JANUARY 2010 VOLUME 24 NUMBER 2 Lawsuit against Hungary’s MÁV by Holocaust 14TH REUNION OF AND JEWISH survivors RESISTANCE SUMMER PROGRAM A lawsuit demanding USD 8.92 billion (HUF 1,773 bn) has been recently launched By ELAINE CULBERTSON against Hungary’s state-owned railway company MÁV for its involvement in For the past 25 years, the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors deporting during World War II. The claim that would thrust the country into and Their Descendants, together with the Jewish Labor Committee and the sovereign default swarms with shocking historical errors but there are legal flaws, American Federation of Teachers, has sponsored the unique Holocaust and Jewish as well, index.hu cited experts as saying. During the research the plaintiffs claim Resistance Teachers Program which takes U.S. public secondary school teachers to have lasted for nine years, no historians versed in the Holocaust were contacted to , Israel and, this year, for intensive study about the annihilation in Hungary. Similarly, no Jewish organizations dealing in the compensation of of most of European Jewry during World War II. Jews, nor lawyers experienced in similar international cases were consulted. This year’s Summer Seminar Program will include visits to Auschwitz, “If they had contacted me, I would have kicked them out in no time, because Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen as well as educational activities in Jerusalem, Poland, this is the biggest madness I’ve heard in a long time,” Hungarian historian László , and Washington, D.C., with the participation of scholars from Israel’s Yad Karsai told index.hu. Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Heirs of Jews killed in the Hungarian Holocaust of 1944 filed a lawsuit at a On February 12-15, 2010, more than 120 alumni of the program came to Chicago court recently against Hungarian state railways MÁV for the company’s Washington for our 14th Alumni Conference. There are many reasons that this involvement in deporting more than 437,000 Jews to their deaths in the Auschwitz- remarkable conference will be remembered by all who attended, not the least of Birkenau death camp. which was the opportunity to interact with members of the American Gathering. “MÁV knew exactly what it was doing [...] and supervised and managed As the years go by and the number of survivors dwindles, these eyewitnesses every aspect of the transportation process,” the plaintiffs said. “Without the trains to the Holocaust remain our most valuable resource, and those survivors that provided by MÁV, hundreds of thousands of Jews could not have been transported were in attendance were eager to share their stories with our teachers in formal to Auschwitz.” and informal settings. MÁV is charged with “aiding and abetting the Nazi genocide of 1944” and At the official opening of our with “looting the plaintiffs’ possessions.” conference, Dr. Steven Meed, “MÁV employees had dug ditches in advance to receive the dead bodies and son of our program’s founder, bury them. The persons who showed signs of mental illness were led to the edge Vladka Meed, extended of the ditches and then shot by MÁV employees.” greetings on behalf of his mother Karsai, head of the Hungarian research team for Jerusalem-based Yad and the entire Meed family. It Vashem, said the oversimplified document contains serious historical fallacies was a particularly poignant that question the claim’s authenticity. moment for all of us, as we continued on p. 14 realized that Vladka Meed would Israeli Postage Stamp Honors not be able to accompany teachers on the summer program Holocaust Remembrance Day or attend our gatherings because BY DANIEL KEREN of the difficulties she is Sixty years after the conclusion of the experiencing due to advancing American Gathering Board Members: Second World War and the liberation age. So many of us have vivid standing (clockwise) Michael Korenblit, of the final concentration camps in memories of being with her and Bernard Kent, Rositta Kenigsberg and Europe, the General of listening to her testimony. It Joyce Celnik. Assembly in 2005 passed a resolution was through her perseverance th that designated January 27 as an and strongly held belief that teachers should emphasize the spiritual resistance of annual International Day of Jews during the Holocaust that a new way of teaching about this subject was Commemoration in memory of the inaugurated. Though she always claimed she was not a teacher, her leadership th victims of the Holocaust. January 27 by example was pedagogically perfect. Steven Meed’s lovely metaphor of being was the day that troops from the former witnesses to the witnesses helped all of us to maintain our focus and commitment. Soviet Union liberated the infamous Knowing that we can never really sufficiently address the topic of Jewish Auschwitz death camp. resistance, there are always nuances that are brought to our attention and that On January 27th, officials of Israel influence our curricula. With respect to that, we concentrated on this topic this Post released a special sheetlet of nine year, beginning with a focus on the many forms of resistance evidenced in the different horizontal 6.70 shekel postage film Defiance. stamps to mark International Holocaust Viewing this film about the legendary Bielski Brigade, an epic tale of family, Remembrance Day, highlighting the heroism of those Sharei Hapleitah, survivors honor, vengeance and salvation in World War II, and then hearing from the of the Holocaust, who uniquely utilized their collective memories of their horrible screenwriter Clay Frohmann and working with Mitch Braff and the vast array of continued on p. 8 cont’d on p. 13

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

April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 1 Exploiting Scrolls: A Morally TOGETHER Reprehensible Scam BY MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT April 2010 Volume 24 Number 2 c•o•n•t•e•n•t•s Some years ago, there was Binjamin Wilkomirski, the author of a purportedly Lawsuit Against Hungary’s MAVS by Holocaust Survivors...... 1 autobiographical account of his years as a Jewish orphan during the Holocaust Israeli Postage Stamp Honors Holocaust Remembrance by Daniel Keren...... 1 but who actually is a Swiss-born Christian clarinetist. Then there was the case of 14th Reunion of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Program by Elaine Culbertson....1 Herman Rosenblat whose heartwarming tale of a little girl tossing him an apple Exploiting Torah Scrolls by Menachem Rosensaft...... 2 every day for seven months across the electrified barbed wire fence of a Nazi Address by PM Netanyahu at Auschwitz...... 3 concentration camp turned out to be a hoax. And now we have Menachem Visiting Rome , Honors Memory of Holocaust Victims...... 4 Evolution of International Holocaust Day by Ruth Ellen Gruber...... 4 Youlus, the Washington DC area bookstore proprietor who moonlights as a self- We Are Still in the Shadow of the Holocaust by Michael Gove ...... 4 proclaimed rescuer of Holocaust-era Torah scrolls, and whose stranger-than- Holocaust War Victims Tracing Center...... 5 fiction tales were debunked earlier this year in a lengthy Washington Post Teaching Holocaust Common Denominator in Israel...... 5 Magazine exposé by Martha Wexler and Jeff Lunden. Database of Polish Citizens Repressed Under German Occupation...... 5 In 2007, on the website of Save a Torah, his 501(c)3 tax exempt organization, Providing End-of-Life Care with Dignity and Compassion by David Nussbaum...... 6 Youlus claimed to have found and restored “Torah scrolls hidden, lost or stolen Journalistic Ethics Still Apply to Ad Space by Rachel Racoosin...... 6 during the Holocaust” which he then “resettled” in more than 50 Jewish Of Killing Fields and Looted Graves by Jeanette Friedman...... 7 communities throughout the world. On a promotional video featured on the same American Gathering Announces New Vice Presidents...... 7 website, he said that “we’ve done over 500 today.” And in a recent Washington Holocaust Study Creates Antisemitism...... 8 Post interview, Youlus boasted of having rescued not 50 or 500 but 1,100 such Ex-Neo-Nazi Admits Role in Auschwtiz Sign Theft by Theunis Bates...... 8 Auschwitz Remains a Symbol by Richard Greenberg...... 9 Torah scrolls. Conservation Bid as Auschwitz Crumbles by Roger Boyes...... 10 Youlus also gave his Torah scrolls dramatic histories. Two were allegedly Catholic Scholars Protest the Vatican by Steve Lipman...... 10 found buried in a “Gestapo body bag” in a Ukrainian mass-grave of murdered Holocaust Survivors’ Group Questions Mengele Journal...... 10 Jews. He supposedly discovered one under the floorboards of a barrack in the Surviving the Survivors by Gloria Kestenbaum...... 11 Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, a “rescue” that is described on Germany Approves • 91m for Holocaust Survivors by Benjamin Weinthal...... 12 his website’s video alongside photographs taken at the camp at the time of its The Hidden Child by Myriam Abramowicz...... 12 liberation by British troops in April 1945. Youlus claims that he dug up yet another iVolunteer Fetes AmGath Chairman by Hilary Feutchman...... 13 Torah scroll in what had been the cemetery of Oswiecim, the town adjacent to Others May Talk About These Things, But I Cannot by Jackie Jacobs...... 14 the Auschwitz death camp, and reunited it with four missing panels that Jews My Search for My Brother by Sandy Speier Klein...... 15 from Oswiecim had taken into the camp and had entrusted for safekeeping to a Chana’s Story by Chana Weisenfeld...... 16 Row Over Definition of Holocaust Survivor by Leon Symons...... 17 Jewish-born priest who eventually gave them to Youlus. Announcements...... 18 If even one of these stories seems fantastic, improbable, even incredible, the Holocuast Archives Go Online by Rachel Tepper...... 18 odds that any one person could have found all four of these Torah scrolls and Letters...... 19 brought them surreptitiously to the United States are, conservatively speaking, In Memoriam...... 20 astronomical. As has been said repeatedly in connection with Bernard Madoff’s Searches (contributing editor Serena Woolrich)...... 22 multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, if something sounds too good to be true, it most “Searches” is a project of Allgenerations, Inc. probably is. Which is not to say that Youlus’s accounts could have withstood serious scrutiny. NOTICE TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS He apparently has never provided any provenance for the Torah scrolls he sold NEEDING ASSISTANCE for thousands of dollars each. No reputable archivist, historian or Jewish community Financial assistance is available for needy Holocaust survivors. If leader in Poland, or Germany can substantiate any of his claims. The you have an urgent situation regarding housing, health care, food or other very idea that the very same Germans who routinely desecrated and burned emergency, you may be eligible for a one-time grant funded by the Claims Torah scrolls should have reverently placed two such scrolls in a “Gestapo body Conference. bag,” whatever that is, and buried them alongside hundreds if not thousands of If there is a Jewish Family Service agency in your area, please naked Jews in a mass grave defies not just credibility but logic. Similarly implausible discuss your situation with them. If there is no such agency nearby, is the tale of Auschwitz inmates, who had been forced to give up all their possessions mail a written inquiry describing your situation to: upon entering the camp, being able to smuggle four Torah panels into the camp, Emergency Holocaust Survivor Assistance all handing them to the same fellow prisoner, a priest, who would give them to P.O. Box 765 Youlus more than six decades later. Murray Hill Station It gets worse. There are no records of any such priest ever having existed, New York, NY 10156 and Youlus refuses to identify him by name. Youlus could not have come across a Torah scroll, or anything else for that matter, in the barracks of Bergen-Belsen, American Gathering Executive Committee where both my parents were liberated, for the simple reason that all the barracks SAM E. BLOCH • ROMAN KENT of that camp were burned in May 1945 in order to contain a raging typhus MAX K. LIEBMANN epidemic. And Youlus peddled the “Ukrainian mass-grave” scrolls to five separate MENACHEM ROSENSAFT • ELAN STEINBERG congregations, assuring each that it was buying one of two, to use the art world term, limited editions. Charlatans and con men – alright, to be politically correct, con persons – TOGETHER come in all shapes and sizes, and belong to all nationalities, faiths and ethnicities. AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Some even hide behind a façade of pseudo-piety. , priests and ministers AND THEIR DESCENDANTS have been known to prey on their communities, on charitable organizations, and 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 · New York, New York 10001 · 212 239 4230 Founding President Vice Presidents Publication Committee on individual congregants. BEN MEED, l“z EVA FOGELMAN SAM E. BLOCH, Chairman Honorary President ROSITTA E. KENIGSBERG Hirsh Altusky, l“z It is bad enough when unscrupulous individuals rip off their marks, as it were, VLADKA MEED ROMANA STROCHLITZ PRIMUS Roman KentPublication Committee President JEAN BLOCH ROSENSAFT Max K.SAM Liebmann E. BLOCH, Chairman with variations of the proverbial Nigerian e-mail scam in which the recipient is SAM E. BLOCH MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT Vladka Meed Honorary Chairman STEFANIE SELTZER Romana Strochlitz Primus promised part of a multi-million dollar fortune in exchange for a relatively minor ERNEST MICHEL ELAN STEINBERG Menachem Z. Rosensaft up-front investment. Exploiting greed is unseemly, to be sure, but anyone who Chairman JEFFREY WIESENFELD Editor ROMAN KENT Secretary JEANETTE FRIEDMAN buys a “genuine” Rolex from a sidewalk peddler for $100 does not deserve much Honorary Senior JOYCE CELNIK LEVINE Editor Emeritus Vice President Treasurer ALFRED LIPSON, l“z sympathy. WILLIAM LOWENBERG MAX K. LIEBMANN Senior Vice President Regional Vice-Presidents Counsel A fake Holocaust memoir or a Torah scroll purportedly rescued from the MAX K. LIEBMANN VIVIAN GLASER BERNSTEIN ABRAHAM KRIEGER BERNARD KENT ruins of World War II Europe is altogether different. Preying on the emotions of MICHAEL KORENBLIT MEL MERMELSTEIN SERENA WOOLRICH cont’d on p. 6

TOGETHER 2 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 Address by PM Netanyahu at Auschwitz concentration camp 27 Jan 2010 I want to thank the Government of Poland for the historic effort it is making to The enlightened nations of the world must learn this lesson.We, the Jewish nation, commemorate the greatest catastrophe that befell my people and the greatest who lost a third of our people on Europe’s blood-soaked soil, have learned that crime committed against humanity.We have gathered here, Poles and Jews, at the only guarantee for defending our people is a strong State of Israel and the the crossroads of tragedy. Our long shared history included tremendous cultural army of Israel. We have learned to warn the nations of the world of approaching accomplishments and the lowest low humanity has experienced. We were here. danger but at the same time to prepare to defend ourselves.As the head of the We remember those who froze to death; if they did not freeze to death, they were Jewish state, I pledge to you today: We will never again permit evil to snuff out executed by gas, burned in the ovens. We remember also that one-third of the the life of our people and the life of our own country.I came here today from Righteous Gentiles, those who risked their lives and their children’s lives and Jerusalem to say to those who perished here: The people of Israel live! We have those of their families in order to save others, were Poles. We remember all this. returned to our homeland, to the land of our fathers, to our capital Jerusalem. We As we stand here to commemorate the past, we are helping to build a future of have come from every corner of the earth—Holocaust survivors and Jewish decency, truth and hope for our two peoples and for all mankind. refugees from Arab lands, Jews from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia, Poland and Now I will speak in Hebrew, Yemen, and Iraq, and Morocco, Jews from seventy lands and the reborn language of the five continents.Some who came almost didn’t make it. Barracks #16 at the people whom the Nazis sought Birkenau death camp, a few meters from here, housed a17-year old Jewish youth to exterminate.[Translation] who suffered from the 80 lashes he received in the ghetto from his Nazi tormenters. The voices of millions of my No one believed the boy would live, but he survived and escaped from the camp.

“To those who were murdered here, and to those who survived the destruction, I come from Jerusalem today with this promise: We will never forget!”

people gassed, burned and killed With the victory over the Nazis 65 years ago, he immigrated to Israel. Fifteen in a thousand different ways rise years later, he was the Israeli police officer guarding Adolph Eichmann when the out of this cursed ground. In the final moment of their lives, many whispered or Jewish state brought the Nazi henchmen to justice.That young man is Michael cried out the timeless words of our ancient people: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our Goldman. With his wife Eva, he raised a family in Israel, and they have five God, the Lord is One.”Perhaps a few used their final breath to chant another children and nine grandchildren. Michael is with us here today—a witness to the age-old prayer: “Remember what Amalek did to you. Never forget!” Holocaust, a witness to the redemption. To those who were murdered here, and to those who survived the destruction, The Jewish people rose from ashes and destruction, from a terrible pain that I come from Jerusalem today with this promise: We will never forget! We will can never be healed. Armed with the Jewish spirit, the justice of man, and the never permit those who desecrated this monument to death to distort or wipe vision of the prophets, we sprouted new branches and grew deep roots. Dry away your memory. We will always remember what Amalek’s Nazi heirs did to bones became covered with flesh, a spirit filled them, and they lived and stood on you. We will be prepared to defend ourselves when a new Amalek appears on their own feet.As Ezekiel prophesized: “Then He said unto me: These bones are the stage of history and threatens again to annihilate the Jews.We will not delude the whole House of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone; ourselves into believing that the threats, vilifications and Holocaust denials are we are doomed.’ Prophecy, therefore, and say to them: Thus said the Lord God: merely empty words. We will never forget. We will always be vigilant. I am going to open your graves and lift you out of your graves, O My people, and The Holocaust author, Katzetnick, in his testimony at the Eichmann trial, bring you to the land of Israel.” called the death camps “another planet.” But the horrors of the Holocaust occurred I stand here today on the ground where so many of my people perished—and not in a far away world but right here on earth. It was not the work of beastly I am not alone. The State of Israel and all the Jewish people stand with me. We animals but of beastly men, of loathsome and despicable murderers. bow our heads to honor your memory and lift our heads as we raise our flag, a The most important lesson of the Holocaust is that a murderous evil must be flag of blue and white with a Star of David in its center. And everyone sees. And stopped early, when it is still in its infancy and before it can carry out its designs. everyone hears. And everyone knows—that our hope is not lost.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for Visiting Rome synagogue, Pope the International Day in Memory of the Victims honors memory of Holocaust victims of the Holocaust Daily Mail An Italian Jewish leader told Pope Benedict on Sunday that his wartime Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the predecessor Pius XII should have spoken out more forcefully against the Holocaust International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, observed 27 to show solidarity with Jews being led to the ‘ovens of Auschwitz’. January: The comments, from the president of Rome’s Jewish community Riccardo The theme of this year’s commemoration at United Nations offices around Pacifici, were made during the pope’s first visit to Rome’s synagogue and were the world is the legacy of survival. some of the bluntest ever spoken by a Jewish leader in public to a pope. Countless men, women and children suffered the horrors of the ghettos and ‘The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah, still hurts because something Nazi death camps, yet somehow survived. should have been done,’ Pacifici told the pope, using the Hebrew word for the All of them carry a crucial message for all of us. A message about the Holocaust. triumph of the human spirit. A living testament that tyranny, though it may rise, ‘Maybe it would not have stopped the death trains, but it would have sent a will surely not prevail. signal, a word of extreme comfort, of human solidarity, towards those brothers of Survivors also play a vital role in keeping the lessons of the Holocaust alive ours transported to the ovens of Auschwitz,’ he said. for future generations. Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest and most notorious of the The visit, Benedict’s third trip to a synagogue since becoming pope in 2005, camps, was liberated 65 years ago today. There and elsewhere, many millions of has deeply split Italy’s Jewish community after he took the decision last month to people were systematically abused and murdered. Most of them were Jews. But advance Pius XII on the path towards sainthood. others were targeted, too. At Auschwitz, more than 2,000 of those killed were He met fifteen survivors of the Nazi camps in the synagogue, but the majority inhabitants of the Roma and Sinti “family camp”. boycotted the meeting. Holocaust survivors will not be with us forever but the legacy of their survival Many Jews say Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, did not do enough to must live on. We must preserve their stories through memorials, through education, help Jews facing persecution by . most of all through robust efforts to prevent genocide and other grave crimes. In his speech to the pope, Pacifici paid tribute to Italian Catholics, priests and The United Nations is fully committed to this cause. Together, let us pledge to nuns during the war and said their efforts made Pius’ ‘silence’ hurt even more. carry forward the mission of Holocaust remembrance and uphold human dignity for all. cont’d on p. 12 April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 3 EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST DAY REFLECTS CHANGING TIMES BY RUTH ELLEN GRUBER, JTA the local government in Barcelona canceled a public annual Day of Holocaust Remembrance.” ROME (JTA) — On the same day Israeli President candlelighting as part of the Holocaust Day Most participating countries chose Jan. 27, given Shimon Peres addressed the German Parliament, commemoration. the importance of Auschwitz as a symbol of the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel appeared before a special “Marking the Jewish Holocaust while a Holocaust, and the U.N. General Assembly in 2005 session of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome. Palestinian Holocaust is taking place is not right,” designated the date as an International Day of The timing is not coincidental. said a statement by an official, described as a Commemoration to honor the victims of the The events were focal points of international representative of Barcelona City Hall, quoted in the Holocaust. Holocaust Memorial Day, an annual observance on La Vanguardia newspaper. But a number of countries chose dates that the anniversary of the Soviet army’s Jan. 27, 1945 The move drew an outraged response from reflected Holocaust events on their own territory. liberation of Auschwitz, which is marked now by the Britain’s Board of Deputies, the body that represents In Poland, for example, it is April 19, the United Nations and more than two dozen individual British Jews. anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. countries. Romania chose Oct. 9, the date when deportations Each year, hundreds of events take place on or of Jews by the Nazi-allied Romanian government near that date. Britain, Italy and Germany have began in 1941. particularly extensive programs. The institution of Holocaust Memorial Day has “There is a great sensitivity to this theme on both not been without its critics. Some have voiced the local and institutional levels,” said Alessandro concern that institutionalizing Holocaust memory as Ruben, a Jewish Italian member of parliament in Italy, an official date in a calendar risked turning where Holocaust Memorial Day has been marked commemoration into a cliche. By and large, however, since 2001. “Every year there are more and more this does not seem to be the case. events connected with it, including many, many “Consider how other historical events are educational initiatives in schools.” remembered,” said Baker, who is also the The nature of the commemorations is a reflection representative for combating antisemitism of the of the times, too. Organization for Security and Cooperation in While most Holocaust Memorial Day initiatives Europe. “Veterans Day in the United States seems are linked directly to the memory and impact of the “The conflict between Israel and Hamas should primarily marked by department store sales, for Nazi genocide against the Jews, there is increasing have absolutely no bearing on a day which represents example. In contrast, the Holocaust is recalled emphasis on what the experience of the Holocaust the global fight against hatred,” board spokesman seriously and soberly.” can teach in the face of other genocides and Mark Frazer said. “Apart from the obvious flawed He added, “While I do not want to sound overly persecution, such as those in , Bosnia, logic in making the decision, this is an affront to all sanguine, I don’t think we should fear that the Cambodia and Darfur. World War II-era persecution Holocaust survivors and to the memory of the memory of the Holocaust will disappear or that of Roma (Gypsies) and gays also is examined. millions of victims. This move should draw criticism Holocaust deniers will find new adherents. Rabbi Andrew Baker, the American Jewish in the strongest terms from all parts of the Spanish “These last 20 years have witnessed a steady Committee’s director of international Jewish affairs, government.” increase in educational and commemorative said the shift in focus is to be expected. Though Germany has marked a Holocaust activities. And is primarily a cudgel “For Jews,” he said, the Holocaust “was a memorial day on Jan. 27 since 1996, the impetus wielded by anti-Semites and haters of Israel, not unique and unprecedented tragedy. But national and for the observance in most countries came from a something that is genuinely debated in any legitimate international commemoration events by their nature landmark Holocaust education forum that took place forum.” also stress the universal lessons that should be drawn in Stockholm in 2000, a decade after the fall of , an Emory University from the event. As survivors and other eyewitnesses communism enabled an uncensored exploration of historian who has written widely about the pass from our midst, those universal expressions history. In most communist states, Jewish issues had phenomenon of Holocaust denial, said she was naturally grow larger.” been suppressed and study or commemoration of “gratified as a historian that there is this attention to At the same time, pro-Palestinian groups are the Shoah had been limited. this event that is now in the past, especially as the trying to transform the international day of At the Stockholm Forum, leaders from 46 survivor generation is passing.” remembrance into an opportunity to criticize Israel. countries pledged to promote education and research But, she said, “One hopes that there is attention Last year, for example, to protest Israel’s military about the Holocaust, and to “encourage appropriate in a deeper way: to examine how this emerged and operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a British forms of Holocaust remembrance, including an happened, while the world stood silently by.” Muslim organization boycotted events in Britain, and WE ARE STILL IN THE SHADOW OF THE HOLOCAUST By Michael Gove (Telegraph-UK) On January 27th we The history of the Holocaust is As the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, has pointed out, what remember the greatest crime ever the history of a society which blamed starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. inflicted by man against his fellow the Jews for its miseries, sought to History teaches us many lessons, if we are willing man. Holocaust Memorial Day push them to the margins and then to pay attention. And one of the most profound is that allows us to reflect on the bleakest sought, literally, to make them vanish the best guide to the health of a society has always chapter in the history of the 20th from sight. In our time we can see been how secure its Jewish community feels. century. And there is a special the same trends returning. The calls Throughout history the freest societies have been urgency in the call to remember for boycotts of Jewish thinkers at those in which Jewish people have felt safest. And this year, of all years, because the Israeli universities, the rise in over the ages the surest sign that a country is moving shadow of the Holocaust continues antisemitic incidents on our streets, away from liberalism has been a growing prejudice to fall over the world today. the inflamed rhetoric of vilification towards the Jewish community. Mass murder is still deployed which culminates in Iranian President It is because that lesson of history is so important as a political tool by tyrants. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call to wipe that Holocaust Memorial Day is so crucial. The Racism is returning to the streets Israel off the map, are all connected. resurgence of antisemitism requires us all to unite of Europe. And antisemitism is Now it is Jewish identity against this most poisonous of prejudices. creeping back into the corridors of expressed through the right of Israel power. The extremism of the British fascists of the to self-determination which is the focus of The writer is the British shadow secretary of state for BNP is mirrored in the equally toxic ideology of antisemitism. Many of Israel’s enemies now risk children, schools and families. antisemitic groups such as Islam4Uk and Hizb-ut repeating one of the greatest errors of history by Tahrir. infusing antisemitism with a new and toxic vibrancy.

