AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 43-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2017-Shevat/Adar 5777 THE MIXED LEGACY OF NUREMBERG so frequently been broken? Why have persuaded by Secretary of War Henry tive nature of the newly announced BY ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ the Nuremberg principles not been Stimson that summary execution was laws and the jurisdictional problems effectively applied to prevent and inconsistent with the American com- posed by a multinational court — his year commemorates the punish these unspeakable crimes? mitment to due process and the rule there was a fundamental question of 80th anniversary of the notori- T Will the International Criminal Court, of law. justice posed. Contemporary com- ous Nuremberg Laws, the Nazi racist established in 2002, be capable of It was decided, therefore, to con- mentators wondered whether judges enactments that formed the legal enforcing the Nuremberg principles vene an international tribunal to sit in appointed by the victorious govern- basis for the Holocaust. Ironically, it and deterring future genocides by judgment over the Nazi leaders. But ments — and politically accountable also marks the 70th anniversary of punishing past ones? this proposal was not without consid- to those governments — could be the Nuremberg Trials, which provided expected to listen the legal basis for prosecuting the with an open mind to Nazi war criminals who murdered mil- the prosecution evi- lions of Jews and others following the dence offered by the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws. Allies and to the There is little dispute about the evil defense claims sub- of the Nuremberg Laws. As Justice mitted on behalf of Robert H. Jackson, who was erstwhile enemies. America’s chief prosecutor at the A review of the trial Nuremberg Trials, put it: “The most nearly 70 years after odious of all oppressions are those the fact leads to the which mask as justice.” conclusion that the There is some dispute, however, judges did a com- about the Nuremberg trials them- mendable job of try- selves. Did they represent objective ing to be fair. They justice or, as Hermann Göring charac- did, after all, acquit terized it, merely “victor’s justice”? three of the twenty- Were the rules under which the Nazi two defendants, and leaders were tried and convicted ex they sentenced post facto laws, enacted after the another seven to crimes were committed in an effort to prison terms rather secure legal justice for the most than hanging. But immoral of crimes? Did the prosecu- results, of course, tion and conviction of a relatively erable difficulties. Justice must be are not the only or even the best crite- small number of Nazi leaders excul- hether the captured Nazi seen to be done, but it must also be ria for evaluating the fairness of a pate too many hands-on perpetra- leaders — those who did not W done in reality. A show trial, with pre- trial. Furthermore, it is impossible to tors? Do the principles that emerged commit suicide or escape — should dictable verdicts and sentences, determine with hindsight whether the from the Nuremberg Trials have con- have been placed on trial, rather than would be little better than no trial at core leaders, such as Göring, von tinued relevance in today’s world? summarily shot, was the subject of all. Indeed, Justice Jackson went so Ribbentrop and Rosenberg, ever had Following the Holocaust, the world much controversy. Even before the far as to suggest, early on, that it a chance, or whether the acquittals took a collective oath encapsulated in end of the war, Secretary of the would be preferable to shoot Nazi and lesser sentences for some of the the powerful phrase “never again,” Treasury Henry Morgenthau had pro- criminals out of hand than to discredit others were a ploy to make it appear but following the Nuremberg Trials, posed that a list of major war crimi- our judicial process by conducting far- that proportional justice was being mass murders, war crimes and even nals be drawn up, and as soon as cical trials. done. genocides have been permitted to they were captured and identified, The challenge of the Nuremberg tri- n the end, it was the documentary occur again and again and again and they would be shot. President bunal, therefore, was to do real justice evidence — the Germans’ own again. Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Roosevelt was initially sympathetic to I in the context of a trial by the victors detailed record of their aggression and the former Yugoslavia and now Syria. such rough justice, but eventually against the vanquished — and specif- genocide — that provided the smoking Why has the promise of “never again” both he and President Truman were ically those leaders of the vanquished guns. Document after document who had been instrumental in the proved beyond any doubt that the most barbaric genocide and mass Nazis had conducted two wars: One IN THIS ISSUE slaughter of civilians in history. was their aggressive war against She loved him, and he died in the Holocaust...... 2 Moreover, the blood of Hitler’s mil- Europe (and eventually America) for How my grandmother helped the “Japanese Schindler” save Jews...... 3 lions of victims was still fresh at the military, political, geographic and eco- Among the enemy: hiding in plain sight in Nazi Germany...... 4 time of the trials. Indeed, the magni- nomic domination. The other was their Walking in the footsteps of the innocents of Babi Yar...... 5 tude of Nazi crimes was being genocidal war to destroy “inferior” Professional Development conference on Holocaust education...... 6 learned by many for the first time dur- races, primarily the Jews and Gypsies. ASYV Young Leadeship Associates Winter Gala...... 8-9 ing the trial itself. Was a fair trial pos- Their war aim was eventually crushed Nazis’ descendants sing “Hatikva” to Holocaust survivors...... 10 sible against this emotional back- by the combined might of the Even in the gas chambers, miracles can happen...... 12 drop? Americans and the Russians. Their Did the Jew who “sparked” Kristallnacht survive the Holocaust?...... 14 Even putting aside the formidable genocidal aims came very close to Holocaust survivors celebrate seven decades of marriage...... 16 jurisprudential hurdles — the retroac- (Continued on page 3) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 SHE LOVED HIM, AND HE DIED IN THE HOLOCAUST. NOW HER SON IS BRINGING HIS MUSIC BACK TO LIFE. cal genius and a great love lost. “You are surely curious about Lulu’s Auschwitz. Though she later married BY MALCOLM GAY, “That was very discouraging,” said exam,” Leonora wrote Livia in and immigrated to the United States, THE BOSTON GLOBE Berkowitz, 57, a high-caliber amateur September 1938, when Delej was 14. her challenges grew when pianist in his own right. “She said he “He played 16 compositions by heart, Berkowitz’s father, Ernest, entered a e’s hovered over Robert was so famous, playing on the radio flawlessly!!” nursing home, incapacitated by multi- Berkowitz’s life for decades, a H all the time. I imagined there’d be Though Imre was confident war ple sclerosis. With limited English and spectral promise of what might have recordings of him. I found nothing.” could be avoided, the family was scant formal education, Pauline was been. Over the past year, however, determined to keep its precious son left alone to raise their son while He’s there in the family album, a Berkowitz has embarked on a revela- safe, and Delej began learning working as a seamstress in Los composer looking older than his years tory journey, reclaiming Delej’s life English before his expected move to Angeles. in a bulky overcoat and fedora, his while excavating his musical legacy. the United States, where he hoped to “It was my mother and me,” recalled Along the way, he’s support himself. Berkowitz, who began piano lessons developed close ties “Loulou would like to learn saxo- around that time. “My mother maybe with members of phone as his second instrument,” Imre had the freedom to tell these stories, Delej’s American fami- wrote his daughter in October 1938. because my father wasn’t in the ly, who have uncov- “This also seems to be practical for the house.” ered a trove of corre- employment possibilities that will be Pauline confided to her son that spondence and mem- necessary for him ‘over there.’ ” she’d met Delej during a piano recital orabilia providing an Soon Delej was studying with the of a cousin — a lithe and musically intimate window into esteemed pianist-composer Pál gifted young woman, the more obvi- the composer’s life Kadosa , who counted György Ligeti, ous match for Delej. before the Holocaust, later one of Hungary’s greatest com- “From the minute he saw me, he including a handful of posers, among his pupils. kind of fell in love,” recalled Pauline lost works for solo “Mr. Kadosa found barely a mis- Herzek, who today uses the surname piano. take,” Leonora wrote Livia in of her late second husband. “From “My mother has said: You brought back Lajos Delej to me,” said Those pieces had September 1939. “Only in the recita- that moment on, he wrote me and Robert Berkowitz. gone unplayed for tion did he point something small out came to visit.” more than 75 years when Berkowitz to Lulu! Do you know, my angel, what Herzek regaled her son with tales of mustache cloaking the scar that premiered them last spring at New that means? He’s already absolutely Delej’s artistry. He had excelled at marred his upper lip. Strolling along a England Conservatory, where he is a independent.” Chopin’s “Heroic” Polonaise, so busy Hungarian street, he towers continuing education student. *** Berkowitz soon mastered a simplified over Berkowitz’s mother, Pauline, “I can’t help but think that something obert Berkowitz knew none of version of it. who strides confidently beside her about this tortuous, strange journey this when he and his longtime “It was clear from the stories I heard suitor — a pianist whose collabora- R has allowed me to communicate partner, Beverly Benedetti, visited the that my mother felt she was really tors would later be counted among something about him,” said US Holocaust Memorial Museum in supposed to marry this other man, the titans of 20th-century music. Berkowitz. “That conduit of love that Washington, D.C., in October 2015. Lajos Delej,” said Berkowitz. She The photo has weathered with age. extended from Delej to my mother, It’s torn in the upper left-hand corner. and then from my mother to me — No one remembers precisely when it does it not carry something that could was taken or by whom, but it is this be communicated in music?” moment — this instant before the war, Hitler, and the lethal machinery that *** tore the couple apart — that has ife in Weimar-era Berlin had obsessed Berkowitz and shaped him Lbeen rewarding for Imre Delej as he followed the trail of his mother’s and his young wife, Leonora. As the recollections. parents of three children — Hillbrich, “I’d hear the story about how he was Livia and the baby, Lajos — the courting my mother and then how he Delejs were firmly established in the entered the ghetto looking to try to city’s more accomplished Jewish cir- rescue her,” said Berkowitz, a Natick- cles, holding an open house each based psychiatrist. That noble choice, Sunday where they hosted actors, made for love, was deadly, Pauline artists and physicists. would tell her son. “He lived very Born to an affluent Budapest family, much in my head as an important Imre spoke fluent French and traveled exemplar,” Berkowitz explained. “He frequently. His hat factories provided really was the idealized man.” a comfortable living for the family. Lajos Delej (pronounced DELL-lay) Still, the Delejs remained outsiders was a composer of great promise, in Berlin. They never became Pauline would recount, describing the German citizens, and their dual- musician’s aristocratic bearing, his minority status made them particular- sensitivity as a pianist, and the ly vulnerable as the Nazi Party rose to celebrity that seemed to attend him power. everywhere. His works were played The family, led by Imre, returned to The composer Lajos Delej, pictured at right with Robert Berkowitz’s mother, Pauline Herzek, on Hungarian radio, his performances Budapest in the early 1930s, but their from the family album. written up in the papers. world would soon unravel. But then the Germans invaded Hillbrich had already immigrated to Though the couple had visited the sought refuge in his memory, and the Hungary. Pauline was sent to Buenos Aires, and daughter Livia museum previously, running Delej’s life that could have been hers. “Here Auschwitz, and Delej was never sailed for the United States in 1937. name through its huge database of she was working as a seamstress . . . heard from again — his young talent Imre lost his German factories the fol- Hitler’s victims, they’d never discov- raising a son by herself. It’s all very extinguished by Hitler’s enterprising lowing year, confiscated by the Nazis. ered anything about Delej, reinforcing hard.” cruelty. But even as life in Budapest Berkowitz’s suspicions that his moth- Growing up the son of a Holocaust Doubt would creep in as Berkowitz, became increasingly fraught, the er had embellished the tale. survivor had special challenges of its mining archives wherever he could Delejs took great pride in Lajos, And why shouldn’t she? own, he added. find them, was unable to confirm a known as “Loulou” (occasionally Life after the war had been difficult “I could sense my mother’s sad- single detail of Delej’s life. He began “Lulu”), whom they recognized early for Pauline, who lost her father and ness, and I think I wanted to attend to to question his mother’s tale of musi- as a musical prodigy. stepmother during their internment at (Continued on page 7) January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 HOW MY GRANDMOTHER HELPED THE “JAPANESE SCHINDLER” SAVE THOUSANDS OF EUROPEAN JEWS Sternheim, and her brother, Leo tions where no visa was needed. The cially nullified by the Nazi invasion. BY ALYZA D. LEWIN, HAARETZ Sternheim, were smuggled with my governor of Curaçao could authorize On July 22, 1940, Zwartendijk agreed grandparents and my father, who was entry to anyone arriving there. and wrote de Decker’s notation on my he story of Chiune Sugihara — then 3 years old, over the border into My grandmother again wrote to de grandparents’ travel papers. That is T the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania. Decker asking whether he could note how my grandparents and my father Lithuania, who disobeyed his govern- n Lithuania, my grandmother the Curaçao or Surinam exception in received the very first Curaçao visa. ment’s orders in 1940 and issued Isought help from the Dutch diplo- her still-valid Polish passport. She Relying on Zwartendijk’s notation, transit visas through Japan to thou- mats because her mother and brother asked the envoy to omit the addition- Sugihara agreed to give my grandpar- sands of Jews seeking to flee war- were Dutch citizens and because she al note that permission of the gover- ents (and my grandmother’s mother torn Europe — wasn’t widely known had been a Dutch citizen prior to mar- nor of Curaçao was required. After all, and brother, who were still Dutch citi- until 1985, when Yad Vashem, Israel’s rying my grandfather. She initially she pointed out, she really did not zens) transit visas through Japan on Holocaust memorial authority, hon- their purported trip to Curaçao. ored him as one of the Righteous Sugihara issued their visas on July Among the Nations. 