CHAPTER 13
Edward Jacobs, Michael Berenbaum and Ryan M. Niemiec
Abstract
The Holocaust has become recognized as a defining event of the twentieth century, with vast implications for the understanding of humanity and the inner workings of government and technology, religion, and culture. The event offers significant insight into the capacity of “ordinary” individuals and groups in the commission of radical evil. It also offers insight into humanity, the insistency of altruistic good, resilience, and the expression of character strengths, especially by way of individuals who behaved not as bystanders but as “upstanders,” taking action despite danger, expressing their courage and moral conviction against perpetrators and their collaborators by helping the victims, and choosing to act in a humane manner. This chapter offers an exemplary case of the creation of a first-ever Holocaust and Humanity Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, and documents the task, challenges, and unique design of the entire exhibition.
Key Words: Holocaust museum, Holocaust and Humanity Museum, character strength, virtue, VIA classification, upstander, bystander, choiceless, choice
Introduction
Holocaust Museums dot the globe; they have been built in Jerusalem and Paris, Washington and New York, London and Chicago, Houston, Dallas, and Cincinnati, and even in Hiroshima, Japan. The Holocaust has become recognized as a defining event of the twentieth century, with vast implications for our understanding of humanity and the inner workings of government and technology, religion, and culture. The event offers significant insight into the capacity of “ordinary” individuals and groups in the commission of radical evil, but also the insistency of altruistic good and resilience.
An emerging trend among many of these institutions is the request to move beyond a chronological telling of the Holocaust narrative, and to devote considerable exhibition and narrative space to address its relevance for contemporary society. This is particularly important for youth, who may feel distant from an event that may not seem pertinent and is overshadowed by more contemporary tragedies.
Telling a history of the Holocaust is a fraught affair. The weight of the subject is as daunting for designers as it is for visitors. Breaking out of common didactic modes of presentation can be considered irreverent for such a sacrosanct subject. Further, searching for ways to make this story relevant and applicable to the visitor’s life without falling into worn clichés and simplistic homilies is equally perilous. The desire to “universalize” the experience in a reductive manner is overwhelming: for example, let’s use the Holocaust as a gateway to discuss schoolyard bullying; or, let’s trace how intolerance leads to genocide. With all this in mind, the designers of the Holocaust and Humanity Center (HHC) in Cincinnati, Ohio, have created a broad palette of exhibits designed to engage a widely diverse audience and geared at making this subject accessible and relevant. Equally important are the programmatic goals of the museum to encourage self-understanding, civic responsibility, and action. It is our hope that visitors leave the museum not only informed and edified but enlightened as to how to mobilize their capacities to be upstanders in the face of injustice.
Task, Opportunity, Challenge
On January 27, 2019, the Nancy and David Wolfe Holocaust and Humanity Center opened in the Cincinnati Museum Center. The Center is a one-of-a-kind, multi-museum complex housed in Union Terminal, a historic Art Deco train station and National Historic Landmark. Museum Center’s major offerings at Union Terminal include the Cincinnati History Museum, the Cincinnati History Library and Archives, the Duke Energy Children’s Museum, the Museum of Natural History & Science, and an OMNIMAX Theater. Museum Center is the largest cultural institution in the city of Cincinnati, with more than 1.4 million visitors per year. Importantly, the Museum Center was the train station where refugees from Nazi Germany and survivors of the Holocaust first landed to begin their “new life chapter” in Cincinnati. As such, it has a direct and sacred connection with the Holocaust narrative.
