by Guy Stern
I also invaded a neighboring campus for an event that touched on the controversy reminiscent of the arguments of our friends, Alex and Judy. A special event at Michigan State University invited me to duel verbally with a most formidable adversary on the subject of whether God survived the Holocaust. The Catholic spokesperson had no doubts; I verbalized my uncertainty. There were no winners or losers.
Before my retirement from the university, it came about that several vacancies occurred on our board of directors. One afternoon Rabbi Rosenzveig tapped me on my shoulder and asked whether I would be interested in being appointed to the board. I didn’t have to think long. It was a flattering offer and entirely doable despite my obligations at the university. I said yes, and a whole set of monthly meetings unfolded, frequently involving household decisions, with the weightier ones remaining within the capable hands of the rabbi and the president. But then a momentous decision arose. The museum, located in the basement of the Jewish Community Center, was running out of space. We couldn’t accept all the high schools and colleges within our orbit who wanted to visit. I suggested that we look at all the modern Holocaust memorials in the country and ask them for architectural suggestions. But the rabbi’s ambitions went beyond those. He engaged Richard Houghton, a British interior architect who led a delegation of his advisors, including me, on a trip to Berlin, justly regarded as one of the leading sites for modern museums. The building, now standing at a busy thoroughfare of suburban Detroit, ended up winning several architectural awards.
The new location was completed and opened in 2004. Concurrently the rabbi asked me to vacate my board membership and take charge of an institute he had long contemplated and had incorporated in his plans for the new museum. He named it the Institute of the Righteous, and it showcased righteous actions throughout history, as well as during the Holocaust itself. We displayed the historic friendship between David and Jonathan, as articulated in post-biblical writing, when Jonathan protected David even though he thereby lost his chance of becoming the king of the Israelites. We showed Rodin’s famous statue of the Citizens of Calais, where one of the elders was willing to sacrifice his life to save his fellow captives. As far as the Holocaust is concerned, we highlighted pictures of Raoul Wallenberg, and the Japanese Consul Chiune Sugihara, and eight other equally heroic persons from various nations and all walks of life. The visitors see these displays at the very end of their tour, and therefore are left with the only ennobling impression to be extracted from the Holocaust when altruistic persons took it upon themselves to help the potential victims of murderous Nazi actions.
I took on the rabbi’s task and defined it, with his approval, as a twofold undertaking. We were going to explore the motivations for altruistic action, drawing on specialists beyond our own constituency, importing social scientists and psychologists from both the United States and abroad to lecture on their theories of the incentives behind people’s unselfish actions. We would also give lectures to high schools and colleges, trying to instill this spirit of idealism in their students. With the help of a devoted committee we advanced these causes, and we also recruited a promising intern, Rebecca Swindler, to research and publish the first bibliography of studies on altruism.
Though he lived to see the opening of the new structure of the Holocaust Center, four years later, on December 11, 2008, Rabbi Rosenzveig succumbed to heart failure. The board asked me whether I wanted to be a candidate for the post of director. Being in my upper eighties, I thought I had done my fair share of carrying administrative responsibilities and politely declined to be considered. But I couldn’t refuse an alternative solution. When I was asked to become interim director until a national search could be concluded, I accepted that responsibility “for a short period.” It turned into a ten-month stint.
Having held different posts at the museum, I felt that I could do a reasonably effective job as interim director. After all, I had held administrative posts at two universities whose size dwarfed the facilities and the staff of the HMC. I wasn’t altogether wrong in that assumption, but I hadn’t calculated the personal effect the daily responsibility would exert on me. Even my service on the board and my delving into the exploration and dissemination of ideas about altruism had not prepared me for the daily encounter with the nightmarish details told to me about the Holocaust.