26, 1940. But I grew up hearing Sugihara’s The number of visas Sugihara story because he saved my father’s issued jumped exponentially on July life. My father, the attorney Nathan 29, 1940, when hundreds of Jews Lewin, is a Sugihara survivor. who had escaped to Vilna learned of I also have a family connection my grandmother’s successful effort. to something that few others have They crowded outside the Japanese known until very recently — the consulate in Kovno (Kaunas in answer to a long-unsolved mystery Lithuanian), hoping Sugihara would surrounding Sugihara’s rescue of an issue them a visa. Sugihara worked estimated 6,000 Jews. around the clock for a month, issuing Why did the Dutch consul in Kovno, 2,139 visas, including to whole fami- Jan Zwartendijk, begin issuing the lies. These enabled the refugees to “Curaçao visas” – the Dutch endorse- take the trans-Siberian railroad from ments that appeared to permit travel Moscow to Vladivostok, and then to the island of Curaçao, Holland’s travel by boat from Russia to Japan, territory off South America upon supposedly en route to Curaçao. which Sugihara relied when issuing The story of Sugihara and his res- visas? Why did Zwartendijk begin The endorsement of Chiune Sugihara appears on the travel document that allowed Isaac Lewin cue is told in a feature film, Persona writing in Jewish passports that a visa and his family to escape Lithuania in 1940. Nathan Lewin is the 4-year-old boy in the arms of his Non Grata, that had its premiere in was not needed to travel to Curaçao? mother. October and is now making the The answer: my late grandmother. asked Zwartendijk, who was in plan to go to Curaçao or Surinam. rounds at Jewish film festivals across Peppy Sternheim Lewin, the recipient Kovno, if he could issue her a visa to “Send me your passport,” de Decker the country. It screened recently at of the first Curaçao visa, is the “miss- the Dutch East Indies, which included replied. So she did. the Washington Jewish Film Festival ing link” in the story. Java and Sumatra. He refused. So On July 11, 1940, de Decker wrote and was shown again in Washington, My grandmother was a Dutch citi- she wrote to the Dutch ambassador in in her passport in French, “The D.C., last month as part of zen, raised and educated in Riga, L.P.J. de Decker. He also turned Consulate of the Netherlands, Riga, CineMatsuri, the Japanese Film Amsterdam. After she married my down her request for a visa to Java or hereby declares that for the admis- Festival in the Nation’s Capital. grandfather, Dr. Isaac Lewin, she Sumatra. sion into Surinam, Curaçao, and other Although my grandmother’s role is moved to his home country, Poland. Refusing to be discouraged, my possessions of the Netherlands in the one of the unsolved mysteries in the When the Nazi army invaded Poland grandmother, who was then in Americas, no entry visa is required.” film, my father was asked to share his in September 1939, my grandmoth- Vilna — a short trip from My grandmother then showed mother’s tale after a CineMatsuri er’s parents and her brother were vis- Kovno — wrote to de Decker again Zwartendijk what the Dutch ambassa- screening. iting her in Lodz, my father’s birth- and asked him whether there was any dor had written in her passport and There are perhaps 100,000 descen- place. My great-grandfather promptly way he could possibly help her family asked him to copy it onto my grand- dants of Sugihara survivors alive flew back to Amsterdam to take care because it included Dutch citizens. parents’ Leidimas — the temporary today. It is humbling to think that it of his business. He later perished at The ambassador replied that the travel document they had been was my grandmother’s initiative and Auschwitz. Dutch West Indies, including Curaçao issued by the Latvian government perseverance that opened up this My grandmother’s mother, Rachel and Surinam, were available destina- after the existence of Poland was offi- travel route to safety for so many. THE MIXED LEGACY OF NUREMBERG (Continued from page 1) “reduced to a nation of farmers.” But The reality that, following morally complicit people who succeeding. Nearly the entire Jewish perhaps the Nuremberg tribunal Nuremberg, the world was to experi- remained silent while it was being car- and Gypsy populations within the asked too little when it implicitly expi- ence genocide again and again ried out around them. Not only were control of the Third Reich were sys- ated those guilty of thousands of demonstrated that trials alone cannot most of these guilty participants tematically murdered while the rest of hands-on murders by focusing culpa- put an end to human barbarity. But immunized from prosecution, but the world — including those nations bility on a small number of leaders the fact that tribunals were estab- many were rewarded with good jobs sitting in judgment — turned a blind who could never have carried out lished to judge at least some of these and other economic benefits. It eye. their wholesale slaughter without the crimes against humanity also demon- should come as no surprise, there- The Nuremberg tribunal and those enthusiastic assistance of an army — strates a willingness to at least fore, that the Nuremberg trials did not that followed it administered justice to both military and civilian — of whole- attempt to prevent and punish evil effectively deter subsequent mass a tiny fraction of those guilty of the sale butchers. using the rule of law. killings. Indeed, the use of civilians as worst barbarism ever inflicted on The Nuremberg trial was an exam- One of the most important lessons weapons of war — victims of geno- humankind. The vast majority of ple both of “victor’s justice” and of the of history is that for genocide and cide, mass rapes and human shields German killers were eventually possible beginning of a “new legal other mass killings to be carried out — has continued, with only a few “denazified” and allowed to live nor- order” of accountability. Trying the requires the active participation of handfuls of leaders and perpetrators mal and often productive lives. culprits was plainly preferable to sim- numerous individuals, from those who prosecuted and punished. The chal- Perhaps Henry Morgenthau was ply killing them. But trying so few of do the actual killing to those who lenge of Nuremberg is to construct an asking for too much when he them sent out a powerful message incite, organize and provide the effective, ongoing, legal regime that demanded that Germany’s industry that the “new legal order” would be means. The Holocaust itself required punishes not just the leaders, but and military capacity be destroyed lenient with those who were “just fol- hundreds of thousands of active co- each and every guilty participant in “forever,” and that Germany be lowing orders.” conspirators and millions more of the most egregious of war crimes. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 AMONG THE ENEMY: HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT IN NAZI GERMANY Among the Enemy: Hiding in Plain courage it took for him “to hide in plain thousand Jews — “men, women, and they fully participated in the use of Sight in Nazi Germany. sight,” “posing as a gentile under var- children” — who made Dubno their conscripted laborers (Genirberg By Sam Genirberg. Robertson ious aliases” “conscripted for compul- home. Step by step, we learn about being one of them). In fact, at one Publishing: Los Gatos, California, sory labor” in Nazi Germany. how the Nazis ordered a Judenrat point Genirberg paints us a picture, 2012. 309 pp. $22.95 hardcover. Concomitantly, the reader cannot help organized there. Then we learn how resembling that of African slaves mar- but empathize in a the Nazis created a keted in the South before the Civil REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN very visceral sense Jewish ghetto in War, as German civilians came to ach and every Jew that survived with the constant and Dubno, “guarded by “look over” these laborers brought Ethe Holocaust has a miraculous fearful terror Ukrainian policemen, from all over Europe to work for them story to tell, and by doing so adds to Genirberg lived . . . as armed with side in various industries. Needless to the full and complete documentation a Jew hiding in the arms and rifles.” say, many, many Germans “benefit- of this unbelievable event in human very nest of evil! Soon, we read about ed” in one way or another with Hitler history. Thus, Sam Genirberg, in his How, specifically how 6,000 Jews their leader! book, Among the Enemy: Hiding in then, does this deemed useless hen when the Germans could Plain Sight in Nazi Germany, tells us absorbing work add to were separated off T no longer deny that they were his story and his miracle. Born in the documentation of from the rest . . . and losing the war, Genirberg tells us how Dubno, at times part of Poland and at the Holocaust? Most in May 1942, killed. he witnessed Germans rushing to other times part of the Ukraine, importantly, the story Not long after, the burn incriminating documents. Later Genirberg, a teenager in 1941 when of an exceptionally rest of the Jewish still, Genirberg relates how he over- the war came, relates how his devot- lucky Jewish teenager population of Dubno heard Germans wishing that the ed mother — grown suspicious of who, all alone, found a was slaughtered. Americans had occupied all of what the Nazis had in store for unique way to survive Then we learn how Germany — yes, the Americans were Dubno’s Jews — encouraged him to the war boldly under- the Ukrainians and much better to them than the escape. He tells us that what espe- lines the fact that Poles benefited from Russians.... And then, later still, there cially aided him in his escape was the Jews did all they could to live, regard- all this — opportunistically looting is the comment directed to Genirberg fact that with his “sandy blond hair, less of their exceptionally limited Jewish homes emptied of their inhab- himself, who the speaker believed short nose, and green eyes,” he didn’t options. Indeed, oftentimes during itants. . . . And all this information is was German: “Look out the window. look Jewish. No less important was those terrible years, Jews had to fear related to us by one who was there! Our country [Germany] is in ruins. . . . the fact that he spoke a number of not just the Nazis come to murder Genirberg also draws our attention I tell you, my friend, there is only one languages well — “Russian, them, but their neighbors who eagerly to other aspects of the Holocaust and thing wrong with Adolph Hitler — that Ukrainian, Polish, and German.” That collaborated with Nazis. In sum, Jews the war that should be a part of the he lost the war.” said, Genirberg then relates, and we fought for their lives in any and every historical record. Interestingly, Among the Enemy is a worthy addi- experience, all the heart-pounding way imaginable and unimaginable. because he spent his time in tion to the library of books on the events he lived through, from his They did not “go like sheep to the Germany, we learn how little German Holocaust. escape from his hometown until the slaughter”! civilians actually “felt” the war. culmination of the war and liberation. Then there is the important fact that Indeed, they went about their lives Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of In the end, the reader cannot help but Among the Enemy tells us more even more “comfortably.” One exam- Media, Communication, and Visual appreciate the enormous amount of about the tragic fate of the twelve ple of that added “comfort” was that Arts at Pace University. BEFORE ELIE WIESEL WAS A HERO TO GERMANS, HE WAS REGARDED AS A NUISANCE — OR WORSE tion and concern. The creation of an ously confronted with its criminal his- ensions between Wiesel and BY JACOB S. EDER, HNN institutional infrastructure of tory. T the Federal Republic reached n July 2, 2016, the world lost — Holocaust memorialization — exem- When Jimmy Carter appointed their apex