Love of Country, Education, Inspires Gift to Support Students Holocaust Survivor and Wife Give Back to Others in Appreciation of ‘Good Life’ They Have Built Bellevue University undergraduates have a new source of scholarships and other need-based financial assistance, thanks to the generosity of Milton and Marsha Kleinberg of Omaha. Their love of America, “the greatest country on the face of the globe,” and their belief in education’s power to transform lives and society, inspired the Kleinbergs to establish The Marsha and Milton Mendel Kleinberg Endowed Student Support Fund. Milton was CEO of Senior Market Sales, Inc. (SMS), and Marsha was office manager when they moved to Omaha from Milwaukee in 1990 to grow the company into a premier insurance marketing organization in the senior market. The company, which they sold last year, has more than 320 Omaha employees, and offers life and
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health coverage for senior citizens through a nationwide network of 65,000 independent agents. The Kleinbergs initially learned about Bellevue University at one of the University’s annual Signature Event programs several years ago. Attracted by the event’s positive portrayal of America’s tenets and history, they became regular attenders at the fall speaker programs, which feature nationally known thought leaders from the realm of politics, civic affairs, and the media. “In America, anyone who dares to dream big can achieve it with perseverance and education,” says Kleinberg, “Winston Churchill’s comment on democracy is also apt for America. We may not be the perfect nation, except when you compare us to all the other nations.”
Milton’s patriotism is born, in part, from his own firsthand perspective as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the U.S. with his family after World War II ended. For decades, he did not talk much about his wartime experiences. But questions from his grandchildren and great grandchildren in Israel, where school field trips include visits to former concentration camps in Poland, changed that, he said. “They wanted to know more about how their grandfather survived the war.” So, in 2010, Milton self-published a hardcover biographical book “Memories of My Childhood During and After the Holocaust 1937-1951,” printing only 500 copies in English and 200 in Hebrew for friends and family. However, the story resonated with many others, and in 2015, the Director of Holocaust Education in
