AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 44-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2018-Shevat/Adar 5778 SIX MILLION VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED Warsaw — Elderly Holocaust sur- the Yad Vashem IRemember Wall this from the Holocaust” is an online exhi- chatter. You have already said every- vivors, wearing striped scarves that year. This annual social media cam- bition staged by the Yad Vashem thing and left me no room. recalled their uniforms as prisoners of paign is a unique and meaningful World Holocaust Remembrance “On this occasion, mother watered Nazi Germany, made a yearly pilgrim- opportunity for the public to partici- Center in Jerusalem. the letter with her tears. age to Auschwitz on January 27, pate in a unique commemorative The center holds thousands of mis- “The situation is now pretty bad exactly 73 years after the Soviet army activity to mark International sives from the doomed and will grad- because we have been imprisoned in liberated the death camp in occupied Holocaust Remembrance Day. By ually publish them over the coming the so-called Jewish quarter. Also at Poland. joining the IRemember Wall, the par- months. home a lot has changed. We now live On the date now commemorated as ticipant's Facebook profile is random- In one such letter, Perla Tytelman in the bedroom [of the parents]. What International Holocaust Remembrance ly linked to the name of a Holocaust writes along with her son Samuel and do I do, you know? I have to come to Day, political leaders and Jewish the end. officials warned that the Nazi “Remember, the most impor- genocide must never cease serv- tant thing is not to take anything ing as a reminder of the evil of to heart and persevere. Then which humans are capable. we will definitely meet again.” In Warsaw, Poland, U.S. The letter was sent in the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson autumn of 1941. All three would attended a solemn ceremony at a later perish in the ghetto, a fact memorial to the Jews who died that Jozef and Rachel would not fighting the German forces in the learn until after the war. Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943. *** The head of Warsaw’s Jewish Staring at grainy video footage community read a prayer, and of Jewish children marching to Tillerson made brief remarks their freedom though the about the importance of not for- barbed-wire fences of the getting the horrors of the Auschwitz death camp, 79-year- Holocaust. old Vera Kriegel Grossman “On this occasion, it reminds us excitedly points a finger at the that we can never, we can never, screen upon identifying a dark- be indifferent to the face of evil,” haired girl in a dirty striped uni- Tillerson said. form as her 6-year-old self. “The Western alliance which “I can’t believe that happened emerged from World War II has to me. I wasn’t a child there. I committed itself to ensuring the Survivors and guests walk past the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate at the former Nazi German concentration camp on was all grown up ... it was like I Oswiecim security of all, that this would International Holocaust Remembrance Day in , Poland, Saturday, January 27, 2018. was 100 years old.” never happen again,” he said. “As we victim from Yad Vashem's Central daughter Rega from the Warsaw Archival footage shot by Auschwitz’s mark this day in solemn remem- Database of Shoah Victims' Names. ghetto to her husband, Jozef, and Soviet liberators is part of the Yad brance, let us repeat the words of our *** other daughter Rachel, who managed Vashem Holocaust memorial’s latest own commitment: Never again. Never Some of the most heartbreaking let- to flee to Siberia. exhibition, ahead of International again.” ters ever penned - written by Nazi vic- The letter reads: 'I am drawing on all Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jerusalem — In honor of tims to loved ones they would never my strength in order to survive for exploring the power of photography International Holocaust see again - have been published you. during World War II. The 1,500 photo- Remembrance Day nearly 8,000 peo- ahead of World Holocaust Day. “But you, my beloved ones, have to graphs and 13 films displayed come ple from 193 different countries joined “We Shall Meet Again - Last Letters prove your bravery, you have to prove from various perspectives, those of that you are capable of overcoming victims and perpetrators alike, and this undeserved punishment and the look to offer today’s media-saturated wanderings with strength and dignity. visitors a new angle for looking at the IN THIS ISSUE “You should be consoled by the horrors of the Holocaust. International Holocaust Remembrance Day...... 1, 8-9 thought that this has to end some- Photography, perhaps more than We knew, but failed to stop the Holocaust...... 3 time, and that then we will once again anything else, has come to shape our Wordwings...... 4 be happy together. Our yearning for memory of the Holocaust. The Nazi havens in South America...... 6 each other knows no bounds.” “Flashes of Memory” exhibit also The Italian Wallenberg...... 7 Rachel then adds her news to the offers a glimpse behind the lens — The post-Holocaust pogrom that Poland is still fighting over...... 10 letter, before saying she has to make showing the actual cameras used, the Holocaust suitcase packs stories of survival...... 11 room for Samuel, who is complaining photographers who took the pictures Irish aid worker who saved children from Auschwitz...... 12 there is no space left to write. and their various motivations. Secret anti-Nazi diary gives voice to man on the street...... 14 Samuel says: “I write last, so that the “The exhibit is aimed at the brain, How artist beat foolproof Nazi system to save 350 lives...... 15 ladies signed above have time to (Continued on page 8) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 IN THE SHADOW OF AUSCHWITZ, JEWISH LIFE ONCE FLOWED WITH SPIRITS to a local Jewish community, which Haberfeld trapped abroad, little tillery, archeologists broke ground at BY MATT LEBOVIC, purchased the adjacent building and Francziska was murdered at Belzec, the site of the former Great THE TIMES OF ISRAEL created the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the first of six Nazi death camps to Synagogue. Among more than 400 an impressive synagogue-museum operate with stationary gassing facili- objects pulled from the grassy slope lthough its name later became complex. ties. in 2004, decorative motif fragments synonymous with the A Although relatively few of the two n 1967, more than two decades evoked the the vast, storied complex, Holocaust, the Polish town Oswiecim million annual visitors to Auschwitz- after rebuilding their lives in the burned down by the Nazis in 1939. — or Auschwitz, in German — once I Birkenau make their way into the his- United States, Alfons and Felicia According to one tale from Jewish brimmed with Jewish culture. The rise toric core of Oswiecim, there are tan- Haberfeld made a return trip to Oswiecim, the Great Synagogue was and fall of the community’s buildings talizing objects from the town’s Oswiecim. The distillery was under a place where worshipers could com- left behind evocative relics, a few Jewish past on display at the shul- state ownership, and Haberfeld mune with souls of the dead who dozen photographs and many tales of museum complex. The collection the town’s special place in Polish- includes ritual objects from the Jewish history. destroyed Great Synagogue, where Jews first settled in Oswiecim, west — legend has it — the souls of of Krakow, about 400 years ago. By departed Jews performed a “death the eve of the Holocaust, they made dance” with the living. up half the town’s population of Among artifacts presented at the 10,000 people. The community put up Auschwitz Jewish Center, a selection of liquor bottles from the world-renowned Haberfeld distillery stands out. In 1804, Jakob Haberfeld opened a “steam vodka & liquor fac- tory” near a bridge cross- ing the Sola River. An early factory in Poland, the Jewish-owned outfit produced vast amounts of In Oswiecim, Poland, a water well is used in front of the so-called “Auschwitz Synagogue” near the vodka, rum and juices. center of town, during the interwar period. Next to the distillery was a 40-room family mansion, House was in disrepair, they noted occasionally gathered to pray there. Haberfeld House, one of with sorrow. Disturbingly, a new wave One night long ago, it was said, the Ritual objects from the Great Synagogue of Oswiecim in Poland, on display at the Auschwitz Jewish Center. the town’s architectural of anti-Semitism was forcing Shoah souls of Oswiecim’s deceased Jews icons. survivors and their children to flee returned to the synagogue for more than 20 synagogues, famous Years before World War II, the Poland only one generation after the Simchat Torah. Hearing strange nois- schools and one of Poland’s first fac- Haberfeld family had a railroad spur Holocaust. es coming from the fortress-like build- tories. Oswiecim was known as “not a built to a marshy region outside town, The trip to Poland was too much to ing after midnight, people went to bad place” to live for Jews; indeed, where river gravel for the distillery bear for Alfons Haberfeld. investigate. Suddenly, the Great the Yiddish name for the town was was plentiful. Later, during the Nazi “Emotionally devastated” by the Synagogue filled with light, and a rev- Oshpitzin, which comes from the occupation of Poland, the tracks were encounter, he died three years later, elation was made. Aramaic word for guests. used to bring Jews to the very end of aged 66. “[The Jews] were informed that all of Today, only the so-called Auschwitz their journey, the “old Jewish ramp” During the 1990s, long after the the worshippers were the purified Synagogue remains of that vanished outside Birkenau, where SS doctors death of her husband, Felicia souls of former Oshpitzin [Oswiecim] Jewish landscape. Built in 1913, the conducted “selections” for the gas Haberfeld attempted to reclaim family Jews who have long been in Heaven,” modest shul located off the town chambers. ownership of the mansion and factory. according to the memoirs of Yakov square has changed hands many In 1939, with Alfons Haberfeld at the The widow’s case did not convince Seifter, who grew up in the town and times. As it is the synagogue closest to distillery’s helm, Germany invaded authorities, and she lived to see the recalled the tale in his memoirs. Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the Nazis “Later, when the Torah Scrolls were murdered more than one million Jews returned to the Holy Ark, they were during World War II, visitors usually instructed that when leaving the syna- come on the same day as a tour of the gogue no one should face the exit, former extermination center. but all were to exit walking back- During the Nazi occupation, the wards, so that they should not, God Auschwitz Synagogue served as a forbid, be harmed,” wrote Seifter. munitions depot for the German army. That Simchat Torah “death dance,” The deportation of Oswiecim’s 5,000 and the occasional visit of departed Jews was accomplished in one week, souls on Shabbat, were part of Jewish during a particularly well-pho- Oswiecim’s flavor, cultivated during tographed aktion. Many townspeople 400 years of struggle and accom- positioned themselves at windows to plishment. watch SS men march the Jews away “It is really good to live in Vienna, forever, and Oswiecim’s main land- but one ought to die in Oshpitzin,” marks — such as churches and according to a Yiddish saying. stores — appear in snapshots taken Because so many esteemed rabbis by the neighbor-witnesses. Oswiecim One of several photographs taken during the deportation of ’s Jews to death camps and were buried in Oswiecim, Jews from Following liberation in 1945, a few ghettos in the region during the Nazi occupation of Poland. throughout the Galicia region attempt- Jews returned to Oswiecim and held Poland. At the time, Haberfeld and his demolition of both buildings in 2003. ed to earn a final resting place among services at the shul again. However, wife, Felicia, were returning from the With the structures gone, plans to them. by the early 1970s, the town’s Jews World’s Fair in New York. The couple open a Jakob Haberfeld distillery – “Anyone who merited to be buried had all emigrated, and “the last syna- had left their two-year-old daughter, themed hotel inside the old factory fell [there] would not suffer travails at the gogue of Auschwitz” became a carpet Francziska, behind in Oswiecim, in through. time of resurrection,” wrote Seifter of warehouse. Later, post-Communism the care of her grandmother. Two A few months after demolition balls his boyhood home, once called “a city restitution laws returned the property years later, with Alfons and Felicia erased Haberfeld House and the dis- of Israel” in Poland. January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 THE ITALIAN WALLENBERG WHO SAVED OVER 5000 HUNGARIAN JEWS was anti-Nazi.” From then on, he September 1943. Italy surrendered to Perlasca imploring him to leave too. BY MENUCHA CHANA LEVIN, reserved his loyalty for the Italian the Allies and the country was split. Realizing that without protection AISH.COM king, Victor Emmanuel III. Some aligned themselves to many Jews would be killed, Perlasca n the early days of World War II, Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic, bravely decided to remain. iorgio Perlasca saved more Perlasca avoided the draft by while others supported the king, who The only person in the consulate Jews than the 1200 saved by I G working as an import-export agent for joined the Allies. Perlasca was arrest- with a Spanish passport, he went to the famous Oskar Schindler. Like ed as an enemy alien and interned in the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Raoul Wallenberg, Perlasca boldly a camp near the Austrian border. Affairs. rescued Hungarian Jews from under Escaping in October 1943, he made Utilizing his boundless chutzpah the noses of the Nazis. his way back to Budapest. and a letter he had forged, Perlasca Yet the heroic Giorgio Perlasca still Life changed drastically in March succeeded in convincing the officials remains unknown. 