AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 46-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2020-Shevat/Adar 5780

the international community to “join the vital effort of confronting Iran.” THE LARGEST “We have yet to see a unified and resolute stance against the most anti-Semitic regime on the planet,” he said. DIPLOMATIC EVENT Netanyahu warned that, today, Iran “openly seeks to develop nuclear weapons and annihi- late the one and only Jewish state.” IN ISRAEL’S HISTORY “Israel salutes [US President Donald] Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for confronting ozens of world leaders attended the ment to remembering the Shoah, for your com- the tyrants of Tehran, who subjugate their own Fifth World Holocaust Forum on Jan- mitment to the citizens of the world, who believe people, who threaten the peace and security of uary 23 at the Yad Vashem remem- in the dignity of man.” the entire world,” he added. Dbrance center. It was established to He said their countries should not take for “I call on all governments to join efforts in con- preserve the memory of the six million Jews mur- granted the common values that people fought fronting Iran. Israel will do whatever it must do to dered on an industrial scale by the Nazis and for in World War II, such as democracy and free- defend its people and the Jewish future.” their accomplices during World War II. dom, adding that Jewish people “remember, be- Iran has repeatedly called for the eradication Almost a million Jews were gassed, starved, cause we understand that if we do not remember of the State of Israel, but says that it is not anti- worked to death and killed in medical experi- then history can be repeated.” Semitic. It has also denied that it wants nuclear ments at Auschwitz, which was in Nazi-occupied “Anti-Semitism does not only stop with Jews,” weapons. Poland. he warned. “Racism and anti-Semitism are a ma- In his address, Prince Charles warned that “hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart” and said people “must be fearless in con- fronting falsehoods and resolute in resisting words and acts of violence.” ““The Holocaust must never be allowed to be- come simply a fact of history,” said Prince Charles, who was among seven key figures given the honor of addressing the hall, on the first day of his first official visit to Israel. “We must never cease to be appalled, nor moved by the testimony of those who lived through it. Their experience must always edu- cate, and guide, and warn us. The lessons of the Holocaust are searingly relevant to this day. Sev- enty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz- Birkenau, hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart, still tell new lies, adopt new dis- guises, and still seek new victims.” France’s Mr. Macron said anti-Semitism was “resurfacing” and expressed total determination to fight against it. But he also stressed that “no one has the right to invoke [those killed by the Nazis] to justify di- World leaders at the the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem. vision or contemporary hatred.” Some 75,000 Polish civilians, 15,000 Soviet lignant disease that dismantles people and coun- ice President Mike Pence addressed prisoners of war, and 25,000 Roma and Sinti, as tries, and no society and no democracy is the Forum with the following words: well as Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and immune to that.” “On this occasion, here on Mount political prisoners, were also put to death there. rime Minister Netanyahu said the VHerzl, we gather to fulfill a solemn ob- More than 40 dignitaries attended and laid Jewish people had “learned the les- ligation — an obligation of remembrance: to wreaths, including Russian President Vladimir sons of the Holocaust — that we can- never allow the memory of those who died in the Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Ger- Pnot take threats to annihilate us lightly; Holocaust to be forgotten by anyone, anywhere man President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, US Vice to confront threats when they are small; and in the world. President Mike Pence and the Prince of Wales, above all, even though we greatly appreciate the “The word ‘remember’ appears no fewer than who is making his first official trip to the Holy help of our friends, to defend ourselves by our- 169 times in the Hebrew Bible — for memory is Land. selves.” the constant obligation of all generations. In the opening address, Israeli President Israel’s prime minister has vowed that “there “And today we pause to remember what Pres- Reuven Rivlin thanked them “for your commit- will not be another Holocaust.” He also called on (Continued on page 2) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 THE LARGEST DIPLOMATIC EVENT IN ISRAEL’S HISTORY (Continued from page 1) ful place among the nations of the Earth. And Never again.” ident Donald Trump rightly called the ‘dark stain we remember — we remember the long night of In his speech at the Forum, German Presi- on human history’ — the greatest evil ever per- that past, the survivors and the faces of those we dent Frank-Walter Steinmeier noted: “The Eter- petuated by man against nal Flame at Yad Vashem does man in the long catalogue not go out. Germany’s responsibil- of human crime. ity does not expire. We want to “The faces of a million live up to our responsibility. and a half children reduced “We fight anti-Semitism! We re- to smoke under a silent sky sist the poison that is nationalism! for the crime of having a We protect Jewish life! We stand single Jewish grandparent. with Israel! The night Elie Wiesel called “Here at Yad Vashem, I renew ‘seven times sealed’ con- this promise before the eyes of sumed the faith of so many the world. And I know that I am not then, and challenges the alone. Today we join together to faith of so many still. say: No to anti-Semitism! No to “Today we remember hatred!” what happens when the Steinmeier closed his remarks powerless cry for help and by saying, “‘Who knows if we will the powerful refuse to an- ever hear again the magical sound swer.” Holocaust survivor Rose Moskowitz (left), accompanied by Colette Avital, lit the Memorial Torch at the Fifth of life? Who knows if we can weave At the end of his speech World Holocaust Forum at the Yad Vashem remembrance center, Jerusalem. ourselves into eternity — who the vice president said: knows?’ Salmen Gradowski wrote “Today we remember not simply the liberation of lost, the heroes who stood against those evil these lines in Auschwitz and buried them in a tin Auschwitz but also the triumph of freedom — a times. And today we gather nearly 50 nations can under a crematorium. Here at Yad Vashem, promise fulfilled, a people restored to their right- strong, here in Jerusalem, to say with one voice: they are woven into eternity.” “NO HATE. NO FEAR.” o Hate. No Fear.” These are of Rabbi Rottenberg in Monsey, New York. One sponsored by the UJA-Federation of New York, the words the words that of the victims remains in a coma. Throughout the the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), blazed on the signs and moti- week of Hanukkah, Jews in Manhattan and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American “Nvated masses to march across Brooklyn experienced numerous other anti-Se- Jewish Committee (AJC) and the New York Board the Brooklyn Bridge on a winter day. More than mitic incidents, many including physical violence. of Rabbis. People of all backgrounds responded 20,000 people took to the streets on Sunday, In response, the Jewish community, along with to this call to action. There were school groups, January 5th, to support the Jewish community its supporters, decided to stand up to hate and religious organizations, religious Jews, secular Jews, non-Jews, public figures, politicians from both sides, civic leaders and beloved Holocaust survivors. Many supporters of the American Soci- ety for Yad Vashem were present, including mem- bers of our Board, YLA and staff. s the crowd arrived at Cadman Plaza, we heard remarks from a number of public figures, including Malcolm A Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Standing in front of the Brooklyn War Memorial, he stated, “Never again. Never again is a pledge each of us must take, every one of us, Jew and non-Jew alike — that we will never allow what happened before to hap- pen again.” Remarks were followed by perform- ances by singer Matisyahu and a capella group The Maccabeats. The crowd was visibly moved when Matisyahu performed his popular song “One Day.” Even hours into the rally, you could still see people coming off the bridge to enter the plaza. For anyone there that day, participants and ob- Members of the American Society for Yad Vashem community at the rally in Cadman Plaza. servers alike, it was a sight to see: thousands of people of all ages and all backgrounds trekking amid an alarming spate of anti-Semitic attacks in let the world know that we will not be forced to across the iconic Brooklyn Bridge with a common the tri-state area. Four people were killed in a hide our faith or pride in our heritage. purpose — to stop the hate, to take a stand, and shooting attack on a kosher grocery store in Jer- Masses of people assembled by the court- to proudly let the world know that nothing can sey City on December 10th. Just weeks later, houses in Foley Square before marching across bring the Jewish people down. five people were stabbed by a man who targeted the Brooklyn Bridge and convening in Cadman a Hanukkah celebration taking place at the home Plaza for a large rally. The Solidarity March was BY JILL GOLTZER January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