in the 1980s, during which Oin the words of Angela plified by museums and memorials, Wiesel as chairman of the President’s time he chaired the US Holocaust Merkel — one of the most notable memorial days, the establishment of Commission on the Holocaust in Memorial Council. In 1984, for individuals of the 20th century. The educational and academic programs, 1978, the latter officially became a instance, Wiesel vehemently rejected German chancellor referred to the and the 1978 NBC miniseries protagonist of the “Americanization” West German considerations to sell passing of the writer, scholar and Holocaust — permanently anchored of the Holocaust and, in the eyes of arms to Saudi Arabia, an enemy of human rights advocate Elie Wiesel, West Germans, the Israel, calling the Federal Republic a who died at age 87 over the summer embodiment of a political “merchant of death” and the Germans in New York City. She called him a and diplomatic problem. “people without memories.” And, in “noble reconciler” and an “insistent In a worst-case scenario, 1985, Wiesel emerged as the most admonisher,” conveying her gratitude German officials feared vocal opponent of Ronald Reagan’s for Wiesel’s efforts to keep the mem- that learning about the controversial visit to Germany, which ory of the Holocaust alive. His lifetime history of the Holocaust, included a visit to the Bergen-Belsen achievements, a long and productive as told from the perspec- concentration camp memorial as well career as a writer and scholar, and a tive of a survivor like as to a German military cemetery significant role in the establishment of Wiesel, might even cause near Bitburg. Since the early 1980s, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Americans to question the Federal Republic’s conservative in Washington (USHMM), made him a their Cold War alliance Chancellor Helmut Kohl had worked moral authority and arguably the with the Federal Republic. toward consigning the Nazi past to world’s most prominent Holocaust Consequently, German the history books, and Bitburg was survivor. The reactions to Wiesel’s Elie Wiesel. diplomats and politicians supposed to send a powerful sign of passing in the Germany of 2016, how- carefully monitored German-American friendship and rec- ever, stand in remarkable contrast to Holocaust memory into American life. Wiesel’s public statements, speech- onciliation around the globe. The cer- the attitudes of West Germany’s polit- Transplanting the perspective of es, writings, and work for the emony, however, at the very least ical leadership towards Wiesel when Holocaust victims into the popular, President’s Commission and later the implied a blurring of the lines between he was in the process of establishing academic and intellectual culture of US Holocaust Memorial Council. For Nazi victims and perpetrators, which himself as the world’s eminent cham- West Germany’s superpower ally was example, they were highly critical of many, not only Wiesel, deemed unac- pion for Holocaust memorialization. disturbing and distressing for repre- Wiesel’s “emotional” language and ceptable. In a live television interview In the 1970s and 1980s, West sentatives of West Germany, who his efforts, based on personal experi- on the day of Reagan’s visit, he told German officials were distinctly less were convinced that their country had ence, to emphasize the responsibility Tom Brokaw: “The road from Bergen- fond of Wiesel and greeted his advo- successfully come to terms with the of ordinary Germans for the Belsen to Bitburg is a very long one, cacy for Holocaust memory with irrita- Nazi past and should not be continu- Holocaust. (Continued on page 11) January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 JOSEPH GOEBBELS' 105-YEAR-OLD SECRETARY: "NO ONE BELIEVES ME NOW, BUT I KNEW NOTHING" and I hope it will be months rather “just another job.” politics, but the truth is, the idealism BY KATE CONNOLLY, than years — I just cling to the hope A German Life, compiled from 30 of youth might easily have led to you THE GUARDIAN that the world doesn’t turn upside hours of conversation with her, was having your neck broken.” t was rare for us to see him in down again as it did then, though recently released at the Munich film She recalls being handed the case “Ithe mornings,” says Brunhilde there have been some ghastly devel- festival. It is the reason why she is file of the anti-Nazi activist and stu- Pomsel, her eyes closed and chin in opments, haven’t there? I’m relieved I willing to “politely answer” my ques- dent Sophie Scholl, who was active in her hand as she recalls her former never had any children that I have to tions. “It is important for me, when I the White Rose resistance move- boss. “He’d walk up the steps from his worry about.” watch the film, to recognize that mir- ment. Scholl was executed for high little palace near the Brandenburg ror image in which treason in February 1943 after distrib- Gate, onto which his huge propagan- I can understand uting antiwar leaflets at the University da ministry was attached. He’d trip up everything I’ve of Munich. “I was told by one of the steps like a little duke, through his done wrong,” she Goebbels’ special advisers to put it in library into his beautiful office on says. “But really, I the safe, and not to look at it. So I did- Unter den Linden.” didn’t do anything n’t, and was quite pleased with myself She smiles at the image, noting how other than type in that he trusted me, and that my keen- elegant the furniture was, the carefree Goebbels’ office.” ness to honor that trust was stronger atmosphere where she sat in an ante- Often, end-of-life than my curiosity to open that file.” chamber off Joseph Goebbels’ office statements such omsel describes herself as a with five other secretaries, how his as these are suf- Pproduct of Prussian discipline, nails were always neatly manicured. fused with a sense recalling a father who, when he “We always knew once he had of guilt. But returned from fighting in the First arrived, but we didn’t normally see Pomsel is unre- World War, when she was seven, Brunhilde Pomsel. him until he left his office, coming pentant. As she banned chamber pots from the family through a door that led directly into o what is the motivation for holds court, gesticulating wildly, with a bedrooms. “If we wanted to go to the our room, so we could ask him any Seffectively breaking her silence broad grin on her face, it seems as if toilet, we had to brave all the witches questions we had, or let him know only now, as probably the last living she even takes something restorative and evil spirits to get to the water who had called. Sometimes, his chil- survivor from the Nazi leadership’s from her insistence that she simply closet.” She and her siblings were dren came to visit and were so excit- inner circle? acted the same way as most other “spanked with the carpet beater” ed to visit Daddy at his work. They “It is absolutely not about clearing Germans. whenever they were disobedient. would come with the family’s lovely my conscience,” she says. “Those people nowadays who say “That stayed with me, that Prussian Airedale. They were very polite and While she admits she was at the they would have stood up against the something, that sense of duty.” would curtsy and shake our hands.” heart of the Nazi propaganda Nazis — I believe they are sincere in She was 31 and working for the Pomsel is giving one of the first, and machine, with her tasks including meaning that, but believe me, most of state broadcaster as a well-paid sec- last, in-depth interviews of her life; at massaging downward statistics about them wouldn’t have.” After the rise of retary — a job she secured only after the age of 105, and having lost her fallen soldiers, as well as exaggerat- the Nazi party, “the whole country was she became a paid-up member of the sight last year, she says she is ing the number of rapes of German as if under a kind of a spell,” she Nazi party — when someone recom- relieved that her days are numbered. women by the Red Army, she insists. “I could open myself up to the mended her for a transfer to the min- “In the little time that’s left to me — describes it, somewhat bizarrely, as accusations that I wasn’t interested in (Continued on page 15) WALKING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE INNOCENTS OF BABI YAR by all accounts, were busy shuffling, eating their picnic? very moment of their execution, still BY STEPHEN ORYSZCZUK, pushing and shunting Jews forced to It was difficult to concentrate on the believed in their resettlement, thanks THE JEWISH NEWS stand in lines. Others brought picnics filming. In the end, I gave up and to an extremely clever organization.” and watched from the banks. walked the vast grassy flanks alone (I Over the next two years, about ’ve been to Babi Yar. It is on the Eyewitnesses recalled Ukrainians was the editor — the others would 100,000 people were killed there, outskirts of the Ukrainian capital I loading the piles of clothing and valu- just have to wait). I walked and including Jews, Gypsies/Roma, cap- Kyiv. The word “yar” is Turkic in origin, ables that the city’s Jews had been walked, through the trees, down the tured Russian soldiers, psychiatric and means “gully” or “ravine.” That’s instructed to bring for their “resettle- slopes, up to and away from the patients and Ukrainian nationalists, why the Nazis chose it: because it ment.” There are no tales of Soviet- era monument, along the like my grandfather. In 1943, with was — is — a huge ravine. Bodies Ukrainians doing anything heroic, or walkways. I wondered how many had the Soviets pressing, the Nazis could fill it from the bottom. anything but help the massacre take died crying. I thought about the chil- decided to burn the evidence. They That’s what happened. Over the place. And that’s what it was: the dren hugging their mothers’ thighs as looted the gravestones from a near- course of just two days in September Holocaust’s first, and worst, mas- the Nazis approached. I wondered by Jewish cemetery and used them 1941, 33,771 Jews were stripped sacre. These Jews were not gassed how, or if, those lying on the newly to form the foundation of a huge naked and shot by Sonderkommando in a room impersonally, but shot in the dead had tried to console themselves funeral pyre at the ravine, which in 4a soldiers. Most of those murdered head at close range. It doesn’t get in their last moments. I thought about turn was used to burn the disinterred didn’t fall dead, however. They were much more personal than that. how, in other battlefields around bodies of the Babi Yar dead. The fur- already lying in neat lines when their I went in 2010. I was there to film, Europe, spilled blood had led to pop- naces burned for 40 days, reducing lives were ended by Nazi bullets. while I was editor of a now-defunct pies, but that here, in Babi Yar, not to ash the remains of the many Brought to the ravine in groups of 10 Jewish TV news channel based in the even the soil had gained. More than unknown thousands. Still today, Yad to 20, they approached and, realizing city, but my mind was elsewhere. anything, I wondered “how.” How? Vashem has identified only a frac- the full horror for the first time, were Despite being neither Jewish nor How could they? tion of the dead. forced to lie on the still warm, still Ukrainian, I have both Jewish and We know the logistics of “how” they If Auschwitz-Birkenau left me cold, bleeding bodies of Jews who had just Ukrainian blood. My grandmother, a perpetrated one of history’s most Babi Yar left me confused, both been gunned down moments earlier. British Jew who had long suppressed wretched crimes. Days earlier, Nazi about who I am, and about who peo- As they lay there, they could only wait her Jewish identity, married my posters were plastered around the ple could be, and what they could for the man with the machine gun to grandfather, a Ukrainian non -Jew, city ordering all “kikes” to assemble at do. If Auschwitz was industrial, this walk along the line. Men, women and only seven years after this ravine a certain time, at a certain place, and was insane, thousands of inhuman children were all slain. When bullets began to fill. I was reminded of this at to “bring warm clothing.” The com- acts perpetrated on very human ran low, Jewish heads were lined up Babi Yar. Did I have, within me, the mander later reported back to his beings, innocents stripped naked, in so that one shot would kill several. At blood of those whom Hitler killed and superiors, saying: “Although only floods of tears at the end of the Nazi the end of each day, a layer of earth those whom Hitler had help from; approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Jews barrel. was tipped onto the dead and dying, those lying in the ravine, waiting to be had been expected, more than I won’t return, but nor will I forget so that the injured were buried alive. shot, and those who sat on the banks, 30,000 Jews arrived who, until the what happened here. Never Again. The Nazis’ Ukrainian collaborators, Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST HISTORY IS GIVEN A NEW LIFE BY BILLY HALLOWELL, DESERET NEWS ome Jewish historians’ person- Sal stories of Holocaust plights and survival had reportedly fallen into obscurity due to a language bar- rier, but they are now seeing new light after one man embarked on a journey to preserve and highlight the texts. The first-person stories that offer a rare glimpse and perspective into the Jewish experience during the Holocaust were written in Yiddish, creating a barrier for some main- stream historians who were unfamil- iar with the language, according to the Jewish Journal. Yiddish joins Hebrew and Aramaic as one of the three major languages that have been spoken throughout Jewish history. While its use was