1944 when the Hungarian Nazis he had been appointed the new Born in 1910 in the small northern seized power. Perlasca ran to the Spanish consul and that Sanz Briz Italian town of Como and raised in Spanish consulate in Budapest. was simply on leave. The German nearby Padua, Perlasca belonged to a Producing his vital letter from the and Hungarian officials believed his family consisting of civil servants and Spanish authorities, he received a appointment and his warning that army officers. Initially attracted to Italian Spanish passport with his new name: Spain would retaliate if forced to turn Fascism, he volunteered for the army Jorge Perlasca. over their refugees. Fortunately for when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. He soon discovered that the him, they were unable to confirm Later he joined the Corps of Volunteer Spanish consul, Angel Sanz Briz, was Perlasca’s new status with Madrid, Troops, an Italian force assisting the issuing “letters of protection” for and he was permitted to continue rebel forces of Francisco Franco in the Hungarian Jews who were forced to working. Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. wear the yellow Star of David. The “I couldn’t stand the sight of people In gratitude for his service, Perlasca embassy was overwhelmed with being branded like animals . . .. I received a letter of thanks from requests from stateless Jews seeking couldn’t stand seeing children being Franco’s victorious new government. Giorgio Perlasca, September 1935. asylum in a neutral country such as killed,” he stated. “I did what I had to The letter instructed the Spanish for- the Italian army. He traveled to Spain, or safe passage out of Europe. do.” eign service to come to his aid if he Zagreb, Belgrade and Eastern The consulate also employed Jews Perlasca described his situation: “At should ever need diplomatic assis- Europe, where he witnessed vicious as clerks and housed them in eight first, I didn’t know what to do, but then tance. At the time Perlasca had no Axis massacres of Jews and Serbs. apartment buildings under its control. I began to feel like a fish in water. I idea how important this letter would In 1942, he was assigned to Perlasca offered his assistance. The continued giving out protective pass- turn out to be. Upon his return home Budapest. He found the Hungarian Hungarian government then discov- es and looked after the Jews in the to Italy, he found Mussolini had capital “full of life, where nothing was ered that the Spanish officials had ‘safe houses’ flying the Spanish flag. aligned with Hitler’s Third Reich and lacking and the restaurants and the- been harboring Jews in their houses As the proverb says, ‘Opportunity introduced its racial laws in 1938. aters were full of seemingly carefree and embassy, and began raiding the makes the thief.’” Perlesca, who had many Jewish people, many of them Jews.” Tall, homes of diplomats. With Budapest in The new “consul” organized food, friends from Padua and from his army well-dressed and stylish, Perlasca chaos, Ángel Sanz Briz and other offi- medical aid and protection for 5,200 service, was strongly opposed to anti- also enjoyed an active social life, cials received orders to vacate imme- Jews in the consulate’s apartments. Semitism. At one time he explained, “I which came to an abrupt end in diately. Sanz Briz left a note for (Continued on page 7) was neither Fascist, nor anti-Fascist; I WE KNEW, BUT FAILED TO STOP THE HOLOCAUST Hitler wanted Germany anything but ly benign step of opening America’s serious consequences. BY MITCHELL BARD, judenrein, clean of Jews.” doors to Jewish immigrants, the pres- The Red Cross could have given THE TIMES OF ISRAEL It was not only the Germans and ident followed public opinion and greater publicity to the Nazi genocide, Austrians who witnessed this sav- barred our gates, condemning thou- used its influence to obtain access to ne of the reasons given for the agery. The front page of the New York sands to death. He went so far as to more camps and mobilized world failure to prevent the O Times (November 11) reported “a oppose Congressional legislation to opinion to crusade for an end to the Holocaust, or to save some of the six wave of destruction, looting, and allow 20,000 Jewish children into the atrocities. Hitler might not have been million Jews murdered by the Nazis incendiarism unparalleled in Germany country. That was before the war. moved by an outcry, but the absence and their collaborators, is that the since the Thirty Years War and, in After it began, the President and his of one allowed him to conclude that world was unaware of the slaughter. Europe generally, since the advisers minimized Nazi persecution his annihilation of the Jews was of lit- The Nazis were good at concealing Bolshevist Revolution.” The story of Jews to rationalize their inaction. tle concern to his enemies. their heinous crimes, but the Allies said, “National Socialist cohorts took A precedent was set in May 1897 General Dwight Eisenhower learned early in the war about the vengeance on Jewish shops, offices when the U.S. ambassador to Persia acknowledged publicizing atrocities Final Solution. Worse, everyone knew and synagogues for the murder by a interceded on behalf of the Jews in would increase support for the war Jews were in danger before World young Polish Jew of Ernst vom Rath, Tehran who were being subjected to effort when he was asked if the wide War II began; nevertheless, Western third secretary of the German mob violence by Muslims. His actions publication of such information was leaders failed to act when the evi- Embassy in Paris.” were approved “in the interest of com- going to be useful. “I think the people dence was in front of their eyes. Other than condemning the vio- mon humanity.” American ambassa- at home ought to know what they are In less than 48 hours, beginning on lence — five days later — and tem- dors in 1939–45 could have acted in fighting for and the kind of person November 9, 1938, at least 96 Jews porarily withdrawing the U.S. ambas- that interest, as Swedish diplomat they are fighting,” he said. were killed in Germany and Austria, sador from Germany, President Raoul Wallenberg did, by providing Unfortunately, Eisenhower said this 7,500 businesses were destroyed, Franklin Roosevelt did nothing. Other visas or passports to as many Jews after the liberation of the camps. and countless Jewish cemeteries and Western leaders were appalled but as possible. This would have been Kristallnacht was the beginning of schools were vandalized. A total of not sufficiently concerned to take any the least U.S. officials could do. the end for German Jewry, and 30,000 Jews were sent to concentra- action against Germany. They were U.S. officials could have warned the telegraphed the fate of all Jews who tion camps. The pogrom became not roused to come to the aid of the Nazis earlier and more frequently would come under Nazi control. Hitler known as the “Night of Broken Glass” Jews even after Hitler told the Czech about the consequences of harming saw from the world’s reaction that he or Kristallnacht. A member of the foreign minister in January 1939: “We Jews, and then acted after learning of could murder Jews with impunity. Hitler Youth admitted that after shall exterminate the Jews.” German crimes. For example, steps Less than three years later, the depor- Kristallnacht, “no German old enough Roosevelt was paralyzed by the cli- toward prosecuting war criminals tation of German Jews to their deaths to walk could ever plead ignorance of mate of isolationism, xenophobia and might have begun before the end of began. Fewer than 10,000 of the the persecution of the Jews, and no anti-Semitism. Rather than rising the war to send the message that 131,800 German Jews targeted for Jews could harbor any delusion that above it, and taking even the relative- Germans who were caught faced extermination by the Nazis survived. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 WORDWINGS Wordwings. Wordwings, about a child-diarist’s who truly lived and played important puppet shows and children’s plays By Sydelle Pearl. Guernica Editions: experiences in the Warsaw ghetto — lesser-known roles in the Warsaw done. In Pearl’s volume we read Toronto, 2017. 203 pp. $20 softcover. twelve-year-old Rivke Rosenblum — ghetto into the narrative. For exam- about Gela’s work with the children. it’s as if we suddenly hear one of ple, we meet Batya, whose full name Then, with Pearl taking the liberty of a REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN these children speak. Moreover, Pearl was actually Batya Temkin-Berman, a fiction writer, we also read about Gela “For a moment, I close my eyes and allows us entry into her dedicated librarian. showing Rivke how her diary, basical- imagine myself transformed into a thoughts. Thus among She had a special ly Rivke’s writings in the margins of a great white swan flying over the wall other things, we learn place in her heart for beloved book of fairy tales by Hans and barbed wire of the Ghetto until I of her love for her the children in the Christian Anderson, will, alongside arrive in a beautiful green meadow grandfather, who sells Warsaw ghetto. She Gela’s drawings of ghetto children, very far away — somewhere in a pillows he embroiders would bring them become part of a secret archive called Hans Christian Andersen fairytale.” on the market in the books to read, wherev- “Oyneg Shabes” — in truth, a docu- Rivke from Wordwings ghetto. We can feel er they were, books mentation collected by Dr. Emanuel ’m sure that the readers of Rivke’s compassion for that offered joy and Ringelblum, recounting the history of IMartyrdom and Resistance have others in the ghetto nurtured imaginations, the Warsaw ghetto. For in Pearl’s vol- all seen clips of films taken inside the through her descrip- promising a tomorrow. ume, Ringelblum has asked Rivke, ghettos, ironically, usually by the tions of them — like the Pearl has Rivke help impressed by her work, to contribute Nazis. These clips show the inhuman lady who sells half-rot- Batya in distributing her writings to this secret archive to conditions Jews were forced to “live” ten potatoes on the these books to the chil- be buried so future generations will under. They show the men and market, and the beggar dren. She also has her know what happened in the ghetto.... women — often dressed in rags and with his little glove pup- tell them stories — Rivke’s reaction: starving — forced to inhabit this hell- pet whom she has some of Rivke’s own “I think of my diary placed inside on-earth. Most heartbreaking of all, fondly nicknamed the making. The story of one of those milk cans in this cellar these clips also show us Jewish chil- “Peddler of Wind.” We “The Jewish Geese” is and then planted in the earth. In my dren: frequently orphaned, lost and recognize Rivke’s admiration for the especially wonderful. I leave that for imagination, my words and the words alone, or perhaps with siblings or oth- courage shown by Gittel and her twin the readers of Wordwings to discover. of Hans Christian Andersen push up ers like themselves, disheveled and sister Ruchel, children who, because Another individual Rivke interacts through a tiny crack in the dirt and hungry, born into an unfriendly, mur- they don’t look Jewish, have become with and who actually lived in the turn themselves into wings....” derous world, neither understood by smugglers bringing needed goods Warsaw ghetto is Gela Seksztajn, an And, if you think about it, Rivke’s them nor of their making. Sometimes (usually food) into the ghetto from the artist. Gela taught art to the children in wish came true. Wordwings has we see these little ones singing or Aryan side of Warsaw — a historical- the ghetto, she drew them, and she made it possible for her words to turn dancing by way of begging for food or ly accurate depiction. Oftentimes, it also helped “with costumes and themselves into wings, flying miles some little money from adult passers- actually was Jewish children who did- scenery for their plays.” For, in fact, and years . . . all the way to us. . . rep- by in the ghetto who themselves have n’t look Jewish that kept ghetto Jews Adam Czerniakow, the Jewish head little or nothing. Sometimes we see alive through their smuggling of food- of the ghetto, and Janusz Korczak, resentative of so many innocent chil- them simply standing there crying. stuffs. who cared for many of the orphaned dren whose words were lost.... Yes, we see them . . . but we never ndeed, Pearl’s book gains espe- little ones in the ghetto — both noted hear them or are ever truly privy to Icial depth, and adds to the knowl- in Wordwings — were very concerned Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of their thoughts or feelings.... edge of the Holocaust for students of with these children enjoying some Media, Communication, and Visual In Sydelle Pearl’s fictional volume, the period, when it weaves people kind of childhood.... Thus, there were Arts at Pace University. KIELCE: THE POST-HOLOCAUST POGROM THAT POLAND IS STILL FIGHTING OVER the hope that they could leave the dren for ritual sacrifice, a mob began ers ran toward the building, armed BY RACHEL E. GROSS, past behind them. They had no idea to assemble. But it was the police and with iron bars and other weapons. SMITHSONIAN.COM they were about to become the target military who started the violence, The residents of 7 Planty were he massacre started with a of anti-Semitic aggression once again recounts Polish historian Jan T. Gross relieved; they thought these men had T blood libel. That wouldn’t be — this time from the Polish neighbors in his 2006 book Fear: Anti-Semitism come to help. Instead, the metal unusual, except this wasn’t the Middle they lived alongside. in Poland After Auschwitz. Though workers began brutally attacking and Ages or even Nazi Germany — it was they were ostensi- killing those still alive inside the build- 1946, a year after the end of World bly there to protect ing. War II. civilians and keep The violence went on for hours. As A few days earlier, an 8-year-old the peace, officers Miriam Guterman, one of the last Polish boy named Henryk Błaszczyk instead opened fire remaining survivors of the pogrom, had gone missing from his home in and began drag- put it in the 2016 documentary film Kielce, a city of 50,000 in southeast- ging Jews into the Bogdan’s Journey: “I couldn’t believe ern Poland. When Henryk reap- courtyard, where that these were humans.” peared two days later, he told his fam- the townspeople All told, 42 Jews were killed that day ily he had been held by a man in a savagely attacked at 7 Planty and around the city, includ- basement. As his father walked him to the Jewish resi- ing a newborn baby and a woman the police station to recount his story, dents. who was six months pregnant. the boy pointed at a man who was That day, Jewish Another 40 were injured. Yet beyond walking near the large corner building men and women the horror of those physical facts, the at 7 Planty Street. were stoned, event would take on a larger historical He did it, Henryk said. robbed, beaten with significance. After the Holocaust, The building, which was owned by rifles, stabbed with many Jews had dreamed of returning the