Return to "In The News"Golden Pacific Region B'nai B'rith Today—March/April 2001
Silent Voices Speak
By Emily RyanOne man was all it took. One man to change history. One man to destroy families throughout Europe. One man to rip people out of the lives they knew and place them in camps, where many were killed. One man who decided that he was personally responsible for changing the face of a nation. That man, of course, was Adolph Hitler.
As the rest of the world stood by, Hitler's troops pillaged, looted, and killed. By the time help came along, the damage had been done. Six million Jews and countless others were murdered.
In the 56 years since liberation from the death camps, people all over the world have remembered the Holocaust in every way possible: pictures, paintings, speakers, museums, artifacts, and remembrance ceremonies.
B'nai B'rith's Golden Pacific Region is a co-sponsor of Silent Voices Speak: The Holocaust and Social Injustice Today, an art exhibition and lecture series. Running from April 1 through May 15, the free exhibition will be held at the Presidio's Herbst International Exhibition Hall in San Francisco.
The program consists of Remembering the Holocaust, an exhibition of Holocaust paintings by award-winning artist Barbara Shilo, accompanied by Visas For Life: The Righteous Diplomats, a moving photographic and historical exhibit on Holocaust rescuers by historian Eric Saul. Additionally, there will be a lecture series given by prominent scholars, civic leaders, artists, survivors, and well-known celebrities.
"The project raises public awareness abut the tragic lessons of history, in order to prevent similar atrocities from occurring in the future," said Lani Silver, Silent Voices Speak project director. "It gives new insight into the Holocaust and links it to social injustice today."
"We were thrilled to be asked to serve as a co-sponsor, and are honored to be a part of this," said Golden Pacific Region President Irving Abramowitz. "Silent Voices Speak is an excellent, innovative program. B'nai B'rith's Greater San Francisco Unit already has booked a day to tour the exhibit, and I'm sure that other units and lodges will be participating as well."
Shilo's Remembering The Holocaust is an exhibition of mixed media paintings derived from documentary photos of the Holocaust taken between 1933 and 1945. Her 14 paintings depict deportation, death marches, death camps, extermination, liberation, and survivors. Although chilling at times, the tender paintings give honor to those who perished in the Holocaust.
"For years the Holocaust was a subject that none of us could face. I kept asking myself, what could I do about it?" Shilo said in a Silent Voices Speak news release. "I felt the only way to do it was to present facts in some measure of an art form."
Shilo's family was living in Germany when Christian friends warned them abut Hitler's troops. After moving to Czechoslovakia for five years, the family fled to the United States, settling in Brooklyn, N.Y. Today Shilo resides in Forestville, California.
Visas for Life began in 1994 as a project to identify, research and honor diplomats who rescued Jews and other refugees during the Holocaust.
Rescue Mission
The exhibition highlights 48 emissaries through family photographs, biographies, and narratives, and is presented in cooperation with the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance and Yad Vashem Heroes' and Martyrs' Memorial.
Curated by renowned historian Eric Saul, the project is continually expanding. Saul continues to discover diplomats involved in the rescue process. The project now identifies more than 100 diplomats from 27 countries who risked their lives to save 250,000 people from death.
"In 1953, the State of Israel established a commission to recognize those 'Righteous Among the Nations,' awarded to non-Jews who acted on their own initiative, were directly involved in saving Jews, risked their own lives, freedom and safety, received no remuneration or reward, and have proof from survivors or archival evidence that their deeds caused a rescue that would not have otherwise occurred," added Silver.
The featured diplomats in Visas for Life include Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, Dr. Feng Shan Ho of China, Chiune Sugihara of Japan, Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes of Portugal, Jan Zwartendijk of Holland, Monsignor Angelo Rotta of the Vatican, Carl Lutz of Switzerland, and many others from Bulgaria, El Salvador, Spain, Turkey, Italy, England, and the United States.
In addition to curating the exhibition, Saul also is the director of Holocaust Educational traveling Exhibits, co-author of numerous historical manuscripts, and owner of Pacific Framing Company in San Francisco, which provides consultation for museum and exhibit design. He has curated exhibitions ranging from American Women at War and The Buffalo Soldiers, to the story of Japanese Americans and the Liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp.
A 10-part lecture series will take place throughout April and May. Lecture topics include: The Holocaust: Told and Untold Stories; Other Victims of The Holocaust; Resistance and Rescue; Childhood in The Holocaust; Lessons in Courage and Vigilance; Lessons of The Holocaust; Making the Links; Healing the Wounds; and Confronting Genocide in Today's World.
Lecture series guests include: Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Provisional Government of East Timor and Nobel Prize Winner Jose Ramos Horta; Daniel Ellsberg, a former government advisor who released The Pentagon Papers; Dith Pran, an author of "The Killing Fields" and New York Times photo-journalist; actors Ed Asner and Peter Coyote; and the family of James Byrd Jr., who was the victim of a racially-motivated dragging death in Jasper, Texas.
There will be two receptions to commemorate the exhibition and lecture series, both open to the public at no cost. The opening reception will be on Sunday, April 1, featuring Shilo, Saul, and children of the diplomats who aided rescue initiatives.
The Swiss Consul Roland Quiller honors the exhibition with a reception on Wednesday, April 4. Honored guests include Agnes Hirschi, whose father Carl Lutz saved 62,000 people from the Holocaust, and Dr. Theo Tschuy, author of Lutz's biography, "Dangerous Diplomacy."
Many thanks to Silent Voices Speak.