By promoting a culture of peace and non-violence that includes respect for diversity and non-discrimination, we can build societies that are resilient to the risk of genocide.
Stories of Survival and Remembrance
Objects and Artefacts
The objects in this exhibition reflect the lives of their one-time owners - their childhoods, their homes, their cultures – and the impact of war, trauma, displacement and exile on these lives. The objects survived the Holocaust, genocide and other atrocity crimes in Cambodia, Srebrenica and Rwanda. The objects are remains from a lost world. Dislodged from their original surroundings, these seemingly ordinary objects are now storytellers. They represent futures that were forever altered.
A call to action for genocide prevention
The United Nations was established over 75 years ago in response to the atrocity crimes committed during the Second World War. Preventing genocide remains as critical today as it ever did. This exhibition is a call to action and reminds us of the need to build a world in which justice prevails, and in which all people are equal in dignity and in rights.
Image and Memory
Over a decade ago, photographer Jim Lommasson began working on a collaborative photographic and writing project with Iraqi and Syrian refugees to the United States, based on the objects they brought with them to this country. Survivors or their family members were asked to reflect through creative expression on the white background of the photographs of the objects, their memories attached to the object. This process allowed autobiographical narratives to become collective history.
In this exhibition, the images related to the Holocaust and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda were taken by photographer Jim Lommasson. The images related to the genocides and atrocities in Cambodia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were provided by the Documentation Center in Cambodia, the War Childhood Museum Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Remembering Srebrenica.
