“Addressee has Left – Destination Unknown, Mail from Occupied Europe”.
The exhibition illuminates the human and personal dimension of those trapped in the inferno.
The letters, the only means of communication with the outside world, reflect the state of mind and daily realities of the millions of people who were trapped in the Nazi-occupied territories.
The exhibition describes the restrictions that the Germans imposed as well as those applied by the Jewish leadership in the ghettos and demonstrates the methods of obfuscation and deception that were used in letters sent from extermination and concentration camps.
More than anything else, however, the exhibition substantiates how, within this hell, the human image persisted and hope was not lost: Letters from a mother to her daughter, from a husband to his wife or letters from youth-movement members to the free world in coded language.
These and additional properties, expressed in the simple language of personal letters, reveal the full human tragedy that took place in the Holocaust.
A companion album for the exhibition is available.
