MIMI’S HISTORY

 

MY HISTORY AND VISION FOR AECO:  

To Honour the Memory of Moshe Aumann (z"l) and Make His History My Own.

To bring Holocaust education from my community to the world through our huge tourist population in an “Each One-Teach One” concept by preparing our guests to return to their own communities to share what they have learned and providing them with educational materials to share with others. 
 

I live in the best of both worlds - I am an American/Israeli with my legal addresses being in both the Ozarks and Jerusalem!  I carry two passports, and I keep both of them ready to travel!
 

I am a credentialed Holocaust educator through the United Sates Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and studied Holocaust Education with the Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conference for Educators, earning 96 total Professional Development Credit Hours as of June, 2024.

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I have been very involved in the past with Hadassah, the largest Zionist volunteer group in the world and received the Hadassah National Leadership Award in 1987 and hold a Hadassah Honorary Life Membership. I was also the Regional Soviet Jewry chair back in the Reagan/Gorbechav  years when we were trying to get the Jews of the Soviet Union released.  This is how my path and Moshe’s converged as one of his portfolios at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, DC, was in Soviet Jewry Affairs.  My wedding  gift to Moshe was a Lifetime Associate Membership in Hadassah.

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From 1993-1998 I assisted Moshe in his career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel, as Administrative Assistant to Chief Writer and Editor/Assistant to the Minister. I developed procedures to handle worldwide correspondence on behalf of the Minister, prepared high-level government documents for presentation by the Minister, and managed volumes of correspondence in English generated by a worldwide publication produced by the Ministry.

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Beginning BIO for Antisemitism Education Center of the Ozarks: 

I have recently created a center for the express purpose of educating all ages and backgrounds for  understanding and knowledge of the Shoah - the historical reality and the huge concern is that our living testimonies will soon be gone from us, giving the phenomenon of Holocaust denial a greater chance of promoting their falsehoods.  Education is the answer to antisemitism and Holocaust denial.  I live in Branson, MO, where we have 8-9 million visitors a year.  (Branson Chamber states that we had 11million visitors to Branson in 2021, a Covid year.)  Branson is the most patriotic city in the nation, so many of these visitors are veterans and their families. Branson promotes tourism especially to veterans but also to every age level with more and more young people showing up every year. I want to provide a center where educational materials will be available, traveling exhibits, speakers and survivors, school visits to provide materials, etc.  We have a large veterans' museum and many of these veterans helped liberate the camps and they know how hatred brought about the Holocaust and plunged the world into WWII.  This is so needed and Branson is the perfect place to provide these tourists with materials to take back to their own communities throughout the nation and the world.  I have created a Facebook page and it has shown immediate interest.

https://www.facebook.com/educationforantisemitism/

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1. My role is as an educator and informer, reporting on current events that relate to past history with regard to the Holocaust…. My mission is specifically to report concerning and disturbing trends worldwide as the level of antisemitism has escalated rapidly in our world today, and in our nation.  My goal is not to promote fear but to make aware of situations that are cause for involvement rather than apathy.  Education can and should be a major factor in turning the current climate of hatred to a more productive solution in working through differences between peoples…  

2. My classroom is the general public and interested and concerned individuals, whether Jew or Non-Jew…

3. My networks have been established with various sources worldwide whose mission is the same…

4. I am connected to various Holocaust museums and centres worldwide and report on their activities, as well as current situations in their countries…

5. I spend my days (and nights) searching for reports that shed light on current situations worldwide that are a barometer of the growing levels of antisemitism throughout the world, not to promote fear but to educate and inform (and warn) harking back to the years prior to and during the Holocaust…

6. I focus on the academic world and what is being allowed to happen on many campuses through their acquiescence to invited lecturers whose worldview is totally anti-Semitic and anti-Israel…  An informed public is a guard against these types of individuals and their message of hate being allowed to poison the minds of students…

7. I also bring living testimonies from the Holocaust survivors, many of whose stories we have never heard, to help the current generation to relate and have empathy with what happened in their lives…  There are events taking place in some of these survivors’ lives that place them in continuing roles of being persecuted…  We MUST not be silent in our protecting of these who have suffered enough.  Education of the current generation is imperative so that their actions will speak louder than their words for the future.  An informed public can change situations in the social media for the good.  An uninformed public can change the course of the world for bad…  Ignorance of reality is no excuse and promotes apathy.