rampant by the time of the 19th cen- tury, millions of its speakers were vic- tims of the Holocaust. Additionally, as Encyclopedia Britannica notes, the former Soviet Union cracked down on the use of Yiddish, further hampering its use. Today, though, the language is once again thriving at universities and in other Jewish circles. While the historical Holocaust texts were reportedly relatively ignored in academic circles over the years, Mark Smith, a 58-year-old graduate student, embarked on an intentional journey to bring their contents to light. It all started a few decades ago when, out of interest in the Yiddish language, he began to collect rare works to try to preserve and protect them. That later led Smith, who is an architect by trade, to take a deeper look at the texts — the stories from Jewish historians that he said repre- Trunk, Joseph Kermish and one encounters a group of Holocaust the community of Yiddish speakers sent “a deliberate choice” to commu- Nachman Blumental. It was after sur- historians whose works have yet to to the larger world of Jewish and nicate in Yiddish about what had viving a number of concentration be explored in their original context,” general scholarship has gained unfolded during the Holocaust. camps that Dworzecki, who was a reads the paper’s abstract. these historians a degree of integra- “It was a worldwide community of medical doctor, specifically felt com- Smith wrote in the abstract that tion into the mainstream of Holocaust Yiddish speakers to whom they were pelled to speak out and tell the sto- these “survivor historians” decided to study,” the abstract reads. addressing themselves,” he told the ries of other Holocaust victims. write the history of the Holocaust “in One of the reasons the work of Jewish Journal. “Those who disappeared have the Yiddish vernacular of their read- these historians is intriguing is that Smith, a doctoral student at UCLA, commanded us: Tell!” he wrote in ers,” but that their work decades later they wrote both about the histories recently completed a 536-page dis- 1948, according to the Jewish was still “surprisingly neglected.” surrounding the Holocaust and about sertation titled The Yiddish Historians Journal. The abstract said the work of these the Jewish experience, including and the Struggle for a Jewish History And now that these stories are historians helps to round out under- information about Jews’ attempts to being given new light, David Myers, a standings of early histories written on of the Holocaust. resist the Nazi mentality through eco- It’s a work he believes could have Jewish history professor at UCLA the Holocaust. nomic and spiritual means. an impact on the study of the who also oversaw Smith’s thesis Rather than an early Holocaust his- “Generally speaking, most histori- Holocaust era, as the paper specifi- project, believes historians will now tory focusing primarily on the perpe- ans who write about the Holocaust cally takes a look at five historians need to amend their understanding trators of the event, these overlooked are not also Jewish historians,” whose work had not yet been given of the field. works provide first-person accounts Smith told the Jewish Forward. “Both fair or proper attention, according to “At the intersection of three areas from the victims who experienced the fields are very large, and you have to Smith. of Jewish scholarship — Yiddish unspeakable horrors. specialize, and you don’t specialize Those historians were Mark studies, Holocaust studies and the “Most recently, the gradual transfer in both.” Dworzecki, Philip Friedman, Isaiah history of Jewish historiography — of the Yiddish historians’ work from January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 SHE LOVED HIM, AND HE DIED IN THE HOLOCAUST. NOW HER SON IS BRINGING HIS MUSIC BACK TO LIFE. (Continued from page 2) *** kind of grave he was buried?” servatory created for Jewish stu- it in an important way,” said hen a package from “I just started crying,” said Cricket dents. Berkowitz. “One of the things I could W Berkowitz arrived a few Lengyel, who recognized Delej in the “Goldmark was a safe island for do was become like the guy she real- weeks later at the Manhattan home of photos and soon began going through Jewish pupils and teachers,” said ly wanted to be with. . . . My mother Livia’s son, Peter Lengyel, there was her grandmother’s correspondence. Péter Bársony, a violist and professor will tell you that she feels I was Delej’s one question: “Is Robert a kook?” “To think of this young man, who hap- at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music son.” asked Livia’s granddaughter, Kristen pens to be my great-uncle, but more who has written extensively on These days Herzek, 94, can be a Lengyel, who goes by Cricket. importantly he’s [Livia’s] little brother Hungarian Jewish musicians during touch forgetful, but she vividly recalls But the parcel, which contained a — it opened up this whole new world.” the Holocaust. “It was one of the few that Delej once gave her a ring. letter recounting his mother’s *** places in Budapest they could work.” Though they were not engaged (“it romance with Delej, family photos, hree weeks after Germany invad- Ensconced in this cultural milieu, was too soon”), she is convinced they and a trove of documents he’d discov- T ed Poland in September 1939, Delej composed his first sonata: a would have married had it not been ered at the Holocaust museum, was Leonora Delej wrote her daughter. work for piano and cello. for the war. “I would be happy if “It is supposed to be beautiful,” “We belonged to each other,” he goes a year from Delej, who often penned little notes at Herzek said by phone from San now,” Leonora said the bottom of his parents’ letters to Diego, where she now lives. “In my of their plans to send practice his English, wrote to Livia in heart he always was with me, and Lajos to the United May 1941. “It is only [too] bad that you until I die he will be with me.” States. “Lulu is learn- cannot hear it immediately.” At Auschwitz, Herzek was among ing English diligently Bársony, who during his research the nearly 60,000 prisoners SS and soon we will, interviewed the renowned Hungarian guards forced on “death marches” too.” cellist János Starker, said Starker told while evacuating the camp as Soviet Meanwhile, 16- him Delej had written the sonata for troops advanced in January 1945. year-old Lajos Delej him. When she finally returned to her was coming into his He added that Starker, who died in home village of Nagybánya (now own as a musician, 2013, told him he’d once had the Romania’s Baia Mare), she wrote giving his first public sonata’s sheet music. But no longer: Delej hoping to resume their performance on He lost it in the late 1950s after per- romance. His mother replied that he’d March 5, 1940. One forming Delej’s music at the BBC’s perished. week later, he dedi- London studios. “It was devastating,” said Herzek. cated three pieces “He was in a rush and somehow he “But you get married and you start for solo piano to his left the music,” Bársony said by your life.” sister, a gift on her Skype from Budapest. Herzek later wed Robert’s father, 25th birthday. At least part of the sonata appears with whom she eventually settled in The works had to have been recorded, and in 2014 the United States. been all but forgotten Warner Classics released a 10-disc Before leaving Europe, however, when Cricket set of Starker performances, including Herzek visited Delej’s home, where Lengyel discovered the Delej sonata’s “Scherzo” move- she hoped to pay her respects to his them behind the ment. mother. She found only the family’s family piano. Had “It’s a miracle that Starker lost the housekeeper, who told her Delej had Pauline Herzek met Delej during a piano recital, a meeting the com- Berkowitz “never music, but through his playing the died needlessly. poser appears to have documented in a letter to his sister. found us, Loulou music survived,” said Bársony, who “He turned himself in,” said Herzek. too enticing to pass up. They knew so would be gone forever,” said Lengyel, also interviewed Ligeti’s widow, Vera. “His silly thinking was that maybe he little of their gifted uncle. whose grandmother died at age 100, The famed composer “considered would find me. But he was in a ghet- “I knew nothing other than he’d just six months before Berkowitz [Delej] to be an exceptional talent, a to. You couldn’t do such things.” been picked up off the street,” said wrote the family. genius,” wrote Barsony. “[H]e Delej had vanished, leaving no trace Peter Lengyel. “It was never talked For Berkowitz, who has incorporat- mourned his loss his entire life.” Berkowitz could find in his years of about.” ed the works into his repertoire, *** research, looking him up online, con- Delej died when Lengyel was still a Delej’s compositions evoke a compli- n the summer of 1941, Delej trav- sulting encyclopedias, music antholo- child. Though Livia had told him her cated mix of emotions. Ieled to Kolozsvár (now Cluj- gies and Holocaust records. younger brother was a marvelous “If Delej had lived, my mother and Napoca in Romania), the city where Now visiting the Holocaust museum musician, she rarely spoke of Delej, he would have had children, and I he would meet Berkowitz’s mother, with Benedetti, Berkowitz again saying only that he’d died during the wouldn’t be alive. . . . It’s as if we have Pauline. He may have gone to study entered the composer’s name into the war. mutually exclusive world lines,” said with the acclaimed composer Sándor terminal, misspelling it — as he had In his letter, Berkowitz, who located Berkowitz. “This music is just asking Veress. his entire life — “D-E-L-E-Y.” the Lengyels online after finding an for somebody to invest it with a partic- Initially, the 17-year-old Delej found A museum employee suggested the old US address in the museum files, ular way of playing, and I think to the town’s women wanting. family likely wouldn’t have spelled conveyed his mother’s tale of the myself: Who better than me?” “[Loulou] writes that there are no their name with a “Y,” recommending composer’s ill-fated attempt to save By the spring of 1940, Delej had ‘pretty’ women there,” Imre wrote on he try instead the more traditional her. He shared that Delej had died at begun curtailing other activities to August 9, 1941. “My young boy sets Delej. Buchenwald of complications from an focus on his music, which would soon almost unrealizable demands with Again, nothing. infected frostbite wound on February include conducting as well. Still, he regard to ‘beauty.’” The staffer went back to his desk 17, 1945 — less than two months remained a distractable teenager, tak- But later that month, Delej’s roman- and began fiddling at a computer. A before American troops liberated the ing dance lessons, swimming at the tic prospects had brightened. few minutes later he turned to camp. He was 21. pool, and assuring Livia he wasn’t “I have again fallen a bit in love, but Berkowitz: “Was this guy a musician?” Finally, Berkowitz included a letter romantically interested in a fellow don’t worry, nothing life-threatening,” “I couldn’t believe it,” said Peter Lengyel’s grandmother, musician. Delej wrote on August 24, going on to Berkowitz, who was soon printing Leonora, had written to the “She is much older than I,” Delej describe his reception in Kolozsvár. “I dozens of World War II–era docu- International Tracing Service five wrote Livia that May. “I think now you had a big, big success; I was some- ments. “What had been a two-dimen- years after Delej’s death. will be able again to sleep.” what worshiped; it was really uncom- sional man suddenly became a three- “I wonder if you could help me in While Delej struggled to find music fortable, and rather unpleasant. You dimensional person. It was as if he finding the whereabouts of the students of his own to earn money, in must not forget that it is, after all, a died all over again. I remember . . . remains of my dead son,” Leonora time he gave performances and small town.” saying to myself, maybe it’ll have a wrote in 1950. “Is there some kind of worked as an accompanist through But Delej’s talent was equally recog- different ending now.” record showing where and in what the Goldmark Music School, a con- (Continued on page 13) Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE AME YOUNG LEADERSHIP ASS

Members of the YLA Board. Top (l. to r.): Alex Levine, Josh Gelnick, ASYV Chairman Leonard Wilf, Daniella Pomeranc, Michael Shmuely, YLA Co-Chair Barry Levine, Alexandra Lebovits, Nadav Besner, Harry Karten, YLA Liaison Isaac Benjamin, Susie Nussbaum. Bottom (l. to r.): Lara Meyer, Jessica YLA Leadership: (l. to r.) Josh Gelnick, Daniella Pomeranc, ASYV Chairman Leonard Wilf, Rachel Glickman-Mauk, YLA Co-Chair Abbi Halpern, Avi Felberbaum, Michael Distenfeld, Erica Distenfeld, Shnay, Michael Shmuely, Abbi Halpern, Barry Levine. Isidore Karten. January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 MERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM SSOCIATES WINTER GALA

