Vol. 36-No.4 ISSN 0892-1571 March/April 2010-Adar/Nissan 5770 CHILDREN IN THE DARKEST HOUR OF HUMANITY ELEVENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST EDUCATION he Education Department of the American Society for Yad Vashem and its Jerusalem. “We work to put a face on individual Holocaust victims in order to intro- T Young Leadership Associates convened the Eleventh Annual Professional duce a human element to the story. Transmitting these messages is our hope for Development Conference on Holocaust Education. This year’s conference is the the future,” explained Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American Society. largest in recent years with close to 200 educators in attendance. his year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Elizabeth Mundlak-Zborowski. Herself The Association of Teachers of Social Studies / United Federation of Teachers, T a child survivor, Dr. Zborowski made a presentation which included the which once again is co-sponsoring the Conference, points out that “This confer- screening of her film, I Was Lucky, and spoke of her life as a hidden child and ence is an invaluable resource for increasing awareness and sensitivity to intol- the reunification with her birth mother. erance and injustice, especially in today’s world.” Close to two hundred educators from the tri-State area, plus Texas and Ohio, This year’s conference focused on No Child’s Play, a look at the experiences of attended this year’s conference. “The lost world of European Jewry and the trag- children during the darkest hour of humanity. The conference looked at the stories ic consequences should be used as points of departure to educate younger gen- of these children through images, film, diary entries, and artwork. We were also erations of the importance of tolerance, understanding and the dangers of pleased to have on display the No Child’s Play exhibit, created at Yad Vashem in hatred and discrimination,” said Mr. Eli Zborowski.

Elizabeth Mundlak-Zborowski, Cultural Director, American Society for Yad Vashem and hidden Ofra Biener and Rebecca Hanus, Members of the Young Leadership Associates; Caroline Massel, child survivor, delivered the keynote address to the over 200 teachers gathered at this year’s con- Chair, Young Leadership Associates of the American Society for Yad Vashem; Eli Zborowski, ference. Also pictured are Carolyn Herbst, ATSS/UFT Liaison; and Caroline Massel, Chair, Young Chairman, American Society for Yad Vashem; and Elizabeth Mundlak-Zborowski, Cultural Leadership Associates of the American Society for Yad Vashem. Director, American Society for Yad Vashem.

Ilana Apelker, Education, American Society for Yad Vashem, presenting at an afternoon workshop Some of the 200 educators during the morning general session. to some of the educators. IN THIS ISSUE British Prime Minister honors Brits who saved Jews during Holocaust...... 2 Germany fights to keep Holocaust organizer's files sealed...... 3 History writ small...... 4 The unthinkable as a tolerance lesson...... 5 Sisters survived Holocaust death camp...... 6 Children of Nazi monsters speak...... 7 Photo highlights from the Young Leadership Associates Winter Gala...... 8-9 A mosaic of life and death...... 10 How diplomat’s paperwork saved lives in Holocaust...... 11 Nazi perpetrators must face justice...... 12 Stolen Holocaust art returned...... 16 Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SUE HUNGARIAN RAILWAY NEW MUSEUM TAKES SHAPE AT HEART OF NAZI TERROR group of survivors and descendants The plaintiffs are asking for 240 million ive years after opening a sprawling plotted, along with the extermination of A of victims of the Holocaust is suing dollars for the stolen property and one bil- FHolocaust Memorial in the heart of European Jewry. the Hungarian state railroad company in lion dollars “as punitive damages reflect- the city, Berlin is preparing to inaugurate a By 1942, nearly 500 people worked US court for its role in transporting Jews to ing the heinous and zealous participation major new museum, this time targeting here, most of them simple pencil-pushers the Auschwitz death camp. by the defendants in genocide. the Nazi perpetrators. needed to keep the wheels of Nazi The class action suit was filed in a US “Even though discussion of money is The new “Topography of Terror” center oppression turning. district court in Chicago by attorneys rep- necessarily crass in the context of the rests on the site of the former headquar- The 58-year-old Nachama, who is also resenting the group of 95 plaintiffs. unspeakable evil that was inflicted upon ters of both the feared Gestapo and a rabbi, a historian and a former leader of The suit seeks 1.24 billion dollars in com- the Holocaust victims, nevertheless the Hitler’s elite SS force. the Berlin Jewish community, first came pensation and punitive damages. law is powerless to do anything other It replaces a provisional facility that upon the disused site in the 1970s while According to the document, the than to obtain financial restitution,“ law- already draws 500,000 visitors each year curating an exhibition at a museum next Hungarian railroad company “knowingly suit says. — one of the top 10 tourist draws in a city door. provided the trains for delivering 437,000 According to the plaintiffs, by US law the steeped in bitter history. His mother Lilli, a Holocaust survivor, Jews to their death in Auschwitz” between Hungarian railroad company can be sued While little remains of the original build- was shocked about his new workplace: March and October 1944. if it is “engaged in commercial activity in ings — merely a few “That is the most hor- Railroad employees are accused of “loot- the United States. cellars and pavement rible address in ing the plaintiffs’ possessions, valuables, “This final requirement is satisfied by the stones — the new Berlin,” he recounted. heirlooms, stock certificates, currency and fact that the defendant sells tickets and complex aims to It was here, just a jewelry from the plaintiffs’ luggage. passes for its railways through its agents explain how the Nazi stone’s throw from “Without the trains provided by (the in the United States,” the document reads. persecution appara- Hitler’s chancellery, defendant), hundreds of thousands of In the period 1940–45 some 1.3 million tus worked with ruth- that the Nazi leader- Jews could not have been transported to people perished at Auschwitz, 1.1 million of less efficiency. ship united the Auschwitz,” the suit charges. them Jews from across occupied Europe. “We are not here in Gestapo and the SS Pompeii — this is not as well as the Reich BRITISH PRIME MINISTER HONORS BRITS about seeing the View taken through a hole in a remaining por- Main Security Office, original architecture,” tion of the Berlin wall showing the which coordinated all WHO SAVED JEWS DURING HOLOCAUST museum“Topography of Terror” museum in central police and security ritish Prime Minister Gordon Brown pleased to create a new award to recog- director Andreas Berlin. forces from 1939 to B has honored more than 20 British nize those amazing British individuals Nachama told AFP 1945. heroes who saved the lives of Jews during who through extraordinary and selfless during a preview of the new building. Just a mention of Prinz Albrecht Strasse, the Holocaust. acts of bravery protected and rescued “Rather, it is about comprehending what as the street was known, was enough to It is the first time such recognition has been Jews and others in the Holocaust.” went out from this place: namely the Nazi drain the color from a Berliner’s face, con- bestowed by the state as a tribute to civilians Two of the award recipients accepted it terror that spread across Germany and juring up the image of the Gestapo “house who undertook extraordinary acts of courage in person: Denis Avey, 91, who as a Europe and cost the lives of millions of prison” where some 15,000 people were and self-sacrifice in order to help others. British prisoner of war risked his life and people.” held during the Nazi era. swapped clothes with a Jewish The 34-million-dollar museum — a Prisoners routinely suffered brutal mis- prisoner in Auschwitz, and Sir squat, light-filled structure — is nearing treatment during interrogations here and Nicholas Winton, 100, who res- completion ahead of its official opening on several were driven to suicide. For others, cued 669 children from May 6, two days before the 65th anniver- Prinz Albrecht Strasse was a transit sta- Czechoslovakia. sary of the end of World War II. tion to the concentration camps. Those receiving the award It will be free to the public. Chilling black-and-white identity photo- posthumously, whose relatives Its two steel-and-glass stories, built to graphs taken at the time of the detainees’ attended the ceremony and give the visitor the feeling of “floating” arrests will be prominently displayed in accepted the award on their above the site, will include a permanent the new exhibition. behalf, include June Ravenhall, a exhibition, a library and a multimedia con- There had been plans since the 1980s British housewife living in Holland ference center for school groups, scholars to erect a proper museum on the site, who sheltered a young Jewish and public talks. which at that time was in the shadow of man even after her husband had “We are a place to learn and in no way the Berlin Wall. The award was announced last year by been taken to a concentration camp; Jane a memorial,” Nachama said. A trailer-like structure housed a tempo- Brown after a visit to Auschwitz and fol- Haining from Scotland, who was sent to The Holocaust Memorial, a private initia- rary exhibition for years alongside infor- lowing a campaign by the Holocaust Auschwitz after caring for 400 Jewish girls tive near the government quarter com- mation billboards sprinkled across the Education Trust to honor those who in occupied Hungary, and Bertha Bracey, prised of a field of 2,700 grey concrete barren grounds. undertook incredible acts of bravery to who lobbied the British government during blocks resembling gravestones and an In 2004, early construction work on the help Jews and other persecuted groups the 1930s to accept persecuted Jewish accompanying museum, is not far from center had to be ripped down because of during the Holocaust. refugees. Her efforts established the the state-funded Topography of Terror. a looming cost explosion. “It is right that we reflect and learn from Kindertransport, which took an estimated Information boards, photographs, docu- Today, the building designed by German the past as we go forward in the future,” 10,000 mainly Jewish children from main- ments, recordings of interviews with sur- architect Ursula Wilms is almost complete the prime minister said. “That is why I was land Europe to Britain. vivors and computer animations will illus- and on budget. trate how Germany went from a flawed Looking out from the front window, a visi- democracy to a fascist dictatorship with a tor has a sweeping view of one of the GERMANY PLEDGES $77 MILLION state terror apparatus in just a few years. longest remaining slabs of the Wall in the FOR NEEDY HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS It was here that political enemies of the city center and the former Reich Air Nazis were targeted, but also where the Ministry, now the finance ministry, behind it. ermany will pay $77 million in sub- the Claims Conference coffers are “Germanization” of the occupied territo- “We chose architecture that would let Gsidies this year to aid needy expected to empty within a few years, ries in Poland and the Soviet Union was this place come to life,” Nachama said. Holocaust survivors worldwide. The deci- necessitating increased financial aid sion is the end result of annual negotia- from Germany. STUDY: TEACHING HOLOCAUST tions held in Berlin between the German The Claims Conference has long government and the Claims Conference. sought to reach agreements with COMMON DENOMINATOR IN ISRAEL According to the terms of the deal, half Germany on the establishment of a foun- national survey of Israeli principals, about the Holocaust. of the money will be sent to survivors liv- dation devoted to the matter of helping A teachers and students has found Some 99 percent of students who par- ing in Israel who are in need of home needy Holocaust survivors, thus negat- that the Holocaust is a common denomi- ticipated in a journey to Poland said it nursing, medicine and food. ing the need for annual negotiations. nator among students of diverse back- was an effective means of learning The sum of $77 million is an 85 percent “It was only in recent years that the grounds, and that there are no major dif- about the Holocaust. increase over last year’s budget the Germans began to recognize their ferences between students from different Strengthening students’ commitment German government set aside for impov- responsibility and moral debt toward demographic groups in terms of their per- to the existence of an independent erished survivors. emigrants from the former Soviet Union ceptions of the Holocaust. State of Israel is an important goal of The bulk of the funds are earmarked for who were persecuted by the Nazis,” The study, headed by Erik Cohen of Holocaust education for 100 percent of those who escaped Nazi persecution in Merhav told Haaretz. Bar-Ilan University’s School of Education, principals and 92 percent of teachers, the former Soviet Union. These individu- “This understanding lies beyond the interviewed 307 principals, 519 teachers the study found. More than half of the als were not officially recognized as bounds of any political argument in and 2,540 ninth- and 12th-grade students teachers received training in Holocaust Holocaust survivors by the German gov- Germany, and it is being championed from Israeli religious and non-religious education through a professional ernment since they were not directly by Chancellor Angela Merkel out of a schools. enrichment course during the past two under German rule during World War II. sense that this is the last chapter in A majority of students, 77 percent, said years. Since the mid-1990s, the Claims negotiations in which we are engaging that the Holocaust affects their worldview The study was conducted from 2007 Conference has supported their efforts to with Germany over compensation to the and 94 percent said they are committed to to 2009 with the support of the wrest reparations from Berlin. According victims of the Nazis and to Holocaust preserving its memory. Some 83 percent Conference on Jewish Material Claims to organization chairman Reuven Merhav, survivors.” said they are interested in learning more Against Germany. March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

