As the Holocaust & Intolerance Museum of New Mexico comes of age, it’s honoring children who never got the chance.
Marking 13 years of advocating tolerance, the museum celebrates its Bar Mitzvah year remembering the 1.5 million children murdered under the Nazi regime, many of whom didn’t live to see their own coming of age.
The Museum Board invites the public to join special event and reception on Sunday, August 24h, at 2 p.m., in Congregation B’nai Israel, 4401 Indian School, NE, in Albuquerque, NM. Please RSVP by calling 505-247-0606 by August 18th.
“We dedicate our Bar Mitzvah year remembering the innocents who met a cruel and senseless death brought on by hate and intolerance,” says Jerry Small, a museum representative. “We must never forget in order to end these atrocities that continue even today in countries ravaged by war.”
During World War II Hitler’s army and collaborators killed over a million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Romani (Gypsy) children, German youth with physical and mental disabilities, Polish children, and innocents residing in the occupied Soviet Union, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The chances for survival for Jewish and some non-Jewish adolescents (13-18 years old) were greater, only because they could be deployed at forced labor.
But, even liberation from Nazi tyranny did not end the plight of those children surviving the Holocaust. Many faced their futures without parents, grandparents, or siblings.
The Holocaust & Intolerance Museum of New Mexico was founded in 2001 by Holocaust survivor Werner Gellert and his late wife, Frances. In addition to the general public, the museum provides tours for schoolchildren, offers training for teachers and school administrators about intolerance and hate prevention, hosts monthly discussion groups, houses a vast resource library and displays various exhibits.
The Holocaust & Intolerance Museum of New Mexico is a beneficiary agency of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico. For more information, please call 505-247-0606.