Numerous visitors, either survivors of the Holocaust or their descendants, came to me as acting director to share their own memories, or those they had heard secondhand. Many of these narratives contained harrowing details. They frequently did not convey new information, but what bestirred me was the daily exposure to these tales. I obviously was not inured, and I could not prevent my thoughts from being thrown back upon the loss of my own family whenever one of the victims or their relatives told me of theirs. As a result, those ten months were, emotionally, the most trying of all my tasks at the Holocaust Memorial Center.
One hopeful thing that occurred during my interim directorship was that we acquired a most valuable artifact, thanks to Feiga Weiss, our head librarian. She had spotted an announcement from the Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam. The chestnut tree on their property, which had stood for Anne as a symbol of the nature from which she was barred in her hiding place, was slowly dying. But several saplings could be salvaged and distributed, on a competitive basis, to various institutions in Europe and beyond. Feiga suggested that we compete for one of them. I thought it was a superb suggestion and drafted a proposal on behalf of our center—and we were awarded one of eleven saplings that went to US institutions. It did not diminish our joy that the US Department of Agriculture, to protect our native trees from diseases, stipulated that our sapling had to be sequestered for three years. We gave it our tender loving care, and so it survived its “hiding place,” and now graces the immediate surroundings of our institute as a study tree, a visible reminder of the talented young girl who has become one of the icons of the victimized European Jews during the Holocaust.
We found yet another way to celebrate the survival of that chestnut tree on our grounds, when Stephen Goldman became our director. I had kept up with cultural events in Germany beyond my retirement and learned that two prominent German artists, the composer Volker Blumenthaler and the librettist Alexander Gruber, had created a cantata in memory of Anne Frank, entitled “My Name Is Anne Frank.” Encouraged by Director Goldman and James Hartway of the WSU Music Department, we were able to premier the work under the auspices of the Holocaust Memorial Center in collaboration with Wayne State University and Berkley High School, Berkley, Michigan whose orchestra was invited to play at President Obama’s inauguration. A capacity crowd of more than eight hundred people filled the school’s auditorium as the Berkley orchestra and an a capella choir, reinforced by two cantors, Dan Gross of Congregation Adat Shalom and Penny Steyer of Temple Shir Shalom, celebrated the talent and spirit of Anne Frank. The performers got a standing ovation and the two artists who had written the cantata came to the opening. The librettist of the work, Alexander Gruber, sent us an email afterward: “I never shall forget the Holocaust Center. . . . And never the great and overwhelming experience the singers and instrumentalists of Berkley High created with their . . . loving rendition.”
One of my disappointments was that I wasn’t able to convince the board to have us initiate a publication outlining the achievements of our Center in a richly illustrated volume. As is so often the case, creativity may be thwarted by an empty pocket. All in all, though, I liked my interim stint, including Sunday morning rap sessions with the Executive Committee of the board and planning the Annual Dinner with the expert advice of one of the spouses of a board member, with tasty and generous samples of the menu offered by competing caterers. But I was equally happy when we all decided on a permanent director.
With an outstanding leader with multiple years of experience in the administration of Holocaust museums inaugurated, I enthusiastically stepped back into my former position as director of the Harry and Wanda Zekelman Inst
itute of the Righteous, and we resumed research on altruism and the spreading of that ideal among younger generations. We try to analyze what has impelled people from all walks of life to act nobly in defense of the persecuted, even if it meant personal disadvantage, losses, or a threat to themselves or their families. Some scholars argue that this noble impulse comes from an upbringing in a loving family or from a person’s religious persuasion. Others trace it to an impulse stemming from the survival instinct during evolutionary times, when Man had to compete with stronger mammals and could only persevere by altruistically banding together, or to the sense of gratification that performing a noble deed can bring. In a small way, we have explored the road that might someday lead us from that small candle to a beacon. Our hope rests in the new generation, which one of Germany’s liberal poets, Ludwig Uhland, addressed as such:
Ihr seid das Saatkorn einer neuen Welt.
Das ist der Weihefrühling, den Gott will.
[You are the kernel of a world renewed.
That is the consecrated spring that God demands.]
