AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 45-No. 2 ISSN 0892-1571 November/December 2018-Kislev/Tevet 5779 The American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner FROM HOLOCAUST TO REBIRTH the notion of “rebirth.” Our YLA was director of ASYV, who noted that what about her experience on the 2018 BY JILL GOLTZER heavily involved in the evening’s pro- “makes tonight extra special is that Yad Vashem Generation to gram, beginning with Halle Wilf and we are honoring the Zborowski family, Generation Mission this past summer. n Sunday, November 11, 2018, Jonathan Friedman, co-chairs of the who exemplify the first generation of Epstein talked about the four sur- the American Society for Yad O YLA Tribute Dinner Committee, lead- survivors, together with the Burian vivors on the trip — Felice Stokes, Vashem (ASYV) gathered at the ing our guests in the motzi. Award- family, who are the true leaders of the Edward Mosberg, Naftali Deutsch, Plaza Hotel in New York City for its winning a cappella group Six13 then second generation.” Dr. Meier also and Leon Green, z”l. These four indi- Annual Tribute Dinner, hon- viduals “opened their hearts oring Celina and Marvin to us and reinforced the Zborowski and Adina and idea of MeShoah Lawrence Burian. Over 700 LeTekumah — that even people attended, including after living through the more than 150 members of atrocities of the Holocaust, the younger generation, by rebirth was not only a possi- far the most in our organiza- bility, but in fact a reality.” tion’s history. Esteemed We were very fortunate to guests included Dr. Ari be joined by some of our Berman (president of esteemed Holocaust sur- Yeshiva University), Malcolm vivors. ASYV Chairman Hoenlein (EVP of the Leonard Wilf invited all the Conference of Presidents of survivors in the room to Major American Jewish stand and be recognized, Organizations), our own and then asked everyone to Mark Wilf (chairman of join them as “we all stand as JFNA), Andrew Lustgarten ONE!” (president of MSG), Andrea Mr. Wilf thanked Dinner Greenberg (president and Chair Mark Moskowitz as CEO of MSG Networks), well as board members Rita Hank Ratner (former presi- Levy and Marilyn dent and CEO of MSG Rubenstein for the tremen- Networks), Titi Ayenaw (Miss dous work they put into Israel 2013), and planning this year’s dinner. Ambassador Danny Danon Dinner honorees Adina Burian and Marvin and Celina Zborowski; Chairman of the ASYV Leonard Wilf ; and Dinner honoree He then presented the Yad (Israel’s permanent repre- Lawrence Burian. Vashem Remembrance sentative to the UN). led everyone in a magnificent rendi- shared stories about his personal Award to Celina and Marvin The theme for the evening was tion of “Hatikvah”. connection to the Holocaust, specifi- Zborowski, who were joined by their “From Holocaust to Rebirth,” which, aster of Ceremonies Jill Martin, cally Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken sons Mark and Ziggy on stage. “It as Dinner Chair Mark Moskowitz ten-time Emmy award-winning Glass”). gives me enormous nachas that my explained, “follows the modern histor- M sportscaster and television personali- This evening fell exactly 80 years children and grandchildren have fol- ical arc of the Jewish people, taking ty, set the tone for the evening by after the events of Kristallnacht, and a lowed in my footsteps and that they us from the depth of the horrors of the emphasizing the importance of pass- mere two weeks after the violent anti- are also involved in the organization Holocaust to the exhilaration of the ing the survivors’ stories “down to the Semitic attack that took place on and the young leadership,” Marvin establishment of the State of Israel 70 next generation with accuracy, love October 27th in a Pittsburgh syna- said. Celina and Marvin are both years ago.” The presence of so many and awareness.” Ms. Martin then gogue. Dr. Meier reminded us that as founding members of ASYV and are members of our Young Leadership introduced Dr. Ron Meier, executive we try to make sense of something Guardians of the Valley of the Associates (YLA) is a testament to that is entirely senseless, what is cer- Communities at Yad Vashem. tain is that Yad Vashem’s sacred mis- Looking out into the audience, Marvin sion is as relevant today as it was 65 stated, “I will continue to do whatever IN THIS ISSUE years ago when its gates first opened I can to perpetuate our memories, so The ASYV Annual Tribute Dinner...... 1, 8-9 in Jerusalem. The shooting in the world could never forget.” Friend of the Jews...... 2 Pittsburgh was the deadliest attack on Following the moving tribute to To Auschwitz and back...... 3 the Jewish people in American histo- the Zborowski family, Jill Martin Veit Harlan: The life and work of a Nazi filmmaker...... 4 ry, and as Ambassador Danon aptly invited board member David Seeking the truth about a Nazi war criminal...... 4 stated, “it was anti-Semitism in its Halpern, son of Sam, z”l, and Poland honors diplomat who saved 800 Jews during the Holocaust...... 7 classic and cruelest form.” Gladys Halpern, to preside over How an astonishing Holocaust diary resurfaced in America...... 11 ollowing a video message from this year’s In Memoriam. Together Nazi collaborator or national hero?...... 12 FYad Vashem Chairman Avner we honored the memories of those The tragedy of the Jews of Rhodes...... 14 Shalev, Jill Martin invited YLA mem- members of our Yad Vashem family The day the rabbis marched...... 15 ber Laura Epstein to say a few words (Continued on page 2) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 FROM HOLOCAUST TO REBIRTH (Continued from page 1) inner Chair Mark Moskowitz lings to continue that legacy as we welcomes and honors people of all who have passed on since the last Dintroduced Adina and Lawrence grow older, to want to participate, and backgrounds and of all faiths.” time we gathered. Eleven YLA mem- Burian and presented them with the to get involved as much as we can.” The evening’s program ended with bers then solemnly stepped onto the Yad Vashem Leadership Award. Adina n accepting this well-deserved an uplifting medley of Hebrew songs stage carrying yahrzeit candles. and Lawrence were both founding Ihonor, Lawrence talked about performed by award-winning a cappel- Each recited the name of one of the members of the YLA and are now working with his father, Holocaust sur- la group Six13. Throughout the night, eleven victims of the recent shooting extremely active members of the ASYV vivor Andrew Burian, and Yad our wonderful honorees, Celina and at the Etz Chaim synagogue in board. They were joined that night by Vashem to publish a book about his Marvin Zborowski and Adina and Pittsburgh. Surrounded by our their parents, siblings and four beautiful father’s experience during the war. Lawrence Burian, inspired everyone young leaders, singer and song- children. Their eldest son, Jonah, For Lawrence, this was one of his with their lifelong commitment to writer Arianna Afsar performed a expressed the immense pride he and greatest satisfactions. He and Adina Holocaust remembrance and their beautiful rendition of “Somewhere his siblings have for their parents. “feel privileged to be part of an organ- unwavering dedication to the ASYV. over the Rainbow” in honor of those “Seeing my parents and their commit- ization that so wholly preserves our Guests sang and danced into the night, who were murdered just because ment and passion for working with Yad past while treasuring the foundation celebrating the sanctity of life, the mira- they were Jewish. Vashem…inspires both me and my sib- of our future; an organization which cle of rebirth, and hope for the future. FRIEND OF THE JEWS: HOW DR. ADÉLAЇDE HAUTVAL DEFIED THE NAZIS AND SAVED JEWISH LIVES called her “the saint.” Utilizing her in April, 1945 she continued to treat ments on at least 400 Jews.” BY MENUCHA CHANA LEVIN, medical knowledge to treat Jewish the patients who were too ill to be Asked questions from the defense, AISH.COM prisoners suffering from typhus, she moved. Adélaïde explained how she reacted secluded them in a separate part of Adélaïde was repatriated only in r. Adélaïde Hautval was a psy- during her incarceration in Block 10: the camp to prevent contagion. By not June 1945, with the last French chiatrist who lived in a Vichy- “I had to serve as an assistant to Dr. D reporting the prisoners’ illness, she patients. Because she was not part of controlled area of southern France. In Wirths, a German with gray-blue saved them from the gas chambers. a resistance organization or network, April 1942, Hautval was told of the eyes. He told me that I would also n April 1943, Adélaïde was sent to she had difficulty obtaining a resist- death of her mother, who had lived in have to assist Professor Clauberg, a Block 10 of the main camp of ance deportee card. occupied Paris. In order to attend the I civilian, bald little man, wearing a Auschwitz, where sadistic experi- fter the war, although her health funeral, she applied for a pass to Tyrolean hat and boots. I was trou- ments took place, including the steril- was impaired by her bout with cross the demarcation line. A bled because that is something I did ization of women by injection of caus- typhus and malnutrition, Adélaïde Although her request was rejected, not want to participate in. Having tic products. She was supposed to resumed her medical practice in Adélaïde attempted to cross over. probably noticed my reluctance, he assist with the “medical experiments” France. She was awarded the Legion She was arrested and taken to the questioned me about my opinion of performed on Jewish women prison- of Honor in December 1945 for her Bourges train station for an identity sterilization. The opportunity was ers without anesthetic by German dedication to her fellow inmates in the check. While waiting on the platform, unique. I think a direct question doctors. With great courage, she brutality of the concentration camps. she noticed some Germans mistreat- deserves a direct answer. I said, ‘I ing a Jewish family. Speaking calmly am absolutely opposed to it.’” to them in German, she told them to “’Do not you see that these people leave the family alone. (the Jews) are very different from “Don’t you see that they are only you?’ I was asked again. ’I do not, Jews?” asked the German. and don’t stop me from saying that in “So what? They are people like the this camp many people are different others, leave them alone,” Adélaïde from me.’” bravely insisted. Her answer landed Following this testimony, one of the her in the Bourges prison, where she English judges proclaimed, “Here is would witness further cruelty toward one the most impressive, brave Jews. women who has ever appeared “A Jewish woman was placed in our before a court in this country, a cell, and I discovered that she was woman of strong character and an wearing a yellow star sewn on her extraordinary personality.” jacket. To attract the attention of the n 1965, Dr. Adélaïde Hautval was Gestapo, I attached a piece of paper Iawarded the title of Righteous to my clothing,” Adélaïde explained. It Among the Nations by Yad Vashem stated, “Friend of the Jews.” and traveled to Israel to receive her Whenever she could, she boldly medal. Her positive attitude toward defended her friends. the Jewish people remained as When Adélaïde was being interro- strong as ever: gated, the Germans offered her a “The return of the people of Israel compromise: “Deny what you said to their own country is an accom- about the Jews and you will be Dr. Hautval with naval cadets and high school students at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, 1965. plishment concerning not only itself released.” defied the criminal experimenters, In 1946 she wrote a short book called but the world at large…. Israel has “But how can I say something else? refusing to enter the operating room Medicine and Crime Against always played a gestative, fermenta- Jews are like other people,” Adélaïde or to assist the surgeons. Sent back Humanity, which was finally published tive role, due to which it was hated or insisted. to Birkenau, she wondered what had 44 years later. respected. Its mission in the world ”So you defend them? You will share saved her from execution, since the Then in May 1964, a libel suit was continues. May Israel remain faithful their fate!” the Germans harshly SS was known for its brutality. filed in London against American nov- to it. The entire history of the Jewish informed her. Because of Hautval’s When she finally discovered that an elist Leon Uris by Dr. Vladislav people demonstrates the primacy of refusal to change her attitudes, the order had in fact been given for her Dering, a Polish gynecologist then liv- spiritual forces. Hence, its undertak- Gestapo compelled her to stitch a Star execution, she was tormented by the ing in Britain. He accused the author ing cannot but be successful,” she of David on her coat along with a cloth idea that another inmate might have of Exodus of defamation. Leon Uris stated. band marked “A friend of the Jews.” been substituted for her. claimed that the doctor had participat- In October, 1988, after discovering Dr. Hautval was sent to the Birkenau In August 1944, she was transferred ed in Block 10 in criminal experiments the signs of Parkinson’s disease, Dr. death camp together with other to Ravensbrück, and later sent as a with Jewish prisoners. Hautval sadly chose to end her life. French prisoners. A devout Protestant doctor to the Watenstett camp, an Dr. Adélaïde Hautval was called as The hospital where she worked was and daughter of a pastor, she was ammunition factory. a witness. On the witness stand, she renamed Adélaïde Hautval Villiers- housed with 500 Jewish women, who After the liberation of Ravensbrück declared: “Yes, Dr. Dering did experi- le-Bel in her honor. November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 TO AUSCHWITZ AND BACK kidney ragout, he says: “I just thought Josef and his family traveled with was Sperre. BY TAKIS WÜRGER, of something. I’m going to tell you a Transport E Number 815, a train During a Sperre, the Germans would SPIEGEL ONLINE funny story.” He listens to himself talk- packed with thousands of other herd together all of the Jews living in ing, pauses for a moment, and then Czech Jews. Their destination? one building and would take those ne morning in June, with the says: “Actually, I have only sad sto- Litzmannstadt, the Lodz ghetto. Had whom they deemed to be “parasites” smell of an approaching thun- O ries.” Josef been able to read, he would — those who couldn’t work, those who derstorm in the air, an elderly man, He speaks of the years during which have seen the signs on the fence suffered from typhoid fever, the elderly his hair carefully parted to one side the Germans murdered 1.5 million reading: “Jewish residential area — and the children — load them into and wearing a freshly ironed, collared Jewish children. He