HOLOCAUST DENIAL BECOMES ILLEGAL IN HUNGARY US LAWMAKERS PUSH INSURERS ungarian President Laszlo Solyom as the red star, the hammer and sickle, or ON HOLOCAUST CLAIMS Hhas signed a law making Holocaust the swastika, which are already among a nited States’ lawmakers unveiled Affairs Committee. denial punishable by three years in prison. narrow pool of symbols that don’t belong Ulegislation aimed at helping The Nazi regime in Germany did not The law was approved last month by under the umbrella of freedom of speech Holocaust survivors or heirs of Nazi vic- issue death certificates to prisoners Hungarian lawmakers, after more wide- and freedom of opinion, Mr. Solyom said. tims sue for insurance claims, estimat- brought to the death camps, and police ranging versions of the law had been Parliament had rejected an amendment ed to run in the hundreds of billions of documents or personal records were rejected by courts for limiting free speech. put forward by the center-right opposition dollars, in US courts. often confiscated and destroyed. Spokesman Ferenc Kumin says adding to the bill crimes by Hungary’s pro- Republican Representative Ileana The bill would validate state laws on President Solyom signed the bill because in Nazi and communist regimes. Ros-Lehtinen's bill seeks to compel the issue, removing potential federal his opinion the law is not unconstitutional. The governing Socialist Party and The law doesn’t infringe the Hungary’s growing Jewish community insurance companies, who often have roadblocks to lawsuits, and subjecting Constitution, Mr. Solyom said in a release welcomed the news. the sole proof of the existence of insurers who refuse to whatever pun- after signing the document. Denying the Some 550,000 Hungarian Jews and Holocaust-era policies, to disclose the ishment individual states decide. holocaust has now become similar to the 50,000 Gypsies were killed in the names of the insured. "Insurance companies must disclose use of prohibited autocratic symbols, such Holocaust. "For too long the insurance compa- the names of policyholders to ensure nies have had the upper hand, denying that just compensation is received. BIDEN AT YAD VASHEM: Holocaust survivors and their families They must not be allowed to hide their rights," said Ros-Lehtinen, the top behind a veil of secrecy any longer," ISRAEL A CENTRAL BOLT IN OUR EXISTENCE Republican on the House Foreign said Ros-Lehtinen. nited States Vice President Joe stone of the heart.” UBiden visited the Yad Vashem His wife Jill also signed the guest book, SURVIVOR’S GRANDSON BUYS MENGELE DIARY Holocaust History Museum and, at the end and wrote that she will never forget, and of his visit, signed the site’s guestbook. He will always remember those lost in the he grandson of a Holocaust survivor Death” were expected to push the price wrote that as a young father, he took his Holocaust. T has reportedly bought the diary of up to about $64,000. children to visit the Dachau the notorious Josef Mengele. The owner of the diary, reported to be a death camp in Germany, to The 180-page journal was sold for an source close to the Mengele family, make them understand how undisclosed sum “to an East Coast acquired the volume in Brazil after brutal mankind can be. Jewish philanthropist who wishes to Mengele died there in 1979, the Daily Mail He visited the site with his remain anonymous,” the Hartford Courant reported. wife Jill. In a note that he left reported, citing an e-mail from Bill The diary begins in May 1960, when behind he told his hosts how Panagopulos of Alexander Autographs Mengele was 49. he took his children to visit historical artifacts house. At Auschwitz, Mengele determined who Europe at the age of 15, and “He is the grandson of an Auschwitz sur- would live and die, and he conducted hor- then took his son to Israel, to vivor who personally encountered Mengele rific, quasi-medical experiments, including show him that the human spirit at Auschwitz,” Panagopulos wrote. “He on twins. cannot be destroyed, and that intends to donate the manuscript to a muse- News of the auction prompted anger it lives on. um devoted to the Holocaust.” and revulsion among Holocaust survivors Biden added that Israel is the Joe Biden (second from right) at Yad Vashem. “I am overjoyed,” Panagopulos told the and their families. In a statement, The heart, life, and hope of the newspaper, “that the manuscript is going American Gathering of Holocaust world’s Jews, and that it saves lives every Dr. David Silberklang, a top historian where it belongs, where it will be available Survivors and Their Descendants called day. He said that anyone who doubts this and editor of the Yad Vashem Studies, to historians and scholars.” the proposed sale of the journal “a cynical should visit the museum, and that the accompanied the Bidens on their visit, Nazi memorabilia collectors vying for act of exploitation aimed at profiting from State of Israel is a central bolt in the and told Ynet the vice president was very the artifact belonging to the Nazi doctor the writings of one of the most heinous world’s existence. moved by the tour and expressed much known at Auschwitz as the “Angel of Nazi criminals.” The American vice president added interest. that each day, Israel challenges the Biden placed a wreath on behalf of the HEIRS RELINQUISH CLAIM TO £30M HOLOCAUST PICASSO words of poet William Butler Yeats, who US administration and lit a candle at the s the Nazis came to power in his heirs, said. But once subject to Nazi wrote, “Too long a sacrifice can make a museum’s Yizkor tent. A Germany, one of the country’s rich- boycotts and “reorganization” of the entire est bankers suddenly started selling his economy, “it was a case of death by a GERMANY FIGHTS TO KEEP collection of Impressionist masterpieces thousand cuts.” HOLOCAUST ORGANIZER'S FILES SEALED — among them a Picasso now valued at The Andrew Lloyd Webber Art £30 million and in the collection of Lord Foundation withdrew The Absinthe ermany is fighting to keep sealed tion centers in Nazi-occupied Poland. Lloyd-Webber. Drinker from auction in New York in 2006 Gthe Eichmann files detailing the After the war he was captured but fled Three quarters of a century later, Paul when von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s heirs years the Holocaust’s chief logistics from Allied custody. As the victors scoured von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s organizer spent on the run before he was Europe and the world for the top officials heirs have relinquished their Mossad captured by agents. of the regime, Eichmann’s name was claim to The Absinthe Drinker Those hoping to have a 50-year secrecy barely known: it was only as more and and a staggering array of other order overturned believe the government more details of the Holocaust emerged paintings, but only after a US is embarrassed by details within that may that his pivotal role in it began to dawn on court ruling in their favor. prove German and Vatican officials collud- Nazi hunters. The terms of a settlement ed in his escape and freedom. In 1960, acting on a tip-off, a Mossad between the Andrew Lloyd The secrecy order is being challenged team was dispatched to Buenos Aires with in a benchmark court case against the orders to kidnap him and bring him back to Webber Art Foundation and the BND, Germany’s domestic intelligence Israel for trial. He was seized, stood trial, Jewish banker’s heirs have service, which wants the 4,500 pages of found guilty and hanged on May 31, 1962. been kept “confidential in their documents on Adolf Eichmann to remain Now the Federal Administrative Court in entirety,” but evidence in a out of the public domain. The service Leipzig, Germany, is studying the files related case in New York has claims that intelligence agencies in other about his getaway from Europe and life in shone a spotlight on von countries will be “frightened off” in future Argentina to decide if they should be Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s col- Lord Lloyd-Webber and the Picasso. Paul von Mendelssohn- data-sharing if they are disclosed. made public. The application for their lapsing earnings and his Bartholdy’s heirs have relinquished their claim to The Critics believe this is a smokescreen release was made by German journalist changing habits as a collector Absinthe Drinker. designed to avoid official embarrassment Gabriele Weber. in Nazi Germany. in both Berlin and the Vatican. It is well The BND maintains that secrecy is nec- In the New York case, Judge Jed Rakoff claimed that it had been sold under documented that German Bishop Alois essary because “much of the information was shown evidence that between 1933 duress in Berlin in 1934. Hudal in Rome operated postwar contained in the files was provided by an and 1935 the “Aryanization” of Germany’s In the related case, Judge Rakoff decid- “Ratlines,” getting passports for wanted unnamed foreign intelligence service.” If banking industry forced Mendelssohn- ed that the heirs had produced evidence Nazis to allow them to escape justice. released, the BND argues, it would “deter” Bartholdy to put paintings on the market, that von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy “never Franz Stangl, commandant of the other nations from sharing intelligence having never previously sold any. The intended to transfer any of his paintings Treblinka extermination camp, admitted to with Germany in the future. paintings included five by Picasso and six and that he was forced to transfer them British Nazi expert Gitta Sereny that But critics believe what the files will real- by Van Gogh. His income fell from only because of threats and economic Hudal helped him get away after the Nazi ly reveal are the levels of assistance, suc- 436,000 Reichsmarks in 1932 to less than pressure by the Nazi government.” The defeat in 1945. cor and turning a blind eye to Nazi fugi- 60,000 two years later. judge criticized the banker’s heirs for con- Eichmann also escaped. He was the ulti- tives from officials in defeated Germany, As a proprietor of Germany’s largest pri- cealing the terms of the settlements. But mate “desk murderer” of the Third Reich together with details of Vatican assistance vate bank before the Nazi takeover, von the family welcomed his ruling as recogni- who, as head of department IVB4 of the SS to top Nazis like him. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, nephew of the tion that those who lost art because of in Berlin, was responsible for the trains that A decision on whether to release the composer Felix Mendelssohn, “was a Nazism should not have to prove that the carried millions to their deaths at extermina- files will be made in the next few weeks. wealthy man,” John Byrne, an attorney for Nazi authorities seized it directly. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS SNOW FLOWERS Snow Flowers: Hungarian Jewish Women in an Airplane Factory, “exploited” to the limits of their physical the author was at great risk of being Women in an Airplane Factory, Markkleeberg, Germany, Stessel again abilities, tyrannized in the main by heart- pounced upon by a German overseer, Markkleeberg, Germany. presents us with a conscientiously less Aufseherins (“German women over- known for his brutality. Stessel repaid this By Zahava Szász Stessel. Fairleigh researched and beautifully written book. seers”) who cared not in the least for them “compassion” with the only payment of Dickinson University Press: Madison, NJ, Here, however, the author most especial- – the author finds these “flowers” . . . and any value at the factory: food. 2009. 438 pp. $57.50 hardcover. ly pays tribute to the human spirit. This is extolls them . . . Stessel notes the kindnesses extended the spirit known for its ndeed, Stessel notes REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN by those suffering alongside her to one tenacity. It is the spirit Ihow, in those years, another. The longed-for rest periods in Amidst all the evil, there were that holds on to life with her younger sister pre- which one sorrowful inmate would begin also acts of kindness, minutes of superhuman courage sented the author with a singing an old sweet song from home, good feelings, creating a kind of a and endurance, regard- veritable “bouquet.” quickly joined in the song by another flower in the frost of icy existence. less of enemies. Finally, Thirteen-year-old Erszike inmate’s voice, and then another, helped Zahava Szász Stessel, author for Stessel, it is the spir- was always there for the all of them cope with their bitter present. and Holocaust survivor, in it that inspires others to fourteen-year-old Zahava. Food shared promised that a civilized Snow Flowers . . . persevere through its She shared any food that humanity still existed. A hand extended, acts of kindness. came her way. She helping, made all the difference . . . n 1996, this reviewer had the distinct Stessel metaphorically shared her very warmth Nor does Stessel ignore those unique Ipleasure of reviewing Zahava Szász refers to these acts as when that was all the and singular “flowers” presented by non- Stessel’s conscientiously researched and “flowers,” specifically, warmth there was. She Jews and even Germans to Jews. The beautifully written work, Wine and Thorns in “snow flowers.” And, not took care of her older sis- food wordlessly left for a slave laborer, the Tokay Valley: Jewish Life in Hungary: The surprisingly, the author ter when she fell ill — a arduous work, somehow, made easier by History of Abaújszántó, in the pages of vividly remembers them, feat nothing less than a more sympathetic German — all prom- M&R. That book was Stessel’s loving tribute appearing as they did heroic, considering their ised better days to come . . . to her hometown, Jewish Abaújszántó. bravely and boldly in a impossible situation. She In sum, Snow Flowers is a wonderful There she told us of Abaújszántó’s history world of pain and “ice” offered her her hope, addition to the library of books on the as a place of Jewish settlement. There she — her world — during when Stessel’s flagged. Holocaust. For, far more than a historical told us of its exceptionally vibrant Jewish World War II. And the author did no less study, it is a sociological and psychologi- life, a life she joyfully participated in. There, Thus, in the midst of the Junkers aircraft for Erszike. Each gave to the other. cal investigation of life in extremis . . . writ- too, sadly, she told us of Jewish manufacturing plant in Markkleeberg, Stessel notes the kindnesses extended ten by an exceptionally perceptive, sensi- Abaújszántó’s ruthless annihilation at the where Stessel was sent as a Jewish slave to her by those suffering alongside her. tive, and kind heart. hands of the Nazis. Many Jews from laborer in 1944; a place, not far from For example, there was the altruistic act Abaújszántó were killed. Stessel was one Leipzig, Germany, where 1,300 females performed by Margit Lörinch Hamburg, Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of of the few lucky survivors. toiled like her; a place where hapless and who the author knew from Bergen-Belsen. Media, Communication, and Visual Arts at In Snow Flowers: Hungarian Jewish helpless cold and hungry women were She “covered for” Stessel at work when Pace University. POWER TO REACH HUMAN SOULS HISTORY WRIT SMALL 17 Days in Treblinka: Daring to Resist, old station to the Treblinka II site and you Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of phone persuading others to help him in and Refusing to Die. will see a row of standing stones marking My Father’s German Village. efforts to assist Jews still stuck in Hitler’s By Eddie Weinstein. Yad Vashem where the fence used to be, while the train By Mimi Schwartz. University of Germany to leave, and fast. Schwartz, a Publications, 2008. 173 pp. $29.95 tracks have been replaced with commem- Nebraska Press, 2008. 260 pp. $24.95. professor emerita of the writing program Softcover. orative stone blocks. Beside the ramp REVIEWED BY AVIYA KUSHNER at Richard Stockton College in New where cattle cars packed with people REVIEWED BY JEFF LUNDON Jersey, takes us into the kitchens and once pulled in, the ground is uneven, still or one month in 1936, my grandfa- gathering places of Germans and Jews very night, I was surprised to find bearing the scars from the ditches that Fther worked in a bar in Bremen, alike, accepting drinks, cakes, and sto- “Emyself alive,” says Eddie housed the dead. Germany. The owner of that bar, who was ries, in an effort to separate truth from lies Weinstein, his Polish accent softened by Inside, the camp is filled with memorial not Jewish, risked plenty to pay my in her father’s account of good neighbors 58 years spent living in New York. The 83- stones bearing the names of communities teenage grandfather for drying glasses in a German village. year-old is the last survivor of the that were destroyed there. Only one is and sweeping the floor. Decades later, he hand-typed article Treblinka II extermination camp. The dedicated to a person, the educator did my grandfather another Aby her father that exact death toll is not Janusz Korczak. These favor, telling a committee in she discovers tucked in an known, but some stones surround a much larg- Bremen, “Yes, I knew old file after his death 870,000 people are esti- er memorial, with a great Zigmund Traum. He worked describes life in the village mated to have died there crack in it to represent the for me in my bar. On this and before Hitler, when it was between July 1942 and evil that was perpetrated in this date.” Because of that common practice for October 1943. Fewer Treblinka. There is a mass testimony, my grandfather neighbors to help each than 100 survived. received reparation checks grave nearby, while another other with feeding the Treblinka I, a forced for the rest of his life. The stone simply reads: “Never chickens, milking the labor camp, was estab- money could not compen- again” in five languages. cows, and stoking coal. lished in 1941. Treblinka sate for the murders of two Weinstein says that people Orthodox Jewish resi- II opened on July 24, need to know what happened parents and four brothers, dents who commuted by 1942, one mile away. It in this terrible place. His but it was an acknowledg- train to Pforzheim regular- was founded as part of account of his experiences ment of what had happened. ly converted one car into a Operation Reinhard, the has been published by Yad Such small episodes – my prayer car, Schwartz’s Nazis’ plan for wiping out Vashem, first in Hebrew under grandfather’s month of illegal father wrote, “much to the Polish Jewry, and it had the name Plada Rotahat and work, the bar owner’s walk to astonishment of Christian one purpose only: to kill. then in English with the title the reparation committee’s travelers. No one shied away from laying “They didn’t have a Quenched Steel: The Story of headquarters – are part of the Holocaust’s tefillin [leather boxes Orthodox men strap count,” Weinstein recalls. “There were no an Escape from Treblinka. history, too. In Good Neighbors, Bad on their arms and heads during morning numbers like they had in Auschwitz. They his is a powerful and moving book. Times, Mimi Schwartz tells the