2 – THE HOLOCAUST – TOMORROW NEVER CAME / April 2012
CONTENTS 3/4
What was the Holocaust? History Being the Son of a Witness
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The Ladder of Prejudice
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The Holocaust and Human Behavior
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Guigui and Engel Reminiscences
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A Reminder For Us All
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Teaching the Good and Bad Parts of History Holocaust Memorial Day
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Dear Teachers and Parents, As the years pass, we tend to forget that which we do not want to remember. We let go of memories that bring us pain and embarrassment or are simply too horrendous to comprehend. To be successful citizens in our current-day communities, local and global, we cannot let the Holocaust fall into this category. With the passing of time and a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors alive to share their first-hand accounts of the war and its atrocities, it is more important than ever to make sure the facts of this tragic period in world history are revealed and retold. The Holocaust leaves an indelible impression when it is learned from the experiences of people we know and from those who have retraced their footsteps on the pathways of history. Therefore, this special Post and Courier Media in Education resource views the Holocaust through the eyes of Lowcountry survivors, liberators, and their families, and focuses on sights seen and lessons learned from a special group of teachers and others who participated in an intense study tour to
Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe last summer. The intent of this resource is to provide an overview of events that define this tragic period in world history and to prompt discussion, reflection and further research. Students will receive the most benefit from the lessons within if they share their conclusions and participate in open discussion led by an adult. Although this publication was prepared for classroom use, some of the photographs and content are graphic and designed to be taught with adult guidance. This resource is not appropriate for young students or others who may be uncomfortable with its detailed content. Parents and teachers are advised to read the entire section before sharing it as a learning resource with your child or students. Although time passes and memories fade, the lessons from history must live on. -Robie Scott, Community Relations, The Post and Courier
12 /13 Arts and the Holocaust 14
Suggested Activities
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Special Events and Resources
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Yom HaShoah
Tomorrow Never Came Charleston Jewish Federation is proud to partner with the Post and Courier in the development of this Holocaust Educational Supplement. The Holocaust was one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime carried out the systematic persecution and murder of six million Jews. Five million were targeted and exterminated from other groups because they were perceived to be racially or ethnically “inferior,” including Gypsies, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, some Russians and Poles and some simply because of their political views. It is our hope that, through continued education, future atrocities will be prevented and tolerance and respect for one another Judy Corsaro Jeffrey Buncher, will prevail. CEO MD President
The July 2011 Holocaust Study Tour Group at the end of the track at Auschwitz near where the crematoria once stood. The entrance to AuschwitzBirkenau can be seen in the distance to the rear (front) Dr. Mary Johnson, Brenda Kirkland, (middle row, l-to-r) Reggie Guigui, Amber Giles, Debbie McCallister, Marvin Engel; back row, Eileen Chepenik, Eric Engel Photo Courtesy of Eileen Chepenik
CREDITS Robie Scott, Editor – Manager, Community Relations, The Post and Courier Eileen Chepenik, Guest Editor The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Charleston Jewish Federation Judi Corsaro, Sandra Brett Sheryl Parkman and Maria Cordray
For additional copies of the section, email rscott@postandcourier.com The views or opinions expressed in this supplement and the context in which the images are used do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of, nor imply approval or endorsement by, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Melissa Kelley, Graphic Designer Contributors Evening Post Publishing Company Eileen Chepenik Eric Engel Marvin Engel Amber Giles Reggie Guigui Ayala Asherov Kalus Dr. Ram Kalus Dr. Mary Johnson Debbie McCallister
ON THE COVER: Top left: Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus who have been selected for death at Auschwitz-Birkenau, walk toward the gas chambers. Photo courtesy of the USHMM Bottom right: Piles of bodies outside the crematorium at Dachau concentration camp the day after the liberation during World War II. Photos were shot by Bernard Warshaw of Walterboro. Photos are part of the Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston. Barbed wired photo © Vasja Podbrˆsˆcek | Dreamstime.com
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locaust o H e h T s a W t Wha The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The inscription on the Charleston Holocaust Memorial in Marion Square provides the following overview. “From 1933 to 1945, The National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany implemented a racial theory declaring the “German Aryan Race” superior. The Nazis used this perverse theory and their military and industrial might to dominate Europe and to separate, imprison and ultimately destroy millions of human beings. Those whom the Nazis deemed undesirable and sought to eliminate included political dissidents, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Roma (Gypsies) and Jehovah’s Witnesses. But their chief victims were 6 million Jews. What began as racial laws to strip Jews of their livelihood, their property and their civil rights accelerated into a campaign to systematically slaughter millions of men, women and children. By 1942, the machinery of mass murder was in full operation. Jews and other victims from all over Europe were sent to some 9,000 concentration and labor camps throughout Europe and to the killing centers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec and Chelmo located in Poland. The denial of human rights combined with advanced technology and a pitiless will to dominate others caused the death of innocent millions and the annihilation of most of the Jews of Europe.” The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum documents that “when the Nazis came to power in 1933, more than 9 million Jews lived in the 22 European nations later occupied by the Germans in World War II. The 600,000 Jews who lived in Germany itself were less than one percent of the population. Within a dozen years, two out of three of the 9 million were dead.”
Background After World War I, Germany was in a deep depression. The people felt demoralized and defeated. The government was weak and Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Worker’s (Nazi) Party, took over. Hitler was a hateful anti-Semite and used his great skills as an orator to excite the people and give them hope for a great Germany. He made speeches that were broadcast over loud speakers and on the radio, using Jews as scapegoats, blaming them for all of Germany’s woes. He wanted to create the master Aryan race and make Europe free of Jews and other “undesirables.” He used the tool of propaganda and captivated the minds and hearts of the German people. Hitler became the dictator of Germany in 1934. He set up a police state and instilled fear to prevent anyone from opposing him. Laws were enacted that defined who was a Jew. Jews were stripped of their citizenship and rights. Their businesses and property were taken away form them. They lost their jobs and their children were not allowed to attend school (see box)
Three Jewish businessmen are paraded down Bruehl Strasse in central Leipzig, carrying signs that read: "Don't buy from Jews; Shop at German stores!" Photo Courtesy of the USHMM
.
