Excitement has been building at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. Set to open Friday for a four-month showing is an exhibition titled “For Liberty: American Jewish Experience in WWI.” Expectations are the highly acclaimed exhibit will be widely viewed.
“This exhibit will appeal to all our visitors and not just our Jewish visitors,” said Doran Cart, senior curator at the National WWI Museum. “This is truly an American story.”
Cart by his own admission is especially enthused about the exhibition. Having witnessed its installation in the new 3,000-square-foot Wylie Gallery, he is impressed with the scope of the materials on display. Cart said the exhibition represents an opportunity to demonstrate how WWI events from a Jewish perspective interconnect with the Museum’s permanent exhibits.
More importantly, Cart said “For Liberty: American Jewish Experience in WWI” is appropriately being housed within the nation’s single-most significant memorial to The Great War.
“When the co-curator of this exhibition called about a year ago, she said this needs to be at your place,” said Cart. “She was right.”
“For Liberty: American Jewish Experience in WWI” will be on display at the National WWI Museum through Nov. 11. The exhibit is on loan from the American Jewish Historical Society in partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Museum of American Jewish History.
The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle is a media sponsor for the exhibition.
This is the third stop for the traveling exhibition, having opened at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and then travelling to the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. These Philadelphia and New York institutions collaborated on building and selecting materials for the exhibition.
“For Liberty” examines the consequential events of 1917 from the perspective of American Jews who experienced the events both as Americans and as displaced immigrants. This was the year of America’s entry into World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution and the issuing of the Balfour Declaration in which Great Britain indicated support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Herb Buchbinder, who along with wife Bonnie is among the honorary committee chairs for the “Liberty Now” showing, said he agreed to help with local fundraising efforts to secure the exhibit once becoming aware of the historical significance of the materials to be displayed. He said his long-time association with the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library helped him recognize the potential for educational outreach.
“From an educational perspective, we hope to get a lot of young people to view this exhibition,” said Buchbinder. He noted the WWI era of Jewish history is not typically taught, yet represents “some lead in” to the Holocaust. “My interest is to make this an educational experience as much as possible.”
The exhibition features more than 130 objects including documents, photographs and war artifacts. Senior Curator Cart said visitors will see things written in Hebrew and Yiddish. The materials, according to Cart, are enlightening, sometimes “touching” and, at times, foreboding.
Cart said more 250,000 Jews — out of 4.8 million American service men and women — served in the American Expeditionary Forces during WWI as well as in volunteer services and the Jewish Welfare Board.
“The exhibition is not really about the battles on the war front, it’s about the battles on the home front,” said Cart. “It’s about how important it was for the Jewish community to get behind the war efforts.”
Cart said one particularly gratifying coup within the exhibition is the original, handwritten draft of the Balfour Declaration, a public statement issued by the British government during WWI stating support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The draft, dated July 17, 1917, is written in the hand of Leon Simon, a British-born Jew who was part of the Zionist Commission that worked on the draft declaration that ultimately led to the creation of the Israel state.
“It’s a little piece of paper,” Cart said of the Balfour Declaration draft, “but from little pieces of paper mighty things happen. This will get a lot of attention for sure.”
Other aspects of the “For Liberty” exhibition include:
A letter from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) leader appealing to Jewish Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, to support the Ten Million Dollar Fund.
Composer Irving Berlin’s draft registration card.
The Medal of Honor as awarded posthumously by President Barack Obama in 2015 to Sgt. William Shemin for his heroism during WWI. Jewish organizations had long lobbied for the medal on Shemin’s behalf.
An open letter written in 1917 by California Congressman Julius Kahn, while serving as chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, stating, “I desire to congratulate my co-religionists on the splendid showing they are making in the matter of serving our country in this war.”
Cart said the National WWI Museum was able to include at least one aspect of its own collection to the display. The original “For Liberty” exhibition included Uncle Sam posters not allowed to travel because of donor specifications. With over 1,400 WWI-era posters in its collection, the National WWI Museum had no problem providing authentic Uncle Sam posters to fill that hole in exhibition.
According to Cart, the exhibition gives vivid demonstration of how WWI resulted in strict limitations on immigration to the United States. While not overtly aimed at Jews, fewer Jews were able to settle in the U.S. because quotas were tightened on countries with high Jewish populations.
“People think of history being in the past and not really being about today,” said Cart. “A letter I was just reading was written in January 1917 by a Jewish leader, Louis Marshall, to Daniel Griffin, a congressman at the time. If you don’t mind let me read this part to you:
‘The enemies of the immigrant are again victorious and once more the immigration bill with the unamerican literacy test is before our president. The immigrant has made good in this country. There is no reason why the door of our glorious land be shut to our immigrant … by experience he raised the standard of living.’
“Consider what’s happening today,” said Cart. “The connection to history can’t be any clearer than that.”
For more information about “For Liberty: American Jewish Experience in WWI,” visit www.theworldwar.org. Summer hours for the National WWI Museum and Memorial, 2 Memorial Drive, Kansas City, Missouri, are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday-Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.