Devinki starts second term on United States Holocaust Memorial Council
Sam Devinki (second from left) was sworn in for his second term as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council (USHMC) earlier this month in Washington, D.C., by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas (third from left). USHMC Chair Howard M. Lorber (far left) and USHMC Vice Chair Allan M. Holt (far right) are also pictured.Sam Devinki’s family paid a terrible price during the Holocaust.About 100 of his family members perished at the hands of the Nazis — seven aunts and uncles, two grandparents and an unknown number of cousins. Thankfully, his parents, Fred and Maria Devinki of blessed memory, survived the Holocaust.In 1993, Devinki traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the opening of the United States Holocaust Museum. Ten years later in 2003, President George W. Bush appointed him to the United States Holocaust Museum Memorial Council for a five-year term. This year, President Donald Trump appointed him to serve on the council for another five-year term.Devinki believes he is the only person from Kansas or Missouri who has served on the council twice, he told The Chronicle in an interview. (Another Kansan, Adam E. Beren of Wichita, currently serves on the council.) Devinki and his wife, Mary Stahl, live in Kansas City, Missouri, and are members of Kehilath Israel Synagogue. He was named as K.I.’s honorary president for life in 2012 in recognition of his support for the congregation.Devinki was sworn in for his second term as a member of the museum’s council on Dec. 5, 2019. Serving on the council is especially meaningful to him because of the Holocaust’s effects on his family.“My parents wouldn’t give us any details (about what they suffered during the Holocaust),” Devinki said. “They said we didn’t need to know. We went to the opening of museum in Washington in 1993. Mom saw hundreds of people telling their stories, and she decided she needed to tell her story.”Devinki is 73. He was born in 1946 in a displaced persons camp in Regensburg, Germany, in the American zone. He was 4 years old when his family left Europe.“It was like going from going from black and white to color,” he said.For 10 years after the museum opened, he worked with it “in whatever role they wanted me,” such as serving on committees and attending days of remembrance. He and his wife have taken 14 trips to various Holocaust memorial sites throughout Europe. “People don’t understand that this museum is not just a building with artifacts in it,” he said. “It’s an educational center. It’s the foundation of maintaining this history. It’s more highly respected in Europe than it is in the United States. The educators and other people we see in Europe respect it tremendously. The museum is an agency of the U.S. government. When we go on these foreign trips, we go representing the U.S.”Congress established the council in 1980 “to lead the nation in commemorating the Holocaust and to raise private funds for and build the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” according to the museum’s website (ushmm.org). The council became the museum’s governing board of trustees when the museum opened. The council is an independent entity of the U.S. government and operates as a public-private partnership. It receives some federal money to support the museum building’s operations.The council meets twice yearly. It comprises 55 members appointed by the president and five members each from the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. It also has three ex-officio members from the U.S. Departments of Education, Interior and State.More than 40 million people have visited the museum since it opened, including 99 heads of state and more than 10 million school-age children.The council is in some measure ceremonial but mostly functional, Devinki said. It is divided into several committees, which “do the actual work.” He serves on the governance committee. Committees sometimes meet in Washington and sometimes by telephone.Devinki was invited to and attended President Trump’s Hanukkah party this year. He attended three Hanukkah parties under Bush. “It’s always an honor to be invited,” he said. “The White House is an incredible place to visit. President Bush’s party was different than President Trump’s. Presidents always put their own stamp on it. It was probably the best kosher food I’ve ever had in my life.”Trump said at the first of two White House Hanukkah receptions on Dec. 11 that he would “celebrate and honor” Jews, JNS reported. “Across our country, Jewish Americans strengthen, sustain and inspire our nation,” Trump said. “As president, I will always celebrate and honor the Jewish people, and I will always stand with our treasured friend and ally, the State of Israel.”Trump signed an executive order at the event calling on U.S. governmental departments to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits federal funding of universities and other institutions that engage in discrimination based on race, color or national origin and which now also applies to anti-Semitism. The executive order also called on governmental agencies to consider adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.“This is our message to universities,” Trump said, according to JNS. “If you want to extend the tremendous amount of federal dollars that you get every year, you must reject anti-Semitism. … We have also taken a firm stand against BDS (a Palestinian-led movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel).”Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz attended the event and called the executive order “a game changer” and “one of the most important events in the 2,000-year battle against anti-Semitism,” JNS reported.That battle is central to the museum’s purpose, which includes “to make the world aware that genocide, hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism haven’t gone away,” Devinki said. “They’re still happening and we have to be on the guard all the time,” he said. “I speak in a lot of schools and … I tell them, mostly teenagers, if they don’t know what hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism look like, they won’t know how to protect themselves against it.”
