Other items in this column include:
*Jewish professionals
* Water purification
* Political bytes
* Coming our way
SAN DIEGO – There is a continuing focus on Holocaust education in the county, with the Lawrence Family JCC and the J Company Youth Theatre announcing a planned “Remembrance Reading” at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the JCC, and second-generation Holocaust educators Sandy Scheller and Sonia Fox-Ohlbaum pledging to take to schools the concentration camp uniforms their family members had been forced to wear.
Betzy Lynch, CEO of the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, noting that the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling, said “as we enter the next generation we no longer will have the presence of these miraculous people in our midst. Their stories must live on. In our case, the power of our ‘Remembrance Readings’ is that the children are the ones delivering the stories with the goal of sharing them with other children.”
Playwright Michael Slade’s And A Child Shall Lead tells of Jewish life in Terezin, which was a way station to the Nazi death camps. Joey Landwehr, artistic director for the J Company Theatre, said the story tells of the Terezin children’s underground newspaper, Vedem, which translates as “We are Leading.”
“Through this paper, they not only united the prisoners of the camp but their hope was to get this to the Red Cross on one of their visits so they could understand the truth,” Landwehr said. “These young people had the forward thinking and bravery to work on an endeavor that proves that, as usual, it is the young that lead us. And that they are still leaving us today.”
Reservations are required for the 7 p.m. performance on Tuesday. More information is available via this website.
Scheller, who is curating the Holocaust exhibit that will open at the Chula Vista library in January, said actual uniforms from the concentration camps will help students to visualize one aspect of the Holocaust. Her grandmother’s black uniform had an X painted over its back. The striped uniform that the father of Sonia Fox-Ohlbaum had to wear is featured in some presentations by the Butterfly Project, which seeks to create and display 1.5 million painted ceramic butterflies around the world in memory of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust.
Cheryl Ratner Price, co-founder of the Butterfly Project, explains in the group’s current newsletter: “The Butterfly Project is committed to sparking acts of creation. Every participant learns about a child that was killed, but also more about themselves as they commit to learning this history and discovering their own identity and how we are more alike than different. Students are called upon to be a witness to the stories and to make a butterfly that is uniquely their own as a symbol of both remembrance and hope. Every participant carries the responsibility of being a voice for those who can no longer speak, and they do this knowing that they are not alone in this work. They are connected to others all over the world as a part of The Butterfly Project learning these lessons, becoming upstanders and making beautiful memorials of butterflies all over the world, including many cities in Germany.”
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“With the ability to go on line it helps to compare facts but learning from a first generation survivor can never be replaced,” Scheller said. However, with second generation survivors making presentations, including those with uniforms and ceramic butterflies, “there is no excuse for students not to learn, but it takes effort from administrators and instructors.”
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Jewish professionals
* Jan Landau, co-founder of the Butterfly Project, has been honored by KGTV-Channel 10 with its leadership award for her role in creating the art project as a way to learn about the Holocaust…
* Margaux Dinerman, former director of women’s philanthropy of the Desert, has been named as director of development for the Butterfly Project.
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Water purification
* Cyclopure, Inc., which develops water purification technologies, has announced a $4 million + investment in the company by Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs to accelerate commercialization of the company’s products. With grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Insitue of Environmental Health Sciences, Cyclopure’s capital has now come to over $10 million. “Irwin and his wife Joan care deeply about community health issues,” said Frank Cassou, Cyclopure’s chief executive officer. “We appreciate their belief in our mission to restore home tap water to drinking water quality for the benefit of personal health, family incomes and the environment.” Jacobs commented: “Access to affordable and safe water is fundamental to healthy communities. It also can reduce reliance on single use plastics; a major environmental problem. Sustainable use of water resources and healthy ecosystems are increasingly under stress from changes in global environmental conditions. We are pleased to support innovation that targets these problems.”
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Political bytes
* Actress Jane Fonda, telling why she is appearing at a 4 p.m. rally for supervisorial candidate Terra Lawson-Remer, said: “Just this week 11,000 scientists around the world issued a bold call to action over the climate crisis with a new warning about the future of the global environment. The federal government has absolutely and tragically failed us. Local leaders like Terra Lawson-Remer, who have the courage and the convictions to step up to the challenge of the climate crisis, are our best hope for saving the planet. Terra intends to make San Diego County the gold standard for the nation for a climate action plan and a Green New Deal. The climate crisis involves every part of our economy and society.”
*Cory Briggs, a candidate for San Diego city attorney, says in an e-flyer that the City of San Diego “has installed more than 3,000 (and counting) surveillance devices that now track our movements and our conversations, producing deep databases on San Diegans? Worse still, the City’s contract with General Electric allows the company to use, sell, manipulate, and profit from the collected data however they want, forever. With proper oversight, cameras can be an important public-safety tool for law enforcement, but that’s not the issue. City Attorney Mara Elliott’s complete disregard for informing the decision-makers, the Mayor and City Council, about the data-sharing IS the issue. She has turned our streets into a petri dish for Big Data.”
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Coming our way
*The four day Shabbat San Diego celebration begins this Thursday with challah bakes around the county, followed by Shabbat dinners on Friday, prayer services, lectures and Havdalah on Saturday, and a day of learning on Sunday. For a schedule of activities, see San Diego’s Jewish World’s events calendar on this webpage.
*Sports talk radio host Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton will be the featured speaker at a 10 a.m. brunch, Sunday, Nov. 17, before the Beth Israel Men’s Club, which will meet in a social hall of the temple at 9001 Towne Centre drive. Hamilton was “the popular longtime Radio Voice of the San Diego Chargers, and also did NFL play-by-play for the Seattle Seahawks, and the Compass Media Networks, in addition to his college play-by-play work for the USC-Trojans, Arizona State Sun Devils, San Diego State Aztecs and the Ohio University Bobcats,” the Men’s Club reported. “His NFL play-by-play has been featured at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in the Hall of Champions in San Diego, and for NFL-Films. He has also broadcast the Super Bowl, the Rose Bowl, and the WHA-All Star games.” RSVPs for the $10 brunch may be made via this website .
*Fanny Krasner Lebovits will kick off a year of Holocaust programming at the New Americans Museum at Liberty Station with a talk about her memoir, Memories, Miracles and Meaning at 1 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 26.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
Looking for Jewish children who survived from Kuzelow Poland