TOGETHER 4 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 Holocaust War Victims STUDY: TEACHING HOLOCAUST Database of Polish Citizens Tracing Center COMMON DENOMINATOR IN ISRAEL Repressed under the German JERUSALEM (JTA) — The teaching of the Occupation Peter wanted to know Holocaust is one of the most meaningful and unifying

the fate of his aunt, areas of study in the Israeli school system, a survey The names of the estimated six million Polish Elisabeth, who lived in found. citizens—three million of whom were Jewish—who Poland during the war. A national survey of Israeli principals, teachers were Holocaust victims, died in combat in the Was she murdered in and students recently released found that the resistance at home, died while fighting the Nazis under a camp? Had she mi- Holocaust is a common denominator among students the Allied command, or were civilian victims of raculously survived? of diverse backgrounds, and that there are no major German reprisals are being gathered from thirty Peter turned to the differences between students from different institutions (among them are The Emanuel Ringelblum American Red Cross demographic groups in terms of their perceptions of Jewish Historical Institute, the Flossenbürg Holocaust and War the Holocaust. Concentration Camp Museum, Prisoner’s Registry Victims Tracing The study, headed by Erik Cohen of Bar-Ilan of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, and the Center for answers. The Tracing Center, which is University’s School of Education, interviewed 307 Polish State Archives) and from individuals and are connected to a global network of Red Cross societies principals, 519 teachers and 2,540 ninth- and 12th- being posted at: http://www.straty.pl/index.php/en. and archives, asked the Polish Red Cross and the grade students from Israeli religious and non-religious The first installment contains 1.9 million names. Over International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, schools. The results were presented to the Knesset time, the remainder will be added. Germany, for help. The ITS said that Elizabeth had Education Committee. The database can be searched at: http:// not only survived the war but their records proved A majority of students, 77 percent, said that the www.straty.pl/index.php/pl/szukaj-w-bazie. The she had emigrated from Germany to the United States Holocaust affects their worldview and 94 percent search terms, written in Polish, are surname, first in 1958 with her daughter, Antonia. A volunteer at said they are committed to preserving its memory. name, father’s first name, mother’s first name, place the Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center found Some 83 percent said they are interested in learning of birth, date of birth (day, month, year), and date of that Elisabeth had unfortunately passed away in 1986. more about the Holocaust. death (day, month, year). With the Death Certificate obtained by the New York Some 99 percent of students who participated in Fill out the questionnaire at: http://www.straty.pl/ Red Cross Chapter, however, a volunteer located a journey to Poland said it was an effective means of index.php/en/questionnaireto provide personal Antonia. In April, 2009 the two cousins spoke to each learning about the Holocaust. information about the victims and submit it online or other for the very first time. Strengthening students’ commitment to the by mail. Thefirst page asks for biographical Irena heard about the Holocaust tracing service existence of an independent State of Israel is an information, such as name, parents’ names, birth and and went to her local Red Cross chapter in Phoenix important goal of Holocaust education for 100 percent death dates, nationality, religion, and education. The to begin a trace for her cousin, Jacob, who was last of principals and 92 percent of teachers, the study next page lists categories to choose among in order known to live in Poland during the war. With the found. More than half of the teachers received training to move on to the second set of questions. The assistance of the Polish Red Cross, her cousin was in Holocaust education through a professional categories are soldiers; Imprisoned soldiers; members located at age 91. Irena overjoyed at the news that enrichment course during the past two years. of the resistance movement/guerrilla warfare; victims her cousin had survived the Holocaust, arranged a The study was conducted from 2007 to 2009 with of repression of camps [e.g., extermination, trip to Poland and was reconnected with her long- the support of the Conference on Jewish Material concentration, transit], ghettos, prisons, arrests; lost cousin, Jacob. Claims Against Germany. Visions of his mother’s capture by the Nazis prosecuted by German courts; victims of execution / pacification; civil victims of warfare and occupation; tormented Henry for most of his life. Her fate was With sincere appreciation repatriation/expulsion;forced labor; and juvenile a mystery he longed to solve when he approached to our special donors... victims of the war and occupation (up to 18 years). the Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center. A As an example of the second set of questions, trace to the Austrian Red Cross led to sad but healing Jack Dym Jack Rosenthal “Civil victims of warfare and occupation” presents a information. Jana had been deported on June 9 1942 Joel Geiderman Russell Steinweg choice of death as a result of warfare; shot dead; to Maly Trostinec, where she was murdered. Henry, Fran Laufer Robert I. Wishnick victim of a murder committed not by authorities in now age 84, said that just knowing the final fate of Foundation occupation; Poles, citizens of other countries— his mother gave him a great sense of peace. The murdered/repressed (also before Sept 1. 1939); local Red Cross volunteer who told Henry the news victims of germanization (over 18), and persons during a home visit said “sharing this information Il Duce Calling forced to hide. with Henry was one of the most gratifying BY WINDSOR GENOVA, AHN The project is financed by Poland’s Ministry of experiences of my life. I could see that he was in Rome, Italy - An Apple iPhone application that plays Culture and National Heritage and the Institute of so much pain. He told me all about the past, his speeches by Italy’s World War II leader Benito National Remembrance, Commission for the happy childhood in Austria, and how just one day Mussolini was a hit among Italians but not to Jewish Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. his mother simply vanished, forever. I was glad that groups and Holocaust survivors. I was there to listen and tell him the news he had The so-called iMussolini app created by 25-year- old Luigi Marino was getting a thousand downloads waited so long to hear.” IF YOU HAVE AN E-MAIL ADDRESS These brief case summaries illustrate how the per day of the Fascist dictator’s 100 speeches plus AND WISH TO RECEIVE NEWS AND Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center of the video. Marino claimed the app, which sold for 79 euro American Red Cross, with its partners around the cents, was even more popular than an iPhone video ANNOUNCEMENTS BETWEEN world and in communities throughout the U.S, helps game based on the movie Avatar and an X-ray app TOGETHER PUBLICATION DATES, people who are seeking the fates of loved ones that lets users see others naked. PLEASE SEND IT THE AMERICAN missing since the Holocaust and its aftermath. The Tullia Zevi, former head of the Jewish community GATHERING Tracing Center has reunited more than 1500 survivors in Rome, labeled the app as an attempt to justify the SEND TO: actions of Mussolini against Jews in Italy during World with family members and has documented the fates [email protected] War II. Mussolini allied himself with Germany and of more than 15,000 victims. The Center assists U.S. , who ordered the Holocaust. residents searching for proof of internment, forced PLEASE SEND US YOUR STORIES, In the U.S., Holocaust survivors condemned the or slave labor or evacuation from former Soviet ARTICLES, AND LETTERS FOR INCLUSION app as the Mussolini speeches insult the memory of territories on themselves or family members. This IN TOGETHER AND OUR WEB SITE. all victims of the Nazi extermination campaign PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT WE documentation may be required for wartime supported by Mussolini’s Fascist regime. CANNOT PRINT EVERYTHING THAT IS reparations. All of the tracing services are free of Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American . To start a trace you can contact your local Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their SUBMITTED. Red Cross office or the Tracing Center at hwvtc@arc- Descendants, said that Apple should be condemned SEND TO: cmc.org or 410-624-2090. for releasing the app through its online store iTunes. [email protected]

April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 5 Providing End-of-Life Care with Dignity and Compassion Brooklyn, New York enlisted the financial support of their neighbors in response to an undeniable need for BY DAVID NUSSBAUM observance program, to all members of the Jewish quality health care for the elderly. This commitment Diaspora—regardless of sect, tradition, economic or to serving the unmet needs of the community lives on It is unconscionable that after experiencing, social background. today in MJHS, as well as in its hospice and palliative witnessing and surviving one of the most horrific Metropolitan Jewish Hospice knows that at the care programs and services. examples of man’s inhumanity, terminally ill Holocaust end-of-life, survivors often face a unique set of issues, But as aging Holocaust survivors once again face victims and their families do not have access to—or including the emotional pain often experienced by the possibility of death, it is imperative that they are unaware of—unique, compassionate and reflecting on their lives and reconciling the guilt for receive the comfort, care, peace and dignity they so culturally-sensitive end-of-life care. having survived concentration camps, as well as other richly deserve. For a number of years, New York City-based indignities. All of its compassionate staff—whether With adequate funding and dedicated staff, Metropolitan Jewish Hospice has worked to reverse hospice and palliative care board-certified physicians, Metropolitan’s hospice and palliative care programs that trend. In the past year, the organization ensured nurses, social workers, pastoral care coordinators, would be poised to lead an unprecedented New York that more than 250 terminally ill survivors and their music and art therapists or bereavement counselors— City-based initiative that would: families received the gentle, loving, peaceful care they are trained to have an increased awareness of, and deserved and needed. sensitivity toward, each survivor’s life journey. 1. Collaborate with other survivor-focused Metropolitan Jewish Hospice is a charitable not- More specifically, Metropolitan is peerless in 10 organizations to ensure terminally ill victims for-profit organization that provides comprehensive distinct areas of its hospice and palliative care receive compassionate, high quality and culturally culturally-sensitive care to patients with advanced programs and services: sensitive end-of-life care, as well as palliative care illnesses throughout Greater Metropolitan New York. programs and services As a participating program of not-for-profit 1. Medical care— symptom management, 2. Educate, as well as sensitize, medical leaders Metropolitan Jewish Health System, Metropolitan including alleviation of physical pain about the unique needs of survivors and their Jewish Hospice focuses on the comfort and individual 2. Patient empowerment—self-directed, - families, including the importance of an “ethical needs of patients and their families in an environment influenced and -adjustable care plans will” in care plans of peace, dignity and respect. It also provides 3. Family meetings—multigenerational 3. Train social workers and arts therapists on the bereavement services, including youth camps for gatherings facilitated by physicians, based on core distinct psycho-social issues experienced by many children and young adults, as well as educational group wishes survivors and their family members sessions. 4. Social work counseling—emotional and 4. Launch a hospice and palliative website with psycho-social support dedicated sections for holocaust survivors and Creating a Place of Dignity, Comfort and Peace 5. Spiritual and religious guidance— their advanced directives or Halachic living wills As the Claims Conference has widely reported, rabbinical support and in-person visits 5. Create an in-person and virtual bereavement Holocaust survivors are more likely than their peers 6. Pediatric care and The Art & Soul support group for surviving family members to suffer from certain illnesses and conditions. And Project™—specialized medical and creative arts while medical institutions treat physical discomfort therapy care for babies, children and teenagers, Going Beyond Commentary and pain, Metropolitan Jewish Hospice is different. as well as their families Just as with Claims Conference, Metropolitan It is one of the only organizations in New York City 7. Music therapy—individual- and group-guided Jewish Hospice and MJHS are motivated by a “moral that focuses on the physical, emotional, social and instrumental or vocal communication and imperative” and “determination to succeed, with a psychological pain and discomfort experienced by intervention for patients and family members resolute understanding of what is at stake.” dying Holocaust victims and their families. It also 8. Community-based palliative care— By working together, we can ensure all Holocaust offers Halachic Pathway, a distinct religious coordinated 24 hour-a-day, on-call care survivors in the Greater New York area spend their Exploiting Torah Scrolls: consultation services with the attending physician final days, weeks and months pain free and surrounded A Morally Reprehensible Scam on symptom management and goals of care by—and treated with—as much love as possible. cont’d from p. 2 9. Bereavement support—individual and As Greg Schneider, the Executive Vice President people overwhelmed by the memory of tragedy in group sessions for children, adults and families of the Claims Conference, says, “Every Shoah victim order to make a buck is contemptible. Think of the throughout New York City deserves to live her or his remaining years in dignity, psychic who misleads a grieving parent into believing 10. Volunteer visits—regular companionship, and the rest is commentary.” that he or she is able to communicate with a deceased patient advocacy and support child. David Nussbaum is the Executive Director of Menachem Youlus promises Jewish Acting with Urgency Metropolitan Jewish Health System Foundation, congregations a tangible link to their past only to look When charitable not-for-profit Metropolitan the financial resource development arm of on impassively when they are made aware that what Jewish Health System (MJHS) created Metropolitan Metropolitan Jewish Health System. For more they purchased from him may be nothing more than Jewish Hospice, it was guided by a powerful legacy. information, call 1-800- HOSPICE (1-900-467- a shadowy facsimile. According to the Washington In 1907, an extraordinary group of women from 7423) or visit www.mjhs.org. Post story, “Youlus declines to explain how five parties believed they had one of these two [Ukrainian Journalistic ethics still apply to ad space mass-grave] .” BY RACHEL RACOOSIN, University of Wisconsin at the Holocaust. The Nazis did not have time to destroy One of Youlus’s defenders argues that exposing Madison the evidence. In quite possibly the most horrifying his deception “may very well be in service of the Throughout history, antisemitism has manifested in a experience of my life, the guide explained that the truth but in disservice of a greater truth.” That is spectrum of different ways—hatred and discrimination gas chambers could be up and running in about 48 utter bunk. against the Jewish people have taken the form of a hours. Millions of lives were tragically ended due to Truth is absolute. The Holocaust was a tragedy simple exchange of words, a catastrophic genocide blind hatred. After leaving Poland, I knew it was my of unfathomable proportions. Its victims, including like the Holocaust and everything in between. responsibility to tell this story and keep the memory the hundreds of thousands of destroyed and You can imagine my horror recently while on the of the six million Jews whose lives were taken at the desecrated Torah scrolls and other Jewish religious Badger Herald’s website I discovered an hands of the Nazis. artifacts, deserve nothing less than the dignity of advertisement for the Committee for Open Debate Jason Smathers, editor-in-chief of The Badger authentic memory. on the Holocaust. This advertisement is linked to the Herald, responded to the placement of the website of Holocaust denier Bradley Smith. advertisement. While he acknowledged the false Menachem Z. Rosensaft is Adjunct Professor of Exploring Jewish history on a trip to Eastern nature of the claims made by the CODOH, he also Law at Cornell Law School, Distinguished Visiting Europe in 2007, I walked through many concentration maintained that the advertisement would remain on Lecturer at Syracuse University College of Law, camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. the Badger Herald website. and Vice President of the American Gathering of My strongest memories are of my visit to Majdanek, The media kits for both The Daily Cardinal and Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their on the outskirts of Lublin. Madjanek is unique as it is The Badger Herald state that the newspapers Descendants. known as the best-preserved concentration camp of cont’d on p. 8

