A glimpse into the lives of survivors and victims of the wreck.
By CARL HOFFMANTitanic exhibit.(photo credit: Courtesy)
Let’s make one thing clear from the beginning, shall we? The RMS Titanic, which hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on Sunday, April 14, 1912, and sank two hours and 40 minutes later with 1,316 passengers and 885 crew members on board, will most likely never be raised.The wreck of this famously illstarred ship that sank on its maiden voyage now lies about 1,550 km. northeast of New York and about 730 km. southeast of the Newfoundland coastline, more than 4 km. beneath the ocean surface, where the pressure is 6,000 pounds per square inch. Even if the technology existed to raise it from the seabed, the wreck – which relentlessly continues to collapse, compact and decay – is far too fragile to withstand the trauma of the lifting and transportation.However, in the years since the ship’s discovery by Dr. Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel in a joint US/French expedition in 1985, thousands of artifacts from the Titanic have been recovered and brought to the surface. And now, for the very first time, many of those artifacts – along with photographs, videos, personal stories, ship sounds, life-sized reconstructions of different parts of the ship and even a piece of an iceberg – will be on display in Israel in a major new presentation called “‘Titanic’: The Artifact Exhibition,” running from June 7 to August 28 at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds.The exhibition has been brought to Israel by RMS Titanic, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions, Inc., which has conducted eight research-and-recovery expeditions from 1987 to 2010, and since 1994 has had “sole sovereign possession of the wreck site,” according to Alexandra Klingelhofer, the company’s vice president for collections and curator of the exhibition.“Legally, that means we are the only entity that is allowed to recover artifacts from the wreck site and the debris field,” she says. “Each one of these artifacts is recovered from over 4 km. below the ocean, brought to the surface, conserved and prepared for exhibition.“We have had several different versions of this show traveling throughout the world since 1998 – different versions that tell the same story but with different artifacts, so that we can complete our goal of sharing as much of the Titanic as possible with the world.”The Artifact Exhibition was developed just last year, Klingelhofer says, and comes to Israel after a highly successful run in Tallinn, Estonia. The show is designed to focus on the Titanic’s compelling human stories, as told through over 150 authentic artifacts and intricate reconstructions of rooms like first- and third-class passenger cabins. Upon entrance, visitors are propelled backwards in time to 1912, as each receives a replica boarding pass of an actual passenger aboard the Titanic.“We provide a Titanic passenger boarding pass to give each visitor a personal connection to the story,” Klingelhofer explains. “We take you through the whole story, from the construction of the ship in Belfast, to what it was like to be a passenger in first, second and third class.“Then you go through the sinking experience. There is an iceberg in the show that you can touch to get a sense of how cold the water was. And it was cold – minus 2º Celsius, I believe. Then you go through the discovery of the sunken ship and finally into a memorial gallery with all the names of the Titanic’s passengers and crew members. And then you can use your boarding pass to find ‘your’ name to see if you survived or did not.“That’s a way of creating a personal touch point to the story, because you have taken on the role of that passenger while going through the exhibition.”
While versions of this expedition have appeared throughout the US and all over the world, the Artifact Expedition is likely to resonate particularly deeply with Israeli audiences. “I think it’s a story of tragedy and hope,” Klingelhofer says. “When you look at the artifacts you can imagine the desperate thoughts of the people as they experienced the sinking, of those that survived and how it affected their lives, how they remembered those that were lost.“The artifacts speak to that. You have a spoon, but it’s not just a spoon – it’s a spoon that was on the Titanic.It sank. It’s been brought back. It can tell that story, of how people calmly enjoyed meals before it sank and then suffered horribly afterwards.“It resonates because there are people traveling all the time. And my understanding is that many of the inhabitants of Tel Aviv and of Israel have traveled much in their lives. So it’s a connection to that story, of immigration, of starting anew in a new land, or of coming back to the homeland, which is what the survivors did.”But more specifically, there is an extensive and very compelling Jewish angle to the story as well. It is known that among the Titanic’s passengers on that fateful maiden voyage, at least 100 and possibly more were Jewish. Perhaps not surprisingly, the best-documented among these were wealthy passengers sailing in first class.Millionaire banker and industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, then 46, famously refused a place in one of the lifeboats, saying in a message given to one of the survivors, “Tell my wife, if it should happen that my secretary and I both go down, tell her I played the game out straight to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward.”After assisting women and children into the remaining lifeboats, Guggenheim returned to his cabin and changed into formal evening wear. He was later heard to say, “We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” And go down he did, seated in a deck chair in the foyer of the Grand Staircase, sipping brandy and smoking a last cigar, as the band played and the ship sank.Also among the victims were Isidor Straus, co-owner with his brother Nathan of Macy’s department store, and his heroic wife, Ida. As women and children were being put into lifeboats, Ida refused to leave her husband behind. After getting her newly hired maid Ellen Bird into one of the lifeboats and handing the young woman her fur coat – declaring that she would no longer be needing it – Ida Straus is reported to have said, “I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die – together.”A survivor later recorded that “the aged couple stood arm in arm on the deck of the first cabin, very peaceful and calm amidst all the uproar and strife of the struggling hundreds at the boats.” And that is how they were last seen, as the crowded lifeboats drew away from the sinking ship.Aside from the famous Jewish passengers in first class, there were many more Jews on the Titanic traveling in second and third class – better known as “steerage.” This was within the period between 1881 and 1924, during which more than two million Jews from Eastern Europe immigrated to the US. The loss of life was particularly heavy among the steerage passengers, many of whom were poor and whose stories have never been told. Moreover, many passenger ship lines – including White Star, owner of the Titanic – offered kosher food service to their Jewish passengers at this time, and it is known that there was kosher food on the Titanic. Finally, there were also Jews among the Titanic’s crew, including Herbert Klein from Leeds, England, one of the ship’s barbers.Visitors to the exhibition will be treated to a glimpse into the life of Adolphe Saalfeld, a Jewish passenger from Manchester, England, who survived the sinking of the ship. Traveling with perfume samples he hoped to introduce to the American market, Saalfeld sailed first class on C Deck, his cabin directly across from that of John Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest man aboard.“We were able to recover his portfolio of perfumes from the wreck site,” Klingelhofer says. “So we have created a special display case for him, perfume vials and the labels that he wrote. This tells a wonderful story of someone trying to make his way in the world. Saalfeld survived, but he never continued in his pursuit to develop perfumes.In addition to the perfumes, RMS Titanic, Inc. has recovered more than 5,500 objects from the wreck site since 1987, ranging from delicate porcelain cups and saucers to a 17-ton section of the Titanic’s hull. Asked if more objects are still coming up, Klingelhofer replies, “We have not recovered anything since 2004. We sent an expedition out in 2010 and that was to document the site, using sonar equipment much like that being used to search for the missing Malaysian Airlines jet. So we have recorded the entire site and now have a picture of where the bow rests, where the stern rests, and the debris field. And all of that will soon be on the Internet.”After its run in Israel, the exhibition will travel to Geneva before eventually returning to the US. “Experts will then monitor the artifacts’ condition and we will change the artifacts again,” says Klingelhofer. “And in this way, we can share the artifacts with the world while preserving them.”“Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” is running from June 7 to August 28 at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds, 101 Rokach Boulevard. Sunday-Thursday: 9 a.m.-8 p.m.; Friday: 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. For tickets and more information: *9066 or www.eventim.co.il.
