IWM After Hours: Public Memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust

James Bulgin, content lead for IWM’s Holocaust Galleries: “So, the purpose of tonight is to talk around some of these subjects pertaining to memory and history in relation to both the Second World War and the Holocaust.

And I wonder if I could start by asking you both, why you think it is that the audience for Holocaust histories and memories has, has grown so much since the late 1970s and 1980s? Andy, maybe if you could?”

Dr Andy Pearce: “I think there's four things for me to say about this. I think in the first instance it's important to recognise that there's a reciprocal relationship between the growth of awareness and, and the audience. So, as the audience has grown, awareness has grown and this has been an interdependent relationship. And I think part of that has been seen and is a product of social and cultural change. So as demographically Britain has changed over the last two generations, we've seen new generations approaching history, approaching memory of the 20th century through new lenses with new perspectives, with new agendas and with new interests and, and also with new priorities and with new concerns. So, people are looking to use the memory of the Second World War and the memory of the Holocaust in ways that earlier generations weren't interested in doing.

I think a third reason why there's been this, this growth of interest relates in, in a simple sense to, to politics, by which I mean the political will of statesman and policymakers to support initiatives, to encourage memory, to encourage educational projects and also, I mean political agendas, so that sense of politicians wanting to support this as much out of goodwill, but also perhaps to, to serve other interests or to, to buttress this season and so on and so forth. And I think the fourth salient reason for this growth of awareness and growth of interest is, is popularisation over the last 40-50 years, there's been a popularisation of this history in ways that we haven't seen previously, partly as a result of technological innovation and change. Also, I think as a result of this, the sort of sense of the stories of this period are obtaining a new traction and acquiring a new dimension of interest for us. So, for me, those are the four most important reasons to, to think about in relation to the growth of awareness and interest.”

James Bulgin: “Ok and I suppose it's something which is worth kind of being clear about that, that, that it is unusual, there is something to be said about this, isn't it? This the way that Holocaust memory or Holocaust consciousness, if we wanted to codify that, that has grown quite substantially in a way which isn't necessarily typical for history as we move further from the event. I wonder, Lucy, is there anything that you think to do with the way that the Cold War evolved and has perhaps had something to do with shaping memory?”

Professor Lucy Noakes: “Yeah, I think the end of the Cold War has made an enormous difference to the way that we remember the Holocaust, actually. But, but the Second World War more largely in, in Britain and as Europe, in Europe as a whole, partly because it opened up archives for historians that we weren't able to access before, some of those have closed again since, of course. But there was a brief moment when there was lots of new material, and there was an, an ability for people to speak and to tell us their stories that they weren't able to do before 1989 and we weren't able to hear before 1989, so. I think that's, that’s very different. I think more broadly for the Second World War as a whole, I think that since 1989 since 1990, our understanding of the war, particularly the war in Europe, has really changed because it's difficult to remember now but, but before then, most people didn't, if you thought about the Second World War, you didn't think about the Soviet Union. You didn't think about the war in the Eastern Front and the, you know, the enormous contribution of the Soviet Union to, to winning that war and to the defeat of Nazism. And after 1989, after 1990, I think that's entered far more into public discourse.”

James Bulgin: “That's really interesting. I suppose it's on a sort of a, a related, but maybe slightly tangential point; it's easy to, to talk quite kind of directly about ideas of memory, but of course that's a deceptively complex notion, isn't it? And as I, just thinking about the origins of the so-called ‘memory boom’ and the reasons underpinning war remembrance since the 1980s and is that something we had something to say about? Maybe start with Andy.”