TOGETHER 6 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 OF KILLING FIELDS AND LOOTED GRAVES: A CATHOLIC PRIEST FULFILLS THE COMMAND, ZACHOR By JEANETTE FRIEDMAN Father Patrick Desbois is an unusual Catholic do their dirty work, and tries to find and protect the synagogue buildings, the entire Jewish community priest, who, at the behest of two French clerics (the mass graves. would disappear. But not without a trace. Artifacts -speaking Holocaust Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of remain at many of the sites, and grave robbers know survivor, Cardinal Jean-Marie the Conference says the it and seek them out. Lustiger, and Cardinal Jean Catholic priest appreciates, When the Yachad in Unum team comes to a Pierre Ricard), officially took it “The kedusha of the town, they ask the locals if they know anyone who upon himself to obey the Kedoshim, the holiness of witnessed the mass murder of the Jews. They race commandment, Zachor, to the holy ones.” As a son of against the clock because the witnesses are dying remember. Born in the 1950’s, Holocaust survivors, of old age. Sometimes the people come forward, he is the grandson of a deportee Hoenlien uses that term to and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes the sent to Rawa-Ruska, near describe Jews murdered by evidence confirms what the witness saw. In one Belzec, in the former Soviet the Nazis and their case a witness described someone playing a Union—a deportee who collaborators during the harmonica while the shootings took place, and Father witnessed mass shooting Holocaust. (The official Desbois’s team found the remains of a harmonica murder of the Jews by Nazis’ definition of a Holocaust near the mass grave. Einzatsgruppen, the mobile survivor includes any Jew The most horrific reason and need for speed to killing troops, and their collaborators. who was in Europe or fled, between 1933 and 1945.) preserve the sites is because of what is happening to Years later he returned to that site with his In 2004, Father Desbois and his team created those mass graves today. In remote areas, there are grandson, to teach him why he had to help heal the the non-profit organization, Yahad in Unum,so he mass graves that have not yet been confirmed and world. At that moment the wick was lit, and Father could fund this quest, which often takes him and his protected, and locals use them as gold mines (80% Desbois became “the memorial candle” for his team to remote areas, where the natives are not of the graves in Ukraine have been looted)—digging family and his calling. With the blessings of the always friendly and might even want to kill them. up the remains to search for gold teeth and jewelry. Cardinals and the Pope, in 2002, he embarked on a It’s one reason he learned to develop a poker face, Artifacts found by the Yachad in Unum team— journey he did not then know could become one that would not reveal his feelings even while shell casings, bullets, necklaces, bracelets—are sent dangerous. listening to the vilest forms of anti-Semitic libels. off to various Holocaust museums to refute On January 12, 2010, Father Desbois was the Said the priest: “If you show on your face what you Holocaust deniers and to educate the public. guest speaker at a luncheon for members of the think, the interview is over. Some of these people They have developed a traveling artifact exhibit, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish are violent and will kill those who try to stop them. “The Holocaust of Bullets,” that is sent to schools Organizations. More than 40 leaders of the Jewish And some of the people who speak of the ‘innocent and study centers across the globe. The team has community were in attendance, among them ones’ are afraid of reprisals.” developed special relationships with the US attorney Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference In one place, he spent Christmas with a Greek Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and with and chairman of the Jewish Community Center Orthodox family whose entertainment for the the Sorbonne in Paris to make these materials Association; John Ruskay, executive vice president evening included skit wherein his host’s son and available to all, and to use those resources in their of UJAFedNY; Mindy Stein, president of Emunah daughter played a Jew who said he came to swindle research as well. of America; Kalman Sultanik, honorary vice everyone in town, and his wife, the Rebbitzen, Yachad in Unum’s goal now is to get funding to president of the , and former opened her coat to reveal stolen cell phones for sale. expand the search for mass graves into , Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman (who founded The witnesses who have given testimony have and Poland; to maintain an archive in Paris the Office of Special Investigations at the Justice allowed Father Desbois to recreate precisely the for other museums, scholars, students, survivor Department to prosecute Nazi war criminals). way the Einzatsgruppen carried out their tasks. In families and researchers to access; and to continue Father Desbois was there to present his case meticulous, chilling detail, he described the to make the traveling exhibition available. for community action and to ask the established methodology of death by close range shooting in Most importantly, they want to recruit people who Jewish community to help him preserve more than the days before Auschwitz and the other death camps can help them convince area governments to seal 900 mass graves that hold the remains of as many were built. the graves with concrete and mark them as sacred as 1.6 million Jews scattered all across Eastern Everything went according to a system that grounds so that they cannot be defiled any longer. Europe, before it was “too late,”—and to help him began when a German location scout would show But this work doesn’t come cheap. Each find as many more as he could before the sites were up to scope out the area for the best place to locate investigative trip, which includes all the research destroyed by grave robbers and urbanization. such a grave. When the troops arrived, the mayor done by the 11-member team costs approximately Doing research and tracking history and maps, and municipal police were recruited to bring the Jews $55,000 and it is expected that the cost to complete Father Desbois walks across the killing fields where out of their homes and march them to the sites, the entire project and seal the graves would cost $5 the mobile killing forces that followed Hitler’s army where they would dig their own graves and be million. through the towns and cities, shtetls and dorfs of murdered at close range—one bullet, one Jew. At the conclusion of his talk, Hoenlein presented Eastern Europe, carried out lethal ethnic cleansing, Within three weeks, beginning with the sales of Father Desbois with an award of thanks on behalf one bullet at a time. He seeks eye witnesses who clothing left at the gravesites and ending with of all of the major Jewish organizations in the United watched what happened when the Nazis arrived to auctions of Jewish-owned furniture in the local States. American Gathering Announces New Vice Presidents network that disseminates and shares information At its Board of Directors meeting in Washington, increasingly diverse society. about the Holocaust and Israel, related issues and DC on April 14, 2010, the four new regional vice Bernard Kent of Franklin, Michigan, a founder events. Serena, who has been a leader and active presidents of the American Gathering of Jewish of the International Network of Children of Jewish member of Second Generation groups in Israel, Fort Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants were Holocaust Survivors, and a past President of Lauderdale, Atlanta, West Hartford, Connecticut, and elected. They are: C.H.A.I.M., Children of Holocaust Survivors Boston, was profiled in the January 2010 issue of Michael Korenblit of Edmond, Oklahoma, co- Association in Michigan, and a retired partner at the Together. author of the best seller Until We Meet Again: A accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers. True Story of Love and Survival in the Holocaust, Vivian Glaser Bernstein of New York City, born PLEASE SEND US YOUR STORIES, in which he relates his parents’ experiences. Michael in Caracas, Venezuela, the daughter of Czech ARTICLES, POEMS, AND LETTERS FOR was Vice President of the International Network of survivors of Terezin, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. INCLUSION IN TOGETHER AND OUR WEB Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and is Vivian is Co-Chief of Group Programmes and Public SITE. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT WE President and co-founder, with his wife Joan, of the Inquiries in Visitors Services at the United Nations. CANNOT PRINT EVERYTHING THAT IS Respect Diversity Foundation, a nonprofit, tax- Serena Woolrich of Washington, DC, the daughter SUBMITTED. exempt organization whose mission is to help people of survivors and founder and President of SEND TO: [email protected] of all ages successfully live, learn and work in our Allgenerations, Inc., an educational and informational April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 7 Holocaust study creates antisemitism: A new evaluation Ex-Neo-Nazi Admits Role in , Germany, Jan. 7 (UPI) — German students Half the students had electrodes attached to their Auschwitz Sign Theft said they became more antisemitic after reading about ring and middle fingers, which they were told were BY THEUNIS BATES ongoing suffering brought on by the Holocaust, a attached to a lie detector. LONDON — The one-time leader of a Swedish neo- university study found. The students who didn’t wear the devices said Nazi group has claimed that he organized the theft of The 62 first-year psychology students had been the ongoing Jewish suffering increased the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign from the gates of former given tests to determine if they were their empathy and reduced their Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on implicitly or explicitly antisemitic, antisemitism. behalf of an as-yet unnamed collector. psychologists Roland Imhoff and But for the students connected to Rainer Banse of the University of Bonn the “lie detectors,” the ongoing-suffering said in a study published in the journal story significantly increased their Psychological Science. antisemitic attitudes, the study found. After three months, the students Imhoff and Banse offered several returned for formal testing. They first theories to explain the behavior. For read about Nazi German atrocities example, guilt may trigger a “defensive against Jews at the Auschwitz antisemitism,” Spirituality & Health magazine concentration camp during World War II. Half read reported. Or belief in a “just world” may cause people Anders Högström — who founded ’s a version that concluded the tragedy had “no direct to think atrocities must be the victims’ own fault, the virulently anti-immigrant National Socialist Front in implications for Jews today,” while the others read a magazine said. 1994 — told local media that he was hired to collect version that said, “Even today, Jews suffer because Imhoff and Banse concluded that while it may the sign from the Polish gang that carried out the of secondary traumatization.” appear logical to emphasize victim suffering “to evoke theft and pass it to a buyer. “We had a person who The students then completed the same sympathetic reactions and reduce prejudice,” such was willing to pay several millions [of kronor, or questionnaire they completed three months earlier. strategies “may be counterproductive in many settings.” hundreds of thousands of dollars] for the sign.” But after discovering that the money from the Israeli Postage Stamp Honors Holocaust Remembrance Day sale would fund a violent campaign aimed at disrupting continued from p. 1 Sweden’s upcoming parliamentary election, Högström past to contribute to the dynamic future of the Jewish Raoul Wallenberg and Chiune Sugihara. said he decided to inform police about the plot. “That State of Israel. This second Israeli stamp to mark International was not something I wanted to be involved in or carry Most of those who survived, about a half million, Holocaust Remembrance Day depicts the hand of a out in any way,” said Högström, who quit the far- immigrated to Israel following the establishment of youngster touching the arm of a Holocaust survivor right movement in 1999. the Jewish State. Professor Hanna Yablonka writes whose concentration camp tattoo is strikingly visible. Sweden’s security service has confirmed that it that “the contribution of those immigrants to Israeli Below the touching hands representing the past and is investigating reports of a neo-Nazi plot to bomb society and country was incomparable. This wave of current generations of Israeli society is a striking the country’s parliament and the home of Prime immigration made a profound impact on the economy, image of the Magen David, Star of David that Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. politics, medicine, settlement, culture (literature, art, throughout the world is symbolic of the land and Polish police — who arrested five men after sculpture, graphics) and in the military field people of Israel, along with the haunting words – “Past finding the sign cut into three pieces in northern Poland particularly during the War of Independence when and Future in our Hands.” on Dec. 20 — have refuted Högström’s claim that half of the Jewish fighting force were Holocaust The stamp was designed by Osnat Eshel from a his actions led to arrests in the case. Still, Polish prosecutors say they want to question three Swedish survivors.” Indeed, it has been noted that this vital photograph taken by Keren Gillerman-Harel. The residents about the theft but haven’t revealed whether contribution was “the revenge of the revival.” stamp was printed in a special commemorative Högström is on their wanted list. In 2008, Israel issued its first International sheetlet of nine stamps, including the bottom row of The relationship between the Swedish ex-Nazi Holocaust Remembrance Day Stamp on January 27th three that contain tabs proclaiming in both Hebrew and his Polish accomplices began two years ago, of that year in a special joint issue with the United and English the date 27.1.2010 as International when the gang’s leader — named Marcin A by Polish Nations Postal Administration. Special U.N. stamps Holocaust Remembrance Day. authorities — was working on Högström’s family featuring the same graphic design as the Israeli stamp At the top of the stamp sheetlet is a quote from estate in southern Sweden. When Marcin A returned were issued on that same day in special United Elie Wiesel, world renowned Holocaust survivor, to his construction firm in Poland, the two men stayed Nations post office branches located in New York, author and Nobel Peace Prize laureate: “Remember in touch. Then last fall, Högström ordered Marcin A Geneva and . the past for the sake of the future and may the past to get a group of experienced thieves together, Over the years, Israel has on its own issued many of the old not become the future of the young.” remove the sign from Poland’s former death camp postage stamps that have recalled the heroism and For more information on this and other Israeli and smuggle it out of the country. sacrifice of the Six Million Holocaust martyrs, stamp issues, please write to the Israel Philatelic The operation didn’t go smoothly. Unable to focusing on specific concepts such as the anniversary Agency of North America, 460 West 34th Street, New unscrew the wrought-iron banner, the gang wrenched of Kristalnacht, the efforts of the Danish resistance York, NY 10001 or email [email protected] or phone it off the camp’s gates, leaving the letter “i” in “frei” to save the Jews of that Scandinavian land, and (212) 629-7979. behind in the snow. The thieves were shocked to specific historic personalities such as Anne Frank, discover that their crime was being reported around the world, and hid the sign in woodland. The Poles Journalistic ethics still apply to ad space all, it is the silence of the global community that contacted Högström and explained their worries, and cont’d from p. 6 allowed the Holocaust to continue. I recognize that the Swede decided to turn himself in to the police. reserve the right to reject any ad deemed libelous or Jews are not uniquely the targets of intolerance and Why Högström was willing to help violate one of offensive. The CODOH advertisement is offensive discrimination. Hatred based on racial, ethnic, the world’s most important Holocaust sites after content, and despite the Herald’s own guidelines it religious, sexual or political affiliation resonates with renouncing his past is still unclear. He publicly quit continues to be displayed. Both student newspapers everyone in the campus community. I urge campus Sweden’s National Socialist Front a decade ago, after have a responsibility to the campus community to and community members to be sensitive to intolerance members of far-right groups were found guilty of adhere to their own principles as well as to maintain and discrimination in our everyday lives. We all have carrying out a wave of bank robberies and attacks. journalistic integrity. a responsibility to take action. More recently, Högström had joined a group called I believe in the benefits of an open marketplace As a student, a journalist, a storyteller and a proud Exit, which helps youths quit far-right movements. of ideas; however, an advertisement is not an opinion Jew, I challenge our student newspapers to uphold But perhaps the biggest mystery is who piece. The Badger Herald chose to associate its their commitment and integrity as journalists—to commissioned the theft in the first place. The British name with the CODOH and in turn chose to connect always seek the truth and to always provide a fair newspaper The Daily Mirror said it had been told their readers—the campus community—to a website and comprehensive account of events and issues. by Swedish sources that a rich Briton with a passion promoting the denial of the Holocaust. Allowing the Holocaust denial advertisements is for Nazi memorabilia wanted the 16-foot-long This incident has reinforced my vow to tell the completely at odds with these goals. metalwork. Prosecutors, however, have yet to story of the Holocaust and to educate others. After Rachel Racoosin is a student at UW-Madison. comment on the sign’s ultimate destination.

TOGETHER 8 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 warm interactions with museum visitors and others “There are no other Holocausts,” the museum’s Auschwitz remains a symbol who want to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. But Napolitano conceded, explaining that Hitler’s campaign BY RICHARD GREENBERG, WJW fresh examples of inhumanity are so abundant, they to eradicate the Jews clearly stands on its own as a Auschwitz. For some, the word is the very symbol conceded, that one of history’s most famous pledges watershed event in the annals of intolerance. of one of mankind’s most horrific chapters. The world’s now rings false. But the same might be said of other mega- largest concentration camp, Auschwitz was a killing “ ‘Never again’ is for the birds,’” declared District slaughters, he noted, which illustrates the folly of rating field for an estimated 1 million Jews (and tens of resident Maryla Korn, 71, who would have been genocides — without denigrating the Holocaust. thousands of other prisoners) during the Holocaust. shipped to Auschwitz if her mother hadn’t smuggled “You have to honor the uniqueness of suffering Henry Greenbaum is well-acquainted with the her to safety as a small girl. “Look at all the genocides and tragedy of each group,” he added. place, and he has a faded tattoo on his left arm to we’ve had. The world doesn’t learn. I am an incurable “It’s not just about Jews; it’s about humanity,” said prove it: A18991. “I’m going to my grave with it,” said pessimist in that sense.” 81-year-old survivor Martin Weiss of Bethesda, who the 81-year-old Bethesda resident. “I lost too much in But she added: “Maybe by talking and telling our also spent time at Auschwitz. “Society went wrong. the Holocaust. I never want to forget.” stories, we can restrain another little monster from The victims were ordinary people and so were the And he wants to make sure the world doesn’t coming up. How can you not talk?” perpetrators, and they became murderers.” either. Most of the interviewees, Korn included, said their There are no metrics that reveal the But what then? Will the Shoah remain relevant experiences indicate that interest in the Holocaust has consciousness-raising power of people like Weiss, for future generations as it recedes further into memory, risen steadily in the past two or three decades (among Greenbaum and others who lived through the Holocaust and survivors such as Greenbaum — the only living both Jews and non-Jews), despite concern in some and now offer their ordeals as a cautionary moral tales. links with that distant era — have long since quarters that the Shoah has become irrelevant for many More often than not, their progress is measured in disappeared? Greenbaum, among others, is committed Diaspora Jews. feel-good units: Hugs. Tears. Letters of thanks from to ensuring that the lessons of the Holocaust long outlive “Interest among young people, in particular, has complete strangers who had known almost nothing those who managed to survive the Nazi killing machine. been disproportionately higher,” said 80-year-old about Hitler’s until they came face-to- The infamous facility that once held Greenbaum survivor Charlene Schiff of Alexandria, another face with one of its intended victims. — a sprawling network of extermination sites and member of the USHMM speakers bureau. “I’m not “That’s our payback,” said Greenbaum, who has forced-labor camps in southern Poland — was liberated exactly sure why this is so, but it is rewarding. In a presented his personal narrative in various forums for by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945, almost three months way, it gives me the strength to keep on doing what I the past 16 years, mostly to non-Jews. That includes before Greenbaum himself was freed. do, which is fighting indifference, intolerance and young Germans, who were so deeply moved by his Greenbaum, who had been deported to Auschwitz ignorance.” words that they apologized to him for the Holocaust.

“ is not just the Holocaust. It’s not the only thing that defines us, but it is part of our history and it’s something we can’t forget.”

in 1944 and then transferred Studies differ on the relevance Diaspora Jews “One said to me, ‘You must hate us all,’” to another camp, was attach to the Holocaust. A survey conducted in 2008 by Greenbaum recalled, “and I told her ‘You weren’t even liberated in Bavaria on April Bar-Ilan University in Israel reported that the Shoah born then, but maybe I’d never forgive your 25, 1945, by U.S. soldiers has only a minimal role in shaping Jewish identity, grandparents.’ And then she gave me a hug.” from the 3rd Armored Division after a four-month compared with such influences as family, religion and Like most survivor-speakers, Greenbaum also has death march. culture. However, other research has indicated that the an extensive collection of letters of thanks from “God sent us an angel,” he said in an interview. “It Holocaust is a major influence in shaping Jewish self- listeners. was a tank, my angel.” image, Steven Bayme, director of contemporary Jewish “Your story deeply influenced my own outlook on Countless visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial life at the American Jewish Committee, angrily reported the Holocaust in a way that no other book, museum, Museum (USHMM) in the District, where Greenbaum in an April 2007 posting on the AJCommittee’s blog. film or story has,” wrote Kevin Kwiatkowski, a student is a volunteer, have heard his story of tragedy and “This is profound and disturbing,” he wrote. “It at the Institute of Ethics. He perseverance. He is one of many survivors — an suggests that we are creating a distorted image of the had heard Greenbaum speak in November 2008. He endangered demographic species — who regularly Jewish past. Jewish history concerns more than Jewish added: “I also feel that you should know that your story, bear witness to the Shoah under the auspices of the suffering.” and the collective story that is the Holocaust, will not USHMM in hopes that the lessons of the Holocaust Indeed it does, several survivors acknowledged. be forgotten so long as I live.” will not be forgotten. “Judaism is not just the Holocaust,” said Korn. “It’s Another letter, from an anonymous high school “Their contribution is huge,” Dan Napolitano, the not the only thing that defines us, but it is part of our student who attended one of Greenbaum’s museum’s director of teacher education, said of the history and it’s something we can’t forget.” presentations, said simply: “I will never complain about survivor volunteers. “But the impact remains to be seen. Virtually a taboo subject among survivors through homework again.” And that’s a vexing question in this field. What will the 1960s, Adolf Hitler’s genocide was first thrust into Greenbaum, who said his encounters with listeners happen when the survivors are gone?” public consciousness in a big way in the late 1970s have been deeply gratifying, was asked if the That question has loomed large over the post- with airing of the landmark TV miniseries The experience has cast humanity in a more positive light. Holocaust landscape for decades, and no one is more Holocaust. In the decades since, the Shoah has been “I hope so,” he said. “I think we’re making some concerned about that than the survivors themselves. established as a legitimate subject of collegiate study progress. But after we’re gone, we’re depending on There may be 300,000-500,000 of them worldwide and research scholarship, while several states (not the museum and teachers to keep it up.” (estimates vary), including perhaps a few hundred in including Virginia, Maryland or the District) have But he interjected a skeptical note, pointing out the Washington area, and their numbers are dwindling mandated that it be taught in middle and high school. that contemporary atrocities like the ethnic cleansing fast; even the youngest survivors are rapidly being Bob Hines, who chairs the history department at that decimated Rwanda in the mid-1990s have silenced by death and disease. Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, has demonstrated for the umpteenth time that “the world WJW interviewed several local survivors (and taught both teachers and students about the Holocaust doesn’t always listen” to voices of moral suasion. some educators) in search of their insights on the legacy for the past 26 years. “When we started the program, Meanwhile, despite the growth in Shoah-centric of the Shoah and the role they have played in helping we’d get phone calls from antisemites and Holocaust education, antisemitism and Holocaust denial remain shape it. deniers,” he recalled. Those calls no longer come, he prevalent. “That’s the reason we exist,” responded Their assessments of the state of Holocaust said, “so hopefully, we’ve made progress.” Napolitano. “This story must be told or the other stories remembrance were often hopeful, but none of them The USHMM opened in 1993, further underscoring will win. The question is not necessarily ‘Did you would ever be mistaken for a Polyanna. That includes the importance of Holocaust remembrance by giving conquer evil?’ but ‘Did you at least fight against it?’ “ 87-year-old Silver resident David Bayer, an it the imprimatur of the federal government. Holocaust Korn said she was once convinced that the Auschwitz survivor who also volunteers at the museum. memorials and museums can now be found nationwide. Holocaust was destined to become “little more than a He harbors no illusions, he said, that the Holocaust Although the Shoah has become an important part paragraph in a history book.” But her outlook changed is immune from becoming a historical footnote. of America’s cultural landscape, it now faces increased after she arrived in the United States in 1961. “It’s “Nobody remembers much about the in competition for recognition from other genocides — a become very much a part of the mainstream,” she Russia or the Inquisition,” he explained. challenge that sometimes devolves into nasty disputes said. “I have a strange feeling that it will take up much Several interviewees said they experienced over whether any other group could possible have more space in the history books than I ever thought it stirrings of renewed faith in humanity through their suffered as severely as the Jews did under the Nazis. would. But I could be wrong.”