Zoe Baker and Avi Snyder are signing up to research family history with the support of Yad Vashem Exploring the silent auction: Jaci and Gonen Paradis. archivists. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 NAZIS’ DESCENDANTS SING “HATIKVA” TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS German organization March of destroyed her childhood home. “And heart that they are so cute and that descendants with the Holocaust sur- Life encourages young Germans to what if it was him?” Chaika says in they know it was wrong. I’m not angry vivors and the victims of the investigate their families’ past, her heavy accent as she keeps with them, absolutely not. I hope that Holocaust. The meeting between break the barrier of silence and caressing Reiner’s hand. “Is she to they won’t be like their grandparents them is part of our message — to uncover the acts committed by blame for what her grandfather and now.” remember what happened not just their grandparents during the grandmother did? Absolutely not. I he March of Life organization through figures and data, but through Holocaust. The activities include love her as if she were my own T was founded nine years ago in personal stories too.” marches in main cities around the daughter.” a bid to commemorate the Holocaust As part of the organization, the world under the banner “Never The unusual meeting between and fight anti-Semitism. It encourages young Germans participate in marches Again,” meetings with survivors Reiner and Chaika was held recently young Germans to investigate their that are held in main cities around the and strong support for the State of in the Israeli city of Netanya, as part of Israel. the activity of German organization March of Life. About 100 Belarus-born BY ITAY ILNAI, YNETNEWS Holocaust survivors, wearing caps t was an emotionally charged and glasses and wrapped in their Imoment: A young German coats, faced some 10 young woman, the granddaughter of a Nazi Germans, tall and good-looking, the officer, sitting next to a Holocaust sur- descendants of Nazi soldiers and offi- vivor and specifying what her grand- cers. The former spoke about their father had done to Jews during World horrible experiences in the Holocaust, War II. There was no anger there, just and the latter told them about their a lot of sadness. families’ grim history. “Both sides of my family, my paternal Surprisingly, there was no anger in side and my maternal side, were this intergenerational meeting, just a devout Nazis,” Anna Reiner confesses lot of sadness and a bit of comfort, for with a serious look on her angel face. both sides. Not a single eye remained “My great-grandfather took part in dry when Asia Bronstein recalled how Dancing and singing to Holocaust survivors. burning the synagogue in the city of her father was drafted by the Soviet army and she was families’ past, break the barrier of world, alongside local citizens and forced to flee east- silence and uncover the acts commit- Holocaust survivors, under the banner ward with her ted by their grandparents in the “Never Again.” So far, the organization mother. On the Holocaust. has held 350 marches in 14 different way, they found “For years, no one in Germany dis- countries. In 2018, in honor of Israel’s themselves in a cussed what had happened only sev- 70th Independence Day, it plans to small Jewish town eral meters from the German city cen- hold its biggest march in Jerusalem. just as the German ters,” explains Heinz Reuss, the orga- t would be very easy to change the army arrived in the nization’s international director. “Not Iorganization’s name from March of area, encircled the only was there no public debate, there Life to Walk of Shame. But Anna town and turned it were no family conversations about Reiner and her young friends are will- into a ghetto. the past either. People didn’t talk about ing to swear that it’s not the shame “That wasn’t life, what they did in the war. We started which makes them learn the words of just a difficult, investigating our families’ past, started “Hatikva” and perform in front of 100 Anna Reiner (right), a descendant of Nazis, and Holocaust survivor daily survival,” she asking questions. Many of us discov- elderly people in Netanya. Yevgenya Chaika. recounted. “The ered that their grandparents were Nazi “It’s the responsibility,” she explains. winter of 1941 was criminals. We were shocked.” “I am the descendant of Nazi criminals, Darmstadt, Germany. Another grand- extremely cold, and there was no Not just in Germany, but in Israel and I am responsible for this matter father was a policeman in the Krakow need to shoot people. They died of too, there has been a silencing culture and for making sure that it doesn’t hap- ghetto. Another grandfather was in the hunger, of the cold and of diseases. about the Holocaust for many years. pen again. Before I knew all this infor- Wehrmacht, the German army, and Every day, a wagon passed between The main principle of the organiza- mation about my family, I had no inter- took part in the occupation of Belarus.” the houses and collected the bodies. tion, therefore, is talking. The actual est in the Holocaust. Today, I am While 25-year-old Reiner describes Only a few survived.” discussion of the matter, after years of breaking the silence. It’s important to the horrible acts committed by her The 25-year-old Samuel Haas took silencing on both sides, brings people talk about it and not to forget.” grandparents, Yevgenya Chaika sits the microphone and said, “My grand- closer and releases tensions and old Beyond the exposure of the past, next to her and strokes her arm, calm- parents were Nazis. One of them hatreds. It aims to guarantee that the the solidarity marches and the per- ing her down. It’s quite possible that handed out printed propaganda infor- past does not repeat itself. sonal meetings, one of the organiza- Chaika, a Belarus-born Holocaust mation, and the other three traveled As part of the organization, the tion’s basic principles is unwavering survivor, ran into Reiner’s grandfather across Europe as part of their job in young Germans meet with Holocaust support, some would say fanatic sup- at some point. She was only eight the Wehrmacht army. They murdered, survivors around the world, tell them port, for the State of Israel. For exam- months old when Hitler’s soldiers robbed and looted. And as a descen- about their families’ Nazi past and ple, at the end of each testimony, the stormed eastern Belarus and jailed all dant of these people, I would like to seek their forgiveness, promising to do young German pledges allegiance to the Jews in crowded ghettos. stand on Israeli soil and say out loud everything in their power so that those the State of Israel and vows to fight Together with her family members, that we must not let such a thing hap- hate crimes do not repeat themselves. any criticism directed at the country. she was tossed “like a sack of pota- pen again. I want to expose my fami- In the meeting held in Netanya, the One of the explanations is the fact toes” into a crate on a large truck, ly’s story and support Israel and the young Germans even presented a that the organization works from which took her to the ghetto. She war on anti-Semitism.” Hasidic dance to the survivors and churches across Germany and mainly barely survived there for four years, a Haas’ comments reflect the solidar- sang a modern version of Israel’s appeals to young devout Christians, helpless baby. After the ghetto was ity at the heart of this event and the national anthem, “Hatikva,” including deeply leaning on the Holy Scriptures. liberated, the family returned home, agreement that such meetings will a rap segment in German, which was “I believe in the Bible, I am only to discover that the house had help guarantee that horrible events met with loud applause. They then Christian, and the Bible says that God been bombed and robbed. like the Holocaust will never repeat handed out flowers to the survivors. gave this land to the Jews,” Reiner Who knows, it may have been themselves. “The March of Life insists that we recites. “So I think that they have the Reiner’s grandfather of all people “Anna and her friends are reaching don’t keep silent again,” says Reuss, right to fight for it. Beyond speaking who threw little Yevgenya into the out to us now,” Chaika says with a “that we speak publicly about what about my family’s past, an important crate on the truck. It may have been broad smile. “They are very good our forefathers did. The goal is to part as far as I am concerned is to he who fired the mortar shell that young men and women. It warms my bring together the Nazi criminals’ stand behind Israel.” January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 BEFORE ELIE WIESEL WAS A HERO TO GERMANS, ANNE FRANK HE WAS REGARDED AS A NUISANCE — OR WORSE WASN’T BETRAYED? nne Frank may not have been (Continued from page 4) American Committee on Learning because he was America’s “most A betrayed to Nazi occupiers, but and I thought it would take centuries and Remembrance to discuss issues prominent Jew,” but officially because captured by chance. A new study pub- for humankind to cross it. And the concerning the museum in the after- “with great persuasion he has encour- lished by the Anne Frank House president of the United States has just math of Bitburg, its content was never aged people around the world to museum in Amsterdam says that crossed it in less than one hour.” up for negotiation. To Wiesel, the reach a higher grade of moral sensi- despite decades of research, there is Although it was mostly directed at committee’s task was to find “a new tivity…. It would be a great encour- no conclusive evidence that the Reagan, the German Chancellery avenue in German-American rela- agement for all, among them the Jewish diarist and her family were met Wiesel’s vocal opposition with tions without forgetting the German people, who dedicate them- betrayed to the Netherlands’ German anger and disregard. Kohl and his Holocaust.” He was convinced that selves to reconciliation.” Even though occupiers during World War II, lead- advisors, however, believed they had such a forum, had it been founded Wiesel received the Nobel Peace ing to their arrest and deportation. been correct in their assumption that earlier, could have averted the Bitburg Prize in 1986, the year he also Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of many American Jews, especially scandal. Not only Wiesel, but also resigned from the chairmanship of the the Anne Frank House museum, said prominent Holocaust survivors, their many other Holocaust survivors in the Holocaust Council, the museum plan- in a statement that new research by organizations and Jewish journalists, United States saw Kohl’s insistence ners — many of them survivors of the the museum “illustrates that other were determined to undermine on the ceremony as an indicator that Holocaust — did not accommodate scenarios should also be considered.” Germany’s rehabilitation in the United West Germany was struggling to German requests for a modification of States. With reference to Wiesel, Kohl accept historical responsibility for the the museum. And it was only during stated disparagingly behind closed Holocaust, that the country lacked the 1990s, after the opening of the USHMM, that the German govern- ment abandoned its claim to a co- determination in the shaping of Holocaust memory abroad, as well as its critical position toward Wiesel. In the new millennium, the Holocaust has become a paradigm for mass crime and genocide, the embodiment of barbarism and human rights viola- tions, and the fate of the Jews has One possible theory is that the been transformed into a universally August 4, 1944, raid that led to Anne’s recognized point of reference for arrest could have been part of an other victim groups. As a result, its investigation into illegal labor or falsi- terminology, iconography and fied ration coupons at the canal-side imagery have traveled and been house where she and other Jews hid appropriated, politicized, used and for just over two years. Anne kept a abused outside their original historical diary during her time in hiding that context. This universalization of the was published after the war and President Shimon Peres seen awarding Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel the Presidential Holocaust, which we can see in the turned her into a globally recognized Medal of Distinction, at a ceremony in New York City, November 25, 2013. United States, Germany and many symbol of Holocaust victims. She died other countries, has also had a signifi- in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentra- doors: “Mister Wiesel, who came from adequate Holocaust education, and cant impact on the reputation of tion camp at age 15, shortly before it Auschwitz … is operating in this mat- that this created an opportunity for the Holocaust survivors. was liberated by Allied forces. ter with a particular severity against revival of neo-Nazism. n this process, Elie Wiesel, who The new research points to two men us, to a degree that I cannot com- Nevertheless, West German inter- Icommanded unrivaled attention who worked in the building on pletely understand, as I wish politely mediaries tried to win over Wiesel, among Holocaust survivors around Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht canal to put it.” though without much success in the the globe, became a moral authority and dealt in illegal ration cards. They t this time, the leadership end. Among numerous initiatives and and a celebrity, also in Germany. In were arrested earlier in 1944 and sub- A around Kohl had come to per- proposals, supporting Wiesel’s cam- 2000, Wiesel gave the official address sequently released, Dutch records ceive themselves as the victims of paign for the Nobel Peace Prize to the Bundestag on the occasion of show. The arrests also are mentioned American Holocaust memory and evolved as the most promising strate- Holocaust Remembrance Day, and in in Anne’s diary. Such arrests were were determined to avert damage, as gy. An advisor to Kohl noted that, in 2009, he returned with Barack reported to an investigation division it were, to the country’s reputation order to convince the museum plan- Obama and Angela Merkel to based in The Hague, and the report abroad. Perhaps even more so than ners to accommodate the German Buchenwald, from which he had been says that, “During their day-to-day during the Bitburg controversy, they government’s suggestions, “we would liberated in 1945. Today, Germany