By name and agenda, the new museum was meant to incorporate a full Holocaust exhibition, seamlessly linked to an exhibition called “Humanity.” The museum directorship turned to us, the museum design firm Berenbaum Jacobs Associates (BJA), to devise and design a museum that would answer both these needs in a compelling, impactful, and relevant way. The focus was meant to tell the story of the Holocaust and address its implications for contemporary society in a manner that deepens commitment to human rights, dignity, decency, and diversity in a complex world in which xenophobia and racism, hatred, intolerance, and antisemitism are ascendant. Working hand in hand with the dedicated and knowledgeable director, Sarah Weiss, and the staff of the museum, as well as a prominent local design firm, Jack Rouse Associates, who were retained to oversee production of the project, BJA sought to frame a unique and original narrative. The collaboration also involved directors of the renowned VIA Institute on Character, a global nonprofit organization that, through science, uncovered humanity’s best characteristics, and involved Drs. Neal Mayerson, Donna Mayerson, and Ryan Niemiec.
The initial challenge was how to integrate the two dimensions of the Museum’s title, Holocaust and Humanity:
•What kind of Holocaust narrative would both tell the story of the Holocaust and introduce the issues to be expanded upon in the Humanity exhibition?
•What can one say about so broad a subject as Humanity that will both integrate with the Holocaust narrative and be a practical call to action for its visitors? Might it be possible to construct the narrative in a way that moves people toward greater flourishing by sensitizing them to their own potential to effect change in themselves and in the world around them?
Approach to Museum Design
A word about our approach to the design of narrative history museums:
•In design and content, an effective exhibition must be driven by the story that needs to be told and the lessons it seeks to transmit. Upon these two considerations, artifacts are identified, imagery gathered, artifacts collected, testimony chosen and diverse media—audio, video, and especially art, etc.—are curated.
•The exhibition must be layered to address the three different types of museum visitors:
Skimmers: those who walk quickly through an exhibition and view the headlines;
Swimmers: those who spend more time reading and engaging with exhibits; and
Deep-Divers: those who read and study every element of each exhibit.
•The exhibition must engage three types of learners: auditory, visual, and tactile.
•A museum exhibition of this type should address general audiences and resonate with visitors of all faiths, ethnic backgrounds, and ideologies, as well as those who have not thought much about any particular historical issue, much less the Holocaust. It must be equally intellectually informative and emotionally compelling.
•That said, we strive to give primary focus to what we consider our most important and challenging audience: high-school-age visitors. They are at once the most critical, scrutinizing, and impressionable audience we have.
•Where possible, building design should support and buttress the exhibition. In the ideal situation, building design follows exhibition design, not the reverse.
•Technology must serve as an aid to storytelling. The visitor should be touched by the content of what she/he sees, rather than marvel at the mode of presentation.
•Personalization: Mass murder is an abstract concept. The murder of millions is a statistic. The experience of the individual is a story that, if told empathically, leaves a lasting impression.
•Localization: Visitors more easily identify with local survivors and activists who have lived in their neighborhoods, attended their schools, and contributed to their community. Further, museum officials are committed to telling the story of the people who have shaped the institutions that are being created. This is especially true of Holocaust survivors who were the driving forces and founders of these institutions.
Let us briefly “walk through” the exhibition and attempt to illustrate how these challenges were addressed.
Lobby
The entrance lobby of the museum is enveloped by a large colorful mural. Composed in the style of a graphic novel, the mural introduces the major characters the visitor will meet in the exhibition. Each makes a statement of what they lived through, for example, “Our refugee ship was denied entry and we were returned to Europe,” and “I saw my hero Jesse Owens win his 4th gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.” These vignettes are meant to create an intriguing overture to the exhibition and include characters from both the Holocaust and Humanity sections of the museum.
Orientation
It is our contention that museum visitors will have an enhanced experience if given an introductory orientation prior to entering the exhibition. This is the opportunity to set expectations, offer necessary context, create parameters, and, most importantly, ask key questions that we would like our visitors to consider throughout the exhibition. It also allows the visitor to decompress, to leave the outside world behind and engage in what is to come.
It is with that in mind that groups of 30–40 visitors are led from the lobby into the adjacent Winds of Change Orientation Theater to view the introductory movie, setting the stage for the rest of the exhibition. As the lights go down, scenes from the mural appear on the 60-foot-long projection screen, and four Cincinnati survivors go from being animated to their actual “human” selves. Together they address the visitors, giving them an introduction to what lies in store.