Dr Andy Pearce: “Well, personally, I've, I've always been quite persuaded by the arguments by Andreas Huyssen, who talks about the sense in which our interest in memory has, has been driven by a, a kind of growing displacement and, and sense of becoming abstracted from our, our daily lives because of the speed and rate at which our lives have been changed by technology, by, by revolution, and so on and so forth. So it's that sense that we kind of turn to memory to have an anchoring that we, that we need in this in this period of intense change. And I find that quite, quite a persuasive idea. And I think in our national context of the British context, I think I think that certainly has, has a degree of, of traction, if you think of the changes that Britain and the United Kingdom have undergone over the last two generations, it, it seems to me that that kind of allure of turning to memory certainly, certainly has an explanation there. But I also think there's, there's also national, nationally specific reasons. So, the memory boom as we talk in abstract terms of this kind of transnational thing that's happened everywhere, I think also we need to put that into particular contexts. And in the British context, I think there's a lot to commend the, the work of, of Robert Hewison and Patrick Wright in the 1980s where they were shining a light on how memory in Britain had acquired this particular dimension that was pivoting around heritage, and extent to which heritage was this partly commercial thing, but also partly experiential thing, the sense in which wanting to re-experience or experience for the first time something that we, we've missed out on and not had, had a, had a part in and I think that's certainly something here and perhaps with the things that are going on at the moment in, in the world around us, perhaps there might be something which, which further drives that, that particular dimension.”

James Bulgin: “It's, it's just, just to be really clear, it's unavoidable to talk about, not talk about Brexit, essentially [laughter] so, so we'll, so we'll get there, but, but maybe let's just stay on point for a second at least. Lucy, did you have any thoughts on that?”

Professor Lucy Noakes: “Yeah. I mean, I think I agree. I think that, that emotional engagement with the past, that heritage could be so good at marketing or involving people in has been, has been really important, so the kind of growth of, of public history, I suppose, I think of it as being really important. I also think that there's something to be said about the memory boom happening at the end of the 20th century, and we were doing so much reflecting on the past and particularly trying to, reflecting on the last thousand years, but particularly trying to understand this kind of what, what felt like a very turbulent and bloody and, and rapidly changing century that we were coming to the end of.

So, I think kind of a reflection on that was, was, was healthy and, and inevitable. And then it also of course it, it coincided with the generation change with some of the, the veterans, the veterans and by, by when I when I talk about veterans, I mean civilian veterans as well as military veterans, particularly in terms of Second World War with some of those people, you know, are not with us any longer.

We were starting to realise that, that was, that, that was going to be the case and then I think technology as well. And I think you're, you're absolutely right - this sense of, of kind of rapid change and, and kind of a desire to root yourself in something and the past is a very, you know, the idea that we share something in common is a very attractive way of doing that, but it's also technology, also enabled people to, to deposit memories and to make them accessible. Some of which were different and wouldn't have had an audience before and I'm thinking there about projects like the BBC People's War Project collected thousands, tens and tens of thousands of memories that they called stories of the Second World War, some of which really kind of undercut a popular narrative. So, there were lots of different things came together I think at a very similar time.”

James Bulgin: “With that in mind actually, Andy, the, just, just to draw us back slightly again to this question of the Holocaust and, and, and why it was that the Holocaust was so, sort of, relatively hidden? And I know that that's something that David Cesarani is problematised this idea of the myth of silence. But nevertheless, you know, that there was a period where we talked about it less. One of the things which we're always interested by the new galleries is how, how British memory of the Holocaust shifted from Belson to Auschwitz, apparently seamlessly in the last sort of, let's say, 20 to 30 years.”

Dr Andy Pearce: “Something which I find a lot in my work with teachers is teachers are very interested to know when does the phrase the Holocaust appear? When does it start to get introduced? And then when you start to, sort of say to them the words been around for a long, long time, it predates this history, it then becomes this, this kind of point of, of, of confusion as to when it becomes the Holocaust, when it's, how is it referred to during the time and so on and so forth. So, I think in terms of that relative silence around the Holocaust partly was the absence of a conceptual framework. I think partly there is there, there was a, a lack of interest amongst non-Jewish society. I think there was an absence of political will to engage with this particular history with this period and and, and also I think there was perhaps uncertainties within the Jewish community as well in terms of how do we talk about this history? What does it mean to us? How do we relate to it? 

