The Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto

At The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

Submitted by Mina Cohen

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened a new exhibition in November entitled The Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto. It will be at the museum through the year 2000. It includes hundreds of photographs, paintings, drawings, diary entries, letters, reports, and other first hand records that took about three years to compile.

Walter Reich wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Now the United States Holocaust Museum can teach not only about Holocaust death but also about Holocaust time." Walter Reich is the director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He goes on to say that "those who haven't studied the Holocaust sometimes have a sense of it as a mass human extinction, an almost passive one, as if the earth of Nazi-occupied Europe opened in 1939 and closed in 1945, and in that seismic moment 6 million Jews were swallowed into the abyss. Six million were indeed devoured during those years, but the didn't just disappear into a void. They were systematically and individually murdered....and until they were murdered, they lived remarkable lives that illuminate the possibilities and extremities of human experience."

So the exhibit Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto goes a long way to tell a significant element of the Holocaust experience, the dimension of time. The Jews in the Kovno ghetto systematically recorded their experience, which was the similar experience of Jews in ghettos like it across Europe. They did so at great peril to their lives but they documented the community's slow destruction, the "day-to-dayness of the terror and the vicissitudes of despair, hope, defiance, and resistance." They hid these records, and after the Holocaust the few survivors collected them and saved them for just this moment.

Judith Meisel, my mother, is a survivor of the Kovno ghetto. She has worked with the staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in this endeavor, including two trips to the Kovno ghetto in the last two years. She attended the opening ceremonies of the exhibit with her husband and brother, Abe Beker who also was a survivor of the ghetto. Survivors came from throughout the world to see this gift of memory for us all. The museum is open daily 10 am to 5:30 pm throughout the year, closed only Christmas Day and Yom Kippur Day. This special exhibit is on the ground floor so no special tickets are necessary, but if you wish to see the entire museum (which takes about 6 hours) you must get tickets. There is no admission charge but the free timed tickets are distributed daily beginning at 10 am at the 14th Street entrance to the museum or they can be secured through Protix, (800) 400-9373. The museum can be reached at (202) 488-0400. This museum is not advisable for children under the age of 11.

Copyright Mina Cohen 1997

Last updated 12/13/97 (RGE)