Yad VaJerusalemhem Volume 87, October 2018

“Generation to Generation” International Mission 2018 (pp. 4-5)

“It Came from Within” New Online Exhibition Marking 80 Years since Kristallnacht (pp. 10-11) Yad VaJerusalemhem Contents A people who in its Volume 87, Tamuz 5779, October 2018 “Tears of Anguished Pride” ■ 2-3 darkest of hours Secret Concert at the Kovno Ghetto could raise its eyes Published by: Revived at Yad Vashem “Generation to Generation" ■ 4-5 to culture could International Mission 2018 never be destroyed Education ■ 6-8

■ Holocaust Education in a World without Survivors ■ 6-7 Chairman of the Council: Rabbi Israel Meir Lau “Time, Place and Relevance” ■ 7 Vice Chairmen of the Council: ■ On 24 July 1943, a concert was held in Tenth International Conference Dr. Yitzhak Arad secret in the Kovno ghetto, marking the Dr. Moshe Kantor on Holocaust Education anniversaries of the deaths of the visionary Chairman of the Directorate: Avner Shalev Graduate Spotlight ■ 8 of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and the Director General: Dorit Novak Rachel Urowitz, Canada celebrated Hebrew and Yiddish poet Chaim Head of the International Institute for Holocaust New in E-Learning ■ 8 Nahman Bialik. Seventy-five years later almost Research and Incumbent, John Najmann Chair Short Animated Films of Key Historical Concepts for Holocaust Studies: Prof. Dan Michman to the day, this concert was revived in its entirety Chief Historian: Prof. Dina Porat Birthday Gifts from the Shoah ■ 9 at Yad Vashem on the Mount of Remembrance Academic Advisor: New Artifacts Displayed in Visitors Center in Jerusalem. Prof. Yehuda Bauer New Online Exhibition: After its establishment in August 1941, Members of the Yad Vashem Directorate: “It Came from Within” ■ 10-11 the leadership of the Kovno ghetto sought to Shmuel Aboav, Yossi Ahimeir, Daniel Atar, Marking 80 Years since Kristallnacht hearten those who had survived the horrific Matityahu Drobles, Abraham Duvdevani, aktionen by promoting Jewish educational and Erez Eshel, Prof. Boleslaw (Bolek) Goldman, Research ■ 12-15 Vera H. Golovensky, Moshe Ha-Elion, cultural life. In 1942, a group of some of the Adv. Shlomit Kasirer, Yehiel Leket, International Research Workshops ■ 12 most talented musicians in Lithuania turned Baruch Shub, Dalit Stauber, Dr. Zehava Tanne, Familiarity and Murder to the ghetto leadership with the request to Adv. Shoshana Weinshall, Dudi Zilbershlag Revealing Personal Voices ■ 13 hold concerts of Jewish and classical music. THE MAGAZINE Ego-Documents in the Soviet Sphere After deliberation over the appropriateness of during the Holocaust conducting such events in the shadow of so Editor-in-Chief: Iris Rosenberg Biography of an Invisible Survivor ■ 14-15 much suffering and death, the decision was Managing Editor: Leah Goldstein ■ 15 made to ask the Germans for permission. This Editorial Board: “A Sense of Relief” Simmy Allen was granted – on the grounds that it would Podium ■ 16 Deborah Berman “raise the spirit” of the slave laborers, and on Marisa Fine Whitewashing History the proviso that the first performance would be Dana Porath ■ 17 for the German civilian administration. Lilach Tamir-Itach Engraved on a Silver Platter Dana Weiler-Polak Gathering the Fragments ■ 18-19 Susan Weisberg Mirroring Reality Editorial Coordinator: Miri Rabinovich Nissim Language Editor: Leah Goldstein Piecing Together the Puzzle ■ 19 Proofreader: Ezra Olman How Shoah Changed Holocaust Translated by: James Joseph Mclntosh Remembrance ■ 20-21 Assisted by: Alexander Avram, Claude Lanzmann (1925-2018) Shaya Ben Yehuda, Ayala Peretz, News ■ 21-25 Amanda Smulowitz, Martin Sykes-Haas Photography: Yossi Ben-David, Isaac Harari Friends Worldwide ■ 26-31 Production: Ahva Printing Press Company Ltd. The International Institute for Holocaust Design: Stephanie & Ruti Design Research: Publications ■ 32

This magazine was published with the ■ Kovno, Lithuania. The ghetto orchestra assistance of The Azrieli Group.

ISSN 0793-7199 The former Slobodka yeshiva was chosen to house the orchestra performances, and in order to ©Articles appearing in this issue may be reprinted with proper acknowledgement. protect the orchestra musicians from deportation and forced labor, they were formally inducted as Yad Vashem’s activities are supported by police officers. In 1947, the Fun Letstn Khurbn the Ministry of Education (The Final Destruction) journal described the effect of the orchestra’s performances – over and The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. 80 in one year – as follows: “Tears fell from ■ On the cover: Holocaust survivor Felice the eyes of the audience members, as well as Zimmern Stokes with Allyson Setton, member from the musicians, as the first chords pierced of the Young Leadership Associates of the American Society for Yad Vashem, during the the silence of the hall. However, these were 2018 International Mission (see pp. 4-5) not tears of sadness; rather, they were tears of 2 “Tears of Anguished Pride” Secret Concert at the Kovno Ghetto Revived at Yad Vashem

Leah Goldstein

■ “A Concert Where Everything is Blue (Tchelet)" held at Yad Vashem 75 years after it was performed in secret in the Kovno ghetto | Aranen Productions: Evyatar Nissan

joy and anguished pride. A people who in its In 1942, a group of some concert took place at Yad Vashem’s Jewish darkest of hours could raise its eyes to culture Fighters and Partisans Monument. The concert could never be destroyed.” Although moved to of the most talented was performed by the Raanana Symphonette the extreme by the performances, the attendees musicians in Lithuania Orchestra alongside the Ankor Choir – made respected the commonly agreed decision not up of teenage girls studying at the Jerusalem to applaud, in deference to the thousands in turned to the ghetto Academy of Music and Dance – and featured their community being murdered by the Nazis several popular Israeli singers, including Karolina, and their collaborators. leadership with the request Yonatan Razel and Ofir Ben Shitrit. In between In March 1944, during the horrific to hold concerts of Jewish the songs, the story of the secret concert was “Children’s Aktion,” members of the Kovno retold through testimonies, photographs, artifacts underground buried the ghetto’s archives, and classical music and videos from the Yad Vashem Collections. which were discovered two decades later. While At the concert, Yad Vashem Chairman conducting his doctoral research on the Kovno presented content that supported Zionism and Avner Shalev recalled “the enormous strength ghetto, Israeli scholar Rami Neuderfer spent a solidarity. Among the songs played were “Shir of human spirit of the people who cleaved to year-and-a-half perusing the archives. Amongst Ha’emek” (Song of the Valley), “Shir Hanamal” and believed in the Zionist endeavor and wished the 40,000 documents, including hundreds (Song of the Port), “Shir Ma’apilei Betar” (The to express it in every manner possible, under of pages about the Kovno ghetto orchestra, Betar Movement Song), and “Nomi Nomi,” a the harshest of circumstances… Today we show Neuderfer discovered a detailed program of children’s lullaby. Popular Eastern European our appreciation for that strength of spirit, of the secret Zionist performance lauded by the Jewish music was also played, as well as a string the ideas developed by the Zionist movement ghetto leadership as the “crowning glory” of of tunes perceived as Yemenite melodies. The in the hills of Kovno and elsewhere, which in the ghetto’s cultural endeavors, and which one concert concluded with the singing, in Yiddish, the wake of WWII and the Shoah proved to of its initiators had entitled “A Concert Where of “Hatikvah” (The Hope), the anthem of the be the only way to ensure the continuation of Everything is Blue (Tchelet).” future State of Israel. the Jewish people: that is, the State of Israel, The concert program brought together the Under the direction of Neuderfer, and in which came into existence 70 years ago. We various educational and cultural movements cooperation with Israel’s Ministry for Social will do our best to guard this most valuable of that operated in the ghetto at the time, and Equality, the authentic revival of the secret pledges, charged to us all.” 3 “Generation to Generation” International Mission 2018

■ Members of the 2018 International Mission in Austria

of Jewish Vienna from medieval times, through in Jerusalem, a celebratory dinner opening the various struggles they faced, the cultural the Israel leg of the mission began with Yad blossoming of the community and the birth of Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev welcoming the modern Zionism — which began in Vienna — up to esteemed group to Israel. Shalev suggested that and including the destruction of the community one of the most important challenges today is during the Holocaust. Participants had the ensuring that the Holocaust remains relevant privilege of meeting the Chancellor of Austria, to the younger generations. Shalev, who has H.E. Mr. Sebastian Kurz, as well as Austrian placed education at the forefront of Yad Vashem’s parliament members. Touring Vienna with Yad activities, acknowledged that educators need Vashem was a unique and moving experience, to cope with new environments of technology evoking powerful thoughts and feelings about and learning. The main objective, he said, is ■ Left to right: Dorit Novak, Adina Burian, Leonard Wilf, Holocaust survivors Leon Green and the Jewish people — its past, its present and its establishing “meaningful remembrance.” New Naftali Deutsch, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz future. The final day in Austria was spent at educational tools are being developed at Yad the Mauthausen–Gusen concentration camp Vashem that will take advantage of the newest ■ In 2014, marking its sixtieth year, Yad complex, where some of the Holocaust survivors technological advances, without losing the human Vashem held its first biennial International on the Mission were incarcerated during the war. context of events. Mission, with some thirty participants. In July “Visiting Mauthausen with survivors who were 2018, one hundred of Yad Vashem’s friends and imprisoned in the very camp we were standing supporters – aged 16 to 96 – took part in the in was an experience unlike anything else,” said third mission of its kind, including the Director Third Generation member Dana Rogozinski. General of Yad Vashem Dorit Novak, Chairman “The feeling was indescribable. It was then that of the American Society for Yad Vashem Leonard I realized it is up to me and my generation to (Lenny) Wilf and Holocaust survivors. share these first-hand encounters, what we saw Entitled “Generation to Generation," the and how we felt. It is up to us to carry on the Mission began in Austria with an opening gala legacy and stories of the Holocaust, and Yad dinner. “This is such a wonderful family gathering Vashem makes this possible.” ■ Young mission participants visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance and Heroism Educational of the First, Second and Third Generations," said From there, the group travelled to the city of Center at the IDF training campus in the Negev Dorit Novak at the dinner. “We really appreciate Linz for an inspiring meeting with the Austrian each and every one of you here. Tonight we look Friends of Yad Vashem. The Austrian leg of the The visit to Israel was packed with behind- at the past, at the rich Jewish life before the war; mission concluded with a festive 4th July dinner, the-scenes tours of the Mount of Remembrance we appreciate the path our parents paved for us marking the day that American forces liberated and other sites in Jerusalem and around the to bring us here to the present; and we pledge Mauthausen, and expressing gratitude for the country; meetings with Yad Vashem experts, ourselves to the future of the Jewish people, of Yad freedom most Jewish communities enjoy today. who introduced the group to different aspects Vashem, of the State of Israel, and of Holocaust As the plane approached Israel, Cantor Shai of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center’s remembrance around the globe.” Abramson, who accompanied the participants diverse activities; and ceremonies in honor of The group learned from Yad Vashem’s throughout the trip in Austria, gave a beautiful new Benefactors Steven Baral (US) and Jaime and professional guides and scholar-in-residence, Yad rendition of the Prayer for the State of Israel. Evelyn Ellstein (Mexico). Shabbat in Jerusalem Vashem Chief Historian Dina Porat, the history After a visit to the Kotel (the Wailing Wall) with Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council and 4 The Mission demonstrated the importance of the role of Yad Vashem and Holocaust remembrance in shaping and strengthening “Generation to Generation” Jewish identity and continuity Sari Granitza

Holocaust survivor Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Rabbi Benji Levin and Yair Stern, all of whom have strong ties to the history of the establishment of the State of Israel, was an important time for reflection and spiritually uplifting for so many members of the group. The group experienced modern-day Israel from different perspectives. At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance and Heroism Educational Center at the IDF training campus in the Negev, participants were welcomed by IDF Chief Educational Officer and Head of the Training Campus Colonel Avi Motolla. The group learned ■ Yad Vashem Archives Division Director and Fred Hillman Chair for Holocaust Documentation Dr. Haim Gertner how teams from Yad Vashem’s International shows Mission participants items from Yad Vashem's Collections in the new exhibition “They Say There Is a Land" School for Holocaust Studies develop and carry out educational programs at the training campus "I realized it is up to me President of the State of Israel, H.E. Mr. Reuven as an inherent part of IDF training activities. (Rubi) Rivlin, demonstrated the importance Dealing with the story of the Holocaust as a and my generation to of the role of Yad Vashem and Holocaust pivotal event in the history of the Jewish people, remembrance in shaping and strengthening alongside examining values such as Jewish share these first-hand Jewish identity and continuity. International identity, mutual responsibility, heroism and encounters… to carry on Relations Division Managing Director Shaya attachment to the Land of Israel, forms the basis Ben Yehuda called Yad Vashem “far more than for cooperative educational endeavors between the legacy and stories of a memorial to the events of the past century. Yad Vashem and the IDF. This partnership allows the Holocaust. Yad Vashem Its educational and commemorative activities, the next generations of soldiers and commanders programs, and courses ensure a greater to commit to passing on the torch of remembrance. makes this possible." commitment and understanding not only of The group then continued to Kibbutz Chatzerim, Dana Rogozinski the Jewish past, but also for the Jewish future where they heard about the struggles of developing and that of humanity as a whole.” agriculture and technology in a barren desert, The 2018 Mission deeply touched all of talking about Theodor Herzl’s vision, and now the participants, some of whom spontaneously here we have the opportunity to experience committed to generous pledges of support for Israel after seven decades of statehood. It really Yad Vashem’s vital work. Many remarked how brought us full circle. It was meaningful to see the connection between the Second and Third the seeds of Zionism in Austria and then to see Generations, as well as to Yad Vashem and to them fulfilled in the modern State of Israel.” Israel, had been considerably strengthened, The group opened its final day with a and how the Mission had inspired them to ceremony marking the commencement of the rededicate themselves to partnering with campaign for the new Shoah Heritage Campus, Yad Vashem in achieving its goals. “Our ■ Israel's President Reuven Rivlin was guest of which will provide greater storage, restoration family was involved with the American honor at the closing ceremony and display facilities for Yad Vashem’s invaluable Society from its inception,” said Lenny Wilf, and not giving up the dream of a blooming Collections. The participants also experienced “Their efforts showed me the way, and I Land of Israel until it became a thriving reality. workshops in Yad Vashem’s International School hope to show my children the same way — After learning about Israel’s army and booming for Holocaust Studies on different topics such as to support Yad Vashem and to support Israel.” technology, the group concluded the day with a using digital resources to educate on the Holocaust The Yad Vashem “Generation to Generation" 2018 cultural experience – a performance by Vertigo, and against antisemitism, in which they learned International Mission was generously sponsored about Yad Vashem’s MOOCs (Massive Online by Mark Moskowitz, Lenny and Beth Wilf, a unique dance troupe in the Kibbutz Netiv David and Sharon Halpern, Peter and Debra Till, HaLamed-Hey ecological village. Open Courses), educational films and survivor Shrub Kempner, Skip and Louise Levine, Avi Katz, testimonies, as well as “The Holocaust and Jewish Lili Stawski, the Krakowski Family, Benjamin “It was especially significant for Mission Warren, Barry and Marilyn Rubenstein, Adina and members to celebrate Israel’s accomplishments Identity” mobile teaching unit. Lawrence Burian, and Chick and Shelley Paradis. The Mission, which ended with a moving after leaving Vienna,” recalled Adina Burian, The author is Deputy Director of the International Chairperson of the Mission. “We stood in Austria and celebratory ceremony in the presence of the Relations Division. 5 Education Holocaust Education in a World without Survivors

