New Jersey Exhibit Examines Lives of Holocaust Survivors After World War II, UN Response
The entrance to the new traveling exhibition “After the End of the World: Displaced Persons and Displaced Persons Camps.” Photo: Provided.
A new traveling exhibit opening this month at Stockton University in New Jersey highlights the lasting impact of the Holocaust in the years immediately following World War II and the multinational relief response by the United Nations.
Titled “After the End of the World: Displaced Persons and Displaced Persons Camps,” the display features artifacts from the archives of the UN and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO), including official documentation, photos, reports, and correspondence between Holocaust survivors and family members who were trying to reunite after the war.
YIVO also provided posters created by Holocaust survivors in displaced persons camps that provide insight into their daily lives, such as wall newspapers, lectures at the camps, and announcements for sporting events and political rallies.
The exhibit — created by the UN Department of Global Communications, UN Archives, and YIVO — “reminds us of the importance of a multinational response that is sensitive and responsive to the agency of the survivors and works to support them as they reconstitute their lives,” said Tracey Petersen, manager of the Holocaust and the UN Outreach Programme.
YIVO CEO Jonathan Brent added, “The exhibition illustrates how the displaced persons did not shrink from the task of rebuilding both their own lives and Jewish communal life.”
The exhibition is free and open to the public from March 21 to April 28 in the Richard E. Bjork Library at Stockton University. A larger display with more artifacts from the YIVO Archives will open at UN headquarters in New York in January 2023.