During nearly 17 years he spent in Israel during the ’70s and ’80s, Paul Hamburg milked a kibbutz’s cows and labored in its orchards. An accomplished pianist, he also ran an adult music education and appreciation seminar there.
“I had two lives on the kibbutz,” he says.
A third was about to begin. While in Israel, Hamburg met and spoke with many Holocaust survivors. He found himself drawn to the subject and ended up pursuing it in depth.
“I’ve learned the Holocaust is the great chasm of the 20th century,” says the new executive director of the Holocaust Center of Northern California. He comes to the post in September from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where he has served as reference and collection development librarian since 1992.
A 48-year-old Detroit native who holds degrees in medieval and Jewish studies and has completed some rabbinical coursework, Hamburg believes that to truly comprehend the depth of the historical chasm, one must examine what came before and after it.
“You have to be able to understand the height of what Jewish life in Europe was like before the Holocaust,” he says, “and also the important strides Jews have made in America and Israel after the Holocaust — how we’ve risen from the ashes.”
At the Wiesenthal Center, Hamburg annually responds to more than 3,000 reference queries addressing nearly every aspect of Holocaust and genocide studies as well as all aspects of Judaica, including Jewish and European history, anti-Semitism and genealogy. He speaks fluent Hebrew, as well as some Yiddish and German.
“He is internationally known as a resource in Holocaust studies,” says Ingrid Tauber, co-president with John Rothmann of the Holocaust Center. She says Hamburg has “this academic dimension and credibility that we feel very strongly about.”
But far from being an ivory-tower academician, Hamburg has also dealt personally with the Jewish community. Survivors in particular, he says, “have made an enormous impression on me. They are in many ways role models of courage and strength.
“They also remind us, unfortunately, of the many people who were lost.”
Hamburg, who was chosen from 20 candidates, replaces former director Barbara Goodman, who is moving to Philadelphia.
He has several imminent goals for the San Francisco center, including increasing its visibility, strengthening its ties to both the Jewish and general communities and enhancing its resources through the acquisition of CD-ROMs, software and other electronic equipment.
A consultant for the development of new online library systems, he received a master’s degree in library and information studies from U.C. Berkeley in 1991.
“I was trained as a librarian at a crucial moment when the use of electronic media became the prime focus of how information is retrieved and transmitted,” he says.
It was while a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley, in fact, that Hamburg first became acquainted with the Holocaust Center on the other side of the bay. A friend introduced him to the site and Hamburg ended up working there as an intern, helping to provide reference services for patrons and cataloging archival materials in various languages.
After departing the Bay Area for Los Angeles in 1992, he kept in touch with the center’s staff and volunteers. When he heard of the search for a new executive director, he leaped at the opportunity.
“I’m very, very excited about the prospect of returning to the Bay Area and taking on this enormously challenging position,” he says. “I have always had a very warm feeling for the center.”