ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the agency of leading Holocaust memorial institutions faced with an ongoing challenge to turn memory into action in the spaces they inhabit, and for the audiences they wish to mobilise. It analyses the language used to construct activist discourses in mission statements, and provides to distil some prevalent practices of activism as reflected in educational and commemoration activities and reflect more broadly on the performativity of such practices. The chapter considers how several Holocaust memorial institutions in the USA, the UK and Israel utilise the language of activism in connection to their publics. Holocaust museums form part of a broad network of museums of ‘difficult knowledge’, some of which have joined the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. The activism discourse may, in this way, serve to further strengthen the position of the museum as a world leader in education, research and genocide prevention—entrusted by the public to carry out the activist work in their name.