camp office, or in the sorting details called “Kanada,” allowed the women minor privileges FIRST TRANSPORT OF not afforded other inmates. “My mother was tough, but in a good way. She learned how to survive from day one. Her JEWS TO AUSCHWITZ survival was probably due 90 percent to luck, but the other 10 percent was likely due to her per- sonality,” Akiva Koren of Haifa suburb Kiryat WAS 997 YOUNG SLOVAK Motzkin told The Times of Israel about his mother Erna Dranger, who secretly took food and other items from the pockets of victims’ gar- WOMEN AND TEENS ments she sorted in Kanada. Macadam, who splits her time between New hen Nazi Germany occupied but Macadam discovered typos on the list — now York and England, spoke passionately about much of Poland at the outbreak held in the Yad Vashem archives — making the why she wanted to write this book in a recent of World War II, the parents of actual tally 997.) conversation with The Times of Israel. W Erna and Fela Dranger sent their In vivid detail, Macadam takes readers into t’s never mentioned that the first daughters over the border from their home in the frigid, snowy towns and villages in eastern transport consisted entirely of young Tylicz to the eastern Slovakian town of Hu- Slovakia just as the town criers announced that women. Some were teenagers as menné. Their cousin Dina Dranger went with Jewish teenage girls and unmarried women up “Iyoung as 15. Why has this been ig- to age 36 must report to cen- nored?” Macadam said angrily. “This work is tral locations such as schools about defending their history and memory.” and firehouses to register for Macadam, who has a Quaker background, work service. The girls were initially learned about the first transport to shocked when they were Auschwitz from Rena Kornreich. Kornreich, also locked inside these buildings originally from Tylicz, Poland, was on that trans- and forced to strip in front of port and survived the Holocaust along with her Slovakian and Nazi officials. sister Danka. Loving parents, assuming After meeting Kornreich in 1992, Macadam their daughters would be penned her Holocaust memoir, Rena’s Promise: home for Shabbat dinner, A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz. The well-re- were left confused and wor- ceived book, originally published in 1995 and up- ried. The wealthy father of dated in 2015, was one of the first accounts of Magda Amster from Prešov, women’s lives in the camps. who realized the danger, Macadam, 60, was not finished digging into pulled every string he could the history of the first transport and the lives of From left: an unidentified girl, Anna Herskovicova, another unidentified girl, Lea Fried- to rescue his daughter, but to the young women. Determined to compile as mann and Debora Gross (Adela’s sister), c. 1936. no avail. The scene of his complete a list as possible, she worked with the them. Erna, 20, and Fela and Dina, both 18, racing in his car after the transport train before it USC Shoah Foundation to identify 22 names — found jobs and settled in with the local Humenné crossed the Polish border is heartbreaking. both survivors and nonsurvivors. (It was only Jewish community. At some point, Fela moved The book then follows these previously shel- later that she discovered the original Nazi list of on to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava with a tered young women from loving families to 997 from the first transport at Yad Vashem.) friend. Auschwitz. It was not yet The girls’ parents thought they had sent their the largest Nazi concen- daughters to safety. But on March 25, 1942, Erna tration camp and killing and Dina were among the nearly 1,000 teenage center when they arrived girls and unmarried young women deported on on March 26, 1942. There the first official transport of Jews to Auschwitz. was little there, and the Told by Slovakian authorities that they would young women were be going away to do government work service forced to build the camp for just a few months, the Jewish girls and under grueling condi- women were actually sold to the Germans by the tions. With bare hands, Slovaks for 500 Reichsmarks (about $200) they cleared land, dis- apiece as slave labor. mantled buildings, moved Fela, in the western part of the country, was materials and did agricul- not on that first transport. However, it wasn’t long tural work. It wasn’t long before she was forced to join her sister and before many of the girls, cousin in Auschwitz, arriving there on April 23 on overseen by 999 female the eighth transport from Slovakia, the first satel- prisoners transferred Linda Reich (prisoner #1173 from first transport) shown at center of photo from The Auschwitz Album. Female prisoners in the Aufräumungskommando (order commandos) sort lite state to deport its Jews. from the overcrowded the confiscated property of a transport of Jews from Subcarpathian Rus at a warehouse in Very few of the 997 girls on that first transport Ravensbruck concentra- Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944. — or any of the other early transports — survived tion camp, started dying the more than three hellish years until the end of from accidents, disease, malnutrition or suicide In 2012, Macadam went to Slovakia for the the war. Erna, Fela and Dina Dranger beat the on the electrified fence. marking of the 70th anniversary of the first de- odds, with the sisters going on to raise families 999 clearly illustrates how the women of the portation. “It was like a pilgrimage,” she said. in Israel and their cousin Dina settling in France. first transport had an advantage over the Jews Next to a memorial at Poprad train station, The story of what happened to these and the who arrived later, many of whom were immedi- from which the young women were deported, other women on the first transports to Auschwitz ately sent to the gas chambers — including Macadam left her list of 22 names and a letter is told in 999: The Extraordinary Young Women many of the girls’ own family members. Those of she had requested from the then-chief rabbi of of the First Official Jewish Transport to the women who managed to survive the initial Great Britain, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. In his Auschwitz, a compelling new book by Heather shock of adjusting to the nightmarish conditions letter, Sacks mentioned all the Jewish victims of Dune Macadam. (The Nazis had planned to de- learned how to keep themselves and their the Holocaust and referred to Rena Kornreich port 999 Jewish women on the initial transport, friends and relatives alive. Getting a job in a (Continued on page 5) Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780

