april 2009 volume 23 number 1 pope tells jews holocaust...

TOGETHER 1visit our website at www.americangathering.comApril 2009

APRIL 2009 VOLUME 23 NUMBER 1

American Gathering of

Jewish Holocaust Survivors

122 West 30th Street, Suite 205

New York, New York 10001

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cont’d on p. 4 cont’d on p. 9

Pope tells Jews Holocaust denial is“intolerable”By PHILIP PULLELLA

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, trying to defuse a controversy over

a bishop who denies the Holocaust, said recently that “any denial or minimization

of this terrible crime is intolerable,” especially

if it comes from a clergyman.

The pope also confirmed for the first time

that he was planning to visit Israel. Vatican

sources say the trip is expected for May. It

would be the first by a pope since John Paul

visited in 2000.

Benedict made the comments in his first

meeting with Jews since the controversy over

traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson began

in late January. Williamson denies the full extent

of the Holocaust and says there were no gas

chambers.

The pope told members of the Conference

of Presidents: “The hatred and contempt for

men, women and children that was manifested

in the Shoah (Holocaust) was a crime against

humanity. This should be clear to everyone, especially to those standing in the

tradition of the Holy Scriptures...” cont’d on p. 7

ISRAELI GOVERNMENT LAUNCHESPUBLIC CAMPAIGN ON HOLOCAUSTSURVIVORS’ RIGHTSIn the wake of the Government’s November 2007 decision to maximize the rights

due to Holocaust survivors in order to see to their welfare and improve their

quality of life, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Social Welfare and Social Services

Ministry, the Pensioners Affairs Ministry and the Finance Ministry initiated on 15

February 2009 a wide-ranging public campaign.

The campaign will make use of Hebrew and Russian television, radio and

Internet channels and is designed not only for survivors themselves, but their

family members as well. The campaign was prepared by the Israel Government

Advertising Agency and will be conducted by the PMO National Information

Directorate.

The Government has made dealing with Holocaust survivors one of its most

important goals. Initially, Prime Minister’s Office Director-General Ra’anan Dinur

chaired a committee on the matter, and Social Welfare and Social Services Ministry

Director-General Itzkovitz prepared a report. Their combined efforts, along with

the adoption of the Dorner Commission Report, led to an increased basket of

services and assistance for Holocaust survivors.

Approximately 250,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel today. However,

inquiries indicate that, despite the significant enlargement of the aid basket, many

survivors have yet to take full advantage of their rights. To this end, a national

telephone center was recently established.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “Establishing the telephone center is the

BY CHARLES BREMNER, TIMES ONLINE

The French State was responsible for deporting Jews during the Second

World War, the top judicial authority ruled for the first time recently, but it dismayed

families of victims by declaring that they had already been compensated.

The decision by the Council of State, the final arbiter on civil law matters,

made formal a doctrine that has been accepted by successive governments since

1995.

It was advising on a case brought by Madeleine Hoffman-Glemane, 75, one

of hundreds of victims who have sued recently for damages over their arrests

and deportation during the Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944.

The council called for a “solemn recognition of the responsibility of the State”.

France was “responsible for damages caused by actions which did not result

from the occupiers’ direct orders but facilitated deportation from France of people

who were victims of anti-Semitic persecution,” it said.

The ruling endorses a view that was proclaimed by the former President

Jacques Chirac when he took office in 1995. Before that the crimes of the

collaborationist Vichy Government had been acknowledged but they had been

ascribed widely to an outlaw regime and not to the French State.

The late President Mitterrand who left office in 1995 and who served as an

official of the Vichy regime, refused to accept the responsibility of the nation for

more than 75,000 people who were taken to Nazi death camps. Most were arrested

by French police on the orders of state officials and few survived.

Since taking office in 2007 President Sarkozy, whose mother is Jewish, has

ordered acts of remembrance of the French role in the Holocaust but during his

election campaign he said that France should stop apologising for itself because it

had never been involved in a policy of genocide.

To the anger of campaigners the council advised the court dealing with Ms

Hoffman-Glemane’s case that deportees had already received enough

“Jewish war victims have had enoughcompensation,” French court says

LITHUANIA TO PAY $41 MILLION FORSEIZED PROPERTYMOSCOW (JTA)—Lithuania agreed to pay $41 million over 10 years to theJewish community to compensate for seized property.

The Ministry of Justice recently agreed to make payments to the Jewishcommunity from January 2011 to March 2021 for property taken over decades ofoppression. Draft legislation on property restitution has languished for years.

The Lithuanian government had returned synagogues and other places ofworship to the Jewish community. Many other properties were nationalized afterWorld War II and under decades of Soviet rule.

Minister of Justice Remigijus Shimashius told Jewish leaders in late Januarythat the administration of President Valdas Adamkus wanted to move forwardwith restitution despite the current crippling financial crisis in the country.

“This matter has dragged on for 10 years, but I believe that the currentgovernment in power wants to break the ice,” the minister said, according to theRegnum News Agency.

The proposed payment accounts for one-third of the average market value of136 properties once owned by the Jewish community, including facilities forreligious, cultural and educational purposes. The compensation excludes restitutionfor parcels of land.

TOGETHER 2 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2009

TOGETHERApril 2009 Volume 23 Number 1

c•o•n•t•e•n•t•s

TOGETHER

AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 · New York, New York 10001 · 212 239 4230

Founding President

BEN MEED, l“z

Honorary President

VLADKA MEED

President

SAM E. BLOCH

Honorary Chairman

ERNEST MICHEL

Chairman

ROMAN KENT

Honorary Senior

Vice President

WILLIAM LOWENBERG

Senior Vice President

MAX K. LIEBMANN

Regional Vice-Presidents

MEL MERMELSTEIN

JEAN BLOCH ROSENSAFT

MARK SARNA

CHARLES SILOW

Counsel

ABRAHAM KRIEGER

Director of Communications

JEANETTE FRIEDMAN

Editor Emeritus

ALFRED LIPSON, l“z

Publication Committee

SAM E. BLOCH, ChairmanHirsh Altusky, l“z

Jeanette Friedman

Dr. Alex Grobman

Roman Kent

Max K. Liebmann

Vladka Meed

Dr. Romana Strochlitz Primus

Menachem Z. Rosensaft

Dr. Philip Sieradski

Vice Presidents

EVA FOGELMAN

ROSITTA E. KENIGSBERG

ROMANA STROCHLITZ PRIMUS

MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT

STEFANIE SELTZER

ELAN STEINBERG

JEFFREY WIESENFELD

Secretary

JOYCE CELNIK LEVINE

Treasurer

MAX K. LIEBMANN

Pope and Holocaust Denial by Philip Pullella...............................................1

Israeli Government Launches Campaign........................................................1

Lithuania to Pay $41 Million..........................................................................1

Jewish War Victims in Farnce Paid Enough by Charles Bremner...................1

Uphold the Legacy of Remembrance by Sam Bloch......................................3

Claims Conference News.............................................................................4

From a Place of Fire and Weeping by Marc E. Agronin.................................4

Resitution of Holocaust-Era Jewish Communal Property by Herbert Block.....5

Withold Pilecki by Tamil Tchorek..................................................................6

Menachem Rosensaft Named Counsel of the WJC........................................7

The Holocaust Revisionism of Hollywood by Rod Lurie.................................8

Foundations acquires letter exhibit by Sohpia Toreen.....................................8

Hillel Kook and Stephen Wise by Yehuda Bauer............................................9

The Ambassador by Zeyno Baran & Onur Sazak.......................................10

The Wedding Gown That Made History by Helen Schwimmer.......................11

Rosian Zernert by Susie Davidson.............................................................12

Nazi fficer Who Saved Jews Honored.........................................................12

The Midwife from Lodz by Dr. Salomea Kape-Jay......................................13

Moussa dn Odette Abadi: A Remembrance...................................................14

Vilna - Jerushalaim de Lite by Lily M. Margules..........................................15

Letters.......................................................................................................15

In Memoriam...................................................................... ........................16

Announcements..........................................................................................19

The End of Days by Felicia Figlarz Anchor...............................................20

Searches (contributing editor Serena Woolrich).............................................21

Dear Friends:

If you are moving or have already moved and wish to continue

receiving Together, please contact us with your new address. The

post office does not forward Together.

If someone has passed away, please contact us with the

information. This is important for the Registry so as to preclude

unnecessary mailings.

Thank you.

NOTICE TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

NEEDING ASSISTANCE

Financial assistance is available for needy Holocaust survivors. If you

have an urgent situation regarding housing, health care, food or other

emergency, you may be eligible for a one-time grant. These grants are funded

by the Claims Conference.

If there is a Jewish Family Service agency in your area, please

discuss your situation with them. If there is no such agency nearby,

mail a written inquiry describing your situation to:

Emergency Holocaust Survivor Assistance

P.O. Box 765

Murray Hill Station

New York, NY 10156

ELLIS ISLAND PROJECTS FOR SURVIVORSAND THEIR DESCENDANTS

The Museum at Ellis Island is seeking Holocaust survivors who came throughEllis Island when they arrived in the United States. They are also seekingvolunteers to transcribe and translate Yiddish recordings made by immigrantsfor immigrants. If you are interested in participating in either of these projectsCONTACT: ERIC BYRON, MUSEUM DIVISION212-363-3206 EXT. 153 or email: [email protected]

The Survivors Registry maintains the single most comprehensivelisting of Holocaust survivors in the world. The Registry has existedfor over two decades and currently contains over 185,000 names of survivorsand their spouses and descendants (including children, their spouses, andgrandchildren).

Visitors to the Registry’s public area at the Holocaust Museum canaccess basic information about survivors and their family membersvia touch-screen computers. This information is based on registration formssubmitted by survivors and their relatives. The Registry is an invaluableresource for survivors still searching for family and friends, as well as forhistorians and genealogists.

Further information can be found at http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/registry

We would be grateful—and it would be a great benefit to AmericanGathering members as they continue to search for missing relatives—if you would distribute our registration forms to those who are not yet listedin the Registry. Registration forms are available in Hebrew and severaladditional languages as well as in English.

Contact: Laura M. Green, Collections Manager, Survivors RegistryUNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

202-488-6164or the American Gathering at 212-239-4230

Please send e-mail addresses to: [email protected]

REGISTRY

Annual Gathering

in Observance of Yom HaShoah

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Sunday, April 26, 20093:00 p.m.

at Congregation Emanu-El

Fifth Avenue and 65th Street

New York, NY

Sponsored by the

Museum of Jewish Heritage-

A Living Memorial to the

Holocaust

American Gathering of Jewish

Holocaust Survivors and

Their Descendants

and

Warsaw Ghetto Resistance

Organization

For more information or

to reserve tickets

please call 646.437.4227between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. (Monday -Friday) or e-mail

[email protected]

Tickets @ $36 must be reserved by April 20. Let no one say that the past is dead. The past is all about us

and what is within us. Haunted by memories, I know this

now, that the present is not the all of me... — Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Australian poet, political activist, artist and educator


Preserve RemembranceConserve Authentic Places

Assume ResponsibilityPresented at the International Conference of

Holocaust Remembrance

The German Bundestag, Berlin

January 27, 2009We, the undersigned, survivors of German

concentration camps, women and men, represent

international prisoner committees of the concentration

camps and their sub-camps. We remember our

murdered families and the millions of victims who

were killed in these places of ashes. Their persecution

and murder, for racial political, religious, social,

biological and economic reasons, and a criminal war

took the world to the brink of disaster and left behind

an appalling toll.

Following our liberation, we pledged to build a

new world of peace and freedom: we became

Involved in order to prevent any repetition of these

incomparable crimes. Throughout our lives we have

born witness; throughout our lives we have made

every effort to Inform young people about our

experiences, about what we encountered, and about

the causes.

Precisely for this reason, we are exceedingly

pained and angered to recognize today the world has

learned too little from our history. Precisely for this

reason remembrance and commemoration must

remain the equal task of both citizens and states.

Today the former camps are story witnesses: they

are scenes of the crimes, international cemeteries,

museums and places of learning, they are evidence

against denial and the playing down of facts, and they

must be presented throughout time. They are places

of scientific research and educational commitment.

Looking after the educational interests of the visitors

must be sufficiently ensured.

The incomparable crimes against humanity

inflicted by the National Socialists — and above all in

this context, the Holocaust — were carried out under

German responsibility. Germany has done much to

come to terms with its history. We expect that the

Federal Republic and its citizens will continue honoring

their responsibility with special commitment in the

future as well.

But Europe also has its task. Instead of asserting

our ideals for democracy, peace, tolerance, self-

determination and human rights, history is too often

used to sow discord between human beings, groups

and peoples. We object to the comparative assignment

of blame, to the creation of hierarchies in the

experiences of suffering, of competition between

victims and to the confusion of historical phases. Forthis reason we endorse the words of the former

President of the European Parliament, Simone Weil,when she addressed the German Parliament in 2004and appealed for the transmission of memory:

“Europe should recognize and stand by its mutualpast as a whole, with all the bright and dark sides;every member state should know about its mistakes

and failures, and acknowledge they are at peace withtheir past, so that they can be at peace with theirneighbors.”

Our ranks are thinning. In all areas of ourassociations, at national and international levels, peopleare coming to our side to preserve remembrance:

they are giving us faith in the future; they are carryingon our work. The dialogue that was begun with usmust be continued with them. They need the support

of state and society for this work.

BY SAM E. BLOCH

President, World Federation of Bergen Belsen

Associations, President, American Gathering of

Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants

Meeting here today, in the heart of the free

German democracy, to commemorate alt those who

perished during the Holocaust, our thoughts go back

to the fires of the crematoria at Auschwitz and

Treblinka, to the mass graves of Belsen

and Babi Yar, and to all the places of death

and destruction. Our thoughts go back

to the more than 4000 destroyed Jewish

communities. For us, our martyrs will

always be with us.

We choose to remember and make

others remember all those who died,

lonely and abandoned by a cruel world

that stood by in silence and indifference.

When the Nazi murderers and their

accomplices destroyed our homes and

our communities, and annihilated, with so much cruelty

and barbarism, six million of our martyrs—innocent

men, women, children—they obliterated their hopes

and dreams, and the infinite creativity, beauty, and

knowledge that they could have contributed to the

betterment of the world.

The Nazis tried to destroy our human dignity, to

efface every vestige of humanity—all this before

taking our lives with such bestiality.

“Even if I die in Auschwitz,” exclaimed one of

our martyrs before execution, “it would be as a human

being who still believes in decency and humankind. I

will hold on to my dignity to the last minute of my

earthly life.”

These simple worlds of courage convey the full

spirit of defiance and resistance against the

Nazi tyranny.

There is a danger that, with the passage of time,

their and our suffering and struggle will be forgotten.

But as long as we live, and as long as there will be in

this world free people who care, we the survivors,

our children, and grandchildren will not stop reminding

the world of the Holocaust, and of man’s capacity

for inhumanity.

What about us, the Survivors? We emerged from

the ashes of the Holocaust, scarred with anguish for

our lost parents, brothers, sisters, and children. And

yet, we approached the return to life with courage,

tenacity, and spiritual strength. We carried a deep

pride in our Jewish identity, values, and tradition,

which inspired us to choose life, to believe in the

future, as we rebuilt our lives, brought children into

the world, created new families, and established new

homes and communities around the world. We, the

survivors of the Holocaust, demonstrated a unique

vitality, as we became productive members of society,

making notable contributions in alt walks of life. If

we are here today at such a gathering - as a living

bridge between the past and the future -

it is not only because of who we are, but

also because of what we are.

The story of our return to life is told

in the extraordinary Bergen-Belsen

Memorial Museum. The Museum is

unique for telling two stories: the grim

story of death at the Bergen-Belsen

concentration camp and the inspiring story

of the rebirth of the survivors after the

liberation in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced

Persons Camp. Having emerged from

death and destruction, the survivors of Belsen stood

for life, rebirth and remembrance—an enduring

message that we hope will inspire the generations to

come. On behalf of the World Federation of Bergen-

Belsen Survivors Associations, and the American

Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, we express

our most profound gratitude to the authorities of

Niedersachsen for establishing the outstanding

Bergen-Belsen Memorial Museum. Our sincere

appreciation goes to all those who labored with so

much dedication for many years to see it finally

inaugurated last year.

In recalling the past. we must reflect on certain

present day realities. Is racism less prevalent than in

the past? It is hatred that culminated in the Holocaust.

It started with speeches, the burning of books, the

burning of synagogues—and ended with the burning

of people.

The conclusion we may draw from the Holocaust,

its aftermath, and those who dare to defame our

tragedy, is the need for continual vigilance and

effective activism. Together, we must transform our

individual memories into collective action. Today, let

us affirm our solidarity and partnership in the sacred

task of remembrance, with a shared commitment to

building a world of tolerance. Justice, and

understanding. Let us uphold our legacy—from

Holocaust to rebirth—with renewed strength and

dedication, and together, let us build a better future

for all humankind.

UPHOLD THE LEGACY OF REMEMBRANCE

Noach Flug (Jerusalem)

International Auschwitz Committee

Sam Bloch (New York)

World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Associations

Bertrand Herz (Paris)

International Buchenwatd Corrmittee

Max Mannhelmer (Munich)

International Dachau Committee

Uri Chanoch (Jerusalem)

International Dachau Sub-Camps Committee

Jack Terry (New York)

International Flossenburg Committee

Albert van Hoey (Brussels)

International Committee Mittelbau-Dora

Robert Pincon (Tours)

International Neuengamme Committee

Annette Chalut (Paris)

Intemational Ravensbruck Committee

Pierre Gouffault (Paris)

International Sachsenhausen Committee

The last eye witnesses appeal to Germany, to all European states and to the international community, to

continue preserving and honoring the human gift of remembrance and commemoration into the future. We

ask young people to carry on our struggle, against Nazi ideology and for a just, peaceful and tolerant world, a

world that has no place for anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and right-wing extremism. This is our bequest.


Conference on Jewish Material ClaimsAgainst Germany

PLEASE SEND YOURE-MAIL ADDRESS AND THOSE OF YOUR

FAMILY MEMBERS TO

[email protected] CAN ALSO SEND MATERIAL

FOR CONSIDERATION FOR PUBLICATION

The Claims Conference is allocating more than

$428,000 to assist Nazi victims, living in areas under

missile attack from Gaza, who may be especially

traumatized by the current conflict. These new grants

build on the Claims Conference’s support over the

past years to help Nazi victims in southern Israel cope

with the additional distress evoked by their present

situation.

Claims Conference assistance includes:

* $268,000 to pay for full memberships in 2009 for

Nazi victims in “supportive communities.” Supportive

communities provide emergency life buttons, enabling

elderly residents to easily contact (without use of a

telephone) emergency medical assistance directly.

Additional services also include home modifications,

counseling, security, and socialization programs. The

Claims Conference allocated $250,000 for this

program in 2008.

* The Claims Conference has enhanced its ongoing

support of AMCHA, the National Israeli Center for

Psychological Support of Nazi Victims, with a $50,000

grant for 2009, specifically to provide psychosocial

support to Nazi victims living near Gaza. In 2008, the

Claims Conference funded a new AMCHA branch

in Sderot.

* Special emergency allocations in 2009 of $36,000

to provide shatter-proof glass windows in three

nursing homes: Beit Avot Ashdod, Association for the

Welfare of the Aged in Beersheva, and Neve Oranim

in Gedera in southern Israel. A total of 290 Nazi

victims live in these nursing homes.

* Hunger relief programs in Ashkelon and Ashdod.

For 2009, the Claims Conference allocated $74,088

to Eshel Ashdod and $32,256 to Eshel Ashkelon for

food programs that include hot meals for Nazi victims,

a program that can be of great comfort in a traumatic

time. For 2007 and 2008, these agencies received a

combined $268,000 for hunger relief for Nazi victims.

Previous and ongoing Claims Conference

assistance for Nazi victims in southern Israel include

the following projects:

* In 2008, the Claims Conference allocated $211,000

to expand and reinforce the day center of the

Association for the Elderly in Sha’ar Hanegev, where

the majority of attendees are Nazi victims. In addition,

the day center of the Association for the Elderly in

Sderot received a $38,000 grant toward reinforcing

the building against attacks. These centers were

established with Claims Conference allocations in

1998 of $140,000 and $100,000 respectively. Last year,

the Claims Conference also initiated a program to

cover the out-of-pocket costs for low-income victims

of Nazi persecution who attend these day centers.

* The Claims Conference is working toward funding

reinforcement of the emergency room at Barzilai

Medical Center in Ashkelon to withstand rocket and

missile attacks. This is part of a larger effort toward

reinforcing and securing four hospitals in Israel in

conflict areas, undertaken in partnership with the

Prime Minister’s office. Barzilai serves hundreds of

Nazi victims every year. In 2005, the Claims

Conference allocated $810,000 to upgrade the internal

medicine department, where the majority of patients

are Nazi victims, and another $10,000 to renovate

the physiotherapy department. The Claims

Conference had previously allocated funds to Barzilai

to upgrade the geriatric and physiotherapy

departments in order to better treat Nazi victims in

the area. In 2008, the Claims Conference approved

a grant of $140,000 toward equipment for Barzilai’s

Intensive Respiratory Care Unit and Occupational

Therapy Department. To date, in sum, Claims

Conference allocations to Barzilai exceed $1.6 million.

* The Foundation for the Benefit of Nazi Victims in

Israel uses approximately NIS 1.2 million yearly from

its Claims Conference allocations to provide nursing

care to Nazi victims in the Gaza region.

* In 2006, allocations of $499,800 were made to three

Amigour sheltered housing complexes in Ashkelon

to provide protected areas on every floor of the

complex in order to shelter residents during attacks.

In 2008, the Claims Conference allocated an additional

$144,025 toward this project. This is part of a larger

Claims Conference allocation of over $1.8 million to

construct protected areas in 13 complexes in

vulnerable regions of Israel.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims

Against Germany (Claims Conference) represents

world Jewry in negotiating for compensation and

restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their

heirs. The Claims Conference administers

compensation funds, recovers unclaimed Jewish

property, and allocates funds to institutions that provide

social welfare services to Holocaust survivors and

preserve the memory and lessons of the Shoah.

culmination of a long process, during which this

Government, for the first time, acted to recognize

Holocaust survivors. For over a year, the Social

Welfare and Social Affairs, Pensioners and Finance

ministries, together with the PMO, have worked to

find the appropriate formula for properly assisting

Holocaust survivors living in Israel. We all wanted to

allocate many resources, and it is important to note

that Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On showed special

sensitivity on the issue and helped find the budget

that will allow the Government to provide many rights

and support services to Holocaust survivors. I am

proud to have headed the Government that has

corrected an historic injustice and is providing proper

assistance to the survivors.”

