Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi-hunter, is coming here from Vienna to dedicate on April 23 the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles. University officials, in announcing the dedication of what they said was the only Holocaust center in North America to bear Wiesenthal’s name and active support, said the first public meeting at the center also would be held on April 23.
The Wiesenthal Center is a unique and multifaceted institution dedicated to the universal recognition of a basic human premise: that through education and awareness, society will never allow an atrocity the magnitude of the Holocaust, to happen again, Center officials said. More than a memorial or a scholarly citadel, the Center is a diverse educational complex that combines sophisticated electronic audio visual techniques and varied graphics as well as more traditional media, to convey the story of mankind’s most tragic period.
The Center contains: multiple video monitors presenting recent news stories that deal with the denial of human rights, a selection of classic still photographs depicting elements of daily life in pre-Holocaust shtetls, a 200-square-foot chronology from Hitler’s rise to power to the ultimate collapse and surrender of the Third Reich and a map of the European countries involved in the Holocaust showing the numbers of Jewish victims lost in each.
It also contains a mechanized information center that provides printed answers to the 36 questions most often raised about the Holocaust, photographs and resumes of the people most responsible for facilitating the Holocaust, toped telephone statements of key world leaders during the Holocaust years, a display dedicated to the 1.5 million children whose lives ended in the infamous death camps, and an exhibit portraying the quiet heroism and steadfastness in the face of absolute evil that characterized the behavior of European Jewry in the face of impending genocide.
The Center also has q “provocatively frank” exhibit of “The World That Was Silent,” depicting world leaders who were among the staunchest proponents of freedom and looked the other way during the Holocaust.
A MAJOR EXHIBIT FOR THE CENTER
A major exhibit for the Wiesenthal Center is being prepared by noted British designer and movie producer Arnold Schwartzman. It is the world’s first multi-screen, multi-channel sound, audio/visual experience dealing with the Holocaust. Music narration, and both still and motion pictures will be mixed by computer-controlled sequences and displayed to the audiences throughout the United States. Utilzing resources and location photography from both sides of the Atlantic, “the 45-minute program will bring the impact and lessons of the Holocaust to life in a way never before seen,” Center officials said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