lived in the four towns of Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue continuously THE ARCHIVE THIEF since medieval times” . . . and little if anything The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged Did Szajkowski’s earlier years hint at the ille- was known about them! Not surprisingly, Sza- French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holo- gitimate turn his work would take? No, not really. jkowski went looking for documents on the story caust. he young man who at sixteen left his of this region and used this research to write “an By Lisa Moses Leff. Oxford University Press: poverty-stricken Russian Polish impressive series of studies.” Finally, he New York, N.Y., 2018. 286 pp. $19.95 softcover. hometown in 1927 for Paris and soon arranged to send the documents he found and n the book by Lisa Moses Leff entitled, came under the mentoring influence the Tcherikower archive, chock full of documen- T tation on the pogroms perpetrated on the Jews The Archive Thief: The Man Who Sal- of Elias (Ilya) Tcherikower, the chair of YIVO’s vaged French Jewish History in the Wake history department and its chief archivist, fell in in Ukraine from 1918 to 1921, to YIVO in New of the Holocaust, we are presented with love with research and scholarship. For that mat- York. (Tcherikower and his wife were already in I New York.) two absorbing and thought-provoking tales. ter, Leff tells us The first is about a man with a passion for Jew- how Szajkowski hen in 1941 Szajkowski finally ish diaspora history, dedicated to the search had “a nose for made it to America, helped by and, oftentimes, the rescue of unique historical sources [docu- YIVO, he felt duty-bound to en- documents. For example, in Berlin after the ments] that W list and ended up in Europe war, he lost no time in “amass[ing] an impres- would become again. However, even though he was a soldier sive archive of materials from the abandoned his trademark.” now, he still concerned himself with salvaging Nazi ministries that documented their crimes Indeed, he left no important documents. “He helped reestablish against the Jews.” He immediately and expedi- stone unturned YIVO Committees in Paris and Brussels.” Sza- tiously arranged for these papers to be sent to when it came to jkowski himself discovered Jewish periodicals New York’s Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institute research. One printed underground during the war and had (the Jewish Scientific Institute, or YIVO), an ac- early and impor- them sent to YIVO. In fact, because of him ademic institute “dedicated to the study of Jew- tant result: He YIVO would come to have “one of the largest ish life, particularly in the Yiddish-speaking became “a major collections in the world on the experiences of world.” Thus, because of him, the material contributor to the French Jews in WWII.” was made available to researchers and schol- large, multi-au- In Berlin he began sending material back, ars. thored project too. But this time, he had no legitimate claim The other tale Leff tells us is of that selfsame that Tcherikower was editing in Paris, a collection to it (at other times, it appears he did) — this man, Zosa Szajkowski, who, with the years, be- of historical studies called Yidn in Frankraykh includes the documents he found in those came increasingly disappointed with his posi- (Jews in France), finally published in early 1942 “abandoned Nazi ministries.” Of course, he tion in life, or rather lack of it. For, regardless in New York.” Moreover, the love he had for this wasn’t the only one doing so. Things were in of the unique documents he found before, dur- kind of work even saw him doing it while he was such an uproar that lots of records and Ju- ing and after the war; regardless of all the effort in the French Foreign Legion. (The immigrant daica, looted from across Europe by the Ger- he put into to sending these countless boxes of Jew, Szajkowski, had voluntarily joined up in mans, were somehow “lost.” But might this just materials back, generally to YIVO; regardless 1939 when he was told by French-Jewish lead- be where Szajkowski’s “illegitimate” habits of how many articles and books he wrote based ers that doing so would offer him some kind of were born? Perhaps; who can say? Disap- on these materials, frequently opening up protection.) This time the topic of research was pointment can lead to many things. In sum, whole new areas of research, he felt he had lit- Jews in the Legion. And the source material he Szajkowski became a thief . . . but he was also tle to show for his work. Recognition was, in his collected here became the basis of more articles a man who salvaged Jewish history. eyes, slight, and money was forever a problem. and books he would write. Then, when he was A unique book, The Archive Thief will be of Hence in the 1950s, Szajkowski became an injured in battle and sent to a hospital in the interest to scholars of the Holocaust, scholars archive thief, stealing documents from one Comtat Venaissin, a region around the Carpen- of history generally, archivists and all those state archive or library, using them for his arti- tras, a part of Petain’s France, Szajkowski found who wonder where the primary documents they cles and books, and then selling them to an- another topic that excited him. “Whereas Jews use come from. other library or institute — all to support himself had been expelled from France proper in 1394 and the “collecting” and writing he enjoyed. and readmitted only centuries later, Jews had REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN HOW I FOUND MY BUBBY urrounded by children and older The image of my grandmother is one of 197 my grandmother until 2015. women, an adolescent girl tilts her photographs in the so-called Auschwitz Album, For reasons unclear to historians, an SS pho- head and grins. Unlike most Jews in one of the most important but poorly understood tographer (either Ernst Hoffman or Bernhard Sthe “transport,” she does not have a primary sources of the Holocaust. Although I’ve Walter) documented the 11-step “processing” of Jewish star affixed to her clothes. Her name is Hungarian Jews during several days Bella — Baila in Yiddish — and she seems to be that spring. The camp had just been showing off the new Passover dress made by modified to handle a record influx of her aunts. 424,000 Hungarian Jews, most of It was a clear day in late May of 1944 when whom were murdered upon arrival. In- 16-year-old Bella Solomon — my grandmother novations included extending the train — stood for “selection” at Auschwitz-Birkenau. tracks into the camp itself to hasten the Those thick chimneys are for bakeries, the new process. arrivals were told. Families will be reunited after The Auschwitz Album is arranged disinfection, and make sure your luggage is into 11 chapters, each of them given a marked. title corresponding to “special handling” The photograph of my grandmother appears procedures. Chronologically, the album strangely sanitized. There is no sense of the hell- begins with victims being unloaded from upon-arrival described by Elie Wiesel and Primo Bella (Baila) Solomon after the war (left) and in The Auschwitz Album. boxcars. It ends in “the grove” where Levi. It’s daytime, so no floodlights are pointed Jews selected for death — mostly chil- at people emerging from boxcars under the whip. known about the album for at least 20 years, I dren and the elderly — waited among the birch No dogs are trained on the victims. did not consider searching within its pages for (Continued on page 7) January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 FIRST TRANSPORT OF JEWS TO AUSCHWITZ WAS 997 YOUNG SLOVAK WOMEN AND TEENS (Continued from page 3) views. The relationship between Edith and her he Dranger women survived and the other women on the first transport in par- sister Lea, who were 17 and 19 respectively Auschwitz longer than almost anyone ticular. when they were deported on the first transport, else, and the scars of the experience Slovak relatives of Adela Gross saw her name is central to the book. Although permanently dis- T were forever imprinted on them. They on Macadam’s list and contacted her. For 70 abled from tuberculosis, Edith survived, while may not have spoken to their children about years, they had had no knowledge of what had Lea did not. Auschwitz, but their behavior did. happened to the lovely, red-headed Adela from “Edith still suffers from survivor’s guilt be- “My mother collapsed after my birth and my Humenné. cause Lea died and not her. She’s a biologist and aunt had to take care of me,” said Isachari, who “I realized that this was a bigger story and that she wonders whether there was something in lives in Netanya. I wanted for people to have closure. There were her DNA that enabled her to survive, while her “She was physically unwell and had other other stories and other families out there suffer- bigger, stronger older sister could not,” Macadam bouts of mental illness. I remember her going ing,” Macadam said. said. down to the entrance of our apartment building ince it is believed that the Nazis did “At the same time, it was important to me to and screaming about Nazis coming to kill her,” not keep full records on the first portray the girls as real, three-dimensional peo- he said. transports of women, and that any ple. Edith’s honest reaction at the time of Lea’s Isachari and Koren said they were extremely Sdocumentation that might have ex- death was that she was glad she herself was still grateful to Macadam for sharing their mothers’ isted was destroyed as the Allies advanced, alive,” she said. stories through her work. Macadam based her research for 999 on It was often familial bonds that helped the girls “The book gave me a lot of things I didn’t recorded survivor testimonies, memoirs and survive. Fela Dranger’s son Avi Isachari said his know or understand about my mother,” Isachari scholarly works such as Auschwitz Chronicle by aunt Erna — whom he described as an “an iron said. Danuta Czech. She cross-referenced sources woman” — got his mother a job in Kanada, en- “It’s made us very proud. I have a grandchild, to create as accurate a timeline and portrayal abling the two to find food and undergarments. so our family is now fourth generation [Holocaust of events as possible. “My aunt Dina also had a special sense for survivors]. I am going to make sure that every- 95-year-old survivor Edith Friedmann, who commerce. She could make money from nothing one gets a copy of Heather’s book,” Koren said. now lives in Toronto, provided Macadam with a but would always share with others,” Isachari wealth of information in lengthy on-camera inter- said. BY RENEE GHERT-ZAND, The Times of Israel Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780

root — without an injection, without a painkiller. I took it and said to her, ‘Mrs. Karolak, here is the diamond. As long as I stay under your roof, you will feed me.’” For starters, she gave him a pork sandwich and some vodka. Sexual exploitation and rape were also forms of “payment” that were sometimes included in ORGY OF MURDER the “transaction” between a Pole and a Jewish woman whom he saved. Testimony to that effect was given by Szejna Miriam L., a Jewish woman of 20. In June 1943, she was turned over to the Gestapo by the man who promised to save her. In her interrogation she related that the man, named Grabacz, “promised to help and that very night he had intercourse with me.” She gave him More than 200,000 Jews were killed, directly the prevailing opinion, according to which most a diamond ring, a gold watch, a wedding ring and or indirectly, by Poles in World War II, says his- of those who proffered help were “righteous.” He clothing, but the next day she was arrested by torian Jan Grabowski, who studied the brutal per- describes no few instances in which Poles saved the Gestapo. “Now I know that I am doomed and secution of the victims. His conclusion: there Jews and then extorted money from them, and that Grabacz betrayed me,” she told the Nazi in- were no bystanders in the Holocaust. in some cases murdered them if they didn’t get terrogators before being sent to Auschwitz. n January 2017, the Polish-born historian what they wanted. A debate is raging in Poland about the role of Jan Grabowski won a lawsuit he filed That was the tragic story of Rywka Gluck- the local population in the Holocaust. At its center against a Polish website. About 18 months mann and her two sons, who in 1942 were given is the question of whether the Poles were victims Iearlier, the site had launched a savage at- shelter by Michal Kozik in Dabrowa Tarnowska of the Nazis or collaborators with them, and tack on him under the headline, “Sieg Heil, Mr. county. Until a short time before the Russians en- where they are to be placed in terms of rescuers, Grabowski,” accompanied by a photograph of tered the area and freed its citizens from the Ger- murderers or bystanders in relation to the fate of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. man occupation, he allowed them to remain in their Jewish neighbors. That followed the publication of a favorable his house, as long as they paid him. But when n a visit to Israel, Polish President Andrzej report in a German newspaper about the money ran out, he butchered all three with Duda referred extensively to the dark Grabowski’s book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal an ax. Jews who were hiding across the way chapters in the Polish people’s past. A and Murder in German-Occupied Poland. The heard the cries of people being murdered, and member of the ruling right-wing Law and book describes the Polish population’s involve- the next day they learned that the Gluckmanns I Justice Party, he was elected in part on the ment in turning in and murdering Jews who were dead, as a local resident, Izaak Stieglitz, basis of his promise to introduce “a new strat- asked for their help during the Holocaust. testified after the war. egy in history policy” — namely, to rebuff those Grabowski’s book was first published in his A better fate befell a Jewish dentist, Jakub who “falsely accuse the Poles” of par- native land in 2011, and two years later in Eng- ticipating in the Holocaust, as he put lish, by Indiana University Press. A revised and it. However, in remarks he made in Is- expanded edition, in Hebrew translation, has rael, Duda took a more moderate now been published by Yad Vashem. stance, admitting that “historical truth The research underlying the book is the fruit is not always pleasant, and that is true of a three-year archival journey embarked upon for the Polish nation as well.” He by Grabowski in pursuit of a phenomenon called added, “As in every nation, we had “hunting for Jews.” The term, which originates in decent people but there were also the German word Judenjagd, refers to the mur- mean people,” and “those who acted derous search for Jews who succeeded in es- despicably and inhumanely should be caping from the ghettos and sought haven from utterly condemned.” their compatriots in occupied Poland. Poles who took part in the persecu- Grabowski’s book concentrates on a rural re- tion of Jews during the Holocaust “re- gion of southeastern Poland called Dabrowa moved themselves from the Polish Tarnowska. Of its population of 60,000 on the people,” he asserted. Everyone can eve of the war, 5,000 were Jews, almost all of judge that statement according to his whom were deported to the death camp Belzec. understanding, but according to data in Of 500 who managed to escape and hide among Grabowski’s possession, the attempt the Poles, only 38 survived the war. All the oth- to argue that the “mean” Poles were ers, as Grabowski discovered, were betrayed only a minority and not part of the Pol- and murdered in direct or indirect ways by their ish people is oversimplistic and possi- Polish neighbors. The events described in Hunt bly lets the whole Polish people off too for the Jews, notes the historian Timothy Snyder easily. (author of Bloodlands), constitute “an inquiry into I raised this sensitive, highly human behavior in dark times from which all can charged and painful issue in my con- learn.” versation with Grabowski. I asked him, Drawing on Polish, Jewish and German is it possible for historians to know how records from the war and postwar periods, The Polish Ulma family, which hid Jews during the Holocaust and was mur- dered by the Nazis. many Jews were killed directly or indi- Grabowski was able to document the local pop- rectly by Poles during World War II? ulation’s involvement in turning over and murder- Glatsztern, who found shelter in the home of a The reply is disturbing and haunting. ing the Jews who sought their help — but also Polish woman. When his money ran out, Grabowski cites a huge figure: more than the heroism of Poles who tried to rescue their Grabowski writes, he turned to his last remaining 200,000. “Precise numbers are very hard to Jewish neighbors and sometimes paid for it with option: He decided to extract one of his teeth, in come by,” he observes, but immediately goes on their lives. the crown of which he had hidden a diamond. He to explain his calculations. “One can start by say- Between these two extremes, Grabowski also asked the woman’s husband for pliers. “He gave ing that about 35,000 Polish Jews survived the found more complex cases: of Poles who helped me old, rusty pliers. I had to remove the tooth to- war in Poland (excluding those who fled into the Jews not for altruistic and moral reasons, but out gether with the root, otherwise I risked breaking Soviet Union and returned after the war). We of greed. In this connection, his study challenges the diamond. So I removed the tooth with the (Continued on page 13) January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7

