New Milford—Held on the evening of November 9, the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County’s Morris and Ruth Kotek Holocaust and Heritage Resource Center’s commemoration featured Joseph Berger, former New York Times columnist and author of “Displaced Persons,” an account of the Holocaust survivors who settled on the West Side of Manhattan in the 1950s. Berger, now semi-retired as a staff writer and editor at the New York Times,where he has worked since 1984, is in the midst of writing an authoritative biography of Holocaust icon Elie Wiesel, who passed away in July. It was Berger who authored the moving, exhaustive New York Times obituary of Wiesel.
Berger’s SSDS address was titled, “Remembering Elie Wiesel—Messenger to Mankind.” Berger’s first encounter with Wiesel was on a plane headed to Israel during the Six Day War. Berger recalls Wiesel sitting in coach and singing Yiddish songs. Wiesel’s rise to become the worldwide spokesman for the Holocaust, according to Berger, was the result of “the sheer force of his personality. He was a self-styled messenger, with the aura of a prophet. He lived human cruelty in the flesh. His haunted, distracted look spoke to the heavens.”
Berger detailed Wiesel’s history from his birth in Sighet in 1928, the only son of a Vishnitzer Chassidic family. He told of his incarceration with his father in Buchenwald, of his liberation as a frail teenager in 1945, as an orphan in France, his re-uniting with two sisters and his move to Israel where he worked as a journalist. Berger highlighted Wiesel’s historical challenge to President Ronald Reagan in April of 1985, when he admonished the President for laying a wreath at the graves of Wehrmacht soldiers at the Bitburg cemetery with the words, “Mr. President, your place is with the victims, not the perpetrators.” On Yom Kippur on 1986, Wiesel was notified of his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “brotherhood and atonement.” Berger called his loss “monumental to the survivor community and to the world.”
The evening also featured the photographs of Solomon Schechter parent and noted photographer Debbie Teicholz Guedalia. Her exhibit, “The Earth Has Not Forgotten: A Journey to Poland,” consists of 18 photographs with accompanying texts documenting a trip to Yad Vashem taken by 12th grade Solomon Schechter students and educators in 2010. Her exhibit has been approved by the New Jersey State Council on Holocaust Education to be used for their mandate to teach Holocaust studies. Guedalia’s works are part of the permanent collection of several museums including the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles, the Hebrew Union College Museum in New York and the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem.
The evening was just one part of the events organized by the gift of a special family. While Beth and Fred Kotek’s three daughters were attending Solomon Schechter in Bergen County and subsequently Solomon Schechter high schools in West Orange and Westchester, their grandfather, Morris Kotek, was very much a part of their school experiences, attending all major milestone events. Living next door in Fair Lawn and sharing daily experiences as well as Shabbat dinners, the girls were very close to their grandfather and heard many stories about his survival during the Holocaust with their grandmother Ruth, who had died many years earlier. These recollections were enforced by those of their maternal grandparents as well. At Morris Kotek’s funeral in 2011, son Fred was asked to what charity he would like donations to be made in memory of his 97-year-old father, ob”m. At that moment, with the reiterated message of his father “never to forget” reverberating in his head, Kotek decided to create the Morris and Ruth Kotek Holocaust and Heritage Resource Center at Solomon Schechter in Bergen County.
Over the past five years the center has truly brought the message of Morris Kutek to the student and parent bodies of the school through its administration and faculty. By hosting yearly commemorations, the center hopes to spread this message to the larger Bergen County community as well.
Through the initial endowment of the Kotek family and private donations from current and alumni families, as well as a grant from the Covenant Foundation, the Morris and Ruth Kotek Holocaust Media and Technology Center hosts print and digital collections of Holocaust resources as well as provides access to materials from around the world. It connects to the Stephen Spielberg Eyewitness Testimony Program at the University of Southern California as well as the Boston-based Facing History and Ourselves curriculum utilized in the middle school. Through smartboards and 20 iPads, it allows students to plug in through their personal devices and to learn in small settings.
In furthering its mission of reaching out to the larger Bergen County community, the Kotek Center has hosted three Kristallnacht commemorations since its inauguration in 2010 with the participation of Steven Spielberg and Pastor Carl Wilkins, a noted humanitarian who protected a Rwanda orphanage while the country was under siege. The first Kristallnacht program featured Steven Smith, Head of the University of Southern California’s Shoah Studies program, followed by Dr. Tamara Freeman, ethnomusicologist who teaches the power of music as a form of resistance.
In speaking to Head of School Ruth Gafni about the impact that the Morris and Ruth Kotek Holocaust and Heritage Resource Center has had on the school, Gafni eloquently responded,
“The Center is a natural extension of our social/emotional curriculum, which has been in place these many years in every grade. From the early grades and up through our eighth grade we have instilled a climate of care for others fostered by our devoted faculty and emulated by our students in their behavior toward the younger students as well as their own classmates. Our mission is to engender a sense of inclusion at every level and through every activity. Our fifth-grade Heritage Fair examines each of the students’ particular Jewish backgrounds, be it Sephardic, Eastern European or American.”
Head Librarian and Director of Shoah Education Beryl Bresgi corroborated Gafni’s comments. “As our school goes through its International Baccalaureate (IB) Accreditation process, our connection to world issues through our eighth-grade Facing History and Ourselves curriculum and our ties to the USC’s testimonies give us credence as a thinkers and inquirers about global issues affecting all nationalities and inequalities worldwide.”
Gafni was gratified to see that the audience at the recent Kristallnacht Commemoration consisted of individuals from many different local shuls, public and independent schools outside of the Schechter community. “We hope to continue spreading our message to the broader community.”
By Pearl Markovitz
