If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is the word count when confronted with an actual boxcar of the type used by the Nazis to transport Jews to concentration camps?
Such an encounter at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center tends to leave one speechless
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The museum, the second-largest such institution in the United States, opened its doors in 2009.
The impetus for its founding was first inspired more than four decades earlier in the aftermath of an aborted neo-Nazi march planned for Skokie, then home to a sizable population of Holocaust survivors.
“The survivors had really worked to put the Holocaust behind them after emigrating to this country and, by and large, did not speak about their experiences,” according to Susan Abrams, CEO of the museum. “Suddenly, they were confronted by this virulent anti-Semitism right here in their own community. That jolted them to realize they needed to raise their voices.”
The first incarnation of the museum was a Skokie storefront that opened in 1984.
Twenty-five years later, on April 19, keynote speaker, former President Bill Clinton, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel presided over the museum’s opening.
Then-President Barack Obama and former President of Israel Shimon Peres recorded video greetings.
Today, Abrams said the museum is more relevant than ever and part of its mission statement, “Remember the past,” has taken on added urgency as the witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust pass, and those who would deny or diminish the Holocaust feel emboldened.
Recently, the museum joined several Jewish groups in expressing alarm over a statement released by the White House on Holocaust Remembrance Day that omitted specific reference to the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, and instead commemorated the “victims, survivors and heroes of the Holocaust.”
“They were being inclusive,” Abrams said of the Trump administration, “and that can be good, but not at the cost of the central story.”
Telling that central story is the lifeblood of the museum and its 25,000 artifacts.
There are three permanent exhibition spaces in conjunction with three spaces for touring or changing exhibitions that enable the museum to, “go deeper into aspects of the Holocaust and more broadly into other aspects of social justice and human rights,” Abrams said.
The museum’s central exhibition space is the Karkomi Holocaust Exhibition, recommended for visitors age 12 and older.
It chronicles and contextualizes Hitler’s “Final Solution” through artifacts and visual media presentations that span life in pre-war Germany and the rise of fascism through the liberation of the concentration camps, the establishment of Israel and post-war life in Skokie, which had the largest per capita population of Holocaust survivors, according to the museum.
Recently opened at the museum is a touring exhibition, “Operation Finale: The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann,” an unprecedented presentation that includes artifacts never seen outside of Israel, including the iconic glass booth in which the escaped Nazi war criminal was put in during his trial.
The museum is one of the select U.S. venues to show the exhibition before its artifacts return to Israel.
In July, the museum will host “Bill Graham and the Rock & Roll Revolution,” an exhibition about the legendary music promoter who is most associated with the iconic Fillmore and Fillmore West theaters, but who was born in Berlin and fled Nazi Germany following Kristallnacht. He came to America as an unaccompanied minor.
But it is the Take A Stand Center, which will open officially in October, that promises to offer a new level of engagement with museum visitors.
The first of three galleries is a Survivors Story Theater. Voice activation software developed by the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation will allow visitors to have a real-time conversation with recorded Holocaust survivors. This technology is in beta testing at the museum and can be experienced on three Saturdays and Sundays per month.
A second gallery will promote the concept of being an “upstander” rather than a bystander.
It will feature stories meant to inspire about famous and regular people who distinguished themselves in fields ranging from environmental and economic rights, to social and civil rights.
A third gallery, the Take A Stand Lab, will offer tool kits designed to motivate people to “move from inspiration to action,” Abrams said.
The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is also highly committed to educational outreach with a speaker’s bureau that boasts 60 Holocaust survivors who speak to students and educators at the museum and in local schools.
“That is critical to our mission,” Abrams emphasized. “Studies show that interaction with a human being really does help to teach our common humanity. The Holocaust is a difficult and overwhelming history. We have been wrestling (with) how we’ll be able to do this for generations to come, and are training the children and grandchildren of survivors to tell their and their families’ stories.”
With news reports of an increase in incidents of violence and vandalism deemed to be anti-Semitic, the museum still has its work cut out for it, Abrams said.
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“We are in a period, it seems, of heightened divisiveness,” she said. “Education continues to be required to combat hatred, prejudice and indifference. We still have lots of work to do.”
Donald Liebenson is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center
Location: 9603 Woods Drive, Skokie
Hours: Weekdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday evenings until 8; Weekends 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: Adults $12; Seniors/Students (ages 12-22) $8; Children (ages 5-11) $6.
Information: 847-967-4800 or www.ilholocaustmuseum.org.