Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City

A Living Memorial to the Holocaust

"In 1996, I joined the fledgling museum in New York, the Jewish Heritage museum, the living memorial to the Holocaust, which opened up in 1997. And there, you know, there was a forum for speaking and sharing your experiences. We had thousands of young people coming...

My job was to introduce the chancellor of education, Dr. [Rudy] Crew. And I went to pick him up and brought him to the podium, and he spoke. And when I was taking him back to his seat, I said, 'Dr. Crew, unless you send us your children, this whole entity, this whole building, is nothing but empty walls and pictures.'

Four weeks later there was a directive to all schools under his administration in the greater New York area that designated the museum as a major educational center and encouraged every school to go and visit it. And my exposure and my opportunity to speak to young people is what eventually cured me of what I didn’t know at that time was Post-Traumatic Stress symptoms."

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