speaks of the entry forbidden.” trucks, plug all the gaps, start the shirt, rings the doorbell of a farm- ghetto, of lethal injections and of The four of them were forced to motor and pump the exhaust inside. house in the Bohemian Forest, a low Auschwitz. Over and over again — or share a bed. Erich worked in a mountain range in the Czech “YOU CAN’T CRY” perhaps the entire time — he also German metal factory and Dora in a Republic. He has a long journey speaks about Dora Salomonovic, his paper factory. Michal, who was 10 osef’s father knew a lot of people behind him, across two international mother. years old at the time, was made to in the ghetto because he would borders and hundreds of kilometers, J Dora Salomonovic was from straighten out bent needles at a work- repair their valuables. On one occa- the last few hundred meters of which Mährisch Ostrau, a town that is now shop, while three-year-old Josef sion, he managed to piece back lead down an alley lined with pear called Ostrava and lies in present-day spent the day alone, from morning to together a Chinese vase belonging to trees. The man knows this farmhouse Czech Republic. Her native language evening. an SS guard, and thus learned of an and the dark brown, weathered barn was German, but she grew up approaching Sperre. He then man- at the end of the gravel road. He has as a Czech Jew in the Austrian aged to convince a fireman he knew been here before, here in the Czech Empire. Dora went to trade to come with a ladder and pry open a village of Brnírov. He has returned school and fell in love with a hole in the ceiling, into which Josef because he wants to fulfill his prom- black-haired engineer named and his mother crawled. He clearly ise. Erich, who was an accom- remembers the wide gaps between A wrinkled woman in a cotton dress plished chess player and could the ladder’s rungs. covered by an apron peers out of the repair anything. She married “You can’t cry, no noise at all,” his open door with her narrowed, blue him, and they had two sons, mother told him. He didn’t understand eyes. She sees the man and immedi- Michal and Josef, whose nick- what the difference was between a ately envelops him in a warm name was Pepek. He was born Jew and a non-Jew, but he did under- embrace, her smile so broad that you in 1938, the same year that stand the fear in his mother’s voice, can see where the molars are missing 1,406 synagogues and temples and he stayed quiet. from her dentures. The two launch were burned down in Germany. The Germans in the Lodz ghetto into a breathless conversation in Josef’s first memory is of his combed through the apartments, Czech. mother coming to him when he searching for children that had been “There you are. I’ve baked a cherry was three to tell him that the hidden. Lying behind the hole in the cake,” the woman says. “There you family was taking a trip to ceiling, Josef could hear the screams are.” Poland. as the Germans found them one by She has been expecting him. She It was 1941, two years after one. knew that he would return. She knows the Germans had occupied In the middle of 1944, Josef found his story — and has known it for Bohemia and Moravia. Dora himself sitting on the bed in their ghet- longer than she has known him. and Erich Salomonovic had to apartment and watching as his par- The man is Josef Salomonovic, the been ordered by the occupiers ents packed their things. Once again, little Jew from the barn. to come to the Bubny train sta- they would be taking a trip at the He presents the farmer’s wife, tion in Prague. Prior to receiv- behest of the Germans. The journey whom he calls “Frau Anna,” with two ing the order, the family had was short and they had reached their bars of chocolate, a bottle of requested permission to leave destination after just a few hours: Australian wine from the supermarket the country for Shanghai, but Auschwitz. Josef could hear people and a package of Merci pralines. He the Germans refused the banging on the outside of the cattle eats a piece of cherry cake, praising request without explanation. car he was in, and when he got out, its moistness — and Frau Anna is so Recently Josef Salomonovic traveled to the Bohemian A friend who visited the fami- Forest to visit the farmhouse where he was saved from a he saw emaciated figures in blue- overcome with nervous excitement ly before their departure would Nazi death march at the end of World War II. He still and-white striped suits who yelled: that she spoons cocoa powder into later write in her memoirs: “It doesn’t know why he was chosen to survive. “Leave everything in the cars. Men to the cups instead of instant coffee. wasn’t possible to speak to Dora. She “Here,” Mr. Salomonovic says in the right, women to the left.” It was the Salomonovic smiles and nods, joining lay on the couch sobbing uncontrol- Vienna, and points to a spot on a map arrival platform at Birkenau. the woman’s grandson for a tour of lably. I tried to give her a farewell kiss, of the ghetto. “This is where we lived.” Josef’s father took his brother the chicken coop and the new out- but she didn’t seem to know what was He has gathered up books, maps and Michal by the hand, bent down and building. Then he asks: “Is the going on. Erich was the only one who files in preparation for my visit, almost said something that Josef can no crooked tree still standing?” seemed outwardly composed. I can as though he were presenting evi- longer remember, and gave him a Before Josef Salomonovic packed still clearly see the place in my mind dence to a court. kiss. Then he left. Josef never saw his two suitcases and embarked on where I told Jean, as we headed Many in the ghetto died of typhoid him again. His mother took him into a this journey shortly before his 80th home through the vineyard: ‘If one of fever or froze to death. Some were low building. birthday, he told me his life story in them doesn’t hold up, it will be Dora.’” beat to death by the Germans and “Take everything off,” a female Vienna. We had met in Auschwitz. others starved. The Jews trapped in guard yelled. “ONLY SAD STORIES” NO MILK the ghetto received too little bread, Josef didn’t see any other children, just women. He watched as a prison- everal months later, at the n the day of their departure, too few vegetables, hardly any flour er shaved off all the hair on their bod- kitchen table of his apartment in OJosef wore two shirts, one on and no butter or meat. After a few S ies. His mother held his hand tightly; Vienna’s 10th District, he is gazing at top of the other, along with a sweater months, Josef’s baby teeth all fell out, someone was constantly crying and the bits of memorabilia with which he and a winter coat. On his back, he but nothing grew in to replace them. screaming. And then Josef let go of wants to illustrate his story: a spoon, carried a backpack with his chamber Josef’s father traded his watch with his mother’s hand, took a couple of a miniature airplane and a letter with pot. His mother had carefully consid- its glowing hands for a loaf of bread. steps and saw people beating other Adolf Hitler’s profile on the stamp. ered which of their possessions to Before long, the ghetto was all Josef people, and then he only saw naked He speaks for three straight days. At bring along, and decided among other knew. He had his parents, whom he women with no hair. He had lost his the beginning of his story, he says he things to bring along a small strainer loved, and his brother, who teased mother. wants to try to avoid making it too with which she would scoop skin from him but whom he loved anyway. He A guard stopped in front of him, a sad. And at one point during the three the milk after boiling it. She couldn’t didn’t, however, know that there was kapo, a prisoner working for the SS. days, when we go to a nearby restau- have known that there would be no a word that struck fear into the hearts (Continued on page 5) rant and Salomonovic orders venison milk in their future. of everyone around him. The word Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 VEIT HARLAN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF A NAZI FILMMAKER Veit Harlan: The Life and Work of a clarify to his men just what they “provocative,” “daring” and always Michal Waszynski’s Dybuk (1937). Nazi Filmmaker. were fighting . . . the cunning Jew, “lively.” We learn about his work in He went to Prague to shoot the syna- By Frank Noack. University Press ready to take everything from them, German film as an actor, and later, gogue sequences in the film using of Kentucky: Lexington, Kentucky, including their women! For that mat- because of Goebbels’s “purges” in “real” Jews. In sum, as regards the 2016.452 pp. $50.00 hardcover. ter, “in 1963 former Waffen the cinema world, his debut as a sur- entire filming process, he brought all REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN Schutzstaffel (SS) member Stefan prisingly fine film director and screen- his accumulated and, at this point, Baretzki [would] insist” at his trial writer. We read about the many substantial talents to the production. he claim persists that “that he had abused and killed comedies, melodramas and more he (Noack frequently compares Harlan’s “T because of Riefenstahl and Jewish concentration camp inmates directed. And then we read, too, work to Alfred Hitchcock’s.) The especially Harlan, a medium [film] lost only after watching Jud Süss ....” about Goebbels’s growing interest in result: Goebbels would write that Jud its innocence and, in the case of Jud o the question is, Was Veit him, especially with the release of his Süss was “‘a very great work of Süss, became a weapon of mass SHarlan really an early supporter 1937 film Der Herrscher (The Ruler), genius. An anti-Semitic film of the kind murder.” of the Nazis? Or did the interviewer where Harlan “for the first time” “com- we had wished for.” For that matter, According to author Frank Noack in from the Völkischer Beobachter “twist bined melodrama with [Nazi] propa- German audiences loved the film too! his well-researched and thought-pro- his words,” as Harlan ganda.” Not surprisingly then, Harlan voking volume entitled Veit Harlan: would later claim? Was ccording to become Goebbels’s “favorite direc- The Life and Work of a Nazi he “ordered” by A Noack, Goebbels tor,” and was given even more work. Filmmaker, Joseph Goebbels, Goebbels to film Jud “approach[ed]” Harlan He received awards from the German “appointed minister of popular enlight- Süss and make it as anti- regarding the direction government. The Italian government enment and propaganda on March Semitic as possible? Or of Jud Süss “around presented him with the “Mussolini 13, 1933, six weeks after Hitler was he just an oppor- November 10, 1939.” Cup” for Best Foreign Picture. Yes, became the nation’s leader, had . . . tunist eager to work and Once he “decided to things were very good for him . . . till plans for the film industry.” First off, he support his family? accept the offer (or the war ended. At that point, however, intended to “purge it of all Jews.” Should Harlan be blamed order) to direct this film, he was faced with “denazification” Then, no less important to Goebbels, for Jud Süss being a Harlan did his best,” as issues alongside increasing ques- was the need to find “artists . . . who, well-crafted film? Or are regards “improving” the tions about his work and support of instead of just appearing in propagan- we simply dealing here script and filming it. For the Nazi regime. And that would lead da plays and films, were also ready to with an “enthusiastic” example, while many to a number of trials . . . and even show their colors more explicitly by artist who couldn’t help writers had already more questions. committing to Nazi Germany.” Veit but harness all his artistic worked on creating the Needless to say, Noack’s volume Harlan was just such an artist — or at abilities for the production of any film anti-Semitic script, Harlan’s additions leaves one thinking . . . There is no least appeared to be. The evidence: he did? Finally, the reader can’t help “enhanced” this aspect, making it doubt that students of the Holocaust In May 1933, an interview with Harlan but wonder if a film really has the impossible to sympathize with the and cinema alike will find this book published in the Völkischer power to motivate people to murder. lead character, Süss. In fact, as unique and fascinating! Beobachter presented him as sup- Interestingly the author of this vol- Noach notes, Harlan would create an P.S.: Regarding a film’s capacity to portive of the new regime. Then, most ume, doesn’t give us his verdict. “economic,” taut script “driven by a incite violence, that, to this day, especially, there was his film, Jud Instead, Noack, labeling himself a purpose” — proving the Jew evil remains a debatable point . . . but Süss, an exceptionally well-made pic- “curious investigator,” simply presents incarnate. Since Harlan was con- Harlan’s Jud Süss most certainly ture whose central motif was anti- Harlan’s entire story, letting the read- cerned with making the film “authen- made matters worse for Europe’s per- Semitism. Indeed, the film was so er judge the man. Thus we learn tic,” he went to Lublin, Poland, to do secuted Jews! “good” that Heninrich Himmler would about Harlan, the ambitious German “research” on the Jewish community. Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of “order” “the entire SS and police stage actor and director, character- He watched Yiddish films like Joseph Media, Communication, and Visual force” to watch it. Himmler was con- ized by reviewers in both arenas as Green’s Yidl mitn Fidl (1936) and vinced that the film would vividly Arts at Pace University. SEEKING THE TRUTH ABOUT A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL The author of the acclaimed 2016 tionship between Sands and his death in 1949 — indicted for war BY ROBERT PHILPOT, book East West Street, Sands returns accomplice, Wächter’s 79-year-old crimes in 1946, he hid for three years THE TIMES OF ISRAEL with a new project. “The Ratline” — a son. high in the Alps, and then escaped to BBC-backed podcast — goes in Living alone in Schloss Rome, where he was assisted by a here’s a lot going on in search of Wächter’s story. A follow-up Haggenberg, a 17th-century baroque highly placed Catholic bishop — was Lemberg,” Otto von Wächter “T book entitled A Death in the Vatican is castle one hour’s drive from Vienna, no accident, but took place on the wrote breezily to his wife, Charlotte, in set to follow in 2020. Horst Wächter is surrounded by orders of Josef Stalin. the spring of 1942. As the programs unfold, Horst clings For the recently installed Nazi gov- grimly to the hope that he can con- ernor of Galicia, they were indeed vince Sands that Otto von Wächter is busy times. not the man which the evidence over- His promotion to oversee the newly whelmingly shows him to be. conquered territory — then part of he Ratline,” described by one Poland, now part of Ukraine — came newspaper as “the hunt for in the same month the Wannsee “T the monstrous Nazi that’s got the Conference approved the greatest nation hooked,” has proven to be crime in human history, the attempted something of a hit. After the podcast annihilation of European Jewry. was launched, it swiftly soared to No. Over the next 18 months, on 1 in Britain’s daily iTunes chart and Wächter’s watch, the Nazis deported then remained in the top five. One and murdered almost every Jew in critic deemed it “scholarly, revelatory, Lemberg — modern-day Lviv — and dramatic and intriguing.” the surrounding countryside. In total, Its popularity is unsurprising. Aside an estimated 500,000 Jews were Lawyer, humanitarian and writer Philippe Sands. from the UK’s seemingly insatiable slaughtered in Galicia. appetite for stories related to World Wächter’s responsibility is of special But this is no ordinary investigation books, letters, documents and record- War II, Wächter’s tale is one of love, interest to the British attorney, aca- of the atrocious acts of a man who, as ings which, he believes, will prove betrayal, unspeakable crimes and demic and international law expert Sands concedes in the first of 10 grip- that his father was a good and decent denial. It takes listeners on a journey Philippe Sands, whose grandfather’s ping episodes, many people have man who did his best in tragic and dif- from Austrian castles to Alpine hide- family — some 80 men, women and never heard of. Instead, much of the ficult circumstances. (Continued on page 6) children — perished in the city. drama turns on the extraordinary rela- He is also convinced that Wächter’s November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 TO AUSCHWITZ AND BACK (Continued from page 3) been killed on a concrete table with Flossenbürg Concentration Camp understand, Pepek? Only when I’m She was a big woman in a skirt and an injection of phenol in his heart. His Memorial, whose network of satellite gone.” When his mother crawled into jacket. Josef looked at her long, blond mother went to the guard in her bar- camps included the forced labor fac- the basement, Josef waited above, hair, and the woman kneeled in front rack and asked that Michal be tory in Dresden. He heads into the looking at the smoking city and think- of him. She took him by the hand and brought to her. And she requested chapel, even though he has decided ing about how sweet the sugar would led him back to the pile of clothes. socks for Josef. that there can be no God, and also be. He rubbed his fingers so often on Salomonovic interrupts his story, goes into the small brick building the matchbox that its label had been CHOCOLATE OR DEATH looks up briefly and laughs as though located at the entrance to an area rubbed away by the time he pulled it et your things,” the woman there is something humorous in the labeled on the map as the “Valley of out of his pocket. His mother survived “Gtold him. He heard someone vignette. “She was so brave,” he Death.” Inside the structure is an oven the day, and Josef, his mother and his call her “Katya.” Josef saw hundreds says. about as tall as a person. brother ate the sugar together. of pairs of shoes, but he found his pair A concentration camp was a place “Crematorium. No explanation The SS sent them to a camp in of white shoes with laces and his coat where people would be beat to death needed,” says Salomonovic. Pirna and then back to Dresden with the spoon still in the pocket. for merely looking at a kapo. It was When he leaves the memorial, before shipping them to Zwodau, “This is it,” Salomonovic says in not the kind of place where prisoners strands of hair are stuck to his face another subcamp in the Flossenbürg Vienna, opening a worn-out perfume could make demands. and he has dark shadows under his network. Josef was hungry. His moth- package to reveal a small, steel Still, the day after Josef’s mother eyes. Salomonovic says that he is er showed him how to rasp a raw spoon. “It saved my life, but we’ll get potato with a spoon so that he could to that.” eat it even without teeth. The kapo woman in Auschwitz WINTER hugged him after he had gotten dressed and put something in his osef began getting cysts on his mouth. It was sweet and melted on Jbody as big as strawberries and his tongue. It was the first time Josef filled with blood and pus. They hurt, had ever tasted chocolate. The particularly when he was lying down. woman took him by the hand and led There were no beds for the prisoners, him into the barracks, where the shiv- and the cysts would burst and leak on ering women were waiting. His the wood. His mother, though, put her shoelaces were untied. In the ghetto, son on her belly so he had something his mother had tied them for him softer to lie on. every morning. She spoke quietly to him and told Six-year-old Josef had arrived at a him the day would come when he place where the guards would lead would have a bed with a real mat- some of the children into the gas tress. She promised him that he chambers and give chocolate to oth- Josef Salomonovic with “Frau Anna,” the granddaughter of the man and woman who offered him wouldn’t suffer from hunger any ers. There was an orchestra that shelter seven decades ago. He promised Frau Anna’s mother that he would regularly come back to longer and nobody would beat him played Chopin and a doctor who had the farmhouse to check on a crooked apple tree in the yard. anymore. an eye collection. In the comman- One night, Josef started crying made her request, Michal came into always nauseated after coming here dant’s garden, there were two turtles because his cysts were bleeding and the barrack. He was shivering and — and the realization dawns that he named Dilla and Jumbo and a river the other inmates were saying that said: “Father is dead.” She took isn’t just taking this trip for himself, but that was black with ash on some the child should leave the barrack. Michal into her arms and then went to also for us. He wants us to try to days. Outside, it was winter. Josef’s mother the guard. “And the socks?” she understand what it was like back then, In talking about Auschwitz, Josef laid him on her belly, but he kept cry- asked. and if we cannot do so, then he wants Salomonovic pauses and says: “It’s ing. As punishment for the question, the us to understand that it is beyond beyond comprehension.” “Get him out,” said the other prison- guard forced her to do knee bends. A comprehension. The guard led him into the barrack ers. rather absurd punishment when you After he’d beenin the Dresden facto- with the naked women, but he still His mother took Josef out the door, recall that people in Stutthof were rou- ry a few weeks, senior SS officials couldn’t see his mother. All the filled a crate with wood shavings that tinely killed for much less. conducted an inspection of the pris- women were shaved and they were she found somewhere, tore strips off At night, as the others slept, Josef’s oners, and Josef hid in a laundry bas- all thin. But then a woman stepped her shirt to bandage the burst cysts, mother would take him by the hand ket in an effort to avoid them. But a forward, kneeled down on the wood- wrapped her child in a blanket and and sneak into the guards’ bathroom. German opened the container and en floor, grabbed his shoelaces and laid him in the crate. She would scoop water out of the toi- said: “The garbage must go.” He tied them. Josef had found his mother Salomonovic still clearly remembers let bowl and have Josef drink out of ordered that Josef be shot to death again. that night. He stretches his hands her hands. It was a risky thing to do. the next morning. It was the night of Together, they traveled in a group over his head toward the ceiling as he But a prisoner who obeyed all the February 13, 1945, with cloudless the Germans called a “closed trans- talks about it. He lay there, a small rules would almost certainly die, since sky. The Allied bombers came in the port.” They had been chosen for labor child, the pain keeping him awake. He the rules ensured that prisoners got darkness. — Auschwitz had just been a stop on got up and stared up at the heavens. too little to eat and no clean water to Hand in hand with his mother, Josef the journey. A couple of days later, “Dear God,” he said. “Please let me drink. headed into the basement. He still their train rolled into the Stutthof con- die.” In November, Michal, Josef and remembers an armed German yelling centration camp near Danzig, today He waited until dawn, and in the their mother were sent by train to at him to keep his mouth open when the Polish city of Gdansk. Josef’s morning, his mother came out of the Dresden, where they assembled bul- the bombs exploded. He watched as brother and father were also there, in barrack with the other prisoners, and lets in a factory. His mother managed the blast waves shattered the win- the men’s camp. it was time to move on. A couple of SS to convince the SS guards to tolerate dows. The bombs fell for two straight men rigged up two horses to a cart SOCKS FOR JOSEPH Josef’s presence and got a Dutch days — and Josef survived, pressed and they all marched off to the south. slave laborer to write a letter to Aunt close to his mother. he nights grew colder. When the Every now and then, a prisoner would Berta in Mähren to ask for food. Aunt When he finally emerged from the T SS called the prisoners into the collapse from exhaustion. On one Berta was Jewish but had found basement, he saw the dead on the yard every morning at 5 a.m. to be occasion, a woman was walking next refuge with a farmer. One night, streets and was surprised at how counted, Josef would shiver from the to Josef in a turnip field. The Germans Josef’s mother woke him up and much hair they had and how well-fed cold. He was so small that he would shot her in the back. stand between his mother’s legs whispered in his ear to be quiet. She they looked. His shoes stuck to the I BEG YOU because it was warmer. He doesn’t then gave him a piece of bread thick- asphalt, which had melted in the heat know why the Germans let him live — ly spread with butter and sprinkled of the bombs. His mother was forced can’t go on, mother,” said Josef. they murdered almost all the other with sugar. to help the cleanup operation. She “ISo she picked him up and car- children in the concentration camps. In 2018, during his trip to the gave Josef a matchbox containing four ried him. And when she couldn’t carry After a couple of weeks, Josef’s Bohemian Forest, Salomonovic stops pieces of sugar and told him: “You can him any longer, she went over to the mother learned that his father had off in northern Bavaria for a visit to the only eat them when I’m gone. Do you (Continued on page 7) Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 SEEKING THE TRUTH ABOUT A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL (Continued from page 4) the Anschluss — “the most wonderful whether he wants to go to Vienna, “never quite Otto’s fault,” there lies a outs, from the bloodlands of Eastern moment of my life,” his wife recalled because I would have considered it a much more complex picture. Europe to the beautiful piazzas of 40 years later — Wächter was on the mistake, while there, not to have “His views on his father — a man he Rome. balcony just behind the Führer. asked this question that I am well never really knew — are filtered Moreover, thanks to Horst’s willing- Wächter then took a post overseeing aware of. Wächter does not want to through the mother he loved and, I ness to open his family’s archives to the removal of 16,000 Austrian Jews go to Vienna.” think it can fairly he said, worshiped. Sands, listeners get to eavesdrop on from their jobs in public service. As the Department of Justice’s Eli For Charlotte, Otto was a shining the relationship between Wächter and When Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Horst’s Rosenbaum, a 30-year veteran of US light, a man misrepresented by histo- his wife. Their huge cache of letters godfather and the Austrian Nazi government efforts to prosecute Nazi ry, a man who didn’t necessarily provides a shocking insight into the leader, became Frank’s deputy in war criminals, tells Sands: “The believe in what was going on around mentality of a cold-blooded killer who Poland in 1939, he invited his old Wächter case is the only one I’ve him but was powerless to stop it,” signed documents consigning hun- comrade to join him. Wächter became seen where someone was actually says Sands. dreds of thousands of people to their the governor of Krakow. While he was offered an opportunity to go some- And yet, Sands admits that it is deaths — and who never appeared to signing orders expelling Jews from where else, to cease involvement in “immensely frustrating to talk to evince any sign of doubt, regret or the city and establishing the ghetto Nazi crimes, and actually turned it someone who is intelligent, curious contrition for his terrible actions. which incarcerated and entrapped down.” and … also open to knowing all about Sands first met Horst when he was those who remained, Charlotte plun- Himmler certainly seemed to his parents’ past, yet at the same time researching the origins of internation- dered Krakow’s national museum for approve of Wächter’s dedication. The cannot accept what seems to me to al criminal law. That interest was both Gothic and Renaissance art and furni- governor remained in Lemberg for be so clearly true.” academic and personal: Lemberg ture, which German soldiers hauled another two years, and, on his 43rd Maybe, he speculates, “there’s was not only the home of Sands’s back to the family’s palatial residence. birthday in 1944, received a greeting some unconscious part of Horst that grandfather, but also of two of the Horst later returned some of his moth- card signed by Himmler. It is one of does want to get to the real truth, and lawyers who played a critical role at er’s stolen booty. the family mementos — which also that’s perhaps why he maintains his the Nuremberg trials. Hersch In 1942, news of the first of two include an inscribed copy of Mein relationship with me.” indictments against Wächter broke. Kampf given to his godson by Seyss- But what of the other relationship The New York Times reported that the Inquart — that clutter Horst’s home. which dominates “The Ratline” — that Polish government-in-exile had For Sands, there is “no real ambigu- between Wächter and his adoring named 10 Nazis — including Frank ity about the responsibility of Otto von and Wächter — collectively responsi- Wächter for these actions.” The evi- ble for the death of 400,000 of its citi- dence, he believes, is “incontrovert- zens. Wächter was, according to the ible” and, had he been caught, he paper, “especially infamous for the would have suffered the same fate as extermination of the Polish intelli- Frank and Seyss-Inquart at gentsia.” Nuremberg. Four years later, a