Jewish Committee and housed Archival image of 7 Planty. bayonets and to their native lands. Kielce shattered many Jewish institutions, was home hurled into a river that dream; for Jews, Poland could to up to 180 Jews. It did not have a n the morning of July 4, a small that flowed nearby. Yet while other never again be home. basement. Most of the residents were Ogroup of state militia and local Kielce residents walked by, none did “[Kielce] really is a symbol of the refugees, having survived the horrors police approached the building to anything to stop it. It wasn’t until noon exodus of Jewish survivors from of the death camps that decimated investigate the alleged kidnapping. As that another group of soldiers was Poland, and a symbol sometimes that more than 90 percent of the Polish rumors of misdeeds spread, a version sent in to break up the crowd and there is no future in Poland for Jews,” Jewish population. After the war, they of the centuries-old “blood libel” that evacuate the wounded and dead. In says Joanna Sliwa, a historian with had returned to their homeland with Jews were kidnapping Christian chil- the afternoon, a group of metal work- (Continued on page 10) January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 JAMAICA WAS A WARTIME HAVEN FOR JEWISH REFUGEES kind of food served in the camp for size since the 1880s, Cooper-Clark Mexico tops this list with 23 victims, BY SHELDON KIRSHNER, years, such as meat, fruit, vegetables, says the descendants of such unions followed by Cuba (19), Curaçao (15), THE TIMES OF ISRAEL butter and sugar. Ersatz coffee was are far removed from Judaism. She Dominican Republic (two), Trinidad all that Europeans had had for years, gives three examples. Chris Blackwell, and Tobago (one), Saint Thomas, s improbable as it may sound, while … the refugees often had Blue a musician and recording executive Virgin Islands (one), Guatemala the Caribbean island of A Mountain coffee, one of the best in who has worked with Bob Marley and (one), El Salvador (one), Nicaragua Jamaica was a wartime haven for the world.” the Rolling Stones, is related to the (one) and Guadeloupe (one).During European Jewish refugees fleeing ejecting the allegation that the Jewish Lindo family. Harry Belafonte, this period, she says, the Nazis and Fascism and anti-Semitism. Jamaica, venerable Jamaican Jewish the singer, has Jewish roots. Colin their collaborators killed 160,000 then a British colony, began admitting R community was indifferent to the Powell, the former U.S. secretary of Sephardic Jews. imperiled Jews in 1938 and continued refugees, she contends that some state, is descended from Jews on his Much to her credit, Cooper-Clark welcoming them through the early local Jews were indeed helpful. Citing father’s side. has rescued this obscure episode 1940s. This little-known footnote in an example, she says that Owen Karl In another aside, she informs the from oblivion. Although Dreams of the annals of the Holocaust could Henriques, a prominent business- reader that 65 Jews from the Re-Creation in Jamaica is a work- easily have fallen through the cracks man, worked tirelessly on their behalf. Caribbean islands and Central manlike account well worth delving of history. It does not thanks to Diana In an interesting aside, she sketches America, almost all of them into, it’s disjointed and repetitious at Cooper-Clark’s book, Dreams of Re- a pen portrait of Jamaica’s long-estab- Sephardim, were murdered during times. These defects, though, are Creation in Jamaica, published by lished, highly assimilated Jewish com- the Holocaust. It’s a largely unknown mere quibbles when compared to the Friesen Press in Canada. munity. Pointing out that mixed mar- fact, even to those familiar with the broad sweep of her pathbreaking The refugees, mainly of Polish and riages have taken a drastic toll on its Holocaust. book. Dutch ancestry, waited out World War II in the Gibraltar and Up Park intern- ment camps in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. Cooper-Clark, a professor in the departments of English and Humanities at York University in Toronto, describes their experiences through the prism of “hope, disap- pointment, pain, loss” and the prospect of a new life. The author, whose interest in the Holocaust was sparked by a book she read at the age of six about the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, believes that about 1,400 Jews found refuge in these makeshift camps. They left Jamaica after the war, rebuilding their lives in countries such as the United States, Canada, Holland and Britain. Jamaica beckoned as a place of refuge after the British Foreign Office informed the Joint Distribution Board, a Jewish organization, that Jewish refugees could come to the island if it paid for their upkeep for at least a year and if the newcomers passed a security test ensuring they were not spies for the Axis powers. She leaves the impression that many of the refugees were brought to Jamaica by Portuguese ships such as the Serpa Pinto and the SS Sao Thome. Upon arriving in Kingston, they were treated like enemy aliens, their passports stamped with the notation: “Permitted to land … but restricted to close supervision pend- ing result of thorough investigation.” Much to their disappointment, they were not permitted to look for jobs. And as time elapsed, some com- plained about conditions in the Gibraltar camp. One indignant refugee went as far as to liken Gibraltar to a Nazi concentration camp. “The comparison is an obscen- ity,” she writes, flatly dismissing the claim. “Gibraltar camp was a confined location for internees, but it certainly did not resemble the architectures of doom that were the Nazi concentra- tion camps.” Cooper-Clark adds that the refugees were fed reasonably well. They were no worse off than “the peo- ple of the island, and they were eating better than many impoverished Jamaicans.” She goes on to write: “People in Europe had not seen the Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 57787 “AND THEN THE NAZIS TOLD ME, YOU’RE GOING TO PALESTINE” allow herself to enter the lion’s den,” for two and a half years under the fied that tomorrow he was flying to the BY OFER ADERET, HAARETZ she said in her testimony. She after- Nazi regime. In September 1942, she moon. ward explained that she brought her was sent with her sons to the he next stop was Vienna, the he marvelous story of Mali chutzpah from the Land of Israel, Westerbork camp, a departure point T center for transports of the so- T Bruckenthal, who was born in where she was already a proud pio- for transports to the death camps. On called exchange people from Europe. 1914 in Munich and died at Kibbutz neer. the way to Westerbork, during a stop While they waited for the train that Hafetz Haim at the age of 103, is con- Subsequently she actually reached made by the train, she somehow con- would take them on the next leg of tained in testimony that she gave to the camp in which her husband was nived to get off with the children and their journey, Mali went into an empty Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial imprisoned and, amid a confrontation ensconce herself in a local café, café in the Austrian capital and struck in Jerusalem, in 2002. Her testimony, with S.S. personnel, was able to meet under the Nazis’ eyes. In fact, she up a conversation with the saleswom- which also appears in a book pub- says in her testimony, an. “The café was always full of Jews. lished in 2008 by her family, reveal an the children later played One of them wrote all the time, maybe extraordinary woman — resourceful, with Nazi officers on the a book, another made music, and courageous, determined and faith- train. there were merchants who had meet- driven. he did not fully ings. And now there are no Jews in Amalia (Mali) Landau was born in Stake in her situa- Vienna. Who will come to me?” she 1914 in Munich into a religiously tion until she reached recalled the saleswoman saying to observant family. She immigrated to the camp and was herd- her. To which Mali said, in rebuttal, Palestine in 1935 and settled in Tel ed with the children onto “You are to blame, you wanted to go Aviv. The following year, she married a truck. “Darkness, you together with the Germans.” Rabbi Hillel Bruckenthal, who had can’t see a thing. I From there she and her sons were immigrated from Poland. The couple search for my children’s taken by train to Istanbul, where the moved to the youth training farm, in heads, and say: Hold exchange itself took place under the Kfar Sava, of the ultra-Orthodox onto my skirt so we will auspices of the Red Cross. Then, Poalei Agudat Yisrael movement, stay together,” she relat- under British supervision, the trans- whose members were later among ed. A month later, she port proceeded to Palestine via the founders of Kibbutz Hafetz Haim, and the children were Turkey and Syria. In the leg between east of Ashdod. placed on the list of priv- Turkey and Aleppo, Amalia and the A few months later, they returned to ileged prisoners who other exchange people traveled on a Europe as envoys of the Zionist were “exchange candi- luxury train. “There were even night movement. They were sent to the city Bruckenthal and her three oldest sons. They were on the list of dates”: Because she beds for everyone. Everyone of Enschede, in Holland, where they privileged prisoners who were “exchange candidates.” was a citizen of the received such and such portions of ran an agricultural training center for with him, although she could not British Mandate administration in wine. People who had already been young refugees from Germany who secure his release. Hillel was then Palestine, the Nazis wanted to in the ghetto for years and had not were waiting for British-issued immi- sent to Germany. Now they could exchange her and others with a simi- eaten, attacked the food,” she related. gration certificates for Palestine. The communicate only by letters, which lar status for German citizens who Once back in Palestine, Mali couple’s first three children, all of he sent her through the Red Cross. In had been arrested by the British, in Bruckenthal was among the founders them sons, were born in Enschede. one such letter he wrote that she particular women from the German of kibbutz Hafetz Haim, and after the In 1940, immediately after the should visit her aunt “Hester” (the Templer sect who lived in Palestine. war, was reunited with her husband, Germans invaded Holland, Hillel was Dutch name for “Esther”; the word “I didn’t believe it when they told me who returned from a German POW arrested by the S.S. Initially he was means “hide” in Hebrew). In other I was going to the Land of Israel with camp in July 1945. “He looked awful- incarcerated in a detention camp in words, he was hinting to her that she the children,” she recounted in her ly bad, but never mind, he was alive,” Holland. Mali did the unthinkable, and should go into hiding. testimony. “When someone from she recounted. The couple had six went to meet with the country’s Nazi Mali remained nearby with her three Westerbork goes to a place other more children in the kibbutz, where governor in order to demand her hus- sons and about 70 young aspiring than Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen —it Hillel was appointed the rabbi and band’s release. “He didn’t think I was pioneers, for whom she was responsi- just couldn’t be,” Mali said. It was, she school principal. Mali was the house- Jewish — a Jewish woman doesn’t ble. She went on managing the center suggested, like someone being noti- mother of the guest house. NAZI HAVENS IN SOUTH AMERICA mated that Brazil accepted between the Chilean town of Colonia Dignidad from Bavaria, opened Paraguay to BY DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER, 1,500 and 2,000 Nazis, Chile took in was found to be home to 300 families former Nazis. In the 1930s, Brazil had AISH.COM between 500 and 1,000, and who’d fled Germany after World War the biggest Nazi party in the world Argentinians welcomed up to 5,000 II, finding a welcome — and no ques- after Germany, with 40,000 members; fter 1945 the scale of the horror Nazis to their country. many of these Brazilian Nazis wel- A of the Holocaust came to light. Many South American countries comed German Nazis after the war. In Faced with unprecedented cruelty, were home to large communities of Argentina, future president Juan much of the world responded with ethnic Germans during and after Peron spent part of the war, from unprecedented vigor. The new term World War II. In many cases, these 1939 to 1941, working in Argentina’s “crimes against humanity” was coined communities were sympathetic to and embassy in Italy and openly admired in the subsequent Nuremberg trials, even welcomed Nazis, helping them the politics of Benito Mussolini and as Allied lawyers called senior Nazis to evade justice. In the mid-1980s, it Adolf Hitler. When Peron became to account. was estimated that 3.6 million of president of Argentina in 1946, he Yet fewer than 300 Nazis faced Brazil’s 130 million citizens, one mil- ordered the establishment of secret judgment in the Nuremberg trials, lion out of Argentina’s 28 million peo- channels — dubbed “ratlines” — to while up to 9,000 Nazis by some ple, and 200,000 out of 3.5 million cit- ferry thousands of Nazis from ports in counts were spirited away from izens of Paraguay were ethnically Spain and Italy out of Europe and into Europe after World War II, helped by German. “Many of them maintain the Latin America. sympathetic agents and friends. Many language and traditions of their fore- istorian Uki Goni, in his 2002 found new lives in South America. By fathers,” the New York Times noted in book The Real Odessa: Juan Peron. H the late 1940s, much of South 1985. “Because of their strong cultur- Smuggling the Nazis to Peron’s America, particularly Brazil, Chile and al identity, the older German farming tions asked — among their compatri- Argentina, documents that in 1946 Argentina, was a haven for thousands communities in southern Brazil and ots in South America.” Juan Peron sent secret word to of Nazis eluding justice. German southern Paraguay have often been In 1955, General Alfredo France that Nazi officials facing pros- prosecutors in recent years have esti- accused of harboring Nazis. In 1962, Stroessner, a grandson of immigrants (Continued on page 11) January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 THE ITALIAN WALLENBERG WHO SAVED OVER 5000 HUNGARIAN JEWS (Continued from page3) ers. release the prisoners to his care. He was not convinced.” An intelligence network warned him in ne December day in 1944, he overruled their protests and eventual- So Perlasca ceased speaking about advance of possible Nazi searches. Owent to the train station and ly they walked away, leaving the Jews his exploits in Budapest and lived in The diplomatic missions of four began arguing with a German officer, safely behind. relative anonymity. other neutral states — Portugal, demanding the release of two Jewish When the Red Army bombarded he full facts of his extraordinary Switzerland, the Vatican and children on a train headed for Budapest towards the end of 1944, T story did not emerge until the Sweden — also helped save Jewish Auschwitz. Also present was Raoul the Ministry of the Interior planned to late 1980s, when some Hungarian lives. Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat move all Jews from the consular Jews recalled the events of wartime n the following months Perlasca whose similar daring acts also saved apartments into the ghetto, then set it Budapest at a family gathering. Idid more than organize the hiding, many Jewish lives. on fire. “Do you remember that Spanish feeding and transport of thousands of “A young SS major pulled out his Perlasca refused to believe this hor- consul?” someone asked. Jews. He came up with a brilliant plan pistol, pointing it at me,” Perlasca rific plan would be put into effect until Several did, and they placed a to use an old Spanish law which gave later recalled. “Wallenberg, standing he saw Jews from the Portuguese- notice in Budapest’s Jewish newspa- Spanish-born Jews full citizenship nearby, shouted at him that he could protected apartments being marched per asking for other testimonies. and protection. Perlasca successfully to the ghetto. Rushing to Gradually Perlasca’s story emerged issued fake safe-conduct passes the minister of the interior, and the tributes finally began to flow. claiming that Hungarian Jews were he begged him to stop the In 1989 the Hungarian Parliament actually Spanish-born. The passes plans, but his humanitari- awarded him its highest honor and a read: an and religious argu- statue was dedicated to him in “The relatives of all Spaniards in ments had no effect. Budapest. Israel accorded him hon- Hungary require their presence in Perlasca then switched orary citizenship and dedicated a tree Spain. Until we are able to reestablish to threats, warning that if to him at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. communications and the journey back the Spanish government As part of its Righteous Among the is possible, they will remain here was not assured within 48 Nations project, the Raanana under the protection of the govern- hours that the Jews under Symphonette Orchestra in Israel ment of Spain.” its protection would be commissioned an original orchestral Giorgio Perlasca teamed up with safe, all Hungarians in piece, His Finest Hour, from compos- Sweden’s Raoul Wallenberg, Angelo Perlasca rescuing Jews at the train station at Budapest. Spain would be impris- er Moshe Zorman in tribute to Rotta from the Vatican and Friedrich oned and their property Perlasca. The piece had its debut at a Born from the International Red Cross not treat a Spanish diplomatic repre- confiscated. He further added that the concert attended by Perlasca’s son to vouch for Jews across Hungary. sentative like this. Then, at a certain Brazilian and Uruguayan govern- Franco and daughter-in-law Luciana Together they helped organize and moment, an SS lieutenant-colonel ments would be urged to follow suit. Amadia. secure the escape of thousands of arrived and asked what was happen- The minister of the interior decided to In 1990 he was honored in New Jews. ing. He listened, then ordered the abandon his vicious plan. York by the Raoul Wallenberg However, Raoul Wallenberg pos- major coldly to do nothing more When Soviet troops entered Committee. sessed plentiful funds, but there was because, ‘Sooner or later’, he said, Budapest in January 1945, the Jews The Spanish king awarded him the no one to pay Perlasca a salary. ‘we’ll get the children anyway.’ They were finally able to leave the apart- Order of Isabella and a pension. When consular funds ran out, he used went away, and it was then that ments. However, the Russians forced In Italy he became the subject of a his own money, then that of the local Wallenberg told me that the SS Perlasca to work as a street cleaner. book and a feature film. Jewish committee. Finally he had to colonel was the notorious Adolf After a few weeks he was able to Like many Holocaust heroes, he ask for funds from the families hiding Eichmann.” leave for Istanbul and eventually downplayed his valor to the end. in the apartments. Perlasca once noticed some Nazi returned to Italy. There, few people Deploring the fuss, he asked, A fearless man, Perlasca acted as if soldiers leading a group of Jews to would credit his story. “My wife didn’t “Wouldn’t you have done the same? If he really was a protected diplomat, their execution. Using his bold air of say outright that she didn’t believe you had seen Jewish children being openly risking his own life to save oth- authority, he insisted that the soldiers me,” he recalled. “But I was sure she shot in the streets?” JEWISH FAMILIES GATHER IN GERMANY TO REMEMBER A HOLOCAUST VICTIM THEY NEVER KNEW found that bore a July 3, 1929, birth- arolina Cohn’s pendant was Although her pendant was found at BY OFER ADERET, HAARETZ date with the words “Mazal tov,” the Kfound at Sobibor by the Israeli Sobibor, it is not clear whether Cohn city Frankfurt, the Hebrew letter “hei” met her death there. According to Yad bout 30 Jewish families from archaeologist Yoram Haimi and his (standing for God) and stars of David. Vashem, she was banished from around the world participated in Polish colleague Wojciech Mazurek. A Frankfurt to Minsk, Belarus, on a special commemorative ceremony The two found tens of November 11, 1941, after which all in Germany for a relative they never thousands of items that trace of her vanished. She may have met — Karolina Cohn, who was mur- had belonged to Jews been murdered there, or survived and dered in the Holocaust. A golden murdered at the camp, been banished to Sobibor in memorial “stumbling stone” was including jewelry, cloth- September 1943, when the Minsk placed at the entrance to Cohn’s ing, cutlery and more. ghetto, which had been created after Frankfurt home after she was identi- “The amount of items we the German invasion of the Soviet fied as the owner of a pendant discov- found buried in the earth Union, was liquidated. ered at Sobibor concentration camp. is inconceivable,” Haimi If she did reach Sobibor, it seems she The stumbling stone (Stolperstein) told Haaretz. lost her pendant on the way to the gas project, an initiative of artist Gunter Following Haaretz’s chambers. If she was murdered in Demnig, began about 20 years ago; Stolpersteine report on the discovery of “ ” (stumbling blocks) have been laid for Karolina Minsk, it’s possible a family member or stones bearing inscriptions with Cohn and her family at a place where they once lived. Cohn’s pendant, amateur friend kept the pendant and lost it at the names and life dates are placed at genealogists, including death camp upon their own murder. the entrances to homes of Jews that A protracted archival and historical Chaim Motzen of Israel, began The ceremony, placing a “stumbling had been expelled and sent to their study into people born in Frankfurt on searching for more information about stone” by the entrance to what had death by the Nazis. that date concluded that the pendant her life. Ultimately about 100 people been her home, was funded by the During an archaeological excava- had belonged to Cohn, who was killed related to her were found. Claims Conference. Cohn had lived tion of the Sobibor concentration at age 14. Later her relatives were “We proved that her name and his- there with her parents and sister, who camp, in what had been German- located in Germany, Britain, the U.S., tory have not been erased,” Motzen were also killed in the Holocaust. occupied Poland, a pendant was Israel and other countries. told Haaretz. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 SIX MILLION VICTIMS OF THE (Continued from page 1) themselves in them, brought back memories United Nations Secretary-General António Mr. Zeid continued, “w not the heart,” said Daniel Uziel, its historical both had spent decades suppressing. Guterres has stressed in his message for the edge the need to prev adviser. “We are asking the visitor to look “It is buried inside our hearts and we don’t international day dedicated to honoring anti-Semitism and all fo beyond the image and examine the wider his- talk about it,” said Huber. “If you want to sur- Holocaust victims that everyone has a gious hatred and discri torical perspective.” vive and continue life, you must continue and responsibility to quickly and decisively resist “In honoring the vict Perhaps most insightful are the everyday live with what you got and carry on.” racism and violence. we must recognize that photos taken by the Jewish victims them- Photos from various chapters of the Nazi Mr. Guterres recalled that the international other as fully equal in selves in various ghettos, some in the service persecution of Jews were scattered across day, marked annually on 27 January, was cre- we be able to come tog of the Nazis and some in stealth in a desper- desks to depict the chaos in which they were ated to honor the memory of six million Jewish many challenges facin ate attempt to document the atrocities against taken. But it was the displaying of Nazi prop- men, women and children that perished in the cluded. Holocaust and countless others who lost their At the same time, lives as cruelty convulsed the world. Director-General of t Yet, decades since the Second World War, Scientific and Cu there is still the persistence of anti-Semitism (UNESCO), citied th and an increase in other forms of prejudice. strengthen nations’ com Citing neo-Nazis and white supremacy Recalling the possib groups as among the main purveyors of carries a memory that extreme hatred, the UN chief said that too ing, she said, adding often, vile views are moving from the margins Semitism, in whatever to the mainstream of societies and politics. this fight” in which ev “Whenever and wherever humanity’s values play. are abandoned, we are all at risk,” stressed Boston — Holocaust the Secretary-General. long been deployed to “All of us have a responsibility to quickly, cide’s horrific immens clearly and decisively resist racism and vio- few people acted to sa lence,” he stated, adding: “Through education pied Europe. Durin and understanding, we can build a future of Holocaust Remembran dignity, human rights and peaceful coexis- tion held in Boston, d tence for all.” countries spoke abo For his part, UN High Commissioner for efforts and their releva Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein held the “Rescue stories carr painful day of remembrance for Holocaust reality, and bring us b victims as forcing us “to contemplate the hor- dimension we can ide rors to which bigotry, racism and discrimina- Harrowitz, a Holocaus United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. tion ultimately lead.” Boston University and them to serve as future proof. For example, aganda in the museum in particular that “The sadistic brutality of the atrocities inflict- ers to address the Zvi Kadushin, an underground photographer posed a difficult dilemma for Yad Vashem. ed by the Nazi regime on Jews, Roma, Slavs, Committee–organized in the Kovno ghetto, did so at great personal Vivian Uria, the exhibit’s curator, said they disabled people, political dissidents, homo- Speaking of the nee risk and produced essential documentation tried to balance this with artifacts and testimo- sexuals and others was nourished by layer mate what happened” as a result. ny of survivors and victims who told their upon layer of propaganda, falsifications and Italy’s consul-general to “They used those images in order to present point of view. Ultimately, though, she said the to the Germans their usefulness, their effec- visuals were essential and it was up to the tiveness,” said Uziel. “On the other hand, the viewer to look back at that dark era with a crit- Jews also seek, without permission, to docu- ical eye toward all those who documented it. ment the crimes done by the Germans.” “The camera and its manipulative power Six million Jews were killed by German have tremendous power and far-reaching Nazis and their collaborators during the influence,” she said. “Although photography Holocaust, wiping out a third of world Jewry. pretends to reflect reality as it is, it is in fact an Israel’s main Holocaust memorial day is in the interpretation of it.” spring — marking the anniversary of the Washington — On January 26, President Warsaw ghetto uprising — while Trump marked International Holocaust the United Nations designated January 27 as Remembrance Day by mourning the six mil- International Holocaust Remembrance Day, lion Jews killed in the Nazi genocide. commemorating the date of the liberation of “Tomorrow marks the 73rd anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp in 1945. the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi That’s the day Grossman considers her death and concentration camp in Nazi-occu- second birthday, since she was delivered pied Poland. We take this opportunity to from the horrors of the camp to freedom. recall the Nazis’ systematic persecution and “God opened the skies and sent us angels brutal murder of six million Jewish people. In and rescued us,” she recalled, upon seeing their death camps and under their inhuman the Soviet troops who later filmed her and the rule, the Nazis also enslaved and killed mil- number tattooed on her arm. “I am happy it lions of Slavs, Roma, gays, people with dis- was documented.” abilities, priests and religious leaders, and Grossman’s father was gassed and inciner- others who courageously opposed their brutal ated in the camp’s crematorium, and she and regime. her twin sister Olga were subjected to the “Our nation is indebted to the Holocaust’s Survivors attend a commemoration event at the former Nazi German concentration ruthless experiments of the infamous Nazi survivors. Despite the trauma they carry with Auschwitz II-Birkenau on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Oswiecim, Pola doctor Josef Mengele. She said her resist- them, they continue to educate us by sharing ance to him is what kept her alive. their experiences, strength, wisdom and gen- incitement to hatred,” he stated, adding how De Santis, shared the “I told myself what he would tell me to do, I erosity of spirit to advance respect for human they were denigrated and smeared, “one after Agnese Tribbioli, the would do the opposite, because he had no rights. Although they are aging and their another, their rights were refused, and finally, convent in Florence wh right