgotten.” This resonates with the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur concepts of “remember to life”, “remember us for life”, as well as the notorious execution of Hungarian Jews along the banks of the Danube River, an event that today is memorialized with iron shoes on the very spot, as well as the display, behind glass, at Auschwitz-Birkenau of a deep pile of shoes of the victims of the camps. Rothman has placed in her glass box a little girl’s dress shoes in the style of that era (thus remembrance and trauma) as well as a pair of new, modern, colorful shoes (a future). Rothman invites us to perceive multiple meanings about how the past is always present.
Rothman’s conjoined life experience and art corpus are the point of entry for Dr. Katz Thor to propose and consider the notion of vulnerable. Vulnerable lives. Vulnerable memory. Dr. Katz Thor suggests that all three projects (the proposed Holocaust Museum, the French Lot, and the serial killer memorial) are engaging with an unhealed wound. This commonality (regardless of vast differences in scale) enables her to investigate how vulnerability is connected to questions of commemoration, cultural heritage and public space. She recognizes the difficulty of dealing with unhealed wounds, unhealed victims, unhealed society and with the denial or, at least, neglecting and minimizing of difficult history.
The impetus for a Holocaust museum came in 2018 from Sweden’s Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven. Unlike the other two projects that Dr. Katz Thor is studying, this project will likely be accomplished in the near future. The Holocaust Museum is well funded by the Swedish government.
New museums are particularly interesting as research venues because as they come into being they can be studied. Dr. Katz Thor is conducting, in essence, an institutional ethnography with the many individuals and direct and indirect stakeholder groups involved with the official Swedish Holocaust Museum as it is happening. She is tracking the process, as she is with the other two initiatives. She observes how all three engage with vulnerable lives.
The idea of a Holocaust Museum in Sweden, with collections and exhibitions is new. She asks why this is happening now and what does that mean? She referred to “a lot of politics behind this,” noting that around the world it is governments that regulate who will be “grievable” and who will not. This impacts public space and the commemorative public projects placed in it.
We understand accountability and responsibility/culpability. It is recognition that is at play. Does recognition, for instance, require a physical presence? And if we “do it once,” does that put an end to “it”? Dr. Katz Thor says no. For all of the cases in her new project – and others elsewhere that would be conceptually related – we are dealing with a process and, thus, with “vulnerable time” (think about this in terms of Michael Herzfeld’s “monumental time”).
The script of the Holocaust Museum is not a comprehensive historical account for learning about the Holocaust. As unpacked thus far by Dr. Katz Thor, the museum will be about individual survivor stories and their memorabilia. The proposal for the museum came from a victim of the genocide and survivor stories of victims will be the core frame for the museum. It will be a museum to/of the victims – those who died, those who did not.
But will Sweden in the Nazi Period be discussed in the museum? The Director appears to be interested but this has not been translated into public pronouncements. Dr. Katz Thor says that from the official Swedish government perspective, the new museum “is a way of honoring Swedish Jewish survivors.” They are trying to find survivors to interview and to make interactive biographies of them. This is an idea imported from the U.S. and indicates the museum’s intended focus on survivor stories. The museum-in-progress is trying to create a collection, desperately trying to find artifacts. But Dr. Katz Thor argues that the museum should not be focused solely on survivor stories but should tell a more complete story. Examples of what would need to be referenced include:
- Sweden had a “race research institute” in the 1920s that was exported to Germany;
- Jews from concentration camps were imported by Sweden in WWII to work in Swedish textile factories, not saved as refugees;
- other Jews were collected and put in forests but not cared for.
Indeed, in the Q & A, Jonathan Larson (Associate Director, European Union Center) asked if a “haunting” might not exist in society under conditions of an unresolved wound, whether that be Sweden’s role during the Holocaust or the legacy of Swedish colonialism. And if it is not illuminated, will a wound continue to exist in Swedish society? Note this very interesting article from the USC Shoah Foundation, which references the complicated history of Sweden.
Dr. Katz Thor laments that in her attendance at the museum meetings, they tend not to discuss “What kind of museum does this make?” “What kind of museum do we want?” There are many Holocaust museums and many are twenty years old. The fundamental questions of “what kind of museum will we be – and why” and “how do we do this” are not yet being asked. Nor is the museum focused on the very many dead: the museum thus far has no associated memorial.
