After the Nazis marched in to Belarus in the summer of 1941, they began the process of forcing Jewish people into ghettos. The Jews of Lida and Novogrudek shared in this humiliation. It was at this time that three brothers, Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski, decided to flee to the forests of their childhood and save as many Jewish men, women and children as they could. It was in the forests that they formed a community that numbered 1250 by the time they were liberated in 1944. The Bielski brothers led the ‘largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II.’

For many, art is the bridge between knowing and understanding. It requires a dialogue with its viewer: posing questions, recalling personal memory, promoting wonder and discovery. It is because of this, that the Florida Holocaust Museum maintains its commitment to art and artists who deal with this difficult subject.

The mass murder of the Armenian people in Anatolia in 1915, now referred to by most historians and human rights organizations as “The Armenian Genocide,” was an event of massive proportions that destroyed a civilization that had resided in Anatolia for thousands of years. The killing of between a million and a million and a half Armenians occurred primarily during the course of World War I, in 1915-6 in particular, but it continued more sporadically in the postwar era until 1923. About two-thirds of the two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire before World War I were killed during the genocide.

This panel exhibition features original photos and text outlining the Armenian culture before the genocide, the 1915 genocide itself and the Armenian Diaspora since 1923