Museums for tragedies like 9/11 face a new challenge: Visitors are too young to remember

Tragedy-focused museums have the added challenge of balancing history with empathy. In American Holocaust Memorial MuseumThere has been lengthy debate between curators and survivors and their families about what should continue, Linenthal said. For example, the museum considered displaying the hair of women brought in from Auschwitz, he said, to illustrate how the bodies were mined, he said. It was difficult, but necessary, the people in charge thought. “But one of the survivors, who lost his family, said: ‘That hair could have been my mother’s. You couldn’t put my mother on display in a museum,” Linenthal recalls. After much discussion, the museum chose to use the photographs instead.