Over time, Mandler developed a thriving practice in the town as an ear, nose and throat specialist. The couple had a daughter, Camilla, in 1954, and quickly became US citizens. They joined the nearest synagogue 121km away in St. Joseph, celebrating the major holidays while also commuting each week for Camilla’s Sunday school classes.
The couple became cultural and religious ambassadors, inviting friends and neighbors to light the Sabbath candles, observe the Passover Seder and celebrate other Jewish customs and rituals.
“Chillicothe was for all intents and purposes a great place to grow up,” said Camilla Kern, the Mandlers’ daughter, now a Kansas City resident. “I felt that my parents were honored and respected.”
Yet life as the only Jews in town was not without its difficulties. As a child, Kern was chastised by a third-grade teacher after explaining that she celebrated Hanukkah, not Christmas, and did not pray to Jesus Christ.
Forty-five years later, the cultural chasms can still seem vast, despite the best intentions of Rule and others.
In one particularly poignant scene of The Mandler Story, Erika witnesses Nazi soldiers cut off and then set on fire the long beard of an observant Jew.
While many in the audience sat rapt, other students laughed loudly.
Mandler would like to believe that the students reacted out of excitement or immaturity.
“It’s enlarged their world view,” Rule said. “They think about how they fit into a larger society ... that what they think is not the only way.”
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