The future of the past: digital media in Holocaust museums

This essay critically examines the implications of digital media for the remembrance of the Holocaust in contemporary museum spaces, a development that has seen fundamental shifts in thinking around agency, education and entertainment. Expanding existing discussions of this issue into the Australian context, the essay takes as its central case study the design and integration of interactive StoryPod screen media in Melbourne’s Jewish Holocaust Centre. Addressing both the limitations and potentialities of interactive digital technologies for facilitating visitor-viewers’ engagement with survivor stories, the analysis highlights that digital media can be used to complement and enhance – rather than replace – traditional artefact and photographic displays, and will play an integral role in the Holocaust museums of the future.