Exodus 1947 - how we label the past makes the past
When I was a teenager, one of my favorite movies was Exodus (1960) with Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint. I watched it again a few years ago and was appalled by the film's treatment of relations between Jews and Muslims in Palestine and the nascent state of Israel.
Today, I visited the National Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Amsterdam to see if there was anything on the Nazi's treatment of homosexuals. Nothing. The museum focused entirely on the lives of Dutch Jews.
But a temporary exhibition titled Exodus 1947 focused on "illegal" Jewish migration to Palestine - including the British deportation and internment of emigrants who had only recently been released from camps and the ways in which Zionist activists worked around the British regulations.
I had expected some interrogation of the term "illegal" because it's such a point of contention when referring to immigrants who come to the US now, but there was none. Nevertheless, the exhibition was fascinating, and it did acknowledge that the creation of a Jewish state was only the beginning of decades of struggles with the land's previous inhabitants.
I was also fascinated by the use of this photograph:
This caption describes the young people as rebellious: "Inside the prison camp some of the younger refugees work off their anger in a folk dance. They live 80 to a small Nissen hut and sleep on burlap-covered straw mattresses." However, the label by the same photo in another publication offered a positive interpretation: "Seemingly in good health and bounding spirits: Jewish illegal immigrants dancing a national dance in the sunshine outside a Nissen hut in the Poppendorf camp."
Another example of the importance of labels and interpretive texts.
Today, I visited the National Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Amsterdam to see if there was anything on the Nazi's treatment of homosexuals. Nothing. The museum focused entirely on the lives of Dutch Jews.
But a temporary exhibition titled Exodus 1947 focused on "illegal" Jewish migration to Palestine - including the British deportation and internment of emigrants who had only recently been released from camps and the ways in which Zionist activists worked around the British regulations.
I had expected some interrogation of the term "illegal" because it's such a point of contention when referring to immigrants who come to the US now, but there was none. Nevertheless, the exhibition was fascinating, and it did acknowledge that the creation of a Jewish state was only the beginning of decades of struggles with the land's previous inhabitants.
I was also fascinated by the use of this photograph:
This caption describes the young people as rebellious: "Inside the prison camp some of the younger refugees work off their anger in a folk dance. They live 80 to a small Nissen hut and sleep on burlap-covered straw mattresses." However, the label by the same photo in another publication offered a positive interpretation: "Seemingly in good health and bounding spirits: Jewish illegal immigrants dancing a national dance in the sunshine outside a Nissen hut in the Poppendorf camp."
Another example of the importance of labels and interpretive texts.
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