West Hartford couple creates fund to boost Holocaust education

West Hartford residents Richard and Lea Rubenstein are concerned about current affairs.

So the couple has made an investment in educating younger people about the horrors of the Holocaust - via a collaboration with the Jewish Community Foundation that will support programs at Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor.

Richard Rubenstein, a Loomis Chaffee alum, said that when he was in college, he spent a summer in Europe in 1966 on a Joint Distribution Committee study mission, where he met many Holocaust survivors.

“There’s nothing like seeing it firsthand,” he said. “That summer, I became very interested in trying to help our fellow Jews.”

For years, Richard has donated his time, energy, and funds to many organizations supporting a range of causes, including survivors. He was previously the president of the Hartford Jewish Federation and chairman of Hebrew Healthcare, among other roles.

On that 1966 trip, he also met Lea, who lived under communism for 20 years in the former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia) before coming to the United States in 1966. They have been married for 53 years.

“That was a souvenir of the trip,” he said.

The couple created The Rubenstein Family Holocaust Education Fund, aimed at supporting the prevention of future genocides through Holocaust education. Combined with other funds at Loomis Chaffee, the fund will finance high-profile speakers, school-wide convocations, and classes.

“The Holocaust was really a terrible thing. I’ve gone and visited many the concentration camps,” he said. “That’s why we did this.”

The school, he said, already has great history programs, but he still wanted to do more to impress upon students how people are mistreated on a large scale.

“The problems in today’s world are greater. What’s going on in Ukraine is another form of genocide,” he said. “History is repeating itself in the worst way right now. I hope young people will help take care of these things that affect all of us because it’s their world and, more importantly, our grandchildren’s world.”

The Rubensteins donated the entire fund, and while they aren’t looking for more donations, they hope their work inspires others to do the same, for this or other causes.

“We put in a substantial amount of money, and we have an agreement with Loomis on how it’s going to be used,” he said.

“The fund is ongoing, and they have other monies they are going to combine with it, because they believe the purpose of it,” Rubenstein said. “They understand exactly what we’re trying to do. These kids really understand what’s going on in the world. This is the kind of thing that will help them as they go forward.”

“One of the reasons we did the fund was to encourage other people to do the same kind of thing,” he said. “They can do the same thing with their school, or wherever they think it might be helpful.”

For more information, visit https://www.jcfhartford.org.