AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 41-No. 1 ISSN 0892-1571 September/October 2014-Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 The American & International Societies for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner he American & International Warsaw ghetto. He serves as the in biology. He earned a PhD. in biolo- T Societies for Yad Vashem chairman of the museum’s North gy from the University of Michigan in Annual Tribute Dinner will be held on American Council. His commitments 1988. After working in his field of evo- Sunday, November 16, 2014, at the to Polish Jewry led to his being lutionary biology at Duke University, Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers awarded the Commander Cross of North Carolina State University and This year’s honoree, Sigmund the Order of Polonia Restituta by Utah State University, he joined the Rolat, was born in 1930 in President Bronislaw Komorowski. In faculty of the University of Rochester Czestochowa, Poland. His immediate addition to his work in Poland, in 2000; he is currently associate pro- family was murdered during the Sigmund was a member of the fessor of biology there. He is married Executive Committee and Board of to Silvia Sörensen, a Berlin native; Governors of Ben-Gurion University they have a nine-year-old son, Tobias in Israel. He continues to serve on Sorensen-Fry. numerous advisory boards, including *** those of the Kosciuszko Foundation, ella Meyer born in Paris and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life Braised in Switzerland, was born & Culture, and the President’s immersed in the world of art. She Council of the Graduate Theological always painted while studying art his- Union in Berkeley, California. He is tory and obtaining her PhD in medieval the chairman of the Krakow Jewish Varian Fry. art history from the Sorbonne. Bella Culture Festival, the Isaac Bashevis Foreign Policy Association. In August taught art history, wrote numerous Singer Festival in Warsaw and the of 1940 he was sent by an aid organ- academic papers and delivered Shalom Foundation. He is also ization, the Emergency Rescue involved in the Jan Karski Educational Committee, to France, to save the Foundation in the US and in Poland. lives of 200 intellectuals and Mr. Rolat serves as the president of renowned figures who had managed the World Society of Czestochowa to escape from Germany. Fry was Jews and Their Descendants. faced with the desperate pleas of Sigmund Rolat. Mr. Rolat is a longtime supporter of many more refugees. Without the Shoah, leaving him orphaned and the American Society for Yad backing of the American consulate, alone. He survived by seeking shelter Vashem. He has achieved the status he decided to act on his own and in the Czestochowa ghetto and by of Builder at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, began finding ways to smuggle peo- working in the Hasag Pelcery labor by donating generously and often. ple out of France. In December 1940, camp. Sigmund arrived in the United Rolat donated a drawing by the Polish Fry was arrested for his rescue activ- States in 1948 and earned a BA from writer and artist, Bruno Schulz, titled ities and then expelled from France. the University of Cincinnati and an “Bianca and Her Father in a Coach.” By his estimate, he helped save the MA from NYU. He has been recognized for the gen- lives of about 4,000 people, among Mr. Rolat went on to marry, raise a erous donation of the works of Private whom was Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall. devoted family and build a successful Zinovii Tolkatchev and other artwork The French government awarded informative, firsthand experiences in business. After the collapse of in Yad Vashem’s collection. him the Chevalier of the Legion lecture form, of her grandfather Marc Communism he saw an opportunity *** d’Honneur prior to his death in 1967. Chagall’s work. Invited to take on and began doing business in Poland. he American Society for Yad Yad Vashem awarded him the title of responsibilities for the visual arts at the That re-engagement led Rolat to T Vashem will also pay tribute in Righteous Among the Nations in Cultural Services of the French become the prime financial supporter to Varian Fry, the first American to 1994. Embassy, Bella settled in New York, and ambassador for restoring Polish receive the title of Righteous Among Varian Fry will be represented at the where she held this position for a num- Jewry’s place in Polish history. He is the Nations from Yad Vashem. When event by his son James Fry, and ber of years. Adding to her expanding now focused on the Museum of the WWII was declared in 1939, Varian Chagall by his granddaughter Bella list of accomplishments, she has had History of Polish Jews, scheduled to Fry was a 32-yea- old American work- Meyer. her hand in costume design and mask- fully open on the site of the former ing in New York as an editor for the *** making for a number of theater per- ames Fry (b. 1958) is the formances and also created many Jyoungest of the three children of puppets for her own puppet show pro- IN THIS ISSUE Varian Fry and Annette Riley Fry. He ductions. Bella’s passion for beauty lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut until The ASYV Annual Tribute Dinner...... 1,8-9 and aesthetics led her to become a flo- he was six, when his family moved to Ron B. Meier is the new executive director of the ASYV...... 2 ral designer. In a recent publication Manhattan’s Upper West Side. There Bergen-Belsen diary, 1945...... 2 Bella describes her love for flowers: “to he learned to play street stickball and Surviving the Holocaust by hiding their faith...... 4 discover its essence — opening, life, became an ardent Yankees fan, tak- How the Nazis helped German companies get very rich...... 5 death — is to experience an unimagin- ing the subway by himself to games The untold story of Jews who rescued Jews...... 6 able mystery.” Bella founded starting at age 9. He attended P.S. 84 Hollywood’s unknown rescuer...... 6 FleursBELLA, a floral design and (1965–1969), Collegiate School The woman who launched 1,000 Jewish refugees...... 7 décor company, in 2005, focusing her (1969–1975), and Columbia College Nazis’ “perfect Aryan” baby was actually Jewish...... 10 talents on creating floral arrangements (1975–1979), graduating with an AB The real Monuments Man...... 16 much in the way an artist paints. Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM BOARD NAMES NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR on B. Meier, PhD., was recently appoint- He also served on the faculty of Haifa University (Israel) as a lecturer (assistant Red as the new executive director of the professor) and chair of the Community Development and Planning Track at the American Society for Yad Vashem. Founded in Haifa University School of Social Work. 1981 by a group of Holocaust survivors, and As a leader in the Jewish communal field, he served as the president of the spearheaded and led by Eli Zborowski, of New Jersey Association of Jewish Communal Service and later as president of blessed memory, from 1981 to 2012, the the Jewish Communal Service Association of North America. American Society for Yad Vashem works in Ron is the son of Holocaust survivors, both of whom were in their early teens partnership with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust growing up in the same small town in Germany around the time of Kristallnacht. Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority His maternal grandparents (for whom he and his sister are named) did not in Jerusalem, to support its efforts in the areas escape, but saved his mother and aunt by getting them on the Kindertransport of commemoration, remembrance, education, to England. As Ron puts it: “Preserving the memory of all those who perished research, capital improvement and special and fighting on behalf of the Jewish people are in my DNA.” projects. Born in Baltimore, he received his BA from the University of Maryland and later Ron comes to the American Society for Yad was awarded MSW and PhD. degrees from Washington University. Ron and his Vashem with a distinguished record of profes- wife Joyce Raynor, an accomplished Jewish educator serving as head of school sional leadership in the Jewish community. Most recently, he served as the New of Golda Och Academy, have two daughters and one granddaughter. York regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, leading ADL’s efforts Leonard A. Wilf, chairman of the board of the American Society for Yad statewide to combat anti-Semitism, prejudice and hate. He spent more than 20 Vashem, comments, “We welcome Ron Meier as our professional leader and years working on behalf of North American Jewish communities, first as the have great confidence that his training and experience in Jewish communal chief operating officer of the United Jewish Federation of MetroWest (N.J.), next leadership will inspire and guide the American Society for Yad Vashem to con- as the chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey tinued success in Holocaust education in the United States and support for the and finally as the senior vice president and founding director of the Mandel critical efforts of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. I look forward to a long and success- Center for Leadership Excellence at the Jewish Federations of North America. ful relationship for years to come.” BERGEN-BELSEN DIARY, 1945 ergen-Belsen was liberated by that stretched above his head. I want returning to your body. You are alive. out our thin bodies? Now she is here Bthe British army on April 15, to write: “How beautiful you are, blue Perhaps you too are standing some- and she beckons to us from every 1945. Conditions at the camp were so sky,” but instead I see your luminous where at this very moment with your corner. She is right before our eyes, horrendous that the British burned it eyes. I can feel your blessings and bowl of soup, leaning against another yet we cannot see her. She begs us: down in order to stop the spread of your dreams, your smile and your wall. Is it possible? I ask my heart, but “Touch me … enjoy me …” But we are typhus and other diseases. They relo- longing. it trembles with uncertainty. tired. Our past, like a hawk, circles cated the survivors to a former Below my window I hear a commo- May 7 overhead, fluttering its black wings, German army barracks, two kilome- tion. It is nothing serious. Soup is herever I look I see you. No devouring our days with horrible ters from the original camp. This new being distributed. Everybody will get a W matter what other thoughts memories. It poisons our nights with camp was called Bergen-Belsen portion. People are impatient, still come into my mind, you are always terror. Poor, sad Freedom! Will she Displaced Persons Camp. haunted by the anxiety of yesterday there. Where are you, Tateh? Will I ever have the strength to free us from This diary by Chava Rosenfarb that lives on in them. Although they ever be able to caress you and beg those dark shadowy wings? appears to have been written in this know that no one will go away without your forgiveness? I showed you so lit- Bats circle outside the window. Their DP camp, when Rosenfarb was 22 his portion of soup — if not at this win- tle kindness in the lost days of my wings flutter in a ghostly dance. My years old. The following extracts were dow, he will be served at the next — feverish past. I told you very little of unfinished ghetto poem torments my published in Yiddish in 1948 as an but still they all try to be served first. my innermost thoughts. You were so mind. It used to accompany me in the addendum to Rosenfarb’s first collec- They want to be sure of that little bowl thirsty to know my feelings and I was camp. With its words on my lips I used tion of poems, Di balade fun nekhtikn of soup, to stir it with a spoon. There so stingy in sharing them with you. to drag myself through the snows in vald (The Ballad of Yesterday’s is a man standing opposite my win- Where are you now, Tateh? I want to the early winter mornings to work. I Forest). It is translated here by Goldie dow. He emerges from the tangled tell you everything! penciled the verses on the ceiling Morgentaler, Rosenfarb’s daughter crowd holding his bowl in his hand. Did you hear the firing of the guns? above my bunk. Each day a few more and a professor of English at the He does not go to his room. He does The shots are meant to tell the world lines. In my mind, I hear them con- University of Lethbridge. not sit down at the table. Leaning that peace has come, that the hour of stantly. Bergen-Belsen, May 6, 1945 against the stone wall he gulps down freedom has arrived; those very days Through the open window I can Father, where are you? the soup as fast as he can. God, how for which you so longed when you hear the loudspeaker announcing that Today, for the first time, I hold a pen- hungry he is! For years he has been were shut up in the darkness of the today the war is officially over. Where cil in my hand. My fingers tremble hungry and for years he has been ghetto. Have you lived to see them? are you, Tateh? I want to hug you. over the white sheet of paper. Where frightened. He is very thin. A heavy The uncertainty is torturing me. My The air trembles to the distant salvos is your warm, sure hand to cover my coat hangs from his shoulders and only hope is that a miracle has saved of guns. Thin clouds of smoke waft trembling fingers and lead them again reaches to his ankles. Between one you. You were so tired after those five through the air. We celebrate this fes- to open the sacred doors of our slurp of soup and the next he wipes years in the ghetto. But then, cut off tive moment with a chunk of dry Yiddish aleph-bet? When I was a little his face with the sleeve of his coat. from us, how could you have survived bread. We have nothing better. girl, you guided my hand over the He is tired but happy. I can see his the still more terrible atrocities of the May 10 neat white lines. We wrote the word eyes dance with pleasure as they camps? Perhaps the longing to see At night when I open my eyes, I see “Tateh” and there arose such a light glance away from his pot to embrace us again helped you to survive? Mother and Henia. They are wiping from those five small letters that the everything around him, from the Tateh, we are here. The fire is glow- the sweat from my forehead and they word itself acquired a soul, and I saw green grass beneath the window to ing, but you are missing from our joy. constantly ask how I feel. We tremble that soul reflected in your loving the tall chestnut tree. He is so happy. May 8 over each other’s well-being. I want to smile: “Tateh.” What is he thinking about, this man, It is over. Our liberation has come, comfort them. I want to tell them that I sit near the window. The branches this Jew, this tortured emaciated but she wears a prosaic face. No one we do not need to be afraid anymore. of the large chestnut tree outside Jew? Most likely, he is not thinking has died of joy. No one has gone mad We are free now. But how can we pro- reach up to the second floor where anything at all. Even so, I know and with excitement. When we used to tect ourselves from death? No, we are we are staying. Today I can see the his limbs know and his body knows dream of freedom, we bathed her with still very helpless. sky and it is of the purest blue. that soon he will cast off his heavy our tears. We crowned her with the I have a fever. Perhaps it is a cold. Perhaps it is just an ordinary blue sky black overcoat. Soon the flesh will garlands of our smiles and dreams. Or is it, perhaps, typhus? with nothing remarkable about it. But I grow on his bones. Life has arrived! Now that she is here, she looks like a June 13 see this sky as it must have looked to I shut my eyes. Deliberately I put out beggar, and we have nothing to give For four long weeks the fever boiled the first human being when he sud- of my mind the man standing oppo- her. With what desperation did we call in my blood. It scorched my eyes and denly recognized God and genuflect- site. And suddenly I see you, Father. for her in those