schmooze sat down with Sam Harris, the President of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, to discuss his book “Sammy: Child Survivor of the Holocaust” and his work on the new Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

schmooze: Why did you decide to write a book so many years after the Holocaust?

Sam Harris:  It was my wife’s idea to create the book. I wanted to wait until after I was dead to publish it.  My wife Dede thought it was so good that it should be shared earlier. So she took the little stories that I wrote to the person who immediately got involved with us and 40 days later we had a book.

Dede Harris: After different experiences, Sam would remember the Holocaust in different ways, so he would come home and put it down on scraps of paper, always referring to the current experience and then back to the Holocaust. So after maybe 10 of these, I thought that these are little jewels that should be put together in the form of a book.

schmooze: Why did you feel that the Holocaust Museum needed to include an education center?

Sam Harris: It was important to have an education center because we have to learn from something that has happened in the past in order to transform the future. If we just go in and look at old hair and shoes and don’t do anything about it like educating, nothing is learned from the experience. Education is the key to the future, and that’s why you have to have education after exploring the museum.

schmooze: Our generation is probably the last to meet Holocaust survivors in person. How can we teach future generations who will be more distant and disconnected from the actual event?

Sam Harris: I think there is nothing like the real thing, which is a survivor. I’ve met students who say they’ve been to Auschwitz, but meeting a survivor is better. We cannot be replaced, but there are enough museums, and Steven Spielberg did over 52,000 interviews so those who want to learn can learn.

schmooze: Do you think we respond quickly enough to modern genocide?

Sam Harris:  I don’t think we respond fast enough. Fast enough would be that people would get on a plane and do something about it. It couldn’t be better than that, but unfortunately that doesn’t happen. I think that people have learned some, but we have a long way to go. Many people have been dying off left and right today, and we still have a lot to do. But we have more organizations to help us now that we didn’t have during the Holocaust. Also, immediate information and Googling helps people know what’s going on in the world.

Text By: Illyse Kornblau