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A traveling exhibit that tells the story
of five Jewish families who lived in
a rural village under Nazi rule and
raises questions about how we all
respond to injustice in our communities.
Photo: Interior of Synagogue in Roth, Germany.
Through photographs, documents, artifacts, and eyewitness testimony, the exhibit "A Reason to Remember: Five Jewish Families in Nazi Germany - and Why Their Stories Matter Today" tells the stories of the five Jewish families who lived comfortably with their Christian neighbors in a small rural village before Hitler came to power. It shows how the bonds of community were systematically dismantled—first in small ways, then with increasing intensity—ultimately driving some into exile and leading others to their deaths.
These stories raise profound moral and civic questions that grow more urgent in our own time. As a microcosm of the Holocaust, “A Reason to Remember” asks visitors to consider how dehumanization can take hold within a community and what responsibility each of us bears when others are targeted or excluded. The exhibit seeks to foster compassion, deepen awareness, and encourage visitors to use their voices, votes, and influence on behalf of those who face injustice.
Our mission is to bring the traveling exhibit “A Reason to Remember: Five Jewish Families in Nazi Germany—and Why Their Stories Matter Today” to communities throughout the United States. The purpose of the exhibit is to expose visitors to a detailed description of how fear, indifference and silence allowed the Holocaust to unfold as it did, and to prompt visitors to consider how and where those dynamics are in play today in our schools, neighborhoods, communities and country.
“A Reason to Remember” offers visitors an intimate window into a painful history. Through the experiences of five families in one small German village, we begin to see how the Holocaust unfolded in ordinary communities across Nazi Germany and occupied Europe—not all at once, but through an accumulation of actions, decisions, silences, and failures to act.
The exhibit raises enduring questions about personal responsibility: What do we owe one another as neighbors, community members, and citizens? What is the consequence of the choices we make in our daily treatment of others? And what happens when exclusion and dehumanization become accepted as part of ordinary life?
The personal stories of these five families, together with guided discussion following the exhibit experience, encourage visitors to:
Picture themselves within these stories and consider the choices they might have faced.
Recognize ways in which individuals and groups can be marginalized, disenfranchised, or dehumanized within a community.
Attend to the warning signs and consequences of hatred, exclusion, and indifference.
Consider the responsibilities of witnesses and bystanders.
Find ways to speak and act when others are targeted or denied their dignity.
Please email us at admin@areasontoremember.org or click here for more information.