Jewish community centers

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Isak Federman, the sole survivor of his family, was 17 years old when the Germans occupied Wolbrom. A short while later, he was grabbed off the street by the SS and sent to the first of a series of labor and concentration camps. He was liberated by the British at Sandbostel, a sub-camp of Neuengamme, in 1945. At the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp, he met Ann Warshawski and they made their way to Kansas City in 1946. In 1993, with his friend Jack Mandelbaum, he founded the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.

Ann Federman was the next-to-youngest of nine children born to Miriam and Abraham Warszawski in Będzin, Poland. Only fourteen when the Germans invaded Poland, Ann spent the war in Parschnitz, a slave labor in camp in Czechoslovakia. After liberation, Ann was eventually reunited with her sister and two brothers. The family lived in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Persons Camps where she met her husband, Isak Federman. They came to the United States in 1946, settling in Kansas City, where they were the first Holocaust survivors to marry.

Zdenko Bergl, an only child, grew up in Zabno, Croatia, a small town with only five Jewish families. Zdenko played soccer, attended public school, and had Hebrew lessons on Sunday. The Bergls enjoyed warm relationships with their non-Jewish employees and neighbors and experienced very little overt antisemitism. However, in April 1941, the Germans occupied Croatia and his father was arrested. After family connections enabled him to be released, the family fled to Italy, where a priest helped them obtain forged papers and they spent the rest of the war passing as non-Jews until their liberation in August 1944. They lived in the Cinecittá displaced persons camp until their immigration to the United States. In 1949, Zdenko married Evelyn Arzt, whom he had met in Cinecittá.

Audio Recording

Interview with Arthur Brand about the history of the Jewish community and his family in the Kansas City area. He describes that he and his extended family came to Kansas City from New York City in June 1928, starting Brand and Puritz garment company, and the development and decline of Kansas City's garment industry from the 1930s through the 1970s. He also discusses at length the evolution of the Jewish community from its beginning in the urban core to its eventual shift south Kansas City and later to Johnson County; issues such as assimilation and intermarriage; and the development of institutions including Menorah Hospital, the Jewish Federation of Kansas City, Jewish Vocational Services, and Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, named for his father; and his involvement with a Judaic Studies program at University of Missouri-Kansas City.