A Progression of Violence One night, Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazis perpetrated a violent attack on Jews throughout Germany. They burned more than 1,000 synagogues, destroyed more than 7,000 stores, killed many Jews and destroyed homes, cemeteries, hospitals and schools. The event became known as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” because of the shattered glass from the destruction of Jewish storefront property. World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland and quickly annexed territories on the eastern border. Having already acquired Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Nazis soon took Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and France. The Nazis issued identification cards based on people’s religion. The cards of Jews were marked with a “J.” Jews were forced to wear a Yellow Star (6-pointed Star of David) to make them easily identifiable. Jews were rounded up and crowded into ghettos, isolated and segregated from the rest of the world by walls. Thousands were cramped into small areas. There was no medicine or sanitary facilities and food was scarce. People were deliberately starved and many died of disease. The Jews were also forced to perform slave labor for the German government. Despite the cruel conditions, many Jews continued to maintain their culture. Jews were also imprisoned in concentration, or internment, camps. More than 9,000 such camps were in operation throughout German-occupied Europe. Prisoners were worked to death as slave laborers, or used in cruel medical experiments. They suffered unspeakable torture and beatings. In January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference outside of Berlin, the Nazis approved a policy of annihilation. They called it the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem and aimed to murder every Jew in Europe. Six death caps were established with gas chambers for mass murder. There were: AuschwitzBirkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Belzec. All of them were in Poland, easily reachable by direct rail lines from any point in occupied Europe. The mass murder of Jews in these gas chambers continued until mid-1945.
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Death Marches In late 1944 the Allied armies crossed into Germany and the Soviet forces liberated sections of eastern Poland. The Germans began destroying the death camps and the SS forcefully marched the surviving prisoners into Germany where they remained in concentration camps until they were freed by the Allies. With the harsh winter weather and few provisions, thousands more died, so many, in fact, that these last brutal acts became known as “Death Marches.”
Liberation The Allied soldiers began liberating the concentration camps in Germany in April 1945. They discovered thousands of emaciated, dying people and stacks of dead bodies. In many instances, they forced the German citizens in the surrounding communities to come into the camps and bury the dead.
Prisoners liberated from Mauthausen, many crowded into a wooden bunk, celebrate their liberation by the American 11th Armored Division
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Being the Son of a Witness by Ram Kalus, MD
PFC Herman “Hy” Kalus, my father, enlisted into active duty status in the United States Army in July, 1943 and landed on the beaches of Cherbourg in southern Normandy on December 17th, 1944. As a Corporal in Company C, 21st Armored Infantry Battalion, 11th Armored Division, Third Army, he served as a combat medic under General George S. Patton, along with tens of thousands of his heroic fellow GI’s in uniform. Speaking with my dad recently, soon to be 87, on a visit together with my children to the 9/11 Memorial in lower Manhattan, the recollections remain both vivid and foggy; distant, yet still raw and highly emotional. While removing injured from the battlefield in “The Battle of the Bulge” in the Ardennes, the largest land battle of World War II in which the U.S. participated, and the last great German offensive of the war, he was injured on January 2, 1945 from shrapnel from a German 120 mm mortar. He recalled the bitter cold and the snow. He was transferred to a field hospital for triage and stabilization, followed by a transfer to a Paris hospital for approximately two months of rehabilitation. After recovering from his wounds, for which he was subsequently awarded the Purple Heart, he returned to the front lines in the advancing Allied convoy toward Austria. He recalls arriving in Linz, a town in north central Austria where the town villagers shouted toward the GI’s, “Wir keine Nazis” (“We are not Nazis”) and ”Gehe nach Mauthausen” (“Go up to Mauthausen”), a hill a few miles outside the town, where there was known to be a rock quarry. Not knowing what they were about to encounter, the convoy kept going. In a letter from my dad to his own father on May 15, 1945, ten days after the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp, excerpts of which were subsequently published in The Baltimore Sun shortly thereafter, my father described what he saw. “You cannot realize the absolutely indescribable horrors”, he wrote as a 20 year old. “Words are quite futile in trying to explain them. They must be seen, and I have seen them, and it is still hard to believe. They were all there, the gas chambers, the crematoriums, their fiendish tortures, the rotting stinking piles of bodies 10 and 11 deep…They were doing exactly what they said they would do, systematically destroying all the so-called “inferior” races.” He went on to write, “It’s quite a structure, this death factory, built large and solid out of brick and granite. No temporary affair, this, but permanent.” My father’s plans after the war were to return to complete pre-medical studies and pursue a career in medicine. But instead, he became overtaken with the theater, and went on to pursue an acting and directing career that included a brief stint in television at CBS in New York, some documentary film work, and primarily dramatic and comedic theater, much of it in Israel, where he met my mother, an ingénue actress with whom he fell in love, started a family (first my older brother, now a psychiatrist in New York, then I), and a subsequent career that spanned over 50 years both in Israel and the U.S. I cannot say with certainty, nor do I think can my dad, that the horrors that he witnessed as a young American GI in World War II led him to a career in theater that can be argued by some to be escapist. Rather, I think the Dr. Ram Kalus with his opposite might be true. Theater is parents and sons in many ways a vehicle for exploring and understanding our PFC Herman "HY" deepest and most heartfelt human Kalus - 1943 emotions, and the human experience, flawed as it may often be. We know it can be glorious, yet we also know it can be horrific. Regardless of any post facto theorizing, I remain forever humbled and grateful. Humbled by the unspeakable heroism of my dad and countless fellow soldiers, named and unnamed, those still with us, those we have lost in the years since, and those that fell and never got to tell their story. Grateful that I did not, and my children, and their children will not, G-d willing, have to witness these horrors ever again. And proud, so very proud.
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The Aftermath – The Legacy of Building New Lives the Holocaust
Why study the Holocaust?
The road to recovery was difficult for survivors of the Holocaust. Nothing remained for them in their hometowns and they were not welcome there. Many who did return were killed in pogroms perpetrated by their onetime neighbors. Over 5,000 Jewish communities throughout Europe were destroyed by the Nazi regime. A way of life, an entire culture rich in traditions had vanished. There was now no place for the Holocaust survivors to go. Approximately 500,000 lived in displaced persons (DP) camps where Jewish relief agencies provided job training and social services. Many were the only members of their families to survive. In these camps the Jewish refugees began to rebuild their lives, marry, and have children, until immigration restrictions were lifted and they could emigrate to the United States or Palestine. In 1947, the United Nations voted to provide a place for the Jewish people to live. The ancient Jewish homeland, Palestine, was divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state. In 1948, the Jewish state became the State of Israel.
