Melbourne Holocaust Museum
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The oldest and largest Holocaust-themed museum in Australia, founded in Melbourne in 1984. Much modernized and expanded since then it is now one of the top institutions of its kind, at least in the southern hemisphere.
More background info: for general information about the Holocaust see also some of the other Holocaust Museums (e.g. the USHMM, Yad Vashem, Shoah Museum, Kazerne Dossin and others) as well as the chapters about the various concentration camps and death camps.
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) goes back to an initiative of a group of Holocaust survivors who had come to Australia after the war to rebuild their lives. In 1984 they founded the first incarnation of the museum, then a much humbler affair than today’s state-of-the-art museum.
The MHM was first remodelled as early as 1990, when an auditorium for events and lectures was also added. As visitor numbers grew another extension was made in 1999. In the early 2000s the museum’s organization was upgraded and a fundraising Foundation started bringing in the necessary money to employ more museum staff. A Learning Centre was added in 2019.
The next big step came the following year when the museum closed for a substantial overhaul and extension. This incorporated the existing original museum building under a modern superstructure with only the old bay window from the original building protruding from the modern facade to unusual effect.
The revamped museum reopened in late 2023 and when I visited at the end of July 2024 it still felt brand new.
In addition to the main permanent exhibition entitled “Everybody Had a Name” there is also another exhibition aimed at younger visitors (from the age of 10, whereas the main exhibition is aimed at ages 15+). Furthermore there are also offers of a VR experience by means of which you are “guided” by a survivor. Guided tours with live guides can also be booked. And in addition there are regular temporary exhibitions on various related topics. I just went through the main permanent exhibition self-guided, so I can’t comment on any of those extra offers.
What there is to see: Before entering the museum it’s worth taking in the unusual architecture of the building it’s housed in.
When you purchase your ticket you are also given a card with basic information about one of six individual survivors, whose stories will be told at so-called “In the Footsteps” audio-video stations (called “kiosks” here), where you pick “your survivor” to start the respective recordings. But you can also listen to other survivors’ stories as other visitors select them. The one survivor I listened to most retained a strong German-sounding accent, which I found mildly amusing at times, especially the pronunciation of “Jews” like “juice” (due to German final consonant devoicing, which I know from my own experience is one of the hardest things to get rid of when learning English properly, and this survivor didn’t manage it even after so many decades of living in Australia).
The main exhibition is mostly chronologically structured but also thematically subdivided. The first part is about Jewish life before the Holocaust, especially in Poland and Germany. There’s also a short section dealing with the history of anti-Semitism, in the form of prejudice about and discrimination of Jews, throughout the centuries and in many countries.
We then come to the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the beginnings of increasing persecution of Jews and gradual removal of their rights. This is introduced with an installation involving a large partially shattered pane of glass – possibly in allusion to the “Night of Broken Glass” on 9 November 1938 across the German Reich.
There’s a section about the power of Nazi propaganda, including many posters, a “Volksempfänger” radio, but also a large blow-up of a photo taken during a Nazi rally at the Blohm+Voss shipyards in Hamburg. Highlighted amongst the crowd raising their right arms in the typical Nazi salute is one man who stands stoically with his arms crossed across his chest and wearing a very sceptical expression on his face. Not everybody fanatically took part! If you study the photo more closely you can spot a couple of other people not raising their right arms.
Covered too are the propagandistic book-burning spectacles (see Bebelplatz), the “degenerate art” exhibitions and defamation of Jews in cartoons and films.
Featured prominently in the exhibition are those yellow stars that the Nazis forced the Jews to wear. Apart from the German ones marked “Jude” (the German word for ‘Jew’) there are also stars with the word for Jew in other languages of countries occupied by the Nazis (such as France or the Netherlands).
Covered too is the tragic journey of the St Louis taking Jews out of Europe, only to be rejected both in the USA and in Cuba so the ship returned. A ticket for the journey is on display here.
This is complemented by the story of an Austrian family who by a stroke of luck managed to emigrate to Australia. Several of their personal belongings are on display, including a toy dog that belonged to a son of the family. Also covered are stories of Jewish children who escaped Nazism through the so-called “Kindertransporte” to Britain. Some of these later emigrated to Australia too and donated various items to the museum.
On a less cheerful note, the mass shootings that preceded the murder of Jews in gas chambers are covered too, with the Babi Yar massacres given particular attention.
Noted on the margins, as it were, are also other groups persecuted and killed by the Nazis, in particular Sinti & Roma and people with (especially mental) disabilities (see e.g. Hartheim and Hadamar).
