John Menszer’s collection of photographs and interviews with Holocaust Survivors are featured in the Museum’s current exhibition - Holocaust Survivors in a New Land: The New Americans Social Club of New Orleans. Mr. Menszer will take us beyond the exhibit and into the living rooms of the Survivors as he was conducting the interviews. He has selected outtakes from his interviews, audio clips, family photos, documentary photographs and ephemera from his collection. Hear the voices of the Survivors talking about the creation of the New Americans Social Club. What it was like coming to rebuild a life in an unfamiliar land. It will be an emotional journey for himself and the audience.

Join us in-person at MSJE or online on September 3rd at 6 Central.  

About the Speaker: 

John Menszer's decades-long effort to document the lives of Holocaust survivors in New Orleans began in 1993 as a photography project and evolved into a respected traveling exhibition and website. Menszer reflected that only through working closely with survivors did he begin to grasp the full emotional and historical dimensions of their experiences. His method—returning for clarification, photographing survivors in their homes, and supporting them as they revisited painful memories—created deep personal bonds and what he described as an “extended family.”

Menszer’s original panel exhibition continues to play an essential role in New Orleans; in the past, it has been displayed at the New Orleans JCC and at The National WWII Museum for their Yom HaShoah programs, ensuring that these survivors’ stories remain central to local remembrance. His work provides the narrative and ethical foundation upon which this exhibition proudly builds.