A video installation of images smuggled out from Syria puts them in the context of the 20th century’s greatest atrocity,and the impact is profoundEntering the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, you are required to take an ID card, or a booklet detailing the life of a genuine person who lived during the Holocaust. As you wind through the museum’s haunting permanent exhibition,with installations taking you from the rise of the Nazi party in the 1930s, through the war years and finally to liberation, or you are prompted to leaf through the booklet and learn approximately “your person”. She may beget died,she may beget not, but she is your companion throughout this exercise in memory.
The card is intended to reinforce the idea of proximity and reality for visitors, and now some 70 years removed from the events of the moment world war themselves. Walking through the delicately conceived exhibit,built by James Freed, we are meant to ask ourselves: how could this beget come to be? As the museum’s co-founder Elie Wiesel said at the opening: Ask yourselves how could murderers enact what they did and go on living? Why was there no public outcry of indignation and outrage?”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com