A PERSONAL MENORAH
TO HONOUR REFUGE
G'day folks,
After escaping the
Holocaust, Manfred Anson paid tribute to his new home.
Hanukkah celebrates a
miracle that occurred in 165
B.C., and the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York Harbor in 1886. The
two moments are separated by two millennia and thousands of miles, but Manfred
Anson thought it perfectly appropriate to bring them together.
In 1986, for the
statue’s centennial, Anson designed a Hanukkah menorah with nine Lady
Liberty–shaped branches, and donated it to the Statue of Liberty National
Museum. On each of Hanukkah’s eight nights, Jews light another candle on the
menorah to commemorate the miracle that took place in Jerusalem, when the
Jewish Maccabee warriors rededicated the Temple after overthrowing the Seleucid
occupation. They had estimated that they only had enough oil to light the
seven-branch menorah for one night, but the fire burned instead for eight. (The
ninth branch, the shammash, is used to light the others.) Anson drew a
connection between this story and his restorative journey to the United States,
after decades of exile and persecution.
As Grace Cohen Grossman, of
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, writes in a blog post for the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of American History (where one of Anson’s menorahs
is on display), a young Anson fled his native Germany shortly before the outbreak
of World War II. He was one of 20 boys selected by the Jewish Welfare Guardian
Society of Australia to move there, where he served in the army during the war.
His younger brother, Heinz, was killed in Majdanek concentration camp in
Poland, while his sister Sigrid survived several camps. Anson followed his
sister to the United States in 1963. (Their parents had also survived the
Holocaust, but had died by the time the siblings reunited.)
According to
Grossman, Anson collected thousands of pieces of American memorabilia,
including items associated with the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and
the Capitol. He also had between 20 and 30 Liberty menorahs cast from a
miniature Lady Liberty souvenir. Anson passed away in 2012, but in 2013
received his highest public honor yet. At that year’s White House Hanukkah
ceremony, President Obama lit one of Anson’s Liberty menorahs, and
said that Anson “sought a place where he could live his life and practice his
religion free from fear,” and that his menorah is “a reminder that our country
endures as a beacon of hope and of freedom wherever you come from, whatever
your faith.”
Though Anson found
refuge, we know that Americans of all faiths have faced bigotry throughout the
country’s history. In 2018, Hanukkah comes barely a month after the massacre at
Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. According to the Anti-Defamation League,
anti-Semitic incidents increased in the United States by 57 percent between
2016 and 2017. Anson’s Liberty menorah is a testament to what the United States
is capable of, and a reminder that there’s still work to be done.
Clancy's comment: I've read many stories about the Holocaust, and about those who survived it. Chilling reading.
I'm ...
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