Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Remembering, Representing, Reframing presented by ENGL 7239: Little Lights: Remembrance at the US Holocaust Museum

The exhibition follows a narrative timeline beginning at Hitler’s rise to power. The goal of the story is to engage young children in a storybook-like world related to the “real world.” Children can walk through and read Daniel’s story through notebook fragments placed through the exhibition which tackle situations such as the fear and uncertainty of wearing a yellow star of David, the mandatory closure of Jewish shops, the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), the Ghettos, and the concentration camps. “The exhibition design is based on historical imagery gathered from family photo albums, documentary sources, and pictorial diaries of the period” while “Daniel’s diary entries, which serve as the exhibition’s primary text, are based on the wartime writings of young people and on the memories of some of those who survived” (“Remember the Children”). The exhibition is also written at a lower reading level for younger children to understand and remember Daniel in a way that makes the character feel realistic to their audience. This conveys to the audience that, though the narrative is historical fiction, it still accurately represents the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty felt by children during the time period. 

The final exhibit in Daniel’s story features an installation of lights which is contextualized as representing all 1,500,000 children victims of the Holocaust. The audience contemplates how each light is a life lost, one that could have been long-lived into adulthood. At the end of the Holocaust, “less than ten percent of Jewish children survived in Nazi-occupied Europe” which serves as a stark reminder that nearly all children perished (Valent viiii). Extermination camps like Auschwitz targeted children specifically. Children were of no use to the Reich, and “in camps where selections took place, German officials almost always dispatched Jewish children directly to the gas chambers” (Heberer 151). Meanwhile, the gendered perspective in Daniel’s story highlights how children, and by extension their mothers, were disproportionately singled out for extermination compared to men. If there were any “infants and toddlers who arrived in the arms of their mothers or another relative” they were sent “immediately to their deaths, often dooming the adults who accompanied them” (151). Gender roles during the time period often encouraged women to be the primary carers for children, and their execution alongside children was seen as an insignificant loss since the Reich deemed that women were not as diligent at manual labor as the opposite gender. People like Daniel’s mother and sister Erika, fictional characters who were killed immediately in Auschwitz, represent the women, men, elderly, and children who perished during the Holocaust. 

The end of the exhibition includes seating for viewers and a desk stocked with paper and colored pencils. Individuals are “invited to review important facts about the exhibition and the Holocaust and to express their feelings or write down their thoughts” (“Remember the Children”). The words of children, adults, and any drawings they created to express these ideas are open for the public to view and reflect upon. The exhibition offers a way for modern children, their parents, and other adults to leave their own mark of remembrance.