On Wednesday September 25, the entire Senior grade at MTA was privileged to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage as part of an extension of the “Names Not Numbers®” Holocaust Oral History Documentary program.

In groups, students explored the main exhibit, “The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do,” showcasing the experiences of European Jewry from the 1930s through the end of the war. Afterwards, students reported both learning things they had never known before about the Holocaust as well as being moved by the images and artifacts contained in the gallery. “I didn’t know how hard it was for survivors to integrate back into society,” said Yitzie L. (Monsey). “I didn’t know that they made the Jews play instruments for other Jews in the camps,” said Noah L. (Queens). Chaim S. (Bergenfield) reflected how inspired he was by seeing the resilience and hope the Jews displayed in the ghettos by creating theaters and music despite the terrible situations they were in.

Students also participated in a workshop on photo analysis, led by Museum Director Dr. Paul Radensky. Students examined scenes from across the span of the Holocaust, including before it began and after it was over. A Jewish wedding photo of the Bamburger from 1921 Germany, the building of the Warsaw Ghetto wall, the public humiliation of an elderly Jew having his beard cut off, a scene from a convent where a Jewish girl was in hiding, and a photo of a man in a DP camp surrounded by friends who are looking on as he holds his infant son. (The young married couple did make it out of Germany in time, and the groom actually went on to teach at Yeshiva University in the 1940s).

Students left feeling a deepened sense of connection to the mesorah as well as a renewed feeling of reassurance that the enemies of Yisrael will never win—certainly a needed message of comfort in light of the difficult situation in Eretz Yisrael today.