All exhibit items 17 items

All items in this exhibit.

1. Passover Seder Service : Deutsches Theatre Restaurant, Munich, Germany, April 15-16, 1946 : conducting Chaplain Abraham J. Klausner / [sider ṿe-tsiyer Y.D. Shainzon].

Curatorial Notes:
Known as the “Survivors’ Haggadah,” this Haggadah was published by Holocaust survivors to celebrate the first Passover after liberation. The text and illustrations interweave the story of the Holocaust with the traditional Haggadah text. It also takes an activist role, calling desperately for a “Survivors’ Exodus” from displaced persons camps in Europe to the Land of Israel, where their lives and the lives of the Jewish people will be rebuilt.
Subject:
Haggadah, Seder—Liturgy—Texts, Judaism—Liturgy—Texts, and Haggadot—Versions

2. Seder ritual of remembrance : for the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis and for the heroes of the ghettos uprisings / issued by Seder Ritual Committee

Curatorial Notes:
“On this night of the [Passover] Seder we remember with reverence and love the six million[] of our people…who perished at the hands of a tyrant more wicked than the Pharaoh who enslaved our fathers in Egypt.” This pamphlet was meant to be inserted into the traditional Passover Haggadah. Its text memorializes the Warsaw ghetto uprising, which it notes occurred on Passover. It compares those who fought in Warsaw to Judah the Maccabee, the military leader of the successful Jewish uprising against the ancient Greeks celebrated on Hanukkah. This short text therefore connects three examples of Jewish resistance, those of Passover, Hanukkah, and the Warsaw ghetto.
Subject:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), Seder—Liturgy—Texts, and Seder—Songs and music

3. Battle of Warsaw

Curatorial Notes:
“The battle may be raging still; we do not know.” This pamphlet was issued weeks after the end of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, although its author did not yet know that it had ended. The text provides a spare description of the battle as the details were not yet fully known. Poignantly, it states that the Jewish fighters are facing death not to win the battle, but “in the hope that the world will be stirred to swifter action against Nazis now seeking to destroy the soul of a nation.”
Subject:
Warsaw (Poland)—History—Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943—Caricatures and cartoons, World War, 1939-1945—Jewish resistance—Poland—Warsaw, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Poland—Warsaw, Political cartoons, and Tracts (Ephemera)

4. Getto walczy : (Udział Bundu w obronie getta warszawskiego) / Marek Edelman

Curatorial Notes:
This memoir was written by the last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In 1942, Marek Edelman founded the ZOB (Jewish Combat Organization), the group that organized the uprising. During the uprising, he succeeded its leader Mordechai Anielewicz after he was killed. After the war, Edelman remained in Poland and was active in the struggle against communism.
Subject:
Ogólny Żydowski Związek Robotniczy "Bund" w Polsce, World War, 1939-1945—Jews—Poland—Warsaw, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Poland—Warsaw, and Warsaw (Poland)—History

5. The battle of the Warsaw ghetto, by Sh. Mendelsohn

Curatorial Notes:
This early account of the Warsaw ghetto uprising provides details about the Holocaust, while it was still occurring, including references to gas chambers at Treblinka. This document’s existence disproves the notion that the world did not know the extent of Nazi crimes while they were happening. Its wide publication describing these crimes – this edition published in Shanghai a year after it was published in New York – illustrates the breadth of Jewish activism in response to Nazi oppression.
Subject:
Warsaw (Poland)—History—Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943, Jews—Persecutions—Poland—Warsaw, and Poland—History—Occupation, 1939-1945

6. In Ancient Egypt and present-day Germany: A Passover sermon : by the Chief Rabbi (Dr. J.H. Hertz), St John's Wood Synagogue April 11th, 1933

Curatorial Notes:
This sermon is given only weeks after Hitler came to power in 1933. Rabbi Hertz compares the plight of German Jews to the ancient Israelite slaves in Egypt. He vigorously calls upon Britain to fight against this Jewish oppression, illustrating that even in these earliest days of the Nazi era, Jewish activists were fighting for the relief of their fellow Jews.

7. The "Battle of Warsaw" : the Chief Rabbi's sermon at the service of mourning and prayer for the martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto, Bevis Marks Synagogue, May 22, 1944

Curatorial Notes:
Marking the one-year anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, this sermon is a sad bookend to Hertz’s sermon 11 years earlier, also featured in this exhibition. It mourns the death and destruction he predicted in 1933. Hertz strongly criticizes the world’s muted response to the “mass crucifixion of a whole people.” These sermons illustrate how British Jews spoke out against oppression from the rise of Hitler, through the end of the war.
Subject:
Jewish sermons, English—Great Britain and Warsaw (Poland)—History—Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943

8. ha-Kipah ha-kehulah

Curatorial Notes:
This Hebrew children’s book, published in Tel Aviv as the Holocaust was ending, provides a resistance rather than a victimhood narrative. The main character, a young Jewish girl, saves the lives of many Jewish children by uncovering the Nazis’ plan to kill them, and then fighting with the Jewish resistance to foil those plans.
Subject:
World War, 1939-1945—Jewish resistance—Juvenile fiction, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Juvenile fiction, and Fiction

9. Under sentence of death

Curatorial Notes:
This 1942 activist pamphlet illustrates what Jews in Britain knew about the Holocaust as it was unfolding (and before it was called the Holocaust). It warns explicitly that millions are in danger of extermination, and provides details about deportation from ghettos in cattle cars to what it calls “special camps” where most are murdered. It also calls on Allied and neutral governments to take immediate action to rescue the Jews in their darkest hour.
Subject:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Public Opinion—Sources, World War, 1939-1945—Public Opinion—Great Britain—Sources, World War, 1939-1945—Atrocities—Public Opinion—Sources, World War, 1939-1945—Jews—Rescue, and World War, 1939-1945—Jewish resistance—Sources

10. הגדה די היטליר and Hagadah di Hiṭler

Curatorial Notes:
“Wicked Hitler enslaved us and the Allied Forces rescued us with a great and mighty outstretched arm. Had the Brits not come, nor the Yanks, we would not have been saved…” (Trans. by Adi and Jonnie Schnytzer). Written in Morocco during the war, it is jarring to see the word “Hitler” in Hebrew – ​​היטליר – splashed on the cover of a Haggadah. The Judeo-Arabic text follows the structure of a traditional Haggadah, but tells the story of the war up to 1943, focusing on North Africa. It employs colorful language to laud the Allies and mock the Germans, its publication therefore an act of bravery and activism as the war still raged.