dark days. With what dulled my brain. From under steep ed before the beautiful blue expanse It is you. I can see how the strength is power did her far-off shimmer flesh (Continued on page 9) September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 CLAIMS CONFERENCE EXAMINES PLIGHT OF CHILD SHOAH VICTIMS More than 1.5 million Jewish chil- Schneider asked. “We need to ask that today, Holocaust survivors find Shoah, said Dr. Kurt Grünberg of the dren were murdered by the Nazis; what are the issues of child survivors themselves hiding from rockets and Sigmund Freud Institute in Berlin. trauma of child Holocaust sur- today. When someone is subjected to bombs in the same way they used to Every experience and trauma was vivors can be triggered at any time, trauma, what effect does that have hide from the police looking for different, depending on the children’s expert says. over time? Problems come out even Jewish children. age, whether they were hiding or in a he last day of the three-day later in life.” Stefanie Seltzer, another survivor camp, how they were separated from T Conference on Jewish Material It quickly became clear that they are from Poland and the president of the their families, what that moment of Claims Against Germany in Berlin almost the only survivors left in the World Federation of Jewish Child separation was like, and a myriad of featured a focused discussion and world, as Roman Kent, a Poland-born Survivors of the Holocaust and other factors, Grünberg said. examination of the experiences of survivor of Auschwitz and the treasur- Descendants, spoke about how years Examining four different case studies child survivors of the Holocaust, a cat- er of the conference, spoke about how later, despite her having been only a of survivors and how they live today — egory into which most of those in the the trauma of surviving when your child, the memories were vivid underlining the fact that 1.5 million chil- crowded conference room who had entire family perished extended to enough to bring her to tears, and to dren were murdered — guilt, anxiety, outlived the Shoah fell. more than just loneliness after the war. inspire her to start forming social antisocial behavior and even physical Conducted in English and in “Some things are intangible,” said groups of other child survivors. illness were all common manifesta- German, this last event of the week, Kent. “On our wedding day we didn’t “There’s no need for introductions or tions of the trauma, he said. held at the Centrum Judaicum muse- have the parents and the aunts and starting from square one,” Seltzer “The long-term effects highlight the um near the center of the city, was the brothers.... I never thought I would said. “We are each other’s family.” acute need for action, especially for meant to be a wake-up call to the be asked by my daughter: ‘Where is espite being experienced 70 to those who are still being neglected,” ongoing needs of Holocaust victims, my grandma?’ I had no answer.” D75 years ago, the trauma can Grünberg said. “The 1,000-year said Greg Schneider, the executive Colette Avital, the chairwoman of be triggered at any time, almost Reich lasted only 12 years, but the vice president of the conference. the Center of Organizations of regardless of how old the children psychological effects extend across “How do we honor child survivors?” Holocaust Survivors in Israel, said were when they went through the generations.” FRENCH NEGOTIATING REPARATIONS FOR JEWISH FAMILIES coalition of Holocaust survivors never forget. Jews. “It wasn’t an attack of morals Department representatives. Tamen A and families headquartered in Paris rail workers and guards “took that caused them to reach out now.” has communicated her clients’ expec- New York has battled to block lucra- everything but the clothes on our The rail company is a transit power- tations, and is awaiting an offer. tive contracts to an affiliate of Société backs and crammed us into a cattle house that moves to the head of the “They had better hurry,” quipped Nationale des Chemins de fer car,” he said. line when cities seek companies Dresdner, 85, a retired salesman from Français, leading the French govern- Now, 73 years later, the French are capable of building and managing Borough Park. ment to start formal negotiations with finally negotiating reparations for cutting-edge transportation systems. His family was lucky. They escaped Its U.S. arm, Keolis North America, from a French internment camp and, has bid on projects from Florida to though they lost everything, eventual- California to Virginia. ly fled to America. Keolis recently won a $2.7 billion con- Manuel Feingold’s family didn’t fare tract from Boston’s Massachusetts Bay so well. Transit Authority. But its interest in a Feingold, 74, a retired Manhattan $6.5 billion Maryland project is being steel broker, lost his father at challenged by a state bill requiring Auschwitz, and his mother never SNCF to pay reparations. recovered. upport for the measure was When he finally moved her to a Sfueled by survivor Leo Bretholz, nursing home, she begged not to go, 92, who has gathered 150,000 signa- insisting her “transit papers” weren’t tures on a petition blasting the in order. “unconscionable” possibility that the Lucie Davis, 84, a Manhattan grand- company could now reap profits from mother of two, discovered both her

Deported Jews from Hungary exit a German boxcar onto a crowded railway platform at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland in 1944. State Department representatives. Jewish families like the Dresdners. The foreign company transported What brought the Société Nationale some 76,000 Jews to concentration des Chemins de fer Français to heel? camps. Only about 3,000 survived. A coalition of survivors and families Francine Green can’t remember the headquartered in New York that has

Abe Dresdner, 85, in his Borough Park, Brooklyn, apartment. Dresdner remembers his family being crammed into a cattle car by Paris rail workers and guards during the Holocaust. its taxpaying victims. parents had died in Auschwitz when Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) has she returned to her Paris home from also joined the fight, co-sponsoring summer camp at the age of 12. the Holocaust Rail Justice Act, which She’s not hopeful she will ever see Francine Green, 73, the younger sister of Abe Dresdner, in her Upper West Side apartment. would allow victims to have their day reparations, and doesn’t buy the com- day she and her family were put on a battled to block lucrative American in U.S. court against the foreign com- pany’s story — that it had to comply train amid the horror of the Holocaust. contracts to an SNCF affiliate. pany that transported some 76,000 with Nazi orders. The Manhattan grandmother was “The SNCF wants desperately to do Jews to concentration camps. Only “The French knocked on doors, an infant then, hidden in the folds of business here,” said Harriet Tamen, about 3,000 survived. loaded Jews in the trucks, forced her mother’s clothing for safety. But the Manhattan attorney representing The French government has now them on the trains,” she said. “No ifs her big brother Abe Dresdner will some 600 U.S., Israeli and French begun formal negotiations with State or buts.” Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS THROUGH AMATEUR EYES Through Amateur Eyes: Film and era enthusiasts who went off to war, No less surprising, of course, is the obliterating the Jews as vermin, Photography in Nazi Germany. when it comes to the countless black- fact that while the Nazi leadership offi- these photographs offer a justifica- By Frances Guerin. University and-white photos taken by these cially forbade the taking of moving or tion for their continued existence. of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, German soldiers on the Eastern Front still photos of anything that could give They show the usefulness and pro- Minnesota, 2012. 342 pp. $ 84.00. — many of them capturing the “worst information to the enemy or besmirch ductivity of Jewish labor....” But, of kinds of violence” and brutalities per- the good name of the Wehrmacht, course, who was doing the viewing REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN petrated on civilians, alongside control appears to have been difficult! would make all the difference here. t has always amazed me to think images of the soldiers themselves Then again, in reading Guerin’s work Meanwhile, as we look back on them Ithat most all the existing still and eating, cleaning their weaponry, one can’t help but notice the Nazi now, Guerin also notes, we cannot moving images documenting World carousing, and doing their daily leadership’s schizophrenic approach help but think about what happened War II were taken by the Germans — chores — Guerin for- to photography and film- to these Jews in the end . . . and amateur photographers and film- wards the idea that making generally. On the inally, there is Guerin’s fasci- makers at that! But as Frances Guerin to the soldiers taking one hand they loved it — Fnating chapter on Eva Braun, records in her book, Through them then, these especially when it came to Hitler’s mistress, and her amateur Amateur Eyes: Film and Photography images served (hor- color photography and photography and filmmaking activi- in Nazi Germany, it’s really not sur- rifyingly) as travel filmmaking. Color, to them, ties. Just one of the variety of inter- prising at all. In the years leading up and sightseeing pho- added artistry to black- esting ideas Guerin forwards here is to the war, the interest in filmmaking tos! And, like travel and-white documentary. the very fact that Braun was most and photography was ever-growing and sightseeing pho- They felt it allowed Nazism definitely NOT the definition of the globally. In Germany it was especially tos, they were fre- to show off its glorious supposed Nazi ideal of the German so, with new technologies developing quently sent home to excitement and colorful- woman, busy in the kitchen and and the number of film clubs burgeon- Germany — with or ness, like nothing else! On busy having children! Instead, ing — all servicing these exceptional- without accompany- the other hand, the cam- Braun was single, she traveled to ly enthusiastic hobbyists. Thus when ing letters — to end era recorded things, things some fascinating places, and she the war came and many Germans up in family photo the Nazis wanted recorded was busy with her camera photo- went off to fight, they packed their albums, also conve- (and they did enjoy record- graphing and filming people and “Agfa box cameras” or the more niently made avail- keeping!) — and those scenes. Moreover, Hitler encour- “recently invented” and “more expen- able at that time. In sum, the picture they didn’t . . . aged her by presenting Braun with sive Leicas” in their gear. of a group of German soldiers next to ndeed, when it comes to that evi- the very latest in camera equipment Which brings this reviewer to what a Jew just hanged, or a hapless Jew Identiary aspect of photography, and film! Hypocritically, it seems does surprise the reader and makes having his beard ruthlessly shorn, Walter Genewein, a chief account- that Hitler’s ideals of “German wom- Guerin’s a thought-provoking work. was, to the sender (and surely his ant of the Lodz ghetto, anhood” were directed much more While most researchers simply con- family), like a photo taken of oneself “meticulous[ly] document[ed]” “the to the greater populace than the cern themselves with the content of near the Eiffel Tower and sent home mechanics and activities of every- Nazi “elite.” the filmed or photographed material, announcing something like, “Look, day life in the Lodz ghetto” on his As regards the rest, I leave that for Guerin’s exceptionally close and “confiscated Movex 12 camera,” in look where I am now!” Needless to the reader to discover . . . and pon- meditative study of them points out say, the soldier sending this image hopes of pleasing his higher-ups der . . . that a much “more nuanced under- (and the family), undoubtedly, was and advancing in the Nazi ranks. He In sum, Holocaust scholars and standing of the images” is possible, either apathetic or proud when it took color photographs of just about camera buffs will find Guerin’s work an “understanding” which reveals that came to the inhuman act this image everything in the ghetto, including, highly absorbing. they have greater stories to tell — recorded. Needless to say, too, this of course, Jews laboring for the often dependent on who is viewing apathy or pride can only attest to the Nazis. The surprise readers will dis- Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of them and when! “success” of Nazism vis-à-vis its cover here? Guerin points out that Media, Communication, and Visual Hence, getting back to those cam- many “dedicated” followers! “Instead of narrating the necessity of Arts at Pace University. SURVIVING THE HOLOCAUST BY HIDING THEIR FAITH Such Good Girls: The Journey of three young girls interviewed was val- Fascism. Although all three girls sur- tect and save her. the Holocaust’s Hidden Child idated by Rosen’s series of personal vived their steady descent into the Carla was born Carla Heijmans in Survivors. in-depth interviews with each of the abyss of Nazi-occupied Europe, they Holland, where 75 percent of the By R.D. Rosen. HarperCollins women, and bolstered by painstaking did so at the expense of being who nation’s Jews were lost, but unlike Publishers: New York, 2014. 288 pp. cross-verifying they were. It was during those victims of the accident of their $25.99, hardcover. research. Even though their young and most birth, she was hidden and survived, the years had buried formative years that they thanks in part to the labors of a coura- REVIEWED BY STEVE WENICK their memories in the learned how to hide from geous but stern Jesuit priest. ews Out!” was just the name of far recesses of their the Nazis and their all- After the war, Sophie, Flora and “Ja child’s game that three little psyches, Rosen was too-eager collaborators, Carla came out of hiding, struggled girls played in World War II Europe. able to cast off the as well as from them- with their past on their journey to the But all is not as it seems, because the shrouds of denial and selves. present, and as adults finally rejoined three girls were Jewish, but hiding forgetfulness and prod Sophie was born Selma the living and reunited with their their true identities. In award-winning the women into recall- Schwartzwald in Lvov, Jewish roots. author R.D. Rosen’s riveting nonfic- ing events that defined Poland, and escaped the art Two: The Gathering, tion work, Such Good Girls, “Jews their secret lives. Jewish ghetto along with Pexplores breaking the silence – Out!” wasn’t a game; it was a struggle The story of Such her mother, who sought survival techniques employed by hid- for survival. Good Girls is presented sanctuary for her daugh- den children in order to reach the next The girls, Sophie, Flora and Carla, in three parts that ter by having her genu- chapter of their lives as adults. grew up in a time and a place that did recount the milestones of the flect as a Catholic under the protec- Although the hidden children could not allow them to be children. The women’s lives: The Children, The tion of the church. neither hide from their memories nor time was the Holocaust, the place Gathering, and The Ghetto Inside. Flora was born Flora Hillel in San escape their nightmares, the psy- was Europe, and the humanity of too art One: The Children delves Remo, Italy, but she was later given chotherapeutic treatment they under- many “good” people was hidden — Pinto the lives of the young girls the Christian-sounding name of Marie went as adults helped give voice to just as three girls were. and how the quality of their lives was Hamon by convent nuns, sworn to the silence. The accuracy of the histories of the wrenched from them with the rise of silence, as they diligently toiled to pro- (Continued on page 13) September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 HOW THE NAZIS HELPED GERMAN COMPANIES GET VERY RICH pharmaceutical behemoths BASF, Germany from conquered