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What did American leaders know about Hitler’s mass extermination of Jews? When did they know it? How did they respond, and what more could they have done to save Jewish lives?

A traveling exhibition designed and curated by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum seeks to answer those questions.

“Americans and the Holocaust” will open Sunday at the central branch of the Fresno County Public Library and run through Dec. 30. This will be its first and only stop in Northern California.

“The timing of this could not be more appropriate, particularly at this moment when we’re seeing antisemitism rising to truly shocking levels,” Bradley Hart, associate professor in the media, communications and journalism department at CSU Fresno, told J.

“Americans and the Holocaust” is based on an exhibition of the same name currently on view at the museum in Washington, D.C. There is also an interactive online version.

“People are shocked to find out about how early Americans learned about what the Nazis called the Final Solution and what they did about it,” curator Daniel Greene says in an introductory video. “The special exhibitions that we’ve done have really focused on victims and perpetrators. This one is different. This is about Americans.”

Through the American Library Association’s public programs office, the exhibit began its two-year national tour at 50 public and university libraries in December 2021. The libraries that were selected, many of which are located in smaller cities and towns in the South and Midwest, were chosen through an application process that prioritized regions that demonstrated a need for Holocaust-related education, among other factors, according to the ALA.

Fresno and Irvine were the two California cities selected as hosts. Fresno has a Jewish population of around 2,000, according to Phyllis Farrow, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Central California and Jewish Family Services.

Each participating library received a $2,000 grant to support public programs tied to the exhibition. Fresno’s grant will support six programs that “provide a deeper understanding of the issues faced during that challenging time and their lasting impact on our communities,” Sally Gomez, Fresno’s interim county librarian, said in a statement.

Several members from Temple Beth Israel, a Reform synagogue in Fresno, served on a committee to organize the additional programs, Rabbi Rick Winer said.

Among the programs is a Nov. 8 lecture by Amila Becirbegovic, an assistant professor of German language at CSU Fresno who also teaches about genocide and fascism. Her talk at the university’s library will examine how popular media today remembers World War II.

Beth Israel, which was vandalized in October with rocks thrown through its front glass doors, is also hosting an event tied to the exhibition. The Nov. 14 event, led by a Japanese American guest speaker, will teach about Fresno County’s role in the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

From mid-November through mid-December, Beth Israel will also display mural panels painted several years ago by local high school students representing the Japanese American internment, according to Winer.

The Fresno County Central Library will host a moderated panel on Dec. 3 with survivors and family members of survivors of the Holocaust and of the WWI Armenian genocide.

“In Fresno, what’s important with our massive Armenian community is how important the Armenian genocide was to paving the way for the Holocaust,” Winer said.

Hart saw the original exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and described it as an emotionally “challenging” experience that allows visitors to imagine themselves in the shoes of an American in the 1930s.

“The exhibition really focuses on that division of opinion as to what Americans were seeing at the time, the news sources they were consuming, the political debates happening and how that resulted in the United States not intervening in the Holocaust until it had begun in earnest,” he said.

He will host two discussions over Zoom on Dec. 5 and 6, during which he’ll expand on topics that he explored in his 2018 book, “Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States.”

“There’s no doubt we’re seeing a very dangerous upswing in antisemitism,” Hart said, speaking of the current Israel-Hamas war and its impact on Jews worldwide, including in the U.S. “I hope all the visitors to the exhibition are left asking themselves what they would have done in the 1930s, and what they should do today.”

“Americans and the Holocaust” is open Sunday to Dec. 30 during regular hours at Fresno County’s central library, 2420 Mariposa St. fresnolibrary.org