Priest Receives Award for Uncovering and Documenting Nazi Atrocities in the Ukraine

by Education Coordinator - Donna Walter

As the IHE announces the winners of the Tribute to the Rescuers essay contest on moral courage, we would like to call your attention to Fr. Patrick Desbois who recently received the 2013 Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award in Houston, Texas.

Desbois, a Catholic priest, is president of Yahad-In Unum.  This organization is devoted to searching out undiscovered mass graves of Jewish and Roma victims of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.  Desbois’ grandfather was a French soldier during Word War II and was imprisoned in the Ukrainian Rawa Ruska prison camp. His grandfather’s only mention of that time was to say “others had it worse.” A photograph of men and women in Bergen Belsen taught Desbois who the “others” were and what “worse” meant…

In a 2002 visit to Ukraine, Desbois was shocked to learn that there were no memorials or other indicators of the atrocities that had taken place there. With the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Germans in June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen (Nazi mobile killing units) began their massacre of 1.5 million Jews in Eastern Europe. These units slaughtered entire villages in a matter of hours.

Few survivors were left to tell stories. Desbois’ organization has helped identify more than 800 hidden mass grave sites containing more than 2,000 mass graves.  Desbois uses archival information from Germany, the former Soviet Union, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to aid his investigations.

Yahad-In Unum has recovered artifacts from sites and more importantly has recorded video testimony from eyewitnesses. Father Desbois has devoted his life to researching the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism, and furthering relations between Catholic and Jews.

Fr. Patrick Desbois certainly is exhibiting moral courage in his quest to uncover the truth of those dark days in Eastern Europe and in his message to those who commit genocide, “…sooner or later, wherever the mass murder of humans has taken place, someone will return.”

Holocaust speakers in Wahoo make impression on students

By Kris Byars and Kelsi Martin
WORLD-HERALD NEWS SERVICE

WAHOO, Neb. — Inge Auerbacher was just a child when her family first felt the effects of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

Before Hitler came to power, Auerbacher said, Christians and Jews lived comfortably side-by-side in her hometown of Kippenheim, in southern Germany near the Black Forest.

That changed as the Third Reich consolidated power.

Eventually Auerbacher and her parents were shipped to a Czech concentration camp, where they spent three years. Her grandmother died in another camp.

Auerbacher, 78, now of Jamaica, N.Y., and another Holocaust survivor, Kitty Williams of Council Bluffs, on Wednesday shared their stories with southeast Nebraska students.

During presentations at Wahoo High School, the auditorium was silent despite the hundreds of students who filled the seats.

Wahoo Public High School hosted the event, and five schools sent students to watch the two presentations in person. Twelve more schools participated using distance-learning technology.

Auerbacher recalled standing in a Jewish shop in 1938 after the infamous Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass.” Over the course of two nights, Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, the windows were shattered at shops and businesses owned by Jewish citizens.

For the rest of this story, click here.

Holocaust survivors will speak to Nebraska students

By Kevin Cole
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Two Holocaust survivors will visit Nebraska this week with a sense of urgency.

Both children during the Nazi occupation, Inge Auerbacher and Agnes Schwartz are among the few survivors left to recount the slaughter of 6 million Jews.

When they tell their stories Wednesday in Wahoo and beyond, they are doing more than offering a history lesson.

They ask the children with whom they speak to become storytellers, to relay their messages of suffering and hope to future generations.

Inge Auerbacher at 4 years old

Auerbacher, 78, of New York City and Schwartz, 79, of Chicago will talk about their World War II experiences in separate appearances at the Wahoo Performance Learning Center. Auerbacher will speak in Wahoo during a 90-minute morning session, and Schwartz will talk at an afternoon session.

“I am putting my heart and soul into this, because I don’t want the Holocaust to be repeated,” Schwartz said by phone. “I hope the children learn not to hate because of color or race, and that they also learn not to let anyone deny that the Holocaust ever happened, because they will have met somebody who was there.”

For the rest of this story, click here.

Art's beauty teaches kids about ugly history

By Erin Grace
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Omaha World-Herald

She paused, first, to listen. Then 11-year-old Marie Powers dipped her paintbrush into blue tempera and dragged a diagonal line across a white canvas.

Across the room sat four men from the Boston Symphony, who earlier had filled this downtown Omaha warehouse with haunting, mournful music. Now they were playing a fast, frightening piece about a tarantula, and Marie and her paintbrush tried to keep up.

