Mesorah Baltimore: the Center for Women’s Torah Studies sponsored an educational excursion to the Sandra R. Berman Center for Humanity, Tolerance & Holocaust Education at Towson University. Mesorah Baltimore is well known for its cadre of in-person and online classes, and periodically offers quality off site educational and cultural opportunities. Previous trips included a private tour of the Bais Yaakov Exhibit and a white glove presentation of the rare books collection from the Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University.
Mrs. Sharon Zuckerbrod, Mesorah Baltimore President, organized the event with the assistance of Mesorah Executive Board Member Mrs. Elaine Mael, a Towson University librarian. Dr. Chris Chulos, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and Dr. Karen Eskow, Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, welcomed the 30 women in attendance. Several librarians addressed the women and prepared them for the Forget-Me-Not exhibit displayed especially for their visit. Dr. Hana Bor, founder and director of the Berman Center, shared her warm greetings, explained more about the Center and its objectives, and spent the morning speaking with the group as a whole as well as with the attendees individually. Additionally, to the delight of the women, the Center provided a kosher buffet lunch.
The excursion featured Forget-Me-Not, a traveling exhibit whose permanent home is the Towson University Library. The exhibit includes life size panels depicting the fates of 24 German Jewish children, before, during, and after the Holocaust. “Very affecting and thought provoking,” said one attendee, “especially in these hard times, and especially considering the origin of the exhibit.”
In 2016, a German librarian named Cordula Kappner directed her expertise in genealogical research into a research project for a group of German high school students. Over two years, under Ms. Kappner’s supervision, the students gathered information regarding the fate of local (to them) Jewish families during the Holocaust. The stunning result is the 24 panels of the Forget-Me-Not exhibit, now translated into English, which include photographs, details of the children’s day-to-day lives, schools, friends, families – and their deportations. Poignantly, the panels are colored coded: Green for survival, red for those who did not survive.
The Center for Humanity, Tolerance and Holocaust Education opened in March 2024, and is endowed by local philanthropist Sandra Berman and her husband, Malcolm Berman. In spite of the institutionalizing of Holocaust memory–including the creation of museums and monuments in cities worldwide–the Center cites an appalling lack of public knowledge about basic Holocaust facts. A recent nationwide poll revealed that 63 percent of Millennials and Generation Z respondents (people born between 1965 and 1996) did not know that 6,000,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and many of the respondents could not name one concentration camp or ghetto. This is a sobering fact, even before one considers the current climate of increasing antisemitism and the willful and ever increasing scourge of Holocaust denial.
The mission statement of the Sandra Berman Center seeks to “promote education on humanity, tolerance and the Holocaust, to highlight the dangers of bigotry and intolerance.” To that end, the Center offers private and group tours, events, and programs, and additionally offers, under the supervision of Dr. Bor, an extensive and curated reading room of related books. Along with housing the Center, Towson University now offers a Holocaust Education Graduate Certificate. The women of Mesorah Baltimore left the trip feeling inspired and have been sharing what they learned from the Forget-Me-Not exhibit with their friends and family.