Album image with my Bubby. According to my grandmother’s testimony, her HOW I FOUND MY BUBBY mother and three younger sisters were “se- (Continued from page 4) were of Hungarian Jews. lected” for the showers, along with her father and trees. Those grove images were labelled, “Bod- At the end of 2015, I had a breakthrough in two younger brothers. One of the brothers, ies that are no longer capable.” my research: The region Bubby lived in had been Simon, was 15 years old, and he might have been able to get through selection — Bubby sus- “NOBODY GOT MARRIED WITHOUT ME” under Hungarian control during the war. Imme- diately, I wondered if any of the people identified pected — had he pretended to be one year older. efore I could find my grandmother in the album were also from Znacova. I exam- Because the SS was ordered to “process” in The Auschwitz Album, I needed ined every caption in a Yad Vashem–published nearly half a million Hungarian Jews in two to listen to her testimony. A few version of the album, and there were indeed peo- months, there was no time to brand a tattoo onto B years after the release of ple from Znacova and other towns in the my grandmother’s arm. With several transports Schindler’s List in 1993, both of my paternal Carpathian Ruthenia region. arriving daily, the system began to sputter, so grandparents gave testimony to Steven Spiel- Equipped with Bubby’s self-description as some steps were skipped. Most critically for the berg’s Shoah Foundation. I was the first per- impish, very thin and free-willed, I scrutinized the SS, the capacity of the “ovens” could not handle son in my family to view Bubby’s interview, image of a girl early in the album. I had noticed so many thousands of corpses each day. although not until 2010. By then she had been her before, the awkward girl with a gap between “They had no room to burn them,” said Bubby gone for three years. her teeth and that out-of-place grin at Birkenau. in her testimony. Born in 1927, Bubby came from the town Zna- But now I saw myself in her eyes for the first The overflow conditions played a role in unit- cova in today’s Ukraine. The half-Jewish farming time. ing the paths of my grandmother and her father community was not far from the Hasidic center Immediately, I started comparing the image to near the birch grove. As Bubby and her sisters Munkacs, where Bubby and the Jews of her my grandmother’s postwar photos. The similari- were marching from the “sauna” disinfection town would be imprisoned in a ghetto. building to the Hungarian women’s camp, the words “Shma Yisroel” were shouted in their di- rection. “I take a look, it’s my father,” said my grand- mother. “He saw us passing by and began to yell. He recognized us even without our hair. He did recognize us.” “CONFORMITY TO THE EXPECTATIONS OF AUTHORITIES” ike my grandmother, Lily Jacob of Bilke came to Auschwitz in one of those late May transports from Hungary. Also like Lmy grandmother, Jacob was trans- ferred from Auschwitz to another camp. In Jacob’s case, that camp was Dora-Mittlebau in Germany. Just following liberation, Jacob went into for- merly off-limits buildings in search of food, cloth- ing and medicine. Rummaging through drawers in a barracks, she came across a beige photo album titled Resettlement of the Jews from Hun- Auschwitz Album image altered to spotlight Bella (Baila) Solomon, May 1944. gary. Within its pages, Jacob saw the faces of her One of eight children, Bubby grew up speak- ties, everyone agreed, were overwhelming. My murdered relatives. She also found herself in a ing Yiddish, Czech and Ukrainian. Owning farm- grandmother’s self-description helped me find wide shot of women prisoners whose heads had land, the family hosted impoverished Jews for her among hundreds of women and children in just been shaved. There were close-ups of rab- Shabbat and sent food to the needy. Znacova the album. was not exactly a shtetl, but there was no elec- bis she knew from Bilke and a now-iconic image tricity and news was announced in the town “GIVE AWAY THE CHILD” of her two younger brothers in matching coats square. n the last day of Passover, “with and hats. My grandmother described herself as a wily the dishes out to be washed,” Since the 1960s, images from The Auschwitz child, always on the lookout for her “religious fa- Bubby and the Jews of Znacova Album have been used in thousands of books, natic” of a father. “When my father wasn’t there, were rounded up and sent to the articles, museums and documentaries, and O served as evidence in the Eichmann trial and I was there,” she told the Shoah Foundation in- Munkacs ghetto. terviewer. She enjoyed sneaking into churches For six weeks, they slept on the floor of a fac- other proceedings. Remarkably, nearly three- to see brides and grooms: “Nobody got married tory. On the day before Shavuot — May 27 — quarters of the victims whose faces appear in the without me,” she said. everyone was herded onto boxcars. There was photos have been identified by either them- In addition to her multiple languages and a lot of praying, Bubby recalled of the journey, selves, survivors or relatives. sense of adventure, Bubby was adept at many and the corpse of someone who died along the However, despite the fame of the album, forms of needlecraft. Unlike her siblings, she way was taken off. there are quite a few gaps surrounding our un- moved easily in non-Jewish society, so her After the chain of boxcars lumbered into derstanding of the carefully prepared photo col- mother sent her into town to sell produce. She Birkenau, the transport was unloaded. The ar- lection. loved showing off her clothes and was thin as a rivals were greeted by Hungarian Jewish women “Known by all, no one truly questions or ana- rail, Bubby said with her wide, saggy smile. in white caps. lyzes [the album] as one should any historical From the time I learned that my grandparents “Give away the child, the child is not gonna document, particularly using the tools of external were in the Holocaust, I was told they were from have what to eat,” my grandmother recalled the and internal criticism,” wrote French historian Tal Czechoslovakia. I knew most of Bubby’s family women saying. Some mothers handed babies to Bruttmann in an academic paper on the album members were murdered at Auschwitz and that grandmothers or older aunts, assuming there last year. she had been imprisoned there. But I never con- would be better conditions in a “family camp.” Calling The Auschwitz Album an “isolated sidered my grandmother could be in The After everyone was divided into “selection” lines, document” among Holocaust sources, Bruttmann Auschwitz Album because those photographs the SS photographer captured The Auschwitz (Continued on page 11) Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780

The American Society for Yad Vashem, (ASYV) Board and staff mourn the untimely passing of our beloved immediate past ex- ecutive director, Dr. Ron Meier. For five years Ron led the ASYV with distinction and foresight. As a child of Holocaust survivors, Ron was passionate about the mission of Yad Vashem. He once said how grateful he was for having the opportunity to work for a cause that allowed his life and career to be in harmony. Ron embodied the highest stan- dards in his profession and serves as a role model for Jewish communal service. Our thoughts are with his family: his wife, Rabbi Joyce Raynor; their daughters, Rachel Meier and Jessica Werner; and their grandchildren, Mia and Blake. May the family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Leonard Wilf Stanley H. Stone Chairman Executive Director January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 HARROWING PAINTINGS BY HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR SHOWING HELL HANDED OVER TO AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM

collection of 19 paintings made after the war by Auschwitz survivor Edith Hofmann has gone to the Auschwitz A Museum collection. The striking images depict the harrowing fate of fellow prisoners from the artist’s own experi- ence. Agnieszka Sieradzka, of the museum’s art collection department, said the works present life in the camp, punishments, deaths during escape attempts, marches of death and recollections and portraits of people the artist remembered.