second indict- Horst, however, is apparently unwill- ment, issued by the Central Registry ing to accept this assessment. He for War Criminals, followed. Wächter, believes that there were two govern- it charged, was “responsible for mass ments under the Nazi regime: a civil murder, shooting and executions administration running day-to-day life, under his command as governor of for which his troubled father worked, the district of Galicia.” and an SS government, which bears ultimate responsibility for the murder THE NOOSE TIGHTENS of the Jews. He takes refuge in the t the Department of Justice in apparent absence of any signed doc- Otto Wächter. A Washington, Sands uncovered uments in which Wächter directly Lauterpacht introduced the notion of three documents which directly impli- orders the murder of Jews — an argu- Hans Frank. “crimes against humanity” into the cated Wächter in the terrible events ment which, it is pointed out by the Nuremberg Charter, while Rafael which unfolded soon after he took up Department of Justice prosecutors, wife, a woman who shared, and never Lemkin invented the term “genocide.” his post in Galicia. Adolf Hitler’s family could similarly repudiated, his Nazi beliefs? Sands was also interested in anoth- The first — a memorandum issued deploy. Thanks to Horst’s willingness to er lawyer — Hans Frank, the gover- just days before he arrived in the city “He acted humanely as far as he open his treasure trove of letters and nor-general of occupied Poland who — set in motion the deportation of could,” Horst tells Sands at one point. documents to Sands and his small was tried, convicted and executed at economically unproductive Jews from “The thing with the Jews, he was not team, it is brought back to life in the Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes Lemberg. The noose was tightened responsible. There were other people program. against humanity. Through Frank’s by the second document, signed by who took care of them. He tried, you The letters are bone-chilling. In one son, Niklas, who in 1987 published an Wächter on March 13, 1942, which know,” he says as his voice trails off. from December 1939, Wächter excoriating biography of his father, placed strict limits on the work Jews in moves seamlessly from telling his THE LOVING FATHER WAS A Sands was introduced to Horst. Galicia could undertake. Two days wife about the “lovely” concert he COLD-BLOODED KILLER “Horst takes a rather different atti- later, Operation Reinhardt — the staged in Krakow to telling her about tude to mine,” Frank warned the bar- secret plan to exterminate Poland’s here is a surprising warmth — “not such nice things” which had rister. Sands, Niklas and Horst later Jews — commenced in Wächter’s ter- T even, at times, joviality — in occurred. “Sabotage. Nasty business joined together for the 2015 BBC doc- ritory with the transportation to Belzec their relationship. Sands describes .... Tomorrow I have to have another umentary, My Nazi Legacy. of thousands of Lemberg’s Jews. Horst as “warm and generous” and 50 Poles shot.” he charge sheet against Horst’s But it was the third of the three doc- comforts him as the elderly man Ever helpful, Horst jumps in with an T father is a long one. Wächter uments which is perhaps the most chokes up when reading for the first explanation: “He writes ‘I have to’ … was born in Vienna, the son of a dec- damning. It is a letter signed by time a letter sent by Charlotte to the Every army did reprisal killings. He orated World War I military hero, and Heinrich Himmler after he traveled to Catholic bishop who was with didn’t decide to kill them. It was some an early recruit to the Nazi cause, Lemberg in August 1942. The visit Wächter when he died. judge from the Gestapo.” joining the party in 1923. A lawyer, he took place at the height of the month’s But underneath there crackles an In another, from August 1942, was involved in the coup and assassi- Great Aktion against Lemberg’s Jews, inevitable tension. As Sands bluntly Wächter apologizes for his failure to nation of the Austrian chancellor, in which 40,000 were murdered after puts it in the program’s opening write so often. “There’s been a lot to Engelbert Dollfuss, in 1934. the Ukranian police systematically episode: “I believe his father bears a do in Lemberg since you’ve been Narrowly escaping arrest — he fled swept through the city arresting and significant degree of responsibility for away with registering the harvest, on a coal freighter bound for transporting Jews to Belzec. the murder of my grandfather’s family. providing workers for the Reich … Budapest — Wächter spent time in In it, Himmler writes: “I recently was He thinks I’m wrong.” and the great Jewish actions which Berlin before returning to his home in Lemberg and had a very plain talk Sands is an astute and empathetic are currently taking place,” he writes, city in 1938. When Hitler addressed with the governor, SS-Brigadeführer enough interlocutor to recognize that signing off cheerily, “Much love to the the crowds in the Heldenplatz after Dr. Wächter. I openly asked him beneath Horst’s belief that it was (Continued on page 10) November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 TO AUSCHWITZ AND BACK (Continued from page 5) to cut it down. When I’m gone, look moved to Vienna and took a job with AN EXTRA LOAF OF BREAD Germans’ horse cart and set her son out for that tree for me.” an engineering manufacturer. on the back when she hoped no one t is a sentence that sounds a bit “Of course I’ll keep an eye on the TALKING WITH MOTHER would turn around. Ilike a Steven Spielberg film, a sen- tree,” Salomonovic answered. After several kilometers, Josef tence that seems completely implau- On the night table next to the bed t the end of her life, Dora heard a thunderous noise in the air, sible in reality. Just as implausible, was a small box with four eggs in it A Salomonovic was blind and and a German yelled: “In the ditches! perhaps, as a place where 1.3 million along with an apple from the tree. lived in a care home. It turned out that Air attack!” His mother covered the people were murdered simply “For the journey,” the old woman said. the woman who had done so much to heads of both Josef and Michal with a because they were Jews. Salomonovic kissed her on the cheek save her sons had been right. They blanket and said: “Stay down. Don’t When Salomonovic asks at the barn when he left. had enough to eat, their mattresses get up. Don’t say anything.” if the crooked tree is still standing, the ince then, he has been coming were soft and nobody beat them any- The SS men and the prisoners con- farm woman’s grandson nods and Sback regularly, even if the trip is more. In the care home, Josef helped tinued once the airplanes had gone, leads him into the garden. It is an becoming more difficult for him and her up and hooked his arm into hers. but Dora, Michal and Josef kept lying apple tree, perhaps the most crooked he suffers from atrial fibrillation. He is On this final day, they walked togeth- there. They waited and then jumped tree in all of the Bohemian Forest, taking care of the tree. er one last time. It was in the hallway up and ran into a forest. Michal was with the trunk winding close to the Before he heads back home, Josef outside the rooms and they only crying out of fear. The three made ground a couple of times before head- Salomonovic once again goes through walked a few slow, careful steps. But their way over a ridge and saw a rail- ing upward. the door to the barn and climbs the lad- they walked. Dora Salomonovic died way crossing in the valley below them When Salomonovic returned to the der to the hayloft. The floorboards at the age of 88 on March 28, 1992. — and a man standing there in a rail- barn for the first time, shortly after the squeak under his weight. Salomonovic Michal Salomonovic still lives in way uniform. collapse of the Soviet Union, the bends down, lifts up a handful of hay Ostrava. Fully 10,000 Jews lived “You have to help us,” Josef’s moth- daughter of the farmer who had hidden and then lets it fall again. there before Hitler came along. er said to him once they had walked him at the end of the war was still alive. “Seventy-three years,” he says. Today, it is home to only 40. down to him. “I beg you.” She was an old woman, but she The Germans stole his childhood Of the thousand people shipped to The man took her by the hand. They remembered those days. She said that from him. It is nowhere to be found — Lodz with the Salomonovic family in ran up a ditch to the nearest farm- her father had come to her and told her and isn’t in the hayloft either. Transport E Number 815, 46 survived house. The farmer took one look at to bake an extra loaf of bread. She did- After the war, Josef, Michal and their the Holocaust. Today, three are still the emaciated trio and rushed them to n’t want to, but he insisted. Later, she mother moved back to Ostrava. Josef alive: Michal and Josef Salomonovic the barn. He climbed up into the said, the loaf disappeared — and that learned what a peach tastes like and and a woman in Munich. hayloft and hid Josef, Michal and is when she realized that they were what a football is. Within just a few After Josef Salomonovic checks on Dora in the straw. Later, he brought also feeding someone in hiding. months, his teeth grew in. But for the crooked tree, he drinks a Pilsner them bread and milk. Josef couldn’t Salomonovic visited the woman on quite some time, he continued hiding Urquell (“fantastic,” he says) and believe how good the milk tasted. several occasions. Frau Anna, the a hunk of bread under his bed. heads back to Vienna. Elisabeth is After three nights, the barn door woman in the blue apron who opened Even now, he still eats standing up expecting him with stuffed peppers, opened and light flooded in. The farmer the door to Salomonovic, is her when he is alone. Because, he says, his favorite dish. He then calls his said: “The Americans are here.” daughter. There is a bond between nobody was allowed to sit down dur- grown daughter on the phone to tell Josef went to the pond in the middle this family and Salomonovic that you ing the death march. her that he is fine. He named her of the village, where an American sol- can likely only understand if you have In his early 30s, Josef Salomonovic Katya after the woman in Auschwitz dier gave him a miniature airplane. saved someone’s life — or been fell in love with Elisabeth from Vienna, who saved his life. “Keep it,” he said. saved. When the old woman lay on a slight woman with black hair and a Salomonovic will eat his dinner, During Salomonovic’s return to this her deathbed a few years ago, he twinkle in her eyes. He told his moth- unpack his suitcase and go into his village this summer, he drives along went there and sat with her. er that he was getting married. She room. There, on the wall to the right of the pear tree–lined alley and is quiet. “The crooked tree in the garden,” went into the kitchen, turned on the his bed, hangs a picture of his moth- “The Germans stole my childhood the woman said, and Salomonovic gas oven and stuck her head into it, er. He says he speaks with her in his from me,” he says at one point. “I didn’t know at first what she was talk- but Salomonovic saved her before thoughts every day in a language that want to try to find it.” ing about. “The apple tree. They want anything happened. He got married, only he knows. RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS HONORED IN VANCOUVER selves and their children. At the Kalmkam told the rapt crowd the story neighborhood and searched house by BY MATTHEW GINDIN, request of a fellow reverend who was of their righteous grandparents. Peter house for hidden Jews and members PACIFIC CORRESPONDENT the brother of the famous Dutch Kalkman’s father, Wim (Dirk’s son), of the resistance. Dirk Kalkman was resistance worker Johannes Post, the had long wished that his parent’s hiding Tanta Ina, as well as two he Consulate General of Israel couple protected and concealed heroism be recognized, but he died in resisters, who were squirrelled away T in Toronto and the Canadian Catharina Six tot Oeterleek-Kuijper at 2013, before he could see hisdream beneath the floorboards, through a Society for Yad Vashem held a spe- their home in Moordrecht, come true. Matthew Kalkman under- trapdoor underneath a large carpet. cial ceremony to honor some of the Netherlands. Wim Kalkman remembered being Righteous Among the Nations. Oeterleek-Kuijper was questioned by Nazis about anyone The evening was full of inspiring and a Jewish widow whose being hidden in the house, while they timely statements on the courage and husband had been a stood directly above the hidden men moral clarity of those who stand member of a noble fami- and in front of Tanta Ina, who was against anti-Semitism, racism and ly in Holland. She lived seated with the rest of the family on xenophobic violence. with the Kalkman family the couch. Wim Kalkman’s sister, who The honor was given to Dirk for the duration of the was also in the room, had diphtheria, Kalkman and Klassje Kalkman and war, until the which frightened the soldiers, making was received on their behalf by Peter Netherlands was liberat- them rushed and sloppy. They left Kalkman, Dirk and Klassje’s grand- ed in May 1945. The without finding anyone and, as a son, and Matthew Kalkman, their family created a false result, the Kalkman family and their great-grandson. It was handed out by identity for her, calling Matthew Kalkman, left, and Peter Kalkman. endangered friends survived. Consul General Galit Baram on her Tanta Ina from Den “The State of Israel, the homeland of behalf of the State of Israel and Josh Haag, and as a result, she was able took the task after Wim died. Together the Jewish people, sees honoring Hacker on behalf of the Canadian to play a role in the Kalkman’s family with researchers in the Netherlands, these courageous individuals and Society for Yad Vashem. life and the community. he was able to find evidence of what their acts of human decency and Dirk Kalkman was a Dutch She died in her 90s in the city of had happened. mercy as an almost sacred duty,” said Reformed pastor who, together with Soest, Netherlands, in 1978. Peter Kalkman told the audience a Baram. “The people of Israel and his wife Klassje, hid a Jewish woman Many members of the Kalkman fam- harrowing tale that was recorded by Jews the world over will forever be in their family’s household from 1943- ily were present at the emotional cer- his father, Wim, who recounted the grateful to them for bringing light and 1945, at great personal risk to them- emony, where Peter and Matthew night that the Nazis surrounded their hope during mankind’s darkest hour.” Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ANNUAL TRIBUTE DI

Robert A. Book, Chairman of the ASYV Leonard Wilf, Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, and Mark Wilf. Dinner Chair Mark Moskowitz.

