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.  

Berlin

The Steering Committee at the Haus der Wannsee Konferenz

(Photo by Eileen Eder)

I have just returned from a week in Germany where I attended a conference at the new Bergen-Belsen memorial museum, see Michael Kimmelman's article in today's New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/arts/design/22abro.html?_r=1&ref=arts). The centerpiece of the trip, however, was meeting up with the Steering Committee of a very exciting new program with the Museum that will offer graduate students, future leaders, and leading scholars, a unique forum to examine contemporary ethical issues using the Holocaust as context. 

Currently titled the Auschwitz Professional Ethics Initiative (APEI), the program will focus on graduate students (initially in Law, Medicine, Business, Journalism, and Theology) who will convene annually in Germany and Poland for an intensive educational experience, which will explore the role of their chosen professions in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.   The APEI will partner with some of the most prestigious Universities in the US and abroad, and will engage students from varying backgrounds in a dialogue that is meant to foster an understanding of the Holocaust as more than a historic event.  The APEI is predicated on the conviction that the study of this history and the distilling of lessons from it, are powerfully enhanced by the location of the study itself.  By taking students to the villa in Berlin where the Wannsee Conference was held and then to Auschwitz, we believe that we will provide an educational experience that will have an extraordinary impact.

 The Committee started their trip in Poland, where they visited the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the Auschwitz State Museum, both prospective partners in the APEI.  I joined the group in Berlin, where we visited the site of the Wannsee Conference and had a very productive meeting with the colleagues there, who run programs that are similar to the APEI.  The trip was stimulating and productive and will yield, I hope, tangible results as we plan for a pilot program of the APEI later this year. 

Committee Members at Gleis 17, the Memorial for the Jews Deported from Berlin (Photo by Shiri Sandler)

Holocaust by Bullets

Father Patrick Desbois at the Museum

We opened our newest special exhibition on Sunday night. Here are the remarks I delivered at the opening:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is David Marwell, and I am the director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Opening an exhibition must surely be among a Museum Director’s most welcome responsibilities.

After all, it is exhibitions that are unique among a museum’s offerings to the cultural life of a community. To be sure, a museum presents a variety of programs and educational opportunities, but it is the exhibition that defines its singular contribution. Exhibitions, especially history exhibitions, combine many disciplines, apply the best elements of design and interpretation and, most important, showcase original and powerful artifacts. The creation of an exhibition is a remarkable process that involves thousands of decisions each made with a single objective – to enrich the public. And so I welcome the opportunity this evening to welcome all of you and to mark the opening of this remarkable exhibition.

Beyond a welcome responsibility, an opening is also an occasion to acknowledge all who were involved in creating the exhibition, and to thank those whose generosity made it possible. I am pleased to carry out my responsibility and will, with great pleasure acknowledge and thank.

First a word about the exhibition. The Shooting of Jews in Ukraine: Holocaust by Bullets joins another special exhibition at our Museum, Woman of Letters: Irene Nemirovsky and Suite Francaise, the story of a Jewish writer who was born in Kiev in 1903, who emigrated to France, and who perished in Auschwitz in 1942. Now, had Irene Nemirovsky, not left Kiev, she and her family would more than likely have been killed by bullets fired by a German policeman or soldier within a short distance from her home and within earshot, and perhaps under the gaze, of her neighbors. Irene’s fate, instead, was to be arrested in her home and transported by train to the ultimate site of her death, hundreds of miles away. The fate she left behind when she left the land of her birth, and the fate that she experienced when she moved to France define the Holocaust in its deadly diversity.

In much of the West, the Holocaust archetype is the concentration camp –epitomized by Auschwitz – a death factory to which Jews were brought from the far corners of Europe. In the former Soviet Union, however, the memories of the Holocaust are defined by mass shootings close to home. Certainly, information on these shootings, and how they were carried out has been available since the war. Knowledge (as distinct from information) and understanding of them was however, limited. That it was limited has much to do with the cold war and with how the narrative of the Holocaust was formulated and where it found its most articulate expression.

It took what many would suggest was an unlikely actor to investigate and make widely known these monstrous crimes. In a reversal of Irene Nemirovsky’s movements, Father Desbois left his native France and traveled to Ukraine in search of his own family history and ended up illuminating the history of hundreds of thousands of families. I don’t think there is a person who has heard the story of Father Patrick Desbois and his work who has not been immediately and deeply moved by this extraordinary man. His work and the work of his organization, Yahad in Unum, are at the heart of this exhibition. I will save any additional comments about Father Desbois until later, when I will interview him here on stage and give all of you an opportunity to ask your own questions.

