DECEMBER 2008 VOLUME 22 NUMBER 3 , mark 70 years Protest Against Mormon Rites on since BY JEANETTE FRIEDMAN BY MELISSA EDDY, The Associated Press After more than 13 years of waiting for leaders of the Church of Latter Day — “We must not be silent” about condemning antisemitism, German Saints of Jesus Christ to keep their word and stop posthumously baptizing Holocaust chancellor Angela Merkel victims and then listing them as Mormons in their genealogical archives, leaders declared recently as of the American Gathering (Sam Bloch, Roman Kent, Max Liebmann) spearheaded Germany and Israel by Auschwitz survivor Ernest W. Michel, marked the 70th anniversary of commemorated the 70th Kristallnacht with a press conference that expressed their unhappiness with the anniversary of Kristall- Mormon practice. nacht, the Nazi-incited riots Once Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering and executive against . With concerts, vice president emeritus of UJA/FederationNY, found his parents’ names on the prayers and ceremonies, Mormon list, discussions began with church leaders to see if the practice could be participants vowed to honor abated and the names removed from Mormon records. There were two key Kristallnacht victims with issues driving his protest. First, as Michel noted, his parents were murdered as renewed vigilance. The riots Jews and not as Mormons; to list them as Mormons denigrates the cause of their are seen by many as the first death and shows a disrespect and disregard of history, as well as the Jewish step leading to the Nazis’ religion. systematic murder of 6 million Jews in . Church elders argued that these rites do not change a person’s religion, in this At Israel’s weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said case “Jewishness,” as one elder described it in a meeting in New York the previous Kristallnacht was “the turning point toward the inevitable destruction of a greater portion of the Jewish people in Europe between 1939-1945,” adding that Israel cont’d on p. 4 “will never forgive or forget” the crimes of the Nazi regime. At , Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, survivors, their , lll”fff, HONORED descendants, academics and the German and Austrian ambassadors to Israel The Norbert Wollheim Memorial: A Place of Commemoration and Information took part in a ceremony that also included a rare musical rendition of a work by was recently created on the grounds of the IG Farben building, now the Campus German-Jewish composer Robert Kahn, whose music was outlawed by the Nazis. Westend of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, . It commemorates the victims of IG Farben’s concentration camp at Buna-Monowitz (Auschwitz) and the people who shared the suffering of Norbert Wollheim. AMERICAN GATHERING CHALLENGES Norbert Wollheim POPE PIUS SAINTHOOD had a leading role in the Central Committee of the BY PHILIP PULLELLA Liberated Jews of Bergen VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - One of the most Belsen, and was involved influential groups of has in sending the Kinder- accused Nazi-era Pope Pius XII of keeping transportees to England. “silent in the face of absolute evil” and asked He was a leader of the the Vatican to freeze his sainthood process. World Federation of The New York-based group, The Ameri- Bergen-Belsen Survivor can Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Associations and among and their Descendants, announced a global the founding members of campaign to lobby Vatican ambassadors so that the American Gathering. Pope Benedict will put the sainthood process He also made important for his predecessor on hold. contributions to the work of the Claims Conference and served as president of “What we as survivors and their children the Fresh Meadows Jewish Center in New York. seek to convey to our friends at the Vatican is Designed by Professor Heiner Blum, photographic, video and audio displays our moral anguish and deep pain at this moment,” Elan Steinberg, the group's are set up under groups of trees in the park around the IG Farben building, now vice president, said in a statement. the university’s Institute for the Humanities and Cultural studies. A nearby pavilion “There were many individuals and representatives of the Church whose shining will also become a part of the installation. Above the entrance, brass letters will heroism during the terrible years of the Holocaust should be recognized, but display a row of figures—107984. It is Norbert Wollheim’s Auschwitz number.

cont’d on p. 4 cont’d on p. 4

American Gathering of NON-PROFIT Jewish Holocaust Survivors U.S. POSTAGE PAID 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 NEW YORK, N.Y. New York, New York 10001 PERMIT NO. 4246

December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 1 International Day of Commemoration TOGETHER in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust at the UN—10 a.m. December 2008 Volume 22 Number 3 Tuesday, January 27, 2009 c•o•n•t•e•n•t•s Registration is by email to [email protected] Germany, Israel Mark 70 Years Since Kristallnacht by Melissa Eddy...... 1 American Gathering Challenges Pope Pius Sainthood by Philip Pullella...... 1 or by fax to 212-963-0536; Protest Against Mormon Rites on Holocaust Victims by Jeanette Friedman....1 please submit your full name, affiliation, email address and Norbert Wolleheim Honored...... 1 phone number. UN Commemoration...... 2 CIVS Comes to New York...... 3 Bilgoraj Landsleit Reunion by Yechiel Baum...... 3 Holocaust 20th Annual International Conference of Child Survivors...... 5 Hadassah Rosensaft Remembered by Eva Fogelman...... 5 Remembrance Catholic Educators Study the Holocaust by Brandy Wilson...... 6 Instrumental in adovcating and finally witnessing a commemorative program Comic Book Idols Rally to Aid Holocaust Artist By G.G. Gustines...... 6 becoming an annual program at the United Nations, the American Gathering of Polish First Lady by Jeanette Friedman...... 7 Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants is pleased to announce the LBJ, Righteous Gentile by Lenny Ben David...... 7 forthcoming Holocaust remembrance activities at the United Nations. In keeping Holocaust Museum Plans Historicv Opening by Emily S. Achenbaum...... 8 with the program’s overall theme of remembrance and beyond, a memorial ceremony Kindertransportees to Receive German Pensions by Ofer Aderet...... 8 titled, “An authentic basis for hope: Holocaust remembrance and education,” will Blueprints Found for Auschwitz Camp by Eric Kirschbaum...... 8 be held from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 27 January 2009. This is a Anyone Can Be Moral...by Heather Robinson...... 9 phrase often used by Professor David Hamburg, Chair of the Secretary-General’s EU Presidency to Highlight Jewish Restitution...... 10 Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention, to assert that genocide prevention is Holocaust Welfare Fund Leaves Survivors in Lurch by Eli Ashkenazi...... 10 indeed within the capacity of humankind. This theme will both honor the memory of Remarks of Ernest W. Michel...... 11 the victims and recognize the positive trend toward around the Holocaust Heroes by Greg Bluestein...... 12 world, action by civil society to promote respect for diversity, institutional support The Findlings Family Reunion by Isabel Alcoff...... 12 for combating and intergovernmental initiatives to help prevent The Flower by Sara Landerer Rosen...... 13 genocide. Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman Announcements...... 13 of the Yad Vashem Council, will deliver the November 9th by Dr. John Rodden...... 14 keynote remarks and Ruth Glasberg Gold, a A Story by Heinz Hesdorffer...... 15 survivor of the camps in Transnistria, will share Another Collaborator Unveiled by DPA...... 15 her personal experience during the Holocaust, The First Family by Sheldon P. Hersh...... 16 along with a WWII veteran from the former myjewishlegacy.com by Elyse Bodenheimer...... 16 Soviet army. Guests may register by email at: Letters...... 17 [email protected] or by fax at David Friedmann by Detlef.Lorenz...... 17 212-963-0536. In Memoriam...... 19 EVENTS OF JANUARY 26 Searches (contributing editor Serena Woolrich)...... 22 On Monday 26 January 2009, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will mount an exhibition titled, “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race.” This exhibition a screening of the documentary fil, Forgiving Doctor Mengele, with statement shows how the Nazi regime, with the support by Eva Kor. Ms. Kor is the subject of the film during which she makes an of doctors and scientists, aimed to change the inspirational visit to Germany, Israel and Auschwitz to come to terms with her genetic makeup of the population through measures known as “racial hygiene” or experience as a “Mengele Twin.” Guests may register by email at: “eugenics.” The categories of persons and groups regarded as biologically [email protected] or by fax at 212-963-0536. The film will be threatening to the health of the nation were expanded to include Jews, Roma, the shown in the Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium. disabled and other minorities. These policies resulted in forced sterilization and The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme was established murder, and ultimately in the Holocaust. It will remain open in the United Nations by General Assembly resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 to mobilize civil society Public Lobby for two months. for Holocaust remembrance and education in order to help prevent future acts of OTHER PROGRAMS: genocide. The Department of Public Information observes the International Day EVENTS OF JANUARY 28 of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust on 27 January HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS’ MEMOIRS PROJECT each year with a ceremony and lecture in the General Assembly Hall at United Every January the United Nations Headquarters in New York displays volumes Nations Headquarters and around the world through its network of United Nations from the Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project in the Public Lobby. The project information centres. The program also organizes seminars, briefings, film is an initiative of laureate Elie Wiesel, who is also a United Nations screenings and publishes a discussion papers series. Messenger of Peace, and Menachem Rosensaft, Chairman of the Project’s Please see www.un.org/holocaustremembrance for more information. Editorial Board. Yad Vashem joined the project in 2004, which has published 11 books with 17 survivors’ memoirs, and 10 more are in various stages of preparation. TOGETHER This year the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme has invited two of the contributors share their stories at a book signing in the UN Bookshop, AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS where the volumes will be available for sale that week. Local survivors, students AND THEIR DESCENDANTS and the general public are invited to attend the event, to be held at 1:00 p.m. on 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 · New York, New York 10001 · 212 239 4230

Wednesday, 28 January 2009. Founding President Vice Presidents Regional Vice-Presidents Publication Committee BEN MEED, l“z EVA FOGELMAN MEL MERMELSTEIN SAM E. BLOCH, Chairman EVENTS OF JANUARY 29 Honorary President ROSITTA E. KENIGSBERG JEAN BLOCH ROSENSAFT Hirsh Altusky, l“z VLADKA MEED ROMANA STROCHLITZ PRIMUS MARK SARNA Jeanette Friedman On Thursday, 29 January from 10:00 a.m. to 12 p.m., the Department of President MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT CHARLES SILOW Dr. Alex Grobman Public Information will hold its weekly NGO Briefing on the topic of Sephardic SAM E. BLOCH STEFANIE SELTZER Counsel Roman Kent Honorary Chairman ELAN STEINBERG ABRAHAM KRIEGER Max K. Liebmann Jews. Potential participants can express their interest in this briefing by emailing ERNEST MICHEL JEFFREY WIESENFELD Director of Communications Vladka Meed Chairman Secretary JEANETTE FRIEDMAN Dr. Romana Strochlitz Primus [email protected]. NGO Relations will respond with a formal invitation and instructions ROMAN KENT JOYCE CELNIK LEVINE Editor Emeritus Menachem Z. Rosensaft Honorary Senior Treasurer ALFRED LIPSON, l“z Dr. Philip Sieradski with regards to obtaining passes approximately two weeks before the event, to Vice President MAX K. LIEBMANN WILLIAM LOWENBERG be held in the Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium. Senior Vice President That evening from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., the Holocaust program will organize MAX K. LIEBMANN

TOGETHER 2 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008

week. They said this rite is merely an offer of conversion done out of love, because French Reparations Commission BILGORAJ LANDSLEIT REUNION

(CIVS) comes to New York BY YECHIEL BAUM, Jewish Press During a recent landsmanschaft trip to the Polish town The Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliations of Bilgoraj, survivors and descendants, led by Yechiel Baum Resulting from the Anti-Semitic Legislation in Force During the Occupation of the Bilgoraj Society, made some disturbing discoveries. (CIVS) came to New York in November for the fourth time. The delegation Greeted by Mayor Rusian, at first, things went happily. examined 66 files from Americans who were living in France during the The visitors, descendants of Bilgoraj’s Jews, were told that Second World War and were victims of spoliations. This mission was an in pre-war days, Bilgoraj was more than half Jewish and that opportunity for the French Government to demonstrate to the American there are still Jews living in Bilgoraj—the hidden children, authorities its determination to give equal rights to the claimants whether who would like to reach out to Jewish Bilgoraj in the Diaspora. they are French or American, to allow them to express themselves freely They were invited to become involved with the rebuilding of and find in common a fair and appropriate response. It was also an Bilgoraj, and asked to help develop a Jewish festival to rival opportunity for the official members to meet important persons of the the one in Krakow. Jewish community as well as representatives of major American Jewish The group also talked to the mayor about communal organizations and associations like the American Gathering of Jewish properties and cemeteries that were owned by the Jews, Holocaust Survivors & Their Descendants, to present its past and future some of them with deeds that dated back to medieval times. actions. When they visited the first cemetery, they found a high In 1995, President Chirac aknowledged France’s “unremitting debt” school standing on it. By building the school, the town had broken religious laws, and toward 76,000 Jews deported from France. The French reparation United Nations and European Union laws concerned with the desecration of graves, program is comprised of: the Mission d’Etude sur la Spoliation des Juifs particularly those of Holocaust victims. The mayor promised to locate the displaced de France (Working Party on the Spoliation of Jews in France), also bodies and have them reburied in the Jewish tradition. called the Mattéoli Working Party, established by a decree of the prime It happened that Baum’s great-grandfather was buried there, and he wanted to rebury minister on March 25, 1997; the CIVS, by decree of September 10, 1999; him next to his great-grandmother, who was slaughtered by Einzatz-gruppen, along 2,500 payments of a monthly annuity or a lump-sum to orphans of parents other Jews from Bilgoraj. But, at the second cemetery the group visited, they discovered deported by decree of July 13, 2000; an annuity for orphans of victims of that a cement factory had usurped 25% of the cemetery plots, and that apartment houses Nazi barbarity by decree of July 27, 2004; and, at last, the Fondation pour were going to be built on the sacred grounds. la Mémoire de la Shoah (Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust) Again, the mayor promised to rectify the situation with a search for the bodies and by decree of December 26, 2000. reburial in a Jewish cemetery The Mattéoli Working Party underlined the extent of spoliations and according to Jewish tradition. determined the fate of this property in the years between the end of the Additional land adjacent to the war and today. After establishing spoliations were systematic for all the cemetery also came into the 350,000 Jews living in France at the beginning of WWI—almost one- discussion. A witness and fourth perished as a result of the persecutions—the Mattéoli Working participant in the mass burials Party also demonstrated the importance of indemnification and restitution during the Holocaust came after the war. Nevertheless, it was incomplete and that’s why the Mattéoli forward and pointed out four mass Working Party had recommended, in a progress report, the creation of a graves—which are evident on the Commission for the compensation of victims of spoliations and of a landscape. The Bilgoraj Society Foundation for memory whose mission would be to collect unclaimed will place an official grave marker funds of any kind resulting from this spoliation. and monument there. The CIVS, so created, is entrusted with the review of individual The group, through its claims, submitted by victims or their legal heirs, or assigns to receive spokesman, Baum, told the mayor reparations for damages following spoliation of their property (looting of that apartment houses for recent arrivals in Bilgoraj “don’t have to be built on top of our apartments, work-related losses, valuables confiscated at the time of relatives, who have rested in Bilgoraj for generations. Our relatives had everything stolen internment in camps in France, bank assets, works of art, etc.) resulting from them—property, possession and lives. Their remains are not there to be stepped on from the antisemitic legislation enforced during the Occupation by either by others who do not even know they existed.” the occupying authorities or the Vichy Government. The Commission The matter remains in dispute, and Rabbi Michael Shudrich, of is follows the Mattéoli Working Party’s recommendations that new involved in the discussions, which have heated up considerably. Only time and prolonged compensations have to observe the same principles as previous negotiations will determine how this matter will be resolved. compensations, and this to assure an equal footing for people subjected to similar damages. No other compensation is given when a looted asset was already restored or indemnified according to the law (French or We are contemplating a “gathering” of German) or to international agreements. It is important to make clear, however, that when previous compensation was not complete, it falls survivors in Las Vegas in December of 2009. obviously to the Commission to provide an extra payment. The CIVS has already received 2,500 claims of which 8,700 bank In order to gauge interest we are requesting accounts are related, with around 80 new claims coming each month. anyone who might consider participating to More than 1,900 files were opened by American claimants that represent 7.5% of all files. American files are 37% of files from abroad, as against contact us by mail, fax (212-279-2926) or e- 33% of Israel. 75% of American files only come from four states: New York (462 files), California (197 files), Florida (180 files) and New Jersey mail ([email protected]). There is (107 files). no commitment. As soon as we determine the The Commission, which still has no limitation of term nor limitation of amount for compensations, encourages all those who haven’t yet to viability of the program we will advise everyone open a case file. Holocaust survivors are examined with an absolute priority, though not only direct victims are qualified but also their heirs of of exact date, time, and costs. second or third generation. In fact, the CIVS is intended for all victims and descendants of victims of these spoliations in France during the For the reparation measures in favor of orphans whose parents were victims of anti- Holocaust era. semitic persecution and died after being deported as well as those in favor of orphans Please send any questions or claims to the following address: CIVS whose parents were victims of barbarity during World War II, please contact directly: -1, rue de la Manutention – 75116 Paris, France - Tel : 00 33 156 52 8500 Ministère de la Défense, Direction des statuts, des pensions et de la réinsertion sociale, - Fax : 00 33 156 52 85 73 -E-mail : [email protected] - Website Bureau des titres et statuts, BP 552—14037 Caen Cedex, France. Tel.: 00 33 231 38 : http://www.civs.gouv.fr 45 21 or 35.