April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 9 Conservation bid as Auschwitz crumbles BY ROGER BOYES, THE AUSTRALIAN sent an appeal to 40 heads of government. The guard towers of Auschwitz are splintering buckling, the plasterwork and wall-paint are flaking. The decay of the notorious former concentration and the barracks are waterlogged. The concentration Jacek Kastelaniec, director-general of the camp is politically sensitive. camp where one million Jews were Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, A trial in Munich of the alleged Sobibor camp slaughtered is decaying so fast has gone to Britain’s Cabinet Office guard John Demjanjuk, 89, is seen as the last for Nazi conservationists have called on to press the British government on war crimes. And Holocaust survivors are dwindling. world leaders to help save it. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s “In 10 years there will be no witnesses,” Mr The recent theft of its sinister promise to contribute to 120 million Kastelaniec said, “and it will be easier for the crazy sign, Arbeit Macht Frei - Work Sets ($187m) endowment fund that will people who say nothing happened in the camps.” You Free - has underlined the guarantee the preservation of one Only the buildings will remain. Auschwitz cannot vulnerability of the Nazi death camp, of the main sites of the Holocaust. simply have a makeover because that would stretching over 20 hectares of German Chancellor Angela undermine its claims to authenticity, and open the way southern Poland. Merkel has said her country will put for those on the far Right who try to deny or trivialize Auschwitz was built on boggy ground between up half the cost, but the managers of the Auschwitz the Holocaust. two rivers, and as a result the high groundwater and museum need other commitments. The strategic point of the restoration is to use the bad drainage has rotted the foundations. The walls Mr. Kastelaniec will visit France, Belgium and camp’s almost overpowering sense of menace to are blistering and starting to lean, the roof frames are the US, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has counter antisemitism and racism. Catholic Scholars Protest the Vatican HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS’ GROUP BY STEVE LIPMAN, The Jewish Week canonization of Pius QUESTIONS MENGELE JOURNAL The largely Jewish effort to slow down the XII has played a By Jesse Leavenworth, Hartford Courant proposed canonization of the pope who headed the prominent role — A Holocaust survivors group has asked the state Catholic during World War II has taken a particularly for attorney general to investigate the authenticity of a more ecumenical tone. Nineteen prominent Catholic Jewish participants recently sold journal that a Stamford, Connecticut scholars and theologians recently sent a letter to Pope — in recent years. auction house owner says was written by Nazi war Benedict XVI, urging him to put aside plans to declare “We sent this criminal Josef Mengele. Pius XII, the controversial pontiff during the letter because we “The claim of this sale and the circumstances Holocaust, a saint until historians gain full access to feel that too often surrounding it should be investigated,” Elan the Vatican’s wartime archives. The letter, intended the issue of Pius Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering as an internal Church document, was leaked to XII is portrayed as of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Reuters in Rome and subsequently made public. one of Jewish Descendants, wrote in an e-mail. “Where is this so- The “faithful, practicing Catholics, consecrated concern,” Rev. called diary? Who has even seen it and what sort of and lay” who signed the letter declared that “the Pawlikowski told Rev. John Pawlikowski ‘expert’ authenticated it? Who is the mystery buyer movement to press forward at this time the process the Catholic News who allegedly purchased it?” of beatification of Pius XII greatly troubles us.” Service. “We wanted to make it clear that some Bill Panagopulos of Alexander Autographs said Beatification is a preliminary step to the Catholics who have worked on Holocaust issues have he sold the journal for an undisclosed sum to the declaration of sainthood. serious concerns about advancing the cause of Pius grandson of a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, “In essence, Pius XII has become a century old XII at this time.” where Mengele conducted lethal experiments on symbol of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism,” “The Catholic scholars’ letter has strengthened inmates. The unidentified buyer planned to donate the letter states. “It is challenging to separate Pius the [interfaith] dialogue by demonstrating that our the journal to a Holocaust museum, Panagopulos said. XII from this legacy.” counterparts have the same fidelity to historic truth The Holocaust survivors group, Attorney General Pius XII, who received praise in Jewish circles as we do,” said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the Richard Blumenthal wrote in an e-mail, is immediately after World War II for his opposition to American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors “understandably repulsed and shocked by the , became subject to wide criticism following and their Descendants. supposed sale — and profit — of a diary by Mengele, Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play, The Deputy, which The Vatican still has not responded to the letter , the infamous ‘Angel of Death’ of the Auschwitz death depicted the Pope as a vacillating figure with little and several representatives of Catholic organizations camp. interest in the fate of endangered Jews. Critics say said there is no way to predict what effect, if any, “I sympathize he turned his back on Jewish suffering; supporters such a letter may have on papal behavior. with their revulsion say his behind-the-scenes role helped save thousands The signers of the letter “are close to the regarding the of Jewish lives. sensitivities of the Jewish community,” but the letter apparent profit from German-born Pope Benedict XVI late last year “will not really have any impact,” said Gary Krupp, this journal — decreed the “heroic virtues” of Pius XII, John Paul president of the Pave the Way Foundation, an Erläuternd reportedly containing II and 15 other Catholics, a step on the road to independent organization that works to improve Jewish Zoologie disturbing writings by canonization. relations with the Vatican. a Nazi war criminal,” Pius’ record is subject to dispute, according to “Those of us who signed it hope that our Blumenthal many scholars. “It’s a record of too much timidity,” considered scholarly opinions will be taken into wrote. “While I share said Sister Mary Boys, professor of practical theology consideration” by Benedict XVI, said Sister Carol their concerns, I must at Union Theological Seminary. Rittner, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies review their request The letter raises the question “Is there really a at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. “My to determine whether need for haste?” said Philip Cunningham, director of ‘biggest hope’ is that he will be given the letter so there is evidence of a violation of state law.” the Institute of Jewish-Catholic Relations at Saint that he personally can read it.” Panagopulos repeated that the journal, written in Joseph’s University. “It’s a plea for ‘let’s take our Rev. Pawlikowski said he and Rev. Kevin Spicer, 1960 when Mengele was in South America, is time.’” “The letter is a request for a continued hold associate professor of history at Stonehill College, authentic and that he and the buyer value the history on the canonization.” drafted the letter “because we felt it was necessary behind it, not Mengele’s racist philosophy. The 180- It does not take a position on the possibility of for Vatican leaders to know that there was important page journal was written in German in a children’s Catholic opposition to fast-tracking Pius’ canonization eventual canonization at some point down the road, notebook and titled Illustrated Zoology. and because we felt that the apparent ‘hold’ on his Rev. John Pawlikowski, professor of ethics at Other Jewish organizations also have complained canonization was in danger of being lifted. We wanted Catholic Theological Union and one of the organizers about the sale. Panagopulos wrote in an e-mail that to encourage the pope to continue the hold so that of the letter, told The Jewish Week in an e-mail he was “sorry that a few organizations would prefer scholars, particularly Catholic scholars, could continue interview. that such material remain hidden and ignored — not Rev. Pawlikowski, like the 18 other signers, is a to do their necessary research without having the all history is necessarily ‘good.’” veteran of interfaith activities, in which the possible cont’d on p. 17

TOGETHER 10 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 surviving the survivors de•scribed his perambulations almost as an adventure on their histories, enjoying in some way the frisson of —Izzy’s excellent adventure. interest it produces, the chance to share in the limelight BY GLORIA KESTENBAUM, The Jewish Week Still, survive he did. And he and his friends of their ordeals. And certainly these days, with My father continues to breathe—huge, wheezing, seemed somehow indestructible, little men with small Holocaust denial increasingly common (who could unconscious but determined breaths—despite the hats, thick accents and hairy veined arms visible have imagined it?) and the living evidence doctor’s predictions, despite the Alzheimer’s that’s through their short-sleeved shirts. Watching Four disappearing, making sure that the stories are recorded ravaged his brain and despite the broken hip and Seasons Lodge, a documentary about a group of seems critical. I’ve made my peace with the notion pneumonia that brought down the rest of him. And Holocaust survivors who gather each year in a of being the “child or survivors.” In an exchange with somehow, that continued existence seems entirely bungalow colony in the Catskills, I closed my eyes Helen Epstein, no longer the bugbear of my earlier appropriate for this inadvertent survivor. and the thick Polish-Yiddish voices, the mordant humor, days but simply another person trying to make sense Inadvertent survival was my father’s the toughness and re•silience brought back my other childhood, we discussed her “need to record” weltanschauung, and “met schon machen” (“We’ll childhood. her family’s history, and how many of us, increasingly make it happen—soon”) his mantra. It was the way And like the survivors in the film, my parents and aware of the inexorability of time, are urgently he described his own experience in getting through their friends are beginning to succumb to the inevitability chronicling our elderly parents’ stories. the war. (“Getting through the war” was what I heard of old age. Thane Rosenbaum, whose novels and As the previous generation dies off, we’ve growing up—there was no war but World War II stories delve into the effects of the Holocaust on become their survivors, attempting to complete their and you didn’t “survive”—you “got through” the war.) survivors’ children, notes, “It’s an incredible paradox stories, anxiously searching for clues that we For my father, chance was what got you through. that these indomitable Jews—who through a purposefully ignored earlier in our lives, looking for And although my father was a deeply religious man, combination of endurance, fortitude and moxie answers to questions we never asked. We yearn for I rarely heard him invoke Hashgacha P’ratit or divine somehow escaped this in•credible experiment in hell— a sense of connectedness, trying to piece together provi•dence. I think it was an innate humility, a notion are dying off. It is sobering and humbling to think that the broken shards of our own history. We determinedly that it would have been presumptuous for him to claim these people who for decades have been celebrated seek to identify the long-dead faces captured on worn God’s direct inter- and mythologized and defined by their survival are now photos in decrepit albums. Diligently, we fill in the vention. dying in an ordinary way. Auschwitz is not a natural blanks on such sites as Ceni.com orJewishCen.org, Like many of cause of death; old age is.” and proudly include the Zimmels and Sluvas and his generation, he Growing up in a community of refugees where Shprintzas, names that filled our younger selves with rarely spoke of his all parents spoke with accents and came from places a sense of queasy embarrassment. With the original wartime with unpro•nounceable consonants, their stories and memorialists passing on, it suddenly seems imperative

As the previous generation dies off, we’ve become their survivors, attempting to complete their stories, anxiously searching for clues that we purposefully ignored earlier in our lives, looking for answers to questions we never asked.

experiences, their suffering belonged only to them. But for us, the graying children, to remember and to partly out of unknowingly, we assimilated their experiences. As a record, as if by so doing we can finally bury all these pain—having lost child I went to Camp Naarah—yes, it meant Camp dead aunts and cousins appropriately and provide their his parents and four siblings—and partly from a sense Girl—with others just like me, unremarkable pale- scattered ashes with a virtual gravestone, a of embarrassment, as if he weren’t entitled to the skinned girls in pedal pushers and fake Keds. It was permanent survival. mantle of war suffering. Unlike so many of the only years later I realized that our color war songs We live in a surreal universe where we have refugees among whom he later lived and prayed, he and even the camp cheers all dealt with death: “We’re become the older generation—older even than our went through the war with relative ease, accidentally Naarah born, and we’re Naarah bred. And when we murdered grandparents. In the few photos that we part of a yeshiva that traveled from Vilna to Japan die, we’ll be Naarah dead. Rah-Rah for Naarah!” uncomfortably glanced at as children, these family and finally to Shanghai where he safely, if sadly, lived Still, when in the ’70s and ’80s, it became cool to members seemed impossibly ancient and distant. out the war. My brother and I took our cues from be Holocaust-related, I was appalled at the notion of Now, they’re shockingly young, and it seems him, and as he always disclaimed survivor status, we taking credit for my parents’ history. Thirty years ago, unconscionable to let their lives pass without memory. didn’t think of him that way either. So when I speak Helen Epstein’s book, Children of the Holocaust: When my aunt, my father’s one remaining sibling, about my father as a survivor, I say it almost with a Conversations with Sons and Daughters of recently noted my resemblance to her mother, my sense of encroachment because that’s how he viewed Survivors, horrified me—the very name was an grandmother, I felt blessed, gifted wittt the benediction it. He hadn’t been through the camps like his two affront. The notion that being the child of survivors of history. Each new discovery, each new story is a surviving siblings and there was no number marking meant anything, that we might have a story, made triumphant refutation of untimely deaths and untold his arm. And unlike my mother, who at 9 years old me feel unclean, grasping, a Holocaust name dropper. pain. wandered alone, scrounging for food in barns and But over the years, it’s become easier to present surviving through a fair-haired, button-nosed myself as their child—perhaps, I should confess— Gloria Kestenbaum is a corporate communications resemblance to her would-be killers, my father even strangely pleasurable. I find myself dining out consultant and freelance writer based in New York City.

although the numbers of survivors are dwindling, the Caribbean ports of San Juan, St. Thomas and St. An event to remember... numbers for the past several years have become Maarten. All Holocaust survivors and their More than 100 survivors and their off-spring came steady with the addition of second (G2), third (G3), descendants/families are welcome. For more to Miami, Florida on January 10, 2010, for the and now fourth (G4) generation family members.” information and pricing contact Barbara Siegall: 954- Holocaust Survivors & Descendants Annual Cruise. It was a glorious and well-organized event that 755-8747 or Jean Gorr: 800-577-8855. Together all generations celebrated while living the bonded all generations together. Sharing something chi-life. Age was not a factor in the bonding, as this in common, we became a close family with kindred top row (l-r): year was the first that Generation 4 (G4) participated spirits. Making new friends, while renewing old Marcia Rosen- in this event. Barbara Siegall, organizer & promoter friendships, made this cruise especially significant and berg, David stated, “The Holocaust Survivors of South Florida meaningful. A wonderful Friday night Shabbat Rubin; middle has been sponsoring this reunion cruise for at least service was officiated by Cantor Max Rubin, who row (l-r): Bar- the last 25 years. In the past, we have had people reminded us of the memory of those lost, and how bara Siegall, Karen Brand from Belgium, France, Israel and several other far we have come in the 65 years since the Holocaust Rogoff, Lauren countries. This year people came from California, (photo attached). Blanc-Benz, New York, Canada, Illinois, New Jersey, , The next reunion is already scheduled for January Dorothy Brand Ohio and Florida to enjoy time together. We have 9 - 16, 2011, on the Celebrity’s 5 Star cruise ship Rubin, Gussie Zaks, Maryla Libicki; front row (l-r): Judy & Jack had as many as 650 attendees at our peak, and Solstice, cruising from Ft. Lauderdale to the Eastern Morgenstern

April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 11 GERMANY APPROVES • 91M. FOR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS needs for the poorest of Jewish Holocaust victims living around the world. By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JPOST of the Holocaust to live in Much still remains to be done, including a multi- BERLIN – Under the dignity. year agreement and continuing to enhance other leadership of Ambassador Those twin goals of benefits for survivors.” According to Schneider, the Stuart Eisenstat and additional home care and ClaimsConference funds for home care services are American Gathering Chair- pension payments were shrinking because the sale of Jewish-owned man Roman Kent, the reached as the negotiators property in East Germany has rapidly declined. Conference on Jewish nailed • 55m. to cover home “We have taken the assets of 1,000 years of Material Claims Against services, a • 25m. increase Jewish life which was destroyed in 12 years” to Germany met recently in when compared to the • 30m. Gregory J. cover the “social welfare needs of Nazi victims,” Berlin and managed to obtain in 2009. Ambassador Stuart Schneider said Schneider. a total of • 91 million during In addition, a newly won Eizenstat The Claims Conference has used proceeds from its annual negotiating session pension entitlement of • 36m. applies to roughly 1,300 the sale of real estate in the former German with the German Finance Ministry. Western European Shoah survivors. Democratic Republic to “pay for home care” in the (The negotiating team also included Andrew Schneider, who has worked for the Claims amount of $60m. a year. In Israel 16,000 survivors Baker, Karen Heilig, , Georg Heuberger, Conference for 15 years, took over the reins as its are recipients of home care services. Saul Kagan, Reuven Merhav, Greg Schnedier, and new Executive Director six months ago. He has a He stressed that survivors are in a critical phase Marian Turski, together with master degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy because “until 2014 home care needs will increase,” the senior staff of the school of government and a second master’s in Jewish largely because survivors are aging and are afflicted office.) communal service from Brandeis University. by poor health. Gregory J. Schneider, the “You have elderly, poor survivors who are isolated Schneider said the Claims Conference sought Executive Vice President of and in failing health,” said Schneider as he explained an expungement of “time limits” for survivor the Claims Conference, told the pressing need to plug the gaps in social service pensions. Survivors are only entitled to pension The Jerusalem Post that the care. The Claims Conference has funded levels of payments if they were imprisoned more than six key goals of this year’s talks home care for a “significant number of the 100,000 months in a concentration camp and beyond 18 were to secure increased home survivors who are both poor and have some level of months in a ghetto. “One day in Auschwitz is an care services and pension disability.” eternity of a hellish nightmare,” said Schneider. The Roman Kent payments to enable survivors Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, Claims Conference German Finance Ministry agreed to review cases Special Negotiator, said, “Today’s agreement is a of special hardship and survivors should contact the major step forward in addressing vital social welfare THE HIDDEN CHILD Claims Conference. BY MYRIAM ABRAMOWICZ, SPECIAL TO TOGETHER In the spring of 1976 I was planning a trip to Brussels, the U.S. and in Europe and began to meet “hidden Visiting Rome synagogue, Pope honors Belgium. My mother Lea, suggested that I pay a visit children” following screenings. My mother, who was memory of Holocaust victims to Nana Ruyts. Mme. Ruyts and her husband Oskar my best fan, was very moved when I told her that I cont’d from p. 3 (who passed away several months prior) had hidden had accumulated over 200 names in a book signed The Vatican maintains that Pius was not silent my parents during the Shoah. Not only did they hide following screenings. She suggested that I create an during the war, but chose to work behind the scenes, my parents but also many of their belongings consisting evening where I would gather these hidden children concerned that public intervention would have of photographs, prayer books and documents. so that they could meet one another and share their worsened the situation for both Jews and Catholics Throughout my childhood (I was born in Belgium unique experience – and she would cook. in a wartime Europe dominated by Hitler. after the war) I had always heard about the Ruyts In those years I had attended several Holocaust The pope, 82, speaking after Pacifici, broadly couple and so I was very excited to meet with her. conferences and often when hidden children wanted stuck to this stance, although he did denounce the Fortunately for my brother George (also hidden in to speak many in the audience who had been in the Holocaust as “the most extreme point on the path of Belgium during the War) and for myself, our parents camps would turn to them and say they had not hatred’ and acknowledged that ‘unfortunately, many were able to speak to us about their experience in suffered and made them feel as if their emotions were remained indifferent.” hiding as well as about the deportation of my father’s not valid. It is then that I decided that one cannot He added that the 20th century had been a “tragic family to Auschwitz. measure someone else’s pain and that if they could period for humanity: ferocious wars that sowed As a child, looking at the photographs and hearing not speak there I would create a venue through which the stories that accompanied them must have made they could express themselves. a huge impression on me. Decades later, they were In 1989, I contacted Drs. Milton and Judith to be the impetus behind the work I was to undertake. Kestenberg, Dr. Eva Fogelman, Jean Rosensaft and Meeting with Mme. Ruyts changed the direction Rabbi Roly Matalon of Congregation Bnai Jeshurun of my life. Sitting in her living room I realized that by – all of whom had connections with survivors and the grace of this woman and her husband I was alive began to see what could be done. They suggested I today. I returned to New York City, where I was wait until 1991 so that mailings and planning could working at a publishing house, and decided to take a take place. And so it was that the First International leave of absence in order to write an oral history Conference of Hidden Children came about on about non-Jews who had risked their lives to save Memorial Day at the Marriott Marquis in New Jews. And so in the summer of 1977 – when the York City. Some 2000 people attended, including subject of Jews in hiding was not yet on the Holocaust several rescuers, scholars and the press. agenda – I went to Belgium with a still camera and a Since that conference many of the hidden children destruction, death and suffering like never before, tape recorder. I began to collect interviews with those have written books, made their own films, written plays frightening ideologies rooted in the idolatry of man, that had done the hiding; with the children who were and introduced us to their individual wartime experience. of race and of the state, which led to brother killing hidden – whom I called The Hidden Children – and Now there are hidden child groups throughout the world brother.” with members of the underground both Jewish and as well as children of hidden children. He added that the Vatican “provided assistance, non-Jewish. I quickly came to the conclusion that a Nearly 30 years later, As If It Were Yesterday is often in a hidden and discreet way,” referring to the book would have to wait and that a film would have still being screened and is housed in public and private wartime record of the . to be made while these witnesses were still alive. collections in the U.S. and Europe. Benedict was welcomed by Jewish leaders from And so three years later the documentary As If In addition, the “Hidden Children” was the subject Rome and abroad as he arrived at the synagogue on It Were Yesterday/Comme Si C’Etait Hier, was of an exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in the banks of the Tiber a short distance from the completed. In 1980 it was shown at the Cannes Film Washington, D.C., where I have deposited many of Vatican to begin the two-hour visit. Festival and garnered several awards. those photographs and documents hidden by the Before entering the synagogue, Jewish leaders I traveled with the film for several years both in Ruytses. cont’d on p. 13