The Holocaust is an important part of American and World History. It stands out as a horrific example of evil unchecked and has implications for all humanity. The lessons this history teaches us are many and compel us to ask ourselves important questions. How did such evil happen? Why didn’t people stop it? How can we prevent it from happening again? It is important to study the Holocaust to honor the memory of six million Jews and five million others who were murdered because of evil run amok. It is important to study the Holocaust to remember that hatred, prejudice and bigotry can lead to genocide when people are singled out for no other reason than who they are or what they believe. It is important to study the Holocaust to educate future generations, to guard against evil ideologies, and to prevent future Holocausts from happening.
As a result of the Holocaust, nations of the world took steps to identify standards of behavior for all of civilization. The United Nations adopted a Convention for the Prevention of Crimes of Genocide and on December 10, 1948 the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights containing thirty Articles outlining a code of respect for people of all nations. New medical ethics were drafted. In 1949 the Geneva Convention outlined the rights of prisoners of war. Today, education, activism, and remembrance by the world community strive to ensure the Holocaust is remembered and its lessons learned so such a tragedy never happens again.
We remember the Holocaust to alert ourselves to the dangers of prejudice, to express our outrage at the scourge of racism, and to warn the world that racism can lead to genocide.
A train used to transport people to Auschwitz still resides at the site.
Inscription on the Charleston Holocaust Memorial in Marion Square
How Does Prejudice Lead to Genocide? THE LADDER OF PREJUDICE The fourth rung: In his book, The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon W. Allport PHYSICAL ATTACK describes prejudice as a ladder with several rungs, or levels. The third rung: As people “climb” up the ladder of prejudice, increasingly DISCRIMINATION People who are negative actions result. discriminated Avoidance of a While studying the Holocaust, see if you can identify how against are often group of people the Nazis and their followers climbed the ladder of prejudice the victims of eventually leads to physical attack. The and determine whether those same negative actions are discrimination attack is usually the present in our world today. Ask yourself if treating someone expression of the The third rung: you have ever engaged in any differently. anger or resentment AVOIDANCE examples of these Discrimination takes that have built up behaviors or if you many forms, from The next step up the The third rung: through the first have experienced denying someone a SPEECH ladder of prejudice steps of prejudice. job to segregation, them as a victim. involves avoiding Prejudice manifests which means the group of people itself through talking separating a person that has been about or making fun of a from the rest stereotyped. group of people. Such of society. Avoidance leads to negative comments are lack of contact with usually the result the group and of stereotyping ignorance about the creating an people involved.
oversimplified opinion, idea, or belief about that group of people.
The fifth rung: EXTERMINATION
Sometimes physical attacks against a group of people turn deadly. This final step in the ladder of prejudice has been present in society since the earliest days. adapted from The Holocaust, by Seymour Rossel
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The Grunewald Station in Berlin raised a series of
Do Not Be a Bystander
questions about bystander behavior.
The Holocaust and Human Behavior
REFLECTIONS - GERMANY, POLAND AND THE CZECH REPUBLIC by Dr. Mary Johnson, Senior Historian, Facing History and Ourselves, leader of the July 2011 Holocaust study tour of Eastern Europe (Head-quartered in Brookline, MA, Facing History and Ourselves is a teacher training organization that combats racism, anti-Semitism, and prejudice and nurtures democracy through education programs worldwide) In July 2011 eight people joined a study tour about the Holocaust, sponsored by the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust. The tour included visits to Berlin and the nearby concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, several places in Poland where ghettos and death camps were located, and the Czech Republic with considerable time spent in Prague and the camp-ghetto Theresienstadt (Terezin). Since I was the tour leader and have the position with the teacher training organization Facing History and Ourselves that examines the Holocaust within the framework of human behavior, I stressed aspects of human behavior throughout the study tour. Again and again we returned to the questions: What would lead people to kill non-combatants simply because of who they are? What would encourage professionals in many disciplines to use their skills and education to build and direct ghettoes and death camps? Why were many people in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe willing to go along with a plan of persecution and eventually mass murder of certain minorities, Jews in particular? How can citizens of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic today cope with memories of what had taken place during World War II in their nations? What can we do today to hep prevent dehumanization of the other and to create strong democracies that do not succumb to the ideals of dictators? Berlin was our first city where we toured museums and exhibitions related to the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust. One of our first stops was the museum called the Topography of Terror, which details the evolution of the Gestapo, the early work of the SA in helping the Nazis into power, and the creation and growth of the SS during the 1930s and war years. In viewing the photographs and artifacts of this exhibition, we were continually asking one another how these Nazi organizations gained sufficient following to be able to carry out mass murder during the war years. What was their training? How did they become enured to harming and killing others? How much of their behavior was determined by anti-semitism and how much by the desire to get ahead in their respective careers? Helping us in our thinking was the work of Christopher Browning’s book, Ordinary Men, which studies in detail the Einsatzgruppen Battalion 101 and finds that the great majority of those involved did the killing because they were conforming to
A rear view of the Wannsee House where the infamous conference was held in 1942.
Dr. Mary Johnson
Members of Police Battalion 101 celebrate Christmas in their barracks Photo Courtesy of the USHMM
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland In his 1992 book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, historian Christopher Browning told the story of the Order Police in Reserve Unit 101, whose job it was to massacre and round up Jews for deportation to the Nazi death camps in 1942. This battalion was comprised of 500 ordinary middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg. They executed their horrendous duties despite the fact that their unit commander gave them the choice to opt out. This meant rounding up Jews from ghettos and towns and often involved exterminating entire villages. They murdered 38,000 people by shooting them to death and transported 100,000 more to their death in Nazi death camps.
what others were doing. They did not necessarily have to obey since their leader, Major Trapp, said in giving the orders that he was not going to punish anyone who could not carry out the killings. The same questions recurred as we toured the Wannsee House in a Berlin suburb. This was the location of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, where fifteen Nazi bureaucrats planned the implementation of the Final Solution in an 86 minute conference. The Wannsee House not only has details about the conference but also traces the growth of the Nazi party and its leadership, showing how the decision-making at the Wannsee Conference was in keeping with decision-making before and during the war. What struck many of us was that the participants at the conference were well aware that they were planning for mass murder and did not seem concerned about what would occur as a result of their decisions.