The premise of this introduction, as well as the entire exhibition, is indeterministic. In our worldview, human beings have autonomy. They have the gift of free will. In this context, the characters speak about choices. They tell the audience that they are about to experience a difficult story about people who made evil choices—they are called perpetrators; about other people who chose to stand by and watch—those are known as bystanders; and about those who were oppressed—victims, whose ability to choose was severely curtailed, but who nonetheless made choices, many times heroic, of their own. Finally, we will hear about the upstanders, those rare individuals who despite danger, often mortal, had the courage and moral conviction to act against the perpetrators and their collaborators by helping the victims, and chose to act in a humane manner. The term upstander was coined by former US ambassador to the United Nations, American academic, and war correspondent Samantha Power. An upstander is a person who sees injustice, inequality, or unfairness and steps up to do something about it. Upstanders are people who get involved. They stand up for other people and their rights. They set an example for those around them. Upstanders come from all walks of life, across age, gender, race, and ethnicity. Upstanders are ordinary people who see something wrong and work to make it right. This term is meant to serve as the direct inverse to the bystander. It is now widely used as an altruistic epithet, both noun and verb.
The survivor narrators state that everyone has the ability to choose what they will do and how they will behave.
In a rhetorical turn, they say to the audience that they may be tempted to ask:
“What would I have done back then? Would I have had the courage to help? The strength to survive?”
To which they answer:
Instead ask yourself: “What can I do to help now?”
“How can I aid someone I know who is suffering?”
“How can we be the best of humanity today?”
This final adjuration from the survivor represents a critical point of our educational philosophy rejecting any kind of role-play exercise. In today’s hyper-media-driven age, where we are shown everything, we think we understand everything. In opposition to this perception, we educate toward empathic humility. Our students should understand that we can never know “how we would respond,” although we may consider how we would like to imagine ourselves responding. And to those we meet when trapped in a world of “choiceless choices,” we cannot judge. As the distinguished literary scholar Lawrence Langer (1980) argued:
After we peel the veneer of respectable behavior, cooperation, hope, mutual support, and inner determination from the surface of the survivor ordeal, we find beneath a raw and quivering anatomy of human existence resembling no society ever encountered before. The situation of the victim can best be described as one of “choice-less choices” where crucial decisions did not reflect the options between life and death but between one form of abnormal response and another, both imposed by a situation that was in no way of the victims’ own choosing.
At the close of this seven-minute movie, the narrators ask:
“What makes some people behave this way and some that? To choose between good and evil?”
They tell the visitors that they will be exploring these questions throughout the exhibition. Indirectly, this production has also turned a light onto the survivors and poses questions concerning their resilience, their fortitude, their positivity.
The Holocaust in Eighteen Words
Every museum exhibition is based on an organizing principle, either overt or hidden. It is chronological, topical, geographic—whichever is deemed best to support the story being told. This exhibition uses an organizing principle which we had never encountered in a museum exhibition. Human behavior is its underlying structure.
The Holocaust Gallery tells the story of the Holocaust by way of historic events, but through the prism of the victim/perpetrator/bystander paradigm, which comes from Raul Hilberg, the “dean” of Holocaust scholars, who addressed the Holocaust from the perspective of these three actors (Hilberg, 1992). The fourth term—upstander—was added to fully round out the behavioral narrative and offers a seamless transition into the Humanity Gallery.