December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 3 AMERICAN GATHERING CHALLENGES POPE PIUS SAINTHOOD NORBERT WOLLHEIM cont’d from p. 1 cont’d from p. 1

Pope Pius was not among them,” said Steinberg, who rope to South America. The installation will include an information portal is also director emeritus of the World Jewish Con- Differences over Pius’s role have haunted Catho- to the IG Farben company history and the gress. lic-Jewish relations. Some Catholics recently pushed company’s own corporate concentration camp Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from for the Pope to speed up his sainthood process and Buna-Monowitz but also information about Norbert 1939 to 1958, of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. some Jews want it put on hold until Vatican archives Wollheim and the first legal proceedings he initiated The Vatican says he worked silently behind the scenes are opened in about seven years. to claim compensation. It is intended to task a and helped save many Jews. “Archives in the Vatican which have still not been research group around the Institute, the The American Gathering, which has about 60,000 made public may shed further light on the controver- Claims Conference, a university study group, and members, will seek meetings with the Vatican nuncio sial record of the wartime pope. Jewish leaders around the historian Dr. Florian Schmaltz with the editing (ambassador) in Washington. Other survivor organi- the world have therefore asked that at a minimum of the contents of the information portal which will zations will approach Vatican envoys in dozens of the Vatican ‘freeze’ the beatification process until be available for access on the Internet worldwide. other countries. these documents can be examined,” Steinberg said. As part of the library at Fritz Bauer Institute Pius was guilty of “public silence in the face of Benedict has yet to decide if Pius can proceed dealing with the history and the impact of the absolute evil,” Steinberg said. on the road to sainthood. Steinberg said the Vatican Holocaust, a comprehensive selective collection of “During World War II, despite pleas and reports should instead look to Pope John XXIII (1958-1963), books on the subject will be provided for ready from other Church leaders and the Allies, Pope Pius who helped save Jews and who reported to the Vatican reference, along with a place to do scientific failed to even once publicly and explicitly denounce on Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews when he was research. the Nazi crimes against the Jews,” he said. After the a bishop and the Vatican’s wartime representative in There will be guided tours and seminars for war, he is alleged to have permitted the efforts of Turkey. students and other interested persons. The pro-Nazi members of the clergy and of the Vatican “To survivors, John was a saint,” Steinberg said. educational offering will include the biography of itself to aid war criminals in their escape from Eu- Norbert Wollheim, the history of the concentration camp Buna-Monowitz, the history of the company Protest Against Mormon Rites on Holocaust Victims IG-Farben, and studies of compensation claims and cont’d from p. 1 “reparation” for damages suffered. if you aren’t a Mormon you can’t get into heaven. But the prayer recited during the ritual makes it clear that the person vicariously baptized is not offered a choice. The prayer states that by being part of the ritual, the person becomes a member of the Church and chooses the Holy Ghost as his savior. In other words, the dead person forcibly accepts the Christian or Mormon messiah—the single act that, in Jewish law, is the renunciation of by a Jew. (It’s the reason Jews for Jesus are really Christians practicing a Judaic cult and are not Jewish.) In recent months, evidence uncovered by genealogist Helen Radkey, a former Mormon now considered persona non grata by the church, has been made public. Despite a written promise to cease and desist there were new Holocaust victims’ names posted on the International Geneaological Index (IGI), the huge data base that lists those who have been put through the rite. To date, it is estimated that more than a billion people have been listed from every era and every walk of life. Anne Frank has been listed six times. In 1995, Michel was told the list contained at least 380,000 Holocaust victims. Last summer, when Michel asked that the new names be removed, Church elders told him it would be the responsibility of the Jewish community to provide a list of those names—an impossibility since the Jewish community has no access to the data base. This led to an exchange of letters and a face-to-face meeting in American Gathering President Sam Bloch, New York. There was no resolution, and the result was the Gathering’s decision to go public. Chairman Roman Kent, Honorary Chairman Ernest Michel and Senior Vice President Roman Kent, chairman of the Gathering, and also an Auschwitz survivor, participated in the event and Max Liebmann. noted that “even 100 Holocaust victims listed in this way is too many.” Abraham Foxman, National Director of the ADL and a child survivor himself, was in the audience, as were Sam Bloch, president of the American Gathering, sons and daughters of survivors, survivors and leaders in the New York community, including Howard Rubenstein, the head of one of New York’s major public relations firms. Foxman told Together, “The American Gathering is the only organization that has the legitimacy to deal with this issue. Beyond the issues of theology and philosophy in the broad scope of interfaith relations, Holocaust survivors have the right to protest the actions of the Mormons that concern their murdered family members.” Feliks Frenkel, a leader in the Russian Jewish community and a Jewish activist, doesn’t consider himself to be a son of survivors—though half his family is buried in . “For some people this may be a minor issue. But imagine if I go back to the graves of my grandfather in the old cemetery of my town in Russia and find a cross on it, it means something. These Mormon posthumous baptisms are the equivalent of that. While it may not change who my grandfather is, it changes the perception of who he is.” Students from Ramaz. Howard Baum, a son of survivors who leads the Bilgoraj Society, a landsmanschaft, wondered out loud about these “conversions.” “They are quick to baptize the souls of the dead, but where were they during the Holocaust itself, when a paper declaring a Jew a member of the Mormon Church could have saved many lives? While it seems silly to the cynics, the Mormons are distorting history.” That sentiment is the second driving force behind the survivors’ protest. The listings in the Mormon archives, claiming Holocaust victims as Mormons, can be used a tool to delegitimize the Holocaust as a Jewish experience in the hands of deniers. Students from the Ramaz School closed the press conference by singing “The Hymn of the Partisans” (“Zog Nit Keyn Mol”) by Hersh Glick, and reading the names of victims. Michel’s grandchildren participated in the ceremony by reading their great-grandparents’ names off a facsimile of the IGI printouts where Michel found them in 1994. The story was carried in more than 100 conventional news outlets around the world and made headlines The Michel grandchildren reading their great- on The Daily Kos, the premier political blog in the United States, as well as other popular blogs. To see where grandparents’ names from the IGI registry. it was covered, visit www.americangathering.com.

TOGETHER 4 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 20th Annual International Conference of Child Survivors The World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust 20th Annual International Conference of Child Survivors, Second and Third Generations, Spouses & Families was recently held at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia. More than 400 child survivors, survivors and their descendants participated in the multi-generational event that addressed issues ranging from the highly personal and psychological to the arts, politics, memoir writing and restitution. Awards were given to Jews who Rescued Jews, including a special posthumous award to Hadassah Rosensaft, and DNA samples for matching lost family members were collected. Though tears of commemoration and mourning were shed, there was singing, dancing, and much happiness shared by all. Board and council members and consultants from the American Gathering actively participated in the event. They were Roman R. Kent, Eva Fogelman, Menachem Rosensaft, Lea Wolinitz, Syd Mandelbaum, Serena Woolrich and Jeanette Friedman.

Jeanette Friedman (right) presents award Stephanie Seltzer, President, Daisy Miller, Shoah Lea Wolnitz and her mother receive award to to the children of Itke Grinberg Gano honor her father who rescued Israel Meir Lau, World Federation of Jewish Child Visual Foundation, who rescued Sara Landerer Rosen, Lousie Lawrence-Israel, chief rabbi of Israel, and Naftalie Lavie, former Survivors of the Holocaust. event coordinator whose book recounting the rescue is event organizer. consul general to NY. . soon to be released.

Roman Kent, chairman of the American Michael Haley Goldman, keeper Rene Lichtman, V.P., World AllGenerations director DNA Shoah Project Director Gathering, and USHMM Director Sara of the survivor registry at the Federation of Jewish Child Serena Woolrich. Syd Mandelbaum. Bloomfield. USHMM. Survivors of the Holocaust.

Presentation by Dr. Eva Fogelman at the International Child Survivors Conference of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust, Washington, D.C., November 9, 2008, honoring the late Dr. Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft for “her selfless acts of courage and heroism at Auschwitz- Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen in the rescue of fellow Jews and especially Jewish children during the Holocaust.” I first met Dr Hadassah Rosensaft, a soft-spoken, Hadassah Rosensaft was a dental surgeon prior to are all crazy because we are so normal.” dignified, intelligent, insightful and classy looking World War II. She used her skills to perform Hadassah loved to tell stories and jokes to make woman, on April 15, 1981, in at a rudimentary surgery, camouflaging women’s wounds, a point. My favorite story is of the psychiatrist who commemoration of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. sending them out of the barrack on work detail in approached Hadassah in the Bergen-Belsen Hadassah was so humble that I did not know I was advance of selections, providing them with the Displaced Persons Camp, where Hadassah headed in the presence of a lady who had saved women in meager medication available to her and thus saving the health department of the British Zone, and told Birkenau and children in Bergen-Belsen, and who their lives. If caught by the , her of the crazy woman she had accompanied Jewish orphans to Palestine a year she would have been killed. just encountered. Dr. after the liberation. On November 14, 1944 SS Dr. Rosensaft asked the A few months Josef Mengele sent Hadassah psychiatrist, “What abnormal after our first en- together with another eight other behavior was the woman counter, I stood next Jewish women as a “medical team” manifesting?” The psychia- to Hadassah in the to the concentration camp of trist replied, “Well, she is halls of the confe- Bergen-Belsen in Germany. There sitting on her bed looking rence center in she organized a virtual children’s into a broken mirror and at the home in one of the barracks for combing her hair with an World Gathering of approximately 150 Jewish children almost toothless comb.” Holocaust Survivors. ranging from infancy to teenagers, Dr. Rosensaft retorted, All of a sudden I all but one of whom survived. One Dr. Eva Fogelman presenting special award “Why don’t you try giving to Menachem Rosensaft honoring his of her fellow inmates Hel Los Jafe her an unbroken mirror and witnessed a few men mother Hadassah. and women coming recalled how Hadassah “walked a regular comb and see if up to Hadassah and kissing her and crying. They all from block to block, found the children, took them, she refuses to use them.” You can understand why reiterated, “You don’t remember me, but you saved lived with them, and took care of them…. The children Dr. Rosensaft had no use for psychiatrists. I felt she my life.” As word got out that Hadassah was there were very small and sick, and we had to wash them, appreciated me despite the fact that I was a other survivors found their way to hug and thank her. clothe them, calm them and feed them. That they psychologist. I was awe-struck, how a woman who had lost survived was due to [Hadassah] and her helpers.” After liberation, Dr. Rosensaft worked tirelessly her 5-and-a-half year old son and husband upon arrival After liberation, people judged the survivors and with the British liberators to bring the survivors back at Auschwitz did not break down, but rather had asked if they were too damaged to resume normal to health. Her work is featured in a British television mobilized her energy, skills, ingenuity, and most of life. Golda Meir once asked Hadassah how many of film, Relief of Belsen. A few months later she was all her courage to work in Birkenau’s Jewish infirmary. the survivors were normal. Hadassah replied, “We cont’d on p. 10 December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 5 CATHOLIC EDUCATORS STUDY THE HOLOCAUST Comic-Book Idols Rally to Aid BY BRANDY WILSON, Catholic News Service Holocaust Artist WASHINGTON (CNS) — Nesse Godin survived starvation, beatings and a as a teenager. “People always say you must have been really smart or really strong to survive the Holocaust. I tell them BY GEORGE GENE GUSTINES, New York Times I wasn’t smart or strong. I was fortunate,” she said. Three of the elder statesmen of comic books—Neal The Lithuanian native presented her story as part of “Bearing Witness: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust Adams, Joe Kubert and Stan Lee—have joined and Contemporary Issues,” an annual seminar for Catholic educators offering strategies for teaching the forces to tell the tale of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, Holocaust. who survived two years at the Auschwitz This year educators from schools in North Carolina, Washington, Maryland and Virginia gathered Aug. concentration camp by painting watercolor portraits 3-7 in the nation’s capital and were themselves the students. for the infamous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele. Some of The seminar is an annual Holocaust education program developed in conjunction with the Anti- the artwork also survived, but it is in the possession Defamation League, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Archdiocese of Washington, the National of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum Catholic Educational Association and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. in Poland. Now 85 and living in California, Mrs. The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder of Jews and other groups by the Nazi Babbitt wants the artwork back, but the museum regime led by and others. More than 6 million Jews were killed between 1933 and 1945 through has steadfastly refused to return it. starvation, execution by firing squad and asphyxiation in gas Now Mrs. Babbitt’s story has been captured in a chambers. Homosexuals, the disabled and Jehovah’s six-page comic-book story illustrated by Adams (who Witnesses were among other victims of the Holocaust. worked on Batman); inked partly by Kubert (whose Seminar participants received intensive training comics career stretches back to the 1940s); and from scholars, theologians, and priests that included featuring an introduction by Lee (co-creator of the a guided tour of the museum, the testimonial from the Fantastic Four and many other Marvel heroes). Holocaust survivor and a scavenger hunt through the museum, in which educators learned how to incorporate museum artifacts into their lessons. “DREAM” Facilitators also utilized the Holocaust to open a Many a dream some people have. dialogue about the contemporary issues of anti- Of strange & things one dreams. Semitism in popular culture, politics and Hollywood; the Sometimes horrible, dumb, or mean, current Israeli/Palestinian conflicts; and genocide in the for instance, one like this. Darfur region of Sudan. I saw a world that prayed to sin, “If you read about what’s happening in Darfur And beauty, law abolished. and substituted the words Jewish community there were definite parallels to the Holocaust,” one teacher said. And those who had accomplished that, Sudan’s Darfur region has been beset by human rights abuses and other atrocities since February 2003 Were world laureates called. when fighting escalated between rebel groups and government troops and the Janjaweed, or Arab militias. Then walked the meanest bandits, walked. The conflict has forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes and left more than 200,000 Along the many alleys, people dead, causing a humanitarian crisis that the United States has described as genocide. And walked the thieves, and spy’s walked, Another seminar participant compared Germany’s attempt to ignore its violations of human rights And peddlers in man’s malice during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin with China’s attempt to hide human rights conditions in that nation And those that lying, hateful lips during this year’s Olympics in Beijing. Knew how to lives destroy, The program for the teachers focuses on guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust, including the And all came to a market place, importance of contextualizing and not romanticizing history, using precise language, avoiding comparisons To brag about their doing. of pain and humanizing the statistics. They screamed: I the greatest tyrant am, “We owe it to our kids to complicate their thinking. The easy thing to do would be to give kids easy black-and-white answers to their questions,” said Peter Fredlake, a facilitator and coordinator of the And I am great at cheating. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s teacher fellowship program. I the greatest liar am. “This is a difficult time in history to have to confront. As teachers we have to help facilitate that And I can do the beating. confrontation. But we have to be intellectually honest,” he said. I am at best when I can kill. Sessions of “Bearing Witness” also aimed to foster Jewish-Catholic relations by educating participants What can be higher, if you will, about the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on relations with non-Christians, “Nostra Aetate,” which They screamed in hateful malice, established the foundation for dialogue between Christians and Jews. A course on Jewish beliefs and But they repeated on and on, that practices was held at the Washington Hebrew Congregation. “DEUTCHLAND UBER ALLES” Featured speakers at other sessions included Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl. Unknown author. “You can’t teach (this by) depicting Jews as peripheral to the Holocaust or asserting that the Holocaust Printed August 1939 in Warsaw newspaper Piata is universal and could have happened to anyone,” said David Friedman, regional director of the ADL. Rano. “The Holocaust is a chapter in the history of antisemitism and the Jewish people, and you have to start with that when teaching about this subject,” he said. Translated by Adam Boren. “As Catholics we deal a lot with social injustices. It’s part of our seven principles of Catholic social teaching,” Andrea Beyrer, a teacher at St. Raphael Catholic School in Raleigh, N.C., told Catholic News Service. “We’re a few generations removed from the Holocaust. It’s important to teach this so that we Dear Friends: don’t lose the message.” If you are moving, have already moved Pat Marlette, an educator at Mount De Sales Academy in Catonsville, Md., planned to implement what and wish to continue receiving Together, she learned in a semester-long course on the Holocaust for juniors and seniors at her school. “It’s important please contact us with your new address. The to give students a sense of Jewish life during that time and not just death,” Marlette said. post office does not forward Together. “Bearing Witness” was developed in 1996 by the late Cardinal James A. Hickey of Washington and Friedman. Since its inception, it has trained nearly 1,300 Catholic educators around the country. If someone has passed away, please “To say ‘’ is not enough. We have to act and get involved,” Godin said. “We can’t fix what contact us with the information. This is was, but we can learn from it.” important for the Registry so as to preclude “There are moments that just touch your life so deeply. This is that experience for me,” Kevin Shearer, unnecessary mailings. a high school teacher at Mount Saint Joseph High School in Baltimore, told CNS. “Being here, you’re inspired to go and transform your community.” Thank you. Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

TOGETHER 6 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 Polish First Lady Introduces Americans to New Jewish History Museum in Warsaw BY JEANETTE FRIEDMAN/PHOTOS BY MENACHEM DAUM The First Lady of the Republic of Poland, Madame Maria Kaczynska, acting as special envoy for the President of Poland, the Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, and Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka, a secretary of state in the President’s Chancellery, were warmly welcomed by Holocaust survivors and their descendants at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, at an event hosted by The North American Council for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Rabbi Arthur Schneier. Cheryl Halpern (2G) former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting offered greetings. Also in attendance were Sam Bloch and Roman Kent, president and chairman of the American Gathering. More than 150 people attended the September 25 reception to meet the First Lady, who introduced them to the Museum’s mission and watched as the Foreign Minister and the Secretary of State posthumously awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic, Poland’s highest honor, to Irena Gut, who had hidden 12 Jews under the noses of the Nazis in Tarnopol during the Holocaust. The medal was accepted by Gut’s daughter, Jeannie Smith of Seattle. A benefit performance of the play about her mother, Irena’s Vow starring Tovah Feldshuh, followed at the Baruch Center for Performing Arts. Also attending the ceremony was Roman Haller, director of the Claims Conference Successor Organization in Munich—who was born in Gut’s hiding place after she convinced his mother not to end her pregnancy. Sigmund A. Rolat, chairman of the Museum’s North American Council and a Holocaust survivor from Czestochowa, said the hi-tech, state-of-the-art museum being built in Warsaw on Madame Maria Kaczynska the site of the ghetto will tell of the almost 1,000-year history of the Jews of Poland. The museum is one Poland’s largest public works projects, with $110 million committed to construction from the Polish Republic and the City of Warsaw. Another $35 million is needed to create the core exhibits. The Museum is being designed as a portal to Poland and its Jewish history for all people visiting Jewish heritage sites and the camps and sites of destruction, aiming at participants from March of the Living programs and Polish students. It is expected to become the most important museum of Jewish history in the world. The museum will offer a perspective often neglected in the post-Holocaust period and present the positive, rich Jewish heritage and culture that invigorated pre-Holocaust Poland while setting the foundations for contemporary Judaism. While this millennial history is marked by violence and antisemitism, the museum will also tell the stories of those Polish Jews who, after the Holocaust, revitalized Jewish culture and Judaism in America and around the world, and of those who are reestablishing Jewish culture in today’s Poland. “After the Inquisition, Poland welcomed us with open arms and we thrived there compared to the rest of Europe,” said Rolat. “When visitors come to Poland, they rarely see anything positive that Jewish people have contributed to Polish society. Jewish and Sigmund A. Rolat Polish youth must discover the important and nation-changing contributions Jewish people made to Polish culture before the Holocaust— we were poets, artists, industrialists, philosophers and philanthropists, as well as scholars, who were part of the fabric of Polish society.” Rolat, himself a recipient of the Commander’s Cross, is a frequent visitor to Poland who often speaks in Polish schools. Over the years, he has been approached by hundreds of young Poles seeking their roots and feels the new museum will be a good place for them to start. Many feel driven to study things Jewish and many suspect they are Jews. “I want to make it easier for them to discover who they are,” said Rolat. “This museum is needed. Anyone who visits it, if he is Jewish, will be proud, and if he is not Jewish, he will know all there is know about Jewish history in Poland. The past, after all, illuminates the future.” LBJ, righteous gentile Survivors’ funding falls victim BY LENNY BEN DAVID to budget crunch A few weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that newly released tapes from US president Lyndon BY ROBERT WIENER, NJJN Johnson’sWhite House officeshowed LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” The news New Jersey Jewish activists are lamenting the death agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969), “the United Statesbecame Israel’s chief of a bill in New Jersey the State Legislature that would diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.” have provided $500,000 for services to Holocaust But the news report does little to reveal the full historical extent of Johnson’s actions on behalf of the survivors. The combined monies were intended for Jewish people and the State of Israel. Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as the programs administered chiefly by local Jewish president during the 1967 war. But few know about LBJ’s actions to rescue hundreds of endangered Jews federations, including counseling, case management, during the Holocaust—actions that could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail. Indeed, the title of home care, and semi-monthly survivors’ gatherings “Righteous Gentile” is certainly appropriate in the case of called Café Europa. “The funding was contained in a the Texan, whose centennial year is being commemorated supplemental appropriations bill,” said State Sen. this year. Robert Gordon (D-Dist. 38), one of the bill’s prime Appropriately enough, the annual Jerusalem sponsors. He said he wasn’t sure just how it was Conference announced that it will honor Johnson in removed but did say it fell victim to the state’s February 2009. financial crunch. Historians have revealed that Johnson, while serving “The state is broke,” explained Gordon. “We are as a young congressman in 1938 and 1939, arranged for going to wind up closing hospitals. That is how dire visas to be supplied to Jews in Warsaw, and oversaw the things are. Things I submitted years ago that would apparently illegal immigration of hundreds of Jews through have gone through without batting an eye were just the port of Galveston, Texas. slashed out of the budget.” A key resource for uncovering LBJ’s pro-Jewish “We were a victim of the state’s financial crisis,” activity is the unpublished 1989 doctoral thesis by lamented Jacob Toporek, the association’s executive University of Texasstudent Louis Gomolak, Prologue: LBJ’s Foreign Affairs Background, 1908-1948. director. “It was an earmark we requested—one of Johnson’s activities were confirmed by other historians in interviews with his wife, family members and those Christmas tree/Hanukka bush items.” political associates. Money from the bill would have been used to match Research into Johnson’s personal history indicates that he inherited his concern for the Jewish people funds from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims from his family. His aunt, Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Against Germany, which works to secure compensation Organization of America. According to Gomolak, Aunt Jessie had nurtured LBJ’s commitment to befriending and restitution for survivors of the Holocaust. Jews for 50 years. As a young boy, Lyndon watched his politically active grandfather “Big Sam” and father “The federations—in order to get matching funds “Little Sam” seek clemency for Leo Frank, the Jewish victim of a blood libel in Atlanta. Frank was lynched by from the Claims Conference—have to use their own a mob in 1915, and the Ku Klux Klan in Texas threatened to kill the Johnsons. The Johnsons later told friends resources, and those are in short supply,” Toporek that Lyndon’s family hid in their cellar while his father and uncles stood guard with shotguns on their porch in said. “If we can’t get the matching funds, then the case of KKK attacks. Johnson’s speechwriter later stated, “Johnson often cited Leo Frank’s lynching as the money from the Claims Conference goes to other source of his opposition to both antisemitism and isolationism.” cont’d on p. 8 states. We would like to keep that here.”

