The walls are grey, the room makes me shiver. The first thing I see is a huge map, nine meters wide and five meters high, engraved in stone. It portrays the Armenian settlements in the Ottoman Empire before 1915, before the genocide had set in. Statistics illustrate the number of Armenian churches and schools. Pictures show happy people, peaceful lives. Carefully I enter the second room. The absence of windows prevents the daylight to spread. The single light in the room comes from behind the crosses that give the room the appearance of a graveyard. The emotions that stem from the exposed objects are overwhelming. Eyewitness reports, photographs that portray sufferings, portraits of victims and documentary films.

Because I can see their handwritings, can hear their voices and touch their letters I feel an inextricable link between my own life and that of the Armenians whose lives are displayed in this museum. These museum objects mark the continuation between the time of the event and the time in which I live, and are therefore able to write the experiences of the Armenians into my personal biography, into the ‘personal experience’ of the audience (Handler, 1986, p. 4; Linnekin, 1991, p. 446). Furthermore, the fact that I am able to touch the letters written by an Armenian during WWI is not only a proof that the letter exists and that this particular Armenian has existed, but also proofs the existence of – in this case – the Armenian genocide. Therefore, such ‘authentic’ objects are able to create a direct relationship between the self and the particular event (Handler, 1986, p. 4).

On the one hand the authentic objects in the Armenian genocide museum apparently enable and sustain a relationship between the audience and the Armenians that lived during the genocide. On the other hand the curator of the exhibition aims at authenticity instead of replicas because authentic objects embrace the quality of being unique (Eberbach & Crowley, 2005, p. 317). They are chosen by the curators because they have something special to say to the visitors; they are ‘historical evidence’ for what they are supposed to symbolise (Kavanagh, 1996, p. 6).

It is not only by authenticity that museum objects have the quality of being historical evidence. Museum curators also aim at portraying the ‘real’ or at least, at achieving the ‘illusion’ of reality. Real then is defined in terms of the immediality of the viewer’s emotion (Bolter & Grusin, 1999, p. 57). In the Armenian genocide museum this has been done by the use of documentaries and photos. Both objects bear the assumption that their images have a direct relationship with the socio-historical world, the so-called “assertive stance” (Roscou & Hight, 2001, p. 8 ). “[…], the image and the record of that image are seen as being one and the same, […]” (Roscou & Hight, 2001, p. 6). This is especially the case when the photographer or documentary maker takes an observational mode, in which they depict everyday life. Because this mode is not that centred around an argument, the images are presented as “a window on reality” (Roscou & Hight, 2001, p. 19). The viewer simply forgets that photos and documentaries are made by people, and are therefore by definition selective and subjective.

And so it was when I was looking around in the second room of the genocide museum. The photos told me not only that the event had actually taken place; they also convinced me of the emotions involved in this historical event. With the cultural belief in mind that ‘the camera does not lie’ (Roscou & Hight, 2001, p. 11), I observed the undernourished women, destroyed families, and crying children. Furthermore, the documentaries and photos gave me the feeling to be in direct contact with eyewitnesses. In some sense, eyewitnesses have similar qualities as have authentic objects; the direct link with the particular event. By seeing and hearing the stories of the eyewitnesses, I gained direct access to the Armenian genocide, because of the idea that they “have seen it with their own eyes” (Roscou & Hight, 2001, p. 16).

It is especially because of these qualities of authenticity and reality that physical museums mediate collective memories in a very convincing and emotional way.

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