It is often said that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Never are those words more applicable than when discussing the Holocaust.
At the first of the year, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (also known as the Claims Conference) released its first comprehensive survey of this topic conducted throughout eight countries, titled the Index on Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness. And sadly, the survey found that knowledge of basic facts about the Holocaust is declining.
In the United States alone, the survey showed that 63% of Millennial and Gen Z Americans were unaware of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. While 36% of those polled in our nation did believe a much smaller number of Jews were killed in that timeframe, an astounding 11% thought those Holocaust deaths were caused by the Jews.
If those numbers are disturbing, then perhaps it is time to take some family and friends to visit the Unknown Child Foundation’s Exhibit at the DeSoto County Museum in Hernando, Mississippi. Entitled, “Children of the Holocaust,” this emotional exhibit poignantly honors the memory of the 1.5 million children who perished during the Holocaust. The interactive exhibit uses photographs, holograms, audio clips, and other historical documents to detail the stories of the systematic slaughter of those innocent lives.
But none of these moving displays would have been possible without the help of some dedicated Mississippi students from Horn Lake Middle School. It all started several years ago when their teachers, Susan Powell and Melissa Swartz Wheeler, searched for a way to make such an enormous historic statistic (1.5 million) relevant to their students.
The innovative Mississippi teachers challenged the kids to collect one penny for each child murdered in the Holocaust. Then, a local rabbi directed the students to Diane McNeil, A Christian woman who had spent years traveling and teaching others about the history and culture of the Jewish people.
Out of that partnership, The Pennies Project was born, and the museum exhibit originated as a means of telling the story of the 1.5 million pennies collected by the Horn Lake students – and the stories of each Jewish child represented by those pennies.
Believe me when I say, those stories are life changing.
In fact, my first visit to the DeSoto County Museum and the Unknown Child Foundation Exhibit miraculously introduced me to Rose and Odette Aboulafia, two young French sisters murdered at Auschwitz in 1944. Their short lives forever impacted mine, as I researched and wrote their stories in a young adult novel named specifically for them. (Read the story of my original visit here: https://www.unknownchild.org/news/afa-book-launch-priceless-pennies-rose-and-odette-unknown-children-of-the-holocaust/.)
Finally, let me challenge you to visit the DeSoto County Museum soon, and let me promise you that it will also change your heart and mind. For more information on the museum, the hours of operation, and location, go to desotomuseum.org.