It was near the end of a series of lessons on the Holocaust this fall for children from the Boys and Girls Clubs. They had toured a Holocaust photography exhibit at the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, Neb. They had learned about conditions at the Terezín concentration camp in the former Czechoslovakia. They had made camp scenes with torn construction paper and glue. They had kept journals and asked questions.

Now, on a Tuesday afternoon at Kaneko, the converted warehouse and arts center at 1111 Jones St. named for Omaha sculptor Jun Kaneko, Marie and 35 other children from the clubs in Carter Lake, Council Bluffs and Westside Community Schools were trying to replicate what they had just viewed. The string quartet had played a piece written in the Theresienstadt concentration camp by a composer who later was gassed at Auschwitz. As they played, landscape artist Jim Schantz quickly painted a canvas to mirror the dizzying, melancholic music.

To read the rest of this story, please click here.

Library Exhibit Tells of Wartime Escape of "Curious George" Creators

A free exhibit telling the story of the creators of the “Curious George” series opens October 17 at the Bennett Martin Public Library, 136 S. 14th Street in Lincoln. The Wartime Escape: Margret and H.A. Rey’s Journey from France tells of the Reys escape from the Nazi invasion of Paris at the start of World War II. Lincoln City Libraries also is planning several events in connection with the exhibit, which will be on display through November 21.

For more on this exhibit curated by Beth Dotan, Executive Director of the Institute for Holocaust Education, please click here.

KIOS will air Ruth Rosenfeld's testimony Monday, July 30

Born in Wadowice, Poland, Ruth Rosenfeld was orphaned before the age of three. She has previously explained her early childhood during the Holocaust as follows:

“We remained in the ghetto until August 1943 when the Germans liquidated the ghetto. As the aktion [round up] began, my father Arik hid with Halinka [my sister] and me in a small space he had created in the attic of a building. It was extremely hot in the attic and we had to remain absolutely quiet. I don’t know why my mother, Sala, did not go into hiding with us. Instead, my mother, my grandmother Renee, my grandfather David, my Aunt Rosa, and my Uncle Aaron were taken to Auschwitz where they were murdered.”

Ruth Rosenfeld and her sister Halinka (Helen) survived the Nazi horrors by each hiding with a different Christian family who put their own lives in jeopardy to care for the girls. She recalled being hidden in attics, under floorboards, and in barrels of poppy seeds to elude the Nazis. In 1949, after spending three years in a number of orphanages, Ruth and her sister were brought to America and placed with an adoring adoptive family.

Ruth, who married Dr. Gerald Rosenfeld in 1962, has three children and six grandchildren. She has been a volunteer for many communal organizations in her home state of New Jersey including Monmouth Mental Health Services. She also served as president of the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County. Ruth received the Hanna Solomon Award from National Council of Jewish Women as the founder of “Project Understanding” which is a dialogue group between Arabs and Jews.

In 2010, Ruth and her family traveled to Poland to take part in a ceremony recognizing her rescuer, Julia Wala, as a Righteous Among the Nations. Ruth spoke in Omaha in April, 2012 to commemorate Yom HaShoah.

After 58 years at Nebraska Furniture Mart, salesman and Holocaust survivor retires

By Michael Kelly
WORLD-HERALD COLUMNIST

With the memorable name Jack Diamond, a salesman at the Nebraska Furniture Mart greeted thousands of customers in a career that ended Tuesday — after 58 years.

He worked on the sales floor, not in the front office, but you could call him the company’s “chairman.” He sold countless chairs, recliners and sofas.

Does he have any idea how many?

“I do not have any idea,” Jack said, “but I know one idea: All the years I am here, I didn’t build up any enemies. Customers are friends who come back to me, and I am proud of that.”

Though he’s an icon at a place that calls itself “America’s largest home furnishings store,” the back story of Jack Diamond has been mostly unknown to generations of customers.

A Holocaust survivor in Poland who lived in a forest and at times ate grass to stay alive, he and his wife arrived in Omaha in 1949. He used his original name back then, “Dimenstein,” later Americanized to “Diamond.”

For the rest of this story, please click here.

Winners of the 10th Annual Tribute to the Rescuers Essay Contest

On April 30^th the Institute for Holocaust Education hosted the 10^th Annual Tribute to the Rescuers Essay Contest Awards Ceremony. Attended by approximately 60 students, community members, teachers and supporters, the ceremony highlighted the importance of continuing Holocaust education and of teaching and applying its lessons to society today. The essay contest is a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League. Support from the Carl Frohm Foundation makes this program possible and Linda and Harold  Mann, Trustees of the Frohm Foundation, presented the awards to the students.