Wherever possible, local stories are the focus of the exhibit. Eighteen distinct exhibit modules tell the story of the Holocaust. The title of each distinct exhibit, like chapters in a book, defines the subjects of the exhibition. Sometimes the clarity of the titles unites disparate elements of the exhibit. At other times, the lack of clarity triggers the visitor’s imagination to fill in some details. For the Holocaust segment of the Museum the following headings were used:
Origins: Deals with the origins of German resentment from World War I onward;
Mosaic: Deals with Jewish life before the Holocaust;
Power: Deals with Nazi rise to power;
Violence: Deals with active Nazi persecution of Jews and other marginalized groups;
War: Deals with World War II;
Escape: Deals with the attempt of Jews to flee Germany, as well as Cincinnati-based sponsors;
Massacre: Deals with the mobile killing units and what is known as “the Holocaust by bullets”;
Ghetto: Deals with effort to segregate, isolate, and contain the Jews within ghettos;
Concentration: Deals with variety of concentration camps implemented by the Nazis for Jews and other victims;
Implementation: Deals with the historic Wannsee Conference;
Resistance: Deals with both armed and spiritual resistance;
Deportation: Deals with the mobile transfer of victims to the killing centers;
Annihilation: Deals with the six killing centers established for the purpose of industrialized murder;
Survival: Deals with Cincinnatians who survived various ordeals, particularly the camps;
Liberation: Portrays both the liberators and the liberated;
Aftermath: Tells the story of the days after liberation and the immediate struggle to return to life;
Judgment: Deals with the quest for justice;
Rebuilding: Focuses on the physical journey of survivors from the lands of their oppression to the land of freedom and the personal journey from imprisonment to a life of freedom.
Each of these exhibit modules are designed in a manner in which deepening levels of subject matter are revealed to the visitor by activating the exhibit, or through discovering the various elements embedded within. We’ll offer several in-depth examples of the eighteen in the following.
The first exhibit, Origins, is presented as a large mural of a World War I battlefield. Upon activation, the mural mechanically splits in half and slides open, revealing soldiers within a trench. A short text describes Germany’s devastating defeat in World War I and the social unrest it caused. More images mechanically arise from behind the trench, showing how the schisms grew in German society. Another expansion reveals the outbreaks of antisemitism and scapegoating of Jews in Germany. Throughout each of these reveals, firsthand eyewitness testimony, by way of images, text, and video, accompanies the historical recounting. Emphasis is placed on highlighting the various categories of our victim/perpetrator/bystander/upstander paradigm.
As described earlier, several of these exhibit models work like mechanical origami, slowly unfolding before the visitor to reveal the various layers of the story. Several have been constructed in an artistic manner, more sculpture than standard exhibit. For example, Massacre presents the perpetrator subject of the Einsatzgruppen/mobile killing units and their collaborators (including nationalist killing squads and neighbors) who systematically shot their Jewish victims where they lived. This exhibit is presented as a mosaic composition composed of thousands of actual bullet shells of similar caliber used during these mobile killings. The scene depicted in the mosaic is from a clandestine picture showing one of the many murder-by-bullets scenes that took place in the eastern territories. A video monitor is also part of the exhibit, providing an eyewitness chilling account of these actions.
In the final exhibit of the Holocaust section, the visitor is confronted with a large judges’ dais. Focus is given to the paradigm of representational justice, the historic Nuremberg Trials (1945), as well as the groundbreaking Eichmann trial that took place in Jerusalem in 1961. It is here that the visitor sees how justice—however symbolic—was meted out to a perpetrator. The Eichmann trial is generally not included in Holocaust museum exhibits (although there is a wonderful traveling exhibition currently touring the United States). However, it was included in Cincinnati, specifically owing to the perpetrators’ defense (Eichmann): “There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders.” It was Eichmann’s diabolical behavior and his attempt to evade personal responsibility that we wanted to echo in the final Holocaust exhibit. It was, after all, radical evil, conceived of and perpetrated by human beings, that was responsible for the Holocaust—not some satanic visitation, not a group of exceptionally clever sadists working behind the scenes, but rather a national effort supported actively and passively by the overwhelming national majority, as well as multitudes of willing cohorts. They all chose to participate.
These notions of judgment provide the transition into the second half of the exhibition, The Humanity Gallery.
The Humanity Gallery
The Humanity Gallery begins with a four-minute video presentation in a small theater. This presentation is meant to recap and highlight some of the important elements that were covered in the Holocaust gallery, and how those ideas will carry through into the Humanity Gallery.
