New Life Exhibition

Henryk Schönker and his Grandson, Ori

(Photo by Hamutal Davidl)

On May 5, I was in Poland and had the great pleasure of attending the opening of the latest exhibition at the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim, which is an affiliate of our Museum. Entitled, New Life, the exhibition is a photographic tribute to Holocaust survivors from Oświęcim, Poland who live in Israel today. The exhibition illustrates the continuation of Jewish life after the Holocaust in the context of those who found a “new life” in Israel.

Through images and testimony, New Life tells the powerful story of the triumph of life in the face of overwhelming devastation.  The exhibition presents 19 contemporary photographs of Jews born in Oświęcim who are now living in Israel with their descendants.  The photographs are accompanied by text panels with personal stories of survival, the subjects’ return to Oświęcim after the Holocaust, and life in Israel. 

A documentary film with former Jewish residents of Oświęcim, along with their children and grandchildren, expressing their feelings about their hometown, Poland, and life in Israel is also featured in the exhibit

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Visitors at the Exhibition 

(Photo curtesy of Auschwitz Jewish Center)

Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow

Ernst Borinski teaching at Tougaloo College, MS, CA 1960.

(Photo courtesy Tougaloo College Archives and The Mississippi Department of Archives and History)

Last night, we opened our latest special exhibition, Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges. It was a very warm event with former students, and the families of professors, from the colleges represented in the exhibition in attendance. The exhibition examines the relationships that were forged between Jewish refugee professors from Germany and Austria and their students at the historically black colleges in the south, where they taught.

Here are some excerpts from my welcoming remarks:

I welcome you warmly to the Museum this evening and to the opening of this extraordinary exhibition, Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges. I have said before that exhibitions are a museum’s unique contribution to the cultural life of this city, and so it is always exciting for me to welcome our supporters and colleagues to an opening. Exhibitions are what museums do that no other institutions do, and we are justly proud this evening of what we offer you.

It is not often in this Museum that we can open an exhibition that tells a happy and uplifting story. To be sure, the context of the story of this exhibition is anything but happy, but the story, itself, is both positive and inspirational. It is the story of teaching and learning and their life-changing power. It is the story of exile and empathy, of the common experience of discrimination shared by students and their teachers, and of the uncommon bond that was forged between them.

Of course, when we first started work on this exhibition several years ago, no one could have predicted that it would open on the 101^st day of the first term of the first African-American president of the United States. Surely our country has advanced in some far-reaching ways since the time period of this exhibition. I am certain that I am not alone in attributing that progress at least in some small way to the values that animated the remarkable relationships that are the focus of the exhibition that we open this evening.

Dr. Joyce Ladner, former President of Howard University and graduate of Tougaloo College, in the Exhibition.

(photo by Melanie Einzig)

Yom Hashoah

Hsinju Lin and Yenming Chen in the Museum (photo by Melanie Einzig)

Here are the short remarks I delivered at the Museum's staff and volunteer Yom Hashoah commemoration:

I had a professor in college who used to point out the paradox that people would gather together to carry out an essentially private act – learning. "You can only learn by yourself," he said, "yet you come together to learn." You come together to be alone. This conceit made an impression on me at the time, and I am always reminded of it on Yom Hashoah each year. We gather together so we can be intensely alone – alone with our thought, our prayers, our memories.

There is another kind of paradox today, and that is we observe this day at the Museum by doing what we do every day – commemorate and teach about the Holocaust. Of all people, one could argue, we do not need a special day to remind us of what we do every day. I would argue just the opposite. We need it just as much as anyone else. Perhaps more. We need it to remind us and to inspire us. And we have chosen a way to mark this day that speaks so powerfully to what we are as an institution. As our visitors walk through the Museum’s galleries on this Yom HaShoah, they will encounter survivors, who will talk about their objects – bringing life to them and to their memories.

Of all of the Yom Hashoah events around the world – in their manifold approaches – candles, music, political speeches, survivor testimonies, the reading of names -- our small one, right here, for our family, has the most meaning for me. I can’t imagine any other group I would rather be alone with.

The Visit of the Cardinals

Dr. Bernard Lander,  Cardinal Vingt-Trois, DGM

(AP Photo/Museum of Jewish Heritage and Touro College, Diane Bondareff)

I have already written several time about Father Patrick Desbois and his important work.  Our exhibition, The Shooting of Jews in Ukraine: Holocaust by Bullets, closed today.  Among its last visitors was a delegation of Catholic leaders, who were shown through the exhibition by Father Desbois.  The delegation, led by the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Vingt-Trois, included a number of Cardinals and Bishops, primarily from France, who came to New York to visit the Museum and meet with Jewish leaders.  

