DAVIE, Fla. – Nowhere in the state can you experience a museum like the one that is on the campus of Nova Southeastern University. At the Craig and Barbara Weiner Holocaust Reflection and Resource Center inside the Alvin Sherman Library on the university’s campus, stories of Holocaust and genocide survivors are well documented.
There’s also a high-tech virtual display where visitors can ask a pair of actual Holocaust survivors practically anything.
Through a microphone, we asked them, “Do you still have nightmares?” One of the survivors answers: “I used to have nightmares regularly for quite a time.”
The survivors are powered by technology similar to what’s used in Alexa or a smartphone. There are more than 2,000 questions that can be asked including requesting that they sing a childhood song.
“It’s important because it’s the newest and only way to keep a survivor alive forever,” Craig Weiner, co-curator of the museum, said.
There are 250 artifacts, too, from Nazi camp guard patches and medals to the actual steel bowls that prisoners used for meals to the very whips that were used to beat thousands of men and women just because they were Jewish. There are even shoes of the youngest people killed. Barbara points out an original Torah in glass that was written in the 1700s.
“It’s so heartwarming because we know for generations to come, people will pass through these doors and will learn a very horrid time in our history, but they will see what comes from evil and what comes from kindness,” said Barbara Weiner, co-curator of the museum.
Find out more about the center by clicking here.