Obituary: Seymour Fromer, Co-Founder of Magnes Museum

Seymour Fromer, Co-Founder of Magnes Museum, Dies in Berkeley at Age 87

I am sad to report the passing of Seymour Fromer, beloved teacher and friend to generations. Seymour will be remembered for his kindness and achievements, especially the founding (with Ruth Camhi Fromer) and development of Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California.

Seymour died in his home in Berkeley, California, on October 25 after a long illness. He was 87. A memorial service was held Tuesday, October 27, at Congregation Beth El, in Berkeley.

Colleagues and friends can share their memories of Seymour on an Opensource blog at here.

Seymour knew - and in almost every case helped – most of people active in the Jewish Museum world, including many of the younger generation, some of whom got there start (and their enthusiasm) under his tutelage.

Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Seymour graduated from Stuyvesant High School, earned a B.A. from Brooklyn College, and did graduate work at Teachers College Columbia University. He worked in the Jewish communities of Essex County , New Jersey and Los Angeles where, in 1955, in the Hollywood Bowl he presented the opera David, composed by Darius Milhaud who conducted the orchestra. In Los Angeles, Seymour met and married his wife of more than fifty years, the poet and author Rebecca Camhi.

In the late 1950s, the Fromers came to Oakland, California, and established the Jewish Education Council (the forerunner of today’s Center for Jewish Life and Learning), remaining in that post for a quarter century. Then in 1962, the Fromers founded the Magnes Museum, first in modest quarters over the Parkway movie theater in Oakland and a few years later in the turn-of-the-century Burke mansion at 2911 Russell Street in Berkeley, its headquarters to this day.

Eventually, through years of energetic and creative collecting, the Magnes grew to be the third largest repository of Judaica in the United States. The collections were a destination for researchers, but the conservation and exhibition facilities of the museums lagged behind its holdings. The dream was to develop and move to a new facility to better protect and present the now invaluable collection which was increasingly supplemented from the 1970s on with the Fromer’s support for new Jewish art by a younger generation.

The story of the founding and early years of the museum is vividly told by Ruth Camhi Fromer in “The Creation of the Magnes Museum (Written in 1987 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Judah L. Magnes Museum)”

Before Seymour’s "retirement" in 1998 (my recollection is he was forced out, in a familiar case of “founding director syndrome”) the Magnes grew to become the third largest Jewish museum in North America, specializing in Judaica from North Africa and India, and in ceremonial art and posters and paintings of Jewish interest.

The Fromers kept expanding the collection by rescuing artifacts from endangered Jewish communities around the world. A planned, expensive - but ultimately failed - merger with the Jewish Museum San Francisco temporarily closed the Magnes. Seymour watched – and commented – from the sidelines as this work of a lifetime almost met an ignominious end. Fortunately, the Magnes was able to reinvent itself, with Seymour once more appreciated and involved. In recent years he continued to work with the Magnes staff to make sure his legacy – and the history of many objects he collected – is preserved. The Magnus Museum is scheduled to move into its new downtown home in 2011.

In 1967, Seymour established the Western Jewish History Center at the Magnes, the first regional Jewish history center in the U.S. and the most comprehensive. He also created the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks, which restored and to this day maintains seven Jewish Gold Rush cemeteries in the California Mother Lode. The Center served as a model for similar efforts such as the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience.

Especially in the 1970s and 80s, Seymour nurtured many young Jewish scholars and artists and was a key catalyst in the Jewish cultural renaissance in the Bay Area. He provided the impetus for such organizations as Lehrhaus Judaica, the Jewish Film Festival, and the National Yiddish Book Center.

Seymour Fromer is survived by his wife, Rebecca Camhi Fromer; their daughter, Mira Z. Amiras, Professor of Comparative Religion at San Jose State University; and grandchildren attorney Michael Zussman and Rayna Leonora Savrosa, a graduate student in the Parsons School of Design, both of Brooklyn, New York.

The family requests that any donations in Seymour Fromer’s memory be sent to the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94705.

My comments are adapted from the obituary posted by the Magnes Museum: Magnes Founder, Seymour Fromer, Dies

Two Grubers on Holocaust Memory in Eastern Europe

Two Grubers on Holocaust Memory in Eastern Europe

Ruth Ellen Gruber has written an overview article for JTA about Holocaust accountability in Europe in the 20 years since the fall of Communism. Click here read column: "In Eastern Europe, advances toward accountability but more to do," by Ruth Ellen Gruber (October 28, 2009).

