Holocaust survivor created memorials from Miami Beach to Washington, D.C.

University in Krakow, Poland, when World War II erupted in 1939. Soon after, her parents were sent to the Treblinka concentration camp, where they were killed.

Fagin’s memories of the horrors of World War II began earlier with the event that has come to be known as The Night of the Broken Glass, ,on Nov. 9, 1938. The Nazi regime coordinated a wave of antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum noted.

Members of Fagin’s family and relatives who were living in Germany were arrested, their homes destroyed and their businesses and synagogues desecrated and looted, Fagin told Miami Herald columnist Bea Hines in 1988.

“My family, who lived in Berlin, was deported as Polish Jews to Zbaszyn, the town where thousands of German Jews of Polish origin were sent,” Fagin told the Herald. “They were dispossessed of all their belongings and were totally uprooted.”

Until then, Fagin told the columnist, the German Jews had considered themselves quite assimilated into the German culture. “They even served in the German army and were proud of their German citizenship. It came as a shock. They were deprived of the right to live.”

The Holocaust ultimately claimed the lives of her parents and 87 members of her extended family.

Fagin and her two sisters survived the war, spending five years in ghettos and in hiding, separate and apart, before they were reunited, her son wrote.

Fagin arrived in New York City in 1946 — “straight from a displaced-persons camp in Austria,” she told the Herald in 1988. She spoke little English.

In 1948, she married Sidney Fagin. Three years later, in 1951, with their daughter Judith, Helen and Sidney moved to Miami, where their son Gary was born.

MAKING HISTORY

1978, after receiving her doctorate at UM in 1977.

In 1979, Fagin became education adviser to Wiesel in developing what would become the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The museum opened in 1993. She later served as chair of its Education Committee.

“I first met Helen about 35 years ago and worked very closely with her in developing the Museum’s educational outreach strategy, well before the Museum opened,” said Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“She helped lay the foundations for the national and international impact the museum has today. Helen had a rare combination of talents: she was smart, funny, courageous and tough, a woman with very high intellectual and moral standards. It was a great honor to work with her. She taught me so much,” Bloomfield said.

In addition to the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, Fagin was instrumental in forming the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the committee that created the World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington.

Fagin’s daughter Judith honored her mother’s legacy by setting up the Dr. Helen N. Fagin Holocaust Education Endowment Fund at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington as a legacy gift in 2016.

Fagin’s survivors include her children Judith and Gary Fagin, granddaughter Cora and her sister Teresa, nieces and nephews and “descendants in the U.S., England and Israel of relatives who survived the Holocaust and myriads of admiring colleagues and students,” her son said for the family obituary.

The funeral service was livestreamed and held on March 15.

Donations can be made in Fagin’s honor to the Dr. Helen N. Fagin Holocaust Education Endowment Fund at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Information: Sara Eigenberg, 202-834-8644. Or send to her collection at New College of Florida. Information:

MaryAnne Young, 941487-4800.