In 1988 I accompanied my mother back to Poland. Together, we went to see the building that had been Gestapo headquarters 1939 to1945, and where she had worked as a slave laborer. A looming gray monolith with barred windows, the building seemed malevolent and forbidding even after 40 years. Yet in this Nazi fortress two cleaning women, my mother and a Polish Catholic, had together saved the life of a Jewish boy. Here is the story:

One day, a day like all the rest, with Gestapo swarming in every corner of the building, loitering in every hall, my mother had discovered a ten year-old boy cringing in the corner of a broom closet. She quickly discerned that he was Jewish (he had been forbidden to talk to anyone), and figured out which of the other cleaning women was his protector. The woman was neither his mother nor aunt, nor any blood relative, but a Pole, a Catholic, a family friend who had promised his parents that she would hide the boy when they were deported. Unable to leave him home where he might be discovered by hostile neighbors, the woman had smuggled the boy into this fortress and here, under her watchful eye, had managed to protect him. From then on, my mother became her collaborator.

If any one of them had been caught, all three would have been immediately executed. But their collusion gave them strength. Together they smuggled the boy from one broom closet to another, depending on which floors they were washing; hid him from basement to roof, depending on which rooms they were sweeping; fed him, clothed him, and made sure he had a place to sleep. Together they saved his life. The boy outlived the war, my mother would say with great pride. He now has a family of his own and lives in Israel.

Stories reach us like nothing else. When students come with their teachers to tour The Breman's permanent exhibit, Absence of Humanity: The Holocaust Years, they hear stories both uplifting and tragic, informative and cautionary. From Holocaust survivors, who serve as our community's living memories and honored speakers, students hear unforgettable eyewitness accounts of what the person standing before them has lived through. From museum docents, students learn not only the basics of Holocaust history, but also the stories behind the family pictures and objects on display, many donated by survivors now residing in Atlanta. Stories radiate from the six video-theaters located throughout the exhibit, where survivors' testimonies provide first-person narratives that parallel the visual displays. And stories beckon from the Legacy Project, composed of four multi-media computer work stations where students learn in greater detail of the experiences endured by survivors from the range of European countries who have since made Atlanta their home. Stories are the mainstays of our museum's educational programming and, indeed, we must be doing something right: from August 1, 2003 to February 10, 2004,we have had a 34 percent increase in the number of tours compared to the same period last year.

In their two or so hours with us, students are both informed and challenged. And if what results are students with more acute consciences, young citizens with more attuned civic antennae, future parents and community leaders with more evolved moral imaginations, then a world of goodness and humanity may yet be in the making, and our exhibit will have fulfilled its charge.

Dr. Liliane Kshensky Baxter, Ph.D., the new director of the Lillian and A.J. Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education, holds a PhD from Emory University. Born in a displaced persons camp in Sweden, she was raised in Paris and New York, where she graduated from the Workmen Circle (Arbeiter Ring) Schools and Hunter College.