Eva Unterman was inducted into the Tulsa Hall of Fame in 2022
In 2019, The Synagogue/Congregation B’nai Emunah bestowed its highest honor upon Eva Unterman at its annual Touro Celebration. The event is named for Judah Touro, an early American Jewish community leader and activist who gave himself fully to the enrichment of Jewish life and the welfare of every community he lived in.
Eva’s own story reflects that focus. In the summer of 1939, Eva’s family, the Wolmans, were on vacation in Zakowice, Poland, and Eva herself was preparing to enter the first grade. What happened instead was the German invasion of Poland the rapid confinement of Polish Jews. Eva was living in Lodz at the time, a city which became a mass internment zone for local Jews and deportees. For four years she struggled through increasing deprivation, disease, forced labor, and the confiscation of her belongings.
All of this grew still more grim in 1944, when she was transported first to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and then moved to Stutthof and a labor camp in Dresden. On May 8, 1945, Eva was liberated after a forced march to Terezin, capping her experience of suffering and enslavement.
Like many survivors in the years following the war, Eva worked to contain her experience. But prompted by an influential local educator, Eva gradually set her guardedness aside and since 1978 has become Tulsa’s foremost Holocaust educator, institutionalizing her work with unique force and skill. The results are Tulsa’s annual Interfaith Holocaust Commemoration and the Council for Holocaust Education. Eva leads a community of passionate communicators who have endeavored to deepen the community’s understanding of the Holocaust and raise the awareness and moral commitment of Tulsa’s students and adults. Side by side with this, she is a powerful political voice, fearlessly committed to the cause of refugees and migrants, along with environmental activism and multicultural awareness.
Eva brings all of this to her career as a long-time board member of the Synagogue, challenging her peers to take their more responsibilities seriously and place the congregation on the front line of social justice. Eva is never afraid to stir things up, and remains a vanguard spirit deep into her career as a volunteer leader. As a person with rounded and wide-ranging interests, she is devoted to her family, along with reading, gardening, and craft.
In addition to the Judah Touro Award, Eva has received numerous awards, including: The Alfred Aaronson award for community from the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Tulsa in 1999; National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) in 2002; Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry (TMM) Interfaith Understanding in 2004; Honorary doctorate from Phillips Theological Seminary in 2006; Tulsa Spirit Pinnacle Award from the Tulsa Commission on the Status of Women; and the Carrie Dickerson Humanitarian Award in 2018.