Hélène Berr, a Stolen Life Exposition in Reno, Nevada, USA

Jean and Hélène in Aubergenville

Hélène Berr was 21 years old in 1942. A Parisian student at the Sorbonne, she kept her diary from April 1942 to February 1944. This text, of an exceptional literary quality, mixes the daily experience of the unbearable and the dreamed world of letters, alternating at every moment between hope and despair.

Arrested on 8 March 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz with her father and mother. She survived almost to the end of the ordeal, succumbing to exhaustion at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, five days before the camp was liberated.

The exhibition, going beyond the strict framework of Hélène Berr’s diary and personality, extends to the context of the Occupation and its persecution of Jews in France. It offers the opportunity to discover the original manuscript of this journal published in 2008, as well as many family archives deposited at the Shoah Memorial.

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Hélène Berr, a Stolen Life Exhibition in Reno, Nevada

This exhibition is based on the journal written by Hélène Berr, a young French woman Jewish whose promising future was brutally cut short by the Vichy Government’s laws and the plan of extermination imagined by the Nazis. Studying English Literature at the Sorbonne University, Helene Berr was 21 years old when she started 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, has rare literary qualities, and carries a universal dimension that regards and questions every human being with sincerity. The exhibition however goes beyond the framework of Helene Berg’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, interactive animations and maps, this exhibition shows how the daily lives of Jews had been impacted by these terrible acts of violence.

INAUGURATION

Thursday, March 9, 2017 at 6pm

RSVP by March 4 at deborah.farnault@memorialdelashoah.org

WORKSHOP

Saturday, March 11, 2017, from 10:00am–4:30pm

History of the Jews in France under the Vichy Regime

Professional credits available for teachers

RSVP by March 8 at deborah.farnault@memorialdelashoah.org

film screening

Saturday, April 1, 2017, from 11am–1pm

From Hollywood to Nuremberg: John Ford, Samuel Fuller, George Stevens (54 minutes, France, 2012)

A film screening followed by a discussion with director and historian Christian Delage, organized by the Mémorial de la Shoah and the Northwest Reno Library.

Picture: Portrait of Hélène Berr © Shoah Memorial, Mariette Job Collection