Edith Hofmann. “The bright colors and wildly deformed char- acters provoke anxiety and fear,” Sieradzka said of Hofmann’s work. “They are a metaphor for the pain and suffer- ing through which the artist must have gone. “In conjunction with the poems that accom- pany them, the pictures represent the extremely personal witness account of a woman who went through the hell of the concentration camps.” Edith Hofmann was born in 1927 in Prague. In 1941, she was deported along with her family to the Litzmannstadt ghetto in Łódź, and from there in 1944 to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp. After several weeks, she was transferred to Christianstadt, a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. During the March of Death she was evacu- ated to Bergen-Belsen, where a month later she was liberated by the British Army. She started studying art in the 1970s and showed her work in a variety of places. “For my mother, art was a way of tackling the trauma,”said Hofmann’s daughter, Amanda Steart, who gave the works to the museum collection. Edith never returned to the Auschwitz memo- rial site but wanted her paintings to go to the mu- seum after her death.

BY EWAN JONES, The First News Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780

refurbished 42 accommodation huts, shower and toilet blocks, two synagogues, a medical clinic, THE FORGOTTEN HAVEN: a post office and shops. The men were not interned; they could re- quest a pass to leave the camp. They played KENT CAMP THAT SAVED football against local teams and visited nearby beaches, and some illicitly worked for cash on Kent farms. Nine editions of a newsletter, the 4,000 GERMAN JEWS Kitchener Camp Review, were published. At the time, the population of Sandwich was t is a nearly forgotten chapter in 20th-century After the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 3,500. The arrival of 4,000 refugees could have history: the rescue of thousands of Jewish 1938, when Jews and their property were vio- been overwhelming, but they were largely wel- men from the Nazis, brought to a camp on lently attacked, about 30,000 Jewish men were comed. Hundreds of people attended concerts the outskirts of the medieval town of Sand- rounded up and taken to Dachau, Sachsen- I performed by refugee musicians, and local chil- wich in Kent as darkness fell across Europe. hausen and Buchenwald concentration camps. dren visited the camp to play table tennis. The Kitchener Camp rescue began in Febru- The Central British Fund (CBF), a Jewish aid The men expected their families to follow ary 1939, and by the time war broke out seven organization in the UK now known as World Jew- them to the UK. Some women were granted “do- months later, about 4,000 men — mainly Ger- ish Relief, persuaded the British government to mestic service visas” enabling them to escape man and Austrian Jews — had arrived by train admit some refugees. Adult men were brought to the Nazis, but arrivals abruptly ended with the and boat. Although the story of the 10,000 Jew- the UK on condition they would not be granted UK outbreak of war on September 1, 1939. ish children brought to the UK on the Kinder- citizenship, they must not work, and they must em- Nearly all Kitchener men were categorized in transport is well known, the Kitchener Camp has igrate onwards to the US, Australia and elsewhere. tribunals as “friendly aliens,” with the words received much less attention. The CBF organized transport and rented a “refugee from Nazi oppression” stamped on their “It’s not even well known in [UK] Jewish com- derelict army base at Richborough, near Sand- papers. “Enemy aliens” were interned. munities,” said Clare Weissenberg, an exibition wich, to house the men. Their first task was to fter the start of the war, 887 Kitch- curator at the Jewish Museum in London. transform the site into a small town. They built or ener men enlisted in the Pioneer Corps. But after the Dunkirk evacua- A tion in May 1940, public opinion turned against German-speaking refugees, whom some suspected of being spies or sabo- teurs. Those not serving in the war effort were in- terned or deported to Australia and Canada. The Kitchener Camp was closed. Weissenberg began investigating the camp’s history after she “inherited [my father’s] German suitcase. I saw references to the Kitchener Camp and thought, ‘What on earth is that?’” She set up a website and began collecting sto- ries and memorabilia from descendants of Kitch- ener men. “Often they hadn’t talked about it. Many of the men lost wives, children, parents — survivor guilt is a huge thing. Many families didn’t know much about the history,” she said. “As a child [of Holocaust survivors], you knew ... not to ask, al- most to protect your parent.” An exception was Lothar Nelken, who had been a judge in Germany before being stripped of his position under the Nuremberg Laws and interned in Buchenwald concentration camp. “He wrote a diary throughout the war. I grew up knowing about his experiences in Buchenwald. He never kept secrets, he shared his memories,” said his son, Stephen. On Thursday, July 13, 1939, Lothar Nelken wrote: “At around 9 pm we arrived in the camp.… We were welcomed with jubilation. After supper we were taken to our huts; Hut 37/II. I chose an upper bunk. One hut sleeps 36 men. The beds are sur- prisingly good. One sleeps as if in a cradle.” In 1973, Clare Ungerson discovered a plaque in Sandwich, “but the wording was very strange, referring to refugees from Nazi oppression.” The daughter of a German Jewish refugee, Ungerson “realized it must refer to Jews, but I’d never heard of this camp.” After she retired, she researched and wrote a book, Four Thousand Lives. In terms of the terri- ble history of the time, the Kitchener Camp may be a small detail, she said, “but it’s not small to the many descendants of Kitchener men, who would not exist if those men hadn’t been rescued.”

BY HARRIET SHERWOOD, The Guardian January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 HOW I FOUND MY BUBBY (Continued from page 7) cluding the one of my grandmother. I spoke Springer-Aharoni in our exchange. wrote, “[The album] was designed to show the about the confusion in dating the photos and My grandmother said she was taken from the smoothness of operations and their conformity shared what Sawicki told me. Munkacs ghetto on the eve of Shavuot. So she to the expectations of the authorities.” “When we look at the images and compare the was not on the same transport as Lily Jacob, In part through a painstaking cataloging of types of train cars and length of the shadows, we who — in any case — was deported from a dif- dozens of train carriages built in four European can see that there are at least two different peri- ferent ghetto. Bubby’s transport would have ar- countries, Bruttmann confirmed the presence of ods of the day and two different transports. But it’s rived one or two days after the holiday in which at least seven deportation trains in the album. impossible to say anything more,” said Sawicki. Jews commemorate the receiving of the Torah, Additionally, he determined the photos could not In 2002, Nina Springer-Aharoni of Yad Vashem during a week in which more than 20 deportation have been taken in one day, as claimed in some was one of several scholars who wrote essays for trains were processed at Birkenau. printed versions of the album. the book, Auschwitz Album: The “IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY ANYTHING Story of a Transport. Since we MORE” now know the photos depict sev- eral transports, the title is a mis- egarding the Lili Jacob album, nomer. It’s impossible to confirm or not In Springer-Aharoni’s essay, confirm anything,” said Pawel “Photographs as Historical Doc- “RSawicki, head of press rela- ument,” she provided readers tions at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and with insights into the photos, in- Museum. cluding when they were taken. Like the guides he works alongside, Sawicki “I relied on the testimonies of refers to the document as “the Lily Jacob album,” the many survivors identified in and not The Auschwitz Album. This is because the album at the time,” there were several albums made about the death Springer-Aharoni told The camp, including one of the camp’s SS officers at Times of Israel. “Most of the their retreat near the camp. survivors did not [name] an Sawicki has an encyclopedic knowledge of exact date, but they stated Yisrael and Zelig, the brothers of Lily Jacob, in The Auschwitz Album. Auschwitz-Birkenau, and he created a fascinat- specifically that they arrived on the eve of the Within hours of her smile being frozen in time ing book in which Auschwitz Album photos were Shavuot holiday, including Lily Jacob,” said the by an SS photographer, my grandmother learned juxtaposed with his photos of the same locations. retired Yad Vashem museum curator. the law of Auschwitz. The chimneys were not for To make the matches, he paired features from “I also tried to check the date according to the bakeries, and families would not be reunited. the old images — such as fence posts and chim- names of the ghettos from which the transports Her father’s “Shma Yisroel” shouted near the neys — with remains of the camp today. were deported and trains departed, plus 2 to 3 gas chambers were his last words to her. Bubby At the end of May, I brought a group of college days — the duration of travel and arrival to never saw him, her mother or her five younger students to Auschwitz-Birkenau for a service- Auschwitz. It seemed correct to follow the major- siblings again. learning mission. The Auschwitz Album photos, ity of the survivors, and record the date as May I told them, were taken exactly 75 years ago, in- 27–28, 1944, on the eve of Shavuot,” wrote BY MATT LEBOVIC, The Times of Israel Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780

