Originally Posted: Detroit Free Press
Client: Zekelman Holocaust Center

The new core exhibition, a collaboration with design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates, steps away from a traditional approach to history by centering the voices of those who experienced the Holocaust and by highlighting survivors who made Michigan their home after World War II. As the population of survivors dwindles, there is an urgent need to ensure the stories of their experiences remain accessible to future generations. Archival footage, images, artifacts, and interactive videos of survivor testimonies bring to life the stories of those affected by the Holocaust.

“We’re trying to help people understand what happened in the Holocaust in a personal way,” said Eli Mayerfeld, CEO of The HC. “And then it can have an impact on society so that people think differently about their own actions in an everyday way and ask themselves, ‘What can I do to make this a better society and avoid the kind of problems that happened in Nazi Germany?’’

“By localizing the history from the perspective of those who lived it, rather than those who perpetrated it, we are showing that the Holocaust did not happen so long ago or so far away.”

A long time coming

Director of Curatorial Affairs Mark Mulder said the massive project took nearly eight years to complete.

“It’s an insanely complex project,” he said, “and I think the hardest part was cutting information that was important or meant something to me, but that we just didn’t have the space to tell. Telling people that their favorite thing from the old exhibit is no longer going to be here — also very difficult. It’s not, ‘We didn’t redo this because we hated what was here,’ but because we needed to shift the perspective.