It isn’t only the history of the Holocaust that you see on display in Israel’s Holocaust museums. It’s also the history of the history of the Holocaust.
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, whose new novel is about a Jewish storyteller in Brooklyn kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists, talks to Rob Verger about the fear of being the last one to bear witness to the crimes of the Nazis, and why the world still hasn’t learned the lessons of the past.
Tourists experience an ordered timeline that leads them through a history of incomprehensible evil.
Which is why memorial trumps museum. Visitors act with the reverence usually given to sacred ground, witnessing the exhibitions alone with their thoughts.
The traveling Museum exhibit, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, will be at the New Orleans museum through mid-October. Tulane plans a series of related lectures.
Holocaust survivor Margit Meissner gives Freddy Mutanguha, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, a tour of the Holocaust Museum, and they both reflected on their mutual hope that educating people about genocides that have already occurred might prevent others.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver the keynote address at a symposium on ending genocide, on July 24 at the Museum.
For decades, nobody really talked about them: the thousands of Poles, mostly Roman Catholics, who risked their lives during World War II to save Jewish friends, neighbors and even strangers.
“We did what we had to do,” said Halina Szaszkiewicz, 89. “There was nothing heroic about it.”
How can humanity ensure that the mass murder of vulnerable minorities never happens again?
Facing 11 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic finally went before an international court Wednesday after more than 15 years on the run. Jeffrey Brown and Michael Dobbs of the Museum discuss the case and Mladic's war crimes charges tied to the Bosnian civil war.
Even after decades of in-depth Holocaust research, excruciating details are only now emerging about more than 1,100 German-run ghettos in Eastern Europe where the Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews.
The Salisbury steak special? Now that’s a good topic. Or that gentle pharmacist at the CVS in Rockville? What a nice man, they’ll say.
But they don’t often talk about what they had to do to survive one of the most terrifying events of the 20th century — or any century for that matter.
President Obama outlined a series of policies Monday aimed at helping the U.S. government better respond to the threat of genocide around the world, declaring that “national sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people.”
Speaking at the Museum, he invoked the international community’s vows of “never again” but also cited the difficulties of fulfilling that pledge in the 21st century, recalling post-World War II mass killings in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia and elsewhere. “We are haunted by the atrocities we did not stop, by the lives we did not save,” he said.
President Obama will announce plans for developing strategies to prevent and respond to mass atrocities when he commemorates the Holocaust at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on April 23, the White House announced yesterday.
Also read: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/04/19/3093331/dc-marks-holocaust-remembrance-with-calls-to-combat-anti-semitism-and-prevent-genocide
Obama will speak at the museum on April 23, less than a week after the official Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Museum encourages communities across the U.S. to hold events near or in conjunction with Holocaust Remembrance Week, set this year for April 15 through 22. The official Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom HaShoah, is April 19.
Kim Klett has been an English teacher at Dobson High School since 1991, but that is not her only contribution to students. Klett also is a regional educator for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
She says: My "A World of Difference" members started this event last year. We invite different speakers for each hour, ask teachers to sign up to bring their classes and try to teach students about problems around the world and solutions to these problems. This year, we have a 94-year-old man who liberated the concentration camp Dachau; Camp Darfur, an interactive exhibit where my club members will be in charge of a tent that teaches students about genocides; and we are screening two movies, "The Last Survivor" and "Not in Our Town."
Michael Abramowitz directs the genocide prevention program of the Museum, which co-convened the Genocide Prevention Task Force.
He says: "Think what a message it would send if this year the presidential nominees of both parties committed themselves to ensuring the creation of a strong Atrocities Prevention Board, and a framework for preventing these worst crimes from happening again. While there are many divisive issues on the plate this election year, preventing genocide should not be one of them."
Area residents are being sought to share stories of rescues related to the Holocaust, as part of the annual Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 18 at 7 p.m. at Congregation B’nai Torah, 2 Eunice Drive, Longmeadow. This year’s memorial service will carry the theme designated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Choosing to Act: Stories of Rescue.”
Moldova has delivered an archive of thousands of Holocaust-era documents to the Museum in Washington.
Charlene Schiff was 9 years old when World War II began.
Then known as Shulamit Perlmutter, she was living in a small town in Poland with her parents, both educators, and her older sister when German soldiers stormed into her home. Her father, who taught at a local college, was among the 300 community leaders rounded up in the early days of the invasion.
“He was a very formal man. He was wearing short sleeves that day and when the Germans came for him, he asked if he could go get his jacket. They said no,” Schiff told a group of students and parents at Middle Tennessee Christian School Friday. “We never said goodbye. He couldn’t even hug us before he left.”