Holocaust and Intolerance Museum of New Mexico


Holocaust Exhibits:

Other Exhibits:

Native American Genocide painting

Art of the Holocaust

This section of our museum contains various works of art created to commemorate the Holocaust.

art of the holocaust

The Liberation of Buchenwald

These photographs showcase what the liberators found when they entered the Buchenwald concentration camp. Some of the photos were taken by German Gestapo and SS troops.

Saving Bulgarian Jews

This area describes how the Bulgarian government saved over 63,000 Bulgarian Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Child Slave Labor

This exhibit contains a mesh sculpture by Vivienne Hermann representing the sleeping areas of the children at these camps. Vivienne Hermann was in a slave labor camp as a child and is a Holocaust survivor.
Special thanks to JFNM for loaning us this powerful sculpture.

The Survivors of Dauchau

This exhibit contains photographs taken by the late Albuquerque photographer Dick Kent. Mr. Kent worked with the Signal Corps during WWII under the late George Stevens, a Hollywood movie producer.

The Rescue of the Danish Jews

The Danish people, in concert with their government, smuggled Jews out of Denmark into Sweden, which was a neutral country that was not occupied by the Germans during the war. As a result of these efforts, only 289 Danish Jews were taken by the Germans.

Flossenbürg Flag


This likeness of the United States Flag amazingly was created by prisoners of the Nazis in Flossenb�rg concentration camp, Germany, where captives labored in a stone quarry. The flag�s background and stars and stripes probably were painted over a Nazi banner.

Once the war ended, the prisoners, not knowing who would liberate them, created (at least three) flags: Russian, British, and American. It was the Americans who marched into the camp on April 23, 1945.

Horrified by what he found there, General Patton ordered town residents to clean up the makeshift graves left by the Nazis.

The next month, a Medical Collecting Company of the Third Army entered the camp. Roy Shaffer, then a teenaged soldier, noticed that no one had claimed the flag, and he was allowed to remove it and bring it to the United States. Dr. Shaffer donated the flag to the museum in 2001.

Based on information from Flossenb�rg Concentration Camp Memorial, the first political prisoners arrived at the camp in 1938, while Jewish prisoners started arriving in 1940. Daily life was dangerous and deadly as the inmates were forced to work the quarry. Living conditions deteriorated drastically, and the ability to work was the only thing that gave a chance of survival. Prisoners were inadequately clothed and there were no safety precautions; deadly accidents were routine. The work day lasted 12 hours and the prisoners carried bodies of the dead back to camp. In late 1943, overcrowding also became an issue. As the death rate went up, a crematorium was constructed.

By the time the U.S. Army reached Flossenb�rg, a majority of the inmates had departed on death marches. The 1,500 left behind were critically ill. Just weeks before liberation, the SS executed Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, General Hans Oster, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other dissidents associated with German resistance groups or implicated in the July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler.

Our thanks go to Dr. Roy Shaffer for donating this unique item to our museum.

Replica Concentration Camp Gate

This sculpture by Vivienne Hermann is on extended loan by the Jewish Federation of New Mexico. It is a composite of the gates the prisoners saw upon their arrival at the concentration camps. The phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" across the top means "work sets you free." Vivienne Hermann was in a slave labor camp as a child and is a Holocaust survivor.
Special thanks to JFNM for loaning us this powerful sculpture.

Medical Experimentation in Nazi Germany

These photographs show the results of the medical experiments performed under the leadership of Dr. Mengele. They were taken by German and Russian soldiers.

Nazi Memorabilia

Our exhibit of Nazi Memorabilia includes a variety of items including a German gun, Nazi flag, Medals and printed materials used by the Nazis.





The Nuremberg Trials

Larry Rhee, a resident of Albuquerque, was an official photographer and translator for the United States during the Nuremberg Trials. This exhibit contains news reports, photographs and final statements of some of the Germans who were tried and convicted at the trials.
Special thanks to Larry Rhee for donating this material to us.

Photographs of Rescued Prisoners

These posters show images of the liberation of various concentration camps, including photographs of the rehabilitation of Jewish prisoners and their resettlement into Israel.
Special thanks to the Consulate of Israel in Houston, TX for donation this material to us.

Rescuer's Exhibit

This area highlights those individuals who put their lives on the line to save Jews. By German law, "Anyone who aids or helps the Jews is subject to arrest and execution." Rescuers included priests, foreign diplomats and extraordinary people from many countries.

Sonia's Legacy

This exhibit contains artwork that was created by a teenaged girl in a concentration camp. She was eventually sent to Auschwitz where she perished.

Holocaust Stamps

This exhibit consists of two rare stamps from the Holocaust. The first is from the Thierenstadt, Czechoslovakia  concentration camp and could be used twice - once to send mail to an inmate and then a second time for the inmate to send a letter out of the camp. The second stamp served a similar purpose at the Lodj Ghetto in Poland.
Special thanks for Dr. Lawrence and Linda Cole for this donation.

Media Coverage of Hate and Intolerance

We constantly scour newspapers and magazines for printed information appropriate to our mission. Many of these articles are posted on a bulletin board in the museum, but even more of them are placed into our archives, which are growing rapidly. For example, this area includes an article from the December, 7, 2003 issue of Parade Magazine describing the fate of the 937 Jews aboard the SS St. Louis, who were turned away by Cuba and the United States and forced to return to Germany.

Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Church is the oldest Christian Church in the World. During World War I, the Ottoman Turks were unsuccessful in their attempts to force the Armenians to accept the Muslim religion. The Ottoman Turks retaliated by enslaving many Armenians and selling others to Muslims. Adolf Hitler said “ The world said nothing when the Turks killed the Armenians, so the world will say nothing when we kill the Jews”.

Following are some direct quotes from the Zoryan Institute of Canada:

“The genocide of the Armenian people during the First World War was the ultimate human rights violation in a long history of oppression of the Armenians, along with other groups, by the Ottoman Turkish government. To improve the lot of the largely peasant Armenian population, Armenian political parties had long struggled for a new social order based on equality between the various religious and ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire, as well as political and economic justice.

The genocide perpetrated by the Ittihad ve Terakke (Committee for Union Progress) government beginning in 1915, is significant for world history, as well as the victim people. The methods used to rationalize, organize and implement the mass murder of up to 1.5 million citizens of the Ottoman Empire are an archetype for subsequent genocides into the 21st Century. Hitler used the Armenian Genocide as justification for his plan to annihilate Poland in 1939, whereby he was quoted as saying, “After all, who today remembers the Armenians?”

Greek Genocide

The Ottoman Turks also persecuted Greeks in an attempt to force them to become Muslims and to expand the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean.




Native American Cultural Genocide

This area contains photos and information about the Bosque Redondo and Wounded Knee incidents forced by the United States Government onto Native Americans. Bosque Redondo was designed to "take the Indian out of the Indians" and to "save souls" by removing Indian children from their families and placing them in boarding schools.

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