The Holocaust (1933-45) refers to Nazi Germany’s deliberate, progressive persecution and systematic murder of Jewish people in Europe.
In 2012, alum and avid collector of Holocaust memorabilia Michael Bulmash ’66 began donating items from his personal collection to Kenyon. This exhibition is curated from the resulting Bulmash Family Holocaust collection, which is dedicated to memorializing the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, as well as other victims of the Nazis. Including a diversity of materials documenting the history, background, and impact of the Holocaust, it is intended to meet the needs of students, teachers, and researchers who have an interest in the Holocaust in general, and in the plight of the Jews in particular.
The photographs displayed on this wall, taken by Roman Vishniac in 1938, demonstrate the impact of the early stages of the Holocaust. Roman Vishniac (1897-1990), himself a Russian Jew, was hired by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1935 to travel through Europe documenting the effects of Nazi ascendency on Jewish communities. Vishniac was eventually imprisoned in an internment camp, but ultimately survived and settled in New York in 1940 where he continued with his photography.
This exhibition focuses on five themes that do not necessarily represent the Holocaust as a whole, but rather aim to provide a glimpse into what life was like for Jewish peoples during this period. These themes are as follows: Nazification and Early Persecution, Identification, Camps, International Responses, and Postwar Liberation. We invite you to learn about the Holocaust through materials such as Nazi propaganda and early Jewish refugee letters soliciting migration assistance, Jewish identification badges, letters from concentration camp prisoners to loved ones, newspapers demonstrating international reactions, and post-war liberation documents. This brief introduction to the Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection aims to introduce community members to its impressive holdings and the educational value that the collection offers.
Curated by the student managers of Special Collections & Archives.