Alabama Holocaust Education Center dedicates new space

“Dreams do come true,” said David Silverstein at the outset of the Alabama Holocaust Education Center dedication on May 22.

Educating about the Holocaust was the dream of founder Phyllis Weinstein over two decades ago, and that effort has taken a major leap forward with the dedication of the new center, encompassing over 8,000 square feet in the former preschool space at Temple Emanu-El.

Dan Puckett, chair of the Alabama Holocaust Commission, said the center “really is (Weinstein’s) vision and her dream.”

At a mezuzah hanging on April 23, the facility was named in honor of Weinstein.

The dedication was held in the Emanu-El sanctuary, drawing a large crowd that included state and local officials. There were opportunities to tour the new space following the ceremony.

The AHEC, recently renamed Alabama instead of Birmingham to reflect its statewide focus, had been housed at the Bayer Properties building, but when that building was sold in 2019 and Bayer moved into a new headquarters, the search was on for a new location.

After the Emanu-El space became available in 2020, the organization raised $4 million to create the new learning center. “Needless to say, we are humbled by the support of the community, and excited for you to tour our new education center,” Silverstein said. “The AHEC is poised to educate for years to come.”

Silverstein the center will teach about “the horrors of the Holocaust, the damage caused by bigotry and hate, and the importance of moral courage.”

Over the years, Silverstein noted, over 400 groups have had Holocaust survivors give presentations, and now that responsibility is falling on the second generation. Over 120 teachers from across the state have received scholarships to attend national and international seminars on teaching the Holocaust.

There have been over 1,500 teachers who have attended in-state training sessions, affecting over 100,000 students.

The center also coordinates public talks and a “Holocaust in Film” movie series.

The dedication was also an introduction of newly-hired Executive Director Lisa Bachman. “Man, we are glad you’re here,” Silverstein exclaimed. The center has recently had a series of short-tenured and interim directors.

A longtime Cleveland resident, Bachman moved to Orlando in 2018 and was executive director at Different Like You.

Governor Kay Ivey said the new center “is an asset to the city of Birmingham and to the state of Alabama.”

She noted that Weinstein “planted the seed… and now it has matured.” Weinstein died in 2021, two days after her 100th birthday.

Ivey said that the exhibits are “a window to the past” and “a powerful resource to guide humanity toward love and understanding for all.”

Each year, the governor issues a proclamation for Days of Remembrance, so “the people of Alabama should always remember the terrible events of the Holocaust and remain vigilant.”

She added that she was honored to host the first-ever Chanukah menorah lighting at the Governor’s Mansion this past December, and hopes that it remains an annual tradition for future governors.

Senator Katie Britt said the center is a reminder of “the evil that is possible when hate rules society,” and that “white supremacy and racism of any kind has no place in our society.”

Britt spoke of the importance of each person appealing to their “better angels,” teaching generations to come to “build a society where bigotry has no home and compassion is commonplace.”

She said the AHEC is “critical in that mission” and “I personally want to encourage every Alabamian to come and see this for themselves” and learn how to “not be indifferent” in the face of evil, “but to stand up firmly for what we know is right.

She referenced local Holocaust survivor Riva Hirsch in her remarks, bringing Hirsch to tears, and they embraced after Britt finished speaking. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said “This is a special place… people from all walks of life will learn the stories and lessons of the Holocaust.” Those lessons “will change people” and spark “a great compassion and courage.”

He spoke of individual acts of courage and heroism, both during the Holocaust and during the civil rights struggles in Birmingham 60 years ago. “As brothers and sisters in this community, together we can strive to make this world more compassionate, so that bigotry has no place among us.”

Emanu-El Rabbi Adam Wright spoke on the importance of remembrance, and the challenge in an age where so many youth are disengaged and unaware of history. “Despite such bad data regarding our youth and understanding the Holocaust, it doesn’t mean we stop teaching, it means that we endeavor to work harder, it means we reach new audiences… It means more research, more teaching, more discoveries, and telling more stories.”

He said “everyone here in this room will do whatever it takes to make sure that the lessons of the past are not repeated.”

