REGISTRATION FOR
A STORY OF SURVIVAL
AND LIBERATION
An evening with
Dr. Leon Bass and
Mr. Robbie Waisman
COUNTRYSIDE
COMMUNITY CHURCH
March 6 - 7 PM
Please, click here.
Monday, December 26, 2011 at 11:39AM Print Article Monday, December 19, 2011 at 12 PM, KIOS will air the testimony of Robbie Waisman. Mr. Waisman is a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp and shared his testimony last April at the Durham Western Heritage Museum. Mr. Waisman will visit Omaha again in 2012 for the Week of Understanding - a project to provide survivor testimony to middle and high school students.
Monday, December 26, 2011 at 11:31AM Print Article On Thursday, December 1, 2011, the Institute for Holocaust Education hosted survivor of Rwandan genocide, Emmanuel Habimana, at the Jewish Community Center in Omaha. Many in attandance to hear Habimana’s testimony left with a deeper undertsanding of and connection to survivors of genocides.
Survivor of Rwandan Genocide, Emmanuel Habimana, speaks with Holocaust survivor, Bea Karp.
Emmanuel Habimana with Eadie Tsbari and Ellie Batt who were in attendance for Habimana’s testimony.
Habimana sharing his testimony.
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 11:56AM Print Article Adam Klinker/World-Herald News Service
This is the story Beatrice Karp shared with sixth-graders in Sara Wheeler’s class at Karen Western Elementary School in Ralston:
Growing up in the countryside near Karlsruhe, Germany, in the early and mid-1930s, her early childhood was normal, even idyllic, living with her parents, a younger sister, her grandmother and an uncle.
“Then, suddenly, I knew something was very wrong,” Karp said. “My uncle used to come home from the university and I could hear arguments about whether to leave Germany or not. My father would say he couldn’t believe anybody would do something like that to the Jewish people. He also said, ‘I am a German. My family has been living here since the 16th century.’”
More on this story …
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 10:34AM Print Article Becky McLaughlin and Erin DeHart, Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium (NHEC) teachers, were each recognized in their districts as Outstanding Educators by the Nebraska State Council for the Social Studies (NSCSS).
McLaughlin teaches Social Studies at Lincoln High. This year she was appointed department head at Lincoln High. She has been a member of the Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium since she arrived in Nebraska. Please see her web page for additional information. http://lhs.lps.org/profile.html?username=rmclaug2.
McLaughlin earned her B.A. in History from Roanoke College in Virginia and her MAED in Curriculum and Instruction from Virginia Tech. She is Nationally Board Certified and has been teaching high school social studies for the past nine years. Becky has been fortunate enough to participate in multiple Holocaust education workshops including two experiences as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Erin DeHart is on the faculty at York College and has instilled a passion for teaching social studies and language arts to hundreds of students. Erin has a special interest in integrating Holocaust education to her curriculum. She has participated in numerous university level seminars including the National Writing Project, seminar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Labor Committee trip to Poland and Israel. She has escorted numerous college students to Washington DC. Erin is presently working on her Ed.D at UNL. More information about Erin can be found on this link:
http://www.york.edu/academics/faculty/eed.asp. Erin is a member of the National Writing Project and the Nebraska Writing Project.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 10:28AM Print Article Beth Seldin Dotan, Director, Institute for Holocaust Education, is thrilled to honor Bob as Volunteer of the Year. “His time and devotion to Holocaust survivors in our community is immeasurable and we cannot thank Bob enough for the quiet and priceless service he provides on our Governance Council,” said Dotan. Cohen has served on the Institute’s Board for more than five years. He chaired 2007’s Kristallnacht event at the Joslyn Museum and the 2010 Yom Ha Shoah observance at Temple Israel. But, the hours of volunteer time devoted to the reparation needs of Omaha survivors is perhaps, his greatest gift. He has worked with Beit Tzedek Legal Services for Holocaust Survivors and connected Kutak-Rock offices outside Omaha to Beit Tzedek to further pro-bono legal assistance for local Holocaust survivors.
Monday, October 3, 2011 at 10:56AM Print Article On Thursday, September 22, 2011, the Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium, a committee of the Institute for Holocaust Education, hosted the Holocaust education conference Teaching about the Holocaust. Wayne State University co-sponsored the event held on their campus. Additional funding was provided by the Herbert Goldsten Trust.
