Holocaust Exhibit 2022

Zekia Musa (South Sudan)

Zekia Musa is a 29-year-old visually impaired youth activist and peacebuilder who works with the South Sudanese Ministry of General Education and Instruction representing people with disabilities. Among her many activities, she also mentors disabled pupils at schools in the capital, Juba. According to the newly-founded National Union of Disabled People's Organizations, over a million people live with a disability in the country, notably as a result of poverty and decades of conflict. Launched in 2020, the Union brings together eight organizations including the South Sudan Women with Disabilities Network of which Zekia is an active member. While a 2015 law aims to protect the rights of persons with disabilities, social stigma and poor access to information has often confined them to the margins of society. “Often, our culture can impact the disabled negatively and I wanted to break the myths surrounding people like me. Disabled people are no ‘lesser’ than anybody who has complete use of all their faculties. As a citizen of South Sudan, I felt that it was my duty to speak up, speak out on behalf of disabled people.”

THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II

"There are in this part of the world [Eastern and Central Europe] 6,000,000 Jews… for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter.“ Chaim Weizmann – later to become Israel's first president

The beginning of World War II marked a new phase in Nazi Germany’s policy toward the Jews.

Though Nazi ideology prescribed the same ultimate fate for all of European Jewry, different anti-Jewish policies were employed in the conquered countries. Many Jews of Eastern Europe were concentrated in ghettos, where they were doomed to humiliation, poverty, and death, or were conscripted into harsh forced labor; while in Western Europe, the Jews were registered and dispossessed of their property. In much of southeastern Europe, Jews were drafted into forced labor by collaborationist governments.

Zekia Musa (South Sudan)

Zekia Musa is a 29-year-old visually impaired youth activist and peacebuilder who works with the South Sudanese Ministry of General Education and Instruction representing people with disabilities. Among her many activities, she also mentors disabled pupils at schools in the capital, Juba. According to the newly-founded National Union of Disabled People's Organizations, over a million people live with a disability in the country, notably as a result of poverty and decades of conflict. Launched in 2020, the Union brings together eight organizations including the South Sudan Women with Disabilities Network of which Zekia is an active member. While a 2015 law aims to protect the rights of persons with disabilities, social stigma and poor access to information has often confined them to the margins of society. “Often, our culture can impact the disabled negatively and I wanted to break the myths surrounding people like me. Disabled people are no ‘lesser’ than anybody who has complete use of all their faculties. As a citizen of South Sudan, I felt that it was my duty to speak up, speak out on behalf of disabled people.”

THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II

"There are in this part of the world [Eastern and Central Europe] 6,000,000 Jews… for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter.“ Chaim Weizmann – later to become Israel's first president

The beginning of World War II marked a new phase in Nazi Germany’s policy toward the Jews.

Though Nazi ideology prescribed the same ultimate fate for all of European Jewry, different anti-Jewish policies were employed in the conquered countries. Many Jews of Eastern Europe were concentrated in ghettos, where they were doomed to humiliation, poverty, and death, or were conscripted into harsh forced labor; while in Western Europe, the Jews were registered and dispossessed of their property. In much of southeastern Europe, Jews were drafted into forced labor by collaborationist governments.