Ruth interviewed me for the article. Its a topic that we discuss frequently. In looking over my extended comments (which Ruth herself could have made since due to our shared experiences our views are very close) I thought them worth sharing. As always, I appreciate, readers' reactions and comment.

Interview with Samuel Gruber about Holocaust Memory After Communism (Oct 20, 2009):

REG: Which [former Communist] states have made most progress coming to terms with this?

Sam Gruber: When talking about Holocaust recognition and commemoration, all progress is relative. Some countries are much further along the path to historical accountability and sincere commemoration than others, but many have had further to come. Some countries are deeply divided with more liberal and internationally leaning political movements ready to discuss crimes of the past, while more right wing and nationalist parties feel that to do so is a form of self-hatred and near treasonous behavior.

In all former Communist countries it has been necessary to overturn a half century of misinformation, and in many cases outright denial of many of the most basic facts of the Holocaust. Those countries which suffered the most under the Nazis - especially Poland and the Czech Republic - were most ready to accept the worst about them, and to acknowledge of horrors of the Holocaust. Those countries where wartime governments collaborated with Germany - such as Latvia and Romania have had a harder time, for to acknowledge Nazi crimes was in effect to acknowledge their own complicity. In the Baltic it has been even more complex, since throughout the decades of Soviet occupation the Nazis continued to be seen as liberators against the Russians by nationalists in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Holocaust history was mostly irrelevant in the years of anti-Communist nationalists.

Thus, to say it is difficult to say who has made the most progress. A small movement to recognize the historic truth of the Holocaust and to commemorate victims in a place like Latvia, and to acknowledge local collaboration, is to me as much progress, as has been done on the monument at Rumbula, is to my as much progress a large monument being erected in Poland, where all Poles see themselves as victims of the Nazis, and most are ready to accept the Jews as victims, too...albeit not always as a separate case.

REG: What are the problem areas and why?

Sam Gruber: There are problems on three levels.

First, there is the problem of obtaining and confirming information about the Holocaust in particularly places. The more the local resistance to accepting the Holocaust as fact; the more important it is to be precise in the information that is presented.

Second, there is the problem of disseminating information. For the most part the hardest populations to reach - and these are also sometimes the very ones that harbor traditional stereotypical notions of Jews (and others) - are those that only communicate in their local language. These populations tend to be the most traditional, the most parochial, the least educated, the least traveled and probably the most religious, where religion has retaken a hold. It has been slow going for international Holocaust education groups to prepare and disseminate materials in local languages, or to do it enough to combat the abundance of locally produced anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial material in these same countries. Local leadership is very important in acknowledging and commemorating the Holocaust. Mayors, teachers, priest, national leaders really can set the tone and established a better climate for education and dialogue.

REG: What are some of best practice examples?

Sam Gruber: I think the monument at Buchenwald in Germany, which tells the story of the Little Camp fully, and in sharp evocative language, and in many languages, is very successful. Because the monument was designed by a survivor of the camp it has special power. Its simplicity is a virtue. The monuments at the killing fields of Rumbula and Bikierniki Forest outside of Riga are also very moving, and very well done. Meanwhile, however, there are inadequate markers at sites within the city itself. I still find the Umschlagplatz monument in Warsaw very moving, though it requires some previous knowledge of the history of the site. The cemetery monument at Kazimierz Dolny, built in the 1980s, and the extensive monument at the Death Camp of Treblinka; also continue to serve well, though it may be time in both cases to add more explanatory and educational material. Not immediately as part of the artistic monuments, but nearby.

Usually monuments that are destinations can be more symbolic, since it is usually assumed the visitor knows something or otherwise would not have come. Markers that appear in unexpected places, on buildings and streets, need to provide more information. Monuments such as that in Bratislava are, as I have previously written, unsuccessful because they mark a place but do not tell a story. They can serve as backdrops for scheduled commemorative events, but otherwise they serve little purpose. This is always the danger of the most official monuments – government sponsors always prefer to be vague – and not to alienate any constituency.

REG: Have some states taken the right steps only to reverse them?

