Alabama Bright Lights: Birmingham Holocaust Education Center preserves, remembers history
Above: Program Director Rebecca Dobrinski at the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center. (Karim Shamsi-Basha/Alabama NewsCenter)
Birmingham Holocaust Education Center is an Alabama Bright Light focused on dark history from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
An architectural model of the concentration camp Auschwitz greeted me upon entering the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center (BHEC). Tiny barracks are surrounded by razor wire fence along which small pieces of torn cloths hung. I later learned the cloth scraps represented Jews who couldn’t take the terror any longer and ran into the electric fence and committed suicide.
“The mission of the Holocaust education center is to preserve the stories and history of Holocaust survivors, and to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are kept alive and passed down to subsequent generations,” Program Director Rebecca Dobrinski said.
Through many yearly events, the BHEC commemorates Holocaust atrocities including Kristallnacht, which took place in 1938. Nazis and anti-Semitic youths attacked Jews living in Germany and Austria and their homes, businesses and places of worship. These events were part of what is known as one of the greatest human slaughters of all time. About 6 million Jews were killed.
The mission of the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center is not only to educate, but also to ensure a humane and tolerant future. It promotes a moral and ethical response to prejudice, hatred and indifference. The BHEC library contains over 2,000 volumes and is one of the largest of its kind in the Southeast. Birmingham has a few Holocaust survivors left, and I was privileged to meet one during my visit to the BHEC.
Eighty-nine-year-old Dr. Robert May was able to leave Germany at a young age and escape the concentration camps, but some of his family members were not so lucky.
“A few years ago my father was in Eastern Europe and visited Auschwitz. He found a couple of my distant relatives on the roles of the concentration camp,” May said. “They perished there, so it’s become a little more personal for me.” He went on to tell me his gripping tale and how the Jews were given the middle name, Sara or Israel, as a mark.
“It was not known to most Americans at the time that Auschwitz even existed. The higher-ups in government did know about the actual gassing. Most learned the Jews were evacuating, but had no idea they were killed until the last few months of the war,” May said.
Stories like that are why Dobrinski, who is not Jewish, works at the BHEC.
She holds continuing education workshops for teachers across the state. She arranges for survivors to visit schools and community groups and tell their dramatic stories. She holds a film series every year as well as dramatic productions throughout Birmingham. Currently, the Darkness into Life exhibit is on view at Vulcan Park in the Linn-Henley Gallery. Two local artists, Mitsy Levin and Becky Sitel, produced the paintings and photographs telling the stories of survivors. Coming up in March 2016, the BHEC will present “For a Look or a Touch” at the Lyric Theatre. The musical shows how the Nazis not only persecuted Jews, but homosexuals as well.
“The Nazis persecuted all that were undesirable like Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, the Polish and other groups,” Dobrinski said. Telling these stories is more than a job for Dobrinski; it is a riveting and a gripping step in combating prejudice and hatred.
The tiny piece of cloth hung on the razor fence surrounding a cardboard Camp Auschwitz is a reminder that hatred and violence will remain in human DNA as long as we live. But places like the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center, and people like Rebecca Dobrinski, will continue the fight to suppress that hatred and violence.
Alabama Bright Lights captures the stories, through words, pictures and video, of some of our state’s brightest lights who are working to make Alabama an even better place to live, work and play. Award-winning photojournalist Karim Shamsi-Basha tells their inspiring stories. Email him comments, as well as suggestions on people to profile, at karimshamsibasha@gmail.com.
