AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM Vol. 45-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2019-Shevat/Adar 5779 HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY: NEVER FORGET DEMAND AND DEFEND YOUR HUMAN RIGHTS Cohen (Chargé d’Affaires, United Remembrance: Demand and Defend Nazi groups and the frightening rise in BY JILL GOLTZER Stations Mission to the UN), and Your Human Rights.” The theme high- anti-Semitic incidents worldwide. Ambassador Sandro De Bernardin lights the 70th anniversary of the “From a deadly assault on a syna- very year, on January 27th, the (Chair, International Holocaust Universal Declaration of Human gogue in the United States to the des- international community marks E Remembrance Alliance). The keynote Rights (UDHR) and the Convention ecration of Jewish cemeteries in International Holocaust Remembrance speaker was Ms. Sara J. Bloomfield, of the Prevention and Punishment of Europe, this centuries-old hatred is Day. This day, designated by the director of the US Holocaust the Crime of Genocide. The UDHR not only still strong — it is getting United Nations in 2005, marks the lib- worse.” The “proliferation of eration of the Auschwitz- neo-Nazi groups and attempts Birkenau extermination camp to rewrite history and distort the by the Red Army. The largest facts of the Holocaust” makes it and perhaps most famous of ever more clear that we must the camps, Auschwitz- continue to educate our youth Birkenau was both a labor and stand together in the con- camp and a center for the tinuous fight against hatred and rapid murder of Jews. Over discrimination. Everyone, not 1.1 million Jews were mur- only Jews, should be wary of dered in this hell on earth. such trends. “Inevitably, where Our Young Leadership there is anti-Semitism, no one Associates were honored to else is safe” (António attend the official Holocaust Guterres). remembrance ceremony at Before the ceremony con- the United Nations headquar- cluded, cantor Benny ters on Monday, January 28th. Rogosnitzky of the Park East Our members were welcomed Synagogue in NYC recited the as guests of the office of memorial prayers, and the PS Ambassador Danny Danon, 22 Chorus, directed by Gregg Israel’s Permanent Breinberg, performed two Representative to the United musical numbers. One of the Nations. We had a delegation songs the chorus performed of eighteen members attend was titled “Who Am I” and was the ceremony, including three written by Holocaust survivor senior board members (Adina Representatives of the American Society for Yad Vashem Jill Goltzer, Mark Moskowitz, Goldie Hertz, Adina Burian, Inge Auerbacher. Burian, Barry Levine, and Barry Levine and Rachel Shnay at the UN event dedicated to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. New York, ollowing the ceremony, Mark Moskowitz) and YLA Co- January 27. our delegation attended Chair Rachel Shnay. F was proclaimed by the United Nations the opening of “Beyond Duty: The ceremony was hosted by Ms. Memorial Museum. In addition to the General Assembly in Paris on Diplomats Recognized as Righteous Alison Smale, UN Under-Secretary- distinguished diplomats and figures December 10, 1948. Eleanor Among the Nations,” an exhibition General for Global Communications, mentioned, we had the privilege of Roosevelt, widow of American curated by Yad Vashem and spon- and included remarks by UN hearing remarks from Holocaust sur- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was sored by the Permanent Missions of Secretary-General António Guterres, vivors Marian Turski and Inge chair of the drafting committee. The Israel, Peru, and Portugal to the H.E. Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa Auerbacher. Declaration was created in response United Nations. The exhibit highlights Garcés (president of the 73rd session he theme of this year’s to the world’s outrage at the horrors of the unique stories of diplomats recog- of the General Assembly), H.E. Mr. Holocaust remembrance and T World War II and the Holocaust; its nized by Yad Vashem for choosing to Danny Danon, H.E. Mr. Jonathan R. education activities is “Holocaust purpose was to prevent such atrocities act according to their conscience from ever happening again. However, rather than simply follow orders. as UN Secretary-General António Individuals such as Raoul Wallenberg IN THIS ISSUE Guterres mentioned in his remarks, we from Sweden and Aristides de Sousa International Holocaust Remembrance Day...........................................1, 8-9 have seen countless incidents of per- Mendes from Portugal risked their Inside the real story behind Schindler’s list..................................................2 secution against groups simply lives to help Jews by providing them Rescuing the Jews of Denmark......................................................................3 because of who they are. Numerous with passports, visas and travel per- A survivor’s duty..............................................................................................4 