Here is an excerpt from my welcoming remarks:

When Father Patrick Desbois called me several weeks ago and announced that he would like to bring a group of high church officials to the Museum, I immediately said yes.  After all, it was here in the Museum, in 2005, that Father Desbois first described to the Jewish world the full scope of his undertaking –locating and identifying the graves of Jews murdered by the Germans in Ukraine during the  Holocaust.  And it was it was the Museum that became the first American venue to host the remarkable exhibition that details Father Desbois’s work. 

I immediately said yes because we have always sought a close connection with the Catholic Church, indeed John Cardinal O’Connor spoke at the dedication of our Museum and forged our connection with the schools of the Archdiocese, stating that it was his desire that every student from every Catholic school visit the Museum.  And since then, thousands of Catholic students and their teachers have come to the Museum and learned about a painful and difficult history. They have learned about this history because people like Cardinal O’Connor – and Father Desbois -- recognized that, to become a good man or woman, to become a good citizen, to become a good Catholic, one must learn about and learn from perhaps the darkest moment in human history.

And so, we welcome this group of distinguished leaders to our Museum as we continue to carry out our crucial mission.  And we welcome them at a particularly painful moment as we try to absorb the still stinging news that a reinstated Church leader, Bishop Richard Williamson, has publicly denied a history that any recent graduate of a New York Archdiocese school knows to be true and irrefutable. 

We welcome our guests knowing that, by their visit, they send an undeniable message to all that there is no room for Williamson’s message, or that of others like him, in the hearts and minds of good men and women, of good citizens of the world. 

Speaking before the press after touring the exhibition, Cardinal Vingt-Trois made a very strong statement on the subject of Holocaust denial:

Let this be another opportunity to recall -- whether the time is right or not -- that being a Catholic is radically incompatible with denying the Holocaust, and that recent statements have caused suffering among our Jewish brothers as well as among many Catholics.

The Boss

Robert M. Morgenthau and David G. Marwell 

(Photo by Melanie Einzig)

We learned last week that Robert M. Morgenthau, the Chairman of the Museum, has decided not to seek reelection and will step down as District Attorney of New York County (Manhattan) at the end of his ninth term in December.  The Boss (as he is called), who will turn 90 in July, has been a remarkable force in New York public life for more than four decades, serving first as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York  under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. President Nixon threatened to fire him when the Boss wouldn't step down explaining that he still had important work to do.  He was elected DA following the death of the legendary Frank Hogan, who had held the record for having served  as DA for the longest period until the Boss overtook him early last year.  He made of the DA's office a creative and relentless force that contributed to making New York City a safer and fairer place to live.  He devoted his efforts and resources not only to combating crime in the streets but also in the suites, taking on white collar crooks with same kind of gusto that he employed in going after the mob.  He extended the reach of his office far beyond the island of Manhattan, and legions of his former Assistant DA's have occupied judges' chambers and law firm offices around the country for decades.  

I first met Morgenthau when he interviewed me for the Museum director position in the fall of 2000, and I quickly realized that getting to know him and work with him would be the most rewarding part of my job.  Over the past eight and a half years, I have spoken to him every week (sometimes every day) and meet with him regularly.  From the very beginning, I learned that the Boss has what I have called "exquisite instincts" -- he senses the solution to  a problem or the right path to take and is confident in these instinctive judgments.  I also learned that one will underestimate him at their peril.  In a recent interview in Jewish Week, Leslie Crocker Schneider, who challenged Morgenthau in the last election -- and was trounced -- intimates that he is no longer entirely with it.  She could not be more wrong.  I was at a meeting with him on the day the article appeared, and he was as sharp as ever.

I will admit that, when I learned that he was not running again, I was a bit concerned. But upon reflection, and after speaking with him, I feel much better.  I know that he is in good health and completely at ease with his decision and I know that he will continue to work hard for the Museum.  My colleagues and I wish him the very best and look forward to working with him for many years to come.

   

My thoughts on The Reader

A lot of ink -- and gigabytes -- have  been devoted to Steven Daldry's film, The Reader, which is up for a number of Oscars, including Best Picture.  Much of what has been written is full of praise, while some is seething in its criticism.  Perhaps the most vehement example of the latter is the Slate article by Ron Rosenbaum, which accuses The Reader of Holocaust revisionism because, he alleges, it means to "exculpate Nazi-era Germans from knowing complicity in the Final Solution." Perhaps I saw a different film, but the one I saw had nothing in it to justify Rosenbaum's attack.   