The workshop focus included historical content, current methodologies, rationale, literature and technological resources for teaching the history of the Holocaust. Approximately 70 pre-service and new teachers attended the day’s events including some from as far away as Chadron and York, Nebraska.
In addition to lectures and break-out sessions, guest speaker Warren J. Blumenfeld, Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Iowa State University in Ames, spoke of his family’s Holocaust experiences. While Dr. Blumenfeld’s grandfather came to the United States in 1912, most of his family remained in Krosno, Poland and were sent to their deaths during the Holocaust. His grandfather returned for a visit in the 1930s taking motion picture equipment with him. This footage is likely the only film taken of Krosno and the Jewish community during that time. (For more of Dr. Blumenfeld’s story, please click here.)
At the workshop, educators also listened to the testimony of Holocaust survivor Rachel Rosenberg. Mrs. Rosenberg was in several concentration camps throughout the war, including Auschwitz. Eventually, Mrs. Rosenberg and her husband Carl, also a survivor, settled in Omaha, Nebraska. He personal story was very powerful, especially for those who had never heard a survivor’s testimony. (For more on Mrs. Rosenberg’s story, please click here.)
Participants were extremely pleased with the day noting the “valuable” information they received, the connection they felt to the survivor stories and more confidence in building a Holocaust curriculum.
The Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium is a group of Nebraska educators committed to teaching students and teachers the universal lessons of the Holocaust through age-appropriate resources. The consortium assits educational institutions by training teachers using Holocaust materials that meet Nebraska State Standards and by providing other Holocaust educational resources to advance the knowledge and teaching skills of educators throughout Nebraska. For more information on the NHEC, please click here.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 12:19PM Print Article Lizzy Gilbert
Plains States Region/ADL
Justice Gabriel Bach spoke at Creighton University on September 22nd and at Kutak Rock Law Offices on September 23rd. His visit marked 50 years since the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel.
Justice Bach is widely known for his role as lead prosecutor in the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was one of the top-ranking Nazi officials responsible for the Holocaust. After living in hiding for years following World War II, Eichmann was captured in Argentina and brought to Israel to stand trial for war crimes.
Addressing Creighton law students and the community on Thursday evening at the Harper Center, Justice Bach then spoke to Omaha-area attorneys at the law firm of Kutak Rock on Friday afternoon. He described the legal considerations and challenges the prosecution faced in the Eichmann trial, including his capture, the location for the trial, and considerations of international law and the previous Nuremburg trials.
Recalling testimony of a Holocaust survivor whose family perished at a concentration camp from the trial, Bach asked this man to recount his experiences. “The man told me,” said Bach, “when we arrived at the camp, Nazi soldiers ordered us into a single-file line. They then sorted us into two lines. I later learned that the people they sent to the left, soldiers marched directly into the gas chambers. Those on the right, they packed into the barracks destined for the work units.”
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 12:28PM Print Article OMAHA, Neb. – The Creighton University School of Law International Law Lecture will mark the 50th anniversary of the trail of infamous Nazi Adolf Eichmann with a talk by Justice Gabriel Bach, Israeli Supreme Court (ret.), the prosecutor at the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann, at 5 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 22 in the auditorium of the Mike and Josie Harper Center at 602 N. 20th Street. Reception to follow.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Eichmann, one of the top-ranking Nazis responsible for the Holocaust was captured in 1960 in Buenos Aires by the Israeli Mossad as part of a covert operation. He was then transported to Israel to be prosecuted in Jerusalem as a war criminal. Justice Bach was appointed to the position of a senior prosecutor for the trial that began in the spring of 1961. He was the lead coordinator for the investigation of Eichmann’s crimes, acting as the legal advisor to the police bureau and preparing the case for trial. He served as one of three principal prosecutors during the trial of Eichmann – one of the most significant trials in the annals of criminal justice.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 10:21AM Print Article On August 22, KIOS will air the testimony of Renee Firestone presented at the University of Nebraska at Omaha on March 2, 2011.
Renee Firestone is a Holocaust survivor and founding lecturer for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Education Outreach Program in Los Angeles.
Firestone was 19 when she and her family were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. For more than three decades she has shared her testimony with students and others. Interviewed in 1994 she said, “The last words when someone was taken away were always ‘Remember us if you survive.’” She considers her survival as part of a mission to carry out those requests.
