Perfect Storm

The impact of Irene was predicted to be especially threatening for us – arguably one of the most vulnerable buildings in lower Manhattan.  Meetings at Battery Park City Authority on Friday morning  imparted the warning of an 8 to 12 foot surge combined with the effects of heavy rain, high tide, and a full moon, which led us to take significant precautions against the storm.

Sandbags headed for the harborside door

Museum Staff de-installing artifacts in Core Exhibition

We deployed sandbags at the most threatened points of the building. We de-installed the first floor of the core exhibition, moved all electronics (including security x-ray machines) from the first floor, relocated stock from the floor of the book store, and secured the piano and all sensitive audio and lighting equipment  from Edmond J. Safra Hall.  To accomplish these major tasks, we closed the Museum at noon, and the entire staff pitched in.  On Saturday and during the storm itself, four colleagues from Security and Operations remained in the Museum to continue our preparations and mitigate any damage that we might sustain. 





Empty Case

I am pleased to report that, with the exception of some minor leaks on the 4^th floor of the Robert M. Morgenthau Wing and in the Rotunda Gallery in the original building, we had no damage and –notably – there was no infiltration of water on the first floor or in the basement.

On Monday, with concerted effort, we reversed the process we had engaged in on Friday, returned the Museum to working condition, and welcomed our first guests shortly after 10:00 am. 

Although most of our precautions turned out -- thankfully-- to be unneeded, they were a necessary and prudent response to the threat that was presented.  I am enormously proud of our staff for their herculean efforts over the past few days. They demonstrated once again that they are our most precious resource.

For her drama and restraint (in our case), Irene will remain in my memory as the perfect storm. 

Annual Gathering of Remembrance

Annual Gathering of Remembrance, Temple Emanu-El  (photo by Melanie Einzig)

Yesterday we held our annual Holocaust commemoration day with more than 2000 people in attendance.  The following are the remarks that I delivered:

Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, I welcome you to this annual gathering, where we assemble to be alone, where we join together to find solitude, where we find strength in our numbers to confront the lonely task of remembering.  A year has past since we last gathered here, and in this year the world has changed, our families have changed, we have changed.  One thing that remains constant, however, is our stone-like resolve to keep a place in our hearts and our minds that is reserved for our deepest reflection – a place to which we return each year to remember what we have lost – what we have lost as individuals and what we have lost as a community. 

Although it may be possible to identify the losses we have suffered personally and the losses that befell our families and mutilated our communities, no one can possibly quantify the vast potential that was denied our people and robbed from the world.  Today we mourn our private losses and we mourn our collective loss that grows in time as we consider generations that were never born, creativity that was never expressed, achievement that could never be realized.

Yet in this crowded place of solitude and memory, we reflect today not only on loss but also on the uplifting story of rebirth and renewal. As we look around us at this room, filled with more than 2000 people, we marvel at the exponential power of survival.  And we know that it belonged to the responsibility of those who survived and those who followed them to remember those who perished, to learn about the monstrous crime that was their murder, and to identify and bring to justice those who committed that crime.  And although that effort was incomplete and flawed, it is important that we recall it and that we recognize what was achieved.  And so today we reflect on the defeat of those who sought to destroy us and we recall the moments of Justice that punctuated the postwar period. 

This year, we note that sixty-five years have passed since the victorious allies placed the Nazi leaders in the dock at Nuremberg, and fifty years since the still young State of Israel, through a combination of chutzpah and heroics, delivered to the glass booth of justice Adolf Eichmann, the man who helped to organize the murder of its people.

Within months of the end of the war, with the earth still smoldering and the dimension of the destruction still undigested, the victors devised a code to judge the offences of their enemies – including crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.  Although imperfect, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg succeeded in documenting the deeds of the Nazis, preserving crucial records for future historians, and removing from the earth some of the perpetrators of those immense crimes.   Exactly 65 years and two weeks ago, those assembled in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg heard the testimony of the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess.  In a series of chillingly straightforward answers to simply posed questions, Hoess described the killing process at Auschwitz.  With his testimony and that of the others, the court and the rest of the world learned of the colossal crimes of the Holocaust.

