‘It is not enough to remember the Holocaust – we need to be activists too’

Marc Cave, director of the National Holocaust Museum (left) with Henry Grunwald, outgoing chair (Photo: Gaby Wine)[Missing Credit]

He said the aim of the museum was for “people to leave here – whether it’s from an exhibition or a learning programme – one per cent less certain of their dogma, because the haters think they know everything…[ They think]: ‘I saw it on Instagram, well it must be true.’…Everything should be questioned because little of it is necessarily true.”

Since becoming director of the museum in 2019, Cave has revolutionised Holocaust education with initiatives such as the Forever Project, where, using AI-driven conversational technology, visitors are able to speak to a Holocaust survivor. Prior to that, he was part of a duo behind Edek, an award-winning film, which used hip hop to tell the story of Holocaust survivor Janine Webber, and since October 7, Cave has put on a hard-hitting pop-up exhibitions, one of which explored the plurality of being both Jewish and British, and another, anti-Jewish pogroms over the past 2,000 years.

Describing October 7 and the ensuing antisemitism as “merely the latest iteration” of Jew-hate, Cave said: “This has been building up, just like the Holocaust did for a long time. So, every time there is something bad, such as Covid –  if people want to blame Covid on being the invention of somebody, guess who gets the blame?”

[Missing Credit]Holocaust survivors lighting candles on the 30th anniversary of the National Holocaust Museum

While he said he felt “anxious” about the current “lack of discourse in the UK”, Cave paid tribute to “friends of the Jewish community”, namely James and Stephen Smith, the two brothers who founded the museum with their father Eddie and their late mother Marina, and the predominantly non-Jewish staff at the museum - “people who aren’t just dedicated and passionate but are really very good at what they do”.

Guests at the event were able walk round the museum’s The Journey exhibition, which recently underwent a £2m upgrade and expansion. It offers an immersive experience in which vistors see Nazi persecution through the eyes of a young boy, Leo, who escaped Berlin to the UK on the Kindertransport.

Using authentic artefacts, the museum has recreated a typical dining room of a Jewish family in Berlin, with the table laid out for Shabbat, as well as a classroom in Nazi Germany and a street where Jewish-owned businesses, including Leo’s father’s tailor’s shop, were attacked on Kristallnacht.

The Journey exhibition at the National Holocaust Museum (Photo: Trioto Photography)[Missing Credit]

“The exhibition was originally designed for young visitors, but we actually find that it works for everyone,” said Maiken Umbach, a professor of modern history at Nottingham University, who co-curated the display with the museum’s curator, Dr Claudia Reese.

“It no longer makes sense to have information-only exhibitions,” said Umbach. “The point is to create engagement, and this approach reaches people through both their hearts and their minds.”

Cave said: “The Journey is now bigger and better equipped than ever to stimulate critical thinking about the ‘othering’ process in the build-up to the Holocaust.

"When we understand what it takes for a child to have to flee for their life, away from everything they know and love, it might also make us think harder about how we welcome and integrate refugees like Leo into our country. The Journey poses this thorny question in a creative and immersive way for people of all ages.”

The Journey exhibition at the National Holocaust Museum (Photo: Trioto Photography)[Missing Credit]

The Journey forms part of a £5m site-wide project to renovate the museum, with principal funding from the Pears Foundation, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England.

Sunday also saw the museum’s chair, Henry Grunwald OBE KC, step down from his role. He became involved with the museum in 2009 after learning about his father’s family, most of whom were murdered in the Holocaust.

In 1962, at his bar mitzvah, Grunwald met a relative who had survived and was reunited with Grunwald’s father. “She was here for two weeks, and I don’t think there was a dry eye among any of my family,” he said.

Grunwald will become chair emeritus of the museum, and he pledged: “As long as I have a connection with [the museum], I will do my bit in making sure that it continues to be the fantastic place that it is.”