So, I think it was probably a complex interplay of those factors that led to this, sort of, marginalisation. On your point about this sort of shift from Belson to, to Auschwitz; I think that's where you see the, the British experience reflecting the, the, the wider global trend where you have this growth of Auschwitz as this sort of metonym for the Holocaust. And also, in terms of the British context you see an atrophy in terms of the, the generation who experienced, experienced in inverted commas, experienced Belson and heard about it first-hand. You see that loss of what the Assmann would call communicative memory of, of Belson, and then the shift towards a more kind of cultural framework, which, which in the international climate focuses on Auschwitz.”

James Bulgin: “I'm always wondering about the extent to which in contemporary culture, the Holocaust informs our sense of the war and, and, and, and how it shapes our sense of Nazism and, and whether I suppose there’s even a danger that the danger, the situations of the Holocaust somehow overshadows the, the memory of the Second World War? Andy if you wanted to?”

Dr Andy Pearce: “I think we probably need to kind of periodize this a bit. I think if we, if we take the idea that the Holocaust as we now know and understand it didn't exist in that kind of conceptual way in, in the immediate post-war period, the ways that the events of, of that history were, were seen and were, were, were kind of dealt with by, by Britain in terms of how you thought about Nazi Germany it was used very much as a sort of, a, a proof positive, if you like, of of the bestiality and the barbarity of Nazism and that kind of antithesis that this isn't very British and this is what we're not and so on and so forth. I think what you start to see progressively towards the end of the 20th century is you start to see, ironically enough, Nazism becoming more abstracted and becoming more decontextualised, and related to that, you start to see the Holocaust becoming more abstracted and decontextualised, and these things start to be looked at and thought of in separate ways, and also almost kind of outside of history. In the latter 20 years of the, of the 20th century, you kind of see that, that emphasis on the uniquity of the Holocaust, which was done for various reasons but only further accelerates its abstraction from its historical context. And you then start to see this kind of sense of, of, of, not no longer kind of caricature Nazis but more Nazis in, in, in, in a kind of very intangible way, we don't talk about, we don’t talk about individuals or agencies, we're talking about this kind of weird sort of slippery notion of the Nazis and Nazism. And then you find the ironic thing that we have this, this critique amongst some sections of our, our kind of cultural commentary of how we're obsessed with Nazis and we're obsessed with Nazi Germany, but certainly in the research that we conducted at UCL when we were talking with students finding that actually their knowledge and their understanding of, of Nazis, Nazism and Nazi German was incredibly impoverished. And I had students in telling me that Nazis were Hitler's elite minions and his paramilitary hit squad and, and I found this incredible for all sorts of reasons but I, I think it is testament to the extent to which the Holocaust hasn't overshadowed Nazism, in some ways the two have become abstracted and come to kind of inform each other in this very abstract way which is not related to historical reality in, in, in any way, shape or form.

James Bulgin: “So obviously things quite, so Jeffrey Alexander talks about the idea of the free-floating Holocaust. And I just think that, that's quite a, a potent way of describing that phenomenon. And Lucy, is this something which you're mindful of or aware of or crosses your path working amongst Second World War histories?”

Professor Lucy Noakes: “I think it's quite interesting, I think that the Second World. For historians, I think we're often quite careful not to engage with the Holocaust and not to because there's a, you know, it's, it's, it's a very, it's a very kind of special field and it's it bears a particular weight. So, I don't, I don't write on the Holocaust, I don't research the Holocaust. But I think that our, our understanding of the Holocaust and the, the role that it now plays, I think in our understanding of the Second World War in Britain can only enrich what we know, it can only be a good thing. It's one of the things we were talking about earlier when we were developing the two new, this new Second World War gallery and the new Holocaust gallery here has been lots of conversations about how to kind of show that these two things are linked because they're often not in terms of scholarly research, so something you can think about to, to how you, how you bring those things together. I don't know exactly how we do it, but it's worth thinking about.”

James Bulgin: “No, it's was one of the things which we, you know, the idea that somehow Pearl Harbour has a bearing on, on, the, the, the, you know, the evolution of the Holocaust as this Nazi policy, these two ostensibly quite disparate things are actually fundamentally interlinked, but these are maybe the sort of things which get lost a lot is the, the separation of the two histories. And I suppose on a kind of related point, again, what do you think we're selective, Lucy, in the way that we remember the Second World War and, and if that's the case, why is that?”