genocides have taken place since the mits. Sousa Mendes famously stat- Opening Italy’s “closet of shame”..................................................................7 adoption of the Declaration. It is clear ed, “I would rather stand with G-d A toy monkey that escaped Nazi Germany..................................................10 that we not only can do more, but we against man than with man against How tiny Ecuador had a huge impact on Jews escaping the Holocaust..12 also must do more. G-d.” Such courage and unwavering Jewish woman recalls the day she gave Hitler flowers.............................13 In the UN Secretary-General’s commitment to humanity is responsi- Nelly Ben-Or risked all to play the piano....................................................14 remarks, Mr. António Guterres ble for saving the lives of thousands The Jewish women who fled tyranny to become angels of the NHS.......15 focused on the proliferation of neo- of Jews. Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL It was here that the SS stumbled on continued even as the Nazis looked to be shot. BY NICK GREEN, EXPRESS a modus operandi. The Jews were intensify their methods of killing. The Nazis may have been in retreat shot in groups: one victim, one shoot- Following their work at Ponar, the but they were capable of appalling efore the war, the Ponar forest er. It was a way of avoiding individual Nazis experimented with gas vans sadism. As digging proceeded, the had been a picnic destination B responsibility: there would only be and then finally the extermination guards shot eleven prisoners. Their for people from the Lithuanian capital, collective guilt. It was psychologically camps. intention: to terrorize and cow the Vilnius. The story of the forest better for the murderers. As camps such as Auschwitz accel- rest. changed forever in 1939 when Stalin The SS, as would become typical, erated their ambitions for industrial- The Jews realized it would only be a and Hitler’s peace pact divided up the logged the numbers, but not the ized murder, the pace of killings at matter of time before they too were lands between Germany and Russia. experiences of those involved. But we Ponar slowed. From 1942, as the murdered so they hatched an escape Stalin took Lithuania and after the do know what happened there. The Germans were getting bogged down plan. They dug a tunnel from the bot- Russians took control of Vilnius, they most exposing testimony about the in the East, Vilnius itself went into a tom of one pit, under the wire. began building an infrastructure with operation came from a Polish journal- period of relative calm and stabiliza- On April 15, 1944, they made their which to support their forces. The Red ist, Kazimierz Sakawicz, whose tion. The Germans needed many of escape. Army needed fuel dumps and they diaries were published in 2005: “July the remaining Jews for slave labor. Forty managed to get through quickly singled out Ponar Forest as a 27, 1941: Shooting is carried on near- But by 1943, it became obvious that before noise alerted the guards. In suitable place. ly every day. Will it go on for ever? Hitler’s operations in the East had the ensuing chase twenty five were A railway track connected city and The executioners began selling turned into an existential forest and the vast density of wood- clothes of the killed. Other garments disaster. The Nazis might land offered a place to hide the fuel. are crammed into sacks in a barn at have been fastidious in log- The Russians set about building large the highway and taken to town.” ging their weekly kill totals circular concrete fuel dumps. But by Sakawicz witnessed how slapdash but they had no desire for the time they were ready to enter the operation could be: “July 30: the world to understand the service the war had swung in About 150 persons shot. Most of them reality of their bureaucratic Germany’s favour and they were were elderly people. The execution- list keeping. Hitler’s dreams abandoned. ers complained of being very tired of were dying and there would In June 1941 Lithuania was swal- their “work”, of having aching shoul- be consequences. It didn’t lowed up by Hitler’s advancing troops ders from shooting. That is the reason take much imagination for when he invaded Russia. It didn’t take for not finishing the wounded off, so those in charge to realise long for the Nazis to turn on the local that they are buried half alive.” that a hundred thousand Jewish population. They forced them On August 2 Sakawicz witnessed decaying bodies buried into ghettos and quickly sealed them how the executioners carried out their only a few miles outside a off from the outside world. work: “they were all inebriated: European capital would be evidence enough to hang anyone associated with it. One of the pits where corpses were burned. And so the SS began the clear up of Ponar. Paul Blobel had killed but 15 escaped — including been in charge of the murders at Szloma Gol.