to do these things to me,” she said. “He numbers are slowly dwindling, their stories even their humanity was denied.” the Nazis. took away my body because he could do that, remain with us, giving us the strength to com- Mr. Zeid pointed to the statement of Primo For hiding and p but he couldn’t take away my mind.” bat intolerance, including anti-Semitism and Levi, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau “Communist refugees, Far less eager to discuss their experiences all other forms of bigotry and discrimination. concentration camp: “It happened, therefore it nized by Yad Vashe were identical twins Lia Huber and Judith New York — Calling on the world to “stand can happen again.” “Righteous Among the Barnea, both 80. Seeing the images, and together against the normalization of hate,” “As we honor the victims of the Holocaust,” Like dozens of coun January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 E HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED we must also acknowl- rates the Holocaust each year on January 27, Leikind, his father would not have survived tion is one of several events surrounding the vent the recurrence of the date when Auschwitz-Birkenau was liber- without assistance from — for instance — the annual observance of the International Day of orms of racial and reli- ated in 1945. When asked about the role of head of a mosque who gave him false identi- Commemoration in memory of the victims of imination today. Holocaust education in Italy, De Santis ty papers, or countless townspeople who the Holocaust. tims of the Holocaust, referred to his country’s “strong literature and turned a blind eye to his presence in some- Anita Winter, President of the Gamaraal t only if we regard each filmography” with regard to the murder of one’s home. Foundation, which helps alleviate financial dis- dignity and rights will 8,000 Italian Jews in the death camps. “Even in times of overwhelming darkness, tress of Holocaust survivors, is the child of sur- gether to overcome the Attacks on the press, educators and other virtue can still survive,” said Leikind. vivors. Seeing the difficulty with which the sur- ng humanity,” he con- “intellectuals” were among the first actions Switzerland — After the Second World vivors spoke of their experiences, she felt taken by the Nazis in occupied Poland, said War, 90 per cent of the Holocaust survivors deeply thankful to them for sharing their stories. Audrey Azoulay, the Marek Lesniewski-Laas, honorary consul- were between 16 and 45 years old. Today, the According to Ms. Winter, many told her per- the UN Educational, general of Poland to New England. He noted youngest survivors, who were born in the last sonally that they felt it was their duty to speak ultural Organization on behalf of the six million who can no longer he day as a call to speak for themselves. For her, their resilience mmitment to peace. is amazing. bility of the worst also Born in 1932, Nina Weil lived in what is must be forward-look- today the Czech Republic. In 1942, she was that combating anti- deported to Theresienstadt and later arrived form, “is at the heart of at Auschwitz with her mother, who died at age veryone has a role to 38 of exhaustion. Ms. Weil survived a “selec- tion” by camp doctor Josef Mengele as well t rescue accounts have as a labor camp. o “balance” the geno- Ms. Weil shared her distress: “They tattooed ity, although relatively me: 71978. I cried a lot. Not because of the ave Jews in Nazi-occu- pain, no, because of the number. Because I ng an International had lost the name, I was just a number. My nce Day commemora- mother said, ‘Do not cry, nothing has hap- diplomats from several pened. When we get home, you visit the out Holocaust rescue dance school and get a big bracelet so no nce to current events. one sees the number.’ I never went to dance ry us away from grim school and never got the bracelet.” back to a more human Ms. Winter recalled an unsettling story that ntify with,” said Nancy Ms. Weil shared with her about taking a trip to st studies professor at the hospital for blood work, where a young one of several speak- technician mistook the number she had tat- e American Jewish tooed on her arm at the concentration camp gathering. for her phone number. d to “never underesti- Eduard Kornfeld survived both Auschwitz during the Holocaust, and Dachau camps. He grew up in Bratislava, o New England, Nicola Slovakia, and was arrested in 1944 while hid- ing with his brother in Hungary. After the war, in which he lost his entire fam- ily, he arrived in Davos weighing only 27 kilos, or 60 pounds, weak and sick from exhaustion. There Swiss doctors saved his life. Mr. Kornfeld said, “We were deported in a cattle car, the journey took three days. When the train suddenly stopped, I heard someone shouting outside in German, ‘Get out!’ I Images from the “Flashes of Memory” exhibit now on display at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. looked out of the carriage and saw SS officers beating people they thought were moving too the example of Krakow, a university city, phase of the war, are over age 70. slowly. A mother wasn’t moving quick enough where hundreds of professors and other Some endured concentration and extermi- because she was trying to take care of her Polish leaders were murdered soon after the nation camps, while others escaped by flee- child, so the SS officers took her infant and German invasion. ing or hiding. threw him in the same truck they put the old “By way of destruction of history, they For the majority, returning to their homeland and sick. Those people were sent to be burned the archives in Warsaw,” said was not an option, so they emigrated to Israel gassed immediately.” Lesniewski-Laas, whose remarks focused on or the United States. Klaus Appel was born in 1925 in Berlin. After Tadeusz Gebethner, a well-known Polish soc- It wasn’t until the investigations of the his father, Paul, and his older brother, Willi- cer player who died after sustaining injuries in Bergier Commission on dormant assets in the Wolf, were arrested and sent to Auschwitz, he the 1944 Warsaw uprising. During the war, late 1990s that the public became aware of and his sister came to England in one of the Gebethner sheltered Jews and helped some the Holocaust survivors living in last Kindertransport humanitarian programs. of them flee to Hungary, efforts for which Yad Switzerland — most of whom traveled to the After the war, Klaus married a Swiss woman, Vashem honored him posthumously. country only after the war. moved to western Switzerland and worked as a Despite concerns expressed about the The number of survivors is steadily watchmaker. He died in April 2017, 10 days n and extermination camp potential for rescue stories to obscure the decreasing. before this exhibit was launched in Switzerland. and. totality of what took place during the Switzerland — which now presides over the Mr. Appel explained, “We were at home Holocaust, the accounts can be used to International Holocaust Remembrance when the doorbell rang. They had come to rescue story of Maria “widen our lens” and “think about ways to Alliance that unites governments and experts arrest my father. ‘Are you Mr. Appel?’ they mother superior of a meet the lessons of dark times today,” said to strengthen and promote Holocaust educa- asked him. ‘Then come with us.’ My father ho sheltered Jews from Robert Leikind, director of the American tion and remembrance globally — sponsored just calmly turned to me and said, ‘You are Jewish Committee’s New England chapter the exhibition on survivors at United Nations going to school.’ That was the last thing he protecting Jews as and event moderator. Headquarters in New York. ever said to me. I never saw him again.” ” Tribbioli was recog- “My brother and I owe our lives to these “Portraits of Holocaust Survivors” tells the Reflecting upon Mr. Appel, who passed away em as one of Italy’s nameless, courageous people,” said Leikind, stories of individuals who are among the last in 2017, Ms. Winter reminisced how he worked Nations.” whose father spent the war on the run from survivors, and how they carried on with their hard to share his experiences with young peo- ntries, Italy commemo- the Nazis in occupied France. According to lives in Switzerland after the war. The exhibi- ple, visiting schools and universities. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 KIELCE: THE POST-HOLOCAUST POGROM THAT POLAND IS STILL FIGHTING OVER (Continued from page 4) wounds. But for Bialek, bringing dia- Loewinger interviews several older other, the blood libel, and … equating the Conference on Jewish Material logue to this moment isn’t just about residents who claim that the riot was Jews with Communism, can turn into Claims Against Germany who focus- reopening old wounds — it is about instigated by Soviet intelligence, or mob-like violence.” es on modern Polish Jewish history lancing a boil. “Each of us has a tough even that Jews themselves staged a n a 2016 television interview, massacre by dragging IPoland’s education minister Anna bodies to the scene. Zalewska appeared to deny Polish nlike the better- responsibility for any involvement in Uknown massacre both of these historical events. When at Jedwabne, when asked directly, “Who murdered Poles living under Nazi Kielce’s Jews during the town control herded several pogrom?” she was unable to answer hundred of their Jewish the question. She demurred, before neighbors into a barn finally answering: “Anti-Semites.” She — and burned them did not admit that these anti-Semites alive — the tragedy in were Poles. When controversy erupt- Kielce was born out of ed, Zalewska received support from postwar tensions. Foreign Minister Witold Poland was on the Wszczykowski, who said her com- brink of civil war, its cit- ments had been “misunderstood.” izens were impover- “It has to do with the Polish govern- ished, and at the time ment, the effort to in a way rewrite his- many believed Jews tory,” says Sliwa. “To put more were Communists or emphasis on heroism and patriotism spies. “You have to of the Polish nation during the war understand, Poland and after the war. It seems like it is an was a pretty miserable attempt to take hold over, to control, place in 1946,” says how the past is narrated.” Loewinger. “It was The concern that Poland is rewriting poverty stricken. There its history feels more relevant now Group portrait of Polish Jewish survivors in Kielce taken in 1945. Many were killed one year later, in the 1946 pogrom. were Jews floating than ever. Ever since the 2015 victory around … There was a of the Law and Justice (Prawo i and the Holocaust. “That despite what moment in his past,” he says in the lot of anger all over.” Sprawiedliwość) party, the right-wing Jews had endured during the film. “Either we were harmed, or we Yet there are clear parallels. populist party led by Jarosław Holocaust, and despite the fact that harmed someone. Until we name it, Jedwabne happened in 1941, directly Kaczyński, the government has pur- the local Polish population had we drag the past behind us.” after the Nazi conquest of Poland; the sued what is openly referred to as observed all that, had witnessed all of ince the collapse of accepted narrative is that the killing polityka historyczna, or “history poli- that … Jews cannot feel safe in SCommunism in 1989, Poland was carried out by Poles under pres- cy.” Journalists and historians like Poland.” has gone through a soul-searching sure by Nazi Germans. In Kielce, the Sliwa, however, call it “politicized his- Sliwa points out that Kielce was not process that has progressed in the first postwar pogrom against Jews bursts, with moments of clarity but in Poland; smaller outbursts of vio- also worrisome backsliding. Polish lence took place the previous year in Jews have come out of the shadows, Krakow and the town of Rzeszow. establishing new communities and In the years that followed, the Kielce reincorporating Jews back into the pogrom — like so many atrocities country’s fabric. In the mid-2000s, committed or abetted by Poles during reports began to emerge document- the war — became taboo. There were ing a curious trend: a “Jewish revival” no memorials. When Bogdan Bialek, of sorts sweeping Poland and a Catholic Pole from Białystok, moved beyond. Polish Jews reclaimed their to Kielce in 1970, he sensed immedi- roots; Polish-Jewish book publishers ately that something was wrong. In and museums sprung up; once-deci- Bogdan’s Journey Bialek remembers mated Jewish quarters began to sensing a deep guilt or shame among thrive again. residents when it came to talking Part of that shift has been a reexam- about the pogrom. He calls this ination of Poland’s history, Bialek said oppression of silence a “disease.” in an interview with Smithsonian.com. Kielce Bialek became drawn to the “We began with no understanding at Funeral procession for the victims of the pogrom. abscess — what Jewish historian all, with a kind of denial, and over time Polish people are equally “blame- tory.” Of course, she adds, “there was Michael Birnbaum referred to at the it’s been changing,” Bialek said in less.” Both of these narratives allow discussion about this even before event as “the looming presence of Polish, translated by Michał Jaskulski, Poles to cling to a national mythology Law and Justice came to rule Poland. absence” — that seemed to be one of the film’s directors. “These days of victimhood and heroism. As Polish But now they’ve taken over, it’s haunting the town. Over the past 30 it’s also easier for [Poles] to see from journalist and dissident Konstanty become so public and acceptable. years, he has made it his mission to the perspective of the victims, which Gebert wrote in Moment, “Raised for And official, really official.” bring this memory back to life and didn’t happen before. And we truly can generations with the (legitimate) You can see traces of this “history engage today’s residents of Kielce in notice how the pogrom strongly belief that theirs was a martyred policy” in how the Kielce story has dialogue through town meetings, impacted Polish-Jewish relations.” nation, many Poles found it increas- evolved over time. Despite the facts memorials and conversations with But there is still work to be done, he ingly hard to accept that their victim- Gross and others have detailed, a survivors. readily admits. While Poles today hood did not automatically grant them 2004 report by the Institute of National Unsurprisingly, he has encountered don’t deny that the pogrom actually the moral high ground when it came Remembrance (IPN) — a state pushback. The story of the Kielce happened, they do debate who to their behavior toward Jews during research institute that examines massacre — which the film pieces deserves responsibility