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HHREC Annual Benefit

Bret Stephens to Offer Keynote on October 27 at the HHREC Annual Benefit Honoring Dennis Mehiel

August 25, 2022 by The Inside Press

Survivor Hannah Deutsch, Millie Jasper, Survivor Alan Moskin, Christa Moskin

The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) will honor Westchester County Business Executive Dennis Mehiel and feature Pulitzer-Prize Winning Journalist Bret Stephens as Keynote Speaker at their annual Benefit on Thursday, October 27th starting at 6:30 p.m. at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York.

Dennis Mehiel

Dennis Mehiel, formerly a twenty-year Westchester County resident, is the Managing Member of Four M Investments, LLC, headquartered in White Plains.  Four M is a Private Investment Firm that manages only family funds, focused on early-stage technology, food service and corrugated packaging.  He is the Chairman and CEO of Delmarva Corrugated Packaging, Inc. 

Mr. Mehiel is the former Chairman, CEO and Principal Shareholder of Box USA, which he founded in 1966. When sold to International Paper Box USA was then the Nation’s largest independent producer of corrugated shipping containers operating 22 corrugated packaging facilities and two containerboard mills, all located within the continental United States.   Mr. Mehiel is also the former Chairman, CEO, and Principal Shareholder of Sweetheart Cup Company, which was then North America’s largest producer of disposable tabletop products for the away-from-home dining market.  Sweetheart was rescued from insolvency when acquired by Mr. Mehiel in 1998, and was divested to its principal competitor, Solo Cup Company in 2004.  More recently, Mr. Mehiel has begun development of a small number of large capacity capital intensive “Alpha” Corrugated Manufacturing Facilities, the first of which began operations in late 2021 at Dover, Delaware.  

Mr. Mehiel has long been active in New York State political and civic life.  He served for 12 years as a member of the Democratic National Committee, is a former Chairman of the Westchester County Democratic Committee, was an Officer and Director of the New York League of Conservation Voters. He was the Democratic Nominee for Lt. Governor in 2002 and was the New York State Chair of the Kerry Presidential Campaign in 2004.  From 2012 until 2017 Mr. Mehiel served as Chairman and C.E.O. of The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), which operates a 92 Acre property at the south end of Manhattan created when the World Trade Center was constructed 40 years ago.  

Mr. Mehiel is a former Member of the Board of The Milano School for Management and Urban Policy at the New School, a Member of Business Executives for National Security and a former Trustee of the Westchester Medical Center.   From 1989 until 1993 he was a Trustee of the Windward School in White Plains, one of the region’s premier providers of education for learning disabled children.  He also served for ten years as a Trustee of the Purnell School in Pottersville, N.J., an independent high school for girls who have not succeeded in a traditional competitive academic setting.  Mr. Mehiel was the first person not of the Jewish faith ever elected to the Board of Governors of Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work where he served from 1989 until 1996. 

Mr. Mehiel is a member of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in New York City.  Until recently he served as the Chairman of Friends of St. Nicholas, charged with managing the construction of The Saint Nicholas National Shrine, which replaces the only House of Worship lost during the attack on September 11, 2001.  The Shrine was Consecrated July 4, 2022.   He is a former member of the Archdiocesan Council, the Lay Leadership of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Americas.  He is an Archon of The Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle, the world’s oldest Lay Religious Organization and a recipient of the Medal of St. Paul, the Highest Honor a lay person may receive from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. 

Mr. Mehiel Resides in New York City with his wife Karen.

Bret Stephens is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist with the New York Times, and the honoree is Dennis Mehiel, Principal Shareholder and Chairman of U.S. Corrugated, Inc.  Stephens joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2017. Mr. Stephens came to The Times after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial page editor in charge of international opinion and, for 11 years, the paper’s principal foreign-affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. At The Post he oversaw the paper’s news, editorial, digital and international operations, and also wrote a weekly column. He has reported from around the world and interviewed scores of world leaders.

Bret Stephens

Mr. Stephens is the author of “America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder,” released in November 2014. He is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including three honorary doctorates, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. In 2022, the government of Russia banned him for life from visiting that country. He was raised in Mexico City and holds a B.A. from the University of Chicago and an MSc. from the London School of Economics. He and his wife, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, a music critic and entrepreneur, live near New York City and have three children.