Michele Forman, a second-generation survivor, referenced her mother’s story and how she built a new life in Alabama. The survivors became “part of the civil rights and human rights fabric of this community, and we can continue their work together.”

Rev. Richmond Webster of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church spoke about Tzedek, the concept of justice and righteousness. Noting that God is also a poet, he said the word has a deeper meaning of unity, and through “tools of memory,” together “we can fight the crime of antisemitism, the crime of hate and bigotry.”

He said the center is “a place to remember, so we can ensure the dignity of every human being in our state.”

Marilyn Pipkin performed selections on a Violin of Hope, a violin used in a concentra- tion camp, that has since been restored by the Weinstein family in Tel Aviv (no relation to the Birmingham Weinsteins). There were performances of the violins in Birmingham in 2018, and one of them is on permanent loan to the AHEC, where it is displayed in a section dedicated to Alabamians who liberated the concentration camps.

Emanu-El Cantor Robby Wittner added a rendition of Naomi Shemer’s “Lu Yehi” (Let It Be).

The center has a section devoted to Jewish life in pre-war Europe. Part of the lobby exhibit is Judaica items from the collection of Werner Knurr, who fled Aurich, Germany, in 1938 at age 3 after a friendly policeman tipped off the family that his father was set to be arrested. The family wound up in Montgmery after a brief time in Baton Rouge.

The main space has exhibits expanded from the “Darkness to Life” project. The exhibit tells the stories of 20 Alabamians who survived the Holocaust, through the modern-day photographs of Becky Seitel and paintings by Mitzi Levin portraying their pre-war stories.

In addition to the liberator section, there is a memorial installation.

There is a conference room for presentations and workshops, and a library housing over 3,000 Holocaust-related volumes, and 8,000 artifacts. The library is the largest Holocaust resource in the Southeast.

Puckett said the statewide commission works with organizations like the AHEC, which “are our boots on the ground,” and with the new space “I really cannot wait to see what happens with all of this.”

Currently, the center is open to visitors by appointment.

205.936.9675 caryn@coachcaryn.com

“Survivor

The last of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah is that every Jews should participate in the writing of a Torah. Two Holocaust survivors in the New Orleans area accomplished that on June 4, in a scroll with a remarkable history.

For the past five years, the goal of the Survivor Torah Project has been to find Holocaust survivors all over the world and have them do the lettering in a damaged scroll that was recently discovered in Poland, with the ultimate goal of having the restored scroll presented to the State of Israel and housed at the synagogue at the president’s residence in Jerusalem, to be used by communities around the world.

Anne Skorecki Levy and Lila Skorecki Millen added their letters in a ceremony at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, each of them holding the arm of Jonny Daniels, who heads From the Depths, a foundation that keeps the memory of the Holocaust alive and assists Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

Before doing the lettering, Levy said “we are the lucky ones,” saying she and her sister survived because of their parents, “who were always a step ahead of the Germans in their planning” and realized they were in danger.

Looking at the scroll, Levy said “I can’t believe I am going to do this.”

Millen said “it is an amazing experience, to live through what we have lived through, and to come to this day. It is absolutely amazing.”

Aaron Bloch, director of the Federation’s Center for Jewish-Multicultural Affairs, said the event was part of the “unwavering commitment to fighting against antisemitism, and to preserve the memories of those who endured unimaginable suffering.” The Federation and the Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana co-hosted the event.

Bloch added, “Each letter rewritten by our local survivors represents not just a physical act, but a powerful symbol of resilience, courage and determination.”

Rabbi David Gerber said that each completion of a Torah scroll “is a testament to the eternal spirit of the Jewish people.”

Addressing the survivors, Gerber said “your strength, your courage, your resilience are a boundless inspiration. We are honored to stand with you today,” and that their stories will be an inspiration for generations to come.

New Orleans City Council President J. P. Morrell brought greetings from the city, saying “we should all look to our neighbors as brothers and sisters.” He added, “To witness history as two Holocaust survivors lend their hands to rebuilding this Survivor Torah on Holocaust Survivor Day is incredibly profound.”

District A Councilman Joseph Giarrusso III also attended the ceremony.