An early discussion twenty years ago was “Let’s make a genocide museum and deal with human rights. A Holocaust museum is too narrow. This is not Swedish history. ” Clearly, that viewpoint changed – but not for everyone. Indeed, Sweden honors Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews, with a memorial in Stockholm. But the memorial was defaced by spray paint less than twenty-four hours after being inaugurated in 2001, likely by neo-Nazis whose groups are active today. We may anticipate that if the Holocaust museum does indeed deal with Swedish history, it will be controversial.
With regard to acknowledging colonialism, Sweden obtained Saint Barthélemy (St. Barts, in the Caribbean) from France in 1784, in exchange for trading rights in Göteborg (Gothenburg), a port city: that free trade zone is “the French Lot.” Sweden controlled Saint Barthélemy for almost a century (until 1878) during which time it was a duty-free port, including for the slave trade, which disembarked African slaves on the island to work in cacao fields and elsewhere on the island, as well as shipping them beyond. Indeed, Sweden was a major purveyor of iron chains for the slave trade. It is this history that, Dr. Katz Thor explained, is largely unknown and completely untaught in Sweden. But a proposed new art installation in Göteborg wants to deal with this history.
The Göteborg International Biennal for Contemporary Art has invited contemplation of the role of art in revealing Sweden’s colonial history, which included involvement in the slave trade. Dr. Katz Thor has observed panel discussions among the Public Art Agency Sweden, artists, and citizens. The major questions she addresses are: “Should there be a permanent monument to mark the slave history of the place? If so, who should guide the process, and with what consultations?” As such, “The French Lot” can be compared to the decolonizing effort of many museums as well as the rescripting of contested public space and removal of controversial statues.
The third component of Dr. Katz Thor’s new research occurs at a smaller scale. It concerns Peter Mangs, a White racist serial killer who, between 2003-2010 murdered three people and attempted to kill twelve others. His stated goal was to “ignite a race war” by heightening racial tension. His victims were Black, Muslim, and Roma. His field of operation was Malmö. As Dr. Katz Thor pointed out, Mangs was not included in lists of terrorists and his actions were ignored by the police, the media and the courts – by everyone except the targeted minorities and his white racist compatriots. Dr. Katz Thor discussed the grassroots initiative among minority community activists to create a monument acknowledging the events. The Municipality of Malmö has taken over the project. They have worked with six different artists who have done temporary exhibitions and they hope there will be a permanent monument in 2023. But this is uncertain.
Should violent history be hidden or showcased in public space? We are in an era in which there is a global spread of the Black Lives Matter movement. One result is that no longer are the perpetrators of violent acts being permitted to stand in public space. When re-conceived, monuments, memorials and museums can redress anguish long after the event has happened. Dr. Katz Thor says we need “an ethical response to respond to previous wrongdoing … and a production of new memory … and how the majority of a society can take responsibility for the vulnerable lives of the minorities living amongst them.” Thus, she has chosen and problematized three cases of human rights abuses at different stages of project initiation: the government for the Holocaust Museum, an art biennial for the French Lot, and minority community activism for the anti-racism monument. She asks us to contemplate the scale (size, form and where), temporality (when: event and today) and commissioning (who and why) of the three projects and their content.
The creation of new commemorative projects is about how we deal with the past. The three projects can be understood in a common framework of how a society assimilates the memory of vulnerable lives through public commemorations. Dr. Katz Thor regards her new project as a contribution to the study of future practices of commemoration, which are compelled to respond ethically to past events and also to play a role in the present as current injustices occur. Moreover, and particular to Sweden, each of the three cases in her research is significant because each challenges Sweden’s complacent national narrative and self-image of the country as professedly neutral during WWII and tolerant, democratic, multicultural, and unmilitaristic (but see the Stockholm University project [you must use Chrome not Safari] here). Based on Dr. Katz Thor’s talk to HGMS, we all look forward to reading the publications resulting from her new work and hopefully to bringing her back at its conclusion.
On October 26, 2021 Swedish scholar Rebecka Katz Thor zoomed in for an Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies (HGMS) faculty seminar to present a fascinating talk entitled “Remember to Life: Vulnerable Memory in a Prospective Monument, Memorial, and Museum.” Her talk considered Sweden’s official plans for a Holocaust Museum as well as an art association’s push to remember Swedish colonialism in the Caribbean, and a grassroots movement to memorialize victims of a racist serial killer. This three-year post-doctoral project builds on her earlier doctoral research.
