Relating WWII atrocities to today

Of the 1,040 men, women and children sent to German concentration camps from Cauterets, in southern France, only 29 survived to see home again. Max Bouton and his brother, Armand, were among those fortunate few.

During his imprisonment, from 1942 to 1945, Bouton endured back-breaking labor and the vivid horrors of genocide. His story has been preserved by the Holocaust Education Center of the Delaware Valley through the exhibit "The Holocaust and Genocide: The Betrayal of Humanity."

After being taken by Nazi soldiers in 1942, Bouton and more than 1,000 French Jews were loaded into boxcars to be moved to Germany from a concentration camp at Drancy, outside Paris.

"You could barely move," Bouton, an 86-year-old Cherry Hill resident, said of the packed train cars.

Bouton would sit three days in his cramped car in transit. One communal steel pot served as a toilet for all the men, women and children. With only one small window in the roof, the atmosphere was stifling and oppressive. They subsisted on meager rations of bread and coffee, given out once a day.

Bouton eventually got off the train in Kosel, Germany, with 120 others and would spend the next three years in concentration camps. Those who didn't get off at Kosel were taken to Auschwitz.

"The Holocaust and Genocide," which features large panels of stark Holocaust images and documentary footage, will be on display through Dec. 12 at Camden County College's William G. Rohrer Center in Cherry Hill.

The documentary features more than a dozen Holocaust survivors and their eyewitness testimonies, in addition to four camp liberators.

The exhibit was previously featured on the Battleship New Jersey, where it was seen by more than 100,000 visitors, said Helen Kirschbaum, education program coordinator at the Holocaust Education Center.

The exhibit has prompted an outpouring of support for Bouton and the other survivors.

"It's beneficial to all the young people who listen to it," said Bouton, who was freed by the Russian army in 1945.

He said he left France in May 1949 "because the situation in France was very bad" economically. He went to New York, and in 1965 he moved to Cherry Hill, where he and his wife raised two children.

He said he has received numerous letters of support and appreciation from visitors to the exhibit.

"We recorded the testimonials from all of the survivors who speak for us," Kirschbaum said. "Each [survivor] just has an unbelievable story of its own."

By bringing the exhibit to Camden County College, Kirschbaum said, the education center hoped to demonstrate its relevance in today's world.

"It teaches how people should not be bystanders," she said.

Barbara Laynor, a librarian at the William G. Rohrer campus and facilitator of the exhibit at the college, said the display forces students to consider the implications of genocide in the modern world.

"It has an impact on the students," Laynor said.

Standing in the hallway, students cast solemn glances at the panels as they leave class. Others pause in silent reflection.

One of the floor-to-ceiling panels of images features a large photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a caption recounting his denial of the Holocaust. Other panels feature images of skeletal human remains and the bodies of gaunt, emaciated children - victims of the ongoing war in Sudan.

"We wanted to look at what happened," Laynor said, "then look at the world today."

To get students and community members thinking, the college created a series of events surrounding the exhibit, called "The Holocaust – Lessons Learned . . . Lessons Yet To Be Learned." This included lectures on different aspects of the Holocaust and a screening of the documentaries

Paper Clips

and

Facing the Sudan.

Because the series was created in conjunction with the Holocaust Education Center, Laynor said, students have been directly engaged with the subject matter.

Kirschbaum said the stark images of the Holocaust evoke a "never-again" reaction, though similar travesties are going on in the modern world.

"The kids," she said, "can make a difference."

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