Using the concept of moral courage - defined as the ability to take a strong stance on a specific issue and to defend it based on one’s personal beliefs or convictions regardless of danger or threats to personal safety - the students researched and applied their new information of historical figures and events to demonstrate their understanding of moral courage. Their essays included a reflection on how these stories are meaningful in their own lives.  Essayists related their own experiences and concerns about issues such as racism, homophobia, gender bias, bullying, oppressive regimes and terrorism — issues that many adults are uncomfortable addressing.

This year’s contest drew an overwhelming response of 650 entries from throughout the United States and Canada.

The winners were as follows:
9th-10th Grade Category
First Place: Sara Cohen, Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart, Omaha, NE
Second Place: Brittany Johnson, Burke High School, Omaha, NE
Third Place: Valerie Aguilar, Burke High School, Omaha, NE

11th-12th Grade Category

First Place: Nyakim Chuol, Central High School, Omaha, NE

Second Place: Alan Donham, Central High School, Omaha, NE

Third Place: Paige Nussrallah, Central High School, Omaha, NE

Honorable mentions:

9th-10th Grade Category

Mallory Rogers, Burke High School, Omaha, NE

11th-12th Grade Category

Margaret Eliason, V.J. & Angela Skutt Catholic High School, Omaha, NE

Tabitha Panas, Central High School, Omaha, NE

Teacher recognition awards included:

Dawn Nielsen, Blair High School, Blair, NE

Jen Stastny, Central High School, Omaha, NE

Stephanie Daniels, V.J. & Angela Skutt Catholic High School, Omaha, NE

Deron Larson, Central High School, Omaha, NE

Sherri Hoye, V.J. & Angela Skutt Catholic High School, Omaha, NE

According to Institute for Holocaust Education Executive Director, Beth Dotan, while all of the winning entries this year were excellent, the top winner of each category became evident during the early rounds of judging.

Nyakim Chuol of Central High School wrote beautifully and movingly about her own experience as a refugee in Sudan. Relating her story to the Holocaust to inform her readers about moral courage, Nyakim wrote, “The chaotic waves of life that come and go may sometimes blind us and over-complicate our roles and duties towards one another, but sometimes all that is needed in a situation is someone who will stop just for a moment and see what is going on in the world around them, someone who will listen to the voices both around and inside of them and not end there, but run after the sound their moral drum instructs them to. It truly is in those instances that some of the world’s most righteous men and women are revealed.”

 Sara Cohen, a student at Duschene Academy, related her experiences as a friend to differently-abled students and how that manifested itself in the eyes of her teachers in elementary school. Sara explained the complexities of understanding moral courage referencing Janusz Korczak, “when Korczak honorably led his famous four-to-a-row procession [of orphaned children] down the ghetto street to the Umschlagplatz, into the train, and ultimately to death, he wasn’t thinking about himself. He was thinking of the children–garbed with their finest dress clothes, miniscule heads held high–the children who displayed no ounce of fear, even when staring directly into the eyes of their oppressors. For this reason, for the duration of the last hours of his life Janusz Korczak stood proud. His own small act of resistance showed the Nazis that even though they were slowly killing off the Jews, their courage and confidence would last eternally.”

The essay contest’s 10^th year brought with it not only the most entries in its history, but also some of the most sophisticated writing and more variety in examples moral courage.

Executive Director of IHE recognized for work

On June 5^th, 2012, the Women’s Center for Advancement recognized Beth Dotan, Executive Director of the Institute for Holocaust Education for her outstanding achievements in the Omaha community.

The 25^th Anniversary Tribute to Women luncheon celebrated six women of the greater Omaha area who have contributed significantly to the community.

The 2012 nominees were chosen from a distinguished list of nominees on the basis of residing or working in the Greater Omaha Metropolitan area, achievement and impact, involvement in community activities and a demonstrated commitment to helping women and their families build lives of strength, growth and self-sufficiency.

Eichmann trial anniversary brings prosecutor to face lost childhood

By Cnaan Liphshiz · May 29, 2012

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Gabriel Bach knew he was Jewish and that the Nazis were a serious threat, but at 13, leaving his new school and home in Amsterdam proved heartwrenching.

What if, the boy wondered, he could stay just a few more weeks to finish the academic year?

Bach would come to powerfully understand the answer to his query. About two decades later he was the prosecutor in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the annihilation of European Jewry.