The narrator explains that within the larger story of the Holocaust, and all of the individual stories heard throughout the exhibition, visitors have seen the worst—and in some cases also the best—of humanity. There were those individuals who, despite even mortal danger to themselves and their families, chose to act and to help. Those upstanders show us the best that humanity can strive for. There were also the stories of the survivors, who through their strength, resilience, and fortitude rebuilt their lives, raised new families, and contributed to society in important and meaningful ways.
The visitors are then presented with the key questions upon which the second part of the exhibit is based: What was it about those upstanders, that caused them to act as they did? Why did they risk life and limb to help? Are they extraordinary? Are they superheroes? Are they “righteous,” the designation given to them by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Memorial to the Holocaust? Do they have attributes that the rest of us normal mortals do not possess? The narrator asks: “What is it that is inside a person, that compels them to stand up? Is it something inside of everyone?”
Regarding the survivors, similar questions are raised: How did they survive the physical and emotional trauma? How were they able to rebuild their lives, often so successfully? What purpose do they feel they serve today as witnesses to one of the greatest willful destructions to befall humanity?
The answer to these questions, which is provided by the video and the ensuing Humanity Gallery, is that every person possesses positive personality traits, called character strengths, that have the potential to draw them toward upstanding behavior. Awareness of one’s own most compelling character strengths can catalyze a person to move beyond being a bystander in the face of injustice to being an actual upstander. The video introduces visitors to the concept that across the religious, philosophical, and ethical spectrum there are those objectively good human qualities that are in every human being—the character strengths—and that scientists have identified twenty-four specific character strengths which represent what we value most in ourselves and others (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). They are the elemental sources of human goodness.
These ideas are based on the groundbreaking research of Christopher Peterson, Martin Seligman, and fifty-five scientists who classified six core virtues (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence) and twenty-four character strengths (for example, curiosity, perseverance, kindness, fairness, humility, hope) found in human beings across cultures, nations, and beliefs. This historical and scientific work is known as the VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues and is viewed as a “common language” of strengths in all people. Over the last decade, over 600 scientific studies have been conducted on this common language, revealing new insights about our positive makeup, how we can better understand our core identity, and how one might take action to flourish and build greater well-being. Millions of people from every country in the world complete the VIA Survey (www.viacharacter.org) each year to discover how these twenty-four character strengths are uniquely profiled in themselves. These twenty-four character strengths and their applications are crucial for not only individual well-being but relational well-being and societal well-being (Niemiec, 2018). By focusing on strengths as much—if not more—than weakness, we may experience greater gains (Cheavens et al., 2012; Meyers et al., 2015). As highlighted by Peterson and Seligman (2004), “character strengths are the bedrock of the human condition and that strength-congruent activity represents an important route to the psychological good life” (p. 131). The Humanity Gallery described herein further offers the proposition that these strengths also are important drivers of upstanding behavior.
To the lead concept-designer of the narrative, this connection seemed the natural transition into a meaningful and impactful humanity exhibit, particularly emanating as it did from the first half revolving around the behavior of the individuals within that story as seen through the victim/perpetrator/bystander/upstander paradigms.
Pushback
While the inclusion of character strengths may seem like a natural connection, there was no little consternation expressed by some of the project stakeholders. And who exactly are the stakeholders? Designing a museum involves many participants, each with their own vision and opinion of what the new museum should be. There is the director of the museum and staff, all versed in the subject matter and rightly demanding varying levels of authorship of the program. Then there is the board of directors, who take their roles seriously and need to be both reported to and heard. In most Holocaust museums, the board includes survivors and children of survivors, creating an entirely different dynamic. Then there are the donors who contribute to the project, and major donors frequently have strong opinions of their own! Similarly, there are local municipalities who are also part of these projects, as are other facility tenants, who rightly anticipate being affected by how the museum is received. We often form a scholarly advisory group who participate in the exhibition’s review committee so that the local intellectual and educational community is informed and involved. All of these diverse groups—often with conflicting perspectives—must be reconciled and somehow brought into some semblance of alignment.
