The Holocaust Center of Northern California’s speakers bureau and oral history project are both alive and well in the wake of recent budget cuts, according to the center’s executive director.
Leslie Kane said staff and lay leadership have found creative ways to maintain the two services. A partnership with the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services to co-manage the speakers bureau is up and running. And the oral history project, which records and preserves survivor testimonies, remains in place — though funds to conduct the interviews will need to be raised on a case-by-case basis.
“We’re operating in a very different mode,” Kane said. “We have about half of our [previous] staff. But we are excited about figuring out the next mode of delivery of our services, given that the world of philanthropy is different.”
JFCS is a good fit for the speakers bureau, she said, because of the agency’s reach across the Bay Area, its experience working with seniors, and its fleet of vans to assist in transportation. Those are things the Holocaust Center never had before.
“We have about 40 active speakers from all experiences of the Holocaust, people who were in concentration camps, on death marches, refugees, hidden children, Kindertransport, liberators: the entire panoply of experiences from eyewitnesses.”
Kane said all speakers received letters explaining the new partnership with JFCS.
In December, the Holocaust Center announced the staff layoffs and budget cuts. With positions such as oral history project director eliminated, some supporters worried that services themselves might face the chopping block.
Not so, Kane insisted.
With more than 2,000 oral histories in its archives, the Holocaust Center continues to catalog, digitize and make accessible the eyewitness accounts of survivors. As time goes on, requests to document new testimonies dwindle, but the center will continue recording them.
“We would not expect a witness to cover the costs,” Kane said, adding that the center’s board plans to establish an oral history fund to cover the expenses of recording survivors’ testimonies. She said the average cost of a single oral history is around $1,000.
Kane also announced in December that the center is seeking a new home to house its vast collection of books, photos, documents and other Holocaust-era materials. She said discussions are under way with various academic institutions to find that home.
Kane said she and the board recently formed a task force to re-envision the direction of the Holocaust Center in the years to come. Its agenda includes finding new partners to help carry out the center’s mission.
“The task force is committed to making the delivery of Holocaust education a priority,” Kane added. “People thought the mission is being abandoned. Far from it. The mission is being strengthened.”