All exhibit items

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

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

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

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

Curatorial Notes:: This traditional Haggadah adds a preface in Hebrew and French that connects the ancient Jews hunted by the Egyptians to the Jews then currently being hunted and murdered by the Nazis. That this Haggadah was published and used in Alexandria, Egypt adds poignancy to this comparison.
Subject:: Haggadah, Haggadot—Texts, Seder—Liturgy—Texts, and Judaism—Liturgy—Texts

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.

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

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

Curatorial Notes:: “We are dining together, Jewish soldiers from all over the diaspora. Our hearts are celebrating [Passover], but our hearts are also agitated. Our hearts are agitated because Egypt is not yet finished with Israel. Because the whole world is our Egypt.” Thousands of Jews from British Mandate Palestine volunteered to serve with the British Army in a “Jewish Brigade” during the Italian Campaign during the Second World War. This Haggadah was written and used by members of that brigade during the Allied advance into Italy. It combines the traditional text with references to the battles these Jewish soldiers were then fighting. The text metaphorically compares Egyptian slavery to the Nazi destruction of European Jews.
Subject:: Haggadah, Haggadot—Texts, Seder—Liturgy—Texts, and Judaism—Liturgy—Texts

Curatorial Notes:: Kibbutz Haggadah, published in British Mandate Palestine during the war with many references to the suffering of the Jewish suffering in Europe.

Jewish Resistance, 1933-1945