hmTv at HMTC Podcasts 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.