The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, A New Exhibition

The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust has announced a new exhibition called The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do and  offers an expansive, timely presentation of Holocaust history told through over 750 objects, photos, and film from the Museum’s collection, many on view for the first time. The 12,000-square-foot exhibition tells a global story through a local lens, rooted in objects donated by survivors and their families, many of whom settled in the greater New York region.

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 audio tour guide accompanying the exhibition, available for download through the free Bloomberg Connects app, features narration from actress Julianna Margulies, winner of eight Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe, and Eleanor Reissa, the Tony-nominated director, Broadway and television actress, prize-winning playwright, author of the memoir “The Letters Project: A Daughter’s Journey,” and former artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.

The exhibition opens to the public on Friday, July 1.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust is New York’s contribution to the global responsibility to never forget. The Museum is committed to the crucial mission of educating diverse visitors about Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust. The third largest Holocaust Museum in the world and the second-largest in North America, the Museum of Jewish Heritage anchors the southernmost tip of Manhattan, completing the cultural and educational landscape it shares with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. 

The Museum of Jewish Heritage maintains a collection of almost 40,000 artifacts, photographs, documentary films, and survivor testimonies and contains classrooms, a 375-seat theater (Edmond J. Safra Hall), special exhibition galleries, a resource center for educators, and a memorial art installation, Garden of Stones, designed by internationally acclaimed sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. The Museum is the home of National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene and JewishGen. 

The Museum’s current offerings include Boris Lurie: Nothing To Do But To Try, a first of its kind exhibition on the 20th century artist and Holocaust survivor on view through November 6, 2022.

Each year, the Museum presents over 60 public programs, connecting our community in person and virtually through lectures, book talks, concerts, and more. For more information visit: mjhnyc.org/events. 

In addition, the Museum offers free, pre-recorded virtual lessons for students, taught by a Museum educator, using its Holocaust Curriculum lesson plans. Designed for middle and high school, the lessons, available on demand, allow for student interaction via chat and polls, offer certificates of completion, and resources for additional research. 

For more information: https://mjhnyc.org/education/virtual-lessons/

The Museum receives general operating support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.