Public History is Alive and Well in the Archives

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that I’ve always been enamored with museums. As a child my parents made sure to expose both my brother and I to as many museums as possible. And, whether these were traditional or living heritage, large or small, they were a staple of family vacations, day trips and parentally-supported school outings. Occasionally, my parents even managed to schedule museum visits for after games when we’d travel for soccer tournaments (they were sneaky like that). Most of the time, I loved wandering from room to room looking at artifacts and dioramas. And when I didn’t? Well, I still learned something. More importantly, I learned to appreciate the important role that museums play in caring for the history, heritage, culture and values of a place and/or a people.

Even with all that interest in museums, I had never given much thought to archives and the role that they play within a community. In fact, I’m almost ashamed to admit that the first time I ever stepped foot into an archive I was already in my fourth year of university. I certainly never envisioned myself – a scant 8 months since starting the Public History program at UWO – working in one archive and volunteering at another. But, this summer I’m doing both.

The main portion of my internship this summer will take place at the Sunnnybrook Archives (SBA) in Toronto where I’ll be an archives assistant to a graduate of UWO’s Public History program, Phil Gold.

The Sunnybrook Archives exists primarily to collect, organize, describe, make available and preserve records materials of historical, legal, and administrative value to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. As the Archives Assistant, I’ll be working in all areas of the archives, including working first-hand with print and graphic records, and with medical artifacts and other college memorabilia. My primary duty will be to assist Phil with the arrangement and description of the collection (specifically the archive’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs Fonds) according to RAD standards in preparation for the submission of a fonds level description to ARCHAEION. It’ll probably be a tedious and exacting process, but one that I’ll learn a great deal about archival practices from.

Since my contract with Sunnybrook Archives is only part time, I’ll be making up the remaining hours of my internship by volunteering at the Ontario Jewish Archives working on a number of archival and public history projects. To begin with, I’ll be helping organize/work “front of house” activities at the archive’s Doors Open Toronto site this weekend. From there I’ll move onto doing an inventory and some digitization of the archival holdings belonging to R.H. McGregor Elementary School in Toronto in preparation for a more extensive school history section on their webpage and a display for the school’s entryway. I’ll also have a hand in a few smaller projects, including helping to organize the OJA’s summer tours, helping update one of the Holocaust Education Centre’s displays and working on a number of item level RAD-compliant descriptions and digitization of some of the archive’s photographic records.

There are two other major projects that I’ll be working on at the OJA this summer and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to have a hand in both of them. The first is a podcast to accompany the OJA’s Facets of Fame: Portraits by Toronto Photographer Al Gilbert display at the Market Gallery in the St. Lawrence Market (see Facets of Fame blog post). I’ll be responsible for setting up interviews with some of the artist’s subjects for inclusion in the podcast, scanning images from the exhibit and helping to create a script for the podcast (Look Ma, I’m writing for the public!). The second major project that I’ll be working on is the continuation of the OJA’s huge oral history project. The project aims to record the stories of WWII veterans and I’ll be responsible for scheduling interviews, conducting pre-interviews and accessioning the videos once they have been recorded.

The summer’s barely begun and already I’m feeling very lucky to have the opportunity to work with the Director of the Ontario Jewish Archives, Ellen Scheinberg, who has been kind enough to include me in so many of the institution’s public history projects. The wide variety of projects she has schedule for me to help on will surely broaden my exposure and practical hands-on experience with public history in the “real world.”

Remembering the Shoah

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 29th Annual Holocaust Education Week in Toronto. From November 1st until November 11th, members of the Holocaust Centre of Toronto and affiliated Jewish organizations are hosting over 170 programs designed to honour the memory of those murdered in the Holocaust and to celebrate the survival of those who were not. The lectures, operas, films and exhibitions offer a perfect opportunity for the Jewish community to educate and promote understanding and remembrance of this tragic event among Jewish and non-Jewish community members alike.

While I think that the majority of the programming is worthwhile attending, I find myself especially drawn to the “My Personal Testimony” segments that run several times a day at different locations around the city. Each testimonial features a survivor of the Holocaust recounting their personal experiences from the war. The stories cover a range of experiences, from living in hiding, to fighting with the partisans in the forest, to struggling to survive in ghettos and concentration camps, during deportations and on death marches. They cover liberation, the aftermath and the decisions made by these survivors to immigrate to Canada.

I think that this is part of the magic of oral history; each testimonial is unique, just as each survivor is unique, and yet their accounts combine together to create a single narrative with common elements, themes and outcomes. During Holocaust Education Week dozens of people will come together to say, “This is who I am. This is what I did. This is what was done to me. This is how I survived. This is how I triumphed.” But what they will come away with is a communal narrative that says, “This is who we are. This is what we did. This is what was done to us. This is how we survived. This is how we triumphed.”

I believe that the survivors of the Holocaust, just as veterans of a war, have a responsibility to recount their stories for the generations that come after them. Their testimony is their opportunity to have a voice, to be understood, to understand. In return, we, as their audience, have the privilege of bearing witness to their stories, gaining insight from them and taking the next step to preserving their memory.