ter. “He was very nice,” she says. “He carried me into the garden when the weather got better.” THE DOCTOR WHO HID A A genealogy website reveals that Pétri went on to become mayor of Val d’Isère, welcoming royals and celebrities to the slopes, among them JEWISH GIRL — AND THE Princess Anne and the Empress of Iran. But he never mentioned to anyone that he had hidden and nursed a Jewish girl during the war. RESORT THAT WANTS TO His daughter, Christel, is not surprised by the revelation. “He was driven by a passion, not for plastering broken legs, but for caring for people,” FORGET she says. “He was profoundly generous, and all his life he did everything he could for others.” s the first snow began to fall in De- about their time in the Alps. Marion waved her Today, Val d’Isère stretches for three miles cember 1943, Huguette Müller and hand dismissively whenever asked about it. along a narrow mountain plateau, but in the her sister Marion quietly left the Only one photograph of that period remains. 1940s it was a tiny place with fewer than 150 res- A French city of Lyon and traveled up Marion died in 2010, and as her daughter-in-law idents. “My father’s house was on the main into the Alps, to one of the highest ski resorts in it fell to me to empty out her house. In an old suit- street,” she says. “To hide a Jewish girl was a Europe. case, alongside her wartime papers, there was very dangerous thing to do.” Christel is also sur- The city was no longer safe, as Klaus Bar- a picture of her standing next to a mountain prised that the sisters chose to hide in such a bie — the SS leader who became known as the chalet in the snow. small place. The answer, she thinks, lies in why Butcher of Lyon — had begun to intensify his It’s only now, 76 years later, that Huguette has her father came to Val d’Isère in the first place. search for Jews. The two young women pinned decided that she wants her story to be told. n 1938, passionate about winter sports, the their hopes of survival on the village of Val d’Isère, Both sisters were born in Berlin in the 1920s young doctor decided to join his friends, just a few kilometers from the Italian border. and fled to France from Germany with their par- among them world-class ski champions, Huguette had already had to flee from Nice, ents in 1933, soon after Hitler came to power. Iwho had founded the resort a few years which had been a haven for Jews while it re- earlier. Like many of the young men who ran the mained under Italian control. But in September hotels and ski schools, he was born in Alsace, a 1943, when Italy dropped out of the war, the region of eastern France that before World War Nazis swooped along the Riviera making thou- I had been occupied by the Germans. Christel sands of arrests. believes this instilled a dislike of Germany that One of them was Huguette’s and Marion’s was only reinforced by the two years he spent in mother, Edith, seized as she attempted to obtain a prisoner-of-war camp near Stuttgart, from 1940 false papers for herself and Huguette. She was to 1942. deported in late October and gassed on arrival When the Germans arrived in the Alps in Sep- in Auschwitz — a fact the sisters would only learn tember 1943, the young men and women of Val after the war. d’Isère turned the best weapons they had Aged 15, Huguette had made her way to against them — their skis. Adept at crisscrossing Lyon, to live with 23-year-old Marion. And now the mountain passes, they set up a resistance they were both on the move again. network. One of the group was Germain Mattis, In the winter of 1943, though, the mountains a local ski instructor who was arrested by the were also a risky place to hide. German soldiers Germans in June 1944 and died in a concentra- recently relocated from the Russian front were tion camp at the age of 27. based in Val d’Isère’s Hotel des Glaciers. They This may well be the reason that Marion se- pillaged hotels and restaurants and burned Frédéric Pétri in 1936. lected Val d’Isère as a place to hide. Her future chalets to the ground if they found someone While Marion had false papers, Huguette did husband Pierre Haymann was not only a member who’d been drafted to work in a German factory not. Their parents had been careful to get her of the resistance, but his family was from Alsace. and failed to go. Locals still refer to the occupa- baptized, so there was no telltale J for Juif on her He may have had connections in the resort. tion as la terreur. carte d’identité, but it did say she had been born Trusting the doctor, Marion left her sister in The SS was also on the lookout for suspicious in Berlin. That would have been enough for her Val d’Isère to recover and went to join Pierre in strangers. So why the sisters went to Val d’Isère to be arrested and sent to her death on arrival at Toulouse. The break would take six months to puzzles Huguette, now 92. One possibility is that the hospital in Bourg-Saint-Maurice. mend, so it was not until June 1944 that she re- Marion had been advised to go there by her fu- Huguette says the doctor explained that with- turned. Now pregnant, she narrowly avoided ture husband, Pierre Haymann, a member of the out the right medical care she would end up with being raped and murdered by the SS on the way. French resistance. But they found themselves in one leg shorter than the other. “I replied it was Hoping to learn more about resistance activi- serious danger when, not long before Christmas, better to limp than be dead,” she says. So, re- ties in Val d’Isère, I sent a number of emails and Huguette slipped and broke her leg. markably, he offered to care for her, for six left posts on the resort’s Facebook page. I got The village doctor said the break was so bad months, in his own house. only one reply, from a member of a famous Paris that the teenager needed to be moved to the Why a total stranger was prepared to risk his hairdressing dynasty — Roby Joffo — whose hospital in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, down in the val- life for a teenage girl he had met moments before uncle, Joseph Joffo, wrote one of France’s best- ley. Scared that questions would be asked and is a mystery. If he had been caught, he and his known Holocaust memoirs, A Bag of Marbles. their cover blown, Marion panicked and punched family would have been imprisoned or shot. Roby’s father, Henri, and his uncle Maurice him in the face. It’s a mystery to Huguette too. (Joseph Joffo’s elder brothers) were also lying *** “When I returned to Val d’Isère in the 1970s low in Val d’Isère during the winter of 1943–44, n a foggy morning in San Francisco, to find him and thank him, it was too late,” she though they felt secure enough to work in a hair Huguette takes a sharp intake of says. “His widow answered the door and said he salon on the main street, opposite the Pétris’ breath, and continues telling the was dead. That was that. And now I can’t quite chalet. The Pétri and Joffo families have re- Ostory of how she survived the Holo- remember his full name.” mained close ever since. caust, under the doctor’s care. A quick Google search reboots her memory. It Roby is adamant that there were other Jews “I think I was there for six months, I can’t quite reveals his name in seconds. The main round- hiding in the valley. He makes a number of calls remember — all I knew was that it was safe,” she about in Val d’Isère is Rond-Point Dr Pétri. The to Val d’Isère, but nobody seems to know any- says. doctor, Huguette confirms, was Dr. Frédéric Pétri, thing about it. Neither Huguette nor Marion ever spoke who lived in a large chalet with his mother and sis- (Continued on page 15) January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