Sam Gruber: It has to be understood that education is a slow process, and that changing inherited and accepted concepts and beliefs is a difficult task in any context. In this light, I think we can look at amazing progress over the past two decades. At the very time that most former Communist countries were grappling with them most challenging problems of nation building, identify, democratization and economic transformation, they have also changed many attitudes about the Jewish past in general, and the events of the Holocaust. In many of these places, even the concept of a Holocaust separate from the devastation of the Great Patriotic War [World War II] had previous been unknown. The greatest willingness to consider, and even accept a basic history of the Holocaust has been greatest in those countries most closely associated with the West. It has been part of the process of granting democratic rights and religious freedom. It has also been the result of Eastern governments yielding to pressures from American a Europe if they wanted NATO and EU status. Thus Poland has been among the most receptive to Holocaust education, while UkraineBelarus have been much slower.

REG: Some of your own personal experiences negotiating and monitoring Holocaust commemoration projects?

Sam Gruber: After the problem of funding, the hardest part of getting monuments and memorials erected not been getting some kind of general consent, it has been working the specifics of design and especially of language. Most older memorials have been very general in their language – so much so that it is often hard to even figure out what events are being commemorated, and rarely can one learn about who did what to whom, and when. This began to change in the 1990s.

In my experience with the US Commission [for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad], it has always been part of the mission that monuments should be not only be symbolic, but that they must help tell a story. Hey need to be witness – clear voices in languages that local people can understand – and they must be as forthright and truthful as possible. Sometimes one could do this in Hebrew, Yiddish or English…local officials didn’t mind. But increasing there has been a push to get truth told in local languages, and that has meant sharp clashes with local Holocaust deniers, or with those who want to protect local reputations. These conflicts have slowed many monument projects…but ultimately they are very good…because it makes the education and commemoration process an active and forceful one, not just a passive act.

In Latvia, at Rumbula, it took the personal intercession of the President of Latvia to make sure language was included on the inscription that mentioned Latvian collaborators. Another problem is using numbers – as in 10,000 Jews were killed. Frequently initial drafts of monument texts are changed to avoid that level of specificity. It is feared that if a number is contested and even disproved, even just by a bit, that such misrepresentation could be used to discredit the entire project, and by extension to paint an entire massacre, or even the entire Holocaust, as false.

The installation of local monuments is often the most touching, since many non-Jews are eager to participate. The older people remember – and one can never by sure what exactly it is that they remember. The younger people are often eager to learn. Usually, the slower the project, and the more it is the result of a continuing dialogue and planning process that is inclusive of local people, the more successful the result, because local people have a proprietary stake in the project. Monuments that are erected without local involvement, but only through the time and money of “outsiders” – even if they are descendants of those murdered in the town – can be more controversial.

REG: How important is this all, 65 years after the fact?

Sam Gruber: Understanding the history of the Holocaust, including acts of complicity and acts of resistance; remains extremely important in this part of the world. Of course, it is important to Jews who want recognition of Jewish suffering, and acknowledgment of the extent of the destruction of an entire civilization. But it is equally important for the individuals and governments of those countries themselves since only by wrestling with their often contentious and convoluted histories can they reduce the likelihood of a future similar to the past. These are still fledgling democracies. Some have a vague memory of pre-Communist democratic institutions and objective historical research. Most, however, have been shaped by rigid ideology for most of a century. Thus it is one thing for Czechs - so close to Austria and Germany, to be attuned to political and historical revisionism of reconsiderations of the recent decades, but it is very different in Ukraine, which was never really independent, and has been under Tsarist and Communist rule since the 19th century. And those areas of - like Lviv - which were more international and multi-cultural before the Holocaust, are today incredibly homogeneous, with populations mostly drawn from the Ukrainian countryside, resettled in Lviv after World War II. For the most part they are not aware of any objective history, including their own. In Ukraine, Holocaust education must be part of a larger package of education about European history overall.

People sometimes suggest that I write a book about Holocaust memory and monuments - mixing the political and the practical; aesthetics and altruism. It has been a nearly a generation since James Young published his important book Texture of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). That book was a primer for me, but James and I come to the subject from very different perspectives - in this case he as a critic and academic, while I am an activist and work with closely with Jewish communities. At the moment though I may have the focus to write such a book, I don't have the (almost greater) energy needed to seek out a publisher. But if any of my readers want to pursue this...by all means, let me know.

Romania: More on Bucharest Holocaust Monument

Bucharest, Romania. Holocaust Memorial. Photos from www.holocaustmemorial.ro

Romania: More on Bucharest Holocaust Monument
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Earlier this month I wrote about the pending dedication of the new Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest. Romania: Holocaust Monument to be Dedicated in Bucharest. The inauguration did take place, but the monument remains incomplete.