TOGETHER 12 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 iVolunteer Fetes AmGath ALUMNI OF THE HOLOCAUST... and well-researched presentation. Menachem is Chairman cont’d from p. 1 Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and educational materials on Defiance from the Jewish Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the Syracuse BY HILARY DEUTCHMAN Partisans Educational Foundation gave us an University College of Law. As a closing lecture on On a crisp January evening, more than 100 people opportunity to experience a synergy that comes very Monday morning, Dr. Michael Berenbaum, director gathered to honor Holocaust survivors and those who infrequently. of the Sigi Ziering Institute for Exploring the Ethical assist them at iVolunteer NY’s second annual benefit. The highlight of the Conference was hearing and Religious Implications of the Holocaust at American The evening began with cocktails in the elegant the eyewitness testimony of a member of the Bielski Jewish University where he is also a Professor of of the Cooper Square Hotel and ended with a lovely Brigade, our own Sam Bloch, president of the Jewish Studies, wove a schema for thinking about buffet dinner in the hotel’s penthouse, surrounded by American Gathering. Sam told the alumni, “I was resistance that will change the way all of us present Manhattan’s magnificent skyline. in the Bielski brigade! And everything in the film on this topic from now on. We are grateful to both of Guests of Defiance is the truth, down to the trees, the bushes, them for their outstanding presentations. Honor Roman the swamps. The things we experienced, the Roman Kent, Chairman of the American R. Kent, Chairman emotions we felt, the terror and the hope. It’s all Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, brought warm of the American true.” He also said that now “the world will know greetings to the Alumni. Roman told the alumni, “As Gathering of Jewish that Tuvia Bielski was one of the great heroes of I speak to you today, you should know that I do not Holocaust Survivors World War II!” speak to you as a historian, as an educator, or as a and Their Descen- Our teachers were also overwhelmed by the teacher—but as a parent, a survivor and a dants, who is (l-r) iVolunteer founder Sheva screening of As Seen Through These Eyes, and the grandparent. I feel humble, so very humble, in the Tauby, honoree Roman Kent, also reasurerT of chance to share ideas with the film’s producer Hilary presence of all of you who are so totally and and iVolunteer board member the Conference on Helstein, the Executive Director of the Los Angeles emotionally dedicated day in and day out to the Jeanette Friedman. Material Claims Jewish Film Festival. There was a stunned silence at teaching of the Holocaust and the Jewish resistance.” against Germany, the end of the film as we reacted to the powerful Not to be ignored was the chance to network received a Lifetime Achievement Award and Elie images and interviews with artists that Hilary had so with other teachers from the geographic region in Rubinstein, Executive Director of Blue Card, received skillfully amassed. which alumni reside, and as I read the evaluations I the Gemilas Chessed Award. Both spoke of their We were treated to lectures that rival any we am most impressed by the fact that teachers want childhoods in Europe—Kent about the ghettos and have heard during our many years of convening. more of this. They are eager to share across districts the camps, and Rubinstein about what it was like to be On Sunday evening, Dr. Samuel D. Kassow, a and states and to form the kind of alliances that a Jew in Communist Russia. Both described how their consultant to the Museum of the History of Polish strengthen each of us in our daily work. childhoods drove them to their present work, and about Jews which is planned to open on the site of the Elaine Culbertson is Program Director of the the challenges of meeting the ever-increasing needs Warsaw Ghetto in 2012, spoke so energetically Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers of the elderly survivors. Both thanked Sheva and Tzvi and knowledgeably about the three Oyneg Shabes Program. Tauby for founding iVolunteer, an organization that Archives created in absolute secrecy in the excels in giving the survivors some comfort in their old Warsaw Ghetto by a small group of people led by age. Anjula Acharia-Bath, CEO and Founder of Desi Emanuel Ringelblum. As Sarah Bloomfield, At the American Gathering Hits, was honored for work as a volunteer and recruiter director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Board meeting in Wash- for the cause. said in her opening remarks, “If you think you ington, the Director of the The successful event allows iVolunteer to knew anything about the Ringelblum archives, government’s Nazi-hunting continue its work for another year, helping to serve unit (Eli Rosenbaum, left), forget it, because you are in for a treat!” She the remaining Holocaust survivors in the greater presented its human rights was right! Metropolitan area. Weekly visits from “iVolunteers” award to Vice President Sunday morning’s agenda began with Menachem facilitates social interaction among survivors, via Elan Steinberg. Rosensaft, a son of survivors and Vice President of luncheons and holiday events, as well as helping them the American Gathering, speaking on the Nuremberg cope with such routine tasks as shopping and paying Photo by trials. The inclusion of his mother’s testimony was a bills. Since it was founded in 2007, iVolunteer has Rositta Kenigsberg. particularly compelling moment in a well-documented organized 75 volunteers who have made over 2,500 Moroccan Jews the focus of visits to survivors, providing companionship and of the Holocaust. creating lasting relationships. And some in the Jewish community, including at UN event marking legacy of The event was attended by survivors, volunteers, least one senior rabbi and a Holocaust survivor, Holocaust survivors and philanthropic members of the New York City decided to boycott the synagogue visit after Benedict Morocco’s tolerance of Jews and its resistance to community. The evening was emceed by Myron approved a decree recognising Pius’s ‘heroic virtues’. antisemitic policies during World War II were spotlighted Kandel, a founding editor of CNN, and included a The two remaining steps to sainthood are as part of a series of events held at the United Nations performance by Ari Teman, an award-winning beatification and canonisation, which could take many to commemorate victims of the Holocaust. The North comedian and bona fide Jewish hero. years. Jewish groups wanted the process frozen until African nation resisted French colonial policies during Visiting Rome synagogue, Pope more Vatican archives are opened to scholars. World War II, refusing to exclude Jews from public honors memory of Holocaust The visit was the Pope’s third to a synagogue functions and not making them wear the yellow Star of victims since he became pontiff in 2005. He has also visited David, as had been decreed by the Vichy regime in cont’d from p. 12 in and New York. German-occupied France. showed the pope a plaque recalling the deportation Efforts to whitewash the Holocaust are “a wound of Rome Jews by Germans on October 16, 1943 and to the collective memory, which we know is engraved another to a 2-year-old boy killed in a gun and grenade in one of the most painful chapters in the collective history of mankind,” King Mohammed VI said in a attack on the synagogue in 1982. message to a briefing at UN Headquarters. The visit comes 24 years after Pope John Paul Morocco’s experience with Jews provides became the first pope in nearly 2,000 years to enter important lessons for the present, especially the a synagogue and called Jews “our beloved elder conflict in the Middle East, the King stressed. brothers.” Exclusion, he said, still exists even when steps are Benedict, who was German-born and drafted into made to spur dialogue among the world’s civilizations, the Hitler Youth and German army as a teenager cultures and religions. during World War Two, has had a more difficult Remembering the Holocaust “strongly imposes relationship with the Jewish community. ethical, moral and political standards which will, Many are still seething at his decision last year Pope Benedict XVI chats with chief Rabbi Riccardo tomorrow, be the true guarantors of this peace – based to start the rehabilitation process of traditionalist Di Segni during the meeting, which was boycotted on equally-shared justice and dignity – and for which Bishop Richard Williamson, who denied the extent by many Holocaust survivors (AFP/Getty Images) most Palestinians and Israelis yearn,” he underscored.

April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 13 “Others may talk about these things, but I cannot.” by JACKIE JACOBS Now that my uncle is gone, just two years after Intelligence Service. She lived in the home of Hessel my mother died, two more survivors are in their van der Zee, head of the K-group and took care of graves. They hadn’t spoken to each other for over the household for him. She was arrested at the same 50 years. Each outlived their spouses, also survivors. time as Hessel. The letter stated that “although she During shiva, upon opening Mother’s safe, we knew a lot, during her interrogations she didn’t tell found money, silver, a knife, a gun, and a handwritten anything other than that she was a hidden Jewess.” note. Another letter that the Stichting gave me, also The currency is from Theresienstadt, her second written in 1948, was my great aunt’s personal account slave laborer named Zalman Schwimer, who got it of five concentration camps. Terezin was the model of her experiences. “I was arrested and taken to the when he was nearly starved, six weeks before camp that conned Red Cross inspectors into believing local prison, where I stayed for four weeks,” she liberation. Near Block 5, close to a guarded fence, that Jews were well-treated. Mother was reticent to wrote. “I suffered from hunger, but what was even was a pile of rotting, frozen rutabagas. He was able speak about her wartime experiences, but she once worse, was my fear, not the fear for my own life, but to clandestinely dig under the wire to retrieve one, mentioned that there really was a store in Terezin. that I would reveal something about my colleagues but was too weak to bite into it. He traded half of the The ghetto money, however, was worthless. Only during the interrogations.” She concluded that “most rutabaga with a Russian POW in exchange for the mustard was for sale. After the Red Cross inspectors difficult of all is my mental status. I often feel knife, and then managed to cut his share into edible left to publish their whitewashed report, the store was depressed, so much that I do not feel any connection slices. I will never know how my mother’s knife closed. How she managed to hang on to the ended up in her possession. currency on her next stops, which included ...both of my parents believed that The story behind the pistol is even more Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, is a curious. Neither of my parents were gun collectors. mystery. on certain matters, talk is silver and silence is gold. The 22 caliber single shot derringer was probably The pieces of sterling silver included a candy made in Belgium, vintage 1860’s, and can easily dish and ashtray, each marked “Stichting 1940- be hidden in a grown person’s closed fist. I am 1945.” My mother’s family was from the Netherlands. to the world, to life and to people. Only if you have told that the gun is in excellent condition and was Stichting is the Dutch word for any reunion of an experienced this yourself can you understand my rarely, if ever, used. organized group of people, such as a labor union or mental status.” The other item in the safe was a note from my garden club. In Holland, where there’s a big emphasis Tante Clara passed away in 1973. She did not mother, a reminder that she had pre-paid the cemetery on commemorating annual meetings, receipt of a want to die alone, and insisted that she be cremated. committee for her perpetual care. A copy of the commemorative gift following such gatherings is not Mother went back to Holland to honor both wishes. I cancelled check was attached. uncommon. But mother was no club member. assume that’s when she got the silver dish and ashtray. My wife is a professional video producer. She A stichting also can be a foundation, and after The knife that was stored in the safe is an ordinary often asked my mother for permission to film her writing to several of the hundreds of foundations in looking utensil manufactured by Cromargen WMF, a oral history. Mother agreed to talk about her life Holland, I was referred to the correct one, which well-known European flatware company. It is before the war and after the war, but refused to be years ago dealt with people involved in the Dutch monogrammed “Offizierheim Bergen.” Pictures of interviewed about the Holocaust. “Others may talk Resistance. They provided me with a copy of a June German officers’ mess halls, including the former about these things, but I cannot,” she said. Others 9, 1948 letter concerning Mother’s aunt, Tante Clara. quarters near Bergen-Belsen, can be may disagree, but both of my parents believed that The letter was penned by the then-board chairman found on the Internet. Not so easy to find is an on certain matters, talk is silver and silence is gold. of Stichting 1940-1945. He wrote that Clara was in “Offizierheim Bergen” knife, but I discovered that hiding and asked to be part of the Resistance. In 1944, has one just like it in its archives. Jackie Jacobs is executive director of the Columbus she worked actively in the Resistance, including the The museum’s knife was donated by a former Jewish Foundation in Columbus, Ohio.

Lawsuit against Hungary’s MÁV international research institutes, found it improbable sensitive nature of the subject, told Index. Such claims cont’d from p. 1 that the plaintiffs had dug deep in U.S. archives. tend to have a volume of several hundred pages, the According to the complaint, Jews were being Historian Gábor Kádár believes they filed a source added. transported from Hungary to Auschwitz between lawsuit against MÁV in Chicago because the legal It is also a question whether the Illinois court has March and October 1944, while researches found successor is easier to be put on trial. The railway jurisdiction in this case or not, as MÁV has no that the first of such trains left on May 14 or 15 and company, he explains, carried out the instructions as establishment in the USA. At the same time, you can the last left the country on 9 July. part of the public administration, just like the police, buy Hungarian railway tickets online, based on which In the complaint, Adolf Eichmann is mentioned the (later abolished) gendarmerie or other MÁV is considered an economic organization as Hitler’s secretary, while in fact it was Martin administrative bodies, over which no U.S. court has providing services in the USA, as well, hence lawsuits Bormann. Eichmann was head of the Gestapo’s jurisdiction. He also labelled the list of atrocities may be launched against it. However, passenger and (Secret State Police) Department IV, Section B4, committed by MÁV staff as nonsense. freight transport services are not carried out by MÁV, which dealt with Jews and their deportation. László Varga, former head of the Budapest City but its subsidiaries, which are not legal successors of Moreover, the majority of the boxcars used Archives, called the allegations “unbelievable,” saying MÁV that existed in 1944. belonged to the German railway company there is no document in MÁV’s archives that would The lawyer underlined that the World Jewish (Reichsbahn) and not to MÁV. support such statements. He claims whenever MÁV Congress, the World Jewish Restitution Organisation Karsai said that in the volumes of historical staff removed bodies from the boxcars, they treated and the Jewish Claims Conference always stand researches, monographies written on the Holocaust, the situation “relatively normally” and had even taken behind such initiatives, but in this case they did not. or in the several thousand memoirs written by care of death certificates. It also sends a message that all the lawyers that survivors he has never met even a single hint that People’s courts were established in 1945 that put are well-known for getting on board in such cases are MÁV employees had ridiculed or humiliated the on trial members of the Sztójay cabinet that ordered nowhere in sight now. The source believes the plaintiffs deported, let alone stolen their properties, dug graves the deportation of Jews and executed most of them. expect MÁV not to have the necessary resources to and shot Jews. MÁV employees had never even “The worst offender has been MÁV, which has recruit high-calibre U.S. lawyers to defend it. carried weapons, Karsai said, adding that such not paid a pengo to the plaintiffs,” the complaint said. Index statements were absolutely nonsense. It will be very hard to prove, however, that Sources talking to agree that the claim The plaintiffs claim that the launch of the MÁV’s management, which was overseeing the lacks both legal and professional support. One of them complaint was preceded by nine years of research. transports only up to the Hungarian border, was aware said it’s but a few private individuals “tilting at But Index.hu called quite a few numbers, and while that it was transporting people to their deaths. This windmills,” the only danger of which is that they will it spoke with several historians considered as experts was not the company’s competence, he explains. make a laughing stock of themselves. The only thing on the subject, none of them had been contacted by The complaint is hardly longer than 15 pages, Karsai could add to that is that irrespective of the the representatives of the plaintiffs. One of the portal’s which is suspicious even at first sight, a lawyer plaintiffs’ intention, the case is perfectly capable of sources, who is in close contact with the major speaking on condition of anonymity because of the fueling antisemitism in Hungary.

