Ep 230: Echoes of the Past with Zachary Graulich and guest Meryl Menashe on hmTv

Echoes of the Past – Ep. 230: “Day One: Reading 9/1/39”
Assistant Director of Education Zachary Graulich sits down with longtime HMTC volunteer and second-generation survivor Meryl Menashe to unpack a powerful artifact she recently donated: a fragile Kansas City Times front page dated September 1, 1939—the day Germany invaded Poland. Through this single newspaper, they trace the lightning-fast timeline from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact to the fall of Warsaw, explore how propaganda framed “living space” and “ethnic German protection,” and connect those headlines to lived experience—including Meryl’s father, Leon Beck, a Polish soldier captured, shot, and later imprisoned by the Soviets. It’s history in real time, and a masterclass in using primary sources to teach nuance, perspective, and media literacy.

Along the way, Zach and Meryl examine the roles of perpetrators, victims, collaborators, and bystanders; the early terror from the Luftwaffe and precursors to Einsatzgruppen killings; and the jarring coexistence of war news with everyday ads, comics, and weather—then and now. If you teach, parent, or simply care about truth in an age of information overload, this episode hands you a ready-to-use lens for the classroom and beyond.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How a single 1939 newspaper captures the start of WWII and American perceptions that day
• Why the pact with the USSR made Poland a two-front tragedy—and how Blitzkrieg overwhelmed it in weeks
• A second-generation perspective: Leon Beck’s Polish Army service, capture, escape, and Soviet imprisonment
• How to use artifacts to teach source evaluation and competing narratives (then vs. now)
• The scale and distinction of suffering among Jews and Polish civilians, without flattening the history

Perfect for: educators, students, museum-goers, and anyone building critical thinking around history and media.

Transcript

Echoes of the Past — Ep. 230
Host: Zachary Graulich
Guest: Meryl Menashe
Series: hmTv, Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center (HMTC)

Zachary:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Echoes of the Past. My name is Zachary Graulich, Assistant Director of Education here at HMTC, and I’m joined today by Meryl Menashe—a second-generation Holocaust survivor and a longtime, deeply engaged member of the HMTC community. Meryl, thanks so much for being here.

Meryl:
Always a pleasure, Zach. Thank you for having me.

Zachary:
Today we’re spotlighting a recent addition to our collection—an artifact you donated. Meryl, would you introduce the item and tell us how it came to you?

Meryl:
Absolutely. While volunteering here—and during my years teaching social studies in Plainview—I was always hunting for primary sources to put the past right in front of students. My classroom walls were covered with period newspapers. Years ago, my son was on a cross-country trip and found a treasure: an original Kansas City Times from September 1, 1939—the day Germany invaded Poland. He brought it home for me. Over time I’ve gathered Life magazines and other period pieces—all of which I expect will eventually live here at HMTC. But for now, this newspaper is the star.

Zachary:
It’s remarkable. The Kansas City Times name is gone now, at least in that form, but holding this paper—yellowed, fragile, over 85 years old—you feel the immediacy of day-one reporting. It shows what people in an American city were reading as the war ignited. Even in its worn condition, the headlines are stark, and the language is telling—references to “the Führer,” speculation about next moves, and Hitler’s claims that the invasion “defended” ethnic Germans and responded to supposed Polish border violations. Claims we now know were part of a manufactured pretext.

Meryl:
Exactly. The Nazis talked about needing Lebensraum—living space—for a “Thousand-Year Reich.” Poles were in the way. And they had a willing partner in the Soviet Union, ready to carve up Poland from the other side. The Poles were stuck in the middle.

Zachary:
And we know from orders and documentation that Hitler expected this to be brutal—different from the largely bloodless takeover of Austria and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. The Wehrmacht anticipated stiff resistance and was prepared to be merciless. He told his troops, in effect, to show no quarter—men, women, and children. Dehumanization of Poles as “subhuman” primed that violence.

Meryl:
My father, Leon Beck, was in the Polish Army. He used to say: “I had a horse; they had tanks. I had a rifle; they had machine guns.” Poland was overrun by superior technology from both directions—Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. And yes, for the Nazis, this became the first full test of their modern army. Austria had been handed to them; the Sudetenland handed to them; then they took the rest of Czechoslovakia. The Allies warned, “One more country and we’ll try to stop them.” Poland was that next step.

