Millions of Buttons to Create Bakersfield Area’s First Holocaust Memorial

BY PATRICIA CORRIGAN – JWeekly.com

Six million buttons of many colors and shapes and sizes — buttons made of metal, wood, cloth, plastic, pearl and shell, plain buttons and buttons with patterns, textured buttons and flat buttons — soon will serve as a memorial in a garden setting at Chabad of Bakersfield to honor the lives of every Jewish woman, man and child killed in the Holocaust.

“We are focused on affirming the lives of every one of them,” said Rabbi Shmuel Schlanger, co-director with his wife, Esther, of Chabad of Bakersfield. “We are going to build this memorial to encourage people of all backgrounds to come here and to reflect on how they could counteract evil deeds of the past by replacing them with deeds of kindness, to make the future and the world more beautiful.”

As he spoke, Schlanger was deftly fielding drop-offs of — what else — boxes and bags of buttons from residents of Bakersfield, who recently learned about the project on a television news broadcast, from the local newspaper and on Chabad’s Facebook page. He reported that about 1,500 buttons had been dropped off that very morning.

They will be added to the 5.5 million already collected, donated by individuals across the country. Cynthia Fischer of Visalia, executive director of the California Holocaust Education and Resource Center (CHERC), initiated the project. About a decade ago, Fischer heard about “Paper Clips,” a documentary film about a middle-school class in Whitwell, Tennessee, that collected 6 million paper clips to represent the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II.

“I started thinking about buttons, how they come in all shapes, sizes, colors and materials, and how that’s the way Jewish people come,” Fischer said. On her own, she decided to start collecting buttons. Then, in 2013, Fischer founded the nonprofit CHERC.

“Our mission is to prevent a repetition of the Holocaust, and as I was teaching about the Holocaust and handing out flyers in the Visalia area, the first buttons started to come in,” Fischer said. “Then, about five years ago, I got savvy with Facebook and the internet and I connected with groups of button collectors across the country.”

As the boxes arrived, Fischer stored them in a shed and the garage at Beit Shalom, a synagogue she helped found. Over the years, students at the La Sierra Military Academy helped count buttons as part of their community service obligation. Early in 2020, Fischer met the Schlangers when she began taking her granddaughter to Sunday school at Chabad of Bakersfield, about 80 miles south of Visalia. Late in December, she spoke with them about her idea for a memorial showcasing the buttons.

Schlanger said the inspiration for the memorial came from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. “When the idea to leave an empty seat at the Passover table to remember everyone killed in the Holocaust was presented to the Rebbe, he said that to bring merit to the souls of the 6 million, the chair should be filled by another Jew who doesn’t have a seder to go to,” he said. “That is the type of memorial we will build, one that fills the empty chair with the love and joy of the seder table.”

Schlanger said he is looking forward to “history in the making” in the Central Valley and bringing the world closer to the Messianic Era — a time of peace and harmony.

“We don’t just believe that it is a dream. We believe it will be a reality. There will be a time when there will be no more war, pain, suffering, pandemics, evil,” Schlanger said. “Our great Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson taught us that one act of goodness and kindness by anybody can take that scale.”

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