(somber music) ♪ Eli, Eli ♪ Shelo yigamer le'olam ♪ Hachol vehayam ♪ Rishrush shel hamayim ♪ Berak hashamayim ♪ Tefilat ha'adam ♪ Hachol vehayam ♪ Rishrush shel hamayim ♪ Berak hashamayim ♪ Tefilat ha'adam (ambient music) - Hate is not okay.

Killing people because of their religious belief is not okay, or their skin color, or their sexuality, if they're handicapped.

All of those reasons are not okay and that people should live together harmoniously and have develop great respect for each other's culture.

And I think that going to Meijer Garden and taking the time to reflect in front of "Ways to Say Goodbye," I'm hoping we'll give people that opportunity.

(somber music) Six million Jews perished in the Holocaust.

In addition to six million Jews, If you had a developmental disability, if you identified as gay, if you had anything that the Germans didn't think was a way that you fit in if you were not Aryan, you would be killed.

You know, when you think of six million of anything, truly mind boggling that so many people died.

- There's no rational reason that human beings would do this to other human beings.

I mean, you can read about this, you can learn about this, but at the end of the day, there's no logic behind any of this happening at all because it makes absolutely no sense.

But probably, the worst part of it is the level of depravity that human beings are capable of and that we not forget that.

(lighthearted music) - [Narrator] West Michigan Holocaust survivors and the millions of murdered Jews are now remembered with artist Ariel Schlesinger's sculpture, "Ways to Say Goodbye."

The 20-foot tall cast aluminum tree with shards of glass embedded among its branches is the area's first public Holocaust memorial.

A community gift from the Pestka family and the Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids, It was dedicated June 30th, 2022 at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.

- It's actually really quite surreal.

There's a sense of relief, a sense of peace, a sense of truth, and a strong sense of fulfillment.

Hopefully, and I will believe this because I have no reason not to, will bring a greater sense of peace and understanding of not only the Holocaust, but also about how we are as people in treating other human beings.

Now, Grand Rapids, I feel, has a place to bridge the Holocaust.

It has a landmark.

We made some phone calls and when we eventually met with David Hooker at Meijer Gardens, David explained that if there were to be a sculpture, that over 750,000 people would be able to see the sculpture every year.

You know, we all were like, "Wow, this would be an incredible opportunity to educate and bring awareness to the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and hopefully in the future, implement curriculum throughout schools to teach about this."

(gentle music) - So L'dor V'dor is the Hebrew term.

It means from generation to generation.

And as Jewish people, that's something that we talk about regularly.

So it's passing down our religion from generation to generation, but also our culture, our traditions, our values.

And also now, it's teaching about the Holocaust from generation to generation.

I mean, something to keep in mind is that my grandfather passed away in 2013.

My son, my oldest child was born in 2015 who's named Henry after my grandfather, Henry.

And so they never got an opportunity to meet each other.

None of my grandfather's great-grandchildren had the opportunity to meet him.

And so we're now in a, getting into an era where children who grew up to adults will never have firsthand met a Holocaust survivor and they're not gonna be here to tell their stories firsthand.

So it's really up to my generation to pass these stories of the Holocaust and of survivors to our children so that they can learn about it and so that their stories keep getting told.

(melancholic music) - [Narrator] Henry Pestka was one of the few survivors of Auschwitz.

Tragically, both his parents and siblings perished.

He was born on July 29th, 1919 in Ciechanow, Poland.

He lived with his two sisters and a brother, his father, a builder and developer, and his mother who owned a business selling oil for lighting home lamps.

Henry was attending a business college when the Nazis invaded Poland in September, 1939.

- [Henry] I said, "No, no, no, I got my friends here."

You know, and I didn't understand what's gonna happen.

So my dad says, "Okay, if you're not going, I'm gonna stay here."

So actually, my dad was an American citizen and they didn't give him that.

Yeah, they took him, killed him too.

- After three years of occupation and oppression, the Jewish population of Ciechanow was ordered to assemble for deportation.

Henry Pestka arrived at Auschwitz on November 7th, 1942.

- As a young child, I would look at his arm and I would see he would have these numbers, 73847 across his forearm.

And of course, you were curious because that was when tattoos were rarely seen.

And I didn't know why he had something when I was young that would never come off.

My first memory of asking about it was met with frustration from my mother and it was like, that's off limits.

And I was probably four or five years old.

- He would not discuss it directly, but he had some sort of indirect ways of dealing with it.

I remember when trying to think when the movie, "Judgment of Nuremberg" came out I think it was 1960 or 1961, he took me on a Sunday afternoon to see that movie.

And I didn't really fully, I mean I sort of comprehended what it was about.

Somehow I knew that in some way, it was related to him 'cause why would he take me to this?

You know, it's kind of unusual thing for him to do.

So I guess he wanted me to know about this, but he didn't wanna tell me about it.

So I think he wanted us to know the story, but that it was too painful for him to actually tell us the story until much later in his life when he started opening up to some extent about it.