Almost as an antidote, and certainly as a respite from the rigors of the trial and the horrors revealed there, the prosecutors and the staff of the tribunal attended a concert at the Nuremberg Opera house on May 7, 1946, one week less than 65 years ago.  On the program was an orchestra of ex-inmates of ghettoes and concentration camps, and among the performers was the dear mother of Rita Lerner, who has served as the co-chair of this commemoration for so many years.  Henny Durmashkin Gurko and her colleagues in the orchestra, dressed in striped uniforms, gave powerful and eloquent expression to their survival.   A sign stood before them on the stage and announced in Hebrew “Am Yisroel Chai.”

Exactly on this day, May 1^st, 50 years ago, in the theater that became a courtroom in Jerusalem, converted for the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a slim young man with thick dark hair took the witness stand.  In accented English he told the story of his experiences during the war and how he lost his mother, father, and all six of his siblings one by one.  Dr. Leon Wells of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who had also testified at Nuremberg and had been a teenager when the war began, told the court how among his many experiences, he had been forced to serve in a special unit that was sent to destroy the evidence of the Nazi crimes by digging up the mass graves and incinerating the bodies and crushing the bones to dust.

Despite this desperate attempt by the Germans to hide their crimes, the evidence survived, and despite their efforts to destroy Leon Wells and Henny Durmashkin Gurko, both survived to live long lives and give birth to children and to tell their stories.  Today we honor their memories as we honor the memories of the millions who perished, and we are mindful today that even if ultimate justice in the context of the Holocaust is not possible, the pursuit of justice in all things is not only worthy but is a sacred responsibility. 

Two Books

Two books which we were involved in arrived at the Museum last week, hot off the presses.  Last Folio: Textures of Jewish Life in Slovakia, published by Indiana University Press in record time --  less than two months -- accompanies our newest exhibition, which opened this week.  Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival, a wonderful cookbook by June Hersh and published by Ruder Finn, has been in the works for several years.  I was privileged to write introductory pieces for both books.  In reading them over this week in their published form, I was struck how, in such different projects, the theme of memory predominates.  Although I wrote them more than 18 months apart, I was struck by their similarities. Here they are:

Photographic Memory

I believe that it is most fitting that this exhibition of Yuri Dojc’s photographs should be inaugurated at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust – an institution that is dedicated to remembering those who perished in the Holocaust by celebrating their lives and exploring the legacy that they left.  Consequently, our narrative is devoted not to how Jews were killed, but rather to how they lived.  I can think of no better way to convey the tragic fate of Slovakian Jews, or to commemorate their lives, than to present these remarkable images.  Yuri Dojc has focused his camera-eye with exquisite care, offering us evidence of lives lived that evokes a heartrending history.  

Following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939, the independent state of Slovakia was established.  Closely allied with Nazi Germany and adopting its anti-Jewish policies, Slovakia was the very first country outside of Germany to deport its Jews.    The first transport left on March 26, 1942, a trainload of nearly 1000 young women.  There followed a succession of trains, nearly all to Auschwitz, which emptied Slovakia of almost three-quarters of its Jewish population within six months.   Among those who were taken were the boys who attended a school in Bardejov.  I cannot look at Yuri Dojc’s photographs of the abandoned books from that school without imagining the people who left them behind.  My mind’s eye can see these boys closing and kissing their sacred texts and placing them down for the last time before they left forever.  The photographs of these books, whose words once conjured worlds, show them as if they have turned to stone, frozen in the available light, petrified by the passing of time.  There is no question that they have a certain power over us, and it is not simply their undeniable beauty.  

While we have no way of knowing for sure, we can surmise that the last memories of the poor souls, who were torn from their lives by Slovak police and paramilitary, were populated with images of the kind that Dojc has captured – people, places, and things – the basic elements of life distilled.  In the bleak monotone of the cattle car and the sickening fear that engulfed them, one can imagine that they found comfort in calling upon such images of normal life.  Indeed, our memories can produce vivid pictures from our past – like photo albums -- that can link by reflection to other times.          

It should come as no surprise that when we think or talk about memory, we often resort to photographic metaphors.  After all, our memories are, for the most part, delivered to us as images that play in our minds.  Indeed, psychologists have tied certain memory phenomena explicitly to photography.  Consider eidetic or “photographic memory,” which describes the phenomenon of total visual recall, or “flashbulb memory,” which refers to vivid recollections of particularly meaningful experienced events (we all remember where we were on 9/11).  It is believed that, under certain circumstances -- often those associated with traumatic events -- memories can be fixed into a vivid photographic permanence. 

