CapitalCampaignReportJUNE2017

“Bearing Witness: A Community Remembers” is the permanent exhibit at Holocaust Museum Houston. This exhibit will remain personalized with testimony of Holocaust Survivors who later settled in the Houston area who lived through a genocidal war that inflicted mass death on unprecedented numbers of innocent civilians. The exhibit features artifacts donated by the Holocaust Survivors who later settled in the Houston area, their descendants, liberators and other collectors. The exhibit also educates visitors about Jewish and non-Jewish resistance efforts, including the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, prisoner revolts, sabotage, the partisan movement, displaced persons camps and life after the Holocaust. This Capital Campaign will expand and enhance the permanent exhibit by bringing two of the Museum’s most important artifacts, the World War II era railcar and the 1940's Danish fishing boat, into the Museum facility, enabling staff to preserve the artifacts from the weather, according to best museum practices. Featuring only state-of-the-art exhibits and technological advances, “Bearing Witness: A Community Remembers” includes the one-of-a-kind “Josef and Edith Mincberg Destroyed Communities” interactive exhibit. “BEARING WITNESS: A COMMUNITY REMEMBERS”

During the Holocaust, extraordinarily talented young writer Anne Frank left a record of her life in hiding in Amsterdam, writing in a way that continues to enthrall readers around the world. She and other youth diarists wrote with passion, humor and fear, depending on what they experienced in different geographic and chronological settings, in hiding, in camps, in places where circumstance placed them, usually with no choice. Their writings, and the “Anne Frank & Young Writers' Voices” exhibit brings us close to the record they left. Their writing makes us think; it makes us feel and it makes us wish for a kinder, gentler world. The HMH Capital Campaign will feature a permanent exhibit on Anne Frank and six other youth diarists to educate visitors about the very personal stories of the Holocaust as well as the existing dangers of hatred, prejudice and apathy. Students will be able to access and utilize electronic diaries, providing them with the unique use of an interactive, experiential technology. Working with renowned diary expert Alexandra Zapruder and using numerous digital resources, this exhibit space will open doors of inquiry to HMH visitors of all ages, engaging them while evoking reflection and care. RHONA AND BRUCE CARESS GALLERY “ANNE FRANK & YOUNG WRITERS’ VOICES”

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