December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 7 Holocaust museum plans BRITISH KINDERTRANSPORTEES TO RECEIVE historic opening GERMAN PENSIONS BY EMILY S. ACHENBAUM, CHICAGO TRIBUNE BY OFER ADERET, Officials with the Illinois Holocaust Museum A historic amendment to British law will now pensions, because they stopped paying German & Education Center announced recently that the allow hundreds of Jews who escaped National Insurance fees upon arriving in Britain. museum will open April 19 to coincide with the as children on the eve of World War II to receive The German government offered compensation anniversary of the 1943 Upris- German National Insurance pensions. only for the years spent in Germany before the escape. ing, considered the largest revolt by Jewish pris- “After many years of struggle, we have solved Hirschberger saw this as an injustice, since the oners against the Nazis during the Holocaust. Ar- the legal entanglement that prevented [those who children had migrated to Britain against their will. Had chitects, organizers and museum benefactors up- were part of the] from receiving they not been persecuted, they would have remained dated the public on the facility near the Edens the payments,” Herman Hirschberger, 82, of London, in Germany and been eligible today for full National Expressway between Golf and Old Orchard Roads who spearheaded the campaign, told Haaretz last Insurance pensions. in Skokie, where construction began in June 2006. week. “It’s a breakthrough. Justice has prevailed.” Following the amendment to British law, some of The museum will be the largest of its kind in the Following a Haaretz query, the German government is now checking to see whether the the National Insurance fees the Kindertransport Midwest. several hundred Jews who left Germany with the members paid Britain will be written off retroactively. "This is likely to be the last major Holocaust mu- Kindertransport and Germany agreed seum built in collaboration with survivors," said Ri- who now live in Israel to consider this chard Hirschhaut, the museum's executive director. will also be eligible for period as one in The exterior of the 65,000-square-foot facility is German pensions. which the largely complete. Although the interior is mostly ex- The Kindertransport survivors paid posed concrete and dust, the walls, lights and stair- (“children’s transport”) German National was a rescue mission Insurance fees— that brought about and will increase 10,000 children, most of their pensions them Jews, out of Nazi accor-dingly. The Germany, Austria and average German Czechoslovakia to pension is four safety in Britain on the times greater than eve of World War II. the average British The children, aged 3 to pension. 17, left their countries, homes and families and sailed This break-through followed a long persistent to Britain between December 1938 and September struggle Hirsch-berger launched 15 years ago. 1939, where they were received by Jewish “Most of the time I was alone. Everyone had cases are done. organizations. given up and thought it was impossible. Even my wife One exhibit is already in place: A wooden, win- Britain’s Jewish leaders had obtained Prime told me it would never happen,” he said. dowless German train car of the type used for trans- Minister Neville Chamberlain’s consent to take them An estimated 150 people who came on the porting livestock until the Nazis used the cars to in, provided they paid for the refugees’ travel and Kindertransport are still living in Britain. The carry thousands of Jews to almost certain death at absorption expenses. government will act to locate them and has set up a concentration camps. Museum officials say incom- Until now, people who left Germany as part of hotline—+44(0)-191-218-7777—in the Department plete and missing records have made them unable the Kindertransport could not receive full German for Work and Pension. to say with certainty whether the museum's train . car was used to transport people, but they know it is German-made and was refurbished during the Ho- locaust era. Blueprints Found for Auschwitz Camp The museum will have some similarities to the BY ERIK KIRSCHBAUM, Reuters There were mass killings of about one million U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washing- BERLIN – The original construction plans Jews before the Nazi’s “” was ton, with rare documents, photographs and cloth- believed used for a major expansion of the Nazi death formulated in late 1941. The decision to kill Europe’s ing. But the Illinois museum will also contain the camp at Auschwitz in 1941 have been found in a 11 million Jews was made at the Wannsee audio testimony of Holocaust survivors who relo- Berlin flat, Germany’s Bild newspaper recently Conference in January 1942. cated to Illinois after World War II, an exhibit on reported. The daily printed three architect’s drawings A copy of the minutes, known as the “Wannsee the neo-Nazi conflict in Skokie in 1977, and an on yellowing paper from the batch of 28 pages of Protocol,” is one of the most important documents educational spotlight on other genocide, including blueprints it obtained. One has an 11.66 meter by from the war. the massacres in Darfur. 11.20 meter room marked “Gaskammer” (gas The newly found Auschwitz blueprints are dated Also under way is an extensive art exhibit chamber) that was part of a “delousing facility.” October 23 1941 and could offer historians earlier showing works of art done in reaction to geno- No one from the federal government’s archives evidence of Nazi plans to kill Jews on a mass scale, cide worldwide. An exhibit for preteens will ex- was immediately available for comment on the Bild said. “These documents reveal that everyone amine issues like bullying and what it means to authenticity or importance of the documents. who had even anything remotely to do with the be different, with the hopes that the museum will The plans, published ahead of the 70th anniversary planning and construction of the concentration camp be a catalyst for discussions on how to prevent of Kristallnacht or the Nazi that was a must have know that people were to be gassed to the unthinkably cruel actions of a few from hav- harbinger of the Holocaust, also include a death in assembly-line fashion,” Bild wrote. “The ing catastrophic effects on many. The museum crematorium and a “L. Keller”—an abbreviation for documents refute once and for all claims by those "will teach children . . . about the dangers of Leichenkeller or corpse cellar. who deny the Holocaust even took place,” it added. overt prejudice and hate," said Chicago billion- A drawing of the building for Auschwitz’s main The concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau aire J.B. Pritzker, who has given more than $1 gate was also found in the documents that Bild said in Poland was the largest — at least 1.1 million Jews million to the project. The museum has raised were believed to have been discovered when a Berlin were killed there. $36.5 million of its $45 million fundraising goal, flat was cleaned out. The mass-circulation newspaper Auschwitz I was set up in May 1940 in an old officials said. About 250,000 students are pre- quoted Hans-Dieter Kreikamp, head of the federal Polish army barracks. The first victims were gassed dicted to visit the museum annually. Since 1990, archives office in Berlin, as saying the blueprints in September 1941. Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, opened Illinois children have been required to learn about offered “authentic evidence of the systematically in October 1941. Four large gas chambers were the Holocaust. planned genocide of European Jews.” added to the camp in January 1942.

TOGETHER 8 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 Kent, who lives in Murray Hill with his wife of insulting at all, but was an expression of joy” because “Anyone can be moral, 51 years, Hannah, is president of the Jewish he sold these families much-needed goods like even under the worst Foundation for the Righteous, a New York-based women’s clothing, and his arrival was a special event nonprofit dedicated to providing financial assistance in country towns. to non-Jews who saved the lives of Jews during the Eventually he moved to New York, where he of circumstances” Holocaust. opened an import/export business with several BY HEATHER ROBINSON, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Squarely built at 83, his gaze is direct and his partners. speech straightforward. But at emotional moments, He also serves as treasurer and chief negotiator When his children were small, they would ask a lilt in his voice betrays a sensitivity that, it is striking for the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Roman Kent to tell them stories about his boyhood. to realize, has survived all that he has. Germany as well as chairman of the American A Holocaust survivor, Kent told As a survivor of Auschwitz, Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their them happy stories about his family— the Lodz ghetto, Gross-Rosen Descendants. his brother, two sisters, himself and slave labor camp in Germany and He is dedicated not only to his fellow Jews, but their parents—before the Germans Flossenberg, a concentration also to those who stood up for them. As president of forced them into the ghetto in Lodz, camp in Germany, Kent has the JFR, he says, “How do you describe a heroic act the city in Poland where they lived. witnessed more inhumanity in one when someone jumps into the ocean and saves a child? His stories often included a mutt named lifetime than most human beings “In Judaism, we say, ‘He who has saved one life, Lala, his childhood pet. could imagine. Yet he has it is as if he has saved the world.’ ... But the righteous Talking about Lala was one way dedicated much of his life to gentiles did more than that. They risked their lives to share with his children some of the helping others, and his words and every day for years; they risked their families’ lives. beautiful and ugly truths about his deeds reflect a reverence for life. “Heroism that could last for days, weeks, months childhood. In telling the remarkable In 1980, he produced a and years ... we don’t have a word to describe the story of how his dog found and visited documentary, Children of the longevity of such heroism.” them in the ghetto, he was able to talk Holocaust, dedicated to the 1.5 The JFR trains teachers to educate youngsters about love in the midst of horrors. million child-ren who perished. about the Holocaust, including the moral lessons it “Our dog was not prejudiced At times, Courage Was My raises. Decency, Kent maintains, is not for the weak. against us because we were Jews,” Only Option reads like a lay- “We like to teach people anyone can be moral, said Kent in his Murray Hill office on friendly book about business. “It’s even under the worst of circumstances—if they have a recent afternoon. “Animals are smarter than people not just about the Holocaust; it’s about what happened the guts,” he says. in this way.” before, during and after,” Kent says. Having lost their After retiring from his textile importing company parents and one of their sisters—their other sister about three years ago, Kent, a grandfather of three, survived the war and moved to Switzerland—Kent CORRECTION decided to write the miraculous story of how Lala and Leon, his younger brother, came to the United located him and his family. Writing that story led to States under a collective visa for 5,000 orphans after publication of My Dog Lala, a children’s book, and the war. In our print version of Together in the “In spurred him on to write his memoir, Courage Was They were placed first in a children’s center in My Only Option (Vantage Press, $26.95) published the Bronx, then with a foster family in Atlanta. In Memoriam” section we inadvertantly ne- this year. the book, Kent recalls that many people in Atlanta, glected to indicate that the Yukiko Sugihara In the book’s introduction, former Secretary of including ones in the Jewish community, lacked article was written by Masha Leon and had State Lawrence Eagleburger, who worked with Kent understanding about the survivors. appeared in The Forward. on the International Commission on Holocaust Era “In those days, rabbis, synagogues, they never Insurance Claims, writes of how Kent and his brother spoke about the Holocaust,” he says. struggled to maintain a small garden in the Lodz ghetto He started his career peddling, mostly to African- so they could feed their mother and sisters. “This American families in Georgia towns, many of whom gentle man,” writes Eagleburger, “fights on with a referred to him as “The Jewman.” will of steel.” He learned this name “was not meant to be

LBJ, righteous gentile But that wasn’t enough. According to historian A decade later while serving in the Senate, Johnson cont’d from p. 5 James M. Smallwood, Congressman Johnson used blocked the Eisenhower administration’s attempts to Already in 1934—four years before legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle apply sanctions against Israel following the 1956 Sinai Chamberlain’s Munich sellout to Hitler— Johnson was “hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as Campaign. “The indefatigable Johnson had never keenly alert to the dangers of and presented the entry port. Enough money could buy false ceased pressure on the administration,” wrote I.L. a book of essays, Nazism: An Assault on passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico and other Kenen, the head of AIPAC at the time. Civilization, to the 21-year-old woman he was Latin American countries.... Johnson smuggled As Senate majority leader, Johnson consistently courting, Claudia Taylor—later known as “Lady Bird” boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas. He hid blocked the anti-Israel initiatives of his fellow Johnson. It was an incredible engagement present. them in the Texas National Youth Democrat, William Fulbright, the chairman of the Five days after taking office in 1937, LBJ Administration...Johnson saved at least four or five Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Among brokewith the Dixiecrats and supported an immigration hundred Jews, possibly more.” Johnson’s closest advisers during this period were bill that would naturalize illegal aliens, mostly Jews During World War II Johnson joined Novy at a several strong pro-Israel advocates, including from Lithuania and Poland. In 1938, Johnson was told small Austin gathering to sell $65,000 in war bonds. Benjamin Cohen (who 30 years earlier was the liaison of a young Austrian Jewish musician who was about According to Gomolak, Novy and Johnson then raised between Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis and to be deported from the United States. With an element a very “substantial sum for arms for Jewish Chaim Weizmann) and Abe Fortas, the legendary of subterfuge, LBJ sent him to the U.S. Consulate in underground fighters in Palestine.” One source cited Washington “insider.” Havana to obtain a residency permit. Erich Leinsdorf, by the historian reports that “Novy and Johnson had Johnson’s concern for the Jewish people the world famous musician and conductor, credited been secretly shipping heavy crates labeled ‘Texas continued through his presidency. Soon after taking LBJ for saving his live. Grapefruit’—but containing arms—to Jewish office in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s That same year, LBJ warned a Jewish friend, underground ‘freedom fighters’ in Palestine.’” assassination in 1963, Johnson told an Israeli diplomat, Jim Novy, that European Jews faced annihilation. “Get On June 4, 1945, Johnson visited Dachau. “You have lost a very great friend, but you have found as many Jewish people as possible out [of Germany According to Smallwood, Lady Bird later recalled a better one.” and Poland],” were Johnson’s instructions. Somehow, that when her husband returned home, “he was still Just one month after succeeding Kennedy, LBJ Johnson provided him with a pile of signed shaken, stunned, terrorized and bursting with an attended the December 1963 dedication of the Agudas immigration papers that were used to get 42 Jews overpowering revulsion and incredulous horror at Achim Synagogue in Austin. Novy opened the out of Warsaw. what he had seen.” cont’d on p. 14 December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 9 Hadassah Rosensaft Presentation Holocaust welfare fund leaves cont’d from p. 5 a principal witness for the prosecution at the first trial of Nazi war criminals before a British military tribunal Hungarian survivors in the lurch held in Luneburg, Germany. BY ELI ASHKENAZI, Haaretz Dr. Rosensaft understood that the plight of the liberated, particularly the orphaned children, was not a Clari Karni, 80, of Kibbutz Hama’apil, put a down time for joy or ecstasy. Those who had lost their families and homes had nowhere to return to and no one to payment on an expensive new pair of glasses a few hug them. In April of 1946, she accompanied a group of Jewish orphans on a boat to Palestine and saw them days ago. She decided on the hefty purchase—some resettled there. Throughout her life time she maintained contact with the children. NIS 2,000—as well as other medical expenditures, Dr. Rosensaft and the man she married, Yosele Rosensaft, the chairman of the Central Committee of only because she knew she would receive a refund Liberated Jews in the British Zone of Germany, did not leave the Bergen-Belsen DP camp until 1950 when all from the Hungarian Holocaust survivors’ fund. The the survivors of Belsen had found a haven. fund transfers $1.75 million annually to Hungarian Dr. Rosensaft continued to be a leader in Holocaust commemoration and education. She served as an survivors with a maximum monthly before-tax income advisor to Dr. Judith Kestenberg’s International Study of Organized Persecution of Children. In 1978, she of NIS 6,650. was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to serve on the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, and she But Karni and other survivors like her will not be was a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council from 1980-1994. She helped make available many getting any more help this year, because the fund’s archives from Europe and played a significant role in the shaping of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in budget for 2008 has been used up. The fund has in- Washington, D.C. formed organizations that deal with survivors’ rights I miss not being able to pick up the phone and consult with Hadassah or just chat over a cup of coffee. that it will not process applications filed after this The Haddasah’s of the world cannot be replaced. As Hanna Senesh once wrote, “There are stars whose coming Monday. radiance is visible on earth though they have long been extinct. These are people whose brilliance continues “The large volume of applications to the Hun- to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the garian fund and the approved budget do not permit night is dark. They light the way for humankind.” the fund to accept new applications until further no- tice,” officials at Israel’s Holocaust Survivors’ Wel- EU PRESIDENCY TO HIGHLIGHT JEWISH RESTITUTION fare Fund, under whose auspices the Hungarian BY CURTIS M. WONG, The Prague Post survivor’s fund operates, said on Thursday. Local Jewish organizations hope that the Czech Republic’s EU presidency will draw attention to a historical “When every shekel is needed and old age is cause—the stolen property of Holocaust victims and their families. During the country’s 2009 presidential knocking at the door, it’s as if life is on hold,” Karni term, Prague will host an international conference on June 26 as part of a government initiative to return indicates the importance of this financial aid. “This is confiscated property to remaining Czech Holocaust survivors and their descendants. The conference, now in the period when a person is approaching the end of the planning stages, is a follow-up event to mark the 10th anniversary of the Washington Conference on his life, but still wants to preserve his dignity.” Holocaust-Era Assets. According to Tomáš Kraus, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Communities The fund was established after a U.S. court rul- in the Czech Republic, co-organizer of the four-day conference formal invitation letters were sent to prime ing that, starting in 2006 and for a period of five years, ministers in 45 countries, and Kraus most are expected to attend. Authorities say most of the Jewish community $1.75 million be allocated to Holocaust survivors from is looking forward to the conference, which is being seen by many as a way to share the findings of their Hungary. The money is intended to help survivors personal research, as well as acknowledge the Holocaust’s historical and personal relevance. with rent payments to prevent eviction, medical treat- ments, dental care, hearing aids, medications, glasses, Special “Matzevah Marker” a second medical opinion and more. During its initial two years of operation, there Available for Survivors’ Graves were few applicants and the fund was able to meet their needs. In view of this, the maximum annual Survival has placed upon us the responsibility of making yet dramatic, maker will re-affirm our uniqueness and amount granted to applicants was increased from NIS sure that the Holocaust is remembered forever. Each of us our place in history for future generations. has the sacred obligation to share this task while we still Our impressive MATZEVAH marker is now available 7,000 to NIS 12,000. But this year the number of can. However, with the passage of each year, we realize for purchase. It is cast in solid bronze, measuring 5x7 monthly applications ballooned from 100 to 800, forc- that time is against us, and we must make sure to utilize all inches, and can be attached to new or existing tombstones. ing the fund to decide this week not to process appli- means for future remembrance. The cost of each marker is $125.00. Additional donations cations submitted after August 31. Karni and her fel- A permanent step toward achieving this important goal are gratefully appreciated. low survivors have been left to cover outstanding can be realized by placing a unique and visible maker on Let us buy the marker now and leave instructions in our expenses from their meager resources, and feel more the gravestone of every survivor. The most meaningful wills for its use. This will enable every one of us to leave than a little duped. symbol for this purpose is our Survivor logo, inscribed on this earth visible proof of our miraculous survival and with the words HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR. This simple, an everlasting legacy of the Holocaust. Remember Us: The Holocaust Bnai Mitzvah Project Name ______invites each child who is preparing for bar/bat mitzvah to connect with the memory of one child Address______who was lost in the Holocaust before having the opportunity to come to the Torah. Each par- City ______State ______Zip ______Phone______ticipant is provided with the name of one spe- cific lost child, the available biography, and sug- Number of Markers ______gestions for ways to remember—speaking about the child from the bimah, doing tikkun olam in Total Amount Enclosed $______the name of the child, taking on the mitzvah of yahrzeit, etc. A brief Parent Guide explains the The cost of each marker is US $125 including shipping & handling. program to the family, and offers suggestions Make checks payable to: for how to support the child in remembering. American Gathering This is a free, voluntary program. Stories told and mail to: by participants about their experience can be American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors read on our web site (www.remember-us.org) and Their Descendants under Stories of Remembering. Names and pro- 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 gram material can be requested on-line. To date New York, NY 10001 more than 9,000 children in 400 congregations Please allow sixty (60) days for delivery. have participated, representing every Jewish de- nomination.