This train station, located in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood of Berlin, was used to take 50,000 Berlin Jews to the East. The residents of the area did not object to what was taking place and made no effort to protest or stop such actions. As we walked along the tracks, we talked to each other about how people in the Grunewald Station as it is today. neighborhood could easily see what was taking place. And, we wondered, were these inhabitants afraid to speak up or did they agree with the effort to remove Jews from their city? Also, we were impressed by how much has been done by the current authorities to preserve the memory of the station and have as a place for visitors to reflect on what took place seven decades ago. During our days in Poland we visited several cities where ghettos were located and three death camps (Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka). The questions about perpetrators and bystanders that we examined in Germany reemerged in Poland. However, the questions about victims and their memory were uppermost for us as we toured Poland. In the death camps, we were haunted by the thoughts of what happened to victims who often had no idea of what awaited them upon arrival. In Auschwitz-Birkenau, where hundreds of barracks were located with a background of gas chambers and crematoria, we stood at the ramp for the trains thinking of the tired, hungry and frightened passengers who were selected for work or death within minutes of arrival. Given the circumstances, victims had almost no opportunity of escape or open resistance: armed guards and the configuration of the camp prevented such attempts. The Grunewald memorial consists of 186 cast steel plates arranged in chronological order on either side of the track, each one representing a transport. Each steel plate has the date of the transport, the number of Jews, often more than a thousand at a time, and their destination.
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Majdanek, a smaller death Treblinka, the death camp camp outside the city of Lublin, for many of the Jews deported from the Warsaw Ghetto, has no
also housed slave labor.
In contrast to Auschwitz where the gas chambers and crematoria were connected in one location, the gassing took place near the entrance to the camp and victims were then dragged through the barracks of workers to the other side for crematoria ovens. The large heap of ashes from the burned corpses remains as a memorial to the dead. Even more frightening is the bathing area for guards that used hot water for bathing from the crematoria ovens. What was most intriguing about our visit was the changed interpretation. The numbers of victims, Jewish and non-Jewish, has been reduced to about half of the initial estimate and the camp emphasizes that there were many non-Jews side by side Jews in the barracks. We wondered how numbers of victims could change so dramatically. We also wondered whether the Soviet liberation of the camp in July 1944 had led to exaggerated reports on victims that were not corrected until the more recent release of documents from the former Soviet Union. Our tour guide who was also a journalist for Lublin newspapers further complicated our thinking about this when she explained that she was not permitted to interview the new camp director about the revised numbers. Why would such an interview be denied? What is in the new numbers?
TH E
CO CA NCE MP NT RA S TI ON
remains of gas chambers or crematoria since the camp was immediately dismantled after the killing was done. Instead, what remains today are stones representing the many towns and cities from which Jews were deported to their death. In this expansive graveyard we do not know the individual names of victims. In many cases the stones do not even bear the names of the towns or cities. Some stones with names offer a sampling of the vast area around Warsaw where Jews were captured and transported to immediate death. For all of us, the extremely humid July day in Treblinka left us thinking about conditions for victims during the wartime summers when Treblinka was operating. If within an hour or two of going through the former camp, we were exhausted by the intense heat and humidity, we tried to imagine what it would have been like for people living in such conditions and knowing that at the end there would be death. Going to these camps that now stand as memorials to what took place offered one form of memory for the victims. Another form of memory came from the three members of the study tour who are second generation, the children of Holocaust survivors — Reggie Guigui, Eric and Marvin Engel. They led the group to the towns from which their families came. With Reggie we visited where her family had lived in Chorzow of Silesia not far from the location of the camp Auschwitz, and with Eric and Marvin we visited Zakroczym, about an hour from Warsaw. In these towns there was no sign that Jews had been living in these places. The return of second generation remains a strong and compelling way to keep memory alive.
The memorial stones at Treblinka seem to go on forever
In the Czech Republic we had another reminder of the past as we visited the remains of the ghettocamp known as Theresienstadt (Terezin). Learning of the many talented artists, writers, dramatists, filmmakers and other professionals taken from Terezin east to death camps, we were strongly reminded of Elie Wiesel’s repeated reminders to audiences of how much talent was lost with the murder of millions of Jews and other minorities. At the end of the study tour, we continued reflecting on what we had witnessed even in our final ride to the airport and on our flight home. Many of us agreed that actually visiting the sites of the Holocaust leaves an incalculable impact on how we think about our own decision making and how people did or did not respond to what was happening during the Nazi era, 1933-45. We had literally faced history and ourselves during the study tour.
The town of Terezin, located 40 miles north of Prague, was originally a fortress. The Germans used it as a military base until the end of the summer of 1941, when they converted it into a ghetto and transit camp. In particular, many prominent artists, writers, scientists and musicians were sent there, as well as about 15,000 children. The German name for Terezin was Theresienstadt. There was little food and tens of thousands of people died there. The Nazis allowed the Red Cross to visit Terezin to quell rumors that Jews were mistreated. In preparation, they planted gardens, painted, and beautified the entire ghetto, and even had the children perform an opera, Brundibar. The Nazis made a propaganda film showing how wonderful life was for the Jews in Terezin. When the filming was over, all the Jews in it were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. After the war, poems and drawings of the children were made into a book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly.” Less than 100 of the children of Terezin survived.
Jews wearing yellow stars walk along a street in Theresienstadt
The sign over the gates of Auschwitz “Arbeit macht frei” or “Work will make you free.”
A row of cremation ovens at Majdanek Jews undergo selection on a ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau Photo Courtesy of the USHMM
A view of the gas chamber at Majdanek. Most Jews were gassed upon arrival.
