The year 1993 was a big one in the history of Holocaust remembrance. Forty-eight years after the concentration camps were liberated and World War II ended, it was the year the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in Washington, D.C., and the Oscar-winning movie “Schindler’s List” premiered. Locally, it was the year the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education (MCHE) was founded.
In 10 days, MCHE will officially mark its silver anniversary with a blend of celebration and commemoration on the indoor Cohen Community Stage at Starlight Theatre. While it is one of the newest Jewish agencies in town at 25, it has grown to become one of the premier Holocaust education organizations in the country.
Founded by survivors Jack Mandelbaum and the late Isak Federman, MCHE teaches the history of the Holocaust, applying its lessons to counter indifference, intolerance and genocide. From the beginning it has gained support from a variety of people and organizations in the Kansas City area, including the Sosland family, who are presenting sponsors of the gala celebration.
“When MCHE was established a quarter century ago, our family proudly offered its support because of our belief in the importance of teaching the history of the Holocaust and its lessons for society in each generation,” said Blanche E. Sosland, Ph.D., a past president of MCHE’s board of directors. “Our sponsorship of the 25th anniversary reflects our gratitude to MCHE for its extraordinary work over the past quarter century in reaching thousands and thousands of fellow Kansas Citians and throughout the Midwest with its effective programming and because we believe the group’s mission has never been more important.”
According to Jean Zeldin, who has served as MCHE’s executive director since its inception, MCHE is “one of the most highly respected and active centers in the country, especially for our size staff and community.” MCHE’s small staff includes two full-timers — a historian, Dr. Shelly Cline, and director of education, Jessica Rockhold — and three part-timers: an accounting manager, a resource assistant and an administrative assistant.
Zeldin said MCHE had risen to prominence through a combination of “finding the right staff people, having a vision that just kept expanding and assessing the interests and needs of the community.”
“We somehow keep coming up with new ideas and perhaps biting off more than we can chew and then chewing it,” she said. “There is always a next project. And we have been very fortunate to receive generous funding from both the Jewish and general communities.”
In the beginning
MCHE’s first order of business was to record the testimonies of the area’s survivors.
“There was the feeling and the reality that we had to get the testimonies recorded, that we were on borrowed time. … There were many things happening that kept the Holocaust in everyone’s consciousness,” she said.
That first project was an important one and is still a big part of MCHE’s programming.
“One of our strengths is that we have really used the material. These aren’t just narratives that sit on our shelves and occasionally somebody watches them. They are dynamic and available to researchers, to teachers and to the general public. Since we recorded these in 1994, we’ve had them digitized (and) we’ve created condensed versions of those for classroom use. We have created six thematic DVDs — for example there is one on ghettos, there’s one on Kristallnacht, another on liberation. We’ve shown those publicly and teachers can purchase those for nominal cost,” Zeldin explained. The testimonies can be found on MCHE’s website, mchekc.org.
A few years later, those testimonies and others led to an exhibit, “Portrait 2000,” and in 2001, the publication of the book “From the Heart: Life Before and After the Holocaust ~ A Mosaic of Memories” by Kansas City Star Books.
Changes through the years
About 10 years ago, MCHE made one of the biggest changes in its ongoing programming when it changed the way the Speakers Bureau operated.
“We had maybe two, at the most three, survivors who were physically and emotionally able to speak and the demand was increasing,” Zeldin said.
Because survivors were aging and diminishing in number, it was time for MCHE to train the second generation, the children of survivors, to fill the void.
“It took a couple of years for the teachers to get used to the fact that they were not going to have a survivor in the classroom,” added Zeldin of what is now known as the Second Generation Speakers Bureau.
Here again, those original testimonies take center stage. As part of the second generation’s presentations, clips of their parents’ stories are shown. Zeldin said that keeps the faces of the survivors in the spotlight.
“Sam Devinki does that. Evy Tilzer does that. Steve Cole is another one. ... We wanted to keep it personalized. Many of the second generation also speak about what it was like growing up with parents who were survivors. The demand is there for those presentations,” she said.
MCHE estimates fewer than 50 survivors now live in Kansas City. (It’s unknown how many survivors lived here, but it is thought to be more than 270.) That encompasses all experiences from that era, including those who survived the camps, were able to get out of Germany in the 1930s, lived in hiding, and those who were part of Kindertransport. Some Russian refugees are also defined as survivors.
Several years ago, MCHE also changed its mission statement to include a reference to genocide. Zeldin said while other centers across the country changed their names to include either human rights or genocide studies, MCHE’s board wanted to stay grounded in the Holocaust.
