Featured Articles

A People's History Exiled
by Edward Rothstein
Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2019
Review of the renovated permanent exhibition at NYC's Jewish Museum.

A time to gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture
by Jason Lustig
Oxford University Press, 2021
Monograph that analyzes the importance of archives to modern Jewish life, as sources of history and anchors of memory.

Ambivalent engagement: relational connection and depthful dwelling in a site of conscience
by Amy Fisher Smith, Charles R. Sullivan, Erin K. Freeman and Alyssa Alonso
Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Volume 22, Issue 4, July 25, 2016
Article about how how museum audiences psychologically experience Holocaust-related exhibits.

American Holocaust museums and the mediations of English
by Stephanie Redekop
English Today, Volume 36, Issue 1, May 24, 2019
Article that considers how English translations of Survivor testimonies foreground particular interpretations.

Americanizations of Holocaust Memory and Museum Aesthetic Experience
by Karolina Krasuka
European Journal of American Studies, Volume 13, 2019
Article that discusses concepts of "Americanization" and compares the aesthetic experience at POLIN and USHMM.

Americans and the Holocaust: A Reader
by Daniel Greene and Edward Phillips (Ed.). Forward by Sara J. Bloomfield.
Rutgers University Press, 2021
Edited volume with 100+ primary sources about American responses to the Holocaust, compiled for USHMM exhibition.

An art therapy study of visitor reactions to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
by Donna J. Betts, Jordan S. Potash, Jessica J. Luke and Michelle Kelso
Museum Management and Curatorship, Volume 30, Issue 1, March 3, 2015
Article that suggests art therapy might provide an effective approach to increasing empathy among museum visitors.

An Auschwitz Exhibition Fails the Jews
by Edward Rothstein
Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2019
Review that considers how the exhibition "Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away." represents antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Are Holocaust Museums Unique?
by Paul Morrow
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Volume 79: Philosophy and Museums: Essays in the Philosophy of Museums, October 2016
Article that uses ontological, epistemic, and taxonomic frameworks to address debates about the ethical function of Holocaust museums.

Auschwitz Is Not a Metaphor
by Dara Horn
The Atlantic, June 6, 2019
Review of the exhibition "Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away." with a focus on contemporary antisemitism.

Auschwitz Museum turns visitors’ eyes to current events
by Shaun Walker
The Guardian, January 26, 2022
Interview with Piotr Cywiński about Holocaust education, governmental policy, and ideological uses of history in Poland.

Balancing the particular and the universal: examining the Holocaust in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
by Jeremy Maron and Clint Curle
Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Volume 24, Issue 4, May 20, 2018
Article detailing the development of the Holocaust exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Building after Auschwitz: Jewish Architecture and the Memory of the Holocaust
by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Yale University Press, 2011
Monograph that discusses Jewish architects since 1945 and the connection of their work to the legacy of the Holocaust.

Can the Jewish Museum be saved?
by Menachem Wecker
Mosaic, Special Issue: The Wreck of the Jewish Museum, May 28, 2019
Reply to the author's original 2019 essay and the responses by Freudenheim, Rothstein and McBee.

Canada's Struggle with Holocaust Memorialization: The War Museum Controversy, Ethnic Identity Politics, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
by Catherine D. Chatterley
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 29, Issue 2, August 5, 2015
Article with an overview of the history of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, with a focus on its controversial development.

Closed by coronavirus, Jewish museums consider an uncertain future online
by PJ Grisar
Forward, March 31, 2020
Article about the role of technology in making Jewish museums accessible, published early during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conflations of Memory: or, What They Saw at the Holocaust Museum after 9/11
by Michael Bernard-Donals
CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2005
Article about the conflation of the Holocaust with other unrelated events and catastrophes, with a focus on the USHMM.

Curating America's Painful Past: Memory, Museums, and the National Imagination
by Tim Gruenewald
University Press of Kansas, 2021
Monograph about how difficult histories are represented at national museums in Washington, with a chapter on USHMM.

Dark Tourism and Social Mobilization
by Joelle Soulard, William Stewart, Marcy Larson, and Eve Samson
Journal of Travel Research, Volume 62, Issue 4, July 13, 2022
Article about Holocaust museum audiences and social mobilization outcomes.

