Sara BLOOMFIELD, director of one of the world’s best known museums — the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington — has recently visited Ukraine. Since the museum’s opening in 1993 it has been attended by over 30 million people 90 percent of which were non-Jews. The Holocaust Memorial Museum is one of many memorials that opened after the World War II genocide.
Today nearly all schoolchildren know about the Holocaust, while anti-Semitism has been condemned across the world. This is a result of Jews’ consolidated position and their joint struggle for their rights. The Jewish community is one of the largest and strongest in the world. The Jewish issue, the history of this people, and its situation today will remain on the world agenda for many more years, especially if we consider that anti-Semitism has not been overcome yet.
Apart from Kyiv, on business trip Bloomfield was in Kamianets-Podilsky, Lviv, and Chernivtsi. She gave an interview to The Day before she left Kyiv to visit these cities.
Ms. Bloomfield, what is the purpose of your visit to Ukraine?
“My visit to Ukraine has several objectives. I am here for the first time, although I am sure that Ukraine is an extremely important country, not only in terms of geopolitics and strategy, but in terms of the history of the Holocaust. I want to learn more about the Ukrainian museums, because we have already established connections with them.
“However, my main task is to study the possibility for a group of our museum’s public activists and volunteers to come to Ukraine in late 2010. This trip is important for us. American Jews are very interested in Ukraine: as I have already said, it is an important country both in European history and present day, and it has a strong Jewish community.”
Ukrainian museums must be also interested in your experience, for the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington is one of the best known memorial museums in the world. What has helped create such a special aura around it?
“Many people wonder: Why was the Museum of the Holocaust established in Washington, the US capital when the Holocaust took place in Europe? Our Museum was created with an aim to bring the lessons of World War II to the attention of the entire world and prevent any similar tragedy from happening in the future. Our mission is to help people counteract hatred and support human dignity in all the corners of the world via the study of history. Although no Holocaust-scale tragedy has since happened in the history of humankind since, we still see terrible things taking place in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur.
“Why is our museum so popular? The exposition was constructed in such a way that the visitors would not perceive it as a usual museum exhibit. … People feel that all this could also happen to them.
“As they go though the museum rooms, visitors see that different people played different roles in the Holocaust. Some of them were the perpetrators of the crime, others fell victim to it, but the majority of them were simply observing from the side. And only a small fraction of people risked their own lives in order to save the victims.
“Of course, we would like the visitors to evaluate the experience of those horrible days, imagine being there, and choose the role of saviors. I think that our museum is so popular to a large extent because it is a museum of humanism rather than a museum of the Holocaust.”
Ukrainians have just started out on the way of bring the truth of the Holodomor to the world. Jews have done this regarding the Holocaust. Despite of all the differences between our situations, what would you recommend to Ukrainians?
“Ukraine is a very young state. Not so long ago you could not even think about speaking out about your difficult history. The Holocaust ended in 1945, and our museum opened in 1993. We had studied the history of the Holocaust for several decades, conducted debates in the academic circles, and wrote scholarly works. I am not an expert in the history of the Soviet period, but I understand that Ukrainians have not had enough time for deep and comprehensive research into this problem. You have just started bringing to the community the facts that for some people are hard to perceive psychologically.
“The Holocaust tragedy has absorbed so much pain, suffering, destruction, and so many deaths that every time we are very careful not to be too sentimental while presenting this topic. We refer only to the documented facts that are based only on the primary source. We put it this way: let the facts speak for themselves. The history of genocide is so emotionally overpowering that it does not require any additional exaggeration or epithets. You probably know that there are many people who are eager to understate the tragedy of the Holocaust. And this requires even more precision mandatory evidence. Our museum contains no exhibit that cannot be checked using a primary source.”
Shortly after becoming the president of independent Ukraine in 1991, Leonid Kravchuk apologized in Babyn Yar to the Jews on behalf of all Ukrainian people for thousands of victims who were killed on the Ukrainian territory, sometimes by Ukrainians. In spite of this, the case of 89-year-old John Demjanjuk accused of cruel violence against Jews in concentration camps has been reopened. Who is interested in stirring up the question of personal responsibility for the Nazi regime again?
“This case was reopened by the US Ministry of Justice, because Demjanjuk was illegally staying on the US territory. As I understand it, he lied while submitting his personal data. But Germany is dealing with his case.”
In your opinion, what do Germans want to show with this case?
“I think that Germans are very scrupulous in understanding the reasons and their role in the Holocaust. I cannot speak for them and for what is guiding them in this concrete case, but they are very thoroughly educating their population on the Holocaust issues.”
