Vol. 33-No.2 ISSN 0892-1571 November/December 2006-Cheshvan/Kislev 5767

he American & International Societies for Yad Vashem held our 25th Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson were presented with the Yad Vashem Anniversary Tribute Dinner on November 19, 2006 at the Sheraton New York Remembrance award for their outstanding contributions to the cause of T Remembrance. Most recently, the Adelsons donated the Museum of Holocaust Art Hotel and Towers. The over 1,200 guests, heads of major Jewish Organizations at Yad Vashem, which exhibits art created by individuals in the darkest moments and Dignitaries who attended were inspired by the moving remarks delivered by of their lives. These works of art help give us a glimpse into the inhumanity of what Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel and the current Chief Rabbi of they saw, as well as their souls, which could not be broken. Tel Aviv. Ambassador Arye Mekel, Consul General of Israel to New York and the Eli Zborowski, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement for his contributions child of survivors, also brought greetings from the State of Israel. to the cause of Holocaust Remembrance. We were reminded of all that he has done The program was presided over by Dinner Co-Chairs Ira Mitzner and Marilyn both as an individual and as the Chairman of the American & International Rubenstein. This year’s dual theme of Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Societies for Yad Vashem, to make sure that the world does not forget. In addition, American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and Yad Vashem as the Global we were able to see first-hand the contributions made to Yad Vashem by Mr. Guardian of Holocaust Remembrance helped us to focus on the outstanding peo- Zborowski and the Societies, which will help Yad Vashem continue to be at the ple who were honored at the dinner. forefront of Holocaust Remembrance. “MAY YOU GO M’CHAYIL L’CHAYIL – GREETINGS FROM AROUND THE WORLD Offices of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem have received FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH.” many letters from heads of state and dignitaries from around the world, congratu- lating them on the 25th anniversary and praising the outstanding work of the Thank you, to all of you, for your continu- Socities as Global Guardian of Holocaust Remembrance. Below, read the quotes ELI ZBOROWSKI, Chairman, American & ous support in the past 25 years. from some of the letters. International Society for Yad Vashem and The video we have just watched tells a Recipient of the 2006 Yad Vashem story none of us would have dared pre- resident Bush, in his letter to the American & International Lifetime Achievement Award dict. How your generosity has enabled PSocieties for Yad Vashem, wrote “I send greetings to those Yad Vashem to become the premier gathered for the Annual Tribute Dinner of the American and Honored Guests, Dear Friends: Holocaust institution in the world. How it his is a time for me to express grati- International Societies for Yad Vashem. Congratulations as you cele- has preserved the memory of the Shoah brate your 25th anniversary. Ttude and give thanks. “Shechianu, and its victims for future generations. v’kimanu, etc. “...I appreciate the American and International Societies for Yad Where did the spirit that drove this effort Vashem for your efforts to honor the innocent lives lost and commem- To all of you who come from? From have gathered here this orate the victory of liberty over oppression. Your good work reminds each other, from our others that great suffering can awaken even greater love and that we must never take evening, I say, “Thank common goals and freedom for granted.” you and a hearty our commitment to “Yasher Koach!” for Remembrance. oshe Katsav, president of the state of Israel, in his message, noted your dedication, your am privileged to M“...Yad Vashem, the Jewish people's international center for com- hard work and for a job Ishare this tribute memorating the Holocaust, fulfils a national, historic and universal role in well done! program with a distin- transmitting the awareness of the Holocaust and its values, in Israel and During the past quar- guished couple, Dr. throughout the world, especially among the young generation.” ter century, under the Miriam and Sheldon “...Yad Vashem is the Jewish memorial voice and the commemoration umbrella of the Society, Adelson. Miri and site of the courage of those interned in the ghettoes and camps, who we have garnered sup- Sheldon have lent their bravely fought against the Nazi oppressor, and also gives expression to port from individuals energy and passion to the appreciation of the Jewish people to the Righteous Among the from all walks of life, numerous philanthropic Nations.” those that survived in concentration causes, both in this country and in Israel. olish president Lech Kaczynski, in his congratulato- camps, in hiding, as partisans, and as I commend them for all that they do and Pry letter to the American & International Societies for ghetto fighters. We have also been joined tonight congratulate them for their stead- Yad Vashem, asserted that “by working together with the by families who were not personally fast devotion to perpetuating the legacy of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for 25 years you have built an touched by the Shoah, but view remem- the Shoah. The Adelsons’ recent gener- imposing research and educational institution in brance as a collective Jewish responsibil- ous gift for education programs at Yad Jerusalem...By cultivating the Jewish memory and pass- ity. This is an evening dedicated to the cel- Vashem is historic not only in the amount, ing it on to the next generation, the Society has con- ebration of our joint accomplishments. but as an example that calls to others to tributed to the creation of treasure trove of knowledge, We, all of us, jointly did it, we made it. (Continued on page 11) one that has the power of not only educating but also inspiring mankind.” IN THIS ISSUE American & International Societies for Yad Vashem Tribute Dinner...... 1, 8-9, 11 Personalizing the perpetrators...... 4 Holocaust kin last link to past...... 5 Profile in courage...... 5 The highest honor of the best country in the world...... 6 Distorting Jewish history...... 7 Serbian Holocaust...... 7 Kin reunited sixty-five years after Holocaust...... 10 An unexpected haven...... 11 DNA key to finding victims of Holocaust...... 12 Auschwitz artifacts highlight ethical dilemma for museums...... 14 Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 UKRAINE COMMEMORATES NAZI MASSACRE WWII EUTHANASIA VICTIMS FOUND IN MASS GRAVE he presidents of Israel and Ukraine by Ukrainian President Viktor They were shot along the ravine’s edge Tled ceremonies on September 27 for Yushchenko, Croatian President Stipe over two days, in what was the first sys- he skeletons of 20 children and five the 65th anniversary of a devastating but Mesic and Montenegrin tematic extermination of Tadults believed to be victims of the often overlooked episode in the Holocaust President Filip Vujanovic. Ukrainian Jews. Nazi euthanasia program have been – the killing of 34,000 Jews by Nazi forces “Humanity should read again The ravine continued to be found in a mass grave in western in Ukraine over two days in 1941. and again about the tragedy of used for executions and up Germany. Israeli President Babi Yar,” said Mr to 60,000 more people – The bones of 20 children were discov- Moshe Katsav launched Yushchenko, whose Jews, Roma, resistance ered during excavation work at a ceme- the commemorations of father was impris- fighters and Soviet prisoners tery in the German town of Menden, close the Babi Yar (Woman’s oned at the of war – were killed there to where a World War II hospital run by Ravine) massacre by Auschwitz concen- until 1943. Hitler’s personal physician, Karl Brandt ,was laying flowers at a mon- tration camp during Before retreating from the located. ument that takes the World War II. advancing Red Army in The children, aged from one to seven form of a menorah. “Time can heal our 1943, Nazi troops exhumed years, were found alongside the bodies of “The mute voices of wounds, but one and burned the corpses at five adults. thousands of victims should not erase Babi Yar in a bid to hide the Investigations of two of the children’s ring out from this these pages in our atrocities. skulls indicated the victims might ground,” Mr Katsav said memory,” he said. A Jewish man wipes tears But the secrets of Babi Yar have been handicapped. The prosecutor’s office in the nearby during the ceremony, in ater, a forum on during commemorative events became part of the accusa- city of Dortmund said there were which prayers were said Israeli President Moshe anti-Semitism at Babi Yar ravine in Kiev. tions against senior Nazi Katsav, left, and Ukraine’s L indications the deaths might be related to and chants were sung and xenophobia began in Kiev, officials at the Nuremberg trials, and a President Viktor Yushchenko, euthanasia, which was secretly by a Moscow syna- entitled Let My People Go, monument was erected in Soviet times to during commemorative events practiced by the Nazis from 1939 to 1941. gogue choir. organized by Ukrainian authori- the memory of the victims. at Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, Some 70,000 people with physical or “We declare that we ties, the World Holocaust Forum However Soviet authorities tried to play Sept. 27, 2006 intellectual disabilities perished in will never forgive and and the Yad Vashem Holocaust down the sensitive Jewish component of the euthanasia program, which the Nazis that this will never be repeated. We will Memorial. Babi Yar. Anniversary gatherings were believed was necessary to cleanse never forget,” Mr Katsav said. Nearly 34,000 Jews, many of them eld- banned at the site, and there was an the German people of racially unsound A second ceremony then took place at a erly, women and children, were driven at attempt to build a stadium there in the elements. Soviet-era memorial that does not men- gunpoint to Babi Yar by German troops 1960s. Those who were deemed “unworthy to tion the Babi Yar victims’ mainly Jewish who told them they were to be resettled, In all, some 800,000 Ukrainian Jews live” by showing symptoms of mental ethnicity, for which Mr Katsav was joined just days after the Nazi invasion. were killed in the war. retardation or physical handicap were sent to the so-called killing ANTI-SEMITISM facilities, where they were murdered by OSLO OPENS HOLOCAUST STUDY CENTER lethal injections or exposure to WIDESPREAD IN SWEDEN mansion used by the Norwegian the war. carbon monoxide gas. ore than a quarter of Swedes har- ANazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling Mr. Fure says the Quisling puppet gov- The Nazi euthanasia program, which Mbor anti-Semitic views, a survey has been turned into a Holocaust ernment was planning to deport the coun- became an open secret in the Third found. research center in the capital Oslo. try’s Romany people, as well. Researchers Reich, was officially terminated in 1941 in According to the poll issued by the After World War II at the center will look into the wake of protests from Crime Prevention Agency and Living “Quisling” became syn- this issue. members of the German clergy. The prac- History Forum, a Holocaust-awareness onymous with “traitor”. When German troops tice, however, clandestinely continued group, 26 percent of Swedes believe that The center’s work will invaded Norway in 1940, until the end of World War “Jews have major influence on the global focus on the Nazi Quisling proclaimed him- II with an ever-wider range of victims, economy” and 15 percent believe that genocide of millions of self “Minister President,” which included geriatric patients, “Jews have too much influence on the Jews, but will also and moved into Villa bombing victims and forced laborers. world.” examine the persecu- Grande with his wife in Karl Brandt, who was in charge of the pro- Around a third of the 3,000 respondents tion of other minorities. 1941. He was executed gram, was executed for war crimes were described as having “ambivalent” More than 750 of in 1945. in 1948. attitudes on anti-Semitism, while 59 per- Norway’s Jews, who Villa Grande: Quisling's house is a sym- The idea of turning the cent said they rejected prejudice against numbered about 1,800 bol of the occupation. mansion into a RESURGENCE Jews. Jewish groups in Sweden said the before the war, died in the Holocaust. Holocaust center came from Bjoern Egge, “There is a huge symbolism here”, said who was a Norwegian soldier during the OF ANTI-SEMITISM study shows that local anti-Semitism is a IN AMERICAN MEDIA serious phenomenon that has been down- the center’s director Odd-Bjorn Fure. Nazi invasion, and spent some time with played. He believes the centre will shed new deported Jews during his three years as a airness and Accuracy in Reporting light on Norwegian complicity in deport- prisoner of war in Sachsenhausen, F(FAIR), an American media watch FEMALE NAZI GUARD ing many of the country’s Jews during Germany. group, claims that the mainstream press in the US has not only failed to cover MARRIED TO A JEW TATTOOS REUNITE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS “increasing anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish DEPORTED FROM U.S. sentiment in many places around the hmuel Tzuk and Josef Shvyatovich Shvyatovich and noticed that the globe,” but has also been complacent in n 83-year-old woman who admit- Smet as teenagers in Poland’s Auschwitz tattoo on his arm was numer- allowing “anti-Jewish outbursts” from ted to serving as a guard at a Nazi- A Shanyov concentration camp in 1943. ically close to her husband’s. many of its commentators. operated concentration camp from June Within months, they were shipped to A tearful meeting followed. The FAIR report cites various anti- of 1944 to April of 1945 was deported to Auschwitz and separated, each assum- “I am a little excited after so many Semitic comments from nationally-syndi- Germany. The woman, Elfriede Rinkel, ing the other had died. As it happened, years,” Shvyatovich, now 83, told cated radio and television commentators said she was not a member of the Nazi both immigrated to Israel. Ma’ariv. “We were between life and and their guests. These included Don party, just did its bidding, according to The two were recently reunited in death, and our meeting now is more than Imus of MSNBC, who called the book the Los Angeles Times. Israel when Tzuk’s wife, Hannah, met family.” publishers Simon & Schuster “thieving Rinkel was told she must leave the Jews” on his popular radio show; Bill United States on or before September 30 DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HONORED AS UNSUNG HERO O’Reilly of Fox News, who told a Jewish and that she could never come back DURING HOLOCAUST caller to his radio show to “go to Israel” if again. She left on September 1. he was upset about “Christmas going into Her late husband, Fred Rinkel, was n September, borough officials gath- and Austria. the schools;” and Bill Donohue, Catholic himself a German Jew who left Germany Iered at Queensborough Community Given the fierce fighting in Europe, it League president and guest on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, who claimed that because of the Holocaust. Rinkel’s rela- College for the unveiling of a Holocaust was difficult for refugees to reach the “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews tives said neither they nor her husband exhibit honoring an unsung hero of World island, and only about 700 were able to who hate Christianity in general and knew of her past. War II: the Dominican Republic. make it to the Dominican Republic, where The Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg they thrived in the coastal community of Catholicism in particular.” Rinkel said she worked with an SS- Holocaust Resource Center at the college Sosua. The recent resurgence in anti-Semitic trained attack dog but said she never officially opened its new exhibit, “Sosua, Queensborough Community College comments by mainstream commentators used the dog as a weapon against the Refuge from the Holocaust in the Tropics,” President Eduardo Marti said that the and guests is attributed to “an aggressive prisoners and never forced them into which pays tribute to the compassion and story of Sosua is an important one and form of religious nationalism” that has morning marches to work or die. generosity showed by the Caribbean should never be forgotten. gained momentum since the re-election of Of a 100 completed cases of Nazi per- nation during the war. “The courage demonstrated by the peo- George Bush last November. This reli- secutors who lied so they could live in Dominican Republic was one of the few ple of the Dominican Republic during this gious nationalist movement, according to the United States, Rinkel is the only countries to offer a safe haven for difficult period of time should be applaud- FAIR, is seeking out a scapegoat to serve woman who was caught and deported. refugees fleeing persecution in Germany ed and recognized,” he said. a powerful conservative mandate. November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 AUSTRIA LAUNCHES INTERNET DATABASE HUNGARIAN NUN SAVING JEWS BEATIFIED FOR ARTWORK LOOTED DURING NAZI ERA ara Salkahazi, a Hungarian nun who into the river on December 27, 1944. saved the lives of dozens of Jews The beatification ceremony was the first in ustria has launched an online data- and examining possible restitution to the S during the last year of World War Two, Hungary since base to find the owners of art items owner of their heirs. A was beatified in Budapest. 