THE UNDISPLAYED DISPLAY

A visit to the National Authority for the Remembrance of Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust - Yad Vashem (meaning Memory and Name in Hebrew) - in Israel brings a lump to the throat, an ache in the heart, tears to the eyes and terrible thoughts to your mind, which you do not even try to suppress. This is sympathy for the great pain of the Jewish people, which they will never forget, and shock. Sympathy. Yes, it is always there, but it grows a hundred times more tangible and painful. It will remain in your soul forever. This is the effect that the creators of the memorial wanted to achieve, and they succeeded.

Ask any Jew about his people and the first thing he will talk about is the extermination of Jews during WWII; an event now called the Holocaust. If you are in Jerusalem, a city where you witness the history of the three main religions of the world on every corner, with the abundance of sights, the first thing that every Jew will recommend is to visit the National Authority for the Remembrance of Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust. "Visit this place, and you will never forget it," they say. This really is true. Something like this cannot be forgotten. It is no surprise that the complex is visited by more than one million people every year, and not just by foreigners. Jews come here with their families and children several times a year, while schools and the Israeli army organize excursions. They can spend all day here because so much time is needed to visit all the museums located within the complex.

It is impossible to convey what you can see at Yad Vashem. The information you receive goes so deeply into your heart that any attempt at description can only limit this impression. Jews give heightened attention to any visitor to Yad Vashem, especially to children. Even if a four-year-old child enters the complex, not only his parents, but also the staff of the complex will do their best to explain to him where he is. This is the duty of every Israeli citizen, because this is the way patriots are brought up. The idea of creating such a complex, its architecture and layout aimed to fulfil exactly this mission. Here victims tell of their Holocaust tragedy from more than 100 TV screens. One big screen is so positioned that, while walking the corridor of the museum which holds documents on the history of the persecution of Jews and which connects all halls and sections, you can turn around and see behind you a person talking about his own tragedy. You can see him from any point in the corridor. There are children, men, women and old people. There are a great many monuments, sculptures and memorable places here, arranged so that a visitor can endure every stage of the tragic events in their totality - the beginning, development and end. There is an arts museum with pictures and drawings by prisoners of concentration camps. There are the clothes, stones and wheelbarrows they carried and the products they were forced to make in factories. Millions of worn-out shoes, scanty food, dishes, cells and instruments of torture, teeth pulled out during torture, crematoriums and gas chambers through which you are requested to go. There is also a library - the largest collection of books on the Holocaust (87,000 books in various languages) and an archive with 58 million pages and more than 100,000 photographs. It is continually augmented with new names. The Yad Vashem archive is the biggest archive in the world, holding documents on the history of the persecution of the Jewish people. At the end, visitors to Yad Vashem are told: "We understand that you are not feeling well now. But they were feeling even worse. They were so unwell that not a single memorial can convey the extent of the horror that the victims of the Holocaust experienced. We created this complex to ensure that such a tragedy never happens anywhere in the world."

Excursion to the museum

What is the important function of museums, memorials and historical complexes, especially if their exhibits and activities relate to the history and culture of a particular country? What is a museum? Is it the function of this cultural repository simply to register and study objects, maintain the heritage and satisfy the public's interest in monuments of nature and history, not to mention the fact that museums have to meet people's demand for aesthetic satisfaction? Museums carry out tremendous scientific work. But what is the purpose? Everything falls into place when you begin to understand that their main role lies in education and patriotic upbringing. This function depends on the information contained in the exhibits. From the example of Israel's museum complexes, we can say that this function is achievable. From seeing how the guides work with children in that country, you begin to understand how much work Azerbaijan still has to do in this sphere so that children love their country, even if their love is based not on consciousness, but on elemental feeling. Such an approach to the issue can be seen not just in Israel, but also in neighbouring Russia. We have to admit that Moscow museums cannot complain about low attendance.