stories would kill you for anything, so they didn’t T What Weinstein accomplishes is “that history has no time for as it paints the prayers]; one prayed as if one were in a bother to count us.” Most victims died this: He shows us how quickly and bru- broad brush strokes of the past.” These synagogue.” within a few hours of reaching the camp. tally both the successive restrictions stories take place in Benheim (Schwartz But as the Nazis’ power grew during the Treblinka II, or what remains of it, is upon Jews and their deportations were changed the name), the German farming 1930s, many Benheim Jews fled. After buried in deep forest, a deceptively still imposed, and how the trapped Jews community where her father was born in her father’s death, Schwartz seeks them and peaceful setting for a mass grave- clung to illusions (things have been bad 1898, when half the town’s 1,200 resi- out to learn what happened in the place yard. When the camp was operational, before, they will also survive slave dents were Jewish. they left behind. In Israel, she hears about nothing could be seen from the outside labor camps or life in a ghetto, surely After he emigrated to Queens in 1937, Benheim Christians who rescued a Torah other than smoke curling into the air. the world will learn of their fate and res- Schwartz’s father insisted that once his during Kristallnacht in 1938. From sur- Today, the barbed wire that once sur- cue them, the Germans will be defeat- hometown “was the best place for Jews!” vivors in Vermont, she learns that there rounded the camp is gone. Walk from the (Continued on page 14) At the same time, he spent hours on the (Continued on page 15) March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 THE UNTHINKABLE AS A TOLERANCE LESSON ple to Jews as human beings, not just as Holocaust. “I called her Matka, mother in images too graphic for children as young as BY AILEEN JACOBSON, victims and survivors,” said Beth Lilach, Polish,” Mrs. Glantz said. 10, the minimum recommended age. THE NEW YORK TIMES the director of education, who was in he first room also contains a picture of ntil about five years ago, the 17- charge of writing the text panels and was Charlotte Gillman, 76, of Westbury, year-old nonprofit center, which hush had fallen over the ballroom, T U the curator of the exhibition. It presents a who often gives talks and acts as a docent leases its building from Nassau County, filled with 45 students from South A detailed history using archival material at the center, guiding visitors or answering focused on having survivors talk to chil- Woods Middle School in Syosset. Peter along with artifacts and images related to questions. In the oversize image, Mrs. Stone, 78, of Oceanside, was speaking dren, said Howard S. Maier, the chairman. Long Island families. about what happened to him when he was Gillman stands with her two sisters during “The survivors realized that in the future In one photo, a boy stands alone bundled 13, the same age as most of his audience: the war. She was about 9, she said, wear- that wouldn’t be enough, because they up in a hat and coat and wearing fine leather he, his family and other Jews from small ing cardboard shoes and a dress her moth- wouldn’t be here,” he said. So he and shoes. “That’s my brother Zelig, at about age towns in Hungary were herded into a train er had made from scraps of fabric. The girls other board members made a “major to be taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. commitment” to the center, he said, rais- “You could barely move,” he told his rapt ing money, expanding board membership, audience one recent morning in the man- visiting Holocaust museums around the sion that houses the newly expanded country for ideas and broadening the cen- Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center ter’s mission. of Nassau County. At the concentration “We evolved the center to one that not camp, Mr. Stone and his father passed only teaches the Holocaust but teaches before an SS officer he later learned was the lessons of the Holocaust,” Mr. Maier the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. said in a telephone interview. Programs “If he asks you, say you are 16,” a person that reach some 35,000 people a year, he he did not see whispered in his ear, Mr. said, use the Holocaust to teach about prejudice in the workplace or bullying in Stone recalled. He and his father were The reopened Tolerance Center, in a former mansion in Glen Cove, with exhibits about the schools. The center also gives tolerance told to turn left — not right, to the gas Holocaust. chambers — and became slave laborers. training to Nassau County police officers, It was just the beginning of their ordeal. 4,” said Gloria Glantz, 70, of Port lived in convent orphanages in Belgium and will soon renovate the second floor to Mr. Stone and other Holocaust survivors Washington, a board member, educator and while their mother hid. create four high-tech classrooms and new who now live on Long Island can also be docent, who was one of several Holocaust Another snapshot, in a gallery about dis- staff offices. The annual operating budget seen telling their stories in videos that are survivors who helped guide a reporter placed persons camps, shows Eddie has tripled, Mr. Maier said, to nearly $1 part of a professionally designed new exhi- through the center recently. Their father Weinstein, 85, of Little Neck, on his wed- million over the past five years. bition space that opened last month after a owned a leather factory in Poland, which ding day in 1949 with his bride, Jean Mr. Maier, 63, of Lattingtown, said his $3 million refurbishment. The center closed accounted for the boy’s handsome shoes. Zucker, a fellow survivor. Mr. Weinstein parents emigrated from Germany as to the public for 18 months while the build- Zelig, another brother, their parents, and said he was forced into slave labor at age teenagers. His grandparents, an aunt, an ing was upgraded and unusable sections, the rest of their extended family were 15 and later taken to Treblinka, from uncle, and a cousin were among the more like its 100-year-old kitchen, were cleared. killed in 1942 at Treblinka, an extermina- which he escaped by hiding in a train filled than 900 Jewish refugees aboard the St. The display area was expanded to seven tion camp near their home. Zelig was with clothing of the dead. He has written a Louis, the German ship that was turned multimedia galleries and a new library, all about 12, Mrs. Glantz said. A few months book about his experiences, 17 Days in away by Cuba and the United States in open to the public. earlier, when she was 3, she had been Treblinka: Daring to Resist, and Refusing 1939 and had to return to Europe. A pho- The exhibition begins with a wall of pho- taken by her mother to live with a to Die (Yad Vashem Publications of tograph of his relatives disembarking in tos of European Jews before the Christian woman on a farm. A photo of her Jerusalem). England is in the exhibition. They sur- Holocaust in ordinary situations like fami- with the woman, Sonia Kowalczyk, is in a The entire exhibition, while not “sugar- vived, he said, but many of the passen- ly gatherings. “We want to introduce peo- gallery devoted to children during the coating the history,” Ms. Lilach said, avoids gers later perished. HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS STILL WAIT FOR JUSTICE lied to obtain citizenship.” when they brought people into the woods squad through the 1960s.” Historian BY NAOMI LAKRITZ, CALGARY HERALD Reached by telephone Farber said: to shoot them, they needed people to Lawrence Stokes says in the article that “Duress was brought up at the last give instructions. I’m not saying Seetzen “is quoted over and over again ack in 1995, when Helmut minute. There were, sadly, many sol- Oberlander did that, but it’s fair to specu- by different of these policemen, being Oberlander left Canada to avoid a B diers who were forced into service dur- late.” interrogated, as having said that. No bit of trouble that was looming about his ing the war. But it’s been historically detailed story on the activities of one’s got it in writing.” Canadian citizenship and his Nazi past, proven that if anybody wanted out of a Oberlander’s unit, much of it citing Farber is the child of Holocaust sur- he took a little jaunt to Marco Island, Fla. A killing unit, they were able to get out; testimony provided to the Munich State vivors. His father’s first wife and their two When the U.S. Office of Special they weren’t sent to the Russian front, Court, and published in 2000 in the little boys were gassed in the Treblinka Investigations caught up with him there, they were sent else- death camp. “There is no statute of limita- he agreed with the OSI that he really where . . . . He certainly tions on such vile acts,” Farber said. And ought to return to Canada. OSI director Eli had the opportunity to while many war criminals and Nazi M. Rosenbaum said at the time: “The know what was going enablers are “old and doddering, some rapid tracing of Helmut Oberlander and on. He had the choice are sick and feeble, we have to think of his removal . . . from this country should to leave.” them as they were then, committing some send a powerful and unambiguous mes- insatzgruppe D of the most vile crimes in human history. sage far beyond our borders: Under no E was responsible They were young, they were brutes, they circumstances will the United States allow for the deaths of 90,000 were bullies, they were murderers.” itself to become a haven for those who are Jews. Oberlander’s sec- The U.S. has revoked the citizenship of credibly accused by other governments of tion, Einsatzkommando more than 100 of these people and complicity in the barbaric crimes of the 10A, was responsible for deported them. Canada has done the Nazi regime.” the deaths of more than same for just one — Jacob Luitjens. Now, if only Canada felt the same way. 23,000, in southern “It’s terrible to think that the perpetra- Here we are, 14 years later, and Ukraine and Crimea. tors and victims came together to this Oberlander, now 86, is not only still in Oberlander, who spoke country and they shared the same wealth Canada, but recently, the Federal Court of German, Russian, and and beauty of this land, when really only Appeal ordered the federal cabinet to re- Ukrainian, served as the the victims should have been allowed to examine the decision to revoke his citi- Helmut Oberlander leaves court after an immigration hearing in unit’s translator. Toronto in 2002 accompanied by his wife, Margret, and daughter do that,” Farber said. zenship. Reason? The court seized upon Oberlander’s daughter, Irene Rooney. What can be done? The federal govern- the idea that Oberlander served with the Irene, told the media her ment can appeal the ruling on Oberlander Nazis’ mobile killing unit, Einsatzgruppe father was never a Nazi. Kitchener-Waterloo Record, which would to the Supreme Court. Not only can it do D, under duress. Farber said: “Oberlander may not have be local resident Oberlander’s daily this, it has a moral obligation to do it. Mark Freiman, president of the pulled the gun, but he was a member of a paper, stated that “Heinz Seetzen, who Carole Saindon, a Justice Department Canadian Jewish Congress, calls this a killing unit. Every member, whether a cook came to the death squad from the spokeswoman, told the media the gov- “hyper-technical point of interpretation” or (someone who would) shine shoes, was Gestapo, was a hard leader who is reput- ernment is looking at its options as it because really, all that matters is the part of the grease that made the engine of ed to have ordered all Einsatzkommando examines the ruling. big lie. As CJC chief executive Bernie murder run.” What would such a unit need 10A members to participate in execu- The survivors are counting on Ottawa to Farber says, “You were a member of a a translator for? Farber said that with so tions. Postwar prosecutors uncovered see that justice is done. They’ve waited killing unit and you didn’t put that for- many Jews of different linguistic back- Seetzen’s alleged execution order while more than 60 years. Let’s hope Ottawa ward when you came to Canada, you grounds being rounded up, “the killing unit, investigating members of the death does not let them down. Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER SISTERS SURVIVED HOLOCAUST DEATH CAMPS “You see, the point is this. We know we sent to the same orphanage over a decade’s ing the sisters with their father. When the BY JESSICA A. YORK, TIMES-HERALD are getting old (and soon) all that we’ve time served them as an adaptive skill. The girls said their father had already left, they been through is history,” Leaver, 81, said. language became imperative when all the were scheduled for the next week’s train. anuary 27 marks 65 years since the “There won’t be anybody alive, because children from the orphanage, and the direc- From Westerbork, they were sent to the Allies liberated the infamous J even we were young, we were 14, we tor, were sent to the Netherlands holding German “death camp” Sobibor, in Nazi- Auschwitz concentration camp from the were one of the youngest ones to go camp — Westerbork — in 1943. occupied Poland, packed like cattle in box Germans. into the camp and cars, with no food or bathroom facilities, Despite the date’s international signifi- come out.” for a three- or four-day trip, they said. cance, it is just another day on the calen- Born in Amsterdam “So, sure enough, the next week, we dar for two Vallejo sisters who lived in the late 1920s and were on there with our (orphanage) director, through the events now detailed in mem- raised in an orphan- and later on, we found out that the train oirs and history books. age after their mother which was before us, all those kids were It’s not that the liberation of Poland’s died, the sisters said immediately sent into the gas chambers,” Auschwitz concentration camp was not a they first felt the com- Sessler said. “So, that was one of our lucks. momentous event for Debora “Debbie” ing Nazi persecution We had a couple of lucky days there.” Sessler and Bertha “Beppy” Leaver. The when they were con- heir second “luck” was when the two had avoided joining a final death fined to Jewish neigh- TNazis called for 30 volunteer women march evacuation from the camp, prior to borhoods and given to clean and sew. The girls lied and said its liberation, only by being bedridden in a an 8 p.m. curfew. they wanted to stay with their mother, who camp hospital. “There were huge they said was 65 — too old for the manu- It’s that the women, Dutch Jews, know boards in front of the al work. their own suffering, and that is enough. Jewish neighborhood. Sisters Beppie Leaver, left, and Debbie Sessler of Vallejo survived “That was the second luck because the “Sixty-five years is a long time,” Sessler, Signs that said ‘Jew German concentration camps during World War II as teens, including whole lot, gassed. We were two of them 83, said, seated beside her sister at their Street’ ... and that’s the infamous Auschwitz. Sessler now gives presentations about her expe- out of Sobibor,” Sessler said. “I think there dining room table. “It’s not important to where the Jewish riences, while her sister prefers to keep her memories more to herself. were not many people ... out of Sobibor. me. You know, I never really thought people lived,” Sessler said. The weekly trains to Westerbork were Anyway, very few people came out of about it, of liberation and stuff like that. It By 1942, the girls’ father, who had paid billed as work opportunities. Sobibor alive. And we did.” was just a way of living, a way of life. A the orphanage to look after his daughters, “They didn’t tell you you were going to Sessler pulled out a printed sheet of sta- way our life went.” was taken to “work” for the Germans. be gassed in concentration camps,” tistics, listing 1,100 women who went from Commemorative events, books and “You see, the Germans told us we would Sessler said. “So, everybody believed Westerbork to Sobibor in March 1943. films like the 1993 Oscar-winning go to work for the Germans, go to work for them, you know. Every Monday night, Thirteen women came out alive from that Schindler’s List, by Steven Spielberg, are them in Germany, so not to worry,” they would come into the barracks and transport. important, though, the sisters agree. Sessler said. “He’ll go to get your food, they would call all the names out, right? “And we were two of them,” Leaver said. Sessler said she was even interviewed by and everything. So, he went, and we And one week, they called all the names The girls remained ignorant of their Spielberg’s company, her story archived never saw him again.” up, all the people from our orphanage, all peers’ fate, traveling again by train to a on DVD in Washington, D.C., at the United The small bit of German language the girls the names were called off — except ours.” camp in Lublin, Poland. The idea of death States Holocaust Memorial Museum. had gleaned from German Jewish children The administrators were planning on send- (Continued on page 14) MEMORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST: ZIGI SHIPPER a routine for him and his grandmother. He date the Lódz ghetto. Zigi and his grand- received a letter with a British postmark. BY STUART JEFFRIES, THE GUARDIAN worked in a metal factory producing muni- mother found themselves on a cattle truck “It was from a woman telling me it was tions. But the routine was broken when, in heading to a death camp. The first thing quite possible that I was her son. She ne morning after war broke out in 1941, the Nazis began to round up Jews Zigi noticed when he got off the train at asked me to look at my left wrist to see if September 1939, Zigi Shipper O for what they called “resettlement.” On Auschwitz was that the sky was hazy. there was a burn mark, which she knew woke up to find his father standing by his one of these raids, Zigi was slung into a happened to me as a four-year-old. I knew bed. “He told me the Germans were com- Then he noticed the terrible smell. “From truck. “I managed to jump off – I ran and then the letter was from my mother.” He ing and he had to go away.” How could he a distance we saw chimneys with smoke ran and luckily, no German saw me.” didn’t, though, want to live with her. “She leave you, I ask? “Like a lot of people in coming out. Rumors started spreading was a stranger to me – I hadn’t see her Lódz [the Polish city where Zigi was born], that it was a crematorium. I since I was four.” he thought the Nazis would only be after still didn’t know what that But he went to London to meet her, and men of fighting age, not children and meant.” He was lined up for selec- stayed. For all the love that Zigi now pro- women. Nobody thought they would want tion. To the left went the fit fesses for Britain, he felt lonely in London. to kill all Jews. How wrong we were. But men, who showered, Then one day he went to a dance at a club still, my father ran away to Russia, think- changed into a uniform and for young Holocaust survivors in Belsize ing that was the right thing to do.” went to their barracks. Park in London. “I looked around and Zigi (short for Zygmunt) was nine. “That Within an hour those who thought, ‘I know him from the ghetto, him was the last time I saw my dad,” he tells went to the right were from Auschwitz.’ I felt as though I had me in his living room in Bushey, gassed to death – women, found my family again.” More than that: at Hertfordshire. His father returned to children, disabled and eld- the club he found a wife – a French Poland later in the war but could only get erly people. Again, Zigi was Jewish woman called Jeanette to whom as far as the Warsaw ghetto. What hap- lucky: he was 15, fit enough he has now been married for 55 years. pened to him? “I presume he died. I have Zigi Shipper, Holocaust survivor. to work. All but inexplicably, ears after the war he found out what been to all the museums and I can’t find a Shipper’s grandmother sur- Yhad happened to his grandmother. trace of him. He might have died in the Zigi stops telling his story for a moment. vived the Auschwitz selections too. “After Auschwitz, we were separated. I Warsaw ghetto or Treblinka [the death “I feel [like] the luckiest person alive. I sur- igi soon left Auschwitz to work in a found out she died in Theresienstadt on camp]. Finding ways to die was not diffi- vived concentration camps, I jumped out Zseries of labor camps. But that did- the day of liberation. She didn’t have one cult for a Jew.” of a truck without being seen.” n’t mean the horrors of the Holocaust day of freedom. She was wonderful to me. Zigi was raised by his grandparents in He was hospitalized for a mild heart were over for him. One day, while he was I would have loved to put my arms around the ghetto in Lódz that the Nazis attack aged 51. “While I was there I had a working in a railway yard, five men were her for one last time.” established in November 1939. His moth- massive coronary. Let me tell you, the caught stealing cigarettes. They were He only returned to Poland about a er, divorced from his father before the war, best place to have a coronary is in hospi- hanged in front of the whole camp. “Each decade ago. “I went to Auschwitz after had moved to Belgium. “I presumed she tal. All my life I asked myself, why did I one jumped off the stools they were put on being nagged by my children.” He recalls was dead.” He was wrong. survive? My answer is: 95% of it was so as not to give the Germans the satis- standing under the “Arbeit macht frei” sign Food was so scarce in the ghetto that luck.” Zigi celebrated his 80th birthday faction of knowing they killed them.” at the camp entrance, which was stolen Zigi’s grandfather became weak and died. recently. “If you had told me when I was a Zigi was liberated from his German cap- and then recovered last year. “It meant Death was everywhere: “When I was 10 I boy I would be alive at 60, let alone 80, I tors by the British army on 3 May 1945. nothing to me. I stood under that sign and stepped over dead bodies in the ghetto would have laughed at you.” He ended up recuperating in a children’s said: ‘After all that Hitler tried to do, he without much feeling.” Ghetto life took on In July 1944, the Nazis decided to liqui- home in Germany. While there he didn’t succeed, for I am still here!’” March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 CHILDREN OF NAZI MONSTERS SPEAK Hitler’s Children, found “fascinating similari- on the face by Hitler at his mountain home Union and returned from captivity in 1952 BY ALLAN HALL, THE SUN ties” between the emotions of those related – and being taken to a death camp by his to find that his two brothers had killed to Holocaust perpetrators and those of sur- father. themselves because of their shame – and hey are the children of the damned, vivors, some of whom meet the children of He remembers seeing prisoners tor- the family’s fortunes were gone. descendants of Nazi Germany’s T their tormentors in the program. mented as he and his father chuckled. most brutal monsters. Now, for the first Hermann Goering was sentenced to He says: “I have made a powerful, Niklas says: “Thin men were mounted death along with 11 others at the time, they have come together to talk on on to a wild donkey by powerful German film about how it feels to have relatives mesmerizing dialogue between the chil- Nuremberg trials in 1946, but he commit- hands. ted suicide by swallowing a poison pill in responsible for the worst crimes in history. dren of the perpetrators and the children “The donkey bucked and the men fell his cell the night before his scheduled Hitler’s Children is a searing TV documen- of the survivors. Both live out the off, and they could only pick themselves execution. tary focusing on these tormented souls who Holocaust daily, unable to move forward with their lives. up again very slowly, and they didn’t find it look, talk, eat, and breathe as funny as I did. like everyone else... and yet “And again and again they got back on feel as if they were spawned and the donkey was given a slap and by the devil. again they fell off and they tried to help Bettina Goering, 53, is a each other – it was a fantastic afternoon. great-niece of Adolf “Then we had cocoa with the most Hitler’s second in com- important soldier. mand Hermann Goering. “These are the s***** images I carry He founded the Gestapo around of my father. I dream of the piles of secret police and organ- corpses in the camps. ized the Blitz on Britain “My country will never be rid of that his- that killed thousands. tory. It is a story that is still not over.” She had herself steril- He lectures about his infamous father to ized so she would “not Monika Hertwig, daughter of camp commander Amon Goeth. young people in the former East Germany pass on the blood of a in a bid to prevent them from straying into “Both finally face the past and are monster.” the neo-Nazi scene that preys on the empowered to move on.” Bettina Goering, the great-niece of Hermann Other participants include Monika young, unemployed and desperate. itler had no children, while those of Goering, was sterilized to prevent passing Hertwig, 65, daughter of Nazi death camp “I have never managed in my life to get his propaganda chief Josef “tainted blood” to children. commandant Amon Goeth, played by H rid of the memory of him,” he said. “I live Goebbels died with him and his wife in the Bettina’s father, who died in 1981, never Ralph Fiennes in the Oscar-winning with this deep shame about what he did.” same bunker in which their Fuehrer killed movie Schindler’s List. ettina Goering now lives in Santa spoke about the Holocaust, or about his himself. Monika tells how it feels to be related to Fe, New Mexico, where she prac- notorious uncle. “But my grandmother was And many others at the dark heart of the B a man who shot babies for “sport” and tices herbal medicine. less evasive – she adored him,” she said. Reich had families – something encour- who got an extra kick from his depraved She told how both she and her brother “As head of the Red Cross in Nazi hobby when victims died slowly and aged by Hitler, who idolized youth as the were voluntarily sterilized, explaining. “I Germany she hobnobbed with the painfully. bedrock of his empire slated to last for had my tubes tied at the age of 30 regime’s other top leaders and had many A tormented man is Niklas Frank, 70, 1,000 years. because I feared I would create another pictures of herself alongside Hitler. the son of Hans Frank, Hitler’s governor Some of the children can even remem- monster. “We would be watching a documentary of occupied Poland and the man respon- ber being patted on the head by Hitler as “I look like him for a start – the eyes, the on TV together about the Holocaust and sible for the extermination camp program they went with their parents to his moun- cheekbone, the profile. I look more like she would yell, “It’s all lies, it didn’t happen.” which killed six million Jews. taintop home in Berchtesgaden. him than his own daughter.” “The hardest part is admitting that I could Frank was hanged by the Allies after the It has taken until now for them to go Bettina said her father Heinz was adopt- have liked Goering. I was so shocked by war but Niklas says he was “condemned before the cameras to talk about their feel- ed by his infamous uncle after his own that. Now I am accepting myself more for to a living death because of the slime-hole ings of pain, revulsion, and confusion, father died. Heinz became a fighter pilot who I am, whatever that encompasses – of a Hitler fanatic that I had for a father.” sometimes mixed with love and regret. for the Luftwaffe. the good, the bad and the ugly. Chanoch Zeevi, the Israeli director of Niklas Frank remembers being stroked He was shot down over the Soviet (Continued on page 15) “THEY REALLY DO SMELL LIKE BLOOD” AMONG HITLER’S EXECUTIONERS ON THE EASTERN FRONT As a young woman, Annette Zwiahel, the city’s Jewish community — Ukrainian helpers always had so little to Schücking-Homeyer served as a Red which had numbered in the thousands — wear, one of the officers asked me if they Cross volunteer on the Eastern Front was annihilated. When did you learn of wanted to have any of the clothes. So I in Ukraine. In an interview with Spiegel, this? went there with the girls. There was a lot of the retired judge discusses the horrors Schücking-Homeyer: On the day we children’s clothing. Some of our girls didn’t committed against the Jews there, how got there, an older officer told us that there want to take anything; others said “Heil everyone knew about them and why, weren’t any more Jews, that they were all Hitler” when thanking the soldiers. I wrote to even after the war, most people just dead and that their houses were empty. my mother about it and immediately wanted to forget. SPIEGEL: Did the man tell you this in informed the nurses in Hamburg that under SPIEGEL: After World War II, most private? no circumstances should they take any Germans denied having known about the Schücking-Homeyer: No, he told us at clothing from the NSV — because it was Holocaust. From 1941 to 1943, you were the dinner table. I described it in a letter I coming from murdered Jews. a volunteer with the German Red Cross sent to my parents soon thereafter. I also SPIEGEL: Did you ever witness any of behind the lines on the Eastern Front. wrote that other nurses had told me that I these crimes with your own eyes? When did you discover that Jews were had shouted in my sleep: “But that’s Schücking-Homeyer: No. But it almost being murdered? impossible, it’s completely impossible, it’s happened once. Every week, I would travel Annette Schücking-Homeyer: In the against all international laws.” to Rivne, about 100 kilometers away, to pick train on the way to the front. It was SPIEGEL: What did the town look like? up food and beer for the soldiers’ home. October 1941. I had been sent with anoth- Schücking-Homeyer: The houses that There was a large ghetto there. One day — In 1941, Annette Schücking-Homeyer joined er nurse to run a so-called soldiers’ home had belonged to the Jews were ran- the Red Cross after completing her legal stud- it was in July 1942 — the brewery where in Zwiahel, a small city 200 kilometers sacked, and you could often find Hebrew ies. The next two years would bring her into many Jews had worked was closed for (125 miles) west of Kiev. After Brest- texts lying in the dirt on the floors. We close contact with the men committing atroci- business. Then we drove through the ghet- Litovsk, two soldiers joined us in our com- were told that we could find nice Jewish ties against the Jews of Eastern Europe. Much to, but it was deserted. It had apparently partment, but I don’t remember whether candlesticks there. One of the officers can be gleaned from her letters and diaries. been cleared just a short time before. And they were with the SS or just regular sol- took one home with him. SPIEGEL: Do you know how many peo- then we saw Germans soldiers herding diers. All of a sudden, one of them told us SPIEGEL: Did you see any mass graves? ple were killed in Zwiahel? together women and children who had how he had been ordered to shoot a Schücking-Homeyer: One day, the Schücking-Homeyer: A few local apparently been hiding. There was no woman in Brest. He said the woman had director of the combat engineering staff Ukrainian girls helped us out in the sol- doubt that they were about to be shot. begged for mercy, pleading that she had offered to show us the historic fortifica- diers’ home; they said 10,000 people had When I got back to Zwiahel, I was still cry- to take care of her handicapped sister. He tions of Zwiahel. He pointed to a spot on been murdered. In any case, it was a ing. All I wanted to do was go home. had someone get the sister, and then he the bank of the Sluch River and said that large number, as I realized a few weeks SPIEGEL: Rivne saw several waves of shot them both. We were horrified, but we 450 Jewish men, women, and children later when the National Socialist People’s murder, and thousands were killed. Do you didn’t say anything. were buried there. I didn’t say anything in Welfare (NSV) opened a huge clothing know anything about the circumstances? SPIEGEL: Before you arrived in response. warehouse in Zwiahel. Since our (Continued on page 14) Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM YoungYoung LeadershLeadersh

ver 800 people attended the Am OLeadership Associates’ Annual W Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. Featured at this year’s Gala was a port Deutsch Bible Paintings. Carol Deutsch, a Jewish painter, was bor Nazi conquest of Belgium, the local Jewish tion of the Jewish people – the Shoah. De an assumed name. During the years 1941 trations of the Bible and a wooden box to two-year-old daughter, Ingrid. On Septem SS. His wife tried to rescue him by going was arrested. On the night of September in transport 22B to Auschwitz, and were and the Bible were saved by neighbors. I she died in 1982. She bequeathed the B Members of the Young Leadership Associates gathered at the Metropolitan Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American Society for Yad Vashem; Elizabeth Pavilion on February 4, 2010 in New York City. This exhibit is one of several available f Mundlak-Zborowski, Cultural Director, American Society for Yad Vashem; Society for Yad Vashem. Caroline Massel, Chair, Young Leadership Associates, American Society for The Young Leadership Associates, a Yad Vashem; Jaci Paradis, 2010 Young Leadership Associates Winter Gala Event Co-Chair; Rebecca Hanus, 2010 Young Leadership Associates Winter highly motivated young professionals, Gala Event Co-Chair; and Barry Levine, 2010 Young Leadership Associates Society for Yad Vashem’s efforts to com Winter Gala Event Co-Chair. cation. They ensure the continuity of grams, social events and activities.

