I almost forgot one of the most important aspect of this discussion, one that usually tends to be forgotten: that dioramas as a concrete form of historical representation can be a useful pedagogical tool and maybe also a shortcut to a different historical situation that we can't and, in this case, wouldn't want to experience first hand.
When I was reading a lot about the "Operation Reinhardt" death Camps in Poland a couple of years ago, I learned that one aspect of them had been very problematic to reconstruct - the layout of the camps, how they actually looked back in 1942/43.
The problem was that, in contrast to Auschwitz for exampel, the camps of Operation Reinhardt (Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor) was totally demolished in late 1943 as an effort to conceal the nazi crimes committed there. All the buildings were torn down, the ground was levelled and pine trees were planted on the sites. Since no drawing plans survived the war, the historians' reconstruction of the layout of the camps had to be based solely on eyewitness accounts. (Later, historians have been able to shed some more light on the topic through archelogical excavations and with the help of aerial photography.)
But based on eyewitness accounts there has been some attempts to make an accurate model of one of the camps, Treblinka. The problem in this respect is that the eyewitness accounts are left by the few surviving jewish prisoners and that thay had a limited possibility to see the whole camp. But by piecing all this information together one modeller by the name Peter Laponder managed to reconstruct Treblinka. The diorama, in the scale 1:400, is shown at the Gisozi Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda, another place that bears witness about human cruelty. The model can also be seen on this site:
http://www.death-camps.org/treblinka/laponder1.html
One of the few survivors from Treblinka, Yankiel Wiernik, has also built his own model of the camp. Wiernik worked as a carpenter in the camp, could move more easily from one part it to another, and had therefor a better chance to get a more accurate overall picture. His model that is made out of wood can bee seen here:
http://www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/wiernik.html
The third diorama that I know of is that made by a modeller named Peter (not sure about his first name). He based his model on the account of Richard Glazer, another prisoner that survived Treblinka. Glazer had an unique opportunity to get an overview of the camp, since he worked in the so called "Camoflage commando", that every day left the camp to chop down branches to twine into the barbed wire fences, to conceal the horrors from people outside. (His book Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka is one of the most chilling accounts from Treblinka and I can really recommed it for anyone interested in the Final solution. It is avaliable on Amazon.com for example).
Peters' model is different from the other two, since he tries to reconstruct the activety in the the camp. The scene in the foreground is that the victims leaving the trainset, but the diorama allows the spectator to follow the whole killing process up until the cremation of the bodies. Even though the model is in the scale 1:400, I find it to be one of the most horrifying representations I have seen of the Final solution, at least in this form. Some people may find it distrubing, a sign af bad taste etc, but to me it has the merit that it allows people to visulize the industrial killing machiney in all its brutal apparation. You be the judge. The model can be found on this site:
http://www.death-camps.org/treblinka/peters.html
I hope that the links will show another way in which the diorama modelling can be used - for other purposes than the pure satisfaction we (often) find in building our models.
/Tony
aka bultenibo