Reno exhibit shows how America reacted to Holocaust

The winds of war swept across Europe in the 1930s. The National Socialist Party took power in Germany with a little-known Austrian-born man who became dictator and led his country into World War II.

In the early 1930s, Adolph Hitler, who had moved to Germany in 1913 and served in World War I with the German army, and the Nazis developed a policy to eradicate Jews. The Nazis opened a concentration camp in 1933 near Munich, and Dachau eventually became a model for other camps to inter “enemies of the state.”

On Sept. 15, 1935, the Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws, which pronounced Germans were a superior “Aryan” race and Jews were not part of that race. The Nazis believed the Jews were a threat to the rest of the population.

With the start of the war, the Germans rounded up Jews and other people they considered a threat, and began their systematic murder. The Nazis killed approximately 6 million Jews and another 5 million Soviet prisoners, gypsies and mentally disabled.

A 1,100 square-foot traveling exhibit, which debuted in July at the Northwest Reno Library and will close Aug. 18, offers a detailed look into the Holocaust and how the world reacted. The Reno library branch was one of 50 sites in the country selected to display the touring exhibition supported by the American Library Association and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This exhibit is based on one that opened at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018.

In addition to separate presentations on the Holocaust offered by various speakers from the Reno area, the exhibit gives visitors a glimpse of the atrocities committed during the 1930s and 1940s and how Americans reacted. The exhibit asks visitors, “What would I have done?" and, "What will I do?”

A perfect storm

“This is a very important exhibit to have now,” said Jeff Scott, director of the Washoe County Library System. “The events happened 80 years ago and whether Americans knew about it or if they did anything about it … look at the parallels today.”

A battered and demoralized Germany agreed to an armistice to end World War I in 1918 and less than a decade later, the Great Depression ravaged much of the world.

“A dictator came out during the Depression,” Scott said of Hitler’s rise.” It’s a reflection of time and what they knew of the time period and what Americans knew.”

Dr. James McSpadden, an assistant professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno, has extensively studied the history of the Nazis and the Holocaust. He told the story of Alice Urbach and her stolen cook book. After her husband died in 1920, which was soon followed by her father’s death, Urbach accepted boarders and also baked pastries for them.

Prior to that time and when she lived in Vienna, Austria, with her family, McSpadden said, Urbach had learned from the chef who tended to her wealthy family.

“Alice had two young boys,” McSpadden said. “She knew something about cooking. She was going to teach in a cooking school. She opened a cooking school and decided this is what she wanted to do.”

McSpadden said Urbach also opened the first catering business.

In 1925, Urbach began writing a cookbook, and it was printed by a German press a decade later. McSpadden said her cookbook, “So kocht man in Wien,” was a good resource for Viennese dishes and pastries.

But life changed when the Nazis crossed the border and annexed Austria. Urbach lost her cooking school, and McSpadden said she looked at moving to another country.

“She finds a way out and goes to England. She goes as a maid or domestic servant,” McSpadden said. “Before she left, the publisher asked her to sign a release (on the cook book).”

In 1949, Urbach returned to Vienna, and while walking, she passed a bookstore that had her cookbook on display. Consequently, when the publisher re-released the book, Urbach’s name was replaced by a chef who was a Nazi sympathizer. McSpadden said the publisher didn’t change any words or remove pictures.

Urbach wrote to the publisher, yet McSpadden said it wasn’t until 2020 — 37 years after her death — when the copyright was restored.

6 million stories

Judith Schumer, former chair of the Governor’s Commission on the Holocaust, said she occasionally hears people question the need to remember the Holocaust.

“There are 6 million stories. We haven’t heard the testimony of every survivor,” she replied.

Schumer said once Holocaust deniers are silenced, then perhaps the Jews can move on.

“My parents and sister were fortunate to have the strength to move to Lithuania from Nazi-occupied Poland,” Schumer said.

From Lithuania, her family received a special visa and eventually moved to Japan and then to Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China, where she was born in October 1945, two months after the Japanese surrendered. In 1948, her family received visas to the United States. April 20 marked the 75th anniversary when her family arrived in San Francisco.

“When I was 10 years old my father took me to an exhibit on the Holocaust at a museum in New York City to see the photos. He bought me a small pin … in Hebrew it says ‘Remember,’” Schumer recalled.

“My father told me to look at the pin, and then he offered advice: ‘If you don’t remember what happened to the Jews and the many members of our family who were murdered by the Nazis, and if you don’t tell others, then the world will forget.’”

Schumer said it’s important to remember the atrocities from the Holocaust and to counter the Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites. She said the Holocaust teaches people the crimes committed against humanity “time after time again.” She said other areas have experienced human cleansing, including Armenia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Cambodia.