1083, when the that may have been looted under Nazi The origins of some of the items are A journalist, writer and cultural activist country’s first regime and are in some of the country’s still in question and it remains to be by profession, Salkahazi joined the king, St. Stephen, museums. determined if they were looted. Sisters of Social Service, a charity organ- his son, St. Imre, The National Fund of the Republic of ccording to Austrian law, art looted isation and religious order helping the as well as St. Austria for Victims of National Socialism, by the Nazis shall be returned to A poor, in 1929. The Sisters of Social Gellert, a bishop set up by the Austrian government in the original owners or to their legal suc- Service saved over 1,000 Jews, including who played a key 1995, compiled a databank of looted art cessors. However, the law doesn’t auto- many women and children, in the final and role in converting on the internet that is now accessible at matically establish a claim and only hardest months of the Second World War. Magyars to www.kunstrestitution.at. opens the possibility for the government Of them, around one hundred were aided Christianity, were It contains several thousand objects of to return the object, Juergen Schremser, by Salkahazi herself. beatified and art that are in the possession of state-run spokesman for the Fund, said. After her mission was reported to the canonised. Sara Salkahazi museums, galleries and other official insti- The database is only available in authorities, the henchmen of the ruling The Hungarian tutions but which are considered to have German. An English version is expected Arrow Cross, the Hungarian allies of the Holocaust claimed the lives of 550,000 to been expropriated between 1938 and to be online in 2007. Nazis, drove her along with people she 600,000 Jews and tens of thousands of 1945, when Austria became a part of Nazi While Austria had been initially very sheltered to the Danube and shot them Roma. Germany. reluctant to tackle the restitution of loot- A virtual catalogue, organized in sec- ed art, the issue gained momentum with tions such as prints, painting or furniture, the case of Maria Altmann, who fought HOLOCAUST CENTER GETS A DONATION facilitates the search for stolen objects many years for the return of several AND A NEW NAME that are described in great detail, often paintings by Art Nouveau painter Gustav with photos. The location of the object and Klimt. he Holocaust Resource Center and commitment to learning the lessons of the institution in charge of it are also list- Altman, who currently lives in Los TArchives at Queensborough the Holocaust.” ed. Angeles, has been deemed the rightful Community College has told the story of The renamed Kupferberg Center, the The National Fund was tasked with heir of five Klimt paintings, among them the Holocaust, for more 23 years, through only educational center of its kind in investigating the origin of art of uncertain a world-famous portrait of Adele Bloch- the survivors. New York City, will house an exclusive origin owned by the state or official institu- Bauer, Altmann’s aunt, that were on dis- Survivors had handed over hundreds of body of materials, programs, exhibits tions, clarifying questions of ownership play at the Austrian Gallery in Vienna. their photos, letters and family heirlooms and historical information on the all with a unique narrative, adding to the Holocaust and other instances of geno- POLISH RIGHTEOUS GENTILE WOMAN bigger story. Those distinct narratives will cide. now have an even louder voice in the Besides telling the story of the RECOMMENDED FOR NOBEL PRIZE story with help from Queens resident, Holocaust through unique exhibits olocaust survivor groups here have buried, with the hope that the youngsters Harriet Kupferberg, and a generous dona- developed by scholars, it also provides Hjoined the recommendation of the would eventually be returned to their fam- tion of $1 million in the name of Harriet extensive teaching and learning materi- Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, to ilies. The Gestapo arrested Sandler in and her late husband, Kenneth als for use in schools around the nation. award the Nobel Peace Prize to 96-year- October 1943. Despite being tortured, she Kupferberg. he renamed center will be housed old Irena Sandler. refused to reveal the children’s identity, In September, the current center was Tin a new, 7,000-square-foot per- Sandler, who was a member of the and was sentenced to death by a Nazi renamed the Harriet and Kenneth manent home and is scheduled to open Polish underground group Zegota that court. The underground group freed her, Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center in the spring of 2008, reflecting the was dedicated to saving Jews, was recog- and she lived in hiding under an assumed and Archives, and was dedicated to the theme, “Let There Be Light.” Marti said nized by the Yad Vashem Martyrs and identity until the end of the war. philanthropist Queens couple. the new building will be a “unique archi- Heroes Remembrance Authority in 1965 If Sandler, who still lives in Poland, is “Over the last 100 years, from the tectural statement,” featuring dramatic for smuggling numerous Jewish children chosen for the Nobel award, it would be Armenian genocide in 1915 to the events use of glass to symbolize awareness, out of the Warsaw Ghetto. the first time the honor would be bestowed in Darfur today, genocide has been a part hope and the lasting memory of those The children received false papers and to a righteous Gentile. of the world we live in,” said Dr. Eduardo who were victims of the Holocaust. were either adopted by Christian families Joining the campaign on behalf of J. Martí, President of Queensborough The Queensborough Community or sent to convents. Sandler, however, Sandler are the Israel-Poland Friendship Community College. “Nothing like the College Fund is in the midst of a $5 mil- recorded the real names of 2,500 children Association and the Lublin and Polish sur- Holocaust has occurred in human history. lion fundraising drive to secure the on lists that were placed in glass jars and vivors’ organizations. The Kupferberg Center demonstrates our ongoing operation of the Center.

A LIFE DEDICATED TO HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE AND EDUCATION igmund Strochlitz, a Holocaust sur- igmund and Rose married shortly In 1992, President George H.W. Bush Executive Committee Member , and is Svivor and internationally recog- Safter the war. They adopted Rose’s appointed Strochlitz to the Presidential Chair of the Education Committee of the nized peace advocate, died October 16, orphaned niece, Halina, and their daugh- Commission on the Preservation of American Society for Yad Vashem. She 2006, at the age of 89 in New London, ter, Romana, was born in July 1946 in Americans’ Heritage Abroad, and in honors the heroic life of her dear parents Conn. He was one of the three founders the displaced persons camp at Bergen- 1993, French President Francois z’l, and has also devoted much of her life of the American Society for Yad Vashem, Belsen. The family came to the United Mitterand appointed him a Chevalier of to Holocaust remembrance and educa- serving as one of its found- States in 1951 and initially the Order of Arts and Letters ing Vice Chairman. He was lived in New York City before of the French Republic. He currently serving as the moving to New London, also was a past recipient of Society’s National Vice Connecticut, where in 1957, the National Holocaust Chairman of Connecticut, Sigmund founded Whaling Remembrance Tribute and and has always been a City Ford. The Strochlitz fam- the Ellis Island Medal of strong supporter of Yad ily also includes two adopted Honor. Vashem and of Holocaust sons, Jaime Strochlitz- trochlitz’s lifelong pas- education. He was a recip- Wurzel of Newton, Mass, Ssion was his Holocaust ient of the Elie Weisel and Rafael Strochlitz-Wurzel remembrance work. He was Remembrance award, and of New Britain, Connecticut. a leading member of numer- has spoken extensively A committed Zionist, Mr. ous national Holocaust about the Holocaust on all Strochlitz was a supporter of remembrance organizations. educational levels. numerous institutions in He served as vice president Elie Wiesel gives a eulogy for Sigmund Strochlitz at Sigmund Strochlitz was Israel. In the early 1980’s, of the Rose and Sigmund Congregation Beth El in New London. born in Bendzin, Poland, in Sigmund Strochlitz Sigmund took a leading role Strochlitz Holocaust Resource Center of tion. Romana and her husband Charles 1917. Until the outbreak of in organizing official the Jewish Federation of Eastern have four adult children and four grand- World War II, he attended the Holocaust observances in every state of Connecticut, was co-chairman of the children. Jagiellonian University in Cracow. His the union. His mandate for this mission National Campaign to Remember and igmund Strochlitz was deeply com- parents, sisters and wife were killed in came from the United States Holocaust chairman of the National Committee Smitted to Holocaust remembrance Birkenau. He himself survived imprison- Memorial Council, to which he was first Responsible for Annual Holocaust and education and perpetuating the ment in several concentration camps, appointed by President Jimmy Carter Commemoration Ceremonies at the memory of the Six Million. He was a including the death camp at Auschwitz- and to which he was later reappointed by White House. Connecticut College and strong supporter of Zionist and other Birkenau, and in April 1945, he was liber- President Ronald Reagan. He has Bar-Ilan University both awarded Jewish causes. His wife Rose died in ated, along with his future wife, Rose received numerous awards for his com- Strochlitz honorary doctorates. 2001. He is survived by four children, 14 Grinberg, in the concentration camp at munity and national service, including His daughter Romana Strochlitz grandchildren and 23 great-grandchil- Bergen-Belsen in Germany. honorary doctorates from four universities. Primus, serves as a Board member, dren in the United States and Israel. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS POLAND, PERSONALIZING THE PERPETRATORS A GREEN COUNTRY The Dachau Defendants: Life Stories He questioned them intensely about their als themselves or the wider denazification Poland, A Green Country. By Aharon from Testimony and Documents of the childhood development, family relation- process, and, indeed, many accounts of Appelfeld. Keter, Jerusalem, 2005. 217 pp. War Crimes Prosecutions. By Fern ships, sexual proclivities and whether they the war crimes trials conducted during this Overbey Hilton. McFarland and Company, had known any sadistic types among their period are already available. Instead, REVIEWED BY RABBI ISRAEL ZOBERMAN 2004. 201pp. $35.00. Paperback. Nazi colleagues. The mid-1990s were Overbey-Hilton focuses on the nature of haron Appelfeld, Israel’s most characterized by the Browning- the people who came before the court, the REVIEWED BY CAROLINE SHARPLES Arenowned and prolific Holocaust Goldhagen debate as to sort of lives they lived prior to author, who himself is a survivor, offers he oft-repeated cry when reflecting whether the criminals of the the rise of National us in his most recent book the best Tupon the Holocaust is one of just Third Reich should be viewed Socialism, and how they fruits yet of his remarkable talent in how was this possible? What could possi- as “ordinary men” or “ordinary came to be in a position to recapturing the themes of the complex bly induce human beings to participate in Germans.” Both scholars engage in criminal activity and convoluted Holocaust tragedy, the genocide of millions? What sort of examined the actions of during the Second World masterfully utilizing both fact and fic- people were behind the crimes of the Police Battalion 101—a unit War. tion. Third Reich? largely made up of educated, The accused themselves This time, Appelfeld focuses on a The question of perpetrator mentality middle-class and middle-aged certainly came from all walks Jacob Fine, Israeli son of survivors ,who has already prompted much historical men. In the debate, much was of life, ranging from major feels compelled to return to his par- research. In his 1996 work, Those Were made of man’s ability to com- ideologically-committed ents’ hometown in a small Polish vil- The Days (the title of which stemmed from mit crimes against his fellow Nazis, to well-educated pro- lage to better understand his family a caption inscribed in Kurt Franz’s photo- man; discussion focused on fessional types (teachers, and reconnect graph album from his time as the erosion of moral bound- doctors, engineers) or even to his roots. Commandant of the Treblinka extermina- aries under Nazism and “ordinary” villagers. There is, Fine, a busi- tion camp), Ernst Klee offered insights whether opportunities existed to defy of course, no room in a slim paperback for nessman and into this mindset through a compilation of orders within a dictatorship at war. the author to tackle all 489 trials. In select- an ex-officer in letters, diaries and reports from perpetra- Against this background comes Fern ing which cases to include, Overbey- the Israeli Army tors and bystanders. The material was Overbey-Hilton’s latest work. Hilton claims to have opted for those encounters a notable for its frequently cool and etween 1945 and 1947, the which “lend themselves to an understand- rural Polish detached depiction of atrocities. More BAmericans staged a total of 489 war ing of the trials” and those which “have setting that has recently, Robert Gellately published a col- crimes trials at the former administration something to teach us about World War II- not changed lection of interviews with the Nuremberg building of Dachau concentration camp. era Germany and the tragedy that grew much since the defendants carried out at the time by the 1,700 individuals were prosecuted under out of the German culture of that time.” war and before American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn. these proceedings, which encompassed a he book itself is divided into seven- it. He experi- These interviews focus on the personal range of atrocities committed in what was Tteen chapters, the last of which aims ences a quasi- lives of some of the biggest names of the now the American occupation zone of the to provide some form of concluding analy- mystic sense of belonging to a place Nazi regime, examining their initial attrac- newly-divided Germany. These included sis under the rhetorical heading, “Will we where his family had lived for cen- tion to National Socialism, as well as their crimes perpetrated in the concentration ever learn?” and spans just over three turies, with the aid of an embracing responses to the Holocaust. Goldensohn camps or during the death marches, as pages. peasant woman of simple, though pro- himself, it seems, deliberately set out to well as the mistreatment and murder of Indeed, the book as a whole is fairly found, religiosity who knew his family, explore whether any peculiar character downed American airmen. concise. The majority of chapters focus on and in whose home he lodges, falling defects or unusual experiences might Overbey-Hilton does not attempt to just one or two defendants at a time and, in love with her during his eventful visit. have rendered these figures more dis- focus on the legal side of these events. No on average, run the course of nine pages. Fine soon encounters the suspicion posed to participating in such activities. detailed discussion is made here of the tri- (Continued on page 15) of the villagers, leery of the stranger who may be after Jewish property left behind, as well as looted following the murder of the Jews by the Germans ,and FASHIONING WOMEN IN THE THIRD REICH the refusal of the Poles to help the des- Nazi Chic? Fashioning Women in the were most important. She paid no atten- their primary role vis-à-vis Nazi society. perate Jews who had done much for Third Reich. By Irene Guenther. Berg, New tion to the foolish antics of the “New Interestingly, while uniformed women the collective welfare for so long. Anti- York, 2004. 