More on this story

KIOS to air lecture of Justice Gabriel Bach

In September of 2011, Justice Gabriel Bach, lead prosecutor in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, spoke in Omaha. His lecture will be aired in two parts during the noon forum on KIOS, Monday, April 30 and Tuesday, May 1.

For more information on Justice Bach’s visit, please click here.

2012 Nebraska State Holocaust Commemoration

On Sunday, April 15 at the Nebraska State Capitol Rotunda in Lincoln, local leaders and community members took part in the 2012 Nebraska State Holocaust Commemoration Ceremony.  With about 200 people in attendance, newly appointed UNL professor of history, Gerald Steinacher, provided the key note. His address was a personal reflection – his story as a person of Viennese heritage who begins to learn about and ultimately teach and write about the Holocaust.  Steinacher’s book, Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice, published by Oxford University Press, was recently selected as recipient of the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category.  

For more on this story, please click here.

NHEC members respond to congressional campaign of Holocaust denier

Recently the Omaha World-Herald ran a shortened version of an editorial regarding the failed Illionois congressional campaign of Arthur Jones. The following is the editorial in full.

With Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) fast approaching, we feel it is necessary to respond to the recent congressional campaign of Illinois candidate, Arthur Jones.

Denying the truth of the Holocaust is a wrenching insult to those who survived the atrocities, those who perished amidst the turmoil and those who gave their own lives to bring an end to the persecution of Jews, Roma, and millions of other individuals seen as unfit in World War II. Unfortunately, those who speak loudest and most ridiculously also help explain how the unfathomable truth of the Holocaust occurred in the first place and support the cause for renewed efforts to study history and what it can tell us about who we are today.

Arthur Jones was a 2012 Republican candidate seeking election to the U.S. House representing the 3^rd Congressional District of Illinois.  Jones was defeated by Richard Grabowski in the Republican primary on March  20, 2012.

“As far as I’m concerned, the Holocaust is nothing more than an international extortion racket by the Jews,” Jones said. “It’s the blackest lie in history. Millions of dollars are being made by Jews telling this tale of woe and misfortune in books, movies, plays and TV. The more survivors, the more lies that are told.”

Today, Holocaust deniers in foreign nations make some of us shake our heads in disbelief, but when such a person, in our own country where freedom and equality are treasured gifts, attempts to rise in power, we must do more than look on in numb disbelief.

The Nebraska Holocaust Educators Consortium would like to lend our support to those voters in the 3rd District who have spoken in favor of education over ignorance. We applaud you who join in the study and conversation of reason and compassion to make America a knowledgeable, understanding and accepting haven. One where our children are raised with a clear understanding of the past in order to reason through the present and to make a difference in the future.

When we study the Holocaust, we develop an understanding and awareness of the warning signs and factors that allow and even encourage violence in thoughts and actions culminating in genocide. Allowing deniers of the Holocaust to go unchallenged is the penultimate red flag being raised in a country where our grandfathers, fathers, service men and women fought and died for the cause of peace, justice, and the end to the insatiable hatred. We must not let revisionists succeed in trivializing or denying the atrocities that took place in Europe. Hatred and ignorance cannot win where Americans still believe in freedom and equality.

During the first week of March , over 3,500 Nebraska students and community members from Omaha and Lincoln - to rural communities across the state - heard survivors and their liberators give personal testimony of their eye witness accounts from the Holocaust.  We will continue to provide these opportunities as long as possible as assurance to not silence the voices of those who were there. We encourage anyone who seeks truth to also seek opportunities to broaden their understanding so they can distinguish foolishness from Fact.  Then, we can use the past to bring light to current issues.

 -Members of the Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium

Holocaust survivors share their harrowing stories with area students

Bea Karp (right), Holocaust survivor, answers audience questions following her presentation Wednesday morning at Wahoo High School. Around 450 students from across eastern Nebraska attended the event in Wahoo or via digital broadcast. (Chris Bristol, Fremont Tribune)

By Tammy Real-McKeighan/News Editor FremontTribune.com

She’s a small woman.

So when she spoke to students gathered at Wahoo High School, Bea Karp had to stand on a wooden platform to reach the podium.

But the tiny woman had a powerful story. A Holocaust survivor whose parents died in Auschwitz, Karp was a child when the Nazis took over Germany. She witnessed Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) in Germany, the suffering of a forced labor camp and the heartbreak of losing beloved family members.