In her 2018 dissertation – Beyond the Witness. Holocaust Representation and the Testimony of Images. Three Films by Yael Hersonski, Harun Farocki and Eyal Sivan – Dr. Katz Thor undertook a theoretically sophisticated analysis of frame, voice, text and narration and the concept of witnessing and testimony, including as the Nazis showed their genocide. She is interested in virtual presence, the use of holograms as eternal witnesses, grieving and what lives are grievable, the relationship between time and memory, forms of remembrance and moral remembrance.
Her new Holocaust engagement is exemplified by the object seen below, created by visual artist Lenke Rothman (died 2008), a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust after being in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. When freed, Rothman was taken to Sweden where she studied art and became a citizen (see also here).
Rothman’s words upon the birth of her son, were that this “miracle remind[ed] me of life, of everything I had forgotten.” This resonates with the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur concepts of “remember to life”, “remember us for life”, as well as the notorious execution of Hungarian Jews along the banks of the Danube River, an event that today is memorialized with iron shoes on the very spot, as well as the display, behind glass, at Auschwitz-Birkenau of a deep pile of shoes of the victims of the camps. Rothman has placed in her glass box a little girl’s dress shoes in the style of that era (thus remembrance and trauma) as well as a pair of new, modern, colorful shoes (a future). Rothman invites us to perceive multiple meanings about how the past is always present.
Rothman’s conjoined life experience and art corpus are the point of entry for Dr. Katz Thor to propose and consider the notion of vulnerable. Vulnerable lives. Vulnerable memory. Dr. Katz Thor suggests that all three projects (the proposed Holocaust Museum, the French Lot, and the serial killer memorial) are engaging with an unhealed wound. This commonality (regardless of vast differences in scale) enables her to investigate how vulnerability is connected to questions of commemoration, cultural heritage and public space. She recognizes the difficulty of dealing with unhealed wounds, unhealed victims, unhealed society and with the denial or, at least, neglecting and minimizing of difficult history.
The impetus for a Holocaust museum came in 2018 from Sweden’s Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven. Unlike the other two projects that Dr. Katz Thor is studying, this project will likely be accomplished in the near future. The Holocaust Museum is well funded by the Swedish government.
New museums are particularly interesting as research venues because as they come into being they can be studied. Dr. Katz Thor is conducting, in essence, an institutional ethnography with the many individuals and direct and indirect stakeholder groups involved with the official Swedish Holocaust Museum as it is happening. She is tracking the process, as she is with the other two initiatives. She observes how all three engage with vulnerable lives.
The idea of a Holocaust Museum in Sweden, with collections and exhibitions is new. She asks why this is happening now and what does that mean? She referred to “a lot of politics behind this,” noting that around the world it is governments that regulate who will be “grievable” and who will not. This impacts public space and the commemorative public projects placed in it.
We understand accountability and responsibility/culpability. It is recognition that is at play. Does recognition, for instance, require a physical presence? And if we “do it once,” does that put an end to “it”? Dr. Katz Thor says no. For all of the cases in her new project – and others elsewhere that would be conceptually related – we are dealing with a process and, thus, with “vulnerable time” (think about this in terms of Michael Herzfeld’s “monumental time”).
The script of the Holocaust Museum is not a comprehensive historical account for learning about the Holocaust. As unpacked thus far by Dr. Katz Thor, the museum will be about individual survivor stories and their memorabilia. The proposal for the museum came from a victim of the genocide and survivor stories of victims will be the core frame for the museum. It will be a museum to/of the victims – those who died, those who did not.
But will Sweden in the Nazi Period be discussed in the museum? The Director appears to be interested but this has not been translated into public pronouncements. Dr. Katz Thor says that from the official Swedish government perspective, the new museum “is a way of honoring Swedish Jewish survivors.” They are trying to find survivors to interview and to make interactive biographies of them. This is an idea imported from the U.S. and indicates the museum’s intended focus on survivor stories. The museum-in-progress is trying to create a collection, desperately trying to find artifacts. But Dr. Katz Thor argues that the museum should not be focused solely on survivor stories but should tell a more complete story. Examples of what would need to be referenced include:
- Sweden had a “race research institute” in the 1920s that was exported to Germany;
- Jews from concentration camps were imported by Sweden in WWII to work in Swedish textile factories, not saved as refugees;
- other Jews were collected and put in forests but not cared for.
Indeed, in the Q & A, Jonathan Larson (Associate Director, European Union Center) asked if a “haunting” might not exist in society under conditions of an unresolved wound, whether that be Sweden’s role during the Holocaust or the legacy of Swedish colonialism. And if it is not illuminated, will a wound continue to exist in Swedish society? Note this very interesting article from the USC Shoah Foundation, which references the complicated history of Sweden.