lands to Rietschel, Guenther was divorced by BY ALAN HALL, MAIL ONLINE Bayer and Hoechst employed 80,000 work for the new master race. her in 1929, although they remained slaves. Many of these went to private com- he colossal extent of slave labor on friendly terms. Bayer celebrated its 150th anniver- panies, like VW and BASF, while tens used by modern-day German She went on to marry the “poison T sary last year with no mention in the of thousands more were conscripted blue-chip companies to get rich dur- dwarf” of the Nazi party, the propa- official blurb about the Nazi years to work under the most appalling con- ing the Third Reich has been laid bare ganda maestro Joseph Goebbels, from 1933 to 1945. ditions producing weaponry. by the nation’s top business maga- and would die with him — after mur- And chemical manufacturer IG These included the slaves zine. Farben even had a factory inside who built the V1 and V2 rock- WirtschaftsWoche has published a Auschwitz death camp that used ets and other massive con- league table illustrating the Nazi past of prison labor in the production of syn- struction projects, such as the top German firms like Bosch, Mercedes, thetic rubber and oil. Valentin submarine base in Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen and many However, Farben’s most ghastly act Bremen. others, which involved the use of almost was in the sale of Zyklon B — the poi- The Nazis differed from other 300,000 slaves. son used in the Nazi gas chambers. regimes throughout histrory The league table follows revelations At its peak in 1944, this factory made which used slave labor. earlier that Audi, which was known as use of 83,000 slave laborers. Romans and Greeks, for exam- Auto Union during the Nazi period, There were also companies which ple, valued and revered their was a big exploiter of concentration enriched themselves through Nazi forced laborers, while the Nazis camp–supplied slave labor, using rule, Publishing giant Bertelsmann treated them with immense cru- 20,000 concentration camp inmates The league table follows revelations earlier that Audi, grew rich publishing gung-ho pro-war elty. in its factories. which was known as Auto Union during the Nazi period, books for Hitler Youth members and, VW, for example, had some- was a big exploiter of concentration camp supplied slave Many of the companies listed by according to Handelsblatt, “profited thing called the “dying room,” labor, using 20,000 concentration camp inmates, such as WirtschaftsWoche have already had massively” from contracts with the where female forced laborers this young boy, in its factories. internal reckonings with their Nazi German armed forces at the Nazi who gave birth had to leave their new- dering their six children — in Hitler’s past. borns to die. bunker in 1945. Most of the agricultural slaves The company grew rich in the Nazi era. came from the occupied eastern ter- In 1937, Hitler bestowed on Guenther ritories of Poland, the Baltic states the title Wehrwirtschaftsführer — leader and Russia. Because the Slavic of the armament economy — and his people were regarded as subhuman business supplied weapons using slave in the Nazi racial lexicon, casualty laborers from concentration camps in at rates among them were the highest least three factories. of all. Hundreds of these laborers died. Slave laborers were used after the An execution area to murder those 1943 Dambuster raid to repair the who displeased their masters was breached dams in the Ruhr Valley found in one of his plants in and many French workers were Hannover and the study mentions press-ganged into backbreaking the fate of a Polish man who was work building Hitler’s Atlantic wall, hanged at another plant in front of meant to stave off a seaborne inva- 50 other inmates. sion launched from England. The study showed that the Quandt BASF built a plant at Auschwitz to firms also used Russian POWs as produce synthetic rubber, and slave laborers and that Guenther Jewish slave workers in striped uniforms work in a Nazi ammunition factory near Dachau concentra- inmates there had a life expectancy and Herbert knew about them, tion camp during World War II. measured in weeks. Soviet PoWs detailing their dispersion among In 2011, the dynasty behind the conscripted to work in Nazi industrial their empire from the company HQ BMW luxury car maker admitted, after Party central headquarters in Munich. plants suffered death rates of in Berlin. decades of silence, to using slave Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche, between 90 and 97 percent. Herbert even employed Ukrainian labor, taking over Jewish firms and did not employ slaves but became *** slaves on his weekend retreat out- hugely wealthy under Nazism. The abriele Quandt spoke out after doing business with the highest eche- side the Reich capital. bank sacked all Jewish directors an in-depth study by Bonn- lons of the Nazi party during World G Guenther was described as an when the Nazis came to power and based historian Joachim Scholtyseck, War II. “opportunist” who enthusiastically from 1938 onwards became the rich- commissioned by the family, that con- Gabriele Quandt, whose grandfa- helped the regime to rid Berlin ther Guenther employed an estimated est in Germany by taking part in the cluded Guenther Quandt and his son industries of Jewish workers before 50,000 forced laborers in his arms “Aryanizing” — or taking over — of Herbert were responsible for numer- the start of the war. factories, producing ammunition, Jewish-owned businesses. ous Nazi injustices. This was despite his numerous rifles, artillery and U-boat batteries, Train builder and electrical engi- It found Guenther acquired compa- contacts with Jewish bankers in the said it was “wrong” for the family to neering giant Siemens still plays its nies through the Nazi program of years before the Nazis began their ignore this chapter of its history. cards close to its chest about wartime “Aryanization” of Jewish-owned firms. climb to power. But BMW was not the only German activities. Herbert Quandt was “part of the sys- firm to profit from the sudden influx of The research director of the tem,” son Stefan Quandt said after the He was also “unscrupulous” in his slave labor. German Museum in Berlin said that conclusion of the three-year study — take-overs of Jewish firms, which Daimler, which owns Mercedes, what it has admitted so far about its forced on the family by public outrage were forcibly sold for a pittance to admitted as far back as 1986 that it past is merely a “house history.” over a German TV documentary — loyal German industrialists such as had employed 40,000 forced laborers Companies such as the sporting compiled using company files from himself. under appalling conditions during the goods supplier Adidas and the popu- the 12-year period of the Third Reich. “The family patriarch was part of war, enabling it to reap massive prof- lar retailer C&A are still working on The Quandt family bought into BMW the Nazi regime,” judged the histori- its. company histories about their time 15 years after the war. an in the 1,200-page study. Electrical giant Bosch used under Nazism. Guenther became a Nazi Party “The Quandts connected them- 20,000 slaves, while steelmaker Top German companies a decade member on May 1, 1933, a month selves inseparably with the crimes ThyssenKrupp used a staggering ago contributed £3 billion into a fund after Adolf Hitler achieved supreme of the National Socialists.” 75,000. to compensate forced laborers power in Germany. BMW, of which the Quandts VW, builder of the “People’s Car” enslaved in Third Reich factories. But he had long used a network of became major shareholders 15 that morphed postwar into the VW Under a program organized by Fritz party officials and Wehrmacht officers years after the war, was not implicat- Beetle, employed 12,000 slaves in Sauckel — who was hanged at to build up contacts for lucrative state ed in the documentary. the most terrible of conditions at its Nuremberg for war crimes — over two contracts. “We were treated terribly and had to plant in Wolfsburg. The chemical and million people were brought to Married to Magda Behrend (Continued on page 14) Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER

THE UNTOLD STORY OF JEWS WHO RESCUED JEWS nity and the “Working Group” headed recognition and resonance they 100 orphaned and refugee children in BY ALAN SCHNEIDER, by Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov deserve even though they represent tow, Indig wrote: THE TIMES OF ISRAEL Weissmandl and Gisi Fleischmann, some of the finest examples that I “[Pacifici] was the representative of but most of his activity was undertak- know of Jewish solidarity and the ona (Jonas) Eckstein (1902- all that was good in Italian Jewry. A en at his own initiative. timeless Jewish edicts: “Neither shalt 1971) was an active member of proud Jew with a warm soul. He was Y thou stand idly by the blood of thy the Jewish community in Bratislava felled on the treacherous route he neighbor” and “All Jews are responsi- and a successful wrestler in the took without fear. He was one of the ble for one another.” “Hakoach” Jewish sport club there. heroes of our rescue, among the Through his sporting activities and Many who could have tried to flee greats we came to know during our vivacious personality Eckstein chose to stay and rescue others; Italian exile.” befriended city officials and police, some paid for it with their lives, like ith great heroism, Jews in every and when the Jews of Bratislava were Goffredo Pacifici from Italy, who W country in occupied Europe being rounded up for deportation in repeatedly undertook the dangerous employed subterfuge, forgery, smug- 1941, Eckstein was charged with pro- task of smuggling groups of Jews at gling, concealment and other methods viding food to Jews in the transit night across the Tresa River between to ensure that some Jews survived the camps and was given the privilege of Italy and Switzerland while it was Holocaust in Europe, or assisted them remaining in his own home. guarded by German troops. He was in escaping to a safe haven, and by But Eckstein did not take advantage the only Italian to remain with the doing so resisted the Nazi murder of his relative freedom and good con- Jewish refugee children at Villa machine. The few rescuers who are still nections to escape to a safe haven. Emma after the area was occupied by alive remained reluctant until recent Instead, he utilized them to facilitate the Germans, and it was he, together times to recount their stories, satisfied in rescue activities of fellow Jews that with the group’s indefatigable leader, the knowledge that they were able to endangered himself and his family. Yosef Indig, who spirited them across overcome the German tormentors and their collaborators. His diverse activity touched thou- the river. When Indig begged him to Yona Eckstein in Bratislava, 1942, with four of Holocaust historiography has sands of people over a period of two join them, Pacifici replied: “Try to the children he kept in hiding. focused for 70 years on the means and a half years, encompassing the understand me. I still want to try to and ways Jews were despoiled, clandestine delivery of food to hidden or years, his heroism was known help some more Jews to cross the only among Jewish survivors deported, dehumanized and mur- Jews along with information vital for F border. I want nothing in exchange! from Bratislava. Like many other res- dered. Some Holocaust historians are their survival; hosting orphans from What will happen to me is not that cuers, Jonas Eckstein did not speak aware of the urgent need for change. Poland and facilitating their con- important! When all will be safe, I’ll veyance to pre-state Israel via of his rescue activities, and many Writing in the introduction to his book also put my wife in safety and then I’ll Hungary; hosting Jews who fled to details remain obscure to this day. Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis, join the partisan in the mountains.” Slovakia from Auschwitz; hosting and After the war, Eckstein emigrated to Patrick Henry, professor emeritus at When it became clear that the Swiss conveying Polish Jews to the then-rel- Australia. Later he made one tri- Whitman College, notes that “[I]n the would no longer turn away youngsters ative safety of Hungary; and hiding umphant visit to Israel, where he was realm of rescue, particularly when Jews in bunkers — including one he hailed by hundreds of people he res- over 16, Pacifici led successive groups compared to the acclaim granted non- dug under his own basement. cued and their offspring, shortly of Jews to the river and on to safety. Jewish rescuers, the tremendous role Eckstein was imprisoned and tortured before succumbing to diabetes. On December 7, 1943, Goffredo and played by Jews in the rescue of other by the Gestapo and pressured by The phenomenon of Jewish rescue his brother Aldo, who assisted in the Jewish persons, often working in Jewish leaders to hand over hidden and the instructive stories of thou- escapes, were picked up by the Jewish organizations and in conjunc- Jews. Many of the operations under- sands of Jews who labored to save Varese police, deported and murdered tion with non-Jews, has not received taken by Jonas Eckstein were done in their endangered brethren throughout in Auschwitz. In his book about his own sufficient academic study and appro- the framework of the Jewish commu- Europe have yet to receive the public escapade across Europe with nearly a priate public recognition.” HOLLYWOOD’S UNKNOWN RESCUER to ask you for an affidavit.” described the 14 years she spent chief in California: their Jewish her- BY ALLISON HOFFMAN, TABLET The man to whom she addressed working as a bookkeeper for a light- itage. But she addressed the letter to her plea was Harry Warner, one of ing-supply company, Siegel & Co. H.M. Warner — the initials for Hirsch n December 27, 1938, a Hollywood’s Warner brothers. She added that she was fluent in for- Moses, the name Warner was born Oyoung woman in Berlin named President of the studio that bore his eign languages and also a diligent with in Poland. The missive, mailed in Johanna Rockmann sat down and family name, he was ranked by housekeeper and seamstress. care of Warner Bros. Studio, Los wrote a desperate letter to a Fortune as the second-most-impor- “Hoping you will be kind enough to Angeles, Cal., USA, made it to stranger in California. In the immedi- tant man in the film business — a consider my petition for which I will Warner’s office and eventually into a ate aftermath of Kristallnacht, it was man with production schedules to always be thankful to you,” she con- manila folder marked “1938 corre- clear that things were only getting meet and high-powered egos to man- cluded. Below her signature, she spondence” that today sits with the worse for Germany’s remaining age and little time left over to help added a postscript — “Please turn rest of the Warner Bros. archives, 550,000 Jews, of whom Rockmann people he didn’t know. over!”