Surprise Find

Daniels started From The Depths a decade ago, “with the aim of helping the younger generation know a little bit more about the Holocaust.”

He explained that there had been more Jewish cemeteries in Poland than in the United States and Israel combined, 1,300 in all, and most were destroyed in the war. Tombstones were taken and used as building material in roads, even in constructing the Warsaw Zoo.

One of the foundation’s programs, the Matzeva Project, recruits volunteers to go to small villages throughout Poland to find gravestones that had been repurposed, and recover them if possible.

Sometimes, the visits had surprises. At one home, he recalled, the owner told the volunteers that a tree out back was where four Jews had been buried. “The people who were living here were killed, and they were buried right there,” the resident explained. “We didn’t know what to do, they are still there.”

Five years ago, University of Warsaw students Joanna Kopacka and Bartek Krzyżewski were going door to door in the northern village of Filipow, a town of 1,800. They came to the home of Kazimierz Wróblewski, an elderly shepherd, who said he did not know of any stones, but he seemed to get quite nervous. Eventually, his wife came into the room and told him to “tell them.”

The shepherd was seven years old when the war started, and he remembered watching through the window as the town’s Jews were rounded up, including his neighbor, the rabbi. His father pulled him from the window and told him not to watch, then some moments later, there was a pounding at the door.

It turned out to be the rabbi, who gave the boy’s father a bundle and said “look after this until I come back, or another Jew will come to look for it.”

The rabbi never came back, nor did any of the town’s roughly 280 Jewish residents, who had been sent to Treblinka.

Wroblewski did not give the students any details about the bundle or show it to them, since neither student was Jewish. The students then contacted Daniels, who went to the house, and Wroblewski told him “I’ve been waiting for you for 75 years.”

“That was incredibly powerful,” Daniels reflected.

The shepherd went to his couch, lifted it up, and Daniels retrieved the bundle from the floor. Inside was a partial Torah scroll that had been hidden there since 1939. His wife was the only other person who knew about it, and he said he held on to it all those years because he thought it was the right thing to do. He also told Daniels that if he died, “my son would probably have found it and thrown it in the bin.”

Over the 75 years, though, he had used some of the “good material” during especially hard times, to make a bag for his wife, insoles for wornout shoes. “He didn’t do it out of malice, he didn’t know better,” Daniels said.

At the end of the visit, the shepherd asked him to exit through the back door, so his neighbors would not notice.

The experience brought home to Daniels the connection the Jewish people has to the Torah, whether religious or not. “We are the people of the Book. That’s the Book.”

He knew “we had this incredible opportunity to bring this Torah back… it deserves to be spoken about, it deserves to be shown, it deserves to be used,” and decided that Holocaust survivors should be the ones involved in restoring the scroll.

Daniels started taking the scroll around the world, but he said there are at least 100,000 letters left, and “I’m one person and we’re a foundation” that has to fundraise constantly. “We’ll do the best we can,” he said, especially as the community of Holocaust survivors shrinks due to old age.

The project had to stop for over three years because of the pandemic, and because of the war in Ukraine, where the foundation is heavily involved. The foundation helped in getting over 20,000 Jews out of Ukraine, including many Holocaust survivors, and also facilitated the escape of some Righteous Among the Nations.

The foundation also brings Congressional representatives to concentration camps and other historic sites. Alabama Rep. Barry Moore was recently on one of those trips.

Daniels has spent a lot of time in Canada with the scroll, and Florida has “been unbelievable, you can imagine how many survivors are there.” A visit to a community often leads to other communities learning about the project and bringing him in, or finding other Holocaust survivors in an area where he has already been. “I’ll drive anywhere to meet survivors,” he said.

Before New Orleans, he had spent a week in Mexico City and surrounding areas, meeting with 11 survivors, and before that he was in Toronto, Canada. The New Orleans connection came through Robert French, the new CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, who Daniels has known since childhood. “Robert’s nephew was my best friend, growing up in London,” he said.

French, a newcomer to the community, said he saw Levy’s talk at the community Holocaust commemoration, and knew that he had to bring Daniels to town.

Daniels said the Torah is “a positive story from a horrendous time.”