A life: Otto Simmonds

The evidence of the Holocaust takes many forms: official documents and personal records, film and photographs, the written and recorded testimony of those who were there. It also includes the everyday objects—at once common and utterly unique—the victims and the survivors, the eyewitnesses and the perpetrators left behind. These artifacts—a typewriter, a camera, a wedding band—are in some ways the most powerful evidence we have, for they provide us with an intimate link to the individuals at the heart of this history. They also remind us in their very familiarity that the Holocaust happened in a world not so unlike our own, and that it can happen still.


from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Everyday Objects