The Man Who Kept Remembrance Alive

The legacy of Miles Lerman, partisan fighter and driving force behind the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Miles Lerman: A Holocaust survivor, he made a bond with younger, American-born Jews and non-Jews. Getty Images

by Irving “Yitz” Greenberg
Special To The Jewish Week

The loss of Miles Lerman is more than another devastating experience of the passing of the survivor generation.

Miles is almost the last of the unique band of survivors who played a central role in the extraordinary rise of Holocaust remembrance in the United States. Until the 1960s, there was widespread unwillingness to hear about the Holocaust. Now 80 percent of American Jews say that remembering the Holocaust is the hallmark of a good Jew. In national polls, a substantial majority of Americans say that knowledge of the Shoah is essential for all Americans. The Shoah has become the incontestable touchstone of evil and of moral norms in a relativistic world.

This is in no small measure the legacy of Miles Lerman and the survivors

who built the institutions of Holocaust memory in the United States.

Miles, who died this week at 88 in Philadelphia, was a survivor and his wife, Chris, lived through Auschwitz. He fought in the partisans in those years when they were hunted by the Germans, abandoned by the Poles, by the Allies, by everyone. (I will never forget Miles’ understated voice speaking in an early documentary film, describing going to battle without having a gun for each fighter. More often, each had only a rationed handful of bullets — eight to 10. Knowing the pitiless tortured death that awaited them if they fell into Nazi hands, he added without bravado, “You always saved the last bullet for yourself.”)

Yet Miles was never embittered or angry. He was unfailingly kind and sweet in every contact I had with him. He never let the egos or the personal agendas throw him or distract him from the task. He set a goal; he unstintingly worked on the details and followed up to the end.

When Harvey Meyerhoff became chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Miles was asked to step down as chairman of the $100 million Campaign to Remember, which was to build and endow the museum. Afterward, the campaign did not go well and he was asked to step back in. Miles took the task back without recrimination or pique. He traveled tirelessly and raised more money for the museum than any other person. He kept going until the fund reached $190 million.

My first contact with Miles came in 1974. In the ‘50s and ‘60s the survivors’ organizations were trapped in a vicious cycle. The public did not want to hear them. Out of hurt, anguish and guilt at not being able to get the job of memory done, many groups turned inward.

Sometimes, the unintentional message to non-survivors was: You will never understand; (maybe) you don’t belong here. This tended to turn memorial events into survivor ghettos. Their isolation left the organizations frustrated and unable to establish community wide alliances to achieve the goals.

When we started CLAL, the Center for Learning and Leadership, in 1974 with Elie Wiesel, CLAL created Zachor: Holocaust Resource Center to teach that the Shoah was a transformational event in Jewish and world history and to urge the creation of Holocaust Memorial Centers — museums and centers totally dedicated to encountering the Shoah and its implications. We understood that Zachor would not succeed unless it had a survivor and a non-survivor as lay co-chairs. But where could we find a person who had this ability to engage non-survivors as full partners without mixed messages?

Ben Leuchter, CLAL’s chairman, was Miles’ neighbor in Vineland, N.J. Miles was a traditional Jew and active in the Jewish community but not a leader on the national scene. Ben said: This man is intensely a survivor but he has this remarkable inner equilibrium that enables him to work with everybody. Miles co-chaired with Irvin Frank of Tulsa and Zachor started its pioneering work.

In 1979, President Carter, guided by his chief domestic affairs adviser, Stuart Eizenstat, created the President’s Commission on the Holocaust with Elie Wiesel as chairman. The core leadership of Zachor moved over to join the commission. Miles saw that this was a “never again” opportunity for remembrance. He took on the task with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his might. He helped conceive the museum. He played a critical role in linking survivors and non-survivors on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

In 1986, the council appeared to be stuck, unable to agree on a memorial that could meet the sacred standards appropriate to this staggering task, and unable to raise sufficient funds to create the museum. Elie Wiesel resigned as chairman. Miles and a small group stepped forward to assure continuity, and to work with Bud Meyerhoff and Al Abramson to raise the money and build the museum.

As he did this, Miles protected the museum’s Jewish character and spirit against the attempts to universalize it to make it “more American.” When the museum was publicly dedicated, Miles led in the fight to invite Israel’s president to address the gathering, against those who objected that this would make the museum look “too Jewish.”

When funds were tight and others demanded that the Academic and Research program be cut in the name of fiscal responsibility, Miles saved it. He negotiated an unprecedented series of agreements with governments in Eastern Europe and with Germany so the museum could obtain extraordinary artifacts from the Holocaust (such as a boxcar which transported Jews, and a milk can in which part of the Ringelblum archives was buried in the Warsaw Ghetto).

Miles handled heads of government with ease and familiarity — armored by his cause and his inner balance — and won access to the European archives for USHMM and thus, for all future scholars.

Miles was personally wounded by the Arafat controversy — in which the PLO head was invited to tour the museum — and by the continuous criticism he endured thereafter. Because he wanted the museum to be beyond criticism, he persuaded the president to appoint a successor (myself), which he hoped would stop the partisan attacks. After stepping down, he continued to be the key fundraiser for the museum because he placed the cause above any personal glory.

A decade ago, Miles discovered that the site of Belzec killing camp was a desolate ruin; the area was encroached on by neighboring farmers; pigs rooted in its soil; it was identified only by a broken marker which did not acknowledge that the victims were Jews. Miles undertook to create a proper memorial in the place where his own mother and sister had been murdered. An extraordinary memorial was commissioned by the Holocaust Memorial Council. However, the museum was gun shy from the relentless partisan criticism that attacked its every move and it feared to proceed. Miles raised the money, persuaded the American Jewish Committee to serve as sponsor, and completed the project. The memorial is a moving and stunningly powerful place of remembrance.

Like Moses, Miles Lerman carried out some of his greatest leadership tasks in his 80s. With his passion and energy, he left the younger staff and associates gasping to keep up. Three years ago, he was in Israel and met with a birthright israel group at Yad VaShem, riveting 40 young Jews with the lessons of the Holocaust and his personal experiences as a partisan.

Until age and infirmity confined him in his last two years, Miles spent his life totally dedicated to remembrance. To the end, he kept faith with the living and the dead. As the Psalm says, “His righteousness will endure forever.”

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization