Longtime educator opening center for Holocaust, Civil Rights education

The "heart" of the center features the wall quilt made by middle school students in Raleigh and given to Ms. Abramson after she spoke at their school. The photos are a montage of Ms. Abramson over the years. The bookshelf is full of books for teens.

Circle Sunday, August 22, on your calendar, and make plans to be at the Queen Street United Methodist Church at 2 p.m. for the opening of the Gizella Gross Abramson Resource Center for Holocaust and Civil Rights Education. The church is at 500 North Queen Street in Kinston. The opening ceremony will begin with a service featuring presenters and music and culminating in the Center’s dedication. After the initial festivities, attendees will be able to socialize and tour the facility.

The facility bears the name of Holocaust survivor Gizella Abramson. The story of her survival and her actions after World War II is compelling. She was 13 at the outbreak of World War II. She escaped the Luck ghetto in Poland by posing as a Christian and presenting false papers.

She joined the partisans until her capture and deportation to the Majdanek concentration camp, where she performed slave labor in a stone quarry and worked as a translator. She was liberated in May 1945 after being forced into what the Nazis hoped would be a death march for the remaining Jews. She was the only member of her immediate family who survived.

After surviving the Holocaust, she came to Brooklyn, NY, living with her aunt and uncle. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1951 with a B.A. in Education. On September 7, 1952, she married Paul Abramson.

The couple relocated to Raleigh in 1970. Mrs. Abramson became an active member of Temple Beth Or, working as the Director of Education for 19 years. She also served as a member of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust from 1981 to 1996.

From 1973 until her death on September 29, 2011, Mrs. Abramson was a highly sought-after speaker. She visited middle and high schools, teacher workshops, military bases, college campuses, churches, and police academies throughout the state. She often said she survived the Holocaust in order to share her experience with young people.

Lee Holder, a longtime and beloved history teacher at North Lenoir High School, decided he did not want his retirement to end his efforts to educate people about the Holocaust, Civil Rights, and true tolerance. To Holder’s knowledge, this Center is the first in eastern North Carolina.

“I met Ms. Abramson at a North Carolina Council on the Holocaust workshop for teachers in 1992,” Holder said. “I sat on the front row and was mesmerized by her story. I saw her experiences in her eyes as she spoke about them.

“I called her the next day and asked if I could bring my students to meet her and hear her story. She immediately said yes. Almost every year, and sometimes twice a year, I took students to visit her at Temple Beth Or in Raleigh. She always met us with cookies because she did not want my students to be hungry. When we left, she always blessed our bus to make sure we had a safe trip home.”

Holder said that the first time he met Mrs. Abramson she finished her talk by saying that all those in her audience were now witnesses to the Holocaust.

“I took that statement with great seriousness. The creation of the Center is a continuation of her challenge for us to go out and do our part to educate against prejudice, discrimination, racism, antisemitism, and hatred.”

The Abramson Center will offer a host of materials for research and study. Holder has amassed books, films, posters, artifacts, teacher guides, and prepared lessons.

“I have approximately 3,000 books, which include non-fiction, fiction, graphic novels, books for teens, and ‘children’s books.’ I have several classroom sets of middle school and high school books, both fiction and non-fiction. I have many books on the pedagogy of teaching this material to students.”

He also has digital materials on these subjects that he will make available to teachers. He plans to have a website soon to share these materials with a broader audience.

“I have big dreams about what we can accomplish with the Center,” Holder said. “My goals are to provide resources, lesson plans, and project materials to teachers and students. My primary focus is Holocaust and genocide studies, but I also have many resources to study African American history. I also have a growing collection of resources on Women’s History and Native American History.”

He also hopes to conduct workshops and professional development sessions for Lenoir County and eastern North Carolina educators; to host small classes on the Holocaust and Civil Rights-related topics; and to host presentations for the community on the Holocaust and Civil Rights-related issues.

I have outlined only four of a dozen goals Lee Holder shared with me. His dream is ambitious, but he is driven to continue the battle against prejudice, discrimination, racism, antisemitism, and hatred.

I am sure Mrs. Abramson is giving her blessing to his efforts to help us all treat each other with respect and dignity. Make sure to be at Queen Street Methodist Church at 2 p.m. on Sunday, August 22, to see this blessing begin to take root.

Mike Parker is a columnist for Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.