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Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center Announces New Board of Directors Chairperson

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HHREC new Board of Directors Chairman, Daniel Weinreb

The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center  (HHREC) has elected Daniel P. Weinreb as their Board Chairperson. Weinreb is a Principal at Paragon Realty Group LLC, a real estate company based in Westport, CT that specializes in acquiring and developing retail and commercial properties.  Weinreb will serve a three-year term effective January 1, 2025.  He has been serving as a board member since 2005, and succeeds Michael Gyory, who served as Board Chairperson since 2021. Gyory will continue to serve as Vice Chairperson of the HHREC Board.

Weinreb is the son of a Holocaust survivor, Bernie Weinreb, who escaped from the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania in 1943, fought with the Partisans, and eventually came to live in America in 1947. 

Reflecting the responsibilities, lessons and core values instilled in him by his father, he has, for over 25 years, helped spearhead a Yom HaShoah program designed to educate and enlighten the congregants and children , on behalf of his synagogue, the Jewish Community Center of Harrison; the Community Synagogue of Rye; KTI Synagogue of Port Chester; and Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester. He is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and has lived in Purchase, NY for the last 36 years with his wife, Wendy.

“I am who I am because I am the son of a Holocaust survivor.” said Weinreb. “Nothing has had as important an impact on me as the fact that my father lived through what he did and managed to survive the Holocaust. Along with my mother, he instilled in me the basic understanding of good and evil, what is important – and what is not.  I am truly honored to be elected as the new Board Chair of the HHREC and look forward to continuing working with our talented, diverse, and dedicated Board members. I especially want to thank Michael Gyory, Joseph Kaidanow and Millie Jasper for all their inspired work as well as the leadership they provide.  Rising antisemitism and hatred continue to remind us all how important the work of the HHREC is and, together with our Board, staff, and supporters, we will continue to carry on our mission – to teach the lessons of the Holocaust and encourage students to stand up and speak up for dignity and respect, and against prejudice and bigotry.”

“It has been a tremendous privilege to be Chairperson of the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center for the past four years” said Gyory. “I look forward to working closely with Daniel and HHREC to share the lessons of the Holocaust, genocides and human rights crimes to teachers and students in Westchester County and the greater Hudson Valley area.” 

Weinreb previously served on the Board of Directors of the Jewish Community Center of Harrison and is a past Chairman of the Real Estate Executives Division of UJA. He and his wife Wendy were among the initial volunteers who worked with Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center to help with fundraising and the development of community awareness activities. They were also founding members of the Parent’s Advisory Council at the Children’s Hospital. 

About The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center

The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in White Plains New York that serves schools, synagogues, colleges, churches and civic centers in Westchester and the greater Hudson Valley area. The HHREC Mission is to enhance the teaching and learning of the lessons of the Holocaust and the right of all people to be treated with dignity and respect. HHREC works with teachers and students to help schools fulfill the New York State mandate that the Holocaust and other human rights abuses be included in their curriculum. Since 1994, the HHREC has brought the lessons of the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights violations to more than 3,000 teachers, and through them to thousands of students. For more information visit www.hhrecny.org call 914.696.0738 email info@hhrecny.org

 

 

HHREC Announces Summer Educator’s Study Tour of Holocaust Museums and Historic Sites March

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The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) will host teachers and others interested in learning about the history of the Holocaust at the HHREC National Educators’ Trip to Germany & Poland June 24-July 9, 2023.

HHREC Director of Education Steve Goldberg and professional tour guide Gerrit Book will lead a two-week series of educational seminars from June 24th to July 9th. This program is designed to offer insight into the history of the Jewish Community in Germany and Poland, trace the origins of the Holocaust, and tour monuments and memorial sites. The tour will include stops at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former Warsaw Ghetto, and Sachsenhausen, a former concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany.

“Our sponsorship of this educational mission enables our teachers to enhance their understanding of this dark period in human history by literally ‘walking the walk’ where the Holocaust was conceived and implemented.” said Steve Goldberg, HHREC Director of Education. “They also can see how the perpetrators have memorialized their victims through unique monuments. This life-changing experience will impact their teaching in the years to come.”