Digital interactivity in public memory institutions: the uses of new technologies in Holocaust museums
by Anna Reading
Media, Culture and Society, Volume 25, Issue 1, January 2003
Article about the use of interactive digital technologies at the Museum of Tolerance in LA.

Digital Memory in the Post-Witness Era: How Holocaust Museums Use Social Media as New Memory Ecologies
by Stefania Manca
Information, Volume 12, Issue 1, January 13, 2021
Article about how Holocaust museums use social media to engage audiences, and promote Holocaust awareness.

Ethical issues of social media in museums: a case study
by Amelia S. Wong
Museum Management and Curatorship, Volume 26, Issue 2, May 03, 2011
Article that considers the emerging professionalization of social media in museum work, and its limitations and opportunities.

Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence
by Amy Sodaro
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Monograph about how different communities confront past trauma, with a chapter on Holocaust memorialization in the US.

Exhibiting the Holocaust, Exhibiting the Self: Museum Tour Narratives and Post-Holocaust American Identity
by Zachary Albert
Museums and Social Issues, Volume 8, Issue 1-2, November 13, 2013
Article that explores American, Jewish and Jewish-American understandings of the Holocaust in museum displays.

Exploring tensions in Holocaust museums’ modes of commemoration and interaction on social media
by Stefania Manca, Marcello Passarelli and Martin Rehm
Technology in Society, Volume 68, January 14, 2022
Article about how museum audiences engage with Holocaust memory practices through digital technologies and social media.

Figures of Memory: The Rhetoric of Displacement at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
by Michael Bernard-Donals
Suny Press, 2016
Monograph that highlights how spatial design at USHMM directs audiences to particular forms of memory and memorialization.

Folding Memory: The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and the Commemoration of the Shoah
by Eran Neuman
The Journal of Holocaust Research, Volume 34, Issue 1, February 10, 2020
Article about Holocaust museums and architecture, with a focus on Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust
by Michael Bernard-Donals
Suny Press, January 2009
Monograph about the role of forgetfulness in understandings of the Holocaust, with references to museums and exhibitions.

From Memory to Action: Multisited Visitor Action at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
by Joy Sather-Wagstaff and Rebekah Sobel
Museums and Social Issues, Volume 7, Issue 2, November 20, 2013
Article that focuses on audience interaction and post-visit engagement at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Genocide and Relevance: Current Trends in United States Holocaust Museums
by Leah Angell Sievers
Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, Volume 30, Issue 3, December 20, 2016
Article that considers how US museums address modern genocide, while keeping a distinct emphasis on the Holocaust.

Holocaust Angst: The Federal Republic of Germany and American Holocaust Memory since the 1970s
by Jacob S. Eder
Oxford University Press, 2016
Monograph about how German organizations managed the legacies of the Holocaust on the international stage.

Holocaust education in transition from live to virtual survivor testimony: pedagogical and ethical dilemmas
by Alan S. Marcus, Rotem Maor, Ian M. McGregor, Gary Mills, Simone Schweber, Jeremy Stoddard and David Hicks
Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Volume 28, Issue 3, Special Issue: Understanding Holocaust... in the Digital Age, December 14, 2021
Article that contemplates the ethical dillemas in using Virtual Interactive Holocaust Survivor Testimony (VIHST) in place of live survivor testimony. Research was conducted in the UK but the technology is also used in the US.

Holocaust knowledge and Holocaust education experiences predict citizenship values among US adults
by Gerene K. Starratt, Ivana Fredotovic, Sashay Goodletty and Christopher Starratt
Journal of Moral Education, Volume 46, Issue 2, March 21, 2017
Article about the relationship between Holocaust knowledge and education, and citizenship values in US adults.

Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation
by Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich
Rutgers University Press, 2014
Monograph about how museums use varied aesthetic techniques to represent the Holocaust in different national contexts.

Holocaust museums and memorials have work cut out for them attracting non-Jews
by Menachem Wecker
Jewish News Syndicate, February 22, 2023
Article about the challenges of attracting non-Jewish audiences to Holocaust museums in the US.

Holocaust Museums and the Itch to Universalize
by Walter Reich
Mosaic, Special Issue: Identity and the Jewish Museum, February 15, 2016
Response to Rothstein's 2016 essay that focuses on the politics of US Jewish and Holocaust museums.

