Past Exhibits

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    Genocide Among the Flowers: Seymour Kaftan’s Ponary Paintings

    This exhibit tells the story of Vilnius’ Jews starting with the Nazi invasion, and including the Ponary tragedy. It does so through the visual images recorded by Seymour Kaftan—born Szepsel Kaftanjski—in 26 oil paintings. A Holocaust survivor—he was 15 years old when the Nazis invaded his hometown—Kaftan documented his personal ordeal, depicting the horrors of Nazi brutality, the loss of…

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    Goose Stepping on Long Island: Camp Siegfried

    In the mid-1930s an organization called the German-American Bund established fifteen summer camps throughout the United States, including one in then-bucolic Yaphank on Long Island. This exhibit exposes the work and the propaganda activities of the Bund at the time when the threat of Nazism seemed foreign to the U.S., certainly to the hinterland of Long Island. It also underlines…

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    The Art of Samuel Bak

    This three-part exhibition explores landscape, object, and person through Samuel Bak’s themes of loss and the Jewish dictate of tikkun olam (“repair of the world”). Bak’s work is born of catastrophe. His canvases are filled with artifacts and ruins of Jewish life, images of Greek mythology, and childhood objects—all presented in fragments half-buried in the ground, hovering above water, or…

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  • Cover image of the KHC's 'American Cartoonists: Nazi Germany and the Holocaust' exhibition catalog

    American Cartoonists, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

    It all began one night in November 1938, when Nazi mobs filled the streets. The planet needed a hero—fast. Who could have predicted that this hero would be one concocted by two Jewish boys from Ohio? Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster went on to create Superman! About the same time that Superman #10 appeared, Dyna Pubs of East Moline, IL,…

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    Defying the Devil: Christian Clergy Who Helped Jews Escape from the Holocaust

    Indifference was the most common reaction of the masses of non-Jewish Europeans witnessing the Nazi crimes committed against Jews. The majority of the European Christian clergy either openly supported the Nazis, remained indifferent, or feared that open criticism would bring the wrath of the Nazis on the clergy itself. However, this exhibit explores the lives and choices of those clergy…

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    From Star of Shame to Star of Courage: The Story of the Yellow Star

    The yellow Star of David was a cloth patch that the Nazis forced Jews to wear on their outer garments which would mark them in public. This discriminatory law was enforced throughout the European countries occupied by the Nazis during World War II. The exhibit traces the imposed use of the yellow badge from medieval times through the 1933-1945 years, concluding with…

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    Diplomats of Mercy: Diplomats Who Helped Jews Escape from the Holocaust

    This exhibit acknowledges the extraordinary deeds of diplomats representing nations from around the world. When many collaborated with Nazis, and when most were bystanders, the actions of these diplomats stand out as beacons of light in an otherwise dark time. These heroes, because of diplomatic immunity and in most cases without the approval of their governments, were able to save…

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    Ships to Nowhere

    Finding a haven to flee Hitler’s regime was only part of the tragic story for so many Jews. Many ships made it safely to their destinations; many did not. Some returned to Europe carrying the same passengers who only weeks earlier had escaped; others were torpedoed on the high seas or suffered damage. Tragically, other ships were denied entry at…

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    Sosúa, The Dominican Republic: Refuge from the Holocaust in the Tropics

    The US, along with other Western nations, kept strict immigration quotas in spite of the despair of thousands of German Jewish refugees. While the Parole der Woche, a weekly Nazi poster, was right in claiming that these desperate Jews were not welcome anywhere in the world, there was one notable exception: in 1938 the Dominican Republic agreed to take in as…

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