Tolerance Week continues today in Siouxland. There are several different exhibits, films and presentations that highlight both tolerance and intolerance.
The Sioux City Public Museum’s exhibit “The Diaries of Humanity,” shows some of both. It’s a collection of handwritten notes and diaries from around Europe at the time of the Holocaust. Curator Matt Anderson says the writings of those who were changed by the Holocaust are sad and hopeful.
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“It really tells some really poignant stories, from adults and children, and is quite heart wrenching. But it also highlights the resistance of the ghetto fighters when there was a major rebellion toward the end of the war. It casts the whole experience as not just one of victimization.”
Anderson says the exhibit also has a Siouxland connection. A soldier from Sioux City named Vernon Tott took many photographs when his division liberated a POW camp in Ahlem, Germany.
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“Ahlem wasn’t strictly speaking a death camp, it was a labor camp, very badly treated, people had TB and many other diseases, and he found that there were mostly men and boys in this camp.”
The museum is holding lunch and reception today (Tuesday) where Anderson will give a brief overview of the exhibit. And tonight at the Mid America Air Museum, the film, “Above and Beyond,” will be screened. It’s about American pilots who smuggled planes out of the U.S. to fight for Isreal in 1948.