499 pp. $28.95. Softcover Woman” interested in Paris styles, make- would come to be in the German armed up, and so much more “dangerous” to the services, that was never a Nazi goal. Semitism still remains a powerful REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN force, even in the absence of Jews, as stability and exis- Rather, it was the result of need: as the Fine’s Jewish identity, separate from heoretically, the Nazi system was tence of the fami- war progressed, there just weren’t enough his Israeli one, grows in response to Tmeant to impact every aspect of ly and the German servicemen. the deep-seated and irrational hostility German life: political, economic, social, “ Fatherland.” So, why should all this interest readers born of the theological rejection and and cultural. Indeed, countless books Yes, she fit per- of M&R? envy of Jewish accomplishments. have examined the political, economic, fectly into Nazism’s he following excerpt, originally part Fine’s transformative return to his and social tenets and manifestations of worldview, and Tof an article on women’s fashion ancestral heritage from which he was Nazism in Germany. Far fewer, though, most particularly from the SS newspaper Das Schwarze paradoxically alienated in Israel, is have examined cultural issues, exception- how they saw the Korps (1939), alludes to the fascinating epitomized in his futile attempt to pur- ally revealing and thought-provoking in primary role of reason—itself in a strange way reminis- chase and bring to Israel the broken their own right, affected by and affecting women: child- cent of Hitler’s wild ravings as regards Jewish tombstones used by the Poles the aforementioned. Thus, Irene bearing. Jews and the German woman in his book as pavement. He even dreams of his Guenther’s volume entitled, Nazi Chic? A kind of “urban Mein Kampf: past Israeli soldiers under his com- Fashioning Women in the Third Reich, is alternative” “The female beauty ideal is no longer mand protecting him from the threaten- a particularly unique, fascinating, and “fashioning proposal” offered the German determined by the beauty of the mother ing Poles who endangered his life. A important contribution. woman was “the German female in uni- and the comrade of the man, but rather, high price is required by the village’s Put simply, in Guenther’s work, we learn form.” Here, Nazism’s obsessive love of more or less hidden, by the whore... council for what it ironically claims is a about Nazi Germany’s propagandist “organization and militarization,”its This whole development was one of the treasured possession reflecting a sig- attempts to create a “German fashion” for “demand for unity, uniformity, commonali- masterstrokes of the Jewish infection that nificant bond with its past honored its women and hence, concomitantly and ty, and community” was “visibly still plagues us today. The entire Aryan Jews. interestingly, fashion their role in Nazi expressed.” And the opportunities to world has been captured and infected by Fine’s following observation is a society. One style especially favored was appear in uniform were many, beginning this Jewish spirit.” haunting one: “Poland is a cemetery the dirndl “Tracht traditional folk costume” in childhood. First, girls were members of In sum, many Nazis held that the Jews, that was ploughed. It is hard to pray in worn by Nazism’s “female ideal”: the the “Bund deutschen Mädel (BdM), or the most specifically in the women’s fashion such a cemetery. The fertile green is German farmer’s wife. Referred to as League of German Girls,” graduating industry in Germany, were responsible for maddening. I truly tried, but it was “`Mother Germany’” and considered “the through its various age specific subdivi- what they viewed as the calculated, beyond my strength.” ‘life spring’ of the national community, the sions. Then, they moved on to member- malicious “degeneration” and “degrada- Volk,” it was felt that the German farmer’s ship in the “`Labor Service for Female tion” of the German woman, body and Rabbi Israel Zoberman, spiritual leader wife instinctively knew that a woman’s Youth (RADwJ)” organization. Still, ulti- soul. According to them, it was the Jews of Congregation Beth Chaverim in highest calling was that of wife and moth- mately, everything they learned in both who were responsible for the “trashy” Virginia Beach, is son of Polish er. She knew that “Kinder, Küche, and these organizations was to make them appearance and continuing popularity of the Holocaust survivors. Kirche (children, kitchen, and church)” better wives and, especially, mothers, (Continued on page 15) November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 HOLOCAUST KIN LAST LINK TO PAST saw in my grandparents. My perspective camps and stealing potatoes to survive. and her mother eventually agreed the BY JORDAN LITE has changed a little bit. I know full well I “I feel like my obligation is to be human- letters should be donated. am not a survivor,” said Lantos, 31. itarian,” said Lantos, who lives in he third generation’s bond with rowing up, Dan Brooks never group Brooks founded last year, Brookline, Mass. Ttheir grandparents is ultimately the Gattached the weight of the word A3GNY, grew out of his own feeling of That the third generation sees their completion of a long healing and under- “legacy” to the stories his grandparents alienation from the second gen- grandparents not as victims standing process for families. told him about their escape from the eration, who he said were but as heroes to emulate When Werner Greenbaum, now 84, Nazis. focused on working through sometimes leads to clashes and his wife were raising their children, But as Holocaust survivors live out their their relationships with their sur- with their own parents, said the memory of the Holocaust was fresh. last days, attention is increasingly focused vivor parents. Brooks and the Julia Chaitin, who has stud- “You didn’t like to talk about it,” said on their grandchildren, who will be the last 400 members of his group want ied three generations of Greenbaum of Fresh Meadows, living link to their stories. to preserve their families’ sto- survivor families. Queens, who fled Germany after the Dubbed the “third generation,” some of ries, educate children who might aroline Weinberg, 23, Gestapo burned down a Frankfurt syna- these young Jews are shaking off the sur- not know survivors, and in some Cdoesn’t remember gogue and secret police forced him to vivor identity they were once assumed to cases, connect to a history that exactly when she was told clean up their destruction of the have inherited. But they continue to may feel unfamiliar, despite her grandmother, Sala Rothschild Museum on Kristallnacht. absorb its emotional pull. being a Holocaust descendant. Garncarz, survived a series Like many survivors, Greenbaum had “I’ve been introduced as a third-genera- Still, consciously or not, they of Nazi labor camps. Yet felt comfortable only speaking English to tion survivor and I’ll cringe,” said Brooks, mourn their grandparents’ suf- Weinberg read Holocaust his children. Yet he was delighted when 28. ‘Legacy’ is a very loaded word.” fering, and “one way they find literature obsessively as a his grandchildren, Arielle, 23, and Though early research suggested sur- meaning is to connect” to the Werner Greenbaum’s searing girl and sobbed through a David, 27, both learned German. memories of the Holocaust vivors’ descendants also experienced Holocaust, said New York psy- diary Garncarz kept in the It also was at Arielle and David’s urg- live on in his granddaughter Holocaust trauma, psychologists have chologist Eva Fogelman. camps, imagining herself in ing that all three generations traveled to Ariel. the survivors’ birthplace in Germany. moved away from characterizing grand- A protest against the genocide her grandmother’s shoes. “I never understood what they experi- kids the way they did their parents. in Sudan turned out a strong contingent of The depth of their connection crystal- enced until my children nudged them,” Paul Lantos once mimicked his parents’ Holocaust survivors’ grandchildren, who lized when Weinberg’s mother, Ann said Greenbaum’s daughter, Judy approach to the Holocaust: He shunned felt a visceral pull toward the tragedy. Kirschner, told her that letters Garncarz Cahill. books and movies about the subject, They also are twice as likely to enter had hidden during her years in the camps In their storytelling, it was as if her believing they would be too painful to medical and social service professions as would be exhibited at the New York Public grandparents were exhaling, Arielle absorb. He hated hearing German spoken American Jews whose grandparents did Library last spring. said. and wouldn’t consider buying a not experience the Holocaust, Fogelman For Kirschner, who had been starved “That was a defining moment for me. I Volkswagen. most of her life for details of Garncarz’s said. felt like, wow, almost like I’ve come full But by the time he got to college, he imprisonment, the letters were “historical,” Lantos, who conducts medical research circle,” she said. “They were helping sensed he was removed enough from his Weinberg said. But she saw them as “per- in poor countries, said he is motivated by document what happened to them. They grandparents’ horrors to no longer feel like sonal documents” and felt protective the tales his grandfather told him during were passing it on.” a victim himself. childhood walks, when the older man about sharing them. “It really became a “I took a lot of ownership of the pain I would recall being tortured in slave-labor family to-do,” she said, adding that she First published in the Daily News

JAPANESE HONOR VICTIMS PROFILE IN COURAGE OF THERESIENSTADT ebruary 1943, Bulgaria agreed to delegation, prime minister. Filov was furious that NAZI DEATH CAMP FGermany’s request that it hand over along with Peshev organized such a public protest. 20,000 Jews. In March, Bulgarian author- several parlia- The parliament voted to remove Peshev Japanese peace group has erect- ities arrested more than 11,000 Jews liv- ment members, from his position as deputy speaker. Soon Aed a monument at the former ing in its newly annexed territories, and to meet with the thereafter, Alexander Belev, the Bulgarian Theresienstadt transit camp, JTA German army units deported them to Minister of the official in charge of the government’s reports. A giant peace pole with the Treblinka. Because the Bulgarian govern- Interior, Petur Jewish policy, launched a plan to deport inscription “May Peace Prevail on Earth” ment had not met the quota of 20,000, it Gabrovski. all of the nearly 50,000 Bulgarian Jews to in Czech, Japanese, German and decided to deport Jews of Bulgarian citi- Gabrovski Poland. English was dedicated at the camp, now zenship, namely the 8,000 living in the denied know- lthough Peshev felt defeated, his a museum in the Czech Republic, by town of Kyustendil near the Macedonian ing about the Aactions caused others to intensify members of the Japanese branch of the border. Word of the plan spread and plan, but they their protests. Leaders of the Bulgarian World Peace Prayer Society. angered many of the non-Jewish resi- knew he was Dimitar Peshev is featured church sent letters to the prime minister The Japanese said they had chosen dents. A delegation of Bulgarians boarded lying and and to King Boris III. Prominent writers in Poster Set on Rescue. Terezin, as the camp is called in Czech, a train for Sophia to protest the deporta- demanded and intellectuals spoke out, as did groups because it is a symbol of wartime suffer- tion. They were hoping to enlist the sup- that he cancel the deportation. After a of lawyers, physicians, and communists. ing. The Nazis set up a ghetto in Terezin port of Dimitar Peshev, the deputy speak- lengthy argument, Gabrovski agreed to do This collective pressure led King Boris III in 1941 and brought there some 155,000 er of the Bulgarian parliament. so. Peshev knew, however, that the Jews to alter his policy. Despite competing Jews from all over Europe, most of Although he had supported Bulgaria’s were not out of danger. pressure from the Germans, he prevented anti-Jewish laws, Peshev had done so n March 17, 1943, Peshev wrote a the deportations by having many whom were deported to death camps, because he knew it would strengthen his Oletter to Prime Minister Bogdan Bulgarian Jews assigned to forced labor particularly Auschwitz. Some 35,000 country’s alliance with Germany. He never Filov in which he opposed any future units in Bulgaria. As a result, no Jews of Jews died in the ghetto from disease and supported the deportation of Bulgaria’s deportations of Bulgarian Jews. He con- Bulgarian citizenship were sent to their hunger due to the horrible conditions. Jews. He, too, wanted to stop it. On vinced 42 of his colleagues in parliament deaths in Poland. There are more than 200,000 peace March 9, 1943, he brought the Kyustendil to sign the petition and presented it to the Dimitar Peshev passed away in 1973. poles in 190 countries. JEWISH REMAINS FOUND IN UKRAINE MASS GRAVE undreds of Jewish skeletons were priests and elderly residents in Ukraine his son, Shimon. tons were children. “We know that as Huncovered in a mass grave in a and asked for assistance in locating “One of the sites that the elderly told us opposed to Gypsies, the Nazis also killed Ukraine forest next to the city of Lvov. potential sites where thousands of Jews about was in a small village next to Lvov, the Jewish families along with their chil- In September, a secret mission called may have been murdered and buried in where there is a forest next to a Jewish dren,” he said. “Kaddish for Ukraine’s Jews” began look- mass graves. cemetery,” said the members of Zaka. he delegation members estimated ing for the mass graves of Ukrainian Jews he delegation members began “We used metal detectors to locate the Tthat in this mass grave alone some who were massacred during the Second Texamining areas around Lvov locat- exact area by detecting the bullets.” 1,800 Jews were buried. They said that World War. ed in western Ukraine. Before the Second “The metal detectors went off exactly in after the grave was uncovered, Ukrainian In an operation initiated by the Jewish World War, about 110,000 Jews lived in that area. They began digging, and two authorities agreed to recognize the area Congress and the Holocaust Museum in Lvov, and with Germany’s invasion of the meters down, the remains began to sur- as a Jewish burial site, and a religious Paris and Washington, the delegation Soviet Union in June of 1941, this city and face. Hundreds of skulls and bare skele- burial ceremony was organized with the uncovered an enormous mass grave in a the surrounding area was one of the first tons were counted in the grave site. The participation of a rabbi from Lvov. forest in Ukraine containing remains of ones that were invaded. years in which the bullets were manufac- The delegation members are planning hundreds of Jews murdered in the time of Among the members of the delegation tured were engraved on the bullets recov- on returning to the area and erect a mon- the Holocaust. The remains were uncov- were a pathologist, several archeologists, ered from the remains – 1941, 1939 – as ument in memory of the victims. The del- ered in one of the 500 sites the delegation local rabbis and eight Zaka Rescue and well as the country in which they were egation will return to Ukraine in order to members are planning on excavating. Recovery members, including organiza- manufactured – Germany. uncover other burial sites of Jews killed by The operation initiators contacted tion Chairman Yehuda Meshi Zahav and Meshi Zahav said that most of the skele- the Nazis. Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER “THE HIGHEST HONOR OF THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD” hen the White House called appreciation to the country that gave him diate superiors recommended him for the was nightmarish for the prisoners. They WCorporal Tibor “Ted” Rubin to tell his freedom, and saved his life. Medal of Honor. However, before the were cold and hungry, and disease was him he was to receive the Congressional ed joined the Army in February paperwork could be processed, these offi- rampant. “Healthy men became like Medal of Honor, he thought it was one of T1950, and five months later landed cers were killed, and a sergeant who babies, helpless,” Ted said. “Everything his friends playing a joke. President Bush in Korea with the 3rd battalion, 8th might have sent the papers up refused to was stink, death, it was terrible, terrible.” has called the 76-year-old Korean War Cavalry Regiment, one of the first do so because Ted was Jewish. “Not on 30-40 a day were dying. “It was hardest veteran “one of the greatest Jewish sol- American units sent to help repel North my watch,” he said. After the Inchon inva- on the Americans, who were not used to diers America has ever known.” But Ted is Korean invasion forces. Ted was soon sion, the 8th Cavalry Regiment moved this,” Ted said. “But I had a heck of a basic characteristically modest. “I was just a involved in the fighting withdrawal to the north towards the Chinese border, and training from the Germans.” country boy,” he told me, “but next week Pusan perimeter. In was at the forward ed used all the experience he had I’ll be honored with the country’s highest one engagement edge of the U.N. Tgained as a Holocaust survivor in award. This is unbelievable.” near Chirye, Ted’s offensive when the helping to keep himself and other prison- Being awarded the Medal of Honor is company was rede- Chinese Red Army ers alive. “I did it because I was an another of a series of adventures in Ted ploying from one hill entered the conflict. American,” Ted told me, “and because it Rubin’s remarkable life. He was born in to another, and he Ted’s battalion was was a mitzvah. Regardless of color or Hungary in 1929, and at age 15 was sent volunteered to stay destroyed at the nationality, they were my brothers.” Food to Mauthausen concentration camp in behind to keep the Battle of Unsan in was vital for survival, so he began to steal Austria. His first day there an SS captain enemy guessing early November rations from the enemy, who had little told the assembled, “None of you will get until the movement 1950, while fighting enough themselves. Fellow POW out of here alive.” Ted turned to the man was completed. As a delaying action Sergeant Carl McClendon stated, “every next to him and said, “Nice fellow.” Ted Corporal Leonard against Chinese day, when it got dark, and we went to survived the next 14 brutal months of cap- Hamm relates, “the North Koreans, think- forces swarming south from the Yalu. sleep, Rubin was on his way, crawling on tivity, but most of his family perished. His ing the hill was still occupied by a whole Hundreds of Americans were captured, his stomach, jumping over fences, break- father died in Buchenwald. His ten-year- company, made an all out offensive with among them Ted, who had manned a ing in supply houses, while the guns were old sister Elonja was sent to the gas all their available troops. PFC Tibor Rubin machine gun to hold off the enemy as the looking down on him. He tied the bottom chambers at Auschwitz, and his mother had stocked each foxhole with grenades, rest of the unit attempted to withdraw. of his fatigue pants and filled up anything Rosa, who was slated for forced labor, and during the attack the following morn- Ted found himself in the Pukchin POW he could get a hold of. He crawled back chose instead to face death with her ing made his way running from foxhole to camp, also known as “Death Valley,” and and distributed the food that he had stolen daughter. Mauthausen was liberated by foxhole, lobbing, one after the other, later at Pyoktong, along with hundreds of and risked his life.” the U.S. 11th Armored Division on May 5, grenades down upon the enemy, he Americans, Turks, and others. The camps Ted also did what he could to treat the 1945. With nothing left for him in Hungary became almost hysterical in his actions were at first run by the North Koreans, sick and injured. But many were beyond Ted emigrated to the United States. He but he held the hill.” then by the Chinese, whom Ted said treat- saving, and diseases such as dysentery promised himself that he would show his For this and other actions, Ted’s imme- ed them slightly better. Nevertheless, life (Continued on page 13)

HOLOCAUST VICTIMS TO GET MILLIONS MORE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FROM INSURER n Italian insurance giant will pay MEET AFTER SIXTY-TWO YEARS Atens of millions of additional dollars more than 1,000 Jews forced from their Bodies of the dead were carried out to the heirs of Holocaust victims who once BY RENE BRUEMMER homes in 1941 by Germany’s Nazis and daily. Weiszner’s parents and her new- held policies with the company, according the Romanian army, marching for six born sibling would be among them, ulti- hen they were 11 years old, child- months until they reached the prison bar- mately succumbing to typhus and malnu- to settlement papers filed in three class hood friends Esther Grauer and actions against Assicurazioni Generali in W racks in the occupied Ukraine in which trition. Disease and lice were rampant Tova Weiszner survived a six-month they would live for three years. Those who because prisoners were not allowed to U.S. District Court in Manhattan. death march. The settlement calls on the company to couldn’t walk any longer or disobeyed bathe. They then spent three years together were shot. pay the claims currently pending before a “Imagine not having a shower for three during the Second World War in a prison Grauer arrived with her mother and years,” Weiszner said. London-based commission set up to deal in the occupied Ukraine, then part of the Weiszner’s and Grauer’s parents heard with Holocaust-era insurance claims. The Soviet Union, begging food of a new law protecting young prisoners $100 million Generali gave to the commis- from villagers to survive. with no parents, and they made the chil- sion, called ICHEIC, in 2000 has already They lost touch after the dren pose as orphans, so they would be been exhausted and additional claims war but trod similar paths, sent to orphanages back in Romania. settling in Canada and rais- remain, according to the settlement Grauer eventually reunited with her moth- agreement. ing families. About 20 years ago, a sup- er and sister; Weiszner never saw her The settlement will also allow victims parents again. and their heirs to submit new claims port organization for Holocaust survivors put them he friends last saw each other in directly to the company through February TBucharest in 1944. Separately, both 2007. in touch, but they hadn’t seen each other in person since travelled to Israel in the late ‘40s, married Although the settlement agreement not long after they left prison. and had children. does not say how much money Generali Sixty-two years, five chil- “I’ve been lucky,” said the diminutive will have to pay to settle the new and dren, seven grandchildren Weiszner, who has a comedian’s delivery existing claims, two sources close to the and two great-grandchildren and credits her vitality to “keeping busy – case said more than $25 million will likely later, the survivors were I don’t just sit on the couch.” be needed to cover them. The agreement reunited at Trudeau airport. Second World War survivors Tova Weiszner (left) and Esther “I’ve had a good life, I have good chil- also allows for the lawyers involved to “Do you have a Valium? I Grauer are reunited at Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport. dren – they’re healthy, they’re not in inspect Generali’s old records, a source can’t believe I forgot my Valium,” Grauer, prison.” said. 77, exclaimed moments before the younger sister, Weiszner with her father, Her one regret, however, is that she and Generali still faces more than 20 reunion, to no avail. pregnant mother and brother. Grauer took so long to see each other. Holocaust-related lawsuits brought by “I don’t want to make a scene.” “It wasn’t a four-star hotel,” Weiszner Yes, Winnipeg is far, but it’s not like they individual plaintiffs and one class-action But there was no scene. Only glistening said. “We slept on the cement floor; there had to walk, Weiszner said. lawsuit that has not yet been certified, a eyes, throats choked with emotion and the were no beds or even mattresses. And Grauer feels the same way. there was no food.” source close to the case said. The 25- silent embrace of friends who have expe- Friends fortunate enough to have sur- They would sneak under the barbed page settlement agreement stipulates that rienced too much and haven’t seen each vived the Holocaust and who live in the wire before dawn (“If the soldiers saw us, if more than 300 claimants decide to opt other since 1944. same country have an obligation to see “I have no words,” said Weiszner, 76. they would shoot us.”) and beg from vil- each other, Grauer noted. out of the settlement, Generali can back lagers who risked their lives to help them. out as well. “There are no words. I am speechless.” “We were happy to survive, but you Friends since Grade 2 at their Hebrew Grauer remembers melting snow for According to the agreement, Generali never forget. ... When you’re that young, it elementary school in Lipcani, Romania water in prison. For food, she rinsed pota- leaves an imprint forever.” will also pay up to $3.25 million in attorney (now a part of Moldova), Grauer and to skins discarded by the German and fees and extra fees to several of plaintiffs. Weiszner and their families were among Romanian guards. First published in The Gazette November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7

OFFICIALS WARN SERBIAN HOLOCAUST OF RISING ANTI-SEMITISM the service sector. The German occupa- transit camp. The Topovske Supe camp undreds of people gathered in the BY CARL SAVICH tion forces put on street cars: “For Jews was set up by German occupation forces Hsouthern Polish city of Kielce July 4 Forbidden (Fur Juden verboten)” along as a temporary assembly point for the to remember the victims of Poland’s worst ollowing the Axis bombardment of with a “V for victory” sign. Jews of Banat, a region of Serbia, then post-WWII pogrom, and were urged to Belgrade on April 6, 1941, the Nazi F n July 28, 1941, under direct stop any resurgence of anti-Semitism. occupation of Serbia began, which imme- the German German military The wail of a siren cutting through the diately targeted the Jewish population. O occupation forces occupation and warm summer air signaled the start of a The Gestapo introduced anti-Jewish announced a curfew administration. solemn ceremony in front of a white and measures only days after entering against Jews in a From here, Jews grey stone monument to more than 40 Belgrade, with the objective “of settling decree or order of the and Roma were Jews, who were mercilessly slaughtered the Jewish issue.” Belgrade Jews were command in Belgrade, sent to the death here 60 years ago. conscripted by German occupation forces Kommandanturbefehl, camps at Sajmiste Kielce erupted in a frenzy of hatred after to remove and to clear the debris and rub- a rumour was spread that a Jewish family Naredba Komande and Banjica. ble following the Axis bombing of the city. had held a Christian boy in a cellar Beograda, in both In the second Concentration camps were set up for overnight. The rumor soon turned into German and Serbian: stage, from August Serbs, Jews, and Roma in German-occu- anti-Semitic hysteria, with tales that Jews “Since the current A trolley car in Belgrade with a Nazi "V for to October, 1941, all pied Yugoslavia. Serbia and Banat were needed to have blood transfusions from urbanization plan is victory" sign and the Nazi occupation warn- Jewish males over under direct German military occupation. Christian children to survive or used being endangered by ing "Forbidden for Jews (Fuer Juden the age of fourteen SS Gruppenfuehrer Harald Turner was Christian blood to make matzos. criminal activity, it is Verboten)." were interned. the head of the German Military The Kielce pogrom happened a year after necessary to establish a curfew for Jews In the third stage, from October to Occupation Administration in Serbia. the end of WWII, in which six million Jews in the city.” The curfew began at 8 pm on December, 1941, almost all Jewish The German occupation forces began died in the Holocaust, more than half of Monday through Friday, and at 7 pm on males were killed. the immediate imple- them from the country’s once-vibrant Saturday and Sunday. n December 12, 1941, Jewish mentation of anti- Jewish community. Jewish-owned business- women and children were interned Jewish measures. SS O In the months following the massacre, es had to be closed at in the Sajmiste camp. The commander of up to the end of 1946, almost 150,000 Gruppenfuehrer Turner, the time of the curfew. If the Sajmiste camp was the Austrian SS- Jews left Poland. Many of them went to described as “a fanati- the Belgrade Jews did Untersturmfuehrer Herbert Andorfer who Palestine to take part in building their new cal National-Socialist not comply, further used mobile gas vans to kill approximate- homeland. They knew that only a sover- and anti-Semite,” was restrictions would be ly 7,500 Jewish prisoners, mostly eign Jewish state can guarantee their determined to imple- established. women. The murders continued until safety,” Israeli ambassador to Poland ment what would Many Jews were con- May, 1942. Andorfer was tried in West David Peleg said. become the “Final scripted for enforced Germany and sentenced in January, Polish President Lech Kaczynski called Solution.” labor. Other Jews were 1962 to two-and-a-half year’s imprison- the Kielce pogrom an unjustifiable and The destruction of the killed as hostages. ment. shameful crime. Jews of Serbia The Belgrade Synagogue which the Groups of Jews were In the fourth stage, from January to “This was a huge dishonor for Poles and occurred in four stages. German occupation forces desecrated executed as reprisals for May, 1942, all Jewish men who remained a tragedy for the few Jews who survived In the first stage, from by removing the Star of David and the activities of the and all the interned women and children the Nazi Holocaust,” he said in a message April to August, 1941, using as a brothel. resistance groups in were killed. Belgrade had a pre-war read out at the ceremony in his absence. the German occupation forces compiled “Nothing can justify this crime. In a free, Belgrade. Other Jews were shot as indi- Jewish population of 11,870, 10,500 of lists of Jewish residents of Belgrade. Jews democratic Poland that upholds the law, viduals. whom were killed during the German were forced to wear yellow badges or rib- there is no place for racism and anti- The concentration camp of Topovske occupation. bons. Mass arrests of Jews ensued. Jews Supe, a former weapons depot, was Semitism, which are met with justified were dismissed from public offices and established in August, 1941 to serve as a First appeared on serbianna.com repulsion,” he said. DISTORTING JEWISH