Honorees Celina and Marvin Zborowski. Honorees Adina and Lawrence Burian.

Jack and Paula Gora with grandsons Sam (l) and Jonathan (r). Celebrating life. November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 INNER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM

Yityish “Titi” Aynaw, Miss Israel 2013. Arianna Afsar. Master of Ceremonies Jill Martin.

Executive director of ASYV Ron Meier; Steven Baral, ASYV board member; honoree Adina Burian; Director of Institutional Advancement — Western Region ASYV William S. Bernstein. Andrew Burian with granddaughter Erin.

Marvin Zborowski with grandsons Michael (l) and Jeremy (r). ASYV board members and past YLA co-chairs Abbi Halpern and Barry Levine. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779

DUTCH DIPLOMAT SEEKING THE TRUTH WAS PUNISHED ABOUT A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL FOR SAVING JEWS IN THE HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 6) Hudal was at the heart of the rat- being a Soviet double agent. children. Lots of love.” Two weeks lines — the effort to assist Nazi war The tapes underline Charlotte’s he Dutch Foreign Ministry rep- later, the Jews are in Wächter’s criminals in escaping capture and desperate but futile attempt to cast T rimanded a diplomat who over- thoughts again. “Things are going ferret them to safe havens such as Wächter’s actions in a more heroic stepped his authority to save thou- very slowly in the garden, unfortu- Argentina. Wächter was soon shel- light. “He always took pleasure in sands of Jews from the Holocaust nately,” he tells Charlotte. “There’s tered at Vigna Pia, a monastery and doing what he thought was the right and deprived him of royal honors, not much labor around. The Jews orphanage. Flicking through its guest thing to do,” she attests. “Until the new research shows. are being deported in increasing book, Sands easily identifies the very end he refused to compromise The research into the treatment of his conscience but sometimes he Jan Zwartendijk, who was honorary just couldn’t do what he thought was consul of the Netherlands in what right.” today is Lithuania, is part of a Dutch- “Everyone has light and dark language book published recently on sides,” Wächter’s wife suggests at his actions, titled The Righteous, by another point. “We should only see biographer Jan Brokken. the good things in everyone.” Zwartendijk served in Kaunas as hese words might carry an consul at the same time that Chiune T ounce more weight if Sugihara was there to represent Charlotte’s diaries did not expose Imperial Japan. her as an unrepentant Nazi. After Largely eclipsed by Sugihara, watching TV coverage of the 40th Zwartendijk was the initiator and anniversary of the Anschluss in chief facilitator of the rescue of more March 1978, she writes: “I’m glad than 2,000 Jews by the two diplo- and thankful to God that I was able to mats. Sugihara gave the refugees, live through this time.” who were fleeing German occupa- Central to Charlotte’s effort is the tion, transit visas that enabled them notion that Wächter was murdered. It to enter the Soviet Union. But they is this to which, perhaps more than would have been unusable had anything else, Horst hangs on Zwartendijk not given them destina- doggedly throughout the programs. tion visas to Curaçao, then a Horst Wächter talks about his father SS officer Otto Gustav von Wächter’s actions during the It is possible, as Horst appears to Caribbean island colony of the Holocaust in What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy. believe, that Hass poisoned Netherlands. Some of those rescued numbers and it’s hard to get hold of names of other notorious murderers Wächter, perhaps after he turned by Zwartendijk nicknamed him “the powder for the tennis court.” — such as Walter Rauff, the inventor down an approach to join him in angel of Curaçao.” In the last years of her life, of the mobile gas chamber — who working for the Soviets. It is also Both men acted without approval Charlotte began a great effort — stayed there. possible, the thriller writer John le from their superiors. Unlike taken up on her death by Horst — to y July 1949, Wächter’s fortunes Carré tells Sands, that Jewish Sugihara, Zwartendijk risked his own redeem her husband’s reputation. Bhad taken a turn for the better. “vengeance teams” tracked down life, as well as those of his wife and She recorded hours of tapes about He had, somewhat bizarrely, man- and murdered Wächter. Le Carré, their three small children, who were the couple’s lives, interviewed aged to find occasional work as a who was a British intelligence officer all living under Nazi occupation. friends, and sat down with a German film extra — he appeared in the in Austria after the war, admits that Yet Zwartendijk, who died in 1976, journalist who was interested in dramatization of the Verdi opera La he “admired” such efforts to exact was “given a dressing down” after his Wächter’s mysterious death in Forza del Destino — and planning the justice so many had escaped. actions became known by a top Rome. for his escape from Europe was A further explanation offered by a Foreign Ministry official, Joseph Never revealed before, the tapes under way. UK-based liver specialist, that Luns, who later became the head of show how Charlotte aided and abet- But, hours after enjoying lunch and Wächter succumbed to a fatal bout NATO. Zwartendijk’s children said ted Wächter as he evaded justice by a swim in Lake Albano with a man he of Weil’s disease after swimming in their father was deeply offended by hiding high in the Austrian Alps along identified to Charlotte as “an old the filthy waters of the Tiber, does how he had been treated. with a young SS officer he hooked up comrade,” Wächter fell desperately not meet Horst’s desire for his father Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a Dutch law- with when the two men found them- ill. He died in the arms of Hudal days to have met a rather more meaning- maker, said in a statement that the selves in Italy at the war’s end. later, telling the bishop he had been ful and heroic end. Foreign Ministry should apologize for Emboldened, the couple and some poisoned. Charlotte arrived in Rome But this detective story pales how it had treated Zwartendijk, of their children spent an idyllic to find her dead husband’s black- beside the great mystery: What kind whom Israel in 1997 recognized as a month together in the summer of ened body, “all burnt inside, he was of man does Horst really believe his Righteous Among the Nations. 1948 in a rented hut. Wächter even like a Negro.” father was? “Jan Zwartendijk deserved a stat- rejoined the family in Salzburg that Sands unmasks the “old comrade” Buried — probably unintentionally ue, not a reprimand,” the ANP news Christmas, although fear of exposure as Karl Hass, one of the ringleaders — among the family papers he agency quoted Sjoerdsma as saying. led him to leave for Italy in the new of the notorious 1944 Ardeatine mas- allows Sands to riffle through, there “High time for an exoneration and year. sacre. With the help of declassified is a 2007 email from Horst to his new apology to his descendants. I hope In April 1949, Wächter arrived in CIA files, he further reveals that nephew: “Attached are the two let- Foreign Minister Stef Blok does it.” Rome. He traveled under a new Hass was, by 1949, the chief source ters from your grandfather that I’ve The ministry declined to comment identity: Alfredo Reinhardt, the sur- for an American spy ring — Project compared with Himmler’s diary. They on whether it is considering an apol- name eerily — but maybe deliberate- Los Angeles — which used former incriminate him more than any other ogy. A spokesperson told the news ly — echoing the operation against Nazis, Vatican officials and neo- documents I have encountered. It’s agency that Zwartendijk’s actions the Polish Jews. Fascists to gather information on the no use. He knew everything. Saw “are without blemish” and added that then-growing Communist threat in everything. And agreed in principle. the Dutch state co-funded a monu- THE HEART OF THE RATLINES Italy. Another of its sources was A sad uncle Horst.” ment celebrating his actions in ächter’s letters reveal that, Hudal. Confronted by Sands, Horst clams Lithuania. W among others, he had the Hass apparently made an offer at up and mutters, “I wouldn’t say that The book also suggests that an assistance of “a religious gentleman” their lunch which Wächter refused. It my father killed 800,000 Jews or unnamed ministry official intervened who told him that his “case was well- seems unlikely that Wächter — a vir- something like that.” with the Dutch royal house to pre- known to him.” That man was Bishop ulent anti-Communist — would have All of which leaves his English vent Zwartendijk from being knighted Alois Hudal, a Nazi sympathizer, turned down an offer to work for the friend, whose grandfather’s family for reasons unrelated to the war — anti-Semite and fanatical anti- Americans. CIA files offer a tantaliz- was murdered seven decades ago in he was a senior executive at the Communist who ran a German sem- ing clue: Hass was also suspected Lemberg, to wonder: How many is Dutch Philips electronics firm — for inary in Rome and was close to the by some “close acquaintances” of too many? his stepping out of line during World late Pope, Pius XI. War II. November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 HOW AN ASTONISHING HOLOCAUST DIARY RESURFACED IN AMERICA Hidden for 70 years, a new invalu- Holocaust has receded so far into the the name Marcel), became a kind of When Ariana was spirited out of the able contribution to Holocaust lit- past that even the youngest survivors trio. “We were tied to one another and ghetto and back to Warsaw in 1942, erature — the diary of Renia are elderly, it’s especially powerful to living each other’s lives,” Tuchman Maria turned in desperation to a close Spiegel — was rediscovered inside discover a youthful voice like Renia’s, recalled in a recent interview at his friend with connections to the arch- a desk in New York. describing the events in real time. home in New York City. bishop of Poland. Soon the girl was A diary is an especially potent form Just two weeks before her 18th baptized with her own fake name, BY ROBIN SHULMAN, in an age of digital information. It’s a birthday in June 1942, Renia Elzbieta, and dispatched to a convent SMITHSONIAN.COM “human-paced experience of how described understanding n January 31, 1939, a 15-year- someone’s mind works and how their “ecstasy” for the first time Oold Jewish girl sat down with a ideas unfold,” says Sherry Turkle, a with Zygmunt. But as her school notebook in a cramped apart- professor at the Massachusetts romance intensified, so did ment in a provincial town in Poland Institute of Technology who studies the war. “Wherever I look and began writing about her life. She the role of technology in our lives. there is bloodshed,” she missed her mother, who lived far Throughout many continuous pages, wrote. “There is killing, mur- away in Warsaw. She missed her she says, diary authors “pause, they der.” The Nazis forced father, who was ensconced on the hesitate, they backtrack, they don’t Renia and her Jewish farm where her family once lived. She know what they think.” For the reader, friends and relatives to wear missed that home, where she had she says, this prolonged engagement white armbands with a blue spent the happiest days of her life. in another person’s thinking produces Star of David. In July, they The girl’s name was Renia Spiegel, empathy. were ordered into a closed and she and her sister, Ariana, were The history we learn in school pro- ghetto, behind barbed wire, staying with their grandparents that ceeds with linear logic — each chain under watch of guards, with August when the Germans and the of events seems obvious and inex- more than 20,000 other Russians divided Poland. Their moth- orable. Reading the diary of a person Jews. “Today at 8 o’clock er was stranded on the Nazi side; her muddling through that history is jar- we have been shut away in daughters were stuck across the bor- ringly different, more like the confus- the ghetto,” Renia writes. “I der, under Soviet control. During the ing experience of actually living it. In live here now; the world is next few years, their father, Bernard, real time, people are slow to recog- separated from me, and I’m disappeared and, later, was eventual- nize events taking place around them, separated from the world.” ly presumed killed in the war. because they have other priorities; Zygmunt had begun work- Over the course of more than 700 because these events happen invisi- ing with the local resistance, This photograph of Renia, at age 17, was taken in the winter of 1941 in Przemysl. pages, between the ages of 15 and bly; and because changes are incre- and he managed a few 18, Renia wrote funny stories about mental and people keep on recalibrat- days later to spirit Renia and Ariana school. Taking catechism, praying the her friends, charming descriptions of ing. The shock of Renia’s diary is out of the ghetto before an Aktion rosary, attending classes with the the natural world, lonely appeals to watching a teenage girl with the stan- when the Nazis deported Jews to the Ursuline sisters — never breathing a her absent parents, passionate confi- dard preoccupations — friends, fami- death camps. Zygmunt installed word about her true identity — the dences about her boyfriend, and chill- ly, schoolwork, boyfriend — come to Renia, along with his parents, in the