■ I’m afraid that in the future the Holocaust will become just another historical episode; that’s why it’s important that the story be told from a personal perspective: Numbers alone have no meaning.” Holocaust survivor Rena Quint, volunteer guide in Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum One of the most common and urgent questions asked by many Holocaust educators and scholars is what form teaching about and commemorating the Shoah will take in the not-too-distant future, when the survivors are no longer with us. What will Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies look like? In which way will roots trips to Poland differ without an accompanying survivor? And most importantly, how will we be able to transfer the importance and relevance of ■ Holocaust survivor and artist Yehuda Bacon speaking at the 2018 International Educators Conference (see p.7) Holocaust memory to future generations without them hearing testimony from the eyewitnesses By recording and gathering why this is so, we have to first ask – what did the themselves? survivors contribute to Holocaust education that Yad Vashem has, of course, been preparing testimonies of survivors, is so important? The answer is that they gave itself for this eventuality since it came into us something beyond their testimony, more than existence in the 1950s. By recording and Yad Vashem has ensured simply relating their experiences in a particular gathering testimonies of survivors – first written that their personal stories period of time. What impacts their audiences is and audio, and in recent decades, video – the actually meeting with them, conducting a dialogue World Holocaust Remembrance Center has will last in perpetuity with them. When people meet a survivor, they ensured that the personal stories of those who connect to them and become committed to their witnessed the darkest of periods in human Why does hearing survivor testimony make memory, as well as to finding meanings from history will last in perpetuity. such an impact on an audience? the Holocaust.” For educators, however, the challenge “When people meet survivors, they suddenly Will we be able to recreate these feelings is perhaps even greater. As Shulamit Imber, realize that history is about human beings, and when meeting with survivors is no longer Pedagogical Director of Yad Vashem’s that helps them connect to the event,” says possible? International School for Holocaust Studies Dr. Mkayton. “Hearing about how they tried to and Fred Hillman Chair in Memory of Janusz “We must remember that meetings with eyewitness cope with persecution, what decisions they made Korczak, succinctly explains, “whereas historians to the events of the Holocaust have already begun within a world of ‘choiceless choices,’ and their talk about the past, educators must give the to dwindle,” says Pollak-Rosenberg. “For many tremendous efforts to rebuild their lives after the past a meaning.” years already, it has been increasingly rare to Holocaust – all these contribute to the realization For more than two decades, Imber and hear from a survivor who was an adult during the that we are first and foremost talking about a her colleagues at Yad Vashem’s International Shoah, and can talk about his or her experiences story of humanity.” School have recognized the immense value of as a parent, the head of a family, or his or her Pollak-Rosenberg concurs. “Hearing from survivor testimony, and are now considering professional life. Of course, we have preserved and meeting with survivors allows a personal the challenges educators will face when that the experiences of the survivors by creating connection, awakens empathy, and enables one generation has passed from the world. In an filmed testimonies that represent the broadest to internalize that the Shoah happened to people exclusive interview for Yad Vashem Jerusalem, and richest spheres of Jewish life before the war. (and was committed by people, too). These people Imber was joined by two other senior members of We also use the creative writings and artworks of were no different from ourselves. That is what staff at the International School – Director of the that generation – these can certainly contribute creates an emotional connection, and engenders Educational Guiding Department Masha Pollak- to an understanding of how real people felt and a curiosity to learn more.” Rosenberg, and Deputy Director of the European interpreted the events of the time.” “We won’t be able to replace the survivors,” Department Dr. Noa Mkayton – in assessing and “We have a range of testimonies at our Imber adds. “When they are no longer with us, tackling this thought-provoking topic: disposal, both at Yad Vashem and worldwide, it just won’t be the same. In order to understand that we can use in Holocaust education,” agrees 6 "Whereas historians talk about the past, educators must give “Time, Place and Relevance” the past a meaning." Tenth International Conference on Shulamit Imber Holocaust Education Leah Goldstein

Imber. “However, they do not all have the impact ■ “The Holocaust was unprecedented – but it enlightening other participants as to respective we are trying to recreate in the absence of the could be a precedent. And this is why you are challenges in engaging today’s students, and survivor. For example, if a survivor describes how all here – to do whatever we can, through the preserving memory in an age when there will she was starved in Auschwitz, that may not be tremendous power of education; to limit – if be no more Holocaust survivors left to tell their enough. But if she says, ‘Because I was starved not suppress – the kind of conditions which stories (see previous page). It was clear that in Auschwitz I am more aware of helping others allowed it to happen.” attempts to harness new technologies – such in need” – that is something any student, any After three meaningful days of discussion as presenting Holocaust survivors to audiences human being, can relate to. Teachers will have and debate on the current challenges of teaching via recorded holograms (such as the USC Shoah to work hard at choosing those testimonies that and learning about the Holocaust, these words, Foundation’s “Dimensions in Testimony” pilot) give meaning to the Holocaust.” delivered by Yad Vashem Academic Advisor or creating exemplary online learning tools Dr. Mkayton concurs but warns, there is “no Prof. Yehuda Bauer at Yad Vashem’s recent such as Yad Vashem and FutureLearn’s Massive miracle solution… we will have to continue using International Conference on Holocaust Education, Open Online Course (MOOC) on Antisemitism — recorded testimonies knowing that they will never resonated for all the participants. allowed the audience to appreciate the wealth replace a personal encounter with a survivor.” This was the tenth such conference to be of new resources aimed at preserving Holocaust Is there a danger, then, of losing the main held in a period spanning only two decades. Of history and teach against denial and distortion. educational messages when trying to find the 360 attendees from 50 countries (including more creative ways to engage young people Albania, China, Turkey and Venezuela), many with the story of the Holocaust? were familiar faces, while others arrived at the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem for the very “Meeting with survivors certainly evokes an first time. Whether veteran Holocaust educator emotional, almost visceral, connection with the or new to the field, the common denominator experience being described,” says Imber. “We have expressed by so many was genuine enthusiasm found that this experience can also be engendered for the issues at hand. “If I don’t come to Yad through the use of interdisciplinary materials, such Vashem’s conference, where will I hear from as art, music, literature and poetry. Nevertheless, others around the world about how they teach? everything must be placed in its historical context, and one must be careful not to trivialize the Whether veteran ■ The Conference provided unique networking opportunities for educators from around the globe event – for example, by using animation without Holocaust educator or new explaining the background – but utilizing these Holocaust survivors were a central tenet of the kinds of materials is an extremely effective way to the field, the common conference. To mark 70 years since the founding to engage with the students in order to generate of the State of Israel, Conference Director Ephraim the empathy and commitment that meetings with denominator expressed Kaye, Director of the International School’s Jewish survivors created.” by so many was genuine World and International Seminars Department, Pollak-Rosenberg points out that “every requested that survivors share memories of their generation asks their own questions and enthusiasm for the issues return to life in the fledgling State of Israel searches for new ideas. It is important that we at hand following the horrors of the Holocaust, and of how have testimonies that we can use for future they rebuilt their families, their communities and generations, but we must also understand the Where will I get sound ideas for how to present themselves. “Listening to Frieda [Kliger], I really post-survivor era could lead to a different kind the Holocaust in my classroom?” asked a teacher understood for the first time just how important of discussion, one that delves deeper into topics from Greece. “Gatherings like this, with so the Jewish State was – and still is – for those that would be difficult to discuss in the presence many experts, are vital to me,” declared another who had fled Europe following the Holocaust,” of survivors.” participant from South Africa. “We all need wrote a participant from the USA. “I cannot However, Imber is wary of going too far too support and we also need to feel encouraged, forget her face and her emotions while sharing soon. “There are some interesting developments to be part of something like this, with so many what living in Israel means to her, her pride and being undertaken today, but we must remember opportunities to be inspired.” her pain. Thank you so much for providing me there are no shortcuts in Holocaust education. The conference placed its central focus on with more food for thought.” We need to be open-minded in assessing new the various challenges of Holocaust education The Tenth International Educators Conference ideas, but always have in mind that what we are faced today around the world. Many presenters was supported by the Asper Foundation, Adelson trying to do is produce that feeling of empathy Family Foundation, Conference on Jewish from across the globe brought their own local Material Claims Against Germany, Genesis and commitment to Holocaust memory, which and cultural perspectives to the discussion, Philanthropy Group, Azrieli Foundation, and the survivors so naturally managed to create.” Gandel Philanthropy. education 7 Graduate Spotlight

Every year, over 300,000 students and educators from Israel and around the world attend hundreds of educational Rachel Urowitz activities, in a dozen languages, at the International School for Holocaust Studies. Featured here is one of the School’s Canada graduates, and what she has achieved since: Leah Goldstein

■ Rachel Urowitz, a veteran Jewish History take a full-year course Having recently completed the inaugural teacher at the Anne and Max Tanenbaum on the Holocaust and year of the course, Urowitz received “extremely Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto modern Israel, but positive feedback” from her students. Attending (TanenbaumCHAT), recently gave a guest beginning in September a Jewish day school, the senior students already lecture at Yad Vashem’s Tenth International 2017 the students were had a strong grasp of the history of the Holocaust Conference on Holocaust Education (see introduced to a new from units studied in earlier years of their Jewish p.7). Her session, entitled “Jewish Life in the course, “Holocaust education. This enabled them to offer their own Aftermath of the Holocaust: Challenges in Jewish in Film." In this suggestions for themes to discuss in the classroom Education,” addressed how the Toronto Jewish course, students learn and films to watch during the course of the year, ■ Graduate Rachel community embraces and encourages Holocaust Urowitz not only about film and gave them confidence to engage in meaningful education, and described a new full-year course documentation as a discussions. Urowitz also discussed with them called ‘Holocaust in Film’ offered to 12th-grade Nazi political tool, but also about the use of why some films about the Holocaust were more students at TanenbaumCHAT. documentary and fictional films in portraying popular, enriching the class and the students’ Urowitz attended a Yad Vashem seminar for the Holocaust – from the rise of the Nazi party interest in the human stories of the Holocaust. educators in Jewish day schools in the summer through liberation. Participants are taught to Some of the students’ suggestions were shared of 2017. The intensive 12-day course brought critique these films’ portrayals of the Holocaust with other educators at the high school, and this together teachers from Jewish day schools to and to question how the movies depict both the allowed for lively discussions in the teachers’ study, discuss and share experiences about Jewish victims and the German perpetrators. staffroom about the most relevant materials to teaching the Holocaust to their students. “The “After returning from the summer seminar at use in the classroom. opportunity to share ideas with fellow educators the International School for Holocaust Studies “TanenbaumCHAT’s commitment to offering and to learn with experts about new approaches last year, I knew that I would be ready to tackle students the opportunity not only to study, in to Holocaust education was a unique experience,” this new course with my students,” explains depth, about the history of the Holocaust, but recalls Urowitz. “I was especially inspired by the Urowitz. “The Yad Vashem educators gave me also to explore the portrayal of the Holocaust sessions on how to make Holocaust education the confidence to weave survivor testimonies in film has allowed our students to engage in relevant in the twenty-first century, and how to along with photography, poetry and artwork Holocaust education in a multifaceted and incorporate themes of art and poetry, as well as into the new film course in order to enrich the meaningful way,” concludes Urowitz. “The photography and film, into my history lessons.” curriculum and give the students another lens introduction of the ‘Holocaust in Film’ course When Urowitz returned to Toronto, she set through which to view the Holocaust. This has helped our students wrestle more deeply about immediately implementing what she had provided me with an even greater opportunity with the challenging issues surrounding the learned at Yad Vashem into her high-school to focus on the human stories in the Holocaust Holocaust, and find the light, through the history classes. TanenbaumCHAT senior-level and to discuss and question moral and ethical human stories of choices and hope, within the students always had the unique opportunity to issues with my students.” darkness of the Shoah.” New in E-Learning: Short Animated Films of Key Holocaust Concepts Liraz Lachmanovich

■ In recent years, the International School for such as Race Doctrine, the Nuremberg Laws, Holocaust Studies has been using advanced the Jewish Badge, and the Nazi Camps. The technology to develop online educational films are no more than two minutes long, but tools for teachers and students alike. Recently, are still extensive enough to give the students ten short animated films have been produced, the basic information they need. Featuring which aim to clarify key historical concepts period images and archival video excerpts that regarding the Holocaust, using language and create a multimedia educational experience for images that students will find informative, the users, the films are an invaluable tool for relevant and interesting. In keeping with Yad teachers, tutors and students, tens of thousands Vashem’s educational philosophy, these films The films, which appear on the International of whom have viewed them to date. form part of broader learning environments that School’s section of Yad Vashem’s website as The author is the Head of the Projects Section in provide the students with the expansive historical well as on Yad Vashem’s YouTube channels the e-Learning Department, International School for Holocaust Studies. background to which the concepts refer. in Hebrew and in English, introduce concepts 8 education Birthday Gifts from the Shoah New Artifacts Displayed in Visitors Center

