Share This Article
The Baxter County Historical Society toured the traveling exhibition “Americans and the Holocaust” at the Baxter County Library Tuesday evening, experiencing one of the final opportunities to view the historical display before it departs.
The Baxter County Library earned the distinction of being the only Arkansas location selected to host this important exhibit, one of just 50 libraries nationwide chosen for the 2024-2026 tour.
Created by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association, the exhibit also represents an achievement for the library, which competed against institutions across the country for the honor. The 1,100-square-foot exhibition required extensive preparation to accommodate its size and scope, with the library staff organizing numerous guided tours and related programming during its stay.
Following a successful first tour at 50 locations from 2021 to 2023, this second tour will bring the exhibit to diverse communities from Hawaii and Alaska to Texas and New Hampshire, making the Baxter County selection particularly notable for this region.
Adult Services Coordinator Jamie Vann, who led Tuesday’s tour for the Historical Society, has been instrumental in presenting the exhibit to various community groups, including numerous school field trips, enabling local residents to engage with this critical historical material.
Understanding America’s Response Through Its Domestic Challenges and Prejudices
Vann began the tour by establishing the exhibition’s central questions.
“In this exhibit, we’re going to be asking a couple of questions. What did Americans know? And what more could have been done?” Vann said. “We’re going to answer the question what did Americans know, but we expect you to think about, for yourself, the question of what more could have been done? That’s a personal question.”
At the opening of the presentation, Vann challenged the common assumption that Americans were unaware of the Holocaust as it was unfolding and instead presented a more nuanced examination of why Americans didn’t act to help despite being informed of what was happening.
To start the conversation, Vann went back in time and reminded guests of the trials and tribulations facing Americans at that time, mainly the Great Depression, which put millions of Americans out of work, and the Dust Bowl that ravaged parts of the Great Plains during the 1930s.
“That’s probably the biggest one because people lost their entire life savings. They couldn’t find work. There was a big drought, they couldn’t eat. There wasn’t enough food, people were standing in those lines that we saw for soup kitchens and different things. It was a huge, huge catastrophe in the U.S,” Vann said.
The economic collapse affected virtually every aspect of American life, creating an environment where international concerns often seemed remote compared to immediate domestic hardships. The ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl compounded these difficulties.
“If you think about Oklahoma and Kansas and Texas, the Dust Bowls were devastating to the people living there,” Vann noted.
One member of the Historical Society mentioned the “black lung” caused by breathing in the dust, while another referenced family connections to the affected regions in Ulysses, Kansas. Other members noted that more rural areas didn’t feel the effects of the Great Depression as much because they were still able to grow their own food.
In addition to rough conditions at home, World War I’s shadow loomed large over American attitudes toward international engagement.
“Just think about the people who didn’t come back from World War I,” Vann said. “My great grandfather was in World War I, and he was gassed. And when he came back, he had severe nerve damage down one side of his body. Other people were missing limbs, or they were blind. They all had PTSD, which we called shell shock back then, right? I mean, they were not the same. They didn’t want to get involved in another War.”
This collective trauma influenced American foreign policy, promoting isolationism and reluctance to engage in European conflicts.
During this period, the United States operated under the Monroe Doctrine, established by President Monroe in 1823, that, in addition to declaring that Europe could no longer colonize the New World, put into practice the express neutrality of the United States in regards to Europe and its remaining colonies.
“We were very isolationist. We were like, we need to protect ourselves and take care of ourselves,” Vann said, noting how these painful memories contributed to the prevailing sentiment that America should avoid entanglement in another European war at all costs.
Equally important to understanding America’s response were the domestic prejudices that mirrored some of the very ideologies Americans claimed to oppose.
“Hitler was racist, and so was the U.S. We were segregated by law in many places by custom and others. A person was killed for the color of their skin right there. The KKK marching. I mean, we had a lot of prejudices and racism in the U.S at the time that we were struggling to overcome,” Vann pointed out as she pointed to photos of the KKK marching and lynching scenes in the 1930s.
That prejudice was also mainstream, with the United States’ most famous individuals promoting antisemitic rhetoric at the time: Henry Ford, who pioneered the car revolution in the United States.
“Ford had his own newsletter that he was writing all about how awful the Jews were here in the U.S, so anti-Semitism was a thing in the U.S. as well,” Vann said, referring to industrialist Henry Ford’s notorious publication.
