ments. Analysing documents is simply interpretation, and the process of interpretation is always subjective. History can never be completely objective due to the cultural relativism involved. History is just a representation of a historian’s way of conceptualising things that have happened. Every culture views the world differently through the lenses of its own concepts and interests, events and experiences are both seen and interpreted differently. The fact that interpretations of past events vary with cultural prejudices, personal interests, and standards of rationality, implies that nobodies’ interpretation of the past can be true or objective. An illness, which a person in one culture blames on an evil spirit, a person in another might describe in terms of a medical theory. Our perceptions of things in the world are a function of our culture, of its practices and concepts. Even within ones own culture there are differences in the way people view things. A common person may see the sun rise over the horizon, but the scientist thinks of the earth turning toward the sun instead. Everybody shapes what he or she sees according to the concepts with which they have learned to structure the world. Keith Jenkins has denied the objectivity and truth of history in his book Re-thinking History (1991). Although agreeing to the idea that historians study sources he remarks that “…the historians viewpoint and predilections still shape the choice of historical materials, and our own personal constructs determine what we make of them. The past that we ‘know’ is always contingent upon our own views, our own ‘present’….” The Sydney Jewish Museum is such a piece of historical memorabilia that has been obviously been significantly shaped by cultural relativism. The Jewish people of today, have established such a museum to recognise the thousands of Jews who were slaughtered during the Holo...
