Taking
The Tour

History Of
The Center

HARRY KIRSBAUM
Staff Writer

DI

elissa Johnson of New
Baltimore enters the
dark hallway of the
Holocaust Memorial
Center on a beautiful sunlit Sunday
for the standard 90-minute tour.
She and two dozen classmates in a
comparative religion class at Macomb
Community College, are led down a
narrow descending hallway, stopping
briefly at maps and pictures as a
docent speaks of thousands of years
of persecution and Jewish survival.
He speaks of the Nazis' rise to power
after World War I — book-burning,
Kristallnacht and the invasion of
Poland in 1939. Melissa takes notes.
But half an hour later, she places
her notebook and pen in her lap, no
longer able to take notes, stunned at
what she sees.
The shock seems to happen to
everyone at the same time. The 13
minutes spent in the video theater,
located in the middle of the center
and the middle of the tour, always
evokes emotional gasps and tears.
"I knew what the Holocaust was,"
Melissa says. "Seeing it made it hard
to believe that this could happen in a
civilized world."
About 25 taking the tour sit on
benches, stairs and against the back
wall as four Holocaust survivors talk of
their experiences in videotaped mono-
logues on the center screen. Black and
white films and photographs match the
survivors' stories on two other screens.
The films include starving Jews scrap-
ing food from the streets to eat, and a
mother holding her baby at the edge of
a mass grave as she is shot. Graphic
black and white photos show the selec-
tion of Jews in the camps and dead
Jewish faces lying next to railroad tracks.
One survivor tells a story from his
past. At a concentration camp selec-
tion line, he sends his scared little
brother to the other line to be with his
parents, later realizing he has sent the
brother to die. Weeping, he says he
blames himself for killing his brother.
The video ends as all three screens
show a pile of bodies carried away on a
wagon. A survivor's voiceover tells of wag-
ons filled with bodies, drawn through the
streets, leaving red lines of blood on the
snow The screens fade to red.

Above:
Nate Garfinkel
speaks.

Far Left:
Tanya Rason listens.

Left:
Adam Klus looks..

On a sunlit day, 90 minutes of excruciating darkness.

No one is taking notes.
Melissa and the others wander
in silence out of the theater. They
are given a few moments to collect
themselves.
The docent leads the group past
the recreated gates of Auschwitz,
past the video stations where they
can see the systematic destruction
found in Auschwitz, past the
Warsaw Ghetto exhibit, and past
the memorial flame. They are run-
ning short of time.
Some pause at the display of an
empty can of Zyklon B, the gas used
at Auschwitz, and the shoes belong-
ing to the victims, found in ware-
house piles after liberation.

The docent has to retrieve the
group for the final part of the tour.
They are led into a small confer-
ence room where they listen as a sur-
vivor tells of his experiences and
answers their questions.
He tells them he does not know
how he survived, just that he did.
He says he does not blame Germany,
but Nazi Germany for what hap-
pened.
"I don't believe in collective
guilt," he says.
The tour is over.
Lisa and her classmates make
their way out of the conference
room, past the library, and up the
stairs to sunlight.

The Holocaust Memorial Center
began when Rabbi Charles
Rosenzveig, Professor of
Rabbinics at the Midrasha,
College of Jewish Studies, in
Southfield, was visiting his sister
in Israel in 1961.
After seeing Yad Vashem, he
was deeply impressed and trou-
bled, he recalled. "How was it
possible that an impoverished
state of Israel could, as its almost
very first act, establish a
Holocaust museum, while the
relatively affluent United States,
which at the time had about 10
times the Jews, never even
thought about it," he said.
"I thought 'I have to do some-
thing.'"
In 1963, he approached
Shaarit Haplaytah, an organiza-
tion of Holocaust survivors, with
his idea, and within a short time
raised $15,000 for a down pay-
ment on six acres in Lathrup
Village for $45,000.
The city was set to issue a
building permit, but the state
took over the property as part of
the 1-696 highway expansion. It
wasn't until 1971, when the state
finally paid $150,000 for the
land, that Rosenzveig used the
money to buy 14 1/2 acres at the
northwest corner of 13 Mile
Road and Farmington Road in
,Farmington Hills.
But before he began improving
the site, the rabbi said, Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit leaders convinced him to
be a part of the new Jewish
Community Center planned for
Maple and Drake in West
Bloomfield.
"After establishing that we
would be completely indepen-
dent, we went along with it," he
said.
It was decided that the
United Jewish Foundation of
Metropolitan Detroit, Federation's
banking/real estate arm, would
own the property.
In 1984, the HMC opened its
doors.

.

—Harry Kirsbaum

2/19
1999

Detroit Jewish News

7