Why are we putting such an emphasis on children? Because they are our future. Everything depends on how they treat and respect their homeland. What can be more satisfying than working with children, especially as the guide has the necessary knowledge, which he can and should share? The main thing is to have the will. It appears that in this regard there is a crisis in our museums. There are many examples. An adult can make an effort to understand the quick and inarticulate speech of the guide who approached the only visitors to a museum in Azerbaijan - a mother and her eight-year-old daughter - but a child cannot. We will not specify which museum in order not to discourage those who want to visit it. At the same time, the expression of the museum employee revealed that the visitors' desire to see the museum was irrelevant. Asked whether they really needed a guide, they answered in the affirmative. The museum employee began her straightforward story about the exhibits. "Galloping" from one exhibit to another, they finished their tour of the museum. Please note that during this time the guide did not make a single attempt to establish contact with the child. She did not ask her name or how old she was, why she had decided to come to the museum or why she had chosen this museum. She never tried to include any element of creativity or warmth in her story in order to interest the girl. And this is very sad. As a result, the child obtained only one piece of information from this diverse palette of historical facts regarding the origin and purpose of the exhibits, their ornaments and symbols - carpets can be hairy or hairless. Who is to blame for this? These carpets have a principal function to fulfil in terms of aesthetic perception and information in a purely national sphere. Such basic information may spark an interest in the nation and an ethnic self-identity in the child. But this child lost interest. A visit to the museum was enough to see to that. It is very sad that the same is happening in other museums. They say that Satan fights for the souls of people who are still at a crossroads and who have not made up their mind whether to believe or not. The same is happening to children who are developing their attitude to the country in which they were born. We adults, especially those who have the necessary knowledge, must win this love and fight for the souls of children. As for museums, there is a desperate need for employees to work with the rising generation here and speak in a language they can understand, regardless of age.

Work is under way

It is clear that many museum staff in Azerbaijan are not happy with their wages. However, speaking about the deplorable situation in this sector, Minister of Culture and Tourism Abulfaz Qarayev said that the wages of museum employees have increased by 90 per cent over the last two years. "Never in the history of Azerbaijan, have employees of the cultural sector received the same wages as employees of other sectors. Thus we must do everything possible to be proud of our museums on the current salaries." The minister also said that there is no book on the museum industry in Azerbaijan which could be submitted to the international public. "It is necessary to compile this book in the near future and send it to the museums of the world. Every country should have information about the culture and museum industry in Azerbaijan." Qarayev also expressed concern that very few people visit museums: "Why does no-one go to museums? You yourselves have to answer this question," the minister said while addressing museum employees.

On 8 March 2007, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev issued a decree to improve the museum sector in Azerbaijan. The head of state stressed in the decree that not only do museums secure the country's spiritual life and comprehensive application of scientific and cultural values, they also engage in patriotic education, especially at a time of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The president instructed the relevant departments to engage in the full reconstruction of the country's museums and improve their work to international standards upon the ideology of Azerbaijanism.

Asked what has been done to improve the museum industry in Azerbaijan, the Ministry of Culture said that this is a large-scale task which will take time. "The refurbishment of the Azerbaijan History Museum, the Nizami Gancavi Literature Museum and the Uzeyir Hacibayov Home Museum has been completed. The refurbishment of the Azerbaijani State Arts Museum is continuing. Work has also begun on the building of a new Carpet Museum. New museums have been opened in Ucar, Sardab, Goranboy, Salyan and other districts and this process will continue. Thus, the total number of Azerbaijani museums now exceeds 160."

As for the issue of attracting more young people to museums, the Ministry of Culture said that this will be possible thanks to modern media technology which will be used in our museums in the future. "In order to study international experience in this sphere, the Ministry of Culture is organizing visits to Baku by foreign specialists in the museum industry. For example, in October Baku was visited by Carmen Beckenbach, a German specialist in using modern media technology to develop museums. She held a seminar for employees of Azerbaijani museums and shared her experience. Moreover, a major Azerbaijani-Norwegian museum project to exchange experience was completed in October. The project lasted for one year. An agreement was signed last year by the Museum Centre of Azerbaijan and the Archaeology Museum of Stavanger, Norway. Following this agreement, three seminars were held in one year - two in Baku and one in Oslo and Stavanger. Specifically, the Norwegians appreciated the Azerbaijani system of document management to register museum artefacts," the ministry said.

Of course, we should point out that, since 2007, the Azerbaijani-Russian project of the Museum Centre of Azerbaijan and the "Russian Museum - Virtual Branch" has been implemented in Azerbaijan. "This is a fundamentally new method of working with visitors and mutual interaction used across the world, and Azerbaijan is also actively engaged with this sector. This is a multimedia cinema in which visitors can take a virtual tour of all the palaces in the Russian museum complex and see their exhibits. Baku schools quite often organize excursions to this virtual branch. We can confidently say that much work is being done to develop the museum industry in Azerbaijan," the Ministry of Culture said in conclusion.

A museum is a place where the country is "on display". The mission of museum employees is very honourable and extremely important. If we want our "display" to be as popular and tangible as in Israel, we should not be waiting for a government official to issue an order to put things right. We have to live in harmony with ourselves and work responsibly and professionally, and if you want to change the world, begin with yourself.