Intern Outing #2: VHM

Virginia Holocaust Museum, 
       2000 E Cary St: 

It was something of a sombre start for the morning of the Outing day. We were visiting here to learn and listen and take in the stories of those who had survived, had lived to tell the tale, and those who had not.
   On first reflection, it seemed a rather odd location for such a museum. Most people are aware of the one in DC, the nation's capital. Why Virginia? Watching the intro video, you quickly gain a sense of how many survivors wound up in the state. Wanting to help others know so that their story, this history, is not forgotten. The importance of remembrance.

I didn't walk around, camera in hand the entire time. I wanted to be able to take in the audio guide, the exhibitions from room to room and be able to reflect. Some of what I'd studied at GCSE came back to me: Dachau concentration camp; Kristallnacht. 
   It was what I didn't know before which I photographed; an act of committing to memory. Surprising truths about exiles; rejection; the way the world continued to turn its back. 
   And the way that artists had sought to represent the journey of the victims of the Holocaust and its survivors. Sometimes words prove only meagre, scratching away at the surface. 

Images, sculpture, artwork speak much louder,

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Gross Breesen was an agricultural training farm, situated between Germany & Poland. 

In the 1930s, it created a refuge to a hundred & thirty Jewish youths. By training them up in the agricultural industry, it was hoped that other countries would be open to providing opportunity to emigrate & put their profession to work. 
   Living in Richmond, I'd become aware of Thalhimer, just as I knew of Miller & Rhoads: the old department stores, long past their heydey, standing in downtown Richmond as a testimony to old shopping habits, long relocated to affluent malls elsewhere in the region.
  Thalhimer was also involved in the resettlement cause, having experienced the growing tensions of Nazi Germany himself at first hand in 1930. William B. Thalhimer's suggestion was that refugees "be settled upon farms in the rural communities of this country in order to relieve their increasing concentration in the city &.. hasten the process of rehabilitation."
   Hyde Park Farm, Burkeville, VA became the location. The necessary visas were almost not supplied but Thalhimer's persistence did eventually pay off.  

A fascinating insight into Virginia's own direct involvement.

The Virginia Plan: William B. Thalhimer & a Rescue from Nazi Germany -  Robert H. Gillette

Hyde Farmlands

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Of refugee Jews trying to emigrate to Cuba, then America. 

On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. On the voyage were 937 passengers. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. The plight of German-Jewish refugees, persecuted at home and unwanted abroad, is illustrated by the voyage of the St. Louis.  

After Cuba and then the United States denied these refugees entry, the St. Louis was forced to return to Europe on June 6, 1939. Following difficult negotiations initiated by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the ship was able to dock in Antwerp, Belgium; and the governments of Belgium, Holland, France, and the United Kingdom agreed to accept the refugees.

USHMM   

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The Potato Hole: 

An exhibit regarding the Ipp family who hid underground 
for nine months, surviving the Holocaust.

The Potato Hole was an excavated chamber measuring 9ft x 12ft x 4ft high. We crawled through a tunnel, on hands & knees, beginning in the potato storage hole leading into a space constructed to the same dimensions. The Ipp family lived in hiding, in that space, underground for nine months. 13 Jews, 4 of whom were children under nine years old. They became survivors of the Kovno Ghetto-Concentration camp, assisted by Mr & Mrs Paskovsky & their son, Stanislavas.

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Haganah,

Exodus 1947

Sometimes it's being away from your home country which allows you a different perspective. The opportunity to take a long view rather than living in close up; 

to discover truths one might otherwise have to dig a little deeper for on home turf.

Cyprus;

 a refugee camp run by the British government,for the internment of Jews regarding Mandatory Palestine.
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The end of the walk around the museum brings you past this 

stained glass window above the Tower of Remembrance.

The flames of the Holocaust lapping around Mount Sinai.

Remembrance.
Tolerance.
Hope.