The National Holocaust Centre and Museum in Nottinghamshire is only about one hour’s drive away from Barrow and is really well worth a visit. There’s so much there – for individuals, families and groups (school, community, adult) with two standing exhibitions and a changing programme of events. It’s about a mile away from Loxton village with its medieval strip farming (featured in Barrow Voice winter 2022).
Quite stunning, if you visit in the summer, is the rose garden you walk through from the carpark. It’s a place for quiet contemplation as each white rose bush is planted in commemoration of a person or a family who were killed by the Nazis. It’s a beautiful comment on a truly ugly time in history. Children (and adults) are invited to add to the Children’s Memorial, commemorating the 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust, by selecting a stone from the trough and placing it on the memorial.
The first exhibition explains the build-up to the antisemitism experienced by Jews across Europe and the history of the Nazi party and political reaction (or lack of) to it from countries around the world. You first see pre-war Jewish life where Jewish culture thrived with the life of farmers, tailors, actors, accountants, writers, factory workers and teachers – families of varying wealth. Then you begin to understand the build-up of antisemitism and pogroms leading to the attempted annihilation of the Jewish people. The exhibition uses a mix of photographs, videos (some with testimony from survivors), reconstructions of railway lines, shops and homes. There are also, movingly, artefacts from the extermination camps of the final solution and a small-scale replica of a camp.
Jews were not the only people the Nazis wanted to exterminate and the Roma population, homosexuals and the disabled are not forgotten.
The second exhibition takes you on a tour into the home of a young German boy. You visit his classroom and his parents’ tailor shop where you are invited to look for the secret entrance to a hidden room where the Jewish family hid (hint: look low rather than high for the secret lever). You then experience the ‘kindertransport’ journey to safety and see many of the personal things that children brought with them to Britain.
In addition to the standing exhibitions, the centre hosts events throughout the year. These include meetings with authors, art exhibitions and live-cast series. There’s a café and a small shop.
Your entrance ticket lasts for any number of visits over a whole year. I returned after my first visit because there is so much to see there, I hadn’t left enough time on my first visit. The centre is based around an old farmhouse and was the brainchild of the Smith family who had visited Israel’s national Holocaust Museum. This Christian family was, as explained on their website, “stunned and challenged by the information gathered during their journey”.
Karisa Krcmar