old mixture of various anti-Semitic cliches and prejudice fostered by the teachings of the ORGY OF MURDER Catholic Church,” he says. In this connection, he (Continued from page 6) occupiers: vodka, sugar, potatoes, oil — along notes that the archives of the Catholic Church in also know that close to 10 percent of Jews fled with personal items taken from the victims. Poland remain “closed and sealed,” so that the the liquidated ghettos in 1942 and 1943 — which “Local inhabitants were actively involved in full and precise picture of the institution’s contri- would give you a number of about 250,000 Jews pulling out Jews from the bunkers in the ghetto,” bution to the persecution of the Jews is not who tried to survive in hiding. Subtract the first Zeminski wrote in his diary, which Grabowski known. number from the second and you will see the quotes in his book. “They pulled out the Jews To this he adds the appearance of “a virulent scale of the ‘dark’ territory, in which the Poles, for from the houses; they caught them in the fields, strand of 19th–20th century nationalism,” com- the most part, decided who lived and who died.” in the meadows. The shots are still ringing, but bined with “a fairly substantial Jewish presence” There is no doubt, he writes in his book, “that our hyenas already set their sights on the Jewish in Poland — in some of the areas that he re- the great majority of Jews in hiding perished as riches. The [Jewish] bodies are still warm, but searched in the country, Jews constituted 50 per- a consequence of betrayal. They were de- people already start to write letters, asking for cent of the population. Another factor in the list nounced or simply seized, tied up and delivered Jewish houses, Jewish stores, workshops or of reasons for the Jew-persecution by the Poles by locals to the nearest station of the Polish po- parcels of land.” People, he noted, “volunteered was the horrors of everyday life under occupa- lice, or to the German gendarmerie.” for this hunt willingly, without any coercion.” tion. whole mechanism was set up to hunt he “heroes” of Grabowski’s book, “The combination of these three factors, I Jews, he says. It operated under those who took part in the “hunt for argue, created an ugly climate in which hate German supervision, but all those on the Jews” and turned it into a national could grow,” Grabowski says. Nevertheless, he A the ground were Poles: villagers who T sport, were people like Jozef Koza- emphasizes, he is not submitting an indictment conducted “night watches,” local informers, po- czka, from Dabrowa, who licemen, firefighters and others. Together, established a large hiding Grabowski maintains, they created a dense web place for 18 of the city’s that made it almost impossible for those hiding Jews — and then, at his to escape discovery. own initiative, turned them Grabowski emphasizes that the actual num- all over to the Germans. ber of Jews murdered by Poles is even higher Another “hero,” Michal than his estimate. “[My] count is very, very con- Witkowski, from Luszowice, servative,” he notes, “because I have not in- caught a Jewish girl who cluded here the human toll of the Polish ‘Blue’ was hiding in his barn and police, who were a deadly force not only after the delivered her to the nearest liquidation of the ghettos but during these so- police station, where she called liquidation actions.” To support his argu- was executed. On the way ment, he recruits Emmanuel Ringelblum, the he took from her a small German and Polish police, Poland, 1943. historian of the Warsaw ghetto, who said that the package she was holding “Blue” police alone were responsible for “hun- that contained two sweaters and a small box with of the whole Polish people: “There is nothing ‘na- dreds of thousands of Jewish deaths.” a needle and thread. He was sentenced to six tional,’ or Polish, to the story — you can find very The background to Grabowski’s research years in prison after the war. similar situations in Lithuania and Ukraine.” consisted of the numerous and well-known sto- Thanks to trials that were held of people like or the Germans, Jew-hunting de- ries of many Poles about the war period, which him by the postwar Communist regime in pended on large-scale involvement by often included statements like, “The Germans ar- Poland, Grabowski was able to uncover many the local Polish population. Testi- rived and took the Jews away.” One of the goals details about the part played by the Poles in per- Fmonies to this effect are found in Ger- of his book, he writes, “is to answer the question secuting Jews in the war. The book’s more than man documents as well. One of them was a about how exactly the Germans knew where to 300 pages are filled with jolting testimonies that “working memorandum” issued by the Warsaw- look for the Jews, and to uncover the circum- portray the Polish villagers as heartless mon- area SS and police commandant in March 1943, stances surrounding the detection and death of sters who were ready to kill their neighbors for a titled “Concerns: Arrest and liquidation of Jews unfortunate refugees hidden in the villages and bottle of vodka without batting an eyelash. who remain in hiding.” The document, which is forests of the Polish countryside.” Grabowski describes an “incredible level of vio- reproduced in Grabowski’s book, states, “In He found the answer in archives, where he lence, which evolved into an orgy of murder.” He order to succeed, one has to involve the Sonder- came across harrowing documents, such as the backs up his conclusions with testimonies from dienst [Special Services], the Polish Police and diary left behind by Stanislaw Zeminski, a contemporaries, both Jews and Poles. the informers. It is also necessary to involve the teacher from the town of Lukow in eastern “In those tragic days we could once again see broad masses of Polish society.” The document Poland. He documented the war’s atrocities until the animal-like instinct of the Polish peasant,” a added, “Persons who have helped to apprehend he himself died in the Majdanek death camp, young Jewish woman, Chaja Rosenblatt-Lewi, the Jews can receive up to one-third of the probably in 1943. testified shortly after the war. “It was not enough seized property.” Zeminski’s diary, which was found after his [for them] to kick the Jews out; they even went To achieve their goal, Grabowski explains, the death in a garbage heap in the camp, eventually after those who hid in the woods, and in the Germans developed a system of prizes and pun- reached the archive of the Jewish Historical In- fields, taking away their last possessions. Even ishments, which they intertwined in their propa- stitute in Warsaw. if they did not kill them themselves, they de- ganda against “the Jewish threat.” Punishment “For me, the situation was even more tragic,” nounced them to the police, and the police fin- for hiding Jews, for example, could be death, ar- Zeminski wrote, “because the orgy of murders ished them off,” she said. She noted that the rest or fines. “Peasants, firefighters, elders and was not only the deed of the Germans, and their hunting of Jews by Poles in the areas adjacent Polish rural youth were forcibly made parts of the Ukrainian and Latvian helpers. It was clear that to the ghettos became such a commonplace German system and were subject to brutal Ger- our [i.e., Polish] policemen would take part in the spectacle that “even dogs got used to the sound man reprisals and equally brutal German disci- slaughter (one knows that they are like animals), of gunfire, and stopped yapping.” pline,” Grabowski writes. At the same time, he but it turned out that normal Poles, accidental Explaining the background to the phenome- observes that the “deadly efficiency” of this sys- volunteers, took part as well.” non, Grabowski told me that at the height of the tem depended on “the zeal and willingness of its What he wrote next makes for difficult read- war, Jewish life was perceived as worthless by participants.” ing. He provides testimony by Polish peasants many Poles — so much so that “many ceased to According to a study conducted by Poland’s who surrounded a nearby village and launched view the murder of Jews as a crime.” Institute of National Remembrance, an organiza- a hunt for Jews, as Zeminski puts it. They did it, How did that happen? “Many Polish peasants tion that operates under the auspices of the gov- he writes, to obtain prizes offered by the German saw the Jews through the prism of a centuries- (Continued on page 15) Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780

anopoulou and Axiopoulos families saved most of the immediate Mordechai family members during the war. HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Dina told reporters that seeing Mor and Yanai’s descendants was incredibly moving for her and expressed that her and her sisters’ ac- REUNITE WITH RESCUER tions “were the right thing to do.” Mor and Yanai both said they were feeling “very emotional and excited” about the special get-together. AT YAD VASHEM Mor’s grandson, Imri Dor, told The Jerusalem Post that he was “super excited” to meet Dina. “I’d heard so much about it growing up, and it’s really special to finally put a face to the name,” he said. “She is a great inspiration, I hope that I will have the same courage. I’m so proud to be here,” he added. Stanlee J. Stahl, the vice president of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, explained The heroic actions of the Gianopoulou and “They were a very poor family,” Mor ex- to the Post that “to the best of my knowledge, this Axiopoulos families saved most of the immediate plained. “They saved us because they loved my is the last reunion [of rescuers and survivors] that Mordechai family members during the war. mother for her good heart.” will ever take place.” here was not a dry eye in sight as sib- “She [Dina] reminded me how we used to play She said that since 1992 she has been organ- lings Sarah Yanai and Yossi Mor em- together,” Mor told reporters. “Thanks to her, we izing such reunions once a year, but today, either braced the woman who saved their have our large and beautiful family.” the rescuers have died, the survivors have died T lives in Greece during the Holocaust. As the war continued, the three sisters shared or they are too frail to travel. On November 3, Melpomeni Dina (née Gi- their food rations with the Mordechai family and “It makes me feel sad,” Stahl added. anopoulou) reunited with Yanai and Mor (whose family name had been Mordechai) in an emo- tional meeting when they introduced their res- cuer, 92-year-old Dina, to almost 40 family members. The meeting took place at Yad Vashem, the meeting facilitator, and was sponsored by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. With tears streaming down her face, Dina told Mor that his grandson, currently serving in the IDF, “resembles you as a child.” “You are no longer that small boy that I re- member,” Dina added, crying and laughing at the same time. After the two embraced Dina, Yanai told re- porters that she was so happy. “There are no words to describe this feeling,” she said. “It is very emotional for us to be to- gether again.” Dina responded that it had been “so long” and invited the siblings to come back with her to Greece. Descendants of the Mordechai family and Righteous Among the Nations rescuer Melpomeni Dina on the balcony exiting from The Mordechai family lived in Veria, Greece, Yad Vashem. a small town of 600 Jews near Thessaloniki. sheltered them despite the risk to their own lives. However, she shared excitement about this Today, they reside in Ramat Hasharon and Beer- With food supplies scarce and expensive, meeting being the first to take place in Israel, ex- sheba. Bithleem and Melpomeni farmed a piece of land plaining that such meetings usually take place at As the Germans rolled into Veria, Dina and they owned in a swamp near Giannitsa, around John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. her older sisters Efthimia and Bithleem Gi- 40 kilometers from Veria. They would return from “One of the beautiful things about doing it in Is- anopoulou risked their lives for almost two years working the land, carrying the provisions on their rael is that you get to see the future generations: to help the Mordechai family, and together with backs for all 10 people. they [Mor and Yanai] got to have most of their members of the Axiopoulos family, gave them One day, little Shmuel became gravely ill. family here for the reunion — including two grand- refuge and provided them with food, including Bithleem took him and his sister Sarah to the children in [IDF] uniform,” Stahl said. “They saved Miriam (Mari) Mordechai and her children: hospital, but he died at age six. this family so Israel could be a nation.” Sarah, Asher, Shmuel, Rachel and Yossi. After Shmuel’s death, and the authorities’ dis- For the director of the Righteous Among the Efthimia first met the Mordechai family while covery of the family’s hiding place, Melpomeni’s Nations department, Dr. Joel Zisenwine, these studying to become a seamstress with the family helped the Mordechai family flee to the events are important because, as time goes on, Mordechai mother, who did not charge her for Vermio mountains, continuing to provide for them there are “less and less survivors and rescuers. lessons since she had been orphaned at a young until the war’s end. “It’s quite rare and unique to see this coming age. “Church bells would be rung by locals when together of rescuer and survivor, and descen- Efthimia grew close to the Mordechais and the Nazis were searching the mountains to warn dants [of survivors], at Yad Vashem, which is an visited them regularly, even after they went into us,” Mor recalled. “One day, the bells just kept authorized commemorative organization for the hiding. When their location was compromised, ringing and ringing — that was the day the war Holocaust, and this makes it more meaningful,” Efthimia arranged for them to move to her home ended.” he said. in Veria, where she lived with her two younger On April 12, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized “This living testimony is deeply moving,” sisters, 15-year-old Bithleem and 14-year-old Melpomeni Dina as one of the Righteous Among Zisenwine added. Melpomeni. In one room, they accommodated all the Nations. The Axiopoulos were recognized as the Mordechai family members. such in 1989. The heroic actions of the Gi- BY ILANIT CHERNICK, The Jerusalem Post January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15