— whose final exclamation which reside in Los Angeles, at the was one. Appeals to Americans with What Rockmann needed from Harry point betrayed her anxiety. On the University of Southern California. influence or money, whose names Warner was something quite reverse side of the page, she wrote hat the Jews of Nazi Germany and addresses could be culled from involved: a signed and notarized that the Dominican Republic was T responded to the gathering newspapers or encyclopedias, were guarantee of financial support that allowing refugees to land as long as storm clouds in Europe by writing to one of the few avenues for escape she could offer to U.S. consular they had $50 in hand, so if Warner strangers halfway around the world is that most German Jews had left. authorities as proof that she would not was not inclined to offer an affidavit, a measure of how dire their circum- “With the greatest desire of my life I become a burden to the American perhaps he would loan her the cash? stances were. But these desperate take the liberty to address you,” she public. Such an affidavit, signed by “I will return you the money with my correspondents weren’t fantasists. wrote, in fluid English script. “I the head of a major Hollywood studio, thanks after my admittance,” For the most part, they were educat- politely address my petition to you, would seal her application for a pre- Rockmann pledged. ed, sophisticated city people trying asking you for your kind assistance cious visa that would allow her to Nowhere did Rockmann make refer- everything they could to save their in getting to a transatlantic country. escape from Nazi Germany. ence to the one thing she shared in own lives. At the same time, I may be permitted To further her case, Rockmann common with the powerful studio (Continued on page 13) September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 THE WOMAN WHO LAUNCHED 1,000 JEWISH REFUGEES 982 refugees boarded the transport “In January 1944, Roosevelt decid- their arms to our children and these BY MENACHEM WECKER AND ship Henry Gibbins and sailed from ed we should open our doors and children were hungry for education,” AMANDA BORSCHEL-DAN, Naples in July 1944. There were also take in 1,000 war refugees. I was a Gruber says, noting some hadn’t THE TIMES OF ISRAEL a comparable number of injured US member of the Roosevelt govern- been in school for up to 15 years. soldiers onboard. ment…. [Secretary of the Interior At the end of the war there was n so many ways, Ruth Gruber is In an interview with journalist Susan Harold L.] Ickes told me they’re going panic, tells Gruber. The refugees Ilarger than life. As a photojournal- Richards, whose father and his family to make me a general. He said, ‘If the thought they would be sent back, as ist she traveled to the Soviet Arctic as were on the boat, Gruber, then 95, Germans capture you, they can kill per their agreement with the now a foreign correspondent in the mid- explains priority was given to people you as a spy. But if we make you a deceased Roosevelt. President Harry 1930s, covered the arrival of Exodus who had escaped from Nazi concen- general, they have to keep you alive!’ S. Truman’s decision to bestow citi- 1947 in Palestine, and “We were part of a whole convoy. zenship on the refugees is attributed reported on the rescue There were 29 ships, about 15 of to the work of camp director Dr. of Jews in Ethiopia in the them were warships. Every night the Joseph Smart and Eleanor mid-1980s. The ship was blacked out completely. The Roosevelt, who took up the cause. Brooklyn native, who whole convoy was blacked out,” says In December 1945, the refugees started reporting in the Gruber. were taken to Canada and given early 1930s, has also he ship was sailing in the visas to the US. published 19 books. T Mediterranean when 30 Nazi “One thousand helps make up for But what she called planes flew over. All pas- “the most important sengers were told to assignment of her life” retreat to their bunks and was not as a journalist, Ruth Gruber, Alaska, 1941-43. the refugees ran to their but rather as a diplomat tration camps and slave labor camps. hold, Gruber describes. — Gruber was a special assistant to Families were kept together whenev- When the Nazi planes the US secretary of the interior during er possible, though young men of mil- flew over, the refugees World War II — with the astonishing itary age were not allowed. were silent on their rank of general. Preference was given to those who bunks. In 1944, Gruber was instrumental in could help run the refugee camp in “They had been through bringing some 1,000 Jewish refugees the US, and those with communicable so much, they could go from Nazi Europe to the United States or “odious diseases” were excluded. through this. Though — the only time the US brought All refugees were forced to sign a many were scared, they Children playing chess on the refugees’ deck of the Henry Jewish refugees en masse. document stating they would return to were silent. Even the Gibbins next to an outdoor medical station and pharmacy, 1944. As documented in her book Haven: Europe after the war ended and babies were silent as if they knew this the thousands we could have saved. The Dramatic Story of 1000 World weren’t provided with legal status for was a moment to be silent,” Gruber It was to be sure late and too little, but War II Refugees and How They Came their stay in the US. Gruber describes tells Richards. it was something,” says Gruber. to America, because of the strict that the refugees were given a tag to “And I had an epiphany and I knew “I had two tools: I had words and I quota system enforced by the US wear around their necks that classi- from this minute on, my life would be had images, and I realized every one Congress, President Franklin D. fied them as “casual baggage.” inexorably bound with rescue and of us has tools, we have to find those Roosevelt used his executive authori- Though the ship arrived August 3, survival,” says Gruber. tools and use them and fight injus- ty to invite 1,000 refugees to be his 1944, the voyage was rife with danger. Slowly the refugees grew used to tice.” “guests” at the fenced and barbed In interviews for the biographical life in the former army base. Gruber The fantastic voyage was described wire secured Fort Ontario Emergency documentary Ahead of Time, Gruber, tells how the townspeople were “fas- in Gruber’s Haven and eventually Refugee shelter on a former army close to 100 at the time of filming, tells cinated” and threw gifts over the turned into a 2001 movie, starring base in Oswego, New York. of this amazing chapter in her episod- fence. Natasha Richardson as Gruber, as Culled from over 3,000 applicants, ic life. “The schools of Oswego opened well as a musical. RESEARCHER’S MISSION TO SHOW NAZIS’ SILENCING OF MUSIC DURING HOLOCAUST her search for a lost musical past. On The Nazis had a knack for doing evil might constitute a small victory over BY MIKE BOEHM, L.A. TIMES display under glass in the library’s in the most bureaucratic way, and the forces that had tried to expunge exhibition room was a small book with Shapreau saw immediately that this their parents’ or grandparents’ artistry. azi crimes against visual art are a marble-patterned binding. It con- little book was a striking example of it. he new discovery is important to easy to grasp. We can see N tained column after column of printed Somebody dutifully had drawn red Beatrice Beer, a French images of paintings they stole. We T names — about 2,000 of them, lined slashes across more than 500 of the American operatic soprano whose can read about court battles up vertically across 23 pages. names, marking them as Jews. By father, Joseph Beer, is crossed out Holocaust victims and their heirs crossing them out, AKM near the top of Page 5. sometimes have fought to get them aimed to end their Beer was already late for a recent back. careers — not just in rehearsal in Philadelphia when a But how does one show the willful Austria but in other reporter reached her to ask about obliteration of music? nations, including the Shapreau’s findings. She’d heard Carla Shapreau saw how during a United States, where about the list but hadn’t seen it. visit to Vienna, and now she is telling AKM had deals with other “This is so emotional for me,” Beer the world. performing rights organi- said. “This gives me the chills.” A violin maker, attorney and lecturer zations to collect its mem- It’s not news that her father was at the UC Berkeley School of Law, bers’ royalties. blacklisted and his career destroyed, Shapreau is on a research mission to “Name by name, this she said. But there’s something bring Nazi persecution of Jewish Erich Wolfgang Korngold, shown in 1920, was a targeted diminutive yet chilling red- uncanny about being able to see the musicians to light. She looks for valu- Austrian composer. lined Nazi-era artifact was moment in which he was marked for able musical instruments and collec- a prelude to evolving persecution in creative erasure. “This comes as a tions of sheet music that the Nazis Published in the late 1930s, it was the Austria for those in the musical bombshell in red.” confiscated, and anything else that membership index of artists, most of world,” Shapreau writes in an article The OREL Foundation exists to will add to the world’s store of knowl- them composers, represented by a recently posted on the website of the make the music of composers such edge about how Jewish musicians performing rights society called AKM. Los Angeles–based OREL as Joseph Beer resound again. It’s an were hounded into emigration, The society’s function was to collect Foundation. outgrowth of Los Angeles Opera silence or death. royalties earned in Austria from per- For composers’ heirs, Shapreau music director James Conlon’s ongo- Two years ago Shapreau went to formances or recordings and pass said, uncovering more of the truth (Continued on page 11) the city library in Vienna to continue them along to the composers. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 THETHE AMERICANAMERICAN && INTERNATIONALINTERNATIONAL SOCIETIESSOCIETIES

HONORARY CHAIRS TRIBUTE Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Dorothy & Julius Berman Ambassador Ron Prosor Gladys & Sam Halpern Stella Dr. itzhak Arad Rabbi Israel M. Lau Avner Shalev Jill Goodman & Melvin Bukiet Dr. Lillian & Ambassador Ido Aharoni Prof. Elie Wiesel Adina & Lawrence Burian Dr. Romana & HONORARY CO-CHAIRS Cheryl Lifshitz Galia & Dr. Caroline & Morris Massel Audrey & Z Malcolm Hoenlein JoCarole & Ambassador Ronald Lauder

GENERAL CHAIRS Bernard Aptaker Rita & Fre Gale & Ira Drukier Beth & Leonard Wilf Marilyn & Barry Rubenstein Renata & Murray Alon Jean & E Sharon & David Halpern Etta Barad Hannah & B Elinor & Norman C. Belfer Selma Gru GENERAL CO-CHAIRS Halina Bitensky Fanya Gott Mindy & Ira Mitzner Cesia and Frank Blaichman Rose Deborah & Richard Born Gloria & H Marilyn & Jack A. Belz Rita & David Levy Fela & David Shapell Irma & Norman Braman Joanna & Jon Stacey & Matthew Bronfman Steven Schwarz Dr. Ingrid D. Tauber Rose Bukiet Danielle & Seryl & Charles Kushner Ruta Zandman Michaela & Leon Constantiner Ludwig Suzanne Czuker Rose M Rebecca & Michael Altman The Crown family Rachelle & Henryk Schwarz Berne & James Bookhamer Phyllis & William Mack Marcia & Dr. Yaakov Toledano TRIBUTE C Drs. Rochelle & Robert Cherry Marilyn & Jack Pechter Jane & Mark Wilf Aviva & Charles Blaichman Ruth & M Dara & Brian Rubenstein Betty Breslaw Ruth Susan & Stanley Chesley Kim & Ga DINNER CHAIRS Anna Erlich Beth & Ben Claire & Issac Fenster Pnina & A Mark Moskowitz Doretta & Jona Goldrich Doris & Sim DINNER CO-CHAIRS The Horace W. Goldsmith Cecile & Rom Jan & Andrew Groveman Michael S. Miller Elisa & Alan Pines Foundation Tamar & M Rachel Landau Gottstein & Esther & D Rella Feldman Jack Halpern David Mitzner Barnard J. Gottstein The Nash Fam Batsheva & Murray Halpern Deedee & Mark Honigsfeld Ann Oster Doris Gross Lucy Cheryl & Fred Halpern Judy & Joel Knapp Nancy & Larry Pantirer Gail & Colin Halpern Lee & Murray Kushner Lily Safra Tami & Fred Mack September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 SS FORFOR YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM ANNUALANNUAL TRIBUTETRIBUTE DINNERDINNER

E CHAIRS TRIBUTE COMMITTEE Skura Elizabeth & Joseph Wilf Abe Besser Menora & Ernst Hacker Peter J. Klein Avner Naveh Celina & Marvin Zborowski Lilly & Sam Bloch Maria Herskovic Carol & Michael Laub & Charles Primus Elizabeth Zborowski Amy Ann & Robert Book Shelly Pechter Himmelrich & Brenda Weil Mandel and Lou Axel Stawski Murry Zborowski Jen & Richard Cohen William Himmelrich Frock Zygmunt Wilf Sally & Jack Pomeranc Jane & Alan Cornell Alissa & Shimmie Horn Miriam & Louis Rosenbaum Vera & Joseph Eden Gustave Jacobs Rudolph Tessler Lynn & Erwin Fisch Shelly and Michael Kassen Erna Weil ed Distenfeld Cecile & Edward Mosberg Rose & Phil Friedman Sima Katz Regina & David Weinberg ugen Gluck Dora & Jack Oltuski Beth & Seth Klarman Bruce Goldman Mark Palmer uder Horowitz Deborah & Lawrence Pomeranc DINNER COMMITTEE tesfeld Heller M.K. & J.B. Pritzker Barbara & Harvey Arfa Trudy & Sol Englander Shelly & Joseph Paradis e Holm Ira Rennert Gail & Bruce Bukiet Rochelle & Maks Etingin Lidia & Jimmy Resnick Henry Jacobs Barbara & Lewis Shrensky Karen & Michael Bukiet Linda & Murray J. Laulicht Bella & George Savran athan Jacobson Rosa Strygler Cheri Deshe David Mandelbaum Betty & Howard Schwartz Harry Karten Fred Zeidman Sarah Eisner Wayne Zuckerman Liebsohn Lori & Alan Zekelman Moskowitz YOUNG LEADERSHIP ASSOCIATES DINNER COMMITTEE Abbi & Jeremy Halpern Ilana Lifshitz Barry Levine CO-CHAIRS Iris & Adam Lindenbaum Mark Hasten Sari & Israel Roizman Nadav Besner Jessica & Andrew Mauk Jennifer & Mark Smith h Hart Bella B. Sekons Lauren & Justin Brody Nicole & Joseph Meyer Brett Tanzman ary Heiman Jacqueline & David Simon Jennifer Drukier & Matthew Sivan Ochshorn Keren Toledano njamin Heller Elizabeth & Craig Snider Birnbaum Dara & David Orbach Ariel & Josh Weiner Anatol Hiller Lili Stawski Yonina & Eric Gomberg Jaci & Gonen Paradis Maeira & Michel Werthenschlag mon Konover Sara Stawski Aviya & Alex Halpern Elliot Pines Cori & Jason Wilf man Kriegstein Lillian & Milton Steinberg Rebecca Hanus Tali & Justin Pines Orin Wilf Milton Maltz Joy & Benjamin Warren Jocelyn & Gregory Klar Nina & Jeffrey Rubenstein Rachel & Jonathan Wilf David Mann Rose Zarucki Julie & Reuben Kopel Mindy & Alan Schall Ariel Zborowski mily Foundation Alexandra Lebovits Rachel Schnay Lolly & Boaz Zborowski Pantirer Nicole & Avi Lieberman Michael Shmuely Aliza & Elie Singer

BERGEN-BELSEN DIARY, 1945 (Continued from page 2) I inched myself closer to the wall toes and carrots all mashed up into a I lead a double life. One part is thin, mountains I saw my loved ones com- near my hospital bed and made room tsimmes. Take it and eat. Open your fragile, trembling, young and yearning ing towards me. They talked to me as for them all. But they angrily pressed mouth. Look how tasty it is and how for joy. The other part is deeper and they used to talk in the past. They me even closer to the wall. Suddenly good it smells.” more painful, full of memory and sor- smiled at me as they used to smile in their mood changed and they became The taste of something sweet and row. The first is full of shame and the past and pleaded for my life. They kinder. I saw the whole ghetto street refreshing made me open my eyes. guilt; the second is stormy, tortured cried through my eyes and squeezed full of people coming towards us in a On my bed sat my mother. She whis- and full of fury. The first trembles on my thin, bony hands. I embraced happy festive mood. Bunim pered something. I could not make the edge of the second, but never them in the emptiness. I snuggled my Shayevitch came too. Then I was left out what she was saying, but her penetrates it. The second, however, hot body into their fleshless arms, alone. My bed swayed like a swing at words dripped like balm into my soul. often steals into my new young life, pressed my swollen, living lips to their the end of a long chain that stretched The tears from her tired eyes cooled disturbing, destroying, poisoning the lifeless faces. I stretched my thin fin- from heaven to the abyss, from life to my burning body. At the foot of my least glimmer of joy. It demands atten- gers out into the shadows of the dream, from dream to death. Bunim bed stood my agonized sister. Her tion constantly. sweaty night and thought I was was standing by the window of my frightened eyes blinked a prayer at June 20 caressing their hair. I felt my own hospital room, just as he used to me, entreating me to live. Yes, I must am learning to walk. Today, burning breath scalding my face and stand in his home at 14 Lotniche live. Some blessed justice has pre- IMother helped me down the stairs thought that they were blowing hot air Street, his hands in his pockets, his served me for their sake and they for and took me into the yard. She found onto my cheeks. They were all there grey eyes squinting from behind the mine. I want to give this justice its an old canned goods box and sat me with me. I saw my friend Yakov lenses of his glasses. He looked due; and I want to pay it back for all down on top of it. A pity that there is Borenstein, just as he was on that through the sky, through me and