A large heap of ashes at Majdanek remains as a memorial
The entrance to Terezin
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A Reminder For Us All by Amber Giles, Pharmacy student, MUSC
Traveling Europe to study the Holocaust may not seem like a typical college graduation present. I guess I’m not a typical college graduate. I have always been interested in learning more about the hatred humans could show towards other humans. I have personally researched, watched many docuAmber Giles mentaries and movies, read numerous books, and have even taken several classes on the Holocaust. I devoted an entire semester to reading novels written by survivors and survivor’s children. The impact that the Holocaust had on individual families, religious groups, and countries well after the war ended is unbelievable. I casually talked to my aunt (Debbie McCallister) about my studies whenever I saw her as she was also taking a class on the Holocaust. When we found out about a trip to Berlin, Krakow, Warsaw, Prague, and five concentration/death camps, we knew it would be a trip of a lifetime. For me, the trip was an opportunity to see the remnants of a part of human history that was dark, evil, and filled with hate in an attempt to grasp some kind of understanding of how prejudices can turn into oppression and genocide. As we traveled from town to town, I was very interested in learning how people dealt with the aftermath of such an event. I noticed how the city of Berlin did not try to hide its history and involvement in the Holocaust. A museum, The Topography of Terror, presented a detailed history starting at the beginning of the Nazi movement and ending with Nuremberg Trials without hiding incriminating evidence of their country’s involvement. While we were at the museum, we learned that students are taken each year so that they will not forget the past of their country and the cruel things that humans are capable of doing. The people of Berlin also have daily reminders of the Holocaust in the form of golden plaques outside of houses that once belonged to Jewish families. These serve as an acknowledgement that people were stripped of their personal belongings and torn from their homes in ways unprecedented in civilized cultures. Other cities, like those in Poland and many small towns, had no evidence of their Jewish populations before the war with the exception of overgrown Jewish cemeteries or maybe a small monument. I was baffled by the fact that towns that once had almost 50% Jewish inhabitants now had zero Jews living in them and no reminders that they had once lived there. Is it that easy to forget or ignore a group that had so much influence building the culture and society that is still there today? I could also tell a difference in the attitudes towards the Jews in Berlin and other
towns. Berlin has become a much more accepting society of those with other beliefs, including the Jews. However, I was utterly shocked to see that much of Poland and many small towns that had deep Jewish roots were still anti-Semitic. This was not just some feeling that I had as I walked around listening to the locals, but it was pushed in my face in the form of graffiti. How is there still anti-Semitism?! Did they learn nothing from a horrible, miserable, terrible time in their histories? These were the types of questions that I struggled with as we toured different towns. However, I do not even know where to possibly begin in expressing the ways I felt as we walked through Nazi concentration and death camps. Sachsenhausen. Auschwitz. Treblinka. Majdanek. Theresienstadt. Sometimes I went completely numb and couldn’t process what I was seeing. Other times I couldn’t even attempt to hold back the tears. It was mind blowing to see the rooms of shoes in Auschwitz and Majdanek that were taken from the people as they entered the camp. Shoes were piled to the ceiling and seemed to go on forever. I never, until that day, fully understood how many people were killed. Another surreal experience was walking through the gas chambers at Majdanek while a group of Jewish tourists were praying for the dead. It was a powerful and beautiful moment of remembrance. Even though I still cannot fully explain the impact that this trip had on me, I can say without a doubt the one moment that affected me the most. Quietly walking around the Track 17 memorial at the Grunewald Station, I read the number of people who were taken each day to concentration camps between 1941 and 1945.
made my way to the end, the numbers dwindled to almost zero. There were almost no more Jews left. Most of them would not survive the war or ever return to their homes. Taking all of this in overwhelmed me. And this track only represented the Jews transported from Berlin. Mind blowing. To me, this trip was a warning that persecution and genocide can arise from a civilized society and that we must all learn and remember the Holocaust to ensure that another event like this will never happen again. The Holocaust is such a complex part of history that I will never understand completely. But, I can learn from it. In my lifetime I can only strive to never be racist, hateful, or prejudiced against people who are different from me. I can only do my best to instill acceptance and tolerance in my family, friends, and those who I might influence.
OCTOBER 18, 1941. 1,251 Jews transported from Berlin to Lodz. JANUARY, 29 1943. 1,000 Jews transported from Berlin to Auschwitz. MARCH 27, 1945. 18 Jews transported from Berlin to Theresienstadt.
I walked the entire length of the tracks and back reading each plaque. Over 50,000 names were on them. Jews were taken from this railway station with their families and most valuable possessions and sent to ghettos and camps. The number of people transported at the beginning of the track was enormous; but as I
These photos show the three plaques Amber mentioned.
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Teaching children the good and bad parts of history by Debbie McCallister, fifth grade teacher Although I have read, studied, and taught the Holocaust for many years, the Holocaust Study Tour in July 2011 opened my eyes in a new way. I was able to stand at a German railway station where people were actually loaded on to the cattle cars. I went into Auschwitz and saw the barracks, the guard towers, the train tracks, and the punishment cells. I was standing there when Eric and Marvin talked to their Uncle Joe (a survivor) on their cell phone. I went to the town of Zakrocym with two children of Holocaust survivors. I learned of the massacre of over two hundred Jewish men, women, and children in the center of the town. I went to the town of Chorzow, where one member of our group was able to visit a building that her father once owned. I could tell how powerful these personal side trips affected not only the family members but all of us. Another thing that meant a lot to me was the stories shared by my fellow travelers of their families’ experiences. They taught me Jewish words, customs, foods, and traditions. Because of these experiences, I now have names, faces, places, and stories to share with others.
No matter our reasons for going on this journey, we all came away with a better understanding of the Holocaust, a shared experience that brought a group of strangers together as family, and the knowledge that the Holocaust must be talked about and survivor stories must be shared. As one of educators on this trip, I believe that we must teach the Holocaust to all students. As a fifth grade teacher, I think my students will be able to grasp the facts and the emotions involved. Fifth graders have a very strong sense of right and wrong. They feel strongly about how people should be treated and how to treat others. They are passionate about the things that they feel are important. One area of study in the fifth grade Social Studies curriculum is World War II. How can we study World War II and leave out the Holocaust? The Holocaust impacted the lives of a massive number of people-then and now. Families were changed forever. How different would our world be if there had been no Holocaust? What future musicians, writers, painters, inventors, or world leaders were killed?
Debbie McCallister and the rest of the group at a memorial in Kielce. Pictured from left to right: Marvin Engel, Eric Engel, Amber Graves, Eileen Chepenik, Debbie McCallister, Brenda Kirkland, Reggie Guigui and Mary Johnson
Debbie McCallister
Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) in Israel By Ayala Asherov-Kalus I was born in Israel. I had few relatives on my mother's side of the family. My maternal grandparents moved to Israel in the early 1920's, but most of their relatives who stayed behind in Poland and Russia perished in the hands of the Nazis. For those born and raised in Israel, like myself, commemorating the Holocaust was a yearly event. We all participated in ceremonies at school. We all heard the stories of survivors, and we were all deeply saddened and affected. There was nothing on television that day except documentaries and special programming on the Holocaust, and all after school activities (sports, music, art) were cancelled for that day. But we all felt the same, because each and every one of us had our own story from home.
Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the wreath laying ceremony at Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established by law in 1953. Photo by Isaac Harrari / Yad Vashem
In Israel, all traffic stops, all conversations stop, all movement stops for one minute, when the sirens sound throughout the entire country for one minute-a haunting sound quite reminiscent of the Shofar (ram’s horn traditionally blown during the Jewish New Year) that brings everyone together for a moment of silent reflection. When I moved to America, I realized that Holocaust Memorial Day is not something everyone commemorates. It wasn't something everyone shared like I was accustomed to in Israel. I felt the personal need to take an active part in this very special day by helping others feel; by helping others remember. Never to forget, Never again.
Tomorrow Never Came
12– THE HOLOCAUST – TOMORROW NEVER CAME / April 2012
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The Arts and the Holocaust
by Ayala Asherov-Kalus, composer
The Power of Art and Music to Teach and Interpret the Holocaust Art has its special way of expressing, of generating feelings and exposing, even discovering, new emotions. During the most difficult times in World War II, under the worst of conditions, the Jews did not forget the arts, nor did they neglect their culture. The did whatever they could to let the children keep on drawing, keep writing poems or stories, and those who knew how, keep playing their instruments. The Nazis even used the prisoners who owned musical instruments to perform outside, in the brutal cold, in the snow, while their family members and friends were literally led to the gas chambers. But the music kept playing, and the music kept them going, lifting their spirits and providing a macabre contrast to the hell through which they were living and dying. The music buoyed their spirits until their last moments of life, enriching their souls the way only music can. As a musician, I feel the best way for me to reach out to my community on Yom HaShoah is through my music. I try to write whenever I can, and wherever there is an opportunity to contribute to Holocaust education and awareness, such that people can listen, be touched, and then perhaps touch others. I believe that music is the underscore to these stories of human tragedy, of indescribable evil and cruelty, and of the ultimate triumph of the spirit. When words are not enough, the music prevails. Writing music that helps us remember is really a way to keep the flame of remembrance both for those who are gone, and for those who survived.
“The Garden”, by Franta Bass, is a very sweet and naive poem about a little boy in a garden. I gave it a very lyrical melody and set it in a slow waltz - a kind of lullaby. But toward the end of the poem, he writes: “…when the blossom comes to bloom, the little boy will be no more…” I chose to treat that first sentence like something bad. Perhaps the blossom symbolizes time and the more time goes by in the ghetto, the less chance this little boy has of staying alive. I therefore accelerated the tempo in that sentence to indicate that time is fleeting.
“The Gardenen, ”
A little gard ll of roses. Fragrant and fu ow The path is narr walks along it. And a little boy t boy, A little boy, a swee ossom. Like that growing bl When the blossom comes to bloom, no more. The little boy will be ~Franta Bass
Ayala Kalus’
Above: Sheet music of Ayala Kalus’ original song “Tomorrow Never Came” Right: Page from a children's memory book written in Terezin with a picture of a skyline of Terezin and a horse. The book was presented as a gift to Misa Grunbaum.
Tomorrow Never Came Poems written by children in the Terezin Ghetto set to music Ayala Asherov-Kalus, an award-winning composer living in Charleston, composed a cycle of songs entitled Tomorrow Never Came based on poems written by children in the Terezin ghetto. The title Tomorrow Never Came was coined by Ruth Bondy, an Israeli author, journalist, translator, Holocaust survivor and family friend. Bondy survived Terezin and knew some of the children who wrote the poems that Asherov-Kalus set to music. The poems survived, even though those who wrote them did not. Whether horrifying or hopeful, they portray life in the camp, memories of lives left behind, and hopes for the future. Asherov-Kalus explains how she went about composing these songs. “I selected five poems. I decided to set
them up for a string trio (violin, viola, and cello) because, in the concentration camps, the Nazis ”used” the Jewish prisoners who could play instruments to perform to improve the atmosphere as their family members and friends were literally being led to the gas chambers, and these instruments were the most portable and therefore easiest to carry. Composing these poems was an extraordinarily powerful experience for me. I am so grateful to these children who left us with a living testimonial from these horrible times, yet they also left us with their impressions in such a poetic and sweet way, that only a child can compose. They did not lose their love for life, nor their culture and faith, up until the very last moment of their lives.”
THE HOLOCAUST – TOMORROW NEVER CAME / April 2012 – 13
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“I’d Like to Go Alone”, by Alena Synkova, felt to me like a solo death march, in a very slow tempo. Starting with the violin in the opening of the song and then giving this motif to the voice, I chose a march-like figure that gives the song a very heavy and somber feel. As the poem becomes more hopeful, I tried to move to a more lyrical mood.
I’d Like to Go Alone I’d like to go away alone Where there are other, nicer people, Somewhere into the far unknown, There, where no one kills another. Maybe more of us, A thousand strong, Will reach this goal Before too long -Alena Synkova
seum) . Holocaust Memorial Mu (Photo courtesy of the U.S
“The Butterfly”, by Pavel Friedman, is the most well known of the poems written by the children of Terezin. I chose to convey the flittering of the butterfly, since, in order to feel the absence of the butterfly in the ghetto, that feeling will be that much stronger if the music makes us think of one. I also chose to use a half step movement in the cello so the flying will sound dissonant and not necessarily pleasant. The poem is moving between the description of the butterfly and of himself and his own life. I chose to make the music more lyrical and less dissonant when the boy describes his life in the ghetto, and how he had never seen another butterfly.
Editor’s note: These songs will be performed by Mezzo soprano Janet Hopkins at the Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance Program, Sunday April 22, 3:00 p.m. at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, 90 Hasell Street.