Holocaust museums, Holocaust memorial culture, and individuals: a Constructivist perspective
by Lacin Idil Oztig
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Volume 22, Issue 1, January 19, 2022
Article about how audiences actively contribute to the Holocaust memorial culture, with a case study at USHMM.

Holocaust Representations in History: An Introduction
by Daniel H. Magilow and Lisa Silverman
Bloomsbury, 2019
Edited volume with 18 case studies about how the Holocaust is depicted and memorialized, with chapters on museums.

Holocaust: An American Understanding
by Deborah E. Lipstadt
Rutgers University Press, 2016
Monograph about the evolution in Holocaust consciousness and about how Holocaust is used to interpret US history.

How Jewish Museums Reflect the Condition of Mainstream Jews
by Edward Rothstein
Mosaic, Special Issue: Identity and the Jewish Museum, February 22, 2016
Reply to the author's original 2016 essay and the responses by Gelernter, Reich and Appelbaum.

How Modern Museums Make Use of Jewish Culture
by Steven Fine
Mosaic, Special Issue: Visions of Medeival Jerusalem, February 20, 2017
Response to Rothstein's 2017 essay that traces the history of the display of Jewish art and culture in museums.

In Fitting Memory: The Art and Politics of Holocaust Memorials
by Sybil Milton and original photographs by Ira Nowinski
Wayne State University Press, 2018
Monograph that surveys Holocaust memorials and monuments, and explores the institutionalization of (national) public memory.

Interpreting American Jewish History at Museums and Historic Sites
by Avi Y. Decter
Rowman and Littlefield, 2016
Monograph that explores museum projects to interpret American Jewish life for general public audiences.

Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-Semitism Worse?
by Dara Horn
The Atlantic, April 3, 2023
Essay about the weaknesses of contemporary Holocaust education in schools and museums.

Jerusalem of (Fool's) Gold
by Robert Irwin
Mosaic, Special Issue: Visions of Medeival Jerusalem, February 13, 2017
Response to Rothstein’s 2017 essay with a focus on the historical sources used to inform the exhibition.

Jerusalem Syndrome at the Met
by Edward Rothstein
Mosaic, Special Issue: Visions of Medeival Jerusalem, February 26, 2017
Review that examines the central historical thesis of the Met's exhibition "Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven."
Mosaic also published responses from Robert Irwin, Maureen Mullarkey and Steven Fine.

Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America
by Jeffrey Shandler
NYU Press, 2009
Monograph about the impact of communications technologies on Jewish Americans, with references to museum displays.

Literalised vulnerability: Holocaust ashes in and beyond memorial sites and museums
by Zuzanna Dziuban
Human Remains and Violence, Volume 8, No. 2, October 2022
Article about the use of human remains in Holocaust museums and memorials around the world.

Making Difficult History Public: The Pedagogy of Remembering and Forgetting in Two Washington DC Museums
by Avner Segall
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Volume 36, Issue 1, February 20, 2014
Article about how USHMM and NMAI engage with and portray 'difficult histories.'

Memory Passages: Holocaust Memorials in the United States and Germany
by Natasha Goldman
Temple University Press, 2020
Monograph that explores how audiences spatially navigate Holocaust museums.

Museums unite to fight near record levels of antisemitism
by Tom Seymour
Art Newspaper, November 5, 2021
Article about the rise of antisemitism in Europe and the United States, and a 2021 symposium in New York.

‘My Holocaust experience was great!’: Entitlements for participation in museum media
by Chaim Noy
Discourse and Communication, Volume 10, Issue 3, February 8, 2016
Article that studies the uses and functions of visitor books in Holocaust museums.

Never Again: The Impact of Learning About the Holocaust on Civic Outcomes
by Daniel H. Bowen and Daniel Kisida
Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Volume 13, Issue 1, October 18, 2019
Article about how Holocaust education might provide opportunities for civic learning, with a case study including a school-sponsored trip to a Holocaust museum.

Not "Your" City—"Everyone's" City
by Edward Rothstein
Mosaic, Special Issue: Visions of Medeival Jerusalem, March 1, 2017
Reply to the author's original 2017 essay and the responses by Irwin, Fine and Mullarkey.

Performing witnessing: dramatic engagement, trauma and museum installations
by Erika Hughes
Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Volume 23, Issue 2, April 2018
Article that discusses interactive exhibits, and the possibilities of 'performative engagement' amongst museum audiences.

Photography and memory in Holocaust museums
by Rick Crownshaw
Mortality, Volume 12, Issue 2, 2007
Article about the uses of photographs at the USHMM, with a focus on methods of memorialization and witnessing.

Poetics of Memory: Aesthetics and Experience of Holocaust Remembrance in Museums
by Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich
Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, Volume 30, Issue 3, October 12, 2016
Article about how exhibition techniques and architecture reflect different countries' dominant Holocaust discourse.

Prejudiced, historical witness, and responsible: Collective memory and liminality in the Beit Hashoah museum of tolerance
by Theodore O Prosise
Communication Quarterly, Volume 51, Issue 3, 2003
Article about responses to Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in LA, with a focus on representational strategies.

Reframing Holocaust Testimony
by Noah Shenker
Indiana University Press, 2015
Monograph about how audiovisual testimonies of the Holocaust are mediated by the practices of museums and archives.

Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness
by Arlene Stein
Oxford University Press, 2014
Monograph about the rise of Holocaust consciousness in the US, from the perspective of Survivors and their descendants.

Rewriting History at the Met
by Maureen Mullarkey
Mosaic, Special Issue: Visions of Medeival Jerusalem, February 23, 2017
Response to Rothstein's 2017 essay that discusses the political implications of the exhibition's historical thesis.

Stance-taking and participation framework in museum commenting platforms: On subjects, objects, authors, and principals
by Chaim Noy and Michal Hamo
Language in Society, Volume 48 , Issue 2, February 22, 2019
Article that studies a visitor book at the Florida Holocaust Museum and analyzes the reponses left by audiences.

Synecdochic Memory at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
by Michael Bernard-Donals
Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English College English, 2012, Volume 74, Issue 5, 2012
Article about how USHMM uses metonymic objects to convey the scale of the Holocaust to museum audiences.

The archive of the fictitious: USHMM’s Daniel’s Story as educational memory
by Mallory Bubar
Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Volume 29, Issue 1, October 18, 2021
Article about the possibilities and limitations of USHMM exhibit that combined archival knowledge and fictional narrative.

The Dismantling of Jewish Identity
by Edward Rothstein
Mosaic, Special Issue: The Wreck of the Jewish Museum, May 20, 2019
Response to Wecker's 2019 essay that reiterates the failure of Jewish museums to engage with Judiasm or Jewish history and culture.

The Future of the Past: Digital Media in Holocaust Museums
by Adam Brown and Deb Waterhouse-Watson
Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Volume 20, Issue 3, June 3, 2015
Article about using digital media for the remembrance of the Holocaust in contemporary museum spaces.

The Holocaust and Jewish Identity in America: Memory, the Unique, and the Universal
by Shaul Magid
Jewish Social Studies, Volume 18, Issue 2, Winter 2012
Article about the centrality of the Holocaust to Jewish American identity, with reference to USHMM.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum: Sacred Secular Space
by Avril Alba
Springer, 2015
Monograph about the tensions between the secular and the sacred in Holocaust museums.

The Jewish Museum's Discomfort with Religion
by Tom L. Freudenheim
Mosaic, Special Issue: The Wreck of the Jewish Museum, May 13, 2019
Response to Wecker's 2019 essay that examines the representation of Jewish belief in contemporary museums.

The Problem with Jewish Museums
by Edward Rothstein
Mosaic, Special Issue: Identity and the Jewish Museum, February 1, 2016
Essay about the weaknesses of contemporary Jewish and Holocaust museums in the US.
Mosaic also published responses from David Gelernter, Walter Reich and Diana Muir Appelbaum.

The state of innovation at Jewish museums
by Michael S. Glickman
eJP, November 1, 2022
Essay outlining the need for innovation in Jewish museums, with examples from projects funded by the David Berg Foundation.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum as a Scene of Pedagogical Address
by Elizabeth Ellsworth
The Sites of Pedagogy, Volume 10, Issue 1/2, 2002
Article about the philosophical and pedagogical problems implicit in teaching about the Holocaust.

The United States and the Nazi Holocaust: Race, Refuge, and Remembrance
by Barry Trachtenberg
Bloomsbury, 2018
Monograph that provides a broad overview of the US and the Holocaust, with reference to museums in the final chapter.