Professor Lucy Noakes: “Yeah, I think we have to be because we can't possibly remember all of it, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s impossible. I think that we are., I think that it the, the what I call the, the, the cultural memory of the war, what some people call the, the myth of the Second World War in Britain has been really powerful since the war itself, it starts to be written in the war. It's, it's reiterated really powerfully in the 1950s through those and it's still great war films that are produced in the 1950s and that sense of, kind of, problematic sense of Britain alone, the sense that, you know, the Britain, we, we were good guys, it's a good war, it's a just war. And, and I think that shapes how we remember it. I think one thing I'd just like to say that I think we've been really, there are lots of things that we're bad remembering about the war. One of the things we're quite bad at remembering is that it sounds daft, but that people died. I think when we remember the First World War, it's all about the dead, it's all about the suffering with the First World War that is much less the case in Britain. It's there in particular, in particular instances. It's obviously there if you think about the Holocaust. It's there I think probably partly because of Steven Spielberg and Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. It's there now when we think about D-Day and the landings on the beaches at D-Day. It's not very present still in other memories of the war, which I think is interesting.”

James Bulgin: “That is interesting and it’s funny you should mention Saving Private Ryan because it always struck me that, I mean, clearly it's not unique in this, but it all goes in a different aesthetic related to the war, somehow. It introduces, as you say, blood and, and the idea of, of, you know, incalculable suffering actually. And I suppose that flags this broader point about the role of, say fiction or, or popular media, popular entertainment and, and, and an example of that, of course, was the film Dunkirk a couple of years ago, very popular film, but of course also a film that was cited by Nigel Farage in part of his efforts to sort of substantiate his arguments around Brexit. We’re there. [laughter]

And so I just wondered for both of you, maybe we'll start with Lucy. How, how do you think we should interpret and respond to that idea of the utilisation of history through popular culture into memory?”
Professor Lucy Noakes: “I mean, it happens. It happens all the time, doesn't it? I mean, I think, I think that Nigel Farage, he's tweeted him standing in front of the poster of Dunkirk and saying this shows that we need to get out of Europe. I mean, it's, it's an utter nonsense. It was a particularly egregious example, I think, of a, of an attempt to, to grab a historical, historical event and to completely misunderstand it and to completely misunder, misinterpret it. If I were to respond to, to that, I would point out, you know, Britain was never alone, not even in 1940, even in 1940, which is the ‘aloneness’ that it gets, Britain had, it had the support of empire and to an extent this brought to the USA even then that it wasn't a kind of, an aloneness that won the war. It was networks of working with other countries of, of, of being part of a much larger collaborative international project. I think I'd also want to point out that since the EU was founded in the 1950s, there has not been a war between France and Germany. I might just leave it there.”

[Laughter]

James Bulgin: “It's interesting, isn't it, this, I mean Dunkirk is a, is a film which makes a claim on authenticity, it's, you know, it's a factual film, nevertheless it's, it's fiction, you know. It's knowledge and the characters, etcetera and this role of fiction in memory and history, I think is a big one in terms of the collective memory and in public memory. And obviously in respect to the war and the Holocaust that that starts to create some, some complicated issues. So Andy, I mean, do you, do you think that role fiction has a role in shaping memory or, or should we dismiss or engage these forms?”

Dr Andy Pearce: “I think fictional works have their, have their place in helping us to understand particular periods in history. I think it's the extent to which we rely on or we use them to do certain things. So, if we're relying on fictional works to tell us about the, the kind of facts of, of, of Ancient Rome or the Civil War or something then that’s, we’re asking something of those, those cultural products to do something which they may, they may not be best served to do. 

So I think we, we shouldn't dismiss fictional works, fictional products in any way shape or form because they tell us as much about ourselves in the present as they do about the past and if we're trying to understand the past, we have to understand the present, we have to understand ourselves in that process, the ways in which we’re constructing the past.