Noa Or

■ During the Holocaust, Rosica’s birthday, he carved her a small gift while the world was collapsing, from wood – a Volkswagen-style car. On the birthdays served as a point in time that underside of the car, he wrote a dedication: could be singled out. Despite the terrible “To my mother for her birthday, 24 July 1943.” difficulties of the period, a birthday was a day to mark love and friendship, values from a previous world, and hopes for a better future. When it was difficult to meet even the most basic human requirements, giving a gift to a beloved often meant forfeiting a valuable item necessary for existence, such as one’s meager daily portion of food. For a few moments, fundamental needs were pushed aside in order to support emotional needs, that of the receiver as well as of the giver. Yad Vashem’s Artifacts Collection contains a range of items given as birthday presents to somebody special during the Holocaust. The display case in the Visitors Center, which Pendant Made of Bread features rotating exhibits of personal items ■ Hana Miko (née Frankl) was sent to work in from the Holocaust era, now houses four of an ammunitions factory in Oederan, Germany. these unique items: For her twenty-first birthday in March 1945, Hana received a pendant made in secret from Decorated Box received in the Oskar a piece of bread by one of the female prisoners Schindler Factory of the camp. Two of her friends paid for the Pin from a Labor Camp in Poland gift in exchange for their own portions of ■ ■ Ruth Zacks (née Kohn), born in Krakow, was Julia Babiaczki (née Salat) was separated bread. “When I received the pendant, I was sent to the Plaszow concentration camp. Ruth from her family in the Czestochowa ghetto and was included in the list of workers sent to Oskar sent to a labor camp. For her twentieth birthday, Schindler’s factory in Brünnlitz, Czechoslovakia. Despite the terrible which fell in June 1944 while she was in the “We pretended to work for the war effort… we Hasag Pelzery labor camp in Czestochowa, her didn’t actually work but we were in a place of difficulties of the period, friends decided to delight her with a birthday work as if we were working. Schindler would a birthday was a day to gift – a pin made of colored electrical wires. come from time to time, and walk amongst us,” related Ruth in her testimony, “he was mark love and friendship, a very handsome and impressive man.” In values from a previous Brünnlitz, for her nineteenth birthday, which fell in February 1945, Ruth received a gift of world, and hopes for a three decorated wooden boxes. better future

overwhelmed,” said Hana in her testimony. “More [valuable] than the actual item, was the knowledge that my friends had traded it for their precious portions of bread.”

Wooden Car Carved by a Son for His Mother ■ The Dankner family from Czernowitz, The author is a Research Assistant in the Artifacts Bukovina, was deported to Transnistria. Department, Museums Division. Nineteen-year-old Armand was recruited to forced labor, paving roads. For his mother collections 9 New Online Exhibition “It Came from Within” Marking 80 Years since Kristallnacht

■ Photograph from the album documenting the destruction of a synagogue in Vienna during Kristallnacht ■ Holocaust survivor Lore Stern Mayerfeld with her doll Inge dressed in the pajamas Lore wore the night of the Kristallnacht pogrom

■ On the evening of 9 November 1938, SA films, testimony excerpts, artifacts and works of men burst into the home of the Zack family in art from Yad Vashem’s Collections, the exhibition Neidenburg in Eastern Prussia, Germany. The depicts the brutal blow suffered by the Jews father of the family, Aron, who was standing during Kristallnacht: the physical violence, the at the entrance of the house, was stabbed in humiliation, the property damage, the synagogue the stomach, and jumped out of the window. desecration and destruction, and the horrifying His wife Minna heard the tumult, came to sight of holy books and Torah scrolls in flames. the door and was stabbed in the neck. Minna “That was the heart of the problem of hemorrhaged heavily, and did not survive the German Jewry: It was so much a part of German night. That same night, the city’s synagogue society that the Nazi blow hit it from within. was demolished. Until 1938, my parents never thought of leaving After recuperating, Aron managed to flee Germany.” So testified Holocaust survivor Germany together with his five children. On and historian Prof. Zvi Bacharach z”l, when 12 May 1939, they left Hamburg on a ship describing his experiences as a child during bound for Argentina. In one of the pages of the the Kristallnacht pogrom in Hanau, Germany. passport Aron used to flee Germany, Minna’s During the pogrom, 91 Jews were murdered, record is deleted with the handwritten note: more than 1,400 synagogues across Germany This exhibition brings the personal account of “Aron Zack’s wife died on 10 November 1938.” and Austria were torched, and Jewish-owned what happened that night – a story that dry The story of Minna Zack is highlighted in shops and businesses were plundered and statistics cannot possibly relay in full. Some a new online exhibition recently uploaded to destroyed. In addition, the Jews were forced to of the stories displayed here are being told for the Yad Vashem website marking 80 years since pay “compensation” for the damage that had the first time online. the Kristallnacht pogrom. Using photographs, been caused and approximately 30,000 Jews A few days after that terrible night, Aharon- documents, personal letters, Pages of Testimony, were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Arnold Rosenfeld from Vienna wrote to his son 10 Yad Vashem online Using items from Yad Vashem's Collections, the exhibition depicts the brutal blow suffered by the Jews during Kristallnacht: the physical violence, the humiliation, the property damage, and the horrifying sight of holy books and Torah scrolls in flames Yona Kobo

■ Lore Stern as a young girl holding Inge ■ Passport belonging to Aron and Minna Zack of Neidenburg, Germany. Mina was murdered during Kristallnacht | Yad Vashem Archives

Haim (Robert) in Haifa: “The blessed house on her voyage. She dressed Inge in the pajamas [synagogue] was attacked, all the windows were This exhibition brings the she had worn the night of Kristallnacht. shattered, the pews were smashed, the curtain personal account of what In 2018, Lore donated Inge to Yad Vashem, of the Ark was torn into pieces and a Torah and the doll is preserved in Yad Vashem's scroll was thrown outside…The black memorial happened that night – a Artifacts Collection. “Inge was very meaningful plaques on the walls were smashed.” Aharon story that dry statistics to me,” Lore explained in her testimony, “for was later murdered in Terezin. the simple reason she was given to me as a Aharon’s words can be seen in an album cannot possibly relay in full gift from my grandmother...and of course the preserved in Yad Vashem’s Archives. The fact that I brought her from Germany with album contains photographs documenting the me. After I married and had children, I didn’t destruction wrought by the rioters in Vienna that homes. Lore, already in pajamas, hid with her allow them to play with her… The pajamas night. The photos depict burned and desecrated mother at the neighbors’ until the pogrom was she always wore – that was my memory of synagogues, as well as the vandalized hall of over. When they returned home, they found Kristallnacht.” that the place had been torn apart, and was the Jewish cemetery. On 7 November 2018, Yad Vashem will be marking The exhibition also includes, among other not fit for habitation. the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom After six weeks’ internment, thanks to the US with a public event featuring a short lecture on accounts, the story of Lore Stern Mayerfeld, the topic and a screening of the 2017 film The from Kassel, Germany, who was a toddler when visa in his possession, Markus was released on Invisibles (German, with subtitles in English and Kristallnacht took place. Lore’s father Markus condition that he leave Germany immediately. Hebrew): Edmond J. Safra Lecture Hall, 18:30. was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. Their Eighteen months after reaching the US, Markus The author is a researcher and Online Exhibition non-Jewish neighbors offered to hide his wife succeeded in obtaining visas for his wife and Coordinator in the Digital Department, daughter. Lore took Inge, the doll she had received Communications Division. The information on Kaetchen and their young daughter in their Lore Stern's doll was provided by the Artifacts house, to protect them from the rioters who for her birthday from her beloved grandmother Department, Museums Division. were breaking into and vandalizing Jewish Lena who was murdered in the Holocaust, with her 11 International Research Workshops Familiarity and Murder

■ Yad Vashem's International Holocaust Hadamar, knowing full well Research Institute’s summer workshop, “Your what would happen to them Brother’s Blood Cries Out to Me” was both there. He also described fascinating and innovative. The participants how Hadamar physicians spoke about different places in Europe, where observed the actual murder Jews were persecuted by people they knew – or of their patients in the gas where face-to-face murder occurred. chambers constructed in In the opening lecture, Yad Vashem Libraries the hospital. Director Dr. Robert Rozett, author of Conscripted French historian Tal Slaves: Hungarian Jewish Forced Laborers on Bruttmann examined a the Eastern Front during the Second World largely unknown aspect War (Yad Vashem, 2014), illustrated that the of the final months of oppression of Jews by people who knew them the German occupation did not begin with murder, but rather was part of France. He described of the landscape of developing persecution. the murderous hunt for Children in particular suffered at the hands of Jews carried out by French the former playmates and teachers. In occupied “ultra-collaborators.” France before the mass murders began, Jewish Often, these collaborators businessmen were denounced by their French worked in their native areas rivals in order to ensure that their companies be hunting down Jews whom shut down or “Aryanized.” In Hungary, prior to they knew. In the Lyon area the wave of deportations to the extermination alone, several hundred Jews camps in 1944, tens of thousands of Jewish were killed in this way. Prof. Therkel Straede of Physicians from around the University of Southern Denmark investigated Germany sent their Bobruysk, one of 40,000 patients to Hadamar, camps and camp-like facilities established by knowing full well what the Nazis, where Jews from the Warsaw ghetto were would happen to them ■ Jews from the 108/56 "labor service" unit of the Hungarian army, September 1941 | Yad Vashem Archives imprisoned. The camp was there rather small, with about 1,500 inmates, and in that The oppression of Jews situation, guards – among whom were Danish forced laborers met their deaths on the Eastern volunteers in the SS – and prisoners sometimes Front, owing largely to Hungarian policies and by people who knew got to know one another well. Owing to the brutal treatment by Hungarian soldiers, who brutal regime, only 91 prisoners survived. The served alongside the Jewish soldiers and were them did not begin with role of the Danish SS men in this intimate responsible for them. Dr. Rozett suggested that murder, but rather was situation of murder was a new revelation, given the term “intimate” could be appropriate for the more familiar connection of the Danish describing this kind of persecution: intimate part of the landscape of people with the rescue, not murder, of Jews in the sense of a familiarity or a personal developing persecution during the Shoah. relationship, and as an antonym for cold, Other presentations discussed face-to-face calculated and impersonal. murder in Lithuania, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Prof. Rael Straus of Tel Aviv University aspects of the first stage of the mass murder by and Italy, highlighting the fact that intimate spoke about the Hadamar psychiatric hospital the Nazi regime, before the “Final Solution,” persecution and murder were phenomena that in western Germany, one of the main sites of and he demonstrated the more intimate aspects touched the entire breadth and scope of the Shoah. the so-called “T4 Euthanasia Program.” Prof. of that murder. He discussed physicians from The workshop was held with the generous support Straus showed how Hadamar reflected critical around Germany who sent their patients to of the Gutwirth Family Fund.

12 research Revealing Personal Voices Ego-Documents in the Soviet Sphere during the Holocaust Dr. Arkadi Zeltser

■ Is it possible to find individual expression proof regarding the participation in the official documents of the KGB? How of local collaborators in the killing does this contribute to our understanding and persecution of Jews. Therefore, of the Holocaust in the USSR? These were there was no reason for them to some of many questions raised at a recent invent “false proofs” or record them research workshop conducted at Yad Vashem’s incorrectly, as was acceptable with International Institute of Holocaust Research the Soviet security bodies in the years on the topic of “Ego-Documents in the Soviet of the Great Terror (1937-1938). Sphere on the Holocaust: Revealing Personal Accordingly, in Schneider’s opinion, Voices.” such materials contained relatively truthful and detailed information on the Holocaust, in addition to the personal voice. However, Dr. Franziska Exeler (University of Cambridge and the Free University of Berlin), who has previously discussed the influence of the war on the postwar situation in Belarus, suggested that the attitude towards such materials should be more cautious. Apart from the complication that in trial The so-called “ego-documents” discussed documentation most people tried to at the workshop are personal documents, blur their participation in the killings testimonies and memoirs that people, Jews of Jews, Dr. Exeler argued that the and non-Jews alike, wrote in the USSR during reliability of all Soviet official sources, ■ especially of the MGB, that “routinely Letter from Musya Shulrikhter to her brother Grisha WWII – including wartime diaries and letters, as describing the murder of their relatives in Lyady, 1944 well as postwar testimonies – that ended up in applied… beating and verbal threats,” is very | Courtesy Sofi Efros state-run organizations or in private collections. problematic. However, both scholars accepted Eighteen young researchers from the United that in such sorts of materials that were Peretz Padison, a former Jewish policeman in States, Germany, Switzerland, France, Ukraine, the Kovno ghetto, who was arrested in 1952 Russia, Lithuania, Georgia and Israel were In some cases, official and sentenced to 25 years in the Gulag (he was joined by specialists on the Holocaust from Yad actually released in 1956 following the death of Vashem and United States Holocaust Memorial documents and reports Stalin). While the collection contains personal Museum (USHMM), who jointly organized the can be integrated into documentation, such as denunciations against workshop, to discuss different aspects of this Padison by some former ghetto inmates, it is fascinating topic. historical research, since difficult to deduce from the materials reliable One of the insights of the workshop was that facts regarding his real behavior in the ghetto. in some cases, official documents and reports they reflect their thoughts Nevertheless, the knowledge that such “ego- can be integrated into historical research, both and ideas of the writers documents” may be found among official papers presenting the personal voice and as a form of certainly contributes to the understanding of testimony, since they reflect the thoughts and the attitudes of survivors or witnesses to their ideas of the authors. This topic aroused an inaccessible for the public, authorities did not recent past. intensive discussion regarding the testimonies conceal the mass killing of Jews, despite the The workshop was organized by the Moshe accepted during investigations conducted by authorities’ insistence that Nazi murder policy Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, supported by Laura and the officers of the Ministry of State Security was directed foremost against Soviet citizens Michael Mirilashvili, at Yad Vashem’s International (MGB), the predecessor of the KGB, and the and not Jews. Institute for Holocaust Research, in cooperation materials of the trials in the USSR. Additional impetus to the discussion on the with the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United Wolfgang Schneider, a doctoral student reliability of the MGB documents was brought by States Holocaust Memorial Museum. from the University of Heidelberg, suggested Samuel Finkelman, a doctoral student from the The author is Director of the Moshe Mirilashvili the possibility of using such kinds of materials. University of Pennsylvania. Finkelman presented Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet He ventured that the authorities had enough a detailed analysis of the MGB files regarding Union, International Institute for Holocaust Research. research 13 Biography of an Invisible Survivor

