
Lesley Weiss was recently named Chair of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad –and her first public participation in a major Jewish heritage preservation event was at last month’s conference in Krakow on Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage. You can see her talk at the conference opening session in the video posted on this web site.
In an article by Ben Zehavi called “After the Survivors, Only the Stones Will Tell the Stories,” the Times of Israel profiles Ms Weiss and the Commission — citing some of its important but largely unsung work in Jewish heritage preservation and documentation. The Commission’s surveys in post-communist Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovenia and elsewhere, starting in the early 1990s, were real landmarks — in most cases the first comprehensive inventories and threat evaluations of Jewish heritage sites in those countries.
The Times of Israel story writes:
Despite the Jewish philanthropic world’s near obsession with young adults and “Jewish identity,” Weiss says there are still plenty of American Jews interested in connecting with their past.
“My mom is a Holocaust survivor, a survivor of Auschwitz who comes from the Carpathian Ukraine and there’s nothing left in her town,” she says. “There’s no synagogue and there are no Jews.”
“When this generation dies, nothing will stand in their place that can speak to us about that lost heritage except the physical sites of their former lives. If your family comes from a place and all that’s left are the remnants of a synagogue and it’s falling apart, you want it to be preserved. This is the significance of the work we do [on the commission] to preserve this precious part of the historical record.”
2 comments on “Article Profiles U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad”
Lesley: You have touched many in the Jewish Professional world over the years, and now your many skills, sensitivity, and wisdom will be shared across the world — and, the world will be a much better place. I am so proud to know you.
Congratulations to Lesley Weiss in her new position as Chair of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. I think she will do a terrific job. I’ve had nearly 23 years of experience working on and off with the Commission. It has a very small budget – which has just been cut in the sequestration process – but still has been able to encourage and perform through example, negotiation and project sponsorship in amazingly varied activities from Jewish cemetery documentation and occasional preservation, and the documentation of other ethnic and minority religious and cultural sites (Roma in Poland, Old Believers in Lithuania, Muslims and Protestants in Bulgaria) as well as the creation of Holocaust memorials and other commemorative events. But most important – the Commission has established a process for government to government and professional to professional discussion about issues before and as they arise – an opportunity the stress action over polemics. I hope and expect the Lesley Weiss will further develop and promote this process with good results.