In the context of the trauma of the Holocaust, Dojc has delivered hauntingly beautiful images -- jewel-like tokens -- that link us by imagination to a lost world and time.  Somehow in looking at them, we can “remember” all they represent.  Our uniquely human capacity for empathy and understanding is triggered, and we are transported inward to a world that is animated by our collective memories.  As we look at these images of all that remained, we remember all that was lost. 

Preface

There is no doubt that memories of food and the social context of food -- preparing it and partaking of it-- are among the most potent that humans have.  One need not read Proust to understand the capacity for food to unlock powerful memories and to transport us through time.  Whatever explanation we seek – brain chemistry or something less clinical -- we have all experienced how an aroma or a particular flavor can take us to another place.  This meaningful and warmly written book -- Recipes Remembered -- is perfect proof of this phenomenon.  Here we see how individuals whose lives were disrupted or torn apart by the events of World War II and the Holocaust retain intense memories of the food they enjoyed in happier times.   It is as if food were the grain of sand around which pearls of memory were formed, enduring as tokens of a lost world and time.

We are so very pleased that June Hersh approached us with the proposal to write this book, and we were eager to cooperate in any way we could.  Of course, June deserves all of the credit for the delicious and diligent work that is reflected here, but I would like to think that her experience in our Museum inspired her to approach the complex and tragic history of the Holocaust through the individual stories of those who lived it.  Indeed, our visitors encounter the messages of our Museum through the personal narratives of the people who were lost and of those who survived to build new lives.  Rather than having an impersonal voice guide our visitors through our Museum, they are led from one personal story to another.  They relate to the history we teach by relating to the people who recount it.  In this same way, June has sought out engaging individuals, whose stories and memories connect us to a different time and whose examples of determination and survival are both deeply compelling and inspirational.

Of course, just as recollections of food populate the prewar memories of the people whose stories are told in these pages, memories of the absence of food often plague those who experienced the hardships of war and persecution.  In this sense, the memories—and recipes—revealed in this book have a special significance.   Not only do they link to happier times, but they are, in a way, also antidotes to the poisonous periods of anguish and deprivation.  One of the most powerful stories of our time remains how those who endured the worst –- unceasing hatred, unpredictable violence, unimaginable trauma—found the best in themselves and mustered the fortitude and resolve to choose life and to rebuild their lives.  Surely in this precarious and uniquely personal journey, they were strengthened along the way by warm memories of the kind that animate this book.

March 16

Excerpt from Document Reproduced in Justice Department Report on Mengele

Yesterday we held our 12th Annual Fanya Heller Conference for Educators on the subject, The Medical Profession and the Holocaust. The two hundred or so teachers had the opportunity not only to hear Fanya Heller discuss her own experience during the Holocaust, but also to listen to two scholars on the subject, Dr. William Meinecke from the USHMM and Dr. Michael Grodin from Boston University. We once again provided an opportunity for teachers in middle and high schools to have access to first-rate scholars on important subjects. This program, and other similar ones that we offer to educators from around the region, have earned us a well-deserved reputation for taking teachers seriously and providing them enriching experiences that they can pass on to their students.


As I was listening to one of the lectures, I reflected on the fact that today, March 16th, would have been Josef Mengele’s 100th birthday. As I have written before in this blog, I was actively engaged in the search for Mengele in 1985 and then in the investigation surrounding the identification of his remains. In 1985, we were looking for a 74 year old man – someone who by any actuarial standard would have had a good chance of still being alive at that time. Of course, we did not know that Mengele had already been dead for six years when the investigation went into high gear. He died just before his 68th birthday when he suffered a stroke while swimming in Bertioga, Brazil.

I suppose it was only natural to reflect on how we are on the cusp of new phase in our understanding of the Holocaust and in how we remember it.  Soon there will be no one left who has any personal memory of what transpired.  The world will rely on institutions like ours and symposia like the Fanya Heller Conference for Educators to preserve the memory and educate the public.

Hannah

Hannah Senesh Self-Portrait (Courtesy of the Senesh Family)

We opened our wonderful new Special Exhibition on Tuesday.  Here are my introductory remarks:

I want to welcome you to this opening celebration of our newest special exhibition, Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh. I am fond of saying that our Museum – a museum about 20th Century Jewish History and the Holocaust -- is much more about life than about death. This exhibition about hero and poet Hannah Senesh is perfect proof of that assertion. For many, Hannah’s death was the defining moment of her life. While this exhibition explains the circumstances surrounding her death, its center of gravity is her life – and what a life it was! Tragically cut short, but lived with commitment and purpose and meaning.

Surely this story could be told in other media. It has, in fact, been conveyed to the public through the printed word and, recently, brilliantly on film, and certainly it will continue to be told in new and changing ways. But it has never and can never be so powerfully presented as it is in a museum – in this Museum. Should anyone argue that museums have been superseded by more exciting and flashier media, let them come to this exhibition. Let them encounter remarkable, authentic artifacts in an intimate setting, let them view the pages of Hannah’s diaries and notebooks – the drafts of her poems – the last note to her mother. Let them come face to face with objects that Hannah touched, with photographs that she composed, with letters that she wrote. Let them experience the singular feeling that is only possible in the presence of such objects. Indeed, there is something uniquely human in the reaction we have when we encounter powerful artifacts. The receptors that we possess for empathy and imagination are engaged, and we have the capacity to understand and to sense kinship that has no match in our experience with other media.

And when this profound and human interaction takes place in the context of a story like that of Hannah Senesh, the impact exceeds our ability to describe it in words. We are moved directly as we follow the exemplary life of Hannah Senesh and we are moved deeply as we witness the evidence she left behind.

A Lovely Evening in Sagaponack

     The Rennert's Lovely Dining room

We were privileged and honored to be the focus of a remarkable benefit dinner hosted by Inge and Ira Rennert at their magnificent home in Sagaponack,NY on August 8. The theme of the dinner was inspired by our special exhibition, Project Mah Jongg, and the evening was punctuated with Asian-accented decor and delicious menu. We were so pleased that so many friends came out to support the Museum and so grateful to the Rennerts for having opened their home.

             DGM, Inge and Ira Rennert


(Photos by Melanie Einzig)

The Visit of Wally

     Egon Schiele  (1890 - 1918)
Portrait of Wally Neuzil, 1912
Leopold Museum, Vienna

As you may have read, the disposition of Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally has been settled. The Leopold Foundation in Vienna will pay the estate of Lea Bondi Jaray $19 million, and the painting will be returned to the Leopold Museum in Vienna. However, according to the terms of the settlement, the painting will be on temporary display here at the Museum beginning next Thursday, July 29 through August 18.


The painting was taken from Lea Bondi Jaray by a Nazi art collector shortly before Bondi Jaray’s departure to England in 1939, where she resided until her death in 1969. Following the war, Wally came into the possession of Dr. Rudolph Leopold, who subsequently placed it in the collection of the Leopold Foundation which operates the Leopold Museum. When the painting was loaned to the Museum of Modern Art by the Leopold Museum in 1997, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau prevented its planned return to Austria on the suspicion that it was stolen property. In 1999, the federal government commenced legal action against the Leopold Foundation with the aim of returning the portrait to the Bondi Jaray family. That action was finally settled this week.  It can be argued that the dispute over this painting was responsible for raising the entire issue of Nazi-looted art and for the establishment of policies and programs designed to identify artworks of questionable provenance and return them to their rightful owners.

We will mark the beginning of Wally’s short visit to the Museum and memorialize the Bondi Jaray family and others like them, whose property was stolen by Nazis, in a ceremony at the Museum next week.

We honor the memory of victims of the Holocaust every day at this Museum and we remember the millions who, while they may have themselves survived, lost their communities, families, homes, and property. While they can never recover what they have lost, it is important to set some things right when at all possible—no matter how long it takes. Compensating the heirs of Holocaust victims and survivors represents a small measure of justice, and we commend all parties for their dedication to this cause. We are honored to host Wally for her brief visit to the Museum where she will help our visitors understand an important element of Holocaust Remembrance and make clear that justice – even delayed – is worthy of pursuit.