TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — After being closed for months due to COVID-19, the Candles Holocaust Museum and Education Center has reopened to the public with a new interactive exhibit.
The museum wants to continue to educate and seek progress in the creation of a world free from prejudice, hatred and genocide.
“We are very excited to have so many people here today and yesterday. Behind the scenes, we’ve just really been working on continuing our presence in this digital world,” said Candles director Leah Simpson. “Continuing our mission of hope, heal, respect and responsibility.”
For their reopening, the museum presented visitors a new interactive exhibit highlighting twins that were used as science experiment during the Holocaust by Nazi’s, including Candles founded Eva Kor.
“At Candles, we are one of the only Holocaust museums to talk about the Mengele twins. What we’ve done is take in testimony from the USC Shoah foundation and broken those testimonies down,” said operations and facility coordinator Trent Andrews. “You can select a Mengele twin and you can listen to snippets of their stories.”
Candles believe Holocaust education is very important because “if we don’t learn about history, we’re doomed to repeat ourselves.”
“We feel it is very relevant and it is our mission to spread this information whether it is about forgiveness or healing from the past or whether it’s about really just learning about other cultures and how we are so similar,” said Simpson.
Through the museum and education center received a grant which will help them create a new “Humanities” exhibit that will be coming soon.