For more and continuing information about the monument and and to see pictures of the inauguration and the structure click here for the web site about the monument created by Marko Maximilain Katz, Director of MCA Romania -The Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania.

Regrettably, many of the inscriptions which will tell some of the facts about the Holocaust in Romania, and which are the real rationale for the memorial, were not ready for installation.

Bucharest, Romania. Inauguration of Holocaust Memorial, October 8, 2009.
Photos from www.holocaustmemorial.ro

What participants in the formal ceremony and observers (including the Romanian and international press) saw was an architectural framework and an ongoing worksite. We have all experienced time and budget overruns on construction projects. Still, in the case of a much anticipated monument such as the one in Bucharest, we can certainly wonder why the decision was taken to dedicate it before its completion. Was it simply that the government sponsors thought the deadline of the local Holocaust Remembrance day would force the contractors to hurry up? Or were there other reasons? Has rushing the dedication in any way diminished the impact of the monument?

K.K. Brattman, Managing Editor of the Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not" reacted strongly to the apparent inadequacies of the new monument, perceiving the one inscribed plaque in situ to be the only working that was to be included. This plaque merely indicates the sponsor and the artist, Romanian sculptor (who lives in Germany) Peter Jacobi.

Bucharest, Romania. Holocaust Memorial. Photos from www.holocaustmemorial.ro

In fact, several more historical and commemorative plaques are still to be completed and installed. The texts to these plaques – or something close to the final texts – were apparently included in the program of the inauguration.

I have been in contact with representatives of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Jewish Committee and the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, three organizations that actively pressured the Romanian government to create the Wiesel Commission, and then to follow through with many recommendations. They all shared the concerns of Mr. Brattman, but assured me that his concerns would be resolved when the monument was complete, with all the intended text.

One problem causing delay was the Hebrew inscription, which was being engraved in Germany. According to my sources, there were problems, but I don’t know whether these were in the text, the translation or the actual carving of the Hebrew letters. Other source reported that at the time of the dedication, where many things were rushed, there may have been some issues about having the proper translations (it is in Romanian, English and Hebrew) or questions about misspellings, which could require it to be remade.

I can attest from prior experience the difficulty in moving from idea to finished text on a Holocaust monuments. I have folders full of draft texts for monuments in Estonia, Croatia, Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere. Sometimes a single word or number - or the translation of the ta word - can hold up a project for a long long time.

In Bucharest (and in Washington) the general expectation is that all the problems about the final inscriptions should be resolved soon, and the final installation should take place within “a month or two.”

I encourage readers of this blog to report in from Bucharest with information and new pictures when they have occasion to visit the site.

I post here part of the moving speech by Liviu Beres, President of The Association of the Jews from Romania - Victims of the Holocaust, delivered at the unfinished monument on Romania's Holocaust Remembrance Day (the Text of the speech by the President of Romania has not yet been posted in English):

It was my destiny to have lived the best years of a person’s life during a dramatic turning point of history. It was a time when the commandment “Thou shall not kill!” was reversed. A time when the spiral of evil was expanding in Europe and all over the world, when anti-Semitism, hatred and discrimination were dominant and lawlessness became a state of the law.

Its initiators conceived the Holocaust in such a way that it was supposed to have no witnesses or history. As you know, the fate of the war turned against them and there remained many witnesses. Thus, the Holocaust has a history.

One of the witnesses is the person who wrote these lines. I belong to a fading generation: the survivors of the Holocaust.

We all know that, as persons, we move in space and change in time. We can return to the same location in space, but never in time. Only memory remains, with what you were able to keep in mind. For me, memories are often conversations with the dead or with myself, as I was at a time and changed to what I am now.

Sixty-eight years have passed since the freight trains, filled with the Jews who were deported from Bukovina, were running to the Dniester River. They “unloaded” the merchandise at the bank of the river for them to cross to “the other side”. At the same time, after the mass executions of the Jews, which took place in July-August 1941, when the troops entered Bassarabia and Northern Bukovina, the survivors were forced to walk, in convoys, to the same place. Whoever stayed behind was shot. I was part of those convoys when I hadn’t been 14 of age, yet.

Having been looted of their goods, of their rights and especially of their right to live, the Jews were going to an unknown place, which also got a new name: Transnistria.

