This research report focuses on the issues for participation in public memory projects, in the light of counter-monument critiques of audiences being ‘rendered passive’. Interviews with people who went on the 2005 March of the Living tour to Holocaust sites in Poland and then to Israel have been analysed in terms of themes and processes of meaningmaking. The written text of some of the material provided to them is also analysed. Meanings in the interviews notably occupied two discursive spaces that seem at odds with each other. The first was the discourse around what is a good way to memorialise – particularly when the memory is one of such enormity as the Holocaust. The second is the discourse around tolerance education – how do we ‘learn lessons’ from the Holocaust? The issues for heritage interpretation and tolerance education are explored.

Thesis contains the novel "Waterval" by Phyllis Sakinofsky. / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Media, Music, and Cultural Studies, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 128-138. / PART ONE -- Introduction -- Section One -- Early history -- The apartheid years - two realities -- Post-apartheid South Africa -- The creative response of Jews to apartheid -- Section Two -- Our relationship with the past: placing narrative in the context of history -- Rememory and representation -- Telling the truth through stories -- Section Three -- Imprints of memories, shadows and silences: shaping the Jewish South African story -- PART TWO -- Waterval: a work of fiction by Phyllis Sakinofsky / This is a non-traditional thesis which comprises a work of fiction and a dissertation. -- The novel is set in South Africa and provides an account of events that took place among three families, Jewish, Coloured and Afrikaans, over three generations. -- The dissertation is constructed in three sections. The first section describes the settlement of South Africa's Jewish community, its divergent responses to apartheid and how this is mirrored in its literary output. -- In the second section, the relationship between history and fiction since the advent of postmodernism is discussed, how there has been a demand for historical truthfulness through multiple points of view and how consequently there has been an upsurge in memories and memorials for those previously denigrated as the defeated or victims. -- Fiction has been re-valued because it is through the novel that these once-submerged stories are being told. The novel has the capacity to explore uncomfortable or silenced episodes in our history, tell important truths and record stories and losses in a meaningful and relevant way. A novel might be shaped by history but it is through the writer's insights and interpretations that messages or meanings can reach many. -- South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission report is an example of how the written word can expose the relationship between the re-telling of history and finding an alternate truth. By recording the many conflicting stories of its peoples, it has linked truth and literature, ensuring an indelible imprint on the country's future writing. The past cannot be changed, but how the nation deals with it in the future will be determined by language and narrative. -- The final section is self-reflexive and illustrates the symbiotic bond between the research and creative components, citing examples from the dissertation of how the two streams influenced one another. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 145 p