“We apply the lessons of the Holocaust to counter indifference, intolerance and genocide,” she explained. “Our expertise is in the Holocaust and making sure that history is taught correctly and any parallels to other atrocities or genocides are well founded and not comparative in nature.”
She said there was time not that long ago when people began to question whether the Holocaust was still relevant and whether Holocaust centers should start talking about current genocides “because it was obvious that the phrase ‘Never Again’ was becoming a hollow phrase.”
“Then, particularly with the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville and the hate crimes and hate language that seem to be with us more now than maybe 10 years ago, people are seeing the relevance of the Holocaust again,” Zeldin said.
Building bridges
Three years after its founding, MCHE was invited by the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City to become one of its partner agencies in June 1996.
“Within the family of Federation agencies, we are unique in the bridges we build to the non-Jewish community. This priority is reflected in our board of directors. From any point in time, we’ve had anywhere from a fourth to a third of our board members who are not Jewish,” Zeldin pointed out, noting the Christian board members bring a special passion to MCHE.
MCHE has partnered with about 40 different organizations in Kansas City as sponsors of speakers, exhibits or one-time programs. MCHE is proud of that, Zeldin said, noting “we’ve made a lot of friends in the community along the way.”
“I think our partnerships with local organizations as well as our connections through the Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO) and a strong relationship with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have benefitted us in in ways that we would not have foreseen. I go to conferences and meet scholars, historians and speakers that are great to bring in. We found out about the exhibits we’ve brought here through USHMM,” said Zeldin, who is a member of the AHO board of directors.
Zeldin believes these community partnerships are one of the things that contribute to MCHE’s outstanding success.
“Our success is due to the networking, our community partners and certainly the MCHE staff,” Zeldin said.
MCHE programs and people
MCHE reaches thousands of youths and adults each year through school and community outreach programs, often offered in cooperation with other not-for-profits. It serves a diverse population in terms of age, religion, race, economic status, ethnicity and gender. Programs reach both the Jewish and general community, including students and teachers in public, private, and parochial settings, primarily grades seven and up.
In addition to the Speakers Bureau, MCHE sponsors an annual White Rose Student Essay Contest; teacher education, including a cadre of professional educators who serve as teacher-trainers and mentors; an academic roundtable of college and university faculty; commemorative programs; and special lectures and exhibits. Its library houses a witness archive and more than 3,000 titles available for free loan. Traveling resource collections are loaned to secondary school classrooms.
The public is most aware of MCHE’s exhibits, speaker series and film series. One of the most successful exhibits was “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda,” curated by USHMM and presented in 2014 in partnership with the National Archives at Kansas City and the National World War I Museum and Memorial.
“We had an eight-part speaker series that went with it,” Zeldin said. “Record crowds came to those talks and it just really seemed to resonate with people. We had school tours. It also strengthened the partnerships that we had the National Archives and the World War I Museum where the talks were held.”
Over the years, Zeldin has enjoyed working with MCHE’s volunteers and board members, and its presidents, whom she described as amazing people.
“It’s been an honor to earn their trust. They have been there for guidance when I need them and reach out to them, but they also have trust in me and our staff to respect us as professionals.”
One of those presidents is Steve Flekier, the son of a Holocaust survivor. He noted that MCHE was celebrating its success over the last 25 years in carrying out its mission of teaching the lessons of the Holocaust.
“We’ve accomplished this by providing the tools and resources needed to educate our community and increase compassion and understanding to help counter racism, hatred and bigotry,” Flekier said.
Another son of a Holocaust survivor, Steve Cole, is one of the co-chairs of the anniversary celebration along with his wife, Beth, Christopher Beal and Tim Van Zandt. Also a member of the Speakers Bureau, Cole said his motivation to give his time to MCHE was both historical and forward-looking.
“Our organization keeps the story and lessons of the Holocaust in front of students and the general community,” Cole said. “By doing that, MCHE fights bigotry, intolerance and works to prevent future genocides while we honor our ancestors and others who suffered and were murdered by the Nazis.”
Zeldin said there had been an incredible response to MCHE’s 25th anniversary event.
“There are many reasons, but one is, I think, acknowledging the work of MCHE and recognizing the need for us to continue what we’re doing. Yes, it’s a celebration, but we can’t afford to take too much of a pause.”
As it celebrates 25 years, MCHE plans to “continue what we are doing,” Zeldin said.
“The interesting thing, and in some ways the unfortunate thing, is the Holocaust is still relevant and our work is not done,” she said. “We will continue to present unique and educational programs. It’s great to be able to celebrate what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished and the people and organizations that we’ve involved, but it’s also important to realize that our mission is not complete.”