Feature
Small Town Inspires Tolerance
by Shoshana Cenker
The small town of Hot Springs, Ark., has garnered
international attention through its countywide “Holocaust Remembrance Education
Project.”
It all began in the summer of 2008 when Congregation House of Israel’s Sisterhood joined forces with the Garland County Library after they brought in the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s traveling exhibit, “Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings. But the project’s co-chairs, Sisterhood President Joanne Reagler and Garland County Library Director John Wells, had even more events in mind for area schools, synagogues and churches.
“From that exhibit, the old saw proved true: From little acorns mighty oaks grow,” explains John. “Several groups and individuals got together and were able to put on a quality educational effort of interest to all.”
“Sisterhood held a Resource Fair to help area teachers learn how to teach diversity and equality,” says Joanne. “We displayed materials including Houston Holocaust Museum papers.”
In addition to the exhibits, dozens of students have entered the project’s essay contests. The first, “Superheroes: People Who Saved Lives in the Holocaust” asked ninth-12th graders to focus on non-Jewish citizens of the world who helped save Jews and non-Jews from Nazi obliteration. Seventh through 12th graders participated in this year’s contest, “Genocide Around the World.”
“The goal of the essay contest reflects our on-going focus and dream to raise awareness of the many occurrences of the attempted obliteration of people, in the past and now, simply because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or beliefs,” says Joanne. “The winners of the essay contest will be announced at our Yom HaShoah Ceremony at the library in April. The first place winners will be invited to read their essays aloud.”
Many of the kids in the Hot Springs area have never met a Jew, much less a Holocaust survivor. So the Holocaust Remembrance Education Project has worked to present them with that opportunity. Last year, the son of a survivor spoke to the crowd.
“This year Holocaust survivor Rosa Blum from Dallas talked to middle and high school students and at National Park Community College,” says Joanne. “About 3,000 students had the chance to hear Mrs. Blum.”
Continuing to partner with the local library, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibit entitled “Schindler” will be on display in mid-April.
“Another project we plan to begin this summer is to introduce into churches and schools the Butterfly Project,” says Joanne. “This is a project in which preschool and elementary age children create a butterfly in memory of the one and a half million children who died in the Holocaust. The Houston Holocaust Museum, which created this project, hopes to collect and put on display one and a half million butterflies from around the country by 2011.”
These educational Holocaust efforts have not gone unnoticed by the international Jewish community. In November at the 47th International Assembly of Women of Reform Judaism in Toronto, the Sisterhood was awarded an “Or Ami Light of My People” Award. The award is presented to select organizations in honor of their high quality and innovative programs of social justice, community service and education.
For the Sisterhood, the recognition was an “honor and privilege,” says Joanne. “You must remember our county has just 97,000 people. In our rural, Southern, Christian community with no history of Holocaust educational programs, our Sisterhood in partnership with the Garland County Library brought these events to the public through joint efforts of community agencies, school administrators, teachers and our congregation.”
At the request of teachers, school administrators, interfaith organizations and other non-profits, the project is expanding its programs. Says a Sisterhood member enthusiastically, “We have stepped up and out of the kitchen!”
“We continue in our efforts to memorialize the past, to educate for the present, and to prepare for the future by offering educable moments for our citizens,” says John. “We have increased the scope of our offerings to include all genocide. It has opened a dialog between students and the local congregation. One school wants to host a lunch for the congregation. Think of that...Christians and Jews, old and young, black, brown and white, all sitting down together and learning from one another.”
The Holocaust Remembrance Educational Project is a vibrant on-going program.
“It has been a source of pride and accomplishment to Sisterhood members, our Temple congregation, and personally to me as Sisterhood president and co-chair of the Holocaust Committee,” says Joanne proudly, yet humbly. “We strive to bring about a safer, brighter future by remembering and learning from our past. We never dreamed when we began this project that it would grow and develop and influence so many people in so many ways.”
Shoshana Cenker was born and raised in Memphis, graduated from White Station High School in 1998 and from Indiana University in Bloomington in 2002 with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Hebrew and Jewish Studies. She studied abroad at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. She is the Director of Communications at Greenfield Hebrew Academy. She and her husband, Dovid, live in Atlanta, GA.
PHOTOS:
The Congregation House of Israel (CHI) Sisterhood held a dinner honoring Rosa Blum from the Dallas Holocaust Museum’s Education Program. Sisterhood invited the groups who have helped fund and/or have supported this and other activities of the CHI’s Holocaust Remembrance Education Project. Mrs. Blum visited six school groups during her visit to Hot Springs.
1) Rosa Blum, Dallas Holocaust Museum; John Wells, director Garland Co. Library and Holocaust Remembrance Education member; and Joanne Reagler, CHI Sisterhood president Holocaust Remembrance Education Project chairperson.
2) Joanne Reagler, Rosa Blum and J. C. “Pancho” Rowe and Betty Kleinman, board members of the Rosenzweig Fund for Interfaith Activities.
3) Rosa, Joanne and Sharon Waxler
4) CHI Sisterhood Dinner
5) Student Deborah Moore with Holocaust survivor Mr. Max Glauben who visited schools in 2009
6) Thank you letter written by Deborah Moore to Mr. Max Glauben
