More than 100,000 persons of all ages — many of them Hebrew school children as well as teenagers and college students — already have viewed the first showing of a photographic exhibit in the U.S. entitled “The Holocaust and Resistance.” The display which was released to the public just six weeks ago will be on tour throughout the U.S. for the next six months. Because of the demand of Jewish organizations, institutions and the general public, the exhibit may have to continue into the fall.
In a special report issued this week, Eli Zborowski, president of the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates and Nazi Victims, said that so far, the response on college campuses, schools and synagogues, and conventions, can best be summed up in the words of a University of Illinois student who wrote: “Pictures better capture the haunted looks, the terror-stricken faces of the Jewish people and the empty brutal faces of their oppressors. I commend this exhibition for helping us not to forget ‘never to forget.'”
The display commemorates the 30th anniversary of Ghetto uprisings in Nazi occupied Europe. The American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates and Nazi Victims asked Yad Vashem, Israel’s National Remembrance Authority, to prepare the exhibit. There are 10 duplicate mobile exhibits circulating throughout the U.S. All major American Jewish organizations are sponsoring the exhibit.
EFFECTS OF EXHIBIT
Declaring that the exhibit was prepared in the hope that it will be a stimulus to more extensive study on the subject. Zborowski reported that already one effect of the exhibit in the past six weeks is that students in Hebrew schools are asking their teachers for more material on the Holocaust. Moreover, he continued, the exhibit is proving that this visual display — the Holocaust and Resistance — is drawing in many persons which books and articles have not yet reached.
Moshe Sheinbaum of Sheingold Publishers said those groups involved in the displays presentation to the American Jewish community are convinced that the display has heightened the awareness of the Holocaust among Jewish and non-Jewish youth and among the general public.
For instance, the exhibit, which has appeared in more than 50 locations in the past six weeks in the U.S. has also brought a greater demand for literature on the Holocaust. Zborowski reported that thousands of booklets on the Holocaust have been sold at the sites of the Exhibit, and the demand is increasing.
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.
