Belton, Texas – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor has partnered with the Bell County Museum to bring the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race to Central Texas. The exhibit will be on display in the West Gallery of the Bell County Museum, located at 201 North Main Street in Belton, from Saturday, January 16, through May 21.
Dr. Timothy Crawford, Dean of the College of Christian Studies at UMHB, was instrumental in bringing the exhibit to Belton.
“I knew that they do these traveling exhibits,” Crawford said. “And I looked at the schedule and started making inquiries.”
When he noticed that no exhibits were scheduled anywhere in Texas, Crawford asked about bringing one to Belton.
“The one hitch was that it required 2,000 square feet dedicated to permanent display,” Crawford said. “And we just didn’t have a space like that on campus.”
Crawford approached officials at the Bell County Museum about hosting the exhibit.
“They were really excited,” Crawford said. “It’s a great opportunity for our whole community to get to experience it.”
The Deadly Medicine exhibit is jointly sponsored by the Bell County Museum and the College of Christian Studies.
Crawford, who is teaching a course called Anti-Semitism, Christianity and the Holocaust this semester, believes that there is much to be learned from the study of the Holocaust.
“One of the things that people ask is why did the Holocaust happen? Why the Jews?” Crawford said. “The reality is that it didn’t begin with the Nazis. In fact, there were centuries of anti-Jewish teachings leading up to that point, much of it propagated by the Church.”
The focus of the Deadly Medicine exhibit is especially powerful.
“Deadly Medicine explores the Holocaust’s roots in then-contemporary scientific and pseudo-scientific thought,” exhibition curator Susan Bachrach said. “At the same time, it touches on complex ethical issues we face today, such as how societies acquire and use scientific knowledge and how they balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the larger community.”
“The very folks who should have been the first to put the brakes on this kind of nonsense, not just doctors but theologians of the time, instead got into gear to make it happen,” Crawford said.
The Deadly Medicine exhibition is made possible through the support of The David Berg Foundation, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, The Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Temporary Exhibitions Fund established in 1990, and The Dorot Foundation.