THE BUTTERFLY
The last, the very last, ingly yellow. So richly, brightly, dazzl rs would sing Perhaps if the sun’s tea ... Against a white stone Such, such a yellow high. Is carried lightly ‘way up ause it wished to It went away I’m sure bec . kiss the world goodbye d in here, For seven weeks I’ve live etto Penned up inside this gh ople here. But I have found my pe The dandelions call to me candles in the court. And the white chestnut butterfly. Only I never saw another last one. That butterfly was the here, Butterflies don’t live in In the ghetto. ~Pavel Friedman
“At Terezin”, by “Teddy”. I have given the cello a steady sequence of low pizzicato notes, to give us the sense of a ticking clock, since the poem is very realistic and the child is being very realistic in describing the situation of where he is. It translated for me into the need for conveying the sense of the passing time and urgency to get out of there. With it I felt it makes the song sound powerful and strong. Therefore I chose to end the cycle with that and with the sentence. “…when I will go home again, I can’t yet tell…” leaving the listener with the energy and restlessness of these children, and letting their last utterance be strong, not weak and frail.
by “Teddy” AT TEREZIN child comes When a new to him. ems strange e s g in th ry ? ve E d I have to lie un ro g e th n o What, t I! toes? No! No ta o p k c la b t a E re! y? It’s dirty he I’ve got to sta t, ir I fear! hy, look, it’s d w – r o o fl ? he T to sleep on it d e s o p up s And I’m ! I’ll get all dirty cries, d of shouting, un o s e th re e H any flies. . And oh, so m carry disease s ie fl s w no k that a Everyone it me! Wasn’t b g in th e m o s Oooh, bedbug in, life is hell t yet tell. Here is Terez e again, I can’ m ho o g l I’l n And whe
FEAR Today th e ghetto knows a Close in different its grip, fear, D eath wie An evil s ld s an icy ickness s scythe. preads a The victim terror in s of its its wake . shadow weep and writhe. Today a father’s heartbeat And othe tell his f rs bend t right heir head Now chil s into their dren cho hands. ke and die A bitter with typ tax is ta h u s here. ken from their ban d s . My heart still beat s inside While fri my breas ends dep ts a rt for othe Perhaps r worlds it’s bett . e r – who Than wa can say? tching th – is, to die today? No, no, m y God, w e want t Not watc o live! h our nu mbers m We want e lt away. to have a better w We want o rld. to work – we mu st not d ie! -Eva Pick ova, 12 ye ars old, Nymburk
“Fear”, by Eva Pickova, has a constant movement of the strings. This movement gives the sense of motion, how every sound and every wrong movement could have meant the end. And when the little girl (who is 12) writes about the possibility of death being a better choice, I stopped the tremolando in the strings, and it’s as if the song comes to a halt, so that we don’t miss the horror this little girl is witnessing and writing about.
14– THE HOLOCAUST – TOMORROW NEVER CAME / April 2012
SUGGESTED
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ACTIVITIES
1. You are a teenager in a concentration camp and might be put on a transport to the death camp, Auschwitz, at any time. You find a piece of paper—a real treasure! In spite of the risk, you start to draw. What would you include in your drawing? Think about what these young people must have faced during the Holocaust: humiliation, isolation, fear, despair, hunger, loss.On the back, describe your picture and why you chose the subject. Include a poem if you wish. Your picture will pay tribute to the youth that perished under the Nazi regime. Imagine what these young people could have accomplished if they had been allowed to live! 2. Art supplies were in short supply in Theresienstadt. What materials could you use to create your artwork? 3. Think of ways people with strong prejudices attempt to make the victims of their bigotry seem less than human, for example, through ethnic and racial jokes, cartoons, segregation and denial of access to economic and educational opportunities. Imagine if you or a friend of yours were the victim of this bigotry. What would you do? What would you do if the victim were someone you do not know or a group of people you do not know much about? What personal beliefs or teachings prompt your actions or inaction? 4. Identify groups of people today that are victims of prejudice. Research to find out why these groups are targeted and by whom. Watch for newspaper articles about these groups and the negative actions used against them. For each article, identify the consequences of the negative actions and who is affected. Discuss how everyone in a society is affected when prejudice is allowed to thrive.
5. Review the criteria that made it possible for the Holocaust to take place: I. War or economic “hard times” that fan the flames of hatred or resentment within a nation; II. The existence of a feeling of overpowering hatred by the people of a nation and a target group against whom this hatred is directed; III. A charismatic leader who is able to identify the feelings of anger and alienation that exist within the nation and to convert those feelings into hatred of the target group; IV. A governmental bureaucracy that could be taken over and used to organize a smoothly run policy of repression and, later, extermination; V. A highly developed state of technology that make possible methods of mass extermination; VI. Government control of the media. 6. Discuss whether it’s possible for another Holocaust to happen today. Are any of these criteria being witnessed in modern-day countries? Watch for newspaper articles that demonstrate one or more of the six criteria taking place somewhere in the world today. Cut out the articles and make a display on poster board. Below each article, write an explanation of how the event parallels the criteria. Discuss what can be done to prevent history from repeating itself 7. When Adolf Hitler took over Germany, he suspended individual freedoms, such as freedom of the press and freedom of speech. To get an idea of what life would be like without these freedoms, go through the main news section of today’s newspaper and mark out all the stories that would NOT have been published without freedom of the press. Then go to the editorial pages and mark out all the opinion pieces that would NOT have been published without freedom of speech. What conclusions can you draw? Talk about the types of stories and information Hitler might have allowed it be published during his reign of tyranny. Remember, with a government-controlled press, the only information disseminated is that which reflects positively on the government and its leader. Write a few front-page headlines that might have appeared as Hitler gained control. 8. Write an essay explaining what would you say if someone today tried to tell you the Holocaust never happened.
Vocabulary: Anti-Semite - a person who hates Jews Anti-Semitism - hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group
Scapegoat - one that bears the blame for others: one that is the object of irrational hostility
Aryan - used in Nazism to designate a supposed master race of non-Jewish Caucasians usually having Nordic features
Propaganda - the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person; ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause
Police state - a political unit characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures
Annihilate/annihilation - to cause to cease to exist
Concentration camp – Prison camps constructed to hold Jews, Gypsies, political and religious opponents, resisters, homosexuals, and other Germans considered "enemies of the state."
Genocide - Deliberate, systematic destruction of a racial, cultural, or political group.