for the atroci- the Holocaust.” crimes committed by the Nazi and together using the testimony of some ty. Conspiracy theories ran rampant Moreover, says Sliwa, “Both of Communist regimes and routinely min- of the last living victims and their when Bialek first moved to Kielce, and these events show how dangerous imizes Poland’s role in the Holocaust descendants — is inconvenient. It he reports that they are still common these conspiracy theories are, and — concluded that the Kielce pogrom challenges Poles. It opens old today. In the film, co-director Larry how these myths about the so-called was the result of a “mishap.” January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 NAZI HAVENS IN SOUTH AMERICA (Continued from page 6) Bishop Alois Hudal, an Austrian-born war. In 2012, Ms. Heidenreich pub- tigations. In The German Connection: ecution at home would find a welcom- admirer of Hitler. Bishop Hudal lished a work documenting Wagner’s The Laundering of Nazi Money in ing haven in Argentina. The “Odessa” worked in Rome, ministering to Axis escape from justice, Beloved Argentina, Ms. Weber estimates the theory, popularized in the 1972 novel POWs, and tirelessly aided war crimi- Criminal: A Diplomat in the Service of value of the money-laundering opera- The Odessa File and the 1974 movie nals by providing them with false the Final Solution. After escaping tion at well over one billion dollars. of the same name, was that a secret Vatican-issued identity papers allow- A Mercedes-Benz plant in the sub- group of former SS officers had band- ing them to gain passports from the urbs of Buenos Aires might have been ed together and was helping former International Red Cross and travel to the center of the program bringing Nazi officials to escape postwar South America. German wealth and former Nazis to Europe. While there was no “Odessa” Bishop Hudal worked with a network Argentina, Ms. Weber uncovered. group, the truth was far stranger: of officials throughout Europe; it was Adolf Eichmann worked at the plant, some of the most senior officials in he, with the aid of a Franciscan friar in first under his own name, and later governments, the Catholic church Italy, who provided false papers that under an alias. According to Ms. and aid organizations actively worked allowed senior Nazi Adolf Eichmann Weber, Eichmann might have worked to help Nazis escape justice, often to sail for Argentina. Hudal’s activities as a paymaster, “financing the move- sending them to South America. helping “refugees” (many of whom ment and flight to Argentina” of other were Nazis evading justice) garnered Nazis, before he was captured by him much praise and financial sup- Israeli forces in 1960, tried, and exe- port. The American Catholic Bishops cuted in 1962. Conference even approved a monthly tto Skorzeny, an SS command- stipend of $200 to Bishop Hudal to Oer who was known as Hitler’s help him in his work. favorite Nazi commando, is another The work of Bishop Hudal and other Otto Skorzeny. senior Nazi figure who might have Catholic officials to help Nazis flee from an Allied-run jail in 1948, arranged for other Nazis to find was an open secret. A 1947 memo Wagner followed a path dubbed the homes in South America. Escaping sent from the United States’ Italian “Kloster Line,” receiving sanctuary in from an Allied prison in 1947 with the embassy noted that “The Vatican of convents and churches in Austria help of local pro-Nazi citizens, course is the largest single organiza- before heading to Rome. There, Skorzeny moved to Madrid, where he tion involved in the illegal movement Bishop Hudal helped him obtain false ran an import/export agency that was of emigrants” out of Europe in those papers and sail to Argentina. rumored to be a front for organizing years. ranz Stangl, the commander of the escape of Nazis to South ishop Hudal and other Catholic Fthe extermination camps of America. Skorzeny made numerous Bofficials had a willing accom- Sobibor and Treblinka who oversaw trips to Argentina, eventually working plice in Carl Jacob Burckhardt, presi- the murder of nearly one and a half for a time as a bodyguard to Juan dent of the International Red Cross in million Jews, was another senior Nazi Peron’s wildly popular second wife, Alois Hudal. the years after World War II. In his Ms. Heidenreich uncovered who fol- Eva, known as Evita. eron’s key point man in creating 2011 book Nazis on the Run: How lowed the same path. Stangl was Evita seems to have been an enthu- Pa pipeline for Nazis was the Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice, histo- aided by Catholic church officials and siastic helper of Nazis in her own Argentinian Cardinal Antonio rian Gerald Steinacher chronicles eventually fled to Brazil on a false Red right. She was reported to have been Caggiano. He passed along Peron’s Burckhardt’s anti-Semitism, as well as Cross passport. Stangl was eventually romantically involved with Skorzeny, top-secret message to a cardinal in his penchant for helping Germans, extradited to Germany in the 1960s and also might have been active in France, who communicated with including former Nazis. It’s hard to and died in jail. Wagner met a different laundering money from German Nazis living in France, helping usher know just how many former Nazis fled fate: he was never extradited and lived Nazis. In 2011, Brazilian authors them to Argentina. Peron invested Europe using false Red Cross to old age in the Argentinian town of Leandro Narloch and Duda Teixeira considerable manpower in smuggling papers; in 2012, German lawyers, Bariloche, near Patagonia where he wrote, “It is still suspected that among Nazis to Argentina, even setting up a after examining recently declassified celebrated at weekly get-togethers in (Eva Peron’s) possessions, there secret office in Bern to help handle archives, estimated that thousands of local beer halls, singing Nazi songs were pieces of Nazi treasure that the paperwork. In spring 1946, the Nazis were similarly able to obtain with other SS comrades who called came from rich Jewish families killed first French Nazis began receiving false Red Cross passports. About 800 Argentina home. in concentration camps.” Argentinian tourist visas and setting SS members were able to flee to In addition to being ideologically A generation ago, thousands of sail for South America. Argentina alone using these false sympathetic to Nazi ideology, Juan Nazis eluded justice by fleeing to Many of these Nazis escaping to documents. Peron also had a financial motive in South America. Today, as a new gen- South America were aided by One Nazi who fled to Argentina was bringing so many Nazis to his country. eration of historians delves into Catholic officials. Some merely want- Horst Wagner, who aided in the In 2005, drawing on government archives and other records, the truth ed to help Catholics escape from the deportation and murder of at least archives that had just been declassi- about how so much of South America rising Communist governments in 350,000 Jews. Wagner’s story would fied, German journalist Gaby Weber became a Nazi haven is being uncov- central Europe. Other officials, how- have remained unknown were it not found that Peron systematically used ered. It’s too late to try most of these ever, were actively anti-Semitic and for the efforts of German family thera- his government to launder money Nazi war criminals, but their victims, desired to help Nazis elude justice. pist turned author Gisela Heidenreich, belonging to Nazi-owned companies, and all of us, deserve to know the One of the highest-ranking Catholic whose mother Edith met and fell in whose profits would otherwise have truth about this dark chapter in South officials who aided Nazi criminals was love with Horst Wagner during the been seized as part of criminal inves- America’s past. HOLOCAUST SUITCASE PACKS STORIES OF SURVIVAL two bags and be ready to leave in two Aish.com interview. However, Etka went into labor at BY RONDA ROBINSON, AISH.COM hours. It was part of the Romanian Her mother, Etka Neuman, would night, so she risked her life and government’s directive to “cleanse leave three-year-old Paula alone sneaked out onto the street to reach aula Neuman Gris’s 75-year-old the Earth” of Jews. every day to visit him in prison and her Jewish midwife. blue suitcase is an old friend. It P A year previously, after the take him food. Then Simon disap- “My memory of that night was she accompanied her from her childhood Russians had occupied her home- peared with 10,000 Jewish men left me alone – probably saying, ‘I home in Czernowitz, Romania, to the town of Czernowitz, they seized her whom the Russians deported to love you, I have to leave now.’ She killing fields of the Holocaust to a dis- father, Simon Neuman, a men’s hab- Siberia. What became of him from locked the door and went away. My placed persons’ camp in Germany erdasher, as a slave laborer. “They there is unclear. memory was standing frozen as a and across the ocean to America. arrested my father because he was a Meanwhile, Etka bore their baby. three-year-old little girl, looking at the The suitcase held necessities and capitalist. They had their own political Anti-Jewish laws and a curfew were in doorknob all night long. It was proba- secrets. The journey began in 1941 agenda. He was imprisoned. At that force. Jews couldn’t be admitted to bly the beginning of a long period of when all the Jews of Czernowitz time, my mother was pregnant with public hospitals and weren’t sup- experiencing terror and fear and the received the dreaded order to pack their second child,” Paula says in an posed to leave their homes at night. (Continued on page 13) Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 RESCUED CHILDREN FINALLY IDENTIFY IRISH AID WORKER WHO SAVED THEM FROM AUSCHWITZ imprisoned thousands of Jews fleeing saved children, George Koltein, trains,” he said. “But if they left, all of BY MICHAEL RIORDAN, from the Nazis in the camp near recalled escaping from Paris to the prisoners would die.” THE TIMES OF ISRAEL Perpignan. French-controlled Vichy after police TIRELESS SACRIFICE Enduring appalling conditions, fami- raided their apartment building. wo young boys huddled silently lies were in dire need of the assis- However, they were arrested on fraim Zuroff of the Simon under a blanket in the back of a T tance given by the Quaker organiza- arrival and sent to Rivesaltes. Wiesenthal Center said the aid large black car as it crossed under the E tion with which Elmes was a volun- Koltein’s father was put into a work workers in Rivesaltes had a unique gaze of the French prison guards and teer. And then the Nazis ordered the gang, but Elmes smuggled the chil- opportunity to help some of the pris- out the wooden gates of Rivesaltes transportation of all Jews to the east. dren out of the camp and into the oners who were already designated internment camp. It was September Despite efforts by French officials to orphanage of Saint Christopher in to be murdered. 25, 1942. Perpignan. “On a daily basis Elmes worked tire- The orphanage was run by another lessly, driving long distances scroung- woman who has also been recog- ing milk and blankets for the children nized by Yad Vashem — Lois in the camp,” explained historian and Gunden, who sheltered the children founder of the Holocaust Art among the local orphans where police Restoration Project (HARP) Marc would not find them. Masurovsky. “Elmes drove seven children to “Her superiors, however, who knew Saint Christopher’s that day,” Koltein of her other activities, warned her not recalled in his documentary interview. to do too much for fear that their “Mary Elmes and Lois Gunden humanitarian work would be halted,” together formed a chain of solidarity he said. with the Jews,” he said. “If discov- But Elmes persisted. In 1943, when ered, anyone attempting to rescue Vichy was finally taken over by the Jewish children would be sent to the Nazis, Elmes was arrested by the death camps with them.” Gestapo on suspicion of aiding Jews Mary Elmes, who secretly brought Jewish children to be saved from Auschwitz. “I was amazed when I first heard and sent to the notorious prison in convince inmates that they were Elmes’s story, how it had remained so Fresnes near Paris, which housed Escaping deportation to Auschwitz going to farms and factories, the and certain death in the gas cham- Jewish prisoners knew the fate that bers, Rene and Mario Freund, aged awaited them. Some committed sui- two and six years old, were driven cide. Parents were separated from high up into the Pyrenees Mountains their children. Elmes didn’t believe the to a remote village. lie either. Risking being sent to The boys had already faced danger Auschwitz herself, she was deter- before, as their father had tried and mined to save as many children as failed to smuggle them across the possible. border into Switzerland. Between August and October 1942, After arriving in the hills, they were nine convoys took 2,300 Jews from met by a priest and moved again to a Rivesaltes camp to Drancy and on to small village further away from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Rivesaltes. They were to be enrolled But Elmes saved 200 children, driv- in a Catholic school and hidden by ing many of them through the moun- local families. tains to Catholic orphanages, and Decades later Rene and Mario — managing to smuggle others across now named Ronald Friend and Rivesaltes the border into neutral Spain. Children in camp during World War II. Michael Freund — fulfilled a lifelong Rene and Mario’s father, Hans unknown for so long,” director Andrew ambition to identify their heroic libera- resistance members and political pris- Freund, approached Elmes in the Gallimore told The Times of Israel. tor, the Irish aid worker Mary Elmes, oners. camp and asked her to take his two “Elmes did such great work for the and nominate her as Righteous She spent six traumatic months boys away. She agreed. The boys refugees,” he said. “But she had to be Among the Nations. there, but after intervention by the never saw their father again. vigilant not to be seen giving special “I wanted to know who took me out Irish Consulate and the International assistance to the Jews who were the of the camp, and I found a document HISTORY OF A HERO Red Cross, she was released. By the most in need of it.” in the American Friends Service time she was freed, there were no lmes was born in the city of Cork Gallimore said he finds the fact that Committee [Quaker] files that identi- Jews left in Rivesaltes. in 1908, and graduated from these terrible events happened in fied her,” said retired New E After the war Elmes remained in Trinity College Dublin with a degree in France “incredible.” York–based Prof. Ronald Friend in a Perpignan, where she married a