Exhibition of paintings from the Carol Deutsch Bi March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 hiphip AssociatesAssociates WinterWinter GalaGala merican Society for Yad Vashem Young Winter Gala on February 4, 2010 at the tion of the Yad Vashem Exhibit of Carol rn in 1894 in Antwerp, Belgium. After the h population was included in the destruc- eutsch and his family hid in Brussels under 1-42, Deutsch painted a series of 99 illus- o hold them, as a birthday present for his mber 3, 1943, Deutsch was arrested by the to the police, but, as a result, she herself r 3-4, Deutsch and his wife were shipped murdered there on September 22. Ingrid Ingrid moved to the United States, where Bible illustrations and box to Yad Vashem. for loan free of charge by the American group of dedicated future leaders and are an integral part of the American mmemorate the Holocaust through edu- this mission through educational pro-

ible Illustrations from Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM A MOSAIC OF LIFE AND DEATH of Poland, for example, there were women separately, were imprisoned there istorians and experts spent six BY DR. LEA PRAIS some 12,000 Jews. for six weeks until they were taken away Hyears researching and writing the The order to establish the ghetto was and murdered in the municipal park. encyclopedia. Consequently, even in eventy years after the Nazi regime given at the end of December 1941 but These and other cases raised the ques- areas that had already been ostensibly established its first Jewish ghetto – S tion: what is a ghetto? Is it an surveyed and researched, such as occu- Piotrków Trybunalski in Poland – Yad open and unsurrounded pied Poland, new ghettos were discov- Vashem has released a new publication: town, or a prison under lock ered whose existence had previously the Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the and key? eluded the researchers. Ghettos During the Holocaust. Written by Eventually, the term “ghet- Thus, for example, it was discovered researchers at the International Institute to” was defined as any com- that a ghetto had been established in the for Holocaust Research and edited by munity that existed in the Fortress of Solipse in Deblin-Irena in the Prof. Guy Miron and Shlomit Shulchani, areas of German occupation Lublin province (known as Modzitz to the the encyclopedia includes entries on where the Jews were entire- Jews), where some 3,500 Jews lived. The close to 1,100 ghettos established in the ly or partially coercively con- main information about its history was dis- areas occupied by the Germans: Greater centrated for a period of at covered in one of the documents stored in Poland, the Russian Republic, Ukraine, least a number of weeks. the “Oneg Shabbat” archives assembled Belorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Nevertheless, the editors of underground in the Warsaw ghetto. Transnistria, Romania and Greece. the encyclopedia were not A collection of over 250 photographs, As the first and only comprehensive col- entirely satisfied with this some in color, form an important part of lection of the ghettos established by the definition, and in a series of the encylopedia. The collection paints the Nazi regime, the encyclopedia marks an introductions that preface the miserable and somber ghetto life in a vivid important milestone in the history of entries give their attention to and human light, as frequently reflected in Holocaust research and historiography. the many problems that the texts. The power of photographs to While some ghettos are quite familiar to derive from the complexity of commemorate the transient and the general public – Warsaw, Lodz, Lwow, the phenomenon. The issue ephemeral remains an historic tool of the Jews in the Lodz Ghetto. Vilna and Bialystok – this epic chronicle of the Jewish houses (Juden first order. also includes the vast majority of ghettos, was carried out only in April 1942. The Häuser) is one such example. These were In addition to the volume itself, an large and small, that existed for a few entire town, except for two streets, was living compounds, scattered throughout accompanying DVD includes a series of weeks or years throughout the Soviet eventually transformed into the ghetto, Germany’s cities, to which local Jews films taken in the ghettos or on the eve of Union and Hungary. albeit without walls or fences. By contrast, were forcibly transferred until their depor- their establishment. The cinematogra- Deciding which cases to include in the in Mglin, the district town of the Orel tation. Despite the fact that the Jewish phy’s raw materials, devotedly gathered encyclopedia was a complex and Province in the Russian Federation, the houses in Germany were never defined and researched by Yad Vashem film cura- almost undecipherable problem. In the ghetto was established in the local prison. as ghettos, their resemblance to the defi- tor Efrat Komisar-Kaplan, were edited by town of Szydlowiec in the Kielce district Six hundred Jews from the town, men and nition of a ghetto is certainly eye-opening. (Continued on page 13) LAST-DITCH ATTEMPT TO GET NAMES OF MURDERED JEWS FROM HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS When Yad Vashem was founded in the vivors to finally speak before it is too late. see it and hear it, and for it to be told for BY ARIEH O’SULLIVAN, THE MEDIA LINE 1950s, it was guided by the principle that “Now they feel that they are old and they another 200 years.” “every victim has a name,” and thus have to talk about it, otherwise it will be Asked why he waited until now to give final campaign is underway to get began the monumental task of identifying forgotten,” Schwartz says. “Every person the names of his parents and siblings, Holocaust survivors to record the A the victims of the Holocaust. is a new story and every person is a sad Neiditz sits back in his chair and says, names of lost family members. It got off to a tough start. In the early years story, so it is difficult, and sometimes we “The train has already left the station. For the tenacious, eighty-six-year-old of the state, native Israelis ridiculed cry together and sometimes I go home There’s nothing to say. If I say, ‘what a Yehoshua Neiditz, surviving has been a Holocaust survivors for not having fought and then I cry.” pity,’ will it help? No. What I’m doing now way of life: evading Nazis in his native the Nazis. The stigma caused many to Wroclawski says there are about 250 vol- is better than nothing because we are only Poland and hiding out with the Partisans, hide their past. As of today, Yad Vashem unteers from across the country helping with a few remaining Holocaust survivors in logging one lucky escape after another. has collected the names of nearly four mil- the program. Most of the missing identities our old age.” But his entire family number among the lion victims and is trying to recover as come from areas of the former Soviet Union Thelma Ophel, the volunteer helping him estimated six million Jews murdered in many more identities as possible while and eastern Poland. Also, the ultra-Orthodox fill out the forms, says she has seen in the Second World War. survivors still live. community, which often shuns national insti- Neiditz and other survivors a character trait “I never wanted to think about it,” says name is essentially a person’s tutions, has been hesitant to register names of living in a perpetual state of survival, man- Neiditz in his small, tidy flat in Tel Aviv. “It “Asoul,” says Cynthia Wroclawski, with Yad Vashem. ifested by burying the past and concentrating makes me anxious to relive it. It’s not manager of the Holocaust Victims’ Names “For many survivors this really is the last on the task immediately at hand. good for my mind.” Recovery Project at Yad Vashem. “It is opportunity to bear witness to what they “What he did from the moment Nazis Sixty-seven years later he has at last their identity. The Nazis tried to wipe off know,” she says. “If they know the help is entered the ghetto is live his life in order to found the courage to dig up painful mem- every memory of their victim … and when there they will reach out.” survive,” Ophel says. “I think character, ories, share his testimony and record the we try and create a personal commemo- rinking hot water, Neiditz, a retired his great zest for life, his ability to get by names of family members from his home- ration to each and every victim we are in Dbarber, seems like a bundle of and stay alive despite everything, has town of Pinsk in the main database of the a sense recreating the great tragic loss of energy and much younger than his 86 continued until this day. Other matters like Nazi genocide. six million of our brothers and sisters who years. It is as if he has been holding recording his family members with Yad The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial were taken from us brutally.” inside of himself his stories of survival Vashem were not important. He just lives and Museum has launched what may be The present campaign in Israel has includ- for decades and they are now bursting his life.” the last viable campaign to get remaining ed broadcasts on national radio stations and out almost uncontrollably. Neiditz smacks her hand and says, Holocaust survivors to record the names has generated hundreds of telephone calls a “My mother held on to me, saying, ‘They “Exactly. It’s exactly as you say.” of Jews murdered in the war. day. Identities can be added on the Yad took your father and brother. You have to Yad Vashem says it has no dialogue with A media campaign across Israel, the Vashem Names Internet site, but volunteers stay with me,’” he recalls. He describes Holocaust deniers, but there is no doubt country with the largest living concentra- are also dispatched to the homes of sur- how he hid under the floorboards as a the list could serve as a rebuttal to those tion of Holocaust survivors, has urged vivors to help them fill out the forms. Nazi officer came in and bellowed “‘Ver ist who say it was exaggerated. them to come forward and give the names “We are really in a race against time,” der manner?’ ‘Gone to work camps,’ my “I know that the issue of Holocaust of those who died. says Wroclawski. “Time is passing and we mother said. The officer knew that meant denial, which is rampant today, is an According to the Centre of don’t know how many more years we they had been sent to their deaths and incentive to some of the survivors to Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in have left to speak with actual witnesses said ‘Das ist gut.’” say, ‘Listen, this was my family. I know Israel, an estimated 327,000 Holocaust who still remember this information.” “The most important thing is for a per- who they were,’” Wroclawski says. survivors eventually received Israeli citi- Volunteers, like Zahava Schwartz, whose son who has suffered through this to tell it “Each page of testimony with the name zenship. About 167,000 are still alive parents went through the Holocaust, have like it was during the Nazi times, the anni- of the person who actually knew that today and the majority of them are over 80 been reaching out to survivors. She says hilation of the Jews, and that this be doc- individual is in itself a testimony against years old. approaching death has caused some sur- umented by the media,” Neiditz says. “To Holocaust denial.” March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 JEWS LEAVE SWEDISH CITY AFTER SHARP RISE IN ANTI-SEMITIC HATE CRIMES already left for Stockholm, England or then evacuated in a release deal negotiated Sweden has had a long record of offer- BY NICK MEO, Israel, and more are preparing to go. between the Swedish Red Cross and sen- ing a safe haven to Jews, the first of THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH With its young people planning new ior Nazis, who were by then trying to save whom arrived from the east in the mid- lives elsewhere, the remaining Jewish their own lives. nineteenth century. Today the Jewish pop- hen she first arrived in Sweden households, many of which are made up fter the war, just as liberal Sweden ulation is about 18,000 nationally, with after her rescue from a Nazi con- W took in Jews who survived the around 3000 in southern Sweden. centration camp, Judith Popinski was of Holocaust survivors and their descen- A Holocaust as a humanitarian act, it also “Jews came to Sweden to get away treated with great kindness. dants, fear they will soon be gone alto- took in new waves of refugees from tyran- from persecution, and now they find it is She raised a family in the city of Malmo, gether. Mrs. Popinski, an 86-year-old and for the next six decades lived happily widow, said she has even encountered ny and conflicts in the Middle East. no longer a safe haven,” said Rabbi in her adopted homeland – until last year. hostility when invited to talk about the Muslims are now estimated to make up Shneur Kesselman, 31. “That is a horrible In 2009, a chapel serving the city’s 700- Holocaust in schools. about a fifth of Malmo’s population of feeling.” strong Jewish community was set ablaze. “Muslim schoolchildren often ignore me nearly 300,000. One who has had enough is Marcus Jewish cemeteries were repeatedly dese- now when I talk about my Eilenberg, a 32-year-old Malmo-born crated, worshippers were abused on their experiences in the camps,” lawyer, who is moving to Israel in April way home from prayer, and “Hitler” was she said. “It is because of with his young family. mockingly chanted in the streets by what their parents tell them “Malmo has really changed in the past masked men. about Jews. The hatreds of year,” he said. “I am optimistic by nature, “I never thought I would see this hatred the Middle East have come but I have no faith in a future here for my again in my lifetime, not in Sweden any- to Malmo. Schools in Muslim children. There is definitely a threat. way,” Mrs Popinski told The Sunday areas of the city simply won’t “It started during the Gaza war when Telegraph. invite Holocaust survivors to Jewish demonstrators were attacked. It “This new hatred comes from Muslim speak any more.” was a horrible feeling, being attacked in immigrants. The Jewish people are afraid Hate crimes, mainly direct- your own city. Just as bad was the realiza- now.” ed against Jews, doubled tion that we were not being protected by Malmo’s Jews, however, do not just last year with Malmo’s police our own leaders.” point the finger at bigoted Muslims and recording 79 incidents and Mr. Eilenberg said he and his wife con- Judith Popinski pictured next to the White Bus at the Red Cross their fellow racists in the country’s neo- admitting that far more prob- sidered moving to Stockholm where Jews museum in Malmo, Sweden. Nazi fringe. They also accuse Ilmar ably went unreported. As of feel safer than in Malmo. “But we decided Reepalu, the left-wing mayor who has yet, no direct attacks on people have been “This new hatred from a group 40,000 not to because in five years’ time I think it been in power for 15 years, of failing to recorded but many Jews believe it is only strong is focused on a small group of will be just as bad there,” he said. protect them. a matter of time in the current climate. Jews,” Mrs. Popinski said. “Some “This is happening all over Europe. I Mr. Reepalu, who is blamed for lax The city’s synagogue has guards and rock- Swedish politicians are letting them do it, have cousins who are leaving their homes policing, is at the center of a growing con- et-proof glass in the windows, while the including the mayor. Of course the in Amsterdam and France for the same troversy for saying that what the Jews per- Jewish kindergarten can only be reached Muslims have more votes than the Jews.” reason as me.” ceive as naked anti-Semitism is in fact just through thick steel security doors. The worst incident was last year during For many of Malmo’s white Swedish a sad but understandable consequence of It is a far cry from the city Mrs. Popinski Israel’s brief war in Gaza, when a small population, meanwhile, the racial prob- Israeli policy in the Middle East. arrived in 65 years ago, half-dead from demonstration in favor of Israel was lems are bewildering after years of liberal While his views are far from unusual on the starvation and typhus. attacked by a screaming mob of Arabs immigration policies. European liberal left, which is often accused At Auschwitz she had been separated and Swedish leftists, who threw bottles “I first encountered race hatred when I of a pro-Palestinian bias, his Jewish critics from her Polish family, all of whom were and firecrackers as the police looked on. was an au pair in England and I was say they encourage young Muslim hotheads murdered. She escaped the gas chambers “I haven’t seen hatred like that for shocked,” said Mrs. Popinski’s friend Ulla- to abuse and harass them. after being sent as a slave laborer. Then decades,” Mrs. Popinski said. “It reminded Lena Cavling, 72, a retired teacher. The future looks so bleak that by one she was moved to a women’s concentration me of what I saw in my youth. Jews feel “I thought, ‘This couldn’t happen in estimate, around 30 Jewish families have camp, Ravensbrück, from which she was vulnerable here now.” Sweden.’ Now I know otherwise.” HOW DIPLOMAT’S PAPERWORK SAVED LIVES IN HOLOCAUST whose visas got 18,000 Jews to safety in The same figure is given by historian than 1,000 of which were found in a suit- BY CLAUDIA TORRENS AND Shanghai. David Kranzler, who published a book case in a Geneva basement in 2005 and RANDY HERSCHAFT, AP Best known of all is Raoul Wallenberg of about the diplomat in 2000 called The donated to the United States Holocaust Sweden, whose efforts probably con- Man Who Stopped the Trains to Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., t took Ina Polak 35 years to discover tributed to saving 90,000 Jewish lives in Auschwitz that also describes Mantello’s by his son three years later. the dusty piece of paper that probably I Hungary before he vanished in what critical role in publicizing the so-called Now museum researchers are trying to saved her and her family in Bergen- became an abiding mystery of the Auschwitz Protocol, a description of the trace recipients of the certificates to get an Belsen concentration camp. Holocaust. Nazis’ biggest death camp by two idea of how many of them actually saved It wasn’t until she was cleaning her Now the work of Mantello is getting escaped inmates. lives and learn the full scope of Mantello’s mother’s New York City apartment follow- fresh attention as scholars dig into newly t is not known how many lives were rescue efforts. ing her death in 1980 that she discovered released files and piece together the lives saved by Mantello’s documents — udith Cohen, director of photo the document listing her, her sister, and I “definitively, hundreds,” says archives, says she has discovered their parents. It was a Salvadoran citizen- J Mordecai Paldiel, a Holocaust how two Dutch families were released ship certificate. studies professor at Yeshiva from Bergen-Belsen in January 1945 “My first reaction was ‘Oh, now I under- University in New York. A letter thanks to the documents, sent first to stand!’” said Polak, who is 87. from Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat Switzerland and then to North Africa to be She and her family were Dutch Jews, who worked with Mantello, speaks exchanged for German prisoners. with nothing to connect them with the dis- of “thousands” saved. “We know that Salvadoran certificates tant Central American country of El Without the Salvadoran certifi- actually helped pull someone out of the Salvador. Yet the certificate dated 1944 cate, Polak and her family would concentration camp and send them to became their lifeline, thanks to a man likely have been worked to death freedom,” said Cohen. While calling it “a named George Mantello. in Bergen-Belsen or sent to other very small footnote to history,” she notes Mantello, a Jew born in what is now camps or the salt mines. Instead the Jewish saying that “he who saves just Romania, was one of a handful of diplo- they were moved to a small camp one person is like he who has saved the mats who during World War II saved thou- enclosure full of Jews with Latin whole world.” sands of Jews and others on the run from It took 35 years for Ina Polak to discover that a dusty American documents, and finally In a speech last year, Cohen noted that the Nazis by giving them visas or citizen- Salvadoran citizenship certificate probably saved her put on a train out of Bergen-Belsen “even when the rescue attempts were ships, often without their governments’ from one of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. along with 2,400 people, and were unsuccessful, the mere existence of the knowledge. he saved by gaming the diplomatic rescued by US troops in April 1945. certificates proves that people cared for They were men such as Hiram Bingham bureaucracy. “Back then,” Polak said, if a German offi- others and tried to extend help to friends IV, a U.S. consular official in Marseille, Working as first secretary in the cial “saw a paper, and if it had the right under occupation to a greater extent than France who issued visas and other travel Salvadoran consulate in Geneva, stamp on it and the signature, then it was is commonly acknowledged.” documents that are credited with helping Switzerland, Mantello used a network of legal. People with these papers were eligi- And the areas targeted by the rescuers to rescue about 2,000 people; or Chiune contacts to issue papers to Jews in Nazi- ble, in the Germans’ eyes, to be sent to a help fill in another blank in Holocaust his- Sugihara, a Japanese envoy in Lithuania, occupied Europe between 1942 and 1944 neutral country, to a better camp.” tory by indicating “who knew what when” thought to have saved 3,500; or Dr. Feng – up to 10,000 documents, according to Mantello sent out notarized copies of the about what was going on under the Nazi Shan Ho, the Chinese consul in Vienna his son, Enrico Mantello. certificates and kept the originals, more (Continued on page 12) Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 HOW DIPLOMAT’S PAPERWORK SAVED LIVES IN HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 11) other diplomats acted against their coun- Latin America or the U.S., said Medoff. you the thanks – as soon as normal con- thumb, she said. tries’ immigration policies or interpreted “So even when the Germans suspected ditions again prevail in this world — of After the war, Polak married a fellow them “very, very, liberally,” says Yeshiva these documents might not be authentic, thousands of human beings whose lives survivor, Jaap Polak. She believes that University’s Paldiel, who wrote a book they often did not care because they con- you saved,” he wrote in a letter stored at maybe friends of her father gave Mantello titled “Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust.” sidered these prisoners to be very useful,” the Washington museum. the name of her family. In her speech, Cohen said diplomats he said. Enrico Mantello, now 80 and living in Her father, Abraham Soep, was a dia- from Portugal and Romania, as well as In January 1945, 800 Germans who had Geneva and Rome, said he remembers mond manufacturer in Amsterdam, and representatives of the Vatican and the been held in the Americas were his father issuing one certificate after probably received the citizenship certifi- International Red Cross, helped spread exchanged for 800 American and Latin the other. cate while the family were in a Dutch tran- Mantello’s documents. American citizens in Germany, and “He was a very driving, energetic per- sit Nazi camp before being sent to Those who made a sustained effort to among them were 149 Bergen-Belsen (the same camp where save Jews numbered just “a few dozen” Jews from Bergen-Belsen another girl from Holland, the diarist Anne out of thousands of diplomats stationed in with Latin American docu- Frank, perished). Europe, says Dr. Rafael Medoff, director ments, said Medoff. of the David S. Wyman Robert Fisch, a Institute for Holocaust Studies Minneapolis pediatrician, in Washington, D.C. remembers seeing a citi- s a Jew, Mantello might zenship certificate in his A himself have easily fall- house in Budapest in 1944. en victim to the Nazis. He had “My mother told me, even held honorary diplomatic posi- wrote, ‘don’t give out this tions for the El Salvador gov- paper. It is very important,’” ernment starting in 1939, and said Fisch, now 84. had changed his name from hile his work on cit- Mandel to the more Spanish- W izenship papers sounding Mantello. But he was stayed discreet, his role in arrested by the Germans in publicizing the Auschwitz This April 13, 1945 photo released by the United States Holocaust Belgrade in 1942. He managed Protocol led to Swiss pub- Memorial Museum shows a train stopped in Farsleben, Germany, to escape to Geneva, where he lic protests, prayers and while transporting about 2,500 inmates, primarily Jewish, from became first secretary of the angry headlines. The Bergen-Belsen to another Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt. Salvadoran consulate, and set worldwide protests they After a six-day journey they were liberated by the 30th Infantry about saving fellow Jews. stirred may have played a Division of the U.S. Ninth Army. Among the passengers were Ina Col. Jose Arturo Castellanos, part in the Hungarian gov- Polak and her family, probably saved from death in Bergen-Belsen because they had Salvadoran citizenship papers supplied to them by the consul general, allowed ernment’s decision to tem- George Mantello. him to issue the certificates, porarily suspend deporta- This Dec. 7, 1944 photo released by the United States and only later did his govern- tions of Jews to Auschwitz. son. He needed very little sleep,” he said. Holocaust Memorial Museum shows the Satmar Rebbe, third ment find out about it. El According to Paldiel, Mantello is insuffi- “He was passionate, he did not take no for from left, with George Mantello, second from left, in white Salvador wasn’t a neutral ciently appreciated because he was an an answer.” coat, arguing with Swiss border guards for the entry of the country at the time — it was outsider of the Jewish organizations, a But after the war and until his death in rebbe into Switzerland. backing the Allies, so Mantello businessman who created his own net- 1992, Mantello was a haunted man. Citizenship papers entitled their holders had to use emissaries to distribute the work of volunteers and emissaries. After Among those to whom he sent citizenship to sometimes wear their own clothes certificates. the war he had difficulty continuing his papers were his parents in what then was instead of prison uniforms and to live in a According to the Washington museum, diplomatic career, and was accused of Hungary, but they arrived one or two days separate section of Bergen-Belsen. copies of the certificates produced by being financially corrupt, but charges too late, and his mother and father, along The difference was critical, said Paul Mantello and his team of Swiss volunteer were dropped after an investigation. with the rest of the Jews in their town, were Shapiro, director of the Washington muse- clerks were sent to almost every country in One man who appreciated his efforts — sent to Auschwitz and murdered. um’s Center for Advanced Holocaust occupied Europe — and even into Auschwitz and said so in writing — was Lutz, the “It is a horrible, sad irony,” said Cohen, Studies. “Remember that if you were in the — with varying degrees of success. Swiss diplomat in Budapest who delivered the museum researcher. “The certificates wrong part of the camp, you were dead.” The Germans, for their part, had a use many of Mantello’s documents to Jews. were saving people all over Europe, and While Wallenberg’s activities were initi- for Jewish prisoners with such documents “You can be assured that ... you ren- despite his efforts he was unable to save ated and supported by his government, — to trade for German nationals held in dered a valuable service which will get his own parents.” NAZI PERPETRATORS MUST FACE JUSTICE Hungarian cases because they were dis- contacted by thousands of people from technical legal challenges unconnected BY EFRAIM ZUROFF, JTA covered in the framework of the all over the world and received the to the case. Wiesental Center’s “Operation: Last names of more than 530 suspects from Now, however, we are finally approach- he efforts to hold Holocaust perpe- ing the moment of truth in both cases. trators accountable are indeed in Chance,” a project launched in 2002 with 25 countries. About 100 of the names T Reports from Budapest indicate that the their final phase. Still, with legal action of the generous assistance of the Targum eventually were turned over to the local prosecution is satisfied that it has suffi- various forms having been taken recent- Shlishi Foundation of Miami founded and prosecutors after we verified that the ly against four of the 10 Nazi war crimi- headed by Aryeh Rubin. allegation was credible and the suspect cient evidence to prosecute Kepiro and nals on the Wiesenthal Center’s “Most Cognizant of the diminishing prospects was alive, was healthy enough to stand hopefully will do so shortly, and Zentai is Wanted” list, it seems clear that the push for the prosecution of Holocaust perpe- trial, and had never been prosecuted. in jail pending his final appeal after for justice will continue — and register trators, Aryeh suggested offering finan- mong the most serious cases were Australian Minister for Home Affairs more victories than initially expected. cial rewards for information that would A those of Kepiro and Zentai. Kepiro Brendan O’Connor approved his extradi- The individuals in question – Ukrainian lead to the prosecution and punishment was among the officers who organized tion to Hungary to stand trial. In short, by Sobibor guard Ivan Demjanjuk (No. 1); of Nazi war criminals – and helped the massacre by Hungarian forces of at the end of 2009, we almost certainly will Hungarian gendarmerie officer Dr. launch the project by providing a gener- least 1,300 civilians (mostly Jews, but know whether these two suspected Sandor Kepiro (2); Dutch SS hit man ous grant. Our primary objective was to also Serbs and Roma) in the city of Novi Holocaust perpetrators will be held Heinrich Boere (6); and Hungarian army try to discover suspects who had been Sad, Serbia, on Jan. 23, 1942. Zentai is accountable for their crimes. officer Karoly (Charles) Zentai (7) — rep- unknown to us and to the authorities. accused of the murder in Budapest on While the process of facilitating these resent a cross-section of the suspects Our initial focus was on post-commu- Nov. 8, 1944, of an 18-year-old Jewish and other cases (in which excellent sus- still unprosecuted who were involved in a nist Europe, where local collaboration boy named Peter Balasz, whom he pects died before they could be prose- variety of crimes ranging from being an with the Nazis had been particularly caught on a streetcar without the cuted) often is nerve-wracking, there is accessory to mass murder (Demjanjuk lethal and extensive, and where Cold required yellow star. no alternative but to try our best to maxi- and Kepiro) to carrying out the execution War politics had prevented an honest In both cases, although the evidence mize justice through the existing legal of individuals (Boere and Zentai). accounting with the past from 1945 until we provided was very substantial, the system. This is our obligation to the vic- While Zentai is incarcerated in Perth, 1991. In that respect, we were encour- cases proceeded at a snail’s pace, jeop- tims of the Holocaust, one which fully Australia, pending approval of his extra- aged by the conviction in 1999 of former ardizing the chances of prosecution deserves a serious effort to achieve as dition to Hungary, the Demjanjuk trial has Jasenovac commander Dinko Sakic, given the age of the suspects. In Kepiro’s much justice as possible despite the dif- started in Munich and Boere is on trial in whose extradition from Argentina and case, the investigation in Hungary was ficulties engendered by the passage of Aachen, Germany. Kepiro, whose pass- prosecution in Zagreb we had helped slowed by innumerable delays influenced time. “Operation: Last Chance” is an port was seized by the authorities, is fac- facilitate, and whose trial had a signifi- by the fact that his crimes had been com- important part of that effort. ing the prospect of prosecution in cant impact on Holocaust issues in mitted in Serbia. In Australia, Zentai’s Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi Budapest. Croatia. lawyers were able to delay his extradition hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center I have a special interest in the two Over the past seven years, we were for about four years by mounting various and director of its Israel Office. March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

THE MUFTI OF JERUSALEM: AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM ARCHITECT OF THE HOLOCAUST? MOURNS THE PASSING OF DAVID BANKIER David Bankier, who helped expand million Jews and on its applicability to Wisliczeny also testified that al- the contours of Holocaust research by other cases of mass murder. BY PAMELA GELLER Husseini asked Heinrich Himmler to send examining the participation of ordinary For anti-Semites, “Jews represent one of Eichmann’s assistants to he original blueprints for the Europeans in the extermination of mysterious, mythic and evil forces,” Jerusalem once the war was over, to aid Auschwitz death camp went on dis- their Jewish neighbors, died after a he said at a recent lecture, “an T the Mufti in “solving the Jewish question play in late January after being discov- omnipotence playing a sinister role in in the Middle East.” long illness, Yad Vashem, the ered in November 2008. They were world history.” And according to the Arab Higher Jerusalem Holocaust center, found by chance behind a wall in a Berlin At another lecture he noted that for Committee: announced. He was 63. apartment during renovation work, yet Hitler, “Nazism was a doctrine of world “In virtually identical letters, the Mufti, Mr. Bankier, who was head of the the exact location of their discovery is in the summer of 1944, approached International Institute for Holocaust salvation to redeem humanity from being kept secret. No one will say whose Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, and Research at Yad Vashem, focused his the Jewish-Christian-Marxist doctrine. apartment it was. Hungary to speed the extermination of scholarly work on anti- The acquisition and There are numerous bits of evidence, the Jews by sending them to Poland Semitism, especially its maintenance of total however, that point to a possible loca- where the Nazi death chambers were use by the Nazis to pro- suppression of the tion where Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the located.” mote and sustain a German race, Hitler Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, lived during he Mufti successfully demanded broader ideology. He believed, must be World War II. And in the course of inves- through total war of T that 400,000 Jews who were about was the author of tigating this, I have found that the Mufti Germans against the to be deported to the Holy Land instead Germans and the Final was involved in and may even have cre- Jews.” be sent to their deaths. That’s not mere- Solution: Public ated the Final Solution for European At the same time, Mr. ly a collaborator, that’s a partner with Opinion under Nazism Jews – and yet his central participation Bankier said last year great influence and power. as well as a collection in the Holocaust has been covered up Yet after the war the Mufti was not that the work he was of essays, Hitler, the and forgotten. overseeing at Yad The Mufti, whom his Holocaust and German Vashem on the role of nephew Yasser Arafat Society: Cooperation bystanders and neigh- called “our hero,” is and Awareness. bors in numerous small- famous for his fanati- Born in Germany just er mass killings across cal Jew-hatred. During before the state of the former Soviet Union World War II, the Mufti Israel was created, Mr. Bankier grew in the early 1940s had important implica- lived in Berlin, where up and was educated here, earning tions for contemporary genocide in he met Hitler and trav- his doctorate in Jewish history at the Africa and other places. eled in top Nazi circles Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He He argued that the world was a differ- (he even stayed in held a professorship at Hebrew ent place as a result of what the Nazis Hitler’s bunker toward University and had served as a visit- had done, that if genocide in far-off the end of the war). ing professor in Britain, the United places shocked average people today it Among his close States, South Africa and South was partly because of their knowledge friends was Adolf America. He spoke excellent English of the details of the Holocaust. In other Eichmann, who is and Spanish, in addition to German words, Holocaust deniers aside, commonly thought to and Hebrew. Holocaust awareness was central to be the architect of the Divorced, Mr. Bankier is survived by contemporary sensibility. Holocaust. Journalist three children. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Maurice Pearlman, A rumpled, somber man who sought to Vashem, said that with Mr. author of the 1947 understand the most bewildering Bankier’s death, the world had lost book The Mufti of aspects of genocide — how someone one of its most important scholars in Jerusalem, said that could play soccer with an acquaintance the field. He noted that Mr. Bankier, prosecuted. He got off scot-free, and the Mufti advised Eichmann on the best one day and assist in his murder the who had fought his illness over a lived comfortably until 1974. Why? And ways to persecute Jews. next — Mr. Bankier insisted both on the long period, kept a regular schedule why the cover-up now about in whose Hitler gave the Mufti a radio station, uniqueness of the Nazi Holocaust of six until his last day. which al-Husseini used to preach Nazism apartment the documents were found? and genocide in Arabic. In one of his Germany does not hide information like broadcasts, the Mufti exhorted Arabs: this after World War II; why are they hid- A MOSAIC OF LIFE AND DEATH “According to the Muslim religion, the ing this now? The only plausible reason defense of your life is a duty which can to keep this location secret would be (Continued from page 10) features maps and diagrams of the ghetto only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews. because it would incriminate the Mufti. film producer Nathan Lifshitz. The circum- areas, appended to the relevant entry. This is your best opportunity to get rid of There are no other reasons. German stances in which the films were pho- Some of the illustrations display the fre- this dirty race, which has usurped your authorities should come clean. tographed, as well as the identity of the quent changes the ghetto area under- rights and brought misfortune and The denial about the key role that this photographers – mostly members of the went, such as in Kovno, whose area was Nazi propaganda units – convinced drawn in real time by the Bauhaus artist destruction on your countries. Kill the Muslim leader played in the Holocaust Fritz Gadiel. Jews, burn their property, destroy their must end. The only difference between An analysis of Jewish life in the stores, annihilate these base supporters Hitler and the Mufti is that Hitler was ghettos would not be complete of British imperialism. Your sole hope of defeated and punished. The slaughter- salvation lies in annihilating the Jews without exploring their day-to-day ing Mufti went on to spawn Yasser lives and spiritual world. The before they annihilate you.” Arafat, inspire Saddam Hussein, and Al-Husseini practiced what he encyclopedia presents articles work to destroy the Jewish homeland that characterized the daily rou- preached. During the Nuremberg Trials and its people. in July 1946, Eichmann’s assistant, tine of the ghetto inhabitants, such There is no statute of limitations on as the yellow patch or the labor Dieter Wisliczeny, testified that Mufti was genocide. I indict the Mufti and the and ration cards, alongside the a central figure in the planning of the Muslim world. They were equal partners artistic works and drawings they genocide of the Jews: in mass death. Not only does the ummah created in the nadir of those dark- “The Grand Mufti has repeatedly sug- not own what they did (let alone apolo- est days. gested to the Nazi authorities – including gize, as the Germans have done repeat- Likewise, excerpts from the Hitler, von Ribbentrop and Himmler – the edly), but it is still pursuing the annihila- extensive literature written by extermination of European Jewry. … The Fleeing the Warsaw Ghetto. tion of the Jews (not to mention all non- ghetto residents provide a per- Mufti was one of the initiators of the sys- Lifshitz to add an introductory film explain- sonal and human soundtrack to the formal tematic extermination of European Jewry believers). Just recently in Iran, accord- ing the aspects and challenges these film texts, and act as a small window on the and had been a collaborator and adviser ing to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Khamenei’s representative in segments harbor. Nevertheless, the rarity pulse of life in the ghetto. As Egon Redlich, of Eichmann and Himmler in the execu- of the films and their ability to project an Terezin ghetto resident, expressed in his tion of this plan… He was one of the Iranian Martyr Foundation said this: “We have manufactured missiles that authentic picture of the physical surround- diary: “My God, what a life! Multi-shaded, Eichmann’s best friends and had con- ings and the faces of the ghetto Jews, horrible, filled with contrasts and flowing allow us, when necessary, to replace stantly incited him to accelerate the most of them anonymous, provide a rapidly… a cabaret performance on the one Israel in its entirety with a big holocaust.” extermination measures. I heard him say, unique and unusual supplement to the hand and alongside it dying old men... prob- It’s time to tell the truth about the accompanied by Eichmann, he had visit- accounts themselves. lems with disinfectant, eradicating lice infes- Muslims role in the Holocaust, and their ed incognito the gas chambers of In addition to the collection of photo- tations, manufacturing beds – a colorful Auschwitz.” desire to start a new one. graphs and films, the encyclopedia also mosaic of life and death.” Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 “THEY REALLY DO POWER TO REACH HUMAN SOULS (Continued from page 4) dying Jews only for valuables, like gold or SMELL LIKE BLOOD” ed, etc.). Weinstein describes how older jewelry; who had already occupied Jewish people were simply unable to uproot homes, appropriated Jewish money, food, (Continued from page 7) one day I was in a car with a sergeant themselves overnight. He shows us how or valuables, and who were already wear- Schücking-Homeyer: I would often go named Frank. He said he was from surreal Treblinka’s killing fields truly were, ing and selling Jewish clothes — and who to the office of the military administration Münster and that he was going to be part where 870,000 Jews were rapidly and were, themselves, at the mercy of a rav- in Rivne to pick up ration coupon books. of a major campaign in the coming weeks relentlessly murdered. enous German army. The soldiers discussed the resettlements in which people would be executed by fir- The gratuitous cruelty is heart-stopping. All of Weinstein’s relatives perished — so nonchalantly that I had to ask. “What’s ing squad. He said he was doing it Deported Jews were subjected to torturous except his father, whom he found in a this resettlement all about?” I would ask. because he wanted a promotion. I told thirst, hunger, cold, and filth, smothered and slave labor camp. Together they, and a “When do they find out about it…” him not to do it, that he wouldn’t be able to dehydrated in box cars or broken by forced handful of others, escaped, and for two SPIEGEL: At that point, had you already sleep afterwards. He did it anyway, and figured out that “resettlement” was just a later he complained to me about not being marches before they were killed. The Nazi years faced death every moment as they polite way of saying “murdering Jews”? able to sleep and about how bad he felt. “I killers kept screaming, beating, shoving, lived in hiding, first under a pigsty, then Schücking-Homeyer: Yes, but I don’t told you so,” I replied. and striking their prey. Those Jews who a fishpond, and then a forest bunker, remember exactly when and how I found SPIEGEL: Of course, your letters also dared to beg for their lives were immediate- where some Poles risked their lives to out. At any rate, the people at the military contain passages that lead one to believe ly beaten to death as punishment — and bring them food — which they only did administration in Rivne said: “We are noti- that you let yourself be infected by your then shot for good measure, as were those for exorbitant sums of money. Even fied on the evening before it happens that surroundings. modest, frightened Jewish girls and women then, they were always threatening to a resettlement is going to take place at a Schücking-Homeyer: No. My father who tried to cover their nakedness. turn them in and often tried to kill their specific location, and that it could get vio- had been an attorney, but he had been Laughing killers shot infants down into huge Jews-in-hiding in very primitive ways. lent. The locally stationed troops aren’t barred from practicing since 1933, so I burning pits. Random killings, mass killings Weinstein’s personal anecdotes of supposed to worry about it or get was very afraid of censorship. I was never never stopped. deadly Polish anti-Semitism, envy, and involved.” Today, we know that special an anti-Semite. On the contrary, on sever- In Treblinka, Weinstein was shot right in avarice, after Poland was liberated by task forces and police officers carried out al occasions later in the war, we helped the chest, “into the lungs,” but he did not Soviet Russia are unbearable to read. the shootings. out persecuted Jews. die. He managed to hide under a vast pile Anyone who suggests that Jews return to SPIEGEL: On Nov. 5, 1941, you wrote SPIEGEL: After the war, what did you of Jewish clothing, which was being sort- Poland might read his book. (And yes, of to your parents: “What Papa says is true: do with your knowledge about what had ed; then, he became a sorter of the dead course, there were Poles who heroically people with no moral inhibitions exude a happened in Zwiahel? Jewish clothing for 17 days, “each of hid and saved Jews. Their stories must strange odor. I can now pick out these Schücking-Homeyer: I had concluded which was more like a century.” also be told, their deeds memorialized.) people, and many of them really do smell that soldiers would file legal complaints, Miraculously, Weinstein and some young Each detail of this brief but remarkable like blood. Oh, what an enormous slaugh- but then I didn’t hear anything about it. friends managed to dodge death in book is as fresh, vivid, outrageous, and terhouse the world is.” Did you think you And so, in 1945, I suggested to the public Treblinka and escape. Their troubles con- memorable as when Weinstein first wrote could detect the murderers? prosecutor in Münster — who had trained tinued because now they were at the about it in the mid-1940s in a DP camp. Schücking-Homeyer: Yes, at least I me in 1943 and was the senior public mercy both of roving German soldiers and His words retain their power to reach thought so at the time. If you are a master prosecutor by then — that he should take of their fellow Poles, who sold water to the other human souls. legal steps to prevent evidence from being destroyed. After all, at the time, the facts were SISTERS SURVIVED HOLOCAUST all still available, includ- ing information about DEATH CAMPS which units … were sta- (Continued from page 6) gas-chambers, the sweeping up of human tioned there. But he camps was still unheard of for them. ash and the dumping of human waste. responded that we “Every morning, you had roll call. Roll While sharing their own strengths — should leave it up to the call is ... outside, sometimes in the nude,” familiarity with a regimented life from their English. I suppose he Sessler said. “Because they want to see orphanage upbringing, youth, knowledge was too cowardly. Three how thin you are. If you were too thin, you of German, relative ignorance of what was or four weeks later, I couldn’t work, you were gassed. Well, we going on around them — they said others informed the Jewish didn’t at that time know you were gassed. were not so lucky. The girls saw bodies community in Dortmund, We figured you went to a hospital, they strewn in front of an electrified fence fol- where I was living at the got you better.” lowing apparent suicides. time, but no one there A street in Zwiahel. But soon, the girls realized the terrible- espite the gravity of their story, the was interested, either. smelling chimney smoke, similar to the women manage to break much of it over life and death, you behave and move SPIEGEL: And later? D odor of chicken fat burning, meant people up with moments of levity, speaking of liv- differently than other people do. You give Schücking-Homeyer: It was impossi- off the impression that you are the one ble to talk about it openly in the court sys- were dying. ing their “golden years” out together as a making all the decisions. tem with any colleagues who had been in essler speaks annually with Benicia pair for the past two decades, following SPIEGEL: Your letters contain many the East. Former Nazis were everywhere. Smiddle school students about hate, their respective husbands’ deaths, and passages like “But the Jews, who ran It wasn’t until a few years before I retired touching on some of her experiences dur- anecdotes of friendly strangers at the gro- most of the shops, are all dead” or “There that the subject of Zwiahel came up again. ing World War II, But the sisters rarely cery store. aren’t any more Jews here in Zwiahel.” In 1974, I was a judge at a social welfare speak in detail about the three years they They briefly, as well, tell of the seeming You write nothing about killing or murder. court in Detmold. I was handed a retire- spent in work and concentration camps insanity of how Leaver was nursed Were you afraid you might be censored? ment pension insurance case that had to between 1942 and 1945. through a grave battle with typhus while in Schücking-Homeyer: Of course. You do with an ethnic German who wanted Leaver, in particular, avoids extensive the concentration camp, while healthy know, I was an anxious girl. I wrote to my credit for his service in 1941 with the story-telling, “though she’s gotten better,” people were killed. The Red Cross would mother — who was completely different German police in Zwiahel. He had been her sister said. check in on the hospitals, they later from me — that she wouldn’t have lasted part of the so-called Ukrainian protective Sessler tells their story now with an learned, and those nursed back to health there a day. And I’m sure she would’ve team, which I assumed had taken part in easy flow, though there was a time when were for show. found a way to get away from there. By the so-called resettlements. I wrote to him she told nearly no one, not even her hus- The women said they ended their tra- staying there, you were basically support- that I knew exactly what had happened in band of 13 years, who is now deceased. vails in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and survived ing the system. But I didn’t know what rea- Zwiahel in October 1941 and that it would Speaking recently with a reporter and because they were near death in a hospi- son I could give for wanting to leave, and be better for him to file a challenge two others, the women shared stories of tal. I needed a permit to go back to Germany. against my taking the case on the grounds whips with metal pieces at their tips, and Following the camp’s liberation, they SPIEGEL: Could you talk about these that I was biased. He did so right away. once-a-day bread and soup rationing. were sent from Russia back to Holland, things with the other nurses? My substitute gave him the credit, as the They revealed faded blue numbers tat- but the two left soon after for England. Schücking-Homeyer: No, we didn’t law unfortunately required. tooed down their arms, A-13918 and A- Sessler then traveled to America, while discuss such things. SPIEGEL: You didn’t report the man to 13919. her sister stayed in England and married SPIEGEL: But did everyone know what the police? They speak of their bouts with typhus, a pub and restaurant owner. Sessler mar- was going on? Schücking-Homeyer: No, he was just a tuberculosis, mouth and leg sores and ried a Californian, became stepmother to Schücking-Homeyer: I can’t say for little cog in the wheel. But then I contacted scarcity of clothing while picking through two sons, and had a daughter. sure whether soldiers at the front knew. the central office in Ludwigsburg to find out clothes of the dead. “You see, I always believed in the God,” But everyone behind the lines — and whether it had investigated the murders in At one point, a small group from Lublin Sessler said of her survival. “I always told especially those who’d been there for a Zwiahel yet. Then, when I testified, I told that included the sisters was sent to a my sister, ‘We’ll get out.’ while — knew about it. them everything I knew. Still, as a witness, I marmalade factory, and they were able to “I still believe in God. She doesn’t. My SPIEGEL: What makes you so sure? could only testify against Sergeant Frank. eat carrot scraps for nourishment. sister does not believe. She could not Schücking-Homeyer: Because, in con- But he couldn’t be located. They briefly described “sadistic” death understand that a God could let that hap- versation, it was always assumed that Interview conducted by Martin Doerry marches, ceremonial hangings, Nazi sol- pen. Six million Jews were killed — for everyone knew. I haven’t told you yet, but and Klaus Wiegrefe, Spiegel. diers’ constant screaming, showers-turned- what reason?” March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 CHILDREN OF NAZI MONSTERS SPEAK HOLOCAUST’S