Holocaust Museum Houston Digital Newsletter November 2015

PRESERVATION AND ACCESS

For the past year, ensuring the conservation and protection of Holocaust Museum Houston’s artifacts and resources has been an even higher priority for the Museum than usual. To adhere to its mission, the Museum must strive not only to collect but to care for and make accessible artifacts and eyewitness survivor accounts to ensure that these histories are not lost to future generations. It is a mission the Museum has worked diligently on this past year, from preserving our Holocaust-era Danish rescue boat from Houston’s heat and humidity to protecting the oral testimonies of 281 Houston-area survivors of the Holocaust, liberators and witnesses. Work continued on restoration of our 1940s-era Danish boat, of the same type as those used to save more than 7,200 Jews from almost certain execution at the hands of German Nazis. That extensive conservation effort began in 2012 and continued until its formal rededication in October 2015. The Museum raised almost $500,000 to complete the renovation. After three years of planning and discussions with the USC Shoah Foundation’s Preserving the Legacy initiative, the Museum negotiated a contract to begin the actual digitization of 281 oral testimonies from the Museum’s collection for integration into the foundation’s Visual History Archive. HMH’s oral history project was initially created in 1985 under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federation. In 1990, HMH began directing the project. Its goal was to document and preserve survivor testimonies to educate students and others about the dangers of prejudice. Interviewees are predominantly Holocaust survivors but also include military personnel, liberators, military prisoners of war and rescuers. Each interview is about two hours long and is a full life history, covering the interviewee’s life before, during and after the genocide. The collection also includes one Rwandan Tutsi Genocide survivor. In addition, 233 of the testimonies have transcripts. The collection also includes testimonies from several prominent figures in the Houston community, including Leon Cooper, who was on “Schindler’s list,” Hana Ginzbarg, who founded the Hana and Arthur Ginzbarg Nature Discovery Center, and liberator Ben Love, a prominent Houston philanthropist and businessman. In addition to the digitization for visitor viewing and testimony protection, a major new project was initiated in 2014 to digitally tell the story of 80 destroyed communities that are featured on the Museum’s memorial slope. Using a newly installed touchscreen in The Museum’s Boniuk Library, visitors can learn about the history of each community, view photos of life before the Holocaust and read survivor stories. While already installed, it will be formally opened to the public on Jan. 27, 2016. The exhibit will eventually display the history of 80 lost communities.

The Destroyed Communities Interactive Learning Center was made possible by a grant from Survivor Edith Mincberg.

Efforts also were undertaken to better preserve and display the silk dress worn by Survivor Chaja Verveer as a one-year-old child, as well as the iconic “Red Handkerchief” made by women imprisoned in the Vught Concentration Camp. The Boniuk Library continued to grow during the past year, with its collection now totaling almost 9,000 books and 850 audio-visual materials for use by students, researchers and the general public. More than 3,900 visitors utilized the library’s services, and library staff assisted with 671 research or reference requests and developed a new library exhibit that opened in April 2015. situation and recognize this boat as a symbol of great humanity.” - Ole Philipson, former Danish ambassador “The rededication was a beautiful afternoon around a sad era, but I was encouraged to see the spontaneous reaction of Houstonians. People get the positive side of this tragic

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GRATITUDE REPORT 2015