The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York is featuring a new installation on Jewish Holocaust survivor and pro-soccer player Paul Mahrer from May 31 through July 31, museum officials announced in May.
The installation, titled Tell Our Boy That I Played Soccer Again, pulls archival photos, letters, and documents from the museum’s collection to trace Mahrer’s life as a professional footballer and Theresienstadt survivor.
The focus of the installation will be on letters smuggled between Mahrer and his wife as they were detained in separate concentration camps during the Holocaust. The project takes its name from a letter Mahrer wrote in hopes that his son would feel his love for family and the sport that gave him his career.
“Tell our boy that I played soccer again and even played well and was successful,” Mahrer wrote from inside the Nazi transit camp.
Before the Gestapo deported him in 1942, Mahrer represented the then-Czechoslovakian national team in the 1924 Paris Olympics. He went on to play countless international matches throughout the 1920s and 1930s until he became one of 140,000 Jewish people held in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Though he survived, over three-quarters of those imprisoned alongside him did not.
The museum’s decision to display this installation comes just as New York welcomes soccer teams from around the globe for the ongoing World Cup matches. For many, Mahrer’s historical retelling serves as a testament that sports can be more than just passing a ball.
“Paul Mahrer’s story reminds us of the power of sport, and the rituals that sustain us, in times of joy and through unimaginable hardship,” said Jack Kliger, president and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.
More on The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
The host museum was first opened in 1997 as New York’s contribution to the Never Forget movement. The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust serves thousands of school children each year as a leading educational resource for the tri-state area.
In an effort to highlight Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust, the museum spotlights multiple installations drawn from the Peter & Mary Kalikow Jewish Genealogy Resource Center, which boasts almost 40,000 artifacts, photographs, films, and survivor testimonies.
Beyond Paul Mahrer’s life story, offerings include Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk, celebrating anti-fascist artist Arthur Szyk and his work, Courage to Act: Rescue in Denmark focusing about the extraordinary rescue of Denmark’s Jewish population in 1943, and The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, which offers a thorough presentation of Holocaust history as it fits into ongoing global antisemitism.
For more information on exhibitions and to get tickets to Tell Our Boy That I Played Soccer Again, visit the museum’s website.