the injustice that has been done to us, so much dirt everywhere. Papers litter winter day when he prepared to leave beyond. “I have perished,” he said. for our loneliness. the ground; empty boxes, broken on his last journey. His eyes were He took hold of the edge of my bed June 18 shelves and bed frames, discarded burning: “Don’t be sad, my friend. We and swung it round. The earth started early six weeks in hospital. I furniture soil the fresh green of the will meet again…” Suddenly, my lips rocking. The sky began to shake. My Nhave returned to life again. My grass. Why can nothing be clean started to tremble. “Come with me; body was on fire with the flames of body rejoices; my soul weeps. I sus- around us? Why is there no orchestra come with me, my dearest friend. We the setting sun. I took off the check- pect that it was not my body but my playing music to the rhythm of my will go for a long walk.” “I am coming, ered jacket that I was wearing and soul that was so ill. Helpless, hope- heartbeat? Why is everything and I am coming,” I called back. But my used it to fan myself as I went back less, I feel like someone who has everyone so indifferent? I am learning other friend, Kuba Litmanovitch, took and forth on the swing. I did this for a spent a long time in a dark cellar and to walk! At least the sky is decorated hold of my hand. “Bring me an long time — so long, so long, so end- has suddenly come up to the light. I with a sparkling sun. I look up at the apple…” I went with him to the ceme- lessly long, until my hands detached am dazzled, drunk. I squint at the sky. We are good friends again. It is tery. All our comrades were there. themselves from my body, and, with light, without the strength to absorb it. good to be alive. It is delicious, a From a far-off pathway there sudden- my fingers still clinging to the jacket, It is spring. The spring of liberation. delight. I don’t want to think about ly appeared Esterl and Moniek. They they fell into the depths of the night. I The sun breathes life into everything. anything. I want my body to acquire were holding hands and running wanted to look down, to see where And yet, beneath its blue skies there flesh. I want my legs to recover their towards us. “Wait!” Esterl shouted. the jacket had fallen and where my is emptiness. The sun’s rays search strength. I want to sing. I want to roll Then she laughed in my face. “So hands had fallen, but tears blinded my in vain for so many faces, so many in the grass. I want to run carefree now you know that I don’t have much eyes. Next to me stood my father, cry- bodies that belong to those faces. through the fields. time.” Moniek lifted her into his arms ing. His lips were very white and They are nowhere to be found. The Henia brought me a little sprig full of and placed her in the grave, as if he glued together, yet I could hear his rays embrace a void, except when blossoms. I am lying on the bed now, were putting her to bed for the night. voice. “Daughter,” he said. “I brought they settle, here and there, on a few as pleased with myself as a young Then he lay down beside her. you some lovely broth. Boiled pota- solitary, half-starved individuals. (Continued on page 12) Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM NAZI’S “PERFECT ARYAN” BABY WAS ACTUALLY JEWISH that his name really was Levinsons,” surely the helper was mistaken. But “But you knew that this is a Jewish BY TERRENCE MCCOY, she said, “they decided to cancel his she wasn’t. child,” the mother exclaimed. THE WASHINGTON POST contract.” “No, no, no, no,” the helper “Yes,” he said, explaining there had “Without any money” and living in a explained to Taft’s mother. “It’s defi- been a competition to find the “perfect he newlyweds came to Berlin as “very, very cramped one-room” apart- nitely Hessy. It’s this picture. Just give example of the Aryan race to further T students, a pair of Latvian Jews ment, the young couple gave birth to me some money, and I’ll get you the Nazi philosophy…. I wanted to allow who wanted to make it big in singing. Hessy Levinsons on May 17, 1934. magazine.” myself the pleasure of this joke. And In 1934, just after Adolf Hitler took She was beautiful. So when she was Money changed hands, and the you see, I was right. Of all the babies, control of Germany, the young Jewish helper soon returned they picked this baby as the perfect woman became pregnant with a child with a magazine. A Aryan.” who would soon become known as headline that said “The amily stories are always prone the “perfect Aryan.” Sun in the Home” Fto hyperbole, distortion and The photo was everywhere. It first stretched across the exaggeration — but this appears to adorned a Nazi magazine that held a top with the same pic- be true. Taft has reams of photo- beauty contest to find “the perfect ture that was there, graphs that show her in numerous Aryan” and then was later splashed resting on the piano. publications and cards. “I can laugh across postcards and storefronts. “The magazine was about it now,” the Telegraph quotes Less well known, however, was the published out of Taft, now a chemistry professor at St. fact that the “Aryan” girl was actually Leipzig [in central John’s University in New York, as say- Jewish. Germany] and was ing. “But if the Nazis had known who I As remarkable as that revelation is, very definitely one of really was, I wouldn’t be alive.” more remarkable is the story that the few magazines The parents were equally shocked accompanies it. The girl, now 80 and allowed to circulate at and “amazed at the irony of it all.” In named Hessy Levinsons Taft, recent- the time,” Taft said in the weeks afterward, the picture was ly presented the magazine cover, the oral history, everywhere. It was in storefront win- emblazoned with her baby photo, to “because it was a Nazi dows, in advertisements and on post- the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial 6 months old, the parents decided to magazine.” She said the pages cards. One time, Taft says her aunt in Israel and offered her tale to the have her picture taken. “My mother brimmed with images of “men wear- went to the store to buy a birthday German newspaper Bild. But the took me to a photographer,” she told ing swastikas” and even one of Hitler card for her first birthday in May of extended version of what happened is the museum. “One of the best in himself “reviewing the troops.” 1935, only to find a card with Taft’s found in an oral history she gave to Berlin! And he did — he made a very The parents were terrified. Why was baby picture on it. “My aunt didn’t say the United States Holocaust Museum beautiful picture — which my parents their Jewish infant on the cover of a another word, but she bought the in 1990. thought was very beautiful.” Nazi magazine lauding Hitler’s postcard, which my parents brought It begins in 1928 when her parents They liked it so much, they framed it exploits? with them throughout the years.” came to Berlin. Both were singers. and propped it up on the piano her They contacted the photographer, Eventually, the family fled Europe The father, Jacob Levinsons, crooned father had given her mother as a according to Hessy’s account. “What and found refuge in Cuba for years a chocolate-smooth baritone. His present after Hessy was born. They is this?” the daughter says her moth- before emigrating to the United wife, Pauline Levinsons, had studied had thought the picture was a private er asked. “‘How did this happen?’” States in the late 1940s and settling at the renowned Riga Conservatory in family photo. But soon after, a woman The photographer told her to quiet in New York City. Hessy Levinsons Latvia. who helped clean the apartment down. “I will tell you the following,” the got married and became Hessy Taft. Jacob had accepted a position at a arrived to deliver some surprising story went. “I was asked to submit my But the father stayed behind in local opera house and taken the news. 10 best pictures for a beauty contest Havana to operate a business, which stage name of Yasha Lenssen, his “You know,” the woman said, “I saw run by the Nazis. So were 10 other eventually foundered under the rise daughter recalled in the lengthy inter- Hessy on a magazine cover in town.” outstanding photographers in of Fidel Castro. “He always said, ‘I view with the Holocaust Museum. It Hessy’s mother found that impossi- Germany. So 10 photographers sub- have survived Hitler; I will survive was the time of surging anti-Semitism ble to believe. A lot of babies look the mitted their 10 best pictures. And I Castro,’” Taft said. “And he did. He in Berlin, and when “they found out same, the mother explained, and sent in your baby’s picture.” did.” “IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN” Names database reconnects solve the mystery of what had become informed him of the discovery. tacted journalist Hillel Kuttler, whose three family branches. of his brother Mendel…. I felt that Maksim (named after his grandfather column “Seeking Kin” aims to help Moshe would have wanted me to try to Max/Mendel) had served as a diplo- reunite long-lost relatives and friends, BY DEBORAH BERMAN find him.” matic emissary in Kiev from 1995 to and asked for his assistance. Kuttler n March 2014, Polina Gavriluk from Chasia, Sima and Miriam had in fact 1997, never knowing that family succeeded in locating Joseph Brier, IKostopil, Ukraine, informed Yad been murdered in the Ponary forest members who had survived the war thereby reuniting the third — US — Vashem that she had discovered a near Vilna in July 1941. But Mendel’s were living in Kostopil, a town in west- branch of the family with the other cousin in Israel while researching the third daughter, Rivka, had managed ern Ukraine some 220 miles from two. Joe Brier, 79, from Suffern, New fate of her family during the Holocaust. to escape the Vilna ghetto to the Kiev. “If only I had known,” he says, “I York, was surprised to learn he had Her grandfather, Moshe Eydelevitch, forests, where she joined a partisan might have been able to help them living family members in Ukraine and was killed while serving as a solider in unit. In 1946 she married, and the reconnect with their Jewish identities, Israel. An only child, Brier grew up the Red Army, and Polina had in her couple emigrated to Israel in 1958. and perhaps even emigrate to Israel.” with few relatives, the most central possession letters that Moshe had n 1983, Rivka Gurvitz submitted After discovering the Eidlicz branch figures in his life being his maternal written at the front, including his “last IPages of Testimony in memory of of the family in Israel, Polina moved grandparents, Tobias and Malka letter,” sent four days before he was her father Mendel Eidlicz and his fam- her investigations to her grandfather’s Eidlicz, the family name slightly differ- killed and only two weeks before the ily. Discovering the Pages of sister Sylvia, who had moved to the ent from the one Polina Gavriluk had end of the war. In the letter, Moshe Testimony on the Yad Vashem web- US before the war. Sylvia was last known for her grandfather. wrote about his desire to learn what site, Polina contacted Rivka, now registered as living in New York City “We are so happy to have found real had happened to his brother Mendel, aged 90. A conversation with Rivka’s in 1940. In 1933 she had married family, to be related by actual DNA,” Mendel’s wife Chasia, and their daugh- daughter, Ahuva Stav, confirmed that Jacob Brier, and in 1935 gave birth to says Maksim Gur. ters, Rivka, Sima and Miriam. “The let- Moshe and Mendel were, in fact, a son named Joseph. “This is a brand-new phenomenon ters are all we have from my grandfa- brothers. Maksim Gur, Rivka’s son, Staff of the Shoah Victims’ Names for all of us. It’s going to take some ther,” explained Polina. “I wanted to was deeply moved when Ahuva Recovery Project at Yad Vashem con- getting used to.” September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 RESEARCHER’S MISSION TO SHOW FORMER NAZI MEDIC ARRESTED IN GERMANY NAZIS’ SILENCING OF MUSIC DURING HOLOCAUST erman police have arrested a Gformer Nazi medic who served (Continued from page 7) Banned by the Nazis, said that other grandfather, the modernist composer at the Auschwitz death camp, on ing effort to perform works by com- striking documents of the suppression Arnold Schoenberg, doesn’t appear multiple charges of aiding and abet- posers the Nazis had banned. include advertisements placed in on the list. He immigrated to the ting murder. erhaps the best-known name German and Austrian newspapers by United States soon after Adolf Hitler’s The 93-year-old, who was arrested slashed in red in the Vienna musicians trying to persuade the pub- ascension to power in 1933 and P at his home near Neubrandenburg composers’ index is Erich Wolfgang lic that they’d been marked incorrect- apparently was not represented by north of Berlin, underwent a medical Korngold, who by 1938, when the ly as Jews and were in fact solid AKM. Nazis absorbed Austria, already had Aryans whose talents could be safely Randol Schoenberg says there’s checkup before he faced a judge and made a mark in Hollywood as a pio- engaged. another way that heirs of composers was then taken into pretrial deten- neer of symphonic film scores. With n 1991, an exhibition on “degener- and authors could be compensated, if tion. the Nazi takeover, Korngold no longer Iate music” that had first been the European Union would go along: The former SS member allegedly could shuttle back and forth to keep mounted in Germany came to the extending the blacklisted artists’ copy- assisted in the mass murder of pris- up his film composing in Hollywood Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, displaying rights by seven years in Austria and 12 oners who arrived on eight trans- and his concert-music career in photographs and documents attesting years in Germany, the duration of Nazi ports from Germany, Austria, France, Europe. His first work as a full-time to the persecution of Jewish musi- rule in each country, respectively. Italy, the Netherlands and Slovenia U.S. resident was the Oscar-winning cians. It was a re-creation of an exhi- s it stands now, all copyrights in in September 1944. the EU expire 70 years after the A Of the arrivals, 1,721 were killed in artist’s death. Schoenberg hopes the gas chambers after they were need for changes will become clear next year, when The Diary of Anne deemed unfit for forced labor at the Frank will stop generating royalties for Auschwitz-Birkenau camp located in her estate. Frank, whose poignant Oswiecim, southern Poland, prose- journal has made her easily the most cutors said. famous victim of the Holocaust, died World Jewish Congress president in the Bergen-Belsen concentration Ronald Lauder praised German camp in 1945. authorities for “not relenting in the For Shapreau, the red-lined Vienna pursuit of those who murdered, or index, uncovered by Austrian schol- aided in murdering, thousands of ars Christoph Lind and Georg Traska, people during World War II.” is most valuable as a testament to “The prosecution of those who par- tragic history rather than as a lever for ticipated in terrible crimes sends a prying loose confiscated performance royalties. clear message that justice must be A page from the book with Jewish names marked off. As Conlon puts it, the fate of Jewish done, no matter how late the hour,” score to the 1938 hit The Adventures bition Nazi propagandists had put on composers and musicians during the he said in an e-mailed statement. of Robin Hood. from an entirely different perspective Holocaust is “a subject where there is The pensioner’s arrest followed a Also on the list — but not expunged in Germany in 1938 as a companion very little general knowledge of what tip-off from the German office inves- in red — is one of the most famous to an infamous 1937 exhibition of was going on; we’re trying to open it tigating Nazi war crimes with a rec- Jewish composers of all time, Irving “degenerate art” by Jews and mod- up.” The red-lined index could help. ommendation to bring charges, but Berlin, whose Austrian rights were ernists. Shapreau said that Lind and Traska prosecutors did not specify when it handled by AKM. Conductor-compos- Shapreau