(Definitions from Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
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THE HOLOCAUST – TOMORROW NEVER CAME / April 2012 – 15
For further study
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES RECOMMENDED READING I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Hana Volavkova contains pictures and poems created by children in Terezin. The REMEMBER Program for Holocaust and Genocide Education The REMEMBER Program remembers and honors victims of the Holocaust, particularly local survivors of the Holocaust as well as liberators of the concentration camps that reside in Charleston. It offers many programs and speakers to area students and adults that inform the community about the Holocaust, genocide, and social injustice. For information contact Sandra Brett at Charleston Jewish Federation at 571-6565 or visit the Program’s website, www.charlestonremembers.org South Carolina Council on the Holocaust - Video and Curriculum Guide Available for Teachers Public and private middle and high schools in the tri-county area have a copy of “Seared Souls: Voices from the Past,” a video produced by the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust and SCETV, and “South Carolina Voices, a teaching and Curriculum Guide.” Please check with your school’s Social Studies Curriculum Chair. This information is also on the website of the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, www.scholocaustcouncil.org South Carolina Council on the Holocaust Holocaust Education Institute for Teachers “Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust,” an intensive summer institute for South Carolina teachers, sponsored by the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust and taught by Dr. Mary Johnson and Dr. Tandy McConnell, will be held July 8-13 at Columbia College (COURSE # EDU 724 - 3 hours of graduate credit). Registration fee is $125. Room and board are provided by the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust. For more information contact Barbara Parker (803)786-3763, or visit the Council’s website at www.scholocaustcouncil.org to download an application. South Carolina Council on the Holocaust – Mini-Grant Program for Holocaust Education Funding is available for Holocaust education projects. Teachers are encouraged to apply. Subsidies may also be granted for teachers to participate in approved Holocaust education trips to Eastern Europe. Teachers must be accepted in the programs before applying. Project goals must coincide with the objectives of the Holocaust Council. For requirements or to download an application, visit the Council’s website at www.scholocaustcouncil.org. South Carolina Council on the Holocaust Teachers’ Advisory Committee This group of teachers from around the state has developed a PowerPoint presentation and script that is available to teachers and holds educational conferences to assist with
teaching the Holocaust. Day-long educational workshops are held in the Fall and Spring. For more information contact Emily Taylor, etaylor@lexington4.net, or visit the Council’s website, www.scholocaustcouncil.org Holocaust Research Section at Charleston County Library features Zucker Holocaust Collection, Shoah Foundation Survivor Videotapes
The Jerry and Anita Zucker Holocaust Memorial Collection at the Charleston County Library is home to some 400 books for citizens, students, and educators to do further research about the Holocaust. Also included are 55 video documentaries, and 28 videotaped survivor testimonies from the Visual History of the Shoah Foundation, available for checkout for individual or classroom use. The Charleston County Main Library is located at 68 Calhoun Street. For questions, please call 805-6930. Holocaust Archives, Special Collections, College of Charleston Library This collection contains hundreds of documents, photographs and artifacts belonging to Holocaust survivors and liberators now living in South Carolina. Contact Dale Rosengarten, Curator, Jewish Heritage Collection, 953-8028, or rosengartend@cofc.edu. Holocaust Archives Website and Quilt Link This project of the Holocaust Archives Project at the College of Charleston links the college’s Holocaust Archives and other resource collections on the subject. The basis of the site is a 79- by 94-inch quilt that hangs in the Charleston County Library, Main Branch, on Calhoun Street. “For Every Person There is a Name” This documentary film was produced by Virginia Friedman and John Reynolds in cooperation with the College of Charleston’s Office of Media & Technology and the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies program. It traces the lives of three Holocaust survivors who made their homes in South Carolina - Pincus Kolender, Joe Engel, and Dientje Krant Kalisky-Adkins. It has been distributed to every middle and high school in South Carolina and is available at the Charleston County Library. Columbia Holocaust Education Commission Visit the Commission’s website, www.columbiaholocausteducation.org, for information about programs, educational materials, and grants. American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Service A clearinghouse for persons looking for loved ones still missing as a result of the Holocaust or other aspects of war, Jews or non-Jews. Has a network in 177 countries throughout the world. For more information, call 764-2323.
The Selden K. Smith Foundation for Holocaust Education The Selden K. Smith Foundation for Holocaust Education is a private source of funding to strengthen the ability of the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust to promote educational activities and community awareness in the state. It is halfway towards its goal of raising $100,000 towards this effort. Foundation funds will be available to schools, colleges, churches, synagogues, civic groups and individuals for grants, classroom supplies, student field trips, teacher training and workshops, Holocaust speakers, exhibits and other related educational programs. The Foundation was named in honor of Dr. Selden Smith, a retired history professor from Columbia College, who was the founding chair of the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Donations can be made via the website, www.holocausteducationfoundation.org, or can be mailed to The Selden K. Smith Foundation for Holocaust Education, C/O Minda Miller, Chair, PO Box 25740, Columbia, SC 29224.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum www.ushmm.org Yad Vashem: the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority www.yad-vashem.org.il South Carolina Council on the Holocaust www.scholocaustcouncil.org Facing History and Ourselves www.facinghistory.org Echoes and Reflections Multimedia Holocaust Education Kit Anti-Defamation League www.adl.org Teaching Tolerance, and “One Survivor Remembers,” programs of the Southern Poverty Law Center www.teachingtolerance.com Simon Wiesenthal Center www.simonwiesenthalcenter.org USC Shoah Foundation Institute www.usc.edu/college/vhi/ American Jewish Committee www.ajc.org Media Literacy Clearinghouse www.medialit.med.sc.edu American Red Cross www.redcross.org Charleston Jewish Federation www.jewishcharleston.org The REMEMBER Program www.charlestonremembers.org Columbia Holocaust Education Commission www.Columbiaholocausteducation.org Generations of the Shoah www.genshoah.org
A TRIBUTE TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS at KAHAL KADOSH BETH ELOHIM
90 HASELL ST, CHARLESTON, SC 29401 2012 HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE PROGRAM
h a o h S a H m o Y
ER C A M E V E N W O R R TO M O
P RO G R A M C H A I R S: D R . E VA LI N E D E L S O N & P H I LLIS K A LISKY- M A I R
Limited Complimentary Parking provided by the City of Charleston at Charleston Place & Marion Square Garages
For more information, contact Sandra Brett at 571.6565 or sandrab@jewishcharleston.org www.jewishcharleston.org