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at the Official Opening of Ground Floor Permanent Exhibition
and launch of the Visual History Archive
14 June 2009
Your Excellency, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to welcome you all here this afternoon. We are honoured that Her Excellency has been able to join us to celebrate some auspicious milestones in the history of the Sydney Jewish Museum.
The vision of the Sydney Jewish Museum is to inspire mutual respect and cross cultural understanding within our society with particular emphasis on the Holocaust, in order that such a tragedy should never happen again to any people. Your Excellency, this Museum is an institution of works, images, history, values, education, tolerance and learning.
We see the role of the Sydney Jewish Museum as being very similar to the role of the newly opened Jewish Museum in Illinois in the U.S.A.
At the opening of that Museum, the German Ambassador declared:
"We are united in the responsibility for preserving the memory of the past and for a shared more humane future. I believe that the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Centre will make an important contribution to this mission. The Museum recalls the terror of the past and the Education Centre is working to ensure that such horror will never happen again."
In the same vein, Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate, explained the impact of the Museum in the effort to teach the next generation about empathy and the lessons of the past. Wiesel declared memory is a vital tool in preventing genocide.
"We must learn certain values and lessons. Whatever happens to one community affects all other communities. When a Jew is hit in the face for being a Jew the whole world falls to its knees."
It is interesting to note that the President of the Illinois Museum stressed the educational role of that Museum. He said:
"The Museum will teach students throughout Illinois and across the Midwest, educating them about this period in history and alerting them to the dangers of unchallenged bigotry.
The Illinois Museum is also proud of its efforts to secure the passage of The Holocaust Education Mandate. In 1990 Illinois became the first State to require Holocaust Education in public schools.
In 2005 the organisation was again influential in the expansion of this mandate creating the Holocaust and Genocide Education Mandate which requires Illinois schools to teach about all genocides. The intent is that education will serve to preserve memories and to prevent future genocide."
Here in Sydney, the Sydney Jewish Museum takes seriously the responsibility of helping to bring the vital messages of tolerance and cross cultural understanding to the community at large. We are here to fight hatred, indifference and genocide.
As President Obama said at the Illinois opening:
"The Museum will serve as a lasting memorial to all those who died in the Holocaust and those who lived through it. But it will also help each of us understand what we can do to fight the many forms of injustice and cruelty that persist in our time. We each have a responsibility to stand up for our fellow human beings. That's the message that schools will learn when they visit this Museum." - Obama declared.
We at the Sydney Jewish Museum align ourselves very much with this aim of teaching.
Education is the central focus and ultimate object of all exhibitions and programs at the Sydney Jewish Museum. Indeed a key focus of the founder of this Museum, the late John Saunders AO, was to create a memorial museum that would serve as the foundation for ongoing education B in other words a living memorial to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. In 2008 approximately 13,500 school students from schools around Sydney visited the Sydney Jewish Museum and we are aiming to end 2009 closer to 15,000.
An important feature of the exhibitions within the entire Museum is the link to the learning areas within the NSW Board of Studies syllabus. The Museum is a NSW Institute of Teachers endorsed provider of teacher professional development and, as well as welcoming students, we welcome educators from across NSW.
We are hopeful that the new National Curriculum will, as the Illinois Legislature did, recognise that historical events of immense importance such as the Holocaust must form an important part of the history curriculum.
At the opening of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Centre in Jerusalem, Elie Wiesel said:
"Only those who were there know the meaning of being there but we all have the obligation to try to tell and not bury the memories in silence."
Here at the Sydney Jewish Museum, we feel that communal obligation to try to tell and not bury the memories in silence.
In order to maintain our relevance and to continue our active role in promoting cross cultural understanding and tolerance the Museum Board decided nearly 2 years ago to completely renew the Ground Floor permanent exhibition. The result is Culture and Continuity: Journey Through Judaism, a state of the art exhibition which explores the richness and resilience of the Jewish tradition, and importantly the contribution that the Jewish community has made to the fabric of multi-cultural Australia C an ethnically and religiously diverse country in which such contributions are both valued and respected.
This exhibition has also been developed with links to Syllabus learning areas providing students with an insight into Judaism=s central beliefs, its sacred texts and way of life.
None of this could have been achieved without the extremely generous bequest received from the late Mrs Ernestine Freiheiter, a Holocaust Survivor who settled in Australia. I would like to pay tribute to her foresight and generosity dedicated in memory of her late husband.
I would also like to extend my thanks to everyone who has been involved in the ground floor project B we can all be very proud of what has been achieved.
More importantly, I wish to thank the Holocaust survivors for their gift to the Museum, namely for their gift of their stories and for their gift of survival and humanity. As Shimon Peres, the former Prime Minister of Israel said, "Survivors' memories are lessons for all humanity. We must all strive to remember to survive and survive to remember."
We are also extremely proud today to officially launch the Visual History Archive at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
After directing the Academy award winning film Schindler=s List, Steven Spielberg established the Shoah Institute in Los Angeles which recorded testimonies in many languages and countries from over 50,000 Holocaust Survivors. The mission of the Institute is to overcome prejudice, intolerance and bigotry - and the suffering they cause - through the educational use of the Foundation's visual history testimonies.
The Museum=s Visual History Archive project came to fruition following intensive negotiations with the Shoah Institute now located at the University of Southern California and comprises the testimonies given by Holocaust Survivors who settled in Australia. Housed in our Resource Centre, the archive allows the Sydney Jewish Museum to remain at the forefront of Holocaust education and is already providing a unique and important resource for students and researchers to explore the universal lessons and legacies of the Holocaust. It also provides an opportunity for visitors to explore their own family history.
I would like to thank all those who provided testimonies to ensure that the memory of those dark days can never be diminished. Thanks to our generous donors who made this project possible. This archive, together with associated education programs, will allow us to convey the contemporary and ongoing relevance of the Holocaust to current and future generations.
After the formalities this afternoon I encourage you to go to our Education and Resource Centre on the lower ground floor and view a demonstration of this fascinating addition to the Museum.
Although the Governor-General will need no introduction to most of you, let me say a few words about Her Excellency. After spending her early years in a small town in Central Western Queensland, Quentin Bryce went on to study at the University of Queensland and to gain admission to the Queensland Bar. She subsequently carved a rich and distinguished career as an academic, lawyer, community and human rights advocate, senior public officer, university college principal, and vice-regal representative in Queensland, and now in Australia.
She was the first woman in this country ever to attain many of the positions she held including that of founding Chair and CEO of the National Childcare Accreditation Council; Principal and CEO of the Women's College at the University of Sydney and Governor of Queensland.
Her contribution to advancing human rights and especially the rights of women and children and the welfare of the family were recognized in her appointment as an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1988 and as a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2003.
In recognition of her achievements Her Excellency has been awarded honorary degrees from Macquarie University, Charles Sturt University, the University of Queensland, Griffith University and the Queensland University of Technology.
As the first woman to take up the office of Governor-General, she is a pioneer in contemporary Australian society and remains a role model and mentor to women at every stage of their lives. As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said at her swearing in, "It only took us 107 years but we made it."
Ladies and Gentlemen, this Museum stands as a testament to the choices survivors made "of life over loss and of hope over heartbreak".
I can think of no-one more suitable than Her Excellency in furthering the objects of such testament. She is an inspiration to us all and I have much pleasure in inviting her to officially open the Museum's refurbished ground floor permanent exhibition, Culture and Continuity: Journey Through Judaism and to launch the Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive of Holocaust testimonies.
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