Museum Blog
July 27, 2016 | A Conversation Like Any Other: My Interaction with Pinchas Gutter
Posted by Caroline | YPC Member and University of Michigan Student
With this new technology, the in-person conversation exists. The impact of Pinchas’ story can reach beyond the places he has visited himself.
June 23, 2016 | A Museum Professional Turned Activist
Posted by Patricia Doyle | YPC Member and Museum Professional
When I looked around the large Hyatt Regency Chicago dining room filled with close to 2,000 of Chicago’s foremost business, civic and community leaders, I felt a sense of pride that I was part of a community that is supporting an extremely relevant and important cause.
May 31, 2016 | What It Means to be a ‘3G’
Posted by Michael Bregman | Young Professional Committee Co-Chair, Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center
The best way for me to ensure that my son grows up in a world where nothing even resembling the Holocaust is possible is to teach future generations to recognize bigotry and intolerance and to confront it.
December 29, 2015 | Seeing Casablanca In A New Way
Posted by Doris Berger | Curator at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles
The exhibition Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950 presents the impressive legacy of German-speaking actors, directors, writers, and composers—many of them Jewish—who fled Nazi persecution in Europe and shaped Hollywood’s “Golden Age.”
April 19, 2015 | Who Will Tell Our Stories?
Posted by Aaron Elster | Holocaust Survivor and Vice President, Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center
Every man, woman and child has a story. For some it is found in the most unlikely of places, during one of the most horrific of times, where actions of a few meant life versus death. Mine is a story of survival: my own and my family’s. A story that begins over seventy years ago when my world became engulfed by the evils of Nazism, my family torn apart, my life forever changed, and my childhood and innocence ripped away as a nine-year-old boy hiding in a tiny, filthy attic in occupied Poland.
March 31, 2015 | When the Curator Gets Nervous
Posted by David Shneer | Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder
I was visiting the Illinois Holocaust Museum to open the exhibition I curated, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, since the show had opened in New York, Houston, Louisiana, and at my home institution, the University of Colorado Art Museum, where I originally curated the show.
October 31, 2014 | Let’s Talk About Race
Posted by Eileen Hogan Heineman | Director of Racial Justice Programs for the YWCA Evanston/North Shore
Last week, I spent time exploring RACE: Are We So Different?, the special exhibition now at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.
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September 29, 2014 | Jan Karski: Hero, Rescuer, Resistor
Posted by Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker
I have been privileged to meet men and women of distinction, of great integrity and high moral character, and yet, we have only met one person whom we could truly call noble: Jan Karski.
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August 26, 2014 | Personalizing Poland: A Docent’s Impression of a Beautiful, Complex Country
Posted by Laurie Bartell, Museum Docent
Recently I traveled to Poland as part of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center’s Inaugural Learning Journey. I boarded a plane departing Chicago for Warsaw with approximately 30 other museum staff and volunteers, including Fritzie Fritzshall and Aaron Elster, two remarkable survivors and educators.
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July 28, 2014 | Charlotte, A Visual Diary
Posted by Joel Cahen, Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Amsterdam
Charlotte Salomon–daughter of the renowned Berlin surgeon, Albert Salomon and Franciscka Grunewald–grew up in a typical Berlin Jewish family, acculturated, and well educated.
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June 26, 2014 | Instrument of Justice
Posted by Action Reconciliation Service for Peace intern Clara Schulte
Before I came here and even before I really started thinking about the Holocaust, I was confronted with the consequences of Germany’s Nazi past.
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May 15, 2014 | Austria is Free
Posted by Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service intern Paul Rathmayr
…Words said by the former Austrian minister of foreign affairs—Leopold Figl, after signing Austria’s State Treaty 59 years ago today, on May 15, 1955—words that would become the most famous quote of Austria’s recent history, words that sparked controversy among some people and euphoria and a new national identity among many more.
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April 28, 2014 | April’s Challenge, April’s Hope
Posted by Matthew Whipple, 2014 Power of One Award Recipient
The month of April always challenges me. It is the month of my birth, reminding me of the passing years. I tend to reflect upon what I’ve accomplished and how much more there is to do to combat injustice wherever we find it.
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March 28, 2014 | A Social Solution: Allyship in the Face of Adversity
Posted by Hudson Taylor, Founder and Executive Director of Athlete Ally
It begins in our formative years as elementary school children on the playground. It grows as we enter middle and high school. It deepens as we move to college and beyond. Friendship is one of the first forms of human relationships that we learn. Interacting with others seems to be dictated by smiling, socializing and offering some form of genuine respect. In a real sense, being a friend is being an ally.
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February 28, 2014 | The Heart of Darkness
Posted by Kelley Szany, Director of Educational Outreach and Genocide Initiatives at the Illinois Holocaust Museum
Our consciousness was awoken last week by a recent United Nations report that found that “systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations” have been committed in North Korea. In many instances, the violations found entailed crimes against humanity.
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