'Profoundly Human Story' of Holocaust at the Museum of Jewish Heritage

"The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do" is an exhibition featuring more than 750 artifacts, as well as many photos and video witness testimonies. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib 

A pair of socks. A cooking pot. A blouse. Simple objects that help tell a story of unthinkable horror.

They are among the more than 750 objects, along with photos and filmed survivor testimonies, that are part of the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s new exhibition, “The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do.” Through even the most mundane of artifacts, many on view for the first time and contributed by survivors who settled in the metropolitan area, the museum presents that story in deeply personal ways.

“The Holocaust is not the story of faceless victims, faceless perpetrators, faceless bystanders,” said Paul Salmons, a consulting curator on the show. “It is a profoundly human story.”

The two-level, 12,000-square-foot exhibition takes the viewer on a journey, room by room, from the rise of the Nazi party and legalized racism to the Jewish ghettos, the mass shootings and resistance, concentration camp life and death, and liberation. 

At the exhibit press preview, Holocaust survivor Toby Levy recounted how, at age 8, she and eight other family members were saved by a Polish woman, a customer of her father's fabric store, who hid them in her barn. The family lived there for two years. “If we make it, you’ll get educated, maybe you’ll figure out why they hate us so much,” she recalled her father telling her.

“Let me tell you,” said Levy. “I made it. And I still don’t know.”

Go here for hours and ticket information. An audio tour guide is available through the free Bloomberg Connects app.

Photos by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib. Captions based on museum labels.