Jews in the United States

Dr. Jacob Dorman, a professor of Core Humanities and History at the University of Nevada, Reno, said anti-Semitism in the American colonies could be traced to Spain in 1492 and a Dutch-to-Brazil connection. Their arrival in the late 16th century resulted in more Jews moving into the Caribbean region.

According to Dorman, an attempted revolution in Europe resulted in more Jews trying to reach the United States.

“They started as merchants because (the colonies) didn’t have much more rural areas in the South, Midwest and Northeast. Jews were associated with the market and capitalism,” Dorman explained. “The Jews symbolized the newness of this new system called capitalism.”

Over time more than 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia arrived in the United States and lived along the eastern seaboard. Dorman said many Jews were poor and tried to work themselves up the social ladder. He said Jews, most of them whites who were accepted in the South, did not become involved with the slave trade, yet, an obscure —and ironic — bit of history reveals a Jew had a prominent role.

“A Jew was vice president of the Confederacy,” Dorman said to the surprised look of most of the attendees.

Judah Philip Benjamin was first the attorney general of the Confederacy before his selection as second-in-command.

Dorman said the Jews became associated with the market and capitalism, but people who felt they didn’t experience “a good deal” accused the Jews of cheating them.

Additionally, Dorman said at the end of the 19th century and extending to the beginning of the 20th, a wave of anti-immigration and then anti-Semitism with the arrival of the Jews swept the nation. He said the immigrants were not Anglo Saxons but Irish, German, Italian, Slavs and Catholics.

Dorman said the political view at the time was the immigrants were bringing new, radical ideas and ideology that were anti-American and destabilizing.

“The eugenics argument,” Dorman said, “stated the genetic stock was degraded by races inferior to white Anglo-Saxon protestants.”

Automobile baron Henry Ford published anti-Semitic articles, and Hitler was a big fan of the American industrialist; falsehoods followed the Jews. Dorman said people blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus, and there was support in the United States for the Germans and Nazi Party in the 1930s. He explained Germany recovered from the Great Depression faster than the United States.

“They invested more in government supply side stimulus to get German factories and economy running again. Fascism was more of a viable political economic system than democracy,” Dorman added.

What did you know and when?

Dr. Daniel Greene, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University near Chicago, is familiar with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s outreach. Greene curated Americans and the Holocaust, an exhibition that opened at the museum to commemorate its 25th anniversary. He addressed the latest attacks on democracy.

“Libraries are on the front line in the same ways of an assault against democracy,” Greene said, referencing the latest attacks on the publications. “Libraries are about freedom of information, creating space for ideas, a deep commitment for truth. Democracy depends on strong institutions.”

Greene said learning about the Holocaust is just as important as obtaining new information from a library. He said the national Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., opened in 1993, and although the Holocaust occurred in Europe and not on American soil, Greene said there are still stories emitting from the United States.

Furthermore, Greene said the exhibition in Reno and the other 49 exhibits are presenting myths and misconceptions and the response of Americans toward the threat of Nazism in the 1930s and ‘40s.

“We want people to learn,” he said, “(by) asking what Americans knew and when they knew it. What more could’ve been done and what wasn’t done.”

In 1931, Greene said journalist Dorothy Thompson, who was syndicated in more than 100 publications, interviewed Hitler who was touted as Germany’s future leader.

“Anti-Semitism is the heart and soul of the Nazi movement,” she wrote, adding how she discussed the dangers associated with Hitler’s leadership.

Thompson said the United States needed to admit more refugees from Nazi Germany. Because of her writing, the German government expelled her from the country.

Greene said a Gallup poll from that era asked respondents in the United States if they approved of the Nazis, and 94% said they disapproved. On the other hand, though, 70% of respondents said the United States should not allow exiles to enter.

Central to the exhibit are four questions: What did Americans know? Did Americans help Jews or refugees? Why did Americans go to war? How did Americans respond to the Holocaust?

This exhibit and the one at the U.S. Holocaust Museum may not offer the answers, but Greene said the questions matter.

“We want people to learn more,” Greene said.

NEED TO KNOW

Northwest Reno Library

2325 Robb Drive, Reno

Monday-Tuesday: 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Wednesday: 10 a.m.-7 p.m.

Thursday-Friday: 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Saturday-Sunday: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Americans and the Holocaust book talk

Saturday, Aug. 5

1 p.m.-1:45 p.m.

PBS The U.S. and the Holocaust excerpt viewing

Sunday, Aug. 6

2 p.m.-3 p.m.

Northwest Reno Library

Registration is required.

Jewish Mathematicians

Wednesday, Aug. 9

5:30-6:30 p.m.

Northwest Reno Library

Registration is required.

Families During World War II story time and activity

Tuesday, Aug. 15

4-5 p.m.

Northwest Reno Library

Registration is required.

To register, go to https://www.washoecountylibrary.us/holocaustexhibit/index.php