Museums and the memory of genocide

Memorial museums are a key mechanism for societies attempting to confront and come to terms with genocide and other atrocities. As both memorials and museums, they combine the educative and narrative functions of history with the affect of memory to convey lessons about the past that will ethically transform their visitors and societies to work to prevent future violence. The roots of memorial museums can be traced to Holocaust commemoration, but in recent decades they have been used around the globe to mobilize the memory of past violence to work toward a more peaceful and democratic future. Yet memorial museums are also wielded as political tools, meaning their messages of “never again” are often diluted or compromised for the sake of political expediency. This chapter examines the promise of memorial museums as tools for violence prevention and the promotion of democratic culture, as well as the constraints that they face as political and politicized institutions.