The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida has unveiled a new exhibit that tells the stories of ten Central Floridians who survived the Holocaust.
The “Hope and Humanity” exhibit shares the experiences of each person before, during and after the events of World War II. Visitors are encouraged to choose one of the ten and follow his or her life story as it unfolds.
Director of Museum Experiences Suzanne Grimmer said it’s a change designed to focus more on individuals, instead of overwhelming numbers, like the six million Jewish people who died during the Holocaust.
“It’s really trying to root people back into the names, and not the number of six million. Each person was someone’s entire world,” said Grimmer. “So by returning their name, and really focusing on their lived experience, that’s where we think the change comes from.”
Director of Education Stephen Poynor said the Hope and Humanity exhibit uses a personal lens to bring history into the present, looking toward a future that’s more aware, empathetic and just. It does not, for instance, focus on the perpetrators. The local survivors remain front and center throughout.
“We want to show you the entire person,” said Poynor. “We want to show you their family. We want to show you their story.”
And through those stories, visitors can learn lessons that resonate through history. “The Holocaust didn't happen overnight,” Poynor said. “The Holocaust happened over time. What we think of as the Holocaust is often marked in 1933 with the first anti-Jewish laws, and then it was a small drip of progressions that led to events like Kristallnacht or the November pogrom. We call it the Night of Broken Glass, which is a mass action against Jewish people. And then ultimately…the mass killings that take place from the invasion of Poland all the way through to the end of the war.”
“None of that started with the start of World War II,” added Poynor. “Those things started with a small progression.”
The exhibit ends with a focus on the survivors’ contributions to the Central Florida community.
One of the survivors, Tess Wise, founded The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida itself. Another, Henri Landwirth, founded Give Kids the World.
“We hope you leave impacted,” Poynor said. “We hope you leave with empathy, perspective. We hope you leave with a sense of understanding that what these people brought to our community is something so much more than they had to, because they went through something significant and came out on the other side and did something amazing, and [we hope] that you leave feeling that you want to impact your community similarly.”