Ford’s antisemitic activities during this period went far beyond casual prejudice. Through his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, Ford systematically published articles blaming Jews for virtually every societal problem, from economic struggles to labor unrest. The paper also republished the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a well-known forgery claiming to reveal an international Jewish conspiracy.
What made Ford’s antisemitism particularly influential was his celebrity status and the distribution network of his automobile dealerships, which spread these ideas throughout America. His views were so aligned with early Nazi ideology that Hitler cited Ford as an inspiration, and in 1938, Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from the Nazi regime.
Despite these challenges, the exhibit demonstrated that Americans had remarkable access to information about events in Nazi Germany. One of the most compelling displays featured newspaper articles from every state documenting the persecution of Jews.
“There’s three examples from every state in the country about what was going on,” Vann said. “So, here’s Arkansas. And there’s three newspaper articles about what was going on and the way the Jews were being treated. Starting from the beginning, the Germans mobbed the Jews. This was from Hope, Arkansas, which isn’t that big.”
“It was not always in our headlines, but it was in our news media,” Vann emphasized.
“We need to understand the history of what was going on here. It’s easy to look back and say, oh, we could have done this, and we could have done that. But when you’re in the middle of it, it’s a lot harder,” Vann noted, contextualizing the information landscape of the era while still acknowledging that Americans were not ignorant of events unfolding across the Atlantic.
The 1936 Olympics and Early Warning Signs
The 1936 Olympics in Berlin provided a fascinating case study in America’s conflicted response to Nazi Germany.
As the 1936 Olympics began to approach, word began to spread throughout Europe and the United States that Hitler and his Nazi party had begun putting political dissidents in concentration camps, effectively ensuring that only the Nazi Party was allowed to operate in Germany.
At the same time, Hitler began to spread propaganda that focused on the white race and its supposed superiority over all other races throughout the world.
The Nazis leaders’ political actions, in addition to his increasing military actions, prompted calls for boycotts of the Olympics.
“There was a lot of pressure to boycott the Olympics and stand in solidarity with the people that were being persecuted,” Vann said. “Ultimately, the U.S decided to participate. There was still a lot of pressure on individual athletes, especially black and Jewish athletes, to boycott.”
Ultimately, both black and Jewish athletes decided to compete against the Germans to prove that Hitler was wrong. The resulting Olympics were a disaster for Germany, which saw itself defeated by the likes of Jesse Owens and others in competitions like track and field.
Owens personally took home four medals.
At the end of the celebration, Hitler was accused of snubbing Owens and others at the award ceremony. Owens pushed back against the narrative and stated that Hitler had to leave for another appointment before the victory ceremony and that the two saw each other as Owens headed over to do a broadcast.
Owens claimed that the two waved at each other. Robert L. Vann, an African American news editor, said he saw Hitler salute Owens for winning the 100m sprint. Eric Brown, a British fighter pilot who attended the Olympics, stated in a BBC documentary that he personally witnessed Owens and Hitler shake hands.
“Eighteen black athletes chose to because they wanted to prove that white supremacy was wrong in the U.S., in Germany, wherever,” Vann said.
Yet, as Vann pointed out, these athletic triumphs did little to change German policies. She quoted Jesse Owens:
“After I came home from the Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back. Wanted to shake my hands – but no one wanted to give me a job.”
Owens later put the rumors to rest by stating that both Hitler and President Roosevelt had refused to shake hands with him after his multiple wins at the Olympics. Owens and other black athletes were snubbed by Roosevelt after they returned home by not inviting them to the White House to be received by the President alongside the other U.S. Olympic athletes.
“I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the president, either,” Owens said. The Olympian received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House by President Gerald Ford after the 1976 Olympics.
Kristallnacht and American Reactions
The exhibit’s coverage then moved to the Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), or the Night of Broken Glass, which marked a turning point in how Nazi Germany treated its Jewish citizens. No longer where they to be persecuted and put into ghettos, now they Nazi’s were looking for an answer to the “final solution” to the Jewish “problem.”
“This was a night of state-sponsored terrorism. Nazi Germany and its collaborators were allowed to destroy Jewish shops and loot stores. Whatever they wanted from those shops. It is called Kristallnacht because of so much broken glass left being on the ground around it,” Vann said.
“They were actually burning synagogues, hundreds of synagogues,” said Vann.
Vann also noted that the Kristallnacht marked the first roundup of Jewish men and boys in Nazi Germany.
“This is the first mass roundup of Jewish boys and men, 30,000 men and boys, were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Before that they were for political prisoners. This is when they started rounding up Jewish people, and it was in our headlines for a couple of months.”
