Exhibiting the Missing: The World Jewish Congress’ London Exhibition of 1947, ‘Search for the Scattered’

In June 1947, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) launched an exhibition in London titled ‘Search for the Scattered.’ Some of the materials on display were loaned to the WJC by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA)’s Central Tracing Bureau (CTB), the predecessor to the International Tracing Service (ITS). The exhibition presented a detailed accounting of the vital work of both the CTB and the WJC. This paper argues, on the basis of the limited documentation that remains, that the ‘Search for the Scattered’ exhibition was a site of postwar knowledge production and transnational exchange that served a practical purpose: facilitating searching by addressing visitors as potential enquirers and reproducing the material culture of the search for visitors to view, read, handle, and understand. Like lists of names that were posted in DP camps, the exhibition can also be read as an early marker of the emotive power of name lists; in Leora Auslander’s words, commemorative markers of ‘a shared fate and common tragedy.’ Although tracing work has been infrequently a focus in the historiography of the Holocaust, the staging of this exhibition demonstrates early recognition of the significance of the WJC’s and CTB’s tracing work and the need for its wider acknowledgement, and suggests the reconstructive and restorative nature of the search itself.