activities, investigators from this saw Wiesel as an antagonist in the have to get the leading American acknowledges its criminal history, and department often came across Jews context of the establishment of Jews on our side, and for this purpose its leaders have changed their minds in hiding by chance.” America’s national Holocaust muse- it would be ideal to support the efforts about Wiesel. Indeed, the country’s Another possibility raised by the um on the Mall in Washington. Kohl of the most prominent Jew, Prof. Elie political leadership actively accepts report is that the raid was part of an and his advisors perceived the plans Wiesel, to receive the Nobel Prize.” historical responsibility and openly investigation into people being for this institution as a particular slight Such thinking was consistent with a identifies with its past. It is thus not at allowed to work to prevent them being against Germany, in their eyes the specific form of West German sec- all surprising that Germany’s political called up as forced labor and sent to United States’ most loyal Cold War ondary anti-Semitism, which suggest- elites today admire and revere Germany. “A company where people ally. To avert damage to the Federal ed that Jews refused to forgive the Wiesel, and that Merkel, President were working illegally and two sales Republic’s reputation, German inter- Germans for the Holocaust, and that Joachim Gauck and many others representatives were arrested for mediaries tried for more than a they exploited Holocaust memory for have embraced his moral message dealing in ration coupons obviously decade to persuade the museum political reasons at the expense of and praised his achievements as an ran the risk of attracting the attention planners to integrate postwar German postwar Germany. For these reasons, advocate for Holocaust memory of the authorities,” the report says. history and the history of German but also out of fear of the alleged emphatically on the occasion of his It adds that, “The possibility of anti-Nazi military resistance into the power of “the influential Jews in passing. One should not forget, how- betrayal has of course not been exhibition concept. They aimed to America,” a campaign by the German ever, that Germany’s coming to terms entirely ruled out by this, nor has any show that not all Germans had been Bundestag was orchestrated in sup- with the Nazi past was a difficult, con- relationship between the ration Nazis during the Third Reich and that port of Wiesel’s bid for the Nobel tradictory and long-winded process, coupon fraud and the arrest been proven,” and says further research is the Federal Republic was distinctly Prize. Needless to say, the roughly 80 which is also reflected in the country’s necessary. “Clearly, the last word different from Nazi Germany. Though parliamentarians who signed the peti- ambivalent attitudes towards Elie about that fateful summer day in 1944 Wiesel agreed to set up a German- tion did not recommend Wiesel Wiesel. has not yet been said,” it adds. Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 EVEN IN THE GAS CHAMBERS, MIRACLES CAN HAPPEN A new documentary chronicles instinctively I turned my arm around.” her. Jewish family. In 1938 Kosice was how a Holocaust survivor escaped After the injection, Braun lifted a This trip back in time is the subject of ceded to Hungary. In April 1944, right the gas chambers, a lethal injec- bale of hay and used the baling wire a documentary A Story in Third Person. after the Nazis occupied the city, the tion and a death camp, and lived to to bore a hole completely through her The driving force behind the project is Jewish students were singled out, keep a promise to her father. forearm, in the hope of forcing out the public relations professional Elisheva given their final report cards and told poison. Somehow or other it worked, Braun-Lapidot, Braun’s only child. not to return to school. Two months BY JUDY MALTZ, HAARETZ and using the same primitive tech- “When my mother talks about what later the family was transported to uzanna Braun (nee Weisz) was nique she saved two other prisoners she went through, it’s so painful, the Auschwitz by cattle car. Sbarely 16 when she walked into near her in the line and her beloved only way she can do it is if she talks remember getting off the train at a gas chamber at Auschwitz, together older sister, Agi. Braun shows a visitor about it happening to someone else,” “IAuschwitz, and the first thing I with her mother and sister. A rare mal- saw was the smoke coming out of the function saved their lives. chimneys and Dr. Mengele standing “There were about 30 of us in there, there wearing white gloves,” recalls and I remember thinking this was the Braun. “I also remember seeing three end,” she recalls. “There was no people who had been hanged. They water coming out of the shower, but were all hanging from their feet.” there was a faint smell of gas. That The women and children were was it, though. Just a faint smell. And pushed into one line, the men into suddenly, after a few minutes, the another. “That was the last time I saw doors were opened, and we were all my father,” says Braun. “I never got to herded out. We understood that say goodbye to him.” something wasn’t working like it She did, though, fulfill an important should be.” commitment she had made to him just That was in June 1944. About half a before the family left Kosice. “My sis- year later, in a different death camp, ter Agi, who was four years older than Braun stared down death again, sur- I, had been ill, and my father made viving what should have been a lethal me promise that I would look after her injection of strychnine. But this time it Suzanna Braun at her home in Jerusalem with an old album of family photos. no matter what happened,” recounts was her own ingenuity, not luck, that the scar on her arm from her crude Braun-Lapidot says by way of explain- Braun. “And I did.” saved her. When her turn in line self-surgery of 70 years ago. ing the title of the 75-minute documen- Auschwitz-Birkenau was the first of came, she rotated her wrist so that Recently, Braun retraced part of the tary, which was directed and edited by numerous stops for the two sisters the needle only pricked her skin. “I horrific journey that began in April Israeli filmmaker Yarden Karmin. before they eventually found their way watched as one inmate after another 1944 when the Nazis occupied her Suzanna and Agi grew up in a spa- back home in October 1945. But the died instantly after getting the injec- hometown of Kosice, the second- cious home in Kosice, a trip Braun took with her family last tion shot directly into a vein,” she largest city in what is now Slovakia, Czechoslovakia town that had about summer ended at the infamous death recounts. “I had remembered learning and put an abrupt end to what had 12,000 Jews before the war. The sis- camp. at some point that when something been a very privileged childhood. She ters were raised largely by au pairs. “As strange as it sounds,” says gets injected directly into the vein it insisted that her daughter, son-in-law Their father was a jurist, their mother Braun-Lapidot, “Auschwitz and Birk- has a much more powerful effect, so and two grandchildren accompany a scion of an aristocratic Hungarian (Continued on page 14) A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE IN FRANCE CIRCA 1942 remarkable mind-numbing efforts of search of bodies, thereby allowing for three weeks. BY ELI HONIG, CJN the extended Christian Counord- more time to execute our escape. When I was 50 years old, I visited Gardon family, they failed in their mis- have in my possession a copy of a my mother in Montreal, and together s an infant, hidden in occupied sion. I was born, and they placed us Iletter from the chief of the French we watched a video of the Holocaust A France during the Holocaust, in different hiding places for the dura- police in Château-Gontier to the com- interview that she had at the Living whose father and his father’s family Testimonies Project at McGill perished in Auschwitz, I grew up with University. There and then I finally a haunting legacy. Over the years, I learned the reason for her surrepti- wrestled with many aspects of this tious nighttime trip to Paris, where history. she was arrested and eventually My mother was five months preg- released. She was going to an under- nant with me, and she was left with ground clinic to have an abortion! her two little girls, when my father was When she stepped out of the jail, she arrested in the first nationwide didn’t know where to go. One direc- roundup of Jews in France, on July tion led to the clinic and the other 16, 1942. When I was much older, direction led to home. Then she saw a she told me that once, prior to his German soldier across the street, and arrest, she had removed her yellow she said to herself that what she star and travelled to Paris from the could do with two children, she could town of Château-Gontier, where our do with three. And she left for family was in enforced residence. home — and I was born. When she arrived she was caught in The revelation that I was almost a large police dragnet of prostitutes aborted reeled me. But it was my and placed in a jail cell with them. Two young women wear the Star of David in Paris. mother’s courage, and the realization Three days later, she was released tion of the war. missioner of police for the province of that I ended up being the vehicle for and returned home. The Germans, realizing that their Mayenne, stating that Mme. Esther the saving of my mother and my two Late in my mother’s pregnancy, two “prey” had eluded them, started hunt- Honig disappeared with her three chil- sisters, not to speak of me, that has SS or Gestapo officers came by car to ing for us. They even interviewed my dren (names, and places and dates of haunted me for years. Now I realize the small town to arrest her and her midwife, who told them that Mme. birth included), and that he had no that for almost two years, we all had two girls. In a last act of desperation, Honig was so desperate that she idea which direction she took. But he near-death experiences, though only she blurted out that she was about to probably jumped into the nearby assured his superior that as soon as my mother was aware of the true dan- give birth. Since she was very heavy Mayenne River with her children. he found the whereabouts of the “fugi- ger at the time. As an infant, I could with child, and since the officers real- When in 1980 I visited the people who tives” he would let him know. The let- have no understanding of what tran- ized what a childbirth would do to had risked life, limb and torture to ter was dated November 24, 1942. So spired then. Yet it was surely the their Mercedes, they retreated, saying save us, I was told that the Germans my mother was labeled a fugitive, and near-death experiences that have that they would return. Through the dredged the river for three days in by extension I was too, at the age of shadowed me in my cognitive years. January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 SHE LOVED HIM, AND HE DIED IN THE HOLOCAUST. NOW HER SON IS BRINGING HIS MUSIC BACK TO LIFE. (Continued from page 7) tifiably 1½ eyes cry.” leaving roughly 200,000 Jews in the Leonora wrote on May 17, 1945. “May nized in Budapest, where after hear- In that same letter Delej’s mood is capital. the good God send him home soon, ing the young composer play his light, as he finally confesses that he’s That July, the Swedish diplomat because this horrible waiting is slow “Intermezzo” (a work whose where- met someone. Raoul Wallenberg arrived in poison. . . . I bemoan Lulu’s piano, abouts are today unknown), his piano “In Kolozsvár it was perfect, simply Budapest, where (joining other diplo- which has been shattered into a thou- teacher György Faragó was so excellent,” wrote Delej. “I met a girl; mats) he began distributing certifi- sand pieces.” impressed, he vowed to record it. we write to each other weekly.” cates of protection, or schutzpasses, Delej is not mentioned again until Even as Delej’s celebrity grew, the Three months later Hungary, to the city’s Jews. Wallenberg helped June 1946, when Leonora placed a family began working feverishly to pressed by the Axis powers, would establish the so-called international notice in a newspaper: secure his passage to the United declare war on the United States. ghetto, an archipelago of safe houses “Who knows about him? On States. *** for Jews bearing protective papers. December 15, 1944, Lajos Delej was Livia had reserved him a space o was the girl from Kolozsvár The Delej home became one of taken from Budapest to Buchenwald, aboard the SS Serpa Pinto, which SRobert Berkowitz’s mother? Wallenberg’s safe houses, and and from there he apparently arrived during the war ferried thousands of Her son certainly likes to think so. Leonora and Lajos were issued sick at a nearby camp in January- refugees from Lisbon to the United “That must be about his meeting schutzpasses. February. Whoever knows anything States. with my mother,” Berkowitz said, In October 1944, however, the about him, please inform his mother.” “It seemed like everything was in adding, “I’ve been knocking at a door Germans organized a coup by the far- The saga of Delej goes almost silent order,” said Michael L. Miller, head of shaped like that face my whole life. right Arrow Cross party, initiating the after that. the Nationalism Studies program and My mother has said: You brought slaughter of hundreds and forcing Bársony’s research indicates that cofounder of the Jewish Studies pro- back Lajos Delej to me.” many others into increasingly brutal some of Delej’s compositions were gram at Central European University Still, the dates are a little fuzzy. labor. played on Hungarian