child actress played the most ing observations of the machinery of an inescapable awareness of the vio- attic of a tenement house where his demanding role of her life. nations engaged in cataclysmic vio- lence that is engulfing her. uncle lived. The following day, By the end of the war, through a lence. The notebook pages, blue- Zygmunt took 12-year-old Ariana to series of bold and fantastical moves lined and torn at the edges, are as * * * the father of her Christian friend. — including a romance with a finely wrinkled as the face of the old enia began her diary feeling On July 30, German soldiers discov- Wehrmacht officer — Maria found woman the girl might have become. Ralone. Her gregarious, saucy 8- ered Zygmunt’s parents and Renia herself working for the Americans in year-old sister Ariana hiding in the attic and executed them. Austria. Almost every Jew she knew was an aspiring film An anguished Zygmunt, who had was dead: Renia, her parents, her star who had moved held onto the diary during Renia’s husband, her friends and neighbors. to Warsaw with their brief time in hiding, wrote the last One of her sole surviving relatives mother so she could entry in his own jagged script: “Three was a brother who had settled in pursue her acting shots! Three lives lost! All I can hear France and married a socialite. He career. Renia had are shots, shots.” Unlike in most other invited Maria and Elzbieta to join him been sent to live with journals of war children, Renia’s there — and even sent a car to fetch her grandmother, death was written onto the page. them. Instead, Maria procured visas who owned a sta- Ariana escaped. Her friend’s father, for herself and her child to have a tionery store, and her a member of the resistance, traveled fresh start in the United States. grandfather, a con- with Ariana to Warsaw, telling After burying so much of their iden- struction contractor, Gestapo officials inspecting the train tities, it was difficult to know which in sleepy Przemysl, a with their dogs that she was his own pieces to resurrect. Maria felt small city in southern daughter. Soon Ariana was back in Catholicism had saved her life, and Poland about 150 her mother’s custody. she clung to it. “They don’t like Jews miles east of Krakow. Her mother, Roza, was one of those too much here either,” their sponsor Renia during harvest time with Ariana and their mother in Ariana was visiting astonishingly resourceful people who told them when they landed in New Zaleszczyki, 1936. her at the end of that was marshaling every skill and con- York. Ariana-cum-Elzbieta, now Her script is delicate, with loops at the summer when war broke out. The sis- nection to survive the war. She’d got- known as Elizabeth, enrolled in a feet of the capital letters and sweetly ters fled the bombardment of ten fake papers with a Catholic name, Polish convent boarding school in curving lines to cross the T’s. Przemysl on foot. When they Maria Leszczynska, and parlayed her Pennsylvania, where she told none of Readers will naturally contrast returned, the town was under Soviet German fluency into a job as assis- her many friends that she was born a Renia’s diary with Anne Frank’s. occupation. tant manager of Warsaw’s grandest Jew. Maria remarried, to an American, Renia was a little older and more Two years later, just as the hotel, Hotel Europejski, which had a man who was prone to making anti- sophisticated, writing frequently in Germans were preparing to invade become a headquarters for Semitic comments, and she never poetry as well as in prose. She was the Soviet Union, Renia had her first Wehrmacht officers. She’d managed told her new husband about her true also living out in the world instead of kiss with a green-eyed Jewish boy to see her children at least twice dur- identity, her daughter later recalled. in seclusion. Reading such different named Zygmunt Schwarzer, son of a ing the war, but those visits had been When she died, she was buried in a firsthand accounts reminds us that doctor and a concert pianist. Renia, brief and clandestine. The woman Catholic cemetery in upstate New each of the Holocaust’s millions of Zygmunt and Maciek Tuchman, a now going by the name Maria was York. victims had a unique and dramatic friend of Zygmunt’s (who now goes by fearful of drawing attention to herself. (Continued on page 13) experience. At a time when the Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 NAZI COLLABORATOR OR NATIONAL HERO? A TEST FOR LITHUANIA into a public national shame. managed, despite repeated protests, they are heroes,” Mr. Fridberg said. BY ANDREW HIGGINS, “We have all heard things about to stay secure on his pedestal. When a group of prominent public THE NEW YORK TIMES what Noreika did during the war,” Ms. Appeals that he be toppled have figures in Lithuania signed a petition Tamosiuniene said. “He obviously met resistance from nationalists and in 2015 demanding the removal of the or the tiny village of Sukioniai in took the wrong path. But his grand- the many Lithuanians whose relatives plaque honoring Mr. Noreika on the western Lithuania, the exploits F daughter should have kept quiet. were deported to remote Soviet library in Vilnius, the Genocide and of General Storm, a local anti- Every family has its ugly things, but regions by Stalin or tortured by the Resistance Research Center protest- Communist hero executed by the they don’t talk about them. It is better K.G.B. intelligence service, crimes ed that “the contempt being shown for Soviet secret police in 1947, have to stay silent.” that blur the far greater crime of the Lithuanian patriots is organized by long been a source of pride. The vil- Keeping things in the family might Holocaust and often make them loath neighbors from the East.” In other lage school is named after him, and be a natural self-defense mechanism to condemn the actions of those who words, Russians. his struggles against the Soviet Union in a small, traumatized country that, resisted Soviet power. Portraying opponents of Moscow as are also honored with a memorial since it first gained independence “They have built up a whole nation- Fascists has been a feature of carved from stone next to the farm from Russia in 1918, has been occu- al narrative around fighting Russian propaganda for decades. where he was born. pied once by Nazi Germany and twice Communism that they cannot dis- After the end of World War II in 1945, All along, though, there have been by the Soviet Union. mantle,” said Grant Gochin, a South Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and persistent whispers that General But the silence has only played into African of Lithuanian descent who Ukrainians who resisted their incorpo- Storm, whose real name was Jonas Russian claims of a cover-up and cast has calculated that he lost 100 family ration into the Soviet Union were Noreika, also helped the Nazis kill a long and sometimes unfairly dark members to the Holocaust in invariably tarred by Moscow as Nazi Lithuania, dozens of them in territory collaborators or their ideological under Mr. Noreika’s control during the heirs, no matter their record or views. Nazi occupation. President Vladimir Putin has further or many citizens of Lithuania stoked this narrative, repeatedly Fand the two other Baltic coun- smearing Russia’s opponents at tries, Estonia and Latvia, the all- home and abroad as Fascists as he important memory of the war and its establishes reverence for Russia’s aftermath is of the 200,000 people huge role in defeating Hitler at the deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan center of his campaign to revive from 1941 to 1949 and of the tens of national pride and his country’s status thousands who took to the forests at as a great power. the end of World War II in a doomed ovid Katz, an American authority fight against rule from Moscow. Don Yiddish who lives in Vilnius, For others, particularly those with said the best response to Russian family memories of the Holocaust, propaganda would be for countries like this is an undeniable calamity but one Lithuania and Ukraine to draw a clear A monument for Jonas Noreika in Sukioniai, Lithuania, the town where he was born. far less horrendous than the system- line between heroes and criminals in atic extermination of more than their accounts of the war. Instead, he Jews. But these were largely dis- shadow on a country justifiably proud 200,000 Jews in Lithuania alone from said, they have often gone into a self- counted as the work of ill-willed out- of its success in building a tolerant, 1941 to 1945. defeating defensive crouch. siders serving a well-orchestrated democratic nation on the ruins left by “Every nation has to have its “Just because Russia says some- campaign by Moscow to tar its foes as the collapse of the Soviet Union at the heroes. I understand Lithuanians on thing for the wrong reasons does not Fascists. end of 1991. this. But how can we have heroes like mean it is automatically wrong,” said Blaming Russian propaganda, how- Virtually nobody in Lithuania is ever, has suddenly become a lot more denying the Holocaust or the role in it difficult thanks to Mr. Noreika’s own of local people. Its horrors are taught granddaughter, Silvia Foti, a in schools and denounced by officials. Lithuanian-American from Chicago And lately there have been growing who has spent years researching a calls, at least from a younger genera- biography of her revered relative and tion less scarred than its elders by went public in July with her shocking memories of Soviet oppression, for an conclusion: Her grandfather was a honest accounting of the role played fierce anti-Semite and Nazi collabora- by some national heroes like Mr. tor. Noreika. Her unequivocal verdict has stirred Indeed, on a recent visit to Vilnius, emotional debate inside Lithuania the capital, Israel’s prime minister, and prompted a flood of “told you so” Benjamin Netanyahu, praised the reports by state-controlled news country for taking “great steps to com- media outlets in Russia. memorate the victims of the “It was terribly shocking,” Ms. Foti Holocaust” and for its “commitment to said in a telephone interview of her fighting anti-Semitism wherever it A carved log depicting Moses with the Ten Commandments on a hill in Plateliai, Lithuania, that finding that her grandfather was a rears its ugly head.” was the site of the mass murder of Jewish men during World War II. killer, not a hero. “I had never heard Ms. Foti’s research into her grandfa- Noreika?” said Pinchos Fridberg, 80, Mr. Katz, who runs a website focused about any of this Nazi stuff.” ther helped prod the mayor of Vilnius a retired professor and the only Jew on the Holocaust. It was also shocking for Jolanda into asking the country’s guardian of left in Vilnius who was born in the city Mr. Noreika spent the last months of Tamosiuniene, a teacher and librarian official history, the Genocide and before the Nazis invaded in 1941. the war in Nazi detention, a fact that at the J. Noreika Basic School in Resistance Research Center, to take Clouding Lithuanians’ judgment, Mr. his defenders cite as evidence that he Sukioniai, where Mr. Noreika was a fresh look at whether Mr. Noreika Fridberg said, has been a deep fear was never really pro-Nazi. But his born at the end of the hamlet’s only merited his status as a national hero of Russia and a widespread assump- principal claim to hero status is that street in 1910. — and whether a plaque in his honor tion that anything that puts their coun- the Soviet Union convicted him of What shocked her, however, was at the library of the Lithuanian try in a bad light must be Russian dis- treason and executed him for his role not Ms. Foti’s discovery that her Academy of Sciences in Vilnius information, or at least worthy of in organizing anti-Communist resist- grandfather was complicit in the should be taken down. skepticism because it comforts the ance while working as a lawyer in Holocaust — that was not really news But at a time of rising nationalism Kremlin. Vilnius at the Academy of Sciences to locals — but that a member of a across Europe and heightened ten- “Whatever someone says or does, following the war. patriotic émigré family had gone pub- sions with Russia, Mr. Noreika has so long as they are against Russia (Continued on page 15) lic and turned a private family matter November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 HOW AN ASTONISHING HOLOCAUST DIARY RESURFACED IN AMERICA (Continued from page 10) woman from Poland. After he finished towns in Poland and the camps and in New York to see a documentary Elizabeth grew up to become a school, they emigrated to America hiding places where they survived the about a Polish Jewish animator who schoolteacher. She met her husband- under the newly created Displaced war, and spoke publicly about their had survived the Holocaust. Elizabeth to-be, George Bellak, at a teachers’ Persons Act, the country’s first piece stories. He became a professor of asked the filmmaker, Tomasz union party, and she was drawn to of refugee legislation. After a stint in architectural history, publishing Magierski, if he wanted to read her him partly because he too was a Jew the U.S. Army, he had a happy career Building After Auschwitz and other sister’s wartime diary. who had fled the Nazi takeover of as a pediatrician in Queens and on articles about the Holocaust and Out of politeness, Magierski said Europe — in his case, Austria. But for Long Island. His two children remem- architecture. yes. “Then I read this book — and I a long time, Elizabeth didn’t tell ber him as