We then come to the inevitable story of the concentration camps and deportations of Jews. A deportee’s suitcase on display has an address in Vienna painted on it. As that’s the city where I now live, this gave me a personal extra emotional element. Obviously a set of those striped clothes worn by concentration-camp inmates is on display as well.
The ghettos, especially in Poland, are a topic too here, and one artefact on display is an actual brick from the wall that surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto.
An elaborate interactive screen provides information about the various ghettos and camps, I checked a good number of them (e.g. Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek) and found that the information provided was commendably accurate.
Picked out especially is Theresienstadt, the “model camp” that one of the museum’s founders was incarcerated in. Amongst the associated artefacts on display is an inmate’s violin. Complementing this are stills from the propaganda film shot in Theresienstadt by the Nazis to portray camp life as not really so harsh, almost idyllic even, in order to fool the world.
A special focus is placed on the Wannsee Conference which laid the groundwork for the then ensuing “Final Solution”. The section about the death camps of Operation Reinhard has a model of Treblinka as its centrepiece. A sign spells out that the model is “not to scale”, but that’s an understatement. It is in fact a very strange (mis-)representation of the camp, though made with many gruesome details. An interactive screen provides ample information about the model/Treblinka.
A subsection of the museum focuses on the deportation of Hungary’s Jews (see Budapest’s Holocaust Memorial Center) which took place as late as 1944-45, when around half a million Hungarian Jews were sent into the gas chambers of Auschwitz. On display is a collection of photos that were taken during the arrival of one of these transports at the ramp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Covered too are stories of Jews who managed to go into hiding and also about those who fought with the Allied militaries against Nazi Germany.
Another remarkable artefact on display is a typewriter with keys in Yiddish, found in the rubble after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto following the uprising staged there in 1943. The typewriter is believed to have been used by the Jewish underground resistance.
People who helped Jews through various more or less heroic means are an aspect also well covered in the exhibition. Naturally the name Oskar Schindler has to feature here, but there’s also a special Australian angle on the rescue of Jews from Nazi persecution.
Interestingly, another distinctly Australian angle is presented openly here too: the “stolen generation” efforts undertaken on eugenics grounds in order to “Europeanize” Aboriginal people, e.g. by taking children away from their native families and putting them in the “care” of white Australians. The massacres of and mistreatment of Aboriginals can in a way be seen as Australia’s “holocaust”.
Back to Europe: amongst the final sections is one about liberation, the end of WWII and the aftermath, which in some cases included continued anti-Semitism. An interactive screen takes stock of the fate of various nations’ Jewish communities. There’s also a section focusing on the Nuremberg Trials and other legal actions. As an add-on there’s a short part about other genocides perpetrated elsewhere since the Holocaust (e.g. in Rwanda).
A particular Australian, even Melbourne angle is provided by the section about Holocaust survivors who went to Australia/Melbourne to start a new life, including those who founded this museum.
At the end of the exhibition is a separate Reflection Room featuring amassed silvery Stars of David as well as black silhouettes of victims.
Normally there would also have been access to a courtyard with some memorial installations but for some reason this was closed at the time of my visit.
All in all, I found this a pretty well-made exhibition with a vast coverage and good historical accuracy. Like the USHMM this may be one of those “displaced” museums (about events that took place elsewhere), but for anybody with an interest in the Holocaust, this is a must-see when in Melbourne.
Location: in the suburb of Elsternwick in south-eastern Melbourne: address: 13 Selwyn Street, Elsternwick, VIC, 3185.
Google Maps locator: [-37.8834, 145.0011]
Access and costs: Rather far out of the centre of Melbourne, but easy enough to reach by public transport, not too pricey.
Details: To get to the museum you can take either a local train from Flinders Street Railway Station (Sandringham line) for seven stops to Elsternwick Station, which is just round the corner from the museum, or get tram line 67 from Fed Square, outside Flinders Street Station, for 26 stops and get out at the Elsternwick Station stop.
From there walk up Glen Huntly Road and turn left into Selwyn Street. The striking museum building is impossible to miss.
Opening times: Tuesday to Thursday from 2 to 6 p.m., on Sundays from 10 a.m., closed Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays as well as on most public holidays and some Jewish holy days (see the mhm.org.au website for a current list).
Admission to the general exhibition: 18 AUD.
Time required: about an hour and a half – or longer if you want to read absolutely everything. Plus about half an hour travelling time each way from/to Melbourne city centre.
Combinations with other dark destinations: see under Melbourne.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: see under Melbourne.
