What did Americans know? Beaver Falls Holocaust exhibit challenges historical memory

What did Americans know of the Holocaust as it was happening, and what more could they have done?

Those questions and others are explored in an exhibition at Carnegie Free Library of Beaver Falls through April 28, as part of a 50-city tour sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Library Association.

“Americans and the Holocaust” examines the U.S. public’s limited response to the plight of Jews seeking to escape Nazi persecution, through storyboards, interactive kiosks, films, and a series of lectures by scholars and Holocaust survivors and their families.

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It is an aspect of the Holocaust “largely underexplored, even in college history classes,” said Jeffrey Cole, a professor of American history at Geneva College, a Christian institution which supported the library in acquiring the traveling exhibition for its only Pennsylvania stop.
“The focus is always on what was going on in Europe, but we forget America’s role and lack of action in all of this.”

Antisemitism was common in the U.S. in the 1930s and ’40s. A survey conducted soon after the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany indicated that while more than 90% of Americans knew what was going on in eastern Europe, over 90% were opposed to offering help, Cole said.

“They didn’t want to get involved in the war, and the question was, ‘Do we really care about the Jews?’”

Probing the past challenges people to think about world events today and how we might learn from inaction, said Cole, who invited first-year and past students from his honors course on genocide to lead exhibition tours for middle and high school groups, and others.

“At some point during the course, students will say, ‘What can I do? I’m only one person,’” he explained. “When I put out the call for docents, I said here’s a great opportunity for you to live into the idea that you can be an agent of change, by educating the public.”

It is an impactful way to act on a core Biblical commandment — to love your neighbor as yourself, he said.

Volunteering resonated with Geneva junior Kiera Metcalf, 19, who said that “neighbor” goes beyond the literal to include “any human being,” each of whom should be treated with dignity and kindness.

She was particularly moved by a presentation by Deborah Stueber, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, that included a Zoom visit with her parents, both of whom are in their late 90s, in Florida.

Hearing from survivors has a powerful effect, Metcalf said.

“When we talk about the Holocaust in terms of numbers we forget that of the 6 million Jews and 13 million people total who died, each was an individual. It’s painful and difficult knowing that so many lost their lives, but beautiful to hear from survivors who went on to have families and contribute to the world.

“Seeing Deborah’s parents was a reminder of each person and that each person has a story.”

That presentation attracted a standing room only crowd of 144 people, according to interim library director Mark Attenborough.

“The fact that there are individuals still around and with living memory of the Holocaust has a particular weight to it,” he said. “It’s not so long ago that the Holocaust occurred.”

Eric Lidji, director of the Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center, spoke about Holocaust history as it related to western Pennsylvania, including Beaver County. He worked with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh to create localized storyboards.

Jews comprised just 1.1 % of Beaver County’s population according to 1937-38 survey data.

An op-ed in the Beaver-Riverside Daily Times in April 1938 proposed an exchange of Nazis living in the U.S. for German and Austrian refugees. In 1939, the United Presbyterian Church in Beaver hosted presentations on the persecution of Jews in Germany, and in 1940, the Beaver County Committee for Refugee Children was established.

Jews in western Pennsylvania were paying much closer attention to what was going on in Europe than the general population, and some pushed themselves to the brink of bankruptcy trying to help strangers or people they barely knew to escape the Holocaust, Lidji said.

“Imagine getting a letter out of the blue: ‘I need someone to write an affidavit for me.’ You’d be on the hook for $500 a week.”

Yet, fears that refugees might become burdens on the state or take jobs from American citizens limited support for immigration policies that might have saved the lives of more immigrants, one storyboard notes.

The exhibition has been an “eye opener” for John Sanderbeck, vice chair of the library board, who indicated that he hadn’t been taught much about America’s reaction to the Holocaust during his own education.

“I hadn’t realized how the people who wanted to escape were persecuted here. It’s an underexamined topic.”

The library spent more than a year preparing for the exhibition with input from the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh and Congregation Beth Shalom, and public attendance has been “outstanding,” Sanderbeck said.

The final presentation before the exhibition leaves for its next destination addresses antisemitism today. Slated for April 27, it includes survivors and families of victims of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and a screening of a shortened version of the documentary “Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life.” PJC

Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.