The Oklahoma Holocaust Remembrance Exhibition consists of two separate exhibits plus movies, workshops, lectures and other events. The Exhibition is located at Untitled [ArtSpace] in downtown Oklahoma City, at 1 NE 3rd Street, and will continue through October 23 of this year.
At the center of the space is Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, 1933 - 1945; and around the perimeter is the exhibit Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust.
Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, 1933 - 1945 is one of several traveling exhibitions offered by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. This exhibition examines the rationale, means, and impact of the Nazi regime’s effort to rid Germany of male homosexuality. Following an overview of the emerging urban gay community in Germany in the 1910s to the early 1930s, the exhibition explores Nazi racial and social ideals that formed the basis for the attempt to eradicate male homosexuality.
The core of the exhibition focuses on the police terror that led to the arrest of some 100,000 homosexual men, 50,000 of whom were convicted and imprisoned during the Nazi period. Also presented is the brutal and often fatal incarceration of an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 homosexual men in concentration camps. The exhibition concludes with the postwar aftermath and Germany’s memorials to the homosexual victims of Nazi persecution.
The curator of the traveling USHMM exhibit, Dr. Ted Phillips, was in Oklahoma City for a few days, speaking about the exhibit. Dr. Phillips made the point that homosexuals should not be referred to as victims of the “Holocaust”: they were victims of Nazi persecution. The term “Holocaust” refers to the systematic targeting and elimination of Jews, nothing else. Other victims during that time, such as gays, Roma (Gypsies), political prisoners, etc, were victims of the Nazis’ persecution. Dr. Phillips noted that this is a subtle, but important, historical distinction to make.
In fact, the Nazi persecution of German male homosexuals was not designed to exterminate them, it was designed to “cure” and “heal” them so they could contribute to re-populating the country. When the Nazis conquered other countries, they did not target gays — it was just German gays they wanted to turn around and straighten up, so to speak.
Lesbians were not targeted because they were not viewed as a threat to society: women had little power and their sphere of influence was too narrow (children, kitchen, and church). Besides, lesbians could be forced to reproduce (there’s a chilling thought). Some lesbians were incarcerated as “asocial” — the “asocials” in the camp wore black triangles, but there were many different groups considered asocials besides lesbians.
Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust was created by Rabbi Malka Drucker and her partner, photographer Gay Block. Rabbi Drucker, author of many children’s books, was asked by her rabbi to tell the story of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, so that children learning of the Holocaust would have a ray of hope, and not lose their innocence and faith in humanity. Malka and Gay spent three years locating and interviewing 105 rescuers and documented their research with this exhibit, a book, and a video (which runs continually in a side room at Untitled).
During the Holocaust, rescuers hid Jews in cellars and behind false walls, shared their meager food rations, disposed of waste, smuggled people out of ghettos, and brought up Jewish children as their own. Their stories of heroism are amazing, and even more so are the attitudes of the rescuers. Some of them lived in perpetual fear or in great degradation; some look at those years as the best of their lives; some are ashamed of having rescued too few; one says those years made her the woman she is today. All of them felt they could not have done differently. Unspoken but ever present is the knowledge that many rescuers were discovered and did not survive the Nazis.
Malka and Gay also were in Oklahoma City to speak about their exhibit. One of the points they emphasized was that people fell into four categories during the Holocaust: they were persecutors, victims, rescuers, or bystanders. The fourth category — bystanders — was far and away the largest percentage of people; and the smallest category was rescuers. Rescuers were only thousands among the millions who were victims and the tens of millions who were bystanders. Malka made the comparison that the ratio of rescuers to bystanders was like one teardrop in an ocean of indifference. Malka and Gay hope that viewers, rather than asking themselves, “What would I have done? Could I have been a rescuer? Or would I have been a bystander?” will instead ask themselves if there are issues or injustices today in which there are victims and bystanders. And, perhaps the exhibit will stimulate visitors to consider how they might be involved in righting contemporary injustices.
In the first five days of the Exhibition, over 1,000 people visited the gallery or attended one of the film showings at the Oklahoma Museum of Art. In the next few weeks it is hoped that an actual rescuer whose story is included in the exhibit, Dr. Marian Pritchard, will be in town to inspire us. Dr. Pritchard is a psychoanalyst in Maine, and as soon as travel plans are completed the information will be on the exhibit website at www.okholocaustexhibition.org.
Also on the website, you will find news of various lectures, workshops, etc. taking place. One of these is a forum on Monday, October 10th, 7–9 p.m., in the City of Norman City Council Chambers. The forum will be presented by the Norman Human Rights Commission and is titled “The Holocaust — How Did It Happen? Could It Happen Again?”
There are several Holocaust scholars here with this event and if you would like to organize an outing of ten or more people you can arrange for one of them to do a special presentation. If you would like to be part of a Herland group taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity, please email Margaret Cox at saintsyb_77(remove this spamguard)@hotmail.com.
Excerpts from Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust
From the window of our house I could see the ghetto. When the houses were burning during the ghetto uprising in April 1943, I saw people jumping from windows. One family of ten came and stayed for a few weeks until I found other shelter for them. No one was refused in my home. We had at least fifty Jews during the war– friends, strangers, acquaintances, or someone who heard about me from someone else. Anyone was taken in. - Zofia Baniecka
We built a false floor in the kitchen cupboard; Jacob was skinny so he could fit in. But about two weeks later the Gestapo came because a neighbor thought she had seen Jacob. They looked everywhere, but they didn’t find him. Then one day that same SS man came again, but that time my brother-in-law was visiting and he knew this man. Jacob was hiding under the sink, and we started giving the Nazi whiskey. They drank and they ate so much, and my brother-in-law convinced him his sister would never hide a Jew, so we escaped that time. But I knew I had to go looking for another apartment.
I found a nice big apartment in a quiet neighborhood. I put Jacob inside the couch, and that’s how we moved across town, right under the noses of the Germans. A couple of days later Dr. Kowalski came to see me and he says, “Mr. Roslan, I want to bring you another boy. He’s in a place now where he has to stay in the attic laying down all the time. He’s so skinny and sickly.”
- Alex & Mela Roslan
