As two new interns came on in the fall, I had the opportunity to train the new interns which I enjoyed. The other interns looked to me if Michlean wasn’t present if they needed help answering reference questions. Michlean also relied upon me to speak to new volunteers and interns for the spring semester about what the internship entails. I appreciated being relied upon to fill this function. I had several training opportunities, including learning about the care and handling of archival materials and training in the new archives catalog, KeMu. Learning about care and conservations of materials will help me with possible career endeavors as an archivist.

I had many enrichment opportunities during my internship. I attended workshops, lectures from research fellows, and first person survivor stories. The lectures were interesting and it was rewarding to see what researchers did with the materials we pulled for them. I had the opportunity to attend a tour of the Museum given by a Holocaust survivor. I have learned a great deal about the Holocaust through editing oral history testimonies as well.

At the start of our internship Michlean stated we had four main objectives: 1) Serving the patrons by pulling materials and answering reference questions. 2) Answering reference questions that were sent by email. 3) Working on oral histories given by survivors to include typing, editing, and adding abstracts for searching and catalog entry. 4) Making sure the finding aids to make sure they are up to date. Some of them are more complete than others. I came up with a guide to scan and edit oral history documents that will greatly improve the process. While typing my first oral history, I scanned half of the document and retyped the other half. Scanning and editing the document took nearly twice as long as retyping, so I created a process to improve the time. I taught the other interns the process and left the instructions with Michlean so she can teach the other interns. Although we did not spend a great deal of time with the finding aids, I do believe I have accomplished a great deal during my internship. I know that finding a full time job will be challenging, so I have asked to stay on here while I search. I have enjoyed my time here and look forward to continuing my work here. I hope to continue to assist Michlean with organizing the archives and streamlining certain processes.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America’s national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history, and serves as this country’s memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims — six million were murdered; Gypsies, the handicapped and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.

The Museum’s primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.

Chartered by a unanimous Act of Congress in 1980 and located adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Museum strives to broaden public understanding of the history of the Holocaust through multifaceted programs: exhibitions; research and publication; collecting and preserving material evidence, art and artifacts related to the Holocaust; annual Holocaust commemorations known as Days of Remembrance; distribution of education materials and teacher resources; and a variety of public programming designed to enhance understanding of the Holocaust and related issues, including those of contemporary significance.

(from the Museum’s website)

So the Museum receives Federal appropriations dollars, but funding is flat. It has not kept pace with inflation, and can be expected to fall further behind with efforts to reduce the Federal deficit. The Museum plans to amp up fundraising efforts in the upcoming years. They also want to focus on outreach programs to emphasize the need to prevent genocide and educate the dangers of racism and antisemitism. They plan to focus on programs for future generations whose lives they can influence. There is concern among the staff at the Museum about preserving living memory during a limited window of opportunity. As more survivors pass away, their recorded memories could be lost to history. So the Museum is ramping up efforts to track down survivors and take their testimony.

Another goal of the Museum is to improve the accessibility of materials in the archive through digitzation. I have helped enhance efforts to scan oral histories for digitzation by creating a process that will make the documents easier to edit. There are also efforts underway to digitize the finding aids

The idea of the new catalog is it will keep track of all of the items at the museum, art, artifacts, documents, books, etc. The database the museum purchased does not do some things that librarians rely on very well. It is an Australian system, so you have to change your default language to English (US).  If you do not, the help functions that have been entered will not come up.

Looking up items is not very efficient. The interface doesn’t let you simply enter a record group number and pull up the record, typing 50.030*469 would pull up all records in the 50 group. There are relational databases that can be searched in, one called location for artifacts and one called locations for archival materials. I could see myself mixing this up until I get the hang of things.

The search functions within the catalog are not very good. In order to search with two terms using AND, you need to simply type the two terms with a space. To do a boolean search using OR you need to enter the terms on separate lines. I am assuming the web catalog would be available for searching so this function in KeMu does not have to be relied upon.

Although the catalog has some limitations, I am trying to learn as much about it as I can. If I can become the go to person on the catalog that would be beneficial to me.