Upon hearing of the “psychological exhibit,” many participants were immediately captivated by the concept. Some wanted to know, “Where else had this been done?” To the best of our knowledge it hadn’t, which elicited questions like, “Well, how do we know it will work?” Others were less than sanguine in their critique. The following is a small sampling of comments that were expressed:
These “virtues” do not relate directly to the Holocaust. The viewer does not say to him or herself: “If only everyone possessed these virtues it would prevent Holocaust-like events from occurring in the future.”
Specifically, these virtues are not only, in all but one case, irrelevant, they are also misleading and even contrary to what we would hope for.
Justice—a fine thing, but not a virtue, rather a goal.
Temperance—not only does this conjure up the entirely irrelevant thought of Prohibition for the reader who possesses some awareness of American history, but also, as “moderation,” it is exactly the philosophy of the bystanders. It is justification for not getting involved: “We shouldn’t get too upset over what they are doing to the Jews, shouldn’t lose our equilibrium over it.” The Biblical Prophets were neither temperate nor moderate.
And it wasn’t just the stakeholders. Even the partners within the conceptual design firm tasked in designing the narrative and the exhibition experienced internal conflict. Upon initial internal presentation of the concept, one senior partner responded vociferously that “a museum is not a psychological playground!” There was also a fear that an exhibit of this type would be perceived as being “naive and Pollyanna-ish.” It could even lead to us being “the laughingstock of the industry.” As mentioned at the opening of this chapter, designing a museum of this type is a fraught affair. It is not uncommon to have aggressive debate, especially when attempting to break new ground—which is what the authors of this chapter and project attempt to do at every opportunity. In the end it was determined that the presentation should be made to the client, and they—rightly—would be the final arbiters.
After considerable exploration, the stakeholders came to understand better that the character strengths were not being conceived as a simplistic antidote to inhumanity, but instead as a science-based complementary element of human nature, with practical implications for preventing and confronting inhumanity when it rears its ugly head.
Unbeknownst to the conceptual designers at that time was the fact that the Cincinnati-based VIA institute, founded by Neal Mayerson, a psychologist and philanthropist, had initiated and produced the study which led to the publication of Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (referred to as the VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues). When we presented the concept to the client, it was met by what we perceived as a stunned silence. We thought this was surely a sign that we had in fact overstepped conceptually. But then the client told us of the coincidence that Neal and Donna Mayerson—leaders in the Cincinnati community—had previously expressed interest in the new museum. Eureka!
This led to a valued collaboration with the Mayersons and Dr. Ryan Niemiec, all of whom are psychologists and directors of the global VIA Institute on Character and contributed immeasurably to this exhibit.
While it was our initial desire to label the six modules according to the six virtues of the VIA Classification, it was felt that this may be too abstract for young (high school) visitors. Ultimately, the museum director and staff chose to have topical subjects reflecting the stories used in each exhibit become the titles, with corresponding virtues embedded within the video presentations. This also seemed to alleviate some of the discomfort aroused by the abstractness of using the virtues alone.
In the closing seconds of the Humanity video presentation, the narrator says:
In the Humanity Gallery to come, you will see how a wide array of upstanders met their moment. Each story is different but shows how each person can activate their own unique set of strengths, to overcome fear, and stand up to injustice. Which of your strengths compel you to be an upstander? Are you ready for your moment?
Humanity Gallery: Moments and Character Strengths
Many of the stories and personalities shown in this gallery present regional initiatives and citizens who may not be well-known to the greater Cincinnati community, but reinforce the notion that ordinary people from all walks of life, all colors and creeds, all levels of education and wealth, are capable of affecting positive change, for themselves, and for others.