literature. Her academic excellence “One of the inmates, Paul new documentary about Elmes. French man with whom she had two earned her recognition from the Niedermayer, asked during filming “I owe my life to Elmes and I feel children. London School of Economics, which how could this have happened in very grateful. But I am just one of Her story became more widely awarded her a scholarship to pursue France — the home of the many who should feel the same,” said known following a 1998 Mexican doc- international studies. Enlightenment,” he added. brother Michael Freund. umentary on the Spanish Civil War in During the Spanish Civil War, she “When we were working in Now, thanks to the quest by the two which she agreed to be interviewed. volunteered to manage a hospital in Perpignan,” said Gallimore, “I felt that grateful brothers, the story of her per- She died in 2002. northern Spain, returning to Ireland the Pyrenees became a metaphor for sonal valor has been highlighted in a After her death, Freund discovered after the fall of Barcelona. However, freedom. The Spanish Republicans new documentary, It Tolls for Thee. her identity and asked her family’s hearing of the plight of the Republican crossing one way and the Jews in the The film is narrated by Winona permission to nominate her as refugees who fled to France, she trav- opposite direction — much in the Ryder, who herself had relatives mur- eled there to organize aid for them. same way as the Mediterranean is Righteous Among the Nations. They dered in the Holocaust and who was Being from neutral Ireland, she was today.” agreed, and she was recognized by nominated for a Grammy for her able to stay on in Rivesaltes after Meanwhile, Denis Peschanski of the Yad Vashem in 2013, becoming audio version of The Diary of Anne World War II began, when others French National Center for Scientific Ireland’s first recipient. Frank. were forced to leave. She was there Research raised in the documentary “My mother never wanted any atten- A DISPLACED PEOPLE when the Jewish refugees arrived and the terrible moral dilemma that Elmes tion and she did not wish to recall the began her selfless work soon there- war,” said her son Patrick Danjou. fter the fall of France, the col- and other aid workers faced in after. “She turned down the French govern- A laborationist Vichy government Rivesaltes. In the documentary, one of the “They knew the truth about the ment’s offer of the Legion D’Honneur.” January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 HOLOCAUST SUITCASE PACKS STORIES OF SURVIVAL (Continued from page 11) graphs, documents, diapers, a towel cine. Paula learned to delay gratifica- Association. She met a senior coun- sense of helplessness,” recalls Paula. and soap. In the corners Etka stuffed tion. If she had a slice of bread, she selor named Bill Gris, who was a Her mother made it to the midwife’s, money and jewelry with which to bribe never ate it all at once. Had the rabbi’s son and her future husband. where she spent the night. The next officials if necessary, and they left Germans not retreated from the “The real reason I married him was morning, she wrapped up her new home. Russians, she doesn’t believe her I loved the smell of his family’s home,” baby in a blanket and walked home. “I’m sure I must have said, ‘Can I family would have been able to hold she says jokingly. “It was clean in a aula declares that her childhood take my blanket? Can I take my out much longer under the lash of way we immigrants never managed to Pended at that point. “I became bear?’ Instead, I had to carry a soup Nazism and Romanian anti-Semitism. get. The food was delicious; his bub- my mother’s partner until the end of can. I think that was probably the last heir troubles were far from over bie did all the cooking. His bubbie the war in protecting and keeping that time I cried,” says Paula. T after liberation. “When we went loved me, so she heaped plates high child alive.” uitcases remain etched in her back to Czernowitz and discovered for me.” Her mother managed to obtain an Smemory from the eyes of a there was no one left, no one to help After Bill finished Army duty, his and child. She recalls masses of people us or to rejoice at our return, it was a Paula’s suitcases would come to rest pushing toward the transport to very difficult time. We lost many in Atlanta when he took a job there. Transnistria. Running, she held onto things in the war. Most of all we lost Meanwhile, Sylvia would become a her mother’s skirt. “You had to keep wife, mother, photographer and artist moving, otherwise you’d get tram- who now lives in upstate New York. pled.” Paula began reclaiming her prewar With her mother performing back- memories at the first World Gathering breaking forced labor for the war of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in effort in the rock quarries of Jerusalem in 1981. Transnistria, Paula was the sole care- “That was the most incredible home- taker of her baby sister during the coming for all of us survivors. All of us day. The girls learned to hide and stay had the same feeling: that God had put The blue suitcase. quiet in the vacated hut they occu- his Hand in the fire and had pulled out exemption written by the town mayor pied. Fear and hunger left them with seeds to reseed the Jewish world.” and allowing them to remain in the no energy to play, with one day blend- Paula Gris. She also reclaimed her tears upon ghetto for nine months after the order ing into the next, unbroken by birth- who we were. We had been treated hearing “Hatikva,” the national anthem came in November 1941 to transport days or holidays. like animals.” of Israel that promises a future for the Jews to the Romanian-administered “There was a very long darkness. I Her mother had kept alive the hope Jewish people. Tears also well up territory called Transnitria, what Paula don’t remember very much of it of reuniting with her husband. But he when she hears young Jewish children describes as the largest killing field of except sheltering my sister, waiting in never came back and was presumed singing songs of hope. A grandmother the Holocaust. One-quarter of a mil- an abandoned house for my mother killed. So she and her two young many times over, Paula appreciates lion Jews died of execution, disease to come back, not crying, being a daughters lived in a displaced per- the Jewish people’s optimism and and starvation there. caregiver to my sister, being as grown sons camp in the American Zone of resiliency, building families and con- November was the coldest month up as I could possibly be, which Occupation in West Germany for tributing to the world after seeing the on record in years, and many Jews means trying to stay brave.” seven years before emigrating to the worst in humanity. piled into cattle cars froze to death in Immediately after returning home United States in 1951. The blue suitcase traveled around transit. Waiting nine months for the from work every night, Etka would Paula yearned to blend in as an the world during her childhood and transport in June when the weather wash the girls’ clothes in a stream. As American and cast off the cobwebs of beyond, until it landed in a glass dis- wasn’t cold would give her baby sister Paula explains, “Cleanliness was her past. She quickly learned English play case at the William Breman Sylvia a better chance of survival. medicine for us, keeping off bedbugs and applied herself at school. Her Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Paula remembers the little blue suit- and lice. After that my mother nursed mother maintained a strong sense of where Paula is an educator. She and case’s role. Her mother was allowed her baby. The three of us slept in a cot Jewish identity for them all. Paula her husband, Bill, have lived in the two suitcases, but needed one hand together.” worked as a junior counselor one sum- community 60 years, and she contin- free to carry Sylvia, so she took just The family survived like that for two mer at a day camp in Pleasantville, ues to tell her story to make a young one suitcase packed with photo- years, with little food and no medi- N.Y., run by the Young Men’s Hebrew Romanian girl’s voice heard. EVIDENCE OF HANUKKAH IN ITALIAN INTERNMENT CAMP REVEALED From there the couple arrived in when they finally immigrated to ner in which Jews observed their holi- BY YORI YALON, ISRAEL HAYOM Benghazi, Libya, where they were Palestine and settled down in Tel Aviv. days even in the most trying of times. ad Vashem recently acquired a supposed to board a ship, but they Initially, conditions in Ferramonti, Yitzhak, 77, still lives in Tel Aviv. She Yprogram detailing a Hanukkah located in southern was 4 years old when the Hanukkah celebration that took place at the Italy, were tolerable, celebration at Ferramonti took place. Ferramonti internment camp in Italy in but they deteriorated “I have memories from Ferramonti,” December 1944. The booklet’s cover gradually along with she recounted. “The Italians let the was stamped with the camp’s symbol; Italy’s situation in World Jews have autonomy. There was a above the stamp is a Star of David with War II. Jews at the synagogue at the camp, and there a menorah illustrated inside it. The pro- camp, however, were were cultural events. With that, the gram arrived at Yad Vashem, Israel’s not harmed or deported conditions there weren’t easy. There national Holocaust museum, within the to death camps in were restrictions and barbed-wire framework of the museum’s Poland, and were per- fences, and the food wasn’t nourish- “Operation Picking up the Pieces” proj- mitted to receive food ing. The area was malaria-stricken. ect — a national campaign to save packages and practice The treatment was humane thanks to personal items from the Holocaust. their religion. the Italian management [of the camp].” The unique booklet was preserved he Ferramonti In Israel, Yitzhak raised a family with over the years by Yehudit Yitzhak, The saved Hanukkah program from the Ferramonti internment T camp was liberat- three children and now has six grand- who decided to give it to Yad Vashem camp in Italy. ed in September 1943, children. for future generations. Yitzhak’s par- but a large number of Of her decision to donate the ents married in Danzig, where her were detained and sent to Naples. Jews stayed there until December Ferramonti Hanukkah program, she father worked as a factory manager. Yitzhak was born in Naples in 1945. The unique Hanukkah celebra- said: “[Yad Vashem] is the right place In the spring of 1940, when her moth- September 1940. After her birth, she tion took place on December 10, 1944, for it to be. It’s an important asset that er was pregnant, the couple fled was sent along with her parents to the after the camp had been liberated by needs to be preserved and stored, so Danzig and sought to immigrate to Ferramonti internment camp. The Allied forces. The theme of the pro- that future generations can under- Palestine via the Italian seaport city of family was held at the camp for near- gram was the move from darkness to stand and appreciate life at the Trieste in the country’s northeast. ly four and a half years until 1945, light and was a testament to the man- Ferramonti camp.” Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 SECRET ANTI-NAZI DIARY GIVES VOICE TO MAN ON THE STREET Friedrich Kellner’s account, start- Kellner’s diary, not only directed “To let people who are completely “I could not fight the Nazis in the ing from 1939, about the Nazi toward the Nazis, but also with regard innocent suffer for the deeds of anoth- present, as they had the power to still regime’s atrocities and the unfold- to his fellow citizens and the world for er is reminiscent of the horrific deeds my voice,” Kellner told his grandson ing destruction of European Jewry allowing Hitler to rise. of wild beasts in times long ago,” at the time. “So I decided to fight them is being published in English for “There is no punishment that would wrote Kellner on October 26, 1941, in the future.” the first time. be hard enough to be applied to these following the murder of 100 French According to Robert Scott Kellner, a Nazi beasts,” wrote Kellner. “Of civilians by German forces in retalia- retired English professor, the diary BY MATT LEBOVIC, course, when the retribution comes, tion for the shooting of two officers. THE TIMES OF ISRAEL the innocent will have to suffer along Kellner’s accounts of the Holocaust alf a century after Friedrich with them. But because ninety-nine were concise, including his report on HKellner gifted his Nazi-era diary percent of the German population is an early Jewish “action” in Poland. to a grandson in America, the clan- guilty, directly or indirectly, for the “A soldier on leave here said he per- destine writings were published in present situation, we can only say sonally witnessed a terrible atrocity in English by Cambridge University that those who travel together will the occupied part of Poland,” wrote Press in January. hang together.” Kellner in 1941. “He watched as A vociferous critic of the Nazis, With indictments like that, it’s no naked Jewish men and women were Kellner used his diary to document wonder Kellner’s full diary was not placed in front of a long deep ditch the regime’s atrocities beginning in published in Germany until 2011. and, upon the order of the SS, were 1939. The small town “justice inspec- rior to Hitler wresting power, shot by Ukrainians in the back of their tor” wrote 676 entries, drawing from PKellner, a veteran of World War heads, and they fell into the ditch. numerous sources and a formidable I, was a public opponent of Hitler and Then the ditch was filled in as knowledge of history. In addition to his movement. A lifelong Social screams kept coming from it.” A few weeks later, Kellner wrote about “Jews being transported somewhere” and “treated worse than animals” along the way. In another entry, he reported on the deportation of specific Jewish families from his town. Friedrich Kellner in 1934. “This cruel, despicable, and sadistic treatment against the was his grandfather’s attempt to pro- Jews that has lasted now sev- vide future generations with a weapon eral years — with its final goal “against any resurgence of such evil.” of extermination — is the As the book’s translator and editor, biggest stain on the honor of Kellner has also worked on a docu- Germany,” wrote Kellner on mentary film about his grandfather December 15, 1941. “They will and several museum exhibitions never be able to erase these based on the diary. crimes.” (This is much prior to For more than 30 years after formal implementation of the Friedrich Kellner’s death, few people Final Solution.) outside of the family saw the crisply his clandestine reporting penned pages of My Opposition. The T of