radio in the in Budapest. “The problem was that Herzek doesn’t recall the precise year “All those Jews who managed to 1950s, but so far only the recording of survive in Budapest are now in dan- the Scherzo has been recovered. ger,” said Miller. “The Jews in the safe Listening to the movement now, houses are threatened. Jews are shot Delej’s nephew, Peter Lengyel, is into the Danube. This is the worst often overcome. phase of the Holocaust in Budapest.” “I think it’s the most beautiful thing Leonora evaded capture by hiding I’ve ever heard,” he said. “God only at the base of an elevator shaft, knows how great he could have assisted by the family’s housekeeper. been.” As Soviet troops advanced on James Conlon, music director of the Budapest, Hungarian authorities Los Angeles Opera, said Delej’s forced Jews without protective certifi- death is part of a multigenerational cates into a fenced-off ghetto, while cultural loss. others remained in the international “The history of 20th-century music is ghetto. written with an enormous omission,” One week later, on December 8, said Conlon, who founded the Los- Delej wrote his mother for the last Angeles based Orel Foundation to time. bring attention to Nazi-suppressed “My dear mommy,” he wrote in a compositions. “Part of the loss is what hurried scrawl. “We are now heading in the direction of the Józsefváros train sta- Robert Berkowitz and his mother, Pauline Herzek. tion, and there is no way he also needed transit visas through she met Delej, but she believes they to know. Do not despair. Germany, France and Spain.” courted for a year or more before she Really look after your- Miller, who has been translating the was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. self. It is a real pity that I Delejs’ correspondence as part of a Did they actually meet three years don’t have my gear broader book project on Hungarian earlier, during the 1941 trip? Family here. Unfortunately, I Jewry, said the family’s plight was correspondence offers little insight, have no food either. But, complicated by US immigration poli- winding down after Imre’s death in we’ll manage somehow. cy, which would tighten considerably 1942. Mommy, don’t be afraid after the Pearl Harbor attack. What remains are a few pieces of of anything. Our “They had to get affidavits and tick- ephemera — newspaper clippings guardian angel will not ets and all sorts of things,” Miller said and a concert program from that abandon us. I kiss you via Skype from Budapest. “Things June, when Delej accompanied warmly. Living just for were going slower than they wanted, Starker in his sonata and presented you, Your Loulou.” but things were going in the right other works, now lost. Delej won a On Christmas Day direction. They never lost confidence recital award in 1943, and that 1944, authorities trans- that he was eventually going to get to December the German pianist Walter ferred Delej to America.” Gieseking was deeply moved by Buchenwald. Imre and Leonora envisioned the Delej’s performance of his composi- id Delej turn him- entire family would eventually be tion “The Flame,” which is also lost. Dself in to authori- reunited in the United States. Still, “The famous musician loved the piece ties in hopes of finding Concert programs from the early 1940s, when Delej performed they repeatedly had to extend their so much that he inserted it into his Herzek, as the house- with musicians who would later be counted among the luminaries of 20th-century music. son’s ticket as they tried to arrange repertoire,” reported a Budapest keeper said, or was he safe passage. newspaper. picked off the street, as the Lengyels could have been. What could this per- Two days after Delej missed a The Germans invaded in March heard? The letters are silent. Either son have become?” September 1941 embarkation date, 1944, after Hungary tried to negotiate way, Delej appears to have been Berkowitz doubts they will ever Imre wrote his daughter: “The Serpa with the Allies. Under SS influence, forced into labor sometime after the recover the rest of Delej’s sonata. Pinto departed punctually on the 12th the Hungarian government ordered Germans invaded in March 1944. Still, he holds out hope that descen- from Lisbon. The ship should have the country’s rural Jews into ghettos, “They took our poor little thing to the dants of musicians listed in the early taken Loulou. Only half an eye is deporting an estimated 440,000 — Albrecht barracks, and from there the programs may eventually step for- laughing that he’s still here, while jus- many to concentration camps — but wretched ones no longer let him out,” ward. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 EVEN IN THE DID THE JEW “RESPONSIBLE” FOR SPARKING GAS CHAMBERS, KRISTALLNACHT SURVIVE THE HOLOCAUST? MIRACLES CAN stumbled across it and recognized a ude to the Holocaust. HAPPEN BY OFER ADERET, HAARETZ person she thought was Grynszpan. The motive for the shooting remains “It didn’t seem as if the photogra- unclear. The most accepted explana- id Herschel Grynszpan, whose (Continued from page 12) pher photographed Grynszpan delib- tion is that Grynszpan attacked the November 1938 killing of a enau was kid’s stuff compared to the D erately or recognized him, even German official in revenge for the suf- German diplomat in Paris served as other things my mom went through, though Grynszpan’s picture made fering caused to his parents and other the “excuse” for the Nazi pogrom that later on. She would not agree to go headlines all over the world in 1938,” Jews who were being expelled from came to be known as Kristallnacht, back to the other places.” Fuhrer wrote. Germany. But there are some who survive World War II? After surviving the gas chambers, ecently, Britain’s Guardian believe he had a romantic attachment An archive photo from 1946, found Suzanna, Agi and their mother were newspaper reported that the to Vom Rath, and shot him when he recently in the Vienna Jewish R tossed into a truck with several dozen picture had undergone a scientific refused to save his parents or help Museum, raises the possibility that other women and driven more than examination involving comparisons to legalize his own status in Paris. Grynszpan, who was assumed to 1,000 kilometers, to Estonia, where actual photos of Grynszpan, and con- have died in a concentration camp nitially, Grynszpan was arrested they were ordered to begin marching cluded that there was a 95 percent during the war, actually survived it. Iby the French; in 1940, when the south. On the road, their mother, likelihood that it was indeed him. The photo, found in the museum by Germans invaded France, he was Elizabeth (Elisheva’s namesake), was If Grynszpan were still alive today chance, shows a group of Jews in a transferred to Berlin and then to the shot dead. Devastated by the loss, he would be 95. nearby Sachsenhausen concentra- young Suzanna was unable to speak displaced persons camp in for a month. Bamberg, Germany, on July Their next stops were a number of 3, 1946, demonstrating for smaller, lesser-known concentration the right to emigrate to camps in Latvia and Poland, where Palestine. The only person Agi became progressively more ill. facing the camera looks After they escaped from a camp near strikingly like Grynszpan, Danzig, Suzanna dragged her older who would have been 24 at sister around on a sled for days in the the time. bitter cold, searching in vain for shelter. German journalist and his- By the time Russian forces drove the torian Armin Fuhrer, who in Germans out of that part of Europe, 2013 wrote a book called Agi had developed gangrene in her Herschel: The Assassination legs. Suzanne got her to a hospital, by Herschel Grynszpan on where Agi’s feet were amputated. the 7th of November 1938 “Through everything I went through and the Beginning of the until then, I never shed a tear,” recalls Holocaust, believes it is Braun. “The one and only time I broke Grynszpan in that photo. down is when the orderly dropped “It’s highly likely that this Agi’s two feet into a tub and told me to picture indeed shows take them down and discard them in a Herschel Grynszpan,” Fuhrer wrote in the German pile of limbs.” Concerned that Agi was Herschel Grynszpan in a 1938 photo, left, and, most likely, in the 1946 photo that recently surfaced in the archives not receiving proper medical care at newspaper Focus in of the Vienna Jewish Museum. that particular hospital, Braun November, after he was “It’s not out of the question,” Fuhrer tion camp. The last official confirma- removed her from the facility, and the asked by the museum to give his told the Guardian. “He could be living tion found in Nazi archives that he two sisters went by train to Russia. opinion. “This photo is a real surprise, under an assumed name in Israel or was alive is from September 1942. They stayed for eight months, until because Grynszpan’s fate was never the United States.” After that, there is no trace of him. Agi was fully recuperated. clear. The question of whether he sur- However, in the past, relatives who Many historians assume that uzanna and Agi eventually emi- vived the war and the Holocaust survived the war and emigrated to Grynszpan died in the camp, either grated to Israel. They lived next remained open. Until now.” S Israel have ruled out that possibility. door to each other for many years, The photo was found in the collec- from illness or at the hands of the In an interview with Haaretz in 2008, until Agi’s death. Braun recently tion of Eliezer Breuer, a representa- Nazis. But there have always been Grynszpan’s niece, Malka Grynszpan moved into a retirement home over- tive of the religious Poalei Agudat rumors that he survived the Holocaust (the daughter of his brother looking the hills of Jerusalem and her Yisrael organization, who was sent to and was living in Paris, in Hamburg or Mordechai, who died in 1996), said: one regret, she says, is that her sister the displaced persons camp to help even in Israel. Some have claimed “Our main proof that he did not live is did not live to see how tastefully she pave the way for Holocaust survivors that he had a family and lived under that he did not make contact with us. decorated her apartment. “How I to come to Palestine. The picture also an assumed identity for fear of being He was so attached to his family that would have loved to show her shows an American policeman point- assassinated. it is unreasonable to think he would around,” she says, sighing. ing a gun at the demonstrators. It isn’t In 1960, a German court pro- not have looked for us.” Because of the damage to her left known if Breuer took the photo or if it nounced Grynszpan dead, paving the Grynszpan’s father, Sendel, who arm from the strychnine injection, had been given to him by someone way for his surviving relatives to get a else. testified at the Eichmann trial in 1961, Braun was never able to resume pension from Germany. On back of the picture it says, “Jews said he had found no proof that his piano playing, her great passion as a Guardian son was alive. Fuhrer told the that the girl, but in recent years, after a long protesting against the closure of the Grynszpan was born in Germany in photograph “raises more questions career teaching kindergarten, she has gates of [Palestine] in 1946. American 1921 to Jewish parents who had than answers. Not least, what did he found a creative outlet in needlework military policemen are keeping order immigrated from Poland. When he do with the rest of his life, and per- and other crafts. with drawn weapons. I protested this was 15 he moved to Paris. On haps more importantly, how did he As she tells her story, Braun and with the help of this picture the November 7, 1938, he shot to death manage to survive the Nazis — was remains true to the title of the film, policemen were punished. The drawn Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary at he protected, and if so, by whom?” sharing the horrific details in a dry, pistols raised ire and difficult memo- the German embassy in Paris. The Archivist Prokisch told the British matter-of-fact tone as if everything ries bordering on mass hysteria.” murder provoked Nazi Germany to newspaper that discovery of the had happened to another person. The photo had never been pub- launch a pogrom in Germany on photo might prompt people to come Until the very end. That is, until she lished, and bounced around between November 9–10 that became known forward with new information, but “we gets to the part about the journey with different locations until it reached the as Kristallnacht, in which synagogues might not like the answers we get,” her family last summer. “There I was Vienna museum in the 1990s as part were destroyed, Jewish stores were walking again in Auschwitz-Birkenau, of a collection of some 30 photo- she said. “For someone of his promi- looted, some 100 Jews were killed but this time with one grandchild on graphs documenting Jews in the DP nence to have survived, as very few and tens of thousands were sent to each side of me holding my hand,” camps. It didn’t attract much attention others did, the suspicion has to be detention camps. Most historians she recounts. at the museum either, until its chief that he collaborated with the Nazis in consider Kristallnacht to be the prel- And then Braun begins to cry. archivist, Christa Prokisch, recently some way.” January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 JOSEPH GOEBBELS' 105-YEAR-OLD SECRETARY: "NO ONE BELIEVES ME NOW, BUT I KNEW NOTHING" (Continued from page 5) but well kept,” of a “gentlemanly coun- The details Pomsel chooses to focus shakes it as she adds: “We were istry of propaganda in 1942. “Only an tenance,” who wore “suits of the best on may reflect the way she has edited dumbstruck.” infectious disease would have stopped cloth, and