Exhibition Review: Fighting Antisemitism from Dreyfrus to Today
The Weiner Holocaust Library’s new exhibition, Fighting Antisemitism from Dreyfus to Today, reveals an enlightening display of never before seen documents and artefacts, many of which seem uncannily familiar to today’s divisive climate, writes Sophiya Sian.
The prophetic phrase “history repeats itself”, suggests we have little control over our collective fate, yet it is us who controls what goes in the history books, and what is left out. In a time where international conflict has reintroduced itself to the headlines of the everyday, how do we prevent history from fulfilling its cyclic prophecy? To this Dr Barbara Warnock, curator of the library’s exhibition, responded “We cannot know much about the present without knowing how much it is rooted in the past”, making the library’s current exhibition a brilliant place to begin.
Among the unassuming row of Russell Square’s terrace buildings, lives one of the world’s most renowned archives of the Holocaust and Nazi era. Walking into the exhibition space, its small size expands into a curation of struggle and perseverance over the last century and a half. From the Dreyfus Affair of 1894 to the conspiratorial tweets of 2014, the display exposes how hatred has evolved, and in some areas resolved, over the years. Platforming contemporary antisemitism just as much as its history, Warnock ensures visitors become directly connected with and implicated by its future.
Along with many students, I was taught much on the tragedies of the Holocaust and the rise of Hitler, but little on the darker and still powerful myths that fuel antisemitism. Staying informed means understanding the nuances of the problem, advised Warnock, rather than assuming you already know the full story. Antisemitism is particular in that it is rooted it in a paradox of power, she explained, one that portrays Jews as a separate race that is both inferior and tyrnannical. Among the many antimsemitic posters, pamphlets, and books were exhibits that revealed the covert powers that promoted these myths. I was told the bewildering story of ‘The Red Book’, a ledger kept by Captain Ramsay’s ‘Right Club’, who at the time of Oswold Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, created an exclusive group for fascist members of the British establishment a few months before the Second World War. Since MI5 infiltrated and arrested many of those involved, the Red Book’s location was unknown until practically appearing on the library’s doorstep. History is often clouded in dusty numbers and anonymous faces, so seeing its signatures and paper creases was a chillingly tangible experience.
Along with the persistent oppression, resistance is also showcased.
The timeline that wraps around the exhibition’s walls details lesser known stories, such as that of the 62 Group who fought against facist MP Colin Jordan, a fight recently dramatised by the BBC. Or, the motorcycle album of 1935 where one Jewish businessman, Fritz Fürstenberg, decided to photograph all the antisemitic signs he passed on his journey from Berlin to Amsterdam. Just a few steps from these yellowed artefacts of the 1900s are the shiny whites and blues of an anti-BNP campaign from 2009. The still fresh prints of the campaign handouts do not seem to belong under a glass museum case, and yet they do, as a current reincarnation of the aged battle.
Spanning Germany, Britain, and France the exhibition reveals the regurgitation of the same dangerous narratives. According to one of the displays, 50% of reported racist attacks in France are antisemitic, despite Jews making up only 1% of the French population. With the echo-chamber of algorithms and quick adrenaline rushes of social media, hatred appears to have found its permanent breeding place. However, Warnock was keen to point out that technology is a friend as well as foe.
One terror group decided to commerorate the evening prior to this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, by sharing photos of posters plastered around an unknown location, but with a disturbingly explicit antisemitic agenda. With the forensic capabilities of technology, the Community Security Trust (CST) determined the whereabouts of the posters through details as subtle as the shape of lamp posts and bike shelters; the location was Islington, not too far from the Wiener Library itself. A Twitter thread, fittingly, recounts this technological feat in the exhibition.
Historical archives and social media feeds in isolation, can convey major problems as too distant or too disparate to understand, let alone resolve. Though, when combined, as in this exhibition, they help to decode one another and reveal the larger themes at work. History may seem to repeat itself, in both its actions and in its attitudes, but by noticing these patterns, perhaps we will have less to contribute to the archives of our own destruction.
The exhibition is free admission and open until September 2022 at The Weiner Holocaust Library 29 Russell Square. Special Thanks to Dr Barbara Warnock for taking the time to be interviewed. Images courtesy of The Weiner Holocaust Library.