8. Education is the greatest tool and weapon we have against the hatred of antisemitism.  Apathy is the greatest failure we can have against the hatred of antisemitism…  

9. The Timeline is an excellent tool for educating, especially with the significant dates for various events that took place during the Holocaust years.  The various current events centered around these dates and presented through Holocaust Museums and centers is also a great educational tool for involving the general public in the collective memory of the past with regard to the Holocaust years.  

10. An historical account of the dates during the Holocaust would reveal horrors that took place.  Each of these is a teaching moment for both the classroom and outside the classroom for enlightenment to those in our personal networks who have no knowledge of these events of the past that eventually plunged the world into war…  Education about what caused WWII can help us guard against WWIII…

11. Echoes and Reflections through the United States Shoah Foundation and the Belfer Conference for Educators through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has created a program of teacher training that will prepare both teachers and their students for the days to come by the study of the days of the past that brought about the Holocaust.  The various levels of study that have been prepared systematically and chronologically as themes are a valuable tool for teachers to build upon in their classrooms and with their students.  I am so grateful for this program that will assist me in my own non-traditional classroom - being  the general public…  I will be focusing on those who did not have the benefit of being taught this history in their former classroom days.  I will be attempting to fill in those gaps in their education in various ways of introducing this history to them.  We have many tools with which to work with our modern technologies and connections through social media.  We must inform and educate as quickly as possible in our world of growing antisemitism. 

12. I am so impressed that many states actually have legislation that allows and promotes Holocaust education within their public school curriculum, but only 29   states have legislation that requires them to provide Holocaust education.  I am also watchful as legislation through the House and Senate of the nation is focused on Holocaust Education and even grant funding for curriculum and materials for teachers of Holocaust Education.   I am also impressed that many countries also require Holocaust Education in their school systems.

13. One of the last efforts to be signed into law prior to President Trump leaving office was the Never Again Education Act (which had lanquished for years), delegating that Holocaust Education would be brought into the curriculums of the schools of the nation. The Never Again Education Act was signed into law by the United States Congress on May 28, 2020. The act provides $10 million of funding for Holocaust education in the US.  The Congress is overwhelmingly united in combatting antisemitism and hate through education and saw this not as a Jewish issue, but as an American issue. The new law expands education programming about the Holocaust nationwide, allocating $2 million annually through the United States Holocaust Museum.     

14. Missouri will become the 20th state to require Holocaust education in curricula for secondary schools. Governor Mike Parson on July 1, 2022 signed Senate Bill 681, which establishes a permanent Holocaust Education and Awareness Commission and Holocaust Education Week.  The newly enacted law designates the second week in April to focus on Holocaust education and age-appropriate instruction to Missouri public school students. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will be required to create a curriculum framework of instruction to study the Holocaust. The commission will consist of 12 members, appointed by the governor. Resources for the education component will include the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum.

15. Veteran’s Day is an opportunity to find a vet whose own life was changed through his or her years of service and participation in WWII.  Many of these vets fought against Hitler and all he stood for.  Some of these vets were liberators of the camps and saw first-hand the horrors suffered by those who yet remained alive.  Seek out a vet who very likely may reveal more than he or she has talked about before while we yet have their living testimony.  Invite a vet to come into your classroom for a scheduled “visit” with the students.

16. GI JEWS -- JEWISH AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II

       (PBS documentary film available here: https://www.pbs.org/show/gi-jews/)

       WATCH THE TRAILER HERE: https://www.gijewsfilm.com/

       This is the profound and remarkable story of the 550,000 Jewish Americans who             served their country in World War II. These brave men and women fought for                 their nation and for Jewish people worldwide. Like all Americans, they fought
       against fascism, but they also waged a more personal fight – to save their brethren         in Europe. Jewish servicemen were also among the first to assist the survivors of 
       the Nazi concentration camps liberated by American troops. After years of 

       struggle, these soldiers emerged transformed, more powerfully American and                more deeply Jewish, determined to continue the fight for equality and tolerance at         home.

       REMEMBER - this was before Israel was a nation reborn!!  

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