The third floor talks about events that took place between 1940-45; you walk through a cattle car that carried people to the death camps, you see the crematoriums and records from the Warsaw ghetto that were preserved in an old milk can. There is a 3D model of the gas chambers that is very powerful.

The second floor focuses on people who helped save others during the Holocaust and when we stopped at the section about Danish rescuers Margit mentioned that her husband was saved by Danish people who told him to go on a ship that was sent to Sweden, and afterwards he came to the United States. She wanted us to see a section where we could watch videos. One of the videos talked about how the United States did little to prevent the Holocaust, and FDR told the citizens that nothing could be done until the War was over.

When it became clear to people around us that Margit knew her subject well and was an excellent speaker, people began to follow our tour around. After each floor, we stopped and she asked us questions about what we had seen and we asked her questions. I know that sometimes groups can arrange for a survivor to speak to them, and the survivors give talks during the summer. This was a unique opportunity for me and I am grateful that I had the opportunity to have a tour of the Museum given by a survivor.

The conservation department wants to educate the interns here on the proper care and handling of materials so that we can show researchers how to handle the materials and set a good example for them. The main lessons I took from the training is that I should always have clean hands and have plenty of clean work surface for working with materials. If anything isn’t in a mylar sleeve, I should wear gloves. They also asked us to work with a pencil instead of a pen around the collections. Another thing I learned for pulling books off the shelf is to not pull it by the headcap, that space at the top of the spine. I could see how that would cause the spine to wear more quickly. We have strict guidelines about eating and drinking in the reference area. After reading Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold, he made it sound as if microfilm and microfiche were terrible and useless, and after working at the Museum I can see that this is not the case. The film and fiche is well cared for here as are the archival collections. The policies that we learned about will help ensure that the materials can be used by researchers for many years to come.

    There are some who believe that the testimonies of 80 year old survivors cannot be taken at face value. People in the discussion believe that it is okay that a survivor’s testimony changes over time. In fact, one of the survivors who now works at the Museum believes that her testimony is different now because of the knowledge she has gained while working here. And scholars who have reinterviewed survivors after many years have found that their testimonies have not changed greatly over time.

     There are some issues that scholars face in working with oral histories. Often the original interview was done in the survivor’s native language and some of the nuances of the story may be lost in a translated version. Some of the oral histories are edited so they follow a chronological path. They also raised the issue that when you are taking a snippet of a story, you may not be getting the entire picture of that person’s experiences. I face this dilemma when writing the abstracts of the oral histories. You are essentially summarizing their experiences during the Holocaust, which really only skim the surface of the person’s emotions and thoughts. Historians and archivists are there to explain what happened at a point in time, so some extraction of events is necessary. But by really listening to a Holocaust survivor’s testimony, you get a depth of understanding that cannot be achieved by reading words on a page (or computer screen.)

1) Serving the patrons by pulling materials and answering reference questions.

2) Answering reference questions that were sent by email. Apparently there is a bit of a backlog so Michlean is hoping to be caught up soon.

3) Working on oral histories given by survivors to include typing, editing, and adding abstracts for searching and catalog entry.

4) Making sure the finding aids to make sure they are up to date. Some of them are more complete than others.

I am looking forward to continuing to work here…there is certainly plenty to do!

The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies regularly holds lectures and conversations with their researchers. I attended a very interesting lecture from one fellow about two female members of the Mosad Le-Aliyah Bet (The Organization for Illegal Immigration of Jews to Palestine). One of the people at the talk pointed out that most people don’t realize that Jews were being smuggled into Israel during WWII and the Holocaust. I also attended a workshop on Ukraine and the Holocaust. What interested me most from that workshop was the realization that because of the Cold War, we don’t have an accurate record of the number of people killed in the Holocaust in the Ukraine, and that the total number will probably need to be revised higher. I also learned about the work of Father Desbois, a Catholic priest who is collecting testimony about the Holocaust in Ukraine. One of his aides works in the archives regularly. You can read more about him here http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/desbois/. I am fortunate that I am able to attend these events as I have learned so much from them.