Agenda

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, 374 young adults and children from the liberated concentration camp at Buchenwald were invited to come and recuperate in Switzerland. The group became known as the “children of Buchenwald”. In the summer of 1945 the Felsenegg youth residential home on Zugerberg mountain served as a convalescent home for 107 of them. Their drawings are a special historical record of the Holocaust. The childlike drawings are in stark contrast to the inhumane living conditions depicted and the daily struggle for survival at the camp. The pictures created by Kalman Landau and by Thomas Geve illustrate this particularly well. The museum shows for the first time more than 150 such drawings and other documents from the estates of the carers.

The exhibition examines collective violence of groups against individuals, from antiquity to the present day. It explores prehistoric human sacrifices, lynching (including burning at the stake) and violence in our times. At the same time, the exhibition looks at the forces that have attempted to oppose violence, such as Religion and Enlightenment.

When the St Gallen merchant Emil Alpiger  (1841-1905) returned to Zurich in 1896, after more than twenty years in Teheran. He had founded one of the world’s biggest Persian textile trading companies and carpet manufacturers. His luggage included a treasure of Persian clothes and fabrics.. The collection was carefully looked after by his family across generations. Now, more than a hundred years later, the precious pieces are the focus of a special exhibition.