Welcome to Museum of Family History's
newest presentation about World War II and the Holocaust. Within
this presentation you will currently find three new exhibitions:
"Persecution and Flight: The Nazi Campaign Against the Jews," "The
Jewish Ghetto, and "Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps."
Each exhibition is an integral part of the Museum's very modest
attempt to present evidence of the events that devastated the once
burgeoning Jewish population of Europe before the advent of the Second World War.
The content of each of these exhibitions
may differ in subject matter, yet each tell of events that befell the Jewish population around the
same time period, i.e. from the 1930s and the rise of Adolf Hitler
and the Nazi Party, to the time of the liberation of the
many concentration camps. Also, each exhibition is similar in
construction and presentation, e.g. in all three there are displayed photographs that visually represent the tragic sufferings
and deprivations of the Jewish populace before and during the Second
World War.
Though many of us may have experienced anti-Semitism, most of us have never lived in a ghetto,
nor have we ever been incarcerated in a concentration camp. Thus for
each of us, the
photographs displayed in these exhibitions serve as a "window in time."
Whether it be a photograph, a postcard or personal testimony from a
Survivor, each piece of evidence provides us with an opportunity to
learn, to try to understand, even imagine if we dare. When we gaze
intently on a particular photograph, we may be affected by the many soulful expressions of those
who are portrayed, the many who may have suffered so greatly. We thus act as silent observers
as we look back at this horrific time in Jewish history.
In this exhibition some video
testimony is also presented, each given by a man or woman who
survived the War. It is one thing to read a written account of one's
life experiences as told in the first- or third-person, but when one
hears such
oral testimony uttered by a
Survivor, and senses the timbre of their voice this has a special meaning.
Such personal
accounts may affect us emotionally in a
way that a simple photograph may not.
The Museum is grateful to three
magnificent and highly esteemed organizations for their content, not to mention those
individuals who have graciously permitted the Museum to include
their testimony within these exhibitions. Such organizations include
the United States National
Archives, United States Memorial
Holocaust Museum and Yad
Vashem, whose collections of historical photographs and Survivor
testimony serve as lasting monuments to the collective history of
the Jewish people.
The Museum would like especially
to recognize the Florence and Lawrence Spungen Family Foundation, which
has given the Museum permission to include the content of its
Holocaust Postal Collection within its various exhibitions.
According to the Foundation website:
In 2007, Danny Spungen, a collector and philatelist, on behalf on
the foundation, acquired arguably one of the best known collections
of Holocaust materials related to stamps, covers, postcards,
letters, bank note forgeries, and manuscripts from concentration
camps & Jewish ghettos. [This exhibition was] formally known as
"NAZI Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation
of Europe."
More can be read about the history of this
exhibition and the Foundation by clicking
here.
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A traveling, anti-Semitic propaganda exhibition titled "Der
ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew)" opened in Munich on November 8, 1937.
Jews were portrayed as moral degenerates in exhibits, lectures,
books, and posters -- alternatively as money-grubbing capitalists or
as Communists conspirators, either way bent on world domination.
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As always, The Museum of Family History welcomes more such material
from the public, whether it be in the form of written material,
photographs, audio or video,
and more. The Museum is "the People's Museum," so to speak, and
always looks forward to the participation of those who are interested
in honoring and preserving the history and culture of the Jewish
people and the Jewish family in particular.
If you're willing to
submit copies of material that might be useful to the Museum, please contact
us by clicking here.
If you have any questions as to the usefulness of material that you
feel is appropriate for the Museum, and that others would be
interested in, please contact us.
The Museum of Family
History hopes that
you will find these three new exhibitions educative and enlightening; that
you perhaps will learn or feel something you haven't learned or felt
before, and that you will, if at all possible, speak sincerely with
and listen to a family member who might have their own interesting
story to tell, whether it be about their lives during World War II
or at any other time that was meaningful to them.
Once these three exhibitions have run
their course, much of their content will be integrated into the
Museum's Permanent Collection, within its "World War II and the
Holocaust" wing.
The Museum strives to offer more such exhibitions,
in each instance serving an educative
purpose or as an opportunity to further one's research into one's
own family, giving to all who are or will be interested in the future
an opportunity to learn more about modern Jewish history in a
non-academic setting.
Regards,
Steven Lasky
Director and Founder
Museum of Family History
steve@museumoffamilyhistory.com
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