Victims or heroes? Children in the narrative line of Holocaust exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Vilnius
Abstract
The author analyses the permanent exhibition devoted to the Holocaust at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum (Vilniaus Gaono žydų Istorijos muziejus). He tries to find out what the place of the youngest victims of the Holocaust is in the narrative line of the exhibition. He asks whether there are separate elements of the permanent exhibition devoted to them or the children's fates are "inscribed" in the general message about the events documented there. Are the creators of the museum focused on the tragic dimension of children's fates or do they present them through the prism of heroic deeds showing the individuals who performed them? Thus – is the death of the victims or the death of the heroes at the centre of the message? And finally – is there a place to present the Survivors? The research, the results of which are presented in the paper, is also an aim to answer whether the narrative line of the museum is devoted to specific individuals or to a community of anonymous participants of war events. The central point is also if the museum's message focuses just on presenting facts or goes beyond this area and includes the space for promoting specific values. In other words: is there a place for axiological elements in addition to the cognitive sphere? Is the goal just education focused on passing on reliable knowledge or on the process of socio-political education, the aim of which is to create specific moral attitudes?
Keywords
Holocaust, museum, children, Lithuania, Vilnius
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SWPS Uniwersytet Humanistycznospołeczny Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9746-9670
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