The national telephone center may be contacted

at *9444 or via http://www.zchut.gov.il/.

ISRAELI GOVERNMENT LAUNCHESPUBLIC CAMPAIGN ON HOLOCAUSTSURVIVORS’ RIGHTScont’d from p. 1

cont’d on p. 15

BY MARC E. AGRONIN, M.D.

Place of fire,

place of weeping,

place of madness

— Zelda, “Place of Fire”

The forest still stands, but the people are gone.

Only a stone memorial guards their place, surrounded

by tall grasses that hide bits of ash and bone deep

beneath their roots.

On this spot on Feb. 4, 1942, more than 920

Jewish men, women and children from the town of

Rakov in what is now Belarus were rounded up by

the Nazis and herded into the synagogue. Several

shrieking children were stabbed with bayonets and

thrown over the heads of the weeping Jews just before

the doors and windows were sealed and the building

was doused with kerosene.

An unspeakable scene of wailing ensued as the

once vibrant Jewish community was annihilated in

the fire. My patient, now 98, still weeps when he

describes witnessing this horror from a hidden perch

in a tree. He gasps audibly when he recalls watching

his father being pummeled by a Nazi soldier before

he was thrust into the doomed crowd.

When this survivor first told me his story, I was

speechless. He held tight to my arm, and I imagined

myself as the branches of the tree that supported

him during this trauma. I was now a witness.

As his psychiatrist I am obliged to ease his

suffering, but no medicine of mine can touch such a

memory. I have tried hard to understand how he and

others managed to mentally survive such traumatic

experiences. These aging Holocaust survivors, in

particular, have taught me what I have come to call

“lessons from fire.”

Lesson 1 is the most difficult for a doctor.

Sometimes the perpetual sadness of many older

survivors is not to be healed but shared. Over time,

as memories fade and the voices of lost loved ones

grow quieter, all that remains is a closely guarded

sadness, persisting as a substitute for the losses. Any

attempt to ease this emotion may be a threat to painful

but beloved remnants of memory. What some

survivors seek is not medicine or therapy: it is the

attentive presence of a doctor and others to serve as

the next generation of witnesses.

Lesson 2 brings a paradox. Surviving a grueling

trauma does not inoculate one against the stresses of

aging. A patient once told me that the small daily

indignities she faced in the nursing home felt worse

than her experiences in a Siberian labor camp. I

realized that she could not bear feeling like a victim

again, even in small measure.

From a Place of Fire and Weeping, Lessons on Memory,

Aging and Hope

The Claims Conference is not involved in theadministration, implementation or processingof Social Insurance pensions for the Germangovernment or its Social Security institutionsor payments from this fund. The informationpresented herein is intended for informationpurposes only and solely as a general guide. Itis a summary of specific issues and does notrepresent a definitive or complete statementof the programs and policies of the agenciesmentioned. To the best of our knowledge theinformation is correct as of the date of this

document but this information may change.


BY HERBERT BLOCK

More than sixty years after the end of the

Holocaust, and nearly two decades after the fall of

the Iron Curtain, Jewish communities in East Central

Europe and the Former Soviet Union are still struggling

with the question of how to reclaim the properties

which were taken from them during the Nazi and

Communist regimes.

Before the Shoah, in nearly every city or town,

large and small, in this region, there were properties

that were owned by Jewish communal or religious

entities. Virtually all of these buildings or sites were

looted, confiscated or destroyed by the Germans or

their allied regimes during World War II. For the most

part, they were subsequently nationalized by

Communist regimes, which ruled for some 40 years

after the war.

Since the fall of Communism,

there has been an effort by the

remaining local Jewish

communities in each country,

together with international Jewish

groups, to obtain restitution of these

assets or compensation. In the mid-

1990s, the World Jewish Restitution

Organization (WJRO) was formed

in Israel to help address this and

other related Holocaust-era assets

issues.

Why is this being done? For the

once-great Jewish communities in

East Central Europe and the Soviet

successor states, the confiscated

Jewish communal property

symbolizes a rich heritage lost during the Holocaust

and the Communist era. There is a strong moral desire

to achieve at least a small measure of justice by having

governments return this property to Jewish communal

ownership, and for those governments to renounce

their claims to assets stolen from the Jewish people.

Property reclamation also represents a remarkable

opportunity in the ongoing renewal of Jewish life in

the region. Either as a venue for communal activities

and institutions, or as a source of income, restituted

Jewish communal property has the potential to put

communities on the road toward fiscal autonomy and

self-sustainability.

What kinds of properties were taken from these

thousands of Jewish communities? This rubric

includes anything that was owned by a Jewish

communal or religious entity, including synagogues,

batei midrash [prayer and study halls], yeshivot

[Talmudic academies], schools, mikvaot [ritual baths],

old age homes, orphanages, hospitals, rabbinical

residences, community offices, cemeteries, chevra

kadisha [funeral and pre-burial] facilities, as well as

apartments, houses and land that had been donated

to, or were otherwise owned by, the communities.

As there were no central prewar records of all

Jewish communal property, and many were in small

towns to which no Jews returned after the war, or

from which Jews were chased away by acts of

violence or threats, it is difficult to know exactly what

was looted. However, according to data from WJRO

and the existing local Jewish communities, we can

estimate that approximately 21,000 confiscated

properties fall under the categories mentioned above.

The majority were synagogues and prayer/study halls

(around 6,000–7,000), cemeteries (about 5,000) and

schools/yeshivot (nearly 3,000).

Under most property restitution laws, only

buildings or lands which were formally owned by

communal or religious entities before the Shoah can

be claimed. There were numerous other Jewish sites

which were privately owned but used by the

community which can not now be claimed. An

example would be the many shtiebelach [small

prayer halls] located in buildings owned privately by

individuals.

Claims for property must be made individually

by the officially recognized Jewish community in each

country, under the specific laws of each country. The

post-Communist governments in each country have

generally granted an official status to a “Jewish

religious community” under the state laws granting

recognition and benefits to

“churches.”

The Communist regimes also

nationalized the property of all

citizens and of all churches and

religious faiths. Therefore, if and

when a restitution law is enacted, it

typically establishes a process for all

churches to follow. However, the

situation for Jewish property differs

in several important ways. First, most

of the church properties have

generally been in continual use for

the past six decades, while Jewish

property was never used again after

the Shoah, due to the destruction of

the communities. In most towns there

has not even been a Jewish

presence, and the Jewish building was used by the

municipality (i.e., the prewar synagogue became a

town library or offices or storage). Secondly, the

Jewish properties are in worse condition than those

of churches due to their neglect by local authorities.

Thirdly, the restitution law may be drafted so that

it covers all property which had been nationalized

from a church, as the central church (or diocese) in

the country owned all the properties used by that faith.

However, the Jewish communities in prewar Europe

owned many buildings that were “communal” but not

owned by a religious body or used for religious

purposes (such as a Jewish hospital, orphanage or

old age home). Lastly, the law may cover properties

which were nationalized by the Communists under

laws enacted in the late 1940s; however, most of the

Jewish communal property had essentially already

been taken by governments, local authorities or even

individuals during the Holocaust when the Jewish

residents were murdered or deported.

One issue that arose in the 1990s between WJRO

and local Jewish communities is the question of who

should be the heir to all the prewar Jewish communal

and religious assets. Should it become the property

of the small Jewish community that exists in the

country today, which is just a fraction of the original

size of the prewar community (and may be in a country

with different borders now)? Should the property

devolve to international Jewry, or the State of Israel,

on behalf of Holocaust survivors and their heirs, as

well as those who perished? Although often difficult

to achieve in practice, a balance was struck by WJRO

and local communities. Through the creation of

“foundation” partnerships between local and world

Jewry, income from restituted property would first

cover Jewish needs in that country while any surplus

would go toward assisting survivors from that country

now living in Israel or elsewhere.

The local communities, together with WJRO and

the partnership foundations, face a difficult and

prolonged process of restitution in each country. It

generally begins with researching and creating an

inventory of prewar communal and religious assets.

Then there may be lengthy negotiations to get a

satisfactory restitution law enacted. Once a law is

passed, formal claims with substantial documentation

must be submitted to some type of governmental

administrative body. Then claims have to be argued

and defended, either at a hearing before a

“commission” or a “tribunal.” Often the outcome of

such a hearing will be a negotiated settlement with

the municipality or state entity which now owns the

property. This might result in the actual return “in

kind” of the original property, or the transfer of a

substitute building or plot of land, or payment of

compensation.

The restitution process is generally a protracted

one, fraught with complications. The process, from

research to filing and pursuing claims, is costly,

especially for Jewish communities that are in a

precarious financial state (until they start to get some

restitution). Government officials are never eager to

return property to Jewish claimants, often due to

concerns about negative reactions from local residents.

The restitution process can lead to manifestations of

antisemitism in the local media and the Internet.

Opposition to restitution is often trumpeted by

politicians seeking to use the issue to gain political

capital. Those who oppose restitution often pointedly

ask, “Why is the government doing something special

for the Jews?” or “Why do the Jews need so much

property?” or “How much of these restituted assets

will end up in Israel?” or “What will the Jews do to

the tenants of the property once it is returned?”—or

even, as Romania’s former president, Ion Iliescu,

declared, “[Restitution of Jewish property] is liable

to generate sentiments not of a positive nature toward

the Jewish population... is it worth continuing to skin

those who are living in distress today... And just in

order to compensate others? I don’t find that

appropriate.”

When properties are actually restituted, they are

often in a dilapidated state and can actually be a

financial burden on the Jewish community. For the

most part, governments are also quick to give back

cemeteries and ruined synagogues (especially in the

provinces), which have little or no financial value, to

communities that do not have the capacity or financial

means to maintain or repair them.

As of the end of 2008, only about 16 percent (or

roughly 3,500) of Jewish communal and religious

properties throughout the region had either been

returned or covered under a compensation agreement

(out of the estimated 21,000 cited above). There

remain an additional 8,000 cases in which claims have

been filed but not yet reviewed or adjudicated. There

are approximately 5,500 properties which have not

yet been claimed (mainly in countries which still have

no restitution law), and an additional 4,000 cemeteries

which are still under governmental ownership.

Some countries, which had relatively small Jewish

communities, and hence few claims, have completed

the restitution process for the small number of prewar

communal properties (Estonia and Macedonia).

The Restitution of Holocaust-Era Jewish Communal Property:An Unfinished Item on the Jewish Diplomatic Agenda

cont’d on p. 6


Others have returned a significant amount of (though

by no means all) communal property, but the Jewish

community is no longer actively pursuing claims

(Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic).

However, in many other countries significant work

remains to be done: In Poland only about 1,400 of

5,544 claims have been adjudicated in seven years;

in Romania only about 300 of 1,982 claims have been

decided in six years; and in Serbia, under a new law,

the community filed 513 claims by September 2008.

In Bulgaria and Croatia some properties have been

returned, but the government has resisted restitution

of the largest and most valuable urban real estate.

There are still no laws providing for the restitution

of Jewish communal property in Lithuania, Latvia,

Bosnia, Slovenia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and

Moldova. The Latvian prime minister established a

“working group” in September 2008 to consider this

issue. Lithuania remains the most recalcitrant country

in dealing with Jewish communal property. Despite

numerous public promises by several prime ministers

since 2002, and much international pressure, no

legislation has even been sent to its parliament for

consideration.

The State of Israel has been involved as an

observer body of the WJRO and by monitoring

restitution activities, mainly through the work of Israeli

embassies. It has not, however, actively participated

in restitution negotiations. Nevertheless, Israeli

government ministers often raise the subject when

traveling to European nations or when hosting foreign

diplomats in Jerusalem.

Since the mid-1990s the United States

government has played an integral role in encouraging

countries to enact restitution laws for both private

and communal property, and to expedite the review

of claims and the actual return of property or payment

of compensation. This has been done through the

Office of Holocaust Issues in the State Department

in Washington, as well as through the resources of

local American embassies.

In September 2008, the U.S. Congress again

spoke out on this issue when the House of

Representatives passed Concurrent Resolution 371,

drawing attention to the record of countries that have

prevaricated. The resolution called on the government

of Poland to enact legislation to address the issue of

private property and “ensure that such restitution and

compensation legislation establishes an

unbureaucratic, simple, transparent, and timely

process, so that it results in a real benefit to those

many persons who suffered from the unjust such

confiscation of their property, many of whom are well

into their 80s or older.”

Efforts by local Jewish communities and WJRO

to press for the enactment of restitution laws and for

the expediting of claims have often been supplemented

by international diplomatic efforts. For the most part,

these have been led by the US government and

Congress. In the early part of this decade, as part of

their campaign to join NATO and/or the European

Union, many countries promised to tackle the issue

of restitution. Sadly, most of these promises remain

unfulfilled, and now that the nations are firmly

embedded in the EU and NATO, there are fewer

avenues for diplomatic pressure. Moreover, after

most of the post-Communist nations joined the

international coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan,

US leverage on these issues was perceived to have

diminished. While the European Union has not been

active on restitution issues, the European Parliament

and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in

Europe (OSCE) have adopted resolutions on the

subject. The most recent was a July 2001 OSCE

resolution, which urged...OSCE participating States to ensure that they

have implemented appropriate legislation to

secure the restitution and/or compensation for

property loss by victims of Nazi persecution and

property loss by communal organizations and

institutions during the National Socialist era to

Nazi victims or their heirs(s), irrespective of the

current citizenship or place or residence of victims

or their heir(s) or the relevant successor of

communal property.

However, in June 2009, during its term in the

rotating presidency of the European Union, the

government of the Czech Republic will host an

intergovernmental conference on “Holocaust-Era

Asssets” in Prague, to which 47 nations have been

invited. The conference will review progress in the

decade since the 1998 Washington Conference on

Holocaust-Era Assets and will address a number of

open issues related to the recovery of assets of victims

of the Holocaust. The subjects to be covered include

the restitution of Jewish communal, religious and

private property; looted art; and the recovery of

Judaica and cultural property. The conference also

will review progress in Holocaust education,

remembrance and research. This will be an important

venue for encouraging further action by governments

on all restitution issues.

Despite all the difficulties and complexities

involved, the reclamation of Jewish communal and

religious property remains an important piece of

unfinished work in the quest for restitution of looted

Holocaust-era assets. This needs to remain a priority

for both world Jewry and for European Jewish

communities. By continuing to pursue this goal, we

can at least achieve some “rough justice” as well as

facilitate the reha-bilitation of Jewish life in countries

ravaged by the

Shoah and years of

C o m m u n i s t

totalitarianism. As

Shoah survivors age

and pass away, and

as we move further

away from the fall of

Communism, there

is only a small

window of oppor-

tunity in which to

really address this

issue. However,

with the combined

and reinvigorated

efforts of world and

local Jewry, together

with the new admini-

stration in Washing-

ton, and with a

supportive stance on

the part of the EU,

significant results

are within reach.

Herbert Block is anassistant executivevice president of theJoint and a boardmember of the WJO.Reprinted from IsraelJournal of Foreign

Affairs III:1 (2009)

Name ________________________________________________

Address_______________________________________________

City ________________________________State __ Zip ________

Phone_________________________________________________

Number of Markers _____________

Total Amount Enclosed $__________

Special “Matzevah Marker”Available for Survivors’ Graves

Survival has placed upon us the

responsibility of making sure that the

Holocaust is remembered forever. Each of

us has the sacred obligation to share this

task while we still can. However, with the

passage of each year, we realize that time is

against us, and we must make sure to utilize

all means for future remembrance.

A permanent step toward achieving this

important goal can be realized by placing a

unique and visible maker on the gravestone

of every survivor. The most meaningful

symbol for this purpose is our Survivor

logo, inscribed with the words

HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR. This simple, yet

dramatic, maker will re-affirm our

uniqueness and our place in history for

future generations.

Our impressive MATZEVAH marker is

now available for purchase. It is cast in solid

bronze, measuring 5x7 inches, and can be

attached to new or existing tombstones.

The cost of each marker is $125.00.

Additional donations are gratefully

appreciated.

Let us buy the marker now and leave

structions in our wills for its use. This will

enable every one of us to leave on this earth

visible proof of our miraculous survival and

an everlasting legacy of the Holocaust.

The cost of each marker is US $125 including shipping & handling.

Make checks payable to: American Gathering

and mail to:

American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants

122 West 30th Street, Suite 205

New York, NY 10001

Please allow sixty (60) days for delivery.

WITOLD PILECKI, THEAUSCHWITZ VOLUNTEERWHO UNCOVEREDHOLOCAUST SECRETSby KAMIL TCHOREK

It was perhaps the bravest act of espionage of

the Second World War. After voluntarily being

imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp for

2½ years, and smuggling out its darkest secrets to

the Allies, Witold Pilecki overcame a guard and, with

two comrades, escaped almost certain death.

Now new details have emerged of the

extraordinary tale of the Polish officer who hatched

a plot with the country’s resistance to be rounded up

by the occupying Germans in September 1940 and

sent to the most notorious Nazi extermination center.

At the time Auschwitz was predominantly a camp

for captured resistance fighters, although Jews and

anyone considered a threat to the Nazi regime were

also being sent there.

Newly released documents from the Polish

archives reveal how Mr Pilecki, going under the false

name Tomasz Serafinski, went about setting up an

underground resistance group in the camp, recruiting

its members and organising it into a coherent

movement.

“In order to assure greater security I have taken

the view that each cell of five will not be aware of

another cell,” he wrote in one of his reports smuggled

out to the Resistance and which has now come to

light. “This is also why I have avoided people who

are registered here under their real names. Some are

involved in the most incompetent conspiracies and

have their own plans for rebellion in the camp.”

Later he wrote: “The gigantic machinery of the

camp spewing out dead bodies has claimed many of

cont’d from p. 5

cont’d on p. 11


The German pope recalled his own visit to thedeath camp at Auschwitz in 2006 and, in some of thestrongest words he has ever spoken about the

Holocaust and relations with Jews, said:“It is my fervent prayer that the memory of this

appalling crime will strengthen our determination toheal the wounds that for too long have sullied relations

between Christians and Jews.”He repeated the prayer that the late Pope John

Paul used when he visited Jerusalem’s Western Wall

in 2000 and asked forgiveness from Jews forChristians who had persecuted them in past centuries.

Benedict then added in his own words: “I now

make his prayer my own.”Catholic-Jewish relations have been extremely

tense since January 24, when Benedict lifted

excommunications of four renegade traditionalistbishops in an attempt to heal a schism that began in1988 when they were ordained without Vatican

permission. Williamson, a member of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St Pius X (SSPX), told Swedishtelevision in an interview broadcast on January 21: “I

believe there were no gas chambers.” He said nomore than 300,000 Jews perished in Naziconcentration camps, rather than the 6 million

accepted by most historians.The Vatican has ordered him to recant but he so

far has not done so, saying he needs more time to

review the evidence.“This terrible chapter in our history (the

Holocaust) must never be forgotten,” the Pope told

the Jewish delegation from the Conference ofPresidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

In his address to the pope, Rabbi Arther Schneier,

who hosted the pontiff at his synagogue in New Yorklast year, emotionally told the pontiff: “As aHolocaust survivor, these have been painful and

difficult days, when confronted with Holocaust-denialby no less than a bishop of the Society of St Pius X

“Victims of the Holocaust have not given us the

right to forgive the perpetrators nor the Holocaustdeniers. Thank you for understanding our pain andanguish ...”

Both the pope and Schneier expressed the hopethat dialogue between Catholics and Jews couldemerge from the crisis even stronger.

While the excommunications of the traditionalistbishops have been lifted, they and members of theSSPX will not be fully readmitted to the Church until

they formally accept the teachings of the 1962-1965Second Vatican Council.

One of that historic gathering’s key documents

was a declaration called “Nostra Aetate” (In OurTimes). It repudiated the concept of collective Jewishguilt for Christ’s death and urged dialogue with other

religions.

cont’d from p. 1

PopeMenachem Rosensaft Named General Counsel of the World

Jewish CongressNew York lawyer and Jewish community activist Menachem Z. Rosensaft has been appointed General

Counsel of the World Jewish Congress, WJC President Ronald S. Lauder announced today. Rosensaft, who

drafted the WJC’s new constitution which was adopted this January at the organization’s 13th Plenary

Assembly, will serve as an officer of the WJC and a member of its Executive.

The son of two survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and

Bergen-Belsen, Rosensaft has long been a leader in Holocaust remembrance

activities. He is Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School where he teaches

a course on World War II war crimes trials. He is Vice President of the American

Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants and is also Founding

Chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors,

a former National President of the Labor Zionist Alliance, and Honorary President

of the Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan. As general counsel of a major New

York Stock Exchange financial services firm, he was instrumental in guiding the

firm through a period of intense regulatory and governmental scrutiny, and

implementing good governance practices.

“I have known Menachem for many years and have come to rely on his judgment

and counsel,” said President Lauder. “The combination of his more than 20 years experience as an international

and securities litigator, his dedication to the Jewish people and to Jewish causes, and his absolute integrity will

be a tremendous asset in the WJC’s ongoing commitment to ensure good governance, compliance and

transparency as we move forward to accomplish our mission.”

The World Jewish Congress is the international organization representing Jewish communities in 92

countries. Founded in Geneva in 1936, the WJC serves as the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people to governments

and international organizations.

SCHLIEBEN: A forgotten concentration camp?

Forum on Saturday, 18 April 2009, in Schlieben (State of Brandenburg/Germany )

With remebrances of former prisoners, of contemporary witnesses and based on research conducted

during recent years.

Initiated by the city of Schlieben and Mr. Uwe Dannhauer, Jean-Louis Rey and Uwe Schwarz

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of publicity about Herman and Rosa Rosenblat and their Holocaust

hoax entitled Apples over the Fence. This story was supposed to have taken place in a German town called

Schlieben. Although the story has now been exposed as fiction, the Schlieben concentration camp and the

horrors perpetrated there were only too real. Just a few month ago a traveller to Schlieben in search of signs

of the Schlieben concentration camp would have been disappointed. Several initiatives have since contributed

to making sure this satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp will not be forgotten including the

stories of those imprisoned there between July 1944 and April 1945.

