Flanking a panel chronicling the life and survival of Gina Lanceter — part of “From Memory to History,” an Aidekman campus exhibit about Holocaust survivors in MetroWest — are Lanceter, left, and her daughter, Dina Cohen, both of whom are now serving on the NJ Commission on Holocaust Education.
Photo courtesy Dina Cohen
September 18, 2008
Holocaust survivor Gina Lanceter has always said if she can reach 10 kids out of 100, she’s happy.
Now, after several years of dedicated Holocaust teaching and programming in the MetroWest area, both Lanceter and her daughter, Dina Cohen, have been given the opportunity to have an impact on even more students on a statewide level.
Paul Winkler, executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, contacted the pair a year ago expressing his desire to appoint them to the body. On Aug. 20, Lanceter and Cohen were officially appointed by Gov. Jon Corzine as the first mother-daughter team on the commission.
As cochair and board member, respectively, of the Holocaust Council of MetroWest and members of the Holocaust Advisory Committee of Cafe Europa, the social venue for survivors, both Lanceter and Cohen are excited to begin working with the commission from the inside.
“It’s such an honor to be appointed to the commission because it really is at the forefront of Holocaust education in the country,” Cohen said at her mother’s apartment in Montclair. Lanceter pointed out that even representatives from Eastern European countries come to learn from the commission.
The two are not the first MetroWest council members on the commission. Cohen cited survivors Martha Rich and the late Cecile Seiden, both previous council members with scholarships established in their names.
“By being named to the commission, we’re following in some big footsteps,” Cohen said.
Despite the commission’s international reputation and statewide success, and the fact that New Jersey — as one of only five states that mandate Holocaust education in public schools — certainly takes Shoa education seriously, mother and daughter agreed that more could be done, especially with regard to the involvement of children of Holocaust survivors and victims.
The survivors, Lanceter said, are “dying out.” While she is still able to speak about her experiences, many remaining survivors are no longer physically or emotionally capable. “It’s very important that the second generation gets involved.”
That’s exactly what Cohen has been doing. In addition to her work on the MetroWest Holocaust council and Cafe Europa, the now-retired Cohen serves as the coordinator of the MetroWest branch of Generations of the Shoah International, a worldwide network of survivor descendants; a board member of the Holocaust Advisory Committee of Jewish Family Service of MetroWest; and as a volunteer in the MetroWest chapter of the American Red Cross for its Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center in Baltimore, Md.
About Lanceter’s and Cohen’s appointment, Winkler said he and the other commission members are “looking forward to their input and expertise as we continue to educate the students in New Jersey about the events that occurred during that time.
“Dina and Gina, for many years, have been very involved and it is good to see that they have been recognized in this way by the governor.”
‘Important legacy’
Originally, Cohen hadn’t really thought about the type of activity she has now taken on.
“I was never inspired to be involved in education,” she said.
She fell into it after interviewing survivors for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, a nonprofit started by Steven Spielberg, in 1995.
“After my father died, I felt upset that I didn’t know his whole story because he never spoke,” said Cohen. “So when I heard about the Spielberg foundation, I decided I wanted to participate. As I got involved in that and started doing interviews and meeting other people who were children of survivors, I got involved in second-generation groups, and from that I started getting involved in education. It was an evolutionary process.”
When Cohen moved to Clifton in 1999, she encouraged her mother to become more active. Until that point, her mother had been interviewed for the Fortunoff Archives at Yale University, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, and Yad Vashem in Israel, but beyond that had spoken only at her grandchildren’s schools.
Lanceter, who has received over 1,000 letters from students over the past eight years, is just as awed by students’ reactions as they are by her story.
Urged by her parents, Lanceter, 14 at the time, leaped out the window of a cattle car headed for the extermination camp of Majdanek, living out the rest of the war in hiding.
“When my parents made me jump out of the train, my father’s last words to me were, ‘You must survive; you must tell what happened to us,’” Lanceter said. “And that was always in my mind — but, you know, raising a family and being young, you don’t do that.”
Now, though, Lanceter is a regular speaker at schools, religious institutions, and panels hosting both scholars and survivors. “I always say we survivors are not leaving a good legacy for our children, but a very important one.”
Cohen added that her mother’s story in particular is important to pass on.
“One of the things that’s very important about her story is that along the way she was helped sometimes in very tiny ways and sometimes in larger ways by individuals,” Cohen said, “so it’s important to teach the kids that one person can really make a difference.”
This message is particularly potent given the situation in Darfur.
“What’s going on now is almost a repetition of what happened” to the Jews in Europe, said Lanceter, who has participated in many rallies on behalf of the victims of the brutality in Sudan. “If we are silent and don’t do anything it will happen again.”
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