Curator Vows Holocaust Exhibit Will Find a Permanent Home

Photos and Story by Donald H. Harrison

CHULA VISTA, California – Project RUTH – “Remember Us: The Holocaust” – which was on exhibit for two years at the Chula Vista Public Library is in the process of closing, but even though it soon will be gone, creator and curator Sandy Scheller vowed Sunday, August 21, that its content won’t be forgotten.

Scheller chatted on stage with Lothian Skelton, widow of television comedian Red Skelton (1913-1997).  She has donated her late husband’s mementos to the Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy at Vincennes University in Indiana.  Scheller said that she has vowed to the dwindling Holocaust Survivor community to keep Holocaust education going in San Diego County, which unlike other metropolitan areas lacks a Holocaust or Jewish museum. “I feel like Oscar Schindler that I haven’t done enough,” Scheller said.  “What’s it going to take?”

Lothian Skelton commented that it’s a matter of believing in yourself and in your project. “The fact that you have taken it this far tells me will take it another step,” she said to an approving audience in the library’s auditorium.  She said the Red Skelton Museum had support from the Indiana state government.  Scheller has been looking for support for a Holocaust museum from both private and public sources, and recently brought up the matter to County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who she said expressed interest.

One audience member related that as a child she was always afraid to watch The Red Skelton Show, thinking it was about a red skeleton.  “That comes later, madam,” Lothian Skeleton quipped.  She is the daughter of cinematographer Gregg Toland (1904-1948), who was well known in Hollywood for his work on such movies as Citizen Kane, The Grapes of Wrath, and Wuthering Heights.

Sunday’s gathering principally marked the conclusion of the exhibit that had opened in January 2020 but was forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to go dark for many months.  However, there were other purposes as well.  Mary Casillas Salas, the outgoing mayor of Chula Vista, was honored for two successful terms in office.  She in turn lauded Scheller and Harry Orgovan, president of the South Bay Historical Society and Chula Vista Heritage Museum, for finding a way to take Holocaust education during the pandemic from the museum to the community via videoed interviews.  Thanks to the exhibit and the outreach, she said, “there are 10,000 more people who know about the Holocaust than ever before.”

Project RUTH was named for Scheller’s mother, the late Ruth Sax, who was a Holocaust Survivor.  Five of her fellow Survivors attended the event which was followed by a kosher luncheon catered by Chabad of Chula Vista.  Those Survivors were Edith Eva Eger, Ursula Israelsky, Ben Midler, Edith Palkowski, and Rose Schindler.  A surprise guest was Alex Vesely, the grandson of the late psychotherapist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, a seminal work in the field of logotherapy which Vesely practices in his home city of Vienna.  Having lived for a while in Los Angeles, Vesely was on vacation in Southern California with a girlfriend when Scheller reached out to him and invited him to attend the luncheon.

Edith Eva Eger, PhD, told the appreciative audience that she had met Frankl once at the now defunct United States International University in San Diego.  Long before their meeting, she had read Frankl’s work and wrote an article telling of its impact on her own understanding of her Holocaust experiences.

She said that she and Frankl realized that they had a similarly meaningful experience while they were in concentration camps.  “He told me when he was tortured, he closed his eyes and imagined that he was in a Viennese concert hall,” Eger said.  “When I danced for Dr. Mengele (the sadist physician who decided if prisoners should go to the work camp or the gas chamber at Auschwitz), I too closed my eyes and imagined that I was in a theatre dancing to Romeo and Juliet and the music of Tchaikovsky.”

The gathering drew rabbis from three movements: Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform.  Orthodoxy was represented by Chabad Rabbis Mendy Begun of Chula Vista and Mendel Goldstein of Poway, the latter of whom who sits as a member of the board of directors of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.  Conservative Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel of Temple Beth Shalom of Chula Vista and Reform Rabbi Laurie Coskey, who now serves as executive director of the San Diego Continuing Education Foundation, also were in attendance.

Those interested in encouraging development of a Holocaust Museum may contact Scheller via sscheller@cox.net or call the South Bay Historical Society at (619) 422-3429.

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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com