HMH Bearing Witness - December 2017

CURATORIAL DEPARTMENT

UPCOMING

Spector/Warren Fellowship for Future Teachers Public Lecture with Professor Peter Hayes: “Why?: Explaining the Holocaust” January 10, 2018 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Location: HMH, 9220 Kirby Dr., Suite 100 Peter Hayes, who is the content expert working with Holocaust Museum Houston on our expanding Museum’s Permanent Exhibition, earned his Ph.D. at Yale. He specializes in the history of Germany in the 20th century, particularly the Nazi period. He

Holocaust Museum Houston Opens Exhibits in Temporary Space During Major Expansion

New Dimensions in Testimony “New Dimensions in Testimony,” an initiative by USC Shoah Foundation, also opened October 20 and runs through spring 2018. This interactive audio- visual installation records and displays testimony in a way that will preserve the dialogue between Holocaust survivors and learners far into the future. Guests will experience “virtual conversations” by “talking” with Holocaust survivors. This pioneering project integrates advanced filming techniques, specialized display technologies and next-generation natural language processing to provide an intimate experience. To date, 15 survivors’ testimonies were captured by more than 50 cameras as each was asked 1,600 questions addressing topics ranging from pre-war life through the Holocaust and beyond. “New Dimensions in Testimony” revolutionizes the concept of oral history. Each specially recorded interview enables viewers to ask questions of the survivor about their life experiences and hear responses in real-time, lifelike conversation. Questions are answered naturally, as if the survivor is in the room, and through Artificial Intelligence, the more questions asked the better the technology becomes. Holocaust Museum Houston is one of only three locations in the United States hosting this extraordinary learning technology. The museum will feature the interactive testimony of Pinchas Gutter, the project’s first participant.

Human Rights Art The “Human Rights Art” exhibition, on view October 20, 2017 through June 3, 2018 in the Josef and Edith Mincberg Gallery, cultivates human rights awareness, reflection and activism showcased in 32 mixed media artworks from the permanent collection of South Texas College. This educational exhibition addressing global and regional human rights, social justice and environmental issues features artists Sharon Sayegh, Keith Sharp, Guadalupe Victorica Reyes and Deborah South McEvoy. Through their artwork and personal statements, the artists strive to encourage reflection, and generate discussion that ultimately leads to change. HMH’s temporary space allows the museum to continue offering Holocaust and human rights education to students, groups and families during our expansion. The museum’s gifted team of curators have done an amazing job reconfiguring our core exhibit into this new space while adding fresh, interactive exhibitions that provide a framework for students to process the many issues impacting their own lives today – bullying, hatred, discrimination and immigration. As a result of its $49.4 million expansion campaign announcement, Holocaust Museum Houston (HMH) moved to a temporary location at 9220 Kirby Drive that opened to the public October 20. Featured exhibits include “Bearing Witness: A Community Remembers,” the museum’s permanent exhibit, and two changing exhibitions, “New Dimensions in Testimony” and “Human Rights Art.”

Dr. Peter Hayes

will explore the fundamental conceptual questions asked and responded to in his most recent book, Why?: Explaining the Holocaust. The author of 12 books, Hayes taught at Northwestern University for 36 years from 1980 to 2016. The recipient of numerous teaching awards and research fellowships and a former member of the academic boards of several professional societies and Holocaust memorial sites, Professor Hayes currently serves as the chair of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. RSVP at hmh.org. Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Breakfast Book Club

THE BONIUK LIBRARY

“Ten Dollars to Hate” by Patricia Bernstein Tuesday, February 6, 2018 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM Location: HMH, 9220 Kirby Dr., Suite 100 Lecture by Patricia Bernstein, author of Ten Dollars to Hate , the story of the massive Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the first prosecutor in the nation to successfully convict and jail Klan members. Dan Moody, a twenty-nine-year-old Texas district attorney, demonstrated that Klansmen could be “My Beautiful Birds” by Suzanne Del Rizzo Thursday, January 11, 2018 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM Location: Harry’s Restaurant and Café, 318 Tuam St. The Friends of The Boniuk Library invite you to join our Breakfast Book Club for a discussion of My Beautiful Birds by Suzanne Del Rizzo, the story of Sami who, living in a refugee camp, can't forget

his pet pigeons and the home his family has left behind. This event is free, but participants must pay for their own breakfast. For more information contact Maria Harris, Librarian, at (713) 942-8000, x.110 or library@hmh.org.

Bearing Witness: A Community Remembers

Anchoring the museum is the permanent exhibition, “Bearing Witness: A Community Remembers,” which carries visitors back to pre-war Europe, revealing the thriving Jewish life and culture there. Authentic film footage, artifacts, photographs and documents expose Nazi propaganda and the ever-tightening restrictions in the steady move toward the “Final Solution.” The exhibition concludes with two 30-minute films of testimony, “Voices” and “Voices II,” which alternate daily in the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Theater. These films offer moving, first-hand accounts of survivors, liberators and witnesses who made their homes in Houston after the war.

punished for taking the law into their own hands. The 1920s Klan infiltrated politics and law enforcement across the United States. Klansmen engaged in extreme violence against whites as well as blacks, promoted outrageous bigotry against various ethnic groups, and boycotted non-Klan businesses. A few courageous public officials tried to make Klansmen pay for their crimes and all failed until September 1923 when Dan Moody convicted and won significant prison time for five Klansmen in a tense courtroom in Georgetown, Texas.

Sharon Sayegh: “Ayaan Hirshi Ali: Brave Hearts from the Warriors for Peace Series”

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