says it’s not clear whether continue to research AKM’s conduct took place. er Alexander Zemlinsky, a leading fig- the AKM booklet and its red marks during the Nazi era — and that the It was the latest in a series of ure on the European classical music could be the start of a paper trail that performing rights society has itself arrests since Germany launched a scene, also was passed over. might point some heirs of blacklisted engaged a respected musicologist, renewed drive to bring to justice the Shapreau says that the red-lined composers toward royalty payments Hartmut Krones, to examine its Nazi- booklet was Austrian music authori- confiscated by the Nazis. era archives and publish his findings. last surviving perpetrators of the ties’ first try at finding the Jewish ele- She came across a 1941 lawsuit by “We all know bad stuff happened, Holocaust. ment, so it was prone to errors and Frank Sabotka, a music publisher but we don’t know the details, and the For more than 60 years German omissions that they would subse- whose royalties were handled by devil is in the details,” she said. courts had only prosecuted Nazi war quently correct. Shapreau writes that AKM, claiming today’s equivalent of Heartbreak cries out from the criminals if evidence showed they AKM first tried to identify Jews in its $1 million in unpaid royalties for per- details of what happened to Joseph had personally committed atrocities. midst by sending a questionnaire to formances in the United States that Beer. He grew up in Lvov in what But in 2011 a Munich court sen- its artist roster, asking members to had been collected by the U.S. per- was then Poland, now Ukraine. tenced John Demjanjuk to five years state their religious and racial back- forming rights society, ASCAP, under Based in Vienna, he became a rising in prison for complicity in the exter- ground. an agreement with AKM. The out- star, his operas regularly produced. mination of Jews at the Sobibor This disgusted Bela Bartok, a non- come may be buried in court archives Then came the Nazi takeover of camp, establishing that all former Jewish Hungarian represented by in New York, Shapreau said. Austria. camp guards can be tried. AKM. In a letter quoted by Shapreau, E. Randol Schoenberg, a Los Beer fled and spent the war hiding he execrated “the notorious question- Angeles attorney known for winning in France while his parents and sis- “There cannot be a statute of limita- naire” whose inquiries he said includ- prominent cases to recover Nazi-loot- ter were murdered in concentration tion for crimes against humanity, and ed “‘Are you of German blood, or kin- ed paintings, said it’s unlikely that camps. Beatrice Beer said her father mass murderers must continue to dred race, or non-Aryan?’” legal claims for unpaid royalties would continued to compose music without live in fear of the long arm of the “Our opinion,” Bartok wrote, “is that get far in the wake of early 2000s letup for the rest of his 79 years, but law,” Lauder said. such questions are wrong and ille- agreements the U.S. struck with anguish, bitterness and guilt kept Auschwitz has become an endur- gal…we must insist on having nothing Germany and Austria to preempt him from sharing it with the world. ing symbol of Nazi Germany’s geno- to do with [it].” most U.S. lawsuits by Holocaust vic- Opportunity sometimes knocked, cide of European Jews, of whom one Shapreau notes that some com- tims and their heirs. Germany, Austria she said, but he would shut the door. million were killed there from 1940 to posers who’d initially avoided being and corporations based there instead “He was a torn person, a lot of pain,” 1945. branded as Jews were fingered by paid $4.7 billion into special accounts she said. More than 100,000 non-Jewish Helmut Wobisch, a trumpeter in the set aside to settle claims for monetary The soprano says that since 1999, Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of Vienna Philharmonic who went on to damages. when she performed her father’s serve as a postwar managing director Among the names slashed in red in music at the United States war, homosexuals and anti-Nazi par- of the notoriously Nazi-friendly the Vienna composers’ index is Eric Holocaust Memorial Museum in tisans also died at the camp in occu- orchestra. Zeisl, Schoenberg’s maternal grand- Washington, D.C., “my life’s mission pied Poland before it was liberated Michael Haas, author of Forbidden father, who escaped to a career in has been to make sure he’s back in by Russian forces on January 27, Music: The Jewish Composers Hollywood. The attorney’s other the major repertoire.” 1945. Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 BERGEN-BELSEN DIARY, 1945 (Continued from page 9) June 26 across. I lay down on a mound of fault that in their dreams they see the mother who has just given birth. The hat lovely days we are having! grass and stretched out my body to its reflections of their parents’ faces, or sprig of blossoms stands in a small W Everything is green. full length, with my arms thrown over the smiles of their sisters and broth- bottle on the windowsill. When I turn Blossoms fall from the trees, gather- my head. I had the feeling that I was ers, or shudder at the horrors they my head I will see it, but right now I do ing into white carpets under every covering the whole earth. Above me a have so recently survived? During the not have the strength. Perhaps later. tree trunk. Those trees which have thick clump of trees formed a circle, day the girls flutter busily about June 23 not yet shed their blossoms look like their branches entwined with clasped singing, drawn from every barrack ats fly across windows. Their religious Jews, slowly preparing to hands as if they were dancing and courtyard to those who will teach Bwings flutter in a dance of remove their prayer shawls. But what beneath the blue festive sky. Nothing them for the first time the language of ghosts. am I saying? These are just ordinary else happened, but this was enough. love. The words may be strange, but Those lines haunt me. They are trees losing their blossoms. It is The world and life. I turned with my they understand the gestures and the from Bunim Shayevitch’s poem about kisses. And then there is the sweet- our fate. I can see him standing by the ness of chocolate to bring back mem- window of his room. Tomorrow he is ories of their distant and yet not-so- going away. In the dark corners of the distant childhoods. room there still linger the spirits of his Some women sell themselves to the loved ones, who are gone. Soon he soldiers simply and knowingly, just for too will be gone. The last of his fami- the taste of a slice of white bread. ly. He is taking a whole generation June 30 with him. Nobody will remember e must record and register them. Nobody will remember him. A W every detail, even the most nameless end. insignificant, of what has happened. It But deep in my subconscious, they is a duty, an obligation, a compulsion. live on. They wake me at night. They But around me there is sunshine and pounce unexpectedly when I am in beauty and the carefree freedom of the middle of a laugh that is too care- summer. I do not have the strength to free, or enjoy a moment that is too resist it all. This is my first summer. Is pleasurable. But when I want to bring it not poisoned to begin with? I post- them back to life, to take them out pone the writing from day to day. from their hidden places, then the I wonder if there will ever be an all- slightest touch of a warm breeze, or A group of women at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. encompassing literary masterpiece the caress of a golden sunray, makes impossible to compare them to any- face to the earth and buried my head that recreates the past. I doubt it. I my limbs grow numb with pain and I thing else. The sense of awe belongs deep in the grass. The sweet smell of recall my conversations with am seized with a powerful longing to to those of us who observe them. We earth permeated my body and intoxi- Shayevitch in the ghetto, when he escape them, to forget them all. are like children. Every day we make cated my limbs. I bit off a blade of was writing his long poem. I told him I know that back in those days when new discoveries. The joy of awaken- grass with my teeth and started to that such an epic has to be written I was to share their fate, they did not ing makes us drunk. It is good to be chew it. At this very moment, in dis- from a certain perspective. Time has pain me. They were with me, not in able to breathe, to feel, to see, to tant towns and countries, people are to elapse. He had no way of knowing fact, but in essence. Somewhere on hear. It is good to be able to eat, to be drinking wine. Poor fools. They will then how his long poem would end, or the way we got separated; at some able to bite into a chunk of bread. We never know the taste of grass. that it would remain unfinished. He unknown moment they left me. I went perform this sacred ritual with wild June 28 told me: “Our lives have to be record- on the road to life. Now when I think animal joy and a sense of religious Two girls from our barrack did not ed as they are happening. I am letting about them, when I remember them, duty. come back to sleep last night. They the story of our daily lives drip off the something breaks inside me, as if it We spend entire days doing noth- arrived in time for lunch, bringing with tip of my pen. We do not need any- would destroy me. Then I pray that ing, but we are not bored. A blade of them cigarettes and chocolates. They thing else.” Today I realize that it something more powerful than this pain grass, trodden down under heavy are not yet twenty years old. The could not have been otherwise. The should come to my rescue. I want to boots, has a hard job righting itself Englishmen with whom they spent the perspective will grow with time; it will live with them. I must remember them. again and must wait until the sap in its night are the first men to admire their stretch out and grow thin. Who then I pray that time not erase the details of veins starts to pulse with new life. We fresh, newly budding femininity. They will bring back the terror of those their lives from my mind, that my mem- are that trodden grass. We are preoc- are not the only ones in the camp. ghetto days? Days like those can only ory of them remain forever fresh and cupied with ourselves, with straight- The forest is full of amorous couples. be described as they are happening ready to serve me. But I’m afraid that it ening our bent bodies. Nothing else is One meets them strolling along all the — with sharp, bated breath. Just as will not be so. My longing will remain as absorbing or thrilling. roads and pathways. One can hear the writers and painters did in the eternally hungry, and as time goes on, I think about Poland, the country of again the almost-forgotten sound of ghetto. When one has distance, one more helpless. Memory will not serve my childhood. I long for the familiar women’s laughter, a laughter meant can only remember fragments of the longing. It will not be possible to streets of my hometown. But what will specifically for men. whole. But that memory lacks the remember all the little things, the tiny happen if there is no one there to Sometimes when I hear this laugh- pulse of the trembling, feverish pres- traces of individuality, which by them- meet me? ter I have the impression that it will ent. selves mean very little, but when put I can see my father’s face before suddenly turn into a wild cry, into the How can one construct an artistic together create individuality. What will me. I can feel his hand caressing my painful longing wail of a woman’s history of the ghetto? Would such a remain will be an abstract picture, a cheek, the same hand which so lov- soul, a woman who tries to find in the work not mask the raw immediacy mere approximation of what once was ingly and presciently caressed me as eyes, hands, and smiles of a stranger with which one must approach this and now exists no longer. we traveled on the train to our final some small trace of the beloved man topic? Is not the form of the novel too June 24 parting in Auschwitz. Tateh, the she once knew. From all the corners elegant, too peaceful, too comfort- Last night I had a nightmare. I woke thought of your warm hand grieves of the yard, from all the rooms, I can able, too quiet? I feel that to write up screaming. I dreamed that we me. Where are you? Where will we hear the sounds of gaiety and laugh- such a novel would be an insult to my were being chased. We ran across meet again on the many roads of this ter. “Look, I have forgotten!” the dear ones and also to myself. fields. Suddenly I lost Mother. I world? Where will you look for us? cheerful voices call. But it is enough July 1 opened my eyes and for a long time I Where should we look for you? to look into the women’s eyes to know I again saw Bunim Shayevitch in my could not calm down. In the darkness June 27 something different. dream. He was radiant with the same I could make out Mother’s pale face, I went into the forest today. It’s good The eighteen- and nineteen-year- light that used to shine so often on his but I could not bring myself to believe that they’ve brought us here to recu- old girls laugh earnestly and unaffect- face when he was happy. We commu- that it was really her. No, we no longer perate — although it seems to me edly. How clever and wonderful life is! nicated with each other without need to run anywhere. It is all over. I that no matter where they would have As if afraid that the nightmare they words, just through thoughts alone. “I walk around all day as if in a fever. brought us, we would see beauty have just lived through might destroy am very tired,” he said. “But I’m Every now and then a shiver passes everywhere. From now on we will their tender, young, newly awoken happy.” He was standing in his wood- through me without my understanding always see and feel the value of bodies, Life has taught them to forget. en shack. From somewhere he pro- why. every beautiful thing that we come Easy, pleasant forgetfulness. Is it their (Continued on page 15) September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 HOLLYWOOD’S UNKNOWN RESCUER (Continued from page 6) Laemmle also had more reason game, and he also invested in race- so — people like Margerete Levi, from Warner Bros. was one of the first than most powerful Hollywood Jews horses. Stuttgart, whom Laemmle had never American studios to stop doing busi- to take Hitler’s actions personally: He But Carl Laemmle’s response to the met but whose aunt, he told the State ness with the Reich, in 1934 — the still had close relatives living in impending mass extermination of Department, he had once promised a same year Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Germany. And when the Nazis came European Jewry — an event that he favor. The obstacles in Laemmle’s Mayer’s right-hand man at MGM, to Laupheim, they put Hitler’s name foresaw with rare clarity — united his path were not insignificant. According famously said, “Hitler and Hitlerism on streets and buildings that had high position and personal capacities to documents retrieved from the will pass, the Jews will still be there.” been dedicated in his honor. “Mr. in a way that made him America’s National Archives by Laemmle’s The Warners, meanwhile, became Hitler comes to power, and all of a most important Holocaust rescuer German biographer, Udo Bayer, the known as the most anti-Nazi studio after Varian Fry, the retired studio boss spent months heads in Hollywood, with Harry — the American who ran the engaged in terse correspondence oldest and most observant of the European operations of with the American consul general in Warner brothers — assuming the role the Emergency Rescue Stuttgart, Samuel Honaker, and his of elder statesman. Committee. By 1938, deputies, who doubted that Laemmle But could the powerful Jewish Laemmle was spend- would follow through on his promises moguls of Hollywood’s Golden Era — ing, in his estimation, to provide support to people like Levi people whose successors have been 80 percent of his time in the absence of any blood relation- happy