The National Holocaust Museum, near Laxton, Nottinghamshire, launches new The Journey exhibition following £2 million upgrade and expansion project

A museum is preparing to open a newly upgraded and interactive exhibition following a multi-million pound expansion.

The Journey, at The National Holocaust Museum, near Laxton, is the UK’s only immersive story-based exhibition about the Nazi persecution of Jews.

Originally launched in 2008, the exhibition has now received a £2m overhaul and upgrade to create a more interactive, engaging, and educational experience using the latest technology.

The exhibition will open to the public this Sunday (April 20), and the Advertiser was invited along for an early look and spoke with some of those responsible for bringing it to fruition.

Set 1938 Berlin, visitors will follow the experience of refugees forced to flee their homes, as told through the eyes of a young boy named Leo.

Walking through a series of elaborately designed period rooms — including a family home, classroom, street scene, and train carriage — sensors can be triggered to activate excerpts from Leo’s diary which describe his journey from happy childhood, to witnessing violence anti-Jewish violence, and eventually becoming a refugee sent away to England by his family for safety.

The rooms also contain a large number of historic objects, and audio-visual clips, which have been embedded into set designs for people to interact with and explore at their own pace.

Maiken Umbach, professor of modern history at the University of Nottingham, is an academic adviser to the museum and helped shape the narrative of the new exhibition alongside head curator Dr Claudia Reiss.

“It’s important to remember that the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers — persecution slowly built up over many years,” said Professor Umbach.

“This is an exhibition which is incredibly relevant today. We are living in a world that is scarily similar to the 1930s, we have seen a huge rise in Jewish-hatred, and conspiracy theories are creeping back into society.”

She added: “If you think about how a lot of young people learn and engage with history, it is through films and video games, not the classroom. So we need to meet them where they are and make it more accessible.

“There is also a problem with media from the time where it can all feel very distant, films are in black and white, and it does not feel real — it is easy to say ‘that is then, and this is now’.

“This is why we have carefully chosen artifacts to show all aspects of German identity and how the indoctrination took place.

“Just seeing the Coca-Cola logo featured alongside Nazi propaganda posters really brings it to life.

“It is important to continue to tell these stories, and to learn from them.”

Leo’s story was based upon the testimony of dozens of survivors who have shared their own experiences of making the same journey in the Kindertransport.

The launch of the newly upgraded exhibition was attended Martin Stern MBE, a survivor of the Holocaust who was sent away by his parents in the 1940, but was eventually taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp and was liberated in May 1945.

Martin has been involved with the museum for many years as a volunteer and regularly shares his story with school children, however, when The Journey was first proposed he was originally against the idea.

He explained, it wasn’t until he visited the original exhibition in 2008 and saw its importance as an educational tool that he changed his mind, and praised the new immersive design.

The exhibition ends with a room of artifacts highlighting not just the stories of Jews who fled Nazi persecution, but refugees of other countries with more contemporary accounts including the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s.

An interactive screen is also available to view testimony from 11 survivors of the holocaust with answers to over 1,400 questions as part of the Forever Project, which aims to ensure that the stories can continue to be told even when there is longer anyone left to share them.

The exhibition upgrade comes as part of a £5m site-wide project to renovate the museum, with funding from the Claims Conference, Pears Foundation, National Lottery Heritage Fund, and Arts Council England.