Artwork by elderly Israeli hostage Shlomo Mansour featured in London Holocaust memorial exhibit
A beautiful model, ‘Butterfly Glasses,’ left unfinished when 85 year-old Shlomo Mansour was taken hostage from Kibbutz Kissufim, has been on display as part of a Holocaust Memorial Day exhibit in central London this week.
Created by the Nottingham-based National Holocaust Centre (NHC), the pop-up display, entitled ‘Vicious Circle,’ describes the age-old scourge of antisemitism, as revealed in five places: Berlin, 1938; Baghdad, 1941; Kielce in Poland, 1946; Aden in Yemen, 1947; and Israeli kibbutzim in October 2023.
Beautiful photographs show thriving Jewish communities in each location, prior to the devastating pogroms, beginning with Kristallnacht in 1938, showing the size of each community prior to the killings, alongside the number of Jews in each place today.
In Aden there is just one Jewish person remaining, Levi Marhabi. He is being held in prison by the Houthi regime.
“As we remember the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is vitally important that we also remember the beliefs that caused it,” Chief Academic and Innovation Advisor at the NHC and Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham, Maiken Umbach, told ALL ISRAEL NEWS.
“Anti-Jewish racism was not invented by the Nazis, and it did not end in 1945. This toxic cocktail of scapegoating and conspiracy theories was normalized for centuries, and it persists today, as does the idea that pogroms public and performative violence against Jews – will create a free world,” Umbach said.
“The exhibition exposes how this delusion on a doom loop has a deeply entangled history between the Christian and the Muslim worlds. Only by understanding it can we break the Vicious Circle: for a better future,” the professor added.
The powerful exhibit, including quotes from the most notorious of antisemites, encourages viewers to break out of the vicious circle of Jew hatred, and “dare to create a virtuous circle… which lives, lets live, and co-creates.”
Five special artefacts reveal the heart of each community. A beautiful tzedakah (charity giving) box from Berlin, reflecting German architecture; a Hanukkah menorah combining Islamic motifs; a Klezmer clarinet from 1940s Poland; a stunning silver wedding bracelet owned by an Adeni Jewish woman who now resides in Israel; and Mansour’s butterfly.
The last item has particular significance this week, as the nation of Israel has painstakingly awaited news as to the fate of the remaining hostages in Gaza, in the wake of the latest verdict from Hamas that eight of the 33 due for imminent release are already deceased.
Mansour, who turned 86 during almost 16 months of captivity, is shown by the London exhibition as a creative and caring individual. He was born in Baghdad in 1938. During the Farhud (expulsion of Jews from Arab lands) of June 1-2, 1941, he was just three years old.
His family survived and escaped to Israel. Mansour settled in Kibbutz Kissufim, which translates as ‘yearning,’ and worked as a carpenter. He especially loved making toys for the children.
The exhibition explains that the residents of Kissufim, a small farming community, “never gave up on investing in peace.” The text of the fifth pogrom in the circle continues: “They were deeply involved in initiatives like ‘Another Voice,’ aimed at strengthening connections and technology partnerships with Bedouins and Palestinians.”
By 2023, the kibbutz had 300 members, the text reveals, until its darkest day.
On Oct. 7, 2023, peace-loving Kissufim was attacked by Hamas. Twenty-eight people, including six from Thailand, were murdered. The London exhibit further describes this recent pogrom, which has all the marks of other pogroms in history: “Buildings were torched, even pet dogs were executed. Shlomo was beaten, abducted and taken to Gaza.”
Lyn Julius, co-founder of Harif, the association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, writes in her blog, ‘Point of No Return,’ it is the first time a Holocaust Memorial Day exhibit includes antisemitic violence perpetrated against Jews in the Middle East and North Africa.
“The inclusion of the Farhud and the Aden pogrom debunks the myth that Jews are white settler colonialists, and demonstrates that 20th Century anti-Jewish hatred was not confined to Europe,” she explains.
The UK Parliament heard a description of the Vicious Circle display, during the Holocaust Memorial Day debate on Jan. 23. Paul Waugh MP told lawmakers in a powerful speech: “Genocides do not come out of the blue. They depend on what Professor David Feldman has described as “the reservoir of hate.”
Waugh said the exhibit “links five Jewish communities decimated by violence.” He continued, “Objects are on display to represent co-existence and integration into the host country before five particular pogroms… That is history, this is the present."
“The well, the reservoir, is there and it needs to be drained,” he added.
The NHC is the only Holocaust museum in the world founded by Christians. In 1995, the Smith family turned their farmhouse in Sherwood Forest into Beth Shalom (‘House of Peace’).
The Vicious Circle will be travelling to Berlin, Tallin (Estonia), Poland and Brussels, before returning to the UK to visit more locations around the country.
The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel.
