The primary purpose of Britain’s first national Holocaust museum will be to focus attention on the kind of prejudice that formed the foundation for the murder of 6 million Jews.
Indeed, one display will depict modern manifestations of racism.
“In this way, we can show that the attitudes that caused the Holocaust still survive,” said Bill Williams, a historian and the chairman of the project.
Leaders of Britain’s Jewish community unveiled plans last week for the $12- million Shoah Center, scheduled to open in 2005 in the city of Manchester.
The museum was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, who recently completed the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
The Manchester museum will be composed of the architect’s trademark “fragments,” representing the shattered shards of the globe, with each splinter housing a display.
The design is intended to complement the nearby Imperial War Museum, also designed by Liebeskind.
The museum’s exhibits will not emphasize the emergence of the Nazis or their tools of genocide, but on the experience of their victims. “It will be about how the Holocaust was experienced by individuals, families and communities.”
Williams said that while visitors would have difficulty relating to the “anonymous number” of the 6 million who perished in the Holocaust, “we believe that people can come to terms with the enormity of it by seeing the victims as individuals, by seeing the Shoah as 6 million stories.”
He said the exhibition would rely heavily on oral testimonies. “There will be lots of sound and photos,” he said, “but not of Hitler.”
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