We definitely should not be relying on fictional works to, to develop our historical knowledge, our historical understanding and, and I think there's, there's real risks in doing so because the danger is by relying on fictional works to, to tell the history, then, then we're not actually starting to understand what history is, we're not understanding what memory is, we're not actually understanding what happened in in the past. So, it has a role, but that role has to be very carefully managed and handled and, and recognised as well. And it's also finally, I think it's, It's dependent on our capacity to develop our critical faculties. We need to be able to recognise, certainly with the work we do with our teachers, with our students and more generally we need to be able to, to develop people's capacity to critique, to actually think about, am I reading something? What? What am I reading? Where does it come from? What's this person's position? So on and so forth and, and that seems elemental.”

James Bulgin: “It's interesting isn’t it. Then I suppose again in respect to something like Saving Private Ryan, because the whole, the whole setup, the whole truth claim is supposed to be about total authenticity, so then problematising its fictionality becomes more of a challenge. Is this something you encountered, Lucy, with, with, as a Second World War historian and, of course, a teacher of students?”

Professor Lucy Noakes: “Yeah. I mean, I think if reading a novel or watching a film sparks somebody's interest in history and it means that they, they, they read further or they come through the doors of that, this museum then I think that's, that's absolutely, that's absolutely fantastic. I think, though, that particularly with war we, I mean, I'm not one of those historians who goes on Twitter and kind of, “But they got the buttons wrong on that uniform.” It's really not, it's not that important, but I think we do, there is, there is there is a particular, there is a particular need for fictional representations of war to, to be as accurate as they possibly can be because there is this, there's a historian called Michael Paris who wrote a great book about what he called ‘The Pleasure Culture of War’ and the pleasure that people get from fictionalised representations of war. I think that can be really dangerous, so I think there is a, there's, there's a particular burden on, on the, the, the, the author or the filmmaker who is representing the Second World War or the Holocaust to be as accurate as they possibly can be.”

James Bulgin: “That’s interesting. We've been focusing obviously mostly around Britain's relationship to the war in terms of our kind of subject position, I'm interested in how perhaps that diverges or is similar to, to positions on the relationships of the war within Germany. And there’s this, whenever I'm over there dealing with institutions, those students, it always strikes me the extent to which subsequent generations relate to this history, knowing that it's part of their national history, but it's so difficult, problematic in respect to the Holocaust. Is that, is that something that you've got any thoughts or perspective on?”

Dr Andy Pearce: “I mean, if we look at the, the surveys, the polls that were done over the past few months and weeks and years and so on and so forth, then, then if you kind of take that narrative then, then there's the sense of people don't know anything anymore and, and, and, and the next generation are ignorant of this and ignorant of that. And I think whilst that grabs headlines and that, that, there's elements of that which are arresting that also needs to, it doesn't tell the whole story; it needs to be complicated and needs to be understood and, and contextualised.

I think in terms of the relationship between British war memory and the condition of that and Holocaust memory against German. Well, I, I think it's, it's telling that in Germany you have arguably had this this kind of model for memory work which has amassed during the last 40-50 years of this sense of coming to terms with the working through the past. And to some extent that's been exported in inverted commas to, to, to other countries through cultural cross-fertilisation, but I would argue that, that, that hasn't necessarily happened in Britain. I, I don't think we have necessarily worked through our, our Second World War past, our relationship with the Holocaust, the darker aspects of our past tend to be skewed and, and, and left to one side. Now why is that? Clearly there's a simple answer in terms of the selectivity of memory, but, but it's also more complicated than that and I think it has something to do with the sense of maybe we've never felt we have to confront these darker aspects of our past.
 

And perhaps we mentioned the EU. Perhaps our kind of connection with that over the last few generations has, has, has mentally kind of gone along with that model of memory work. And my suspicion is that depending on how things pan out over the next few weeks and the next few months and next few years, I think we're going to end up in a situation where we might have to, we're either going to have to confront some of those skeletons in our closet, or you're going to see the complete opposite where they're pushed even further away and my fear is we might end up going that way. But, but I think certainly there's a, there's a, there's a lack of will or there has been a lack of will to engage in that. Is that a result of politics? Is it result of ethics and is it something which I know we're going to go on to talk about the extent to which we can, or we should be burdened by, by our past. But yeah, I think there is, there is that as well.” 