American public opinion polls from this period revealed the complex and sometimes contradictory attitudes of Americans.
“Do you approve or disapprove of this treatment, and you can see 6 percent approved? So that just shows that anti-Semitism was well in America. It existed, but 94 percent of Americans disapproved. They did not think this should be happening. When asked, should we allow a greater number of Jewish Exiles to come to the U.S to live? The answer was no, no, and again,” said Vann while going over U.S. polling of Jewish persecution before the U.S. entered the war.
This disconnect between moral disapproval and willingness to take concrete action became a central theme of the exhibition. Vann contextualized this reluctance:
“If you are searching for a job and can’t find work and you’re struggling to feed your family, you’re going to think twice about saying, oh yeah, let’s let more people come to the U.S.,” Vann said. “So, it also shows there’s a disconnect between having sympathy for someone and acting to help them, and that’s still true today. We still have that disconnect.”
Immigration Restrictions and Missed Opportunities
The immigration section of the exhibit offered Historical Society members a detailed look at the bureaucratic barriers that prevented many Jewish refugees from finding safety in America.
“In the 1930s, as persecution of Jewish people ramped up in Nazi Germany, a lot of people wanted to integrate, and by 1939, there were more than 300,000 people on the waiting list,” Vann said.
The exhibit detailed the arduous process required for immigration, with applicants needing numerous documents that were difficult or impossible to obtain.
“You had to have a certificate of good conduct from the German police, which was not very easy to get. If you were Jewish, you had to prove that you’d paid your taxes.”
Perhaps the most significant barrier was “a financial support affidavit from an American sponsor.” Vann elaborated on the financial burden this represented:
“America was still recovering from the depression, but you had to have someone, and I believe the amount was like four or five thousand dollars… It was a lot of money back then… You had to have someone who was willing to put that money and say, yes, I will sponsor this person financially and take care of them until they can get a job.”
The exhibit also illustrated how America’s immigration quotas, established in the 1920s, reflected racial prejudices of the era.
“These numbers were set by a racist immigration policies started in the 1920s. If you were from northern Europe, you were more likely to be able to get into the U.S because the numbers were higher for northern Europe,” Vann said.
A display showing the annual immigration quotas by country revealed that while Germany had a relatively high allocation of 25,957 people per year, these quotas were rarely filled in the early years of Nazi rule.
“In 1933, only 1241 people were permitted to enter the US,” Vann noted, highlighting how administrative obstacles prevented even the limited quotas from being fulfilled.
The exhibit also featured the tragic story of the St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees that was turned away from both Cuba and the United States in 1939 after its passengers discovered that they had been duped by a corrupt Cuban official, forcing its passengers to return to Europe where many would later perish in the Holocaust.
It should be noted that many isolationists in the U.S. Government went out of their way to lie about immigration numbers, prompting the Treasury Department to challenge the State Department to provide more aid to Europe.
In response to the Treasury Department’s revelations that the State Department had been intentionally lying about immigration numbers and holding up aid, President Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, which immediately went to work providing aid to Jewish Europeans. The board also worked to rescue Europeans trying to flee Europe and worked with other nations to provide the documents needed to protect Jews still trapped in German territories.
The Wagner-Rogers Bill: A Failed Initiative to Save Children
The exhibit explored a particularly poignant missed opportunity: a 1939 bipartisan bill to admit 20,000 German refugee children to the United States.
“We had a Democrat and a Republican working together. They wanted to allow 20,000 German refugee children into the U.S.,” Vann said. “There was a lot of support for this bipartisan support and Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the first lady at the time and a huge commercial advocate for a lot of people was very much in favor of it.”
This initiative, known as the Wagner-Rogers Bill, was introduced on February 9, 1939, by Democratic Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Republican Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts. The bill originated from the efforts of Clarence Pickett, director of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker relief organization, who had convinced Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to support the cause.
The legislation specified that 10,000 children under the age of fourteen would be admitted annually for two fiscal years, outside the existing quota system. Though not explicitly stated in the bill, it was understood that most of these children would be Jewish. The bill included provisions that once these children reached age eighteen, they would either be counted against that year’s German immigration quota or would return to Europe.
The display included a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt supporting the initiative:
“England, France and the Scandinavian countries are taking their share of these children, and I think we should.”
This marked the first time in her six years as First Lady that she had allowed reporters to quote her in support of pending legislation, calling it “a wise way to do a humanitarian act.” Despite his wife’s urging, President Roosevelt never publicly commented on the bill.
