RELATED EXHIBITIONS

Persecution and Flight:
The Nazi Campaign Against the Jews

 

The Jewish Ghetto

Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself what    I can do for those who have not survived. The answer I have found for  myself (and which need not necessarily be the answer for every survivor) is: I want to be their mouthpiece, I want to keep their memory alive, to make sure the dead live on in that memory."
-Simon Wiesenthal, "Justice, Not Vengeance" (1989)
 

Most of the victims of the Holocaust (Shoah in Hebrew) were European Jews. In all, approximately six million Jews perished, mostly at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators during the second World War. The Nazis strove to persecute Jews and commit genocide, all as part of Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."
 
During this time, many Jews were forced into ghettos or sent directly to internment (concentration) camps. Conditions in these ghettos were generally poor. There was great overcrowding; many starved and died of disease. Gradually, many of the ghettos were emptied, as those who had been forced to live in the ghettos were eventually deported to the concentration camps.

Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps

 

World Holocaust memorials

 

Walk in My Shoes:
Collected Memories of the Holocaust

 

Images of the Concentration Camps

In the Holocaust portion of the Museum of Family History, the story of this horrible period in Jewish history is told not only in the third-person, but also in a personal way, through first-hand, eyewitness accounts. It is hoped that more survivors of the Holocaust will submit their own personal testimonies to the Museum, either in a written or oral form, so that those who wish to read and hear these accounts will become that much more knowledgeable about what occurred during these times.

 Photographs of the concentration camp grounds and their 'museums' are displayed. Links to all pertinent Holocaust-related websites are proffered so that all who are interested can see the fine work that other people and organizations have done in order to educate others about the Holocaust. Exhibitions showing photographs of many of the extant Holocaust memorials in various cemeteries in New York, New Jersey and Canada, as well as those in many locations in Europe and Israel, can also be viewed online within the Museum's Holocaust project.

The Museum welcomes all those who wish to contribute their own personal account (even those heard secondhand, passed down from parent or grandparent to child) of their experiences during the Holocaust, as well as any family photographs taken during these arduous times.

It is the mission of the Museum to honor and preserve the memory of our ancestors, our  families. It is hoped that the presentation of this material relating to the Holocaust will contribute in some small but perceptible way to keeping its memory alive in order to remind everyone that such a tragedy must never happen again.