Core Exhibits

Our permanent exhibit is currently under construction through December 2023. A temporary exhibit will be on display during the renovation with selections from our core collection and previews of our new exhibit. The updated exhibit space will reopen in 2024. Learn more at holocaustcenter.org/renovation

Core Exhibits

 

The Eternal Flame and Memorial Wall

In Jewish practice, a twenty-four hour candle is lit on the anniversary of the death of a parent or child. For many, there is no known anniversary date for relatives lost in the Holocaust; no grave to visit, and, increasingly, no one to remember. For all these innocent souls, we keep the flame burning.

 

The Boxcar

The Henrietta and Alvin Weisberg Gallery tells the horrors of deportation by rail to the ghettos, death camps and concentration camps of Europe. The Gallery’s centerpiece is a WWII-era boxcar used by the Nazis at the time that Jews and other “undesirables” were transported to implement the Final Solution. The boxcar is set in historically accurate architecture of the Hannoverscher Bahnhof station platform in Hamburg, Germany. A mural and audio-visual elements add to the experience.

 

The Timeline

It is important to contextualize events within world history. All events are the result of actions that came before and, in turn, influence events that follow.  In this timeline, the history of the Jewish people is juxtaposed with milestones in world history.

 

Museum of European Jewish Heritage

The Museum of European Jewish Heritage uses kiosks, murals, and religious artifacts to tell the story of European Jewish culture and antisemitism from the second century CE through contemporary times. Eastern European shtetl life is prominently featured.

 

Descent into Nazism

As you move toward the portrait of Adolf Hitler, you descend into darkness.  You learn of persecution, resistance, fear and unparalleled courage, families uprooted, separated, confined and murdered, the unspeakable atrocities of the perpetrators and the silence of the bystanders.

 

The Camp System

Beginning in 1933, thousands of camps sprang up.  We hear primarily about Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec and Majdanek, the killing centers established in Poland by the occupying Nazi forces. Ultimately there were thousands of other camps, including transit camps, slave labor camps which provided workers for German factories, and Prisoner of War camps.

 

The Abyss

General Dwight D. Eisenhower required civilian news media and military combat camera units to record their observations. He explained, “I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

 

 

The Postwar Period

Following Hitler’s defeat, war crimes trials were held at Dachau and Nuremberg. While Jews sought surviving family members and traces of their former lives, the Allies set up Displaced Persons’ camps to house refugees. Individuals came to grips with the reality that they had no place to go and, often, no surviving family.  Others came to strange new lands with little more than the clothes on their backs.

 

More Core Exhibits at The HC

Self-guided tour

To take a full, self-guided virtual tour of The Holocaust Center, please click here.