Roots of Resistance: The Tuchyn Story

Roots of Resistance is a hybrid digital/physical traveling exhibit about a Jewish uprising during the Holocaust in Tuchyn, a village in Ukraine. The project emerged from the family history of Dr. Anne Parsons, whose Jewish great-grandparents immigrated to the United States from Tuchyn. After unearthing the story and locating primary sources, Dr. Parsons teamed up with her graduate students to create an innovative exhibit that inspires young people to resist injustices themselves while also filling major gaps in scholarship and public memory. The exhibit is designed for high school students in North Carolina.

The “Holocaust by Bullets”–a term coined by Father Patrick Desbois, was the mass killing by firing squad of Jewish, Roma, and other people throughout Eastern Europe, resulting in 1.5 million Jews murdered in Ukraine alone. 40% of Jewish victims during the Holocaust were killed this way, though high school Holocaust history courses often focus only on concentration and death camps. Ukraine was also the site of key Jewish uprisings, but those stories receive little attention. Our team is addressing these elisions with original research and a rigorous historical interpretation. The exhibit weaves together art, historical interpretation, and participatory practice to build bridges and combat intolerance among participants.

Our poster will showcase the stories of survivors, focusing especially on Miriam Schwartzman-Koutz, Laura Oberlender, and Yosef Zilberberg. These three individuals were children in 1942, and each have their own connection to Tuchyn and the uprising. We will outline their survival stories and weave them into the larger histories of Tuchyn and the Holocaust by Bullets in Ukraine. Participants will also learn about the 5 W’s of the exhibit–who, what, when, where, and why–and the high-level, international collaboration that went into its fabrication. Together with the digital exhibit website and a small prototype of the physical installation, the poster will also show a glimpse of the immersive experience we are crafting for our audience.

As our work in museums shifts and adapts to attract new generations of learners, we must be cognizant of the way these learners acquire and retain knowledge. The last few years have shown us the inequities of our times, and we have seen these younger generations moving in the right direction to combat these intolerances. The Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study of 2018 highlights the need for teaching these stories, with 7 out of 10 Americans believing that fewer people care about the Holocaust than before, and 58% believing that something like the Holocaust could happen again. These staggering numbers speak volumes and are part of the reason we are passionate about this work. The Never Again Education Act (federal) and the Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act (N.C.) mandate that more rigorous Holocaust education be taught in schools, and our hope is that teachers around the state can use this incredible interactive tool to teach about the Holocaust from a new perspective.