{"id":315589,"date":"2026-05-14T16:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/315589\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T16:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:27:12","slug":"national-holocaust-exhibit-enters-last-week-at-grossmont-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/315589\/","title":{"rendered":"National Holocaust exhibit enters last week at Grossmont College"},"content":{"rendered":"

A traveling Holocaust exhibit<\/a> has opened at Grossmont College\u2019s library<\/a>, showing how the United States responded to Nazi Germany\u2019s persecution and murder of 6 million Jews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t concentrate on victims and perpetrators. Instead, it focuses on American citizens, our society, our government,\u201d said Nadra Farina-Hess<\/a>, the college\u2019s cataloging librarian, who spent two years making this exhibit, \u201cAmericans and the Holocaust,\u201d possible. \u201cWhat did we know and what did we do?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The free exhibit supports Holocaust education with curated displays and a lecture series, covering topics from propaganda<\/a> to survivor stories<\/a> and stateside connections, such as Japanese internment<\/a> and Jim Crow<\/a> laws. It opened to the public last month and will close on May 21.<\/p>\n

It tackles how the United States\u2019 own prejudices \u2013 racism, segregation and antisemitism \u2013 caused the country\u2019s doors to close to the victims. The museum explains that Americans knew about the World War II atrocities earlier than most visitors would expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the kiosks is an interactive map of the United States, where you can pick any state and see what newspaper articles were published in the 1930s. It helps show what information Americans had about the persecution of Jews \u2013 far before World War II even began,\u201d Farina-Hess said.<\/p>\n

The exhibit offers key resources in its exploration of America\u2019s response to the Nazi\u2019s persecution, including books, articles, teaching tools and primary sources \u2013 such as official documents, newspapers, letters and interviews.<\/p>\n

Grossmont is the only location hosting the traveling exhibit in California. Already, it has seen 15,000 visitors and the library has offered extended hours.<\/p>\n

This is part of a national initiative by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum<\/a> and American Library Association<\/a> called \u201cNow at Your Library,\u201d with Grossmont College hosting one of 50 such exhibits across the country. Only three are at community colleges.<\/p>\n

\"Archival<\/a>A protest against Hitler in the U.S prior to World War II.(Image from U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum via YouTube)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe response has been overwhelmingly positive. Everybody who\u2019s come through here, community members and students alike, have just been grateful,\u201d Farina-Hess said.<\/p>\n

The exhibit is primarily self-guided, but Grossmont\u2019s Media Communications department utilized its professional recording studio to create an audio tour for visitors \u2013 available in Spanish, Arabic and American Sign Language, suiting the needs of the college\u2019s student body.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These recordings will be made available to the next libraries that host the exhibit, helping more people engage with history.<\/p>\n

Since local schools lack funding for field trips, the Legacy of Light Goldberg Institute for Holocaust Education<\/a> has made donations to provide bus transportation for visiting groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This organization also created the Spark Interactive bus<\/a>, a mobile classroom that brings the exhibit\u2019s lessons to schools across the county \u2013 a \u201creverse field trip,\u201d as Farina-Hess calls it.<\/p>\n

Large classes are split in two. While one tours the exhibit, the other group of students listen to the stories of second-generation Holocaust survivor Bob Gans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If Gans is unavailable, students paint ceramic butterflies with kits provided by The Butterfly Project to remember the 1.5 million children who died in the Holocaust. Grossmont plans to use these butterflies in a permanent art installation in the library.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes you think about the past so that you can move forward with social justice issues with more information today and question your own actions,\u201d Farina-Hess said. \u201cTo look at history, but also to look forward and make sure that, as a society, we try to do things that are socially right for our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A traveling Holocaust exhibit has opened at Grossmont College\u2019s library, showing how the United States responded to Nazi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[132115,67306,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-315589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-grossmont-college","tag-holocaust","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}