"Hélène Berr, A Stolen Life" Exhibit at John Burke Memorial Library Spring Hill College, March 28 - August 10, 2014

Hélène Berr’s official portrait, 1942 © Mémorial de la Shoah – Coll. Mariette Job

Spring Hill College will host the “Hélène Berr, A Stolen Life” exhibit March 28 through Aug. 10, 2014, in the Barter Room of the Marnie and John Burke Memorial Library.

“Hélène Berr, A Stolen Life” will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursdays; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays; and 2 to 6 p.m. on Sundays.

This traveling exhibition is based on the Journal written by Hélène Berr, a young Jewish French woman, whose promising future was brutally cut short by Vichy Government’s laws and the extermination plan imagined by the Nazis. Studying English literature at Sorbonne University, Berr was 21 years old when she began writing her Journal. We follow her steps through Paris under the German Occupation, perceiving the daily experience of the unbearable, oscillating between hope and despair, until her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz in 1944.

While revealing a true premonition of the inescapable, this subtle testimony is exceptionally poetic and carries a universal dimension that regards and questions every human being with sincerity. The exhibition, however, goes beyond the framework of Berr’s Journal and personality, as it broadens the context of the Occupation and addresses largely the persecution of the Jews in France. With the support of photographs, archives, films, and interactive animations, this exhibition shows how the daily lives of Jews had been impacted by these terrible acts of violence.

For more information, please see the John Burke Memorial Library website.