To register for this event, or for more information including sponsorship opportunities visit the HHREC website hhrecny.org, email benefit@hhrecny.org or call 914.696.0738.

The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) will hold their annual Benefit on Thursday evening, October 27 starting at 6:30 p.m. at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York. The Keynote Speaker is Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist with the New York Times, and the honoree is Dennis Mehiel, Principal Shareholder and Chairman of U.S. Corrugated, Inc.

To reserve your place or for more information, including sponsorship opportunities visit the events page at hhrecny.org, or email benefit@hhrecny.org or call 914.696.0738.

Survivor Betty Knoop with Ruth Nyavira
Liberator Alan Moskin and Survivor Sami Steigmann

Filed Under: Happenings Tagged With: Bret Stephens, hhrec, HHREC Annual Benefit, Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center

In The Aftermath of the Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting

December 2, 2018 by Stacey Pfeffer

My Perspective on Elisha Wiesel’s Speech at the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center Annual Benefit and a Community-wide Interfaith Candelight Vigil at Temple Beth El

HHREC Keynote Speaker Elisha Wiesel
PHOTO COURTESY OF HHREC

On Thursday evening October 25th, Elisha Wiesel, the only child of the deceased Nobel Prize winning author, humanitarian and Holocaust educator Elie Wiesel was the keynote speaker at the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center’s (HHREC’s) annual benefit. It was a packed house of more than 250 attendees including 16 Holocaust survivors and one liberator. Honorees for the evening included Joseph E. Nyre, Ph.D., the President of Iona College and Mitchell Wm. Ostrove, the CEO of The Ostrove Group, a comprehensive planning organization for businesses, families and high net worth individuals. Additionally Valerie O’Keeffe received a special award recognizing her years of volunteer work as a former chairperson at the HHREC.

Elisha Wiesel currently serves as the Chief Information Officer at Goldman Sachs and occasionally speaks about human rights issues and his upbringing. Wiesel described his father as a “relentless optimist” despite all he experienced as a Holocaust survivor. He questioned the audience and asked what his father would think of this country today and lamented the state of extremism on both the left and alt-right and how these perspectives contribute to anti-Semitism.

Less than 48 hours later on Saturday morning October 27th, 11 Jews at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, PA, were murdered by an anti-Semitic gunman and several others were injured including first responders during the massacre. It was one of the deadliest attacks on American Jewry in recent decades. To think that this event took place during services when joyous life cycle events such as Bar Mitzvahs and baby namings were taking place in the synagogue should make everyone of us shudder, no matter what faith one practices.

When this magazine’s publisher Grace Bennett asked if I would cover the HHREC event this year, I unequivocally said yes. Bennett is deeply involved with the organization. As many of our readers know, her father is a Holocaust survivor and she is passionate about Holocaust education.

I have been fortunate enough to cover the HHREC and attend their Human Rights Institute event in which local high students are encouraged to become “upstanders” when they see hate or bigotry. From time to time, Grace and I have discussed whether or not our magazine is too saturated with Holocaust news. As a third-generation survivor of the Holocaust (my maternal grandparents were survivors), I am admittedly biased when it comes to Holocaust news as well. I always believe we should cover topics about the Holocaust so that future generations can learn the lessons that history has taught us.

Little did I know when I covered October’s HHREC event that the tragedy in Pittsburgh would unfold in less than two days. I know that anti-Semitism is on the rise (the Anti-Defamation League reported the largest single-year increase–a 57 percent increase) in anti-Semitic incidents last year) and that xenophobia is plaguing this nation but I didn’t realize that these feelings of hate could actually propel someone to commit such a heinous crime on American soil in the year 2018.

Perhaps I was in denial. One of the organizations that the murderer vilified in his hateful rhetoric on www.gab.com was the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), an organization that assists refugees of all faiths and backgrounds. My grandparents and mother came to America in 1950 with the help of HIAS who was resettling Holocaust survivors from the deportation (DP) camps in Germany. To be honest, I had never really given much thought about how crucial this organization was and still is for so many refugees seeking a new life in America.

