New Mexico State University Library is one of 50 U.S. libraries selected to host “Americans and the Holocaust,” a traveling exhibition which opens today at NMSU’s Zuhl Library. Scott Brocato spoke with NMSU Special Collections Librarian Dylan McDonald, and NMSU Associate Professor and Cataloging Librarian Aubrey Iglesias, about the exhibit.
Scott Brocato:
Dylan, first give us an overview of the "Americans on the Holocaust" exhibition.
Dylan McDonald:
Sure. I think one thing that's important to understand about this exhibit is that it's a shortened traveling version of what the US Holocaust Museum put together. And so what it tries to focus on is kind of four different topics. One is basically, what was it that Americans knew about the Holocaust? When did they know that? What were their responses to the Holocaust? By that I mean the US government, the US military, and individual citizens. How did people feel about what was happening? And so those are kind of overview of what the exhibit talks about. So it's mostly showing the Holocaust from the American perspective.
Scott Brocato:
And most of this is a self-guided tour, the one that's on the third floor of Zuhl Library?
Dylan McDonald:
Yes.
Scott Brocato:
And what are some of the highlights?
Aubrey Iglesias:
There are many highlights. It does address four main questions. So there are kind of four main panels with additional four interactive media kiosks...
Scott Brocato:
Is that what Dylan touched upon a while ago?
Aubrey Iglesias:
A little bit, but more specifically: what did Americans know? Did Americans help Jewish refugees and why did Americans go to war, as well as how did ordinary citizens as well as US government respond? So yeah, basically what he said.
So I think I just want to highlight the research that went behind this. Again, this is just a part of the larger permanent exhibition that's on at the DC Holocaust Museum. So it's very well- researched with primary resources documents.
And then the interactive portion is especially cool, I think. There's a screen at the very beginning that is looping and showing some of the historical events. But then later on, there are four kiosks with tablets that one could go through, with two having recordings still listened to in history. And there's also even one of the kiosks, you can click on any of the states in the United States and then get more information about specific articles that were published about the Holocaust during that time.
Scott Brocato:
NMSU is one of 50 libraries that were chosen for this. How were they chosen? What was the process of that?
Aubrey Iglesias:
Well, this is the second group of tours. This is a 2023 to 2026 second tour dates. And mainly they wanted geographical representations, like usually at least one from every state, and also communities that perhaps didn't have robust Holocaust education happening in the area, just to increase the education of this historical event in our region.
Dylan McDonald:
So we, NMSU, and previously the Rio Rancho Public Library and the Carlsbad Public Library, hosted this exhibit. So you can see the geographic spread of those areas. And also, I think the important thing is that when you applied for this, you had to make sure that it wasn't just that they wanted the exhibit to be there. They wanted public programming to go along with the event. And so it was essential that in the application that we had to kind of give a sense or an idea of what types of programs that we would put together. And so we have, besides the opening reception, we have four really great programs that people can attend on Thursday afternoons during the run of the five-week exhibit.
Scott Brocato:
So the official opening, soft opening, is today. When is that opening reception?
Dylan McDonald:
The opening reception is on Thursday evening, August 27th.
Scott Brocato:
And that will be in Zuhl Library?
Dylan McDonald:
In Zuhl Library from 5 to 7 on the third floor.
Scott Brocato:
Well, there'll be four free public events in conjunction with the exhibit. Your part, Dylan, one of them is with history professor Jamie Bronstein. And that will be called "New Mexicans and the Holocaust, Stories of Action and Accountability," and that's September 10th. Talk about that and what that will cover.
Dylan McDonald:
Yeah, I think Jamie and I are excited to talk about a couple things. Jamie's presentation will focus on a resource that was made available through the US Holocaust Museum. This Aubrey had previously mentioned, the kiosks that allow people to look at newspaper coverage of the Holocaust as seen through New Mexico newspapers. Jamie mined that very heavily to try and describe like: when did New Mexicans know what was going on? How did they respond? And so her presentation really goes into the details about that, who the individuals were, even the news editors that were writing opinion pieces about it.
The second part of the presentation, I'm going to be talking about efforts of the students here at NMSU to change the title of the annual. The yearbook here at NMSU used to be called The Swastika. And when it was first called that in 1907, that was fine. But as we know, the Nazi adaptation of the swastika symbol kind of poisoned the use of that. But yet NMSU continued to use that as their yearbook moniker up until 1983, when students from a local, I guess the Halal group, which was a university organization for Jewish students, they began to push back about that and it really brought national attention to NMSU when regional newspapers picked up this story about, you know, why is a university using swastika as their as the moniker for their yearbook?
And there was a lot of back and forth debating on it and ultimately I'll be talking about the members of the Jewish community here in Las Cruces and El Paso and Albuquerque that worked to help change that and the efforts they went to. A lot of it was kind of behind the scenes work where they were cautiously encouraging people who had decision-making authority to say, this is why we find this problematic. The students themselves were also very much a part of this effort. So ultimately in May of 1983 the Board of Regents voted to change the name of that. So I'll be talking a bit about that.
Scott Brocato:
And what will be some of the other presentations?
Aubrey Iglesias:
Well, we partnered with the New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum, which is located in Albuquerque. And they're just so gracious to work with us and excited about the programming. So through their networking and them themselves, there are two programs at STEM. So one of them is an event with Mr. Andy Holten speaking. It's a firsthand account of somebody who lived through the Holocaust. He was five years old at the time, and he was a hidden child in the Netherlands when the Nazis occupation took place. So that will be, I am sure, a very powerful presentation.
