The Highground Veterans Memorial Park is currently hosting a major Holocaust exhibition titled “Hidden Voices of the Holocaust,” running now through Jan. 28, of next year. The word “Holocaust” comes from Greek and refers to the planned and systematic murder of six million European Jews during World War II by the Nazis, along with five million additional victims including gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents of the Nazis, and others. The Holocaust was systematized at the Nazis at the Wannsee Conference held in a villa outside Berlin, Germany on Jan. 20, 1942, arising from earlier antisemitic policies of the Nazis. It resulted in the attempt at a systematic extermination of a people for no other reason than who they were. The Nazis themselves came to power in response to Germany’s defeat in World War I as well as economic struggles, as ordinary Germans sought scapegoats to explain the reality. The Nazi state suspended the Weimar Constitution in 1933 after the Reichstag fire and ruled Germany under a declared state of emergency until 1945, destroying individual civil rights in the process.

The current exhibit at the Highground’s Welcome Center seeks to educate and teach about the history of the Holocaust era, lest it happen again.

As such it brings together historical displays from several Holocaust education organizations across the Midwest, including the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, Illinois, the Holocaust Education Center of the Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation, and the Institute for Holocaust Education in Omaha, Nebraska.

The exhibit divided into five main parts focuses on the experiences of Jewish children, resistance fighters, Holocaust survivors and individuals who risked their lives to protect people persecuted by Nazi Germany. Two presentations are included with the current exhibit at the Highground.

As for the first, Erez Cohen, Director of the Hillel Jewish Cultural Center at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign presented Oct. 1 on his grandmother’s resistance efforts in the Krakow ghetto, while author Jeffrey Gingold will present a second presentation Jan. 16, 2027 to discuss how his father and grandparents survived the Warsaw ghetto. Ghettos historically were places set apart from the rest of a city where Jews were required to live, dating to the Middle Ages and enforcing a separate existence for European Jews.

Cohen shared more Oct. 1 regarding his grandmother Shoshsana Cohen’s resistance to the Nazis in the Krakow ghetto.

“Thank you all for coming,” Cohen said from the Highground Welcome Center’s Theater Room in Neillsville at 6 p.m.

Cohen then shared how his grandmother Shoshsana was born Aug. 8, 1920 as Reijza Klingberg and grew up in a highly religious Hasidic Jewish family near Krakow, Poland, descended from a line of prominent rabbis. Eventually able to speak six languages, Shoshsana and the family highly valued education. Her father was Rabbi Shem Klingberg, influential in Krakow. He and several family members perished in the Holocaust.

When Poland was invaded on Sept. 1, 1939, the Nazis banned education. Shoshsana responded by starting a kindergarten for Jewish children to ensure they would have a future. Later, as Nazi policy became clear and Jews were ordered into ghettos, Shoshsana decided to join the Jewish resistance. Living in a small town near Krakow, she was smuggled into the Krakow ghetto from outside through an apartment building with a hole in the wall.

She then became known as Marina Kalina, a Catholic Jewish woman visiting friends from Warsaw. Under this name she carried communications and sometimes weapons between Jewish resistance fighters and those outside the ghetto, traveling between Kraków, Bochnia, Koszyce, Sandomierz, along with other places.

Fighting for the honor of the Jewish people rather than to win, the resistance bombed an area inside the historic royal quarter in Krakow. The Nazis responded by making a curfew on Jews and non-Jews alike, while several members were ratted out by others and came into Nazi custody, from where they entered the prison and camp system. The Krakow ghetto was liquidated between March 12 to 14, 1943, an event shown in the movie “Schindler’s List” by Steven Speilberg.

Spending time in Montelupich Prison, Shoshsana was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination and labor camp in early 1943, becoming a laborer. Auschwitz (Oświęcim in Polish) had electrified barbed wire, with no way out except death. While there Shoshsana was injected with typhoid as part of Dr. Joseph Mengele’s experiments, recovering after three days. Shoshsana was then marched out of Auschwitz as Germany began to lose the war and was later freed by the Allies. After the war Shoshsana worked as a translator for the Allies and later emigrated to Israel, where she met Cohen’s grandfather in Tel Aviv.

Remembering history is important to not repeat it. As of 2026 just 196,600 Holocaust survivors remain, mostly women and child survivors, with 30 percent 90 and older.

For those unable to make the Oct. 1 presentation at the Highground or the one in January, the exhibit now through January features five principal displays examining different aspects of the Holocaust. The first, entitled “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising” documents Jewish resistance against Nazi forces in Warsaw, Poland, during April and May 1943. The second, “Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust” shares the experiences of Jewish children who survived by hiding in forests, communities and other locations. Both displays come from the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

The third, entitled “The Righteous Among the Nations” honors individuals who risked their lives to rescue Jews and others facing Nazi persecution, while the fourth, “Courage to Remember” was developed by Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, examining Nazi persecution and genocide. Both “The Righteous Among the Nations” and “Courage to Remember” are provided through the Holocaust Education Center of the Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation. The fifth and final display, “From the Children, About the Children, For the Children,” features artwork and writings created by children during the Holocaust, many of whom were later murdered at Auschwitz. The fifth display comes from the Institute for Holocaust Education in Omaha, Nebraska.

As for the Highground at Neillsville, it was founded in 1984 by Vietnam War veteran Tom Miller and others with a mission to “Honor, Educate, and Heal,” the Highground Veterans Memorial Park is a 155-acre veterans memorial and educational facility located along U.S. Highway 10, approximately three miles west of Neillsville in Clark County, Wisconsin. Readers can find out more at www.thehighground.us.