I am uncomfortable even characterizing The Reader as a film about the Holocaust.  It is rather a film about post-war Germany and the generation of Germans born after the war (or who were young children at the end of the war).   No one can claim that this generation had any first-hand knowledge of the war or war crimes, and they certainly could not rely on their parents to provide full disclosure.  In the early years of the Federal Republic there were not the same efforts that have marked modern day Germany’s exemplary record of Holocaust education.  Following the early prosecutions of Nazi war criminals (at Nuremberg and elsewhere) and the end of denazification (both efforts effectively ended by the cold war), there was a period in the 1950’s when there was little discussion or public education about the crimes of WWII.  Rebuilding Germany (the scenes from the 1950’s in the film show constant construction) was the order of the day, and many had hoped that a final line had been drawn separating Germany's past from its present and future.  

Rather than a film that intends to teach about the Holocaust or even to portray Holocaust history, The Reader is about what happens when you love someone and discover that that person did horrible things. The film is about one generation learning about the crimes of another.  The only parts of the film that deal directly with the Holocaust are the trial scenes, which are certainly not intended to teach us Holocaust history.  What they do (and I think effectively) is frame the question of motivation and moral depth or lack of it.  No one, it seems to me, can watch this part of the film and come away with any sort of sympathy for the accused.  Hanna’s codefendants (unattractive figures all), conspire to set her up, and she offers, in the context of a criminal trial, an explanation of her actions which is absolutely devoid of moral consciousness. 

I have some first-hand experience with the themes of this film from earlier in my career.  During my time as the Director of the Berlin Document Center (BDC) – the late 1980’s and early 1990’s – the Holocaust was a topic taught in the schools and examined nearly every week in one television documentary or another.  Public knowledge about Nazi war crimes was widespread.  The depth of German responsibility for these crimes was broadly acknowledged.  As the keeper of the personnel-related records of the Nazi Party and its component organizations – including the SS – I occupied a curious position in the eyes of the German population.  I was the keeper of family secrets.  I had routine encounters with people of Bernard Schlink’s generation (and that of The Reader’s central character, Michael Berg) who sought me out to learn about their parents’ or grandparents’ possible membership in the SS or Nazi Party.  These were people who sought to come to terms with precisely the issues raised in the film – how to reconcile deep feelings of love for someone with deeply troubling knowledge (or fear) about that person’s past conduct. 

As a historian for the Office of Special Investigations (the Nazi war crimes unit of the Justice Department), I found myself one day, in 1985, in the office of Rolf Mengele (who has since changed his name) investigating the whereabouts of his father, Josef Mengele.  In a long conversation, young Mengele, voiced his own personal struggle.  He acknowledged his father’s crimes, but, at the same time, admitted an emotional connection to him. 

Now, I am certainly not suggesting that the young Mengele, or others in Schlink’s generation, deserve our sympathy, but we can certainly acknowledge that they have been confronted with a complex emotional challenge that was not of their making.  And we can appreciate serious attempts to give voice to this challenge in the form of novels and films without misrepresenting what they are and what they intend to do.  

Mendelssohn

We are all very excited about our upcoming concert featuring thirteen never-performed pieces by Felix Mendelssohn.  Mendelssohn, who was enormously popular during his lifetime, published only a small fraction of his work before his death at 38. There are a number of factors that explain the surprising fact there are literally hundreds of unpublished, unperformed, and unknown Mendelssohn pieces.

Stephen Somary, the founder of The Mendelssohn Project (www. TheMendelssohnProject.org), who has spent the past ten years trying to locate the unpublished manuscripts, explains that it was a combination of  Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic vitriol, which darkened Mendelssohn's name and reputation, the banning of Mendelssohn by the Nazis, and, most important, the dispersal of his unpublished manuscripts during the war to the far corners of the earth.   It took Somary's painstaking research and evident passion to track them down. 

It is thrilling to think that we will have the opportunity -- for the first time ever -- to  listen to works composed more than a 160 years ago by one of the greats.  Obviously such a concert calls for great artists, and we will deliver.  The Shanghai Quartet will perform along with pianists, Anna Polonsky and Orion Weiss, and singers, Abigail Nims and Kevin Deas.