Online, Interactive Holocaust Memorial Launches

(Source: Your People)

This fall, Portraits of Honor: Our Michigan Holocaust Survivors launches two new components to the exhibit of 400 Michigan survivors: an online, comprehensive, interactive exhibit (portraitsofhonor.org), and the Passports program for exhibit visitors to connect one-to-one with a survivor’s story and journey.

The exhibit, under the direction of Dr. Charles Silow, is an interactive, electronic Holocaust educational exhibit of the Program for Holocaust Survivors and Families, a service of Jewish Senior Life of Metropolitan Detroit. The online version includes voice-over narratives of each survivor’s personal story, plus links to maps, history, and other educational sites.

“Despite all the horrors they went through, the survivors have inspiring messages of hope, peace and tolerance,” said Silow, director of the Program for Holocaust Survivors and Families. “We want people to know what our Holocaust survivors experienced.”

Portraits of Honor was dedicated in May 2011 as a permanent exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus in Farmington Hills. With school groups visiting this fall, Portraits of Honor launches its electronic interactive Passport card reader system. Visitors receive a paper Passport with the name and photograph of a survivor and summary of their Holocaust experience, plus their message to the future.

The Passport includes a QR code to be scanned for fuller biographies.The Portraits of Honor exhibit, including the Passport program and online exhibit, have been funded by Shari Ferber Kaufman, Ron Ferber and Annette Ferber Adelman in honor of their parents, Miriam and Fred Ferber, and by Leo and Harry Eisenberg in memory of their parents, Belle and Isidor Eisenberg.

“It is through the generosity of individuals like the Eisenberg and Ferber families that we have made a difference in the education of our community,” said Carol Rosenberg, JSL Foundation Director.

There is room for additional survivors in the online exhibit. Silow invites Holocaust survivors or their relatives who may have lived in Michigan at some point to contact him to share their stories. Contact Silow at at csilow@jslmi.org.

The Holocaust Memorial Center is located at 28123 Orchard Lake Rd. in Farmington Hills.