The eye-opening traveling exhibit State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda is now on display at the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center in Dania Beach.
This exhibit, produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , is running at the HDEC, 303 N. Federal Highway, through May 6. Through a multimedia environment, the exhibit examines how the Nazis used propaganda to win broad voter support in Germany’s young democracy after World War I, implement radical programs under the party’s dictatorship in the 1930s and justify war and mass murder of Europe’s Jews and others. It is intended to challenge visitors to think about their responsibilities as consumers of information and how they can confront harmful propaganda today.
“We feel this exhibit is so important because we would like today’s generation to understand what propaganda is and, in this particular instance, how it was used,” said Rositta Kenigsberg, the HDEC’s president. “Propaganda in the wrong hands is extraordinarily dangerous, so the lesson here is that words matter, the truth is important and we need to speak truth.”
This exhibit is the first traveling one that the HDEC, the organization behind South Florida’s first Holocaust museum, has hosted.
Kenigsberg noted that the arrival of this exhibit as the museum’s first traveling one is fitting as it exemplifies and explores how the use of propaganda shaped and transformed a society to accept, support and become “willing executioners” of the mass murder of millions of Jews and others.
“Visitors will see firsthand that early messages of Nazi propaganda began subtly and snowballed over time into extremist marketing for a dangerous and deadly campaign,” she noted.
David Schulman, the center’s chairman, said, “We’re very proud that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has allowed us to use their traveling exhibit on Nazi propaganda, especially at this time.”
“We think it’s an important exhibit that makes an important statement and we feel that it will make everyone who sees it think.”
Steven Luckert, senior program curator in the Levine Institute for Holocaust Education in the USHMM and curator for the exhibit, said regarding the exhibit’s goals, “We would like people to think about the importance of being critical consumers of information because today, as then, we’re bombarded with a lot of messaging.”
“There’s some information that’s both dangerous and potentially dangerous that we need to be aware of,” Luckert continued. “Hopefully through this exhibition, we can have visitors see how the Nazis used propaganda and how even images of propaganda that might seem very positive can have extremely negative consequences for somebody else. I think now, as we see the growth of extremism, the growth of anti-Semitism and the growth of racism in many parts of the world, it’s important for people to be on guard against those things.”
Robert Tanen, Southeast regional acting director of the USHMM, said, “I think what it’s [exhibit] trying to show is the way a society can be manipulated and conned into believing an ideology through propaganda.”
The exhibit has had a profound impact on Gail Sonnenschein, a Sunny Isles Beach resident who viewed it.
“As a a child of Holocaust survivors, I was brought up to be aware of how society can be manipulated by using propaganda and false information,” Sonnenschein noted. “The exhibit shows how things started very small with name calling and euphemisms, but step by step, psychologically vulnerable people were strategically and incrementally manipulated into tolerating and then actively participating in terrible actions.”
Sonnenschein continued, “It’s a really absorbing exhibit that demonstrates the techniques the Nazis used, even down to marketing, art directing and branding their message, and the historical importance of making informed judgments.”
Viewing hours are Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. General Admission is $10. Visit hdec.org or call 954-929-5690 for more information. Visit ushmm.org/propaganda for more information about the history of Nazi propaganda and to discover connections between that dark period in history and issues affecting today’s world.
