Learning from the past: Holocaust exhibit showcases both evil, resilience

To know who will protect the marginalized today, one must look at the empathy exhibited in the past, according to Heidi Straus.

Straus is the head of a nonprofit called Nevada Center for Humanity, which aims to educate the community about the Holocaust. Last year, she partnered with UNLV’s history department to curate an exhibit with the organization’s collection of artifacts from the Holocaust.

“The Holocaust” Reconstructing Shattered Humanity,” open from Nov. 19 to March 13, sits in the only spot where Straus knew the artifacts would be safe enough: Gov. Joe Lombardo’s Las Vegas office.

Straus and UNLV History Professor Gregory Brown hope the exhibit, which includes Nazi propaganda leading up to World War II and personal artifacts (including those of a Jewish refugee who fled to o Shanghai, China) can educate the community on the Holocaust and its implications in the present day.

“It really is about understanding humanity,” Straus said. “Now we know where the ceiling is for incredible evil, but we also know where incredible greatness is.”

As she led a tour through the exhibit on Thursday, she told the senior social committee and Jewish lifelong learners from Temple Sinai, who were visiting that day, to be active as they went through it.

“It’s so important for us to bear witness,” Rabbi Ilana Baden said. “It really brings it home.”

With Monday marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the largest death camp, Auschwitz-Bireknau, the group saw the need to learn and spread awareness more than ever.

Richard Fogel, a second-generation descendant of holocaust survivors, said that information needs to be spread especially to young people.

UNLV’s public history partnership aimed to do just that.

“The challenges that both individuals but also we as a society face are deeply rooted in the kind of well-documented and empathetic work that you can do in history,” Brown said.

Brown said that UNLV’s involvement expands the university’s mission to expand its Holocaust and genocide studies curriculum, as well as stretching its public history projects beyond just local history. The 16 graduate students did research to design the texts in the exhibit, did publicity, designed the visitor experience and ultimately installed it in October.

The university is also hosting an 11:30 a.m. event on Monday with Mayor Shelley Berkley, a candle lighting, a presentation on different aspects of the Holocaust and a discussion of the significance of Holocaust and genocide education in the present day.

“It’s important for exhibits like this one to be available for the entire community so that we can all be more understanding and tolerant of one another, and learn from the lessons of the past so that we can make a brighter future for all,” said Beth Miller, one of the exhibit’s visitors from Temple Sinai.

‘It is relevant today’

“The important questions concerning hate, state-sponsored mass murders, political violence, are really live questions,” Brown said. “Being able to look at this in terms of both, how did this happen, which is a classic question students always want to understand, but also, how did people survive?

Straus said that Holocaust survivors’ stories extend beyond merely relating to the Holocaust. Many survivors who speak at schools tell her that afterward, students who were struggling with all sorts of issues reach out to say that the stories gave them hope and a reason to keep going.

Straus hopes to one day find a permanent location for the exhibit, which focuses not only on the survivors themselves, but also the “upstanders,” or those who had the “moral courage” to help people.

“If we can nurture that, maybe in the young, maybe we can increase those with stronger value systems,” Straus said. “How else can we learn, if not studying from the past?”

Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ktfutts on X and @katiefutterman.bsky.social.