For more information, contact Steve Goldberg sgoldberg@HHRECNY.org or visit the HHREC website hhrecny.org.

News courtesy of the HHREC.

Supporting the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center

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Anyone ‘watching’ might hopefully note that included in my mission during most of my 20 Years of Inside Press publishing has been supporting the amazing work of the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, (find out more at hhrecny.org). Here, as an HHREC advisory board member, I was honored to join HHREC Director Millie Jasper, HHREC Board Member and past Chairperson David Alpert and Greenburgh councilwoman Ellen Hendrickx to also offer remarks at a Westchester County January 27th commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. County Executive George Latimer hosted the speakers commending them for their long-time commitment and support of Holocaust education and advocacy against antisemitism and all hate. Said Jasper to Latimer: ”Once again you struck the perfect tone about the importance of being an Upstander in the Westchester Community, and around the world.”   — Grace Bennett, Publisher @ Editor, Inside Press, Inc.

Teaching History With a New Consciousness and through a Personal Lens

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The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and with it, the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, an eight-day celebration honoring the triumph of the Jewish people over the Syrian Greeks. The holiday is joyous, complete with gift giving, dreidel spinning, menorah lighting and lots of latkes.

For me, however, a teacher trip through the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) to Germany and Poland last summer caused a subtle shift in the way I think about Hanukkah and my career as an educator.

As a social studies teacher and self-proclaimed history nerd, I wanted to learn about this dark period in human history up close and bring these experiences back to my classroom. I can listen and read and even watch Ken Burns’ excellent documentary, “The US and the Holocaust”, but none of this makes history come alive the way walking along the streets of Berlin, Warsaw and Krakow did. It was here that I saw the physical evidence of a once thriving Jewish life, now all but gone. I walked in the very places where the Warsaw ghetto confined its Jewish residents. I visited concentration camps, like Auschwitz-Birkenau where millions were murdered and left with the picture of a pair of shoes that had once belonged to a small child seared in my mind.

Memory became paramount on this trip, as I scrambled to imprint every lecture we heard, every object we saw, and every place we visited into my consciousness. Our tour guide at Auschwitz, a Polish Professor and activist, reminded us that the simple act of visiting the death camp had afforded us the chance to bear witness to this evil tragedy and therefore we now shouldered the responsibility to make sure the next generation remembers. This has never been so important as it is today when Shoah survivors are diminishing in number.

This is where teachers come in.

As educators we make content choices. While a curriculum is prescribed in broad strokes, it is the teacher who decides to spend a week on World War II, and two days on the Cold War. Or vice versa. In so many ways we are the gatekeepers of history, and as such we have a responsibility to continually learn and consider how we will present material to our students.

As much as we want history to come alive for our students, we need to make it vibrant for ourselves. When we learn, they learn, and if there is a personal connection to the material all the better. I certainly cannot arrange for a field trip to Europe for my students, but I am certain when we find ourselves in our World War II unit next spring, there will be an increased interest because I can offer a personal lens with which they can view and understand this time period.

I hope that my enthusiasm will be palpable as I show them the photo of their English teacher and me straddling the wall with one foot in the former East Berlin and one foot in the West. I am excited to answer their questions as they look through the 100-page photo journal I created to try and capture the essence of my experience.

There are even pedagogical ideas from the trip–the idea of memorializing, the purpose of museums, the contrast with how our nation and Germany grapples with its dark history that have easily fit into our earlier units of study. In essence, the trip has rooted itself in my consciousness as a teacher, a Jewish adult and as a human.

My students remind me daily of my responsibility to help them develop compassion, empathy, and an ability to grapple with the darker side of human history. As for me, I will continue to celebrate the triumph of the Maccabees, and admire the warmth and light the menorah brings into my home. But my lens has shifted ever so slightly and I can never look at it in quite the same way. The on-going struggle of the Jewish people, which so many ethnic and racial groups experience is built into the story of Hanukkah, and this year I will light the candles and say the blessings for the six million European Jews who cannot.

Marissa DeFranca (left) and Laurie Lichtenstein, teachers from the Seven Bridges Middle School in Chappaqua, during the HHREC trip last summer.

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

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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