Andrew Guckes | Staff Writer
The Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center in Elkins Park has been providing Americans with firsthand accounts of the atrocities of the Holocaust since it was founded more than six decades ago. However, in the past year and a half, the organization has rapidly increased its programming in response to the Israel-Hamas war and rising antisemitism.
This comes after going completely virtual during the pandemic and restarting in-person activity slowly after that. Program and Outreach Director Lise Marlowe said that the 80% increase is thanks to strong survivors and interested and willing students.
“Before COVID, we had about 300 programs a year, and we had 40 survivors who drove themselves to the events. Now, we’re down to six survivors,” she said. “After Oct. 7, we were able to really tap into more of the Jewish student unions and high schools who were needing support. The Holocaust survivor program is something that brings people together.”
She said that the program is free for schools, and there has been a lot of success with student-led efforts to bring the program to their schools.
Freedy Kelman is a student at Cheltenham High School, and he was instrumental in bringing HAMEC and a survivor to Cheltenham. Without many Jewish kids at Cheltenham, the importance of the Holocaust is often lost.
“We need to educate people, and we need to talk about it. We can’t just go silent,” Kelman said. “It went really well. A lot of kids were asking questions and coming after to learn more.”
Fabulous Flores is the education director at HAMEC, and she said that the small group of survivors that is left is deeply committed to this work. They are old, but spry, and always willing to help.
“A lot of it has been trying to figure out, what can our speakers do? What’s their capacity? Thankfully, of the ones we have left, they are all very much willing to hit the ground running [and] give you multiple [events] in a week,” she said.
Flores said that, even though those six survivors are more than able, HAMEC likes to schedule events with second-generation survivors now, too. Part of that is due to demand and logistics, but the larger goal is to begin the process of what the next era of Holocaust education will look like.
“One of the reasons we’re doing that is because we’re also trying to get schools and other organizations used to the idea that, unfortunately, time is not on our side,” she said. “We’re losing our survivors at a rapid pace, unfortunately, so we want to start integrating [second-generation survivors] to make schools more comfortable with the idea of continuing on with having these lessons and programs.”
Kelman said that he knows that his generation is the last that will meet survivors, and that that makes it all the more important to learn their message now so it can be carried on later.
“We’re the last generation that will actually hear from a survivor. I’ll tell my kids about how I met Holocaust survivors when they’re learning about it in class,” he said. “The biggest emphasis is on making sure people know it was real and that it happened to people, because there are people who don’t believe that.”
Right now, these programs largely consist of students meeting survivors and hearing their stories. HAMEC also partners with some schools for a more immersive experience in which students study survivors before writing a biography on them.
HAMEC also has resources like a library of primary sources from the Holocaust and survivor accounts, as well as professional development programs and workshops for adults and children. The programs for students can be scaled up or down in intensity depending on the target age.
The organization has held programs during lunch time at high schools and concerts for survivors with local youth choirs.
Marlowe described the work in schools as the “main mission” of HAMEC. Flores said that the team behind this work is relatively small, but that the organization hopes to expand.
“We understand that Holocaust education is going to look differently, especially once we no longer have survivors, but we are hoping to continue on with their stories through their children and their children’s children,” Flores said.
HAMEC is also a physical site for learning. While its home has changed over the years, it is currently located at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel. Here, visitors can expand upon what they have heard from survivors by reading and watching primary sources, some that aren’t available anywhere else.
“We have more artifacts now than we do space. So we would also love to have satellite museum locations [in addition to] continuing to speak to schools,” Flores said. “We have spoken on every continent except Antarctica, so we’re hoping that anyone out there who knows of schools, whether it’s in Pennsylvania or anywhere else, that they will contact us or make a connection for us.”
For Flores — who will be named CEO this summer — and Marlowe, who are two of the driving forces behind HAMEC and its vast work, the job is not easy. However, it needs to be done. Once, an older Holocaust professional told Flores that if she wanted to pursue this work, she would need to take breaks for herself.
“I remember thinking, ‘What? How? I always watch documentaries; I always read books. I can’t get enough of this,’” she said. “It’s not until recently that I found myself doing the same thing where, when I have free time, I don’t want to read a book a survivor wrote. It snuck up on me, and I think it’s because I am inundated with it all the time.”
Kelman said that these programs are powerful.
As one of the only Jewish students at Cheltenham, he has been subject to antisemitic taunting. At the end of middle school, it got so bad that it caused a rift among some students in his circle.
During the assembly with HAMEC, Kelman saw those same students dialed in to the survivor’s message. Afterwards, they spoke to him.
“They said, ‘I’m sorry we said all these things; I didn’t realize the severity or the magnitude of the situation,’” Kelman said. “I think that’s really the biggest thing that the survivors show.”