to leverage their political clout trying to rescue Jews, ship. In one, Laemmle told Honaker and star power for causes from elect- one by one, herding he would provide her with letters of ing presidents to ending the conflict in people through the visa introduction to his friends in New Darfur — done more to save their co- process from his hilltop York, who would find her a job if he religionists from the Holocaust? The Beverly Hills compound asked. “I, for one, feel that every sin- answer is yes. Just how much more like the Noah of gle Jew who is in a financial position the Jews of Hollywood could have Benedict Canyon. All in to help those badly in need should do done is shown by the deeds of anoth- Carl Laemmle aboard the Leviathan in the 1930s. all, he quietly rescued, so unswervingly,” he wrote in August, er studio boss whose personal sense in his estimation, more 1937, from Beverly Hills. Laemmle of urgency and activism outstripped sudden Laemmlestrasse was no than 200 Jews from the Final said the same in a subsequent letter even that of the Warners, but who longer Laemmlestrasse,” a former Solution. The actual numbers may be to Cordell Hull, Franklin Delano never made it into the history books employee, Joseph Roos, told inter- far higher. Roosevelt’s secretary of state, whom as one of America’s most important viewers from the Shoah Foundation in Laemmle wasn’t entirely alone. In he personally lobbied for a general Holocaust rescuers. His name was 1995. November 1938, the director Ernst relaxation of the rules governing the Carl Laemmle. Laemmle immediately brought his Lubitsch and film agent Paul Kohner acceptance of affidavits by consular *** siblings and their extended families established the European Film Fund, officials abroad. “Your consuls,” he arl Laemmle is well known to from Germany to Los Angeles and through which they issued affidavits wrote in April of 1938, “can give the Chistorians as one of the most soon began pestering friends and and provided financial assistance to law a little more liberal interpretations important studio heads of Hollywood’s acquaintances to accept his help in newly arrived refugees. For the most which I think, under the circum- Golden Era. A German-born Jew who getting visas so they could leave, too. part, those associated with the group stances, is permissible.” got his start in the garment business, “In 1935, my father went to visit him in helped fellow intellectuals and artists, hat same year, Harry Warner he managed in middle age to jump Zurich at the hospital, and he said, many of them friends and former col- T was also working hard to push from being a mid-level schmatte sales- ‘Wilhelm, you have to get out of leagues. But, according to historian American policymakers to save man to founding Universal Pictures. Germany,’ ” Max Obernauer, the son Martin Sauter, they also collaborated Jewish refugees from Hitler, but from Unlike other studio bosses, who want- of Laemmle’s closest childhood with Varian Fry to find additional peo- the top down, rather than from the ed to leave Europe behind them, friend, told the Shoah Foundation in a ple they could help. And it wasn’t only bottom up. In October 1938, after Laemmle stayed in touch with life in 1997 interview. “He felt that all the Jews who volunteered to provide affi- hearing that the British were consider- the country he left. He underwrote the Jews of Germany were going to be davits: according to Salka Viertel, a ing restricting Jewish immigration to reconstruction of his hometown, exterminated, and he felt that whatev- writer and protégé of Lubitsch who Palestine, he immediately sent a Laupheim, following World War I and er he could do on his own he would gave Greta Garbo elocution lessons, telegram to his brother Jack in was appalled and frightened by Hitler’s do to save as many lives as he could.” the list of those who wrote affidavits London, instructing him to go see rise to power. Unlike most Western In 1936, he sold Universal Pictures for the EFF included Dorothy Parker U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy leaders, and most Jews, in Hollywood and, at 70, was more or less retired and her fellow parodist Donald Ogden for help. Warner sent a second mis- and Europe alike, Laemmle had no from the film business, with an estate Stewart. sive directly to President Roosevelt — illusions about who Hitler was and worth $4 million — about $65 million But Laemmle proved willing to addressed “My dear president” — what he had in mind — for Germany, in today’s dollars. He told interviewers devote equal energy to people who asking him to personally intervene. for Europe, and for the Jews. that he planned to improve his poker were not famous, nor likely to become (Continued on page 14) SURVIVING THE HOLOCAUST BY HIDING THEIR FAITH (Continued from page 4) social worker, helped run the Hidden teenagers about the consequences of Rosen’s literary style is easy to n 1991, the First International Child Foundation in New York. racism, anti-Semitism and prejudice. read, but his portrayals of the cruel- IGathering of Hidden Child art Three: The Ghetto Inside Although her narrative challenged the ty inflicted upon millions of Jews at Survivors was convened in New York P breaches the walls of repressed boundaries of credibility, it resonated the hands of the Nazis and their will- City to give additional support to memories. It is said that the dead and as authentic with the students ing collaborators are difficult to fath- those who sought it. More than 1,600 buried are oft forgotten, but as Rosen because it was her story. om. Rosen’s narrative of the girls’ hidden children worldwide joined as so aptly puts it, “One buries a memo- Carla’s life fortunately followed a accounts of the brutality they wit- one family to help one another heal ry, remembered in great detail, and path that led to a place looking much nessed and experienced is so the scars of soulless memories. finds, on digging it up, quite another.” like the American dream, though one descriptive and so intense that at It was during their discovery of and Sophie, once exhumed from her could never have imagined it could times one cannot help but wince. recovery from a past marred by a interment of silence, discovered that happen after the horrors of her child- So the child’s game, “Jews Out,” childhood that never was, that the her conscious identity was largely hood. Her Jewishidentity and dignity was not really just a game. It was a girls grew into adulthood and counterfeit. As an adult she learned were stripped from her at an early metaphor for the mistreatment of emerged as respected women in their how difficult a task it was for her to age to preserve her life. Today, in Jews during the most shameful days communities. Flora, in spite of her say goodbye to the little girl she could her 70s, she has emerged from the of Europe’s history. And now, after own demons, had managed to have been but never became. shadows of her past to become an more than 70 years, their stories are become a psychologist who was But Flora could not forget, nor did advocate and helping hand for so no longer concealed, lost or forgot- instrumental in advancing the study of she think that she should. Neither many like her, by serving as a social ten, because the moments and hidden child survivors. Sophie could she ignore her past, so in the worker and vice-president of the memories of their lives have been became a successful radiation oncol- 1990s she volunteered to go into high Manhattan office of the Hidden Child faithfully recounted in the pages of ogist in Manhattan, and Carla, a school classrooms and teach Foundation. Rosen’s book. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 HOW THE NAZIS HELPED GERMAN COMPANIES GET VERY RICH (Continued from page 5) inmates during the Second World War The academic study also revealed were used in the production of Auto drink water from the toilets. We were and was “firmly ensnared” in the Nazi that another 16,500 forced laborers, Union in their Saxon works, including also whipped,” said Takis Mylopoulos, regime, an investigation found last who were not imprisoned in concen- almost one-fifth from concentration a forced laborer who worked in month. tration camps, were working in Auto camps,” said the study authors. Quandt’s Hannover plant. Union plants. Conditions in the concentration camp In 1946 Guenther Quandt was Authors of the study, economic his- in the city of Zwickau, where many arrested and interned. To the surprise torian Rudolf Boch of the University of workers were held, were particularly of many, he was judged to be a Chemnitz, and Martin Kukowski, head appalling, with 1,000 prisoners — Mitlaufer, or fellow traveler — name- of the department of history at Audi, many of them forced laborers from ly someone who accepted the Nazi were granted access to the Audi France — living in unheated barracks. ideology but did not take an active archives for the first time for their “The conditions were devastating,” part in crimes. “house cleaning” history of the firm. said the historians. He was released in January 1948. Their book, Wartime Economy and The researchers also discovered One of the prosecutors in the Labor Usage of Auto Union Chemnitz that disabled workers were shipped Nuremberg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, AG during the Second World War, north to the Flossenburg concentra- now says that if today’s evidence centers on the firm, which was the tion camp to be executed, and their against him had been presented to only serious competitor to Mercedes numbers replaced with prisoners from the court at the time, “Quandt would during the 12-year lifespan of the that camp. have been charged with the same Third Reich, with a 20 percent market Towards the end of the war, 688 offenses as the directors of IG share for luxury cars. Zwickau inmates were sent on a Farben” — the makers of the gas During the war some of the plants death march to Karlovy Vary, now in used to murder the Jews at were turned over to military produc- the Czech Republic, with almost half Auschwitz. tion, churning out tanks and aircraft of them dying on the way. Quandt was able to reinstall himself Hitler speaks at the opening ceremony of the engines. Audi recognized its wartime guilt in in the supervisory boards of various Volkswagen car factory in Fallersleben, The 500-page report claims that using forced labor more a decade Germany, in 1938. Volkwagen used 12,000 German firms such as Deutsche Bank. slave laborers under the Nazis. Auto Union — now Volkswagen’s lux- ago, paying massive amounts into the He also became an honorary citizen of ury marque Audi — built its success £3 billion fund which German industry the University in Frankfurt in 1951. During the war years, Audi was on the back of human misery and suf- set up to compensate Nazi slave He died on holiday in Cairo on known as Group Auto Union and, in a fering, and that founder Dr. Richard workers and their descendants. December 30, 1954. deal brokered by the SS, hired 3,700 Bruhn was largely responsible for the The company was founded in 1932 *** concentration camp inmates to work firm’s large-scale exploitation of following a merger of four car makers, ar giant Audi employed thou- in what was then Germany’s second- forced labor. and dropped the Auto Union name Csands of concentration camp biggest car firm. “More than 20,000 forced laborers after a further merger in 1985. HOLLYWOOD’S UNKNOWN RESCUER (Continued from page 13) Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union. revoked, in 1940. the situation deteriorated in Germany, (The stress of the episode, according (After the war, Warner lobbied Truman Yet the Warner archives contain no the country’s trapped Jews became to Warner biographer Michael Birdwell, — unsuccessfully — to revisit the idea hint, aside from the survival of the let- desperate enough to ask the ultimate put Harry Warner in the hospital with as a means of moving Jews out of the ter itself, of whether Harry Warner ever favor from people they barely knew — bleeding ulcers that same month.) DP camps in Europe.) His studio pro- responded to his supplicant Johanna in letters that in some cases still exist, Two weeks later, Jack Warner trav- duced a short film, The Nine Million, Rockmann. Her heartrending plea for buried in archives and in family corre- eled from London to Paris. There he to promote the idea of lifting American an affidavit wasn’t the only one Warner spondence. Doctors wrote to col- learned that the German-born sister immigration quotas for refugees from received. On January 22, 1939, anoth- leagues they’d met at medical confer- of one of his employees, Joseph Fascism. Warner Bros. also put out er letter came, this time from Vienna, ences decades earlier, asking for Westreich, had been seized from their the explicitly anti-Hitler Confessions newly annexed into Nazi Germany. “I help. Others scoured the Manhattan parents’ home in Frankfurt and of a Nazi Spy, despite intense opposi- came across the speech you held late- phone books, available at the Berlin deported to Poland. Westreich’s sister tion from the censors responsible for ly in Hollywood and it made a great public library, for people with the Rosalie recalled Warner’s response. keeping American films politically impression on me,” wrote Sigmund same surname — an idea popular- “He said, ‘Is there anything I can do?’ neutral. Zucker, a 52-year-old engineer, whose ized in an underground handbook and fortunately my brother had the There’s no question that the British-born wife Gladys had, unfortu- written by Joseph Wechsberg, a presence of mind to say yes, if you Warners — and Harry Warner in par- nately, adopted Austrian citizenship, Czech journalist who fled Germany give an affidavit, my sister might be ticular — cared about the fate of trapping them both with passports via Montreal. “If you were an able to emigrate to the United States,” Europe’s Jews, far more than most issued by Hitler’s Reich. “By helping American Jew of German ancestry she told an interviewer for the Shoah of their fellow Jewish studio heads. me with an affidavit, you would be then you were going to get these Foundation. “So, he went to the While Harry Warner was lobbying doing a good deed to a worthy man.” appeals,” said Laurel Leff, who in writ- American consulate in Paris, and Roosevelt, the producer David O. He attached a small black-and-white ing about the New York Times and its being Jack Warner he didn’t need any Selznick, always hesitant about photograph, presumably of himself: a coverage of the Holocaust came of the formalities that were necessary being too publicly Jewish, was busy handsome man with dark hair brushed across affidavit requests sent to the in those days.” Warner quickly filed an burning down a studio backlot for back, wearing a suit with a waistcoat Sulzberger family by people claiming affidavit. Regina Westreich arrived in Gone with the Wind, which swept the and a white handkerchief. He was not distant family relationships. “People the United States safely, before the 1939 Oscars. That year, Louis B. smiling. found themselves in this situation war broke out. Mayer was the highest-paid execu- If Warner did attempt to rescue the where if they did nothing they could Through September 1939, when tive in America, a man who, for the Zuckers, he was only partially suc- die, and all they could do was write Germany invaded Poland and war price of his annual dues at Hillcrest, cessful. According to passenger man- these pathetic letters.” was declared between Britain and the Jewish country club just south of ifests kept by Britain and Australia, Along with committing to future Germany, Harry Warner continued Beverly Hills, could have sent 60 the couple left Southampton, financial support, American visa regu- trying to open the door for large num- German Jews like Johanna England, for Australia in May 1939, lations required an affiant to provide bers of refugees. His strategy was Rockmann the $50 they needed to stopping in Ceylon en route. Johanna proof of assets — arguably easier, or informed by his years as a movie land in Santo Domingo. Instead, in Rockmann wasn’t so lucky: On at least more palatable, for