always had a light tan.” “He her own story so that she feels more She and her fellow secretaries set me,” she insists. “I was flattered, had well-groomed hands — he proba- comfortable with it. But it is also con- about cutting up white food sacks and because it was a reward for being the bly had a manicure every day,” she ceivable that a combination of igno- turning them into a large surrender fastest typist at the radio station.” says, laughing at the thought. “There rance and awe, as well as the protec- flag to present to the Russians. She remembers her pay slip, on was really nothing to criticize about tion offered by the huge office complex Discussing their strategy ahead of which a range of tax-free allowances him.” She even felt sorry for him in the government quarter,,,,,,,, really their inevitable arrest, Pomsel told her was listed, alongside the 275-mark because of the limp he had, “which he did shield her from much of reality. colleagues she would tell the truth, salary — a small fortune compared made up for by being a bit arrogant.” “That I had worked as a shorthand with what most of her friends were typist in Joseph Goebbels’ propagan- earning. da ministry.” She was sentenced to She notes how life for her vivacious, five years’ incarceration in various red-haired Jewish friend, Eva Russian prison camps in and around Löwenthal, became increasingly diffi- Berlin. “It was no bed of roses,” is all cult after Adolf Hitler came to power. she will say about that time. It was Pomsel was also shocked by the only when she returned home that arrest of a hugely popular announcer she became aware of the Holocaust, at the radio station, who was sent to a she insists, referring to it as “the mat- concentration camp as punishment ter of the Jews.” for being gay. But she says that large- She quickly resumed a life not dis- ly, she remained in a bubble, unaware similar to the one she had had, when she found secretarial work at the state of the destruction being meted out by broadcaster once again, working her the Nazi regime on its enemies, way up to become the executive sec- despite the fact that she was at the retary to its director of programs and physical heart of the system. enjoying a privileged life of well-paid know no one ever believes us Goebbels and his wife, Magda, with Hitler. work and travel before retiring, aged nowadays — everyone thinks Only occasionally did she get a t was the day after Hitler’s birthday “I 60, in 1971. we knew everything. We knew noth- glimpse of the the man who turned in 1945 that her life as she knew it I But it would take her a full six ing, it was all kept well secret.” She lying into an art in pursuit of the Nazis’ came to an abrupt halt. Goebbels and decades after the end of the war refuses to admit she was naive in murderous goals. She was terrified to his entourage were ordered to join before she made any inquiries about believing that Jews who had been see him on stage at Berlin’s Hitler in his subterranean air raid shel- her Jewish school friend, Eva. When “disappeared” — including her friend Sportpalast delivering his infamous ter — the so-called Führerbunker — the Holocaust memorial was unveiled Eva — had been sent to villages in “total war” speech in February 1943. during the last days of the war. “It felt in 2005, she took a trip from her home the Sudetenland on the grounds that She and a colleague had been given as if something inside me had died,” in Munich to see it for herself. “I went those territories were in need of being ringside seats, just behind Magda says Pomsel. “We tried to make sure into the information center and told repopulated. “We believed it — we Goebbels. It was shortly after the we didn’t run out of alcohol. That was them I myself was missing someone, swallowed it — it seemed entirely Battle of Stalingrad, and Goebbels urgently needed in order to retain the an Eva Löwenthal.” A man went plausible,” she says. hoped to get popular support to pull numbness.” She lifts an index finger through the records and soon tracked When the flat she shared with her out all the stops to fight the threats as she takes pains to tell events in down her friend, who had been deport- parents was destroyed in a bombing facing Germany. “No actor could have their right order, recalling how ed to Auschwitz in November 1943, raid, Goebbels’ wife, Magda, helped to been any better at the transformation Goebbels’ assistant Günther and had been declared dead in 1945. soften the blow by presenting her with from a civilized, serious person into a Schwägermann came with the news “The list of names on the machine a silk-lined suit of blue Cheviot wool. ranting, rowdy man …. In the office he on April 30 that Hitler had killed him- on which we found her just kept on “I’ve never possessed anything as chic had a kind of noble elegance, and self, followed a day later by Goebbels. rolling nonstop down the screen,” she as that before or since,” she says. then to see him there like a raging “We asked him: ‘And his wife as well?’ says, leaning her head back, the fin- “They were both very nice to me.” midget — you just can’t imagine a ‘Yes.’ ‘And the children?’ ‘And the chil- gertips of one hand tracing the line of She recalls her boss as being “short greater contrast.” dren too.’” She bows her head and her necklace. THE BANKER WHO USED NAZIS TO HELP SAVE JEWS officers arrived at the Lissauers’ had in the United States. he returned to the banking business, BY BENJAMIN GLATT, house, and the two families — 11 “This was all an elaborate ploy, and and he died in 1978. THE JERUSALEM POST people in total — boarded the bus. the funds were never sent to But not only did von Oppenheim They drove through occupied Germany,” he said. perform acts of kindness during the year prior to the start of the Belgium and France, and finally the After saving the lives of the two fam- war; his legacy lives on in a Second World War, prominent A Nazis reached their final destination ilies, von Oppenheim continued to Holocaust education fund. Today, the banker Baron Friedrich Carl von at the Spanish border, dropping off work to save the lives of more people, Baron Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim Oppenheim convinced two of his the two families and returning home. demonstrating to the Nazi authorities Chair for the Study of Racism, friends, the Jewish owners of a metal Once in Spain, the Lissauers and that the metal company was crucial Antisemitism, and the Holocaust, factory, to move their families and Griessmans took a train to Portugal for the German war effort, and its founded and funded by the von their metal operation to Amsterdam and traveled to Brazil via ship. workers — almost exclusively Jewish Oppenheim family of Cologne, annu- from Cologne. “Basically, they were escorted to refugees, most of whom had no expe- ally awards two or three postdoctoral Even though their firm was taken freedom by Nazis. How was this pos- rience at all in the metal business — fellowship grants. over by von Oppenheim’s bank during sible?” von Oppenheim’s grandson, needed to remain in the vicinity of the “Whenever I reflect on my grandfa- the war, the Lissauer and Griessman Florian von Oppenheim, asked at a metal operation. ther’s actions, he helped save 11 families lived and worked in memorial in the Israeli Consulate in he ploy worked for a few years, lives from two families,” said Florian Amsterdam in relative peace during Shanghai in 2015. but only a dozen were able to von Oppenheim. “This is a drop in the first few months of the war. But as T He explained that through his survive. And as von Oppenheim contin- the ocean compared to the six million the long arm of the Nazis began to grandfather’s high-level connections ued in his efforts, the Gestapo caught who were murdered. But for those 11 reach all of Western Europe, they with the German Central Bank, von up with him, framing him and throwing individuals and their descendants — were in grave danger of being deport- Oppenheim was able to get them exit him in jail on charges of treason with a it’s everything.” ed and sent to concentration camps. visas, convincing the bankers that the death sentence over his head. He On October 10, 1996, Yad Vashem On September 7, 1940, an official only way the metal company would be managed to survive in prison, and was recognized Baron Friedrich von Nazi bus escorted by two German able to pay back their massive loans freed by the Americans before the Oppenheim as Righteous Among the military vehicles commanded by Nazi was through frozen funds the families Nazis could execute him. After the war Nations. American & International Societies 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 (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for New York, NY 10110 NY York, New Ron B. Meier, Ph.D., Ron B. Meier, EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL *Published Bimonthly by the American by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor 42nd Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 January/February after the war. after or by phone at: “We’ve achieved a lot,” “We’ve got so many “We’ve That “She charmed me. Unlike Hanka and Sigi, Their great-grandson’s the children who were murdered under the Nazi regime. Melbourne backyard. Sigi says. grandchildren and great- grandchildren. was that, the rest was history.” only a handful of their classmates survived the Holocaust. school, Bialik College, is currently collecting 1.5 million buttons to honor Katowice he year after, Hanka gave birth he year after, to the first of their two daugh- to the first of their T “We are free.” “We were married. The next day they Having moved to Australia in 1971, Having moved to Sigi is donating 180 buttons to the The doting couple, aged 91 and 93, The inscription also commemorates are inviting the souls of our “We ters, Evelyne, the first baby born to ters, Evelyne, the first baby born home Holocaust survivors in Sigi’s town of it wasn’t until their 50th wedding a anniversary that the couple had proper wedding, in their daughter’s project this month, to represent the family he lost in the Holocaust. have already had their gravestones side by side, for when they prepared, leave this world. their immediate family who were never given a grave. exterminated family to rest in our grave.” , its victims, survivors and heroes , its Empower, educate and strengthen our Empower, contribution can make a generous You future by making an endowment gift to the future by making an endowment gift Your Vashem. Yad American Society for in Vashem Yad legacy will help to support Jerusalem and keep the memory of the Shoah alive forever. through a bequest in your will by desig- of a ASYV as a beneficiary nating or Charitable Remainder Trust Charitable can also contribute You Annuity. Gift [email protected] MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE “She was the only person I could Hanka says she risked her life to Then one night, she came for a sec- This time she was smiling and had The camp was being liberated. “They’re gone,” she told him. He says he had been sabotaging He says he had When he received word that the He says only Hanka knew where he trust my life with,” he says. keep him alive — smuggling him small pieces of her bread ration and a blanket that she had made to keep him warm on -15 degree nights. ond visit. her arms out. tions workshop making bullets for the bullets tions workshop making Nazi German army. too making bullets the factory line — small for the gun barrels. was looking for him, he Gestapo found a hiding spot in a nearby aban- doned construction site. was hiding. camp Melbourne couple Sigi, 93, and Hanka, 91, say after all of these years they are still all of these years they are Melbourne couple Sigi, 93, and Hanka, 91, say after very much in love. A PLANNED GIFT TO ASYV PLANNED GIFT TO A SEVEN DECADES OF MARRIAGE SEVEN Czestochowa HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS CELEBRATE CELEBRATE SURVIVORS HOLOCAUST FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION: GENERATION: TO FROM GENERATION

aving virtually grown up in labor aving virtually grown camps, the teenagers were the teenagers camps,

Our ASYV staff are here to help you accomplish your estate planning goals. accomplish your estate are here to help you ASYV staff Our Chris plan, please contact with your estate For more information or assistance Sigi had been working in the muni- “He was very gentle.” Over the coming days this new love “At that time, the people in the camp Sigi had stood out in an environ- That is exactly what she did on that “I remember the first Before returning to his He approached her and “There was a pair of “There was a pair “I had no interest in girls, It was New Year’s Eve Year’s It was New “I lost my mind,” Sigi says. the whole world “When I saw her, H 212-220-4304, extension 213. through a life insurance or retirement plan, by naming ASYV as a beneficiary of a through a life insurance or retirement plan, by naming or other retirement vehicle. IRA life insurance policy, Morton, Director of Planned Giving: was tested. were terrible,” she says. ment where the inhumane conditions most people shells of their for- had left mer selves. first day, because, she says, she first day, wanted to hold onto it forever. kiss,” Hanka says as she her hand on her face. puts barracks he gave her a kiss on the cheek. they talked. beautiful eyes looking at me, with a smile like I never saw in my life.” because I was a skeleton,” Sigi says. 1944, 18 days before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. was turning around me. I saw a pair of was turning around me. I saw a pair beautiful eyes and I heard bells ring- ing.” in Poland. both wasting away when their eyes first locked in the BY MARGARET BURIN, ABC NEWS BURIN, MARGARET BY Page 16