January 2017

State Sen. Eleanor
Sobel, D-Hollywood,
left, and Rositta
Ehrlich Kenigsberg,
who says the senator
offered “unbelievable
support” for facilities
that recall details of
the Holocaust.
Founding chair of the first Children of Holocaust Survivors
Group created in South Florida in 1981,Kenigsberg was born
in the Displaced Persons Camp of Bindermichl in Austria. Her
fight for a proper, public, and accessible venue to maintain
Holocaust memories and history was “a promise I made to
my father,” and one that has gained solid and considerable
support from many Floridians, among them, state Sen.
Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood.
She and many lawmakers gathered in 1994 when Gov.
Lawton Chiles signed a bill mandating Holocaust education
in all public schools in the state, from kindergarten through
college and university levels. “Every Florida student will have
the opportunity to learn that promises of ‘Never Again’ are
empty and meaningless if we remain silent and indifferent in
the face of any hatred, bigotry, and bullying.”
The HDEC has spent 36 years making a museum happen.
It has already created a research library and administrative
offices in the Dania Beach building along with two anchor
exhibits – a U.S. Army M-4A3E8 Sherman Tank, the same
type that helped liberate the Dachau prison camp in 1945,
and a Polish railroad car, which, according to Nazi code
numbers found underneath, was one of the vehicles that
carried innocent victims to Nazi death camps. It is one of only
nine on display around the world.
By creating oral histories, the center “will
put names and faces to the victims, raising
the sounds of their moral voices of conscience
to mute the noise of prejudice and hatred,”
Kenigsberg said.
The HDEC’s Documentation Department continues to
videotape interviews with survivors, liberators, rescuers, and
other eyewitnesses to preserve their stories.
Kenigsberg helped create the U.S. Holocaust Museum in
Washington, D.C. and lent institutions such as the United
Nations, Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, and the Simon
Wiesenthal Center the expertise to develop oral histories of
their own.
To date, the Dania Beach facility has some 2,500 stories in its
spoken history collection along with 6,000 volumes of Holocaustrelated
books, journals, DVDs, and videos from that era.
The existing HDEC has won praise for taking its programs
into communities in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach,
and Monroe counties. Annually since 1986, the center has
conducted Student Awareness Days that not only educated
children and young adults from middle and high schools,
colleges and universities, but also give them a chance to
meet and speak with Holocaust survivors.
Kenigsberg said young people are also aware that
extermination of races is still practiced today. “In light of the
ongoing problem of genocide in our times and the inadequacy
of the world's response to it, we must sensitize future
generations to remain vigilant and responsive in this.”
The HDEC also has a division linking Holocaust speakers with
schools, community organizations, churches, synagogues,
state, and federal agencies.
Kenigsberg promises the museum Holocaust stories “will be
appropriate for ages 11 and older, with parental discretion
advised. The design will take a multimedia, state-of-the-art
approach, combining pictures, text, audio and interactive
displays.”
One survivor eager to see completion is Julius Eisenstein, 97,
of Hallendale Beach. A native of Poland, he was moved from
a Polish ghetto to Blizin Labor Camp and held at four other
internment centers until 1945, when he was liberated. During
a Student Awareness event at the NDEC, he met one of the
people who liberated Dachau – the last place he was held.
“I made arrangements with God that He should not take
me away before the opening of the museum,” Eisenstein
said. “I want to make sure the future generations know what
happened.” P
Julius Eisenstein
and Rositta Ehrlich
Kenigsberg
shown holding a
plated photo of
the liberation of
Dachau.
the PARKLANDER 51