a retired tycoon who had helped build an June of 1939, he hosted a delegation January 29, 1943, she was deported mogul or a contract writer than for the empire based on influence and lever- of German reporters on the MGM lot, from Berlin to Auschwitz, where she working head of a large corporation, age. He sent a film crew to Alaska as in an effort to maintain his favor with was killed the following month. or for the head of a family trying to part of a plan to convince Roosevelt the Nazi regime; MGM was among It’s impossible to know how many make ends meet. “A lot of people said to resettle Jewish refugees in the ter- the last three American studios to Hollywood moguls and stars received no,” Leff said. “That’s the dirty secret.” ritory in a real-world antecedent of the have their hugely profitable distribu- appeals from strangers like Johanna But, as Carl Laemmle’s story fictional mise-en-scène of Michael tion rights in the Third Reich Rockmann and Sigmund Zucker. As shows, they could have said yes. September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 BERGEN-BELSEN DIARY, 1945 (Continued from page 12) the distance a man resembling my not keep from thinking about the men chambers. There is nobody left any duced a big parcel of manuscripts. “Did father, my knees give way. dearest to me. more for whom to wait. you save them?” I asked him. He Sometimes a couple walks past us. July 19, Wednesday September 1 answered with his radiant smile: “I saved A man and a woman. They are hold- We have news of Father! By chance do not read the names on the lists enough. Only the long poem, ‘Israel ing hands, awkwardly caught we stopped a man in the camp and Iany more. I do not go anywhere. I Noble.’” He started to read the poem. between pain and joy. They are the asked him if he knew anything about know that I shall never see my father Suddenly he began to prepare for lucky ones. We look after them with Father. Yes, he knew. He was with again. Actually I have known this for a another journey. I told him: “We have strange expressions in our eyes. Father until two days before the liber- long time. I felt it in Auschwitz the day been evacuated already, don’t you July 8 ation. we parted for the last time. remember?” Tateh, this very moment I am calling July 20, Thursday Now I must find all kinds of refined Where are you, Bunim? Where are all you with all the power of my being. If Henia and I are going to look for means to deaden my pain. I am going our friends? Where are the writers and you are alive somewhere then surely Father. We left the camp this morning. to make a lot of noise. I am going to painters and musicians of the ghetto? you feel my anguish. Surely you hear August 28 run, laugh, busy myself with work, do We are lonely. We are all together and my call. Do not lose hope. If you are We are back in the camp. Why am I everything I can to stifle the constant yet each one of us is alone. What are alive there is no road too far for me to telling all this anyway? longing in my heart. But where does we going to do with this gift of life? The travel. If you are sick, do not give in. For four long weeks we trudged all one get the strength for joy? How world is closed to us. Somewhere there Wait. We will come. Our joy will bring over Germany. We got lifts on coal does one poison longing? Even is a new beginning. For us time stands you back to life. We will make you wagons, hitched rides with lorries Nature has lost its charm for me. I am still. Long days and nights take us back well. We are calling you, Tateh! packed with horses. We walked for empty of all desires. to the past. The world is rewriting the I cannot get away from thoughts of history of the injustice that has been my father’s death. I experience it over done to us. and over again. I lose myself in July 5 thoughts of his lonely suffering — and rom everywhere men flood into yet, I am not dying of sorrow. I sup- Fthe camp. They are looking for pose that there must be still greater their women. Every knock on the door depth of pain that I cannot reach. makes us tremble with anticipation. Last night I had a dream. I saw With each knock someone new myself in the concentration camp with comes into our barrack. They come to Henia. Every day fifty women were ask if we have any news, if we know taken out of the camp to be shot. the whereabouts of their loved ones. Henia and I tried every ruse we could They look at us with pleading eyes. think of to postpone being taken. They describe their dear ones. Don’t When it was no longer possible to they know that the picture they carry avoid our deaths, we begged the SS in their hearts has long ago been women guards to postpone our exe- altered, that every day of the many cution for just one day, because it was that were spent in the camp changed the Sabbath. We knew that we had to one’s appearance beyond recogni- die, but could it not be one day later? tion? We too make inquiries. The men That one extra day we pleaded for answer brusquely, absentmindedly. seemed to us to be more beautiful We tell them what we know, but they Left to right: Chava, her father, her sister Henia, and her mother. This is the only known photo of and enticing than our entire lifetimes. have no patience. They jump up and Chava’s father. We pleaded with the guards and run to another barrack looking for begged for that single day, but they information. From an open door July 10 miles, tired, frightened, with an did not want to grant it to us. comes the sound of spasmodic sob- e scan the lists of names of uneasy feeling in our hearts. We were They were already preparing the bing. Bad news! An already forlorn W survivors of the camps. The not the only ones on the road. We met execution grounds, when suddenly heart has lost its last glimmer of hope. long pages are crumpled from passing hundreds of lonely children just like Father appeared with a burning staff in Or perhaps these are the sounds of through too many impatient hands. us. Hundreds of wandering fathers, his hand. The SS women disappeared joy, of a long-cherished dream come There are finger marks on every single hundreds of solitary wives. and Father told us that he would fight true? The sudden emotion has sheet of paper, like anonymous signa- It was all for nothing. Somewhere, with us. It was true, he said, that we released the pent-up tears so that tures. My fingers wander over the wel- perhaps in a forest or in a field lies the would have to die, but in fighting one they gush forth in a stream of joyful ter of names, my heart thumping wild- mutilated body of our father. Perhaps does not feel one’s death. We were so relief. For whom does this person cry, ly. Behind these names are actual we passed the very spot, and did not afraid for our father. He was talking so for the living or the dead? human beings, Jews saved from hear the mute call of his body. He did loudly, somebody might betray him to We cannot stay still for long. We run death. They call to us. “Look, I am not live long enough to feel our arms the guards. Later I saw us fighting. All downstairs. There is commotion alive! I am here! Come find me, broth- around his neck; we never even had the camps rose in one great uprising, everywhere, as the men move from er. Find me, sister, friend …” How the chance to kiss his wounds. Hamburg, Dachau, Buchenwald and barrack to barrack. They stand before many of these names will not find an We looked for Simkha-Bunim Bergen-Belsen. I saw a wave of flame the open windows and call out long echo in any heart? Strange, solitary, Shayevitch, but that too was a fruit- sweeping over all of Germany. And we, lists of women’s names — wives, lonely names; hundreds of them. less search. Perhaps somewhere a the fighters, glowed victorious in that daughters, sisters. Then they wait to I have found some familiar names, breeze blew past us carrying the flame. It was a night of fire and every- see if the miracle will happen, if from some of people I knew well, some not breath of his burned body. But we did where I looked I saw my father with the the depths of the rooms there will so well. I’m glad to know that they are not feel it. When we returned to the burning staff in his hand. That staff appear a beloved face. But they are alive. But my fingers do not stop at camp the bad news was waiting for emitted such fierce flames that the greeted only by the eyes of strangers their names, but continue down the us, brought by a friend who has sur- Germans sent airplanes to bomb us staring at them from the windows. list. I am looking for those who are still vived. We have recovered a friend — and we had to run to the fields in order — Where do you come from? closer to me. Very often my heart but we have lost our father. Joy and to escape. It was then that Father sud- — Perhaps you know … ? skips a beat. The same name as …! sorrow. Why does the poor heart not denly appeared next to us, saying that No, he does not know. No, it is another man with the same break in agony? Our friend found our he wanted to die together with us. — And you, young lady, perhaps name. I continue the search. names on the lists. He told us that Never before had death seemed so you remember my little daughter? July 16 Father perished a day before the lib- attractive as it was in my dream. Later The camp trembles with expecta- We are losing our peace of mind. eration, killed when an American I saw us all in a cellar, but Father was tion. We stop every man we meet. It The uncertainty is destroying us. It is bomb landed on the train that the no longer with us. Somebody opened would be so beautiful if one of these painful to catch the eye of the strange Germans were using to transport the door. Our eyes were blinded by a men turned out to be our father. How men moving about our camp. They Dachau prisoners deeper into grey shaft of light and I felt a great much strength we would need for are healthy, with strong, tanned, half- Germany. Shayevitch was taken on sorrow in my heart. It was the begin- such an encounter. When I see from naked bodies. I see them and I can- the very last transport to the gas ning of a new day. American & International Societies for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE U.S. POST 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO. 9313

Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org Society ** ** Editor (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for New York, NY 10110 NY York, New Ron B. Meier, Ph.D. Ron B. Meier, EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL *Published Bimonthly by the American by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern Isidore Karten Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet September/October 2014 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5775 - Tishri/Cheshvan 2014 September/October is based on in Germany in March 1945. in Germany in 1996, Edsel began to won- in 1996, Edsel began .” “George helped me to lobby Harry has traveled across tions. Harry often says that says tions. Harry often those who continue the difficult of matching the work he started survived WWII. His research into survived WWII. His became a labor of unit the Men’s love. When Clooney read his work he, too, became passion- ate about turning the incredible These men, story into a film. Clooney realized, had been air- brushed from history. for the medal to be awarded to the few remaining Men, such as Edsel says. “I had the Harry,” honor of breaking the news of He looked the award to Harry. just like a child who had seen Claus. He so deserves it.” Santa Europe and the United States will and hopes that his efforts encourage museums and pri- vate collectors to return tainted to their artwork and artifacts legitimate owners and institu- Cleves “And American architect Walter American “And Men The Monuments YLA: ABOUT THE Associates of Leadership Young The For more information about our edu- rescue a medieval altar from a church medieval altar rescue a in Huchthausen, who was gunned down Huchthausen, who piece near altar trying to rescue an Aachen the book charting Robert Edsel’s young man in As a success. Men’s Florence masterpieces had der how many great owners with their Nazi-looted proper- Men, and ty are the new Monuments this to continue until every he wants last heirloom is recovered. “What we had done was something that every American should be proud of,” said things, we “Instead of taking Ettlinger. gave them back.” in established American Society, the 1997, and the Education Department, in 1999, provide educa- established of how tors with a better understanding to transmit the lessons of the Holocaust to present and future gener- ations through our programs and about this event will Teaching events. promote increased awareness and greater sensitivity between groups to reduce hatred, and understanding intolerance and prejudice. Leadership Young cation work and our Associates, please contact Director of Education, Marlene W. PhD, 212.220.4304; Yahalom, [email protected]. which The Monuments two years ago and mem- MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE The Monuments Men, The Monuments The Monuments Men The Monuments by Hugh Bonneville), who was t brought the powerful message that, not only did Hitler want to Ettlinger’s Reaction to the Movie “I “I have been an American citizen “I have been an annihilate an entire race, but he want- culture wiped from the face of ed its the earth too. I went back to the Kockendorf ories came flooding back. It wasn’t arms against my hard for me to take Germany The day I left home country. I was no longer German. American since I was 19, and I am an I will never forget the bravery patriot. Those British men, such of the Men. as the Cambridge historian Ronald Balfour (played in Ettlinger’s in the MFAA. main tasks Their story was told in this year’s fea- ture film Men killed by a shell burst while trying to his Rabbi granted the family permis- granted the family his Rabbi it even though that day, sion to flee Several years later, was the Sabbath. Army. into the US Harry was drafted assigned to the Ettlinger was later Arts Fine Allied Forces Monuments, and Archives subcommission. This instructed to find was a special unit primarily from and preserve art looted and summariz- Translating the Jews. were among ing German documents included a character based on Harry the war Harry returned After Ettlinger. home and built his own life in the leaving the work he United States, in Germany behind him. started , in 1926, Karlsruhe Kristallnacht Karlsruhe THE REAL MONUMENTS MAN MONUMENTS REAL THE

r. Harry Ettlinger, who served in who served Harry Ettlinger, r. the US Army’s “Monuments Army’s the US

Ettlinger is, in his own words, the

Harry Ettlinger grew up in Germany M Germany, before the synagogue was before the synagogue Germany, burned down.” During only “healthy, living Monument Man” living Monument only “healthy, In his 88 years, he has had good left. timing. In 1938, he said, he “was the last bar mitzvah boy in Harry escaped Germany together and two brothers in with his parents They managed to September 1938. get visas for the US and settled in Newark, N.J. Harry Ettlinger with YLA co-chairs Abbi Halpern (right) and Barry Levine during the ceremony at Yankee at Abbi Halpern (right) and Barry Levine during the ceremony co-chairs YLA with Harry Ettlinger Stadium. in a typical Jewish traditional family. in The Ettlingers trace their roots Germany back to 1450, yet in 1938, it Although all came to an abrupt end. the Ettlingers had just managed to everything behind escape, they left a new life here in the and started Born Heinz Ludwig United States. Chaim Ettlinger in keynote talk by Ettlinger. This event by Ettlinger. keynote talk Abigail Fisch and was co-chaired by YLA Michael Distenfeld and included Abbi Halpern and Barry co-chairs relief pitcher Yankees Levine and David Robertson. Men” unit in World War II, was hon- War Men” unit in World Yankee plate at ored at home the Detroit vs. prior to Stadium The August 6th. on game Yankees Yankees by the honor was arranged Associates Leadership Young and the Yad American Society for (YLA) of the featured an The evening Vashem. the game with a event prior to Page 16 Page