HISTORY n the mid-nineteenth century, leading President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recent- argument.” After several Jewish students BY SHARON LAPKIN IFrench writer, Leon Bloy wrote, “It is ly called the slaughter of six million Jews complained, the NSW Department of impossible to earn the esteem of a dog if in the Holocaust a “myth” and declared Education investigated and revealed that ixty years ago, Nazism massacred one does not feel an instinctive disgust for Israel should be “wiped off the map.” the simulation was “heavily biased against Ssix million Jews in Europe. But anti- the synagogue.” And in 1871, Pope Pius Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Dan Israel.” The schools have dropped the Semitism didn’t begin with Adolf Hitler. X1 said in reference to Jews, “of these Gillerman, warned the world body, that the programme, but Macquarie University – Judeophobia has been an affliction of dogs, there are too many of them at pres- Iranian President’s hostility and Holocaust which developed the activity – has Western civilization since the Roman his- ent in Rome, and we hear them howling in denial was a “real threat of future geno- refused to stop. torian Tacitus maligned the Israelites in the streets, and they are disturbing us in cide.” The Iranian President, he said, rep- s history teaching morphs into the first century of the Common Era. all places.” resents an “evil regime” that “denies the Aindoctrination through role-play and In 1267 in Vienna, The Catholic Council Almost five hundred years after Martin Holocaust while preparing for the next computer simulation – which simultane- decreed that all Jews had to wear pileum Luther published his pamphlet, On the one.” ously de-emphasize historical facts and cornutum or horned hats, so the public Jews and their Lies, a three-year-old Gillerman went on to state he “terribly dates – it is essential that Jewish history could identify them as offspring of the Palestinian toddler articulated ageless regretted that the State of Israel did not be remembered in its entirety. And that it devil. And half a century earlier the Jew hatred in a new context in 2005, exist in 1938 or 1943”, because if it had, not be reduced to computer graphics Council of Paris forbade Christian mid- when she explained to a large Arab televi- the Holocaust “would never have hap- where students are required to pretend to wives to attend Jewish women, who they sion audience on the Iqra network that pened...And I warn you,” he said,” there be an “Invader Jew” in order to pass a his- proclaimed, were bringing the brood of the Jews were “dogs” and “villains.” will forever be an Israel, so this horror will tory exam. The motto, so oft repeated Devil into the world. As the world acknowledged the first never be witnessed again.” “Never Again,” can only be properly The Archbishop of Canterbury closed “International Day of Commemoration of But Hitler was not the first to massacre understood if it retains its context. every synagogue in his diocese in 1282, and eight years later, King Edward I the Victims of the Holocaust” on 27 large numbers of Jews, nor was he the Dr. Dagobert Runes, revered peer of expelled the remaining 17, 000 Jews from January, the Iranian mission to the UN most recent. He merely pioneered the Albert Einstein and renowned Jewish England and stole their property. They released an official response to the “day,” killing machine that processed the hatred scholar, said in 1968, that “the wearing of fled to Europe, but most were thrown into and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of fourteen hundred years of anti- the yellow spot, the burning of Jewish the sea by order of the ships’ captains. obtained a copy. Semitism before him. As new threats books, and finally the burning of the peo- In Russia in the mid-nineteenth and This document called for “scientific emerge and demand the destruction of ple...” was learned and practiced well early twentieth century, Jews were rou- scrutiny and rigor” to determine the Israel, it is vitally important that Jewish before Hitler. Prior to Nazism, he claimed, tinely tortured and put on trial for alleged “veracity of the Nazi genocide against history not be defined by isolated events Jews were burned alive. At least, he said, blood-drinking. Later, they were burned European Jewry.” It accused Israel of such as the Holocaust and the conflict Hitler gassed his victims before he burned alive in pogroms, as the public were “massacres” and “acts of state terrorism” with the Palestinians. them. warned to hide their children from the and stated that “The basic principle of estern teaching trends in high Nor did the massacre of Jews cease vampire Jews who sought to kidnap them democracy ... should pave the way for Wschools and universities now with the defeat of Nazism in the Second and drink their blood at Passover. exploring different aspects of historical include teaching history through interpre- World War. The Kielce Pogrom in Poland, Throughout history, Jews have been events without any arbitrary restriction.” tive methods, such as computer simula- in 1946, saw Jewish Holocaust survivors referred to as dogs. When Martin Luther And it ended with a warning that, “geno- tion. One such teaching activity was being lured out of their homes by neigh- designed his eight-point plan to rid the cide and immense suffering should not be recently introduced into seven Australian bors who spent five hours publicly mur- world of Jews in 1543, he demanded, manipulated for political purposes.” schools and a university, where students dering them in cold blood as the local gov- “They must be driven from our country” A few days earlier, Iran announced it were required to role-play the ernment and church stood silently by. and “we must drive them out like mad was organizing a conference to examine Palestinian/Israeli conflict, to enable them This event – almost two years after the dogs.” the “scientific evidence for the Holocaust.” to “gain an insight into all sides of the (Continued on page 14) Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767

Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and Recipient of the Recipient of the 2006 Yad Vashem Lifetime Achievement Award with Dr. Miriam 2006 Yad Vashem Lifetime Achievement Award, Sheldon G. Adelson, Recipient of the Yad Vashem Adelson, Recipient of the Yad Vashem Achievement Award. Remembrance Award, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Guest Speaker. Eli Zborowski, Vashem Lifetim

Marvin Z Marvin Zborowski, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Guest Speaker and Eli Zborowski, Chairman, Picture of some of the more than 1200 people who attended the American & International Guest Spe American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and Recipient of the 2006 Yad Vashem Societies for Yad Vashem 25th Anniversary Tribute Dinner. Recipient Lifetime Achievement Award. Gottesfeld

Ariel Zborowski, Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and Barry Rubenstein, Marilyn Rubenstein Dinner Co-Chair, and Eli Zborowski, Chairman, Recipient of the 2006 Yad Vashem Lifetime Achievement Award, Sheldon G. Adelson, Recipient of the Shel American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and Recipient of the 2006 Yad Vashem Yad Vashem Remembrance Award, Dr. Miriam Adelson, Recipient of the Yad Vashem Achievement Lifetime Achievement Award. Awa Award, Elizabeth Zborowski and Murry Zborowski. Soci November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9

Sam and Stella Skura, Elizabeth Zborowski and Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and Recipient of the 2006 Yad Vashem Lifetime Achievement Award. Chairman, American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and Recipient of the 2006 Yad me Achievement Award, Elizabeth Zborowski, and Elizabeth and Joseph Wilf.

Zborowski, H.E. Krzysztof Kasprzyk, Consul General of Poland, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, eaker and Eli Zborowski Chairman, American & International Societies for Yad Vashem and of the 2006 Yad Vashem Lifetime Achievement Award, Elizabeth Zborowski and Fanya d Heller. Mindy Mitzner and Ira Mitzner, Dinner Co-Chair.

ldon G. Adelson and Dr. Miriam Adelson, Recipients of the Yad Vashem Remembrance ard, Marvin and Celina Zborowski and Eli Zborowski Chairman, American & International Lawrence and Adina Burian and Caroline Massel, Co-President of the American Society for Yad Vashem Young ieties for Yad Vashem and Recipient of the 2006 Yad Vashem Lifetime Achievement Award. Leadership Associates and Morris Massel. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM KIN REUNITED SIXTY- FIVE YEARS AFTER HOLOCAUST “I felt I couldn’t talk. I just cried,” he said. Eddie — stayed in Romania, finding too ill to travel to Israel to meet his sister. BY ARON HELLER, AP “You don’t understand, 65 years ...” His refuge in a basement. The fate of one His son Irving, however, lives in Israel, voice trailed off. sister, Pepi, remains unknown. She dis- just half an hour away from his missing ilda Shlick thought she lost nearly Shlick, 75, said she too was over- appeared and is presumed to have been relatives. all her family in the Holocaust — H whelmed by the discovery. killed by the Nazis. Shlick said she plans to until her Internet-savvy grandsons located “For 65 years, I lived thinking I had no Glasberg, his brothers travel to Canada soon to her 81-year-old brother in Canada. family besides one sister,” she said. After 65 years, I have found the sister and parents emigrated see her other relatives and who I love,” Simon to Canada after the war visit the graves of the par- Glasberg said in heav- ended. Shlick and her ents she lost as a child. ily accented English, sister moved to Estonia, ad Vashem director his eyes filling with where Bertha died in YAvner Shalev said tears. “I can’t stop 1970. the story should encourage kissing her.” n 1998, Shlick immi- Jews from around the Using the database Igrated to Israel. world to check the data- of Holocaust victims at During a family conver- base for their relatives’ Yad Vashem, Israel’s sation this summer, her names and to submit Holocaust memorial, grandsons learned her pages of testimony for two of Shlick’s grand- maiden name was those who have been lost. children, Benny and Glasberg, and they The database contains David, began unearthing began to investigate her some 3 million names of a mystery spanning six past. Holocaust victims and has decades and three con- They logged onto the been visited by 10 million Chairman of the Yad Vashem tinents. Yad Vashem Web site people since it went online Directorate Avner Shalev gives While improved tech- Simon Glasberg, 81, of Ottawa, Canada, left, hugs his sister Hilda and found a page of tes- in 2004. Shlick, 75, from Ashdod, Israel, during their meeting at the Yad timony submitted in Hilda and Simon Glasberg a tour Yad Vashem spokes- nology in recent years of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem has made the task of Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. 1999 by her brother woman Estee Yaari said tracking Holocaust survivors easier, fewer Since reunion, the family bond has Karol, of Montreal, who wrote about his this was only the second known case of and fewer survivors remain as each year clearly been re-established, with the two sister Hilda, who “perished in the living siblings discovering each other passes. elderly siblings playfully joking and remi- Shoah.” through the database. Last June, two Scanning the database, the grandsons, niscing in a hearty mixture of Russian and Karol died that same year, but further sisters who had survived the Holocaust both in their 20s, discovered an entry erro- Yiddish. Their large families have quickly searches through the Web site of the and moved separately to Israel were neously stating their grandmother had become close. Montreal Burial Society and online reunited after 61 years. perished half a century earlier. That entry The last time the two saw each other forums of survivors of Chernowitz, Glasberg, though thrilled to find his sis- led them to other surviving relatives, who was in 1941, when the Glasberg family of Shlick’s grandsons were able to track ter, said the reunion was bittersweet eventually brought about the siblings’ Chernowitz, Romania, was separated down his son, who filled in the picture of because of all the years the family was emotional reunion. after the Nazis invaded. what happened to the divided family. divided. When Glasberg, who lives near Ottawa, Hilda, then 10, escaped to Uzbekistan Shlick’s parents died in the 1980s in “My poor parents, they always said, Canada, saw his gray-haired little sister with her older sister Bertha. The rest of Montreal, living well into their 90s, as did ‘We wish we would find all our kids’” he for the first time, he recognized her imme- the family — parents Henia and Benzion, her brother Eddie, who died in 2004. said. “It is such a tragedy, but now I am diately, he said. and brothers Simon, Mark, Karol and Mark Glasberg lives in Ottawa, but was so happy.” POLAND WORKS WITH A RIGHTEOUS FAMILY IS HONORED AFTER SIXTY YEARS YAD VASHEM TO IDENTIFY n the meantime, their parents, who on the farm with his wife, Hendrika, “RIGHTEOUS” POLES BY ETGAR LEFKOVITS Ihad chosen to remain in Amsterdam, their 11 children, and a grandfather. were caught and sent to their deaths in The two Jewish brothers were offered he Institute of National Remembrance or four decades, Ben Hulata, 81, Auschwitz in October 1943. shelter at the farm even though Bernard in Warsaw (IPN) has had a general T had lost contact with the Dutch fam- Soon enough, the brothers’ money ran Colenbrander had been imprisoned in cooperation agreement with the Yad F ily that saved him and his younger brother out, but their contact in the Dutch the Vught camp in the south of Holland Vashem in Jerusalem since 2004. Now, during World War II. underground transferred them to a fam- the Israeli institute studying crimes of the for resisting the regime and on suspi- Then last year, the octogenarian was Holocaust has promised to officially assist ily farm in Varsseveld, a small Dutch vil- cion of hiding Jews. suddenly struck with pangs of it in gathering archive documents about Colenbrander’s son, Elbert, then 21, Poles who lost their life, or suffered conscience and remorse for “not was in charge of finding alternate hiding repression for helping Jews during the doing enough” to thank the places for the Jewish siblings on the Second World War. Christian Dutch family for their family farm both before and after his The latest visit by representatives of the heroism. father’s detention. Polish institution to Jerusalem has set the Determined to set the record espite the already-heightened risk scene for official bilateral cooperation in straight and see them rightfully Dto the family, the two brothers scientific research and the exchange of recognized, he set out to find the were given Dutch names and hidden in archive documents relating to the period family that had saved his own a small room above the pigsty of the of World War Two. Mateusz Szpytna, one life, and that of his younger farm, along with two British pilots, with of the members of the delegation, says brother more than 60 years ago. all their needs looked after by the fami- cooperation to date between IPN and Yad In the summer of 1943, ly during their one-year stay. Vashem was based on archive research Hulata, born Ben Monnikendam, Over the course of that year, Elbert conducted by individual historians study- was 18 when he decided to flee Colenbrander would bring two addition- ing aspects of Polish-Jewish relations. Amsterdam together with his 16- al Jews to the farm, and take care of The present agreement opens an entirely year-old brother Yitzhak after them as well. new chapter in relations with Yad Vashem, being put in touch, via a female Near the end of the war, a group of he says. classmate, with a member of the German soldiers arrived on the family “ We want this process to be more insti- Dutch underground named farm, taking over part of it for their own tutionalized and better organized. We are Luke. use. starting research on help extended to Just two years earlier, their In the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations: