The Canadian Society for Yad Vashem Young Leadership Division
Ed Sonshine, born in Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons’ Camp in Germany and the son of Holocaust survivors, inspired his audience with his presentation, elaborating on his philosophy on the interconnection between business success and philanthropy with the Holocaust.
He related his personal story of founding himself corralled by a friend when he was a young lawyer to go to a home fundraiser for Israel during the Yom Kippur war. There, he saw giants of the legal profession pledging tens of thousands of dollars.
Ed was nudged by a colleague to make a pledge, the first of what would become a well-trodden road of philanthropy from that day forward. “I’d like to tell you why philanthropy runs in everything we do… In the end we all have to make a living, to strive for financial security… somehow, I do better when I give. I don’t know why it is, but I do better when I give,” Ed said.
It was only a generation and a half ago, he recalled, when antisemitism was alive and well in the legal profession. “The big white shoe firms did not hire Jews. What Jewish guys of the day did was join a Jewish firm or hang up your own shingle. It’s hard to believe 40 years ago that that was the case. Today, Jews are everywhere,” Ed said.
Mr. Sonshine’s most important message was his call to action for vigilance against signs of intolerance, large or small:
One of the lessons of the Holocaust is that you can’t put up with anything… In Germany, the Nazis started very small, very slow. They started within 20 minutes of Hitler coming to power. They started with a law of some sort, and then another one, that was [incremental]. They’d wait and see if there was going to be a big reaction, and another and another, and it slowly built itself up.
You can’t let anything go, even if it doesn’t affect you. You can’t say (after the Nazis banned Jews from playing in the Philharmonic) ‘hey, all the Jews in Germany who didn’t play in the Philharmonic who are banned from playing; it doesn’t affect me.’ Because it can be a very slippery slope. I think that’s a lesson what many people should have.
The Holocaust had a profound effect on him, as he recollected the day when, as a young boy, a friend of his told him he had to leave the playground to go visit his ‘bubbe’. The only time I saw my mother cry really hard … was when I asked her ‘what’s a bubbe?’ So it shapes you, in a way that you might not know.”
In summation, Sonshine urged the engrossed young professionals on the imperative of immersing themselves in Holocaust education:
“It’s so important for Jews to know why the Holocaust happened, how it happened. I’ve always been committed to educating about the Holocaust. I was at the Yad Vashem campus – it’s a lot more than a museum. Whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish, you need to go there.”