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Music of the Holocaust: Highlights from the Collection
For many victims of Nazi brutality, music was an important means of preserving and asserting their humanity. Like “audio snapshots,” works of music from the Holocaust offer a telling glimpse into the events and emotions their creators and first audiences experienced firsthand.
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Personal Histories
The items people chose to take with them as they fled Nazi persecution; a mother’s efforts to protect her child; the atmosphere in ghettos in the aftermath of roundups and deportations; conditions in cattle cars during deportation—these are among the experiences described in featured personal histories.
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Szpilman’s Warsaw: The History behind The Pianist
The movie The Pianist is set in Holocaust-era Warsaw and tells the remarkable story of Polish-Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman. Hunger and hiding, resistance both spiritual and violent, conscious choices and sheer luck—all of these played a role in the unlikely survival of Szpilman and the fate of hundreds of thousands of other Jews under Nazi control in Warsaw.
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Theresienstadt: Spiritual Resistance and Historical Context
The “camp-ghetto” of Theresienstadt, located about 35 miles northwest of the Czech city of Prague, offered perhaps the most favorable environment for spiritual resistance in the Nazi camp system.
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