The Canadian Museum for Human Rights: The ‘uniqueness of the Holocaust’ and the question of genocide
License
Cadmus Permanent Link
Full-text via DOI
ISBN
ISSN
1462-3528; 1469-9494
Issue Date
Type of Publication
Keyword(s)
LC Subject Heading
Other Topic(s)
EUI Research Cluster(s)
Initial version
Published version
Succeeding version
Preceding version
Published version part
Earlier different version
Initial format
Author(s)
Citation
Journal of Genocide Research, 2012, 14, 2, 215-238
Cite
MOSES, A. Dirk, The Canadian Museum for Human Rights: The ‘uniqueness of the Holocaust’ and the question of genocide, Journal of Genocide Research, 2012, 14, 2, 215-238 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/25275
Abstract
This article analyzes the debate about the controversial Canadian Museum for Human Rights by reconstructing the efforts to establish a government-sponsored Holocaust museum from the late 1990s. This history reveals that the controversy inheres in part in the conflation of the rival imperatives to promote atrocity memorialization on the one hand, above all of the Holocaust, and human rights education/activism on the other. In multicultural Canada, memory regimes, which utilize the egalitarian concepts of genocide or crimes against humanity to emphasize the suffering of all, also vie for official validation with the Holocaust uniqueness agenda. The article concludes that the museum is caught on the horns of a dilemma of its own making: the more it emphasizes commemoration, the greater the competition among migrant group leaders for exhibition space dedicated to ‘their’ experience. The more that human rights are emphasized, the less the interest from the private donors whose generosity is essential to museum’s financial viability.
Table of Contents
Additional Information
Version of record first published: 10 May 2012.