12 November 2019 | parkcitiespeople.com
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LEARN TO BE A HATRED-COUNTERING UPSTANDER Holocaust museum challenges visitors to stand up
I F YO U G O What: Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum Where: 300 N. Houston St. Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends and many holidays (closed New Year’s Day, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day) Tickets: $16 adults, $14 seniors, military, and educators; $12 for students (not recommended for children younger than 12) Online: dhhrm.org AMANDA LYNN PHOTOGRAPHY
Dallas’ Holocaust museum is no longer a small place in the Jewish Community Center basement. From a grand downtown location, it seeks to change hearts.
By Dalia Faheid
People Newspapers
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fficials for the new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum want visitors to imagine a future where the world is full of “upstanders,” people who stand up against hatred and bigotry. “At a time when our country is being attacked from within by domestic terrorists acting on hatred and racist ideology, our mission at the new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is not only timely but critically needed,” museum president and CEO Mary Pat Higgins said. According to the latest hate crime report by the FBI, hate crimes across the U.S. rose 17% from 2016 to 2017, with the majority of victims targeted due to their race, religion,
and sexual orientation. Hate crimes in Texas have seen a similar rise, with DPS reporting a 6.7% increase between 2016 and 2017. To counter those attitudes, museum designers used a combination of exhibits and architecture to tell the stories of genocide survivors. Architects used copper because the outer layer corrodes to protect the inner layer, symbolizing how survivors have chosen to remain resilient and hopeful despite the injustices they’ve suffered. Dallas Holocaust survivor Max Glauben compares the opening of the new museum to a 40-yearseed finally taking root. A project that started as a small museum in the Max Glauben
basement of the Jewish Community Center has become a landmark featuring a hologram of Glauben. His image responds to visitors in the Dimensions of Testimony Theater and shares stories of his Holocaust experiences. “There isn’t a person in this world that cannot come into this museum, their children, their grandchildren, their great, great-grandchildren, God knows for how long,” he said, “and ask a question.” Glauben survived the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi invasion of Poland. He survived becoming an orphan by age 13 and imprisonment at five different concentration camps. At 91, Glauben is one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors in Dallas. Glauben likens hatred to dough. “You
take a little piece, and you put it in the refrigerator, and overnight, it becomes a big bunch of dough,” he said. Ending this growing hatred, Glauben said, is as simple as “choosing the goodness in you.” Individuals possess whatever it takes to be a good human being, an upstander, he said. In a world where people are persecuted because of their religion, education can lead to positive change, Glauben said. The ultimate goal, museum officials say, is to teach 100,000 student visitors annually how to be upstanders. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who was present at the recent museum opening along with Gov. Greg Abbott, embraced that goal. “My dream for Dallas is that we will be a city of upstanders,” Johnson said.
Rwandan Genocide Survivor Finds a Place to Tell Her Story By Dalia Faheid
perpetrators were surrounding the orphanage ready to murder,” she said. “And I remember thinking, I am going to die, my brothers and sisters, we are all going to die.”
People Newspapers Focusing on human rights violations throughout history, the new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum tells the stories of genocide victims around the world. “I saw myself because the museum represents every survivor of hate crimes,” Rwandan genocide survivor Lydia Nimbeshaho said. Her favorite part of the museum is the Memorial and Reflection room because she never had the chance to mourn her loved ones properly. Her memories of the genocide came back as she visited the Rwandan genocide exhibit. “It’s intense, but it’s also a beautiful feeling to see where we came from and where we are,”
AMANDA LYNN PHOTOGRAPHY
Lydia Nimbeshaho says she wants to stop the cycle of hate. she said. Only 25 years ago, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi people were brutally murdered in three months. Speaking at the museum opening, Nimbeshaho told of her
parents’ murder when she was only 6. Forced to live in an orphanage, she and her 10-year-old sister had to care for their younger siblings. “I remember being in the orphanage and hearing that the
It’s intense, but it’s also a beautiful feeling to see where we came from and where we are. Lydia Nimbeshaho Nimbeshaho sobbed as she described the dehumanization and betrayal at the hands of the Tutsis’ neighbors, friends, and even family members.
Despite the tragedies she’s overcome, Nimbeshaho has learned not to carry the burden of hatred on her back. When her children ask who the killers were, she assigns blame only to prejudice, careful not to continue a cycle of hate. She doesn’t want her kids to “grow up thinking every Hutu is a killer.” Ending the cycle begins with educating the young, she said. The perpetrators “inherited the hatred of their parents, which means if they had the right environment to grow up in, they would have turned into something different,” she said. Nimbeshaho said that what she went through gave her the strength to become an upstander. She dreams of counseling other genocide survivors to confront their mental health traumas.