‘For the Child’ exhibit tells Kindertransport story for adults and children
'The exhibit tells heroic stories of simple people, which can ultimately inspire students'
An exhibit sure to prompt robust intergenerational dialogue, “For the Child – The Story of the Kindertransport,” began its Pittsburgh tour on Sept. 22 at Rodef Shalom Congregation. It will make its way to several educational centers and community institutions with lessons about the historic Kindertransport and present-day responsibilities.
Between 1938 and 1940, approximately 10,000 refugee children — mostly Jewish — were brought to Great Britain from Nazi Germany via the Kindertransport.
“For the Child” marks 85 years since the end of the Kindertransport by detailing participants’ “personal stories,” Ellen Resnek, educational programs and outreach manager at Classrooms Without Borders, said.
Artists Rosie Potter and Patricia Ayre developed the exhibition between 2000 and 2003 following the requests of several Kindertransport participants.
Potter and Ayre created 23 panels with each showing a photo of an original suitcase and the objects its young owner transported. Inside some suitcases are family photos. Inside other suitcases are a prayer book, doll or brush. Written above each panel is a fragment of text relating to a suitcase’s contents.
Milli Segal has curated and owned the exhibition for nearly 18 years.
Speaking with the Chronicle by phone from Vienna, Segal explained that the exhibition offers a window into “the Kinder.”
Their belongings were no different than what many children might pack today if they were leaving everything they knew, she said. These items are “the remembrance of home.”
On Sept. 22, the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh joined CWB to cosponsor an opening reception for the exhibition.
Emily Loeb, the Holocaust Center’s director of programs and education, said the two organizations are looking forward to “getting the exhibition into schools.”
Seeing these panels is important because “people think about children differently,” Loeb said. “For a parent to have to think about sending their child elsewhere, to another country, is almost unfathomable. The Kindertransport story really resonates and connects with people in a deep way.”
Local institutions including Seneca Valley School District, Allegheny Intermediate Unit, Rodef Shalom, Community Day School and the Holocaust Center, already have agreed to showcase the exhibition during its Pittsburgh stay, Resnek said.
Casey Weiss, Community Day’s head of school, said that CDS is partnering with CWB to bring the exhibition to the Jewish day school.
“This is an incredibly important initiative that we are absolutely elated to collaborate on,” Weiss said.
In recent years studies have demonstrated a lack of Holocaust awareness among Gen Z and millennials in the U.S.
A Claims Conference report released in 2020 noted that 63% of respondents didn’t know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Additionally, although more than 40,000 camps and ghettos existed within Europe during the Holocaust, 48% of respondents couldn’t name even one. Within Pennsylvania, 40% of respondents did not know what Auschwitz was.
A Pew Research Report, also released in 2020, found that “teens display lower levels of knowledge about the Holocaust than their elders do.”
Tsipy Gur, founder and executive director of CWB, said there are multiple reasons why the exhibition is essential to see now.
“There are kids who are being forced to leave their homes, and their classrooms and their classmates in Ukraine, and Palestine and Israel and it’s important we talk about misplaced kids,” she said.
Where these children end up and how they’re treated is vital to understand, but so, too, are the stories of those who help them, like, “Nicholas Winton and many people in England,” she added.
In 1939, Winton rescued 669 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, according to Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
“The exhibit tells heroic stories of simple people, which can ultimately inspire students,” Gur said.
Loeb agreed and called “For the Child” a “unique way for people to learn about the topic and different forms of rescue that happened in the Holocaust.” People, especially students, should know that “strangers acted generously and heroically to help others in a time of great danger and peril.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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