Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

This Week In Chicago: Remembering History Amid Springtime Gloom

It’s springtime in other parts of the world, but Chicago is still dark and grim. This is a good week for going to a museum and getting all existential and gloomy.

As it happens, there’s a unique chronicler of the Holocaust coming to town who fits the bill. On Tuesday, May 16, Father Patrick Desbois, whose organization Yahad-In Unum, identifies all the locations in Eastern Europe where Nazis held mass shootings, will be speaking at “Uncovering the Truth: A Lost Chapter of Holocaust History.” The event is a benefit for the United States Holocaust Museum.

Desbois, a French Catholic priest, is author of the book The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews. The book chronicles a part of the Shoah that took place outside the concentration camps—areas of Eastern Europe where the Nazis rounded up Jews in fields and and shot dead by the thousands. Dubois and his group identify these sites and visit them to collect artifacts and conduct interviews with eyewitnesses, which are recorded on video. These videos will be preserved in the museum. This event begins at 6:30 at Venue One in the West Loop; reserve your spot here.

The Northwestern University Block Gallery’s current exhibit, “If You Remember, I’ll Remember,” is not specifically Jewish, despite its title, but it does engage with some of the great injustices of American history, which should remind us that others suffer, too. Six artists use historical documents, photographs, and audio from oral histories to create artwork around the idea of remembering and commemorating.

This may also be a good time to check out “#Ai Weiwei” at the Museum of Contemporary Photography; this is the first time the Chinese dissident’s work has been on display in Chicago, and it contains selections both from his professional work and from his Instagram account.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.