TOGETHER 14 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 MY SEARCH FOR MY BROTHER to Manfred and had begun searching. The call came to bring food and clothes for them; he was never from one of their volunteers who spoke English. She permitted to see them. BY SANDY SPEIER KLEIN, SPECIAL TO TOGETHER related what they had thus far discovered. I was told Lino gave me a sense of what Manni was like - My parents were Holocaust Survivors; my that Lino, the son of the family that cared for Manfred a quiet, incredibly bright little boy who was very close father endured four years in the Riga Ghetto and my provided the information (they were neighbors in to our mother. According to Lino, they were mother spent a total of two years, first in an Italian Costa di Rovigo). Lino had returned home from school inseparable. He told me that my mother was the only Prison, then in Auschwitz and ultimately in Bergen one afternoon in the summer of 1944 and saw Manni one of the family who learned to speak Italian, and Belsen. As a little girl I had difficulty understanding (as he was known to them) in an SS vehicle. Lino she was the lifeline. No surprise there — that was why my parents would get “those looks” whenever ran home and he found that his mother and sister had my mother’s role in life. He also told me that my they talked about concentration camps. Wasn’t a been beaten. The SS had come to the house to take mother’s sense of humor was present even then — camp a fun place to be? I quickly got the message Manni, and Lino’s mother resisted. I found out that again no surprise. I have always felt that it was her not to ask. My parents believed that I should be Manni had lived with this family from December 1943 sense of humor that was my mother’s strongest sheltered from knowing anything about their until the day he was taken. coping mechanism. What was especially poignant experiences. What transpired after this telephone call were was the pain in Lino’s eyes. My mother, Paula, and her first husband Jakob increasingly frequent emails with updates about places His wife told me that he still mourns Manni and Buchaster, were from , Germany. They that had been contacted and visited in an effort to has never gotten over the trauma of losing him. Like escaped to Italy - first Milan and then Costa di find out more information about Manni’s fate. Each my mother, Lino is still unable to talk about Manni, Rovigo. Paula and Jakob were arrested and step of the way gave more possibilities and more and yet, ironically, it was impossible for him to imprisoned in the Rovigo Prison from December 1943 frustrations. As our contacts progressed, a relationship understand why my mother never told me any details until June of 1944. They were sent to the Fossoli and friendship developed over the Internet. about their family or why my mother never stayed in camp and then to Auschwitz,where Shortly after the first call, I was contact with them. Rosa told me stories about Manni Jakob perished. My mother survived told that the town of Costa di Rovigo as well. She had been a talented artist and she had a the war, immigrated to the US after where my mother last resided was framed, dated, drawing of Manni that she had done Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, and going to have a ceremony on January still hanging on the wall of her dining room. Imagine remarried. 27, 2007, the Italian Day of my shock and tears when she removed the picture I was an only child - loved and doted Remembrance; they were planning to from the wall and gave it to me. Rosa, like Lino, cannot upon. I was an only child until the age honor Manni’s memory. I was invited talk about Manni without becoming very emotional. of 13. That is when I was told about to come at their expense and to speak She was able to verbalize not only her grief, but also Manfred. Manfred, my mother’s little as a Clinical Social Worker about my her joy at knowing that even after all of these years, son who was given to a non-Jewish mother’s experience as well as my someone was still looking for him. family when she, Jakob, and her in-laws search for my brother. As I prepared Prior to coming to Italy I had been asked to speak were deported to Auschwitz. I was told for the trip, I was also told that we at three public ceremonies and at the prison in Rovigo. that they had fled from Germany to Italy would have the chance to see the This was an incredibly cathartic experience — to because they were unable to obtain exit places where my mother had lived, the verbalize my feelings, to tell some of my mother’s visas to the United States. camp from which she had been story, and to try to help others see that hatred and Learning about Manfred changed deported to Auschwitz, and the Prison discrimination are not attitudes that we should adhere my life forever. Suddenly I had a half where she had been interned. I to were just some of the message I hoped to give. Manfred Buchaster departed for Italy with a lot of Last year my husband and I were again invited sibling who disappeared during the war and whose fate was only speculation. I anticipation and trepidation. back to Costa di Rovigo. The town had decided to had so many questions, but asking them My description of this trip is that name the town library after my brother. I was also was taboo. I learned to wait to hear details and not to it was an incredible journey. Just incredible. To say asked to return to the prison and speak to the prisoners probe. My mother a lively, loving hysterically funny I traveled in my mother’s shoes would sound trite again about my mother and Manni. Once again I had woman would become silent whenever I asked about but so true. I was taken to one of the buildings she the chance to see the people in the town and to be my brother. I knew that she had searched for Manfred lived in while she was in Milan. From there we visited embraced by their love. Lino’s parting words to me after the War and I had once seen an old Italian not only the Rovigo Prison where she was interned were that I needed to come back soon — he is 81 newspaper article with his picture, but I had no other for 6 months but also Fossoli, the deportation camp and he does not know how much longer he will live. information. I did not even know the name of the from which she was sent to Auschwitz, Fossoli was Saying goodbye to my Italian friends was difficult, family he was with. In the early 1990’s the Red Cross open but is in ruins and you can only speculate about but saying goodbye to Lino each time has felt like a began accepting applications for searches and I asked the conditions under which people lived. The prison piece of me is torn away. my mother if she wanted to search again. at Rovigo, however, is still a working prison. When Two and a half years have passed since I went Her response was simple: “I have spent 50 years we entered, we had to lock up all of our possessions. to Costa di Rovigo for the first time. I have developed believing my child is dead. I cannot do this again.” There was a moment of panic — a kind of vicarious close loving relationships with people who my family My mother became silent yet again. trauma. Was this my mother’s experience? We were now considers our family. We have remained in My mother died in 1994 and I continued to think given a tour of the Prison, shown where my mother constant contact with some of them. I think about about searching for Manfred. In 2004 I made the was probably confined, and then were taken into a what this journey has meant to me and what I have decision to try to find out what had happened to room where we were shown the actual prison learned. First of all, the most important lesson for my brother, and to determine once and for all, if he records of her admission and discharge from the me, as a Jew, was the realization that there were was in fact dead. In addition to filling out forms prison. many victims of the Holocaust who did not go to for the Red Cross, I networked everywhere I could. To see these up close and to see my mother’s camps and who were not Jews. The people who I experienced many emotions during that period of signature on these documents was just overwhelming. helped my mother and her family were traumatized time and I came to understand my mother’s sorrow. Just as overwhelming and more frustrating was being and suffered losses as well. This is something that I As a mother myself, I cannot imagine what it is handed my mother’s passport, which was still kept never thought about. Just the fact that these wonderful like to give your child away and never know what under lock and key. I tried to get the authorities to people still cry about a little boy who touched their happened. allow me to keep it but they would not, claiming it lives and has never been forgotten is so powerful. I In November 2006 I received a call from Italy. I was still considered a legal document. have learned that even in a world filled with war, evil had contacted many organizations and I had also The most wrenching part of the trip was finally and hatred, there can still be good. contacted an historian who had written a reference meeting Lino, and also meeting Rosa. Rosa was a I have not found my brother, nor do I truly know book documenting the fate all of the Jews in Italy neighbor, who knew my mother, her family and all of what happened. I am, however, somewhat more at during World War II. the difficulties they went through and in whose house peace. I have learned that my brother’s life, however My networking letters had been sent to many Manni spent a lot of time. Lino’s parents not only short, was filled with love and that even when his places at the same time. I had no clue that all of took care of Manni after my mother and her husband family was taken away, he still had people in his life these organizations collaborated closely, and that my were imprisoned, but I discovered that this amazing who cared for him and who loved him like their own story had intrigued them. Unbeknownst to me, they family refused to accept money for Manni’s care. I child. For this I am grateful. took a special interest in finding out what had happened also found out that Lino went to the prison each week April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 15 Chana’s Story and managed to escape. He grew a beard that made advance, and it took almost a month before families him look like a Ukrainian villager and eventually made were reunited and sent back to their homes. BY CHANA WIESENFELD his way back to us. Early in 1945, we tried to go home. There was I lived happily with my parents, my 4-year-old My mother, who was pregnant, would go to town evidence of the German retreat all around us. We sister Tuti, and our little dog Lord in a beautiful and beg for food. The gendarmes who counted us sometimes were able to hitch a ride on a train or tank apartment in Stanesti, Bukovina. My mother Sara ran a dress shop from the apartment and taught every morning realized my mother was pregnant and convoy, and walked to Belz—now a burning ruin. hit her in the belly. She went into labor prematurely Eventually we arrived in Czernovice, but the men needlework to the daughters of the Jewish gentry. and bore twins, a boy and a girl. The boy died at who survived were conscripted into the Russian My father, Anschel, managed a lumber yard and birth; the girl, named Nina, never enjoyed a day of Army. Once again, my father hid, but the Russians supervised villagers who worked in the forest. We good health. It was then that my father suddenly came looking for him, so he ran to Stanesti. were not rich, but we had a wonderful life—going reappeared. I didn’t recognize him as he had aged, While he was away, my mother was taken to a for walks, to movies, socializing with friends. We were had jaundice and looked very shabby, but we were hospital and told she had an ovarian tumor. They traditional, observant Jews who attended the major synagogue on Shabbat and all the holidays. very happy to have him back and hid him in a nearby operated on her and said she had stopped breathing basement. soon after. Pronounced dead, she was taken to the One night in the fall of 1941, we went to a theater During the day I gathered wood. Sometimes we morgue. I was instructed to notify my father to make and saw a war movie. When we headed for home, found edible mushrooms and brought them home. We funeral arrangements. But as word reached my father, the nightmare became reality. Planes droned overhead a miracle occurred. A nurse in the hospital morgue and we could hear exploding bombs all around us. saw a body moving. It was my mother! The Nazis had begun their blitzkrieg against Russia. As the invading army approached Cernovice, we We soon moved to Stanesi, now a ghost town, and lived in one of the few houses left standing. Then, one wondered what would happen to us. day, Banderovtzy, a cutthroat band of Germans and As we sat at the dinner table that Shabbat, our Ukrainians, fired on the house and threatened to kill us home was invaded by Ukrainians armed with if we didn’t get out. hammers and wooden bats, who ordered us to the Russian tanks picked us up and took us to City Hall. They crammed hundreds of us into a few rooms—separating the men from the women and Vashkovitz, where we found a place to stay. My father got a job as a director of the Forest Department, children—and locked us up. started to make living and sent us to school. But the The Ukrainians gave us no food or water. At Russians decided to create a Jewish state in Biro-Bijan nightfall, they took the rabbi and his three sons out and and sent all the Jewish survivors there. By the end of came back for 80 more men. Soon we heard 84 1946, my father decided that it would be best for us to gunshots and knew immediately that they all had been executed.In hiding, my father hadn’t been taken. leave for Romania. We also had another mouth to feed—a third sister, named Cypora, was born. That night the Ukrainians burned the synagogue were permitted to leave the camp perimeter, wearing With help from the Joint Distribution Committee, and then came for us. Romanian gendarmes opened Stars of David to differentiate us from the Ukrainians. we traveled to Transylvania. There we settled in the the door to our prison and piled books in the middle of Occasionally, we had to hide in the fields when the small town of Sibiu. the room. They poured gasoline on the books and lined Germans passed by and I remember praying and In 1946, I was 14 years old and very unhappy. I us up around it—mothers facing children, with weapons facing us. They were preparing to burn us alive. begging God not to let the Germans kill us. joined B’nai Akiva, a religious Zionist organization After our first winter, we learned to sing Christmas and decided to make aliyah, to live in British Mandate My mother wasn’t going to let her children go up carols for our supper. And because we were lice Palestine. When I turned 16, I joined Keren Kayemet in flames. With great courage, she walked over to infested, they would bring the food out. Tuti and I would (the Jewish National Fund) and was soon aboard an one of the gendarmes and said, “Look at these sit in the snow and fight over a bowl of borscht like old boat, the Pan York/Pan Christian. As we innocent children and their mothers. Whatever will two little animals. We did this for four years. approached Haifa, the British stopped us and took us happen to us will happen to your children and your wives.” His response was to punch my mother in the One day my mother’s only surviving sister, Aunt to camps in Cyprus. My only joy came from a Greek Yetty, arrived. She had been in Scazinitz, but managed Orthodox priest who brought me an orange every face, but then he began to pull the books apart and to escape. Fluent in Ukrainian, she passed as a non- day. I also joined the Haganah, the underground did not let the others light the pyre. Jew and looked for us. She told us that Grandma Jewish army, and learned a few things, including Afterward we were sent back to our homes to Genendel and my other aunts, Fanny and Brancy, tactics. It also earned me a better food ration. gather our belongings and were driven out of Stanesi had died of starvation and were buried in mass graves. After Golda Meier asked the British to let the by the Gestapo and their Romanian henchmen. When we joined Jews from other towns, we learned my Aunt My mother’s brother, Boruch-Leib, went to fight the children come to Palestine, they agreed to let ten Germans, was taken prisoner and shipped to children a day go through. Finally, my turn came. We Chaika had been beheaded by the Ukrainians and that Auschwitz. There they used him for medical went in a little motorboat on a stormy sea, but 24 her head was on display at the local courthouse. experiments and he, too, perished. hours later I arrived in the Promised Land. I learned During the march, those who could not walk One night we heard a commotion.We thought to be a farmer and I remember the day the United were shot. Finally we stopped in Yedinitz, Besarabia, the Germans were coming to kill us, but to our surprise, Nations voted to give the Jewish people the land of in a transit camp. Thousands of us were jammed in without food and water. Hundreds died. After a hundreds of partisans were bringing us something to Israel. It was one of the most moving moments of eat. We were the happiest people on earth. They my life. But the celebration didn’t last long. week, they dumped us at the Ukrainian border. promised to stay and protect us, but in the morning, Then one day wonderful news came: the Joint There, on a rainy night, they took us out to a field they were ordered to pull back because the German sent word that my parents and sisters were coming and took the few men who were left with us to be Army was approaching. For us it was devastating. to Israel. When they arrived, we were very happy. I shot. My mother cried that soon we would join my Then we heard another commotion. The partisans was discharged from the army in 1952, worked for a father in the grave. But the men bribed the guards and soon rejoined their families. and the Germans mounted a pitched battle, and the doctor and in 1956 met his cousin Max, a Holocaust camp was caught in the crossfire. Many of us were survivor who lived in America. He proposed marriage In a downpour, we began our march across the killed. When an SS unit marched in, we saved almost immediately, but we were at war in the Sinai, countryside, losing our shoes in the mud. People ourselves by speaking Ukrainian and covering up our so I said no. Eight months after the war ended, Max drowned when they put us on a cattle barge to cross Stars of David. Because they thought we were natives, came back to Israel and insisted that I marry him. I the Gniester River. When we got to Mogilev, the the Germans spoke freely. They were very suspicious. did. Max went back to the States and waited for my Germans took over and continued our death march through fields and forests littered with the bodies of My father came out of his cellar, not knowing that visa to come through. the S.S. was there, and a word of German slipped My new life in America began on September 13, the elderly and children. out of his mouth. But before the S.S. could do 1957. We had a beautiful, all-American life and two We finally stopped in Luchinitz, Transnistria. The anything, there was an eruption of machine gun fire. wonderful sons, Jeffrey and Howard. We all worked Germans dispersed us to various labor camps, and we The Russian Army had arrived from Odessa. hard and made a good life for ourselves. But then ended up in Zguray, an impoverished . Although As they ran for their lives, the Germans tried to Max suffered from heart disease, and after 11 difficult the Ukrainians there hardly had anything to eat themselves, they shared what they did have with us. use my father as a shield, but failed. During the years, died. A few years later I met Nat, and we Thirty of us were jammed into each barrack, with firefight, he escaped. After the Russians took over lived happily together. the village, they liberated us and fed us. All we wanted Through the years I have learned that the secret no running water or toilets. Soon we were all sick to do was go home. But the Russians had other plans. to happiness is never to take anything for granted and infested with lice. My father was sent to Trechati They took the few surviving men with them on their and to appreciate what is good in our lives. near Odessa to help build a bridge for the Germans TOGETHER 16 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 Catholic Scholars Protest the Vatican history at Saint John’s University who is writing a significant, important gesture. The views of cont’d from p. 10 biography of Pius XII. Catholics resonate a lot more seriously” in the extra burden of critiquing an already canonized saint. “History needs distance and perspective” to Vatican than those of outsiders. We think out letter might just help keep the hold in make a thorough examination of Pius’ papacy, the The Catholic News Service report on the letter place.” letter states. “Proceeding with the cause of Pope brought a mixed response from readers. “I see a lot Most Jewish opponent’s of the pope’s Pius XII, without an exhaustive study of his actions of signatures, but none from anyone whose opinion canonization have emphasized that the Catholic during the Holocaust, might harm Jewish-Catholic matters,” one reader wrote. “These are very Church’s declaration of sainthood is a purely internal relations in a way that cannot be overcome in the important voices,” wrote another. Catholic decision, but that a premature canonization foreseeable future.” Copies of the letter were also sent to Cardinal of Pius XII is likely to harm Jewish-Catholic relations The signers of the letters reflect the views of a Walter Kasper, president of the ’s that improved following the Second Vatican Council’s larger group of Catholics who are troubled by Pius’ Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, and inter-religious advances in the early 1960s, and during canonization before the opening of Vatican archives, New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Episcopal the papacy of John Paul II. observers said. Moderator for Catholic-Jewish Relations for the It is an extremely good sign — that there are “I regard it as not just 19 people, but 19 people U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. elements within the Catholic Church who...do not wish speaking on behalf of many of us,” said Sister Boys. What effect will the leaking of the private to see that progress being rolled back,” said Holocaust expert Michael Berenbaum said the document have on the Vatican’s decision-making Menachem Rosensaft, vice president of the American signers of the letter, mostly veterans of interfaith process? Gathering organization. work “who grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust” Philip Cunningham of Saint Joseph’s University Signers of the letter include Eugene Fisher, and of Vatican II, took to heart the Church’s said a mixed reaction is likely. “It will annoy those retired associate director of U.S. Conference of increasing openness to ecumenism over recent in the Vatican hierarchy who wish to see Pius Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and decades. canonized.” On the other hand, he said, “It might Inter-religious Relations; Paul O’Shea, an Australian Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti- give people pause who are not necessarily ready to author who has written a balanced history of Pius’ Defamation League and a hidden child in Poland have that happen right away.” wartime record; and Frank Coppa, professor of during the Holocaust, called the letter a “very Row over definition of Holocaust survivor Cesarani said: “There is no single definition of a Holocaust survivor. It is technically more correct to BY LEON SYMONS, the JC.com after Hitler came to power in 1933 when she eight. describe those who came to the UK in 1938-39 as A row has broken out over the meaning of the term “My father was sent to Dachau before I was former refugees from Nazi persecution. But if they Holocaust survivor after an 85-year-old grandmother sent to at 14. That was the last time I saw feel like survivors I don’t see why they should not be used it to describe herself when criticising Israeli my parents and they and almost all my relatives were allowed to think and speak of themselves as such. action against Palestinians. killed in camps in France and at Auschwitz.” After Both terms, ‘Holocaust’ and ‘survivor,’ have become German-born Hedy Epstein was attacked by a England, she went to a surviving uncle and aunt in woefully imprecise.” senior figure in the Zionist Federation who dismissed America. Denis MacShane MP, chair of the All-Party her as a refugee “touted as a trophy survivor” to help She said her stance on Israel was rooted in her Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, said: “My vilify Israel. parents’ anti-Zionism. But she took little notice until interpretation would be someone who has been in The row exploded into a heated online exchange the massacres of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese one of the death camps or prison camps.” and a debate about whether historians had a proper Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila refugee Baroness Deech said: “My first reaction would definition of the term. camps in 1982. be someone in the camps or in Europe. But this Jonathan Hoffman, a vice chair of the ZF, wrote She has visited the West Bank five times and woman would never have been on the kindertransport in his blog on the JC website: “Hedy Epstein is a was in Egypt last week for a Gaza freedom march. and had to flee if not for the Nazis, so I would say ‘refugee.’ She is not a ‘survivor.’ To call her a She has been to Israel to visit a Holocaust memorial she is entitled to call herself a survivor.” ‘survivor’ is an insult to genuine survivors and to their that bears her parents’ names. Deborah Lipstadt, who defeated a libel action families. Hedy Epstein was never in a camp, a ghetto She admitted: “My views have been coloured by from Holocaust denier David Irving 10 years ago, or a death march.” what I have seen and lived through. I knew from agreed: “It’s someone whose life was seriously He agreed that Ms Epstein came to England on early childhood what persecution and oppression was disrupted by the Holocaust or had to leave Germany the kindertransport from Germany on May 18 1939 like. Some Holocaust survivors disagree with my precipitously. However, in her case it has been milked and went on: “The Yad Vashem definition of a views, others don’t.” for all it’s worth.” ‘survivor’ is someone who was in a camp or in And she pointed to another paragraph from Yad Germany or an occupied country after the War broke Vashem which stated: “One can also define Shoah out. Epstein does not conform to that definition. survivors as Jews who lived for any amount of time April 18, “If she — and the people who are using her — under Nazi domination, direct or indirect, and 2010 are prepared to call her a ‘survivor’ to add weight to survived it . . . as well as Jews who forcefully left her mendaciousness about Israel, then it is perfectly Germany in the 1930s, after the rise of the Nazis to I am the Senior reasonable to point out that she is not a ‘survivor’ but power. No historical definition can be completely Director of Edu- a ‘refugee.’ By using her status as a tool to vilify satisfactory.” cation at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Cen- Israel, she — and those who use her — have made WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY ter of Nassau County (on Long Island). Our center that status a matter of public interest.” Experts agree on one thing: there is no single has just completed a new, multimedia Holocaust mu- The posting attracted more than 40 comments, definition of who is a Holocaust survivor. seum which utilizes testimony and artifacts from sur- ranging from one calling Mr Hoffman a “Holocaust Everyone agrees that it includes those who were vivors, 2Gs and 3Gs living in the tri-state area. We revisionist” to others saying the only reason for in the camps and were caught in Nazi-occupied are hosting a special Grand Opening event for Survi- drawing attention to her was because she was siding Europe from 1933 to 1945 But there are some who vors and their families on April 18. Social welfare with the Palestinians and that it was “all about adopt a wider definition. organizations devoted to helping Survivors (i.e. Blue politics.” The Claims Conference in New York, for Card, Self-Help, etc.) will be on hand and we will be Speaking from her home in Missouri, Epstein said example, cited many different classifications from the conducting a very brief Yom HaShoah program. she adopted the term only after a Holocaust museum German government about who could make a claim Beth E. Lilach described her as a survivor. The United States under different programmes and was therefore a Holocaust Museum in Washington DC had also survivor. Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance applied the term to her. “It was not something I called Lord Janner, chair of the Holocaust Educational Center of Nassau County myself to begin with. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable Trust, was unequivocal: “If Hedy Epstein was on the Welwyn Preserve because it labels me and I am a lot of other things,” kindertransport, she is a Holocaust survivor. What 100 Crescent Beach Road she said. she is doing might be abhorrent and sad but Glen Cove, NY 11542 She grew up in the village of Kippenheim and kindertransportees are survivors.” Ph. 516-571-8040 ext. 105 was called “a dirty Jew” and thrown out of school Historian and Holocaust expert Professor David

April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 17 “An Evening with Elie Wiesel” Survivor Interviews Published Online Adelphi University announced that tickets have gone Thirty years ago, Wisconsin Historical Society staff interviewed on sale for the exclusive program, “An Evening with 22 survivors and two American eyewitnesses, yielding 160 hours of Elie Wiesel.” The event with the Nobel Peace Prize- tape recordings and more than 3,000 pages of transcripts. These have winning Holocaust survivor, author, and activist will now been published in their entirety at www.wisconsinhistory.org/ take place on Wednesday, April 14, 2010, at 7:00 holocaustsurvivors . Users can stream the recordings while reading p.m. in the University’s state-of-the-art Center for Recreation and Sports, 1 South Avenue, along or download the audio (mp3) and text (pdf) for later use. A search engine leads to anecdotes about Garden City, NY. specific topics, places, people, and events. Nearly 200 photographs are included. The 1986 Nobel Committee called Mr. Wiesel a Dozens of short excerpts (www.wisconsinhistory.org/holocaustsurvivors/excerpts/) are organized under “messenger to mankind,” and he will bring his headings such as “Prewar Life in Europe,” “Ghettoes,” “Escapes,” “Resistance,” and “Postwar Life & powerful words of peace, atonement, and humanity Immigration.” These compelling stories are only one or two minutes long, perfect for classroom use or to Adelphi. Inspiring and engaging, his life story is casual browsing. one to be heard. His acclaimed book, Night (La Nuit), Most of the survivors were children or teenagers at the time of the Holocaust, so their memories are a will be available for purchase at the event. The event particularly effective teaching tool. A separate teachers’ page (http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/ is sponsored by the William E. Simon Lecture in HolocaustSurvivors/teachers.asp) links to age-appropriate stories and suggests how to use them in classes. American Civilization and Values Endowment. The survivors recall happy childhoods, traditional Jewish communities, the rise of the Third Reich, anti- Semitic violence such as , the Warsaw and Lodz ghettoes, and conditions at Auschwitz, Dachau HOLOCAUST ARCHIVES GO ONLINE and other concentration camps. They describe the fates of their families, starting new lives in postwar BY RACHEL TEPPER Europe, emigrating to the U.S., and the founding of Israel. They also discuss life in Wisconsin’s Jewish WASHINGTON (JTA) – Efforts to track down U.S.- communities between 1945 and 1980. The interviews were conducted not only in Milwaukee and Madison held records that may assist Holocaust restitution but in cities from Kenosha to Superior and towns from Monroe to Merrill. claims are now a click — and possibly a fee — away. The collection differs from other online Holocaust resources in its depth and breadth. Although only 22 The U.S. National Archives and Footnote.com, a fee-based history research Web site, recently survivors give testimony, they grew up all over Europe — from Holland in the West to Ukraine in the East, launched the largest online interactive collection of Poland in the North to Greece in the South. Some came from affluent families with servants, while others Holocaust records. were middle- or working-class families. An equal number of men and women are interviewed. Some fled The collection organizes more than 1 million their homes in the late 1930s as refugees, while others went into hiding like Anne Frank. During the Holocaust, Holocaust-era records, including concentration camp some worked at slave labor and others survived the death camps. Unlike other Web sites devoted to the registers and documents from Dachau, Mauthausen, Holocaust, the Wisconsin collection provides entire interviews (some lasting up to 12 hours) and complete Auschwitz and Flossenburg; captured German records including deportation and death lists from typed transcripts. The interviews also cover their subjects’ family histories, lives before the Holocaust, and concentration camps; Nuremberg war crimes trial experiences in later life as American immigrants. proceedings; and about 26,000 photos from the All content may be printed or downloaded to a user’s computer or mp3 player at no cost, for nonprofit National Archives. educational use by teachers, students and private researchers. Commercial use is prohibited. While the total number of Holocaust records in Wisconsin Historical Society staff can visit your school, organization, temple or church to introduce the the National Archives’ possession is not known collection to teachers, students, and other interested groups. Contact Michael Edmonds for more information, conclusively because many have yet to be assessed at [email protected] and processed, archivists estimate that the material available on Footnote.com accounts for 10 percent and survivors through over 1 million documents.” objective document and a subjective one that is being of its current holdings. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum official created based on memory.” There’s always a risk of The database also contains the Ardelia Hall records on Footnote.com will supplement data already memory fading, he says, of dates being approximations Collection, which includes records relating to the Nazi on the museum’s Web site and bring the stories of and information being inaccurate as a result, despite looting of Jewish possessions such as artwork and Holocaust victims and survivors to a wider audience, the best intentions of the author. other cultural objects. The collection is named for thus creating a richer research experience. The Access to the collections has been free, but full Ardelia Hall, the U.S. State Department’s arts and information on Footnote.com will link back to access eventually was expected to be reserved for monuments adviser who worked extensively with the additional material on the museum’s Web site, said those with paid memberships. records between 1954 and 1961. Michael Gurnberger, the museum’s director of Memberships on Footnote.com are $79.95 The records now available in Footnote.com’s collections. Gurnberger believes that having several annually and $11.95 monthly. Users, however, can databases have been in the public domain in the sites featuring the material will increase the potential use the databases on a “pay-per-image” basis for archival research rooms of the National Archives here. for learning and meaningful research. $2.95 per record. Access to the “Stories” section of The new endeavor marks the first time the documents “It’s not only to reach more people,” he said of the site and pages created with Footnote’s social have been available online and made searchable. Footnote.com. “It’s also to bring them back to our media tools were expected to remain free. In addition to the emotional impact of researching Web site so they can learn more. That’s our mission.” Rosensaft expressed displeasure that access to one’s family history, the developers hope that Menachem Rosensaft, vice president of the the records ultimately would become fee-based. information detailing stolen Jewish possessions might American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Documents that have been in the public domain, he aid in restitution battles. Holocaust survivors and their and Their Descendants, welcomed the availability of said, should not be part of a profit-making venture, families are still battling with several European the archives’ collection but voiced some concerns. especially in regard to research for Holocaust governments over the issue of restitution, in particular “Any initiative that provides access to Holocaust- survivors and their heirs. “There should not be a price the return of artwork stolen by the Nazis and the related documentation is positive,” Rosensaft said. tag on that,” he stressed. communists in Central and Eastern Europe. “Of course, having it in conjunction with the National Still, Rosensaft anticipated that Holocaust The project also has a considerable social Archives and the United States Holocaust Memorial survivors and their descendants would welcome the networking component; the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is extremely important because it provides resource. “I think the community is going to be very Museum provided to Footnote.com the material for a serious legitimacy to the project.” appreciative,” he said. Despite any misgivings about some 600 interactive personal accounts of those who He added, however, that the limitations of the the project, Rosensaft acknowledged that the large survived or perished in the Holocaust. Footnote’s database must be made clear. While the database scale of the project is particularly exciting. technology allows visitors to search for names and includes a large amount of historical material, “We cannot afford to forget this period in our add photos, comments and stories, share their insights Rosensaft said, it represents only a sliver of the history,” said Michael Kurtz, assistant archivist of the and create pages to highlight their discoveries. records kept during the Holocaust and do not make United States and author of America and the Return “These pages tell a personal story that is not for a complete picture of events during that time. of Nazi Contraband: The Recovery of Europe’s included in the history textbooks,” said Russ Wilding, Rosensaft warned users that major discoveries are Cultural Treasures. “Working with Footnote, these CEO of Footnote.com. “They give visitors a firsthand “a longshot under any circumstances.” records will become more widely accessible, and will glimpse into the tragic events of the Holocaust and He also voiced concern over the project’s social help people now and in the future learn more about allow users to engage with content such as maps, networking element, saying that scholars and users the events and impact of the Holocaust.” photos, timelines and personal accounts of victims need to “keep in mind the difference between an