facts was not enough writings got a big break in 2005, when for the inflamed justice inspec- the George Bush Presidential Library tor, who also dared to criticize exhibited portions of the diary for pub- the regime outside of his diary. lic viewing. That endorsement helped For this, Kellner was labelled a bring about the German publication of “bad influence” on the popula- the diary, which Der Spiegel said pre- tion of Laubach by its mayor. sented a “challenging” but essential The April 25, 1943, entry in Friedrich Kellner’s wartime diary. He was threatened with narrative of wartime Germany. imprisonment in a concentra- January’s publication of My content on the unfolding Holocaust, Democrat, he delivered anti-Nazi tion camp along with his wife, Pauline, Opposition in English is another mile- Kellner wrote about the regime’s use speeches during the heady Wiemar and plans were drawn up to punish stone in his grandfather’s legacy, of propaganda to delude the popu- Republic years, for which he was him after the Final Victory. Kellner told The Times of Israel. lace, and what he regarded as the often assaulted. Following the “He should be made to disappear,” Seventy-eight years ago, Friedrich Allies’ criminal mismanagement of the regime’s Kristallnacht pogrom in wrote Nazi official Ernst Monnig in a Kellner addressed the issue of “blam- war. 1938, Kellner sought to bring charges report on Kellner. Despite constant ing Jews” in one of his early diary Kellner’s diary, which he titled My against some of the riot leaders. In danger, the diarist continued to seek entries. As was his habit, the activist Opposition, is seen by some histori- retaliation for these efforts, a Nazi out friendly ears. Seemingly fearless, refuted the regime’s lies and accused ans as a barometer for what “ordi- judge ordered that he and his wife’s he sometimes gathered up anti-Nazi his neighbors of complicity. nary” Germans might have known “bloodlines” be investigated for traces leaflets dropped by the Allies in order “To keep the people from directing about activities in the east, where of Jewish ancestry. to place them strategically around their rage at their actual oppressor, members of the SS and other As the Nazis spread terror across town. rulers in every age have used diver- Germans were engaged in the mass Europe, Kellner documented atroci- Following the liberation of Germany, sionary tactics to shield their own murder of Jews, Poles and Slavs. ties the regime sought to hide. To put Kellner was appointed deputy mayor guilt,” wrote Kellner in 1939. Some of Kellner’s information came current events in context for future of Laubach, where he helped with “The entire action against the Jews from sources that were widely avail- readers, he made pointed references denazification and to revive the Social was no different from throwing down a able, including the Nazi party broad- to Hitler’s tome Mein Kampf, on which Democratic Party. He died in 1970, piece of meat for the beasts. ‘The sheet and illegal radio broadcasts. To he was an expert. Among other long before his My Opposition diary Jews are our misfortune,’ cry out the gather other accounts, Kellner ques- crimes, he wrote about the “mercy made it to readers’ attention. Nazis. The correct answers of the tioned people and sifted through gos- killings” of disabled Germans at In 1968, with two years left to live, people would have been, ‘No, not the sip, attaching more than 500 newspa- Hadamar, and “retribution” killings Friedrich Kellner gave his diary to an Jews, but the Nazis are the misfor- per clippings along the way. carried out against civilians in occu- American-born grandson, Robert tune for the German people,’” wrote A potent sense of anger fills pied countries. Scott Kellner. Kellner. January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 HOW ARTIST BEAT FOOLPROOF NAZI SYSTEM TO SAVE 350 LIVES — the majority of the community — Beginning in 1941, all Dutch men ents. Like other Jews among the BY MATT LEBOVIC, were murdered at Nazi-built death and women were ordered to carry ID Netherlands’ surviving remnant, she THE TIMES OF ISRAEL camps and elsewhere in the Reich. cards with them. For Jews, a large had to build a new life from scratch. Born in Breslau in 1914, Cohn stud- black “J,” for Jew, was stamped on As fate had it, Cohn began obtaining uring the years in which ied cabinetmaking until the Nazis both sides of the card. By the summer fabrics from a Liechtenstein-based 102,000 Dutch Jews were mur- D came to power in 1933. When Jewish of 1942, authorities began using the merchant named Rudolf Bermann. dered by the Nazis, a German-born students were banned from taking registry to arrest and deport Jews The materials he provided helped her Jewish artist helped rescue hundreds exams or submitting final projects, from the Netherlands. Suddenly, the create, for instance, puppets with gri- of children from the clutches of geno- she moved to Berlin for a year of demand for altered or completely fal- macing faces and vibrant costumes. cide. school in graphic arts. The situation sified identification exploded, includ- What began as an exchange of fab- As an expert forger of identity for German Jews continued to deteri- ing the need to crack Lentz’s “hermet- rics blossomed into love, and, in papers, Alice Cohn worked with a orate, so Cohn fled to the Netherlands ic” system. 1947, Cohn left the Netherlands to Utrecht-based resistance group while in search of a secure future. Before she went into hiding, Cohn join Bermann as his wife in in hiding. Their production of so- ettling in Amsterdam on a stu- found a position with Amsterdam’s Liechtenstein. called “wild papers,” including ID and dent visa, Cohn learned Dutch Jewish Council as a doctor’s assis- Recently, some 17 years after Cohn ration cards, saved up to 350 Jewish S and received commissions to design tant. With the job providing her a nom- died at age 85 in Liechtenstein, she cinema posters. On inal degree of freedom, she was able was posthumously awarded the the eve of the war, she to smuggle a Jewish child — 3-year- “Jewish Rescuers’ Citation” for Jews was creating children’s old Lonnie Lesser — out of a building who helped save fellow Jews during toys. Unbeknownst to where Jews were incarcerated prior the Shoah. Cohn’s daughter and son, the new Dutch citizen, to deportation. After seeing the child Evelyne Bermann and Michael the Nazis were about safely into hiding, to catch up with her. Cohn made her own Of all the countries way to a “safe” occupied by Germany address in Utrecht, during World War II, south of Amsterdam. the Netherlands had During two years the most robust prewar of hiding in an attic population registry. near Utrecht’s The system’s success Wilhelmina Park, was attributed to Jacob Cohn accomplished Lentz, a Dutch official what had been who created the so- deemed impossible: called “foolproof” per- She forged identity Alice Cohn poses in front of the building in which she hid from the sonal identity card. cards able to with- Utrecht During the Nazi occu- stand scrutiny. Nazis, in , the Netherlands. Some of the Nazi-era forgeries that artist Alice Cohn worked on for the pation, Lentz refined ccording to children from the Nazis. During the Dutch resistance. his system to help authorities issue the museum, war’s final year, Cohn’s handiwork A new cards throughout the country. Cohn and her group of co-resisters, Bermann, were presented with the helped prevent young Dutch men In addition to a high-tech design and called “The Utrecht Children’s honor during the Amsterdam opening from being sent to Germany as forced use of the bearer’s fingerprints, Dutch Committee,” managed to save 350 of the exhibit on their mother’s life. So laborers. identity cards were backed up in a children from deportation and murder. far, 171 women and men from eight Cohn’s story and the saga of Dutch central registry. This made it possible The group also forged ration coupons countries have been honored by identity cards during World War II is a to confirm whether or not a suspi- needed by “underground” people in Jewish organization B’nai B’rith in this subject of an exhibit at the National cious-looking ID had been forged. At hiding to obtain food. During the last capacity. Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam. the exhibit on Alice Cohn’s life, she is year of the war, many new “wild “There are many people who were According to the museum, one moti- contrasted with the population-count- papers” were needed to help young able to escape deportation through vation for highlighting Cohn’s efforts ing expert Lentz. While Cohn used Dutch men evade forced labor in fake identity cards,” said exhibit cura- was to help correct the “prevailing, but her artistic skills to help save lives, Germany. tor Annemiek Gringold. “The people incorrect, image that Dutch Jews had Lentz — conjuring “the banality of After liberation, Cohn learned that who had the skills and the courage to a passive role during the war.” During evil” — deployed his organizational all of her relatives from Breslau had carry out this vital work remain large- the Holocaust, 102,000 Dutch Jews skills to implement the Nazis’ agenda. been murdered, including her par- ly unknown until today.” NAZI DEATH SQUAD’S SHOCKING SECRETS REVEALED IN BURIED NOTE so. I wanted and want to live, to delivered in a German Red Cross accounts. And he pays much more BY BEN GRAHAM avenge the death of Dad, Mum and vehicle with two SS men. They then attention to his family. For example, my dear little sister,” he wrote. dropped the gas through openings — he specifies who he wants to receive hilling notes from an Auschwitz Historians say Nadjari stuffed his and half an hour later our work his dead sister’s piano.” inmate forced to help the Nazi C 13-page manuscript into a Thermos began,” he wrote. According to the Institute of murder squads have finally been flask, which he sealed with a plastic “We dragged the bodies of those Contemporary History in Munich, deciphered — almost 75 years after top. He then placed the Thermos in a innocent women and children to the Nadjari was one of the few inmates to they were written. leather pouch and buried it. lift, which took them to the ovens.” survive Auschwitz. He was then Marcel Nadjari, a Greek Jew, was “The crematorium is a big building According to the BBC, the notes deported to the Mauthausen concen- one of 2200 members of the with a wide chimney and 15 ovens. were found by a Polish forestry stu- tration camp in Austria as the Third Sonderkommando — Jewish slaves Under a garden there are two enor- dent during digging at the site — 36 Reich collapsed. of the SS who had to escort fellow mous cellars. One is where people years after they were buried. After the war, he married and in Jews to the gas chambers. They also undress and the other is the death Russian historian Pavel Polian said 1951 moved to New York. He already had to burn the bodies, collect gold chamber. People enter it naked and only 10 percent of the notes could be had a one-year-old son, and in 1957 fillings and women’s hair, and throw once about 3000 are inside it is deciphered when they were first his wife Rosa gave birth to a girl, the ashes into a nearby river. locked and they are gassed. After six found. whom they named Nelli — after Aged 26, he penned his accounts of or seven minutes of suffering they The ink had faded over time and the Nadjari’s late sister. life in the infamous death camp in die,” he wrote. text was virtually impossible to read. In prewar Thessaloniki he had 1944, and only now have they been His accounts also provide intricate “The inmates obviously discussed worked as a merchant. In New York decoded thanks to digital imaging, details of the sickening ways the how many trains had arrived,” Mr he made a living as a tailor. according to the BBC. Nazis disguised the gas chambers as Polian told the BBC. Nadjari died in 1971, aged 53 — “Often I thought of going in with the showers. “Nadjari’s desire for revenge stands nine years before his Auschwitz mes- others, to put an end to this. But “The gas canisters were always out — that’s different from the other sage was discovered. always revenge prevented me doing 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 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 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 January/February for more than

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MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE The Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle is The American Society for Yad for American Society The Vashem was founded in 1981 by a was founded Vashem survivors and led group of Holocaust by Eli Zborowski, thirty years. Recently approved by the thirty years. Recently American of the Board of Directors our Legacy Vashem, Yad Society for in memory of Eli Circle is being named Zborowski, respected for his work and accom- Vashem Yad on behalf of plishments and is missed by all who knew him. ELI ZBOROWSKI LEGACY CIRCLE LEGACY ELI ZBOROWSKI 212-220-4304; [email protected] Director of Planned Giving at ASYV Director of Planned Giving at Robert Christopher Morton, By including Yad Vashem in your estate plans, you assure a in your estate Vashem Yad By including The Talmud “I did not find the world desolate when I entered it. As my I entered it. “I did not find the world desolate when please contact For further information about the Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle, For further information about the Eli Zborowski serve as a powerful antidote to denial, hate and indifference. serve as a powerful antidote to denial, future in which Holocaust remembrance and education will future in which Holocaust remembrance who will come after me.” fathers planted for me before I was born, so do I plant for those fathers planted for me before I was born, as well as those with substantial wealth. as well as those with substantial ment vehicles that can accommodate those of modest means, ment vehicles that can accommodate of any size, through a broad range of programs and invest- of any size, through a broad range eficiary of a Charitable Lead Trust. Individuals can make gifts Lead Trust. eficiary of a Charitable interest in an IRA or retirement plan, or making ASYV the ben- or retirement plan, or making interest in an IRA donating a paid-up life insurance policy or contributing an life insurance policy donating a paid-up ing a Charitable Remainder Trust or Charitable Gift Annuity, Gift or Charitable Remainder Trust ing a Charitable in their estate plans. This can include a bequest by will, fund- plans. This can include a bequest in their estate open to and will recognize anyone who includes Yad Vashem Yad includes open to and will recognize anyone who Page 16