■ Rika Benveniste, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Thessaly in the coastal city of Volos in Greece, recently gave a fascinating lecture as a visiting scholar to Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research on “invisible survivors.” Benveniste presented the unique research she conducted in recent years – a historical biography of a Greek Holocaust survivor who left almost no traces of memory. Benveniste was born in Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece, Her parents met after WWII, during which her father had fought with the partisans against the Germans and her mother had returned from deportation to Bergen-Belsen. She spent time in Israel, graduating from the History Department of the Hebrew University. She later obtained her doctorate in Medieval History from the Sorbonne and returned to Greece in 1986. Her book on the Jews of Salonika in the 1940s is due to be published in English by Yad Vashem. Luna’s mother tongue was Ladino; she didn’t ■ The Jewish Allatini Orphanage in Salonika as it looks today. Luna lived here for more than twenty years | know how to write and Courtesy: Rika Benveniste the material evidence. Through Luna’s story, Luna lived at Allatini for more than twenty read, she did not send Benveniste explained how one can learn years, and then settled for the first time in a to reconstruct the life trajectories of those small apartment of her own, in a building letters, nor did she Holocaust survivors who are often considered constructed by the community. The neighbors, receive any invisible subjects. mostly Jews, were all familiar to her. In her Luna was born in 1910 and grew up in one new apartment, she continued to work as a of the main Jewish neighborhoods of Salonika, seamstress. In 1982, when the Shaul Modiano Her latest book, Luna: An Essay in Historical where the Jewish community housed roughly a Retirement Home reopened its gates, Luna was Biography, tells the story of a Jewish woman thousand families left homeless after the great among its first tenants. She lived there for more from Salonika who survived Auschwitz. The book fire of 1917. She was married to Sam, a harbor than fifteen years. In 1998, she was taken to her focuses on the Jews of Salonika, on deportation, worker. They left Salonika from the transit final “residence” at the new Jewish cemetery on poverty, and on the devastating postwar years. ghetto of Baron Hirsh, with the fifth transport of Salonika, the old one having been destroyed Luna’s mother tongue was Ladino; she didn’t to Auschwitz, on 27 March 1943. by the Germans. know how to write and read, she did not send In Auschwitz, Luna survived medical Luna was, in fact, Benveniste’s distant letters, nor did she receive any. Traces of Luna’s experiments, high fever and typhus. She was relative, who lost almost all her extended life have been saved in the paperwork of the sent to the Schneiderei Kommando, to sew and family in Auschwitz. When she came back to Jewish community’s relief system: Her destiny fix clothes. At the war’s end, a death march led Salonika, Benveniste recalls, “she found in us a had been attached to the fate of the community her to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated. close family, and we found an ‘aunt’ in her. She and its rehabilitation. Some memories of Luna After a transit period in Brussels, Luna returned used to visit us every single Saturday, bringing were also left in those who knew her, but as to Salonika, in September 1945. Together with delicious fruits as well as caresses and the sound time goes by, their number diminishes. Other dozens of other homeless Jews, she found shelter of Ladino and the Judeo-Spanish world; she traces of her life are her creations – the covers first in the city’s Sygrou Synagogue and then was present in all the happy and sad moments of armchairs and sofas that she produced and in the Jewish Allatini Orphanage, which was of our family. However, this did not save her left behind. Photos and certificates complete transformed into a dormitory. from her torments, nor from her loneliness. 14 research “A Sense of Relief” Orit Noiman

■ Early in February 2018, in the wake of the For the last two months of the war, Yosef Leah Goldstein new Polish law that makes saying that Poles and Rosa stayed alone in the forest with nowhere were involved in crimes against Jews during to hide, exposed to the elements. From time to WWII a penal crime, Yad Vashem received a time, a Polish acquaintance named Durek helped message from Sima Farkash. Farkash described them obtain food. The sounds of combat from how her uncle, Holocaust survivor Yosef Kornblit, the front punctuated this period, raising their had been restless and was hoping to talk to hopes that the war would soon end. Attempting to represent Yad Vashem about his family’s fate during the Following the recording of Yosef's testimony, their lives means that Holocaust. A meeting at Yosef’s home to film Sima Farkash, Rosa's daughter, contacted Yad his testimony was scheduled right away. Vashem again. “My heartfelt thanks to you for their silence is being Yosef was born in Toporów, near Mielec, Poland, in 1926, the youngest of six children. broken by words which As he relayed his testimony to Ronit Wilder, an are not their own interviewer from the Collection and Registration Section in Yad Vashem’s Archives Division, Yosef described the complex relations between Jews When she passed away, I inherited a shoebox and Poles during the Holocaust. “My parents full of photos and some documents. I began to had a tobacco shop in the front of our house, so think of her not just as an aunt, but also as the lots of Poles from the area would meet up at our subject of a tragic history.” place,” said Yosef. “The village where I grew up There are no photos of Luna in Benveniste’s was small, with very few Jews; we lived and went book, although photos of hers are commented on to school together with the Poles. Sometimes the as part of the narrative and the interpretation. Poles would say, ‘Jews, go to Israel,’ but I didn’t “I was troubled by one photo of her youthful know what that meant at the time.” face before the war, others of a face swollen and In 1941, the Kornblits were deported to the marked by Nazi crimes, and finally those that Biesiadki camp near Mielec, where they were ■ Holocaust survivor Yosef Korniblit holds a picture of his regained its naturalness, aged and old. I chose forced laborers. In the summer of 1942, after family - most of whom were murdered during the Shoah to keep her many faces away from indiscreet more than six months of dire conditions in the gazes; I thought it wouldn’t be right to sum camp, the family decided to escape to the nearby sending a team to interview my uncle Yosef. up her entire life in one injured face. The only forest. Yosef’s parents and the four youngest I spoke with him yesterday, and he felt a tangible photographs in the book are of the places Luna sense of relief,” she wrote. “The events of the inhabited, since by following her movement “During the war, I was war have been seared into his soul, and he only through them (until her final resting place), I mentions them to a restricted group of family tried to weave the narrative of her life.” afraid of the Poles more members. ‘I didn’t think I’d live to see the day Benveniste first visited Yad Vashem as a than the Germans.” when I would give my testimony to Yad Vashem,’ teenager, in 1975. In 1982, as a student at the he told me. Uncle Yosef wishes he’d thanked the Hebrew University, she performed research in Yosef Kornblit Holy One, blessed be He, as well as you at the the Yad Vashem Archives, preparing a seminar end of the film for the privilege of having his paper. Writing the paper was so painful for her children hid in the forest in a bunker that the personal story documented. He also wanted to that she actually abandoned the idea of becoming family built. They were forced to steal food say thank you to God for the good life he has a historian of the Shoah. When she finally from their surroundings and lived in constant now, so I am doing so in his name. Our deepest succumbed to her inevitable fate, Benveniste fear. “During the war, I was afraid of the Poles thanks go to you and to everyone doing this found Yad Vashem, its resources, its people and more than the Germans,” remembered Yosef. sacred work." its environment “of invaluable importance for “The Germans didn’t come to distant places like The Yad Vashem Archives contain over 129,000 conducting research on the Holocaust.” where we were hiding. Most of the time, we were testimonies in video, audio and written formats. Yad Vashem records over 1,000 video testimonies “Writing about Holocaust survivors who more terrified that Poles would inform on us.” annually. To schedule a time to give testimony could not speak for themselves is particularly In the winter of 1943, Yosef’s father Yitzhak in Israel, please call 02-644-3888. meaningful, although we should keep in mind and brother Yirmiyahu died of typhus. In Yad Vashem's testimony collection efforts are that attempting to represent their lives, speaking June 1944, two months before the area was supported by: Jack and Marilyn Pechter; Hudson Bay Capital; Vladimir Zemtsov, the Philip Chosky or writing about them, means that their silence liberated, the Kornblits’ bunker was exposed by Trust; the Circle of Service Foundation; the Samson is being broken by words which are not their the Poles, and everyone hiding there – Yosef’s Charity Foundation, based in Switzerland; Friends own,” says Benveniste. “Our understanding of mother Sarah, three of her children and two of Yad Vashem in Austria; Society of Friends of Yad Vashem in Liechtenstein; Swiss Friends of Yad the Shoah is largely dependent on the ability to other young women, sisters who had joined Vashem; and Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung turn our attention to all those who were caught them in the bunker – were laid on the ground von Wissenschaft und Kultur. in the maelstrom of destruction in order to make and shot. Yosef and his sister Rosa managed to The author is Head of the Collection and Registration possible both the historical narrative and the get away, and from that moment, they never Section, Archives Division. subtlety of the individual’s story.” saw their family again. 15 Podium Whitewashing History

Dr. Robert Rozett

■ For some time now, a trend toward a In Hungary, there is presently no law The list goes on: In Slovakia, Croatia and distorted discourse about the Holocaust has analogous to those adopted in Poland and Latvia, there have been recent endeavors to emerged in most former Communist countries. Ukraine. There is, however, a governmental extol figures from the war years and whitewash Although not identical everywhere, there are ombudsman regarding Hungarian history, the their role in the Holocaust. In Slovakia and salient commonalities. These include efforts to Veritas Historical Institute, founded in January Croatia in particular, the collaborationist and rebrand nations as victims, resisters and rescuers 2014. Its leader, Dr. Sándor Szakály, has been criminal regimes from the period are also at the expense of the historical record, while engaged in trying to excuse Miklos Horthy, the often lauded publicly. In these countries, the concomitantly whitewashing the role played by wartime Regent of Hungary, for responsibility extent and scope of rescue efforts on behalf of local populations, as well as official and semi- for crimes against Hungarian Jewry that Jews by local Righteous Among the Nations is official national institutions, in collaboration occurred under his leadership; and despite disproportionally represented, at the expense of with the persecution and murder of Jews. solid documentary evidence to the contrary, open discussion about local complicity in the Another phenomenon is the glorification of even absolve him of any knowledge about the persecution and murder of Jewish neighbors. historical figures as national heroes, despite To a significant extent, these phenomena the documented role they played in persecuting can be traced to decades of Communist rule. and murdering Jews. Efforts to regulate history A trend toward a distorted Under Communism, the Holocaust was not through governmental institutions and/or the addressed fully, objectively and thoughtfully, passage of laws are part of this troubling reality. discourse about the and what little discourse there was, was twisted The recent painful discussion about Poland’s Holocaust has emerged in to conform to its ideology. Additionally, the law that prohibits blaming the Polish people Communist regimes repressed discussion about for Holocaust-related misdeeds reflects the most former Communist their own crimes, and their extent only began to desire to regulate history and to rebrand the countries, including be unearthed after the fall of those regimes. A nation. While overtly about protecting the good byproduct of these revelations has been a strong name of Poland, this law is actually tightly efforts to rebrand nations inclination to equate crimes committed by the linked to efforts that over-emphasize the role as victims, resisters and Nazis to crimes committed by the Communists, of Polish rescuers during the Holocaust and blurring differences and engendering a sort characterize the Polish resistance as not only rescuers at the expense of of competition about victimhood. The heroic, but also as sympathetic to the plight of revelations about the Communist crimes have the Jews, which it overwhelmingly was not. the historical record also influenced – and accelerated – the search Following an official and highly problematic for national, anti-Communist heroes. joint Polish-Israeli declaration about the law, On a different plane, such factors as social since the declaration contained many distortions systematic mass murder of Jews. This is part and economic turbulence of the post-Communist of history and the law still included penalties of a government-supported crusade to blame years, anti-globalization, fear of loss of national for violating it, Yad Vashem historians issued the persecution of Hungarian Jewry entirely identity and autonomy in a united Europe, and a firm and well-grounded paper (available on the Germans after they occupied Hungary fear of inundation by multitudes of non-European on the Yad Vashem website) correcting the in March 1944, in the face of unassailable immigrants, have all contributed to the distortion inaccuracies and condemning the law. The documentation about widespread complicity of of public discourse about the Holocaust. address for legal complaints based on the law Hungarian institutions and individuals before Despite this troubling landscape, determined is a governmental organization, the Institute of and during the occupation. Moreover, Horthy citizens in these countries are conscientiously National Remembrance (IPN), which as such is and other dubious figures from the period are engaged in objective historical research, meant to serve as the arbiter for history. often portrayed publicly as national heroes. in presenting narratives anchored in the In Ukraine, a law passed in 2015 makes it a In Lithuania, too, public veneration of documentary record, and in genuine educational felony to exhibit public disrespect toward or deny Lithuanian figures who were involved in the work and soul-searching. Yad Vashem has fully the legitimacy of a number of anti-Communist murder of Jews endures. Open discussion about and actively supported such efforts, and will Ukrainian nationalist groupings. Among them are the widespread participation, even initiation, continue to do so. For the sake of the memory the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) by Lithuanians of the mass murder of Jews of the victims and survivors, for the sake of and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), both during the Holocaust, and how a great many presenting an accurate historical narrative, and of which were involved in the persecution and Lithuanians benefited from the property of the above all for the sake of a better future, we must murder of Jews, as well as the ethnic cleansing of murdered Jews, remains an anathema for large all redouble our efforts to fight the whitewashing Poles. As a corollary to this, figures like Stephan segments of the public. Thus, the focus is often and distortion of the history of the Holocaust. Bandera, the notorious leader of the OUN, have on Lithuanian rescuers or Lithuanian suffering The author is Director of the Yad Vashem Libraries. been celebrated by the Ukrainian state. under the Soviets. 16 Engraved on a Silver Platter

