Later, I read textbook statistics that rattled off details such as six million Jewish people killed and used words like genocide, concentration camps and gas chambers. It was awful, tragic, indescribable. But it also felt like a distant and long ago tragedy.
It wasn’t until my first visit to the Florida Holocaust Museum that I was able to connect facts with faces. My history class took a field trip to the FHM where we walked through the various spaces in the exhibit:
Jewish Life Before WWII: Ordinary People. Nazis in Power: Hitler and the Third Reich. Ethnic Purity: Pseudo-Science. The Rising Tide: Discrimination, Segregation, Isolation. World Response: Appeasement and Silence. Final Solution: A Plan to Murder a People.
It was then that I heard the stories; they spoke volumes above the statistics I'd previously only read about. That day, the Holocaust grew more familiar with each step, each section, each square foot of the museum.
I could see these people. I could feel them. I heard their voices and I saw their faces.
The FHM’s goal is to honor the memory of the innocent victims of the Holocaust, and to teach individuals of every race and culture “the inherent worth and dignity of human life in order to prevent future genocides.” Edith and Walter Loebenberg created the museum in order to help people realize just how connected we all are to the Holocaust, and to one another.
25 Survivors, 25 Stories…Celebrating 25 Years! highlights the up-close and personal accounts of 25 individuals who survived the Holocaust.
Walter Loebenberg is the first speaker in the series of 25 Survivors, 25 Stories…Celebrating 25 Years! In his story, he describes being summoned into a town hall gathering of Jewish families after Kristallnacht. Just 14 years old, he was instructed by a police officer to sweep the floors until the crowd cleared. Jewish men were escorted out of the building while Loebenberg and other teens swept. Somehow the police allowed them out of the building and let them run away; Loebenberg ran hours through the night towards his home. His family later immigrated to the States, where he vowed to dedicate his life to altruism.
“I always knew that if I were able, I’d want to give back,” Loebenberg said.
Today, I step through the exhibit with fresh eyes. It’s been years since I last visited, and though the entire space has an impact on me, there are two things I know will hit hardest: The boxcar and the numbers.
I feel the boxcar before I see it: There is no scent, but a certain presence, maybe kept alive by the fact the Loebenbergs decided not to touch or refurbish any piece of it since the Holocaust. This boxcar is the only one of its time that has not been refurbished, and I feel it hit me as soon as I enter the room, the same way I first felt it all those years ago. During the Holocaust, up to 120 people were crammed into this single car for days on end, no food or water or sanitation provided.
This is real.
Just as real is the digital ticker to the left, its red digits small and screaming. “Every 24 seconds a victim of genocide is killed,” the sign below reads. And every 24 seconds, the number on the ticker increases by one. Recent and present examples of racism, discrimination and genocide are listed nearby as reminders that hatred and intolerance still run rampant today.
Edith and Walter Loebenberg founded the Florida Holocaust Museum 25 years ago to create and maintain an awareness — and a personal connection with — the appalling tragedy of the Holocaust. Their 25th anniversary celebration comes at a time when politicians compare current events to the Holocaust, as if it can be used as some sort of gauge.
Each month, a different speaker will share their story. Each month, a new piece of the narrative will be told.
And each month, we will remember why.
This article appears in Apr 13-20, 2017.