And the things that he said were extremely painful.

(somber music) - So it's a fruit tree because fruit trees are very important for us, but also in the history of Judaism.

And I thought it was a nice gesture that not only that the tree, the sculpture gives us ideas, it gives us fruits.

- [Narrator] At Frankfurt, Germany's Jewish Museum, Schlesinger's 2019 sculpture, "Untitled," incorporates two cast aluminum fig trees.

- I also sculpted it after I took the cast of those two trees.

So it's really just like we say, like it's a clay in the hand of the artist.

I really shaped it in the best way that I felt will suit the idea of this tragic, of something alive that is struggling, something that is dead that is still standing.

- So June 30th, 2022 was the ribbon cutting ceremony for "Ways to Say Goodbye" at the Frederik Meijer Gardens.

And our brand new website went live that night.

Within moments, we had at least 10,000 hits to try to take the website down.

Fast forward, a few months went by, 48,000 attempts to take the website down and we were actually under attack and we're unable to access our own website despite having incredible security on that website.

So just that alone, the word Holocaust triggers so many different hate groups.

Social media is definitely fueling anti-Semitism.

You know, we worked so hard on this website and making sure that we had the chronology, the lives of Holocaust survivors that settled in Grand Rapids.

So it was an attack on our Jewish community here.

- It's a lesson about dehumanization.

You know, if you look at Julia Stryker was the editor of Der Sturmer, which was an anti-Semitic broadsheet that was published in Germany at the beginning of the Nazi rule.

Jews were dehumanized, they were portrayed as rats, they were portrayed as subhuman.

So if you take a group of people and you say they're not really human, and then you say they're responsible for all your problems, the Jews are the cause of our misery.

And you repeat this enough to people and you control the means of communication, and that's all people hear, after a while, it has an effect on people.

People are much more susceptible to propaganda.

It's what Goebbels' called the big lie.

In other words, it's more difficult to have people believe a little lie than a big lie.

And if you can convince them of these kinds of things, then all kinds of atrocities can occur.

And sadly, we've seen that not just with the Holocaust of the Jews, but in other kinds of situations where horrible barbarity has occurred.

(melancholic music) - [Narrator] On November 9th and 10th, 1938, the Nazi regime attacked Jewish communities across Germany, Austria, and Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

It was in response to the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish Jew.

Nazis and rioters vandalized Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools.

They burned more than 1,000 synagogues, 7,500 Jewish owned businesses were looted.

The violence killed nearly 100 Jews and 30,000 Jewish males were rounded up, arrested, and sent off to concentration camps.

The two days of havoc wreaked in Germany known as Kristallnacht or Crystal Knight, forever remembered as Night of Broken Glass.

- In this particular work, I was playing with shattered pieces of glass and it was just kind of like trapping them between my fingers, almost like a game, like trying to hold as many pieces as possible.

And I think that kind of shapes only turn itself into a tree and into broken ceiling or windows.

That's how the shape came to be.

On a larger scale, the ideas or this kind of subjects of trauma are always something I'm curious about.

I think growing up in Israel, growing up with grandparents who went through the Holocaust survived and some of my family perished.

Of course, I was exposed to this kind of stories and upbringing.

Yeah, the element of trauma and also just more recent things that's happening all around us these days, all around the world, not only to Jewish people, of course, affects me as a creator.

And I think it's just natural that these kind of catastrophes come to be metaphor in my art.

- So within West Michigan, there's a 21% uptick in anti-Semitic crimes and hate crimes.

So within our community, there's more and more anti-Semitism.

And what is being reported to me from community members, there have been three different isolated incidents that have happened here in West Michigan since I've lived here that have impacted me and have made me question, are we safe?

And that was one, I teach religious school and there were swastikas on the front doors of the religious school.

You know, so being greeted in the morning with a swastika is not a good thing.

And years ago, when we would have a Jewish function, we didn't think about security.

Now, when we have Shabbat services or a community festive event, there are armed guards.

So this is the world that we live in and unfortunately, it's not getting any easier or any better for Jewish people.

♪ Oh God, my God ♪ I pray that these things never end ♪ ♪ The sand and the sea ♪ The rush of the waters ♪ The crash of the heavens ♪ The prayer of the heart ♪ The sand and the sea - [Narrator] Henry was transported and housed in numerous satellite camps.

With the war's end in sight, the Nazis moved prisoners all across Europe on death marches.

In September, 1944, Henry and two friends escaped, encountering advancing free French Army troops.

♪ Of the heart - They ended up in the home of a family that lived not too far away from where they were and they didn't know were this family gonna turn them in, were they gonna kill them, or what was gonna happen.

And they took them in with open arms, gave them a warm meal, gave them new clothing 'cause they were wearing the clothing that the prisoners wore in Auschwitz.

And then sent them on their way so that they were disguised.

- They spent a year in France after World War II and then spent a year in New York.

