Mapping our Tears is an environmental theater that will “map” the journeys of Holocaust refugees and survivors, liberators and rescuers, and follow in their footsteps from Nazi Europe to their new homes in the Greater Cincinnati area. It will serve as the focal point and catalyst for educational workshops, teaching curriculum, school and civic programming, and community interaction on the Cincinnati campus of the College-Institute. Located in Mayerson Hall, Mapping our Tears will continue to add new testimonies and artifacts, growing and evolving as the personal stories are “mapped out” onto the exhibition by a team of committed students from a wide consortium of local universities.

Visitors will sit inside a set design of what appears to be an attic filled with an assortment of artifacts, clothing, memorabilia, a variety of monitors and props. Through special lighting effects, sound and visual multi-media elements, the Jewish experience in Nazi dominated Europe unfolds through taped testimonies, photos and images. A large multi-function screen will include a map that geographically traces the spread of genocide against the Jews as well as a multi-media series that specifically traces the route of each individual survivor. The unique mosaic of experiences of Jewish children and youth in hiding, ghettos and camps from across the face of Europe; a musician from the Auschwitz orchestra; young American soldiers; an interrogator at the Nuremberg Trials; a non-Jewish youth in the underground and the first mate of the ship “Exodus” are all woven into the local and distinctive series of testimonies.

Survivor testimonies detail and personalize the horrors of the Holocaust and tell the multi-dimensional lessons that must guide humanity today. Educational elements found present in the testimonies are the focus for workshops dedicated to specific themes. The first three motifs: love, courage, and loss are designed for school groups to explore issues of moral integrity, human relationships, preciousness of human life and self-worth.

The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education views this project as a valuable teaching tool for the entire community. It will boldly relate the confrontation with evil; and the strength of hope, faith, and goodness. The Center has won the approval of the local corporate community, who were the first to lend support. Working in cooperation with the Cincinnati Museum Center, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the Cincinnati Museum of Art and the Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Mapping Our Tears will be a welcome and timely addition to the region when it opens to the public in February 2002.

Living in the Moment: Contemporary Artists Celebrate Jewish Time™ [ongoing]
The inauguration of a permanent, ongoing presentation of new, outstanding, and innovative works of Jewish ceremonial art, created by internationally recognized artists, which sanctify life and spiritual experience. These unique and limited edition works, as well as special artist commissions, are available for acquisition, so that they can enter into the lives of families and communities.

Lucie and Paul Peter Porges: Style and Humor [September 13, 2001 - June 28, 2002]

Peter Paul Porges, "New York Cab"

Lucie Proges, "Sketch"

In 1938, two 12-year-old Jewish children's lives were changed forever: Lucie Eisenstab fled with her parents and sister from Vienna through Belgium and France; Paul Peter Porges was evacuated from Vienna with other children to the La Guette refugee camp in France, and made his own way across France. Both reached safety in Switzerland, where they first met at the Academy of Art in Geneva in 1945, and later settled in New York, where they married in 1951. They embarked on extraordinary careers: Lucie as the artist-in-residence and principal fashion designer at Pauline Trigere for four decades; PPP as the popular cartoonist whose work appeared regularly in The New Yorker, Mad Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. From the high style of fashion to the irreverent humor of cartooning, their lives and careers affirm the essence of Jewish creativity and vitality. Their unique accomplishments challenge us to ponder the infinite potential of the 1.5 million Jewish children of the Porges's generation who did not survive the Holocaust.

Ora Lerman: I Gave You My Song [September 13, 2001 - December 16, 2001]

Ora Lerman, "Is the Gate to Eden Imagined or Remembered?"

This memorial retrospective exhibition presents the life's work of the celebrated artist, Ora Lerman. The daughter of Eastern European Jews who settled in Campbellsville, Kentucky, Lerman's radiant paintings, sculpture, and works on paper combine childhood fantasies with adult musings on life. Employing an allegorical, narrative style, Lerman connects family stories, textual inscriptions, and a vivid imagination to express a powerful celebration of life.

Susan Malloy, "Four Seasons"

Susan Malloy: Seasons [September 13, 2001 - January 4, 2002]
Susan Malloy, a life-long painter, finds inspiration in the seasonal aspects of nature. Her works distill a sense of place, the essence of the season, and the universality of forms and patterns in the landscape, to achieve a deep, spiritual resonance. Malloy is adept in all media, from the lush colorism of her oil paintings to the graphic solidity of her lithographic crayon drawings. With clarity and vision, Malloy gives us eternal days of summer and a winter of austere serenity.

The Kindertransport Journey: Memory into History [September 13, 2001 - January 4, 2002]

Kindertransport children say goodbye to their parents, Berlin, winter, 1938-1939. Photo courtesy of the Wiener Library, London.

In 1938, immediately after the "Kristallnacht" program of November 9th-10th in the German Reich, the Jews of Britain initiated the unique rescue operation now known as "Kindertransport." With aid from Jewish as well as Quaker and other non-Jewish refugee organizations, they brought ten thousand unaccompanied children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to safety in Britain prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. Most of the children were Jews, including infants carried by other children. Most of the parents who had sent them to safety perished in the Holocaust. This documentary exhibition, featuring photographs, letters, and artifacts, illustrates the dislocation, personal bravery, and individual odysseys of these child-witnesses to history. This exhibition is presented in cooperation with The Kindertransport Association.