And then there's also the New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum's collections archivist Camelia Caton-Garcia, who will be presenting. And that's specifically about refugees who made New Mexico home eventually. They have some rich archives at that museum of numerous families that took refuge in New Mexico ultimately. So that's another not-to-miss presentation program. And Dylan, maybe you want to talk about the film that will be screened.
Dylan McDonald:
Yeah, the final program on Thursday, September 24th is a screening of the program "Nazi Town USA," which is an hour-long documentary that focuses on the German-American boom that was here in the United States, who were hoping that one day the United States would end up just like Germany: with a strong leader and perhaps a fascist state; and the pushback that Americans had against the German-American boom. And what's great about this program is after we show the film, the director and producer, Peter Yost, is going to zoom in for a Q&A with the audience so we can ask them questions about how the film came about and his ideas about that time in American period, that American history.
Scott Brocato:
Why do you feel that this exhibit is so important and what can people learn about it? What do you want them to take away from it?
Aubrey Iglesias:
Well, the historical event is central. So really reflecting on this historical event and the nuances of how media got out, what Americans knew, and how did they respond or not respond is really contextualizing within that historical moment is what the focus is. They want us to keep with this exhibition.
Beyond that, there's definitely so many different ways to look at this disciplinary-wise, different lenses, that you could look at this and what you can take away from it. But the second part is reflection. It's really to start reflecting how would you react if you were in that environment? What would you have done? What could you have done? But the reflection is an important piece of personal reflection, I would say.
Dylan McDonald:
Yeah, I think when people come to the exhibit and also come participate in some of these events, there's going to be themes that emerge that people hopefully could think about, well, are these some of the same types of things that we're considering today? Or how did that impact us today as well? But it's always a challenge to exactly say what we hope people to come away with that because people have their own interpretations of things as well.
Scott Brocato:
I was going to ask if there were parallels (to today's events)...
Dylan McDonald:
I think people can certainly draw those.
Aubrey Iglesias:
If I...I mean, if I may interject: I think it's a natural tendency to think about that. Like how does it, you know, what have we learned from this going in today and whatnot? But it's such a...how should I put this...it's such a historical moment that was just so huge that they really, at the Holocaust Museum in DC, really want us to center on it being that time.
Personally, I can think of parallels, of course; thinking in terms of immigration policies, for example, readily come to mind. The U.S. was very isolationist back at the time during the Nazi occupation, right, with Roosevelt. At that time that was happening, one could think about what's happening today, but ultimately, we were really trying to keep it to that time frame of the refugees and the plight then as a historical event and thinking in terms of personal responsibility and how you would kind of imagining how you would react at that time.
Scott Brocato:
Is there anything else that both of you would like to add that we haven't discussed about the exhibit?
Aubrey Iglesias:
Actually, when we first submitted our application, our proposal, with the strong focus on the program, is what they really were wanting to know how we would put the program is. We were really initially thinking in terms of different subject expertise, disciplines on campus could look at this event through those different lenses, right?
So history, of course, comes to mind. But what about news and communication, propaganda through news? What about I mean, there's other things--journalism, of course. I don't know, you could... mental health, right? What about mental health of refugees? And there's also a lot of resources we have on our lip guides, mainly pointing to the US Holocaust Museum in DC's rich, rich resources for instructors from junior high all through undergrads and graduate level students. So there's a lot of resources. And they do have some specific course plans, if you will, class plans that are, you could select them from different subject matters.
Dylan McDonald:
Yeah, I mean, I guess as far as something that maybe we haven't talked about, I would say that the idea of when the US government especially found out what was happening to the Jewish population of Europe, they decided that their number one course of action would be to just win the war. But the war dragged on and on and on, and the numbers became horrific to try and consider, right, how many people were being just mass murdered, whether they were sent to death camps or work camps, but also the Einsatzgruppen who were just operating in Eastern Europe and just massacring people in mass shootings and things. It really shows how important it was for the media to get information out.
And so that's why people who were, kind of stymied by it, they couldn't get the American government to do much. They had to go and put public pressure and get word out and work with media people to actually travel to Europe, especially toward the end of the war. And people were taken to these camps. Because when the word was first going out, people were just like, I can't believe that. That's, really, this seems unbelievable. But finally, when there are actual reporting and there were eyewitness accounts from people, that started to change.
And then a lot of Jewish groups and allied people were putting pressure on the American government saying it's not enough just to win the war because people are being massacred. We have to find another way to assist. And even then, once the refugee crisis after the war ended, it was still an issue of whether countries were going to allow these refugees into their midst. And so I think that's a thing that is talked about in the exhibit is immigration policy. What was it like before the war and even after the war once people understood what had happened? And I think people will learn some pretty interesting things that they may not have known about how the US, we do, obviously had some major victories not only on the battlefield but also in saving tens of thousands of people.
But there potentially is this question out there: could we have done more? And so that's what people will have to decide when they take a look at the exhibit and make a decision on their own.
Scott Brocato:
The exhibit is Americans in the Holocaust. It opens today and will last through September 25th. Dylan McDonald, Aubrey Iglesias, thanks for coming in and talking about this with KRWG Public Media.
Dylan McDonald:
Yeah, thank you.
Aubrey Iglesias:
Thank you. It's our pleasure.
For more information about “Americans and the Holocaust” and related programming at NMSU, visit https://library.nmsu.edu/holocaustexhibition2026.html.