The extermination policy was set into motion. Tens and hundreds of thousands of people were sentenced to death. Their only fault was that they were born and their parents were Jewish. It is true: no gas chambers were used in the Holocaust perpetrated by Antonescu’s government. People died from bullets, cold, hunger, insanitary conditions and disease (and they made “all the proper conditions” for it to appear). People also suffocated in tightly closed freight trains (the death trains from Iaşi). They were set on fire and blown up while crowded in warehouses. They were hanged (Odessa) and they died because the people around were bad.

In this bleak picture, where the scene is mainly occupied by the victims, perpetrators and indifferent spectators, there were good people as well. They were not many, among those who believed in light, despite the general dark. They risked their own life so as to save others.
The Holocaust is still here, in the memory of the few survivors. It is here with us in its whole horror. It was a cruel reality, a denial of any sense of morality, a denial of humanity. This memorial that we inaugurate now and here was made in honor of the victims of this cruel reality. As a tombstone for the ones who have no grave, the memorial will be a token for all those who want to know what happened. For, if we speak about learning from the Holocaust, it means we should not only tell the truth about the past, but also show how the same mechanisms act today in various societies and in people as well.

The fear of unknown finds its release in the fear and hatred for the “stranger”. Intolerance, fundamentalism, fanaticism, they all get their nutrients and new energy precisely from this “fear”. This is why it is necessary to spread the knowledge about the Holocaust.

By knowing our past, they will be able to act efficiently so that it does not become their future. It is possible that many will start thinking about what life and death is, and especially about what the world is. Even today, there are enough signs that warn about the always active potentiality of evil.

People forget too often that whatever starts with the hatred against the Jews continues with the loathing of all that is different. Mankind, who created tyrannical utopias and suffered from their disasters, can now better understand the consequences of one’s deeds.

This Memorial about people who existed at one time was erected for the people of today and of tomorrow. It is meant to remove indifference, the lack of knowledge about this matter and it should have an important contribution in this sense.

Let me tell you that, despite of all that happened, I still believe that MAN should be the purpose of man, in life.

USA: Beth Sholom to Dedicate New Visitor's Center to Serve Frank Lloyd Wright Designed Synagogue

Elkins Park, Pennsylvania (USA). Beth Sholom Synagogue (1953-57), designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Photos: Courtesy of Paul Rocheleau

USA: Beth Sholom to Dedicate New Visitor's Center to Serve Frank Lloyd Wright Designed Synagogue
by Samuel D. Gruber

A new visitor's center for the Beth Sholom Synagogue, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, will be dedicated on November 15, 2009. Beth Sholom, completed in 1959, is one of the best known and most reproduced synagogues in the world. Does that make it one of the best? I've always had mixed feeling about it. I appreciate it's design, but I have always found many aspects gaudy and overblown, and suspect that the big space is not particularly conducive for congregation building (but many large sanctuaries share this problem).

On the other hand it's novelty has helped bring notoriety to the congregation and shape identity, and the exterior massing, the interior space, the changing natural light and the expressive originality always call one back to look and consider. It is often exciting, and certainly never boring. It amazes me that expressive modernism in this case is so venerated, while elsewhere it has been destroyed. This is due, of course, as much to the power of Wright's name as to (very real) virtues of the architecture.

I've written more about the building in my book American Synagogues: A Century of architecture and Jewish Community (Rizzoli, 2003), 105-109.

ISJM has received the following notice:

Beth Sholom Synagogue Preservation Foundation in Elkins Park, PA will dedicate its new Visitor Center with Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for the New Yorker Magazine, who will speak about Beth Sholom Synagogue on the occasion of its 50 th Anniversary. Guests to the opening event will have an opportunity to see the newly created Visitor Center and to tour the National Historic Landmark building.

As the only synagogue designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Beth Sholom stands as a monument both to twentieth-century design and Jewish interests. The Visitor Center was created to give a greater understanding of the building to the public and to provide an exciting experience that will complement tours of the Wright structure. The Visitor Center interprets Beth Sholom in the contexts of Wright’s life and work and American synagogue architecture. Included in the exhibition is an 18-minute film entitled: “An American Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright, Rabbi Mortimer Cohen and the Making of Beth Sholom,” produced by exhibition designers Picture Projects of New York.

The dedication event is free and open to the public, and will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, November 15, 2009. The opening event is co-sponsored by Partnership for Scared Spaces, the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia. For more information about the event, please contact Beth Sholom at 215-887-1342 or http://www.bethsholomcongregation.org/

An extensive gallery of photos of the synagogue can be viewed here.