Pseudo-Intellectual Babble at the Jewish Museum (Op-ed)

Die Presse, January 6, 2023

German original: https://www.diepresse.com/6235212/geschwurbel-im-juedischen-museum

Exhibition review. One can argue about tastelessness, but there are limits.

When an exhibition at the Jewish Museum Vienna addresses "100 Misconceptions About and Among Jews," one is pleased and hopes that something will be made clear. But that is difficult when you are constantly getting bumped in the head and made dizzy. For example, there is this exhibition poster. On it, you see a skinhead in a black leather bomber jacket decorated with Nazi symbols, with "Judenfreund" written on it. Really now? What is being insinuated there? Friends of Jews are Nazis? Nazis are friends of Jews? Is that generally the case, or is that a curious exception? And is this now the misunderstanding or already its correction?

Hitler as a fireplace rug

That is exactly what is so awful about this exhibition concept. One never knows exactly where the misunderstanding ends and the understanding begins. What is an isolated case, what is typical? There are useful sections that dispose of stereotypes, such as those about the Jewish mama, Klezmer music, or the Mossad. Commendably, the Bible verse "an eye for an eye," regularly abused by anti-Semites and ignoramuses, is described for what it is, not a revenge slogan but a humane, progressive principle of compensation. Unfortunately, this is coupled with an exhibit that turns everything in its head: Hitler as a fireplace rug. Are Jews barbaric hunters and retaliators after all? Also ambiguous is the debunking of Palais Eskeles as a "legend." The home of the museum, one learns, is not a Jewish palace at all. Well, I'll be! Then it must be a legend that Jewish palaces have helped shape Vienna's architectural history. But what about the palaces Ephrussi, Tedesco, Lieben-Auspitz, Wertheim, Epstein, Königswarter, Gutmann?

The fact that the old Jewish palaces are being pummeled is not so bad. Worse is how, in passing, the exhibit scuffs up the not-so-old Jewish state. One text uses the phrase "Zionist expansionist policy," not as a quotation, but as if it were part of common knowledge. This terminology fits in at a rally of the anti-Jewish terror group Hamas in Gaza, not at a Jewish museum in Vienna. The expression is factually incorrect: there has never been a unified Zionist policy, especially on territorial issues, let alone an "expansionist policy." Since 1979, Israel has withdrawn from the Sinai, from large parts of the West Bank, from southern Lebanon, from Gaza. Is this "expansionist policy"?

The nonsense has a system. Elsewhere, one stumbles upon "Israeli war and discrimination policies" or the accusation that the respected Jerusalem Holocaust research site Jad Vashem is engaged in "propaganda for the state's Palestinian policy." Nor does the museum shy away from invoking a notorious Israel-baiter like Norman Finkelstein, who blathers on about the "bloodlust of Israeli society" in lectures.

The exhibition has gone completely astray in its approach to the Holocaust. In a video performance, for example, one sees a Jewish family dancing in front of the gate to the Auschwitz mass murder camp. The fact that the survivor Adolek Kohn copes with his nightmares in this way is to be respected. But in the world there are about 15 million Jews, five danced in Auschwitz. The museum is supposed to inform people who know little or nothing about Judaism. What do they learn? One is allowed to dance in Auschwitz! Hooray, then it can't have been so bad, and there's no need to make such a fuss about it. The same spirit is conveyed by the photo montage in which a self-staging "artist" is waving a Diet Coke can around in front of emaciated figures on concentration camp beds in Buchenwald. One can argue about taste(lessness), but there are limits. What could have convinced the exhibition organizers that this almost 30-year-old British "work of art" had to be unearthed and presented to the Viennese public? For many Jews, such a thing is hurtful, even unbearable. Survivors and direct relatives of the murder victims are still among us. In the museum, of course, one knows this, but one has other priorities.

It is not an art museum

The concepts that are repeatedly, almost obsessively, linked to the Holocaust here are "instrumentalization," "marketing," "commercialization." Those who are not familiar with the subject must get the impression that the Shoah was the invention of a Jewish advertising industry. Misunderstandings are not cleared up, but spread. To a large extent, this is due to works of art. Thus, one can make excuses about artistic freedom or about the fact that, as it says in the catalog, "there is no 'right' or 'wrong,' but that it depends on the perspective". But a Jewish museum is not an art museum. Jewish museums are supposed to, again quoting from the catalog, "educate, train the eye, and stimulate thought." This exhibition rambles, distorts and confuses.

The author

Ben Segenreich (born 1952 in Vienna) is an author, journalist, and Middle East expert. He emigrated to Israel in 1983. He worked there as an ORF correspondent from 1990 to 2018. He has made contributions to numerous media in German-speaking countries.