Holocaust & Humanity Center Announces Groundbreaking Humanity Gallery Opening January 2027

CINCINNATI, OH (July 8, 2026) — The Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center proudly announces the Anita & Hank Schneider Family Humanity Gallery featuring the Gloria and Alvin Lipson Family Upstander Experience, a groundbreaking new destination designed to help visitors connect the lessons of the Holocaust to the challenges of today and discover their capacity to create positive change. Opening in January 2027 at Union Terminal, the gallery represents a bold new vision for Holocaust education that transforms remembrance into action.

For nearly a decade, HHC has partnered with the VIA Institute on Character — a Cincinnati-based nonprofit co-founded by Drs. Neal and Donna Mayerson that has become the world’s leading resource for the science of character strengths and human flourishing — to bring a first-of-its-kind application of that science to Holocaust education. The Humanity Gallery is the next step in that journey: helping visitors not only understand how wrong things can go given certain circumstances, but most importantly guiding visitors on how to amplify the best of humanity.

The Holocaust teaches us, with devastating clarity, how ordinary people making ordinary choices — shaped by indifference, prejudice, and the slow erosion of others’ humanity — can lead to atrocity. The Humanity Gallery offers the counterweight: an immersive experience that shows visitors how their own choices, grounded in the universal set of character strengths within each of us, can lead to human progress and stronger communities. At HHC’s founding, Holocaust survivors who settled in Cincinnati after the war issued a challenge to all who would come after: don’t ask what you would have done back then — ask what you will do today. The Humanity Gallery is designed to help every visitor answer that question by activating the character strengths within.

“What makes this application of character strengths so powerful is precisely the moral and scientific foundation it rests on,” said Dr. Neal Mayerson, co-founder of the VIA Institute on Character. “The Holocaust shows us, without flinching, what ordinary people are capable of when darkness goes unchallenged. But we are equally capable of great light. The science of character strengths gives people a way to access that capacity when it matters most — and there is no more urgent or meaningful context in which to discover it.”

“Character strengths are not abstract ideals — they are the living, active tools that allow people to do what they already know is right,” said Dr. Donna Mayerson, co-founder of the VIA Institute on Character. “Partnering with HHC to bring this science to life within Holocaust history has been one of the most meaningful applications of this work we have seen. This gallery will change how people understand themselves and what they are capable of.”

Through immersive storytelling, interactive technology, and personalized experiences grounded in positive psychology, social science, and experiential learning, visitors will discover what motivates them to act, learn strategies for overcoming fear and other barriers to action, and experience how diverse strengths combine for collective impact. Every visitor receives a character strengths assessment and a custom RFID token that activates tailored experiences throughout the gallery. The journey concludes with an opportunity for visitors to record their own upstanding story and commit to concrete next steps that carry the lessons of the museum beyond its walls.

The Humanity Gallery was made possible in part through the naming gift of Anita and Hank Schneider and their family, whose commitment to this mission is both deeply personal and long-standing.

“We’re energized about our creative partnership with the team at the Holocaust and Humanity Center,” said Ben Jett, Creative Team Director at Solid Light. “We believe transformative learning experiences help us all grow as individuals, and HHC’s commitment to the greater good via their Upstander and Character Strength work is driving a powerful new visitor experience that promotes understanding, insight, and positive community building.”

“None of this would have been possible without the extraordinary generosity and vision of the community leaders, families, foundations, and partners who believed in this mission from the start,” said Jackie Congedo, CEO of the Holocaust & Humanity Center. “Together, they’ve helped build something ripe with possibility, potential, and hope — an experience where every visitor leaves not only knowing they carry the capacity to make a difference, but having practiced activating it. Visitors will understand, perhaps for the first time, the power they have always had.”

In Gratitude to Our Supporters