In March of 2011, Firestone visited Omaha to take part in A Week of Understanding, a joint effort of the Institute for Holocaust Education and Omaha Public Schools.
Ralston Recorder: Holocaust Survivor Speaks to Strudents - Mrs. Firestone’s visit to Ralston Middle School
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 12:36PM Print Article UPDATE BY BETH SELDIN DOTAN, DIRECTOR OF THE IHE
A teacher from the Friedel Jewish Academy brought me a short book published by Yad Vashem titled “The Daughter We Always Wanted: The Story of Marta.” In one sitting, I learned about a survivor who was hidden in a Catholic-Polish family’s home in Warsaw. She had the fortune of attending school and hiding in the open. Later, when her family did not come to retrieve her, as they had all met their death,
she was sent to Israel with a group of Jewish orphans. Marta’s grandfather later discovered her, but by then she was well integrated into Israeli society.
The story seemed ripe for developing a sharing program. Modeled after the Ghetto Fighter’s Book-sharing project, I contacted Friedel and through other connections, I contacted the St. Augustine Catholic school which is almost entirely populated by students of the Omaha and Winnebago tribes of the Sioux Indians. We then decided to include our Partnership with Israel elementary school in the Western Galilee since the book was originally written in Hebrew.
With a grant from the Jewish Federation Foundation, we were able to arrange the purchase and shipment of the books for all schools and arrange for numerous cultural exchanges between the groups. The Friedel students traveled to the town of Winnebago which is located and hour and
a half north of Omaha in the Native American reservation. St. Augustine parents and students honored us with a drum circle and dancers carefully dressed in full Sioux Regalia. The children began to understand each other’s differences and similarities. Holidays and food had uncanny commonalities. We laughed at the end of the day when we took a group photo. The uniforms were just alike, and essentially unless you knew the children, it is difficult to be able to tell them apart!
The St. Augustine students visited Friedel as well, baking challah together, discussing issues in the book and learning Israeli dance. All the while, both schools were also sharing information with their Israeli
counterparts at Maayanot school in Israel. The Maayanot teachers visited Omaha and together with the educators strategized second semester activities for all the students.
After numerous e-mail exchanges, the project concluded this spring with two video conference experiences. The first was a social exchange for the children to see and speak to one another. One of the chaperones from St. Augustine, is a nun who was born in Germany shortly before WWII began. Sister Frances felt great pressure as a young person to join the Hitler Youth, but her parents did not allow her to join. The children in Israel had many questions about her habit and clothing and her past.
The St. Augustine children taught the Israeli kids to say various words in their native “Hochunk.”
The second and final component of the project was a video conference with the subject of the book, child survivor “Marta.” She traveled from Jerusalem to the Western Galilee and spoke to the Friedel and Maayanot students about the book and her life in Israel from the Ghetto Fighters Museum.
The entire experience was unforgettable. Each interaction helped us all to understand how this simple book unified all of us in our very different worlds. How unlikely is it that Jewish children in Omaha
would interact with Native American students in a Catholic school whose media center director was a nun born in Germany? Oh and did we mentioned that the head Priest at the Mission school has perfected playing the Indian Flute and gave his try at blowing the shofar during one of our visits? Marta’s story had a great impact on the children on so many levels. The possibility to talk face to face with our students here made for an unforgettable experience.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 12:23PM Print Article Visitors from throughout the United States, Canada and China recently spent a week in Omaha as the Institute for Holocaust Education hosted the Association of Holocaust Organizations 2011 Annual Conference. The theme of this year’s meeting was Staying the Course: Strengthening the Future.
The Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO) was established in 1985 to serve as an international network of organizations and individuals for the advancement of Holocaust education, remembrance and research. A delegation from Harbin, China, including Mayor-elect, Mr. Piao, attended the beginning of the conference to introduce a new 60-panel art exhibit depicting the Jewish community of Harbin. Beginning in the early 1900s, Russian Jews settled in Harbin and for many years a thriving Jewish society existed there. The AHO Board accepted an invitation from the Chinese delegation to participate in a 2013 gathering in Harbin. Omaha City Council President, Thomas Mulligan, welcomed the Chinese delegation and the AHO members at the exhibit opening.
