Exhibition Review: ‘Death Marches: Evidence and Memory’ at Wiener Holocaust Library

The Wiener Holocaust Library’s latest exhibition, ‘Death Marches: Evidence and Memory’, sheds light on the final chapter of the Nazi genocide, complicating the notion of liberation.

The march from Helmbrechts, beginning on 13 April 1945. Copyright Kate Pettitt, Bivouac Limited

The Wiener Holocaust Library is the oldest institution in the world devoted to the study of the Holocaust, and is situated in Russell Square, only a stone’s throw away from the main UCL campus. The Library’s current exhibition, ‘Death Marches: Evidence and Memory’, was originally meant to open last year to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, however, was postponed due to Covid-19. Curated by Christine Schmidt and Dan Stone, the exhibition focuses on the “chaotic and brutal evacuations” that took place towards the end of the Second World War, when the Nazis retreated from the advance of Allied forces. As with the Library’s previous exhibitions, such as “Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust” and “Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti”, its latest exhibition is devoted to an aspect of the Holocaust that is too often overlooked.

Despite the limited exhibition space available in the Library, Schmidt and Stone have curated an exhibition that provides impressive detail, informing visitors about individual figures, such as Eugene Black, a Jewish teenager who was a forced labourer and camp survivor, whilst communicating the complexity and sheer volume of information about the marches that cannot all be displayed. Their addition of QR codes scattered around the exhibition is an ingenious way of adding content without taking up space. This layered multimedia element of the exhibition aids the digestibility of the exhibition’s content. It does not hinder one’s experience and understanding of the exhibition, but instead augments and extends it, allowing visitors to seek out additional information about stories that strike them as particularly interesting, without overwhelming visitors with content.

Much of the exhibition takes a thematic approach, and is divided under headings such as ‘Mapping the Death Marches’ and ‘Research and Remembrance’. The thematic categorisation is engaging, and creates an opportunity for interesting reflections across decades. For example, the section on remembrance includes information on the French survivors of the Flossenbürg-Cham death march, who retraced the route of the march in 1991 and produced a booklet to commemorate their journey, alongside the research of scholars like Erik Steiner, who mapped a march route using a piece of string — a striking example of how emotional geographies can be mapped. As well as this layout provoking thought, it has the effect of resisting hierarchies of remembrance. By placing survivors’ experiences of commemoration alongside academic scholarship, the curators are encouraging visitors to equally value all acts of emotional and intellectual remembrance. The thematic approach is additionally a practical choice in these socially-distanced times; co-curator, Schmidt, explained that, whilst the exhibition has an ideal starting point, if social distancing requires a visitor to jump between sections, their experience and understanding of the marches will not be compromised.

When discussing the exhibition with Schmidt, she outlined two main aims for the exhibition. The first is to “complicate the notion of liberation”, and the second is to help visitors understand “how we know what we know”. Both aims are certainly executed in the Library’s exhibition. Liberation of the concentration camps is often thought of as occurring on a single day, a sudden freedom. However, the exhibition emphasises the gruelling and complex journey from persecution to liberation, and the brutality of the marches. The exhibition places much emphasis on evidence, informing visitors about how we know what we do about the death marches. The exhibition utilises a range of different sources including forensic evidence and the investigations of the International Tracing Service, photographs from archives, and survivors’ accounts and testimonies. The exhibition gives prominence to survivors’ voices, challenging the myth of their silence post-liberation.

Schmidt and Stone have curated an incredibly self-aware exhibition. As opposed to feigning objectivity, the exhibition reminds visitors of curatorial intentions and the curatorial voice. It encourages visitors to not only consider what is being presented, but also how information is being presented. For example, Schmidt and Stone make space for visitors’ views in the exhibition space, allowing visitors to provide digital feedback on their curatorial choices, in particular, their use of “atrocity photographs”. When talking to Schmidt about the use of “atrocity photos”, she acknowledged the ethical debate about whether (and how) they should be used, referring to Susan Sontag’s argument that using them and looking at them is re-victimising those depicted. Schmidt, however, explained the importance of using “atrocity photos” thoughtfully. The exhibition uses a limited number of atrocity photographs to demonstrate the physical state of victims, and they are typically placed within glass cases, out of direct vision. The curators’ active consideration of this ethical debate helps to make the exhibition one that resists stasis and passive consumption — it spurs thought continually.

The exhibition also includes striking maps that visually depict the routes of several death marches. These maps are incredibly useful when attempting to understand the length and scale of the marches. However, the exhibition highlights the shortcomings of attempting “to impose cartographic order” on such disordered and complicated routes. Acknowledging the difficulties of representing such a loaded topic is something the exhibition curators do not shy away from. When being guided through the exhibition by Schmidt, I was struck by a particular illustration of a cemetery in Hannover-Harenberg which was coloured pink and furnished with details, such as a stalk and chimneys. Schmidt talked me through the curatorial choice to resist reading into the strangeness of this illustration, reflecting on how much a curator should put their own voice in captions and how much they should interpret. This is yet another example of how the exhibition speaks to the issue of writing and analysing history more widely.

Part of the geo-visualisation by Erik Steiner. Reprinted with permission from Geographies of the Holocaust, Knowles, Cole, Giordano (eds), Indiana University Press, 2014

ITS Digital Archive, WHL 101101338

“Death Marches: Evidence and Memory” is an incredibly insightful and thought-provoking exhibition that, as well as informing visitors about “mobile concentration camps”, asks wider questions about how history is written and displayed. For its inclusion of the poignant stories of victims, plethora of artefacts on display, and striking visual representations of the marches, the Weiner Holocaust Library’s latest exhibition is not one to be missed.

The Library is open to the public Tuesday-Friday from 10am-5pm, and (free!) tickets to visit the exhibition can be booked here.