■ Until recently, the name of six-year-old buried silver. However, when Michoel Hesheles was one of the more than they went to the village to one million names of Holocaust victims collect their son, they were that are still missing from Yad Vashem’s faced with devastating news Central Database of Shoah Victims Names. about his terrible fate: After However, when 84-year-old Yoske Badichi, learning of Yocheved and a longtime active volunteer in Yad Vashem’s Moshe Aaron's deportation, Names Recovery Project, came to Jerusalem the non-Jewish family had in the summer of 2017 to participate in his handed Michoel over to the great-nephew’s son’s Pidyon Haben ceremony Germans. – whereby a Jewish firstborn son is “redeemed” The couple sadly never from service in the (destroyed) Holy Temple – he bore more children, and made an amazing discovery. after her husband passed away, Yocheved felt truly totally alone in the world. The silver platter and the candlesticks were her only reminders of the past. A further inscription on One of the few people who visited her regularly the back of the platter was Chaya Gutein, a family friend. Towards her last days, as she lay in hospital, Yocheved turned out to be a short decided to donate the platter to Chaya’s son and account of Michoel's daughter-in law, Yosef and Ruth Gutein, who had opened a gemach for accessories for Jewish sad story circumcision ceremonies. Michoel’s name and a short account of what happened were inscribed given money, jewelry and silver possessions by on the tray, and the tray continued to be used Michoel’s parents specifically so they would keep as it had for generations before. This is how him safe. The parents survived, but never saw Yoske’s family had come into its possession for their beloved son again, and towards the end their own Pidyon Haben ceremony. of her life, Michoel’s mother donated the tray “It took the ongoing awareness of a dedicated to a gemach (charitable loan organization) in Yad Vashem volunteer for Michoel’s name to his memory. The inscription also detailed how be commemorated for generations to come,” Michoel was believed to be a descendant of the said Sara Berkowitz. “I implore anyone who Vilna Gaon and the Noda Beyehudah – two discovers similar information, in whatever famous rabbinical scholars from the 1700s – form, to be in touch with the Names Recovery and how the platter had been used throughout Project team, so that together, we can ensure the generations for Pidyon Haben ceremonies. that no Holocaust victim remains forgotten.” Still at the reception, Yoske called Sara The Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project Berkowitz, Head of the Names Recovery Project is generously supported by Dana and Yossie at Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, and asked her to Hollander. Yad Vashem's names collection efforts are also supported by: Fondation pour In keeping with Jewish tradition, the baby make an immediate search to check if Michoel’s la Me´moire de la Shoah, France; the Conference was placed on a beautiful silver platter. Out of name appeared in the Names Database. Sara told on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany; Swiss Banks Settlement; Genesis Philanthropy curiosity, Yoske took the platter afterwards and Yoske that the name was not in the Database, and Group; the Noaber Foundation; the National noticed a moving Hebrew inscription: “In memory asked Yoske to use the opportunity to gather as Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of much information as he could about the story. National Socialism; the Nadav Foundation; Swiss of Michoel, son of Moshe Aaron and Yocheved Friends of Yad Vashem; the Zanker Foundation, Hesheles, who was murdered in the Shoah.” Yoske discovered that Yocheved and Moshe the Maror Foundation; Friends of Yad Vashem Turning the tray over, Yoske noticed a further Aaron Hesheles had hidden this heirloom platter, in the Netherlands; and Friends of Yad Vashem in Austria. inscription on the back of the platter – which together with a pair of Sabbath candlesticks, in the yard of their home during the war. For more information on filling out Pages of turned out to be a short account of Michoel’s sad Testimony or donating other sources containing story. Michoel, it read, had been turned over to Surviving Auschwitz, they returned to their names of Holocaust victims, please contact: the Nazis by a non-Jewish family who had been home, where they were able to retrieve the [email protected] names recovery 17 Gathering the Fragments Mirroring Reality

■ GIS software allows exact locations to be identified on wartime maps ■ While in hiding, Machiel de Vries sketched the meeting of the Allied forces on German soil in April 1945

■ When WWII broke out, Machiel de Vries, a In the past seven years, since “Gathering the Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy. 20-year-old Amsterdam native from a secular Fragments” commenced, some 11,400 people There is also one map of the war’s progress in Jewish family, was drafted into the Dutch have donated over 250,000 Holocaust-era the Atlantic Ocean. army. He was taken captive by the Germans personal items to Yad Vashem for safekeeping. In the center of a map of Germany, for and released months later. When he returned Some of the personal collections include example, Machiel drew two arrows and a square. to his parents’ home, Machiel made his living With the help of Geographic Information Systems from a Jewish employer. One evening on his He continued his service (GIS) software, staff from the Yad Vashem way home, Machiel saw his parents, Marcus Archives Division discovered why Machiel and Rosalina de Vries, being taken away by a in hiding by marking marked that spot on the map. GIS software German truck. He never saw them again, and the war’s progress on programs make it possible to geo-reference the he eventually found out that they had been historical map to the exact coordinates on the murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. geographic maps while planet and facilitate map digitization. This makes After his parents were deported, Machiel clandestinely listening to the maps interactive; allowing information to joined the Dutch underground. Because he be added and various queries posed, such as was Jewish, the underground sent him into radio broadcasts measurements of distances and more. After hiding, where he continued his service by uploading the map to a computer, Archives marking the war’s progress on geographic maps contemporaneous maps kept during the war. staff used a contemporary satellite photograph while clandestinely listening to the BBC radio In certain cases, the maps were drawn from to geo-reference the map’s precise coordinates. broadcasts. After the war, Machiel married Annie memory; and in others, contours and other Then it all made sense: Machiel had marked the Walls. Annie and Machiel had no descendants, kinds of information were drawn on a printed city of Torgau, Germany, which lies on the banks so after their passing, Annie’s nephew, Jan map. These maps are like a mirror of reality, of the Elbe River. There, on 25 April 1945, the Vrij, took responsibility for the collection of often representing a person’s way of thinking. Western Allies and the Red Army made contact documents that attested to his uncle’s actions Some of the maps that Machiel de Vries on German soil for the first time. during the Holocaust. In August 2017, Jan sketched were political maps, while the rest A different kind of map was donated to donated the documents, including 13 maps that were actual roadmaps, including markings for Yad Vashem in 2016. It is a map of the city Machiel had sketched while living in hiding, highways and railroads. Most of the maps show of Bacˇka Palanka, in present-day Serbia. A to Yad Vashem as part of the “Gathering the the region of Europe, and some of the maps German architect drew the map in 1982 for Fragments” project. specifically show Central and Eastern Europe, an organization of Swabian Germans who had 18 Piecing Together the Puzzle Dr. Gad Schaffer Hillel Solomon, Emmanuelle Moscovitz and Naama Shilo

been deported from Yugoslavia. The map was ■ While attempting systematically to annihilate world. The objective of the international project – sketched based on testimony and documents the Jewish people, the Nazis also destroyed and which was recently adopted by ESFRI (European given by the former residents of the town, scattered numerous documents that attested Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) and and it describes the situation in 1944, before to the industry of murder and to Jewish life thus will be able to continue its important work the deportation of the Jews. One of the houses before WWII. After the war, it was very difficult beyond 2019 – is to foster and promote access that appears in the city map belonged to Bela to locate information about the persecution and to Holocaust-related documents by building and Sofia Deutsch, the grandparents of Ilana destruction of the Jews, as well as the stories of the technological infrastructure to connect the Melz, who gave the map to Yad Vashem. Their Jewish communities and individuals. For this sources of information. factory for manufacturing pipe organs is there, reason, Holocaust-related collections can be Later that day, several examples of dispersed too, as are many other homes that belonged to found in various places worldwide. The digital collections and ways to deal with them were the extended family until they were deported age has heralded the opportunity to map and presented. Prof. Haim Saadon, Director of the to Auschwitz in 1944. Using GIS software, it connect different collections of documentation, Ben-Zvi Institute’s Documentation Center of North was possible to identify the exact location of but has also created new challenges. African Jewry during WWII, presented the North the map on a current satellite photo, and by so In June 2018, archivists, researchers, librarians African issue; Dr. Roni Stauber, Academic Director doing identify the family home. Furthermore, and experts from Holocaust commemorative of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Nazi with the help of digitization, the moment institutions from across Israel came together at Era and the Holocaust, spoke about the Wiener Yad Vashem to address the challenges and systems Collection, which is spread across London, Tel employed to locate and connect Holocaust-era Aviv and Jerusalem; and former Director of Yad By using GIS software, it documentary collections in Israel and overseas. The Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Department was possible to identify symposium, entitled “Piecing Together the Puzzle,” Irena Steinfeldt described the work of searching tackled questions such as: How can one manage for information in various archives and databases the exact location of a collection of Holocaust-related documentation in order to build a complete picture about stories the map on a current that has been scattered across three continents? of rescue during the Holocaust. Is there a single place where information about While the digital age helps map different satellite photo, and by Holocaust documentary material around the archival material and makes it more accessible, so doing identify the world is concentrated? What challenges does the it also poses moral dilemmas for the general digital age pose to administering collections of public. Examples of these kinds of dilemmas family home Holocaust-related material? were discussed in a panel about ethical and legal questions when using Holocaust-era photographs someone clicks on the house on the map, they and films in the social media age. Dr. Tehilla will receive all existing information about the Shwartz Altshuler from the Israel Democracy family, thus keeping the story of the deported Institute moderated the panel, which included Jewish family alive. Dr. Iael Nidam-Orvieto, Director of Yad Vashem’s Yad Vashem runs the “Gathering the Fragments” International Institute for Holocaust Research; campaign in cooperation with the “Landmarks” Dr. Daniel Uziel, Director of the Yad Vashem Program at the Israel Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage and with the support of the Israel Photo Archive; and filmmaker Noemi Schory. Ministry of Education; Dora Zitno (Argentina); A project fair was also held during the day, The Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement The 140 participants used this unique allowing the audience to learn more about of Research and Culture (Germany); and Friends of Yad Vashem in the Netherlands. opportunity to meet, network, share information different Holocaust institutes in Israel and their collections. The participants saw existing material Since the “Gathering the Fragments” campaign and learn from each other. The day began with began seven years ago, 11,400 people have donated a presentation about two important projects: in different archives and learned how to access some 253,000 items, including 147,000 documents, Yehezkel Kassent from Israel’s National Library them. In the afternoon, they visited the “Flashes 98,000 photographs, 4,550 artifacts, 694 works of art and 185 original films. Representatives of presented “Project RAI,” which makes it possible of Memory: Photography during the Holocaust” Yad Vashem visit Holocaust survivors or their to map national heritage material on a large exhibition, as well as the Visual Center, where they family members in their homes, in addition to heard a lecture about Yad Vashem’s collection of holding collection days in centers throughout scale from archives across Israel; and Yad Israel closest to their place of residence in order Vashem Archives Director and Fred Hillman Holocaust-related films from Dr. Robert Rozett, to gather Holocaust-era personal items. To Chair for Holocaust Documentation Dr. Haim Director of the Yad Vashem Libraries. schedule a meeting in Israel: +972-2-644-3888 or [email protected] Gertner presented the European Holocaust The symposium took place through the EHRI Research Infrastructure (EHRI) project, which project and in cooperation with the Association The author is a Coordinator in the Collections and of Israeli Archivists. Registration Section, Archives Division. has been providing assistance in mapping the documentation that has been spread all over the The authors work in the Archives Division. research 19 How Shoah Changed Holocaust Remembrance

■ Claude Lanzmann signing the Yad Vashem “Declaration of Remembrance" at the ceremony marking 50 years since the establishment of Yad Vashem in 2003

■ Renowned French filmmaker Claude Claude Lanzmann is best known for his Shoah documentation. Even if these images were Lanzmann dramatically changed the way non-fiction work Shoah. What can you tell a close representation of what had happened people commemorated and remembered the us about Shoah and the way it changed in the camps, they were taken after the event, Holocaust. Holocaust remembrance? similar to a re-enactment of a crime scene. This, Born in Paris in 1925 to Jewish immigrant Shoah marks a tectonic shift in Holocaust too, was unacceptable to Lanzmann. In addition, parents from Eastern Europe, Lanzmann lived cinema, and has become one of the foremost they are very difficult images to look at, and in hiding with his family during WWII, before Holocaust-related films since its release in 1985. Lanzmann did not want to allow the viewer to joining the French resistance at the young age Rejecting archival footage, docu-drama, and all look away, even for a second, from the screen. of 17. After reading Jean Paul Sartre’s Anti- other genres, Lanzmann insisted on focusing What problems did Lanzmann encounter Semite and Jew (On the Jewish Question), on testimonies of Holocaust survivors who had Lanzmann began to explore his Jewish identity. while relying on testimonies to tell the been closest to the mass murder of their people. story of the Holocaust? On the release of his first film Pourquoi Israël It is a work about the present, representing the (Israel, Why), which documents the first twenty- way those who were there live with trauma Lanzmann recorded more than 200 interviews five years of the State of Israel, Israel’s Ministry and the memory of it. Holocaust films of all over a time span of 10 years – Jewish survivors, of Foreign Affairs approached Lanzmann, genres changed after Shoah, which also served but also Righteous Among the Nations, as encouraging him to create a film about the to shine a spotlight on survivor testimony in well as Nazis. Lanzmann opened Shoah with Holocaust from the Jewish point of view. The an unprecedented scope and manner. the testimony of Simon Srebnik, who was a result was the iconic Shoah, a nine-hour epic 13-year-old Jewish boy in the Sonderkommando endeavor which has been translated into more Why did Lanzmann prefer not to use archival [slave laborers who worked at the crematoria] than 20 languages. footage? in Chelmo. For several minutes we accompany Following Lanzmann’s death in July 2018 Most archival images from the Holocaust period Srebnik through his painful testimony, and then at the age of 92, Liat Benhabib, Director of were produced by the Nazis for propaganda he explains that it is impossible to understand Yad Vashem’s Visual Center, reflected upon purposes, which Lanzmann refused to use. Other what happened: “No one can comprehend it; his monumental achievements in the field of images were taken by the Allied forces – the even I who was there, I cannot comprehend what Holocaust cinema: Russians, the British, the Americans – at the really happened.” Lanzmann then seemingly liberation of the camps, which constitute post- makes a deal with the viewers. “You will not 20 News Claude Lanzmann (1925-2018) Black Honey Wins 2018 Avner Shalev Award Liat Benhabib understand,” he is trying to tell us, “but we ■ The winner will tell you this story again and again, in of this year’s depth, from several points of view, from several Avner Shalev interlocutors, from several places, in order to Yad Vashem even try to grasp some comprehension of how Chairman’s this was possible.” This was an extraordinarily Award for courageous cinematographic decision. Holocaust-related Is it even possible to build a reliable film was Black documentary film solely on testimonials? Honey: The Life and and Poetry The value of the testimony raises historical of Avraham as well as psychological questions. How does Sutskever, a memory work? Are memories objective? How ■ Left to right: Mimi Ash from Yad Vashem's Visual documentary film Center, film director Uri Barbash, film producer Yair Kedar can one reconstruct a story from personal by renowned Israeli director Uri Barbash. experiences? How do you bring an individual to The jury for this year’s Jewish Experience The jury praised Black Honey for recount memories that are decades old without competition at the 35th Jerusalem International “introducing us to Avraham Sutzkever, the reviving a trauma? All these questions are Film Festival included Susan Engel, Executive most prominent Yiddish poet of the twentieth reflected in Shoah. For example, in a scene with Producer of Recanati-Kaplan 92Y Talks in century. Barbash draws a portrait of Sutzkever, Abraham Bomba, the hairdresser from Holon, New York; Prof. Dan Michman, Head of the man and the artist, stressing not only the who had to shave women on their arrival at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for centrality of the Holocaust in Sutzkever’s work, Auschwitz, Bomba struggles to testify, and Holocaust Research and John Najmann but also the latter’s lifelong commitment to begs Lanzmann to leave him in peace. The Chair for Holocaust Studies; and director and Yiddish poetry, even in Israel, where he did not viewer sees his suffering: Lanzmann films screenwriter Amichai Greenberg. receive the recognition he deserved.” all their exchanges. He reassures Bomba, and convinces him to speak. The viewer witnesses the entire psychological process the witness Yad Vashem Desk Calendar 2018-19: endures. These are very important data for the Marking Jewish Time during the Holocaust duty of memory. Thirty years after its release, how does ■ Throughout the ages, Jewish individuals This year’s calendar highlights a selection Shoah continue to influence Holocaust- and communities strove to mark the Jewish of items from Yad Vashem’s Collections, related film? holidays and festivals that are part of the highlighting efforts to mark Jewish time during Hebrew calendar, even under the most the Holocaust era and the struggle to continue Before Lanzmann, there were archival films. With perilous of circumstances. This was true also life in the shadow of death. Lanzmann, there were testimonial films. Today, during the Holocaust, when, despite the harsh The Yad Vashem 2018-19 desk calendar was we combine both. Young filmmakers are and often untenable living conditions, many produced with the generous support of Galia and returning to archival footage that, thanks to Axel Stawski and their daughters in memory of Jews struggled to continue the practice of all the victims of the Shoah. the digital age, is increasingly available, but Jewish traditions. They marked Jewish life- they also continue to use or refer to Lanzmann’s The calendar is available for purchase in the cycle events, they attempted to observe the Yad Vashem Online Store: www.yadvashem.org Shoah, which remains a prime example of holidays, they wrote their own prayer books, Holocaust testimonial documentation. and they even created hand-drawn Jewish During September and October 2018, the Yad calendars from memory while incarcerated Vashem Visual Center, together with the Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Herzliya Cinematheques, ran a in the camps, in hiding or from within the program of screenings of Shoah in full length in ghettos. Religious items from the Holocaust memory of Claude Lanzmann. period – Torah scrolls, Chanukah menorahs, Yad Vashem’s Visual Center is open from 9am prayer books and calendars – are symbolic of to 5pm from Sunday to Thursday. It contains more than 11,200 films, referenced in the online the quest for Jewish continuity and the desire catalog (in English). to maintain observances prior to and during This article was written with the assistance of Mimi the war years, as well the eternal hope for a Ash, Film Research and Acquisitions Coordinator, brighter, more promising future. Visual Center.