Witness accounts and photographs have all helped to examine the camp’s history and operation. The

camp served basically as a source of slave labor for the huge German weapons factory Hasag-Hugo Schneider

AG Leipzig.

As a part of the tragic history of concentration camps , the Schlieben camp was unique in several respects,

for its size, its organization and the diverse groups of people who worked there. More than 4,000 prisoners,

various other forced laborers, several hundred German civilians, soldiers of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe,

Reichsarbeitsdienst-RAD and SS troops were gathered there to work on designing, testing and ultimately

building several hundred thousand so-called Panzerfaust weapons.

The forum explores the question of how it was possible that Schlieben, a small town of about 2,000

inhabitants during the years 1938-1945 was practically adsorbed by the Hasag-Hugo Schneider AG and the

concentration camp.

Many years later, the town reflects without prejudice on its prior and its current history.

Further information is available from:

Uwe Sannhauer, Straße der Arbeit 8, 04936

Schlieben (Germany)

Phone 0049 (0) 536180426

e-mail [email protected]

Jean-Louis Rey, 14 Place Denfert-Rochereau ,

75014 Paris (France)

Phone 0033 (0) 143227451


Uwe Schwarz , Theodor-Storm-Straße 1 , 03050

Cottbus (Germany)

Phone 0049 (0) 355525224


PLEASE SEND US YOURSTORIES, ARTICLES, POEMS,AND LETTERS FOR INCLUSIONIN TOGETHER AND OUR WEBSITE. WHILE WE CANNOT PRINTEVERYTHING THAT ISSUBMITTED, WE SHALLENDEAVOR TO PUBLISH THEMOST INTERESTING ITEMS.SEND TO:

[email protected] Memorial.


Foundation acquires Holocaust letter exhibitBY SOPHIA TOREEN, AP

CHICAGO—The faded papers hint at stark details in the lives of Nazi

concentration camp inmates.

Letters secretly carried by children through the sewers of Warsaw, Poland,

during the 1944 uprising. A 1933 card from a Dachau camp commander outlining

strict rules for prisoner mail. A 1943 letter from a young man, who spent time in

Auschwitz, to his parents.

The more than 250 World War II postal documents—cards, letters and

stamps—have been acquired by an Illinois foundation from a private collector

and will soon be on permanent display in a museum in suburban Chicago.

“These artifacts underscore the very personal dimension to this catastrophe,”

said Richard Hirschhaut, the executive director of the Skokie-based Illinois

Holocaust Museum and Education Center, where the exhibit will be housed next

year when the museum opens.

“It now will reach an exponentially larger audience and serve as a genuine

tool for education and learning,” Hirschhaut said.

The Holocaust memorial exhibit belonged to longtime postal memorabilia

collector and activist Ken Lawrence of Pennsylvania. It was called “The Nazi

Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe.”

The Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation, based in Northbrook,

Ill., recently bought the collection and has added to it.

“The insured value of the collection is $1 million, but the educational value to

future generations is incalculable,” said Daniel Spungen, a board member of the

foundation, in a statement.

The exhibit also includes a handwritten Bible scroll in Hebrew that was used

by a German soldier to mail a package. There are also documents sent to a Nazi

doctor on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg.

Lawrence, the former vice president of the American Philatelic Society,

meticulously collected the documents for more than three decades. His project

was sparked by claims that the Holocaust never occurred.

He has since showcased the collection around the country, garnering awards.

The exhibit can also be viewed online.

by ROD LURIE, Huffington Post

It never crossed my mind that I would ever speak

or write negatively about the work of a fellow

filmmaker. But when it comes to the topic of the

Shoah, I feel like I have to speak my mind — as both

a Jew and a Sabra.

The other day I was watching Stephen Daldry’s

film The Reader with my best friend and producing

partner, Marc Frydman. His grandmother was a

survivor of the camps. When it was over Marc

seemed both saddened and shocked. The movie, he

felt, served to diminish the suffering of the Jews and

went toward not a nullification of Nazi behavior, but

certainly a mitigation of it.

The Reader traces the relationship through the

years between a female Schutzstaffel

(SS) guard and a man whom she

seduced when she was in her mid-

thirties and he was but fifteen. It’s an

exceptionally well-made film. The

performances, especially Kate

Winslet’s as Hanna, are unique and

nuanced. It may even take home an

Oscar or two next weekend. [It did.]

Which is the problem.

The audience, many of them

young people uneducated about the

Holocaust, will take as fact what they

see on screen. And that would be a

damn shame. For this film gives

ammunition to Holocaust negationists, to the

Archbishop Williamsons of the world, to the people

who would tell us that the Shoah is a mass

exaggeration.

Ron Rosenbaum has already written a brilliant

piece in Slate, taking the film to task for more or less

exonerating the German population for their part in

the Final Solution. Several others have written about

the inappropriateness of trying to solicit a kind of

sympathy for an SS guard. Others have attacked it

for using sexuality to soften and evoke pity for the

lead character.

What I would like to explore are the film’s

versions of certain “facts” presented in the film that

serve to diminish the culpability of the SS... if you

can imagine such a thing.

First up is the notion that Winslet’s Hanna Schmitz

would ever have been allowed into the SS. In the

trial portion of the film (especially well done) we learn

the SS was “recruiting” guards and Hanna volunteered

her services. (She was working in Siemens—the giant

electronics company that used Jewish slave labor).

Hanna is an illiterate. Furthermore, her work ethic was

driven by efficiency—doing her job and duty—and not

antisemitism.

The problem here is every person, man or woman,

who was in the SS was intimately indoctrinated into the

teachings of several rabid Jew haters including Julius

Streicher in Der Stürmer. In fact, that newspaper was

required reading for the SS on Hitler’s orders. One was

not entering a job when they came to the SS. They

were turning themselves over to an ideology with cult-

like obedience. This was especially true of those who

were entering the Totenkopf, the “deaths head,”

tasked with being guards at the camps.

Now, as with anything, you can find exceptions

to the rule. Of course there were

some members of the SS who were

not educated (though Germany was

easily the most literate European

country at the time). There may have

been a Hanna or two. But is that not

the primary tool of the Holocaust

denier? To turn the exception into the

rule? I am sure the makers of this

film are not deniers. But they are

helping those who are.

Because Hanna is not presented

as an anomaly, those uneducated on

the Holocaust will assume her

character is an accurate portrayal of

a member of the SS. Indeed, this depiction leads to the

kind of ignorant statement made in this excerpt from a

letter to the Los Angeles Times defending the film:

“Is it all that wrong to realize, that maybe the

murdered were not the only victims of that situation?

To anyone watching the movie with an open mind,

Hannah Schmitd [sic] is a sad victim, an illiterate

working as a guard, merely following orders, either

her rationality suspended and/or her judgment

coloured by the atmosphere of the Third Reich.”

No. Hanna is not a victim. But The Reader helps

to foster the notion that she and her contemporaries

may have been.

Indeed, Kate Winslet herself said this on The

Charlie Rose Show of the people who entered the

SS: “These were young men and women who didn’t

know what they were getting into.”

Furthermore, Winslet quotes Daldry as saying

that the “Holocaust was started by normal people.”

It is a shocking lack of understanding of one of

the most important and horrible moments in human

history.

Also in question is the SS “report” written about

the church-burning incident that is central to the film.

One of Hitler’s first orders was that the SS (and

Gestapo) could only be investigated by the

Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) — created by

Heinrich Himmler. Although the Wermacht were

record keepers, the RHSA were not...and they were

most certainly not in the business of investigating the

murder of Jews (or in this case willfully allowing Jews

to be cremated alive).

The Reader gives the appearance that the SS

—in the midst of fighting the war—were policing

themselves for their own atrocities like we Americans

did with, say, My Lai. In France there were three

cases of churches filled with civilians being burned

to the ground. The RHSA never once filed a report

on any of these incidents.

The hollowest scene is the one I am sure was

intended to be the film’s most redemptive. A grown

up Michael goes to see a survivor of the very church

burning Hanna was involved with. She lectures him

about the camps and refuses the money Hanna has

willed to her (though she accepts the tin the money

came in). The beautiful Lena Olin plays the survivor.

She is well dressed. Her New York apartment is large

and gorgeously furnished, her art collection on display.

In the scenes preceding it we see Hanna. She

has nothing. She is in bad health. She commits suicide.

So, the SS representative in the film ends up

pathetic and sad and, by the way, not guilty of the

crime for which she was sentenced.

The lone representative of the survivors is haughty

and glamorous—a near perfect (and negative)

stereotype of the wealthy European Jew in New York.

Guess whom the audience can relate to more?

By the way, we never see the tattoo on Olin’s

wrist that every concentration camp prisoner was

branded with (Olin is costumed in sleeves). It’s almost

as if the filmmakers want to make us intellectually

aware of Jewish suffering but not emotionally aware

of it. The opposite is true of the SS guard’s “suffering.”

After Marc took some time to think about The

Reader he reminded me that the great Jewish writer

Primo Levi once said that the victims of the Nazis,

exterminated in the SS camps did not vanish forever

in the smoke of the ovens. They have a grave and a

fragile one: our memory.

As the years pass and those memories are buried

with the survivors it then is up to the artists to tell the

story of the six million and to tell it right.

And, by the way, there was something that neither

Marc nor his late grandmother ever forgot. The

number tattooed on her wrist: A5499.

THE HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM OF HOLLYWOOD


Hillel Kook and Stephen WisePROFESSOR YEHUDA BAUER

On July 8, 2008 the Jerusalem Post

published an article by Isi Leibler, a Jewish

leader of importance, and a friend. Leibler

attacked Yad Vashem’s refusal to

incorporate into its Holocaust History

Museum an exhibit relating to efforts by

Hillel Kook to persuade the US

government to rescue the Jews of Europe.

Originally an emissary of the Irgun Tzvai

Leumi in the US, Kook and his team later

became independent actors. Leibler also

attacked the then leading personality of

US Jewry, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, not

only for hampering Kook’s efforts to bring

the tragedy of European Jewry to the

attention of the American people, but also

for not making public the famous cable

of August 8, 1942, of Dr. Gerhardt

Riegner, the secretary of the Geneva

office of the World Jewish Congress, who

tried to alert the WJC in London and New

York to the danger of a mass annihilation

of 3 1/2 to 4 million Jews in the coming

fall. Leibler says that Wise finally asked Roosevelt to intervene, and that Roosevelt

said “Tell your Jewish associates to keep quiet.” But Roosevelt did not speak

with Wise between August and December, 1942, so this is an error. Leibler says

that Wise’s non-action was “the most shameful failure of Jewish leadership in the

20th century.”

Unfair, and inaccurate.

In the summer of 1942, the Germans were racing towards Stalingrad. They

were at El-Alamein, and the danger to Palestine was obvious; the U.S. had just

barely managed to repulse the Japanese Navy at Midway. The Germans were

sinking more Allied ships in the Atlantic than the shipyards delivered replacements.

Public opinion in the US, as Gallup polls showed, was increasingly antisemitic.

This was the scene when the cable was received. Riegner’s cable ended with the

words “we transmit information with all necessary reservation as exactitude cannot

be confirmed. Informant stated to have close connection with highest German

authorities and his reports generally speaking reliable.” Riegner’s cable thus cast

doubt on the accuracy of its own information.

Sumner Welles, the State Department undersecretary, asked Wise not to

make the cable public because the information had to be verified, as the cable

itself had implied. In any event, in the summer of 1942 there was no Allied army

anywhere near the Jews, and the Allied Air Forces in 1942 were incapable of

reaching the Polish extermination sites. No one could have prevented the mass

murder at that point; the situation changed in November 1943–after that the

Western Allies could have bombed the extermination sites, but refused to do so.

In 1942 the Americans could not have rescued the Jews even if they had wanted

to; in addition, they feared the “accusation” that they were fighting the war for

the Jews.

Was Wise right in yielding to Welles when the cable itself had cast doubt on

its own contents? As historians David S. Wyman and Raphael Medoff write (A

Race Against Death, 2002, p. 8): “Wise believed he had no realistic choice but

comply, for he could not risk alienating the one government department whose

cooperation was most needed in the effort to help the European Jews.” He did

inform Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury, and Judge Felix

Frankfurter, in the hope that they would reach the President. He informed his

colleagues, and then he waited for confirmation, which arrived in November,

from the American representative in Switzerland. He then arranged for a press

conference to make the information public, and it was reported in the New York

Times, on a back page. Wise’s fault? Should all this contradictory and controversial

story, without any background and context, be shrunk into a panel in the Yad

Vashem Museum?

Hillel Kook was a young activist, and he did great work in trying to mobilize

American opinion to influence the US Administration to do something to save the

Jews. He was hampered and attacked by the Jewish establishment of the day,

with Wise at its head. Did he influence public opinion? Leibler mentions the big

demonstration of supposedly 400 Orthodox Rabbis in front of the White House in

on October 6, 1943, as proof of his effectiveness. It was indeed impressive,

although Orthodoxy was then a small minority among American Jews; and their

influence was minimal. They did not see Roosevelt, of course, but were received

on Capitol Hill by the Vice President and some senators. Their demonstration

was reported in the New York Times (October 7, page 4; 441 words), and that

was it. The media did not mention it afterwards, and the effect on American

public opinion is very doubtful. American antisemitism was to reach a peak in

1944, with 48% of the population expressing anti-Jewish views. Among members

of Congress, the mood began to change later, in 1943, and part of that was no

doubt due to the efforts of the Kook group; partly, it was also the influence of

Wise and his official Zionist group, who made contact with Treasury Secretary

Morgenthau. Yet it was some intrepid non-Jewish members of the Treasury who

persuaded Morgenthau to press the President, who then established the War

Refugee Board (WRB).

Leibler claims, wrongly, that the WRB was initiated exclusively by Kook, and

rescued 200,000 Hungarian Jews (Wyman and Medoff say that 120,000 were

rescued in Budapest). This is demonstrably wrong: The rescue of the remnant of

Hungarian Jews was the result of an

interplay of many factors, only one of which

was the WRB, which financed, for instance,

Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest, but with

money from the JDC (the “Joint”)–

opponents of Kook, and the heart of the non-

Zionist Jewish establishment.

Leibler is right. Kook should be given

an honorary mention, along with other Jews

outside of Europe. But for that we need a

different museum, as this one is devoted,

by design, to what happened to the Jews of

Europe, in Europe. The visitor will not find

anything about efforts by World Jewry, or

the lack of them, except for a comment by

Jan Karski about his mission to the West.

There is nothing there about the Yishuv,

except for the parachutists; there is nothing

there about the organization of Soviet Jews

to support the Soviet war effort, almost

nothing about Jews serving in Allied armies.

Nor about Kook. Or Wise. Or Ben-Gurion (except for the post-Holocaust period).

Or Begin.

Yad Vashem’s Museum presents the story of the Holocaust, in detail. That is

what people come to learn. Much even about what happened to the Jews in

Europe had to be left out. If it introduced the story of world Jewish action and

inaction during the Holocaust, and expanded on the attitude of the Allies and the

neutrals, what does Mr. Leibler suggest should be kept out? Treblinka? Resistance?

Judenraete?

Isi Leibler’s heart is in the right place. It is his analysis that is wrong.

compensation. “The different measures taken since the end of the Second World

War have made reparation as much as possible,” it said.

The Paris court had sought the opinion of the council on the request of Ms

Hoffman-Glemane, whose mother died at Auschwitz, for material and moral

damages for the suffering of her and her father. She is suing the state and the

SNCF, the national railways, for 200,000 euros (£180,000) for Joseph Kaplon,

her father, and 80,000 euros for herself. Anne-Laure Archambault, the lawyer

for Ms Hoffman-Glemane, said that she would appeal to the European Court of

Human Rights.

Avi Bitton, another lawyer who represents 600 deportees and plaintiffs, said:

“We are simply asking to be treated like any other citizen who is a victim of

asbestos poisoning or a road accident. When you suffer damage, you should be

able to seek recourse.”

For more than a decade Holocaust survivors and their families have been

waging legal battles in French and US courts. In 2007, however, an appeal court

reversed a Bordeaux court conviction against the railways for holding and robbing

two Jews. The court ruled that the SNCF was not an arm of the State.

A New York Federal Court judge also ruled in December that France was

shielded as a sovereign state from action in US courts over its wartime conduct.

Since then Senator Charles Schumer of New York has tabled a Bill in Congress

to exempt the SNCF from the sovereign immunity.

‘Jewish war victims have had enough compensation’ French court sayscont’d from p. 1

Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson)


Turkey’s reaction to the recent Israel-Hamas war

in Gaza has scared many of us who believed that

antisemitism could never take root in our country.

The mass protests outside the Israeli consulate in

Istanbul, the defacing of

a synagogue in Izmir, the

antisemitic graffiti andnewspaper articles haveraised a frightening pros-pect. It is tragic that acountry that had been thesavior of so many Jews—first during the SpanishInquisition and later dur-ing World War II—hasbeen transformed into onewhose Jewish minoritylives in fear.

This eruption hasbeen building. For several years this decade, for in-stance, Hitler’s Mein Kampf was a bestseller in Tur-key. Such facts make all the more important the ap-pearance in 2007 of The Ambassador, Emir Kivircik’sbiography of his grandfather, Behic Erkin, the coura-geous Turkish diplomat who saved 20,000 Jews inFrance from the Holocaust. Too few have heard ofhis gallantry or his righteous actions during one ofhumanity’s darkest times.

Behic Erkin fought in both World War I and theTurkish war of independence. He was the Ottomanarmy’s expert on railroads, and his logistical gifts provedcritical during World War I, earning him five medalsfrom the German government. The Iron Cross FirstClass was awarded to him personally by the Germancommander Liman von Sanders, and it would proveinstrumental in Erkin’s later effort to save Jewish lives.

Erkin was a close friend of Mustafa KemalAtatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, who entrustedhim with the transportation of troops and ammuni-tion to the front lines during the war of independence.

After the formation of the republic, Erkin servedin parliament, representing Istanbul, and later as min-ister of transportation and development. He was ap-pointed Turkey’s ambassador to France on August 1,1939—a month before Nazi Germany declared waron Poland.From this perch, Erkin witnessed the com-plete collapse of the Allies on the continent. Parisfell on June 15, 1940. In July, Marshall Philippe Pétaindeclared himself president of what became knownas the Vichy republic and pledged his government’scollaboration with the Germans on all issues, includ-ing the fate of his fellow Jewish citizens. (The Turk-ish embassy moved to Vichy, though Erkin kept aconsulate open in Paris.)

Early on, Erkin sensed that something was notquite right. A census conducted solely among the Jewsliving in France in July 1941 troubled him deeply. Herecognized it as part of a broad campaign by the Vichygovernment to confiscate Jewish-owned propertiesand businesses. He determined to oppose the subju-gation of the Turkish Jews living in France. On July31, 1941, the Turkish embassy asked the Vichy gov-ernment to exempt those Jews who were Turkishcitizens from antisemitic legislation: The Republic ofTurkey does not discriminate among its citizens onthe basis of race, ethnicity, religion, or other elements.Moreover, the Republic of Turkey is concerned aboutthe laws by which the French government is forcingour citizens to abide. Therefore, we hereby inform[the French authorities] that we reserve all of ourrights with regard to our Jewish citizens.The Vichyauthorities ignored the Turks’ letter until Erkin took itup with German officials in Paris, who ordered the

The Ambassador : How a Turkish diplomat saved 20,000 Jews during the Holocaust.

by ZEYNO BARAN & ONUR SAZAK , The Weekly Standard, 02/16/2009, Volume 014, Issue 21

French to comply with every request from the Turk-ish consulate concerning the businesses owned bythe Jews with Turkish citizenship.

As Vichy France increased its collaboration withthe Nazis on the “Final Solution,” Erkin doubled hisefforts. He ordered the consul-general in Paris toissue birth certificates to Turkish expatriates living inFrance who had given up their citizenship before 1940.(Turkey had enacted new citizenship laws in 1935, and,if you did not register as a Turkish citizen, you werestripped of your citizenship.) Many of them lackedproper documentation to prove their ties to Turkey. Inone of his orders to Paris, he said, “I do not care ifthey do not have the necessary papers. Teach them torecite ‘I am Turkish. My relatives live on Turkish soil’and issue a birth certificate to anyone who can repeatthese ten words in Turkish.”The ambassador also or-dered his staff to produce a list of non-Jewish Turkishcitizens living in France, looking for individuals withclean records and employment histories.

On a cold winter night in February 1942, he sum-moned a group of people from this list and askedthem to volunteer to take custody of the businessesand properties that their fellow Turkish citizens werebeing forced to give up and to pledge to return every-thing when this ordeal finally came to an end. Hecalled them the “Turkish Custodians of the Proper-ties of our Jewish Citizens” and presented the list ofvolunteers to the leadership of the Turkish Jewishcommunity in Paris for its approval. When Erkin couldnot get the Vichy authorities to agree to transfer thecustody of the Jewish properties to non-Christians,he went to the German-controlled Jewish AffairsCommission and got it from them. This victory was atestament to Erkin’s tenacity.

While French leaders simply fell in line behindthe wishes of their German occupiers, Erkin foughton...Erkin recognized the danger he faced in stand-ing up to the Germans and defending the Jews.Kivircik quotes Erkin saying, “You need to deal with[the Nazis] as if you are playing chess, calculatingthe possible outcome of every single move you make.You have to continue on your path by calculating thenext 2 to 3 moves in advance. So long as you do nottake up arms, your most powerful weapon is diplo-macy. Diplomacy is a craft of patience and intelli-gence. I must have practiced it quite well that theseGermans kept complaining about me all this time, yetthey always awarded me with medals.”

Erkin’s campaign to grant a Turkish birth certifi-cate to every Jewish applicant who had ever been acitizen of Turkey received increased scrutiny afterNovember 1942, when Vichy authorities discoveredthat many Turks living in France had likely lost theircitizenship when Turkey’s new citizenship law wasenacted. The Vichy government’s investigation re-vealed that nearly 10,000 Turkish Jews were indeedFrench citizens in 1940. Vichy officials passed thisinformation to their German counterparts.