Introduction of Eric de Rothschild
Holocaust by bullets was originally created by the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris. It opened there in June of 2007 to significant acclaim and received tens of thousands of visitors. When I visited Paris last year and toured the exhibition, I decided that we had to host this exhibition in New York. We worked closely with our French colleagues to create a North American version of the exhibition, adjusting the design to accommodate our space and revising the English text for an American audience. We are grateful to our French friends, especially Jacques Fredj, the director for the Memorial, Karel Fracopane, his “foreign minister,” and Sophie Nagiscarde, who was the curator of the exhibition.

It is now my pleasure and honor to introduce, Baron Eric de Rothschild, eminent financier, and distinguished leader of the French Jewish community. Among his many positions and honors, he is the president of the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris – a remarkable institution that would not have been possible without his vision, drive, and energy. Ladies and gentlemen, Baron Eric de Rothschild….

Thank the Staff
I want to thank those who made the New York version of the exhibition possible: Lou Levine and his team, especially, Jason Steinhauer, Sherrie Adler, Erica Blumenfeld, Matt Peverly, and Andy Piedilato; Mike Minerva, and his team. Our designers (Rita Meyers Design and Yvette Lenhart Design); the fabricators, Final Push Construction,

Thank the Funders
I do not want to say that it was easy to raise the necessary funds to support this exhibition. It is never easy to do that, but I will say that the three foundations that share the honor of bringing this exhibition to New York and share our profound gratitude, did not seem to need a great deal of convincing that this undertaking was worthy of their support. Their generosity and willingness are simply an indication of their true natures. They share the conviction that the story told by this exhibition is a story that needs to be told and needs to be heard. We are grateful beyond words to each of these foundations and pray that we have proven to them that that their support landed in worthy hands. We thank them all.

We thank the Robert I. Goldman Foundation, especially Walter Weiner, one of its trustees, and one of our trustees, who saw the value of this exhibition immediately, and knew that Robert Goldman, whose family history can be traced to areas where mass shootings took place during the Holocaust, would have been keenly interested in the subject matter of this exhibition.

We thank the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation, and our Trustee, Lily Safra. The Museum is deeply indebted to Mrs. Safra, as we were to her late husband, our friend and trustee, Edmond J. Safra. We have benefitted from Lily’s continued support over the years, and especially for her magnificent gift of this theater, which bears her husband’s name and which is the venue for some of New York City’s most creative and powerful programs. The EJSPF has another intimate connection to this exhibition since they are important supporters of Father Desbois’s important work.

Introduction of Victor Pinchuk
Finally, we thank the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and its president, Thomas Eymond-Laritaz. The Victor Pinchuk Foundation is also a supporter of Father Desbois’s work and an early and passionate backer of this exhibition. As you can read in your program, the Foundation seeks to be a force for good in the world and has initiated innovative projects in the fields of health, education, and contemporary art. The driving force behind the Foundation is its founder, Victor Pinchuk, who has honored us this evening by traveling all the way from Ukraine to be here. Ladies and gentlemen, Victor Pinchuk….

(Photo by Melanie Einzig)

Rosa

Rosa Strygler at our Generation to Generation Dinner

We had our 20th annual Generation to Generation Dinner at the Museum last week and honored Rosa Stryler, our Trustee Emerita, who did so much to help establish the Museum. Rosa is a remarkable woman with a remarkable personal history. The following is an excerpt from my remarks at the dinner.

I can’t imagine a better place to honor Rosa or to contemplate her story. In so many ways, Rosa’s story is our story, the story that we teach in this Museum. Our many visitors can learn about Rosa, and the many like her, on each of the three floors of our core exhibition. On the first floor they can learn about the rich and varied and virbrant lives that Jews led before the Holocaust. On the second, they learn about the violent destruction of that life and the murder of millions, and the obliteration of communities and a way of life. On our third floor, they learn about the most inspiring and stirring story that we tell. Here they learn about how people returned to life after the Holocaust.

Surely the most profound, indeed heroic, phenomenon in the context of the Holocaust is that those who had been confronted with unimagined and unimaginable trauma -- the loss of loved ones, exposure to extreme and unrelenting violence, the constant presence of paralyzing and sickening fear – that these poor souls -- or at least some of them -- were able to choose and lead lives that followed a different path than their experience might have defined for them. Their response to death was desire – desire to grab a firm hold on life and pull from it meaning and pleasure. Surely one could have emerged from Rosa’s past severely handicapped, cynical and suspicious, damaged and demanding. That Rosa and others found their way to distill from life an essential spirit that looked away from dark despair and sought out the bright light of vitality and service and the pursuit of good works must undoubtedly be one of the most inspiring stories of the human spirit.

Just on the other side of the window behind me is the Garden of Stones that tells Rosa’s story with a quiet eloquence. This garden, composed of eighteen boulders out of each of which grows a single oak tree, gives powerful expression to the potent metaphor that life will take root and flourish even in the most unforgiving circumstances. The circumstances that defined Rosa’s young life, and that of so many of you, provided, it might seem, very little prospect for life to renew its vital force. Yet Rosa created a new life in this new land and pursued it with a single purpose that enriched so many other lives and from which we have all benefited.