stand- Despite the heightened risk to their Jews by Poles during World War Two. older brother had been deported ing on the left Elbert Colenbrander; fourth from right, lives, the Colenbranders continued to There will be two parallel programs. The to the Mauthausen concentra- Johan Colenbrander; center, standing, Yitzhak Hulata; sequester the Jews, and provide them first one is to complete a register of Poles tion camp where he was mur- third from right, Ben Hulata. with food when the German soldiers repressed by the Nazis for their assis- dered by the Nazis. lage near the German border. were out. tance to Jews. This is where we are As the persecution of the Jews intensified The farm belonged to the Ben and Yitzhak Hulata remained at strongly counting on cooperation with Yad in the Dutch capital, the two brothers Colenbrander family. The head of the the farm until they were liberated in Vashem. The second will aim at an inven- escaped, and hid on a farm in eastern household, Bernard Colenbrander, who 1945. (Continued on page 13) Holland, where they paid rent to the farmers. was active in the Dutch resistance, lived (Continued on page 15) November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 “MAY YOU GO M’CHAYIL L’CHAYIL – FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH.” (Continued from page 1) our hope that the Diana Zborowski follow in that sacred work of Shoah Aftermath Research and Remembrance. Education Center at Yad Vashem will The staff of the American Society has record the phenomenal rebirth in this worked tirelessly for months to make period, and that it will teach future THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM this event a success. To them I offer generations to confront and overcome YOUNG LEADERSHIP ASSOCIATES my sincere and heartfelt gratitude. My adversity. wife Elizabeth, a child survivor, lent “V’al achron, achron choviv” – And her commitment, talent and inspira- last but not least, I profoundly thank CORDIALLY INVITE YOU TO A tion to the production of my video and Yad Vashem for the privilege of pro- to the creation of the 25th anniversary viding us, the survivors, and our exhibition, which is displayed in the friends outside of Israel an opportuni- Dinner Buffet Reception reception area. Elizabeth, thank you ty to partner with you in creating and for your diligence and for embracing expanding an institution which has our mission. become the Global Guardian of The Torah teaches us, “v’higadetah Holocaust Remembrance. In celebration of our 10 years and still l’vincha” – and you shall tell your chil- The Society has been blessed with Moving Forward! dren. My children grew up with the many active members among the sec- burden of the Holocaust. They grew ond and third generation, who now up with stories of hardship, of cruelty, hold key leadership positions in our of loss and devastation, but they also organization. They are the future, February 1, 2007 learned about kindness and sacrifice, they already carry and they will con- 7 pm - 11 pm because both my late wife Diana and tinue to carry the torch of I were saved by Christians who risked Remembrance and the commitment to their lives to shelter us during the war. Yad Vashem into the next genera- West Side Loft It has, perhaps, been a difficult bur- tions. Their activities, which demon- den for our children to shoulder, but strate their devotion to our mission, 336 West 37th Street they have done so with understanding are extensively recorded in this year’s New York City and compassion. To my children and Journal. I am sure you will find this grandchildren, I say, “Thank you for material interesting and heartwarm- your caring, your concern, your com- ing. mitment to Yiddishkeit and the perpet- As the light is slowly fading in our For more information, please contact 212.220.4304 uation of Jewish memory. tent, I am confident that it will be Email: [email protected] For almost six decades, until her brightly rekindled anew in our chil- death in 2004, Diana was my sound- dren’s and grandchildren’s genera- ing board, my advisor and my partner tion. To the incoming leadership, I Dietary Restrictions Observed in all my communal endeavors. She say: “May you go m’chayil l’chayil – was beloved and respected by all from strength to strength.” Couvert: $54.00 per person in advance; those whose lives she touched. It is Thank you. $75 per person at the door. AN UNEXPECTED HAVEN t recent ceremonies in memory of Italians’ point of view of security it was a tombs with Hebrew inscriptions among Carabinieri could cope with. Athe Jews who were interned in a perfect setting - miles away from any- the cypresses, with very non-Calabrian n March 1942, the camp commandant camp in Calabria during World War II, the where, no military installations, no impor- names and birthplaces: “Rosa Freidmann, Iwas explicit in his policy when he told town of Tarsia named a street after Rabbi tant roads or railways, and impervious born in Dobropole, 24 October 1879,” a visitor, “The internees can do what they Riccardo Pacifici, who was part of the mountains all around. But iso- “Max Mannheim, born in want as long as appearances are kept up camp’s history. lation and malaria apart, con- Mosciski, 23 September 1897.” and I don’t get into trouble with the Yellow signs on the motorways in Italy ditions were far from harsh. That is, apart from one: “Leo Ministry.” In practice, Ferramonti turned signal places of special interest - this one From the beginning the Wellesz, born 2 January 1943 at out to be the salvation of the Jews reads “Ferramonti di Tarsia.” It is no Italians allowed internees to Ferramonti, died 4 April 1943.” interned there. They spent up to three church or villa or castle but something regulate the life of the camp. Little Leo was an exception, years there (while sharing the sufferings much rarer in Italy: it is the site of a World ery soon there was a though. Other babies born in the of the general population, especially cold, War II concentration camp for Jews. Vsynagogue and school, camp survived, and the first one malaria and insufficient food). But they Ferramonti is almost unique in another an infirmary and a kosher was even given the name were saved from deportation to Germany. sense, not only in Italy but in the whole of butcher. Contacts with the “Benito” in honor of Mussolini. It was, given the circumstances in the rest continental Europe. It was a camp which locals flourished. Domenico Professor Benito Erlich is now a of Europe, in some respects an idyll. actually became a haven for the Zazzaro, who was thirteen in consultant in an Israeli hospital. Many Ferramontini stayed in Italy after the internees, a place where they could avoid 1940, still lives within spitting In time, two other synagogues war. One even remained in Cosenza, the horrors of the German concentration distance of the camp. He were added to cope with reli- where he founded the town’s only publish- camps. remembers, “There was a gious differences; there were ing house. Others stayed in Italy in Rome In September 1943, units of the Fifth Czech who came every day three levels of schooling (with or Milan. British Infantry Division and the Eleventh to buy milk. He used to take foreign languages taught from The Ferramonti Foundation was started Canadian Tank Regiment of the Eighth manure as well from the cow- the elementary level, a piece of in the 1980s by Calabrian pediatrician Army liberated Ferramonti as they sheds for their vegetable progress which only reached Spartaco Capogreco. Twenty years ago or advanced northward through Calabria. plots.” But the contacts were other Calabrian schools in the so, Capogreco, who is neither Jewish nor This was the first Axis internment camp to not just practical and down- 1990s), and a library with thou- even from Cosenza, “discovered” be liberated by the Allies, and the biggest to-earth. Culture too was sands of volumes. There were Ferramonti and was shocked that it was Italian one. There were 2,000 inmates, exchanged. debates and plays, football not part of the local memory. Since then most of them Jews from Germany and Viennese painter Michel matches, chess tournaments he has written a book about Ferramonti, central Europe. But it could hardly have Fingsten continued his work and literary competitions. One started the foundation and worked inde- been more different from the ones which in what became known as the German Jew told Lord Rennel of fatigably to put Ferramonti on the map, as were to follow. “studio-hut,” and one of his the Allied Control Commission part of Italy’s history and as an important Mussolini had passed anti-Jewish laws canvases, a large Martyrdom of Saint immediately after liberation, “The Italians positive episode in the Shoah. One of his in 1938 and began interning foreign Jews Bartholomew, is today the altarpiece in a could not be cruel, because even if they successes was to persuade the Ministry as soon as war broke out. The first nearby church. This was not the only ecu- tried they would be so inefficient that we of Transport to put Ferramonti literally on “Ferramontini” were Germans, Austrians menical touch. Obviously, there was no could get round it.” the map by giving it a yellow motorway and Czechs, most of whom had left their Jewish cemetery in Tarsia, as the Jews Right from the beginning, regulations sign. Last year he finally succeeded in own countries after discriminatory laws were expelled from southern Italy in the were relaxed; there were supposed to be having the site legally protected by the had been passed there. The camp was 16th century. So inmates who died in the three roll calls a day. Very soon they were Ministry of Culture, though it was too late built on low-lying ground near the river camp, and there were not many, were reduced to two, then one and then nor- to prevent the destruction of one of the Crati, 30 miles north of Cosenza in buried in the Christian graveyard a couple mally every two days - the unpronounce- last remaining huts. Calabria, deep in Italy’s toe. From the of miles from the camp. It is strange to see able foreign names were more than the First published in Jerusalem Post Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 SURVIVOR CAMPAIGNS TO HONOR TOWN THAT HID HER FAMILY FROM NAZIS “Gandino remembers its Jews; why She continued, “I was having a good n 1943, Italy made peace with the BY ENID WEISS can’t Jews remember Gandino?” said time in the mountains — the fresh air. But IAllies, and the Allies occupied parts of Zinn. winter was coming, and we heard that the country, while Germany took control of arina Lowi Zinn has never forgotten Zinn said she’s been told by Yad German Nazis and Italian fascists had other parts. The Nazis then hunted down the small Italian town or the people M Vashem officials that there isn’t enough begun conducting raids of homes in the Italian Jews, eventually deporting more there who sheltered her and her family documentation to honor the entire town’s area. They were looking for Jews.” than 7,000 to concentration camps. from the Nazis during the Holocaust. population as Righteous Gentiles. She’s earful that they would be discovered, Her South Plainfield home is decorated The Lowi and the Ongaro families frustrated because nearly everyone in the the family left their hiding place in with photographs and paintings of F became close and the children played small town knew there were Jews hiding the countryside and moved in with a fam- Gandino, the town where the Lowi family together, she recalled. To this day, Zinn there, and most even knew her family, yet ily in Gandino. That house was partially hid, along with posters from modern-day and one of the Ongaro children keep in no one sold them out. hidden by a large rock and lacked heat Holocaust commemoration ceremonies touch — writing letters and talking on the and running water. held in Gandino. The town, nestled in the *** telephone. The Lowis lived quietly, posing It was so cold in the winter, said Zinn, countryside near Milan, now has a popu- nti-Semitism wasn’t originally part of as Christians until, one day, the Nazis that her mother went to a nearby convent lation of about 5,000. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s arrived. A and the siblings were moved to a Catholic Zinn and her husband, Ralph, have political platform; some Jews even joined “We were small but we knew we could- boarding school. spent years collecting newspaper clip- his Fascist Party. Italy allied n’t tell them we were Jewish,” said Zinn, “I still have the pings, letters, and other documents — itself with Germany and Japan who still remembers the day vividly. She yellow and white both old and new — and sending them on in 1937, and the Italian dictator and her brother also had to make sure fabric with my to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ adopted Nazi racial laws in they did not let on that they understood school number. and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in 1938 and stepped up anti- German. “The Nazis went through the My mother came Israel. In 2005, six residents of Gandino Semitic measures in 1940 house and storage room. They kicked the to visit us during directly involved in hiding her family — when it entered World War II. luggage looking for ammunition.” the off-hours, but Vincenzo Rudelli, Bortolo and Battistina In 1942, Lowi, her parents, Luckily the suitcases didn’t open she always came Ongaro, Francesco and Maria Nodari, and brother were living in Milan because that’s where the family stored during my piano their Hebrew books, she said. The Nazis and Giovanni Servalli — were honored as when her father arranged to lessons. One day Righteous Among the Nations. smuggle his two children out of also uncovered a small sewing box her the piano teacher mother had purchased as a birthday pres- Zinn also spearheaded an effort in coor- Italy to Belgium in a florist’s Marina Lowi Zinn in her home in New became suspi- dination with the National Italian American truck. But the children got the ent for her. Jersey cious and asked, Zinn said, “She gave it to me then, say- Foundation in 1995 to plant trees in Israel measles and couldn’t go. They ‘Are you Jewish?’” in memory of those six Righteous were in hiding with their mother when her ing, ‘Who knows how long we’ll be alive.’” Lowi said that at the time she didn’t By the time the war ended, 26 families Gentiles. But, said Zinn, all those efforts father was deported to Auschwitz, where know it, but found out after the war that were not enough; she wants the entire he was killed. had helped hide the Lowis and other there were other Jewish children being Jewish families. And every time the Nazis town recognized. They made their way north, out of Milan, sheltered at the school. “They deserve it — everybody knew to a small house in the countryside near came looking for Jews, no one from the The Lowi children hid at the school less town helped them, she said. [Jews] were hiding, but nobody gave us Gandino in the foothills of the Alps. than a full school year before they had to away,” Zinn said in an interview. She was Giovanni Servalli provided six-year-old Zinn said, “Not one Jew was arrested move again. The mother superior at the from that town.” in Gandino in 2000 when the Yad Vashem Zinn and her brother with false papers. school was the only one who could be honor was conferred; the event was in the The siblings masqueraded as Christian After the war, the Lowi family returned to trusted with their identity, and she discov- Milan. newspapers there, she said, and has children under the name Carnazzi. ered that German officials were investi- been “every year since then, even though “My mother met lots of nice people,” gating area convents and schools, looking First published in New Jersey Jewish there are no Jews in Gandino.” Zinn said. for Jewish children. News DNA KEY TO FINDING VICTIMS OF HOLOCAUST Arizona and co-director of the project. result of lessons learned from recent found his remains, I would love to have BY KENDRA MARR There are 300,000 concentration camp mass casualties. the option to give him a decent burial survivors left, with an average age of 68, hen fires in the World Trade and put him in a place where we could orensic tools used to identify victims Center degraded the remains of honor his memory.’’ of the Sept. 11 attacks and the as well as roughly 10,000 Holocaust W F victims to the point that standard DNA “fin- Mandelbaum is perhaps best known as December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami orphans who were sent to safety in the United States, Canada and England dur- gerprinting’’ methods were useless, the founder of Rock and Wrap it Up!, an could help reunite families of an older examiners turned to another method. It tragedy — the Holocaust. ing World War II; many of them lost touch international non-profit organization that with their families. examines mitochondrial DNA, found in the gathers food left over from rock concerts DNA Shoah is the brainchild of Syd energy-producing parts of cells, which is Mandelbaum, a retired geneticist and the “It didn’t take much convincing for me to and other performances and distributes want to participate,’’ Hammer said. much more resilient and abundant than it to the hungry. child of two Holocaust survivors. Part sci- the nuclear DNA involved in inheritance. ence, part community service, part detec- “There’s a window of opportunity to do n 1994 Mandelbaum was involved in this. We have the technology, and gener- DNA Shoah faces a similar problem. DNA tests to determine whether tive work, its goal is to create a genetic After 60 years underground, the DNA in I ations of survivors are aging. If we don’t Anna Anderson was the long-lost Grand database of people who lost family during Holocaust remains — especially broken do it now, it can’t ever be done.’’ Duchess Anastasia of Russia. The tests, the Holocaust, identify the remains of bones — almost certainly has degraded. nina Levermore, executive director on strands of hair, refuted her claim. Holocaust victims and bring together liv- In the Indian Ocean tsunami, waves of the Climate of Trust Council, an Now, Mandelbaum is back to doing ing relatives. P washed away items such as toothbrushes organization that works with Jewish DNA detective work. “It’s never too late for healing to happen, that could have provided clues to uniden- Russian immigrants living in the Bay Area, The plan is simple. DNA sampling kits even if it is a few generations down the tified bodies. Software developed by said it’s a compelling idea. will be sent to families around the world line,’’ said Mandelbaum’s daughter Bari, a Gene Codes, a “bioinformatics’’ firm “People would be thrilled at the possibil- who want to participate. Participants rub 31-year-old Santa Clara nutritionist who based in Michigan, provided ways of will be leading a grass-roots campaign to ity of finding long-lost relatives they didn’t swabs along their inner cheeks to collect matching victims with distant relatives. cells. Each swab is placed in a tube and build the database. know they have,’’ she said. But she added Gene Codes has donated its software to She hopes to reach out to synagogues, that sending samples of DNA to a data- mailed off to Hammer’s lab in Arizona for handle DNA Shoah’s anticipated hun- DNA fingerprinting. Jewish student centers and Jewish agen- base raises privacy issues that will need dreds of thousands of genetic samples. The university will absorb most of the cies throughout the West Coast. But the to be addressed. It was the discovery of an unidentified lab costs, and Mandelbaum is starting to project is not confined to the Jewish com- Hammer said DNA Shoah will keep mass grave that inspired Mandelbaum, a raise money for sampling kits and other munity; it’s also open to others who lost genetic information confidential and 56-year-old New Yorker, to create DNA essentials. The costs of DNA fingerprint- relatives in the genocide that killed an ensure anonymity by identifying DNA Shoah in November. ing have gone down, he said, making estimated 9 million to 11 million people, samples with bar codes, rather than Mandelbaum said he read an article such a large-scale project possible. including Poles, Gypsies, gays, trade names. about remains in Germany that were A lot of Holocaust work is “vitally unionists and the disabled. Each person has a unique “genetic fin- believed to be connected to the important, but also brutal,” Bari DNA Shoah plans to collect DNA sam- gerprint’’ distinguished by a pattern of Holocaust. He contacted Israeli police and Mandelbaum said. “This project not only ples from survivors and their families, as DNA markers. Since children get half their Israel’s Holocaust museum to confirm the lets us remember the past, but it lets us well as from Holocaust-era remains as markers from each parent, the more suspicion, but no one was able to identify move toward the future. We’re bringing they continue to surface in Poland, genetic material that is available, the bet- the remains, and the bodies were together families and laying bodies to Germany and other parts of Europe. ter chance of finding a match to distant reburied. rest.’’ They need to act quickly, said Michael relatives. “It bothered me,’’ he said. “I have a Hammer, a geneticist at the University of This type of analysis has improved as a missing grandfather. If someone ever First published in Mercury News November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 SHOAH RESCUERS HAVE MORAL HONOR, BUT IN POLAND THEY LACK BASIC NEEDS survivors sometimes wait until late in life There is a very active association of people in Eastern Europe. Their tiny BY DINAH A. SPRITZER to let their families and Yad Vashem know those who saved Jews that touts its pensions — most live on $150 to $300 a about their protectors and their wartime members’ achievements with pride, but month — have not kept pace with infla- arysia Ambrozy has participated in suffering. whether their deeds are admired or even tion, and many struggle to survive. a lot of events honoring those who M Ambrozy’s boss, cultural attache appreciated by most Poles remains Poland, for instance, has some of the helped Jews during the Holocaust, but a Ya’akov Finkelstein, points to what he unclear. highest prices for medicine per income recent ceremony in Wroclaw, Poland, says is an equally disturbing stumbling “It’s ridiculous that there were Poles in the European Union; in Ukraine, gas made her cry for all the wrong reasons. block for the Righteous Gentiles. who were not afraid of the Nazis, but are and electricity prices have been particu- In May, two elderly sisters were recog- “I get letters each month from people afraid of their neighbors,” Finkelstein larly difficult for the elderly to bear. nized by Yad Vashem for helping their who tell us they don’t want the ceremony said. ad Vashem’s medal award is impoverished parents feed, house and where they live, they don’t want people to An extensive report last spring in meant as a symbolic endorsement hide nine Jews during the Holocaust. Y know about the award, which really Poland’s leading daily, Gazeta of moral courage, since a financial At the awards ceremony, Ambrozy, a shocked me when I came here,” Wyborcza, chronicled the fear some award might suggest that one should cultural assistant at the Israeli Embassy in Finkelstein said. recipients of the Yad Vashem medal feel. help others for personal economic gain, Warsaw, overheard a newspaper inter- Some medal recipients worry their fel- stee Ya’ari, spokeswoman for Yad those familiar with the recognition pro- view with the sisters, who were in their low villagers will be jealous, Finkelstein EVashem, said via e-mail that most gram explain. early teens at the time of their parents’ act said. people who receive the recognition are Cash-strapped local governments say of valor. “They’re concerned that their neighbors proud, but added, “we have heard of a they would love to provide greater suste- “They said that they don’t need a medal think they’re getting money from the few cases in Poland where righteous nance to the righteous, but insist they and they don’t care about it,” she said, Jews,” he explained. prefer that their already face many other social problems adding that the sisters said that “what they “Others were wor- names not be made that affect all of their elderly. need is money. The journalist was asking ried that they might public, and this is The Jewish Foundation for the them, ‘Don’t you think that you did a great be robbed if the indeed an unfortu- Righteous, founded in 1986, is the only thing?’ And they answered — ‘Our stupid media put the word nate comment on organization that provides financial sup- mother was helping and never got any- out that they got the environment in port to those who have received the Yad thing for this.’ ” some kind of award, which they live. As Vashem recognition. The sisters’ bitterness is perhaps a rare and then there are for other countries, The New York-based Claims phenomenon, she noted, but it illustrates some who say their we are not familiar Conference, which has a budget of $1.4 some of the problems Righteous Gentiles, neighbors will con- with similar cases.” million, provides stipends to 1,450 men as they’re called, and their heirs have in demn them for being To strengthen the and women in 28 countries, including about 700 in Poland. Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. supported by Jews. official endorse- The monthly support in Poland was They tend to be from poorer areas, since It seems the further ment of Righteous raised from $75 to $100 in May — and is it was easier to hide Jews in rural villages east in the country Gentiles’ position in Polish Righteous Gentile Maria Florek. paid out quarterly. during the war than in cities. you go, the more Polish life, more “It definitely helps me survive; it means Ambrozy explained that after World War common that attitude is,” Finkelstein esti- Polish politicians, including the current I can get medicine” said Righteous II ended, the sisters’ mother was physical- mated. national president and the heads of both Gentile Maria Florek, whose pension is ly attacked by neighbors for helping Jews. aving Jews from the gas chambers houses of Parliament, have been turning $200 a month. The sisters’ father died of cancer after the in Poland was a remarkable feat of up at the Israeli Embassy’s award cere- S Stanlee Joyce Stahl, the foundation’s family was too poor to pay for his medical bravery in the country that had the largest monies. executive vice president, hinted that treatment. number of Jews perish. The righteous also are frequently descendants of Holocaust survivors The sisters sought financial aid for their The Nazi punishment for Poles who referred to in politicians’ speeches as family from Jewish organizations, but one of the country’s deepest sources of should be interested in the well-being of helped Jews was death, often the death of the descendants of the righteous. were unsuccessful, according to Ambrozy, pride. In Lodz, a city recently known for one’s entire family. Some who merely “If the survivors went on and had chil- who added that they were now desperate its numerous initiatives memorializing gave food to Jews were murdered on the dren and grandchildren, the question is, for money to pay for their own medicine. Jews, a park dedicated to the righteous spot, while others were tortured before where is the family?” she asked “Most “Ninety percent of the righteous being has been opened. being killed and many were sent to con- people during the Holocaust were awarded today in Poland have no money In Krakow, one of the country’s first centration camps. bystanders. There were a precious few for basic medications or even for a ticket exhibitions devoted to the righteous Yet more people in Poland helped Jews rescuers. There is not enough the opened earlier this year at the Galicia to come to their own ceremonies,” she than in any other nation, according to Yad Jewish community could ever do for Jewish Museum. lamented. Vashem, which has recognized nearly them.” Ceremonies for the righteous are held 6,000 Righteous Among the Nations in However, the righteous face the same almost every month in Poland as aging Poland. financial difficulties as all other aging First published in JTA

“THE HIGHEST HONOR POLAND WORKS WITH YAD VASHEM OF THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD” TO IDENTIFY “RIGHTEOUS” POLES (Continued from page 6) the country was moving on, and anyway, (Continued from page 10) one of the cases where cooperation could strike anyone. “No one knew when many men in Ted’s original unit thought he tory of all places on Polish territory where between Yad Vashem and IPN was very he would die,” Ted noted, “It was all ran- was dead. He created a wonder at a 1980 wartime crimes had been committed on positive. Unfortunately, we have many dom.” When prisoners passed away, Ted Korean War veterans’ reunion simply by Polish Jews and those brought to suffer things to do in the future. The Righteous would bury them, and recite the Kaddish. showing up. from other countries of occupied Europe.” Among nations, the next generation and “I buried my friends, my comrades, Ted’s case was brought to the Army’s Professor Shevach Weiss from the institute the third generation after them and many American soldiers,” Ted said, “and asked attention in 1985, but he was ineligible to in Jerusalem and former Israeli ambassa- other issues.’ the Good Lord to let them rest in peace.” receive the award until statutory language dor to Poland is convinced the cooperation Indeed the Righteous Among Nations are When the Chinese learned that Ted was was amended in 1996. His is one of many with IPN already is, and will continue to be a special category of people who helped originally from Hungary, they offered to let cases being reviewed under section 552 important and valuable. save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. In him return to his home country, which at of the 2002 National Defense Besides strictly historical gains from the Nazi-occupied Poland this was punishable the time was a Soviet satellite. They Authorization Act, which requires the mili- IPN-Yad Vashem cooperation, can one of by death, yet Poles constitute by far the promised him a job, good clothes, all the tary to “review the records of certain its effects be overcoming the many nega- largest part of that group of many nations. food he could want. But Ted refused to be Jewish-American and Hispanic-American tive stereotypes which have accumulated Polish-Jewish relations are a rich area for a pawn for Chinese propaganda and war veterans to determine if any of these in Polish-Jewish relations? Mateusz study, but they also contain many tragic turned them down. “I stood by my oath,” veterans should be awarded the Medal of Szpytna from IPN is confident the results elements with anti-Semitic roots. An exam- he said. Ted stayed in the camp until the Honor.” will be visible. ple is the pogrom in Kielce in 1945. end of the war, when he was released. Most such awards will unfortunately be Professor Weiss adds the cooperation Professor Shevach Weiss says this makes The Army credits him with saving over 40 posthumous. But on September 23, Yad Vashem has been pursuing with the the events even more tragic. lives during his two and a half years of President Bush gave Corporal Ted Rubin Institute of National Remembrance The latest cooperation agreement imprisonment. long overdue recognition for his many extends beyond the subject of Nazi crimes between the Polish Institute of National When Ted returned to the United States, acts of valor in the Korean conflict. Ted during the war. A sensitive issue is docu- Remembrance and the Israeli Yad Vashem he finally received his U.S. citizenship. “I received, in his own words, “the highest mented Polish participation in some of will surely contribute to resolving some of was the happiest man in the world,” he honor of the best country in the world.” these atrocities, like the mass murder of the grim mysteries governing the dark said. He left the Army and worked at his How does he feel about it? “It still hasn’t Jews in Jedwabne in 1941. mechanisms of racial hatred and oppres- brother Emery’s store. Ted married, and sunk in,” he said. “I’m just a country boy. “We talked about Jedwabne after a very sion. It will also shed light on the heroic he and his wife Yvonne had two children. It’s a dream come true.” intensive, long and systematic work of IPN, acts of individuals who did not hesitate to By this time, there was no talk of medals; First appeared on National Review Online with professors Kieres and Kulesza. It was risk their lives to save others. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767

