By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – A parade of speakers on Sunday rededicated a 50-year-old Holocaust monument, telling about the Jewish communal building where the monument is now located, about the artist who created the massive bronze sculpture, and most importantly, about the victims and survivors of the genocide launched against the Jews by Nazi Germany.
The monument, created by sculptor Shirley Lichtman, had its original dedication in 1971 at the Jewish Community Center which had been located on 54th Street near University Avenue before it was replaced by a real estate development. With Zachor (Remember) written in Hebrew letters at the top it showed six branches of a broken tree, representing the Six Million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Near the branches were the names of Nazi killing centers: Bergen-Belson, Treblinka, Warsaw Ghetto, Transnistria, Majdenek, Ravensbruck, Dachau, Sobibor, Auschwitz, Babi Yar, Theresienstadt, and Stothof. In its original configuration, the memorial had an eternal flame as well as a water feature which flowed from one branch to another in a tree like configuration.
After the 54th Street Jewish Community Center was sold, the memorial was moved to the Chabad campus at Scripps Ranch, where a sculpture garden was planned but not realized. The memorial lay in disuse until members of the Jewish Federation of San Diego and members of the San Diego Chapter of Generation of the Shoah led by Jeff Schindler decided to have the piece restored and placed on an outside wall of the Joseph and Lenka Finci Jewish Community Building.
That building, at 4950 Murphy Canyon Road, houses offices of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County; along with those of the American Technion Society, Anti-Defamation League, Camp Mountain Chai, Hadassah Southern California, Jewish Community Foundation, Stand With Us, the Butterfly Project, and Friends of the Israel Defense Force (FIDF).
Heidi Gantwerk, interim president and CEO of the Jewish Federation, said the Finci family fled Sarajevo in a portion of the former Yugoslavia (today Bosnia and Herzogovina) in May 1941, shortly after the Nazi invasion. “On the night before the first roundup—the very first roundup of 10 Jews was supposed to take place. Joseph Finci was on that list and he was tipped off by a Muslim acquaintance, who was working as a policeman for the Nazi-overseen administration. Joseph and Lenka and their two children including Erna Lenka Viterbi (the future wife of Qualcomm co-founder Andrew Viterbi) fled to Italian-occupied Montenegro and eventually spent 1942 and much of 1943 under village arrest near Parma, Italy. When the Nazis occupied Italy after the armistice, the locals helped to hide the Finci family as they once again had to flee. The local Italians who had been their neighbors … facilitated their passage across the Swiss border. They were able to spend the rest of the war there in Switzerland, thanks to the generosity of payments made by the JDC (Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) and raised by the Federation system to pay the Swiss government to permit the small number of refugees who could reach that country to remain there throughout the war. Eventually in 1950, HIAS (then known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) again with funds raised through Federation helped them to immigrate to Los Angeles.”
She added that the Fincis had been descendants of a 400-year-old community of Sephardic Jews who were an integral part of that Sarajevo population. “They lost a vast majority of their family, part of the 70 percent of Yugoslav Jewry who were murdered by the Nazis or by their Croatian allies,” Gantwerk added. “Today there is only one elderly member of the Finci family left in Sarajevo from a family which had served as the community’ chief rabbi for centuries before that. The branches of that family thrive today in San Diego and other parts of California and in Israel.”
Jeff Schindler recalled that his parents, Rose and the late Max Schindler, attended the original dedication of the monument at a 1971 ceremony attended by newly elected San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson, who later went on to become a California’s U.S. senator and after that, governor. “We dedicated ourselves to assuring that the lessons of the Holocaust and a lifelong commitment to our beloved Holocaust survivors that this horrific event would never be forgotten.”
He said the bronze monument was restored over a two-year period by a firm in Valley Center, and then the search began for a new home in a public place where the monument “could serve as a reminder to all of us what happens when evil goes unchecked.” Schindler said he and Darren Schwartz, the Federation’s chief planning and strategy officer, toured many sites before deciding that the Joseph and Lenka Finci Jewish Community Building was the most appropriate venue. “The San Diego Jewish Federation represents us all as well as the spirit of our collective energy and aspiration,” Schindler said. The G. A Recht Construction Company, owned by community member Gary Recht, carefully transported the large sculpture to its new home.
Myla Lichtman Fields, daughter of the late sculptor Shirley H. Lichtman, said “In light of what is happening today in Texas regarding … demands that Holocaust denial material be included alongside the teaching of actual World War II Holocaust history makes the rededication of this memorial even more essential.”
{Editors Note: Gina Peddy, an administrator of the Southlake, Texas, school district earlier this month had told elementary school teachers that new state guidelines required opposing views to be presented on various topics, including the Holocaust. However, the school district superintendent, Lane Ledbetter, subsequently apologized, saying “We recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust. As we continue to work through implementation of [Texas Law} HB 3979, we also understand that this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts. As a district we will work to add clarity to our expectations for teachers and once again apologize for any hurt or confusion this has caused.}
Fields said her mother wrote concerning the 1971 dedication that “Present and future generations must be made aware of the German-instigated brutalities that were inflicted upon a select race of people. History must be remembered so that these events will never occur again.”
The daughter added that the design of the sculpture was inspired by “the biblical teachings that even though branches [are] broken off, a tree can go on living.”
Fields’ brother, Howard Lichtman, added that his family had moved to San Diego in 1968 and became involved with Tifereth Israel Synagogue (where she designed the doors to the Aron Kodesh and an accompanying Ner Tamid.) In behalf of the family, he presented to Darren Schwartz and the Jewish Federation a sterling silver medal that was made at the time the memorial was originally dedicated. It was inside a commemorative postal enveloped postmarked on June 27, 1971.
In his presentation, Schwartz noted that the Jewish Federation had been founded 85 years earlier in San Diego with a primary objective of “helping to establish a Jewish homeland. Shortly thereafter we adapted our work to support Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors, to help them find their way to safety and refuge.” Since then, in partnership with the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Federation has helped support Holocaust survivors all across the world. “In 2019,” he added, “we decided that we wanted to have an extra special focus on survivors here in our community. Primarily with our partners at Jewish Family Service, we took a long hard look at who are San Diego survivors are. … On Dec. 3, 2019, we had several organizations—about 30—signed on to a resolution not only for ‘Never Again’ and ‘To Never Forget’ but to make the most of our time with our heroes, the Holocaust survivors, and the lessons that they have to leave us.”
Vera Falus Lorell, a Holocaust survivor, said when she and her husband moved to San Diego, they became involved with the New Life Club of Holocaust Survivors, which then was based at the 54th Street Jewish Community Center, where they felt comfortable meeting and talking with other survivors of the Holocaust. She added that the monument was conceived to educate a new generation about the evil that is possible when hate goes unchecked.
Gerhard Maschkowski, another Holocaust survivor, commented from the audience that Holocaust denial is refuted by the records that the German Nazis themselves kept and which can be found on line via the Arolsen Archives.
Cheryl Price and Jan Landau, cofounders of The Butterfly Project, which seeks to memorialize each of the 1.5 million Jewish children lost in the Holocaust with a publicly mounted ceramic butterfly, said the community’s Holocaust memory will not end with the rededication of the memorial. They said further artwork, incorporating the butterfly theme, is planned at the site to complement the memorial.
Rabbi Ralph Dalin, the Jewish Community Chaplain, recited El Moleh Rachamim, the memorial prayer for the dead, and the Israel Scouts associated with the Ken Jewish Community led the assemblage in the singing of Israel’s National Anthem, HaTikvah.
*
Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
A beautiful article. We felt as if we were at the ceremony.