We sit this evening within view of the Statue of Liberty. Think for a moment of the day when Rosa arrived in New York Harbor, beneath the benevolent gaze of that most beloved symbol. She was an orphan who had lost so much, her family and her childhood -- do you think that she might have imagined on that day, that some day, just across the water she might help to build a beautiful and proud museum that would tell her story? And that she would inspire others to work hard to ensure its survival.

Photo by Melanie Einzig

JewishGen

I returned from Ireland (no opportunity to post, but I include a photo from the walk here) and went directly to the Conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) in Chicago. I attended the conference to announce an exciting new relationship that we have just worked out with Ancestry.com, the commercial genealogical website. The agreement with Ancestry represents a win-win-win for JewishGen (and the Museum), Ancestry, and the public.

Here is what I said about the Agreement at the Conference:

On Sunday night, we honored Susan King and acknowledged her pathbreaking efforts. I am pleased that tonight we announce a new chapter in the life of JewishGen that will build upon and extend the remarkable institution that Susan founded.

We are very excited about our new partnership with Ancestry.com. It is the result of a long and complex negotiation that was marked by unusual good will on both sides. While I can’t give you a blow-by-blow account of the negotiation process that led to the agreement, I can describe to you the principles that guided us throughout. First, we were determined to remain faithful to the basic tenet that the records available on JewishGen would remain free and freely accessible. Second, we were determined to find a way to ensure that JewishGen was technically stable, indeed robust, and that it had sufficient bandwidth to serve a growing and demanding public. Third, we sought a way to improve the functionality of JewishGen and ensure that we can get more data up more quickly. Our driving concern was to continue to serve our public.

Principle elements of the Agreement
1) JewishGen data, and Warren will detail which data that is, will be available on Ancestry at no charge;
2) Ancestry will provide pipe and power and maintain JG servers;
3) JewishGen will receive a percentage of revenue that derives from business driven to Ancestry from JewishGen;
4) Ancestry will consult with JewishGen on technical, design, and user experience issues.
5) JewishGen will consult with Ancestry on Jewish genealogical issues.

Now Ancestry.com is a decidedly for-profit company, and JewishGen is decidedly not-for-profit. How could these two entities, which are so wildly different when it comes to the bottom line, reach an agreement that would serve each of their individual interests and that of the public all at the same time. Well it happens sometimes that the stars align and that there is a happy coincidence of interests, and that was absolutely the case here. As I understand Ancestry’s business, they profit from interest in genealogy because they know that if people are engaged in family research, they will end up at Ancestry. For this reason, they are interested in a stable and thriving JewishGen. JewishGen, on the other hand, desperately needed to find a means to ensure its future. The financial component of the agreement with Ancestry will go some way to ensure JewishGen’s survival, but more important, the reach of Ancestry will introduce a significant new audience to JewishGen and allow us to extend our reach and add more and more members to our family.

Ancestry will benefit from the expanded exposure that its relationship with JewishGen will enable, and JewishGen will benefit from a stable technical platform, and the increased power of Ancestry’s marketing and promotional reach, and all of you will benefit from continued access to crucial records and the assurance that JewishGen will survive and flourish.

Important Points to Remember
1) JewishGen will remain an independent, non-profit organization. It will retain its current structure and continue to rely on volunteers and donations. It will continue to provide unique tools and content that will not be available anywhere else, and it will continue to host the data of other organizations like JRI-Poland and LitvakSig.
2) JewishGen records will remain free and freely available both on JewishGen and on Ancestry.
3) Ancestry will provide “pipe and power” to JewishGen; they will not administer the site nor will they have access to any personal data for JewishGen users.

I know that when the full extent of this agreement is realized, when JG is installed on powerful servers with generous bandwidth, when Warren and his team can focus all of their attention on acquiring more records and getting more records on line, when we can make useful changes to improve navigation and the user’s experience, I know that you will all agree that we have made the right move in developing this relationship with Ancestry. Until that time, I am here to listen to your concerns, address your questions, take your suggestions, and provide you with whatever information you need.

It will take time before we can really assess the reaction of the community to the Ancestry agreement. It took no time, however, to learn that there are a number of people who are very upset at the new logo which we introduced! For good and supportable reasons, we decided to give JewishGen a new graphic identity and we engaged in a deliberate and consultative process that resulted in the logo that appears at the begining of this post. It replaces the original logo:


If you have a strong feeling about this logo issue, please feel free to comment. For more on Ancestry, JewishGen, and the logo, see: www.jewishgen.blogspot.com.

Here is the promised photo from my walk in Ireland: