VINCENNES, Ind., January 28, 2025 – The Vincennes University Shake Library is gearing up to host the traveling exhibit “Americans and the Holocaust,” accompanied by engaging events exploring this tragic historical period. Additionally, the library will showcase heartfelt butterfly displays created by the University Community and the public to honor the lives lost.
The exhibit will debut in the Shake Library, located in the Shake Learning Resource Center, on March 17 and run through April 28.
“Americans and the Holocaust” offers a thought-provoking look and explores the motives, pressures, and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism, war, and genocide in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. The Shake Library collaborated with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association (ALA) to bring the traveling exhibition to Vincennes.
VU Director of Library Services Charla Gilbert said, “The “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibit holds deep significance as it examines a pivotal and sobering chapter in history, reminding us of the importance of understanding our past to shape a more compassionate future. The Shake Library is honored to host this exhibit at VU, offering community members, VU students, faculty, and staff an opportunity to engage with its powerful message through tours and accompanying events. Together, we hope to foster important dialogue, deepen understanding, and honor the memory of those impacted by this tragic period in history.”
In conjunction with the exhibit, the Shake Library has created a Butterfly Project that offers the University Community and broader community a unique opportunity to engage with the exhibit and honor Holocaust victims. The library is asking VU students, faculty, staff, and community members to create butterflies in various forms of media, including paper, ceramics, photography, digital art, and more. Those butterflies will be on display throughout VU. The library encourages people to take a look at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s database of over 600 ID cards to get inspiration from those who experienced the Holocaust.
For additional information, to submit photos or digital files of your butterflies, or to schedule a time to drop them off at the Shake Library, contact Tiarra Basham at tiarra.basham@vinu.edu.
The Shake Library’s butterfly display is inspired by the Butterfly Project initiated by the Holocaust Museum in Houston to honor the 1.5 million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust. The museum’s inspiration is Pavel Friedmann, a Jewish Czechoslovak poet who wrote the poem “The Butterfly” while in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. In 1944, Friedmann was transferred to Auschwitz, where he was killed. His poem was later published in a book, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944.”
The exhibit is open any time the Shake Library is open, and operating hours are available at vinu.libguides.com/shakelibrary. 25-minute guided tours are available, but signing up in advance is required at vinu.libcal.com/space/168652. Large groups are also asked to sign up.
The Shake Library is located at 130 E. College Ave. inside the Shake Learning Resource Center on the Vincennes Campus. For more information, visit vinu.libguides.com/USHolocaustExhibit
The Shake Library’s “Americans and the Holocaust” Events include:
- “The U.S. and the Holocaust” Documentary Showing
Thursday, Feb. 20, 6-8 p.m. (ET), CANDLES Museum, Terre Haute
The CANDLES Museum will present selected clips from “The U.S. and the Holocaust”, A film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick & Sarah Botstein.
- Opening Reception
Tuesday, March 25, 6-8 p.m. (ET), Shake Learning Resource Center Café
The Shake Library will celebrate the “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition. The reception is free to attend but the library requests that you register for the event.
- Keynote Speaker: Trent Andrews, “Echoes from Auschwitz: The Story of Eva Kor”
March 27, 11 a.m.-Noon and 1-2 p.m. (ET), Red Skelton Performing Arts Center and Zoom
Join Zoom Meeting
https://vinu-edu.zoom.us/j/95113409583
Meeting ID: 951 1340 9583
Trent Andrews serves at the Operations Director of the CANDLES Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute. He possesses more than decade of experience in Holocaust education. He has met many survivors and visited numerous Holocaust sites. Andrews will share the compelling story of Eva Mozes Kor, a twin survivor of the Holocaust and the horrific medical experiments at Auschwitz, who established Indiana’s only Holocaust museum.
- Panel Discussion: “Effects of World War II on Vincennes and Surrounding Areas”
Tuesday, April 1, 6-8 p.m. (ET), Shake Learning Resource Center, Innovation Room 112 and Zoom
Join Zoom Meeting
https://vinu-edu.zoom.us/j/9180738980?omn=98156164438
Meeting ID: 918 073 8980
The discussion will feature local and state historians including: Christopher Fischer (Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana State University), Jill Weiss Simins (Archive Advocate for the Indiana Archives and Records Administration), Cynthia Killion Frederick (Knox County Public Library Staffer and Knox County Historian), and Gazella Summitt (Expert on the Jewish Community of Knox County).
- “Recitations & Reflections” featuring Vincennes University Theatre Students
Thursday, April 3, 11 a.m.-Noon (ET), Shake Learning Resource Center Café
VU students will perform readings and monologues reflecting on the people who lived during the Holocaust.
- Recital: Kyle Forehand, “Butterflies: Confronting Our Past, Ensuring Our Future”
Tuesday, April 8, 6:30-8 p.m. (ET), Shircliff Humanities Center Auditorium and Vincennes PBS recording
A search for reconciliation and justice through the music of the Holocaust, by song and lecture, told through the voice of a Nazi’s great-grandson. Arkansas native Kyle Forehand, a baritone, is currently a graduate student in the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
- Book Talk: Jason Lantzer, “Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust: A History”
Thursday, April 10, 11 a.m.-Noon (ET), Shake Learning Resource Center, Innovation Room 112 and Zoom
Join Zoom Meeting
https://vinu-edu.zoom.us/j/9180738980?omn=95407402664
Meeting ID: 918 073 8980
Jason S. Lantzer is the author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including most recently his book about Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust. The research and writing of Hoosier native and Indiana University graduate centers on the intersection of religion, politics, and law in American History in addition to the impact of the Walt Disney Company on American culture. Lantzer is currently the Assistant Director of the Butler University Honors Program.
- Humanities Film and Lecture Series Screening and Discussion: “Home of the Brave: When Southbury Said NO to the Nazis”
Tuesday, April 15, 6-8 p.m. (ET), Shircliff Humanities Center Auditorium
The 36-minute film explores “how one small American town in 1937 recognized hate and evil and said no to a regime well before it would become responsible for genocide.” Following the screening, local historian and author of “Vincennes: A Pictorial History” Richard Day will lead a discussion exploring the ways Knox County and Southern Indiana responded to “Nazism, war and genocide in Europe” between 1933 and 1945.
- Indiana Jewish Historical Society Director Michael Brown, “After Survival, The Story of Joe Levine in Post-War Bavaria”
Tuesday, April 22, 11 a.m.-Noon, Zoom Only with Discussion in Shake Learning Resource Center Innovation Room 112
Join Zoom Meeting
https://vinu-edu.zoom.us/j/95233560423
Meeting ID: 952 3356 0423
Brown is Executive Director of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society, a historian, and hosts the podcast, “IN-Jewish History.” and will present the story Joe Levine, the first Executive Director of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society. Levine was one of the first social workers to arrive in Europe right after the end of World War II. He took a leave of absence from his job as executive director of Fort Wayne Jewish Federation to look after the welfare of thousands of Jewish displaced refugees who were still reeling from the unfathomable scope of tragedy and horror that was the Holocaust.
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