James Bulgin: “This is an interesting point I think. The extent to which subsequent generations bear at some sort of responsibility or obligation to the past or certainly in the case of the Holocaust, the crimes of the past. But do you, do you think maybe we’ll start with Lucy on this, do you think that the public memory is time-barred in that respect? To, to what extent are subsequent generations, should they in any respect be held accountable for, for the past?”

Professor Lucy Noakes: “I think it's, I mean, I don't know is the, is the honest answer. I think it's a conversation that we need to keep on having. Accountable might be putting it too far. I think certainly acknowledging the past is really, really important and to keep having conversations about those kind of darker aspects of Britain's past I think is incredibly important.”

James Bulgin: “Andy, is that something?...”

Dr Andy Pearce: “I agree. I think, I think it, I think it also depends on two things. I think first it depends on how we have, have or haven't dealt with that past. Has there been some sort of reconciliation? Has there been some sort of restitution? Some degree of contrition so on and so forth. I mean, on, on one level it seems a bit unreasonable and unrealistic to, to, to expect every generation to be held to account of, of it at its forebearers’ actions, that seems a bit unrealistic, that's not very kind of practical way of moving forward. So, for me it becomes more an issue of how each generation is choosing to use the past and, and how that relates to, to what actually happened. So, it's that, it's that relationship between history and memory and the ways that we're using those two things.”

James Bulgin: “It's interesting the, it's a really interesting point anyone who's been to, to, to Germany or specifically any of the former concentration camps in Germany, it's virtually impossible to go there and not meet reams of school children from Germany. It's clearly a big part of their kind of active engagement. Similar but different here in this very building, you know, this institution is about this idea of, you know, the past memory history, et cetera. I'm interested as to what you think is the, the, a museum’s challenges or responsibility for, for creating memory, particularly within the so-called ‘Post-Truth Age.’ You know we're in this, this, this reality of unreality, so, so if that's something you had thoughts on, Lucy? Maybe start on that.”

Professor Lucy Noakes: “Yeah, no, I have. I have, I think, I think that the role of institutions like this today is, is probably more critical than it's, than it's been in my, in my memory in, in, in my career as, as a historian. I think the Imperial War Museum and, and other big national institutions have, they they are still widely trusted, it's still widely trusted as, as reliable as, as trustworthy and, and as informative and there's two things I think the, the museum needs to, needs to do, needs to be aware of. One is to not let there be any way that that can be undermined, to be so careful to be accurate, but also to make, to be as open as possible to make yourself and, and your collections and the way that you tell those stories and tell those histories as accessible to as many people as possible. I think it's, it’s so important that people are able to, to get a, a reliable sense of the past today.”

James Bulgin: “Andy?”

Dr Andy Pearce: “I completely agree in terms of the, the critical role now. I think to me where we are museums need to be transparent, they need to be self-aware, they need to, to in this kind of post-truth age, they need to be able to, to make a contribution to a cultural conversation about the nature of knowledge. How do we know about the past? What do we know? What do we not know? And to have that kind of reflexivity which a visitor coming to an exhibition is, is then going to, to, to to know that they're not seeing the past in front of them, they're seeing a representation of it, but one which is based on research which has rigour, which is robust, all of those things. So, that degree of transparency. Having said that, I think there's also a call for museums to. Whilst they're being transparent and self-aware, they also need to be assured and they need to be self-confident and they need to not shy away from, from, from actually saying, “Look, this is what we do, this is who we are, this is how we’re representing this particular period of history in these ways.” And to, to offer that authoritative voice to those people who in this so-called post-truth age, are actually looking for someone who they can respect and actually learn from and be guided through, through something as complex and as something that's not straightforward. So, museums have a critical role.”

James Bulgin: “Thank you very much. That's, that's really interesting. Thank you so much. That seems like a, a really good note to, to conclude the panel discussion. Thank you so much for coming tonight.”

[Applause]