The Burlington Public Library is one of just 50 across the country to host a unique traveling exhibit about the Holocaust. Becky Nelson, the library’s manager of outreach and program services, says it’s designed to transport you back to the 1930s and ‘40s and make you think about how you — as an American — might have responded to the stories coming out of Nazi Germany.
“We are talking about how information was produced, how it flowed, and how people interpret it. It’s less about doom and death and despair in the way that you would normally think of a Holocaust exhibit, ” she says. Nelson says the exhibit “Americans and the Holocaust” uses newspaper stories, magazine articles, and propaganda as its source material to provide insight.
“What did we know? How did we know it? How did we react to it?,” she says. The first panel in the exhibit shows that German propaganda was making its way into the American mainstream as early as 1933.
“The quote on Time magazine says, ‘Say it in your dreams. The Jews are to blame.’ So already we’re seeing information in the United States in the early 1930s that something was happening. But lots of Americans didn’t interpret it that way,” she says.
Nelson says a combination of anti-Semitism, the Great Depression, and the isolationist mood in the U-S after World War One contributed to the nation generally turning a blind eye toward what was happening in Europe. But some Americans showed empathy for those trying to flee Europe in the late 1930s. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt shared her concerns through what was then a relatively new medium.
“Radio was very important in this time, and I think we forget about how important radio was and how revolutionary it was. Hearing the first lady on a live radio broadcast would have been amazing,” Nelson says.
A panel in the exhibit says Roosevelt advocated for at least allowing refugee children from Germany into the U.S. But despite her advocacy, 66 percent of Americans opposed accepting refugee children, according to a poll taken in January of 1939. It is one of several polls from that era that are cited in the display. The exhibit includes kiosks that show videos and provide interactive information through maps, and the library will hold a special programming that ties into the exhibit. Nelson believes the display does not try to lead visitors to any particular conclusion.
“This exhibit is very careful to not tell you what to think or how to feel or what decisions to make. I think that people really need to come and read the information and interpret it for themselves and come to that conclusion.” Nelson says the approach is a natural one for libraries.
“Libraries in general don’t want to tell people how to think or what to think. We just give them the resources to become thinkers. This exhibit complements that goal in that way,” Nelson says. The final exhibit section shows military personnel liberating death camps and providing first-hand accounts of the atrocities. Though a poll at the time found only 48 percent of Americans believed the Holocaust was real. Many felt stories about it were propaganda and misinformation designed to keep pushing the war effort.
Nelson says the biggest question posed by the exhibit is: How would you have reacted and what would you have done? And she says that is something you have to answer for yourself. The exhibit comes from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association. It can be seen at the Burlington Public Library through the end of September.
(By Rich Egger, Tri States Radio)