news 21 News Events at Yad Vashem: June-September 2018

During June-September 2018, Yad Vashem conducted 28 commemorative events, including annual memorial ceremonies for Holocaust survivor organizations, ceremonies for Yad Vashem supporters and Righteous Among the Nations, and film screenings and concerts for the public. Following is a small selection of Yad Vashem events over these four months:

Memorial Ceremony for the Holocaust in Romania Gal Cohen ■ On 19 June, some 600 people assembled at lack of awareness: the painful culture of silence Yad Vashem's Monument to the Jewish Soldiers among Romanian survivors. “My family had and Partisans for a ceremony in memory a saying: ‘Children don’t need to know about of the Holocaust in Romania. The ceremony everything that happens.’ Our parents’ generation was the fruit of cooperation between Yad let us live with the illusion that they had made it Vashem and AMIR, the umbrella organization through the war physically and psychologically of Romanian immigrants to Israel. This year’s intact. There was an outlook of restraint, where ceremony focused on the topic of the ghettos cultured people don’t put their wounds on display and the camps in Transnistria. or share their pain. ‘The Missing Chapter' is the “In 2018, there are still people who don’t title that suits the story of all Romanian Jews. know that the Holocaust happened in Romania,” Fortunately, this absence is beginning to shrink, said AMIR Chairman Micha Harish. He explained thanks to activity and programming like that that this unfamiliarity was not coincidental, of AMIR and Yad Vashem.” government has observed a memorial day every but rather stemmed from how the Holocaust in Yochanan Ron Singer, Chairman of AMIR’s year since then, and the topic of the Holocaust Romania was different from the general story of Yad Vashem Committee, President of the World is taught in Romanian schools.” the Holocaust. “The Holocaust in Romania took Organization of the Jews of Bukovina, and "I am always surprised at how much these place mostly on Romanian territory, as a result himself survivor of Transnistria, also emphasized gatherings move me," said Yad Vashem Director of the policies of the Romanian administration, the distinctiveness of the Holocaust in Romania. General Dorit Novak. “The plaza is filled with and was executed by the Romanian army and “It can’t be said that Romania imitated what the faces of young and old, the next generations gendarmes – not by the Nazis. The other factor happened in Nazi Germany or followed in its together with the first. Gatherings like today for this lack of awareness is decades of denial footsteps – it preceded them. Until the Wiesel restore confidence that our shared mission – by the communist authorities in Romania.” Committee was founded in 2003, Romania to remember and remind – stands a chance.” Dr. Miriam Yahil-Wax, the daughter of claimed that not only had it not murdered Jews, The author assists production in the Commemoration Holocaust survivors, noted another factor in the but also that it had helped them. The Romanian and Community Relations Division. The Road to Babi Yar ■ On 22 June 1941, the German army invaded collaboration between the Nazis and the local the Soviet Union with massive military force, population in Ukraine, where some 1.5 million with the objective of decisively ending WWII Jews were murdered.” by the winter. “Operation Barbarossa” was The Road to Babi Yar is the eighth and final accompanied by the mass murder of the Jews entry in Maftsir’s documentary film project, in every town the Germans occupied in broad “Searching for the Unknown Holocaust,” a swaths of the USSR, committed within a few project that seeks for the first time to give an Photo: Roni Katzenelson Roni Photo: weeks after the territory fell under German extensive cinematic voice to the Holocaust in occupation. Very few non-Jews risked their the USSR. lives to hide Jews, and some of the population “There was no death as cruel, cold, brutal, actively collaborated with the Germans in concentrated and secluded as death at Babi ■ Left to right: Boris Maftsir, President Rivlin and their murder. Avner Shalev at the screening of The Road to Babi Yar Yar,” said President Rivlin. “Men, women and Marking 77 years since the onslaught children were massacred over two days; even of “Operation Barbarossa,” on 21 June 2018 “For years, the public was less familiar with their names went unrecorded. All that was said Yad Vashem held a special film screening of the fate of Soviet Jews during the Holocaust, about them was ‘They were also Jews.’ What the The Road to Babi Yar – a documentary film that although when the archives began to open up Soviet authorities tried to blur for decades has tracks the first hundred days of the invasion with the fall of the Communist Bloc, researchers been uncovered in recent years, but the puzzle of Ukraine, when the Nazis realized they could started to encounter primary sources about it,” is unfortunately still incomplete, the picture is kill the Jews where they lived, and even receive said Liat Benhabib, Director of the Yad Vashem not whole. We must spare no effort to reveal help from the locals. The audience in the Visual Center. “How and why did the system the scale of the destruction and the stories of packed Edmond J. Safra Auditorium included of mass murder grow and evolve at hundreds the Jewish families who lived in the Former President Reuven Rivlin, Yad Vashem Chairman of sites in Ukraine, which Babi Yar came to Soviet Union before the Holocaust. I would like Avner Shalev, Genesis Philanthropy Group symbolize? By interviewing historians, local to thank Boris for this film and for the entire representative Natalie Shnaiderman, and the eyewitnesses and Jewish survivors, The Road film project, which has placed the Holocaust film’s creators, Boris Maftsir and Zvi Shefy. to Babi Yar presents a broad, painful picture of in the USSR at the center of remembrance.” 22 news Memorial Ceremony Marks Kites for Korczak 75 Years since the Jewish ■ On 7 August 2018, Yad Vashem marked the 76th anniversary of the deportation of Janusz Korczak, Stefa Wilczynska, and the Revolt at Sobibor children of their orphanage from the Warsaw ■ On 9 October 2018, a center at the site of the former death camp that ghetto to Treblinka. memorial ceremony and will accurately educate future generations about Janusz Korczak (aka Henryk Goldszmit), event was held at Yad its terrible history and fittingly commemorate a Polish-born doctor, author and educator, Vashem's Synagogue, its victims. dedicated his life to caring for children, commemorating 75 Devorah Fishman (Lichtman), daughter particularly orphans. He believed that children years since the Jewish of the late Sobibor survivors Eda Fischer and should always be listened to and respected, revolt at the former Jitschak Lichtman, spoke about both the burden and this belief was reflected in his works. In German Nazi death camp and honor of growing up as a member of the 1912, Korczak became the director of a Jewish Sobibor. The memorial Second Generation. The most important lesson ■ orphanage in Warsaw. When the Jews of Warsaw event took place in the Aleksander Pechersky she learned from her parents was how they were forced to move into a ghetto, Korczak presence of Holocaust survivors and next preserved their humanity in the camp, and later refused to abandon the children, despite offers generations, as well as the Ambassadors of the found “the proper way to live a normal life.” from Polish friends to hide him on the “Aryan” Netherlands and Slovakia in Israel and diplomatic “How lucky we are to be connected to such side of the city. representatives from Poland and Russia. heroism,” she concluded. Naama Galil from Yad Vashem’s Since 2007, archeology doctoral student Commemoration and Community Relations Yoram Haimi has led excavations at the site Division lectured on the history of the camp and of the former death camp together with his the revolt at Sobibor. One of three “Operation Polish counterpart, Wojciech Mazurek, with the Reinhard” extermination camps, Sobibor began involvement and supervision of Yad Vashem's its deadly work in April 1942. Sobibor was chosen International Institute for Holocaust Research due to its proximity to railway tracks and its and Directorate. In his lecture, Haimi revealed isolation from the surrounding population. Most that over the past 11 years, teams of volunteers of the victims of Sobibor arrived via trains. After at the site have unearthed over 70,000 artifacts, Korzcak’s right-hand assistant at the several failed plans and attempts at escape, on including wedding rings, personalized pendants, orphanage was Stefania “Stefa” Wilczynska. In 1935, Wilczynska visited Eretz Israel and lived at Kibbutz Ein Harod before returning to Warsaw in 1939. After the Nazi occupation of Poland, the members of Ein Harod arranged for her to leave the country, but she refused and moved to the ghetto along with Dr. Korczak and the children. On 5 August 1942, during a two-month wave of deportations from the ghetto, the Nazis rounded up Korczak, Wilczynska and the 200 14 October 1943, two Jewish prisoners, Leon false teeth, keys, and even door signs with the children of the orphanage. They marched in Felhendler and Lieutenant Aleksander (Sasha) names of families deported to the camp in rows to the Umschlagplatz gathering point, with Pechersky, a recently arrived Jewish POW from the belief they were relocating. “Each small Korczak in the lead. He and Wilczynska never Minsk, planned and led the mass revolt and item carries with it a fascinating story,” Haimi abandoned the children, even to the very end. escape of some 300 Jews incarcerated and emphasized. Together they were sent to Treblinka, where awaiting extermination at Sobibor. Nearly half Despite the German efforts to destroy the they were all murdered. of the inmates were killed while escaping, and camp in an attempt to erase all evidence of The memorial day at Yad Vashem began with many others were caught in the manhunt that its existence, and the subsequent building and a special academic symposium on the subject followed. Approximately 50 survived by hiding roads laid over many important components of of respect, love and equality for all people and in the nearby forests. Historians have since the camp, the archeological team showed, with of all ages – in the spirit of the philosophy estimated that between 170,000 to 250,000 Jews the help of aerial and 3D images, much of the heralded by Korczak. Following the educational were murdered at Sobibor by the time the camp camp’s structure: the exact locations of eight portion of the day, a memorial ceremony was closed in 1943 following the uprising. gas chambers, 21 burial pits and nine open held at Janusz Korczak Square, which was “Despite the fact that it took place on occupied crematoria, in addition to the “Himmelstrasse” generously endowed by Holocaust survivor Polish soil, and was carried out by German Nazis (Road to Heaven) along which the victims were Maxi Librati. Members of the Hamahanot and their collaborators, on Jewish victims from hurried towards the gas chambers, the women’s Haolim youth movement then flew dozens of across Europe as well as North Africa, and despite disrobing hut and the living quarters of the camp’s kites in memory of Janusz Korczak’s unique its universal implications, Sobibor is above all a commandants. “Our archeological work proves educational worldview. Jewish story,” stated Yad Vashem’s Director of for future generations that Sobibor existed,” Governmental and External Affairs Yossi Gevir. Haimi concluded. Gevir concurred: “You are www.yadvashem.org for a short biographical video featuring the story Gevir also praised the ongoing international and exposing what the Germans tried to hide – the of Janusz Korczak and his revolutionary professional efforts to establish a new visitors truth about Sobibor.” philosophy news 23 News RECENT VISITS TO YAD VASHEM During June-September 2018, Yad Vashem conducted 257 guided tours for some 3,850 official visitors from Israel and abroad. These guests included members of royalty, heads of state and local government, ambassadors, mayors, NGO officials, economists, environmentalists, religious leaders and personalities from the entertainment world. Following is a small selection of our honored guests over these four months:

■ HRH Prince William Arthur Philip Louis “It has been a profoundly moving experience of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, visited to visit Yad Vashem today,” wrote Prince Yad Vashem on 26 June 2018, as part of the William in the Yad Vashem Guest Book. “It is first-ever official British royal family visit to almost impossible to comprehend this appalling Israel. Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev event in history. Every name, photograph and accompanied the Duke throughout his visit to memory recorded here is a tragic reminder of Yad Vashem. Prince William toured the Holocaust the unimaginable human cost of the Holocaust History Museum, participated in a memorial and of the immense loss suffered by the Jewish ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, visited people. The story of the Holocaust is one of the Children’s Memorial, and signed the Yad darkness and despair, questioning humanity Vashem Guest Book. itself. But the actions of those few who took In addition, the Duke spoke with two great risks to help others are a reminder of the Holocaust survivors, Paul Alexander and Henry human capacity for love and hope. I am honored Foner, survivors of the Kindertransport rescue that my own great-grandmother is one of these initiative. The private meeting took place in the Righteous Among the Nations. Museum of Holocaust Art. “We must never forget the Holocaust - the The British royal family has an honorable murder of six million men, women and children, connection to the history of the Holocaust. simply because they were Jewish. We all have a In 1993, Princess Alice of Battenberg and responsibility to remember and to teach future Greece, great-grandmother of Prince William, generations about the horrors of the past so was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous that they can never reoccur. May the millions Among the Nations for her role in rescuing the of Jewish people remembered by Yad Vashem Cohen family in Greece during the Holocaust. never be forgotten.”

