insurgents themselves, our heroes, and to them, we give our voice. At the same time, we try to encourage civic attitudes. In our museum, we mainly show the past and try to build a relationship with it to the present. So that it also influences the present or future - says, Oldakowski.
Hearts for Auschwitz
Although institutions dealing with challenging chapters in human history are now firmly established on social media, we sometimes still feel the clash between these two worlds: modern, simplified and swift online communication and complex, painful history. The challenge is to tell the story of an Auschwitz survivor or insurgent in 280 characters because that’s all we can fit into a Twitter post.
Marta Szadowiak, founder of the PR Project agency, working, among others, with cultural institutions, sees an essential educational mission in introducing difficult content to social media. In her opinion, it does not necessarily involve trivialising the subject but is rather spreading it through the mass media, adapting the language to the user.
- On Facebook or Instagram, under a post about the Holocaust, you can still give a heart or click “wow”, which is in stark contrast to the subject. For example, “X people died in X year. Reaction I like this: Me and 3,459 people”. I suppose this is what raises most doubts among observers. But in essence, Facebook and Instagram are not built to fit only entertaining content, with overtones of light, easy and fun. The behaviour and reactions - the key word - of users make us see these platforms in this way. A serious subject may become trivialised after a thousand people click “haha” on FB. Apparently, recipients could hold back and not give hearts to Holocaust-related posts on Instagram, but then the profile’s visibility will suffer, explains the PR expert.
To ensure that the hearts do not have a questionable overtone, it is better to inform about the museum’s activities, not just the Holocaust as such. About new exhibitions, events, tours - Szadowiak explains. It would be safer without the trivialising overtones of hearts. The same hearts that Instagrammers use every day to make billions of posts about picture-perfect lives, perfect figures, shaped pastries and cute dogs.