2020 | Building Peace through Heritage
The reflection on the museum as a place of mutual knowledge between different cultures has seen in recent years an improved awareness dictated by the changes of society and communities . In particular , concern has raised on how the museum can activate processes that , respecting the cultural identity of origin and arrival , promote the harmonious coexistence between old and new citizens , based on the principle that cultural diversity can communicate , coexist and enrich themselves mutually . In addition , museums questioned the intercultural dialogue not aimed at integration but aimed at those who come into cultural contact temporarily , as in the case of tourists or international students , and identified new methods to create more inclusive museum narratives .
Moreover , since ill-understood religiosity can often lead to extreme forms of dogmatism and fanaticism , to reach violence and terrorism , by people , especially young people and not only migrants , who feel excluded or marginalized by the society where they live , museums of sacred art can play a non-secondary role in introducing them to mutual knowledge , to understanding other faiths and religious traditions other than their own , to tolerance of other opinions , to welcome and to mutual respect in the sign of human solidarity .
A few examples : the Jewish museums and the Shoah
The previous words , written in reference to the ecclesiastical museums , are perfectly attuned to any museum solution related to the preservation and dissemination of knowledge of works of art and objects of worship of every monotheistic religion . In fact , as an example , they are the motivations for the creation of the Jewish Museum in Paris , which has a real city-museum ( the Marais district ) dedicated to Judaism , including synagogues , Hebrew bookshops , kosher restaurants and museums . This set of physical , monumental structures , and places of culture and religiosity constitute a kind of allencompassing and ever-changing living museum , an active place of historical memory , where one of the most heinous crimes of the Shoah has been carried out by the Nazis and their French accomplices , with deportation in the lagers of the Parisian Jews . And the places of memory are the common thread of our discourse , of the projects and cultural initiatives described in this paper , because the dramatic facts of racial , ethnic , religious , political persecution , etc . - of which migratory phenomena are always a consequence , in addition to economic and / or social motivations - should not be forgotten or underestimated . In rue Pavée there is the heart of Jewish Paris : The street , on which faces at number 13 the synagogue built in 1913 by the famous architect Hector Guimard , the greatest representative of Art Nouveau in France , along with rue du Roi de Sicile , rue des Rosiers and rue Ferdinand Duval , forms the historic centre of the Parisian Jewish quarter , which continues on rue des Quatre Fils and rue Viellie du Temple . Running all the rue du Temple , where the Musée d ’ Art et Histoire du Judaisme is located , you cross rue de Rivoli and continue to the rue Geoffroy l ’ Asniers . Here is the Memorial de la Shoah , a free holocaust space that traces the suffering of the Jewish people through videos , photographs and writings . Every Sunday , the Memorial organizes a guided tour of the Drancy concentration camp , just outside Paris , which was created in August 1941 by the French collaborationist authorities as an internment camp for foreign Jews in France , under the control of the German Security Police . From June 1942 it became the main transit camp for the deportations of Jews from France . From July 1 , 1943 , the Germans took over the management of the camp directly until its liberation in August 1944 . Almost all of the Jews deported from France passed through the Drancy transit camp , including those gathered in the Gurs and Le Vernet internment camps . The Museum of Art and History of Judaism ( Musée d ’ Art et Histoire du Judaisme ), founded as a non-profit organization , is located in the Le Marais district of Paris , within a 17 th -century palace , the Hotel de Saint- Aignan , which the Municipality of Paris purchased in 1962 to make it home to its archives . Following restorations and donations , the museum was opened in December 1998 by the then-President Chirac . It can be considered the heir to the Musée d ’ Art Juif de Paris , founded in 1948 by a private association , in order to remember and pay tribute to a culture destroyed by the Holocaust . The first collections included items returned in 1951 by the American Jewish Restitution Successor Organization , charged with returning the goods of Jews stolen by the Nazis . Unfortunately , the story of the Holocaust is now an essential subject of every museum of Judaism . The Holocaust Memorial is a ‘ free ’ holocaust space that traces the suffering of the Jewish people through videos , photographs and writings . Another symbol of the Holocaust is the Hotel Lutetia where lager survivors were welcomed at the end of World War II .
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