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UN Exhibit Remembers When the World Turned Its Back on Stateless Jewish Refugees
(New York Jewish Week) Andrew Silow-Carroll - There is a now-aging cohort of children born or raised in the DP camps, the last with a first-hand connection to the experience of 250,000 Jewish survivors who passed through them at the end of World War II. To recall the experience, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the UN Department of Global Communications have staged a short-term exhibit at UN headquarters in New York City, "After the End of the World: Displaced Persons and Displaced Persons Camps." On display through Feb. 23, it is intended to illuminate "how the impact of the Holocaust continued to be felt after the Second World War ended and the courage and resilience of those that survived in their efforts to rebuild their lives despite having lost everything." Among the artifacts on display are dolls created by Jewish children and copies of some of the 70 newspapers published by residents, as well as photographs of weddings, theatrical performances, sporting events and classroom lessons. "There's no point where the residents of these DP camps were just sitting around waiting for other people to do things for them," said Deborah Dwork, who directs the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center-CUNY, who served as the scholar adviser for the exhibition. "They took initiative and developed a whole range of cultural and educational programs."