The JMA and Sonja van der Horst Distinguished Professorship in Jewish History and
Culture
Rationale
When Sonja van der Horst was diagnosed with a Grade IV glioblastoma in Oct.
2005, her children, Tatjana, Charles, Roger and Jacqueline, opened a discussion
with her about the possibility of donating funds for a project honoring both
her and her late husband, Johannes Martinus Arnold (Hans) van der Horst. After
much discussion Sonja chose to donate her home of fifty years to B'Nai Israel
Congregation and to fund a professorship at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. The rationale for this decision is a reflection of
their combined ideals and of the singular impact World War II and more
specifically, The Holocaust, had on each of them. They lived their lives
committed to many ideals including:
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high quality education not only for their own children but for others as well
-
fostering intellectual curiosity
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the importance of research in support of scientific and cultural advancement
- protecting civil liberties, religious and racial freedom for all
A list of particular charitable organizations which Sonja and Hans were
affiliated with or support these ideals can be found here.
Sonja and Hans
Hans was born on Sept. 22, 1918, in the Netherlands to Hendrik and Catharina van
der Horst, both chemical engineers. (Click
here for PDF). His own training as an engineer was interrupted by the
Nazi invasion of Holland on May 10, 1940. He fought in both the Dutch Army at
the onset of the war and then as a scout with the US Armed Forces, starting
with their invasion of southern France in Aug. 15, 1944. With the end of
hostilities in Europe on May 8, 1945, Hans began working for the United Nations
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, during which period he took Russian
lessons from Sonja.
Sonja was born Chaya Eichenbaum Teichholz on Dec. 16, 1923, to Naftali and Chawa
Teichholz in Tarnopol, Poland. Her grandfather, Shmerl Eichenbaum, (Click
here for more information.), was a religious scholar. Sonja was one of
only a few Jewish females to be allowed to attend the public high school or
gymnasium. As a fifteen year old she witnessed the Soviet invasion of Tarnopol
on September 1, 1939 when Poland was divided between the Soviets and the Nazis
under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty. Her father, aware of the stories of Jewish
murders in Nazi controlled Poland, wanted to immigrate to Palestine but could
not afford the immigration tax imposed by the British Mandate. Then on June 22,
1941, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union began and specifically on July 2,
1941, Nazi Einsatzgruppen entered Tarnopol. In one week five thousand Jews were
murdered beginning a systematic extermination of the 18,000 Jews of that
provincial town. On Nov. 8th and 9th of that year during a Nazi Aktion, Naftali
and his daughter, Malka, were shot outside their apartment and Chawa was gone,
presumably to the Belzec Concentration Camp at the age of 40
(View the site here). To escape, Chaya assumed a
series of false names, the final one being Sonja Tarasowa from the town of
Winniza. She took off her yellow star and joined a workers train with two other
friends to Germany. She survived in Germany and at the end of the war was
working as a translator for the English forces.
In the summer of 1945 the Soviets began the forced repatriation of displaced
persons to their countries of origin and the English agreed to hide her. When
she told Hans, he proposed and they tried to get married Oct. 11, 1945, in
Belgium but eventually were married on Dec. 8, 1945, in the Netherlands.
Hans van der Horst was a scholar and classic intellectual. Fluent in Russian,
Japanese, Dutch, French, German, Spanish and English, and trained as a chemical
engineer, he read archaeology journals and translated them for fun. Nothing
pleased him more then sitting in his favorite armchair by the picture window in
the living room overlooking a forest of trees, smoking a large stinky cigar and
reading an obscure article on an archaeological site in the Middle East. Sonja,
although never having attended a university, was equally fluent in many
languages, including French, German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Russian and
English as well as an ability to read Hebrew. She was au courant with the New
Yorker, the Saturday Review, and the latest novels.
Both Hans and Sonja were passionately committed to education, with Hans serving
as president of the Olean Public Library Board, raising the funds for a new,
handicapped accessible library, long before it became fashionable and counter
to some opposition from the local community. Hans also served as president of
the local American Field Service Committee, which sent high school students
from Olean to foreign countries, and was the western New York State fundraiser
for the United Negro College Fund. Having lived through the Holocaust, both
were committed to civil liberties and racial equality and were card carrying
members of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center and the
American Civil Liberties Union soon after arriving in the United States in
1952. An example of this commitment occurred at the height of the Viet Nam War,
when a young female high school student was chosen by the AFS Committee to go
abroad. During school, she refused to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Committee met to take away the award and Hans pointed out that when he was
made a US citizen he was asked to uphold the Constitution, not salute the flag.
After his passionate speech the Committee agreed to continue the award.
Although, Hans, himself, was not Jewish, as a scholar he was interested in
Judaism and Jewish history. He was also very supportive of his wife’s beliefs.
All of these ideals made the decision to fund a professorship at a public
university an easy one.
The decision to fund a professorship in Jewish Studies was easy as well. With
the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70
of the Common Era (AD), the beginning of a great diaspora of Jews took place.
Jews spread out from Israel throughout Europe. In 1481, the Spanish Inquisition
instituted by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, led to the murder, forced
conversion and expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, another diaspora,
and the beginning of the “early modern era‿in Jewish history. A little more
than five hundred years later, he Nazi’s goal was eradication of everything
Jewish. Not only would the Nazi’s implement the Final Solution in January 1942
to murder all the Jews in Europe, but they began a systematic effort to destroy
any evidence of Jewish culture, including music, books, artifacts, synagogues,
and even the cemeteries that could be found in these flourishing diaspora
communities. The JMA and Sonja van der Horst Distinguished Professorship will
focus on the period from the destruction of the Second Temple to the Spanish
Inquisition, exactly what the Nazis tried to destroy.
The van der Horst family, although immigrants in the United States, have grown
to appreciate all the benefits they received from this democratic country
including superb and free public education and freedom of the press, separation
of church and state and the freedom to practice our religion without fear of
persecution or conversion. We also have deep ties to the State of North
Carolina and the University of North Carolina system. Three of the four
children of JMA and Sonja van der Horst reside in North Carolina. Six of the
sixteen children and grandchildren have either trained at or obtained degrees
from the University, including Jacqueline Sergent (UNC-CH, MPH 1982), Charles
van der Horst (UNC Hospitals, 1985 Fellowship), Derek Schwendinger (UNC-CH, MBA
2005), David Sergent (NC State, BA 2006), Whitney Sergent (UNC-Wilmington,
2009) and Maureen van der Horst (UNC-Greensboro, 2007).
Starting in the 1960s Sonja began receiving Wiedergutmachung or reparations from
the German Government for the deaths of her parents and her younger sister.
This small monthly stipend has continued for the last forty years. Through wise
investments the amount has increased enough to fund the Professorship, a
fitting tribute to JMA and Sonja and an appropriate use of the funds. This
legacy will ensure that for generations to come, thousands of University of
North Carolina students will learn of an important period in European and
Middle Eastern history and that research conducted by the Professor, eventually
named, will continue to enlighten and advance the cause of University.
The Carolina Center for Jewish Studies
With nine full-time faculty members housed in a variety of departments in the
College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-CH, the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies
is well on its way to developing one of the premier Jewish Studies programs at
a public university in the United States. Center faculty now offer thirty
regular courses in Jewish Studies, including three years of instruction in
Modern Hebrew and both large lecture courses and small seminars in the
humanities and social sciences. Particular areas of strength are ancient
Judaism and the archaeology of ancient Israel, modern Judaism and the
Jewish-American experience, Jewish culture in Germany and Eastern Europe,
Jewish-American literature, and the History of the Holocaust. Currently, close
to 1,000 undergraduates take Jewish Studies courses each year at Carolina, and
the Center has more than a dozen students enrolled in its undergraduate minor
program.
The Center for Jewish Studies‿faculty steering committee has identified the
field of Jewish history—a linchpin of any interdisciplinary Jewish Studies
program that aspires to national excellence‿as one of its major priorities for
future faculty positions. Currently, the UNC History Department is home to
Frank Porter Graham Professor Christopher Browning, one of the world’s most
distinguished experts on the Holocaust. Browning teaches a popular lecture
course on the “History of the Holocaust‿every year to more than 150
undergraduates and has several graduate students working under him on Jewish
Studies and Holocaust-related research topics. The Center now wishes to build
on these strengths in the modern period with an additional position in Jewish
history, the JMA and Sonja van der Horst Distinguished Professorship in Jewish
History and Culture.
The initial appointment for this distinguished professorship would be in
medieval Jewish history, the period between the destruction of the Second
Temple and the beginning of the modern era. Hiring a medieval Jewish historian
would serve as a crucial bridge between our curricular offerings in ancient
Judaism and the courses we offer in the modern era. The JMA and Sonja van der
Horst professor would teach both survey courses in Jewish history as well as
more specialized courses in medieval Jewish studies. These courses would be of
interest to students specializing in Jewish Studies, to history majors and
graduate students, and to the general undergraduate population that has shown
such tremendous interest in Jewish Studies courses throughout the last decade.
In addition to this professorship, the College will fill three new Jewish
Studies positions: the Sara and E. J. Evans Distinguished Professorship in
Israel and the Middle East in the Department of Political Science; the Leonard
and Tobee Kaplan Distinguished Professorship in Modern Jewish Thought in the
Department of Religious Studies; and a lectureship in Modern Hebrew in the
Department of Asian Studies. The JMA and Sonja van der Horst Professorship in
Jewish History will have an immediate impact on the shape of Jewish Studies at
Carolina, creating an important further link to the history department and
dramatically increasing the course offerings as UNC moves towards the creation
of an undergraduate major in Jewish Studies.