Emmanouel Sofillas, Asst. Sports Editor
A new art exhibit at the entrance of O’Malley Library is bringing a largely unknown chapter of Holocaust history to the Manhattan University (MU) campus, featuring over 20 graphic sketches by Marcel Roux, a member of the French Resistance who was imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II.
The exhibit, titled “Lost Stories of the Holocaust,” was curated by Mehnaz Afridi, Ph.D., director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center at MU. It opened March 24 and will remain on display through April 17.
EMMANOUEL SOFILLAS / THE QUADRANGLE
The story behind the sketches is as remarkable as the artwork itself. Helene Orce and her husband discovered the drawings preserved in a satchel inside a closet of their Westchester County home after moving in over 30 years ago. The sketches bore the inscription “To my dear friend, Captain Epstein,” written in French — a dedication to Dr. William Epstein, a U.S. Army field hospital captain who helped liberate Roux from the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp.
Orce’s husband, Ken, a MU alumnus and retired lawyer, is now living with Alzheimer’s disease and was unable to attend the opening. The couple eventually donated the sketches to the university’s development office, which connected them with Afridi.
“What’s specifically really unique about Roux is how quickly he did this in such a short time,” Afridi said.
Afridi said she was immediately drawn to the story when she first encountered the sketches. She was particularly struck by Roux’s identity as a non-Jewish victim of the Holocaust — a Protestant French resistance fighter — and by the bond between Roux and his American liberator.
“I think it’s more important that non-Jews learn this story, and that they understand that not only Jews were victims,” Afridi said.
While curating the exhibit, Afridi said she discovered a sequential narrative running through the sketches. Arranged along the right side of the exhibit space, the drawings walk viewers through the daily experience of camp life — from the Appell, or morning roll call, to forced labor, to the brutal consequences faced by those too weak to work.
“I noticed a sequence in his sketches,” Afridi said. “It starts with one, which is the Appell — that’s the roll call they used to have in most camps. And then the second one is they used to get fed. And then the third one is they were taken to labor. And then it shows how, if you weren’t doing labor, you were tired or weak, you were actually beaten and sometimes hung to death.”
Afridi also placed reflection questions on the walls of the exhibit, inviting students to think critically about the issues the sketches raise.
For some students on campus, the exhibit has already made an impression. Ian Cortez, a freshman finance major, said walking past the display on his way into the library stopped him in his tracks.
“I didn’t know much about the Holocaust beyond what I learned in high school,” Cortez said. “Seeing it shown through someone’s actual drawings makes it feel real in a way that reading about it doesn’t.”
Leighton Barton, a freshman civil engineering student, said the exhibit reminded him why history classes matter.
“It’s easy to think of historical events as distant,” Barton said. “But these sketches were made by a person who actually lived through it. That’s a completely different kind of learning.”
Afridi said the exhibit is also meant to challenge common misconceptions about the Holocaust — chief among them, that it was solely a Jewish tragedy. While six million Jews were murdered, Afridi emphasized that approximately five million additional victims, many of them political prisoners, resistance fighters and others targeted for opposing fascism, are far less discussed.
She also pointed to the role of the United States in the story as a deliberate choice. Captain Epstein’s presence in the narrative, she said, is a reminder of American democratic values at a time when those values feel increasingly fraught.
“We were once the liberators and not the oppressors,” Afridi said. “I think that’s an important message — that we need to maintain our democracy, our democratic human rights values as we hopefully progress and not regress.”
Afridi said the exhibit has drawn significant attention since its opening, including coverage by The New York Times. She is also continuing to research Roux’s story and has been contacted by individuals with personal connections to the same field hospital where Epstein served, including a woman whose father also possessed a sketch by Roux.
“There’s all these different stories coming out,” Afridi said. “It’s almost like I’m starting this whole process of actually making it more of a historical site for people to understand.”Students interested in visiting the exhibit can find it at the entrance of O’Malley Library before it closes April 17. Additional information about Roux and the exhibit, including footage from the opening and the New York Times article, is available at HGImanhattan.com.