For more on this story, please click here.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 12:23PM Print Article Monday, May 23, 2011 at 12 PM, KIOS will air the November 22, 2010 lecture of Dr. Boaz Cohen: Child Survivors in the Aftermath of the Holocaust.
Dr. Cohen is the head of the Holocaust Studies Program of the Western Galilee College in Akko Israel.
He received his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and is a specialist in children’s memories/memoirs of the Holocaust and of how these accounts relate to our understanding of the Holocaust. He has published extensively in this area.
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 11:37AM Print Article Approximately 350 people attended the 2011 Omaha community Holocaust Commemoration which took place on Wednesday, May 4 at Beth Israel Synagogue. Sixteen local survivors were present to light candles in memory of the six million Jews who lost their lives during the Holocaust. Also in attendance was guest speaker and survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Robbie Waisman.
For more information on the evening, please click here.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 11:29AM Print Article 
Alan Potash, director of the Plains States Office of the Anti-Defamation League, right, presents the Couarge to Care award to Olta Gjoca, left. Gjoca received the award on behalf of her grandmother, Deshire Kumi-Veseli, an Albanian who helped save two Jewish families during the Holocaust. Gjoca is a 2006 graduate of RHS. Her grandmother still lives in Albania.
For Mr. Klinker’s story on Deshire Kumi Veseli, please click here.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 1:15PM Print Article 
While the update may be a bit belated, the baskets arrived right on time. The IHE delivered baskets of fruit in honor of the Passover season to 21 survivors and their family members.
For the Omaha World-Herald article, please click here.
Monday, May 2, 2011 at 2:24PM Print Article 
Holy Name student Angie Peterson, left, an eighth-grader, guest speaker Bea Karp and Kara Ramold, a Holy Name seventh-grader, met when Karp spoke at the school to conclude a lesson on the Holocaust.
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 10:50AM Print Article Kitty Williams, Dr. Fred Kader and Lou Leviticus shared their testimonies with over 500 high school seniors from Grand Island on March 24, 2011.
The survivors told their stories and provided some advice. Williams said there’s only one thing she wants students to take away from their survival stories: “Don’t ever by prejudiced, because that’s where I think it all starts.”
Following an article about the event, one Grand Island student posted, “These are stories that every student in Nebraska should hear. Perhaps our school would have less problems with bullying if they could learn not to judge others.”
For the rest of the story, please check the following links from Grand Island’s local news sources:
Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 10:58AM Print Article The Magazine for the National Endowment for the Humanities, March/April 2011, included a piece titled The Great Escape, The Journey that Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margaret and H.A. Rey. The article described the Rey’s journey and the exhibit inspired by their artwork during that time. The exhibit was curated by the IHE’s Director, Beth Seldin Dotan.
We will attach the article once it is available on-line.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 1:34PM Print Article Please tune in Monday, April 4th, 12 PM as KIOS airs the testimony of Rachel Rosenberg.
Rosenberg spoke at the Jewish Community Center in Omaha in the summer of 2010. The program will be one-half hour.
While most of her family was murdered, remarkably Rachel and her two sisters survived the Holocaust.
The devestating odyssey and ultimate survival of Rachel and her sisters can be read here.
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 3:51PM Print Article On Thursday evening, March 10, I went to the Omaha Home for Boys to lead
a book discussion on the novel, The Island on Bird Street- historical
fiction written by Uri Orlev. The relationship with the Omaha Home for
Boys came about through a wonderful volunteer for the IHE, Amber Partin
who works as the Communications Assistant at the organization. A group
of five young men and three or four staff participated in the
discussion. Some of the boys had just begun the book, but we had an
interesting discussion about the Holocaust, about Poland and the Warsaw
ghetto where the story line takes place. Volunteer, Caroline Rockman
accompanied me to the book discussion and helped talk about Darfur and
the genocide that is occurring there. Some of the boys explained that
there are Sudanese students at their schools. We talked about the
trials and struggles these students have gone through in their life-time
in parallel to the challenges mentioned in the book by protagonist,
Alex. I also spoke about the author, Uri Orlev and that I had been with
him personally as he visited a number of schools on the east coast a
number of years ago.
The young men at the Omaha Home for Boys hope to finish reading the book
in a few weeks and Caroline and I will return to continue the discussion
with them. They will also view the DVD film that closely follows the
story line in the book.
- Beth Seldin Dotan