TOGETHER 18 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 I noted in about Pius XII in archives is the same as lying to the process has been nothing short of Kafka-esque. They the last issue of world? Or is it politically incorrect to do so? What is accepted the application in English and did not Together an obvious is that the archives must contain facts that acknowledge receipt for two years. After contacting article about the are able to discredit the Catholic Church as a trustful the Hungarian embassy I was put in touch with a celebrated leader. Otherwise, what is the reason to keep the ar- case worker who was able to correspond with me in Rezso Kasztner chives closed from the public? English by e-mail. She told me I could write to her in affair. You know, English but my messages were typically ignored. it is most often pointed out that he saved some 1600 Jeffrey Imas, San Jose, CA. Eventually we started receiving responses in people by organizing a rescue train in Budapest and Hungarian, which we then needed to translate. We were told we needed to submit proof of the claims, got Eichman’s permission to ship them to, first Bergen- I found it interesting that the lead story in January’s such as death certificates! I assured them no death Belsen, then — successfully — to Switzerland. Not “Together”described Elie Wiesel’s remarks concerning certificates were provided for the gas chamber that saving 1600 people would not be enough to honor Holocaust denial in Hungary. It arrived in my mail victims at Belzec, nor did they issue them when they Kasztner’s memory, but actually (as is mentioned in only weeks after the death of my mother, Helen Dub shot Jews at Borszczow ghetto. Then they asked us the article) he was also instrumental, or at least (nee Grossman), a survivor who suffered at the hands to provide birth certificates. The area was contributed to, that some 20,000 to 25,000 Jewish- of Hungarians. (I am attaching a copy of the obituary Czechoslovakia before the war but is now Ukraine. Hungarians were shipped to Austria for labor, instead for my mother that was published in the Cleveland We tried going through the Ukranian process but they to Auschwitz for gas and fire. This was the so called Jewish News last month, which I thought was well could not find any birth certificates. We got “help” Strasshof group, so named after the small Austrian done, except that it failed to specifically mention that from the U.S. State Department, but the Hungarian she was deported by Hungary.) village, a short ride north of Vienna on the Vienna-to- case worker would still not relent. We provided an My mother was one of the unfortunate 20,000 or Czech border rail line. Strasshof had a affidavit of another survivor from the town, but they so Jews of Carpathian Ruthenia who were deported Durchgangslager (Transit Camp) manned by responded she had not proven her birth there either. by Hungary in August 1941, to Poland. The vast Ukrainian guards, where all these deportees first They denied the claims in a letter in Hungarian which majority of this group were promptly herded to arrived, in order to “delouse” them and have them took me about 30 days to translate, and I quickly Kamenets Podolsk, where they were shot by German assigned to work stations in Lower Austria. appealed with new submissions, including my mother’s einzatsgrubben and Ukranians on August 27-28, 1941. I was one of them. Together with my mother 1985 videotape and a copy of her U.S. naturalization My mother and her group of 22 family members were and my brother and sister, we arrived in Strasshof in papers showing place of birth. After one of the appeals robbed and dropped off by their captors about 20 early July of 1944. After a few days we were driven I received a copy of the caseworker’s response to our miles from the massacre site. They lived in Mielnitze- into a large barrack and told to strip down nude. Some appeal, arguing among other things that we appealed Podolsk for a time, but then in September, 1942, most Germans appeared and took off our hair, top, after the 30-day time limit and should therefore lose Jews were killed or transported to Belzec for underarm, pubic, included.Then we were told to enter our appeal on those grounds! I don’t think a final extermination, including much of my mother’s family. a large communal shower facility which — in decision has been rendered but I’m not sure, since My mother and the remnant of her family survived retrospect looked almost as the Auschwitz gas correspondence directed to my mother may have been but were then forced into the ghetto in nearby chambers were described. However this time it returned by the post office after her death. Borszczow. At Borszczow, thousands of Jews were really was a shower. Then we got a ride back to I wonder if anyone else has had similar (or better) murdered in a series of massacres over the next 8 experiences with this program. In any case, my Vienna, and temporarily put up in an abandoned months, including most other members of my experience supports the view apparently also warehouse-like building with greenish-blue windows. mother’s family. maintained by Elie Wiesel, that Hungary still does not There, quite decent Austrian civilian men appeared In fall of 1943, the ghetto was liquidated and face up to its own role in the Holocaust. and made work assignments. I guess my Mom declared Judenrein. My mother fled to the woods thought that better the known than the unknown, so with her only remaining sister, and she Stanley Dub when she heard of Strasshof mentioned, she spent the winter of volunteered; and we were shipped back there by 1943-1944 living in an trucks, some 200 people as a group. It turned out underground bunker Special “Matzevah Marker” that in Strasshof a German construction firm by the with 25 other Jews. name of Sager und Woerner was engaged in Then in spring 1944, Available for Survivors’ Graves constructing a small landing strip east of the village. the bunker collapsed, Survival has placed upon us the dramatic, maker will re-affirm our There we lived in a makeshift camp in tiny huts, killing most of the responsibility of making sure that the uniqueness and our place in history for Holocaust is remembered forever. Each of future generations. that held 8 inhabitants each, with 4 double-decker occupants, including us has the sacred obligation to share this Our impressive MATZEVAH marker is bunks and a small iron stove. my mother’s sister. task while we still can. However, with the now available for purchase. It is cast in solid A remarkable event intervened. Someone got The area was passage of each year, we realize that time is bronze, measuring 5x7 inches, and can be acquainted with a German man who offered to take liberated by Russians against us, and we must make sure to utilize attached to new or existing tombstones. messages back to Budapest (for a fee, of course, to in July, 1944. My all means for future remembrance. The cost of each marker is $125. be payed by the relatives). My Mom wrote four letter mother was the only A permanent step toward achieving this Additional donations are gratefully (on toilet paper! — I still have them) and received survivor of the group important goal can be realized by placing a appreciated. replies, even some small packages. This raised our of 150 or so deported unique and visible maker on the gravestone Let us buy the marker now and leave morale, of course. from her town (Vinif) of every survivor. The most meaningful structions in our wills for its use. This will My mother became the chief cook of the camp, in 1941, and one of symbol for this purpose is our Survivor enable every one of us to leave on this earth a skill she performed as well as could be under the only a very few logo, inscribed with the words visible proof of our miraculous survival and HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR. This simple, yet an everlasting legacy of the Holocaust. circumstances. I may also mention that the camp was survivors of the group run by a young German woman by the name of Regina of 20,000 deported by The cost of each marker is US $125 including shipping & handling. Falkenberg, a quite decent girl even if somewhat Hungary. Make checks payable to: American Gathering hysterical at times. We dubbed her “Hercegno” Hungary has a and mail to: program of compen- (Princess) in Hungarian, on account of her name. American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants sation for Jews killed We were liberated on April 10, 1945 by the 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 following depor- Russians and headed homeward, reaching Budapest New York, NY 10001 tation by Hungary. on May 1, to find all our relatives — with the Please allow sixty (60) days for delivery. Several years ago I exception only of a brother of my mother — alive. helped my mother Name ______I thought this individual story may interest you, apply for these Address______although surely you have heard many similar ones. payments based on the deaths after City ______State __ Zip ______Andrew Lenard, Bloomington, Indiana deportation of her Phone______parents, seven Number of Markers ______Is anybody of the world’s Jewish leaders able to find sisters and one Total Amount Enclosed $______sufficient courage to tell the Pope that hiding the truth brother. The April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 19 RABBI survived Auschwitz-Birkenau. authorities, Miep retrieved Anne Frank’s diaries and CHASKEL At the start of the war he peddled his bicycle saved them in her desk drawer for Anne’s return. BESSER across Poland against all odds to bring aid to his parents Once the war was over and it was confirmed that by Mordechai who fled deeper into Poland believing they were safer Anne had perished in Bergen-Belsen, Gies gave the Lightstone there. He managed to sneak two escaped Jewish collection of papers and notebooks to the sole survivor Rabbi Chaskel Polish soldiers out of his town. In the camp he rallied from the Secret Annex, Anne’s father, Otto. After Besser, 87, passed away his fellow inmates with the saying “it will be better transcribing sections for his family, his daughter’s on February 9. tomorrow” and after the war he received the grati- literary ability became apparent and he arranged for Rabbi Besser was tude of many. Once in America he became a the book’s publication in 1947. born in Katowice, businessman who had a farm and later a retail store In 1994, Miep Gies was awarded the Order of Poland, in 1923, to a of fine china and crystal. Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany; in 1995, family of distinguished He raised funds for the building of three she received the Yad Vashem medal, and in 1997, disciples of the Rebbe immigrant synagogues and later served on the board she was knighted by Queen Beatrix of the of Radomsk. In 1939, of directors of The McKee City Jewish Famers Netherlands. Miep’s and Jan’s only child, Paul, was with antisemitism on the Congregation. He was a charter member of the born on July 13, 1950. Jan Gies died in 1993. rise in prewar Poland, United States Holocaust Museum. He is featured in In December 1994, during the making of the his family fled to Israel. the book Portraits of Resilience: Southern New documentary film Anne Frank Remembered, Miep After meeting and marrying his wife, Ahuva, the Jersey Holocaust Survivors and was a member of was introduced to Peter Pfeffer, the son of Fritz young couple settled in Tel Aviv, where Chaskel the world-wide Bendin-Sosnowicer Society. Pfeffer. After his parents divorced, Pfeffer was raised befriended Yisroel Aryeh Leib Schneerson, brother He played a few musical instruments including by his father, until his father felt it was too dangerous of the then-to-be Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi the flute and piccolo. He always had a story about for him to remain in Germany, and in 1938 was sent Menachem Mendel Schneerson. After the war ended, the “old country” and his memory of that time was to London to live with his uncle. By the end of the the Bessers moved to the U.S. ultimately settling on encyclopedic. war he had lost most of his close family, including his Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In 1964, he became father and mother, who had died in Theresienstadt. the rabbi of Congregation Bnei Yisroel Chaim, a Pfeffer moved to the United States and settled shtiebel frequented by Holocaust survivors and EDA FRUCHTMAN in California, where he founded a successful office Europe’s refugees. Eda Fruchtman, 86, died August 4, 2009, at her home supply business. Pfeffer, upon meeting Miep Gies, In the chaos that followed the destruction of in Dewey Beach, Delaware. She was a Holocaust expressed his thanks to her for attempting to save his European Jewry, many of the customs and practices survivor from Lodz, Poland. of the old world, it appeared, were being forgotten. father’s life. Pfeffer died of cancer two months later. Miep Gies lived in the Dutch province of Noord- One of these was the Daf Yomi custom of daily Talmud EON RUCHTMAN L F Holland. According to Carol Ann Lee’s biography of study. Concerned that this practice would be lost, Leon Fruchtman, 87, died Jan. 2, 2010, at his home Besser set about creating Daf Yomi classes. He found Otto Frank, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Gies in Dewey Beach, Delaware. He was a Holocaust stopped granting interviews after enduring a bout of a group of seven rabbis who agreed to teach on survivor from Krakow, Poland. different days of the week, and so revived the custom. severe ill health. On February 15, 2009, she celebrated Besser’s work with the Jewish community her 100th birthday. Gies died on January 11, 2010, eventually led to his service as president of the MIEP GIES following a short illness. American Agudath Israel movement, an umbrella Born Hermine San- organization that represents many groups within the trouschitz in Vienna, TEDDY GILNER Orthodox Community. Miep Gies was Teddy Gilner, a Holocaust survivor from Ostrow, Himself a Radomsker, Besser was nonetheless transported to Leiden Mazowiecky, Poland passed away on October 26, drawn to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, becoming a student from Vienna in 2009. and follower in all but name. December 1920 to Fleeing from Nazi persecution with his mother The destruction of European Jewry and over a escape the food and two sisters to Swerdlovsk, the family remained thousand years of Jewish history in Poland remained shortages prevailing in Austria after . In there until 1945, when they left Russia for Austrian constantly on Besser’s mind. Making frequent trips 1922, she moved with her foster family to Amsterdam. DP camps. They remained there for three years until to Poland, the first one in 1949, he sought to maintain In 1933, she met Otto Frank when she applied for they received visas to Cuba, where they remained the traditional Jewish cemeteries around the country, the post of secretary in his spice company, Opekta. until a cousin in Atlanta, GA got them the papers abandoned and often desecrated by the Nazis and Eventually promoted to a more general administrative necessary to emigrate to the U.S. Polish vandals. role, she became a close friend of the Frank family, In the mid-’80s, Ahuva Besser approached the as did Jan Gies, whom she married on July 16, 1941 ERTHOLD ERPE Rebbe during his famous “Sunday dollars” custom. after she refused to join a Nazi women’s association B H Upon hearing from Mrs. Besser that her husband and was threatened with deportation back to Austria. Berthold Herpe, 100, of was in Poland on a mission to repair the Jewish Her knowledge of Dutch and German helped the Frank Daly City and Kelseyville, cemeteries, the Rebbe suggested to her that her family assimilate into Dutch society, and she and her CA, passed away on husband might look into the needs of the living Jews husband became regular guests at the Franks’ home. January 11, 2010. Mr. of Poland as well. Besser took this comment to heart, With her husband, and her colleagues, Victor Herpe was born in Essen, and ultimately partnered with philanthropist and Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, and Bep Voskuijl, Miep Germany on November 7, cosmetic magnate Ronald S. Lauder, eventually helped hide Edith and Otto Frank, their daughters 1909, and resided in opening humanitarian and educational projects in Margot and Anne, Hermann and Auguste van Pels, Frankfurt, Germany until Poland under the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation for their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer in a secret upstairs 1938, when he was imprisoned in the Nazi Poland, with Besser serving as its director. room that was not used in the spice company’s office concentration camp Dachau. In 1939 Berthold was For all his achievements, Besser remained a building from July 1942 to August 4, 1944. able to renounce his German citizenship and obtain humble and unassuming figure, preferring to work In theory, Miep and the other helpers could have passage to Shanghai, China. Berthold and his family behind the scenes. As the spirit of Manhattan’s Upper been shot if they had been caught hiding Jews. On immigrated to the United States, departing the ship in West Side changed from a community of survivors San Francisco, interestingly enough, on July 4, 1947. to a younger and Americanized one, Besser adapted, the morning of August 4, 1944, acting on information provided by an informant, the Grüne Polizei arrested The family settled in San Francisco, where most still with his Shabbat table becoming an eclectic gathering live today. place for the community’s youth. The rabbi in his the people hidden at Frank’s place of business, as well as Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman. A few Berthold had a successful career as a baker, small synagogue even became the subject of a book, which included stints with the Langendorf Baking The Rabbi of 84th Street, by Warren Kozak. days later, Miep unsuccessfully tried to bribe the Austrian Nazi officer to release her friends. Three Company, Fairmont Hotel and finally Orowheat separate criminal investigations after the war all failed Bakery in South San Francisco where he retired at WOLF EHRLICH age 65. Wolf Ehrlich passed away on 2/19/2010. Born in to identify the informant. Bendzin, Poland in 1918, by luck and courage he Before the hiding place was emptied by the cont’d on p. 21

