HEC'S FIRST RESOURCE BOOK, " STORIES OF HANNAH"

The Holocaust Education Center is committed to the education of children on the Holocaust. Since its inception, seven thousands of children from elementary school to high school have visited the center, and the number of these schools has totaled 100. A great need has been felt by many who did advance study on the Holocaust for adequate educational materials on the subject. In order to respond to this demand, HEC is now preparing a resource book written in Japanese based on materials already in use at Holocaust education centers worldwide. The book will be a compilation of personal stories of Mrs. Elizabeth Hannah Pick, who is referred to in the Diary of Anne Frank as Lies. The Diary is one of the most familiar books to many Japanese, being widely read among the youth and often viewed on TV.

Mrs. Pick flew over to Japan from Israel to attend the HEC's opening ceremony two years ago, and her lecture on her personal experiences in the death camp had a great impact on the Japanese audience. "Anne died, but I survived. I must keep telling for her the message of peace," said Mrs. Pick. The resource book will contain her message through the course of her dramatic life, starting from birth, to her friendship with Anne in elementary school, onto the capture and to the death camp, and finally to the liberation and her return to Israel. Also in progress is the preparation of a guidebook for teachers.

Prior to writing the draft text, the HEC staff was able to have an indepth interview with Mrs. Pick. Her personal episodes, which have not appeared in print, are also included in the book. Among such episodes are her encounter with Mr. Otto Frank, that she and Anne sat side by side in classroom but they were separated by their teacher because they chatted too much during class, that they were good playmates but Hannah was not very good at sports except swimming.

ENCOUNTER WITH THE HOLOCAUST

Tsuyoshi YAMAGUCHI, Director, International Cooperation of HEC

(Photo9: Mr. & Mrs. Greenfield, S. Heller,
A. Able and T. Yamaguchi in Australia")

"He always prays for the "Peace of Jerusalem" with great love to Jewish people." I clearly remember my pastor's words about Rev. Makoto Otsuka, currently the Director General of Holocaust Education Center, which I heard when I first met him at my church. It was 27 years ago, and both of us were still university students. After graduation from college, he chose the way to become a clergy man and I became a businessman. In my business life, I was mostly assigned to work for the overseas subsidiaries of the company and I lived in Brussels, Milan, Rome, Frankfurt, Panama City and Singapore for 16 years in total. Naturally I had to make business trips to countries (including Israel) around the subsidiaries and through doing business I made good acquaintances with Jewish people. Many of them are survivors of the Holocaust or relatives of the victims who experienced and overcame various hardships which are beyond description. They are sensitive and are of deep insight into mankind, and I learned a lot from their talk and life itself.

Among my experiences, I should like to introduce one episode. I had an old business friend of some character who always hooked up a small tape measure onto the belt of his trousers. One day, I asked him, "Why do you always hold it on your belt?" He answered -" My every action and behavior is measured in front of God. This tape measure reminds me of it." Contacts with such Jewish people and visit to Yad Vashem were my initial introduction to the Holocaust.

In April 1991, after the falling of the Berlin Wall, I was again transferred to Frankfurt in order to assume new duties in the development of the Central & Eastern Europe market. This gave me the second opportunity to learn about what happened to the Jewish people. In those countries, I saw the seeds of the traditional Jewish culture which was hidden below the surface for so long starting to sprout out in the spring and blossoming in a day. It really could be called 'the renaissance of the Jewish culture' and shows vividness and shine of Life! Illegally confiscated personal properties from the Jewish people were returned to the original owners, synagogue were renewed, Jewish historical and holocaust museums were newly opened. After that, under my own initiative during a vacation, I began collecting materials relating to the Holocaust and to the life of Jewish people there, visiting around the historic places for the Holocaust and the sites of concentration camps. It was at this time when I received a request from Rev. Makoto Otsuka to collect and send him some material for the "Anne Frank Exhibition" which was planned to be held in his church in Fukuyama, Japan.

In 1993, after having finished my assignment, I came back home and immediately paid a visit to Rev. Makoto Otsuka at his church. He showed me many letters and materials received from the witnesses of the Holocaust living in different countries and revealed his vision of opening a Holocaust Education Center for children.

His vision came true, and in the summer of 1994, during our preparation for the opening of the center, we had an opportunity to visit concentration camps and the Holocaust museums in Germany and Poland. Then in early spring of 1995, we visited Austria, Hungary and Czech Republic. During these trips, we could see the facts of the Holocaust and meet with many concerned people, which gave us three-dimensional understanding of the Holocaust. In Auschwitz, we saw an old lady with a numbered arm crouching by the stone steps. We also met an old man holding out his arm with a tattooed number, telling us to take a picture of it, upon listening to our purpose of the trip. I saw a small Israeli flag and candles placed at the end of ruined rows of wards. A strong feeling rose in me; the Holocaust has not come to an end yet. We have to pass this fact down from generation to generation.

Our center is still new and small, but we wish to continue with efforts to fulfil our task in cooperation and solidarity with colleagues carrying out this same work elsewhere.

RECENT VISITORS TO HEC

During the 3 months in fall last year, 3456 people (September, 704; October, 1715; and November, 737) visited our center. These three months are the season of excursions for Japanese schools. Some schools take students out for sight-seeing; some for social studies. But this year many schools chose HEC as their destination.

Many teachers in the vicinity and even those in the Tokyo Metropolitan area came to know of this newly established center, and they fixed a date for visiting the center in their trip schedule and brought many children to study about the Holocaust.

Most teachers visit here in advance and study for themselves firsthand. They also take back with them audiovisual materials to show and study about the Holocaust with their pupils. Children visit here with textbooks in their hands; many of them are handmade by their teachers. Some children come with questions and themes and study earnestly about the tragedy which occurred many years ago in places they have never heard of.

The following are some reactions of the children who have visited the center recently:

" This should never happen again! "

" More I think of it, more sad I become. I will study more and more about it from today. "

COMMEMORATIVE BOOKLETS PUBLISHED

(Photo10: Commemorative Booklets)

A commemorative lecture was held last June, as one of the events to celebrate the first anniversary of the opening of the Holocaust Education Center. Prof. Michael Berenbaum of USHMM (now he is the president of Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in Los Angeles) was invited as a principal guest. He had held commemoration lectures in Okayama, Kyoto, Tokyo and Fukuyama.

Last December, HEC compiled a booklet of his lectures and the contents of Q&A. It was published in A5 size, 56 pages, limited 1000 edition. At the end of the booklet, an ÒUnderstandable History of the HolocaustÓ was also attached to be helpful for studentsÕ study.

At the lecture held on June 25 in Fukuyama, Mr. Victor Navarsky, a survivor from the Holocaust, presented his experiences and exchanged Q&A on the Holocaust with 31 students from elementary, junior high, and senior high schools. At the end of the lecture, the students presented their opinions under the title of "Small Hands, Create Peace - What I can do Now."

The booklet which recorded this lecture meeting, including all the participants opinions, was also put into print (A5 size, 122 pages, limited 600 edition), and was distributed in and around Fukuyama. The response to the publication of the booklet was so great that four newspapers introduced this booklet at once on their pages.

BOOKS PUBLISHED RECENTLY ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST

(Photo11)

In Japan, there were previously some books on the Holocaust such as diaries, testimonies and documentary literature. But recently, we have seen many books interpreted from other languages to Japanese which deal with the Holocaust systematically on a full scale. Some of the titles are "The World Must know" (Michael Berenbaum), "The Dent Atlas of the Holocaust" (Martin Gilbert), "The Holocaust in History" (Michael R. Marrus).

Japanese people are inclined to mix-up the Holocaust with the War, and at present study on the Holocaust is likely to be done only from political aspects by specialists on modern history. So it is pleasant to find these books which are explaining scientifically about how the Holocaust occurred from a historical viewpoint. In Europe and the USA, Holocaust is a synthetic subject studied from in spheres and from many aspects.

Also, we can find collections of photographs, poems and cartoons on the Holocaust, but there are not so many books which gives answers to the question of "why it happened". On that point, it is significant that those books such as mentioned above are published in Japanese.

A Doll from Terezin

(Photo12)

A doll of Terezin Camp (replica) was sent to HEC from Dr. Jan Munk (Dir. of the Terezin Memorial, Czech Rep.) and exhibited in the display room. This doll was made by Ms. Vlasta Solcova, exactly after the original one even to the spots of the stain.

We would like to express our appreciation to Mrs. Helly Barzilay of American Academy for Hewish research for sending us 15 books on the Holocaust to our library and also great thanks to Mr. Gerald P. Wolf for his warm donations.

We have opened our home page on the INTERNET so that we can introduce the Holocaust and the center to all over Japan, and to the world. We are waiting for your accesses.
Web site : http://www.urban.or.jp/home/hecjpn
E-mail : hecjpn@urban.or.jp

May the "light of hope" will shine forever
Otto Frank
(Father of Anne Frank)

NEWSLETTER Published quarterly since 1995 by Holocaust Education Center, JAPAN (In Memory of 1.5 million Jewish Children)

Editor-in-Chief : Masaru OTSUKI
Advisory Board : Rabbi James M. Lebeau, Etsuo SAKON, Yoshiyuki TAMURA
Editorial Staff : Makoto OTSUKA, Akio YOSHIDA, Mimako SAEKI, Hisao OKA

To NewsLetter No5 Index