The Spungen Holocaust Collection and Exhibit Hertogpost 2020 - 's-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch), Netherlands - March 19 – 21, 2020 Fact Sheet and Highlights About the Collection The Spungen Family Foundation, based in the USA, has arguably the most extensive and largest privately-owned Holocaust collection and exhibit in the world. The collection consists of thousands of individual philatelic and numismatic pieces as well as other rare documents. These artifacts are genuine witnesses to the Holocaust that have stories to tell – stories about what they have seen and what they mean for today’s world. A portion of the collection is organized into an award- winning exhibit titled The NAZI Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe, which features hundreds of objects from all major concentration camps and ghettos. It also includes rare objects from lesser-known sites that will reveal new information even to advanced students of the Holocaust. The Scourge exhibit was originally curated by renowned philatelist Ken Lawrence over a period of 30 years. It was then purchased in 2007 by the collector, businessman, and philanthropist Danny Spungen. (Read more about the exhibit’s history in the New York Times here.) Danny donated the majority of the collection to the Spungen Family Foundation. Since then, he has continued to add rare pieces to both the collection and the exhibit. The exhibit has traveled the world, but it is never exactly the same. Taking into account the audience and venue, the Foundation selects about 400 items from its archive to tell the story that begins in 1933. The exhibit originally ended with a document signed in 1946 by US General Clay ordering the hanging of a Nazi who was found guilty in a war crimes trial. Today the exhibit ends with the Tutsi ID card of a young man named William, who was murdered in a church in 1994 during the genocide in Rwanda. Does the story end at this point? Visitors at Hertogpost 2020 will have a chance to view the exhibit and form their own conclusions. About the Spungen Family Foundation The mission of the Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation is to improve the quality of life of individuals and families facing health challenges, and to address issues that particularly affect the Jewish community. The Foundation supports building awareness about the importance of genetic screening to fight cancer, supporting family caregivers, and facilitating discussions about the Holocaust and genocide. Rev. February 11, 2020 – KM (das 2/16) 1 Educational Philosophy Our focus is on telling a story of “breakdowns in humanity” using the Holocaust as a primary example. We bring the story to life through documents that survived the war – post cards, letters, passports, visas, fragments of Torah scroll, currency from concentration camps, and much more. For students in today’s digital world, this is a process that involves not just learning about history, but also learning how people communicated in the days before email, text messaging, and social media. The exhibit is controversial because it takes a bold student-centered approach. We allow students to touch and hold pieces of history, which is very risky considering the potential consequences for the breakdown of paper fibers, erasure of ink, etc. But the act of holding these “witnesses” of genocide – even for a short moment – can be emotional and powerful. These letters, post cards and other documents experienced the anguish, the fight to survive, and the struggle to send love to family and friends in the midst of horror. Locking up the exhibit material and showing replicas is not powerful enough. The authentic items students will see and hold have stories to tell and have been given a second life for education in the hopes that students will contribute to humanity, not destroy it. The exhibit is designed to engage students along credible frameworks such as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Recommendations for Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust. For example, students who view the exhibit will be able to respond to all of IHRA’s “Four essential questions to consider as students learn about the Holocaust”: 1. What were the historical conditions and key stages in the process of this genocide? 2. Why and how did people participate or become complicit in these crimes? 3. How did Jews respond to persecution and mass murder? 4. Why and how did some people resist these crimes? In addition to equipping students with knowledge about this event that fundamentally challenged human values, the exhibit, as IHRA outlines, “gives students the opportunity to understand some of the mechanisms and processes that lead to genocide and the choices people made to accelerate, accept or resist the process of persecution and murder.” They will also learn that these choices were sometimes made under extreme circumstances. The Spungen Holocaust collection and exhibit provides a unique and powerful way for students to learn how to analyze primary sources, interpret the evidence of the past, and think critically about its implications for today. These witnesses and their stories must be kept alive for future generations. We hope to see you at the exhibit. Contact: Danny Spungen | [email protected] | +1.847.533.7337 Kiel Majewski | [email protected] | +1.812.229.2316 The entire Scourge I exhibit can be viewed online: http://spungenfoundation.org/collection/ Rev. February 11, 2020 – KM (das 2/16) 2 Ten Pieces from the Spungen Holocaust Exhibit The exhibition at Hertogpost 2020 will feature Holocaust items that have never been seen in public before. Which pieces are the “best of the best” is impossible to state. Every piece has its own story. There will be material from all major concentration camps and ghettos that many students will recognize. We have put together the following overview of ten items that make the Spungen exhibit so special. 1. Youth Concentration Camp Moringen In 1939 and 1940, the Nazis established three concentration camps to “re-educate” wayward young people who deviated from the official racist doctrine of the state – at Moringen and Litzmannstadt for boys, and at Uckermark for girls. One example of a crime that led to incarceration was a fondness for jazz music, which the Nazis disparaged in racial terms. Very few prisoner letters from Moringen are known, and none are recorded from other youth concentration camps. This is an August 26, 1942, young man’s letter to his family. 2. Stamp book from Shanghai Ghetto Gary, a 13-year-old German Jewish boy in the Shanghai Ghetto, took a German Opera book and created a stamp album on the pages. On this page, he drew pictures of tanks pointing at Hitler. About 18,000 Jews found refuge in Shanghai during the war. Rev. February 11, 2020 – KM (das 2/16) 3 3. Defaced Torah (Tanakh) scroll A piece of sacred scroll stolen by a German corporal, who ripped it apart. The Torah scroll fragment was then used to make paper that a parcel was wrapped in, canceled with Nazi markings, and sent from the Russian front to Vienna. 4. Secret message from Sachsenhausen Although Nazi censors checked all incoming and outgoing mail from concentration camps, some inmates occasionally managed to slip secret messages past the censors, risking severe punishment. In this letter from Sachsenhausen, a stamp peeled off the envelope revealed a secret message. In the message, a concentration camp prisoner is asking his wife to send bread. Rev. February 11, 2020 – KM (das 2/16) 4 5. Letters from the ‘Angel of Death’ Nazi doctor Josef Mengele conducted cruel and inhumane medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz, including children. In two letters which are part of the collection, Mengele writes to his wife about ordinary life – holiday plans, how his work is going, etc. The letters are postmarked from Auschwitz. 6. Hand-painted artwork Letters from Westerbork, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen, all with hand-painted artwork. Even experiencing the horrors of war, prisoners were able to draw Easter bunnies, flowers, and landscape sceneries. Rev. February 11, 2020 – KM (das 2/16) 5 7. Compulsory sterilization and euthanasia: The T4 program German citizens with disabilities became the first victims of the Nazis’ attempt to create a “master race” by a policy of “purification” through mass murder. Throughout the war, doctors at Gugging State Hospital ruthlessly sterilized and killed disabled patients under this program. On this post card to the hospital at Gugging in 1938, a mother inquired about the fate of her child. 8. Righteous Among the Nations Documents from several Righteous Among the Nations recipients such as Raoul Wallenberg and Chiune Sugihara who risked their lives to issue visas, passports, and Letters of Protection for Jewish people fleeing Nazi persecution. Rev. February 11, 2020 – KM (das 2/16) 6 9. Carrying the legacy A post card that a Holocaust survivor’s son kept folded up in his wallet to keep the connection with him. The post card was written by his mother’s father in a ghetto in Poland to his mother who was sent to a concentration camp in Germany. 10. Never Again? The exhibit originally ended with a document signed by US General Clay ordering the hanging of a Nazi found guilty in 1946. Today the exhibit ends with the Tutsi ID card of William who was murdered in a church in 1994 during the genocide in Rwanda. The ID card was an important factor in classifying who was to be killed in the genocide. This document serves as an important reminder and a warning that genocides are not unique to any one generation or place on Earth. Rev. February 11, 2020 – KM (das 2/16) 7 .