gregarious, brilliant, funny Zygmunt Schwarzer died from a could not stop reading it,” he said. “I George what they had in common. and kind, the sort of person who stroke in 1992. Before his death, he read it over three or four nights. It was The fear of exposure was a part of her wanted to taste every food, see every had made a last contribution to so powerful.” now. She baptized her two children sight and strike up conversation with Renia’s diary. On April 23, 1989, while Magierski was born 15 years after and didn’t tell even them her secret. every passerby, as if surviving the war visiting Elizabeth, he wrote one of two the war’s end, in southern Poland, in She began to forget some of the had only amplified his zest for life. additional entries. “I’m with Renusia’s a town, like most every other Polish details herself. But as he gained more distance sister,” he wrote. “This blood link is all town, that had been emptied of Jews. from the past, his internal life grew I have left. It’s been 41 years since I Poland had been the country where * * * darker. By the 1980s, he often won- have lost Renusia.... Thanks to Renia most of Europe’s Jews lived, and it ut her past was not finished with dered aloud why Mengele had I fell in love for the first time in my life, was also the site of all the major Nazi Bher yet. In the 1950s, when allowed him to live. “What did he see deeply and sincerely. And I was loved death camps. At school, Magierski Elizabeth and her mother were living in me?” he asked Mitchell. “Why did back by her in an extraordinary, had learned about the Holocaust, but in a studio apartment on Manhattan’s this man save my life?” unearthly, incredibly passionate way.” no one seemed to talk about the miss- West 90th Street, Zygmunt ing people, whether because of Schwarzer tromped up the grief or culpability, official sup- stairs, Elizabeth recalls. He had pression or a reluctance to also survived the war and also dredge up the miserable past. resettled in New York City, and It seemed wrong to Magierski he was as handsome and that not only the people were charming as ever, calling gone, but so were their stories. Elizabeth by her childhood nick- “I fell in love with Renia,” he name — “Arianka!” He carried says, in his gentle voice, with him something precious: explaining why he decided to Renia’s diary. There it was, the make a film about her. “There pale blue-lined notebook, con- are hundreds of thousands of taining her sister’s words, her young people and children who intelligence and sensitivity, and disappeared and were killed, her growing understanding of and their stories will never be love and violence — delivered told.” This one felt like his to this new life in America. responsibility: “I have to bring Elizabeth could not bring her- this thing to life.” He began vis- Left to right: Zygmunt Schwarzer with friends and cousins on the San River in Przemysl in the summer of 1940; self to read it. Zgymunt’s medical school ID photo from Heidelberg; Zgymunt after his liberation from Lager Buchberg in Bavaria in iting town archives, old ceme- No one alive today seems to the spring of 1945. Later in life, his son says, he obscured the tattooed numbers on his arm. teries, newspaper records and be able to explain the mystery the people of Przemysl, turning of how, precisely, Renia’s diary had He had made a copy of the diary, up information even Elizabeth had not made its way from Poland to and his basement office became a * * * known or remembered. Schwarzer’s hands in New York—not shrine to Renia. Her photograph hung fter Maria died in 1969, He also created a poetry competi- Elizabeth, Tuchman or Schwarzer’s on his wall. He would lay out photo- A Elizabeth retrieved her sister’s tion in Renia’s name and wrote a play son, Mitchell. Perhaps Zygmunt copied pages of her diary on brown journal and stashed it away, eventual- based on Renia’s diary. Actors from Schwarzer had given it to a non- leather medical examination tables ly in a safe deposit box at the Chase Przemysl performed it in Przemysl Jewish neighbor for safekeeping back and spend hours poring over them. bank downstairs from her airy apart- and Warsaw in 2016. The lead in Poland; perhaps someone discov- “He was apparently falling in love with ment near Union Square in actress, 18-year-old Ola Bernatek, ered it in a hiding spot and sent it to this diary,” his son recalls. “He would Manhattan. It was both her dearest had never before heard stories of the the International Red Cross for rout- tell me about Renia. She was this possession and unopenable, like the Jews of her town. Now, she said, “I ing to the owner. After the war, pho- spiritual presence.” closely guarded secret of her see her house every day when I go to tos, personal items and documents Zygmunt Schwarzer’s wife, Jean Jewishness. Her French uncle had school.” reached survivors in all sorts of cir- Schwarzer, had little interest in her always told her: “Forget the past.” For Renia’s family, though, the goal cuitous ways. husband’s heartache — she reacted One day, when her youngest child, was publishing her journal. The book What’s known is that by the time to the long-dead girl like a living rival. Alexandra, was about 12 years old, was published in Polish in 2016. It Schwarzer appeared with the diary, “My mother would say, ‘Ach, he’s with she said something casually deroga- was not widely reviewed in Poland — he’d survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, the diary downstairs,’” said Mitchell. tory toward Jews. Elizabeth decided it where the topic of Jewish Holocaust Landsberg and other camps. In a tes- “She wasn’t interested in all of what was time Alexandra and her brother, experience is still a kind of taboo — timony recorded in 1986, now on file she would call his ‘meshugas,’ his Andrew, knew the truth. but readers acknowledged its power at the United States Holocaust crazy crap.” “I told them I was born Jewish,” and rarity. “She was clearly a talented Memorial Museum, Schwarzer said But Tuchman, Schwarzer’s child- Elizabeth said. writer,” Eva Hoffman, a London- that Josef Mengele, the famous death hood friend, understood the need to By the time Alexandra grew up, she based Polish Jewish writer and aca- camp doctor, personally examined reconnect with the past later in life. wanted to know more about the diary. demic, said of Renia. “Like Anne him — and decided to let him live. “We were clamoring for some attach- “I had to know what it said,” said Frank, she had a gift for transposing Another time, he said, he was to be ment and the desire to see a common Alexandra. In 2012, she scanned the herself onto the page and for bringing put to death for stealing clothes when thread,” he explained recently. pages and emailed them, 20 at a great emotional intensity as well as a girlfriend showed up to pay a dia- Survivors often sought out artifacts as time, to a student in Poland for trans- wit to her writing.” mond for his release. a kind of anchor, he said, to feel that lation. When they came back, she The night her diary was printed, His camp was liberated in the spring “we were not just floating in the was finally able to read her dead Magierski stayed in the print shop the of 1945. By the autumn of that year, atmosphere.” aunt’s words. “It was heart-wrench- whole night, watching. “There was a his son says, he was studying medi- Zygmunt’s son Mitchell took up the ing,” she said. moment where I became cold,” he cine in Germany under former Nazi mantle of investigating that lost world. In early 2014, Alexandra and said. “She’s going to exist. She’s professors. He married a Jewish He traveled to his parents’ home- Elizabeth went to the Polish consulate back.” Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 THE TRAGEDY OF THE JEWS OF RHODES According to tradition, Jews lived known about their way of life. Oral tra- women were instructed to appear to 42 Jews, claiming that they were on Rhodes even before the dition holds that Roman-era Jews set- “receive instructions.” The women Turkish citizens. Ulkumen did not destruction of the Second Temple. tled on the island following the who arrived at the building were given hesitate to approach the Gestapo and The community survived blood destruction of the Second Temple in bitter news — if they did not return the used Turkey’s neutrality to demand libels, poverty and a world war, but 70 C.E., and some say even before next day with their children and valu- that they be let out of the air force in 1944 the Nazis sent the remain- that. ables, their male relatives would be building where they were being held. ing Jews of Rhodes to Auschwitz, About 100 years ago, the Jewish executed. Habib’s mother wrote that The Germans complied. One of the killing all but 200. community on Rhodes numbered they were not given a choice: “We lucky 42, a year-old baby at the time, about 6,000. The widespread poverty were only women and girls, and we continues to visit Rhodes from his BY ARIEL BOLSTEIN, on the island prompted mass migra- went directly in to our deaths.” The home in the U.S. every year. ISRAEL HAYOM tion to the U.S., South America, and women and children joined the men, commemorative plaque in the t was a quiet evening in the old city European colonies in Africa. By the and everyone was held in the air force A Rhodes synagogue courtyard Iof Rhodes as I strolled through the end of the 1930s, about two-thirds of HQ for three days. tells another kind of story and lists all crooked alleyways, which were empty the island’s Jews had left. It soon At 2 p.m. on July 23, the Germans the local Jewish families who were and looked as if they hadn’t changed became apparent that they had saved set off the island’s air raid sirens. The murdered in the Holocaust. Among the since the Middle Ages. Suddenly, I themselves from the hell that was residents, as expected, ran for shel- many Spanish names (Alhadeff, heard scraps of a conversation that looming. ter, leaving no witnesses. The Soncino, Capeluto, Ventura, bounced off the stones. It wasn’t in Germans led the Jews to the port of Benbenisti), I find the name of a single Greek or in any other language spo- Ashkenazi family. How could that be, if ken by the tourists that visit this Greek Rhodes was never home to any Jews island. When I got closer to the of Ashkenazi origin? Habib tells me the speakers, I saw two elderly people sit- story of the Pentcho, one of the ships ting on a low step leading to a court- that carried illegal Jewish immigrants yard. Now I could hear the words into Mandate Palestine in violation of clearly, and there was no doubt — the British embargo. In May 1940, they were speaking Ladino. about 500 Jews, mostly members of When I approached them, I saw in the Betar Zionist movement, tried to the moonlight that one of them had a escape Europe on board the Pentcho, number tattooed on his arm. The which sailed from Thessaloniki. numerals were faded. That is how I After three months at sea, the ship’s made the acquaintance of Samuel heater exploded, and it wrecked on Modiano. When he was 13 and a half, the boulders offshore of the small Samuel (Sami) and his family were Aegean island of Chamili. Some 10 caught and sent to Auschwitz. He was days after the wreck, and an Italian lucky enough to be tall, and he was patrol plane spotted the survivors, chosen for hard labor rather than the whose food and water was nearly gas chamber. Sami survived, and after gone, and carried them out to the war he found himself in Italy. Like Rhodes. The Jewish refugees from all the Jews of Rhodes who survived Europe were put up in tents erected The Kahal Shalom synagogue in Rhodes. the war (other than one woman, one of on a soccer field. Some perished his cousins), Sami didn’t move back to he Germans occupied Rhodes Rhodes and loaded them onto huge because of the cold and the harsh the island. But some inexplicable force T and the rest of the Aegean transport barges to start their journey conditions. Two others died while try- keeps drawing him back to where his Islands in September 1943 after Italy to Auschwitz. ing to reach Palestine, and the rest family lived for generations. stopped fighting alongside Hitler. For The ships that would take them the were eventually transferred to a con- Many descendants of Rhodian months, the Germans did nothing to rest of the way were waiting at the centration camp in southern Italy. Jews, who are known among them- the local Jews. There were no public island of Samos because the efficien- The possibility of being sent to Italy, selves as “Rhodeslis,” visit the island humiliations, they weren’t forced to cy-minded Germans wanted to add a which was Germany’s ally, seemed a every summer. Maybe it’s the illusion wear yellow Stars of David on their transport of Jews from Kos. On July death sentence. So when the Pann that time has stood still in the ancient clothing, and they weren’t shepherd- 31, the vessels docked in Athens, and family, whose father had a profession streets that tempts them back. You ed into a ghetto, as the Jews of the Jews were moved to the Haidari deemed vital on the island, was given don’t need an overactive imagination Thessaloniki were. The relative quiet, concentration camp. The men were a chance to remain on Rhodes, they to picture how it would have been which wasn’t disturbed until the separated. On August 3, the infamous were seen as fortunate. The family hundreds of years ago. Isaak Habib, British began bombing the island cattle cars pulled up, and the Jews of was happy to accept the invitation to who was born to Jewish parents from (killing some of the Jews who the Aegean