狐狸视频

Curator focuses on personal objects and stories to share Holocaust survivors' experiences

For U of T alumna Sara-Jane Vigneault, museums can play a crucial role in the battle against misinformation
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Sara-Jane Vigneault graduated from the 狐狸视频 in 2021 with a master's degree in history (supplied image)

A teddy bear belonging to Holocaust survivor Marianne Constantine is one of the many donated objects 狐狸视频 alum has handled as a curator at the Montreal Holocaust Museum since earning her master鈥檚 degree in history through the  (CERES) at the and the .

鈥淲hat I appreciate most about this job is meeting survivors and families and working with them to tell their stories,鈥 says Vigneault, who graduated in 2021. 鈥淚鈥檒l never take this for granted, because it鈥檚 a privilege to be there for them.鈥

Vigneault notes that museums can play a crucial role in the battle against misinformation, whitewashing and conspiracy theories. A recent survey found that nearly a third of North American teens think the Holocaust is an exaggerated or fabricated event.

鈥淲e need to continue creating spaces to analyze the personal experiences of communities targeted during the Holocaust. I also believe it is necessary to offer dialogue with other genocides and conflicts,鈥 Vigneault says.

These are important times of growth for Holocaust museums in Canada, with expansion of the  and recent opening of the new , whose chief curator, Rachel Libman, is also an alum of U of T's Faculty of Arts & Science and has collaborated closely with Vigneault.

Although not Jewish, Vigneault was particularly attentive to questions about the Holocaust and its legacies while pursuing her coursework in the faculty's  and CERES.

Her master鈥檚 project focused on Ir猫ne N茅mirovsky, author of Suite Fran莽aise, and N茅mirovsky's daughters鈥 experiences of the war through their writings. Vigneault鈥檚 thesis, Filling and Bridging the Gaps: Two Daughters鈥 Paths to Retrieve, Uncover and Recollect their Mother from Beyond Obliteration considers 脡lisabeth Gille鈥檚 and Denise Epstein-Daupl茅鈥檚 coping processes as they pieced together the memories of a mother that Vichy France seized from them.

Vigneault considers literature as a site of continuity between N茅mirovsky 鈥 who was arrested as a stateless Jew and killed in Auschwitz 鈥 and her daughters.

鈥淚 wanted to see how literature enabled them to reconnect and work through traumatic experiences,鈥 says Vigneault, who contacted N茅mirovsky鈥檚 grandson as part of her research. She interviewed him and obtained permission to access crucial archives.

鈥淪ara-Jane frames the narrative theoretically and analytically yet always keeps sight of N茅mirovsky and her daughters as people 鈥 individual women with personalities, feelings, fears and needs. It is not easy to write history in this way,鈥 says Vigneault's thesis supervisor , the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies in U of T's department of history.

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Vigneault's research took her to Hungary's Living Memorial, where she explored the politics of memory and interviewed Holocaust survivors, scholars and activists (supplied image)

鈥淪he tackled enormous questions about the nature of historical research, the limits and possibilities of the archives and the responsibility of a scholar to the people 鈥 living and dead 鈥 who are our sources and our subjects.鈥

Experiential learning also bolstered Vigneault鈥檚 U of T experience, including a research trip to Budapest, Hungary, where she worked on the politics of memory. There she interviewed scholars, survivors and activists about the Living Memorial, a counter-memorial created in response to the Hungarian government鈥檚 refusal to acknowledge the country鈥檚 role in the Holocaust.

Vigneault is currently pursuing her PhD in history at the University of Cambridge. She works on intimate contacts between French colonial soldiers and European women during the First and Second World Wars and investigates how French authorities tried to control racialized soldiers鈥 proximity to white women and maintain colonial borders.

For Vigneault, her work as a researcher and at the museum serves to bring forward the stories of marginalized groups and encourages people to reflect on their individual and collective roles and learn from history.

At the Montreal Holocaust Museum, Vigneault pursues that work alongside Jewish survivors like Marianne Constantine, who survived the Holocaust in Hungary with her mother and grandmother, only to be separated from them after the war. She reunited with her parents in Canada in 1952.

As a child, Constantine鈥檚 one constant was the teddy bear she kept throughout the ordeal 鈥 the same teddy bear she entrusted to Vigneault and the museum more than 75 years later.

Arts & Science