The Humanity Gallery features six topic zones—each with a paired video installation and digital interactive stations—each presenting stories of action, transformation, and hope. Thematic video attract stories are projected onto 3D sculptural surfaces, creating visually captivating areas that are as layered and dimensional as the stories they tell. Accompanying touchscreens invite the visitors to explore three distinct moments when upstanders took initiative, and, most importantly, to identify within themselves some of those character strengths that lead to such actions. All of the video pieces were defined and composed as a team effort between the staff of the museum, our colleagues from VIA, and our media arm, Winikur Productions.
The aim of each story is to show how ordinary people identified an opportunity in their lives when their signature strengths of character were energized to respond positively and constructively in that moment. With the repetition of this format throughout the Humanity Gallery, it is hoped that visitors will come to understand that they can raise their awareness when injustice occurs and then consciously deploy their character strengths to respond constructively. Each moment that is presented prompts visitors to reflect on how they themselves may share the virtues/strengths with the upstanders featured in each. The moments also prompt visitors to think about ways in which they have experienced and responded in similar situations.
The topics and their corresponding virtues include the following:
Sharing Our World/(Wisdom):
Contains three vignettes entitled: From Trash to Treasure; Waking up to Water Access; and Creative Cleanup;
Standing up to Hate/(Courage):
Contains three vignettes entitled: A Community Fights Back; Real Talk; Patriotism in the Face of Prejudice;
Protecting Civil Rights/(Humanity):
Contains three vignettes entitled: A Case for Women’s Equality; Campaigning for Change; and Marching to Make a Difference;
Responding to Genocide/(Justice):
Contains three vignettes entitled: The World Must Know; Healing the Scars of Genocide; A Crime Without a Name;
Promoting Pluralism/(Temperance/Moderation):
Contains three vignettes entitled: Sharing A Name, Saving a Language; Dialogues of Faith; Artistic Expression in the Urban Core;
Finding Home/(Transcendence):
Contains three vignettes entitled: Threads of Hope; Sole Mates; A Foundation for the Future.
We explore two of these stations/exhibits here in further depth.
In the exhibit Sole Mates/Finding Home, the virtue of transcendence (which consists of the character strengths of appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality) is featured. It tells the story of Bassam Osman and his family who, fueled by a resilient hope and enduring optimism for a better life, escaped Syria’s complex and bloody civil war between the Assad regime and various opposition forces. Bassam had worked at a shoe factory in Aleppo before it was bombed; and he claims it was spiritual synchronicity or meaningful fate that he was resettled in Cincinnati, home of Clarence Howell Shoe Repair. The store’s owner, Clarence Howell, hired Bassam in 2016, not only kindly offering the Osman family stability for the first time in years, but also laying the foundation of a beautiful friendship, characterized by a deep and mutual kindness and gratitude for one another. This was based not only in their having undergone deep suffering and tragedy in their pasts, but also in their drive to look for the good, beauty, and virtue in other people and the world around them.
In the exhibit, A Community Fights Back/Standing Up to Hate, the virtue of courage (which consists of the character strengths of bravery, perseverance, honesty, and zest) is featured. In late 1998, a hate-related incident sent shock waves through the quiet community of Anderson Township in Cincinnati: swastikas were spray-painted on a Jewish family’s home, and at least nine other homes were vandalized overnight. Church leaders and an outraged community, fueled by impassioned zest and seemingly limitless perseverance, signed a pledge to stand in solidarity against hate. After a second wave of hate, in the form of racist flyers, the community responded again by founding Greater Anderson Promotes Peace (GAPP). As one of its primary goals, GAPP worked with officials to construct a public Peace Pole, designed to honor diversity, encourage understanding, and promote inclusion.
After witnessing the hateful incidents in Anderson, Louise Lawarre ignited her courage to organize a community event to take a stand—a brave, honest, and persistent stand against hate. The response to the one-time event was so enthusiastic it became a movement and the inspiration for GAPP. Louise said her goal was to encourage her community to “speak out” against the hate that was showing up in their driveway and that silence was not an option.
Make Your Mark Wall
The Make Your Mark Wall is the final stop for the visitor in the exhibition. An interactive installation, visitors are asked to carry forward what they have learned in the exhibition and literally make their mark upon leaving the museum. It brings the visitor to begin to question, “How might I be an upstander in today’s world?”
