The Concentration Camps

This original exhibition at the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center surveys the scope and brutality of the Nazi system of incarceration and genocide, underscoring the horrific consequences of antisemitism, racism, and authoritarianism. Approximately 44,000 concentration camps and ghettos existed across Nazi-occupied Europe and North Africa during World War II. These incarceration sites, which Adolf Hitler used as a mechanism to terrorize and eliminate non-Aryan groups (those seen as “subhuman,” “useless eaters,” and not part of the pure, white, Germanic race), ranged from small barns to compounds with populations of a medium-sized city. These extensive networks of ghettos, transit camps, women’s camps, forced labor camps, and extermination camps, to name a few, played a central role in the Holocaust—the annihilation of six million Jews—as well as the mass murder of millions more Poles, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, people with disabilities, social outcasts, Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as other political and religious opponents. In addition to the exhibit’s text, images, and artifacts, personal testimonies from local Holocaust survivors offer painful insights into these excruciating landscapes of degradation and dehumanization.

Click here to listen to the CUNY podcast about how the exhibit was created, as well as its significance to the community and beyond.

Click here to watch a clip about the exhibition on CUNY TV’s January 2023 episode of Arts in the City.

This exhibit is curated by Cary Lane, Ph.D., the KHC 2020-21 Curator-in-Residence and Associate Professor of English at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York. Dr. Lane worked with Jason Tingler, Ph.D., KHC Postdoctoral Research Fellow; Robyn Schwartz, Graphic Designer; Nicholas Caccese, Film Editor; Sean Simpson, Videographer, as well as QCC-KHC Student Curatorial Fellows Aliza Perlmutter, Jhordain Roberts, Manuel Souffrant, and Nicholas Richards; and KHC Curatorial Interns Alexia Wang, Anika Chowdhury, Ashleigh Requijo, Calista Requijo, Eliana Ellerton, Kristen Morgenstern, ​Noah Benus, and Shani Bornstein.