■ On 21 August, US National Security Advisor ■ On 19 July, Hungarian Prime Minister ■ Montenegro’s Foreign Minister Prof. Ambassador John R. Bolton visited Yad Vashem, Viktor Orbán (left) toured the Holocaust History Dr. Srdjan Darmanovic visited Yad Vashem on accompanied by US Ambassador to Israel H.E. Museum, where he was guided by Director of the 16 July. He toured the Holocaust History Museum Mr. David M. Friedman, and laid a wreath in Yad Vashem Libraries Dr. Robert Rozett (right), and laid a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance. memory of the six million Holocaust victims a historian of the Holocaust of Hungarian on behalf of the American people. In the Guest Jewry. During his tour of the museum, the Book, he wrote: “In memory of the greatest Prime Minister received a comprehensive tragedy which the spirit and resilience of the explanation of the Holocaust, as well as specific Jewish people has overcome, to help us prevent references to the destruction of Hungarian its like from ever happening again… to anyone.” Jewry. Yad Vashem expressed an expectation to the Prime Minister that those chosen to lead institutions and museums dealing with the Holocaust in Hungary should be committed to the presentation and dissemination of ■ During his visit to Yad Vashem on 7 June, authoritative and conscientious historical Foreign Minister of Latvia Edgars Rinke¯vicˇs research in this field. toured the Museum of Holocaust Art, where he viewed the biblical artwork created by Holocaust victim Carol Deutsch.

24 24 NEW BENEFACTORS The Saban Family: Supporting IDF Seminars ■ During their compulsory national service, and moral development, and the family is thus Israel’s young people face experiences that delighted to be supporting Yad Vashem’s vital provoke fresh examination of their character, efforts in this field. beliefs, and their relationship to their nation A native of Egypt, Haim Saban immigrated and state. Accordingly, study of the Holocaust to Israel and France before moving to Los has become an integral part of the Israel Defense Angeles in 1983. Now Chairman and CEO of Forces’ education programs. Yad Vashem’s Saban Capital Group, Haim launched the Saban International School for Holocaust Studies Family Foundation in 1999 with Cheryl to support cooperates closely with the IDF Education Corps various medical, children’s and educational to produce programs and develop day seminars, programs. Among these programs are the which are attended by some 70,000 soldiers Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, the Soroka every year, new recruits and veteran officers Saban made a generous pledge to support Yad Children’s Hospital in Israel and Friends of the alike. These visits strengthen the soldiers’ sense Vashem’s IDF seminars both on the Mount of IDF. Yad Vashem is deeply grateful for this latest of personal commitment to defend the Jewish Remembrance and at army bases and training contribution from the Saban Family Foundation State in order to ensure the continued existence centers throughout Israel. During their pledge, that will help facilitate Yad Vashem’s ongoing IDF and growth of the Jewish people. Haim pointed out that while military service seminars and workshops, stimulating dialogue At the American Society for Yad Vashem’s is both a necessity and a rite of passage for on ethical issues, and helping participants Annual Tribute Dinner in November 2017, new young Israeli men and women, it is also one internalize humanitarian values of tolerance Yad Vashem Benefactors Haim and Cheryl of the most important stages in their social and moral courage. Steven Baral: Honoring His Father ■ In a recent ceremony that took place Bronisława (Bronka) Porwit from Krakow, and the memory of his during the 2018 Yad Vashem “Generation Ilona (Ilonka) Nemes from Budapest, both of whom family members who to Generation" Mission (see pp. 4-5), new were also later honored as Righteous Among were murdered in the Yad Vashem Benefactor Steven Baral was the Nations, Martin’s mother Franka helped her Holocaust, as well as recognized for his generous support of the three children as well as three nieces flee by foot those who survived. He International School for Holocaust Studies. via Slovakia and Hungary to Romania. There currently serves as Vice Steven’s father Martin Baral was born in she received a treasured “certificate” from the President in Seattle’s Krakow, Poland, in 1932. When he was eight British authorities, allowing them to immigrate Holocaust Center for years old, Martin and his family were interned to Eretz Israel. Her husband Samuel, who had Humanity, where he in the Krakow ghetto, where they spent two been separated from the rest of the family and has been active for over years living in squalor and under constant interned in the Plazsow concentration camp, was twenty years. In his persecution. In the midst of this living hell, he one of over 1,200 Jews saved by Righteous Among gracious speech at Yad Vashem in July 2018, received assistance from Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the Nations Oskar Schindler as prisoner Number Steven acknowledged, “Yad Vashem is the sole a Polish Catholic pharmacist, who was later 41 on Schindler’s famous list. After liberation, legitimate repository of Jewish memory and recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Samuel was reunited with his family, who later Jewish history... Yad Vashem has educated me Among the Nations. moved to Australia, where Steven was born. and inspired me. My family’s name has been Martin and his brother Jim escaped the ghetto Now residing in Seattle, WA, Steven placed in the heart of Yad Vashem, and for this on the night before its liquidation. Aided by Baral has made it his life’s mission to honor I feel extremely honored.” Egon and Miriam Sonnenschein: Inspiring the Next Generation ■ As a Holocaust survivor from Slovenia in in Cape Town, their students: that the Holocaust was real; the former Yugoslavia, Egon Sonnenschein as well as that they must not forget the atrocities, which understands what it means to lose 17 family importing and must never happen again; that many survivors members, be dispossessed, and be left with selling woven suffered terrible psychological and physical nothing. He moved to many countries during curtaining. damage; and that the students should never and after the war. After serving in the IDF, The family be bystanders to unjust acts, nor give up hope he immigrated to South Africa, where he immigrated for a better future. met Miriam. They married 61 years ago, had to Sydney, The Sonnenscheins are deeply committed four children and are proud grandparents of Australia, in to Israel and the Jewish people, and were 12 grandchildren. Tragically, their daughter 1983, where included in the Sydney community’s Jewish Vivienne passed away, leaving behind her they established a very successful textile Communal Appeal list of major philanthropists husband and four beautiful children. business. over the last half-century, in particular for their Egon was the founder and Chairman of Egon and Miriam are actively involved support of the Sydney Jewish Museum. Their Nettex in South Africa, which grew from humble with the Sydney Jewish Museum, where generous donation to Yad Vashem has been beginnings into the largest knitting factory Egon tells his story as a Holocaust survivor recognized in the Holocaust History Museum, south of the equator, producing and exporting and Miriam guides. Between them, they pass where their names now appear on the Museum laces and a large variety of knitted curtaining on a number of uniquely valuable lessons to Partners Wall. news 25 Friends Worldwide

USA ■ Following a tour of the Holocaust History ■ Yakira Hoffer (center) marked her bat mitzvah Museum, Max Freud (center) and his parents with her parents Daniella and Ben Hoffer ■ On 31 August, Michael and Linda Shabot Valerie Russo and Marc Freud participated in and other family members at Yad Vashem on (third from right and third from left) visited Yad a meaningful Bar Mitzvah Twinning Ceremony 16 August. After a tour of the Holocaust History Vashem with friends. They toured the Holocaust in the Yad Vashem Synagogue on 20 August. Museum, their moving visit culminated in a History Museum, and participated in a behind- Bat Mitzvah Twinning Ceremony in the Yad the-scenes visit to the Archives, presented by Vashem Synagogue. the International Relations Division’s Managing Director Shaya Ben Yehuda (center).

■ On 19 August, Zachary Brownstein, Spencer Buten and Nathalie Chen (center) marked their bar and bat mitzvahs at Yad Vashem with their families. Following a tour of the Holocaust ■ On 30 July, Jared Resnick, grandson of Yad History Museum, Zachary, Spencer and Nathalie Vashem Builders Jimmy and Lydia Resnick, ■ On 26 September, Ryan Zuckerman (center) participated in a special Twinning Ceremony visited Yad Vashem with his summer travel marked his bar mitzvah at Yad Vashem with in the Yad Vashem Synagogue. program. During the visit, Jared viewed the his family in a meaningful twinning ceremony, dedication to his grandparents in the Square following a guided tour of the Holocaust History of Hope. Museum.

■ Yad Vashem Benefactor Steven Baral (second from left) visited Yad Vashem on 12 July with his friends Jeff and Jamie Merriman-Cohen ■ Sasha Hurowitz (second from left) marked her ■ Jacob Salzhauer (center) marked his bar (right). They were greeted by Shaya Ben Yehuda bat mitzvah at Yad Vashem on 17 June with a mitzvah with his parents Eva and Michael (left), and were given a behind-the-scenes meaningful day at Yad Vashem. Together with Salzhauer at Yad Vashem on 20 August. The tour of the Yad Vashem Archives, followed by her parents Sharon and Richar Hurowitz, and family participated in a tour of the Holocaust a tour of the Holocaust History Museum and her brother, Sasha walked along the Path of the History Museum, and the visit culminated Children’s Memorial. Righteous Among the Nations, and then toured with a special Twinning Ceremony in the Yad the Holocaust History Museum, the Holocaust Vashem Synagogue. Art Museum and the “Flashes of Memory” exhibition. The visit culminated in a touching Bat Mitzvah Twinning Ceremony in the Yad Vashem Synagogue.

26 ■ Samantha Mann (front row, second from and the new “Flashes of Memory” exhibition. ■ On 19 August, the right), granddaughter of Yad Vashem Trustees They were also shown fascinating documents American Society for Yad David and Esther Mann, visited Yad Vashem and artifacts from the Yad Vashem Collections. Vashem and the Los Angeles on 17 July, along with her teaching colleagues. Museum of the Holocaust During their visit, they toured the Children’s partnered for the first Memorial, Janusz Korczak Square, and the time in a screening of the Holocaust History Museum. documentary The Presence of Their Absence. With over 100 supporters in attendance, the screening was followed by a discussion with filmmaker Donna Kanter and Fred Zaidman, whose family story is the subject of the movie. The session was moderated by William Bernstein. ■ Jim Breslauer (left) was greeted by Shaya Ben Yehuda (right) before touring the Holocaust ■ On 23 May, the American Society held its History Museum on 29 June. Annual Spring Luncheon in New York City, honoring Holocaust survivor Millie Zuckerman ■ After a tour of the Holocaust History Museum and her three daughters Ruth Katz, Ann on 17 June, Asher Rossen, Kyle Pierce, Garrett Sklar and Deborah Zuckerman (pictured with Button, Zachary Rossen, Samuel Sachs, Tyler American Society Chair Leonard Wilf and her Button and Max Dombchik marked their bar granddaughters, Michelle Katz Rappaport, mitzvahs with their families through a special Stephanie Abromow, Hillary Katz, Debra Twinning Ceremony in the Yad Vashem Kaplan and Julia Kaplan). Guest speakers were Synagogue. Holocaust survivor and author of Survivor’s Club: The Very True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz Michael Bornstein and ■ After being greeted by Michael Fisher (center) his daughter Debbie Bornstein Holinstat. The and American Society West Coast Director of event was co-chaired by Goldie Hertz, Danielle Institutional Advancement William Bernstein Karten, Abby Kaufthal, Jaci Paradis, Rachel (right), Peter and Leslie Strong (third and Shnay and Michelle Taragin. fourth from left) toured Yad Vashem’s “Flashes of Memory” exhibition on 8 June along with family and friends.

■ Following a memorable tour of the Holocaust History Museum on 14 June, Coby Bronfman and Moise Safra (center) commemorated their bar mitzvahs with their mothers, Stacey Bronfman (left) and Marielle Safra (second from right), and Director of the International Relations Division’s US Desk Michael Fisher ■ On 22 July, Eli Pechtold (left) visited the (right), in the Yad Vashem Synagogue. ■ Following a tour of the Holocaust Holocaust History Museum, the “Flashes of History Museum on 6 June, members of the Memory” exhibition and the Children’s Memorial. Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra held a meaningful wreath-laying ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, led by Michael Fisher.

