Illinois boy becomes youngest `major donor’ to Holocaust museum

NEW YORK, Dec. 30 (JTA) — A 9-year-old boy from Illinois has become the youngest “major donor” to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Daniel Obeler donated the money he won in an international art contest for children to the museum. Obeler won one of the first prizes in the Northwest Airlines-sponsored contest for his artwork titled “The Windy City,” which depicts Chicago’s landscape. The airline donated $5,000 in the name of each winner to his or her favorite charity — and Obeler selected the Holocaust museum in Washington. “I wanted to give my award to a good cause that dealt with humanitarian issues and the Jewish people. The Holocaust museum does both,” he said. He presented the money to the museum Monday, just before taking a private tour of the exhibits with a guide who was just a few years older than Obeler is now when she was deported to a concentration camp in 1944. Obeler is helping “touch young people throughout the United States, only a few of whom share his intuitive understanding of the importance of our mission and message,” said the museum’s director of development, Marc Breslaw.