(New York, NY)— The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust announces its new core exhibition will open for previews on June 30, 2022. The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do will offer an expansive and timely presentation of Holocaust history told through personal stories, objects, photos, and film—many on view for the first time.
The 12,000-square-foot exhibition will feature over 700 original objects and survivor testimonies from the Museum’s collection to tell a global story through a local lens, rooted in objects donated by survivors and their families, many of whom settled in New York and nearby places.
Of a particularly timely resonance, numerous artifacts in the Museum’s collection are from Ukraine, and the history of Jews in Ukraine is woven throughout The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, providing the history of Ukrainian Jews as crucial context for today’s unfolding crisis.
In keeping with the Museum’s mission to educate people of all ages and backgrounds on the broad tapestry of Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust, the exhibition features countless beginnings, middles, and too many endings that make up the stories of The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do. Each room, and each object, contains generations of experiences and information about who Jews are, what sustains Jewish communities, and what life was like during the period of European modernization, World War I, and the political and social movements that brought about the rise of the Nazi Party.
Within the Holocaust experiences of legalized racism and fascism, pogroms, ghettos, mass murder, and concentration camps are instances of personal and global decision-making, escape, resistance, and resilience, and ultimately liberation and new beginnings.
“The title of our new exhibition speaks to our institution’s very reason for being,” says Museum President & CEO Jack Kliger. “Antisemitism and fascism are again on the rise throughout the world. Right here in New York, we have witnessed not only a surge in antisemitism but an uptick in violence and harassment targeting many marginalized groups. The time to speak out and act is upon us, and it is urgent. We hope The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do will educate and inspire our visitors and honor those who perished in the Holocaust, whose memories are a blessing.”
“It is a particular point of pride for our institution that this new core exhibition gives new life to the Museum’s collection. The hundreds of artifacts, many of them donated by survivors, that visitors will experience were all donated to our institution with extraordinary trust and vision, and we are grateful. Each offers up its own story, and together these artifacts present an irrefutable record of history,” says the Museum’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bruce Ratner.
The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do will be the Museum’s first exhibition to open in its core galleries since its award-winning and widely acclaimed Auschwitz. Not Long ago. Not far away., which concluded last spring.
The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do is made possible with leadership support from The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, The Oster Family, and Patti Askwith Kenner.
Generous support is provided by presenting partners Peter and Mary Kalikow, The Pickman Foundation, and Larry and Klara Silverstein and Family.
With special thanks to our benefactors Carlos and Malú Alvarez, Stefany and Simon Bergson, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Campari USA, Michael Lowenstein, Manhattan Beer Distributors, and Wendy Lowenstein Sandler and Neil Sandler.
Additional support is made possible by Breakthru Beverage Group, Constellation Brands, Nancy Fisher, The Gallery Educator Friends of the Museum, Margie and Jeffrey Honickman, Charles and Leigh Merinoff, New York State Council on the Arts, Dominic Origlio, a gift in memory of the Sundheimer and Semler Families, and David Wiener #189897, son of Moishe Chaim and Hannah Wiener, and by Joyce and Fred Claar, Scott & Debby Rechler | Rechler Philanthropy, the Saiontz Family in memory of Jack and Sally Feldman, Mary Ann Fribourg, The Starr Foundation, and other generous donors.