Interfaith candlelight vigil at Temple Beth El
PHOTO COURTESY OF TEMPLE BETH EL

Wiesel also participated in a Q&A session following his speech at the HHREC event and one audience member asked him what he thought his father would say if he had the opportunity to meet the President today. Wiesel first asked “Do you think my father could have gotten a word in?” resulting in several laughs from the audience. He then continued to tell a story about his father who was hit by a taxi in New York City during the 1950s while on a journalist visa and was forced to wear a full body cast for several months. When he nervously went to the Customs Office to renew his expired visa, the officer said to him “You know you can become a citizen.” Wiesel paused and asked the audience, “Imagine that.” Growing up he said his father would always get misty eyed whenever they landed at JFK and were welcomed by US Customs.

Wiesel described his father as “patriotic and someone who loved this country deeply.” When Elisha was a liberal arts student in college he recalls there was a large debate underway about burning the American flag. His father told him, “If you knew what the flag meant to me when we saw it when we were liberated by the US army, you would never burn it.” Wiesel said he believes that his father would want to talk to President Trump about “how we treat people coming to our shores because it is something he felt so personally as a beneficiary. My father could never forgive FDR for closing the doors to Jews in the 1930s and he would very much take up this issue with our President if he met him today.”

Within five days of hearing Wiesel speak, I found myself in the crowded pews at Temple Beth El in Chappaqua with my ten-year-old son for an interfaith candlelight vigil for the victims of the Tree of Life shooting. In attendance were: Reverend Martha Jacobs, First Congregational Church of Chappaqua; Reverend Tenku Ruff, Soto Zen Buddhist Association; Friar Hugh Burns, Holy Innocents Catholic Church; Reverend Merle McJunkin, Antioch Baptist Church; Reverend Alan Dennis, Saint Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church; Kristina Szibinga, Chappaqua Friends Society; Dilkash Ashraf, Upper Westchester Muslim Society; and Robert Greenstein, Town Supervisor of New Castle. The service led by Temple Beth El’s Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe included communal singing led by Cantor Elizabeth Sternlieb and a speech from Rabbi Maura Linzer, who has strong ties to the Squirrel Hill tightknit Jewish community having grown up in Pittsburgh not that far from a Tree of Life synagogue.

Admittedly I was a bit wary of attending the service with my ten-year-old son but I am not one to shy away from tough topics with my kids especially as they relate to anti-Semitism and/or the Holocaust. My five-year old daughter knows who Hitler is and that he hated Jews. I don’t go into vivid details yet but I use it as a discussion point with my kids to talk about bigotry. I see the world through a Jewish lens as a third-generation survivor so I see it as my obligation to start telling my children about their family’s legacy in basic terms they can understand.

Wiesel concluded his HHREC speech with a question he posed to the audience. “My father lived with despair and managed to see the light. What of us who live in the light like few generations ever have in this country in this time of plenty? Can we squint in the light and can we see the darkness among us? Can we see the saddest among us and once we see that darkness, can we look past it and see the good in everyone’s soul to champion them in their time of need?”

I’d like to say that we are living in the light, as Wiesel suggests. My grandmother’s favorite saying was “this too shall pass” whenever I encountered a difficult circumstance. Now I’m not so sure.

Filed Under: Armonk Cover Stories Tagged With: community, Elie Wiesel, Elisha Wisel, gun violence, HHREC Annual Benefit, Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, Holocaust education, Interfaith Service, service, Tree of Life Synagogue

Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center 2017 Annual Benefit Dinner: October 26

June 3, 2017 by The Inside Press

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The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center announces its Annual Benefit Dinner

October 26, 2017

Mamaroneck Beach & Yacht Club

Honoring Paul Elliot, CFA
Founder & Managing Member, ELCO Management Company, LLC and

Grace Bennett
Publisher & Editor, The Inside Press, Inc.

For further information please call 914-696-0738 or email benefit@hhrecny.org

Filed Under: Chappaqua Community Tagged With: Grace Bennett, hhrec, HHREC Annual Benefit, Holocaust and Human Rights, Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, Paul Elliot

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