The Witness as Object: Video Testimony in Memorial Museums
by Steffi de Jong
Berghahn, 2018
Monograph that considers the transformation of video Survivor testimonies into museum exhibits.

The Wreck of the Jewish Museum
by Menachem Wecker
Mosaic, Special Issue: The Wreck of the Jewish Museum, May 6, 2019
Review of NYC's Jewish Museum that highlights the limitations of universalism in museums about Jewish art, history and culture.
Mosaic also published responses from Tom L. Fredenheim, Edward Rothstein and Richard McBee.

There's Plenty of Significant Contemporary Jewish Art Hiding in Plain Sight
by Richard McBee
Mosaic, Special Issue: The Wreck of the Jewish Museum, May 24, 2019
Response to Wecker's 2019 essay that comments on the significance of the contemporary Jewish art scene.

Torah and Taboo: Containing Jewish Relics and Jewish Identity at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
by Oren Baruch Stier
Numen, Volume 57, Issue 3-4, June 2010
Article about debates over the treatment and display of selected sacred artifacts, with a focus on USHMM.

Trauma and the Memory of Politics
by Jenny Edkins
Cambridge University Press, 2003
Monograph about the aftermath of war or catastrophe, with multiple chapters related to Holocaust museums and memorials, in the US and Europe.

Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust
by Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt (Ed.)
University of Wisconsin Press, 2020
Edited volume to assist educators, with practical guides to using survivor testimonies, photographs, museums, etc.

Understanding Holocaust memory and education in the digital age: before and after Covid-19
by Victoria Grace Walden
Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Volume 28, Issue 3, Special Issue: Understanding Holocaust... in the Digital Age, December 14, 2021
Introductory article to a special issue of the journal, about how digital technologies inform memory and educational initiatives.

United States Holocaust Museums: Pathos, Possession, Patriotism
by Rob Baum
UTS ePress, Volume 18, Dec 31, 2011
Article about how US museums direct knowledge and memory of the Holocaust, with reference to race and Jewish identity.

US Holocaust Museums Are Updating Content and Context
by Adam Popescu
New York Times, October 8, 2021
Article about recent projects to modernize US Holocaust museums and preserve the stories of living Holocaust Survivors.

Virtual Holocaust Memory
by Matthew Boswell and Antony Rowland
Oxford University Press, 2023
Monograph that explores how interactive digital technologies are refashioning public memory of the Holocaust.

Visitor Experience at Holocaust Memorials and Museums
by Diana I. Popescu (Ed.)
Routledge, 2022
Edited volume with insights into audience responses to varied Holocaust museum exhibitions, memorials, and memory sites.

Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History
by Richard I. Cohen (Ed.)
Oxford University Press, 2012
Edited volume with essays about Jewish museums in the 20th century, with case studies in the US, Europe, and Israel.

What a 21st-Century Jewish Museum Should Look Like
by David Gelernter
Mosaic, Special Issue: Identity and the Jewish Museum, February 18, 2016
Response to Rothstein's 2016 essay that considers how museums might better depict Jewish belief, tradition and culture.

What Americans Known About the Holocaust
Collaborative research project led by Becka A. Alper
Pew Research Center, January 22, 2020
Research article with statistical data about Holocaust awareness and education in the US.

What Happened When a Conservative Jewish Group Invited DeSantis to Speak
by Liam Stack
New York Times, May 14, 2022
Article that overviews and contextualizes the Tikvah Fund/ Ron DeSantis/ MJH controversy in 2022.

Whose Museum Is It? Jewish Museums and Indigenous Theory
by Yaniv Feller
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 63, Issue 4, October 19, 2021
Article that considers Jewish museums alongside Indigenous museum theory, to discuss questions of "rhetorical sovereignty.

"Why Are There So Many Jewish Museums?
by Diana Muir Appelbaum
Mosaic, Special Issue: Identity and the Jewish Museum, February 9, 2016
Response to Rothstein's 2016 essay that notes the contemporary abundance of different types of Jewish museums.

Why Do Jewish Museums Matter? An International Perspective
by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Association of European Jewish Museums 2011 Conference, November 2011
Lecture and Q&A that discusses different aspects of the field, with commentary on and comparisons between North American and European contexts.