Islands began the last stay. Sadly, the Europeans deported Rhodes after the war, travels here remained), kept the local community stage of their awful journey, a 13-day to Italy were unharmed, but the Pann from his home in South Africa for at ignorant of the fate that awaited them. trip to the largest industrialized death family was sent to Auschwitz with the least five months of the year. Habib is A year ago, Habib discovered that in machine in history. rest of the island’s Jews and were a driving force behind the preserva- April 1944, the Italian police on Rhodes One of Habib’s grandfathers died in killed there. A miraculous rescue tion of the legacy of Jews of Rhodes handed lists of the Jewish population the suffocating car. The rest got off wound up leading to their destruction. and the rebuilding of the Kahal over to the Germans. The lists them- the train at Auschwitz. Some 600 Jewish communities with roots on Shalom synagogue. He oversees the selves were discovered in the syna- youths were taken away for labor, and Rhodes exist throughout the world, maintenance of it and directs gogue two years ago. Habib’s workers the rest were killed within the space of and in some surprising places — research into the community’s did not see them as important, and only three hours. Fewer than 200 Rhodian including the Democratic Republic of impressive history, with its ups and when they were carefully reviewed did Jews survived the camps. After the the Congo, where Habib was born downs. Isaak’s own family history they turn out to be a detailed registry war, Habib’s mother wrote a memoir and raised. At its height, that commu- reflects what befell the island’s Jews prepared in 1938 — including heads of of what she experienced and sent it to nity numbered some 2,000, but as the over the past century. households “belonging to the Jewish an acquaintance in Italy. She never years went by, nearly all the Jews left. This is the oldest extant synagogue race,” along with the families’ address- told her family or children what she Bit by bit, most Jews of Rhodian in modern-day Greece, although it es and the number of people living in endured, but years later her memoir descent seem to be making their way should be noted that the Jews of the each home. was found. to Israel. Habib sees his future here. � island do not characterize themselves On July 18, 1944, the local newspa- That is how Habib learned about his ”Rhodes holds so much Jewish his- as Greek Jews. They differentiate per reported that all Jewish men aged mother’s torturous experiences, tory,” he says, gazing at the ancient between Rhodes and mainland 16 and over would be required to which included Dachau and Bergen- synagogue. Greece, which annexed Rhodes only appear the next day at a building Belsen. ”That’s the past, happy and sad. But after World War II. used as the headquarters of the The terrible story of the end of the the past is gone … and now all that Rhodes was home to Jews prior to Italian air force. The paper reported Jews of Rhodes is not lacking in sto- remains is to be happy that we’ve Spain’s expulsion of its Jewish citi- that they would be assigned work ries of rescue. The Turkish consul on started to control the fate of the Jews. zens in the 15th century, but little is duties. The men obeyed. A day later, the island, Selahettin Ulkumen, saved In Israel, of course.” November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 THE DAY THE RABBIS MARCHED the Melitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Yitzchok be very undignified for a group of Washington Times-Herald headline BY RAFAEL MEDOFF, Horowitz. And there were a number of such un-American looking people to the next morning. A leading Jewish THE ALGEMEINER younger rabbis who would soon appear in Washington.” The Jewish newspaper columnist angrily asked: become leaders of their generation, in communal leader Cyrus Adler once “Would a similar delegation of 500 n an era that has seen more than particular Moshe Feinstein and referred to that attitude as “the ghetto Catholic priests have been thus treat- I400,000 people take part in a Joseph B. Soloveitchik. crouch” — the phenomenon of Jews ed?” The editors of the Jewish daily Women’s March on Washington, it columnist for the Yiddish-lan- walking with their heads bowed so as Forverts (Forward) reported signs of may not sound very impressive that A guage newspaper Der Tog (The not to draw the attention of non-Jews. a new mood among some American 400 rabbis marched in the nation’s Day) was impressed by the reaction The rabbis were greeted on the Jews: “In open comment it is voiced capital in 1943. But numbers alone of passersby. As the rabbis in their steps of the Capitol by Vice President that Roosevelt has betrayed the don’t always tell the whole story. “long silk and gabardines and round Henry Wallace and members of Jews” — a shocking sentiment in a The rabbis’ march took place three plush hats, moved along Congress. After brief remarks, the community that repeatedly cast 90% days before Yom Kippur in 1943. The Pennsylvania Avenue … there [were] rabbis proceeded to the Lincoln of its ballots for FDR. ten days between Rosh Hashana and absolutely no snickers, no smirks on Memorial to recite prayers and sing The publicity from the march helped Yom Kippur are among the most hec- the faces of the onlookers,” he wrote. the national anthem. galvanize a Congressional resolution tic periods for a pulpit rabbi, who has “They did not gape or guffaw as Then they marched to the White urging the creation of a rescue major sermons to prepare and count- almost any crowd in a Central or East House. While most of the rabbis wait- agency. A Roosevelt administration less logistics to arrange for the most European land most decidedly would ed across the street in Lafayette Park, official gave wildly misleading testi- well-attended services of the year. have. They watched in wonderment their leaders approached the gates of mony at the hearings on the resolu- So there was no small inconvenience and in respect. The traffic stopped, the White House to ask if President tion. The embarrassing publicity that involved for the rabbis who answered and here and there a burgher Roosevelt could “accord a few min- followed, combined with behind-the- the call of the political action commit- removed his hat. I myself saw many a utes of his most precious time.” They scenes pressure from Treasury tee known as the Bergson Group and soldier snap in salute.” wanted to present him with a petition Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the Orthodox rescue advocates of the and his aides, convinced President Va’ad ha-Hatzala to come to Roosevelt to establish the War Washington to plead for the rescue of Refugee Board. Europe’s Jews. Although handicapped by the small And their journey was likely made size of its staff and the measly level more than a little jittery by the fact of funding it received from the that, just one month earlier, a new Roosevelt administration (private high-speed train on its way from New Jewish groups supplied 90% of its York City to Washington had derailed budget), the War Refugee Board and killed 79 passengers. accomplished near-miracles in its Nevertheless, more than 400 rabbis brief existence. It provided funds to put down their books, left their com- hide Jewish refugees, bribe Nazi offi- munities and congregations, and cials and move tens of thousands of headed for Washington. Most came Jews out of the way of the retreating from the New York City area, but oth- German armies. It also recruited ers traveled from as far away as Raoul Wallenberg to go to Nazi-occu- Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Fear of East European–style anti- calling for the creation of “a special pied Budapest and financed his res- Pittsburgh and Worcester, Semitic mockery was actually a large agency to rescue the remainder of the cue missions there. Historians calcu- Massachusetts. part of the reason that the rabbis’ Jewish nation in Europe.” late that the Board played a crucial As the station master shouted, march was so unusual. It was, in fact, A White House staffer informed the role in saving the lives of some “Clear the way for those rabbis!” the the only march in Washington for the rabbis that the president was unavail- 200,000 Jews in Europe during the protesters emerged from Washington rescue of the Jews during the able “because of the pressure of other final 15 months of the war. Union Station and made their way Holocaust years. Many American business.” Actually, FDR’s schedule There is no straight line from the toward the cluster of buildings known Jews, as immigrants or the children of was clear that afternoon. But a presi- rabbis’ march to Raoul Wallenberg as the Capitol. immigrants, were extremely anxious dential meeting would have conferred pulling Jews off trains bound for It was not only their numbers, but to be seen as fitting in. They worried legitimacy on the protesters’ pleas for Auschwitz. But the march was an also their stature, that was notewor- that noisy Jewish protests might be US action. And Roosevelt’s policy important part of the series of events thy. The marchers were led by Rabbis perceived as un-American. was that there was nothing that could that eventually led to that outcome. Eliezer Silver and Yisroel Rosenberg, In fact, one Jewish member of be done to help the Jews, except to Seventy-five years ago, the rabbis co-presidents of the Union of Congress, Representative Sol Bloom win the war. proved that you don’t always need Orthodox Rabbis. There were notable (D-New York), reportedly sought to hat move backfired. “Rabbis 400,000 people in the streets of Hasidic rebbes, such as the Boyaner persuade the rabbis to cancel the T Report ‘Cold Welcome’ at the Washington to have an impact — Rebbe, Rabbi Shlomo Friedman, and march on the grounds that “it would White House,” declared a sometimes 400 will do the trick. NAZI COLLABORATOR OR NATIONAL HERO? A TEST FOR LITHUANIA (Continued from page 12) cheered the Nazis as liberators the were buried after being shot or beat- accomplice in mass murder. Mr. fter regaining its independence following year. en to death by their neighbors. Noreika, she said, did not pull the trig- A with the breakup of the Soviet Plunge’s entire Jewish population of When Ms. Foti started researching ger himself but was a “desk killer.” Union, Lithuania canceled the convic- more than 1,800 was murdered within her book on her grandfather 18 years She said he oversaw the slaughter tion and declared Mr. Noreika a heroic days of the invasion, mostly by local ago, she expected to produce a glow- in Plunge, where his family moved martyr, ignoring his role as an official people. ing tribute. into a handsome home seized from its under Nazi occupation, which resulted Eugenijus Bunka, the son of a pre- “My grandfather was going to be the Jewish owners, and also in the near- in the slaughter of about 95 percent of war Jewish resident who survived white knight in shining armor, a pure by town of Siauliai, where he served the more than 200,000 Jews living in because he fled to the Soviet Union, hero from beginning to end,” she said. as county chief under the Nazis start- Lithuania when Hitler invaded. said Mr. Noreika probably didn’t kill “I had always heard how he had done ing in late 1941 — and where the Today the country is dotted with Jews himself but still bore responsibil- so much for Lithuania and had died at main government building now has a Holocaust grave sites and memorials. ity as an administrator who signed the early age of 36 at the hands of the plaque in his honor. One of the biggest stands in a forest orders seizing their property and K.G.B.” “Lithuanians have been raped three outside the western town of Plunge, ordering their “isolation.” Instead, after digging up wartime times — by the Communists twice where Mr. Noreika served as com- “I hear all these people shouting documents with her grandfather’s sig- and by the Nazis once,” Ms. Foti said. mander of the Lithuanian Activist about defending our patriots, but the nature relating to the treatment of “All they know is that they were raped, Front, an openly anti-Semitic group people who have another view are all Jews and talking to relatives and oth- that they are the victims. They have that was fiercely hostile to an initial silent,” he said, pointing to one of the ers during research trips to Lithuania, no more room in their psyche for any Soviet occupation in 1940 and pits where Plunge’s Jewish residents she realized that he had been an other victims.” aAmerican & 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 November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 2018 - Kislev/Tevet November/December for more than

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The Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle is MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE 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, 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, who can be reached at: ASYV, Director of Planned Giving at Robert Christopher Morton, For further information about the Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle, For further information about the Eli Zborowski 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 By including Yad Vashem in your estate plans, you assure a in your estate Vashem Yad By including please contact 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, 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 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