Dr. Katz Thor laments that in her attendance at the museum meetings, they tend not to discuss “What kind of museum does this make?” “What kind of museum do we want?” There are many Holocaust museums and many are twenty years old. The fundamental questions of “what kind of museum will we be – and why” and “how do we do this” are not yet being asked. Nor is the museum focused on the very many dead: the museum thus far has no associated memorial.
An early discussion twenty years ago was “Let’s make a genocide museum and deal with human rights. A Holocaust museum is too narrow. This is not Swedish history. ” Clearly, that viewpoint changed – but not for everyone. Indeed, Sweden honors Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews, with a memorial in Stockholm. But the memorial was defaced by spray paint less than twenty-four hours after being inaugurated in 2001, likely by neo-Nazis whose groups are active today. We may anticipate that if the Holocaust museum does indeed deal with Swedish history, it will be controversial.
With regard to acknowledging colonialism, Sweden obtained Saint Barthélemy (St. Barts, in the Caribbean) from France in 1784, in exchange for trading rights in Göteborg (Gothenburg), a port city: that free trade zone is “the French Lot.” Sweden controlled Saint Barthélemy for almost a century (until 1878) during which time it was a duty-free port, including for the slave trade, which disembarked African slaves on the island to work in cacao fields and elsewhere on the island, as well as shipping them beyond. Indeed, Sweden was a major purveyor of iron chains for the slave trade. It is this history that, Dr. Katz Thor explained, is largely unknown and completely untaught in Sweden. But a proposed new art installation in Göteborg wants to deal with this history.
The Göteborg International Biennal for Contemporary Art has invited contemplation of the role of art in revealing Sweden’s colonial history, which included involvement in the slave trade. Dr. Katz Thor has observed panel discussions among the Public Art Agency Sweden, artists, and citizens. The major questions she addresses are: “Should there be a permanent monument to mark the slave history of the place? If so, who should guide the process, and with what consultations?” As such, “The French Lot” can be compared to the decolonizing effort of many museums as well as the rescripting of contested public space and removal of controversial statues.
The third component of Dr. Katz Thor’s new research occurs at a smaller scale. It concerns Peter Mangs, a White racist serial killer who, between 2003-2010 murdered three people and attempted to kill twelve others. His stated goal was to “ignite a race war” by heightening racial tension. His victims were Black, Muslim, and Roma. His field of operation was Malmö. As Dr. Katz Thor pointed out, Mangs was not included in lists of terrorists and his actions were ignored by the police, the media and the courts – by everyone except the targeted minorities and his white racist compatriots. Dr. Katz Thor discussed the grassroots initiative among minority community activists to create a monument acknowledging the events. The Municipality of Malmö has taken over the project. They have worked with six different artists who have done temporary exhibitions and they hope there will be a permanent monument in 2023. But this is uncertain.
Should violent history be hidden or showcased in public space? We are in an era in which there is a global spread of the Black Lives Matter movement. One result is that no longer are the perpetrators of violent acts being permitted to stand in public space. When re-conceived, monuments, memorials and museums can redress anguish long after the event has happened. Dr. Katz Thor says we need “an ethical response to respond to previous wrongdoing … and a production of new memory … and how the majority of a society can take responsibility for the vulnerable lives of the minorities living amongst them.” Thus, she has chosen and problematized three cases of human rights abuses at different stages of project initiation: the government for the Holocaust Museum, an art biennial for the French Lot, and minority community activism for the anti-racism monument. She asks us to contemplate the scale (size, form and where), temporality (when: event and today) and commissioning (who and why) of the three projects and their content.
The creation of new commemorative projects is about how we deal with the past. The three projects can be understood in a common framework of how a society assimilates the memory of vulnerable lives through public commemorations. Dr. Katz Thor regards her new project as a contribution to the study of future practices of commemoration, which are compelled to respond ethically to past events and also to play a role in the present as current injustices occur. Moreover, and particular to Sweden, each of the three cases in her research is significant because each challenges Sweden’s complacent national narrative and self-image of the country as professedly neutral during WWII and tolerant, democratic, multicultural, and unmilitaristic (but see the Stockholm University project [you must use Chrome not Safari] here). Based on Dr. Katz Thor’s talk to HGMS, we all look forward to reading the publications resulting from her new work and hopefully to bringing her back at its conclusion.
Photos by Hendrick Zeitler