TOGETHER 20 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 cont’d from p. 20 worker, he started working in the meat business. In He was a He was a part of many German clubs and 1957, he and a partner started Whitehall Packing Life and Quali- participated in the San Francisco German Choir since Company in Whitehall, Wisconsin. By the 1960s he fying Member 1952. He was a long-standing member of had built Whitehall Packing Company into the largest of the Million Congregation B’nai Emunah and Congregation Beth kosher beef slaughter operation east of the Dollar Round Israel Judea. After receiving his U.S. citizenship he Mississippi. In the mid-1960s Whitehall Packing even hosted the neighborhood polling booth in his Table for 38 Company had operations in Chicago, Illinois and years, received the National Quality Award from garage each year on voting day. Tampa, Florida. th the National Association of Life Underwriters 32 Berthold celebrated his 100 birthday on In 1970, Manny purchased H. Trenkle Co, Inc. times and the National Sales Achievement Award November 15, 2009 with 250 friends and family in Dubuque, Iowa, a 100-year-old manufacturer of members. Guests came from as far away as sausages and luncheon meats. Also in the 1970s he 30 times. He was Agent of the Year for both the Germany. Berthold “glowed” in his throne and crown: opened Rich Fine Foods, a beef slaughter and meat Oregon State Life Underwriters Association and the it was a night that family and friends will remember processing operation in Waterloo, Wisconsin. In 1983, Portland Life Underwriters Association. fondly. the family moved again, this time to Tampa, Florida, In addition to his business and military service, where he opened Bay Food Distributors. Never one Rosenbaum devoted his lifetime to service to his IRVING MANDEL to retire, he ran Bay Food from 1983 until the day he community. He was a vice president of the Oregon Irving Mandel, 89, of Fort passed away in 2009. Area Jewish Committee from its inception in 2008 Lee, NJ and Hallandale, In his later years, concerned that the memory of until the spring of 2009. From 2002-08, he was a Florida passed away on the Holocaust was fading, he established a scholarship vice president of American Jewish Committee- August 17, 2009. Mandel fund for those desiring to go on the March of the Oregon Chapter, which honored Rosenbaum and his was born in Ropa, Poland. Living. Through his generosity, he was also the driving wife Jane with its Maurice Sussman Award in 2000. He was a Holocaust force for the acquisition of a Holocaust Torah for his He was also the associate national survivor who lost most of synagogue, Temple Rodeph Shalom in Tampa. commissioner of the Anti-Defamation League and his family during the war. Regrettably, he did not live to witness the dedication director of the Institute of Metropolitan Studies at Mandel arrived in the of that Holocaust Torah. Portland State University. He was a member of Displaced Persons camp in Germany in 1946 where Submitted by his son, S. David Riba he met his wife, Alice (nee Dranger). He came to the National Executive Committee for the the United States in May of 1949 and eventually Secretary of Defense, Employers Support of the owned his own clothing business, M & I Men’s FRED ROSENBAUM National Guard and Reserve. Other affiliations Clothes, in Brooklyn, NY. Born June 30, 1926, in included chair, Oregon Museum of Science and Vienna, Austria, Fred Industry; trustee of the Evergreen Aviation Rosenbaum, died Jan. 12, MENDEL “MANNY” Museum; state chair, Department of Defense, 2010, at the age of 83. Employers Support the Guard and Reserve; RIBA “Fred Rosenbaum had director, Urban League of Portland; chair, Housing Mendel Riba passed a great heart for those who Authority of Portland; and chair, Advisory away on July 14, 2009 are so vulnerable in our at the age of 85. Born society: the children, the Committee to the School of Urban and Public Mortke Ryba in homeless, the economically Affairs, Portland State University. He served as a Dzialoszyce, Poland on marginal,” said Charles R. trustee of Reed College for many years. September 15, 1923, he Schiffman, executive vice president of the Jewish In 1976, the city named its new housing facility was a middle child of Federation of Greater Portland. “Perhaps because for low-income elderly Rosenbaum Plaza. Camp Dovid and Faygel Ryba. His family was prominent he himself came from a background of the Rosenbaum, a camp for underprivileged urban in the cattle and meat business in SouthWest Poland. Kindertransport, he knew that in order for the world children, was dedicated by the Oregon Governor When Dzialoszyce was made Judenrein in 1942, he to be an inhabitable place, people must proactively Vie Atiyeh in 1985 and still operates today. At Camp and his father were sent to Plaszow, outside of reach out to help their brothers and sisters. Merely Rilea near Warrenton, a Garden of Gratitude was Krakow. In November, 1943 he was sent from abstaining from evil is not enough; active work for named in his honor for his many years of service Plaszow-Jerozolimska to the HASAG works in the good is necessary. Fred also had a strong to Camp Rosenbaum. Secretary of Defense supportive relationship with the local police and this Skarzysko-Kamienna. In Skarzysk, he was a picriner William S. Cohen awarded him the Secretary of working with the picric acid which permanently country’s armed forces because he knew how Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service in scarred his lungs. He survived a selection where he important it is to stand strong against those who would 1998. He received the State of Oregon Governor’s was shot, left for dead, and eventually returned back destroy civilization.” Award for Work Accomplished in the Field of Race to work. Late in 1944 he was sent to Czestochowa Rosenbaum escaped Austria in 1938 as part of to work in the HASAG steel works, where he was the Kindertransport, which moved nearly 10,000 Relations in 1994 and the President’s Award from put to work unloading railroad . With the advance children—without their parents—from Nazi Germany, PSU in 1992.The Oregon Air National Guard of the Russian Army, he was evacuated to Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia to safety in Great hangar facility at the Portland Air Base was named Buchenwald. In March 1945 he was evacuated from Britain. in his honor. Buchenwald on a forced death march via Colditz. When he was reunited with his parents and they Rosenbaum received the Republic of Austria’s On the same death march, but in a different column, immigrated to America, he enlisted in the National Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver “in recognition his father was shot on the road near Treglitz on April Guard at age 16—he misrepresented his age—and of Rosenbaum’s significant contribution to the 12 1945. He was liberated by the Russian Army in eventually served as an enlisted man in the Philippines. Austrian military and to closer ties between Austria Theresienstadt on May 8, 1945. After the war, he returned to Reed College and and the United States.” joined the Oregon Air National Guard, rising to the After Liberation he traveled back to Dzialoszyce, He wrote numerous articles including “Career rank of Brigadier General and serving as Assistant where he survived a by the local Polish AK. Revisited” published by the Million Dollar Round Several of his friends were killed in the pogrom. In Adjutant General (AIR), State of Oregon from 1980 to 1985. Table; “One Child’s Lonely Passage to Freedom,” the morning, the survivors buried the six Jewish boys The Archives, United States Holocaust Memorial who were shot, and left Dzialoszyce and did not return Rosenbaum entered the insurance industry in Museum; and “Memories Revisted,” The Archives, until a visit in May 1989. Manny traveled to 1957. In 1982, he and his son, Mark, formed United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Sosnowiec where he stayed with his aunt who had Rosenbaum and Rosenbaum. The name was later survived the war. At his aunt’s bakery he met his changed to Rosenbaum Financial. In addition to Reed future wife, Sala Tolub. They married in College, Rosenbaum attended Northwestern School SAM SEIF Reichenbach, Poland and moved from Poland to of Law in Portland and completed his bachelor of Sam Seif, of New Haven, CT, formerly of New Germany before emigrating to the United States science in political science from Portland State Bedford, died on February 7, 2010. Mr. Seif was On February 1, 1950 Manny arrived in New York, University where he also completed his graduate a Holocaust survivor. along with his wife and young son. Always a hard work in urban studies. April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 21 FROM ALLGENERATIONS, Inc. June 23, 1897. From about l941 on, he did forced labor for the Siemens company SERENA WOOLRICH, in Berlin. He was deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin) on January 21, 1944, in PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER Alterstransport I/106 together with 62 others. On September 29, 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz in Transport El, which consisted of 1,500 prisoners, of PLEASE SEND RELEVANT RESPONSES whom 76 survived. How and exactly when my father died is not known. A German- TO: [email protected] language memorial volumes lists him as “verschollen” (disappeared) in Auschwitz. From Yehuda Alexander, a Survivor in Israel (submitted on his behalf by I would like very much to get in contact with anyone who might have known Paul Michal Hendler, a 2g in Lakewood, New Jersey): Bernstein or who knew of him: I recently made the acquaintance of Yehuda Alexander, originally from Ortelsburg, Germany (today Szczytno, Poland). My father grew up in that town and through From Anne Berson, a 2g in Richmond, VA: online research I found his email address. I thought he may have some leads for I was born in Munich, Germany. My mother was originally from Lublin and my me and, in fact, he did help me with my family research. Yehuda has a very father from Warsaw. They met after the war when my mother was searching for interesting story; please see the link below to the site, Missing Identity, regarding anyone in her family who might have survived. They got married in Lamportheim, his life story. In short, he was adopted as a young child before the outbreak of the and I was born while they were waiting to come to the US. We came over by war by his aunt who moved to Palestine. He was not told that he was adopted airplane, from Germany to New York, by way of Shannon, Ireland. My mother until later in life after his “parents” died. At that point he had no one to ask what and my father both had family in New York, but HIAS settled us in Nashville, TN, happened to his family during the war. For the past few years he has been where we had no one. Did anything like this happen to anyone else, where their desperately searching for Survivors but unfortunately, all his efforts did not bear family was sent to a place that had no built-in supports? fruit. Since he corresponds mostly in Hebrew, he asked me to contact you to see if you many be have any information or advice for him on researching his family, From Jeanette Neumann Berstein, a 2g in Eagleville, PA: the Schneider family from Ortelsburg. My brother and I were born here in Philadelphia, PA. My mother is from a small Mrs. Michal Hendler town called Pzorzheim, Germany. She was in a concentration camp in Germany Researching Tikotzky, Hirschfeld, Zacharias Ortelsburg, Germany, Tykocki, Sieger and one in France, then was hidden throughout France. Her maiden name is Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland Zloczower. My father was born in Berlin. He was in a labor camp. His name is http://missing-identity.net/mi/content/view/53/26/ Neumann.Obviously, this is the abridged version. I am thankful to say that they are living here in Philly. From Ruth Almog in Tel Aviv, Israel: I am looking for any information about the Lump family from Fulda and From Reinhold Beuer-Tajovsky, a survivor the Rhoen area in Hessen, Germany. I know that Bernard Lump, my in Oshkosh, WI: father’s uncle, went in 1940 to Berlin but I don’t know what happened I am searching for two (2) children who were brought over to him. Three of his son—Ludwig, Max and Julius went to Shanghai. I to the U.S. with me on one of the four (4) OSE transports know Ludwig died there and the others went to the U.S.A. I am looking back in the ’41/’42 period. They are from Stettin, Germany: for their children. He had also daughters and I am looking for their Evelyne and Manfred Fuchs. Also, if there is anyone out children. There must have been in the Rhoen area, maybe in there who knows someone who hails from Stettin-Greifswald, Wustensachsen. All are related to my father, Dr. Jacob Lump from etc, Schmalnau, who came to Palestine. in Pomerania, Germany, please contact me as I would like to make contact with that person. From Liesel Appel, author of The Neighbor’s Son, in Asheville, NC: Also from Reinhold Beuer-Tajovsky: I am looking for the Meyer family of 334 Gladbecker Strasse, Bottrop, Westfalia, Once again I ask, are there NO survivors who lived in/through the former Lwow , Germany. They were our neighbors. My family owned 332 Gladbecker Strasse. Poland now Lviv, Ukraine???? I am still looking for survivor(s)/contacts of my Horrible crimes were committed against the wonderful Meyer family. Their baby, stepfather’s family—wife and daughters of Emile Szlechter. Edgar August Meyer, born on September, 20, 1937, in Essen, was thrown from a , but he survived. A neighbor caught him in his arms. The family left for From Sabine Borlinghaus, in , Germany: Palestine in 1939. The last trace I found recently at the Holocaust Museum in For the Jewish community of Bad Kreuznach I am researching the history of the Washington, DC, is from 1963. Edgar’s father’s name was Wilhelm Meyer, born Jewish people who lived in this area.In , a village with now about August, 3, 1903, in Booinghausen. I believe that Wilhelm passed away in Israel. 3,800 inhabitants, there lived the Blank family. Anna (“Anny”) Blank was born I am looking for any Meyer family member, especially Edgar or any information on October 3, 1895 in Pfeddersheim (Platatinate). Her parents were Moses Blank, on their fate. a religious teacher from Lucinic, Russia (now Litauen), who died prior to 1933, and Sara Wolpert, born in Neustadt. Around 1890 Anny´s parents emigrated From Alisa Barkatt, a 2g in Silver Spring, MD: from Russia to the USA, and then later to Germany. Anny and her mother left My family came from Germany; my parents left Europe and in 1933 and 1935. I Langenlonsheim in 1936 and went to Belgium. First they lived in Bruxelles, Rue was born in Jerusalem in 1944. Since I do a lot of research about my family des Allies 258. On February 29, 1944 Anny was imprisoned in Mecheln and (since 1750!) I am interested to find out if anyone knew my relatives, the deported to Auschwitz on. April 4, 1944. She “died” during transport. There is no Oschinskys (Arno Kate Perls) from Breslau, Germany (today Wroclaw, Poland)? information about her mother. Sara Blank-Wolpert was registered on December Also, my grandmother, aunt, and another Oschinsky family member were seven 20.1940 in Bruxelles, but afterwards I lost all trace of her. Also, Anny had two years in Shanghai; maybe there is someone who knew them? I am also looking brothers, Siegmund and Emil. Siegmund was working in 1917 for “Bankhaus for information about other family members; Proskauer (her daughter Minna); Landau” in Bingen/ and Emil, in 1916, was a merchant in Frankfurt.Is there and Schwartz, Kuechler, from Grottkau. A relative of mine in Israel is looking for anybody in the world who knows something about this family? Anny worked as a someone who knew his mother, Erna Simonshon in Gogolin. Also my aunt, Kate secretary for the mayor of Langenlonsheim. Now I am the secretary for the Oschinsky Perls, from her sister and I would love to find a connection to her mayor there, so I have a special interest in knowing more about her and her family (a Suzette Kline who lived in San Francisco). family.

From Henry Baum, a survivor: From Judy Cohen, a Survivor in Toronto, Canada: I was a Kindertransport child who left Cologne, Germany in April 1939 for a I am searching for former fellow ‘inmates’ who were on the same march in hostel in Brighton, England. I have for the longest time been searching for any April 1945 as I was. My name is Judy Weiszenberg-Cohen, originally from information about my parents, Max (Majlech) and Bronia Baum. My father was Debrecen, Hungary. Presently I live in Toronto, Canada. After Auschwitz I was a cantor in Cologne. The last letter I received from them was from Warsaw with sent to Bergen Belsen. From there, in January 1945, 500 of us young women a return address of 20/17 Novolipki. Perhaps there is a survivor in your group were sent to the Junkers Airplane factory in Aschersleben (near Leipzig), who remembers that street or even that address. Germany. Sometime in late April 1945 the American air force bombed the entire area. Subsequently all of us in this slave-labor camp were sent on a “march” to From Thomas Bernstein, a 2g in Irvine, CA: “nowhere.” It was an incredibly brutal march, no provisions of any kind—and I am looking for information about my father, Paul Bernstein, born in Berlin on we starved and died.

TOGETHER 22 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010 One day as we woke up in a filthy barn, the Bürgermeister of a small town came Switzerland with their mother; they were both sent to Auschwitz. She is listed to “greet us” and declared, on this beautiful Saturday morning, “Fraulein Sie sind as having been on a transport in September or October 1942 to Auschwitz, but frei, you are free to go—because our guards had disappeared. Dragging ourselves there is no record of her death. There is only a record of my grandmother’s death, on the road, American soldiers were coming towards us in Red Cross trucks— not of Emma’s. I have the transport number (but unfortunately not at hand). Both they were our second liberators. We were told it was May 5, 1945. We ended up my aunt and my grandmother have been named in Yad Vashem’s database. Another in another small town called Düben already occupied by the American military great aunt of whom I could find no trace other than a Berlin telephone directory command and for three days, till May 8th, we did not get a regular supply of food entry in the early 1930s was Klara Kastner. There is a Klara Kastner recorded or care, only clean accommodations, and we were allowed to have a “free-for- in Yad Vashem, but this one is not the same person. Klara Kastner may have all,” to take food from any store we wished and whatever we could find. Many of married and changed her surname. She lived in Berlin, was probably born 1870s- us got very sick. Some time later this town and the surrrounding area came under 1880s, and may have been born in Germany or Galicia. My father died in London in Soviet control and we were with them for a while. I can’t remember for how 1979, and my mother also in London in 1990.Can anyone give me any idea of the long, but then US military trucks came and took us to a large refugee centre in fate of some of my relatives? Leipzig. We were in Leipzig for a few weeks, then we all went our own separate From Vera Friedlaender, a Survivor in Berlin, Germany: ways. I went back to Hungary for a short duration. Does this sound familiar to Mrs. Vera Friedlaender of Berlin, a survivor of World War II and daughter of a anyone out there; if yes, please get in touch. mixed marriage, has asked me to research possible connections with her late mother’s brother who had emigrated from Germany to New York City in the 1920’s. Martin From Horst Eisfelder, a Survivor in Melbourne, Australia: (Tawrigowski) possibly renamed Friedland, was born in 1900 in Germany or Poland I am writing to you at the suggestion of Mrs. Amelie Döge of Berlin. It is in and followed his father to the USA in the late 1920s. The mother of Mrs. Vera relation to my search for two school friends from my childhood days in Berlin. Friedlaender, living in Berlin, had contact with this brother of hers until the 1960s. Although I have serious doubts that my friends survived the Holocaust there is He is buried in a New York area cemetery, location not known. On a photo of the always a remote possibility that they somehow escaped. I am now looking for the 1960’s the address is given as Brooklyn, on Sixth Street. His wife’s name was Ruth following friends who, if still alive, would be of my own age, namely 83: and they had two children named Leonard and Natalie (or Bertha). Fritz Friedländer: he lived in the small south German town of , where his father, Dr. Kurt Salomon Friedländer, worked as a medical From Patrice Flesch, a 2g in Boston, MA: doctor. However, from early 1932 till early 1934 my friend and I attended a primary In reading “Re: Where & When we Were Born,” I saw there were some people school in Berlin, where at that time he lived with his grandparents. The school from Frankfurt AM, where my family is from. Do any of you know anyone from was the 19 Gemeindeschule a government primary school), located in the Berlin my family: my grandparents, Hilde and Herbert Flesch, and their children: Inge, suburb of Wilmersdorf. The other person I am looking for is Heinz Peter, and Gerhardt Flesch? Other relatives: Minnie and Max Berger who, with me, attended a Jewish school located in Klopstock Rothschild and their children Wilhelm and Hannah, Hildegard Straße, in the ‘Hansa’ district of Berlin - Tiergarten. This was from Paul, Kurt Frankel and his children Ruth & Beppo. Else Easter 1936 onwards. I left Berlin, and Europe in October 1938, but Abelman and her daughter Edith. maintained some postal contact with Heinz, until the outbreak of war in September 1939. From Chaim (Karl) Franck, a Survivor in Melbourne, Australia: From Miriam Feldman, a 2g in Morton Grove, IL: I was part of a group of people who were on a train that left My father died at the age of 51 in 1964. His name was Rolf Salomon, Budapest on 4th December, 1944 and went to Bergen-Belsen born in Berlin on 09/22/1912. Somehow, he survived Auschwitz. He concentration camp. This group of people were housed in an was in Auschwitz between 1942 and 1945. I was 13 when he died. He established section of the camp, and received ‘special’ never spoke to me about his time in Auschwitz, or my sisters. My treatment, insofar as they were given slightly better food, extra mother was never really able to tell us much; she said they preferred not to talk rations from the Red Cross and were allowed to wear their own clothes. In fact, as about it. My mother is alive today, 86 years old, but she was diagnosed five years a high proportion of this group were religious, they were permitted, during Pesach, ago with Alzheimer’s disease. I am wondering if anyone can tell me if they have to eat matzah that was baked on site in the camp! Just after Pesach of 1945 (approx. any information on my father’s time in the camps. I believe he was in other 25th April, 1945), they were put onto a train that was rumored to be heading to camps besides Auschwitz. Switzerland. That train was intercepted, and liberated by the American Forces at the Elba River near Magdenburg. The passengers/prisoners were then taken to From Alice Fink, a Survivor in Chicago, Illinois: Hillersleben. I would like to know if there are any survivors of this event that are My father, Georg Redlich was employed in the 1930’ s by the Jewish community still alive, are they contactable, was this train journey part, or connected, to a deal in Berlin as “Beerdigungskomissar,” which meant in case of a death in a made between Kasztner and the Germans, and what happened to the rest of the family he was called and he had to take care of all the official papers and make prisoners that remained behind in the camp? the funeral arrangements. On October 26, 1942 a whole group of people from the offices of the Jewish community were gathered and later sent to Auschwitz. I From Zelda (Marbell - Mimrilstein) Fuksman, a survivor in Boca Raton, wonder if there was anyone out there who was in this group? FL: It would be WONDERFUL to find my DP camp, , friend, Basia Katz. We were about 13 in 1949. Basia was from Poland. She was an only child, about five From Sylvia Finzi, a 2g in Sheffield, UK feet tall, dark hair, very cute and was a talented dancer (ballet, etc.) We attended I’m a daughter of refugees who came to England in the late 1930s. My mother Beit Byalik School at the DP Camp and rejuvenated our lives in friendship, school, was from Wuppertal/Elberfeld, Germany, but moved to Berlin when she was 2 love of Israel, and regained the laughter of childhood. We had excellent teachers, and grew up there. My father was from Milan, Italy. I was born in London, UK the ORT school where we learned embroidery and sewing by hand, and were lucky in 1948. Betty Suessmann (nee Kastner) was my mother’s aunt (her father’s to have a survivor professional ballet teacher who helped the girls to develop self sister) and probably lived in Berlin in the 1920s and was born somewhere in the confidence both in posture and carriage, and also we presented dance numbers 1870s-1880s, perhaps in Germany or Galicia. She was married to a once a year at the Stuttgart Opera House for the entire camp. We had excellent “businessman.” This aunt Betty (Elisabeth? Bettina?) was wealthy by marriage teachers, survivors, but who left as soon as their quota or possibility of aliya was and supported my grandmother and her four children (including my mother) available to them. The only teacher who stayed the course were the Israeli that when my grandfather died at the early age of 38. I expect the family all lived in came and stayed until the camp was liquidated in 1949. When we settled in Chicago Germany. My grandfather was born in Kolomea (former Galicia, now in 1949, she was in New York. Last I saw her was in 1951. Ukraine), in about 1880. There is a record of one of his brothers and his wife (Benno and Minna Kastner) having fled from Germany to Belgium from where From Gunther Karger, a Survivor in Miami, FL: they were deported and murdered (I believe in Sobibor). My mother left I would be interested in getting in touch with anyone who was sent to Sweden Germany in 1938. My mother had no idea what had happened to her; she has during summer-fall, 1939 from Germany on the last train transport arranged had no contact with her after the war. However, I have found no record of her by HIAS. I was on that “transport” at age 6 from the Black Forest (Schmieheim). deportation or death anywhere. There is no record of a Bettina, Elisabeth, In Sweden, I lived with Christian farmers in Dalarna for 5 years, one year at Elizabeth or Betty Suessmann nee Kastner anywhere among the recorded victims a Jewish orphanage in Osby and was sent to live with a family in Stockholm the (husband’ last name unknown). Emma Laura Finzi, born in Milan in 1905; she final year (1945). was my father’s sister. She was arrested trying to escape from Italy via April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 23

For 26 years the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, the largest umbrella organization of survivors, has been at the forefront of all issues pertaining to survivors and their An Urgent families. Despite extraordinary economic challenges and confrontations with Holocaust deniers, this past year has been no exception. We are determined to continue our work and know that together, with your Appeal generous contributions, we will be able to insure that our fight for remembrance will live on. With your support and that of the more than 80,000 survivor families who make up our organization, we to Our will be able to continue our critical work in the coming year and build on our past accomplishments. Please send what you can. Contributors of $180 or more will receive a special gift, and contributors of Readers $500 or more will be acknowledged and listed in forthcoming editions of our newspaper, Together. In 2009 alone we have:

· Represented survivors’ interests at diplomatic conferences and negotiations in Berlin, Washington and Prague to secure and increase reparations and restitution for those victimized by Nazi persecution and plunder;

· Fought those who would deny or trivialize the evils of the Holocaust, both here and abroad;

· Ensured that survivors receive proper care and assistance through our work with social agencies like the Jewish Board of Family Services, Self-Help and The Blue Card;

· Advocated our cause in newspapers and on television, with more than a dozen columns since the beginning of 2009;

· Promoted Holocaust education, with the participation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, and the Study Center of Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot, by sponsoring the non- sectarian Summer Seminar Program on Holocaust The and Jewish Resistance that takes American teachers American to Poland, Israel and Washington to give them a Gathering personal appreciation of the Holocaust; now · Worked with the U.S. Justice Department in the accepts search for and prosecution of Nazi war criminals, Visa, including the recent successful deportation to Germany Mastercard, of the notorious John Demjanjuk; American Express, and Discover · Promoted the search for “lost survivors” sought by by phone and in person for your relatives and friends, in cooperation convenience. with AllGenerations, Inc., headed by Serena Woolrich; (212) 239-4230 · Continued the solemn observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the largest annual commemoration in the United States, in association with New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage – a Living Memorial to the Holocaust;

· Maintained and updated the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors which now includes the records of over 185,000 survivors and their families who came to North America after World War II; · Disseminated Holocaust-related news and other items of interest to the survivor community on our website, www.americangathering.com. In order to continue these important efforts, the American Gathering needs your ongoing financial commitment and support, NOW more than ever. We face tremendous fundraising challenges and are confident that we can count on you, our Survivor family, to help us continue making the difference we do.

Your generous, tax-exempt (U.S.) contribution to the American Gathering will help us greatly in our continued activities.

We thank you in advance for your generosity, and wish you health and happiness in the coming year. American Gathering, 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205, New York, NY 10001

Name: Please make a meaningful, ______tax deductible Address: contribution payable to the ______City: State: Zip: Phone: “American Gathering.” ______Thank you. qMastercard qVisa qAmerican Express qDiscover Amount: ______Credit Card #:______Expiration Date:______

TOGETHER 24 visit our website at www.americangathering.com April 2010