HORRORS (Continued from page 7) hend the crimes of the man she once loved. he large area where we visited next “And another hard part for Hitler’s Monika was 11 when Ruth told her: LEONARD GRAY, THE NEWS-STAR T held several more barracks. A Children is that they thought they were the “You are like your father and you will wagon, loaded with dead bodies, was oday, there is a persistent claim that descendants of heroes. And they were die like him.” headed for one of them, and our guide the Holocaust didn’t actually hap- not. We are the descendants of criminals She says: “I think he was a sadist who T explained that the medics had set up pen. Well, it really did happen. It was real. and mass murderers.” took pleasure in killing. Jews were the three barracks: one for dead bodies, one I saw it. onika Hertwig finds that she cannot true heroes and I feel nothing but con- for people so near death nothing could be I was a liaison-observation pilot in World accept anything about her own tempt for those who still idolize the done to save them, and the third for those M War II, flying off a chain-link runway in a father. As commandant of the Auschwitz Nazis, those cowardly, rabid dogs.” whose lives they were still trying to save. pear orchard in Holland when the Allied sub-camp of Plaszow, he was hanged in Then we passed through a crematorium Forces crossed the Rhine River and cap- 1946 for the murders of tens of thousands area where there was a row of large tured the major Luftwaffe air base in of people, 500 of them by his own hands. ovens, like huge country mail boxes, Weisbaden, Germany. We established our She says: “He liked to shoot women where the bodies were burned. We saw flight headquarters there for the remain- with babies in their arms from the bal- some of them held partially burned human der of the war. cony of his house, to see if one bullet remains, and between each of the ovens About the third week in April 1945, I was could kill two. was a pile of human ashes and bits of assigned the mission of flying the medical “How far do you separate the murderer bones 3- or 4-feet high. inspecting officer to the Buchenwald con- from the father? How much of the murder- After that, we came to the public hanging centration camp near Weimar, Germany. er is in me? These things torment me. site, where our guide had been strung up. He This, only a matter of days after the camp led us on to another building used for pickling was liberated by U.S. troops. What we and tanning of human skin they had cut from saw there was absolutely horrible. prisoners who had interesting tattoos. Since I had flown the medical officer Hitler and Goering’s baby Edda. there to report on what we found, we took atrin Himmler, 43, the great-niece of many photographs for evidence. When K Heinrich Himmler – the SS chief we entered the first barrack we were hit by second only to Hitler and in charge of the a terrible odor. On each side of the room extermination program – married an were two rows of sleeping places, each Israeli Jew and ponders how “one day, I about 3 feet wide and high. Each of them will tell the story to my son about his was filled with mostly naked men. great-great-uncle Heinrich.” In the middle of the room was a She says: “I don’t believe I inherited his garbage-style container (50 gallons or so) ‘badness.’ But I live with his name. When filled with thin “dishwater-looking” soup for I was 11 the TV series Holocaust was their food. Our guide was a small shown in Germany. I sat at my desk crying humped-backed Jewish prisoner. He and crying because the name Himmler explained his physical condition as being was repeated again and again. a broken shoulder, caused by his being Here is a picture taken of camp prisoners dur- Katrin Himmler, the great-niece of Heinrich “I realize he was the worst mass mur- hung from the public hanging rack for pun- ing the time of liberation at Buchenwald. Himmler, wept as his crimes were shown on derer of modern times. But I am not ishment for being too long in the toilet. He television. responsible.” was hung by his thumbs with his hands The most shocking thing we saw was a “I always remember meeting a man Other children of once-powerful Nazis tied behind his back, resulting in a broken lamp shade made of those tanned human years ago, before I knew what my father speak on the program – set for world- shoulder. skins, as a special gift for Hitler’s woman, did. It was 1958. wide release when it is completed in the Passing through the building, I saw a Eva Braun. “He was washing dishes in a cafe and summer. prisoner come out of his bunk, crawling on I kept the photos of those things we saw, rolled up his sleeves and I saw the number They include archaeology professor his hands and knees directly at me. but after several years of seeing them in tattooed on his arm. He had been in a camp. Ricardo Eichmann, 55, who talks about Concerned, I asked our guide, “What our photo album I was so repulsed by the “He said he had been in Krakow. ‘Oh my his dad – “desk murderer” Adolf does he want, and why is he doing this?” sights and memories that I threw them all father ran a camp there,’ I said. Eichmann, who organized the transport He spoke to the man and then explained in the trash. “He froze. He said, ‘Your father was of the six million Jews who died in the to me, “He wants to touch your feet to However, if you wish to see those pho- Amon Goeth?’ I smiled back at him, Holocaust to the extermination centers. thank you because you saved their lives.” tos, go to your Internet and search for thrilled that I might find someone who Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped by Even with this humbling and frightening Buchenwald concentration camp. They could tell me things about my father. Israeli agents in Buenos Aires and experience, I still was not prepared for are all there. “He pointed to the door of the cafe and flown to Israel, where he was hanged what we found when we went out the back Yes, the Holocaust was real. told me never to come back.” for his crimes in 1962. door. Immediately on our left was a stack Buchenwald was real, and you can still In the film she meets a Jewish man who Ricardo once said: “I tend to compare of naked human bodies about waist high. visit the place where an estimated 56,000 suffered under her father. His testimony our family history to that of a multi- My immediate reaction was anger, prisoners were killed before U.S. troops about Goeth’s daily cruelties is heart- stage rocket. My father was the part because I thought they were wax dum- freed the thousands facing those same breaking and Monika weeps. that was dropped to the sea shortly mies put there to impress our medical horrors. I know, because I was there. Her mother Ruth – Goeth’s mistress - com- after take-off, while we continue flying. I inspector. But they were real. Many had I will never forget what happened there. mitted suicide in 1983, unable to compre- am glad I do not have to live with him.” their eyes and mouths open. I hope America never will forget, either.

DON’T FALL FOR ANTI-SEMITES’ NEWEST TACTIC — HISTORY WRIT SMALL TRIVIALIZING THE HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 4) streets, where Nazi thugs roamed. e aware that the newest tactic true. But what they ignore and what is are actually two extant Benheim Torahs. Benheim men sent to Dachau all returned Bemployed by anti-Semites is not also undeniably true, is that no other such And she hears stories that confirm that in March 1939 – thin, but alive. Most sent denying the Holocaust but rather trivializ- orgy of murder was performed by as cal- brave acts by non-Jews weren’t confined to to concentration camps later did not ing it. culating, rational, industrial, efficient and her father’s village. One Benheim survivor, return. Of the 89 Benheimers who were Holocaust deniers are easy to refute, heartless manner as was that of the 6 mil- a woman named Ilse Loew, tells Schwartz deported in 1940-41, 87 were murdered. thanks to a more than abundant body of lion victims of the Jewish Holocaust. about a woman from Holland she met Those who read widely in the crowded evidence. Evidence of this assertion is readily recently who had hidden Jews during the field of Holocaust studies will find some The Holocaust trivializers are different. available. Trains carrying Jews to the war: “One day someone knocked on her facets of this book familiar. Like Daniel They do not quibble about numbers. death camps had priority over even troop door – it was either the Dutch police or a Mendelsohn, author of The Lost: A Search Nazi – and demanded she hand over the for Six of Six Million (2006), Schwartz Instead, they say, “Let’s accept that 6 mil- movements. Victims were classified and Jews. She offered him a cup of coffee and goes to elderly neighbors and relatives, lion Jews were killed. Big deal, consider tattooed by number, and their bodies while he drank, she got a gun and killed and finally travels thousands of miles, to that somewhere between 40 and 50 mil- stripped of recyclable resources such as him.” An undertaker friend stowed the body hear the stories she was “allergic to” as a lion people were killed during World War eyeglasses, gold teeth, hair and more. in a coffin with another corpse. kid. These stories may be less reliable II, most of these civilian men, women and Evaluations were held to determine the But good neighbors are not the whole than historical data, she admits, but “I children.” least expensive mode of murder. It was story, either. There were many seemingly liked how one person’s memory bumped In late September in New York, Hugo decided that bullets could be saved and nice local ladies who moved into vacant another, muddying the moral waters of Chavez added to this the murderous con- the bother of digging graves averted if the Jewish homes and live there still, tending easy judgment.” This book of moments flicts associated with the European settle- Jews were murdered en masse by gas flowers. Gradually, Schwartz pieces and little stories surprises and horrifies, ment of the New World and the decima- and subsequently burned to ash. together the story of who let whom hide soothes and disturbs. But it is, above all, a tion of Native Americans. It was the coldest, cruelest, most whom. The pharmacist who initially shel- beautiful read by a charming writer. And it These and other episodes of mass immoral, least humane mass murder of tered Loew and her future husband during reminds us that behind every story is the killings throughout history are undeniably that magnitude in history. Kristallnacht soon sent them out into the flawed human being who told it. International Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE U.S. POST 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 NEW YORK, N.Y. Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org PERMIT NO. 9313 ** ** Editor International Society Eli Zborowski, (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, for Yad EDITORIAL BOARD New York, NYNew York, 10110 *Published Bimonthly by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski Mandell William Sam Halpern Isidore Karten Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet March/April 2010 - Adar/Nissan 5770 Adar/Nissan 2010 - March/April to Knesset . The Israel Marriage Portrait n order to host the exhibition, the n order to host the Israel Museum pushed the "The law is important because there "The law is important Furthermore, Scher said the law is a "The law only says that survivors can't "In addition, we had to publish the works I tors eventually came to support the law, for a variety of reasons. was no way France was going to agree to let us host this exhibition here," said Dena the Israel Museum Foreign Press Scher, "People began to realize that if we Officer. the law we are never going to don't pass see these paintings." positive one that not only moves to protect of Holocaust survivors, but also the rights poten- provides a mechanism to facilitate tial claims. lay claim to the art here in Israel. But it in also stipulates that the lending country, this case France, must have a functioning body to adjudicate survivor claims. France once does – there is a tribunal that meets or twice a year to listen to claims. at least one month before the exhibition, to allow the public to survey the works and All the works in file claims if they had any. this show were put on the Justice Ministry website on December 28 and stayed there for a month. No claims were made, for ship- and the material was prepared she said. ment at the end of January," pass the Immunity from Seizure Law, pre- from Seizure Law, the Immunity pass venting survivors or heirs from claiming The controver- ownership of the property. sial bill became law in 2007, and museum that many of the law's detrac- say officials Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, of Charlotte von Rothschild Museum. loan by Austria's Leopold Foundation to Foundation Austria's Leopold loan by Art of Modern Museum York the New Robert Attorney General caused the return of sev- Morgenthau to prevent artist by early 20th century eral paintings of claims Austria because Egon Schiele to the show in exhibits by two families that murdered by belonged to their relatives of Court York The New the Nazis. authori- highest legal Appeals, the state's against the plain- eventually decided ty, for but the case set a precedent tiffs, future claims. Germany. . Réunion des Musé. Frankfurt, MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE The Rabbi n addition to providing a non-tradition- al history of the Holocaust period in I Museum officials consider the "second" consider Museum officials The concern was not unfounded: In the Chanukah lamp from Chanukah lamp from Marc Chagall, Marc primary exhibition. With more than 50 primary exhibition. With more than paintings, Jewish ceremonial objects, all stolen from Jewish books and prints, Third Reich, the families throughout the stunning in their simplicity. are artifacts Museum Director James Snyder said the particularly many of the objects, Judaica, would not be considered "valu- able" in the international art marketplace, but nonetheless they are an important record of the history of European Jewry. exhibition, entitled "Orphaned Art: Looted entitled "Orphaned exhibition, to be secondary Art from the Holocuast," but in to the French exhibit, in importance descriptive of every- many ways it is more Europe than the day Jewish life in prewar blocks along the way from French author- ities and culture institutions such as the Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR), the current custodian of many of the French works, who were concerned about possible restitution claims by Holocaust survivors in Israel. mid-1990s a legal battle surrounding a France, the exhibit highlights one of the France, the exhibit highlights for survivors of the subjects most painful Museum tragedy: restitution and poverty. to bring the exhibit to sources say efforts Jerusalem have been under way for more than a decade, but have hit stumbling The Israel Museum. , France. Alsace

AMERICAN SOCIETYANNUAL VASHEM YAD FOR SPRING LUNCHEON

he Israel Museum opened two new opened two he Israel Museum

exhibitions of Holocaust-era art in of Holocaust-era exhibitions STOLEN HOLOCAUST ART RETURNED ART HOLOCAUST STOLEN We look forward to greeting you on May 27th. This year’s Annual Spring Luncheon will be held on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at the This year’s Annual Spring Luncheon will be held on T As with many things Nazi-related, the In a gallery featuring many priceless Israel Museum officials stress that while Israel Museum officials The exhibit "Looking for Owners: The exhibit "Looking Grand Hyatt New York, 109 East 42nd Street. We are proud to announce that this Grand Hyatt New York, 109 East 42nd Street. We Gomberg, an active member year’s honorees are Doris Gross, a survivor, and Yonina of survivors. As we con- of our Young Leadership Associates and the granddaughter transmitted to the world, and to tinue to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are this year’s luncheon is Continuity. prevent history from repeating itself, the theme of A formal invitation will be arriving shortly. Torah crown from from crown Torah Page 16 Page numbers are astounding. From April 1941 numbers are astounding. From to July 1944, 138 railcars were packed with 4,174 cases of stolen artwork and shipped to Germany – an average of more than three per month. In all, more than during this were taken 22,000 objects period, some of the nearly 60,000 pieces of art looted during the war. masterpieces, one of the most sobering features of the exhibition is a series of eight photographs documenting the theft There are images of hun- of French art. boxed up and dreds of classic paintings, awaiting shipment to Germany; one Train shows the walls of the Paris Central laden with fine art, and another Station shows a similar view of the private homes And of course, of some Nazi higher-ups. would no exhibition on Holocaust-era theft be complete without images of stolen scrolls and other Judaica. Torah returned to France, but restoring the mate- owners proved impossible rial to the rightful because many or most of the original own- ers were killed, both in concentration camps and as a direct result of the war. most of the art was stolen from Jewish col- lectors and private homes, some of the from French non-Jews works were taken in and culture institutions. Many were sold for "legitimate" commercial transactions prices far below market value or in forced many pieces were sales. Following the war, Custody, Research and Restitution of Art and Restitution of Research Custody, II" War in France during World Stolen of the by some includes 58 paintings European art, repre- biggest names in years and a wide senting hundreds of and topics. styles variety of painting works by Paintings include non-Jewish as Paul Cézanne and such artists Édouard Manet, as well as Jewish as Marc Chagall, Max such painters Liebermann and others. February, giving light to nearly 100 paint- giving light February, ceremonial artifacts ings and Jewish during the Second stolen by Nazi looters War. World