“Holocaust Survivors in a New Land: The New Americans Social Club of New Orleans”

A photograph from 1952, displayed in a section of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience’s permanent galleries, shows a group of people posing on the front steps of the New Orleans Jewish Community Center. They are members of the New Americans Social Club — European Holocaust survivors who’d made their way to new lives in the American South.

“I remember when I first started working here seeing that and being like, ‘What’s the New Americans Social Club?’ and putting it in the back of my head,” said Michael Jacobs, collections and exhibits curator. “A couple of years later, I’m thinking about my next exhibit. I come back to this photograph, and I’m like, ‘Wow, this would be a really good story.’”

Launching into his research, Jacobs learned that “there really isn’t that much” recorded about the New Orleans club.

A referral from Kenneth Hoffman, MSJE’s executive director, brought Jacobs to John Menszer, a local attorney who has been interviewing local Holocaust survivors since the 1990s (his mother, Elaine, had been doing so since the 1970s). That opened up a trove of photos, documents and oral histories, many of which have made their way into the exhibit “Holocaust Survivors in a New Land: The New Americans Social Club of New Orleans,” on view through the end of the year. An enlargement of the 1952 club photo is on the title wall.

The story continues at nola.com (find it here) and on the Museumgoer Podcast here. Here is a virtual tour of the exhibit with Jacobs. Some gallery photos below.