ABSTRACT
In 2010, the Jewish Holocaust Centre (JHC) in Melbourne unveiled its new permanent exhibition, replacing one that had remained, mostly unchanged, for the past twenty years since a major redevelopment in 1990. The exhibition redevelopment in 2010 was, in part, a manifestation of that anxiety, with the urgency to incorporate survivor video-testimony increasing as the survivors aged and their memories faded. One way of understanding this power is through the work on affect and memory in Holocaust museums by such authors as Andrea Witcomb and Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, who build on Benjamin's notion of 'aura', the authentic presence, which Benjamin argues withers in the age of mechanical reproduction'. Arising from a number of disciplines, including human geography, anthropology, tourism studies, cultural studies, and sociology, this work has foregrounded the politics of the past in the present and the way that difficult histories are represented, understood, and performed at such sites.
