NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Members and interns working with ShadowLight have partnered with collector Darrel English to help catalog his vast collection and bring it to schools throughout North America.

 

"For students to see these things that have survived these generations, I think it really gives them a connection to this history and understanding of why it's so important for them to learn about this," said Evelyn Riddell of ShadowLight. "I want them to continue to talk about it and to be empowered to continue that conversation with their peers, with their family, and also with the next generation."

 

ShadowLight is a Holocaust education organization based out of Canada. It travels throughout Canada and America and visits high schools and universities. 

 

English said he has been working with ShadowLight for some two years through a partnership with the organization's founder and Executive Director Jordana Lebowitz.

 

English said the relationship started "innocuously" when he saw Lebowitz post on social media looking for some Jewish stars.

 

"I responded, 'Well how many do you want?' and from there it just took off," English said. "So we have been filtering through everything and trying to find more material that I have."

 

Riddell, who is from Toronto, said ShadowLight currently has two exhibits: a replica boxcar that people can walk into to view a 360-degree video featuring the recollections of two Holocaust survivors. The second part of their presentation features items from English's collection.

 

"When students come through we have two survivors speak to them and directly tell them their experience," she said. "They learn the history of the Holocaust, and then they come to the artifacts. They actually see a piece of that history that reality brings in front of them."

 

English has been collecting World War II, Nazi, and Holocaust artifacts since he was a teen. His ever-expanding collection has more than 1,000 pieces but has been mostly in storage with a few stints in museums in the Northern Berkshires.  

 

He has looked for a more permanent home to display his collection. His main goal has always been to get as many eyes on his collection as possible so he can properly tell a story that he fears is being forgotten.

 

This partnership with ShadowLight lets him take his museum on the road, giving it exposure throughout the continent.

 

The work isn't easy and in this latest two-week session, the group had been shifting through piles of artifacts on the upper levels of All Saints Episcopal Church.

 

Riddell has help from Mia McNamara and Dylan Warnes, both from Los Angeles and affiliated with the Museum of Tolerance there.

 

The group has been working through the dog days of summer without air conditioning, relying only on a few overworked fans to stay cool.

 

"For his collection in general, we are starting to create an official archive for him," Riddell said. "So if we are able to create a bigger museum of space, we will have the archive catalog. That way it will be easier for us to know what he has in this collection."

 

She said the archive will allow the team to better curate exhibits for differing educational experiences as they rotate artifacts in and out of the touring collection.

 

Items going on tour are carefully recorded and photographed and transferred from boxes and laminates to museum-grade display cases. Warnes said they try to handle things as little as possible, taking care to record wear.

 

She said artifacts for the tour are a priority as they are heading out in September.

 

"We want to get as much done as we can in the little time that we have," she said.

 

McNamara said the process starts by picking English's brain. She said English usually knows a large chunk of the story and even learning how he acquired items adds important context to the developing catalog. 

 

"He knows everything. He is a living history book," McNamara said. "He is almost better than the internet."

 

Warnes said everything is cataloged by year and association. Dimensions are recorded as well as photos. Everything is recorded into a searchable spreadsheet. 

 

In this session, she said they have gone through about 60 items but in total Riddell guesses that they have gone through only 1 percent of English's collection.

 

"This is going to take us a very long time, but we are going to keep going. On the road we only need a small percentage," she said.  

 

And English appreciates the help, noting that his sprawling collection lives in boxes and cases tucked away in his house. Only cataloged in his own mind, he is thankful that the group is helping him get the collection into a more tangible document.

 

But the challenge now is finding everything. English prides himself in committing every part of his collection to memory, and he knows what he has. 

 

He just doesn't always know where it is.

 

"Hey Ev, Since you have been bugging me about the coins," English said holding up some laminated money from the 1920s.

 

"You got me the coins!" Riddell excitedly responded. 

 

"No, I got your paper money instead. They're both 1923. There are a month apart from each other," he said. 

 

"But I bought the case specifically to fit the coins," Riddell disappointedly shrugged.

 

"I know, but until I can find the coins at least this will maybe get you kind of off my back," English laughed.

 

English said he gets more artifacts every month noting he just received five to six new items last week. He said he has so many boxes that there are parts of his collection he cannot reach without playing a herculean game of Tetris.

 

"I can't find this one coin. They photographed it years ago and because I have so much material, the stuff gets shuffled around," he said. 

 

English, who was sitting back at the large table constantly adjusting piles of paper and shifting boxes within arm's length, said he is amazed at the details the group can dig up. Items that he thought were dead to history, the group is able to unearth with a few taps on their computers. 

 

"They have found more information on artifacts that I've had in my collection for more years than they've been alive," he said. "They went through with their little computery things and they pulled up more information." 

 

He recalled one identification card from a concentration camp that he had in his collection for more than 40 years.

 

"You get some of this stuff and you look at it and go, 'yeah, he's dead. Story over. That's it,'" he said. "Then they find that he got out of Germany, made it to Israel, and died in 1943 — but he got out of Germany. ...

 

"When I got a lot of this stuff there were no personal computers and a lot of this stuff just got pushed aside deeper into the collection."  

 

These stories are important to the group even if they are often difficult to research. 

 

"Sometimes the work can be hard to get through emotionally, especially the type of items that are being shown," McNamara said from behind her laptop. "I think we all have had one item that has really hit us in the chest, and we had to step back for a minute."

 

Warnes said there is excitement when unearthing lost stories and bringing these stories to students shines a light on some of the darkness.

 

"A lot of those younger students they've never seen a piece of this history and it really makes history real for them," she said. "We want to empower these students to be the ones to teach it to the next generation. It is difficult to be working with these things, but the importance of showing them to students and remembering that we're using these for education is what helps us to be able to do this."

 

English is proud of his collection and is animated when he pulls something new out of a box to show the group. He said he is happy to share it with fellow scholars.  

 

"These gals have been working so diligently on this stuff, and I am happy to be able to show it to them," he said. "They are coming from a museum that probably would give their left arm to have anything on this table, and they are seeing it first hand here from someone who has spent a lifetime collecting."

 

English wants to help the group expand and maybe add a second exhibit to the tour. He dreams of constructing an expandable trailer that could house 300 artifacts.

 

That is English's goal, to share his collection with as many people as possible and to tell a more thorough story of the Holocaust and WWII.

 

"Most people have what I call the 'Hogan's Heroes' ideology of what the Nazis were, what the Holocaust was all about that. That's basically everyone's framework that they have from it," he said. "You get to somebody like me who's been studying it for more than 50 years … looking around and trying to find all this stuff that was lost or taken without any knowledge. Then trying to come back and understand it.

 

"The big thing in my life is trying to tell a story… from 1919 to 1945, those 25 years of time that built to get to that crescendo. It's not known by most people … it is the start, it is the groundwork that lit the bonfire. And it is easy to bypass."

 

The group left the city Friday. This time Warnes gets to go on tour with the artifacts that will head out in September.

 

"I think seeing how extensive the collection is and how much it hits us just seeing how many things there are really puts into perspective," Warnes said. "How students and the general public must feel when they're able to see the artifacts because there are a lot of areas in the U.S. that do not get these opportunities in a school setting that is accessible and definitely affordable."