us were called in to report to the Gestapo in Nowy Sacz, where we received two ex-Jewish ORGY OF MURDER coats each, as a reward for our diligent work.” (Continued from page 13) a Jewish survivor. One peasant, Grabowski Locating the Jews who were in hiding in Pol- ernment and with its funding, about 700 Poles writes, who was sentenced to prison after the ish homes was not an easy task. The wife of Jan were executed by the Nazis for helping Jews war for complicity in the murder of two Jews, said Kurzawa, in whose barn the firefighters found a hide. One of the best-known cases was that of that the notorious Gestapo commandant in the Jewish woman, related that at first he refused to the Ulma family, peasants from the village of city of Nowy Sacz, Heinrich Hamann, “asked us inform on her, and that it took “a tap of an axe on Markowa, who hid a few Jews. The entire fam- what it is we wanted for having killed these his head to make him talk.” ily — parents (the mother was pregnant at the Jews.” To which one of the Poles replied, “What- Grabowski also emerged with a more general time) and their six children — was murdered by ever you see fit, although I, personally, would be insight from his comprehensive research, which the Germans together with the Jews in hiding. happy with some clothes.” included a lengthy stay as a research fellow at Yad The Polish authorities are using the Ulma The Poles sometimes complained about the Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Stud- family cynically, Grabowski says, in an attempt quality of the “prizes” they received. Grabowski ies. He is now convinced that the commonly used to present a false picture to the effect that the tells about a peasant who buried the bodies of term “bystanders” — to describe the indifferent re- rescue of Jews was widespread in occupied Jews who had been shot and afterward took sponse of the majority of the local population, in Poland — a narrative, he adds, that has the sup- away a dress, shoes and a kerchief. “But only af- Poland and elsewhere in Europe — should be re- port of a large majority of the Polish population. terward did I found out [sic] that there was a bul- moved from the historical lexicon. His conclusion Against this background, “The fact that the Poles let hole in the back of the dress,” he complained. from the many testimonies he read is that it was who saved Jews were very few, and that they But it wasn’t only simple and ignorant peas- impossible to remain neutral and indifferent, par- were a tiny, terrorized group who feared, most of ants who took part in hunting down Jews. Ac- ticularly in occupied Poland, where the Holocaust all, their own neighbors, seems lost on the advo- cording to the postwar testimony of a firefighter reached the very doorstep of so many homes. cates of ‘innocent Poland,’” he asserts. named Franciszek Glab, from the town of Lip- “The general lesson,” he says, “is that no one hat about the rewards? Testi- nica, his superior ordered him and his fellow fire- who went through World War II in Eastern Eu- monies collected by Grabowski fighters to search for Jews in hiding. rope emerged without wounds and scars of one show that in some cases the Pol- “Although we had information that they were kind or another. There were no ‘bystanders’ to ish peasants negotiated directly hiding in Lipnica, we found no one,” he related. the Holocaust — everybody acted, one way or W another, became involved.” with the Germans in this regard. His book relates “Later on, [someone] told us that there were the case of Bronislaw Przedzial, from the small some Jews in [the village of] Falkowa. We went Some took an active part in the hunt of their village of Bagienica, who demanded two kilo- to Falkowa and there we found one Jewess in own free will. Others did so under coercion. And grams of sugar from the Germans for the Jews the house of Kurzawa and another Jew at there were those who watched, from behind the he found while scouring nearby forests. Fryda’s place. We roughed up the Jews real curtain, as Jews were led by Polish peasants to In another place, the Germans offered 500 good and the same day we brought them to the the police station or were murdered by them. zloty for every Jew, according to the testimony of Polish police.” A few days later, he added, “all of BY OFER ADERET, Haaretz THE DOCTOR WHO HID A JEWISH GIRL (Continued from page 12) laborated and those who resisted, “the only way was still occupied by the Germans. Once again bout 75,000 Jews were deported to carry on living with your neighbors after the Pétri would place his life on the line for a total from France to concentration camps war was to forget what had happened.” stranger. On a winter’s evening in November and death camps between 1940 and For Frédéric Pétri to have hidden Huguette 1944, he set off to rescue a group of British sol- A 1944. Only in 1995 did French Pres- was, she says, “a 100% dangerous thing to do” diers who had been led over mountain passes ident Jacques Chirac acknowledge French re- by the partisans. Trapped in a snowdrift without sponsibility. “These dark hours forever sully our adequate clothing, they were freezing to death. history and are an insult to our past and our tra- When Pétri finally found them, only one of the ditions,” he said. “Yes, the criminal folly of the oc- soldiers, Alfred Southon, was still alive. He was cupiers was seconded by the French, by the barely breathing, but Pétri refused to give him up French state.” for dead. He carried him back to his chalet and, Only two French officials were convicted for with the help of his mother, cared for him until he crimes against humanity. One was Paul Touvier was well enough to leave. a local intelligence chief who served under Lyon This was also a potentially unpopular move, as Gestapo boss Klaus Barbie; he was convicted in many people resented what they saw as Britain’s 1994 for having ordered the execution of seven abandonment of France at Dunkirk and the bomb- Jews 50 years earlier. The other was Maurice ing raids on French cities. Just as Dr. Pétri had Papon, jailed in 1998 for his role in the deporta- said nothing about hiding Huguette, he did not tion of 1,690 Jews from Bordeaux. (Papon had mention this adventure to his family either, until gone on to serve as Paris’s police chief and as a Southon became a celebrity in the UK when his government minister.) story was told in a 1953 BBC radio documentary. Barbie himself, a German, was extradited Marion married Pierre, and after the war they from Bolivia to France in 1983 and convicted on Marion, Tim and Huguette. settled in Paris with Huguette and their two small 41 counts of crimes against humanity in July and an act that would not necessarily have been children, Francois and Sylvie. The marriage did 1987. applauded after the liberation either, as “the re- not last, and Marion then began what she called Christel is not surprised by the eerie silence. gion was a highly Catholic, conservative, right- her “second life” in London with husband Joe She says no one ever spoke about what hap- wing society.” Judah, and their son Tim. pened during the war, and as a result even the The archives in Annecy, not far from Val The history of World War II still haunts families who still live in Val d’Isère today have no d’Isère, are full of letters written to the authorities France. Huguette’s decision to revisit the darkest idea that members of the French resistance op- during the war, often anonymously, denouncing period of her life has offered Val d’Isère a chance erated in their town. people for acts of resistance. to address its past, but it appears it isn’t one the The war divided communities, explains Jane Two months after the sisters left, Val d’Isère resort is ready to take. Metter, who researches the period at Queen was liberated. But the local resistance carried on Mary University of London. For those who col- the fight, supporting the partisans in Italy, which BY ROSIE WHITEHOUSE, BBC News American Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE U.S. POSTAGE 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID SMITHTOWN, N.Y. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO.15

Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org Society Editor Stanely Stone (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for New York, NY 10110 NY York, New EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL *Published Bimonthly by the American by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp In- mates, and Nazi Victims **deceased Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer** Joseph Bukiet** January/February 2020 - Shevat/Adar 5780 - Shevat/Adar 2020 January/February for more than z”l,

, who was greatly respected for his , who was greatly respected

The Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle is The Eli Zborowski The American Society for Yad for American Society The MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Vashem was founded in 1981 by a was founded in 1981 Vashem survivors and led group of Holocaust by Eli Zborowski, thirty years. Our Legacy Circle is thirty years. Our of Eli Zborowski, named in memory z”l work and accomplishments on be- work and accomplishments and is missed by Vashem Yad half of all who knew him. Yad open to anyone who includes in their estate plans. This in- Vashem cludes a bequest by will, funding a

Zborowski Legacy Circle. ELI ZBOROWSKI LEGACY CIRCLE LEGACY ELI ZBOROWSKI 212-220-4304; [email protected] Director of Planned Giving at ASYV, who can be reached at: ASYV, Director of Planned Giving at Robert Christopher Morton, For further information about the Eli Zborowski Legacy Cir- For further information about the Eli The Talmud “I did not find the world desolate when I entered it. As my fa- I entered it. “I did not find the world desolate when By including Yad Vashem in your estate plans, you assure a in Vashem Yad By including *ASYV now has nearly 100 individuals and families who have joined the *ASYV now has nearly 100 individuals and families cle, please contact who will come after me.” thers planted for me before I was born, so do I plant for those thers planted for me before I was born, hate and indifference. serve as a powerful antidote to Holocaust denial, distortion, serve as a powerful antidote to Holocaust future in which Holocaust remembrance and education will future in which Holocaust remembrance retirement plan.* ing a paid-up life insurance policy or contributing an IRA or contributing an IRA ing a paid-up life insurance policy or Charitable Remainder Trust or Charitable Gift Annuity, donat- Annuity, or Charitable Gift Charitable Remainder Trust Page 16 Page