‘NO CHILD’S PLAY’ EXHIBITION OPENS ON 24 JANUARY

Note to Correspondents

‘NO CHILD’S PLAY’ EXHIBITION OPENS ON 24 JANUARY

An exhibition entitled “No Child’s Play” opens in the South Gallery of the General Assembly Visitors’ Lobby on Tuesday, 24 January at 12 noon.  This travelling exhibit, produced by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, opens a window into the world of children during the Shoah.  It focuses on toys, games, artwork, diaries and poems, highlighting some of the personal stories of the children and providing a glimpse into their lives during the Holocaust.  The exhibition tells the story of survival -- the struggle of these children to hold on to life.

Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General of the Department of Public Information, will host the opening ceremony.  Brief remarks will be made by Yehudit Inbar, Curator of the “No Child’s Play” exhibit, and Melvin Jules Bukiet, son of a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.  A poem Dream, written in the Lodz ghetto by 13-year-old Abramek Koplowicz, who later perished at Auschwitz, will be recited by Mischa Baker, a high school student from the United Nations International School.  Representatives of the Hidden Child Foundation, child survivors who went into hiding during World War II, and the American Society for Yad Vashem will also be present at the opening ceremony.

The exhibit is complemented by a Holocaust Learning Centre in the North East Gallery that will feature video presentations showing footage of the Holocaust and a brief history of the founding of the United Nations; photographs from the ITAR-TASS collection (Moscow); books written by Holocaust survivors; copies of a children’s book with drawings and poems by children in the Terezín ghetto (in the former Czechoslovakia), courtesy of the Permanent Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations; as well as computer stations where visitors are able to access the central database of Shoah victims’ names, the UN Cyberschoolbus and other websites related to the Holocaust.

This multimedia exhibit, sponsored by the Department of Public Information, is presented as part of a week-long series of activities on the theme “Remembrance and Beyond”, leading up to 27 January, which has been designated by the United Nations General Assembly as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.  Following the adoption of the resolution, the Secretary-General of the United Nations characterized this special day as “an important reminder of the universal lessons of the Holocaust, a unique evil which cannot simply be consigned to the past and forgotten”.

For more information on United Nations exhibitions, call Jan Arnesen, tel.:  (212) 963-8531; or Liza Wichmann, tel.:  (212) 963-0089, or visit the website at www.un.org/events/UNART.

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For information media • not an official record