jack and isak

Last night the board of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education honored our founders Jack and Isak with birthday cakes and balloons as they prepare to celebrate their 80th and 85th birthdays respectively. Jack and Isak are both survivors, both dear and remarkable men. Both have been important role models for me; my admiration, respect and affection for them runs deep.

Jack grew up in the Holocaust. Born in the free state of Danzig in 1927, he was just 12 years old when Hitler invaded Poland. At age 13, he was captured by the Nazis and for the next two years, he worked in series of forced labor camps. In 1942, he was deported and imprisoned at Blechammer concentration camp, the first of many such camps where he would be sent prior to his liberation on May 7, 1945. He was the sole survivor of his family of six. Jack and his friend Isak arrived in the United States in June 1946. Together they founded the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education in 1993.

Isak was the sole survivor of an entire family. Born in Poland in 1922, at the age of seventeen, he was arrested by the SS and sent to Miechow. Four years later, in 1943, he and other prisoners were loaded into boxcars and sent west. He spent the next twenty-six months in eleven different camps, always under the control of the SS. He was sent to Bergen-Belsen twice. He managed to escape once, but was shot and recaptured. Towards the end of the war, he was sent to Sandposten, ninety-eight kilometers from Bergen-Belsen. At liberation, in April 1945, Isak weighed only eighty pounds and had to recover in a British field hospital. That Christmas, on hearing a translation of President Truman's speech to the American people declaring that he would allow 100,000 displaced persons to immigrate to the United States, Isak resolved to leave Europe. He and Ann, his wife-to-be, arrived in the United States in June 1946. They were the first Holocaust survivors married in Kansas City.

To say that these men have made a profound difference in the lives of many would be an understatement. Their mission: to teach the history and lessons of the Holocaust to people of all races and religious beliefs throughout the Midwest to prevent its recurrence and perpetuate understanding, compassion, and mutual respect for generations to come.

I, for one, feel very lucky to know Jack and Isak - and honored to call them my friends.