During President Jimmy Carter’s term, Helen J. Ginsburg traveled with a small delegation from Denver to Washington D.C., to meet with the president at the White House. Ginsburg sought funding to complete the first phase of Babi Yar Park, a Denver memorial honoring 33,771 Jewish men, women and children murdered on Sept. 29 to 30, 1941, by German Nazis in Babi Yar, Ukraine.

At the meeting, Carter delivered, promising Ginsburg about $178,000 in federal funding for the southeast Denver park.

As Americans mourn the passing of Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at age 100, Ginsburg, 90, recalled the day she met with the man. The meeting with the president was arranged by then-Sen. Floyd Haskell.

“Senator Haskell met us and led us to a conference room off the Rose Garden. Past presidents’ portraits were on the walls,” Ginsburg said. “The big double doors opened, and it was announced: ‘The President of the United States: Jimmy Carter.’ It was so impressive. It takes me back to feeling like a little girl when I was in my 30s at the time. I was a very shy young woman.”

Ginsburg recalled: “Senator Haskell had us sit in a line along one side of the huge board room table. When the president came in and greeted us, he looked at the situation and moved us all to the head of the table where we could all look directly at one another. He said: ‘Mrs. Ginsburg you sit here by me.’ And I did. He had a thoughtfulness from the onset of our meeting.”

Ginsburg was the spokesperson and made her impassioned appeal for the funds to help build the Holocaust memorial park. She said that Carter paid rapt attention.

“I was star struck. I mean, he was the president of the United States! I remember how he sat leaning forward to listen to what I had to say to him personally. He could tell I was so nervous,” Ginsburg said.

Afterwards, Ginsburg presented the president with an information package.

“I wanted to leave it with him in case I forgot something important. But he took my hand and told me: ‘I don’t need it. You did a good job. You can relax now. I know about your mission, and I’m going to help.’ He was reaching out to be kind. And I left with his promise of about $178,000.”

The funds, the president explained, were left over from federal aid allocated to Colorado after the Big Thompson flood.

Ginsburg recalled Carter’s big smile and twinkling eyes.

“He was a person of great humanity. This man was so real. He was so human, so good. I can’t say that everyone is so human and so good anymore,” Ginsburg said. “People somehow are just seeing President Carter or maybe it’s younger people coming up seeing what we have out there today and learning and feeling that Jimmy Carter had such humanity. He was more a president of the people than most people realized, but they’re seeing see it now. When I look back to being with him, his comments, the holding of my hand: It was such an amazing moment.”

Ginsburg recalled that after the meeting, Carter asked her to stay.

“He asked me about my thoughts on having a Holocaust memorial museum created. I asked him where he thought the museum would be. He said: ‘Well, New York City, because that’s where most Jews live.’ I forgot who I was talking to, and I said: ‘But Mr. President, we know what happened to us. The Holocaust Museum has to be here in Washington D.C., with all other major buildings and memorials so rest of world knows it’s a fact that the Holocaust happened.’ I was contradicting the president of the United States, but I had to speak up, and I could see he was thoughtfully considering what I’d said.”

About two months later, Ginsburg received a telephone call from then-Vice President Walter Mondale.

“He said, ‘President Carter hasn’t been able to reach you. Don’t you ever stay home?’”

Mondale invited Ginsburg to join a planning committee advising the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She was sworn in and worked with, among others, Elie Weisel — the noted writer and Holocaust survivor.

At her Denver home, Ginsburg keeps a photo of the meeting with Carter along with a note he sent her declining her invitation to attend the opening of Babi Yar Park in 1983.

Ginsburg read aloud Carter’s cordial message and said: “At the bottom in his own handwriting, he added a personal note that included a PS: ‘I will have to be in Washington, but will be with you in spirit.’ It’s dated June 16, 1983.”

The Babi Yar Park Foundation continues to host events at the park. Ginsburg, has sent a letter to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, inviting him to visit Babi Yar Park.

“The park is a voice of the past and a warning for the future,” Ginsburg said. “The story isn’t over.”

For more about Babi Yar Park, read this feature previously published by The Denver Gazette.