Photograph by Richard Nichols
Even parents who ban Grand Theft Auto from the house realize there is a time and place to expose kids to violence, war and even genocide, in order to teach them to understand what human beings are capable of; it is in Creve Coeur, of all places, that children can really come to grips with hatred at its most visceral level, as well as altruism at its most poignant. The St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center welcomes more than 30,000 visitors annually for a multimedia journey through the Nazi-controlled Europe of the 1930s and '40s. The majority of those visitors, according to HMLC curator and education director Dan Reich, are children on school trips.
The museum is laid out in a loop. Visitors begin in a gallery of photographs of Holocaust survivors. This is intended to show that "before these people were victims, they were individuals," explains Reich. "They had rich lives. They went to school, they got married, they went on vacation, they had pets."
Subsequent galleries illustrate "The Rise of Nazism" and include Nazi flags and racist newspapers, as well as propaganda targeting the German youth. An area spotlighting resistance to Hitler features a very detailed miniature model of the Lodz Ghetto in Poland, where Jews were confined and starved. A slide show with audio explains the workings of the "Final Solution." A gallery of concentration-camp badges displays six-pointed stars and triangles in the colors the Nazis used to mark them; Roma, homosexuals, "race violators" (those who had relations with non-Aryans) and many other groups joined the imprisoned Jews.
At about this point, the museum can get pretty hard to handle. The "Life in a Slave Labor Camp" area may occasion some detailed explanations from the docents who usually accompany the students. Then there's the huge, blown-up photo of a Nazi preparing to shoot a man in the head and push him into a pit of bodies. Reich says this is a good place to start a discussion. A docent might ask, "What is the man about to be killed thinking? What is the killer thinking? What are the bystanders — who seem to include local collaborators — thinking? This is a moment on the precipice between life and death," Reich says.
This sort of sensitive material is why the HMLC discourages visitors any younger than sixth-graders. But how and why, exactly, do you introduce teenagers to these topics?
Often, the "how" is with a trunk. The museum sends out "Educators' Trunks" filled with books, videos, maps and curriculum guides for classroom use. After immersing themselves in the history and significance of the Holocaust, students often conclude the unit with a field trip to the museum. "A lot [of the kids' response] has to do with how the teacher has prepared them," says Reich.
Even still, he says, "We do witness some emotional responses, including the occasional fainting student, who maybe hasn't had breakfast, has been on a bus for a while and is then overwhelmed by what they see. Some have a hard time and cry, and some maybe feel they've seen too much and need to take a break. If you're confronting this material for the first time, it can be overpowering."
Yet, it is the darkest moments of the museum's chronological journey that are cut by rays of light. And here we particularly begin to see the "why." A display on heroes such as Oskar Schindler, demonstrates how "one person can make a difference," says Reich. Dramatic tales of resistance in the form of ghetto uprisings, partisan attacks, and even theatrical and musical protests are uplifting. The loop of the museum begins to close with areas on the Nuremberg trials and the birth of Israel and ends, in the words of Reich, with a look at the "resilience of the human spirit." Photographs of survivors who settled in St. Louis and started families line the wall.
But the journey is not quite over. Most tours conclude with one of St. Louis' estimated 100 living Holocaust survivors telling his or her story to the kids. "The survivors are the heart and soul of the museum," says Reich. Their presentation makes all the horror and the hope the children have just discovered quite real.
"One of the slogans after the Holocaust was 'Never Again,' and there've been a series of genocides since," says Reich. "There is relevance in seeing people as victims, perpetrators, collaborators and rescuers. Those roles that we see in the Holocaust we see played out again and again."
The St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center, 12 Millstone Campus Drive, 314-432-0020, hmlc.org.
