The Face of Justice, an original acrylic black and white picture by an unknown artist, reflecting the perception of justice by those who have been unjustly mistreated, persecuted and subjected to crimes against humanity.
The exhibit was originally prepared by Dr. John M. Steiner, founding director of the Holocaust Study Center and Professor Emeritus in Sociology and Sandra Walton, Librarian. Dr. Steiner, a native of Prague, Czechoslovakia, Holocaust survivor (survivor of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Blechhammer, death march Reichenbach and Dachau) believes that talk and intellectual knowledge about the Holocaust doesn't 'do it' for many people. The additional dimension provided by artifacts catches people's attention, enables them to relate to that period tangibly, and makes more concrete the reality of this cataclysmic event.
Today, we must ask the question: is the survivors' message getting through? We still want to believe that if enough people had seen the camps, the Final Solution could have been averted. Yet today, even after Liberation made the horrifying documentation accessible to the public, books have been written, films have been made, and survivors have told their stories, we see what has happened and is happening in Cambodia, Africa, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, Moçambique and numerous other places. All that effort toward informing the public about what we humans can do to each other, apparently, has not changed a thing. The human condition as it appears has remained virtually immutable.
This exhibit is a small contribution to promoting human sensibility and understanding; to promoting the development of moral intelligence and solidarity between humans in order to transcend egoism and crass materialism; to promoting the application of critical thinking skills in the public arena. We need to reduce the disparity between rhetoric and reality not with words but with action, action which requires an individual profile of courage, sacrifice, and a readiness to be accountable. This requires at least a modicum of understanding of oneself and a wilingness to act upon one's self recognition.
Adventures in Social/Psychological Research: The Work of John M. Steiner, an exhibit depicting Dr. Steiner's interviews with SS personnel and resulting publications, accompanies the main exhibit. Dr. Steiner's work reflects the following statement by Dr. Erich Fromm: "It is a question of great psychological and political significance to understand the real motivations of people in the service of a dictatorial regime."
A signed lithograph of an early work of Salvador Dalí entitled Men Devouring Each Other; a portrayal of the human condition.