A Jewish Museum Is Not a Cure for Anti-Semitism (Opinion)
Die Presse, January 11, 2023
German original: https://www.diepresse.com/6237098/ein-juedisches-museum-ist-keine-heilanstalt-gegen-antisemitismus
Why context matters and anti-Semitism does not disappear when you close an exhibit. A response to Ben Segenreich's critique.
So, an exhibition about misunderstanding leads to misunderstanding. We are talking about the current exhibit at the Jewish Museum Vienna, "100 Misunderstandings About and Among Jews." One focus is on philosemitism, i.e. positively exaggerated stereotypes about Jews. The Jewish genius, the romance of the shtetl, the Jewish sense of family. In addition, other sensitive topics are taken up, including Holocaust remembrance and dealings with the state of Israel.
The exhibition "rambles, distorts and confuses," wrote author and journalist Ben Segenreich in a "Presse" guest commentary on January 7. On Monday, publicist Paul Lendvai backed him up in a letter to the editor: "I would even close the exhibition immediately, because - as I have seen myself - it tends to inspire mocking remarks and laughter from schoolchildren."
Why such drastic reactions? Segenreich thinks the museum has "lost its way" in its approach to the Holocaust. One of his criticisms: a video performance showing a Holocaust survivor and his descendants dancing in former concentration camps. People who knew nothing or little about Judaism would thus learn that it was permissible to dance in Auschwitz, Segenreich writes. Whoever understands the video in this way must want to misunderstand it. In the museum it is placed in such a way that the critical voices cannot be overlooked: They stand large and prominent right next to the projection. The video, like other content that might offend survivors and their loved ones, is embedded in ample context. As is expected of a well-curated museum.
In places, Segenreich's commentary is not an exhibition critique but a catalog critique. The longtime ORF Middle East correspondent criticizes a text that uses the phrase "Zionist expansionist policy," and not as a quote. Segenreich knowledgeably cites why the term is wrong. "In passing" the Jewish state is scuffed up. Only: this problematic formulation was removed from the object description right after the exhibition began in November and can now only be read in the catalog. A small but important difference. One wants to avoid misunderstandings, after all.
"Elsewhere, one stumbles upon 'Israeli war and discrimination policies' or the accusation that the prestigious Jerusalem Holocaust research site Yad Vashem is engaged in 'propaganda for state Palestinian policies,'" Segenreich writes. One never stumbled upon these formulations on site, but only in catalog texts. Segenreich also fails to provide the full context, namely that the accusation is clearly identified in the text as the opinion of the artist, not the museum. This is how misunderstandings arise.
The exhibition - the first by Barbara Staudinger, who took up her directorship in July - is bold and humorous, but in places the information remains somewhat superficial.
But the Jewish Museum in Vienna does not have it easy: On the one hand, it has to assume that many visitors are not Jewish themselves; on the other hand, it is supposed to be a place where the Jewish community can find itself. It should bring the majority closer to a minority and at the same time depict the plurality within this minority. It wants to present a history of relations that is marked by discrimination and persecution, but not dominated by the narrative of the perpetrators. It must also, like any museum, deal with laughing students. And it must do so in a society that still has an anti-Semitism problem.
Another misunderstanding: a Jewish museum is not a cure-all for anti-Semitism. But anti-Semitism also doesn't disappear when you close the exhibition.
E-mails an:debatte@diepresse.com