As it turned out, Director Stephen Goldman found additional uses for me. During my stays in Germany, I was able to enter the negotiations for acquiring one of the Center’s most spectacular and effective exhibits: a boxcar that in all likelihood was used for the nefarious deportations the Nazis had in store for their Jewish fellow citizens. While other museums had been able to secure boxcars from stock held by the Polish railroad authorities—Goldman had bought one for his museum in Saint Petersburg, Florida—I tracked down the German surplus agency for railroad-related parts and whole retired boxcars and locomotives. I located a boxcar of German origin with some bureaucratic inscriptions. On an administrative level, I was also able to reestablish a more positive atmosphere between the museum and the German Foreign Office. That improved relationship may also have contributed to receiving a grant that helped in the restoration of the acquired boxcar.
Goldman also encouraged me to make use of my contacts at Michigan universities and with particular ethnic groups for the sake of HMC. For instance, we worked to inaugurate meetings of interest to the Greek community and the Armenian consulate. Born out of a relationship of cordiality and friendship, we also gave radio and television interviews as a team, addressed civic groups such as the Rotary Club and the Shriners, and pursued an invitation from the Eisenhower Memorial Library for me to address a crowd during a commemoration of Victory Europe Day. At times I felt like an ambassador of goodwill, as when the Michigan Veterans Administration selected me as the keynote speaker at a Veterans Memorial Day. I was invited to speak at the National Veterans’ Cemetery in Holly, Michigan, and found myself addressing an audience of four thousand people. Needless to say, I called attention to the Jewish War Veterans and to the Holocaust Memorial Center, but also gave examples of the heroism of Jewish soldiers throughout American history. I cited the courage of Tibor Rubin, who held off an entire North Korean battalion and became the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, bestowed upon him by President George H. W. Bush. It will not surprise anyone that given my admiration for Tibor Rubin I went to extraordinary length to secure his presence as the keynote speaker at the Holocaust Memorial Center for Memorial Day, 2009. His appearance constituted a dramatic rebuttal of the age old canard, denying the heroism of Jewish men and women.
One of the most satisfying excursions was our joint journey to Germany, when one of the exhibits developed by us opened at the University of Bamberg, and subsequently went to the Free University of Berlin. The exhibit featured some of the exploits of the Ritchie Boys, with particular emphasis on their role in preparing the way for democratic media, free of the propagandistic content and jargon of the Nazi years. During our stay in Europe, we crisscrossed southern Germany and laid the foundation for future collaborative efforts with German museums. Both aims of our trip offered new challenges and gave me a sense of fulfillment.
As I conclude this tome, I am still gainfully employed at the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus. The task left unfinished is a project very much within the purview of altruistic deeds. While the rescue or attempted rescue of persecuted Jews during the Holocaust by non-Jews has been extensively and most justly recorded and commemorated, the self-help of Jews for other Jews has not. The reasons for such an omission are manifold, prominently among them the claim that Scripture enjoins Jews to help their co-religionists, and thus such assistance isn’t considered altruistic in the way it might be for non-Jews. To our minds, however, it has become imperative to recognize the extraordinary valor Jewish rescuers displayed, and I was charged with forming a committee to commemorate such superhuman efforts. Our mission statement reads:
In honor of those who risked their lives to save others, the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus is working to ensure that the heroism and altruism shown by Jews who helped their fellow Jews to survive through a time of unspeakable horror, will find its rightful place in the vast compendium of tragic events that took place during the Holocaust. As the surviving rescuers and survivors age and pass along, we owe it to them and to those who have passed to do this justice.
I was authorized to employ an assistant, Shirlee Wyman Harris, to share this new and difficult assignment. Harris engaged herself in researching information on the Nazi occupied countries and coordinated her research with the committee members for them to use for the basis of their further investigation. The committee found a wealth of examples to prove the implicit assumptions of the mission statement—and the work continues. All of us feel gratified and honored that we can resurrect memories of altruistic heroism frequently not recorded elsewhere.
