Against the Odds

An exhibit on the impossibility of immigration, Against the Odds: American Jews & the Rescue of Europe’s Refugees, 1933-1941 was voted one of the most influential exhibition design projects of the 21st Century.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 and began to persecute Germany’s Jews, it touched off an international refugee crisis that escalated throughout the 1930s.

Many Jews hoped to come to the United States, but laws passed by Congress in the 1920s had ended the era of open immigration.

Against the Odds is the story of American Jews who answered the call for help, told through their own words and the words of those they saved.

Against the Odds, a collaboration between C&G Partners and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, is the story of these heroes, documented with extensive artifacts, told in their own words and the words of those they saved.

The exhibit encourages visitors to learn about the experiences of the refugees and their rescuers through images, original documents, first-person accounts, and multi-sensory, highly interactive design elements (including a choreographed ambient score).

The exhibition is dominated by the “paper walls” that represent the significant bureaucratic barriers and extensive paperwork that stood in the way of this heroic undertaking.

The final display, a wall of nearly empty frames discovered in a nearby closet during the project, is a simple but poignant testimony of loss at an unimaginable scale.