Karp, who lives in Omaha, was one of two survivors, who along with two camp liberators, spoke Wednesday during Week of Understanding outreach activities sponsored by the Institute for Holocaust Education in Wahoo. Students from Wahoo and several area schools filled the school auditorium, while those from several other northeast Nebraska schools viewed presentations via satellite video.

For the rest of the story, click here.

Keeping His Promise

By Julie Anderson
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

It’s not an easy talk for Robbie Waisman to give.

He usually has to lie down for a while afterward. In fact, it took him 30 years to talk about it at all, beyond explaining to the woman who would become his wife why he might not make a loving husband and father.

Still, he talks. It’s his passion. And it keeps the promise he made to a voice that spoke out of the darkness one night in a German concentration camp barracks and urged the younger prisoners to tell the world what happened there.

For the rest of the story, please click here.

KIOS to air testimony of Robbie Waisman

Monday, December 19, 2011 at 12 PM, KIOS will air the testimony of Robbie Waisman. Mr. Waisman is a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp and shared his testimony last April at the Durham Western Heritage Museum. Mr. Waisman will visit Omaha again in 2012 for the Week of Understanding - a project to provide survivor testimony to middle and high school students.

Emmanuel Habimana shares his testimony

On Thursday, December 1, 2011, the Institute for Holocaust Education hosted survivor of Rwandan genocide, Emmanuel Habimana, at the Jewish Community Center in Omaha. Many in attandance to hear Habimana’s testimony left with a deeper undertsanding of and connection to survivors of genocides.

Survivor of Rwandan Genocide, Emmanuel Habimana, speaks with Holocaust survivor, Bea Karp.

Emmanuel Habimana with Eadie Tsbari and Ellie Batt who were in attendance for Habimana’s testimony.

Habimana sharing his testimony.

A Holocaust survivor's story

Adam Klinker/World-Herald News Service

This is the story Beatrice Karp shared with sixth-graders in Sara Wheeler’s class at Karen Western Elementary School in Ralston:

Growing up in the countryside near Karlsruhe, Germany, in the early and mid-1930s, her early childhood was normal, even idyllic, living with her parents, a younger sister, her grandmother and an uncle.

“Then, suddenly, I knew something was very wrong,” Karp said. “My uncle used to come home from the university and I could hear arguments about whether to leave Germany or not. My father would say he couldn’t believe anybody would do something like that to the Jewish people. He also said, ‘I am a German. My family has been living here since the 16th century.’”

More on this story … 

NHEC Educators Recognized

Becky McLaughlin and Erin DeHart, Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium (NHEC) teachers, were each recognized in their districts as Outstanding Educators by the Nebraska State Council for the Social Studies (NSCSS).

McLaughlin teaches Social Studies at Lincoln High. This year she was appointed department head at Lincoln High. She has been a member of the Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium since she arrived in Nebraska. Please see her web page for additional information. http://lhs.lps.org/profile.html?username=rmclaug2.

McLaughlin earned her B.A. in History from Roanoke College in Virginia and her MAED in Curriculum and Instruction from Virginia Tech. She is Nationally Board Certified and has been teaching high school social studies for the past nine years. Becky has been fortunate enough to participate in multiple Holocaust education workshops including two experiences as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Erin DeHart is on the faculty at York College and has instilled a passion for teaching social studies and language arts to hundreds of students. Erin has a special interest in integrating Holocaust education to her curriculum. She has participated in numerous university level seminars including the National Writing Project, seminar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Labor Committee trip to Poland and Israel. She has escorted numerous college students to Washington DC. Erin is presently working on her Ed.D at UNL. More information about Erin can be found on this link:
http://www.york.edu/academics/faculty/eed.asp. Erin is a member of  the National Writing Project and the Nebraska Writing Project.

Bob Cohen - Volunteer of the Year

Beth Seldin Dotan, Director, Institute for Holocaust Education, is thrilled to honor Bob as Volunteer of the Year. “His time and devotion to Holocaust survivors in our community is immeasurable and we cannot thank Bob enough for the quiet and priceless service he provides on our Governance Council,” said Dotan. Cohen has served on the Institute’s Board for more than five years. He chaired 2007’s Kristallnacht event at the Joslyn Museum and the 2010 Yom Ha Shoah observance at Temple Israel. But, the hours of volunteer time devoted to the reparation needs of Omaha survivors is perhaps, his greatest gift. He has worked with Beit Tzedek Legal Services for Holocaust Survivors and connected Kutak-Rock offices outside Omaha to Beit Tzedek to further pro-bono legal assistance for local Holocaust survivors.