Liz Shevchenko
Director of the Coalition Office (New York, USA)
Tel. + 1 212 431 0233
Email: coalition tenement.org
In 1999 representatives of nine of the latest history platforms – the District 6 Museum (South-Africa), the GULAG museum (Russia), the Liberation War Museum (Bangladesh), the Near East Museum (USA), Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves, Senegal), National Park (USA), Memoria Abierta (Argentina), the Terezin Memorial (Czech Republic) and the Corrective Labour Camp (Great-Britain) – united their efforts with regard to the following declaration:
“We all believe that it is the obligation of historic sites to assist the public in drawing connections between the history of our sites and their contemporary implications. We view stimulating dialogue on pressing social issues and promoting humanitarism and democratic values as a primary function.”
We feel constrained to cooperate in order to develop effective strategies for the activation of our memorial sites, making them centres of dialogue of contemporary problems. It is our aim to basically reorganize history museums from places of passive learning into places of active contacts with the public. We aspire to using history, everything that happened around, no matter whether it was a genocide, a violation of civil rights or the triumph of democracy – as background for our dialogue about where and in which way similar problems are present nowadays and what we might be able to do, in order to update them. To be able to realize all our plans we cooperate with leading human rights’ organizations using the force of their local memorial places to inspire the citizens to take an active part in the present fight for truth and a just judicial system.
In our coalition many museums are involved in the memorization of catastrophes, which happened due to human failure, human guilt – catastrophes which resulted in the mass loss of human life and the destruction of cultural heritage. Such events include wars, genocide, dictatorship, slavery, colonialism, apartheid policy, exploitation and other forms of using force,implementing discremination and practice racism.
The GULAG Museum in Perm-36 in Siberia is Stalin’s only labour camp in Russia, which will be kept as a historic object. As a center of learning about the GULAG system. the Museum realizes discussions among visitors, makes excursions with former guards and prisoners and organizes international conferences on problems with regard to human rights, whereby it calls on tacticians and advocates to use the history of the GULAG, in order to imagine the future democracy in Russia. The Liberation War Museum, Muktijuddha Jadughar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, preserves the places of murder and other sites connected to the genocide committed during the Liberation War in 1971 and organizes trips under the motto “Mobile museum” in memory of more than 3 millions of killed Bangladeshi, 200 000 of raped women and 10 millions of people, who were deported before the foundation of a democratic national state in December of the same year. The Terezin Memorial is situated in the Small Fortress in a Bohemian town in the Czech Republic, exactly in the place where the Gestapo kept imprisoned unwilling citizens, who had dared to raise their voices against the Nazi regime, and turned the garrison town into a Jewish ghetto and train station with tracks leading directly into the prisons and concentration camps. From 140 000 men, women and children, who passed through Terezin, less than 4 000 survived. The District 6 Museum in South-Africa revives the history, working life und cultural heritage of people who suffered from racism in the surrounding districts, which were all destroyed before 1966 in order to give way for the development of “the Whites only”. The House of Slavery on Goree Island in Senegal, one of the World Heritage Sites, UNESCO) since 1978, stresses the fight and the efforts of the Africans over a period of 100 years of slave trade (15th to 19th century), when the storeromms of the present museum served as prison cells for slaves, who were bought and sold and then sent from the Goree harbour over the sea to Europe and, particularly, the America.
The coalition provides member sites with direct funding for civic engagement programs. It organizes learning exchanges, including seminars and symposia, makes available reference books and organizes consultations of other members of the coalition; it conducts strategic advocacy for sites and the Sites of Conscience movement. Our multilingual website (English, French, German, Spanish and Russian), www.sitesofconscience.org, supports the sites of each of the members of the coalition of our museums. Our first international conference under the motto “Hands on District N° 6: the landscape of postcolonial rememberance” (25 – 29 May in Capetown) is preparing its realization. We are impatiently waiting for the publication of its results in the near future.
Museum complex of History and Culture, Krasnoyarsk. Messenger N° 10. Methodic seminar for researchers working on the issue of “Political repressions in the USSR”. October 2004, Krasnoyarsk 2005.