A new traveling exhibit will be on display at the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus beginning Sunday, Dec. 12. The exhibit, "A Day in the Warsaw Ghetto: A Birthday Trip in Hell," is comprised of 85 of the still photographs that Wehrmacht Sergeant Heinz Jost took illegally while wandering inside the Warsaw Ghetto on his birthday in November 1941. He hid the pictures for about 40 years until he knew that he was dying.
The Holocaust Memorial Center is located at 28123 Orchard Lake Road in Farmington Hills. The exhibit, which is co-sponsored by The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring, will be on display until March 12, 2011.
The grand opening of the exhibit will be held at 1 p.m. on Dec. 12. The guest speaker is Samuel Kassow, an American historian who focuses on Ashkenazi Jewry. He has written several books and will discuss one of them, "Who Will Write Our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive." Kassow's appearance is co-sponsored by the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies. Light refreshments will be served at the grand opening.
The exhibit photos are grouped in themes: street life, beggars, peddlers, children, the dead and burial. Passages from original diaries written by ghetto residents provide historical context and complement the photographs. The photos depict the diversity of conditions, including people who are starving and ill and newcomers still thriving; illegal schools; people praying together; and book peddlers plying their trade amidst death and disease.
Jost apparently found the experience that day so disturbing that he kept the photographs secreted away, not even revealing their existence to his wife or family until 1980. Eventually, the pictures were given to Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial and museum, where curators selected the images for the exhibit. Originally, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service circulated it throughout the United States.
The Holocaust Memorial Center executive director Stephen Goldman said, "This exhibit is an opportunity to get a glimpse of the life that went on under the most deplorable conditions in the Warsaw ghetto. Amidst starvation, degradation and death, the Jewish people tried to keep a semblance of daily normalcy and human dignity. Jost's photos chronicle unimaginable circumstances."
The launch of the exhibit coincides with the opening of the Holocaust Center's new gallery. The gallery for temporary exhibitions has been carved out of former storage areas and features 1,500 square feet of uninterrupted floor space with an entry area, state-of-the art lighting, moveable interior walls, acoustic treatment and a structural roof grid where exhibit materials can be hung.
The Holocaust Memorial Center encourages visitors to tour this emotionally engaging exhibit. The museum hours are: Sunday - Thursday, 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. (last admission at 3:30 p.m.); and Friday, 9:30 a.m. - 3 p.m. (last admission at 1:30 p.m.). The museum is closed on Saturday and public holidays. There is an admission fee.
For more information, call (248) 553-2400, or visit www.holocaustcenter.org.
Published: Wed, Dec 1, 2010
