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This post was written by Dr. Shay Pilnik, the Director of Emil and Jenny A. Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Yeshiva University in New York, NY. Mariane Hirsch, a comparative literature and memory studies scholar and daughter… Read More

Every trip I’ve taken to Eastern Europe has involved the odd out-of-body experience. A few years ago, for example, I stood at a crosswalk in Warsaw on a bright, sunny day with lots of people out and about and suddenly… Read More

Our newest special exhibit, Book Smugglers: Poets, Partisans and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis details the efforts made by the Paper Brigade of the Vilna Ghetto to rescue Jewish culture from certain destruction. The Paper Brigade… Read More

“Unicorn Portrait,” a short story by William Torphy, was a short-listed entry in the Jerry Jazz Musician’s recently concluded 61st Short Fiction Contest and is published with the consent of the author. Unicorn Portrait by William Torphy …..David Wyler slammed the… Read More

Our current exhibit is titled DEGENERATE! Hitler’s War on Modern Art (open now through August 20th). It documents the cultural assault waged against all things liberal and democratic that created a petri dish of intolerance, ultranationalism, xenophobia, racism, and antisemitism within… Read More

By Meitav Aaron, Jewish Museum Milwaukee Intern During times of collective crisis, the priorities of our government are laid bare for our entire country to witness.  During the height of the Great Depression, when closed signs were scattered on shop windows… Read More

Susan Friebert Rossen, May 2020 Abe and Ginka Cohn were significant figures in my life. Ginka—a gifted modern dancer, choreographer and teacher—credited my mother, Betsy Ritz Friebert, with encouraging her to teach, a career she successfully pursued to the end… Read More

As Jewish Museum Milwaukee prepares to exhibit Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photographs of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman, we wanted to highlight women who have taken a stand. While some like Faye Schulman, were part of an organized movement or… Read More

Since Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare opened many local colleges have assigned students to view and respond to the exhibit. At the Museum, we generally do not get to read their responses, so the staff was delighted when UW-Milwaukee History Professor Christine… Read More

On October 11, 2018, Jewish Museum Milwaukee opened Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare with a Premiere featuring Gene Policinski, one of the most eminent journalists on First Amendment Rights, a founder of USA Today, and President and COO of the Freedom… Read More

As Jewish Museum Milwaukee prepares to launch Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare, one might ask: What’s Jewish or Milwaukee about the Hollywood Red Scare? The answer could be: What isn’t? Learn more about local and Jewish connections to the Hollywood Red Scare here.

In planning for the anticipated return of Stitching History From The Holocaust and the added stories of the Oelsner and Spira/Stern families, Jewish Museum Milwaukee was excited to present a timeline that would integrate their narratives with the Strnad’s and provide context for events surrounding World War II. Little did we know that in contextualizing the individual experiences that happened seventy-five years ago, we would encounter disturbing parallels to what we are witnessing in our world today.

Check out how Jewish Museum Milwaukee found additional photos and documents relating to Hedy Strnad and her family. These additions show the evolution of Stitching History From the Holocaust, but also demonstrate that historical research is never done. There will always be more archives to explore and people to connect with, but each small salient connection like these helps expand our understanding of the lived experience.

JMM occupies a unique niche in the museum world in Milwaukee. We use the Jewish experience to build bridges between groups of people and between eras. We live our tagline “Where Conversations Happen” by looking at multiple perspectives of a topic or issue, by partnering with diverse organizations, by asking visitors to use critical thinking skills to contemplate commonalities and differences of a particular subject over time.

The first time I met Patti Sherman-Cisler, our executive director, she talked about museums providing transformative experiences. I, too, believe the stories we tell at JMM have the power to be inspirational and transformative for our visitors.

Did you know Milwaukee was home to a well-known Jewish featherweight boxer during the 1920s?  Julius Singer, later known as Joey Sangor, was born on July 4th, 1903 in Russia.  In 1905, Sangor came to Milwaukee with his mother and… Read More

The Archives at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee recently received a collection of letters written by Arthur (Artie) J Grossman, a Jewish soldier from Milwaukee during World War II; they were donated by Lloyd Levin, Artie’s nephew. This collection of letters provides insight to what life was like for both Artie in the Army and his family in Milwaukee during World War II.