SPEAKING MEMORIES - THE LAST WITNESSES OF THE HOLOCAUST
Lizzie Oved Scheja
Speaking Memories began as workshops arranged by Jewish culture in Sweden – together with the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden (Paideia), the Swedish History Museum and the Association of Holocaust Survivors in Sweden, for the purpose of bringing together students Paideia and Holocaust survivors. The project also included open-for- the public seminars and commissioning from photographer Karl Gabor the portraits of the survivors
Jewish Culture in Sweden and the Swedish History Museum were looking for paths by which a long-term project could be implemented at the museum, enabling access to archive material and to the survivors’ testimonies. The topic that we have been dealing with throughout the years has been how to meet the challenges of preserving and forwarding the memory of the Shoah when the survivors are no longer with us, when the survivors are not here to tell, when they no longer meet pupils in schools, when they no longer write books.
That gave birth to the idea of arranging an exhibition which core is archive material, interviews and artefacts.
It was important for Jewish Culture in Sweden and to the Swedish History Museum to form partnership with international institutions who carry out just this type of work, whose mission is to document, commemorate and teach. For that purpose, we connected with the USC Shoah Foundation which archive includes more than 55 000 testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust and other atrocities, and who developed the installation Dimensions in Testimony where visitors could interact with a survivor. Another important cooperation was formed with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum from which we were able to borrow artefacts for the exhibition. All that, presented for the first time in Sweden, makes Speaking Memories a truly unique exhibition with a distinct educational purpose. It is the first time that a State Museum in Sweden produces and presents an exhibition on the Holocaust.
Much has happened since my childhood in Tel Aviv and the silence that engulfed us about the Shoah. It was here in Sweden that I was getting to know the survivors, many of whom added brilliance and meaning to my life. Speaking Memories is about strength, about people who came out of the ashes, who left behind murdered families and a whole world that collapsed. Despite that they rebuilt their lives, got an education, built families, became an active part and contributed to the building of society, with much creativity and dignity. Not everyone made it. For some victims the burden of the nightmare of the Holocaust was too difficult to carry, but of the survivors who are here with us, not once have I heard words of hatred or revenge. They have been too busy writing books and telling their stories at schools for the purpose of teaching the younger generation knowing that this is the only way to create a better world and combat history from repeating itself.
A blouse of Polish political prisoner of Auschwitz Jan Godek (camp np. 449) from the Auschwitz Memorial Collections