To do this, visitors are asked three questions, centering on those parts of the exhibition that they most identified with:
a.During my visit, I was inspired by …
b.Based on my experience today, I am inspired to …
c.Choose three character strengths you have and can activate.
A photo is taken of the visitor and is projected upon the large LCD wall, where the photographs of all the other participants appear like floating documents throughout the exhibition. In this they become part of a community of people committed to carrying the lessons learned in the museum forward, and its mandate: “to inspire action based on the lessons of the Holocaust.”
Asking the visitor to review and articulate elements of personal inspiration from the exhibition reinforces those memories, crystallizing those images and stories as the visitor leaves. By asking visitors to choose the three character strengths that they most identify with, along with taking a “selfie” of themselves, it is the museum’s hope that these simple actions will become a lasting mnemonic for the visitors who will leave the exhibition with the notion of character strengths and upstanding foremost in their mind.
Conclusion: Future Directions, Moving Forward
Many in the Holocaust field fear that expanding narratives beyond the Holocaust itself challenges its uniqueness and threatens to trivialize the memory of this singular event. Others seek to situate the event as a sort of satanic visitation on humanity, outside of the realm of “normative” human behavior.
Confronting the Holocaust as the paradigm of human potential for evil is as true as it is conventional. Wrestling relevant lessons from this event that may actually alter how we view our responsibilities to our fellow humans, as well as how one behaves day to day, is a challenging and critical departure from that convention. Such lessons require us to confront our human capacities for both evil and good. If the adage “never again” is ever able to attain practical traction, we as humans must chronicle the conditions that bring out both the worst and the best in all of us. Such knowledge puts us in a better position to manage ourselves, communities, and nations so as to minimize the expressions of human evil and maximize the potential of human goodness.
The radical evil that the perpetrator forces us to confront in the Holocaust becomes unfortunately less surprising the more we know of the world and the human capacity for virulent malevolence. It also rightly forces us to confront other genocidal occurrences with the same critical tools, including comparative and analogous reflections with the Holocaust. To be specific, we are against cavalier Holocaust analogies heard frequently in the media. That said, we do support critical and scholarly comparisons and analogies with similar genocidal occurrences. We stress that comparison is not equivalence. It is only through comparison that distinction is revealed. We should embrace those distinctions as we do the paradigms.
The tragic dignity often witnessed from victims of the Holocaust—and similar destructive events—even in their world of choiceless choices, is frequently inspiring. It is also relentlessly harrowing.
The passivity and aloofness of all bystanders should force one to examine their own moral and psychological preparedness to react to real-world situations that require immediate intervention.
The altruism and nobility of upstanders everywhere should instill a desire to emulate the refusal to accept an unacceptable situation, regardless of the consequences. Their frequent inability to even conceive of another way to behave illuminates what one may describe as the radical goodness inherent within human beings, and that which must be mined as a most precious human resource.
Finally, the grace and resilience of many survivors will hopefully kindle within the visitor a sense of obligation to participate in the repair of an unredeemed world. It is through the prism of these perspectives, which elevate our collective consciousness, that we determine, actively or by default, whether it will be our capacities for coarse inhumaneness or our resplendent capacities for human goodness that will find expression.
While there have been no analytical studies done gauging the effect that this exhibition has had on its visitors thus far, anecdotal reaction to date tells us that we have tapped into a wellspring of possibility. It is our contention after this experience that we may reach even further into the science of positive psychology, character strengths, and human flourishing to serve as catalysts for future work and inspire others to do the same.
References
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Meyers, M. C., van Woerkom, M., de Reuver, R., Bakk, Z., & Oberski, D. L. (2015). Enhancing psychological capital and personal growth initiative: Working on strengths or deficiencies? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 62(1), 50–62. http://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000050
Niemiec, R. M. (2018). Character strengths interventions: A field-guide for practitioners. Boston, MA: Hogrefe.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.