The bill’s supporters tried to address potential criticism by securing endorsements from influential organizations. The American Federation of Labor backed the proposal, arguing that children would not contribute to unemployment. The Children’s Bureau, within the Department of Labor, agreed to oversee the children’s placement and care, while the Non-Sectarian Committee for German Refugee Children, headed by Pickett, promised that private donations would support them.
However, opposition was substantial, with North Carolina Democratic Senator Robert Reynolds leading the charge. Reynolds gave multiple speeches against the bill, warning that admitting refugees—even children—would increase unemployment. He had already introduced five separate proposals to limit immigration, including one that would have banned all immigration either for ten years or until unemployment dropped to historically low levels.
Reynolds found allies in the American Legion and the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies, including members of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Veterans of Foreign Wars. These groups advocated for reducing immigration overall and helping American children instead of refugees.
Public opinion polls revealed widespread resistance to the proposal. In January 1939, just before the bill’s introduction, only 26% of Americans supported allowing 10,000 refugee children from Germany into the country, while 67% opposed it. By March, an informal poll of senators showed 21 in favor and 24 opposed, with many refusing to take a position on what they considered an issue “too hot to handle.”
The bill’s opponents proposed compromises that would have gutted its effectiveness, such as counting the children within the existing quota system or halting all quota immigration for five years in exchange for admitting these children. Senator Wagner refused these compromises and withdrew the bill from consideration. Neither the Senate nor House committees ever put the Wagner-Rogers Bill to a vote.
Vann noted: “66 percent of Americans were against this. It never even made it to the floor of Congress for a vote.”
She provided important context for understanding this opposition.
“If your children are starving. And you can’t feed them because you can’t find work. It’s going to be a little harder to say. Let’s take in these children.”
While not excusing the decision, this historical context helped visitors understand the complex factors that influenced American responses to the refugee crisis.
The exhibit also explained that after World War II began in September 1939, many members of the Non-Sectarian Committee for German Refugee Children formed a new organization that eventually secured passage for several hundred refugee children during the war, far fewer than the 20,000 proposed by the Wagner-Rogers Bill.
Individual Heroes and Acts of Courage
Amid the broader narrative of governmental and societal failures, the exhibit highlighted remarkable stories of American individuals who took action to save lives.
“Here’s some positive examples. Now, what happened? Easy to just be the negative because there were positives too,” Vann noted.
The story of Marianne Winter and her American pen pal Jane Bomberger illustrated how personal connections could overcome institutional barriers. When Austria was annexed by Germany, Jane’s family in Reading, Pennsylvania made:
“A kind of family discussion about doing without. In order to help this family because they decided that they would go ahead and financially sponsor the family of four from Austria to come to the U.S.”
This sacrifice went beyond paperwork:
“Marianne’s family actually lived with Jane’s family until they could get an apartment of their own, and they were able to successfully get a job and immigrate into the U.S.”
Such stories demonstrated that when Americans made personal commitments to helping refugees, they could overcome the substantial bureaucratic obstacles in place.
The exhibit also featured Gilbert Kraus, a lawyer who:
“Not only sponsored refugees himself but also put pressure on all of his friends to sponsor children. And in the end, he actually was able to go to Nazi Germany and rescue 50 Jewish children.”
These children, aged 5 to 14, represented parents who made the heartbreaking decision to send their children to safety even when they themselves couldn’t escape.
All the children rescued by the Krauses were from families that had previously tried to escape Nazi territory. After the children arrived in the United States, they were sent to live with foster families until their parents were able to immigrate. While many of the children lost family members in the Holocaust, all eventually reunited with at least one parent.
In early 1939, as Nazi persecution of Jews intensified, Gilbert was approached by Louis Levine, president of the Jewish fraternal organization Brith Sholom. Together, they developed a plan to bring Jewish children from Nazi Germany to the United States, with Brith Sholom promising financial support and care at their summer camp facility in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
What made the Krauses’ efforts remarkable was their determination to work within existing immigration laws rather than waiting for legislative change. With assistance from Pennsylvania Congressman Leon Sacks, they secured a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State George Messersmith, who suggested they might use “dead” visas: those reserved for immigrants who were unable to leave Germany at the last minute and would otherwise expire unused at the end of the quota year.
Eleanor Kraus gathered 54 financial affidavits from Brith Sholom members and personal contacts—each requiring extensive documentation including bank statements, insurance policies, and tax forms—to prove the children would not become “public charges.” With these preparations in place, the Krauses personally traveled to Nazi Germany in April 1939, first to Berlin and then to Vienna, where they interviewed Jewish families desperate to get their children to safety.
By May 1939, they had selected 50 children between ages 4 and 14, obtained temporary guardianship from the parents, and secured the necessary visas through persistent advocacy with American diplomats. The Krauses personally accompanied the children on the S.S. President Harding, arriving in New York on June 3, 1939—ironically around the same time news broke about the St. Louis being turned away from Cuba with its Jewish refugee passengers.
The children initially stayed at Brith Sholom’s facility in Collegeville before being placed with foster families or relatives. Though one child tragically died of pneumonia, all the others eventually reunited with at least one parent, with many families successfully immigrating to the United States in late 1939 or 1940. The Krauses themselves became foster parents to two of the children, Robert and Johanna Braun, who stayed with them until after the war, when they reunited with their parents.
While not featured in the exhibit, another heroic figure from this period was Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker whose story bears remarkable similarities to the Krauses. In December 1938, Winton canceled a skiing vacation to travel to Prague, where he joined efforts to aid children from families at risk from the Nazis. Over the course of three weeks, Winton compiled lists of endangered children, then returned to Britain to secure their entry permits and find homes for them.
Working within Britain’s system that allowed entry of refugees under 17 who had a place to stay, and a warranty deposited for their eventual return, Winton and his collaborators ultimately saved 669 children, primarily Jewish, from Czechoslovakia. Many of their parents would later perish in Auschwitz. His mother worked alongside him to place the children in British homes, and he even placed photographs of the children in Picture Post magazine to find families willing to accept them.
The final group of 250 children Winton had arranged to rescue was scheduled to leave Prague on September 1, 1939—the very day Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. Tragically, only two of these children survived the war. What makes Winton’s story even more remarkable is that his humanitarian efforts remained largely unknown for nearly 50 years until 1988, when he was invited to a BBC television program and unexpectedly reunited with dozens of the now-adult children he had saved.
“Parents had this horrible choice of… They wanted to escape as well. They were willing to make a sacrifice to send their children across an ocean without them because they knew that more children could be rescued that way, and they knew that their child needed to be safe,” Vann said.
Pearl Harbor and America’s Entry into World War II
The attack on Pearl Harbor marked America’s transition from reluctant observer to active participant in World War II.
“Early in the morning, December 7, 1941, they bombed Pearl Harbor, and they also had land attacks at the same time, which is something that I didn’t realize until later, but they killed hundreds of people on the land in land attacks in the surrounding area. And guess who those people were? Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants,” Vann said.
This section of the exhibit addressed America’s deeply problematic response to the Pearl Harbor attack: the internment of Japanese Americans.
“Within two months, our president had signed paperwork to place over 110,000 people into internment camps or relocation centers as we call them now,” Vann noted.
This aspect of the exhibit connected the Holocaust to America’s own human rights violations during the war, providing a more complete picture of the era.
The exhibit included a quote from Mississippi Congressman John Rankin supporting internment:
“I’m for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps.”
Vann noted that this sentiment was “widely supported across the country,” though there was some opposition, as evidenced by an article stating:
“Color seems to be the only possible reason why thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry are in concentration camps. Anyway, there are no Italian American or German American citizens in such camps.”
Vann connected this history to Arkansas specifically, noting that “we had Rohwer and Jerome,” two Japanese American internment camps in the state.
“The way we treated them was worse than the way we treated prisoners of war who were actively attacking us,” she observed, creating local connections to this national history.
This section prompted engagement from Historical Society members, with one sharing about an uncle in South Arkansas who had approached prisoners in the camps to work in fields when the men were off at war. Vann noted that while German prisoners of war were paid for such work.
“If they were Japanese? They didn’t get paid,” Vann said.
Discovering the Holocaust
The second to the last section of the exhibit chronicled how information about the “Final Solution” gradually reached the American public. In 1942, Swiss businessman Gerhart Riegner obtained evidence that Nazi Germany had decided to systematically murder all European Jews.
“He was in Switzerland and a businessman from Germany brought him proof that this was actively happening. The German businessman had basically, he said, ‘oh, I have to go on a business trip,’ and he went over to Switzerland, and he provided all this information,” Vann said.
Initially, this information was suppressed.
“The state department, the U.S. State Department kind of shut them down. They basically said, these are war rumors you can’t share this information. It’s not true. Basically, these are conspiracy theories.”
