By Deborah Ashin, JTNews Correspondent
Three ordinary bowls, one enamel, two aluminum. To see them on a shelf or in someone’s attic, they would be unremarkable. But each bowl is a silent witness to history, telling the powerful story about the Holocaust survivor who used it.
On display at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry until July 18, the bowls provide a tangible connection to a traveling exhibit of photographs commemorating the United States Holocaust Museum’s 10th anniversary.
Loaned from the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, each bowl belonged to a Holocaust survivor who eventually settled in Seattle:
• Thomas “Toivi” Blatt was a teenager when he received his bowl at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland where 250,000 Jews were murdered. Liberated after a prisoner revolt, he buried this bowl in his barracks for “all those left behind.”
• Ilse Huppert Wolf’s 6 x 3 inch enamel bowl was issued at the concentration camp Mauthausen, in Austria and later taken with her to Auschwitz and two labor camps. While working in a factory, she secretly made a length of silken rope to tie the bowl around her waist, so as not to miss her daily food ration.
• Magda Schalous was shipped by cattle car from Hungary to Auschwitz and later survived two slave labor camps. She received her bowl from a woman who used it at Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau. It is engraved with the letters BMW, which operated factories in the sub-camps to build parts for warplanes. Schalous later used it as a cooking pot in a Displaced Persons camp
“Each bowl has meaning because it is tied to the story of an individual survivor,” explains Miriam Greenbaum, co-executive director of the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center. Greenbaum believes bowls are especially powerful objects because they relate to survival, to food, and to the desire to live.
“Artifacts alone are only objects…yet they capture the imagination and teach about humanity and survival,” she says.
These bowls not only represent the few necessities inmates were allotted by the concentration and death camp administrators, but also reflect a survivor’s hope. Just having a bowl — and the food to put in it — might have meant the difference between a prisoner’s chance of survival and certain death.
Greenbaum explains that many survivors feel it is important to maintain a connection to the past, which is why they hold on to the personal objects they brought back.
Now, when survivors share their stories, she says, “Many stress they are doing this on behalf of the people who did not survive…who were murdered.”
Displaying these bowls adds a unique dimension to the Holocaust Museum’s traveling exhibit, “Silent Witness,” which is sponsored by the Northern Trust Company. Seattle is the second stop of the exhibit’s eight-city tour.
Sara Bloomfield, director of the Holocaust Museum, was in Seattle for a private showing of the exhibit at Northern Trust Company’s Seattle office. As part of this special event, the Holocaust Museum brought an object from its collection — a child’s dress — which Bloomfield says marks the first time the museum has taken a personal artifact on tour.
“Like other artifacts belonging to Holocaust survivors, this dress takes on an incredible significance,” Bloomfield explained. “Survivors clung to these little things to maintain their individual integrity. Never underestimate the value of these objects.”
Sealed in a metal and glass suitcase, the dress — like the bowls on display at MOHAI — doesn’t seem like much until you hear its story. It was worn by Lola Kaufman, who survived the war as a small child by hiding in a hole dug beneath a barn. For eight months, she lived in almost total silence and darkness. The dress, which had been made by Lola’s mother, was not just her only piece of clothing — it was her only possession. Kaufman, incidentally, came to Seattle last week to tell her story to guests at a Northern Trust special event.
Bloomfield added, “It is often the ordinariness of the objects that is so touching when we look at them today.”
Although Lola’s dress was not put on exhibit at MOHAI, it carries the same emotional weight as the three bowls.
For Feliks Banel, MOHAI’s deputy director, the bowls and their stories are inspirational, representing the power of survival.
“Museums operate at their best when they can combine real stories with objects. The energy from these bowls is very powerful,” Banel explains. “It is an honor to have them here.”
The bowls provide an added dimension to “Silent Witness,” the traveling display about the Holocaust Museum’s 10th anniversary, which features 50 photographs that chart the museum’s history, explain its mission, and recognize people whose lives it has affected. It also highlights some of the museum’s lesser-known educational programs, including one for local law enforcement and the FBI, which examine the role German police played during the Holocaust and explores what lessons can be learned about this today.
Banel says he is pleased to provide MOHAI’s visitors with the opportunity to learn about a museum they might not have the opportunity to see in person.
The bowls and the “Silent Witness” exhibit will be on display through July 18 at the Museum of History and Industry (206-324-1126). The Museum is open daily from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and on Thursdays until 8 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for seniors and students.