Erkin realized that it was time for the TurkishJews to leave France if they wanted to survive. Heknew that convincing the Germans to grant safe pas-sage for Jews en route to neutral countries would bea difficult task. In April 1942, he traveled to Paris tomeet with the German consul-general Krug vonNidda. He claimed that since the war seemed to belasting longer than expected, many Turks were in-creasingly concerned about their safety in France andwanted to return home. He told von Nidda and theother German officers in the room that he had madearrangements to transport back to Turkey those whowanted to leave. He needed the Nazi government togrant these refugees safe passage through occupied

territories. When von Nidda sarcastically wonderedwhy Germany should comply with such a request,Erkin replied, “for two reasons.” “First of all, Turkeywas the most important ally of the German Empire inWorld War I. If you recall those days, we rescuedtwo of your battleships. We harbored them in ourstraits. In return, they bombed Russian ports—andwe found ourselves in a war in which we did notwish to take part. While Germany lost its war onland, we won ours. Yet, we were forced to share thesame destiny with the defeated because of our alli-ance with you. This is the first reason. As for thesecond reason”—at this moment Mr. Erkin reacheddeep into the left pocket of his jacket, pulled out anobject and placed it on the table. From that momenton he continued his speech standing: “I am request-ing this from you not only as an ambassador from afriendly country, but as someone who has beenawarded with the Iron Cross of the First Degree—the highest military honor conferred by the GermanEmpire. For these two important reasons, you shouldgrant my wish.”

The Germans gave in, but granted Erkin only untilthe end of 1942 to arrange the evacuation. Erkin knewthat this was simply impossible, and, protesting unre-lentingly, successfully got the deadline extendedthrough 1943.His posting in France was approachingits end, and Erkin instructed all embassy and consu-late personnel to continue his work and to save asmany Jewish lives as they could. Erkin’s associatesproved more than capable. When the deputy consul-general in Marseille, Necdet Kent, heard from SadiIscan, a young Jewish translator at the consulate, thatTurkish Jews were being loaded onto a train for de-portation, he immediately went to the station to askthat they be released. When the German soldiers re-fused, both Kent and Iscan boarded the train them-selves. Upon hearing what had happened, Erkin de-manded to see von Nidda. When the German sar-castically asked, “What could be so urgent? Is Tur-key entering the war?” Erkin responded, “Thanks toyou we are about to enter the war.” He poured out atorrent of threats: A diplomatic scandal is about tobreak out and this is the mildest way I can put it. I fyou do not correct this mistake, a crisis between thetwo countries will be inevitable. When I tell my presi-dent what happened here tonight, I am sure Berlin isgoing to reevaluate the career of every official whodid not take the initiative to avoid a crisis betweenTurkey and Germany.”

To avoid a diplomatic incident with Turkey, vonNidda agreed to the release of all the Turkish citizensin the train. When the train was stopped and Kentwas told to leave with all the Turks on board, he in-formed the Germans that everyone aboard was Turk-ish. Erkin met von Nidda for the last time shortlyafter this incident. The German consul-general re-marked: “Now I understand why the German com-manders who served in the Ottoman Empire duringthe war both hated and respected you. I see that theIron Cross was given to the right person.”

When World War II erupted, 330,000 Jews livedin France: 10,000 of them were Turkish citizens, andanother 10,000 had previously been Turkish citizens.Erkin managed to get Turkish citizenship for the lat-ter 10,000 Jews and then convinced both French andNazi governments to allow them all to return to Tur-key. Behic Erkin saved the lives of 20,000 innocentsouls during Europe’s darkest moment.

Zeyno Baran is a senior fellow and the director of

the Center for Eurasian Policy at the Hudson Institute.

Onur Sazak is a research associate at the center.

Behic Erkin


by HELEN ZEGERMAN SCHWIMMER

Lilly Friedman doesn’t

remember the last name of the

woman who designed and sewed

the wedding gown she wore when

she walked down the aisle over 60

years ago. But the grandmother of

seven does recall that when she

first told her fiance, Ludwig, that

she had always dreamed of being

married in a white gown he

realized he had his work cut out

for him.

For the tall, lanky 21-year-old

who had survived hunger, disease

and torture this was a different kind

of challenge. How was he ever

going to find such a dress in the

Bergen Belsen Displaced Person’s

camp where they felt grateful for the clothes on their

backs?

Fate would intervene in the guise of a former

German pilot who walked into the food distribution

center where Ludwig worked, eager to make a trade

for his worthless parachute. In exchange for two

pounds of coffee beans and a couple of packs of

cigarettes Lilly would have her wedding gown.

For two weeks Miriam the seamstress worked

under the curious eyes of her fellow DPs, carefully

fashioning the six parachute panels into a simple, long

sleeved gown with a rolled collar and a fitted waist

that tied in the back with a bow. When the dress was

completed she sewed the leftover material into a

matching shirt for the groom.

A white wedding gown may have seemed like a

frivolous request in the surreal

environment of the camps, but for

Lilly the dress symbolized the

innocent, normal life she and her

family had once led before the world

descended into madness. Lilly and

her siblings were raised in a Torah-

observant home in the small town

of Zarica, Czechoslovakia where

her father was a melamed,

respected and well liked by the

young yeshiva students he taught in

nearby Irsheva.

He and his two sons were

marked for extermination

immediately upon arriving at

Auschwitz. For Lilly and her sisters

it was only their first stop on their

long journey of persecution, which

included Plashof, Neustadt, Gross Rosen and finally

Bergen-Belsen.

Four hundred people marched 15 miles in the

snow to the town of Celle on January 27, 1946 to

attend Lilly and Ludwig’s wedding. The town

synagogue, damaged and desecrated, had been

lovingly renovated by the DPs with the meager

materials available to them. When a Sefer Torah

arrived from England they converted an old kitchen

cabinet into a makeshift Aron Kodesh.

“My sisters and I lost everything—our parents,

our two brothers, our homes. The most important

thing was to build a new home.”

Six months later, Lilly’s sister Ilona wore the dress

when she married Max Traeger. After that came

Cousin Rosie. How many brides wore Lilly’s dress?

“I stopped counting after 17.” With the camps

experiencing the highest marriage

rate in the world, Lilly’s gown was in

great demand.

In 1948 when President Harry

Truman finally permitted the 100,000

Jews who had been languishing in

DP camps since the end of the war

to emigrate, the gown accompanied

Lilly across the ocean to America.

Unable to part with her dress, it lay

at the bottom of her bedroom closet

for the next 50 years, “not even good

enough for a garage sale. I was

happy when it found such a good

home.”

Home was the U.S. Holocaust

Memorial Museum in Washington,

D.C. When Lily’s niece, a volunteer,

told museum officials about her

aunt’s dress, they immediately recognized its historical

significance and displayed the gown in a specially

designed showcase, guaranteed to preserve it for 500

years.

But Lilly Friedman’s dress had one more journey

to make. Bergen Belsen, the museum, opened its

doors on October 28, 2007. The German government

invited Lilly and her sisters to be their guests for the

grand opening. They initially declined, but finally

traveled to Hanover the following year with their

children, their grandchildren and extended families to

view the extra-ordinary exhibit created for the

wedding dress made from a parachute.

Lilly’s family, who were all familiar with the

stories about the wedding in Celle, were eager to

visit the synagogue. They found the building had been

completely renovated and

modernized. But when they pulled

aside the handsome curtain they were

astounded to find that the Aron

Kodesh, made from a kitchen

cabinet, had remained untouched as

a testament to the profound faith of

the survivors. As Lilly stood on the

bimah once again she beckoned to her

granddaughter, Jackie, to stand beside

her where she was once a kallah.

“It was an emotional trip. We cried a

lot.”

Two weeks later, the woman who

had once stood trembling before the

selective eyes of the infamous Dr.

Josef Mengele returned home and

witnessed the marriage of her

granddaughter.

The three Lax sisters—Lilly, Ilona and Eva, who

together survived Auschwitz, a forced labor camp, a

death march and Bergen Belsen—have remained

close and today live within walking distance of each

other in Brooklyn. As mere teenagers, they managed

to outwit and outlive a monstrous killing machine, then

went on to marry, have children, grandchildren and

great-grandchildren and were ultimately honored by

the country that had earmarked them for extinction.

As young brides, they had stood underneath the

chuppah and recited the blessings that their ancestors

had been saying for thousands of years. In doing so,

they chose to honor the legacy of those who had

perished by choosing life.Helen Zegerman Schwimmer is the author of Like The

Stars of The Heavens.

The Wedding Gown That Made History

Lily and Ludwig Friedman

Lily Friedman and her wedding

dress on exhibit.

my friends...We have sent messages to the outside

world which were then transmitted back by foreign

radio stations. Consequently the camp guards are very

angry right now.”

Pilecki’s reports from the camp were channelled

to the Allies via a courier system that the Polish

Resistance operated throughout occupied Europe. By

1942 Pilecki’s organization realized the existence of

the gas chambers and he worked on several plans to

liberate Auschwitz, including one in which the RAF

would bomb the walls, or Free Polish paratroopers

would fly in from Britain.

However, in 1943, realizing that the Allies had no

plans to liberate the camp, he and two others escaped.

The new documents include a Gestapo manhunt alert

after his escape.

Pilecki ensured that a full report on the camp

reached London, and the resistance group he started

in Auschwitz continued to feed information to Britain

and the United States, confirming that the Nazis were

bent on the extermination of the Jews.

The archive material will again raise questions as

to why the Allies, and in particular Winston Churchill,

never did anything to stop the atrocities there. “We

can only assume the British thought we were

exaggerating,” said the Polish historian Jacek

Pawlowicz. “I’m certain Poles shared their intelligence

with MI6 and the highest levels of British Government,

which, for some reason, remained silent.”

After his escape Pilecki was captured fighting in

the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and spent the rest of

the conflict in a prisoner-of-war camp. In July 1945

he joined Free Polish troops in Italy, from where he

agreed to return to Poland and gather intelligence on

the Soviet takeover of the country. He was, however,

caught by the Polish Communist regime. In a twist of

fate, a Polish Jew administered the torture during his

interrogation. Pilecki’s wife was invited to visit and he

told her that his time in Auschwitz was child’s play by

comparison. After a show trial he was given three death

sentences and shot.

The new material includes his charge sheet, which

has 132 subsections, each listing a separate alleged

crime. “From July 1945 to May 1947 the accused

worked against the Polish state as a paid resident of

an overseas intelligence agency,” one accusation

reads. “The worst crime committed against the state

was that he was acting in the interests of foreign

imperialism, to which he has completely sold out

through a prolonged period of work as a spy.” The

implication is clear: Mr Pilecki was providing

information on the Soviet-backed regime that was

finding its way to MI6.

After his death Pilecki was demonized by the

Communists and his heroics re-emerged only after

1989.

His son, Andrzej Pilecki, who was 16 when he

learned that his father had been executed, said:

“There’d be no better memorial to my father than for

the young to learn of his example. I was at school at

the time, it was a terrible shock, but now after 60

years of waiting I am thrilled to see justice.”

The new archive releases also reveal touching

details. In a smuggled letter dated October 18, 1943,

to his ten-year-old daughter he wrote: “I am very

happy to hear you are such a devoted housemaid and

that you like to take care of the animals and our plants

in the garden. I, too, like every kind of bug and beetle

as well as the beans and the peas. I like everything

that lives. I’m very glad to hear that inside my children

there are the same thoughts that I have.”

WITOLD PILECKIcont’d from p. 6


Rosian ZernerBY SUSIE DAVIDSON, JEWISH ADVOCATE

“I stand before you as proof that miracles

happen,” Rosian Zerner said last year at the annual

Yom HaShoah ceremony at Faneuil Hall.

Zerner’s place at the podium was inspirational,

and apropos. Her advocacy on behalf of Holocaust

survivors and work in German-Jewish relations is well-

known. She is the former vice

president, and current governing

board member of the World

Federation of Jewish Child Survivors

of the Holocaust. The contact person

for Greater Boston Child Survivors,

she is the JCRC representative from,

and executive committee member of

the American Association of Jewish

Holocaust Survivors of Greater

Boston. She is also on the Holocaust

Survivor Advisory Board at the

Jewish Family and Children’s Service,

the Yom HaShoah planning committee, has

represented Boston survivors at restitution issue

meetings, and helped bring about a U.S. stamp

honoring rescuer/diplomat Hiram Bingham.

Although her native Lithuania holds the dread

distinction of being the country that lost the highest

percentage of its Jews, Zerner survived World War

II in the Kovno Ghetto, and in hiding. Her parents

dug a hole under the ghetto’s barbed wire fence and

pushed her to safety. “I was 6,” she said. “They timed

and avoided the changing of the guards, the

searchlights, the dogs.

Zerner, who had grown up in a privileged

environment, remembers every detail of her escape.

“I was hidden in homes, attics, barns and woods, an

orphanage. I was baptized,” she said. “Sometimes I

was ready to stop running, but my will to live was

greater.” Miraculously reunited with her parents after

the war, they remained in Italy for six years, en route

to Palestine and before moving to the U.S. in 1951.

Immersed into Newton High School at age 16,

she sang the St. Louis Blues without knowing English

with the acapella sextet the Newtonettes. She found

it refreshing to be with people not touched by the

Holocaust.

“It certainly did not fit into my senior prom as the

date of the class president or into the values that I

was absorbing within the ‘melting pot’ of the 50s,”

she said.

Zerner later matriculated at Barnard College. “In

Italy I had listened to Radio Free Europe and thought

I would come to the land of

spirituals and jazz,” she

rememberd. Instead, it was all rock

and roll. Her mother had been the

Konzertmeister of the Lithuanian

Opera, and Zerner had been a

student at Milan’s La Scala Ballet

School. She had read all the works

of Shakespeare, Zane Gray, and

Jack London in Italian. Despite

class structures and educational

strictures, she said that “the world,

the time, was my very own oyster.”

Zerner was a runner-up for Miss Barnard,

president of the fine arts club (her major was art

history and her thesis, the female nude), and a class

officer. Her future husband, John Zerner, was in her

music class. In 1961, she began graduate school at

Columbia, but embarked for India, arriving before

even the Beatles’ George Harrison. She spent four

months in Japan, Thailand and Persia.

“I bicycled in Nepal among Tibetan refugees,

lived on a houseboat in Kashmir, bathed in the Ganges

and went to its source.” She has since traveled to 64

countries. In Israel, Zerner visited her mother’s

surviving relatives on a kibbutz and in Tel Aviv. She

married Zerner in 1962; they had two sons but

divorced in 1970 following his medical school

graduation. “I was unprepared for either motherhood

or independence, and yet, in those feminist days, I

declined to take alimony,” she says.

In the freewheeling ’60s, Zerner’s car had a

flower instead of an antenna, she was teargassed in

Washington antiwar marches, and started to sculpt

again, painting, writing and publishing Beat poetry,

making candles, pottery, enameling. Her father later

convinced her to buy a home in Chestnut Hill.

“Newton schools were the best at that time,” she

said. A salon she had begun in Brookline became the

Sunday Brunch Club at the Newton Highlands

Women’s Club. She organized trips, tennis parties,

support groups, and media, joined boards of arts

organizations and chaired art-related events.

“In 1987, she joined her pro-baseball player son

Jay, who is now a physician, in Australia. Although

caring for her father curtailed graduate school hopes,

she studied Spanish and pre-Columbian civilizations

at San Miguel de Allende and Oaxaca in Mexico,

climbed pyramids and became a Mayan Solar Initiate.

“I spent a month in New Mexico and Arizona with

the Zuni and Hopi, explored Eastern philosophies and

religions that took me to Brazil, Japan and Thailand,

and followed the Celtic and other paths that led from

Stonehenge throughout Portugal and Spain,” she said.

In 1996, her father died at age 90, and she learned

that her father’s sister, Lyda, committed suicide weeks

after the Nazis murdered her composer husband

Edwin. In 2000, Zerner joined a child survivors’ and

a German-Jewish Dialogue group. She accepted an

award bestowed posthumously by then President

Adamkus of Lithuania upon one of her rescuers. “I

re-connected with my childhood friend who hid with

me, and retraced my steps from the house of my

grandfather to the Kovno Ghetto, to the homes where

I was hidden,” she recalled.

At Faneuil last year, where son Lang lit a candle,

Zerner quoted presidential candidate Dennis

Kuchinich: “If we can change ourselves, we can

change the world. We are not the victims of the world

we see, we are the victims of the way we see the

world.”

Rosian was recently cited by the governor and

senate of Massachusetts.

Susie Davidson is the author of I Refused to Die, a bookdocumenting the lives of 20 survivors and 10concentration camp liberators in Boston, and Jewish Lifein Postwar Germany: Our Ten-Day Seminar.

(International Herald Tribune) Jerusalem (AP) The

Nazi officer made famous in Roman Polanski’s movie

The Pianist has been posthumously honored by

Israel’s Holocaust memorial.

Yad Vashem spokeswoman Estee Yaari says the

museum awarded the honor of “righteous among the

nations” to Capt. Wilm

Hosenfeld based on

testimonies of Holocaust

survivors. She says he

rescued at least two Jews in

Poland from the Nazi

genocide.

Hosenfeld joined the

Nazi Party before World War

II, but later wrote about his

“disgust and horror” at the

systematic murder of

European Jews. After the

war, Hosenfeld was arrested and jailed by the Soviets.

He died in a Soviet prison in 1952.

The museum says it will award a medal and

certificate to Hosenfeld’s descendants on his behalf.

No date has been set for the ceremony.

Nazi officer who saved Jewshonored

The UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey. The

program will take place on Sunday, April 19 at 4pm

at the Fair Lawn Jewish Center in Fair Lawn, NJ.

The keynote address will be given by Paul Shapiro,

Director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust

Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum.

The program honors six survivors by having their

story read in the first person by a young person, while

the survivor lights a candle on our menorah in memory

of the Six Million. There is a children’s candle

procession, one child for each anniversary of the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The program includes a

Yiddish reading and a Second Generation speaker,

who will be Leah Kaufman, Director of Jewish Family

Service of North Jersey.

YIZKOR – Remembrance ServiceSunday, April 19, 2009

Fair Lawn Jewish Center/Congregation Bnai Israel

10-10 Norma Avenue, Fair Lawn, NJ

Keynote Speaker: Paul ShapiroDirector of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum -

Washington, D.C.

“Opening the Archives of the InternationalTracing Service:

How did it happen? What does it mean?”Program at 4 pm. Photo Exhibit at 3:30 pm

For additional information callDr. Wallace Greene (201) 820-3911

Sponsored by the

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL COMMITTEE

of the UJA FEDERATION OF NORTHERN NEW

JERSEY


BY SALOMEA KAPE-JAY M.D.In the summer of 1944 the Russian Army halted

the offensive and sat passive on the other side of the

Vistula River watching the slaughter by the Nazis of

the Polish insurgents in Warsaw. Ninety miles from

Warsaw the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto started in

July and reached its final stage at the end of August.

The number of “volunteers” for deportation decreased

each day and the Gestapo started their “actions”—

roundups—by removing Jews from their apartments

by force. The “actions” always came suddenly and

were performed with the precision of a Swiss watch,

reinforced by the experience the Nazis acquired with

each passing day. The familiar picture of a swarm of

armed Gestapo men in green uniforms standing with

their legs wide apart, in battle readiness at the corner

of the streets, of the Jewish police dispersed to the

buildings in search of ghetto dwellers, and of the

trucks waiting for the victims was a part of the

landscape in July and August 1944, the last months

of Lodz- Ghetto existence. And the noise! The cries

and screams of the Jews removed from their homes

together with the barking commands “Raus! Raus!”

formed a terrifying cacophony.

It was a warm August in 1944. The pleasant

weather facilitated the hunting expeditions and the

Gestapo found Jews almost without a miss. On one

of those beautiful summer days my mother needed

to reconnect with relatives. There wasn’t food in the

house, not a slice of bread or even the brown ersatz

coffee that gave a sense of being sated when eaten

dry with brown sugar. Mother avoided the open streets

and moved like a cat through the courtyards, cellars

and attics. She knew the ghetto like the palm of her

hand for her patients once lived there. An old pass

from the Department of Health allowing her to move

freely during the curfew—of little help if stopped by

the Nazis—gave her some kind of false security.

I was alone. The lonely man who had lived in the

kitchen had been deported the month before. Not a

trace was left of him, only the narrow, bare bed he

had used.

Soon our room would look like his, I thought, and

nobody would know of us, of our life, of our struggle,

of our death. We’ll have no names; we’ll become

statistics. Will future occupants of this building lead

normal lives within these silent walls? Will they make

love in this room? Will children play in the streets

where the Nazis are now dragging people to their

deaths? Will laughter be heard here again?” Such

thoughts frequently occupied me. The empty bed

made me aware how little I knew about the man

who shared our apartment with us for two years.

The ghetto was a place where friendship was in short

supply and hunger admitted no human bond.

I looked at our room with its big closet and the

old clock which had stopped telling time. Time was

now measured from one roundup to another. Above

the unmade bed a huge painting of “Solomon and his

Wives” covered the wall. The well-rounded figures

of the biblical wives with opulent breasts looked

obscene in the cluttered and cold room. It was almost

too painful to look at them on an empty stomach. I

stared at myself in the big mirror standing between

the two windows; my dress hung on me like one on a

hanger. Once again I surveyed the room. A heavy

couch in the corner showed its wiry interior which

made deep marks on my back after a night’s sleep

and the old, black stove stood useless and cold. On

the table All Quiet on the Western Front waited for

a reader.

These things will outlast us, I thought. With envy

I looked at the table and the closet. When my eyes

rested on the painting of Solomon and his wives, I

said aloud “No, not you. You’re too Jewish. You’ll be

replaced by the picture of Madonna and Christ.”

Suddenly I heard a commotion in the courtyard.

The roundup had started. Through the window I saw

the familiar sight of the Gestapo at the corner of the

street. My blood raced to my brain but my brain was

no longer capable of sending signals to my legs. I

wanted to run but my feet were glued to the floor.

My heart was pounding ready to explode. I could

hear my rapid breathing and fear, a paralyzing fear

oozing from every cell of my body.

I thought: “Should I write a farewell note? What

can I write when I am all nerves? Should I take some

clothing? Yes, but where is my clothing?” I grabbed

the toothbrush from the table and put it in my pocket.

Aloud I said, “They’ll take me and I’m hungry. Not a

slice of bread is in the house, nothing.”

My mind raced from one idea to another and I

decided, “No, they’ll not find me so easily. Where

can I hide? The closet, the big closet. ‘Sally, please,’

I begged myself, ‘quiet down and move. ‘Take the

book with you and read, read. Read till they’ll come

to take you.’”

In the closet I read All Quiet on the Western

Front trying to detach myself from the events in the

streets but my sharpened ear heard the heavy

stampeding on the stairs. Then I heard the police

shout,” The building is clean, nobody’s left. Let’s go.”

I thought I smelled the odor of the people taken

to the trucks, but it was my own odor of fear. Now

all the commotion, yelling and screaming and roaring

of the trucks ceased; a deadly silence fell upon the

street. In this silence I started to cry and my tears

wetted the famous book. I couldn’t cry for the people

who were taken brutally away. I cried for my own

life, for my unfulfilled dreams, for the love I might

never know, and most of all I cried for my mother.

“They didn’t find you. Good girl.” My mother

touched my face as if not believing her own eyes,” I

have some news,” she said “The Nazis are leaving a

few hundred Jews to clean the ghetto, and your uncle

Mel, who is now a manager of the stable, offered us

the job to clean the stable and to take care of the

horses. Horses are benign animals. We have a chance

to be together for awhile, if we’re lucky.”

Before moving out, my father, a hard working

and frugal man, smashed his lifework, the sum of his

dreams, the furniture. First went the paralyzed clock

while I looked with a renewed interest at all the

elaborate internal mechanisms, now in pieces. With

a hammer he struck the big mirror and the flying

refracting crystals shone like diamonds in the sun on

this perfect summer day. With the last force of a

blinded Samson he threw the heavy couch out from

the third floor window. The flying couch hit the ground

with a canon-like blast. My father still hadn’t satisfied

his anger and looked for more objects to demolish.

I took on the task of destroying the painting of

Solomon while the book, All Quiet on the Western

Front, flew like a bird through the window. The

thunder of the falling heavy objects didn’t cause any

reaction. No one came to the open windows. No one

asked, “Mr. Herschenberg, what happened? What

are you doing throwing out a good couch? And books?

You must be crazy.” There were no racing steps, no

curious faces. The tenants were on their way to

Auschwitz. This was my father’s way of protesting

against the silence of the world, against the futility of

his life’s efforts, against bonding with material objects,

against Hitler, against Nazis, against God.

We left the building and went to a newly formed

camp to join about 600 Jews selected as cleaners of

Lodz-Ghetto. In that camp my mother approached

Mel.

“I’ll not stand for the morning roll call. Look at

me; I am so thin, so emaciated that I’ll be the first

victim for deportation. Tomorrow is the selection day,”

she said.

Mel was irritated and raised his voice. “The Nazis

have a prepared list of people for deportation and

your hiding is hopeless. It may endanger our lives,

too. Don’t tell me what do you want to do; I’ m better

off if I don’t know your plans.”

“Even so, no power will drag me to the morning

roll call,” she responded.

I looked at my mother and realized that she was

right. Grayish, parchment-like skin covered the bones

of her face and her black eyes rimmed by prominent

puffs sat deep in their sockets. The head was attached

to a body of a child. No doubt she’ll catch the Nazis’

eyes. Mel must have had a second thought for he

repeated, “Do what you wish. I don’t want to know.”

It was another sunny morning when we stood in

a double row shivering from the first cold and the

tense atmosphere in the courtyard. From a prepared

list the Germans called out loudly the names of persons

designed for deportation. Suddenly the name Rose

Herschenberg hit my ear. My mother! A thousand

thoughts moved with the speed of light through my

head. “They’ll start a search for her, they’ll find her,

and they’ll kill her on the spot,” I whispered to myself.

A horror movie of a Nazi hunt with guns and dogs

and my mother’s bloody body exposed in the

courtyard was rolling under my eyelids.

What to do? Where’s my father? I was blinded

by panic for my father was actually close by, totally

shocked by the events.

“Mel,” I whispered. “No, he’s of no help.” I saw

his stony face. The rows of Jews on the morning call

stirred impatiently like a small wave. You don’t play

with the Nazis and you don’t let the Nazis wait. We

looked at each other but nobody budged.

This time the German shouted: “ROSE

HERSCHENBERG!” A tall woman with gray hair

whose face I couldn’t see walked slowly toward the

group of people assigned for deportation. All the

adrenaline leaked out of my body leaving me with

cotton legs and a buzzing in the head. Now I saw my

father, and in his blood-drained face I saw a reflection

of my own.

Later, my mother said, “I would have gone to the

front line the first time the Nazi called my name. I

didn’t know that there was another Rose

Herschenberg in our camp.” I never asked where

she had hid but I knew that the safest place was in

the stable, between the horses, “the benign animals.”

In late fall a man secretly came to the camp. He

and his wife had hidden in one of the abandoned

buildings in the ghetto. He had prepared the hideout

anticipating the liquidation of Lodz-Ghetto. He came

in the darkness of the night, for his wife was bleeding

to death after giving birth to a boy.

“Help me,” he begged the Jewish commandant

of the camp, “do you have a doctor here?”

“Yes, he’s a well known surgeon in Lodz. Let’s

go to him.” They approached the famous and highly

respected doctor.

“You don’t expect me to risk my life,” the doctor

said, visibly agitated and shaken. “The Nazis are

roaming the streets at night with dogs looking for the

hiding Jews like you. In camp I have a fraction of

hope to survive. Going with you is a suicide.”

The Midwife from Lodz

cont’d on p. 14


The surgeon’s wife didn’t leave the room; she

stood behind her husband and fully supported his

position. Finally, the unwelcomed young father left

the room.

“He’s right and I cannot order him to go with

you,” said the commandant. “But wait. We have a

midwife in the camp, let’s try, but it’s a slim chance.”

Rose, my mother, the skinny, scared woman, a far

cry from “mother courage” was the last resort. I

couldn’t understand why she agreed to take the

dangerous journey. The call of duty? The pained eyes

of the husband? My mother wasn’t under normal

circumstances a risk-taking person, but these were

not ordinary times. She left the camp with the night

visitor and disappeared into the labyrinth of empty

streets. The dark, wide-open windows of the abandoned

buildings slammed by the cold wind looked like the eye

of Cyclops. They walked cautiously but every step

could be heard meters away in the empty streets.

In a filthy, well camouflaged cellar my mother

examined the heavily bleeding woman, removed the

retained placenta by an ungloved and not too clean

hand. She waited till the bleeding stopped, checked

the baby, and then returned to the camp alone.

“Sally,” she reported, and her face radiated with

pride,”it’s a healthy and beautiful baby boy. I am

concerned about the sterility. But in obstetrics one

cannot predict the outcome. Sometimes you spit in

the wound and nothing happens and another time you

maintain 100% sterility and a full-blown infection

follows. I must see her again.”

“Oh no, Ma, it’s not an after-delivery visit; it’s a

dangerous journey. You’re tempting death. The

surgeon had enough common sense to refuse.

Besides, the woman was foolish to get pregnant in

hiding. It’s a double ticket to death. I don’t understand

how in the midst of hunger, destruction and deportation

one gets pregnant,” I reprimanded my mother as

though I were 25 years her senior and not the other

way around.

My mother answered, “The drive of intimacy is

very strong even in the lowest human conditions,

although hunger made a lot of us asexual. The husband

is a very courageous and intelligent man and he didn’t

follow the herd to the train station for a journey to...who

knows, it seems to me like death. He prepared the

hiding place to the last detail; he has electric power,

water, and even a small radio.The baby has more

chances to survive than we have. We are exposed

here in camp and are an easy target for a mass

execution while the baby, with a little luck, may live.

You don’t see something symbolic in this delivery?”

“No, I see a danger to your life and I’m not

interested in symbols,” I cried.

I wanted to scare and pain my mother, to tell her,

“You left me alone once to my own fate. Please don’t

do it again. Don’t let me die without you and don’t let

me survive without you. Don’t go.”

I was well aware of my own thoughts but I had

to put a clamp on my emotions to stop the out pouring

of resentment for the people in the hideout.

My mother, as though listening through a

stethoscope, was aware of my innermost thoughts.

“What?, yYou have a fixation that I’m risking my

life. I don’t run between shooting squads; our life in

the camp is riskier. The Nazis took away from us the

right to be pregnant and to bear children. I’m fully

trained to deliver babies, and babies are the promise

of life.”

My mother made a second visit, alone. She came

back beaming with joy and with a loaf of bread. The

mother and the baby were doing well, which proved

again that the impossible was sometimes possible in

the Lodz-Ghetto.

“Why did you take bread from the man?” I asked.

“We have enough food in the camp.”

“He insisted on giving me something for the

services and I took the only thing which in the ghetto

had the value of life. The baby is laughing a lot and

crying very little; a smart baby he is. He’ll see a better

world without Hitlers and the Nazis.”

My mother delivered another baby in the camp.

The woman was so slim that no one recognized that

she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Her

husband came straight to my mother, having learned

that the surgeon under the watchful eye of his wife

would absolutely refuse to help. In the camp all news

traveled very fast. The woman’s bed was put in a

dark corner in the hall of the womens’ quarter. I sat

nearby and heard a slight commotion behind the

improvised curtain, the husband’s whispers and my

mother’s quiet voice, “Easy, easy.” No groan or moan.

There were only my mother’s quick steps and later a

weak cry, a chirp. Then there was a total silence

behind the curtain.

The women didn’t sleep. The air was heavy with

tension and fear and smelled faintly of blood. In the

early morningthere was no trace of the event and no

trace of the baby. The bed was in its usual position

and the woman was asleep. All sighed with relief

and no one asked questions. The woman went to her

usual work assignment with a deathly face; her

husband was silent and a shade paler. My mother

came to me in tears and said, “but the boy, the baby-

boy in the cellar, he’ll survive. You’ll see, he’ll survive.”

On January 17, 1945 the Red Army began its

final push to Berlin, crossed the Vistula in force and

liberated Lodz on January 19, 1945. We, 840 Jews,

the remnants of 250,000 Jews of Lodz survived.

The Nazis had no time left and ran West, leaving

behind six mass graves in the Jewish cemetery

prepared for us.

Today, I still remember and wonder, where is the

boy born in a cellar in a dying ghetto to brave parents

on November 1944, delivered by my mother who

never doubted in his survival as he became for her a

symbol of the rebirth of our nation?

cont’d from p. 13

The Midwife from Lodz

In 1942 a young French couple, Moussa Abadi

and Odette Rosenstock—Moussa, a Syrian-born

Sorbonne professor, and Odette, a recent medical school

graduate affected by the Gertman laws restricting

Jewish medical practice—relocated from

Paris to non-Vichy southern France. In Nice,

which was under Italian occupation, with a

background in acting and languages, Abadi

was hired as a teacher in a Catholic

theological seminary. In September 1943,

after the Germans occupied the area and

began deporting its Jews, Abadi decided to

set up a network to save children. He asked

for help from his employer, Monsignor Paul

Remond, the Bishop of Nice. The Bishop

gave him the title of superintendent of

Catholic education. The signed letter of

appointment enabled Abadi freedom of

movement and access to Christian

institutions in which he was able to hide

children. The couple secured safe lodgings in

convents and some private homes for 527

children, arranging for their expenses and

necessary papers.

Odette was arrested by the French in

1944 and turned over to the Gestapo. She survived a

brutal interrogation in Drancy without giving up any of

the children or revealing the scope of their operation,

and then sent to Auschwitz and subsequently to Bergen-

Moussa and Odette Abadi: A RemembranceBelsen. Moussa continued their efforts from hiding

until the end of the war. At the conclusion of WWII,

the reunited couple married and helped the children

find surviving family members or, if that was not

possible, find homes in orphanages.

Years later, now Archbishop Remond

was recognized by the Israeli government

as a “Righteous Gentile” for his

participation in the Abadi rescue operation.

For the Abadis themselves, the French

government has recently honored the

memory of their bold and selfless

work by renaming a site in the 12th

arrondissement in Paris after them:

“Place Moussa et Odette Abadi.”

Self-effacing and never recognized by

the Jewish community, it was only when

when Remond and other Christians who

had helped in Abadi operations were

honored as righteous gentiles that the

Abadis came to be known.

Moussaf Abadi died in 1997; a

distraught Odette took her life two years

later.

As Abadi noted in one of his last

speeches, “Do not accept that in this

world one kills. Be on guard; be arousers; talk to

your children and grandchildren. Talk, yell and

scream.”

Lesson 3 gives me hope. One patient, a survivor

of Auschwitz, recently lost her husband of 60 years.

She came to me severely depressed, with thoughts

of suicide.

I asked her, “How did you have any hope in the

camp, knowing that each day could be your last?”

She smiled briefly and told me a story (I reconstruct

her words from memory):

“My dear doctor, I believe in God, and he was

with me in the camp. But I also had several young

women from my town with me in the barracks.

“When we had to stand at attention for hours,

we stood together, propping up one another when

weak. When we dug ditches we did it together, one

holding and moving the arms and shovel for another

who didn’t have strength that day. We were

desperate, but never alone.”

I referred her to a social club we created for

older people with mild memory problems, and one

day I crept into the room during a discussion group

and hid behind a corner to listen.

One women spoke disparagingly of her memory.

“I am losing my mind,” she said. “It is so painful.”

Then I heard my patient respond in a resolute

voice: “You must have hope. We are all in the same

boat here, together.”

As I listened I could feel tears welling in my eyes,

but I kept myself hidden, afraid to let the group see

their doctor weeping. From my hiding place I

cont’d from p. 4

From a Place of Fire and Weeping

cont’d on p. 15


Vilna – Jerushalaim de Lite:A TributeBY LILY M. MARGULES

Today, I stand before you to pay tribute to a city

where I was born and spent my happy childhood—to

my beloved Vilna—“Jerushalaim de Lite.”

An old legend tells us about the mighty Lithuanian

knight Gediminus, who many centuries ago while

hunting with his entourage in the Black Forest, slayed

a big black boar. The boar, king of this forest, had

roamed among the tall trees, roaring over his dominion.

A very dangerous and ferocious animal, his meat

proved sweeter than honey and practically melted in

one’s mouth.

After a huge and loud celebration, our hero fell

asleep on the fresh smelling green grass when he

was suddenly awakened by a strong, demanding voice

that commanded him to celebrate his victory by

building a fort, a castle carved from stone, high on

this mountain overlooking the majestic slowly flowing

waters of the Wiliya River. And so it was done. And

it was the beginning.

Through the ages Poles, Lithuanians, and

Russians settled here. And then Jews, the eternal

wanderers, came as well, liked what they saw and

steadily started to build communities around the tall

castle carved from stone. And soon a city was born.

Life was not easy, especially for the Jews. Vilna,

because if its geographic location and many natural

resources, was a “tasty morsel” worth fighting for.

Invaders came and went, and with them new customs

and languages had to be learned. But somehow the

Vilner Jewish population continued to grow, building

synagogues and yeshivot that became centers of

Jewish education attracting students from all over.

And then one day Napoleon Bonaparte, the little

corporal from Corsica and future emperor of France,

during his triumphant march through Europe on his

gallop to conquer the Russian bear, passed through

Vilna. The streets of the city were

all lined up with very excited

inhabitants shouting, “Vive le

France, Vive le Grand General.”

Napoleon was in his glory. Sitting

high on his white stallion, dressed in

a splendid uniform surrounded by

adoring generals, Napoleon savored

every minute of it. Then he suddenly

entered a very different section of

this great city. He started to look

with amazement at the narrow

cobblestone covered streets

overflowing with shabbily dressed

young men with pallid faces

carrying heavy books and shouting

their greetings in a strange, guttural

language. He asked one of his

adjutants to find out who these strange people were.

After being informed that he was in the Jewish

quarter, he announced with a big smile and great pride:

“Mon Dieu, I just conquered the Jerusalem of

Lithuania without firing a single shot!!” Hence the

name “Jerushalaim de Lite,” came into being.

And so with the passing years the Jewish

population continued to grow and prosper. The city

became a vibrant center of Jewish culture. We had a

Jewish theater where actors performed in all the

classic plays including Shakespeare. There were

libraries, daily and monthly newspapers, schools and

philanthropic institutions. The music school on

Rudnicka Street performed the opera Aida by Verdi

in Yiddish, etc., etc.

In the year 1939, from the 250,000 natives 80,000

were my brothers and sisters—Jews—basking in the

bright sun shining over Jerushalaim de Lite.

But then the bubble burst with the outbreak of

the Second World War. With the occupation of the

Nazi war machine, we, the Vilner Jews lost the right

to exist. We became persona non grata, hunted

animals destined for complete extermination.

On a grim, autumn day—September 23, 1943—

the date of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, with

tears in our eyes and great sorrow in our hearts we

marched in columns, men separated from women,

through the ghetto gate leaving our beloved city behind.

Vilna was now judenrein. This is the last time I was

there, never having the emotional or physical strength

to return.

Today the ancient city is renamed Vilnius and is

the capital of Lithuania, one of the Baltic states.

Vilna—guarded jealously by the tall silent castle built

a long, long time ago by Gediminus overlooking the

majestic slowly flowing waters of the Wiliya River,

once full of a vibrant Jewish life—lives now only in

the souls and hearts of Vilner like me.

Vilne Vilne undzer heim shtot

Unzer beinkszaft un bager

Ah—wie oft es ruft dein nomen

Fun mein oig arois a trer

Vilner geslach, Vilner taichun

Vilner velder barg un tol

Epes noiet, epes beink sich

Noch di zeiten fun amol.

Lily Margules is the author of Memories, Memories: From

Vilna to New York With a Few Stops Along the Way. This tribute

was made at the commemoration at the Hebrew Institute of

Riverdale, 9-23-93.

I enjoyed readingthe Dec. 2008issue of Together

but wanted togive you a headsup on the following.The issue contains

an article by a now-13-year-old young woman namedElyse Bodenheimer asking Jewish children andteenagers to send her Holocaust stories. I had comeacross her and her website some time ago, thoughtit was remarkable for such a young woman to becreating a website for Jewish Holocaust stories, andasked her if she’d like to put one of my stories onher website. She said she would and I sent it to her.When it was published, I noticed a number of errorsand sent them to her asking her to makecorrections.Instead of getting an answer from her, Igot an answer from her father saying she’s too busyto make the corrections, but he will. That was monthsago.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Dear Together newspaper staff,As I am the granchild of Holocaust survivors, I amdeeply moved that you continue to keep knowledgeof the Holocaust so that people understand thetremendous hardships that my grandparents wentthrough. I recently read your newspaper for the firsttime and tears came to my eyes. I am sure mygrandparents would be proud to have people cometogether to commemorate theirs and those like theirlives. So, I would like to say thank you on behalf ofmy family for remembering. Also, I would like toknow some organizations and/or anything to do withHolocaust survivors that I could possibly volunteerto help in Los Angeles.A Sincere Thank you, Dana

To the American Gathering,My name is Mary Wagner. I grew up on the eastside of Columbus, OH, where I was born 56 yearsago. I am a lifelong Catholic, and my pride in myheritage received an inestimable boost when PopeJohn Paul II called antisemitism what a Pope shouldhave forcefully called it long, long before: “a sinagainst God and man.”

I have known people with numbers tatooed ontheir arms my whole life. Our neighbor, Mr. Winter,never volunteered his stories of the camps unless Iasked, but I learned so much from him, and not justabout his ordeal—he was a great teacher of love.

I wanted to give you this context so that youwill, I hope, accept as sincere my own personaloutrage that Pope Benedict has permitted thisunreconstructed Shoah denier back into the Catholicchurch, which is in my estimate nearly carte blanchefor deniers of all stripe.

I know that the Pope’s plainly wrong action willdo nothing to heal the remaining distrust the Jewishcommunity as a whole, and especially the AmericanGathering, has of the institutional Catholic church—quite the opposite. But I hope you will at least knowthat Catholics in the pew do and will consider theVatican flat-out wrong on this matter.

My closely-held hope that John Paul’s heartfeltefforts to end anti-Semitism, and his example ofcalling himself, other Catholics, and the Catholicchurch to account for millenia of this sin, would createpositive momentum is obviously gone. And I couldnot be more disappointed.

I will not stop calling this matter out in my owncommunity and up the “chain of command” thatoversees this religion of 1.2 billion human beings. Weare all responsible for what we know, and I both knowthat this is wrong and how wrong it is. I promise to beyour voice whenever there is the trace of an opportunity.

witnessed a beloved patient begin to heal herself.These lessons from fire are not the only points of clinical knowledge that one needs to work with aging

victims of trauma, but they’re a good start. When facing the last generation of Holocaust survivors, I offer mypresence as a doctor and I feel strengthened by their words.

“Faith — I still have faith,” I hear a survivor say. “Doctor, hope for me!” another commands. These arethe primal gifts of life that we share.

Marc E. Agronin is a geriatric psychiatrist in Miami.

From a Place of Fire and Weeping cont’d from p. 14


cont’d on p. 17

GERTA BAGRIANSKY

From her daughter, Rosian

Zerner

Gerta Bagriansky died peacefully

in her sleep. She was over 100

years old. Born on 8/8/08 in

Germany she lived in Lithuania,

Denmark, France, Austria and Italy before settling into

her Newton, MA, USA home in 1951. During World

War II she was interned in the Kovno and Vilno Ghettoes,

escaping both and surviving in hiding. The music degree

she received in Paris served her well after WWII when she became the

Konzertmeister of the Lithuanian Opera and taught piano. She continued to teach

and to play four-handed on her two pianos with her friends in the USA. An avid

gardener, she was always surrounded by plants and flowers.

ADAM BOREN

Adam Boren died on March 1, 2009 after a brief illness. He was 79. Adam was

born Adam Borenzstein in Warsaw, Poland, to chemist and businessman Israel

Borenzstein and his wife Sarah Gold Borenzstein. After the Germans occupied

Warsaw in 1939, Adam, his father and brother Mietek left Warsaw for the part of

Poland occupied by the Soviets. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Israel,

Mietek and Adam were captured and imprisoned. On the evening of their execution

Adam escaped. His father, brother and 40 other

Jewish prisoners were executed by hanging. Adam

returned to his mother in the Warsaw Ghetto to find

that his sister had died of typhus. Adam then

participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. His

mother was killed when her building was bombed.

Adam was wounded, captured, and eventually

transported to the first of three concentration camps.

He survived Majdanek, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen

and a death march.

Adam immigrated to the United States and arrived in New York on December

20, 1946. He worked for several years in New York then decided to go west. He

moved to Denver in 1948 where he became a sales and service manager of

Telco Company, a television manufacturer. In 1956 he returned to New York and

formed Unico, a commercial refrigeration company supplying equipment to

supermarkets. In 1961 he formed the Adam Equipment Company, later called

Adamatic Corp., to manufacture and supply the wholesale bakery trade with

high-speed roll and bread production lines and ovens. In 1989 the Hobart Company

acquired Adamatic. Adam was retained as a COO of the Hobart division until he

retired in 1994 to be treated for pancreatic cancer.

After moving to Asbury Park, NJ, Adam met Claire Goldbarten on a blind

date in New York in May of 1961. They married December 10, 1961, and several

years later moved to Ocean Township, where they raised their daughter Sari and

son Jonathan. In 1990, Adam and Claire moved to Rumson.

Throughout their marriage, Adam and Claire were very involved in the Jewish

community and in their support of Israel. Adam was an active officer in the

International Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization, the David S. Wyman

Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the Monmouth County Jewish Federation and

Jewish Community Center. Adam spoke frequently about his Holocaust experience

at schools, universities, Fort Monmouth, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and other organizations.

In 1996, to celebrate Adam’s miraculous recovery from cancer, Adam and

Claire’s friends established the Boren Holocaust Education Fund at the Jewish

Federation of Monmouth County.

After retirement Adam studied photography at the International Center of

Photography in New York and began taking a memoir writing class at New York

University. In 2000, the Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project and the U.S.

Holocaust Memorial Museum put out a call for manuscripts of Holocaust memoirs

to publish. From the over 1,000 manuscripts received, Adam’s memoir, Journey

Through the Inferno, was the first to be published in 2004.

RABBI IZYK MENDEL BORNSTEIN

by Yossi Bornstein

Rabbi Izyk Mendel Bornstein (Menachem) passed away on December 11, 2008 at

the age of 84. Izyk Mendel was a courageous Holocaust survivor of six Nazi

camps: Plaszov I, Plaszov II, Pionki, Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Gunskurchen.

He was the sole survivor of his family.

After the liberation he moved to Israel where he served in the army, actively

participating in the the Six-Day and Yom Kippur Wars.

After moving to the US in the ’80s, he became a very important

person in the community of Harrisburg, PA. In 2004, supported

and accompanied by his wife and four children, he decided to go

back to Poland. After reaching his hometown of Szczekociny, he

discovered to his dismay that all the remains of the Jewish religious

sites had been devastated and the memory of the town’s almost

3,000 Jews was completely lost. The two cemeteries had most of

the bones removed and a private house, a factory and public toilets were built on

top of them.

He then started a battle, together with his family, to have the toilets removed

and a monument built to commemorate all Jewish families from the town.

In June 2008, Izyk Mendel came back again to Szczekociny, this time to

participate in the first Festival of Jewish Culture. He said kaddish for the

Szczekociny Jews, his family included. He lit candles in their memory on the

remains of the old cemetery and spoke of times before the war.

My father used to believe that one man can make a difference. His spirit

remains as encouragement for us all and he himself was a model of bravery and

eagerness to change the world. His life story will be published as a book, B94—

The Spirit of the Survivor.

FELICA MUNN GALAS BRENNER

Felicia Brenner, 82, passed away on May 23rd, 2008. Mrs. Brenner survived the

ravages of the Lodz Ghetto, the death camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen

and the Salzwadel work camp. Her entire family—her parents and six brothers

and sisters—perished in death camps. Liberated in 1945, Felicia met her first

husband, Tibor Munk, at an American hospital in Frankfurt where they were both

recovering from typhus. Felicia and Tibor found his mother Roza, who also survived

Auschwitz , and the three of them immigrated to the U.S. in July 1946. Felicia

and her husband moved to Skokie in 1955 where they raised their two daughters

and where Felicia developed her reputation on the North Shore for her beautiful

handmade draperies and bedspreads. Felicia remarried in 1985. She and her

husband, Gershon Brenner, became founding members of the Illinois Holocaust

Museum and Education Center. A gifted speaker, she was invited numerous times

to speak to children and university students about her war experience. In 2005,

Felicia was named Mayor Daley’s Speaker of the Year at Chicago’s annual

Holocaust Memorial event. Everyone who knew Felicia was touched by her

struggles to overcome the incredible challenges of her life and admired her

indomitable will to survive.

GABRIEL BROSS

Gabriel Bross of Delray Beach, FL, passed away December 24, 2008. He was

90 years old. Mr. Bross was born in Dombrowice, Poland, the son of Rueben and

Chava Brzustowski. He survived the Holocaust and many infamous concentration

camps, arriving in the U.S. in 1946. Mr. Bross lived in New Jersey before retiring

to Florida. He worked in liquor distributing and owned a butcher shop and health

food store. He was married twice. Mr. Bross loved Judaism and studied to be a

cantor before the Holocaust.

MICHAEL ETKIN

Michael Etkin was born in Glubokie, Belarus, on Decem-

ber 25, 1932 together with a twin brother, Chaim Shabtai.

With the Nazi invasion of 1941, the family was moved from

their town of Krulevshchizna to the Glubokie Ghetto. His

mother Chava, a nurse, soon left the family and joined a

local partisan group that fought the Nazis in the forests of

Belarus. In 1943, when the Nazis began exterminating the

residents of the ghetto, Michael ran away, though he was shot in the foot in the

process. He was eventually found and brought to the partisans but it would only

be years later that he discovered his mother had been captured and hanged by the

Nazis. In 1946, along with 2,000 other orphans, he arrived in Israel, first to the Atlit

transfer camp and then to the Magdiel agricultural school. After his army service,

Michael studied physical education at the Wingate Institute and went on to a

career in sports and physical education. In 1956 he married Rivka Levy and had

five sons. He died on February 9, 2009.

ANN GILBERT (Chana Zylberstajn)

The Gazette (Cedar Rapids-Iowa City, IA)Ann was born on July 20, 1924, in Szydlowiec, Poland, to Josek and Laja

Zylberstajn. She spent over four years in concentration camps and was liberated

in April 1945. She married Fred Gilbert (Felek Gebotszrajber) on January 2, 1946,


cont’d from p. 16

in Scwabisch Hall, Germany. Ann was a

consummate homemaker, an

accomplished seamstress, and devoted to

her family. She and Fred lived in Cedar

Rapids from 1949 to 1986, where she was

an active member of Temple Judah and

in the community. She was a lifetime member of Hadassah.

From 1986 to 2003, Ann and Fred lived in Los Angeles,

where she was a much sought after seamstress to film and

motion picture stars. Ann and Fred were also very active in

the survivor community. They were regular speakers at the Simon Wiesenthal

Center-Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. She and Fred lectured frequently

about their experiences. In 2003, she and Fred returned to Cedar Rapids. She

passed away on December 13, 2008.

PINKAS GRUSSGOTT

BY SAM GRUSSGOTT

Pinkas Grussgott passed away peacefully at the grand age of 93 on September

6th, 2008. My father, Pinchas Elemelech, was born on November 23, 1914 in

Pericin, Czechoslovakia. My father was the only survivor of his immediate family.

He survived Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dernau, Flossenburg and Schotterwork

and returned to Zetec to see who was left of his family. He later married my

mother, Margaret Stern. Before immigrating to America, they had my two brothers

Jack and Leslie. They left for the U.S. on the Queen Mary and nine months

later I was born. I remember on many occasions, my father asking me why he

had survived the Holocaust. My response to him was that he had survived to

have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

OLGA WEISZ GUTTMAN

Olga Weisz Guttman was born in Satoralyauhely, Hungary.

She was deported with her family from Hungary in 1944 to

Auschwitz, from there to Geislingen Steige, Germany, and

then to Allah, a subsidiary of Dachau. She was liberated on

April 30, 1945 in a cattle car by American Soldiers near

Iffeldorf, Bavaria.

She was truly a Woman of Valor and honored by many

Jewish organizations, including AMIT Women. She was very

involved in the Miami Holocaust Resource Center, and

lectured to many schools and organizations on her wartime experience. She

truly believed we must keep the memory alive, to that extent, that she even went

on the March of the Living with a large group of students from Miami in 1996.

IRENE LIEBLICH

BY JEANETTE FRIEDMAN

It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of South Florida resident Irene

Lieblich on December 28, 2008. Mrs. Lieblich survived the Holocaust and created

evocative paintings that recorded shtetl life. She grew up in the Polish town of

Zamosc, and after the war settled in the U.S. as a wife to

Jakob and mother of Nathan and Mahli. Her childhood

memories expressed themselves through poetry and

painting. Her poems were published in Yiddish-language

newspapers, including The Forward, in the 1960s and ’70s.

But once she began painting in 1971, she found her

preferred medium. She studied at the Brooklyn Museum

and a year later won first prize at the Farband Arts Festival

in New York City. When Nobel-Prize winning author Isaac

Bashevis Singer saw Lieblich’s work at an Artists’ Equity

exhibition in Manhattan, in 1973, he asked Lieblich to illustrate his children’s

books. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, his publishers, engaged the then-unknown artist to

illustrate A Tale of Three Wishes, published in 1976. A second book, The Power

of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah, was published in 1980. The Women’s

Zionist Organization of America used her painting, Jerusalem of Gold, as the

design for its greeting cards. In 1995, an exhibition of her work was presented at

the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants

at the Fountainbleau Hilton in 1995.

MASHA RAPOPORT

BY KEN RAPOPORT, NORTHBROOK, IL (abridged)

Masha Rapoport was born in Bedzin, Poland, on March 23, 1923, as Masza

Piotrkowska, the youngest child in a family of seven children. Her love of music

started early in life, and she learned to play the mandolin as a

child. After the death of her father, her mother ran the family

business, which was manufacturing and selling shoes. They

had a factory and store on the main street in Bedzin. With the

death of her mother just before the war, Masha went to live

with her eldest sister. The Nazis invaded her town on September

5, 1939, and the Jews were forced into the Kamionka Ghetto.

In August 1943 she and her family were taken to nearby Auschwitz. Her sisters

and all of their families perished there, along with one of her brothers—only one

brother survived. My mother could have been destined for the same fate, but God

intervened, in the form of the brilliant band leader of the Jewish Women’s Orchestra

in Auschwitz named Alma Rose. She was pulled out of a “selection” line when

they asked for volunteers who could play an instrument. Thus Masha went into

the women’s orchestra and played for the Nazis, who were eager for some soft

classical music after a hard day’s labor of torturing and murdering. Later she was

transported by cattle car to Bergen-Belsen. Liberated by British troops on April

15, 1945, she was given shelter in the DP camp there. Soon she met and married

Morris Rappaort. They immigrated to U.S., arriving in Chicago in 1950. Morris

would become successful in the construction trade while Masha devoted herself

to family. In 1960 they moved to the survivor community of Lincolnwood. Morris

passed away in 1998, a tragedy Masha would never overcome. Her heart finally

failed her in January 2009.

DORA FUCHS SAWICKI

Dora Fuchs Sawicki, 93, was born in a small town in Poland in 1916 and passed

away February 08, 2009. She was predeceased by her husband of 44 years, Moric

Sawicki, in 1990. Dora was a valiant and strong woman who managed to save

herself and two sisters from the Nazi genocide. She kept them all together during

internment in two ghettos, one of which was Lodz; the Ravensbruck Concentration

Camp, and finally liberated by the Russian army from the Wittenberg labor camp in

1945. Dora also saved a woman who was alone in the Lodz Ghetto by bringing her

into their family group and helping her survive to liberation. She and her late husband

Moric became U.S.citizens and managed to rebuild their lives in Rochester, NY. They

moved to Harrisburg, PA in 1989.

POLA HOROWICZ SIGIEL

By Sylvia Safer

The small number of remaining Holocaust survivors has been diminished by the

death of Pola Horowicz Sigiel of Suffern, New York, on March 11, 2009.

Pola Horowicz was born on April 12, 1923 in Czestochowa, Poland. She was

the only child of Aaron and Lea. In 1942, her parents were deported to Treblinka

and Pola survived as a slave laborer in the Hasag Pelcery. She was liberated in

Czestochowa.in January 15, 1945 by the Russians.

After liberation, in September 1945, Pola married David Sigiel in Czestochowa.

They then settled for a time in Bad Worishofen, Germany, where, in 1948, Pola

gave birth to her daughter Lea, who was named after her own mother. Five months

later, the Sigiels arrived in America and settled in the Bronx. David worked in the

garment center and Pola worked as a cosmetician, and became president of Lea’s

PTA. They enjoyed their family and friends and were known as positive, upbeat

people.Pola never stopped loving her hometown and, despite the tragic memories,

bravely took the opportunity to visit in October of 2006 during a reunion of the

World Society of Czestochowa Jews and their Descendants.

At that reunion, and in the years since, Pola was a surrogate mother to many

members of the second generation. With her enthusiasm, positive attitude,

intelligence, sense of humor, interest and above all, her exceptional memory for

people and places, Pola was a valued source of information and insight. She provided

a bridge to the past for the sons and daughters of survivors, and brought them

together. Lea called her the “Encyclopedia of Czestochowa” and she was indeed

that, and much more. She enjoyed speaking with fellow survivors and the second

generation about her beloved hometown, despite the painful war experiences.

This was submitted by Pola to the czestochowajews.org website in the “Lives

and Legends” section:

Everything on earth passes slowly

Memory of good fortune and of what brings pain

All that passes thus, seeks a purpose

One thing remains—memory.

In sweet memory of my friends, citizens of Czestochowa

who perished at the hands of the Hitlerites (1942):

Stefka Landau, Maryla Preger, Renia and Maryla Hoffman, Paulina Zeryker,

Marysia Lewkowicz, Gutka Baum, Janek Stawski, and for my best friend, Jerzy

cont’d on p. 18


Rozenblat, who died the death of a hero fighting the

Nazis, a member of the “ZOB” organization (Jewish

Fighting Organization.)Sylvia Safer is a member of the CzestochowaLandsmanshaft and board member of the North AmericanCouncil for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

LANI SILVER

Lani Silver, the founder the Bay Area Holocaust Oral

History Project that gathered 1,700 interviews of

Holocaust survivors and inspired Steven Spielberg to

create his similar Shoah Foundation, recently died of

brain cancer at her sister’s San Francisco home. She

was 60.

Silver, then a professor of political science and

women’s studies at San Francisco State University,

began recording survivors’ memories in 1981 after

attending the first World Gathering of Holocaust

Survivors in Jerusalem. Silver grew her one-woman

mission into a large team of interviewers, transcribers,

photographers and others, and she served as the

project’s executive director until 1997. She worked

as a consultant to Spielberg when he founded his

better-known Holocaust oral

history project, the Shoah

Foundation, in 1994 and

trained 500 interviewers for

Spielberg, whose foundation

has since collected tens of

thousands of interviews.

In the course of her

work, Silver researched and

promoted the story of Chiune

Sugihara, the consul general

from Japan who saved thousands of Jews by hand-

writing visas allowing them to travel to Japan. She

helped revive and promote his story which led to a

memorial being built to him in Tokyo in 2002. Silver

helped organize hundreds of workshops, exhibits and

programs around the world about his work and co-

wrote an opera about the story.

In 2000, Silver became project director of the

James Byrd Jr. Racism Oral History Project, founded

by the family of Byrd, a father of three in Jasper,

Texas. In 1998 he was chained to a pickup truck by

three white supremacists and dragged to his death.

Silver coordinated 2,500 interviews about racism and

its impact on the lives of everyday Americans.

Born in Lynn, MA, to an attorney father and

homemaker mother, Silver was just 2 months old when

her family moved to San Francisco. After graduating

from Lowell High School, Silver traveled with friends to

South Africa when she was 19. Visiting Soweto changed

her life. “From that moment, she was an activist,” her

sister said.”

Silver earned a bachelor’s degree in political

science from the University of San Francisco in 1970

and an M.A. in government from San Francisco State

University in 1972. She obtained a second master’s

degree in political science from the University of

Chicago in 2005.

FLORA (MENDELOWICZ) SINGER

BY LAUREN WISEMAN

Flora (Mendelowicz) Singer, 78, who helped create a

curriculum for training Montgomery County, Maryland

public school teachers on the Holocaust and wrote a

memoir about her childhood in Nazi-occupied

Belgium, died Feb. 25 at her home in Potomac of

complications from a stroke.

In 1985, Mrs. Singer and two other Montgomery

County educators devised a course on how to teach

sensitive material about the Holocaust. The course is

still used today in county schools. She also spoke to

teachers and students about her experiences during

the Holocaust and how she survived.

In 2007, Yad Vashem and the Holocaust

Survivors’ Memoirs Project published her memoir,

Flora: I was but a Child, which recounts her

experiences as a Jewish girl hiding in Belgium during

the Holocaust.

Flora Mendelowitz was born in Antwerp,

Belgium. She was 11 when her family was forced

into hiding in 1942. She spent the next two years hiding

in convents with her two younger sisters until Belgium

was liberated. In 1946, she moved to New York with

her sisters and mother and

was reunited with her

father, who had left

Belgium in 1938. She

worked as a stenographer

during the late 1940s and

later as a dressmaker at her

home in Westbury, NY.

In the late 1960s, she

moved to the Washington area and helped her husband

and brother-in-law open Bagel Master, one of the

first bagel bakeries in the region. Later, she received

a B.A. in French and a M.A. in French literature,

both from the University of Maryland.

From the late 1970s until her retirement in 1993,

she taught foreign language classes at Cabin John

Middle School and Albert Einstein and Walt Whitman

high schools. She volunteered with the Jewish

Community Center of Greater Washington and the

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She served as

co-president of the Jewish Holocaust Survivors and

Friends of Greater Washington for the past eight

years. In 2007, the Potomac Chamber of Commerce

named her Potomac citizen of the year.

As Michael Berenbaum says of her, “The

beginning of Flora’s life was so difficult; the end of

Flora’s life was so hard, but the substance of her life

was of such inestimable value that we all felt graced

by her presence.”

DINA VIERNY

Dina Vierny was an art dealer, collector and museum

director and former artists’ model. Vierny was born

into a Jewish family (Aibinder) in Kishinev, Bessarabia

(now Chisinau, Moldova). At 15 years of age, she

became a model and muse to the 73-year-old sculptor

Aristide Maillol. Both Henri Matisse and Pierre

Bonnard, artists to whom Maillol sent Vierny, attribute

to the model a renewed

inspiration for painting and

sculpture.

Vierny, who had joinedthe Resistance early on during

World War II, led refugeesfrom Nazism across thePyrenees into Spain as part of

Varian Fry’s organizationoperating out of Marseille.

After several months of working for the Comité Fry,

Vierny was arrested by the French police. A lawyerretained by Maillol managed to get her acquitted. In1943, Vierny was again arrested, this time by the

Gestapo, in Paris. She was released after six monthsin prison when Maillol appealed to Arno Breker,Hitler’s favorite sculptor.

Vierny began as an artists’ model in her mid-

teens and evolved from being a simple muse to taking

a serious interest in the business of curating the art

of those for whom she worked. She regarded Maillol

as her finest benefactor and mentor.

After Maillol’s death, in a car crash, Vierny collected

his work and dozens of his contemporaries, including

Matisse and Bonnard, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily

Kandinsky, Ilya Kabakov and Vladimir Yankilevsky.

These works are now displayed at the Musée Maillol

in Paris. She died in Paris at the age of 89.

RUBIN WAGNER

Born Ruvke Wajner (pro-nounced Viner) in Vilna,

Lithuania, the older son of Aron and Sore Chana,

both of whom perished in the Holocaust, and brother

of Mendel who disappeared into the Ponary forest. On

February 20, 1940 at the age of 20, Ruby eloped with

the love of his life, Sima Benosher. In June 1941, Soviet

Russia annexed Lithuania and closed Jewish institutions.

Sima, Ruby and baby daughter, Sheynelle, lived together

with his parents until the Germans entered Vilna. He

survived the war in concentration camps often working

as a barber, a skill he had learned in his mother’s thriving

beauty salon. Ruby was liberated in 1945 unaware that

his daughter had perished or that his wife survived. Sima

and Ruby were reunited to begin life again, lived in

Heidenheim, Germany among many friends, had their

first son, Aron (Harry), and in May 1949 set sail for

America.

Beginning in a railroad flat apartment at 1958

Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, Ruby did what he

had to do to support his family. He became a barber

in a shop in the basement of the famous Hearst

Building near Columbus Circle. A few years later he

had the opportunity to go into partnership to build one

single-family house in what was then the farmland of

Huntington, New

York. Founding

Ripley Associates

and Forest Green,

Ruby and his longtime

business partner,

Victor Cynamon, built

many homes, and

developed much property, at one time becoming a

large landowner in Huntington.

Moving to Roslyn, New York, then Aventura,

Florida, Ruby was always active in his community

whether planning cantorial concerts, doing what was

needed at his synagogues, or participating in Holocaust

remembrance.

Throughout his life Ruby was a proud Vilner, to

him a very special identity. Ruby was one of the

publishers of Vilna in Pictures, a highly regarded

pictorial history by Lazar Ran.

From his youth an aficionado of soccer, Ruby

came to love the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York

Mets. He loved his weekly poker games, vacations

in the Catskills; he loved happy occasions, Chivas,

and any food that starts with the letter “a” (as in a

shtikkele cake, a drink, etc.). Finally, Ruby deeply

loved the country that gave him and his extended

family the opportunity to rebuild their lives and flourish

from the horrors that they had survived.

MISHA WAJSMAN (FROM THE GAZETTE)

Misha Wajsman, who died at age 91, was born to a

prominent family in the city of Lutsk, then part of Poland,

now in western Ukraine.His father, Pinchas, was a

major sugar beet producer and sent Misha to college

in Warsaw. He was studying pre-law there when the

Germans invaded Poland in September 1939.

After a lull in the fighting, Wajsman returned to

Warsaw to resume his studies, but when the Germans

cont’d on p. 19

cont’d from p. 17


pushed east to invade the Soviet zone of influence he

fled and ended up in the Soviet Union. He never saw

his father or only sister again, both of whom perished.

He joined the Red Army as a junior officer in its

transportation section and served until war’s end.

He and his wife, Dora Alperin, who lived in the

neighboring Polish town of Rovno emigrated to

Canada from France in 1959. She died in 1995.

Misha spent most of his working life as a sales

manager in the wholesale meat business.

Wajsman and survivors from the same area

established the Montreal branch of the Federation of

Wolynian Jews. At its height, this self-help

organization had a membership of 600 Montreal

families. With survivors in New York and Los Angeles,

they created a museum in the town of Givatayim,

east of Tel Aviv, called Hechal Wolyn, a two-story

museum dedicated to the memory of Jewish life in

the towns and villages they had abandoned.

In the early 1960s, he saw two women crying at

the Jewish cemetery on de la Savane Rd., his son

said. They were bemoaning the lack of a monument

with names of relatives and their towns, so they could

recite prayers for the dead. He was instrumental in

getting the monument built, as well as a memorial

outside Lutsk where about 17,500 people were

murdered by German soldiers.

He was also active in the campaign in the 1970s

to allow the emigration of Soviet Jews and other pro-

Israel campaigns.

DAVID WEISS

BY BARRY PADDOCK, ERICA PEARSON AND SIMONE

WEICHSELBAUM, DAILY NEWS

A Brooklyn man who survived both world wars,

the Auschwitz gas chambers and the deaths of four

wives perished at age 100 when he was trapped in a

fire in his Williamsburg home.

David Weiss had seen the worst of the world but

remained deeply faithful. He went to synagogue every

day, including the morning he died, when relatives

said he returned home for a forgotten prayer shawl

and was caught in the flames.

Born in Romania, Weiss was in his early 30s when

he was sent to the Polish concentration camp where

his pregnant first wife, Rivkah, and three children

were killed. After the war, Weiss moved to Israel

and became a truck driver. He and his second wife,

Chaya, had two girls and four boys. She died of cancer

years ago, and the widower moved to Brooklyn,

where he earned a living in a knitting factory despite

his difficulty learning English. He married twice more,

only to survive both wives.

MIRIAM (MITZI) WILNER

Miriam (Mitzi) Wilner of San Francisco passed away

on January 7, 2009, at age 91. A Holocaust survivor

from Lvov, Poland, she immigrated to the United

States with her husband in 1947 and lived in New

York and subsequently in San Diego and San

Francisco. Mitzi was dedicated to educating hundreds

of school children about tolerance and the perils of

prejudice. She was a volunteer speaker for the

Holocaust Center of Northern California. Mitzi also

volunteered at the California Pacific Medical Center

and was a devoted member of Congregation Beth

Sholom in San Francisco.

VICTOR ZARNOWITZ

Victor Zarnowitz, one of the world’s leading

authorities on business cycles, business indicators, and

forecast evaluation, died on Feb. 21, 2009, in New

York City. He was 89.

Dr. Zarnowitz was Senior Fellow and Economic

Counselor to The Conference Board in New York,

where he worked since 1999. He was also Professor

Emeritus of Economics and Finance, Graduate School

of Business, The University of Chicago, and Research

Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research.

From the 1950s on he helped develop tools to

measure and analyze business cycles around the

world. Journalists and peers sought Dr. Zarnowitz’s

expertise on global economic developments over the

course of six decades. In

October 2008, he was

recognized with the Isaac

Kerstenetzky Life

Achievement award from the

Fundação Getúlio Vargas in

Brazil.

Dr. Zarnowitz was born on

Nov. 3, 1919, in the small town

of Lancut in southeastern

Poland. He fled his hometown of Oswiecim just ahead

of the Nazi invasion in September 1939, was

imprisoned in a Soviet labor camp, and immigrated to

Germany after the war to earn his Ph.D. summa cum

laude at the University of Heidelberg. The Zarnowitz

family came to the United States in 1952, settled

initially in New York and moved to Chicago in 1959.

Dr. Zarnowitz was the recipient of many awards

and honors and was the author of Business Cycles:

Theory, History, Indicators and Forecasting. He

recently published his memoirs, Fleeing the Nazis,

Surviving the Gulag, and Arriving in the Free

World.

“Deadly

Medicine:

Creating

the Master

Race”

Exhibition

at the Jewish

Museum Berlin

March 13 to July

19, 2009

The exhibition

“Deadly Medicine” was

first shown at the United

States Holocaust Memorial

Museum in Washington.

This overview exhibition has been extended for

the Berlin exhibition to include regional examples from

Berlin and Brandenburg.

The life story of a “euthanasia” victim is

presented in detail for the first time in an exhibition

through documents, letters, and photos.

An exhibition by the United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., in cooperation

with the Jewish Museum Berlin, Lindenstr. 9-14,

10969 Berlin.

For further information on the exhibition, please

visit the Museum’s website.

“Hidden Children of the Holocaust-Artists

& Authors” will be featured at the Gallery of the

Fair Lawn Public Library, 10-01 Fair Lawn Avenue

in Fair Lawn, NJ, from April 5 through May 31. The

exhibit will open with a reception on Sunday April 5

from 2-4:30 pm. Library hours are Mon-Thurs. 10-9,

Fri. 10-5, Sat., 9-5, Sun., 1-5. Free admission.

The Board of Friends of the Shalom

Foundation of Warsaw to Host

Jewish Life & Culture of Poland

Musical Soiree; Launch of Friends of

Shalom Foundation in U.S.

On April 26, 2009, the Friends of the Shalom

Foundation of Warsaw will present Jewish Life &

Culture of Poland Musical Soiree, a special event

celebrating the vitality and cultural vibrance of the

Polish Jewish heritage. Hosted by Board members

Chairman Sigmund Rolat, President Lydia Sarfati, Lea

Wolinetz,, Rivka Ostaszewski, and Paul Dykstra, the

event marks the launch of the Friends of the Shalom

Foundation in the U.S, a patronage of the organization

of the same in Poland. Featuring Golda Tencer,

Originator and General Director of the Shalom

Foundation Poland, Cantor Joseph Malovany of the

Fifth Avenue Synagogue and the Ariyon Ensemble

of Chicago, the event will serve as a celebration of

the culture and arts that are still flourishing in Poland.

The Foundation is hoping to encourage membership

and support. The thrust of the organization is to not

only concentrate on the tremendous tragedies that

have occurred but to place a focus on life.

When: Sunday, April 26, 2009

Where: Consulate General of the Republic of

Poland in New York, 233 Madison Ave, NYC

Time: 5PM- 7:30PM

RSVP: [email protected] or

call 201-549-4200 x248

Holocaust Documentation and

Education Center, Inc.

presents

Meet the AuthorChildren Who Survived the Final Solution by

Twenty–Six Child Survivors–Ed. by Peter Tarjan

Holocaust Documentation and Education Center,

Inc. 2031 Harrison Street • Hollywood, FL 33020 •

(954) 929-5690 • www.hdec.org

When: Sunday, April 19, 2009 at 2:30 p.m.

Where: Holocaust Documentation and Education

Center, 2031 Harrison Street, Hollywood, FL 33020

Cost: Free

RSVP: Seating is limited, so please RSVP to Regina

Burgess, Librarian, at (954) 929-5690 Ext. 209 or

email [email protected].

This anthology is the work of the twenty-six

authors of the individual stories, all survivors of the

Nazi Holocaust. The authors are Johanna Franklin

Saper (nee Hirschbein); Rita Bymel; Ruth B.

Schwartz; Gunther Karger; Nellie Lee; Anna Blitz;

Ruth Glasberg Gold; Tova Goldszer; Magda Bader;

George Klein; Jack Baigelman (Beigelman); Rose

Kaplovitz (Zaks); Bernard Mayer; David B. Zugman

(formerly Dow, Dov, Dave Zugman); Judy Berkowitz;

Arnold Geier; Faye Lazega Stern; Frances Cutler;

Louise Oberlender; Suzanne Ringel; Dena Axelrod;

Elizabeth Zielinski de Mundlak; Bianca Lerner;

Eugenia Schulz Rosen; Yosi Lazzar; and Peter Tarjan.

The book may be purchased online at sites such

as Amazon.com. It will also be available for purchase

after the presentation, when the authors present will

personally inscribe your copy on request.

cont’d from p. 18


Israel’s Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, as Righteous

Among the Nations. Chiune Sugihara died in 1986.

In her memoirs and lectures, Mrs. Sugihara would

continue to remind that it was she who

urged her husband to keep signing. That

when her husband’s hand got tired and

he could not go on, she massaged his

arm so he could continue. In “Visas for

Life,” Mrs. Sugihara writes: “My

husband and I are Christians of the

Greek Church, so we desired earnestly

to help the Jews … My husband and I

talked about the visas before he issued

them. We understood that both the

Japanese and German governments

disagreed with our ideas, but we went

ahead anyhow…The Jews who passed

through Kaunas…shouted when we

were leaving Kaunas station. ‘We will

never forget you. We will never see you again.’ I’ve

heard that, as a people, the Jews never forget a

promise.” Mrs. Sugihara was the inspiration for “Visas

for Life: The Righteous and Honorable Diplomats

Project,” which was founded by and has been curated

since by Eric Saul. The “Visas for Life” project, which

has traveled all over the world, was a part of that

special 1994 trip to Japan. In his note to me about her

death, Eric Saul wrote: Mrs. Sugihara was an

inspiration to me and all those whom she met. She

spent the last 20 years of her life telling the story of

the Sugihara life-saving visas. We had the honor to

know her and to have her inspire us, and we will

continue her work.”

Mrs. Sugihara’s funeral took place at Fujisawa,

Japan. Her ashes [were] buried on November 8 at

Kamakura where (her husband) Chiune (and sons)

Hiroki and Haruki are buried. A son and grandson of

hers in the past have lived in Israel, spoke fluent

Hebrew and were in the diamond business.

In Memory of

Yukiko SugiharaBy Masha Leon, The Forward

http://www.forward.com/articles/14441

Were it not for Yukiko Sugihara, who died on

October 8 at age 94, I might not be writing this column,

nor would there be some 55,000 descendants of the

Jews her husband helped save from the Holocaust.

I first met Mrs. Sugihara in May 1989, when she

and her son Hiroki came to New York to accept the

Anti Defamation League of B’nai B’rith’s post-

humous “Courage to Care Award,” presented to her

husband. Across the table at the Summit Hotel, Mrs.

Sugihara responded to my questions in whispered

Japanese, which Hiro translated. Unexpectedly, I

began to weep. I explained that, like others, my mother

and I had been helped by agencies such as the Jewish

Labor Committee, American Joint Distribution

Committee, the Red Cross, yet here I was with an

individual—someone who changed history, who

could have told her husband not to put his family and

career in peril by issuing “illegal” visas to Jews at a

time when Japan was an ally of Nazi Germany. In

her book, “Visas for Life,” Mrs. Sugihara describes

the crowds of Jews waiting outside the consulate for

visas. “My mother was one of those,” I told her. While

I slept in our hiding place in Vilnius, fearing arrest by

Stalin’s NKVD, my mother took the night train to

Kovno to wait outside for one of those life-saving

visas—#1882.

As we parted, I told Hiroki, “Tell your mother

she is very beautiful.”

He blanched and did not translate. It went against

the grain of Japanese form. As they accompanied

me to the elevator, I tried again: “I

know it’s un-Japanese, but I wish

I could give your mother a hug.”

Both looked uncomfortable. The

elevator came; I bowed, and said

sayonara, good-bye. In August

1994, I returned to Japan for the

first time since 1941. When my

daughter Karen and I arrived in

Tokyo to attend special ceremonies

at The Hill of Humanity, a memorial

ceremony for Chiune Sugihara, set

high in the mountains near his

hometown of Yoatsu, near Tokyo, I

finally got to hug and kiss her.

The ceremony turned into a

media blitz, with dozens of

cameramen and reporters from American, European

and Japanese networks and press. Beneath a blazing

sun, hundreds of spectators and representatives of

American, Israeli and Japanese governments sat on

tiered cement bleachers, and watched as the stoic,

frail, still beautiful 80-year-old Yukiko Sugihara was

presented with flowers, as a Japanese church choir

sang “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of

Gold). During our stop at Tokyo’s Jewish Community

Center, former American vice president Walter

Mondale said: “Schindler got into [rescuing] to make

money… and to his credit saw the horror of it and

ended up saving those on his famous list. Raoul

Wallenberg, who saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews,

knew that his career was not at risk if he returned to

Sweden. What is unique about Sugihara was that he

and his wife were risking their lives and career

future… When asked why he did it, [Sugihara] said,

‘I did what we as human beings should do.’” In 1985,

Chiune Sugihara was honored by Yad Vashem,

Photo by Karen Leon

CORRECTIONIn our last issue of Together we erroneously

attributed this article. The article was written by

Masha Leon and had originally appeared in The

Forward. It is reprinted here with the correct

attribution.

The End of DaysBY FELICIA FIGLARZ ANCHOR

We are now in times we have dreaded but knewwere inevitable—when the eyewitnesses to the Shoahcome to the end of their days. Each death is a loss ofhistorical magnitude and significance; of personal lifestories and insights. As we mourn, our determinationto sustain memory, legacy and educational impactchallenges us and calls on us to be even morededicated and creative.

As the Chair of the Tennessee HolocaustCommission, it has been my privilege to facilitatehundreds of classroom and community visits by ourlocal survivors and refugees. We are told, consistently,that these visits are the highlight of our attempts toteach the lessons of the Shoah. But as the survivorsage, traveling and retelling these personal stories takesits toll. For me, like other educators, the challenge is tosustain the personal interaction and connections thatmean so much to the speakers and their audiences.

The solution came to me at 5 a.m. one morning.We would photograph and chronicle all of ourremaining Tennessee eyewitnesses. I made myproposal to the other members of the Commission.That’s how the exhibit, “Living On: Profiles ofTennessee Survivors and Liberators” was born.

For two years we reached out to our cities andsmall towns searching for those with an interest andwho were qualified to take part in our project. Ourinitial concept was to include portraits of Tennesseesurvivors, U.S. liberators, hidden children andrefugees from the Holocaust. Rob Heller, a faculty

experience for students and those who want to knowmore. The web-site also provides equal access to allsince the exhibit is not permanent in any city.Other exciting developments were the invitationproffered by the honorable Victor Ashe, Ambassadorto Poland, to show the exhibit in Poland, where itopened at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, andis now en route to showings in Auschwitz, Krakowand Breslau. Last year, the University of TennesseePress turned the exhibit into a beautiful photographicbook available for sale.

With support from the Claims Conference, weprovided teacher in-service training and now folksin even the most remote areas of Tennessee canaccess the materials made available to theclassrooms in the big cities.

Audiences standing before these photographs aremesmerized. They talk to each other about lifecircumstances that bring the subjects and the viewerstogether. Commissioner Leonid Saharovici was upsetbecause we didn’t think of it sooner. “Why didn’tyou think of this 20 years ago—when we wereyounger and more robust? Now our only images areof older people.”

We are steadily losing the members of oursurvivor community and saddened to have to say goodbye. We can never replicate their essence. Still, atthe very least, we have captured their images, theirlife stories and their energy. Their memories andlegacies will live on. That is what they hoped for. It iswhat we intended to do for them, and for us.

member at the University of Tennessee, and DawnWeiss Smith, a journalist, traveled across the state,capturing in word and image the stories of 77eyewitnesses to the Shoah, transforming them into ahaunting and beautiful exhibit that expressed theessence of their subjects’ lives.

Rob Heller said, “If you look into a person’s eyeslong enough, you can see into that person’s soul.” The30 by 30 inch black and white portraits, accompaniedby their biographical sketches, do just that.

And as the project developed, we realized thatthere was a microcosm of Holocaust history living inTennessee. In these 77 accounts, we met Kinder-transportees, infants handed off to strangers as parentswere deported, and those left to fend for themselves.There were those who fled to Russia or were hidden,and those who suffered in concentration and deathcamps. The stories covered the geography of the planet,from Greece to France and every country in between.We were introduced to 19-year-old American farmboy soldiers who climbed a hill and discoveredconcentration camps and their haunted, skeletalinhabitants. We met survivors of Berga, where U.S.soldiers were interred and enslaved. And we cameface-to-face with determination and human resilience.The exhibit has traveled to every corner ofTennessee—from the Civil Rights Museum inMemphis to the Historical Society of East Tennesseeon the other side of the state. Will Pedigo recordedthe interviews and created an Emmy-winning film toaccompany the exhibit, often aired on our PBSstations. Our website, www.tennesseeholocaust

commission.org/livingon, provides an interactive


The Holocaust and War Victims Tracing

CenterThe Holocaust and War Victims Tracing

Center, http://www.redcross.org/services/intl/

holotrace/9-29-00.html, is a national

clearinghouse for persons seeking the fates

of loved ones missing since the Holocaust and its aftermath. We assist U.S.

residents searching for proof of internment, forced/slave labor, or evacuation

from former Soviet territories on themselves or family members. This

documentation may be required for reparations. All of our tracing services are

confidential and free of charge. We pioneered a process with the International

Tracing Service which results in expedited replies to searches. We use the

worldwide network of 181 Red Cross and Red Crescent societies and the Magen

David Adom in Israel. We also consult museums, archives, and international

organizations to further facilitate tracing requests. Cases remain open, and if new

information becomes available, it is immediately shared with the inquirer. Watch

the CNN story of a Ukraine reunion after a 66 year separation http://

www.redcross-cmd.org/chapter/tracingnewsdec2008.html.

For more information contact: Linda Klein, DirectorAmerican Red Cross/Holocaust

and War Victims Tracing Center, 4800 Mt. Hope Drive, Baltimore, MD

21215(410)624-2091/ (410)764-7664 (fax) [email protected]

(British) Association of Jewish RefugeesFrom Michael Newman, a Survivor in London, UK and director, (British)

Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR):

I am writing to ask for your help. As a recipient of your newsletter it occurred to

me that you might be able to help circulate information about a Holocaust archive

my organization has created. Refugee Voices is the Association of Jewish

Refugees’ Holocaust survivor audio-visual testimony archive. It contains 150 filmed

interviews with Holocaust survivors and refugees. Each film has been transcribed

and each transcript is time coded to enable a researcher or user to pinpoint the

precise part of the testimony they wish to access. The collection also contains

personal photographs belonging to each interviewee.The project is framed by a

database, a searchable catalogue containing 44 separate categories of information

ranging from personal details to places of residence/occupation, as well as

information on peoples’ post-war lives. Together with a summary sheet and key

words section, the catalogue helps a user identify precise aspects of the interviews

for research on specific episodes or chapters.We are now seeking partner

organizations to deliver Refugee Voices at, amongst other institutions, universities,

libraries and research centers. Michael Newman,Director [email protected]

020 8385 3074/www.ajr.org.uk

The Kresy-Siberia GroupFrom Stefan Wisniowski, a 2g in Sydney, Australia and president, The Kresy-

Siberia Group:

The Kresy-Siberia Group is the international special interest group of over 750

survivors of the Soviet persecutions and their 2nd and 3rd-generation descendants.

Its objectives are to research, remember and recognize the persecution of Polish

citizens of all ethnic and religious backgrounds by the Soviet Union during the

Second World War, as well as supporting property claimants with information and

assistance. One of its current projects is developing a state-of-the-art “virtual

museum” on the Internet to commemorate this little-known chapter of the Second

World War. The “Kresy-Siberia Group” brings into contact people from countries

around the world with a special interest in the tragedy of over one million Polish

citizens of various faiths and “ethnicities” (Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Catholic,

Orthodox, Jewish, etc.) either deported from eastern Poland (Kresy) in 1940-41

or otherwise arrested and sent to special Soviet labor camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan

and eastern Asia. Some 115,000 of them were evacuated through Iran in 1942 as

soldiers of Anders Army and their families and eventually made their way to the

West. The circumstances of their odyssey and the tragic history of the Polish

citizens under Soviet Russian occupation during the war were hushed up during

the war to protect the reputation of the Soviet Union, an important ally in the war

against Nazi Germany. Almost seventy years later the survivors have aged and

many have died. The group brings together surviving deportees and their

descendants to remember, learn, discover and spread the word of their ordeal to

the world and to future generations. Regards Stefan Wisniowski PRESIDENT,

KRESY-SIBERIA FOUNDATION3 Castle Circuit CloseSeaforth NSW 2092

AustraliaTelephone +61 411 864 873 stefan.wisniowski@kresy-

siberia.orgwww.kresy-siberia.org PREZES, FUNDACJA KRESY-SYBERIA ul.

Wisniowa 40B lokal nr 602-516 Warszawa, PolskaTelefon +48 22 5424090 fax

+48 22 5424089Kom. +61 411 864 873 Stefan.Wisniowski@Kresy-

Syberia.orgwww.Kresy-Syberia.org Virtual Museum web site: www.Kresy-

Siberia.org.

From Rachelle Goldstein, a Survivor and, vice president, Righteous Among the

Nations-Hidden Child Foundation/ADL in New York, New York:

Some survivors have not yet submitted requests to Yad Vashem to have their

rescuers honored as “Righteous Among the Nations.” Paying tribute to the people

who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust is one of the primary

tasks of Yad Vashem and of the Hidden Child Foundation. Together, we urge you

to honor your rescuers if you haven’t yet done so by filing an application with the

Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem. Guidelines explaining

where and how to apply can be found on Yad Vashem’s website: http://

www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/index.html. The website also contains

stories about the Righteous, information about the program and a selection of

resources.

Call for witnesses: We’ve also been asked by Irena Steinfeldt, Director, Righteous

Among the Nations Department, Yad Vashem, to help in a search for survivors

who were helped by Noël Barrot, a French rescuer. This request, initiated by the

rescuer’s son, Jacques Barrot, follows: Noël Barrot was responsible for the work

of the “petits bergers des Cévennes” (the little shepherds of Cévennes), a group

that was founded by Alex Brolles (recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous

Among the Nations”) in the Yssingeaux area in France. From 1940, Noël Barrot

and fellow members of the “petits bergers des Cévennes,” welcomed Jewish

children and hid them from the Nazis. One of the hidden children, Jojo Falaise,

who lives in the United States today, sent the Barrot family a photo of a tree

planted in a memorial in the U.S. in honor of Noël Barrot. After the family moved

from Yssingeaux, this witness and others have proven difficult to find. The Barrot

family is asking for anyone who may have known Mr. Noël Barrot or Jojo Falaise

to please contact Laurent Muschel, Tel: +32-498-980152 or email Jacques.

[email protected]. RachelleRachelle GoldsteinVice PresidentHidden Child

Foundation/ADL605 Third AvenueNew York, NY 10158-3560212-885-7900fax:

212-885-5869

French Ministry of Education

I am pleased to inform you that the French Ministry of Education, as a conclusion

to a 2007 presidential decision to enhance further Holocaust education in

elementary schools, has created a new portal and a pedagogical leaflet providing

teachers with new resources on how to teach about the Holocaust to young

pupils. The website provides access to various links, and also to the

recommendations of the Ministry and of the Waysbord Commission on teaching

the Holocaust to young children. www.shoah.education.fr The main part of this

website is composed of a database of the 11,000 children deported from France.

http:/ /www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jPx-mm1-

okShlPDAN6gOKmul7cKg.

Warsaw Traces a Tragic PastBy Vanessa Gera / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WARSAW, Poland - Polish officials have marked the border of the former Warsaw

Ghetto with plaques and boundary lines traced in the ground to preserve the

memory of the tragic World War II-era Jewish quarter. The markers were

inaugurated recently with speeches by the Warsaw mayor and other officials. A

group of Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish community then made

their way in the rain together to reflect on the past at some of the 21 memorial

plaques.http://www.northjersey.com/news/world/34860554.html.

Help me find a shipFrom William Gross, a Survivor, in Long Island, New York:

Can you help me find the ship that my family and I came over on from Feldafing,

Germany to Ellis Island in may 1951? My father’s name was Jacob Gross born in

Lodz 1910 My mother’s name was Naja Gross born in Czestochowa in 1916. My

sister’s name was Dora Gross born 1942 in Siberia. My brother’s name was

Yiddle Gross born in 1947 in Germany. My name was Wolf Gross born in 1945 in

Siberia.If you can help William, please respond to him directly at:

[email protected].

From David Riba, a 2g in Clearwater, FL:

Does anyone on AllGen have a recommendation on where I can find the lists of

those on the Death Marches from Buchenwald to Theresienstadt in April and

May, 1945? The Nazis did keep “roll call” lists of the prisoners, and they probably

wound up at Theresienstadt. Any suggestions as to where (or if) those lists still

exist?

From Ruth Fertig

I am seeking a Czech-accented narrator for a Holocaust documentary. If you fit

the requirements and are interested, please contact me at [email protected].


COMPILED AND EDITED

BY SERENA WOOLRICH,

PRESIDENT AND

FOUNDER,

ALLGENERATIONS, inc.

PLEASE SEND ALL RESPONSES TO [email protected].

].

cont’d on p. 23

My name is David Kahan. I was born in Gheorghani, Hungary. We were deported

to Auschwitz from the Szasregen Ghetto to Auschwitz in the beginning of June

1944. My father’s name was Moishe Chaim Kahan. My mother’s name was

Rosa Reisel-Toba Czick. She was born in Koshice, Czechoslovakia. My father

was born in Belbest. His father’s name was Hersh Lieb Kahan. I know that the

Kahan’s were a large family in the Sighet area. I’m looking for any Holocaust

survivors who are relatives of my mother or my father.

q

From Joanne Aloni-Boldon

Looking for Ignatz or Ignacy Shapira from Lviv, Poland born on 10/6/05. He

survived Buchenwald. He was married to Ludwicka Laufer (1/20/32 or 33); one

daughter named Dana. They were separated during the war. Dana was a hidden

child. She and her mother immigrated to the U.S. She would like to know what

happened to her father after the camps. Can you help?

q

From Carole Turkeltaub Borowitz

I am currently involved as a volunteer researcher for a web site for Kutno, Poland,

and if there are any members of your group from Kutno who would

agree to e-mail me, I would be overjoyed to hear from them. Also,

Wloclawek. Maybe, maybe, there’s someone out there who would

turn out to be my cousin...

q

From Stanislawa (Stasia) Janowska, a survivor in Cambridge, MA:

I was born Hadasa Chajmowicz November 24, 1930 in Warsaw,

Poland. My childhood ended with the beginning of the ghetto in

1940. In mid-August 1942 I was smuggled out to a Polish friend. I

became Stanislawa Janowska, thanks to a birth certificate of a

dead child by this name. At the end I survived in a “children’s

home” in the eastern part of Poland. None of my family survived.

In 1946 I was transferred to a children’s home in Lublin. I finished

high school; 1950-1955 Medical Academy in Lublin; 1958 Pediatric Board. All

this time I have been searching for my brother, Franek Chajmowicz in Geneva,

USSR, and Ukraine. He was the son of Elka Wajc and Wolf Chajmowicz, residing

in Warsaw, Poland at 46 Nowolipki Street. If alive Franek would be 86-87 years

old now. He studied Mechanical Engineering in Wilno from 1937-1939. At the

end of 1940, he was smuggled to the Soviet Union hoping to make it to the USA.

Instead he got stranded in Stolpce and later on in Kostopol, both in Ukraine. I’ve

searched for him numerous times, but to no avail. Maybe an old colleague or an

acquaintance of his is still alive and could tell me something about him.

q

From Sharon Szeracki Kalman, a 2g in St. Louis, MO:

I would like to find out if my father has any living relatives. My father’s name

was Abraham or Abram Sieradzki. He was born in Babiasky (Pabienice) around

1910. His father was Mendel and his mother was Fajga (Feiga) nee Jakowbowicz.

I know my father had several siblings, but he never mentioned them by name. He

was married to a Regina nee Warszawski and had two children. He was told that

his wife and two children died in the Holocaust. He met my mother, Sura Ruchla

Golla, in the Displaced Person camp in Bergen-Belsen. They married in 1948. In

1949 they moved to St. Louis where I was born in 1950.I would love to try and

piece together my father’s family.

q

From Jay Kuperman, a survivor in Philadelphia, PA:

I am searching for several people: An uncle, Avram Cyne Glejcer, whom we

called Arthur. He was born in Sosnowiec, Poland, and was a watchmaker. When

ordered to present himself at the office of the Gestapo, he went East to Lwow

(Lemberg). He even sent us food packages from there. While in Lwow he became

a director of a Russian watchmakers cooperative. Maybe somewhere somehow

people met him? Another uncle, Leon Kuperman, born in Zwolen, Poland, was

married and possibly had two children. He lived in Rybnik and in Bedzin, Poland.

q

From Philip Leder, a Survivor in Baltimore, MD:

I was born on June 19, 1943 in Kazakhstan. My father was from Zamocz and

Izbetcha. He was always known as “Shlomo the Baker.” He was a survivor of

the Warsaw Ghetto; he escaped in 1942. He and my mother escaped to Russia

and kept running until they got to Kazakastan. During that time, my father did a

hitch in a Russian labor camp. After the war we lived in DP camps; the one I

remember is Fohrenwold. Both of my parents have passed away (my father in

1996 and my mother in 1998.) I am looking for someone who comes from either

Chelm or Raivitz and remembers anyone by the last name of Ergman (sp?). My

grandfather was Fievela Bach and my grandmother’s name was Rosa. He had a

shoe store.There were 11 siblings; my mother, Toba, was the eldest girl. Some of

the siblings names were Lazer, Mordichai, Schimuel, Tzirel and Surah.That’s all I

can remember from stories my mother told me. I have been doing research work

to find relatives on and off for the past 30 + years.

q

From Willy Lermer, a survivor in Melbourne, Australia:

Looking for Sabina Roth (Rosenberg), who lived in Krakow, Poland during the

war. She was last seen in 1941 with her son Wladek (Wolf).She was married to

Adolf (Abraham) Roth; he was in K.C. Plaszow till 1944.That’s all the information

I have.

q

From Jeannette Rapoport-Hubschman, a survivor in Neuilly Sur Seine, France:

I’m searching for members of my father’s family. My father was Meir Hubschman,

born in 1901 in Nadworna (actually in Ukraine). His mother’s name was Chaje

Hubscham. Thanks to JRI Poland, on Nadworna PSA AGAD Births, I discovered

he had two brothers and one sister, all registered in Nadworna like my father. His

siblings were Jutte, born in 1894, Abe born in 1897, Jacob born in 1899. The fact

that their surnames were Hubschman led me to think that there was not a civil

wedding for their parents, but only a religious one, which explains why my father

bore his mother’s name.My father was deported to Auschwitz, then to Mauthausen

where he died on February 26th 1945. Three months ago, I

discovered the documents that my father had to fill out to get

French citizenship. In these documents he specified that his father

was called Bernhard Pfeffer, and that he died on June 15th 1924.

My father wrote also that he had two brothers and one sister:

Simon Pfeffer born in 1892 tradesman in Jablonow; Lazar Pfeffer,

born in 1908, a bank employee; and Dora Leitner (I imagine her

maiden name to be Pfeffer), born in 1895 , married and living in

Nadworna.My father, never gave us precise information about

his family left in Galicia. I think that Bernhard Pfeffer can be my

paternal grandfather, because my father called one of my two

brothers (his eldest son) Bernard. Are the results on JRI Poland

absolutely reliable? It’s difficult to imagine that my father gave

false informations for such an important request.I would be very grateful for any

information and explanations that you could give me to solve my problem, and I

would be so happy if descendants of the families Hubschman and Pfeffer had

survived, and if I could get information from them.

q

From Deborah Ross, a 2g in Vancouver, Canada:

My mother’s maiden name was Ramm or Ram. Her first name was Nechama or

Niuta and her [mother’s] maiden name was Devora Baltupski. She was born in

the southern Ukraine but grew up in Vilna. She was a nurse in Warsaw at some

point. Her husband was Yonia Fain, an artist and poet who taught at the university

in Warsaw. They escaped with a Sugihara visa and went to Japan and then on to

Shanghai and after the war went to Mexico City where they hung out with Diego

Rivera and Frida Kalo. Also, my maternal grandfather was sent to Siberia before

the war (last name Ramm or Ram, first name was Chaim). I have hoped that he

survived in Russia and maybe started another family. My maternal uncle was

Israel Ram. I now live in Canada and have no relatives. I would love to find

someone who might be related to me.

q

From Iris Rozencwajg, a 2g in Houston, TX:

My family, Schlesinger/Ross/Rossova, was burned out of Kalnice, Czechoslovakia

in 1918. Schlesingers also came from Wiener Neustadt, Austria They ended up in

Trencin, south of Bratislava. I’m also looking for any cousins related to this family:

parents (my maternal grandparents) Max and Selma Ross; daughters: Elsa, Edith,

Olga, Blanka; Edith survived and lives in Florida. All from Kalnice and then Trencin,

Czechoslovakia. Looking for any collateral relatives, Anna Turteltaub, sister of

mother’s cousin Palo Turteltaub (later Turcan) and anyone who knew Palo and

wife Magda Turteltaub (Turcan) in the partisans or anyone who knew Frantisek

Sachistahl, Elsa Rossova’s fiance. Other cousins, including Oskar Brenner and

family, lived in England—Birmingham, I think. Anyone know them? Related to

Czechoslovakia family described above? Also, looking for any Rozencwajg children

from Czestochowa, Poland—some rumored to have been spirited to Denmark

before or during the war. Grandparents’ names would have been Idessa Wajl and

Izak Judka Rozencwajg. Possible parents’ names: Marek Rozencwajg (died in

Bialystok massacre after moving back to Czestochowa); Regina nee Rozencwajg;


Loosia nee Rozencwajg; Helena nee Rozencwajg—all from Czestochowa, Poland.

q

From Israel Unger, a survivor in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada:

I was born in Tarnow, Poland in 1938. My nuclear family—father, mother, brother

and I—survived in hiding in Tarnow. My father came from Ryglice, a small village

near Tarnow. He had seven brothers and sisters. My grandfather’s name was

Josef Pincus Unger and my grandmother’s name was Hana Leia (nee Leser)

Unger. One brother, Abraham, moved to England prior to the war. The other six

siblings, along with my grandparents, were all murdered by the Nazis. I do not

know the names of my uncles and aunts, my father’s sisters and brothers. If any

one knows their names and what happened to them please let me know.

q

From Mietek Weintraub, a Survivor in Arligton Heights, Illinois:

It would be so reassuring to find Jerzyk Geller, a survivor and dear friend and pre-

war classmate from Itzhak Kacenelson’s School in Lodz. We saw each other

soon after the war in Lodz in 1945, but lost contact since.If anyone knows of his

whereabouts, please let me know.

q

From Diana Gerzenstein, a 2g in Melbourne, Australia:

I’m still searching for my father’s family, any survivors of the Lazar family from

Transylvania, Szilagy Somlio.I don’t know how to get any more information. I

applied to Yad Vashem, to the Australian Red Cross (not much help there) to

Arolson, to the museum in Szilagy Somlyo (Simleul Silvaniei in Romanian).My

dream will be if someone survived and married and had children.In fact I know

that Bela Lazar survived Dachau and was in Paris DP camp in 1945—but after?

q

From Sam Malbin, a survivor in Johannesburg, South Africa:

My parents, Mottel and Hinda Malbin (now deceased), and their

families were born in Steibst, now known as Stolpste, Belorussia.

Thesurvivors emigrated to South Africa and Argentina circa 1925-

1939, but many of their kin were murdered in 1942 and the

remainder in concentration camps. There may hopefully be surviving

children who, like me, are continually hunting for possible

connections.

q

From Eugen Schoenfeld, a Survivor in Atlanta, GA:

I am seeking any person who is related to the Neuman family—

my grandparents—who lived in Talamas. The family also resided

in Huklivoh and Voloc. Also, I am looking for anyone who was related to my

grandmother, Feiga, nee Berman, born in Poland and her brother who emigrated

to Israel before World War I. He had a wood and coal store in Haifa on Rechov

Hanamal.

q

From Lev Raphael, a 2g in Okemos, MI:

Does anyone have any relatives from Lithuania or Latvia with the name Garbel?

I’ve struck out on JewishGen and everywhere else I’ve looked. I have found

some things my late mother wrote about the war and she lists two (2) sub camps

of Kaiserwald: Strassdenhoff Labor Camp and Yugla Seidenfabrik. She was there

as Liale or Lalke or Lidja Kliatshko (Klaczko) along with a good friend, Frieda

Zewin. I have their numbers at Stutthof (where they were transferred from Riga)

and they’re consecutive—both however had changed their last names, perhaps

to be considered sisters? Did anyone who was in these camps know my mother,

Lidja Garbel (aka Lidja Klatchko) from Vilno? Does the name Garbel ring bells

for anyone out there?

q

From Daniela Coray, a 3g in Cornwall, England:

I am hoping to find out some information about my relatives. I know some very

basic facts about my family, primarily names and towns. My grandparents were

from Hungary and were survivors of the Holocaust. My grandmother was born

Eva Judit Forro in 1938 to Bela Forro and Blanka Judit Birnbaum in either Szolnok

or Szeged in Hungary. Bela’s surname was originally Friedman, but was changed

during the war in an attempt to hide his family’s Jewish origins. This didn’t work,

as he was sent to a work camp. He had four brothers; Laszlo, Josef, Sandor and

Zoltan. Zoltan died in one of the camps; Josef and Sandor immigrated to the US

in 1938; and Laszlo in 1950. Blanka’s parents were Markusz and Margaret

Birnbaum from Miskolc. Blanka had two, possibly more sisters, Olga and Erzsebet.

Olga survived the war, but Erzsebet and her family died in one of the camps.

Olga had one child, Tomas Verebes, who still lives in the US (maybe New Jersey).

My grandmother’s family lived in Miskolc until 1950 when they moved to Budapest.

They fled the country during the revolution in 1956 and settled in Southern California.

My grandfather, Elemer Elek, was born in 1937. I’m not sure where he was born,

but he grew up in Siofok before moving to Budapest to go to university. His father

was Balint Elek and was born in Szeghalom in SE Hungary. His mother’s name

was Anna Gulyas. My grandfather had a

brother, Erno Elek, and a sister, Erzsebet Elek.

I don’t know anything else about his family

besides the fact that he played a large role in

the Hungarian revolution as a student.

q

From Lou Appleman, a survivor in Queens, NY:

I am looking for any survivors of the Pinsk Ghetto. Most of my family escaped

from there just before it was liquidated and survived with the partisans in the

Zawistcze forest. I would like to know of any other Pinsk Ghetto survivors and to

hear from them.

q

From Leo Braun, a survivor in São Paulo, Brazil:

I am a survivor from Vienna, Austria, born in 1926 now living in São Paulo, SP,

Brazil. I had a school friend of my age, also from Vienna, named Hans Singer. As

far as I know he escaped to Valparaiso or Santiago, Chile in 1938/39. I wonder

whether you could help me to find him or maybe his children, if any.

q

From Rosalyn Kliot Heims, a child survivor in Redmond, OR:

Both of my parents are now deceased; however, I would like information about

the camp from which they escaped in 1944—I believe it was named Goldplatz, in

Estonia. Both my parents, Leon (Lippa) and Vera Kliot (nee Borowick) were

originally from Vilna, were transported to the Vilna Ghetto, then on to various

labor camps in Poland and finally Estonia. And any information about my mother’s

little brother, Avram, who at the age of 10 was designated as a “political prisoner”

(per records), was sent to Auschwitz and sent to the gas chamber.

And, additionally, any information about my grandmother, who

was sent to Stutthoff—also murdered. Her name was Esther

Borowick.

q

From Peter Paisley, a Survivor in Essex, Chigwell, UK:

I am looking for an old friend, a fellow survivor, a fellow inmate

of various internment camps in Vichy France.It is Paul Stern,

born 1920 or 1921 in Cologne, who lived in Belgium prior to May

1940. After our escape in August 1942, we met again in Lyons at

the time of Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, then went our

separate ways and were both lucky enough to survive the ordeal.

We met again in Brussels in 1946 when Paul had something to

do with a Swiss newspaper.We have lost contact since and if by any stroke of

luck he is still alive, I would love to hear from him. My name used to be Herbert

Peiser but I changed it while in the British armed forces and my present name is

Herbert Peter Paisley. I am well and live in England. Incidentally, if there should

be some other former inmates of St. Cyprien and/or Gurs with whom I have not

already been in touch, I would love to hear from them.

q

From Miriam Feldman, a 2g in Morton Grove, IL:

I’m a 2G. Both my parents survived the camps. My father died at the age of 51 in

1964. His name was Rolf Salomon, born in Berlin on 09/22/1912. Somehow, he

survived Auschwitz. He was in Auschwitz between 1942 and 1945. I was 13

when he died. He never spoke to me about his time in Auschwitz, or my sisters.

My mother was never really able to tell us much; she said they preferred not to

talk about it.My mother is alive today, 86 years old, but she was diagnosed five

years ago with Alzheimer’s disease.I am wondering if anyone can tell me if they

have any information on them.

q

From Lilly Weiss, a survivor in Oak Park, MI:

I am looking for my relative Imre Weiss (father’s name was Bela Weiss), last

seen in Balassagyarmat, Hungary in 1944-45. He would be 75-80 by now.

q

From Frances Nunnally, a survivor in Richmond, VA:

I am a survivor from Vienna, Austria and am wondering if anyone ever came

across my brother, Leopold Huppert (called Poldi). He fled from Vienna to Belgium

in 1938, and later on to France. For a while he was at a camp called St. Cyprien.

Later he hid in Paris where he found wrok as a radio technician. Betrayed, he

was sent to Drancy and then Auschwitz in 1944. From Auschwitz he was

transferred to other camps. Does anyone have any more information about him?

q

From Debbie Long, a 2g in Chapel Hill, NC:

I am searching for any information about Regina-Rifka (nee Galas) Loeffelholz

of Lodz and Brzesko, who may have survived Ravensbruck. I am also searching

for her brother, Israel-Sruellek Galas and her sister, Sara-Bluma Galas who were

last seen in the Cracow Ghetto. Any information about the Loeffelholz family of

Cracow or Brzekso, or the Galas family of Lodz, would be much appreciated.


An Urgent

Appeal

to Our

Readers

The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants is the foremost umbrella

organization of survivors located in North America with a mission to advocate for survivors and to

advance and encourage Holocaust remembrance, education and commemoration. As part of its mission,

the American Gathering maintains a number of ongoing projects:

The CONFERENCE ON JEWISH MATERIAL CLAIMS AGAINST GERMANY

The American Gathering is a key member of the Board of Directors. With the present negotiating committee

composed solely of survivors and chaired by the American Gathering’s chairman Roman Kent, hundreds of

millions of additional dollars are coming from Germany to better provide for current health care and assistance

to survivors in desperate need.

The MEED REGISTRY OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

Established in 1981 to document the names of survivors who came to the Americas after World War II, the

Registry, the only one of its kind, was moved in 1993 to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

(USHMM). Along with the Museum, the American Gathering continues to manage the database and to

seek new registrants via its quarterly newspaper Together and its website, http://www.american

gathering.com, among other venues. As a result of the American Gathering’s efforts, the Registry now

includes over 185,000 records related to survivors and their families and is a resource for Holocaust

historians and scholars, as well as families looking for lost relatives.

THE SUMMER SEMINAR PROGRAM ON HOLOCAUST AND JEWISH RESISTANCE

Initiated in 1984 by Vladka Meed and jointly administered by the American Gathering and the USHMM,

this program takes middle school and high school teachers, both Jewish and non-Jewish alike, on trips to

Holocaust sites in Poland and to Israel. Participating scholars come from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the

Study Center at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot, and the USHMM in Washington, D.C. A biannual Alumni

Conference of the program’s participants further reinforces its goals to foster remembrance and toleration.

TOGETHER

Founded in 1985, Together is the official publication of the American Gathering. With a circulation of

approximately 85,000, it reflects the collective voice of survivors, the second and third generations, and

includes news, opinions, information on education, commemorations, events, book reviews,

announcements, searches, and articles on history and personal remembrance. Contributors include

professional writers, poets, thinkers, historians and Holocaust scholars.

The GATHERING IS A MEMBER OF OTHER ORGANIZATIONS such as the World Jewish

Congress, the World Jewish Restitution Organization, the JCRC and the Conference of Presidents of

Major American Jewish Organizations. In that capacity, its mission is to use its moral authority to influence

issues of importance to the survivor community and to the world Jewish community.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

The American Gathering actively assists survivors on a daily basis. Whether it is through sitting on the

Claims Conference, Self-Help Boards, manning an office to offer information, applications for assistance

or interfacing with other related agencies on behalf of survivors, the American Gathering does its utmost

to insure that survivor issues are addressed.

NATIONAL HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATIONS AND MEMORIALS

The collective and individual initiatives of the American Gathering leadership has fostered Holocaust

commemoration, remembrance events and the establishment of Holocaust memorials in many communities

throughout the United States and in almost every State House in the Union. While the American Gathering

continues to sponsor its own annual commemoration program with the Museum of Jewish Heritage and

WAGRO, it has been instrumental in the creation of the ongoing Holocaust programs at both the United

Nations and the U.S. Congress.Please make a meaningful,

tax deductible

contribution payable to the

“American Gathering.”

Thank you.

American Gathering, 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205, New York, NY 10001

Name:

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Address:

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Amount of contribution: $

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