But then, into these rigorous and at the same time captivating largely scholarly activities a personal pursuit snuck in. During the last chapter I had at one place indicated that I had written closure on my wartime experiences without, of course, relinquishing my involvement with my professional and personal ties to the Holocaust. I had to beat a hasty retreat from that ominous word “closure” when a letter from the French Consulate fluttered in. His letter notified me that I was to be given the French government’s award, “Knight of the Legion of Honor.” After the storm of emotions that followed having read that missive finally subsided, I wrote “Finis” once more to Normandy, decoration, castles in France and all that. To be sure only mentally this time, to be on the safe side. I was well advised!
Upon this occasion the Holocaust Museum played an even more central part in the resurrection of those two-and-a-half eventful wartime years. This time the revocation didn’t play out in the large spaces of our auditorium, often resounding with lectures and vociferous debates but in the quiet ambience of our archives. It started with a telephone call. A gentleman introduced himself as Bruce Henderson. He needed to talk to me and asked for an appointment. “No trouble,” I said. “I have an open door policy.” We arranged for a meeting; he would fly in from California two weeks later. His research topic was “The Ritchie Boys.” After the phone call I rushed to the computer. Who on earth was Bruce Henderson? I discovered he is a best-selling nonfiction writer, who had chosen hitherto all but unknown, but totally gripping stories from the peripheries of various US wars as his subject. With one of them Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War, he had monopolized the number one spot on the nonfiction list of the New York Times. Our West Bloomfield Library, rated one of the best in the nation, carried the volume. The light in my bedroom burned past midnight. That fellow could write! When we became closely acquainted, Henderson told me one of his secrets of non-fiction writing, which he had shared with several generations of Stanford University students: “Details, details, details!” He had practiced what he preached.
Bruce arrived. With no time lost, Feiga Weiss and I took him to our archive on the Ritchie Boys, started when we mounted our exhibits and sponsored the first reunion of those stalwarts. He thanked Mrs. Weiss profusely as she produced her treasures. “My job and my pleasure,” she answered. And the
n he started to interview me. The exchange, scheduled for two days turned into a week, even though he was a quick study. One evening during that week he took my wife and me to dinner. I looked a bit closer at him; most of the time before we had looked at papers and artifacts. Across from us sat a broad-shouldered, wavy haired, informally dressed gentleman in his late sixties. He exuded a warm, winning smile and poignant wit. “What made you hit upon the Ritchie Boys?” Susanna asked him. “Well, I was reading an obituary in the New York Times,” he answered. “I habitually read them. You discover the craziest stories within those entries. And this one briefly mentioned the membership in your outfit of the deceased. I got curious and found out that there was no book about you in English. So I resolved to write it.” “I’m glad,” I said, “We are little known in the US. I think we deserve to be ‘resurrected.’” “I will try to do just that,” he promised. Actually he has more than lived up to that promise: the hardback has sold well and the paperback appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List for several weeks. He promoted the book in various cities in the United States. Here in Detroit the past chair of the Jewish Book Fair, Gail Fisher, scouted him during his appearance in New York. He spoke as well as he writes. Finally a miniseries based on his book is in preparation. In a fit of vanity I bargained out that I, appearing as a young man in his twenties, would be played by a handsome actor.
At this writing my daily work at the Holocaust Memorial Center continues. I consider myself an ambassador of goodwill for the institution that I have been connected to for such a long time. I am one of the very few people to hold an office under all the directors, temporary or permanent, who have headed this much respected Center. Our new leader since 2017 is a person who holds two different titles that rarely are attached to the same person: Eli Mayerfeld is a rabbi who also holds an engineering degree. He developed a new mission statement for the Center: to engage and to educate and empower by remembering the Holocaust. He established a new focus for our activities based on that mission, and with his leadership we set four initiatives: lead in statewide Holocaust education, integrate HMC visits into a broader Holocaust education, raise awareness for younger generations, and refresh our exhibits in order to keep them current. We will concentrate on the needs of our immediate constituency.