TOGETHER 10 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 victims.” The agreement also stipulated that if anyone matter to the public’s attention. It is our obligation and Remarks of Ernest W. Michel protested the inclusion of a celebrity or family member, our duty to their memory. at the Press Conference the church would remove those names from the IGI. We are also making a call for action. If you find Protesting Mormon Rites on And so we thought the problem had been solved this practice as objectionable as we do, let the church and those identified as Holocaust victims were removed know how you feel by writing to the church president. Holocaust Victims from the IGI. But we were wrong! The practice Tell him, as I have, that Holocaust victims should The American continues unabated and Holocaust victims’ names, as not be baptized. Let him know, as I have, that you Gathering of Jewish well as the names of other deceased Jews, are still categorically refuse to be baptized after your own death Holocaust Survivors and being added to the Mormon lists. and you do not want your name or family members’ Their Descendants have We do not know how many Holocaust victims’ names listed in Mormon church records. Put this reluctantly called this names were removed from the IGI, but it is fair to say demand in your last will and testament, as well. press conference to that the total number of such baptized Holocaust victims We want the leaders of the church to clearly hear discuss a practice of the still on Mormon lists is in the hundreds of thousands. It our demands: Mormon Church that is important to know that even if a name is removed We, the Holocaust survivors, demand that the causes Holocaust Sur- from the IGI, it is still kept in non-public church records. Mormon Church stop baptizing Jews murdered in the vivors around the world When we recently discovered new names on the Holocaust, a genocide where one out of three Jews in tremendous pain and IGI, it became clear that our differing interpretations the world were murdered because they were Jews. anguish. of the 1995 agreement seemed insoluble. Church We, the survivors, demand that the names of those It is fitting that today is the 70th anniversary of leaders say their religion gives them the right to known victims baptized be removed from the IGI and Kristallnacht, when 1400 synagogues in Germany posthumously baptize anyone who ever lived. I learned other Mormon records. were destroyed. I stood in front of our synagogue in that people of all religions—Christians, Muslims, We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as and saw the still smoking ruins. Fourteen Buddhists and others—are being posthumously we respect you and your religion. years ago, in 1994, I learned that my parents—who baptized, including prominent non-Jews and Jews We, the survivors, ask you leave our 6,000,000 were murdered in Auschwitz—were posthumously whose names come from death records. My best guess Jews, all victims of the Holocaust alone. baptized by the Mormon Church. My mother was is that almost one billion people have been posthumously They suffered enough. We, the survivors ,speak baptized in 1991 at the Mormon temple in Las Vegas, baptized. for them. We ask you, the leaders of the Mormon and is listed in the International Genealogical Index, We met with church leaders in New York as church, to let them rest in peace. known as the IGI, which records the names of those recently to again voice our displeasure.Nothing posthumously baptized. My father was also baptized.I changed at that meeting. A few days later we received was shocked. With a letter I wrote to then church a letter from Elders Jensen and Lance Wickman, with president Howard Hunter, with a copy to Utah no reference to on-going baptisms of Holocaust victims. Senator Orrin Hatch, thus began a 14-year odyssey. They told us about their new computer software that When Senator Hatch invited me to his Washington would “discourage the submission of large lists of office, he explained these baptisms are done out the unrelated individuals.” We have heard about this Mormon’s love for the Jewish people, so that the souls software for the last six years, and we are still waiting Address of the President of the Mormon of murdered Holocaust victims would be allowed to for them to roll it out. Church: be reunited with their ancestors. They also suggested that we reconstitute a joint Posthumous baptism is a major tenet of Mormon monitoring committee to identify possible violations of Thomas S. Monson religious belief which says you can go to heaven and church policy. But they failed to tell us that the Church The Church of Jesus Christ be in the presence of God only if you are born a has no mechanism to undo a baptism. Unless the Mormon or have been baptized into the faith. All others Mormons implement a mechanism to undo what they Of Latter Day Saints can never be admitted. have done, they will, in effect, create a situation where Temple Square The ceremony takes place in the temple’s inner Holocaust deniers will be able to use the data base to Salt Lake City, Utah 84150 sanctum, where a living Mormon stands in for the prove that the death of six million Jews was a myth. person about to be baptized, and the following prayer So while the Mormons say they share our pain, is recited: “Brother_____, in the name of Jesus Christ they also share with us their frustration that by raising we lay our hands upon your head, for and in behalf this issue we are accusing them of trying to change of______, who is dead and confirm you as a member the Jewishness of a person that they have chosen to of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints baptize. We tell them repeatedly that we are not When I told my fellow survivors at the American interested in a theological debate; we are concerned Gathering about this, they were as upset as I was about how their lists can be used in the future. and authorized me to write to President Hunter to They tell me that my parents’ Jewishness has not demand the removal of my parents’ names from their been altered, but how will they guarantee that my records. parents of blessed memory—who lived as Jews and NOTICE TO HOLOCAUST Throughout the 14-year process, our relationship were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than SURVIVORS with the church has been respectful and cordial, and it they were Jews—will not be identified as Mormon still is. Our goal was to try to convince the Mormon victims of the Holocaust? NEEDING ASSISTANCE Church to stop baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims. The Mormons say they are very concerned about Financial assistance is available for needy Discussions led to a signed agreement on May 3, 1995, not breaking their own rules. Before a Holocaust victim Holocaust survivors. If you have an urgent under the auspices of the Conference of Presidents of can be baptized in this rite, church rules say permission situation regarding housing, health care, food or Major American Jewish Organizations. It stipulated has to be obtained from the closest living relative, a other emergency, you may be eligible for a one- that “the church would discontinue the posthumous parent, son or daughter. Since some 6,000,000 Jews time grant. These grants are funded by the Claims baptism of Jews.” As a result, on June 16, 1995, the were murdered, including entire families, there is no Conference. highest level in the Mormon Church, the first one left to give permission. When asked, a leading If there is a Jewish Family Service agency presidency, sent a letter to all church members. It read, member of the Arizona Mormon Church admitted, “We in your area, please discuss your situation with in part: “Church members should not submit for temple have never really done that.” them. If there is no such agency nearby, mail ordinances the names of celebrities and non-approved Over the years some suggested we file a lawsuit a written inquiry describing your situation to: groups, such as Jewish Holocaust victims.” for breach of contract. We have never considered that. Emergency Holocaust Survivor Assistance On August 9, 1995, Elder Monte Brough, Director There will be no lawsuit. But we do turn to the court P.O. Box 765 of the Church’s Family History Department wrote me of public opinion because the American Gathering’s Murray Hill Station and said: “We have received some letters wishing that key mission is to remember and commemorate the New York, NY 10156 we had only agreed to remove ordinance information. victims of the Holocaust. Because there is a risk here However, we are removing all of the Holocaust that that memory will be distorted, we now bring this

December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 11 the country, but was later released to finish a building contacts in Europe, America and elsewhere. Holocaust Heroes project in town. He began designing work camps and “He was the foot soldier of the group,” said BY GREG BLUESTEIN, AP other sites for the Nazis, hoping the Jewish community Jacob Fuchs, a author who chronicled ATLANTA - Andre Steiner, the last known survivor would be better off if they cooperated. the group. “He went out there and risked his of an unsung group credited with saving thousands Soon he had 4,000 people working in 130 neck in actual negotiations.” of Jews during the Holocaust, turned 100 rercently. workshops at the camps, making an array of items Buoyed by its success, the group planned The Bratislava Working Group used cash supplied for the German war effort. At lunch, he gathered to boost the bribes to save Jews through the by foreigners to bribe Nazi officials into keeping with other young Jews to talk about ways to improve rest of the continent, but it couldn’t come up scores of Jews from being sent to concentration conditions for the Jews. The band soon became known with the cash. Their work was sidelined for camps. as the Bratislava Working Group. good in September 1944 when Slovak partisans He’s hard of hearing but his mind and memory But as Slovaks began a massive deportation of revolted, drawing a crushing response from the are sharp, and his crystal blue eyes sparkle when he Jews to concentration camps in Poland in 1942, the German military. talks about his experience. group’s mission changed as well. It decided to focus Steiner and his family fled to the mountains, Wearing a loose flannel shirt and jeans that hung on finding a way—any way—to rescue Jews in hiding there for months until peasants from the Slovakia. countryside came with the welcome news that “We wanted to help in any way we the war had ended. Newly liberated, Steiner could,” he said. “It was a very close-knit moved to Cuba in 1948 and then the U.S. in friendship with one ideal: to help the Jews.” 1950, settling with relatives in Atlanta. One of the members, Rabbi Michael Dov He became a celebrated architect here, Weissmandl, had heard a rumor that a Nazi responsible for planning some of the state’s official was willing to accept cash bribes to largest attractions, from Stone Mountain Park keep Jews off the dreaded deportation list. to Emory University. He was also known for Soon, they had devised a back story for their more ambitious ideas, like a 1970s proposal for gambit: They were negotiating on behalf of a a mini-city in downtown Atlanta that could be fictitious world Jewish leader named home to 130,000 people. Ferdinand Roth. When shown a newspaper clipping about When it was time for a face-to-face the project, he dismissed it with a wave of his meeting, the group picked Steiner, the hands. “Plans, shmlans,” he said. “Only plans.” confident man who cut a dashing figure with Steiner’s long life has had its share of slicked back hair and a golden tongue. Inside, sorrow. He still regrets divorcing his first wife. though, Steiner was awash with anxiety. A He fought off colon cancer a dozen years ago, off his thin body during a recent visit, he was sporting single misstep could have cost him his life and betray a stroke two years back. And he’s outlived his two white hearing aids that blended with his close- the group’s effort. two sons, who both died recently. cropped beard. But visitors still had to shout in his Asking the rabbi for advice, he got a most But he has long since come to terms with ear to be heard. unexpected answer: Imagine the Nazi sitting on a his quixotic relationship with the Nazi, a man “Imagine—a hundred years,” he said in a thick, toilet nude. When he arrived at the meeting and did he bribed with labor and money in hopes of halting accent. “It’s nearly too much.” just that, he couldn’t stifle a smirk. saving his fellow Jews. Steiner already was in his late 20s when the Nazis “He got really angry but I told him if you’re angry “He was an enemy in whose hand was the occupied Czechoslovakia, bringing with them anti- we won’t make a deal. He conceded, then said, ‘Take future.” Jewish laws they had spread through much of the a seat,’” Steiner remembers. “From then on, I wasn’t rest of Europe. His father-in-law fled to England in nervous at all.” 1938, but Steiner settled in Bratislava with his wife Steiner soon became the go-to-guy for the group’s and young son. negotiations with local leaders and Nazi officials, I was next door. He was arrested after Nazis seized control of handing over cash installments smuggled in through I was next door. All were silently plotting what no mind could think of then. The Findling Family Reunion And it happened so fast, no one wanted to BY ISABEL ALCOFF family can get together without food? But it was an amazing believe their eyes. The concept of a family reunion always seemed fete to bring together five branches of the family under I was there next door. impossible for our family which was spread out all one roof for several hours of schmoozing, picture-taking, over the world like so many Jews. I was always and connecting dots on a chart. Many brought old black I saw them flying out of the windows, envious of my American friends whose families had and white photos of family members they sometimes could jumping off, diving off huge reunions or cousins’ clubs, organized well in not even identify, and we tried to help put together the pieces, Hoping that the angels would catch them advance including the obligatory souvenir family T- touching these fragile documents with full knowledge that Or somehow something out there would shirt. Since my parents were Holocaust survivors, I we would probably only see them once. Almost all those break their fall. grew up with very few relatives and did not know attending, or their ancestors, had left Poland before World I was there next door. most of them except from photographs and letters War II. One representative from each branch of the family All happened quickly, but their sufferings, presented a short summary of their family history and, as I we received from Uruguay, France, Israel, Poland, their sufferings were slow. Brazil, and Australia. listened, I couldn’t help thinking how fortunate they were Call it ghosts, call it souls. As I got older, I made an effort to meet many not to have memories of the Holocaust hanging over them I saw, yes I saw bubbles of life of the relatives at least once. I really thought I had like dark clouds. Floating into the air between flames, dust met everyone, until my father received an email in My father, the only survivor in the room, told his and smoke mid 2007 from someone named Toni asking if he was grandmother’s story, including that she was killed at Belzec. Waving slow, sad goodbyes. the grandson of Rosa Findling. Toni was working on Several of the young people in the room later led him to the Goodbye dear friends, brothers, sisters. her family tree and doing some serious research, trying genealogical chart hanging on the wall afterward, and asked I was there next door and could only to connect the branches of the Findling family from him to tell them more about each individual from his part of watch. around the world. The tree grew over the last year the family. I don’t think there was anything that could top Death was deaf to our cries. and today, a beautiful Sunday in October 2008, we that for him. They wanted to know. I’m here to tell you anyway, the suffering had a reunion of my father’s grandmother’s family in We may never meet again, but we had this unique is still alive and slow. New York City. opportunity. The laborious research of one woman paid off Still slow around us and inside us. The Findling family descendants came from near as we connected names and faces we never knew, places Of course we will NEVER FORGET. and far— the youngest only a year old and the oldest we never heard of, and a series of events that brought us ---Chrisopher Leroy was 87. Of course, there was food. What Jewish together on a Sunday in New York.

TOGETHER 12 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 distinctly—a small pea flower on a short stem, in Each year, THE FLOWER different shades of purple. It was exquisite! We put as more Jews BY SARA LANDERER ROSEN it into the best glass we had and placed it on the and their families dresser so everyone could enjoy it. move across the In everybody’s life there are unforgettable That same day, the Germans announced that one country seeking moments: first day in school, first love, first kiss, first part of the ghetto was to be annexed immediately new jobs, or disappointment, first heartbreaking loss. Memories and completely surprised even the Jewish militia— retire to new of childhood and youth are usually happy ones, and no arrangements could be made for the new refugees communities, the mature years bring memories of tragedies and on such short notice. Luckily, the evening was warm, and as more sorrows. As an adolescent in Poland between the and the majority camped outside. The next day they and more older Jews are passing away, we’re two World Wars there were simply too many were absorbed into our small community. becoming strangers to one another. tragedies. Often, people, even my own children, ask That night, sheltered by walls of our yard, families We sit next to someone at synagogue or temple how I kept my spirits up, how I maintained my morale. prepared for the night. We didn’t know about horror on the High Holy Days, or we exercise beside A small, seemingly unimportant incident, when I movies in those days—life was horror itself—but the someone at the JCC on weekends, and we wonder was in the ghetto in Tarnow, characterized my attitude courtyard below us looked like a scene from one. about his or her Jewish story. But we rarely, if ever, to life then. It was spring or summer 1942. I was a Most amazing was the stillness. Afraid to attract learn it. Our stories are being lost to a new generation teenager, and despite the hurricane of cruelty German attention, people moved like shadows. of Jews. unleashed around us, I believed in life and a future. I stood on the balcony with two friends. We I founded The Jewish Writing Project as a way We lived in one room with three other families, ten always met after what was pompously called of encouraging Jews to share and preserve their people together. Fear was our constant companion; “supper” for a little privacy. Somehow, that evening Jewish stories. You can visit The Jewish Writing anything unexpected—a loud sound, a bang at the we couldn’t talk. We stood together, trying not to see Project website at: door, a motion in the street, could mean sudden the people in the yard. They did not up look at us, http://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com. death—sudden and unexpected—because our will either. Everyone tried to be casual. We leaned on the Just imagine if Jews contributed stories or poems to live was so overwhelming we simply ignored the rail, looking at each other, ashamed of the plight of about experiences that might have made an impact danger and could be cut down in a second. our people, scared about tomorrow’s insecurity, and on them as Jews, or shared memories of holidays, or Death seemed inevitable, because it was not were afraid to mention it. interviewed a person who might have influenced their abstract. It was always there, and made us believe Suddenly I ran to our room, took the little flower, understanding of Judaism. we would survive—without logic, without hope— and brought it to my friends on the balcony. They With luck, the project will serve as an archive of except for the hope in our dreams. We were in our were speechless. They caressed the little flower, tried Jewish stories, memories, poems, interviews, etc., teens and early twenties, and it seemed absolutely to smell it, though it had no aroma, kissed it, held it bringing together Jews from all backgrounds, ages, impossible that a tiny lead bullet could stop the driving close to their faces. It was a revelation, a message and places, and shedding light on what it means for force each of us carried within. We paid as little from the world outside, the world of beauty, nature, so many of us to be Jewish today. attention as possible to our dismal and devastating life. The little flower was proof that the ghetto wasn’t Hope you enjoy exploring the site... and will think surroundings. We created a world filled with feelings, the only universe. about sharing it with your colleagues (and your love, friendship, dreams—we built castles in our The courtyard and its sad inhabitants disappeared paper’s readers). Perhaps you’d even think of dreams and hoped against hope. like a bad dream, and we began to talk again about contributing? Many thanks. When they marched us out of the ghetto to work, life, future and happiness. My friend, Mina Natel, we recited poetry to the rhythm of our steps. During said, “You know girls, if we are still able to rejoice Best wishes, the work, we hummed melodies, trying to find parallels because of a little flower’s beauty, then Hitler will to our situation in poetry and music. Books were never win the war against us.” Bruce Black forbidden, but we always had some hidden, and we The little purple pea flower gave us the ability to Founder, The Jewish Writing Project savored every word, learning passages that were see and cherish beauty despite the squalor around Sarasota, FL relevant to us by heart. us; it strengthened our determination to resist the (941) 355-1787 Our Bible was The Flames by the Russian writer degradation of our humanity by our diabolic Brzozovsky, depicting the life of revolutionaries. We oppressors, and reinforced our ability to create a shell Beyond camps and forced labour: identified with the heroes, since we had ties with the to protect our inner selves from destruction. We current international research on resisted until the last heartbeat. Those of us who died, underground and hoped to join the movement. To retain survivors of Nazi persecution. our sanity, we rejected the idea of senseless death, a died as human beings, those who survived were the death because one was born a Jew. The heroes of true victors of the enemy’s depraved and defeated Third international multidisciplinary conference to be the book were killed fighting for their ideals—we, armies—and the little flower was our weapon. held at the Imperial War Museum London too, had ideals we would die for. One of the book’s 7-9 January 2009 main characters, who was killed in an ambush, left a Further information and a registration form are now will in which he wrote, “What could be better than a available at: http://www.iwm.org.uk/BCFL2009 sudden death? It closes the door behind you and you Around 100 speakers from all over the world will are not responsible for anything. Not for the evil and present and discuss the latest results of their research injustice around you...” on all groups of survivors of Nazi persecution. These That’s what we wished for: if we had to die, let it include—but are not limited to—Jews, Gypsies, be sudden, taking us unawares—because we felt so Slavonic peoples, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of guilty in our helplessness. Brzozowsky’s language was magnificently rich, war, political dissidents, members of underground and in the sea of poverty that constituted the ghetto, movements, the disabled, the so-called “racially every page was a treasure. Everyone and everything impure,” and forced laborers. around us was drab, poor, and gray... Even the few trees and bushes in our backyard seemed to change Suzanne Bardgett from green to gray, as if ashamed to look unaffected. IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM, LONDON Vocabulary in our ghetto shrank to essentials, and David Cesarani expressed only daily needs. So we savored the Royal Holloway luscious descriptions of the Russian countryside and UNIVERSITY OF LONDON cities, so similar to Poland, because we loved the Jessica Reinisch country we were born in, and it was refreshing to be BIRKBECK COLLEGE LONDON reminded of its beauty. One day, my cousin Bubek, a young mischievous Johannes-Dieter Steinert boy, smuggled a flower into the ghetto. I remember it UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 13 the solitude to compose Mein Kampf (My Struggle) November 9th custody, and 36 Jews were murdered. The pretext and ultimately assisted his populist message to far was the previous day’s assassination in Paris of a right-wing opponents of the Weimar Republic. What Should We Remember? German diplomat by a 17-year old Jewish boy whose Fifteen years later on November 9, Hitler exploited BY DR. JOHN RODDEN parents had been dumped with thousands of other the date’s associations sponsor Kristallnacht, which November 9 marked a number of important Jews on the Polish border and were left there to launched his Final Solution. events in German history. In addition to being the starve. 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of So can Germans celebrate the day the Berlin Wall collapsed? If they do, it is uneasily at best. For Broken Glass that marked the official beginning of o you believe in astrology? The Germans refer one November 9 recalls another. If 1918 led to the Holocaust, the date also marks the 19th anniversary to November 9 as a Schickssalstag—a star- D democracy, 1923 represented Hitler’s first attempt of an event that numerous scholars consider the most crossed day, a “Day X.” a day Americans would call at a power grab—and 1938 witnessed the Nazi significant occurrence in modern world history: the a “day of infamy.” Germany’s November 9 possesses regime’s first organized nationwide pogrom against fall of the Berlin Wall. a reputation like that of our Pearl Harbor Day, and the Jews.Yet in 1989—44 years after Germany’s Many historians say that it rivals the French has also accreted associations evocative of September unconditional surrender in World War II—liberation Revolution in importance. The crumbling of the Wall 11, July 4, and even Thanksgiving Day and M.L.K. really occurred marking the end of the postwar era in November 1989 led to the collapse of communism Day. It is all of these and more rolled into one. in Germany and, soon thereafter, throughout Europe. throughout Eastern Europe and to the ultimate The happenchance convergence of the events During the last decade, there has been a call to dissolution of the Soviet Union just two years later. of 1989 with those of 1938 explains why November make November 9 a “Day of Unity.” Former Foreign Erected in August 1961, the Wall stood for 28 years 9 was rejected by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Minister Joschka Fischer declared: “…Why does before it was toppled by the mass protests of East 1989-90 as reunified Germany’s national holiday: the this republic not possess the courage to declare Germans in their “unbloody revolution.” joyous scenes atop the Wall evoked the horrific November 9 our national holiday? Why does the Such an anniversary would normally furnish spectacle of Kristallnacht. In the shadow of the Wall Federal Republic not have the courage to say: This grounds for joyous celebration, but modern German knelt the ghostly presence of the Holocaust. The terror is our history? November 9 …possesses a special history is not so simple. For there are other November haunted the triumph, the agony enveloped the ecstasy. emotional quality,” adding that Germans could 9ths too—Kristallnacht is just one—and for millions Yes, the relief—that the Cold War was over and a express “deepest sadness and remorse” about the of people these other anniversaries form an umbra New World Order was at hand—was freighted with events of 1938 and the treatment of German Jews, that envelopes the later date. The dilemma for the burden of the German past. The writer and human while acknowledging that “November 9 was also Germans is agonizing: How can a society celebrate rights advocate Friedrich Schorlemmer has called the the night when the Wall fell and people danced in one group without offending another if the event date “a joke played by history.” the streets. celebrated inescapably recalls the suffering of the The years 1989 and 1938 are only two of the Ultimately, if there is a single day in modern latter? Can such a celebration reflect a culture’s German November 9 “days of infamy.” But few German history—and perhaps even in world enlarged understanding of suffering and thereby Germans laugh when they think of the coincidences— history—that warrants reflection, it is November 9. express a deepened resulting compassion? These or the unforeseen, often unintended consequences. The German government promoted a slogan in the questions resound especially loudly on this 70th November 9, 1918. On that date Kaiser Wilhelm late 1990s that it hoped would help Germans anniversary of Kristallnacht. abdicated the throne in the face of an armed uprising commemorate without unduly celebrating November While the Berlin Wall remains, for younger from the populace. This ended the Hohenzollern 9: “Remembrance Is the Key to Redemption.” Germans, an unforgettable symbol of the Cold War dynasty and inaugurated Germany’s experiment with People are reluctant to accept Fischer’s and of East-West tensions, the image of shattered democracy, leading to the formation of the Weimar proposal. Different Germans remember differently. glass littering Nazi Germany’s streets bleed in the Republic. In 1923, on that same date, a little known For East Germans, November 9 means reunification memory of elder Germans, especially those German right-wing radical in Munich—Adolf Hitler, a with their families in ; indeed it Jews who survived. On that night, the German histrionic Austrian interloper—led the “Beer Hall symbolizes new freedoms to speak out, to travel to government condoned the looting and pillaging of Putsch,” a sparsely supported, pathetic little march places beyond the Wall. For German Jews and Jews thousands of Jewish shops and synagogues—191 easily broken up by the city police. Yet the arrest, around the globe, November 9 still means terror in synagogues were set afire (most of them burned to trial, and imprisonment of the leader of these the streets, broken synagogue windows, and the ground), almost 7,500 Jewish-owned shops were insurrectionists had grave, unexpected ransacked, 20,000 Jewish citizens were taken into consequences: his months in prison granted Hitler shattered storefront glass.

LBJ, righteous gentile Avner recently described prime minister Levi Eshkol’s Goldberg later noted, “Resolution 242 in no way cont’d from p. 8 successful appeal for these weapons on a visit to the refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was ceremony by saying to Johnson, “We can’t thank him LBJ ranch. deliberate.” This historic diplomacy was conducted enough for all those Jews he got out of Germany Israel won the 1967 war, and Johnson worked under Johnson’s stewardship, as Goldberg related during the days of Hitler.” to make sure it also won the peace. “I sure as hell to the Johnson Library. “I must say for Johnson,’ Lady Bird would later describe the day, according want to be careful and not run out on little Israel,” Goldberg stated, “he gave me great personal to Gomolak: “Person after person plucked at my Johnsonsaid in a March 1968 conversation with his support.” sleeve and said, ‘I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, Robert David Johnson, a professor of history at for him. He helped me get out.’’’ Lady Bird elaborated, according to White House tapes recently released. College, recently wrote in The New York “Jews had been woven into the warp and woof of all Soon after the 1967 war, Soviet premier Aleksei Sun, “Johnson’s policies stemmed more from [Lyndon’s] years.” Kosygin asked Johnson at the Glassboro Summit personal concerns—his friendship with leading The prelude to the 1967 war was a terrifying why the U.S. supported Israel when there were 80 Zionists, his belief that America had a moral period for Israel, with theU.S. State Department led million Arabs and only 3 million Israelis. “Because obligation to bolster Israeli security and his by the historically unfriendly Dean Rusk urging an it is right,” responded the straight-shooting Texan. conception of Israel as a frontier land much like his evenhanded policy despite Arab threats and acts of The crafting of UN Resolution 242 in November home state of Texas. His personal concerns led him aggression. Johnsonheld no such illusions. After the 1967 was done under Johnson’s scrutiny. The call to intervene when he felt that the State or Defense war he placed the blame firmly on Egypt: “If a single for “secure and recognized boundaries” was critical. departments had insufficiently appreciated Israel’s act of folly was more responsible for this explosion The American and British drafters of the resolution diplomatic or military needs.” than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous opposed Israel returning all the territories captured President Johnson firmly pointed American policy announced decision [by Egypt] that the Strait of Tiran in the war. In September 1968, Johnsonexplained, in a pro-Israel direction. In a historical context, the would be closed [to Israeli ships and Israeli-bound “We are not the ones to say where other nations American emergency airlift to Israel in 1973, the constant cargo].” should draw lines between them that will assure diplomatic support, the economic and military assistance Kennedy was the first president to approve the each the greatest security.It is clear, however, that and the strategic bonds between the two countries can sale of defensive U.S. weapons to Israel, specifically a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring all be credited to the seeds planted by LBJ. Hawk anti-aircraft missiles. But Johnson approved peace.There must be secure and there must be The writer served as deputy chief of mission of the Israeli tanks and fighter jets, all vital after the 1967 war when recognized borders. Some such lines must be agreed Embassy in Washington. Today, an international consultant, he France imposed a freeze on sales to Israel. Yehuda to by the neighbors involved.” blogs atwww.lennybendavid.com.

TOGETHER 14 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 A Story my arm so hard that he almost cut off my circulation. meet...I’m sure you know that today is Yom Kippur We all stampeded to get out of the line of fire, and and they are about to say Yizkor (mention the names BY HEINZ HESDORFFER my son and I were separated in the frenzy. I never of those who have passed away). Come with me so As I was sitting on the plane, I could not help saw him again. Later, I heard from others who knew you can mention your son’s name, who died for the but notice the man on my left. He was consuming a us, that he had been pulled aside by a soldier and sake of Kiddush Hashem (for the sake of sanctifying trayf (unkosher) cutlet. As I settled back to wait shot.” Brushing the tears from his eyes, “God says Hashem’s name), to the Chazzan. This might be until he finished eating his meal, I noticed the name ‘Have children.’ I did, and they were taken away. your only chance for your son’s name to be on the wrapping covering his trayf-as-trayf-can- So now whatever God tells me to do, I do the remembered. Don’t you think that it’s time for his be meal. The name read, Weinstein. opposite. He says ‘Keep kosher’—I eat trayf. He soul to be mentioned in the Heavenly court?” “Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude or offend says, ‘Honor the Sabbath’—I go out in my car. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, just you, but may I ask you a question?” I asked. Whatever He says, I do the opposite.” waiting to spill over onto his shirt. Clasping his arm “Sure.” I could not say anything. Six hours later, we in mine, I led him through and up to where the “You know that you have the option to order Chazzan stood. I approached kosher meals on this airline?” him and asked if he would say He then stared at me and replied, “I don’t eat a special Hashkava. Mr. kosher.” Weinstein leaned over and “What do you mean you don’t eat kosher? Do whispered, Kasriel Menachem you mean that in the house yes and out of the house ben Yechezkel Sraga. no, or is it just not a big deal to you, or what?” The chazzan’s face turned “None of the above. I don’t eat kosher and I a chalky white, and beads of don’t eat it because God said that we SHOULD sweat broke out on his eat it, and anything God says, well, I just do the forehead. His eyes looked like complete OPPOSITE.” they would pop out of his head, As if that had not shocked me enough, I then and he swayed for a second saw a number tattooed in blue ink on his arm as he landed in Houston and went our separate ways. I where he stood. He reached out toward the man rolled up his sleeves. never dreamed that I would see Mr. Weinstein again. standing next to me and called out in a strangled “You really want to know?” he asked me. I said Four years later, I decided to take my family to voice, “Father!”—and he fainted. yes and he continued. The funny thing was that he Eretz Yisrael for the yamim tovim. We went from Many marriages could have been saved by was speaking to me as if there had been a place to place visiting the whole country. Then Yom considering letting go, forgiving, or saying “I am conversation going on in his head all along and he Kippur came. I attended a Yom Kippur service in a sorry.” Many relationships can continue by simply was just turning up the volume. Beit Kneset in Mea Shaarim. I walked outside for forgetting and starting on a new page. Many Gezerot “It was my son,” he said. “That was the final some fresh air. I then saw something out of the corner (decrees) could have been cancelled from oneself straw...I endured everything with equanimity until of my eye that shocked me. An elderly man was and all of Am Yisrael by realizing that obstacles and finally, one day I broke. The entire time in the camps, sitting at the bus stop, and smoking! As I stood there suffering we go through is because “Our kind father I had one goal, to see the liberation with my son, in shock, I suddenly realized that the old man sitting in heaven is expecting me to make a U (you)-turn. Kasriel Menachem. His mother was long gone, as and smoking was my old acquaintance Mr. That U-turn would bring blessing, health, and were his brother and sisters, but we were going to Weinstein. I realized I was being given another happiness, for oneself as well as all of Am Yisrael. survive, I was sure of it. One day, the entire prisoner chance. The father who decided to make a U-turn and enter population was summoned to the assembly area for I approached him and told him, “Isn’t it funny theBeit Kneset was able to find his lost child that he a special roll call. There was number of trapdoors how life will sometime throw two people together never imagined he would see again. on the platform to accommodate several and they can’t even imagine why? Then years later Let us all make a little U-turn every day, and simultaneous hangings. they cross paths once again, and this time they are save our relationships and marriages, and cancel the During this tirade, my son’s hand was squeezing able to get a little bit of an idea why they had to troubled decrees from Am Yisrael.

Another Collaborator Unveiled sistant attorney general Matthew Friedrich of the By DPA U.S. justice department’s criminal division. The court The Survivors Registry maintains the single An 87-year-old Ukrainian immigrant lost his ap- based its decision in part on UAP documents, includ- R most comprehensive listing of Holocaust peal to keep his U.S. citizenship after a U.S. federal ing one signed by Kalymon that “proved that in 1942 survivors in the world. The Registry has existed court ruled he had collaborated with Nazis during he personally killed and wounded Jews in Lviv by E for over a decade, and currently contains over Germany’s occupation of and helped liqui- shooting them,” a statement from the justice depart- G 185,000 names of survivors and their spouses date a Jewish ghetto in Poland. Ruling in ment said. and descendants (including children, their the four-year-old case, the Sixth Circuit “The Nazis and their collaborators killed I spouses, and grandchildren). Visitors to the Registry’s public area at the Court of Appeals said that John Ivan more than 100,000 of Lviv’s Jews—men, S Holocaust Museum can access basic information Kalymon had lied about his involvement women and children whose only ‘crime’ was T about survivors and their family members via with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) their religion,” said Eli Rosenbaum, director touch-screen computers. The Registry is an when he emigrated to the U.S. from Ger- R of the Office of Special Investigations that con- invaluable resource for survivors still searching many in 1949, U.S. justice officials said. tinues to probe Nazi-era crimes. He called Y for family and friends, as well as for historians The Troy, Michigan, resident became a the decision by the court, which serves Michi- and genealogists. U.S. citizen in 1955. gan, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, an “im- Further information can be found at U.S. investigators charged that as a member of portant victory in the U.S. government’s ongoing ef- http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/registry. the UAP, Kalymon had helped round up Jews, im- fort to secure a measure of justice on behalf of the prison them in a ghetto, terrorize them and supervise victims of Nazi inhumanity.” Contact: Laura M. Green, Collections their forced labor, kill those trying to escape and lead The court ruled that Kalymon had not been Manager, Survivors Registry survivors to extermination and forced labor camps, eligible for U.S. citizenship because of his UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST including Belzec in Poland. He allegedly committed collaboration with the Nazis, and because he hid MEMORIAL MUSEUM the crimes in Lviv, formerly in Poland and now part this information when he applied for a U.S. visa. 202-488-6164 of Ukraine, from 1941-1944. It was not clear if he would be allowed to stay in The court decision was announced by acting as- the U.S.

December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 15 The First Family myjewishlegacy.com: BY DR. SHELDON HERSH Documenting the journey My parents were masters at keeping secrets. Once these two Holocaust survivors decided to remain tight-lipped, any attempt at breaching their well- fortified wall of silence was certain to end in failure. Prodding, BY ELYSE BODENHEIMER pleading, cajoling or whining was seldom successful as they steadfastly held their ground without yielding an My name is Elyse Bodenheimer and I am 12 inch. It’s almost as though it had become a matter of national pride or personal conquest as they persevered years old. My bat mitzvah is on January 24, 2009, in spite of ongoing adversity. If a topic for discussion was deemed inappropriate and not intended for the and for my bat mitzvah project I have created a children to hear, there would be an instantaneous language change as they shifted effortlessly from Yiddish to website for the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors Polish and the curtain of comprehension was suddenly lowered. This clever tactical maneuver was meant to to share and document their grandparents’ stories insure that their secrets remained well-concealed, for we children, the ever present eavesdroppers, could not on their journeys and survival during the Holocaust understand a single word of Polish, a strange foreign tongue that left us confused, clueless and very often to a safer place. frustrated. The website name is www.myjewishlegacy.com One such topic of discussion that was relegated to the expandable parental folder of forbidden conversations, and I decided to do this web site because I wanted dealt with the matter of my father’s first family, a wife and three children, four innocents who perished in the kids to have a place to document the journeys and Lodz ghetto. They along with thousands of adults and children had died from starvation, exhaustion and illness experiences their family had to go through. I hope while the lives of countless others were cruelly extinguished in nearby killing centers. The story of this first to inspire others who read these courageous stories. family was a chapter in a book that was destined to remain closed and unread. I was taught how my family fought to survive From my earliest recollection, I sensed that this was a subject that remained strictly off limits and though because they were proud of their Jewish identity, my interest was quite naturally piqued, I refrained from asking too many questions. My father, generally open and hearing about my own family’s history has made and talkative, remained resolute and silent in matters related to this phantom first family. There were no me feel proud to be a Jew. I am hoping that this details of how they lived and no revelation as to how they expired. Talk of their appearance, likes, dislikes, web site will keep those memories alive! mannerisms and personalities was never forthcoming and remained under lock and key in my father’s secure I have been blessed with wonderful memory bank. My mother, perhaps fearful of unwanted repercussions and not wanting to open old wounds, grandparents. Two of them, my dad’s parents, would seldom broach any subject that was certain to unsettle my father. The first family was clearly one such escaped Germany during the rise of Hitler and the subject and she wisely spoke little of the matter. She would, however, occasionally drop miniscule bits of Nazis. I never knew my grandmother, Ellen information about the first family that initially seemed promising and informative but like a pinhole in a drawn Schleicher Bodenheimer, because she died before I window shade, often resulted in little, if any, illumination or insight. was born. My grandfather, Bert Arno Bodenheimer, The first family’s names were never mentioned and their faces never graced the pages of our earliest passed away on March 8th. He truly inspired me to emaciated photo album. Early on, I would occasionally think of this phantom first family as these children be proud of my Jewish heritage. were, after all, my siblings. My ever fanciful imagination endeavored to bring each of the lost members back I once spent an afternoon interviewing my into the fold by assigning names and concrete features to faceless individuals who, in spite of my best efforts, Grandpa Bert and reliving his travels from the age continued to reside far off in the murky distance. There were times when, emboldened by a jolt of curiosity, I of 10. I learned what it was like to live as a Jewish approached my father with questions relating to his first family. “Foolish child”, he would quickly reply, “how child under the rule of the Nazis. There came a could you ever possibly understand” and just as with other Holocaust era questions that left my father at a loss time when he could no longer go to school in for words, our conversation ended abruptly with his use of this very short refrain. While visiting my parents a number of years ago, I was determined once again to learn of this mysterious Germany. first family. Whether it had been the presence of my own children or the appreciation that I could not be put His family lived on the Swiss border, and they off any longer, my father had softened somewhat and appeared a bit more receptive to the idea of introducing were able to arrange for him and his sister to go to his first family into our daily conversation. As the lone survivor of his extended family, he was the only one school there. He would ride his bike to school in who could provide needed information about those who had not survived. No photographs, letters or mementos Switzerland, hiding documents and money (also the of their very existence had ever surfaced after the war; making my father’s recollections all the more critical. deed to the house in Germany) and sneaking them I was well aware of his sensitivity and appreciated his vulnerability and at my mother’s urging, I proposed that across the border, to give to a teacher in Switzerland we go slowly and proceed at a pace of his own choosing. to hold for the Bodenheimer family. Every day the With the little time that remained during that last visit, my father began speaking of life in the ghetto and police would flag him over the border, but on the with some reservation, introduced me to his young daughter and two infant sons. Though details were quite ride home they would stop him, search his meager, a milestone had been reached which, I had hoped, would facilitate and encourage additional discussion. belongings, and even take the tire off of his bicycle The first hurdle had been overcome and it was as if a sprinkle of clarity was added to a distant blur. Visions to make sure he wasn’t smuggling items into of images were starting to inch forward ever so slowly with the promise of recognition and eventual integration Germany. They never thought he would smuggle if only time would allow the process to continue. It had not. My father died unexpectedly after our initial items OUT of Germany! breakthrough. This first small step barely scratched the surface and now there was no one left to ask and no It was very dangerous to do this for his family, where else to turn. but my grandfather was a very determined, smart, Years later, I came upon a speech given to a large crowd in the Lodz ghetto by Chaim Rumkowski, and brave person. His Jewish identity was one of chairman of the ghetto Jewish council. An order had been received from German officials that 20,000 Jews the most important aspects of his being. were to be deported and that the Jewish council was to decide which Jews were to be chosen for certain Once I get and read stories from other kids and death. It had been decided to place the “unproductive elements” of the ghetto, the elderly, the sick and teens, I will post them on the web site and comment children below the age of ten, on the list for deportation. In a speech, titled ‘Give Me your Children’, Rumkowski on them. My hope is that kids and teens find this as stunned a grief-stricken crowd that was soon to be left in a state of unimaginable terror. “I never imagined I interesting as I do. It is important to share these would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my own old age I must stretch out stories with generations to come. If it were not for my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters, hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers give me your children…I their bravery, a lot of us would not be here today. must perform this difficult and bloody operation; I must cut off the limbs in order to save the body itself.” Hopefully everyone will check back on the website A number of notes written by Josef Zelkowicz, a witness to these horrific events, were published in a and read the stories of other families, and get some work entitled In Those Terrible Days: Writings from the Lodz Ghetto. Zelcowicz describes the heart- inspiration. wrenching terror. What I hope to get out of my bat mitzvah project “Hours have passed since these woes, these agonies, were inflicted on those wretched people, but the is that I can encourage other Jewish children and situation has not calmed down one bit. Mothers have not yet tired of shrieking, fathers’ wellsprings of tears teens to learn more about the Holocaust and their have not yet sealed, and the silence of the night amplifies the reverberations of the screaming and sobbing. No own family’s history. I will also be researching more sound reaches your ears, man, but that bitter wailing; no thought occurs to you but death; and your heart about my grandparents and we can share information ponders, nothing but devastation.” with each other on ways to find more about the I will never know what became of this first family but I am now able to appreciate why it was my father different journeys to the United States. This web could not relive a time that propelled so many to madness and exile from the human condition. His common site is one way to do that. refrain—“Foolish child, how could you ever possibly understand?—has taken on a clarity of its own. He was Please help me with this project by spreading correct. I could not then nor ever in the future have any understanding of what had transpired. He succeeded the word and asking children and teens to submit in keeping his secret mostly intact and I sense that his intention was not only to maintain his own emotional stories by going to my website: and physical integrity but to keep us, his current children and loved ones, safe from any harm. www.myjewishlegacy.com

TOGETHER 16 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 My name is Fred Spiegel and I am a “child survivor” of the David Friedmann, A Berlin Press Holocaust. I was 13 years old when I was liberated. I spent six weeks in Vught concentr-ation/slave labor camp in the Artist of the 1920s , then 8 months in and 16 months in Bergen-Belsen. David Friedmann was one of the many visual artists for I receive your publication regularly and find it generally whom the expression of the “Forgotten Generation” was coined. informative. However, I was somewhat upset with the story “A Girl With an Apple” by Herman He lived in Berlin since 1911, during his most successful Rosenblatt. and artistically significant years. He was successful as a painter and graphics It is a beautiful story, except for the paragraph which starts, “Nearly seven months later, my artist producing late impressionistic brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in landscapes, still lifes, and nudes—until Czechoslovakia...We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and the Nazis came to power in 1933. In Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10 1945, I was scheduled to die 1938, he fled to Prague with his young in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.” family and was deported to the Lodz As you must know, there were no gas chambers in Theresienstadt. The camp actually was a Ghetto and then to Auschwitz. Almost transit camp from where the people were transported mainly to Auschwitz and the majority were all of his works were confiscated by gassed there. Auschwitz was liberated in January and the Germans stopped using the gas chambers the and presumably destroyed. there about two months before and everywhere else, except maybe Mauthausen even earlier. His wife and little daughter were Aside from that the Nazi’s never told you, we are going to gas you on such and such a date. murdered by the Nazis. He survived and painted his memories This story has been making the rounds on the Internet already for months and whenever I of the ghetto and concentration camps: “Because... they were receive it I try to reply to whomever sent it, not to forward it any further. This is the sort of thing Jews!” Later he remarried and via Israel, came to the United which gives “ammunition” to Holocaust deniers. States, where he died after a lifetime of achievement. Thanks to the tireless efforts of his daughter from his second marriage, Miriam Friedman Morris, this artist has been rescued The article “DID COUNTRIES COLLABORATING WITH NAZIS KILL FEWER JEWS” from oblivion. Perhaps for this reason the remainder of his by Leon Wells contains a major inaccuracy about WWII history and the persecution of Jews in missing works may yet surface and be found. Czechoslovakia. David Friedmann, who was known as a brilliant and After dismembering of the country in Munich in 1938, Slovakia was given independence on respected portraitist, had the opportunity in 1924 to sketch for March 14, 1939. Under the leadership a catholic priest, Dr. Josef Tiso and Dr. Vojtech Tuka it various newspapers and magazines at a time when they were became the first country in Europe to ask Hitler to remove its Jews as early as 1941. In 1942 they the main medium of information. According to his own account, convinced Eichman to deport Slovak Jews and paid the Reich for each Jew deported. All this lead he sketched hundreds of portraits of celebrated personalities to Slovakia becoming the most destructive of its Jews in Europe, even though it collaborated with from the theater, in music, politics and sports. Now for the first the Nazis. time, a volume has been published of a small selection of I am surprised at Mr. Leon Wells’s and his source Dr. Philip Friedman’s neglect of these facts, Friedmann’s sketches portraying musicians, authors, actors, when they claim that states collaborating with Nazis killed less Jews. All they had to do was to read among others: David Friedmann (1893-1980). Ein Berliner Nora Levin’s book The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1939-45 were it is Pressezeichner der 1920er Jahre (David Friedmann, A Berlin described in great detail under the chapter “Slovakia” page 527. Press Artist of the 1920’s) by Detlef Lorenz. Teetz, Berlin: I am concerned about distortion of historical facts about the Holocaust, even when well Verlag Hentrich & Hentrich, 2008. intentioned, and I hope survivors like myself who are still around can correct these inaccuracies. David Friedmann had a special connection with music and I hope Together will feel obliged to make the proper corrections to this article it published and the famous musicians of his time whom he sketched. Many of forward this letter to Mr. Wells. them were outstanding soloists and members of the Berlin Thank you. Philharmonic Orchestra before it was taken over by the Nazi Daisy Brand Government. Presently the Philharmonie Berlin, Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker, is planning an exhibition in the Foyer of the Many of us start our day by opening our e-mail. On June 21th, I did just that. However, I Philharmonie, which will open on November 8, 2008 at 6:00 received an e-mail from CLAIM CON.ORG that I found most intriguing. The title of the e- p.m. and can be viewed through January 4, 2009. The exhibition mail was “Holocaust Survivor Services to Receive an Additional 18 Millon Over Three Years will show reproductions of a number of “David Friedmann Portraits of Musicians.” from Insurance Commission. Then there was an insert with a picture, and under the picture For information about the artist please see the David it read “Serah Schwartz of Sydney, Australia receives home support through ICHEIC’s Friedmann Website: humanitarian program, which is administered by the Claims Conference.” Under that was a http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/responses/friedmann/ link to read Serah’s story. berlinPressArtist.html I clicked on the link, and her story sent shivers down my spine. Her story was my story. http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/responses/friedmann/ She is from the area I came from. She was from Romania and so was I. Her story continued because.html that she worked in a bomb factory and that she was liberated from Thereisienstadt in 1945. http://www.chgs.umn.edu/ That is exactly what I had experienced. museum/responses/friedmann/ I decided to try and determine if indeed the two of us were in Theresienstadt at the same lostArt.html time. I decided to send an e-mail to Anita Sapper, a Senior Program Associate from the Claims Conference. I asked her to help me contact Serah Schwartz. Contact: She answered my e-mail and indicated to me that she will try to make the contact first. If [email protected] Serah was interested in pursuing this contact, she would let me know. or Miriam Friedman Morris Several days later I did receive and e-mail which made me very happy and excited. The [email protected] e-mail indicated that Serah was indeed interested in hearing from me. She gave me Serah’s phone number in Australia. That same day, I placed a call to Serah and sure enough we determined that both Serah and I were in the same camp, and that we were taken from Auschwitz on the same day. We had a long conversation on that day. We continued to keep in touch after that. I sent her photographs of myself and my family . She indicated to me that she will also mail me photos of her family. Szymon Unfortunately, since we are so far apart, it is difficult for us to meet, however I really Goldberg enjoy talking with her on the phone. I find it truly amazing that one e-mail allowed me to locate Serah from the other end of the world. Arnold Vera Hecht Schönberg December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 17 Henryk Ehrlich Auschwitz III [Buna-Monowitz], Dora-Mittelbau and Nordhausen. First arrested as a Polish army officer in 1939, he spent more than BY ELINOR J. BRECHER, Miami Herald five years in German incarceration including three winters at Henryk Ehrlich—Hymie, to his friends—was born in the Auschwitz. central Polish town of Miedzyrzec, where 12,000 Jews He was born in Dziedzice and worked as a pharmaceutical accounted for 75% of the population before WWII. Shortly apprentice. He served in the Polish Army, graduated with a degree after the Nazis took control of the town in October 1939, from the University of Cracow in 1935 and worked in Katowice as a they herded the Jews into a ghetto. practicing pharmacist until the outbreak of WWII. Those who didn’t die of starvation or disease went to He has what had described as a “low number” at Auschwitz, worthy concentration camps. of respect for the mere fact that he endured. He was a veteran prisoner and that rare For a time, Ehrlich was hidden by a non-Jewish capo [concentration camp foreman] who protected his prisoners, most especially the neighbor. Finally captured, he managed to survive children whom he brought into his barracks and to whom he gave lighter assignments. Auschwitz, Buna, Majdanek, Starachowice and Dora He treated them with as much decency as conditions permitted. Mittelbau, death marches, and slave labor in coal mines, Because he spoke English and five other languages, Halbreich worked as an salt mines and German munitions factories. interpreter and investigator with the American War Crimes Branch in preparation for Liberated by U.S. troops from Mauthausen on May the trials. He later became a member of the Board of Buna-Auschwitz 5, 1945, he weighed 88 pounds and was one of perhaps Committee and was called many times to testify as a witness in the trials of Nazi 120 remaining Miedzyrzec Jews. Among the dead, his criminals. His testimony was used in the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1960. parents and three brothers. Sig came to the United States in 1946 and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. He At Auschwitz, where his father died, the Nazis tattooed A18894 on his left arm. moved to Los Angeles in 1959. In addition to his speaking engagements, he served He considered it “a very important memory and part of a legacy,’’ especially as president of The 1939 Club in Los Angeles and led the effort to establish an significant because his father—a custom shoemaker—was A18893, Kenigsberg endowed chair in at UCLA. said. Sig wrote a book, Before, During and After, in 1991 and was the subject of Ehrlich met his future wife, Hilda Egartner, at the Steyr DP camp, where they a children’s book, The Tattoo on My Grandfather’s Arm, which explains the married and had Rositta. They sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1951 and settled in Holocaust to young children; those young enough to sit in their parent’s or Montreal, where Ehrlich opened the Miami Deli. He later became involved with the grandparent’s lap and be read to prior to bedtime. He was also instrumental and famous Canadian deli chain, Ben Ash. deeply involved in creating the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, which But with the rise of Quebec’s French-speaking separatists in the late 1970s, the was previously know as the Martyrs’ Memorial Museum. family—which by then included a son, Jeff—relocated to North Miami Beach. In 1978, Ehrlich and son-in-law Kolman Kenigsberg bought the North Miami Dr. Jay Katz Pumpernik’s. Kenigsberg bought out Ehrlich’s share in 1985. Dr. Jay Katz, a physician and a professor at Yale In 1988, Ehrlich and two partners bought the Suniland Pumpernik’s, not connected Law School who spent more than 40 years tackling to the North Miami restaurant—both defunct. confounding questions on the boundaries between If filling diners with corned beef and pastrami was Ehrlich’s livelihood, filling law, medicine, psychology and ethics, died Monday youngsters with his memories was his mission. He spoke about the Holocaust at his home in New Haven, Conn. He was 86. whenever anyone asked, honoring a promise he’d made to his father: that if he Jacob Katz was born on Oct. 20, 1922, in lived, he’d tell the story of what happened. Zwickan, Germany, one of two sons of Paul and “He knew only too well that as long as there is somebody to tell the story, there Dora Ungar Katz. His father owned a department is life, and as long as there is someone to listen, there is hope,’’ Kenigsberg said at store. When Jacob was 11, the Nazis came to power his funeral. and his family’s citizenship was revoked. His father A learned man who spoke seven languages, Ehrlich cherished his faith and was managed to get him a Czech passport. At 16, on his active in religious and community affairs at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center. own, Jacob went to Prague, and then, by way of Kenigsberg said her father was never bitter. Italy and England, made his way to New York, “I grew up on him saying, `I want you to remember your entire life that there where he found work in an auto parts store. The are good people and bad people in every race and religion.’ He did not believe in rest of Jacob’s family followed in 1940. Four years later, he graduated from the collective guilt.’’ University of Vermont, and in 1949 he received his medical degree from Harvard. He then served as a captain in the Air Force. Kenneth Herman In 1952, Dr. Katz married Esta Mae Zorn; she died in 1987. Kenneth Herman, 87, passed away peacefully on August 23, 2008. Born in If there was one revelation that most focused Dr. Katz on issues of medical Wurtzburg, Germany, he emigrated to America at a young age. He served with ethics throughout his career it was the unspeakable experiments performed by distinction in the U.S. Army during World War II. Ken’s early training was in Nazi doctors during World War II. agriculture, starting with schooling at Gross Breesen in Germany, and continuing He expressed consternation in 1996 when the Food and Drug Administration in this country. He and Hilda bought a farm on the Great Brook Road in South revised 50-year-old federal regulations to allow medical researchers to enroll New Berlin in 1949. He was a successful dairy farmer for 25 years before moving patients in some studies without their consent. Although the new rules could be to Woods Corners in Norwich and launching his second career as a real estate applied only in carefully circumscribed situations, they stepped back from a broker and appraiser. In recent years, Ken and Hilda enjoyed the winter months principle dating back to the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, when American judges in Florida, but always made it back north in time to plant the garden. wrote an international code of medical ethics. Ken cared deeply about his community and was involved with many “It’s a fateful step,” Dr. Katz told The New York Times in a telephone interview organizations and local institutions. He was a proud member of the Jewish Center from Germany, where at the time he was about to give the keynote speech at a of Norwich for 58 years and held several offices including president. He served conference in observance of the 50th anniversary of the doctors’ trials at on both the South New Berlin School Board and the Chenango County Planning. Nuremberg. One of Ken’s favorite activities was playing bridge, and he was a long-time “The first sentence of the first principle of the Nuremberg Code,” he said, participant in the Norwich Duplicate Bridge group. He taught and shared his love stated that no research on human beings should be done without their consent. of the game with many people over the years. Ken enjoyed his experience as a And now, he said, “here we are making exceptions.” volunteer tour guide at the Northeast Classic Car Museum, and his almost daily trips to the YMCA. Ken will long be remem-bered for his loving spirit, generosity, companionship, intelligence, and wonderful sense of humor. David Kestenberg David Kestenberg of Sharon and Hollywood, Fla., died Thursday, Nov. 27, Sig Halbreich 2008. He was 79. Born in Lodz, Poland, he was a son of the late Sheva and Yitzchak BY MICHAEL BERENBAUM Sig Halbreich died just 60 days short of his 99th birthday. At 93+, Sig was a Kestenberg The Nazis put his family in the Lodz ghetto when he was 9. Mr. survivor of several camps—Sachsuenhausen, Gross Rosen, Auschwitz I, cont’d on p. 19

TOGETHER 18 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 cont’d from p. 18 Anna Lutenberg Koenig was born in Bialystok, Poland Kestenberg lived in the Lodz ghetto and survived various on August 16, 1926. The second of four children, Anna and concentration camps until he was liberated from Aushwitz in her family were forced into the Bialystok Getto in August 1945 at age 14. The rest of his family perished in the 1941. The ghetto was liquidated in August 1943, and Anna Holocaust. found heerself in Maidanek and then Auscwitz. On May 8, Mr. Kestenberg then spent time in Scotland and England 1945 Anna, sick with , was freed by the Russians. Anna met Bill Koenig in Theresienstadt. They married in before coming to Sharon, where he had relatives. He Poland, and came to the U.S. in 1945. Bill died in 2005. graduated from Sharon High School in one and a half years at the top of his class. He was awarded one of the first scholarships to Brandeis University. He Nathan Krieger chose instead to become an entrepreneur, starting Boston Window & Floor Cleaning Co., and Blue Hill Tennis Club in Braintree. Born 2/21/17 in Vishnitz Nova, Poland, Nathan was one of 11 children. In 1941 Mr. Kestenberg was one of the original members of Temple Israel of Sharon he and his family were taken by the Nazis to the Bochnia Ghetto, where he met and was an active member and major supporter of the Chabad of Sharon. He and married Tonia. Soon both his and Tonia’s families were sent to Auschwitz. On a death march from Poland to Czechoslovakia, of the original 15,000 Nathan was also an active member of the Holocaust Survivors. It was important to him was one of 300 who survived. After the war, Nathan was reunited with Tonia and to remember the lives of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. immigrated to America in 1949. They had two children, Abe and Marilyn. Nathan established a successful men’s clothing business and was a founder of Shor Yoshuv Jan Krugier and the Young Israel of Woodmere. His passing leaves memories of Jan Krugier, who died on November 15 aged 80, love, achievement, and a testament to the Jewish spirit. was a Geneva-based art dealer and collector with an international reputation. He was born Janick Jakov Janny Manasse Krygier on May 12 1928 at the small Polish town of BY LARRY FINLEY, Suntimes Radom, the son of a Jewish manufacturer who was Jannigje L. Borst was born on March 21, 1918, in Lopik, Holland. She was in also a modest art collector. His mother died in nursing training in 1940 when the Germans bombed and invaded her country. She childbirth when he was 5. His father was a Polish became a member of the Dutch resistance, carrying messages and weapons, and patriot, and by the time he was 13 Jan had become a providing hiding places, fraudulent identification and ration cards for Dutch Jews. member of the Polish resistance. He worked for it She married in early 1942, a non-Jew marrying a Jew, shortly before a Nazi as a courier, delivering his first bomb concealed in a edict that banned the marriage of Jews and non-Jews, and was arrested by a backpack to blow up the lavatories of the Hotel Bristol Dutch collaborator after she lent her passport to a Jewish woman who tried to in Warsaw. use it to flee to Switzerland. Early in the war his father was killed fighting the “My mother was arrested in Amsterdam and taken to prison,” Robert Manasse German invaders, and in 1942, when he was 14, Jan and his family were arrested; said. “For six months, she was tortured and interrogated to extract information, both his step-mother and younger brother were murdered at Treblinka, but Krugier but my mother said she never divulged anything about the resistance movement.” himself survived, twice escaping from trains bound for the camp. He spent several Her husband had escaped from a camp that was a staging point for transit to months living rough in the woods before being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the Auschwitz death camp, in Poland, the son said, and stayed in hiding until the he witnessed the execution of 8,000 people in one night. Having worked as a liberation of Amsterdam in May 1945. slave laborer at the IG Farben chemical plant nearby, he was sent to Mittelbau- The couple and their four sons came to the United States in 1954 on a program Dora, enduring the so-called “march of death” from the advancing Russians. He sponsored by a church group in Holland. She worked as a housekeeper until survived on a potato a day at Dora-Nordhausen, and was finally taken to Bergen- becoming a nurse’s aide. Her husband got a job as a carpet layer. Belsen, where he was liberated by the British in April 1945. For the rest of his life “Her passion became the Selfhelp Home, which was founded for refugees and Krugier remained tormented by memories of his wartime incarceration in the Holocaust survivors, and that became her calling — to help them,” said her son. He , and bore his number tattooed on his left arm. said that, after six months in a church basement, the family lived in a small apartment At the end of the war Krugier was adopted by a wealthy Swiss family who in Lake View and acted as a clearinghouse for families arriving from Holland. had known his parents. Wishing to pursue a career as an artist, he studied at the Mrs. Manasse enjoyed traveling, “swimming at the ‘Y’ three times a week” Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich under Johannes Itten, a former instructor with the and riding her bike “like Dutch people do,” he said. “Then, in June, she had a school, and in 1947 moved to Paris to paint. After criticism from Henri stroke, which left her left side paralyzed.” Matisse, and on the advice of his friend Giacometti, Krugier gave up painting. As The morning she died, she asked for her usual bath and put on clean clothes, his reputation as a dealer grew, he became increasingly influential in the modern he said. “She said, ‘Let me lay down,’ ” her son recounted. “They put her in bed. and contemporary art markets. In Los Angeles in 1964 he met his second wife, She put her arms over herself, and she died.” Marie-Anne Poniatowska, who as well as being of royal lineage was also a gifted artist. He went into business with her, scraping together $12,000 for their first purchase, a classical landscape by Georges Seurat. Jacob (Kuba) Mowszowicz From this modest start Krugier applied his exceptional eye to building what BY SALOMEA KAPE-JAY, M.D. became a world-class collection, buying a series of spectacular Cézannes during Born in Lodz, Poland, a child of the middle class parents, his young life was the 1970s at a time when they had fallen from fashion. He also became affiliated interrupted suddenly at the age of 14 when Germany invaded Poland. His family with the Picasso heirs and was greatly involved in the sale of Picassos. of four was forced to move from a comfortable apartment into the slums of For Krugier, art offered a way of confronting the horrors he had witnessed as Baluty where the Lodz Ghetto was formed. There existence consisted of hard a prisoner of the Nazis. “Collecting is a kind of psychotherapy,” he once explained. labor, hunger and constant fear of deportation but came to an abrupt end during “That’s the way I tried to close Pandora’s box, to reconcile myself with other the summer of 1944, during the liquidation of the Lodz human beings and to live with the memories haunting me.” Ghetto and subsequent deportation to Auschwitz. There he immediately lost his parents and sister during the Anna Lutenberg Koenig selection. Later, he was transferred to labor camps in Upper Silesia, Grossrosen and Friedland. In these camps he met BY DR. VERA KIELSKY-GREENWOOD boys from Lodz with identical Auschwitz experiences and Anna Koenig passed away on Saturday, April 12, 2008. She was one of the there friendships were born that lasted a lifetime. The camp founders of the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors’ Association and its second was liberated in 1945 by the Russian Army and Kuba President. She was honored with the Shofar Award for her many years of returned to Lodz nursing a faint hope of finding a member volunteer work, speaking at numerous schools and colleges about the Holocaust of his family. and her experience in it. She was also very active in the Bnei Brith Women The post-war years in Lodz were difficult for Kuba, Organization (now Jewish Women International) and served as Chapter who went back to school and later was admitted to the Medical President for two years, doubling the required allocation for charity. Both she Academy, but he didn’t have a roof over his head and no and her husband Bill were great philanthropists. cont’d on p. 20

December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 19 means of supporting himself. In this crossroad of his Rabbi Leslie H. Hardman comfort to the survivors and said the , the life he fell in love and married Eugenia, a survivor of The Rev. Leslie H. Hardman MBE, HCF, Jewish memorial prayer, over the dead. He tried to Russian lagers whose father was killed by the (February 18, 1913–October 7, 2008), was an persuade the army bulldozer drivers who were Communists in Katyn; two of her sisters were Orthodox Rabbi and the first Jewish British Army pushing the bodies of the dead into a pit to bury them murdered by the Nazis. Kuba left Poland in 1957 Chaplain to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, with some kind of dignity. Hardman supervised the with the first wave of Jewish emigration to Israel. an experience “that made him a public figure, both burial of about 20,000 victims, “giving them the dignity There he met his old friends struggling, searching for within his community and outside it.” in death of which they had been robbed in life.” jobs, for a place to live. All of them were married Hardman was born in Glynneath, to a Years later, Hardman told a correspondent from with children, all not yet established, all full of dreams Polish father and Russian mother. The couple went the BBC, “If all the trees in the world turned into in the new state of Israel. Kuba learned a new trade to live in the Welsh valleys and pens, all the waters in the oceans and soon established himself as a successful decorator. worked as small traders. While turned into ink and the heavens Soon he exchanged with his clients books, magazines, he was still young the family turned into paper, it would still be newspapers in three languages, being fluent in moved to where he insufficient material to describe the Hebrew, Polish and German. In 1962 a son, Daniel, attended the Hope Street horrors these people suffered under was bom and perhaps the happiest chapter started in Jewish School. Hardman the SS.” Kuba’s life. attended a yeshivah and then the He was recorded as having , where he said that he had lost his faith at Murray Pantirer took his B.A. and then an M.A. Belsen. However, he later stated, “I didn’t lose my faith, but some of Born Mejzesz Puntierer in June 1925, he grew up in He married his wife Josi (1911– the words of the prayers I said at Kracow, Poland. With the German occupation of 2007) on October 14, 1936, two Belsen stuck in my throat. I Poland in 1939, years after becoming minister couldn’t understand how the God I Pantirer and his of the Jewish community at St. worshipped could permit this.” family were relocated Anne’s, where he was also the After the War Hardman served to the Kracow Ghetto. shochet. From there he took a as the rabbi at Hendon United In 1942, he and a bro- ministerial appointment in Synagogue from 1947 to 1982, and ther were de-ported Leeds. was the Hendon Branch Chaplain to the forced labor On the outbreak of World War II in September of the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and camp in Plaszow. 1939, Hardman enlisted in the Army Chaplains’ Women. He also served as chaplain to the psychiatric Later that year, he was transferred to Gorss-Rosen Department, being stationed in Hertfordshire with the unit at Edgware Hospital and was a strong supporter and then to Brunnlitz to work for Oskar Schindler. East Central District of the Eastern Command. In of the Holocaust Educational Trust. He was liberated in 1945. the autumn of 1944 Hardman served in Holland, where In 1995 Hardman was invited to conduct the After the war, he spent a couple of years in an he learned of the atrocities perpetrated against Jews. service to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Austrian refugee camp at Bindermichel before There he became involved with members of the liberation of Ravensbrück camp. He was also emigrating to the U.S. There he set up a construction remaining Jewish community. From Holland he was frequently called on by American groups to speak at company with his friend, Abraham Zuckerman, and sent to Germany, where he remained until the end of Holocaust conferences. At one such event the rabbis created their first subdivision in South Plainfield, New the war. presented him with an American rabbinical certificate, Jersey, naming one of the streets Schindler Drive. By April 1945 Captain Hardman was the 32-year- a presentation which had been denied him by Jews Since then, all of their complexes also exhibited the old Senior Jewish Chaplain to the British Forces, College, the leading rabbinical seminary in London, Schindler name. attached to 8 Corp of the British 2nd Army. On April “for political reasons,” he claimed. From 1957 until Schindler’s death in 1974, the 17, 1945, two days after it had been liberated by British Hardman was appointed an MBE in 1998. two helped Schindler financially. In addition, Pantirer military forces, Hardman entered Bergen-Belsen Leslie Hardman died on October 7, 2008. He contributed to museums and Holocaust related concentration camp, being the first Jewish chaplain was 95. projects and founded, in Schindler’s name, a bursary to do so. Upon arriving at the camp he tried to bring for Hebraic studies in Jerusalem. Murray Pantirer passed away on November 7. When the last survivor dies, Surviving Auschwitz and who will speak for the children, the death march until Chaim Rotenstein the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers— liberation in May 1945, he all dead and denied by those who seek to rewrite came to America after two BY DEBORAH ROTENSTEIN history… years in Italy. He married My father, Chaim Rotenstein, a survivor of the When the last survivor dies, Pearl Strulovitz, also from Shoah, died on June 28, 2008. Long before his death museums and memorials will remain Bilke, in March 1951 and he had asked me to call a list of fellow survivors to as physical testament to the past, was immediately drafted attend his funeral. With many attempts I could not But it is in living that we defy death. into the Korean War for reach any of the friends on his list. The burial took The generations that might not have been two years. When he returned to begin his life as a place in an area of the cemetery dedicated to the must return to their roots to survive and grow, true American, he worked as a kosher butcher town of his birth, Czestochowa, Poland, and was to heal, to watch and protect, spanning 40+ years. He bought his home in marked by a large stone monument he and others to learn, to teach, to understand. Whitestone, Queens where he lived at the same had dedicated to those loved ones who perished So that when the last survivor dies address for 52 years. His legacy of a son and but had no gravesite. After the funeral , I looked to join the countless souls in return to the daughter produced four grandsons and one around at the gravestones near my father’s grave Eternal, granddaughter (deceased). and realized that all the survivors that were on his their rest will not be marked by a deafening He was a friend to all and gave of himself in list … were already buried there. For my father’s silence— unlimited acts of kindness and love. He gave to chevra, he was the last survivor. rather a cacophony of creation. charity generously. His very happy last year was spent as a congregant of the Chabad Congregation “AN ODE TO THE LAST SURVIVOR” William Schlesinger of Northeast Queens (Bay-Terrace). When the last survivor dies, A strong, positive, remarkable man like this William Schlesinger, an Auschwitz survivor, died there will be no one to say Kaddish does not cross life’s path too often. I was honored after a very brief illness at the age of 83.Born in for those the living have forgotten to be his daughter. —Linda Leff or never knew. Bilke, Czechoslovakia, in the Carpathian Mountains, he was the son of a cattle trader For some, Eva Judith Takacs a book chapter closed (Yoseph and Fannie). At 18 he was sent to the Mrs. Eva Judith Takacs, 87, passed away on an era over Bereksass Ghetto, following with Birkenau, a generation lost to those who remain. Matthausen, Meike and Abenzae (by Linz). cont’d on p. 21

TOGETHER 20 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 Thursday, November 27, 2008. She was born After the war, he Israel Synagogue, and one term as Men’s Club November 9, 1921 in Budapest, Hungary to Aladár went to Modena, Italy, president. He was also a prominent member of and Ilona (Bande) Klein. She was a Holocaust helping the Jewish the New Life Club, a group for Holocaust survivors survivor, having survived concentration and forced Brigade smuggle Jewish and their families formed to raise money to fight labor camps during World War II. survivors into Israel. antisemitism. On March 27, 1947 she married Andrew Then he went to meet Born in Klobuck, Poland on April 8, 1925, Zaks Takacs, also a Holocaust survivor. After the the Pope. The Pope survived life and near-death at Bergen-Belsen Hungarian Revolution in 1956, they escaped wanted him to convert before being liberated in 1945. He moved to San Hungary, carrying their baby daughter and holding and offered him a job Diego in 1949 and became an their young son's hand. Seeking refuge, they were and a wife but my father said, “I have my God. extremely proud American, given safe haven in the United States, arriving Please send a message to my wife in Poland that I flying the U.S. flag at home March 13, 1957. am alive.” and often taking part in My father’s legacy is his goodness that he Marine Corps color guard Morris Tellerman passed on to his family and those he knew. He truly events. Zaks’ relationship and humbly carried out the mitzvah of loving another with the Marines was Morris Tellerman, 89, recently passed away sur- as oneself. His good-natured conviviality brought bolstered by his business, A. rounded by his family. He was born in joy and happiness to those who knew him. People Sonabend Co., a tailoring Novemyasto, Poland, near, near Radom. He sur- always said he was handsome but his inner qualities business that consistently vived the Holocaust with his wife, Carol, and came meant more to him than his outward beauty. At the won Marine Corps’ contracts to the United States in 1947. end, in the hospital, he raised his hands and said, for altering uniforms. My father personified the deepest values of “Raboyne shel Oylam!”– he prayed to God in Zaks was known as a man who gave back, loyalty, stead-fastness and love of his fellow man. Yiddish and his last words were, “I love you.”— both financially and physically. In addition to When he was young he was a man of action. He Judith S. Tellerman of Chicago, Illinois contributions to the synagogue, Mike and his wife hated fighting, but as a boy he had to fight to defend Gussie supported Israel’s Holocaust memorial, the the Jews from a Polish pogrom in Przytyk; and later Michael Zaks United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in he volunteered to serve in the Russian army. Fighting Washington, D.C., and the Holocaust Memorial in the siege of Leningrad he was one of 50 who Michael Zaks, a Holocaust survivor and leader in San Diego’s Jewish community, has died. He was Wall at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community survived from a battalion of 11,000 and went on to Center. liberate the Majdanek concentration camp. 83. Zaks served two terms as president of Tifereth

Germany presents Israel Holocaust-era directory

completed its database on German Jewry during the “The murderers wanted to eradicate the Jewish BY ARON HELLER Nazi era, Shalev said. people and Jewish identity. They did not succeed,” JERUSALEM (AP) — The German government Its focus will now turn to compiling a similar Salm said. recently handed Israel’s national Holocaust memorial database on the Jews who lived in the personal details of 600,000 Jewish residents of Poland and eastern Europe, an Nazi Germany, the most comprehensive record to extremely difficult task because of poor date of German-Jewish life during the Nazi era. record-keeping, large-scale executions German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann and mass destruction of villages. presented the directory during a ceremony at the Yad “We are nearing the point where Vashem memorial, saying that it allowed for the first we will reach the limit of extracting time to show the Jewish residents of Germany from human memory,” Shalev said. “It’s a 1933-1945. scary point, because beyond it “But this list is much more than a list,” Neumann everything will be lost.” said. “It is a unique document about life in Germany It took 20 German scientists four and tells the story of those who could not tell their years to compile the directory and cost own story.” $2.24 million. It was presented to Neumann, whose responsibilities include German Chancellor Angela Merkel a German commemoration of the Holocaust, said he few weeks ago and she instructed hoped the list would “restore to these victims part Neumann to hand over a digital copy of their honor.” to Yad Vashem. The ceremony took place in the Hall of Names, Around 2.5 million data records a cone-shaped room whose walls are lined with were collected from more than 1,000 bookshelves containing folders upon folders of pages sources, including Jewish and Nazi archives, according of testimonies about the Holocaust victims. Yad to “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future,” the Vashem currently has records on 3.3 million of the 6 German foundation that produced the directory ELLIS ISLAND PROJECTS FOR million who perished and continues to collect archival together with the German federal archives. SURVIVORS material from around the world. Following Yad Vashem, the records will also be AND THEIR DESCENDANTS The new directory includes the names and made available to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial The Museum at Ellis Island is seeking addresses of the Jewish residents and classifies them Museum in Washington, the Claims Conference and Holocaust survivors who came through into those who survived, those who perished and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Ellis Island when they arrived in the United those whose fate remains unknown. The list includes Germany. States. They are also seeking volunteers details on emigration, detention and deportation, as The list is not being made public. It is subject to to transcribe and translate Yiddish well as where and when people died. strict German data protection laws, given that it has recordings made by immigrants for “This list adds to our understanding of what names of people who are still alive. immigrants. If you are interested in happened to the Jews in Germany,” said Yad Vashem “It is a memorial to those murdered and those participating in either of these projects director Avner Shalev. “Every new piece of forced into exile. The shame for the crimes committed CONTACT: ERIC BYRON, MUSEUM information allows us to piece together the story of by the Germans is mixed with grief for the loss that DIVISION 212-363-3206 EXT. 153 or email: individuals and communities during the Holocaust.” Germany inflicted upon itself,” said Martin Salm, the With this latest list, Yad Vashem has essentially chairman of the foundation.

December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 21 COMPILED AND EDITED r BY SERENA WOOLRICH, From Florence Marmor in Brooklyn, New York: My family owned property in Poland, the Ukraine and Hungary. I would be ex- PRESIDENT AND tremely interested in any information available on them. My Ringelheim, Weisenfeld FOUNDER, and Scherz families lived in various towns surround Kanczuga and Rzeszow in the ALLGENERATIONS, inc. southeastern corner of Poland. My Krauthamer-Spanier family lived in Kolomeya and the surrounding area in the Ukraine and Roumania. My Lissauer, Bogar and PLEASE SEND ALL RESPONSES TO [email protected]. Jonap families lived in various areas of Hungary. From George Brandstatter, a Survivor in Tel-Aviv, Israel: ] r Family Jean Besson looking for brothers and sister Armand, André and Rosa From Israel Unger, a Survivor in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Majteles. Hidden Children in France during the Second World War.Armand lived Canada: in Givatayim, Kaplinski 5 Israel, during the 1980’s. I was born in Tanow, Poland in March 1938. My nuclear family, Father, Mother, r older brother and I along with 5 other Jews survived the Holocaust in Tarnow in From Rosa Karpati, a Survivor in Skokie, Illinois: hiding. Our hiding place was behind a false wall in the attic of Dagnan’s flour mill. I am looking for the following people: 1956 After the revolution in Hungary I lost Besides my family there was a Mrs. Bochner, a young married couple whose track 2 of my friends, both of them from Budapest. They are: Vider Katalin(in name may have been Alexandrovitch, and 2 sisters aged about 14 and 17. I would English Cathy Vider), but this is her maiden name! As far as I know she lives in very much appreciate hearing from anyone who has any information about any of Australia/Melbourne. Szecsi Ervin (in English Ervin Szecsi); As far as I know he the individuals who were with us in the hiding place. Also, my brother and I left lives in England. I am also looking for a school friend of mine named Judith Gimes; Poland with the Rescued Children’s Organization. We left from Krakow and ended Budapest Alngol Kisasszonyok 2 class of polgari iskola. Also searching for people up in Aix Les Bains in France. I would very much like to hear from anyone who whom I was together with in Budapest, Hungary; Kobanya in the Dorogi and was part of that group. My father came from Ryglice, a small village near Tarnow. Tushak Rubber Factory. We lived there in ghetto style from April 1944 to Novem- My grandfather’s name was Josef Pincus Unger and my grandmother’s name ber 1944. I remember the following names: Klara Tushak, Piroska Laszlo, Vera was Hana Leia (nee Leser) Unger. Pilish, Laszlo Kerekes, Dery Tibor, Ms. Markovics and her son. In addition, I am My brother had 7 brothers and sisters. One brother, Abraham, moved to England looking for people who were together with me in my hiding place in the Convent prior to the war. The other six siblings, along with my grandparents, were all of Jopasztor in Obuda, Budapest Szolo-utca 60. Names I recall: Szilasy Monika murdered by the Nazis. I do not know the names of my uncles and aunts, my and her sister and mother Cecilia; a girl with the name, Gabriel father’s sisters and brothers. Rothhauser and anybody else who was hiding there in 1944. r r From Felicia (Fela) Zieff, a 2g in Chicago, Illinois: From Rod Hartman, a 2g in Melbourne, Australia: When I visited the Holocaust museum, I found a video testimony I am looking to meet anyone who was in the Barletta DP camp or given by my uncle who recently died in Gdansk, Poland. He men- someone who may have any have some information about it. In tioned that we had relatives named Skarzynski from the town of fact in May next year my wife and I are traveling to Barletta as Skarzyn, Poland. I’m looking for anyone who is or knows of any that also was the place she was born after the Holocaust. I have survivors or descendants named Skarzynski. some photocopied photos from Camp Barletta. I hope you can help r me. From Sleman Khoury, a 2g in Detroit, Michigan: r I wonder if you can help me corroborate the information from a From Sara Barnea, a Survivor in Ramat Hasharon, Israel: Yad Vashem Testimony about my maternal uncle, Wolf My name is Sara Barnea and I survived the war in Russia with my parents. I was (Wili)Tenintap (Tenintzap), who was born in the town of Buhusi born Sara Frydman in Tomasozw Lublelski, Poland. My mother was Mirla or the town of Roman, in Romania, circa 1920. From the Yad Vashem testimony, Gorzyczanski Fryman, daughter of Fiszel and Mindle Gorzyczanski from Tomaszow I understand that he perished in the camp of Vapniarka (Wapniarka) in 1943. I Lublelski and my father was Szmuel Frydman, son of Froim and Mala Frydman was not able to find a birth or a death certificate for him. I would appreciate any from Lublin, Poland. I am looking for surviving family with the name of help in closure. Gorzyczanski. I had many cousins who disappeared during the Holocaust. I know r that there were Gorzyczanski family members in the United States before the From Jack Shapiro: war. My late husband, also a survivor, tried for years to find surviving family but The family home in Belarus was Berestechko. My mother’s maiden name was was unsuccessful. His name was Itzhak Berencwajg born in Siedlec, Poland to Kairys and she came from Radziviloff. My grandmother, an uncle and two aunts Hersz and Chaia. The Berencwajg family also had relatives in the United States and their families disappeared. My wife’s family name is Grabowska andtheir from before the war. home town was Wlotzlavek. I would be grateful for news of any family members. r r From Irene Frisch, a Survivor in Fort Lee, New Jersey: My parents left me most probably on the grounds of the ghetto of Piasecznie, not I am looking for a high school friend, whose name at the time was Fela Weinreb. far from Warsaw. The ghetto was already liquidated by the Germans, and the Fela was born in Lwow , Poland or Ukraine. Her wartime name was Ziuta. She entire Jewish community was gone. Someone found me, gave me shelter and hid was a very pretty blond girl. We finished high school in Legnica, Poland, in 1949. me in all kinds of places until the fall of 1944. I know that she lives in Israel. She was very active in Gordonia. Would like to I met Helena Strzalecka by chance and from October, 1944 I lived with her. keep in touch. My name at the time was Irena Bienstock (now Frisch). Fela, if Later she married and she gave me my new name. Since then I am called Janusz you read this please contact me. Suralinksi with a date of birth: October 12, 1941.Of rFrom Esther Frucht Kisnera, a Survivor in Boca Raton, Florida course these are fictitious dates. I have a suspicion (submitted on her behalf by Halina Gartenberg): that I am older and I could have been born even in My friend, Esther Frucht Kisnera, a survivor in Boca Raton, Florida is looking for 1938 or 39. I attended school in 1946 and I looked her friend, Zygmunt Heller, born in Krakow, Poland in 1929. His last known ad- taller and more mature than other children. I enclose dress was: 48 Clapton Common, London E5. He lived there with Roman Lax. In two photographs one with a woman made in 1945 and his last letter he mentioned plans to emigrate to Israel or the USA. If anybody the other from 1946. This is the earliest photos in my knows him please contact me and I will contact Esther since she does not have a possession from my youth. The experiences of the computer. ear distorted fully my memory but I do remember the r Germans. From Channah Magori, a 2g in Montreal, Canada: I am asking you favor to look up in the archives if My name is Channah Magori, nee Landgarten. Both my parents were Holocaust there was anyone who was looking for a young child survivors. They came from Dzialoszyce, Poland. My mother’s maiden name was with blonde curly hair blue eyes who was abandoned Sala Zylberberg (or burg) and her brother was Levi Yitzchak Zylberberg, whose on the street hoping that someone would find me, which whereabouts or death was never confirmed. He was lost in the last action in Lodz is exactly what happened. Of course I realize that for natural reasons my parents in 1944 when they inhabited the Lodz ghetto. Can you help me in my search for are probably dead, because otherwise they would have searched for me. It is him? cont’d on p. 23

TOGETHER 22 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008 very difficult for me to live with the understanding that the war took everything feel free to contact me, Sandy Speier Klein. away from me. r Shortly after the war, two men came to where I grew up. They were members From RB, a 2g in New Jersey: of a Jewish agency dealing with searches for Jewish children in Polish territories. I have never been able to find any information The head of this group was a certain Mr. Drucker. They wanted to take me away about some of my family members. I do hope from my so-called “parents,” by my “mother” did not agree to it. that someone is alive but I doubt it. We lost It is very difficult for me to say how they came to find me in Gurykalwari, about 95% of our family. I wonder if perhaps because it is a small town near Piasecznie, 30 km from Warsaw. Before the war, someone knew any of my family. This group lived in Kravska, Czechoslovakia: a certain Tzaddik lived there and there was a large Jewish community, but I don’t Ernestine Sofer Diamant, Louise Katz Reich and her sons, Heinz & Morris Katz remember this period. (her first husband died). She then married Kurt Reich and had a son, Berthold My address is Janusz Suralinksy Reich. This group lived in Znaim, Czechoslovakia: Emmie Gruenberg Diamant Grujecka Str. 47/51 Apt. 21, 02-031 Warsaw Poland, Tel +48-22-409-8668 and her sons, Thomas Diamant and Joseph Diamant, Bernarhard Schwartsbart r and wife, Hermine Schwartsbart; Paula and Alfred Baum and their children, From Liz Karpati, a Survivor in Ocala, FL: Gerta Kathe, Arnold and their families.This group lived in Jaroslav, Poland: I do During the Holocaust era I was a baby and I was hiding with my parents in know that some were sent to Siberia: Miriam Katz, Samuel and Yenta Katz, Peral Budapest. My grandparents, aunts and uncles were victims of various camps. Katz, Nika Katz, Oska and Yenta Katz and Izak Lipper. My maiden name is, Markus ,and my maternal grandparents name was Kurtag. I (From Cynthia Wroclawski, Outreach Manager, The Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery am looking for unknown relatives who survived the Holocaust. Project, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel: The purpose of my doing the search below was r simply to show EVERYONE who is looking for people to first check the Yad Vashem From Leor Alcalay, a 2g in Boston, Massachusetts: Names Database and not just specifically to answer the 2G whom I randomly picked from a SEARCHES e-mail. For the 2G from New Jersey. I did a random search on the My father, Albert Alcalay, a survivor and an artist, recently passed away. His database and found a Page of Testimony (please see attached) submitted for Louise memoirs, The Persistence of Hope, were published by the University of Delaware Reich nee Diamant. The page states that she was born in Kravsko to Joseph and Press and I am looking for the daughter of Albert’s uncle, David Alcalay (the Ernestine. Prior to WWII she lived in Kravsko, Czechoslovakia. During the war she was spelling might be different), who worked in Yad Vashem in the Righteous Gentiles in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. Louise perished in the Shoah. This information is section for many years, and who has a square named after him in French Hill in based on a Page of Testimony submitted on 11-Sep-1974 by her sister. If you go to our Jerusalem. David lost his first wife and child in Belgrade during database online you can see the actual page submitted as well as the the war, but he remarried in Jerusalem. He had a daughter, Liora, information of the person who submitted the information. The names from that marriage. Liora grew up in Jerusalem, but married a of her children are also listed on this page and they should have Swiss man. I met her only once, at the time of David’s death, in pages filled out for each of them separately—so please do so. I 1982, in Jerusalem. We know the name of the man she married. It encourage all those who are searching for people to first look in our database for information. You may make some very meaningful is Bronnle, or Bronle, with an umlaut over the “o”. We had an discoveries. If the names are not there and you know if they survived, address in Switzerland, but all of our recent attempts to contact I encourage you to download a Shoah Survivors Registration Form her have failed. All mail sent to a street address I had, was and fill it out in order to commemorate them. You can add photos to not responded to. existing pages, if you have them, by scanning them and submitting r them online. Yad Vashem, has collected over 3 million names of victims From Jan Berg, a 2g in Vasteras, : to date, but millions of names are still missing and time is running I am trying to find information about my family. My mother, Adela out. Even if you just know a name and where a person was from, you Schwarcer, was born in Krakow, Poland in 1923. For more can fill out a page in their memory. This will ensure that they will information, please go the following web site: www.adelas chwarzer.com which never be forgotten. The database is on the Yad Vashem web site: www.yadvashem.org .) has recently been updated. r r From Ann Jacobson, a Survivor in Naples, Florida (and Kansas City, MO): From Marianna Hoszowska, in Warsaw, Poland, on behalf of Fela Weiss (nee I am Anni Reisner Jacobson, and emigrated from Vienna, Austria in April 1939 to Kokotek), a Survivor in Herzliya, Israel: the United States with my parents. I would like to find three friends with whom I If you don’t mind I would like to post an appeal on behalf of a Holocaust Survivor, went to a private Gymnasium in the Novara Gasse from 1935 to 1938. I would Mrs Fela Weiss nee Kokotek from Herzliya, Israel. Fela is looking for anyone like to contact Marianne Rosenthal, Putti Popper and Erika Stoltz. I know Marianne who was in the Sosnowiec-Srodula ghetto, especially up until its liquidation in went to Israel to a foster family, and Erika went to England with her mother, but 1943. She managed to escape during liquidation with about 20 other people. She’s I do not know what happened to Putti. looking for anybody who shared her fate in the ghetto. r r From Elias Kupfermann, a 2g in Slough Berkshire, UK: From Paula Ross (nee Meersand) I just wondered if anyone had known my family in Vienna? My grandparents Is there anyone of your readers who may have known Georg Helmut Schlosser were Elias and Menia Kupfermann, who lived in Vienna between 1926 and (Bubi) born June 3, 1917 in Pilsen but lived in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss. 1941. A real shot in the dark but you never know! He and his brother Erich, who was older and lived in Bratislava, disappeared r around 1943/44. I would be very thankful for any information. From Lilian Pleshoyano, a 3g in Perth, Australia: r Searching for any surviving unknown relatives who lived in Vienna Austria related From Judy Lordjan to Leopold and Leontine Rosenzweig born in 1873 & 1882 of 17/19 My father, Tibor Mauskopf, was from a small city called Vari Karpat, Ukrajna. Wientraubengasse Wien Austria. Leontine Rosenzweig (nee Singer) was born in He was the eldest of four children (Eva , Jeno, and Hajnalka). My grandfather’s Moravia. They died in the Holocaust.I am led to believe that some family members name was Zoltan Mauskopf and my grandmother’s name was Sarolta Gluck. escaped to USA in the 1940’s. I am a 3g and I have only just recently learned The whole family was deported to Auschwitz while my father was deported to about my paternal history. Mauthausen. If anyone has any information about them, please contact me. r r From Rose Anuszewicz Haneman, a Child Survivor, in Sydney, Australia: I need your help because I found a picture with three young sisters and a little I was born in Belgium in 1933. During the war I was hidden in a convent called brother. They lived in Milan during the Les Seours de Saint Joseph in a village called L’hermite’ with my little sister, war. They were deported at the end of Suzanne. We were hidden for over 2 years (from 1942 till late 1944), given false July 1944. I don’t know their names, and names, baptized, etc. Our names originally were Rose and Suzanne Anuszewicz. this is the problem. Is it possible to publish My cousin, Sabine Lewenkron, whom I am trying to find, was also in the convent their picture and ask if someone knows with us. Our names had been changed, and after the war we lost track of our them? Before the end of this year the cousin. I last saw her in 1946 as she and her father left for Antwerp, Belgium. Her picture will be published in Israel. I know mother and two brothers and sister were all killed in Auschwitz. My parents and nothing about this family but I do know my sister and I were lucky to survive. We came to Australia in 1947.While at Yad the parents were deported as well. Thank Vashem, I found out her name is now Regina Erblikh, but I can’t find any trace you, and if you have any questions, please of her. I would like to find her if possible.

December 2008 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 23 An Urgent 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, Appeal the American Gathering maintains a number of ongoing projects: to Our 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 Readers 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 75,000, 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 Please make a meaningful, Nations and the U.S. Congress. tax deductible American Gathering, 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205, New York, NY 10001 contribution payable to the Name: “American Gathering.” ______Thank you. Address: ______City: State: Zip: Phone: ______Amount of contribution: $

TOGETHER 24 visit our website at www.americangathering.com December 2008