Zachary:
For listeners newer to the timeline, a few quick dates to show how fast this unfolded:

• August 24, 1939: Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, including secret protocols to divide Poland.
• September 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland—this newspaper’s date.
• Within days, German forces reach Warsaw.
• September 17: The Soviets invade from the east.
• By late September, Polish forces in Warsaw surrender; within just over a month, the last major resistance collapses.
   It was a whirlwind.

Meryl:
There was no way to match that onslaught. You did your best to survive. My father was captured by the Germans as a Polish soldier—a POW, not yet targeted as a Jew. He and two others decided to escape in different directions. He doesn’t know what happened to the others. He was shot, made his way east, thinking the Russians might be safer, and asked directions to Romania. The Soviets replied, “We’ll show you the way to Siberia instead—you’re our prisoner now.” For Poles, capture by either side often meant imprisonment, forced labor, or worse.

Zachary:
And civilians faced relentless terror. In the first weeks alone, tens of thousands were killed. The Luftwaffe strafed refugees and towns; ground units attacked villages. We also see the onset of what would become systematic mass murder. The Einsatzgruppen—mobile killing units—soon followed invasions across Eastern Europe, murdering Jews and others in mass shootings. Early on, it might look like disparate atrocities; in hindsight, it’s the clear prelude to genocide.

Meryl:
My family’s story has gaps—common with families caught between borders and regimes. We were told relatives were taken into the forest by Germans and killed. The Einsatzgruppen machinery wasn’t fully in motion yet, but the pattern—round-ups, shootings—had begun.

Zachary:
People often forget: while Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust, Polish civilians—many not Jewish—were also devastated by occupation. When you tour Poland today, you’ll hear the numbers: roughly three million Jews and three million non-Jewish Poles killed. The scale is different—Jews were targeted for total annihilation—but Polish society was shattered, too.

Meryl:
When I taught, I’d have students read the war headlines—and then flip to the ads, comics, movie listings. Even on a day the world is tipping into catastrophe, people are buying shoes, going to films, reading the weather. That juxtaposition helps students see the culture behind the news—what ordinary life looked like as history turned.

Zachary:
We see the same rhythm today. Wars rage; some days they’re front-page; other days they’re buried on page eight. During WWII in the U.S., the “war effort” touched daily life—women in factories, rationing, victory gardens—but normalcy persisted alongside crisis. In Europe, it depended where you stood. You mention your husband’s family in Greece—celebrations continuing in 1939 while Poland was being crushed. Different countries were on very different clocks.

Meryl:
Right. Europe could hear the thunder, but it didn’t strike everywhere at once. Life is complicated.

Zachary:
Artifacts like this newspaper help us teach that complexity. When I guide students, I always ask: What was America seeing, saying, and thinking—today, in this paper? It makes the past tangible. We pair it with other exhibits—how American media framed events, what headlines emphasized, what was ignored. For students, eighty-plus years can feel like ancient history. A crackling front page collapses that distance.

Meryl:
I did a project aligned with USHMM years ago—students searching local papers. Big-city dailies weren’t always the goal; small-town coverage could be more revealing. The students still found a mix: war dispatches and everyday life. That’s the point.

Zachary:
Exactly. And as media evolved, so did the challenge. Today you can Google your way into a flood—information abundance makes source evaluation harder. In 1939, a Kansas City reader had the Kansas City Times. Today, a student has a hundred thousand hits and a headache. The skill we’re really teaching is discernment.

Meryl:
Back then, you had fewer choices—sometimes biased ones—but fewer. Now you have endless choices—and it’s harder to sort truth from fiction. That’s why primary sources still matter.

Zachary:
Meryl, thank you for entrusting us with this paper—and for everything you do for HMTC. I’m excited to bring it into tours and classes so students can see what 9/1/39 looked like in American print.

Meryl:
There’s more where that came from. And plenty already here to explore.

Zachary:
We’ll take you up on that. To our listeners: thanks for joining us. You can find more episodes of Echoes of the Past at hmtcli.org. Until next time, keep asking good questions—and keep looking at the sources.