Keeping Memories Alive

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Anew project created in partnership with Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids aims to preserve the stories of Holocaust survivors who settled in the Grand Rapids area.

Launching before the end of the year, a special website dedicated to the survivors will feature personal interviews, photos, archives and more, capturing their journeys both during and after World War II.

“Right now, we have about 10 stories that we’re going to be doing,” says Nicole Katzman, executive director of Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids. “As we complete them, we’re going to share these with the community and with community partners, and then continue to add more stories of survivors.”

With a small, yet close-knit Jewish community on the west side of the state, the website hopes to spotlight a group of people who are sometimes overshadowed by Metro Detroit’s larger Jewish community.

Once the website is complete, which currently has three stories finished, the individuals behind the effort want their project to be a template or model that other communities in Michigan can replicate and use for their own purposes.

“There are people who settled in Benton Harbor and all over the state who have similar stories,” explains Rob Franciosi, a professor at Grand Valley State University near Grand Rapids who is helping spearhead the project and its research. “We thought by creating a model, that might be instructive for other people to take and run with as well.”

The idea began during an informal Zoom group held during COVID-19, Franciosi says, where Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids and its partners met to discuss a soon-to-be-installed Holocaust Memorial Sculpture at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

“We were trying to figure out ways to supplement the educational component,” Franciosi says. “We were talking about local connections in particular, so as a group we decided that some kind of a website to honor Holocaust survivors who settled in Grand Rapids would be our unique contribution there.”

While there are many websites devoted to the history of the Holocaust, Franciosi says that few, if any, spotlight the west Michigan perspective. To help tell the stories of survivors, the up-and-coming website will use a geospatial software program that shows how people traveled from Europe to places like Shanghai, the Dominican Republic and, ultimately, Grand Rapids.

Peg Finkelstein, who has led many archival efforts for the website, spent the last year scanning and documenting the history of the Jewish Federation

BELOW: Survivor and Grand Rapids

the war. RIGHT: Here

GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY

PESTKA FAMILY

of Grand Rapids. Various programs that she has helped put on led her to connect with local Holocaust survivors, in particular a man named David Mandel.

“He lived in Grand Rapids for many years and never talked about the Holocaust,” Finkelstein explains. His story will be showcased on the website. Mandel, encouraged by Grand Valley State University, began to slowly share his story and eventually ended up speaking at Jewish day schools for Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Mandel is one of several Grand Rapids-based Holocaust survivors who volunteered to share their journey for the website. “I think with the Holocaust website project and the memorial project at Meijer Gardens, we’re going to really make an impact in Grand Rapids,” Finkelstein says.

By capturing the incredible stories of local survivors, Finkelstein adds that a project like this one can help ensure these journeys and moments in time are never forgotten, particularly for families and descendants. Plus, an increase in online content makes securing archival data and photos easier now than in the past.

“We’re living in a time where if you have internet access, you can get onto some amazing genealogical resources that are out there,” Franciosi says. “I got into an online conversation with a local historian in a Polish town who was able to send pictures of what the town [where a survivor was originally from] looked like in the 1930s and 1940s.”

For the small Jewish community in west Michigan — approximately 2,000 individuals, Katzman estimates — the website will mark the first time many of these stories are told. They’re also encouraging people to reach out with their own stories to further contribute to the effort.

“They’ve never been processed; they’ve never been presented,” Finkelstein says of many Grand Rapids survivor testimonies. “That makes it even more important.”

— PEG FINKELSTEIN

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