It is customary for a host city to provide an opportunity for Tzedakah during the JCC Maccabi Games, a hands-on project that gives participating athletes and volunteers the chance to give to others. Since 1982, those attending the games have been part of a variety of activities, such as packing school supply kits for Family Centers and Israeli children, visiting sick kids and teens at local hospitals, spending time with older adults in nursing homes, or improving neighborhoods or local facilities. (i.e. Habitat for Humanity).
 This, too, is the case in Omaha this week, as on Wednesday August 4 more than 1000 kids will be transported to Lincoln to perform a very special task. Sharon Kirshenbaum, who chairs the Omaha project, says: “Caring and Sharing is all about having the kids experience Tikkun Olam, and making the world a better place.”

The Nebraska Holocaust Memorial at Wyuka Cemetery, in Lincoln

 Wyuka Cemetery, the focus of Omaha’s Day of Caring and Sharing, is located in Lincoln. Established as a state cemetery by an act of the Nebraska Legislature in 1869, and designed like a public park, Wyuka Cemetery is the largest all-faith cemetery serving the Lincoln community. It is also the home of the Nebraska Holocaust Memorial.
 The Nebraska Holocaust Memorial was dedicated on April 15, 2007, and serves as a place of remembrance and education. The Memorial started with an initiative by the Holocaust Memorial Committee, originally gathered by Yale Gotsdiner.  It was created through the support of Nebraska citizens, and is dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and in honor of all the liberators and survivors of the Nazi concentration camps.
 “The Day of Caring and Sharing contains four basic parts,” Jeff Aizenberg, JCC Director, says. “On the ride to Lincoln from the JCC, there will be an educational component about Wyuka and the Holocaust, as well as an orientation to the afternoon activities. A volunteer educator of the Institute for Holocaust Education will lead this section. Upon arrival at the cemetery, delegations will get off their buses and have a chance to view the Holocaust Memorial. They will place a stone in the area as a permanent symbol of having visited. The delegations will divide into groups and participate in service projects throughout the cemetery, after which they will gather near the memorial for a short ceremony.” Those projects include adding a walkway to a new butterfly garden. This garden will memorialize the children who perished in the Holocaust and will be dedicated in honor of the 2010 Omaha JCC Maccabi Games. Aizenberg explains: “The walkway will begin with bricks which will contain the names of each delegation. Other projects will include spreading dirt and planting new grass to level several areas of the cemetery.”
 Gary Hill is the volunteer Executive Director of the Memorial; on the Day of Caring and Sharing, he says, the volunteers “will come in four flavors. First, we will have the Maccabi athletes, the teachers who accompany them, and about 50 students from Lincoln high schools who have attended Holocaust education classes. Second, we have many kids and adults who already volunteer at Wyuka on a regular basis. Then there are representatives from the Jewish community, and, finally, there are volunteers from a construction company who work at the Memorial on a regular basis, accompanied by Wyuka’s staff. All in all, I expect about 1,200 visitors that day. I think it will be the largest group of volunteers ever at the Holocaust Memorial.”
 Gary Hill has been working with the Memorial for four years, and says its main purpose has always been education. “We are big believers that statues are nice, but that is ultimately not what this is about. It is open to everybody, and visitors are expected to ask a lot of questions. During the school year, we have weekly visits from students who specifically come to see the Holocaust Memorial. They can come at any age: the butterfly garden the Maccabi kids will be building, for instance, is going to focus on hope, and will be particularly fitting for very young children.”
 “The IHE and educators from the Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium will escort the young athletes to the Holocaust Memorial in Lincoln,” says Beth Seldin Dotan, Director of the IHE. “Teachers will provide background on the Holocaust, and help students work on the cemetery grounds as a community service project. The Heartland Holocaust Education Fund has made this day possible for the young athletes.  These athletes will watch a short DVD that tells the story of the Nazi Olympics in Berlin in 1936. Jewish athletes were not allowd to participate, so this Maccabi visit is a real statement of Jewish continuity and commemoration.”
 She adds that this is “something these kids will always remember. It combines all these different organizations and facets, and it is something that has real meaning. I am very happy and honored to have been asked to participate.”
 The Heartland Holocaust Educational Fund (HHEF) provides funding for Holocaust and

Sam Fried

Genocide education to institutions of higher learning across the Heartland. It is a non-profit entity in partnership with the Omaha Community Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Omaha Foundation. The Fund manages the Nebraska Holocaust Memorial as well as a display at the Strategic Air & Space Museum.
 Sam Fried, who is co-founder with his wife Frances, and a board member of the HHEF, has dedicated his life to educating the younger generation about the Holocaust. A survivor of Auschwitz, he came to America after the war and made a home in Omaha.
 When he first arrived in America, he didn’t talk about his experiences during the Holocaust. Then, in 1978, something changed: “Someone wrote a book, called The Hoax of the 20th Century. The author denied the Holocaust ever happened,” he says. “At that point, I knew silence was no longer an option.” He organized the Society of Survivors of the Holocaust, and donated seed money to the University of Nebraska at Omaha to start Holocaust education. Sam Fried has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Nebraska, and has received special recognition from the American Freedom Foundation for all the work he has done.
 “There are four components to the Holocaust,” he says, “there are the perpetrators, collaborators, the victims, and the bystanders. If there were no bystanders, there could be no Holocaust. We need to educate those potential bystanders, and we need to get the entire community involved in that education.”
 Knowing that this large group of kids and adults will be experiencing the Holocaust Memorial is something Sam is very pleased with: “We must remember, and we must help others remember. We must teach the next generation to never be silent or be bystanders in the face of evil. They must speak up against injustice, racism, and religious hatred.”
 The Wyuka project promises to be an ambitious undertaking, an operation with so many kids and volunteers involved that it is hard to imagine without experiencing it first hand. “Having kids from all over the country, and some from other countries, participate in this means they will help our community, while at the same time helping themselves,” Sharon Kirshenbaum says. “They will leave something of themselves behind, and simultaneously take the experience home with them, which I think is a fantastic thing. After all, taking care of and cleaning a cemetery is a very humbling experience, but it is also an excellent teaching opportunity, which is our main focus. At the end of the day, we should all leave with hope for the future.”