Looking Forward
HMC annual dinner focuses on new museum's construction.
HARRY KIRSBAUM
StaffWriter
ith a construction update video
replacing a guest speaker and a table
of teens and preteens doing the
HaMotzi blessing over bread, this
year's Holocaust Memorial Center annual dinner
had a different look.
"The fact that we are here tonight in such great
masses is already an unbelievable message to our
survivors," said Shari Kaufman, dinner chair, to
the record crowd of 1,200 in the Renaissance
Ballroom of the Marriott Hotel in downtown
Detroit.
The message is of choosing to remember — and
"living each day with the understanding that
never again should we allow this period of history
to be repeated," she said.
Noting the Nov. 9 New Campus Inaugural
Dedication Dinner fell on the 65th anniversary of
Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass in
Germany and the harbinger of the Holocaust —
Lawrence Jackier, Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit president, said, "We could
have been a footnote in history, but we're not —
we're here. And I think it's especially significant to
recognize that the way we respond to an event
like Kristallnacht is to build an institution like
the Holocaust Memorial Center."
Rabbi Ely Rosenzveig of Congregation Anshe
Sholom in New Rochelle, N.Y., and son of HMC
founder Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig, told the
crowd, "The survivors' nightmares pierce the veil
of quiet and rest in the still of the night, and con-
tinue to haunt our heroes.
"As long as they struggle with their memories,
we must, at the very least, help them tell their
story and tell it well."
Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig commented this
week, "We felt that this was a different evening,
that we concentrated on what we are and our
vision of our future. To have included a guest
speaker would have been too much and would
have also gotten into an area that has no relation
to this historic event, which is building an institu-
tion that doesn't exist anywhere in the world."
The new HMC on Orchard Lake Road north of
12 Mile Road in Farmington Hills, is slated to
open in early 2004. The HMC is currently locat-
ed in West Bloomfield.
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11/14
2003
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Top to bottom:
Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig
Shari Kaufman
Rabbi Ely Rosenzveig of New
Rochelle, NY, speaks at the din-
net: