Jayne Josem

Role: MHM CEO & Lead Curator

Exhibition: Everybody Had a Name

How does the new core exhibition differ from the previous?

The new exhibition continues to be chronological – starting with life before and ending in Australia. The main difference is that we have expanded pre- and post-war life as powerful bookends to this difficult story. This provides visitors with

a greater understanding of who the Jewish people were before the Holocaust – exploring both their similarities to the wider community as well as their distinctiveness.

We decided to start and end with the image of one survivor: Tuvia Lipson z”l. Every week he would ask students “what does six million mean to you?” As part of his answer he would say “everybody had a name, nobody had a grave”. He taught the students to go from abstract numbers and think about the impact on one person. This exhibition starts with an image of 12 year old Tuvia from before the war,

and ends with a video of him taken not long before he passed away. As he looks out across the bay, the viewer is invited to consider the events from one person’s perspective: a survivor who lost his family but rebuilt a life far away in Melbourne.

Our ending provokes thoughts about the difficulty of re-establishing lives in the wake of the Holocaust, a challenge that is enduring. It celebrates the successes while acknowledging the trauma.

Sandy Saxon

Role: Senior Curator

Exhibition: Everybody Had a Name

What sets this exhibition apart from other Holocaust museums?

Walking through Everybody Had a Name will be an immersive experience for the visitor as they journey through the different themes of the exhibition. Running parallel to the main narrative – a history of the Holocaust – are personal stories of our Melbourne survivors told through their objects and testimonies. Through a multimedia overlay, visitors

can follow ‘in the footsteps’ of individual survivors as they traverse the exhibition, and gain insights into their personal experiences at each stage of the war. The exhibition also celebrates the tenacity and achievements of survivors who ultimately made Melbourne their home.

The exhibition facilitates reflection. Visitors are asked to consider questions about the nature of prejudice, what it means to be a bystander, and how understanding the events of the past can inform our actions today and into the future.

Like many Holocaust exhibitions, Everybody Had a Name is also a memorial to those who were murdered. However, its uniqueness lies in its specificity, presenting the experiences of the Melbourne survivor community closely connected to our museum.

Fiona Kelmann

Role: Assistant Curator

Exhibition: Everybody Had a Name

Can you please share an element of the exhibition that you connected with while working on the project?

Honestly, I connected with the entire exhibition. I know that everyone will feel the same, no matter what level of knowledge they have.

One significant new installation that really speaks to me is the “Desperate Letters” multimedia station. It features original, handwritten (some typed) correspondence, of three separate families that manage to leave Europe, by “the skin of their teeth”, prior to World War Two.

The letters, of a highly personal nature, between emigres, and their relatives trapped in Europe, tragically impart the powerlessness of European Jews against incremental persecutory policies of the Nazis. They beckon us to question the passivity of the world, and its callous, xenophobic refugee policies. These themes reverberate in our own world today. The sudden cessation of correspondence is haunting. A final explanatory paragraph in the museum voice details the fate of those who remained behind.

Arek Dybel

Role: Creative Director of Multimedia

Exhibition: Everybody Had a Name

How has technology been used throughout the exhibition to enhance the user experience?

My general approach to the use of technology in museum contexts is that technology should be invisible. The story and the relation to the object should always be the main focus. Within this exhibition, technology has been used as a tool to elevate engagement with the stories.

Our Czestochowa room explores the work of artist Perec Willenberg and his unique synagogue ceiling polychromy, which tells us of the rich culture of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust. Having only fragmented traces of survivors’ memories and limited visual materials from the period, the team was able to recreate an imagination of the ceiling as an artwork. Digital media technology allowed us to reveal the ceiling’s deep symbolic meaning and build a connection to the narrative which would not be possible otherwise.

A well-developed narrative and artistry focusing on survivor stories and related artefacts will always overshadow any technology. The benchmark of a good quality experience is when technology remains unnoticed and compliments the sole power of the MHM Collection, which is embedded into a good narrative context, and ultimately, stays forever in the visitor’s memory.

Jennifer Levitt-Maxwell

Role: Lead Curator and Creative Director

Exhibition: Hidden: Seven Children Saved

Why was it important to create interactive personal experiences within the exhibition?

When we designed Hidden, and we were thinking about transformative learning experiences, we started by placing the learner at the centre. Understanding that we all learn differently, we looked at how we can apply lots of different learning styles within the exhibit, whether it’s audio, visual, interactive or otherwise.

One of the major things that we looked at when developing a transformative learning experience, is linking back to people’s prior knowledge. For example, in the “pre-war” section of the exhibit, there is a photo of Holocaust survivor Sonia Kempler on her first day of school, standing next to her brother, Heini. We exhibited that photo, knowing that most students, and visitors, can relate to that relationship with a sibling or, the experience of their first day of school. Using these narratives in the exhibition, allows our visitors to make strong personal connections from the beginning, which then encourages empathy to build and supports positive action.

Lisa Phillips

Role: Curator and Education Specialist

Exhibition: Hidden: Seven Children Saved

What impact do you hope this exhibition will have on students?

With this interactive exhibition, we hope students will come away looking at the light in the Holocaust.

With such a difficult topic to communicate to younger audiences, we used our Learning Framework – developed and conceived by the MHM and finalised in partnership with the University of Melbourne – to explore the concept of choices, and how we can all make an impact in people’s lives.

The MHM Learning Framework brings together the lessons of the Holocaust, with key character strengths and ultimately, it engages our students and visitors to take action in their own lives.

Within the museum, we explore those people who made choices and helped those seven children – seven

survivors – to survive the Holocaust. We aim for students to come away with the knowledge that the choices they make can have a positive impact on other people’s lives. Empowering students with this message will provide them with the agency to know they can do good things in the world.