But he had, a friend of his father's lived in Grand Rapids, Sam Wiseman, who at the time owned Grand Rapids Auto Parts.

So he told my dad, wrote him a letter and said, "If you come here, we'll get you a job."

- [Narrator] Henry attended Union High School and learned to speak English.

Working at Bergman Auto brought Henry into contact with another hard worker, Beatrice Bergman.

Married, they would begin a family with the birth of Steven in 1951 and Linda in 1954.

- He had plans in his mind and he went for them, something he wanted to endeavor.

He didn't overthink it, he would act.

And I think that was symbolic in many ways of how he was able to become another, I wouldn't say another person, but another life.

So he didn't have the luxury of having a lot of stability at certain points of his life.

And I think that impacted his career as far as making decisions moving forward, and being part of something that was in motion.

- The Grand Rapids Herald did a story about him in July 14th, 1946 - And he said people would approach him on the street and wanna shake his hand and tell him how happy they were that he was here.

And so those were the types of memories that he liked to share with us, with me, his other grandchildren about the kindness of others and persevering really through anything.

- [Narrator] In the 1950s, Henry moved from the auto parts business to the career he had learned from his father, a builder and real estate developer, forming a partnership with his brother-in-law, Herman Bergman.

H & H Development Company completed a wide range of projects across the area.

One of Henry Pestka's most important projects was supervising the construction of a new synagogue for the Ahavas Israel Congregation.

- [Henry] I built that place, you know?

And took a lot of times a lot of hard work.

I was already established that time as business, but I took almost a year off to build a synagogue.

And the friends of mine, they were really generous.

Some of the stuff I paid down there for the synagogue was for less money.

That was something without profit.

You know, that was really, really nice people.

- He wanted to do this for the passing on of generation to generation.

He was not a particularly religious person, but he wanted people to remember what happened.

He wanted there to be a structure that was a testament to the continuation of the Jewish people.

That we were not gonna be wiped out by what Hitler did or what other anti-Semites did through history, but we would continue to be there and survive.

(lighthearted music) - [Narrator] One year after the new synagogue opened, a memorial window was installed in the foyer outside the sanctuary.

Seven local Holocaust survivors gathered for the dedication on April 26th, 1971.

- It is a Holocaust memorial, but that was simply for the Jewish people and it wasn't seen by a broader, larger audience.

So Linda and I were thinking about something that was gonna be appreciated by all communities, not just the Jewish community.

- And I think everyone kind of knows in this area the Meijer Gardens is one of the crown jewels of Grand Rapids.

And so we know that it's gonna be cared for here.

We know that it will be respected here.

We don't have to worry about vandalism or being desecrated in some way.

And so that's why it was so important that Meijer Gardens wanted to partner with us to get this memorial here in such a safe place.

And also, like I had said, there's so many people that come through here.

So it really provides a great opportunity for us to share holocaust education to the greater public.

- And it is our hope that six hours of Holocaust education will be taught in grade six through 12, and that students will really understand what this is about and take it seriously.

So it's extremely important.

Without educating young people about the horrors of genocide and war, these kinds of things will happen again in the future.

Educational programs like we recently had, the US and Holocaust program featuring Ken Burns film is a great opportunity for people to educate themselves through text and images of the horrors that happened during war.

Being an educator myself, sitting down with students, with adults and discussing the history of the war, what led to World War II, why the Jews were persecuted is so important in developing that understanding in a young person or an older person.

- [Narrator] In the late 1990s, Henry was honored by the United States Senate and Michigan lawmakers.

- Well, I'll never forget.

It was very moving, I think, for him and, well, for all of us is he was introduced on the floor of the House and he had a standing ovation.

It was, I think for him, a very moving moment.

- [Narrator] In 2009, Pestka sat with Arizona artist, Robert Sutz, creating a life mask, honoring survivors and preserving history.

Henry Pestka passed away on February 15th, 2013 at his Grand Rapids' home.

(melancholic music) - I think we all have some commonness about being better human beings in understanding why people may have different customs or may have different histories.

So here's a great starting point, this memorial - You know, I think some people are sort of scared to learn about the Holocaust or scared to teach it to their children because they think it might be too much.

And I think this is just an opportunity to take a specific person out of that horrible story that people can connect to and in an environment that feels very inviting and secure.

- Human beings have to be reminded constantly that this kind of hatred can occur, that scapegoating can occur, that various groups can be singled out as being responsible for all the problems of the world even though that's obviously not at all true.

And this is the kind of result when people get caught up in a herd mentality of hatred that leads to just devastating consequences.

And I think the more that we remind ourselves of that possibility and the potential for that to happen, the more we can do to keep it from happening again.

♪ Neged tsor'rai ♪ Dishanta vashemen roshi ♪ Cosi r'vayah.

♪ Ach tov vahesed Yird'funi kol y'mei chayai ♪ ♪ V'shav'ti b'veit Adonai ♪ L'orech yamim.