Eventually, Rabbi Stephen Wise, a prominent religious leader, convinced the Undersecretary of State to investigate, confirming the reports.
Even with official confirmation, many Americans remained skeptical. An opinion poll asked: “It’s said that two million Jews have been killed in Europe since the war began. Do you think that’s true or just a rumor?” Vann noted:
“Less than half of people believed it. I mean two million is such a huge number. Some people might have been willing to believe a couple thousand, you know, but million, that’s a huge number.”
This public doubt prompted action from the Jewish community and Hollywood figures, who created a pageant called “We Will Never Die” that toured major American cities.
“It sold out Madison Square Garden in New York twice in the same night,” Vann noted, indicating growing public awareness.
As information about the Holocaust was beginning to spread throughout the United States, Nazi Germany began to pick up the pace in its killings after failing to get other countries to take in German Jews.
The regime began exterminating women, children, the elderly and the disabled through various forms of execution like gas chambers and firing squads. Cremation furnaces were used around the clock to dispose of the dead.
In addition to murder, Jews and other political prisoners living in the camps had to deal with starvation and disease, leading to even more deaths.
In the end, the only remaining survivors were those who were still strong enough to work. Those who fell behind or collapsed from exhaustion were either allowed to die naturally or were shot.
Liberation and Documentation
The final exhibit chronicled American soldiers’ reactions to discovering Nazi concentration camps.
“Even the hardened soldiers who had seen a lot of horrific things on the battlefield, their friends and their comrades dying. They also were horrified whenever they made it to the concentration camps,” Vann said.
Stephen Louis, a Jewish refugee who had joined the U.S. military, provided a firsthand account.
“We were the first American troops in the book involved concentration camps. Needless to say, you couldn’t distinguish between those people that had passed away from the others, which were still living. The conditions were so horrible.”
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, personally visited Ohrdruf concentration camp and “wrote back to Washington that the conditions were basically too horrific for words.”
Recognizing the historical significance of these discoveries, Eisenhower moved quickly to catalog the German atrocities so that they would not be forgotten in history.
“He sent 10 camera crews to take photographs, and he sent film crews to make films, and he sent people to record the testimonies of the survivors and of the liberators.”
When asked why Eisenhower took such extensive documentation measures, Vann explained he was “afraid that people would someday say that it’s all just propaganda.”
“The very first person I saw walking through here. I approached them and said, ‘hey, we’re going to have a program about’, I don’t even remember what, and they said, ‘oh, it’s just propaganda anyway…’ There are still people who don’t believe this happened.”
The Exhibit’s Message for Today
Vann concluded the tour by going over the exhibit’s central purpose.
“The museum created this exhibit because we want you to understand that the U.S. faced a lot of challenges between 1933 and 1945.”
While acknowledging these challenges, the exhibit raised the essential question:
“What more could have been done to prevent the Holocaust? What more could have been done to help people during the Holocaust? This didn’t have to happen.”
She connected the historical lessons to present-day responsibility.
“Every time I think about that, I think. Okay, now let’s move it to today. What can I do? To confront hatred. What can I do to promote human dignity? Everything we do matters. Every choice we make matters.”
Vann shared the powerful story of Denmark, where citizens refused to cooperate with Nazi persecution of Jews.
“Denmark was overtaken by the Nazis. They were invaded, but the people of Denmark refused to participate in the Holocaust. They would not turn in their neighbors. They would not tell the Nazis who was Jewish and who wasn’t.”
In fact, the people of Denmark were so courageous that even their Nazi occupiers began to refuse to look for Jews among the population, prompting Hitler to crack down. When it became clear that their neighbors were in danger of being taken to camps, the local citizens of Denmark, without prompting or town hall discussion, began taking action to send their Jewish neighbors to Sweden.
“The Denmark people… got all their fishing boats together, and they put the Jewish people on them, and they sent them across the water to Sweden, which was neutral, and they helped them to escape.”
As a result, the majority of Denmark’s Jewish population survived World War II.
“These were just people acting on what they thought was the right thing to do,” Vann said. “Every action we take really does make a difference. And that’s the reason why this exhibit exists. And it’s the reason why we wanted to get the grant for it so that we could share it because it’s so important to remember. We don’t want to repeat history, and what we do, the choices we make, truly make a difference.”
The “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition will remain at the Baxter County Library through April 25, offering community members a rare opportunity to explore this pivotal historical period and reflect on its lessons for today.
Visitors are encouraged to sign a guest book and share their thoughts in a reflection room at the end of the exhibit.