■ On 10 June, Marcie and Cliff Goldstein (third and fourth from left) and friends took a guided tour of the Holocaust History Museum friends worldwide 27 Friends Worldwide

■ On 21 August, the American Society Young CANADA Leadership Associates hosted “An Evening ■ Yad Vashem mourns the passing of at Citi Field,” chaired by Rachel Shnay and Holocaust survivor and Yad Vashem Builder ■ Yad Vashem mourns Josh Gelnick. Over 25 young professionals Isaac Dickmann. the recent passing of gathered to hear Holocaust survivor Felice Isaac was born on 11 November 1919 in Holocaust survivor Hank Zimmern Stokes (left), introduced by Allyson Stryj, Poland, where he qualified as a dental Rosenbaum, former Chair Setton (right) – who struck up an extraordinary technician. After the German occupation of the Canadian Society for friendship during the recent 2018 Yad Vashem of Poland, he was sent to the Russian Yad Vashem. International Donors Mission (see pp. 4-5). front, eventually joining the Polish army. Born in August 1936 in Marilyn and Barry Rubenstein generously In September 1944, Isaac’s army unit was Warsaw, Poland, Hank and helped to make this special evening possible. stationed in Eretz Israel, where he joined his family were forced into the Warsaw ghetto the Jewish Brigade. From his entire family, in 1939, where his brother died. In 1942, they Isaac was the sole survivor of the Holocaust. escaped the ghetto through the sewer system, In Israel, Isaac met his beloved wife Yona, and were hidden in a cowshed by a childhood to whom he was married for 63 years. He friend of Hank’s father. When the Germans served in the IDF for two years and fought learned of their whereabouts through an in Israel's War of Independence. The couple informant, the family escaped into the forest, moved to Washington, DC in 1959. Isaac and where they hid until liberation by the Red Army. Yona were deeply committed to Holocaust After spending time in a DP camp in education, and during their annual visits to Germany, Hank immigrated to Canada in 1952 Yad Vashem, they were always interested to ■ On 1 June, Isabel Maxwell (second from right) at the age of 16. He began his professional career hear about its pedagogic activites. This keen and Frances Arnold (right) were greeted by Shaya in a clothing factory, and eventually built his interest led to the couple making a generous Ben Yehuda (second from left), at the beginning own textile import business. A dear friend of Yad bequest in support of Yad Vashem’s educational of their meaningful visit to Yad Vashem. They Vashem, Hank was committed to perpetuating endeavors. were guided by Esther Bowalsky (left). Holocaust remembrance, serving as Chair of the Yad Vashem extends its condolences Canadian Society for Yad Vashem from 1995 to to Isaac’s family. May his memory be 2009. During this time, he was instrumental in blessed. the establishment of the Wall of Remembrance at Earl Bales Park, and helped initiate the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies at Queen’s Park, UK during which special recognition is given to Holocaust survivors who have contributed to ■ On 17 June, Yad Vashem Pillars Michael the wellbeing of Ontario. and Jackie Gee (center) met with Yad Vashem Yad Vashem expresses its deepest Chairman Avner Shalev (second from left), condolences to Hank’s widow Helen, his Director General Dorit Novak (left), and children Brian, Cheryl and Warren, Steven ■ On 26 September, the American Society for International Relations Division Managing and Debbie, and all the grandchildren. May Yad Vashem in cooperation with Jewish Life Director Shaya Ben Yehuda (right). Their visit his memory be blessed. Television (JLTV) honored Phil Blazer, retiring included a tour of the two recently opened JLTV Chief Executive Officer, for his valued exhibitions, “Flashes of Memory: Photography SOUTH AFRICA service and contributions to the development during the Holocaust” and “‘They Say There of the American Society in Los Angeles. Left is a Land’: Longings for Eretz Israel during ■ Accompanied by extended family and friends, to right: William Bernstein, Phil Blazer, Kathy the Holocaust.” Brian and Lee Joffe (fourth and third from left) Blazer, American Society Executive Director toured the Children’s Memorial and Holocaust Ron Meier History Museum on 14 June. Their visit culminated in a plaque-unveiling ceremony on the Warsaw Ghetto Square Balcony and the presentation to them of the Yad Vashem Key.

28 BELGIUM AUSTRALIA ■ On 24 July, Andrew Peterfreund toured the Holocaust Art Museum and two recently ■ Tom and Di Goldman, Barry and Sandra opened Yad Vashem exhibitions, “Flashes of ■ Yad Vashem mourns the Smorgon, and Peter and Clare Palan toured Memory: Photography during the Holocaust” recent passing of Holocaust the Children’s Memorial and Holocaust History and “‘They Say There is a Land’: Longings for survivor and former Chair Museum on 23 May. They were then given a Eretz Israel during the Holocaust.” of Yad Vashem Friends in behind-the-scenes tour of the Yad Vashem Belgium Jack Graubart, at Archives by Archives Director and Fred the age of 97. Hillman Chair for Holocaust Documentation Jack was born in Dr. Haim Gertner. Sanok, Poland in 1921. When he was 18 years old, he followed his brother Walter to Belgium. With the situation deteriorating in Europe, he volunteered to join the French resistance. As part of his initiation, he was required to kill a German officer. During his service in the resistance, he helped transfer hundreds of Jews from ■ On 28 June, Vivienne Fried (center) unveiled occupied France to Switzerland, thus saving her plaque on the Australian Wall of the their lives. He escaped arrest twice by the ■ On 29 July, Danny Gluck (center) visited the Memorial Cave, accompanied by her daughter- French police, but the third time he was Museum of Holocaust Art and the exhibition in-law Timna (left), her son Noach (right) and sent to the Drancy transit camp and from “Flashes of Memory: Photography during her dear friend Helsie Brustman OAM. there to Auschwitz. Jack spent nearly three the Holocaust.” He was also given a behind- years in four concentration camps, including the-scenes tour of the Yad Vashem Archives Auschwitz and Buchenwald, surviving death by Archives Division Deputy Director Elinor marches between camps, of which only he and Kroitoru (left). three others out of 1,400 prisoners survived. Although he never completed high school, Jack was fluent in almost 12 languages. He became a successful diamond merchant in Belgium, and was a dedicated sports enthusiast. He loved the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and was on excellent terms ■ Accompanied by their son and daughter- with many diplomats, government officials in-law Ian and Linda Gandel (left), as well as and businessmen. Jack ensured he passed on Gandel Philanthropy representative in Israel the torch of remembrance to his children; ■ Yad Vashem Benefactors Egon and Miriam Avi Armoni, Yad Vashem Pillars Pauline and on retiring as Chair of Yad Vashem Friends Sonnenschein and their son Alan visited the John Gandel AC (right) visited the Mount of in Belgium, his daughter Yvette Graubart- Children’s Memorial and Holocaust History Remembrance on 28 June. They took part Blaiberg continued in his place. Museum on 3 June. A week later, they visited in the Tenth International Conference for Yad Vashem expresses its sympathy and the Holocaust Art Museum as well as the Holocaust Education (see p. 7), and met with heartfelt condolences to Jack’s children, “Flashes of Memory” exhibition, followed by Australian conference participants. After Yvette and Jack Blaiberg, and Dorothy a behind-the-scenes-visit to the Yad Vashem Shaya Ben Yehuda presented them with the and Gabriel Kertesz, their children and Archives and Artifacts Collections. They also Yad Vashem Key, they met with Yad Vashem grandchildren. May his memory be blessed. met with Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev senior management and viewed the “Flashes and International Relations Division Managing of Memory” exhibition. Director Shaya Ben Yehuda.

friends worldwide 29 Friends Worldwide

■ On 7 June, Ann Bryce (center) and her partner MEXICO Aaron Kanat (left) visited the Holocaust History ■ Yad Vashem Builders Sharon and David Sitt ■ Museum, Holocaust Art Museum and “Flashes Yad Vashem Builders Inés and David Beja marked the bar mitzvah of their son Alan (fourth of Memory” exhibition. (center) were joined by Director of the Latin- from right) in the Yad Vashem Synagogue, America, Spain, Portugal and Miami Spanish- together with their sons Edward and Daniel Speaking Desk in Yad Vashem’s International (sixth from left and fifth from right) and other Relations Division Perla Hazan (second from family members. They were joined by Perla left), Division Managing Director Shaya Ben and Moshe Hazan. Yehuda (fourth from right), Gina Beja Nizri and her husband (third and fourth from left), Yad Vashem Builder Jaime Braverman and Beatriz Masliah (third and second from right) and Daniel Leon (right), at the unveiling of ■ Accompanied by his granddaughter Isabelle the plaque in their honor on the Builders Wall. Worth, Harry Chojna visited the Children’s Memorial and Holocaust History Museum on 24 June.

MIAMI SPANISH-SPEAKERS ■ Yad Vashem Sponsors Daniel and Elizabeth Slimak (left) were accompanied by Director of the Latin-America, Spain, Portugal and Miami ■ The Fastlicht, Russo and Azcarraga Families Spanish-Speaking Desk Perla Hazan and Moshe visited Yad Vashem to mark the bar mitzvahs Hazan (right) during their visit to Yad Vashem. of Alex Russo (second from right) and Emilio Azcarraga (second from left). They were joined ■ Izhar and Jane Ronen (left) and George and by Marcos Fastlicht (right), Marc Russo (center) Helen Proos visited the Children’s Memorial and Emilio Azcarraga (left). and Holocaust History Museum on 21 June.

■ Debra and Robert Kasirer were joined by Perla Hazan during their visit to Yad Vashem.

SPAIN ■ Yad Vashem Pillars Vicky and Ariel Picker (third from left and right) visited Yad Vashem ■ David Hatchwell (sixth from left) and a group to mark the bat mitzvah of the their daughter of friends were accompanied by Director of Tali (second from right) and the unveiling of the Latin-America, Spain, Portugal and Miami the plaque in her honor, together with their ■ Alexandra and Daniela Hirschhorn recently Spanish-Speaking Desk Perla Hazan (right) and sons Alan and Uri (left). Moshe Hazan during their visit to Yad Vashem. visited Yad Vashem.

30 friends worldwide PERU VENEZUELA Christian Desk with ICEJ and ■ Jessica and Alex Wolfenson (center) marked ■ Yad Vashem mourns the The Museum of the Bible the bar mitzvah of their son Ariel (third from left) passing of its distinguished ■ After ten years as the Director of the during a special visit to Yad Vashem together and longtime friend, Christian Friends of Yad Vashem, Dr. Susanna with their family. Holocaust survivor, and Kokkonen (front, right) is leaving her position. founder and president of Deputy Director of the International Relations the Venezuelan Association Division Sari Granitza (back, right) will be for Yad Vashem David the new director, with Pastor Mark and Terrie Yisrael. Jenkins (back, left) acting liaisons in the USA. David’s mother and little sister Eva, The four held a recent planning meeting with as well as his grandparents, uncles, aunts International Relations Division Managing and cousins, were all murdered in the gas Director Shaya Ben Yehuda (front, left). chambers at Auschwitz. Having survived the horrors of the Holocaust together with his father and brothers, David immigrated to Eretz ■ Valeria and Simon Fishman (fourth and fifth Israel, where he joined the nascent Israeli from left) were joined at Yad Vashem by their army to fight in the War of Independence. family and friends to mark the bar mitzvah of Later, David and his wife Dora established their son Rafael (third from left). a family in Venezuela, where he held a number of leadership roles within the Jewish Community in Caracas. A steadfast supporter of Yad Vashem, David was one of the founders of Yad Vashem’s Memorial Cave, which offers survivors, relatives and friends ■ During the Feast of Tabernacles 2018, Yad of Holocaust victims a way to commemorate Vashem hosted a number of international their loved ones and their lost communities. visits. Various nations from around the globe As president of the Venezuelan Association for were represented, including countries as far Yad Vashem, David was one of the pioneers apart as Spain and New Zealand. Thousands in emphasizing Holocaust education. of visitors from the Feast came to Yad Vashem Yad Vashem extends its deepest and toured the Holocaust History Museum and ARGENTINA condolences to David’s wife Dora, daughter the two new temporary exhibitions, “They Say There Is a Land" and “Flashes of Memory." ■ Vanina and Marcelo Cassin (third from left Goldy Yisrael Greenfield, and sons, Milton, Dr. Susanna Kokkonen, outgoing Director of the and second from right) visited Yad Vashem Willy and Jacobo Yisrael. May his memory Christian Friends of Yad Vashem, also hosted a with their children Galia (left) and Avril (fourth be blessed. seminar at the Feast venue. At her VIP farewell from left) to mark the bar mitzvah of their son reception, Dr. Kokkonen (center) was joined Michel (third from right). by ICEJ President Dr. Jürgen Bühler (left) and ■ Henrique and Mónica Radonski de Capriles ICEJ VP Finance David van der Walt (right). (third from left and center) visited Yad Vashem with members of their family, including Andrés and Claudia Capriles (left). Director of the Latin-America, Spain, Portugal and Miami Spanish-Speaking Desk Perla Hazan (right) accompanied the group during the visit. The International Institute for Holocaust Research: Publications Relations Between Jews and Poles during the The Jewish Voice in the Ghettos and Concentration Camps: Holocaust: The Jewish Perspective Verbal Expression under Nazi Oppression Havi Dreifuss (Ben-Sasson) Yisrael Kaplan | Editor: Zeev W. Mankowitz 174 NIS 128 NIS 88 NIS 66 NIS ■ In this study, the author describes the changes ■ At the end of 1945, Yisrael Kaplan, an established that occurred in the attitude of Polish Jews toward historian and literary essayist and editor of the their neighbors during the Holocaust. The book Yiddish journal Fun Letstn Khurbn (The Final documents the transformation of the Jews’ sense Destruction), began circulating among survivors of belonging to Poland into a feeling of insult and a questionnaire on ethnographic-linguistic topics. hatred, and exposes a glimpse of the reality of their This collection includes poems, jokes, songs, lives, casting light on several of the factors that expressions, proverbs, slogans, common curses, directly and indirectly influenced their lives – and secret codes and more - coined by Jews all over ultimately their deaths. Europe as a way of coping with the harsh reality.

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Your Support Helps Make a Difference All of the activities, projects and events which you have just read about are made possible thanks to the generous support of our donors. In these difficult times, when there is a worrying rise in antisemitism and Holocaust denial around the world, Yad Vashem is doubling its efforts to commemorate the Holocaust, disseminate its universal implications and strengthen Jewish continuity. Yad Vashem is deeply grateful for your generosity in supporting its vital work and welcomes both new friends and established supporters as partners in our shared mission. ■ To make tax-deductible donations: USA: GERMANY: AUSTRALIA: American Society for Yad Vashem Society of Friends of Yad Vashem in Germany Australian Friends of Yad Vashem 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Joachimstaler Str. 13 President: Joey Borensztajn New York, NY 10110 10719 Berlin 2 Huntingfield Road Tel: 1-800-310-7495 or 1-212-220-4304 Tel: +49-30-81825931 Toorak, VIC 3142 Australia E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +61-3-9299-9639 E-mail: [email protected] American Society – Western Region AUSTRIA: 11911 San Vincente Blvd. Suite 215 Friends of Yad Vashem in Austria Los Angeles, CA 90049 Blütenstr. 18/B2 Tel: 1-424-273-4460 A-4040 Linz E-mail: [email protected] ■ Tel: +43-732-716 822 Donations may also be sent to: E-mail: [email protected] International Relations Division, CANADA: Yad Vashem, PO Box 3477 Canadian Society for Yad Vashem SWITZERLAND: Jerusalem 9103401, Israel 265 Rimrock Road, Suite 218 Tel: +972-2-6443420 Toronto, ON M3J 3C6 Swiss Friends of Yad Vashem CIG - 21 Avenue Dumas E-mail: Tel: 1-416-785-1333 [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] 1208 Geneve Tel: +41-22-8173688 ■ UK: E-mail: [email protected] For information on societies Yad Vashem - UK Foundation in other countries, please visit: Stirling House, Breasy Place www.yadvashem.org/friends 9 Burroughs Gardens London NW4 4AU Tel: 020-8359-1146 Donate online: www.yadvashem.org 32E-mail:32 [email protected] www.yad vashem.org text

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