ROMANIA COMMEMORATES HOLOCAUST VICTIMS CASE INVOLVING AUSCHWITZ ARTIFACTS omania commemorated its national RHolocaust day with ceremonies HIGHLIGHTS ETHICAL DILEMMA FOR MUSEUMS marking 65 years since the beginning of Within the Babbitt way of thinking, why his paintings, whether paid for or not, as deportations of hundreds of thousands of BY DINAH A. SPRITZER shouldn’t the author claim the gate and his private property, six decades after he Jews to death camps in the occupied hang it on his wall?” had painted them?” Bauer wrote in an e- Soviet Union. useums chronicling Jewish life and espite Mensfelt’s reasoning, mail. President Traian Basescu laid the first Mdeath — including the Holocaust — DBabbitt’s case has elicited outrage He added that it was “a scandal” for stone of a national monument being built safeguard the memory of millions who can among artists and museum directors that Babbitt “to demand that pictures of Gypsy to commemorate Holocaust victims in no longer speak. a concentration camp survivor should be victims that testify to genocide should central Bucharest. He reminded partici- These institutions often rely on artifacts thwarted by a museum devoted to depict- become her private property, to be sold on pants that Romania only recently began to — items bequeathed by those who want ing Jewish suffering. But experts in cura- the market or hung in her private apart- confront its role in the Holocaust after to share their family’s history ment.” decades of denial. with the world for posterity, to Babbitt has expressed a During communist times, the country’s tell their stories. desire to move the paintings official history taught that Germans were But at former Nazi concen- to an American museum. the sole perpetrators of the Holocaust, tration camps that are now Kalman Sultanik of the ignoring the involvement of Romania’s museums, the artifacts were Auschwitz International wartime leaders. largely items that were Council said that although he In 2004 after a dispute with Israel over already on site, so they were thinks that this move would be comments about the Holocaust, then- obtained without the consent wrong, the Auschwitz President Ion Iliescu assembled an inter- of former owners or their Museum needs to reach some national panel, led by Nobel-prize winner heirs. Elie Wiesel, to investigate the Holocaust sort of compromise with So who has the right to in Romania. Babbitt that would honor her claim them? The panel concluded that the pro-Nazi role as the painting’s creator. government of Marshal Ion Antonescu It is perhaps the ultimate he Holocaust Museum was responsible for the deaths of ethical nightmare for a Jewish Tin Washington would not 280,000-380,000 Jews and more than museum. weigh in on the Babbitt case, 11,000 Gypsies, or Roma. That nightmare is embodied although in a written state- “This was a country where the in the case of Dina ment the museum expressed Holocaust was a taboo subject,” Paul Gottliebova Babbitt, who has understanding for both sides Shapiro, Director of the Center for a claim against the Auschwitz in the conflict. Advanced Studies at the United States Museum in Poland. A Yad Vashem spokes- The 83-year-old Jewish Holocaust Memorial Museum in Dina Gottliebova Babbitt is suing the Auschwitz Museum in Poland for the woman noted that the muse- Washington told The Associated Press. artist, Czech-born and now return of the watercolors she drew as a prisoner of the death camp. um had dealt with a handful of Shapiro said Romania was now follow- living in California, was forced victim claims, some conclud- ing the panel’s recommendations by cre- by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele in torial ethics and historians are by no ing with the return of property. ating an institution to study the Holocaust Auschwitz to paint watercolors of gypsies means united about the museum’s posi- Michaela Hajkova, a curator for the and a national monument to commemo- — also known as Roma — as part of his tion. Jewish Museum in Prague, explains that rate the victims. effort to document their genetic inferiority. The chairman of the council’s legal com- she had dealt with a small number of situ- Dozens of elderly Jewish and Roma Babbitt has unsuccessfully been trying mittee, Patrick Boylan, accused the ations in which heirs sought to recover art- survivors of the deportations were present for years to get seven of her paintings Auschwitz Museum in an e-mail of behav- works. at the ceremonies, and hailed the decision back from the Auschwitz Museum. The ing like a institution wanting to keep Nazi- The most significant case for the Prague to build the monument. museum argues that the artworks’ role as looted art from Jewish heirs. museum’s collections involved 174 “The fact that, despite the delay, the crucial evidence in one of the 20th centu- To those focused on Holocaust educa- expressionistic portraits of life at the Romanian government has acknowl- ry’s greatest crime against humanity tion, the need for the public to be aware of Theresienstadt camp painted by artist edged the responsibility of state authori- supersedes her ownership rights and her what Babbitt’s paintings represent is para- Bedrich Fritta before he was murdered at ties of the time for what happened ... is emotional attachment to the works that mount. The works are part of an exhibition Auschwitz. The hidden paintings were encouraging for us survivors,” said author saved her and her mother’s life. on the Nazi’s attempted extermination of given to the museum by Fritta’s friend Oliver Lustig. Museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt the Roma. Estimates of gypsy victims after World War II, and it was only in the Lustig, now 79, was deported to suggests that acknowledging owners’ range from 250,000 to half a million, but mid-1990s that Fritta’s son Tomas claimed Auschwitz-Birkenau at the age of 17 with rights to thousands of Auschwitz artifacts what is agreed upon is that they lost a them. his parents and six siblings by Hungarian would undermine the museum’s ability to authorities who controlled northern greater percentage of their ethnic group, “We knew he didn’t have the facilities to educate the public at a time when Romania at the time. about 50 percent, than any other group store these or a clue of how to take care Holocaust denial has reached new levels. Roma survivor Dumitru Tranca, 71, also besides Jews. of them. We knew the paintings were He explains the museum’s position, which insisted that new generations “must know Yehuda Bauer, a renowned Holocaust essential as documents from evidence. what happened, what we suffered.” it is also taking with a French man who scholar and adviser to Yad Vashem, also We were worried they might be Tranca was deported with his family of took legal action earlier this year in an said the Babbitt paintings were essential destroyed,” said Hajkova. coppersmiths to camps in an area in the attempt to reclaim his father’s suitcase. to the museum. But even with that knowledge, “We just occupied Soviet Union, where his parents “A good example is the Arbeit Mach Frei “Do you think that if Rembrandt was gave them back,” said Hajkova. “We rec- and two sisters died. gate. We know the author of this sign. alive, he should have the right to reclaim ognized his moral right.” DISTORTING JEWISH HISTORY (Continued from page 7) Mohammed, drew a standing ovation at persecution, including the Holocaust. ince the creation of the Jewish Holocaust – resulted in tens of thousands an Islamic Conference when he While the most horrific expression of Jew Shomeland, Jews in the Diaspora are of Jews fleeing Poland. announced, “...But today, the Jews rule hatred was indeed the slaughter of mil- no longer destined to religious, ethnic or fter World War II, Jew-hunting con- this world by proxy. They get others to lions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis. It cultural persecution without the option of Atinued when Lena Küchler- fight and die for them...They invented must be remembered that this macabre escape. But now, Israel has become the Silberman set up an orphanage in Poland socialism, communism, human rights and event represents an intrinsic element of a new target. And as fresh alliances are to care for Jewish children who had lost democracy, so that persecuting them larger mosaic of pain, tragedy, suffering formed between Arab states and anti- their parents in the Holocaust. However, would appear wrong...” and intolerance that has scarred the Zionist Westerners with the common goal Polish villagers attacked the orphanage ast year, in 2005, fifteen members of human race since the beginning of record- of destroying Jewish nationhood, it is and attempted to murder the children, so Lthe State Duma of the Russian ed time. important to remember the entire bloodied with all 100 of them, she fled and under- Federation demanded that Jewish organi- Dagobert Runes, in 1968, stated that mosaic of immense suffering that led to took a treacherous and dangerous jour- zations be banned from the country. And Jews have been persecuted through vam- the creation of Israel in the first place. ney to safety in Israel. in June, 500 prominent Russians pire trials and Black Death accusations, The history of the Jewish people is not In 1952 – seven years after the demanded that the state prosecutor through the Count Rindfleisch campaign properly defined by presenting the Holocaust ended – on what is now known examine ancient Jewish texts, claiming (146 Jewish communities were extermi- Holocaust as an isolated event, and it is as the “Night of the Murdered Poets,” they were “anti-Russian.” nated in six months), the Hussite wars totally misrepresented by computer simu- lations that require students to role-play Joseph Stalin ordered that thirteen of the As the newly elected Palestinian terror- (almost the entire Jewish population of oppressed Palestinians and Invader most prominent Yiddish writers in the ist organization Hamas joins Iran’s Prague perished) and the Chmielnicki Jews. To avoid distortion and misrepre- Soviet Union be executed. President in calling for the destruction of bloodbath (a brutal Cossack who massa- sentation, Jewish history must be kept State-sponsored anti Semitism also did- Israel, it becomes essential that the cre- cred Jews) the Russian pogroms, intact and in context. n’t end with the defeat of Hitler. In 2003, ation of Israel be understood to be the Rumanian barbarism and the Nazi Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir result of two thousand years of Jewish Holocaust. First appeared on FrontPageMagazine.com November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 PERSONALIZING THE PERPETRATORS SERBIA URGED TO (Continued from page 4) Two successive chapters deal with victim’s family and his legal wrangles with EXTRADITE Here, then, we get the account Wilhelm German civilians who attacked downed the War Crimes Commission at Dachau NAZI SUSPECTS Grill, who worked in the post office build- US pilots; another focuses on the fate of than with the actual men accused of mur- ing of Mauthausen concentration camp American prisoners of war in Berga camp dering American airman Daniel P. Loyd. director of the Simon Wiesenthal while still in his early twenties; Paul in Thuringia, and a fourth follows the story The author bases her study exclusively on ACenter urged Serbian authorities to Wolfram, who managed the infamous of Dr. Max Schmid, who removed the primary source material “with the excep- seek the extradition of two Croatia-born Mauthausen quarry; Dr. Erika Flocken, head from an American corpse, allegedly tion of background information available men and try them for alleged World War II chief physician at Muehldorf, who select- for scientific research. in any textbook on modern European his- atrocities against Jews, Serbs and ed the prisoners destined for Auschwitz; On occasion, however, The Dachau tory.” She thus draws upon letters, peti- Gypsies. and Christian Mohr, a guard at Defendants moves away from a study of tions, military records, psychiatric reports, Efraim Zuroff, the Los Angeles-based Flossenburg accused of beating prisoners specific characters and provides instead a trial documents and other material which center’s chief Nazi hunter, met in and taking an active role in their execution more generalized account of a set of crim- has found its way into the case files pre- Belgrade with President Boris Tadic and — going so far as to put the noose around inal events. One chapter utilizes the testi- served in the American National Archives Justice Ministry officials, advising them to victims’ necks. mony of a Buchenwald stretcher bearer, and Records Administration in Maryland. join efforts to bring to justice Ivo Rojnica Two chapters highlight the cases of Marian Zgoda, to describe a special detail Testimonies from both survivors and for- and Milivoj Asner. Heinrich Buuck, Julius Straub and Peter known as “Commando 99” – organized to mer Nazis are reproduced at length, The men served in Croatia’s World War Goldmann, who all killed prisoners on execute the murder of prisoners who recalling in horrific detail the abuse and II Nazi puppet regime and allegedly took death marches during the final phases of came to the camp’s “clinic” for supposed the war; another two sections trace the murder of countless concentration camp part in the prosecution and death camp medical examinations. This section of the victims and ensuring the reality of the behavior of a Czech and a Spanish deportations of hundreds of Jews, Serbs book seems much more concerned with crimes is not lost amid defendants’ postur- national who served as Capos during the and Gypsies, Zuroff said. how this deception was played out than ing. war and were consequently prosecuted Although the men are not Serbian citi- with offering a personal history of the chief Overall, the book does a good job of for the mistreatment of other concentra- zens and their alleged crimes were com- tion camp inmates. A significant propor- perpetrators, and thus fails to give any individualizing and re-humanizing some of mitted in the territory of present-day tion of this book, meanwhile, pays atten- real insight into the psychological makeup the criminal figures of the Third Reich and tion to crimes committed against of those involved. Another chapter, mean- in explaining the factors that could compel Croatia, the ethnicity of some of the vic- Americans during the war. while, stands out for focusing more on the someone to participate in such actions. tims “entitles Serbia to seek extradition” of Rojnica and Asner, living in Argentina and Austria, respectively, Zuroff said. Last year, Croatia indicted Asner for STAMP HONORS HOLOCAUST HERO crimes against humanity and war crimes, archaeologist who rediscovered the ruins and other travel documents, some fraudu- but Austrian authorities failed to arrest the BY CHRISTOPHER LEE of the Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru in lent, and let rescue activists use his home 92-year-old man. Croatia has since for planning meetings. ixty-six years ago, Hiram Bingham 1911 and later served briefly as shown little resolve to press for the han- fter German and French officials got IV, a blue-blood American diplomat Connecticut governor and as a dover of Asner, or to seek extradition of S wind of the rescue activity and com- in France, defied U.S. policy by helping Republican U.S. senator from that state. A Rojnica, 90, who is believed to be living in plained to the U.S. government, the State Jews escape the Nazis in the early years fter graduating from Yale, Harry Buenos Aires, Zuroff said. Department revoked Fry’s passport in of World War II. ABingham entered the Foreign “When it comes to the Second World early 1941 and transferred Bingham to Bingham’s actions cost him his Foreign Service and eventually became U.S. vice Portugal, and later to the embassy in War cases, in our attempts to see justice Service career but won him the undying consul in Marseille, France, in 1936. Argentina. done it has always been important to con- gratitude of the more than 2,000 refugees Within a few years Hitler’s armies began Bingham called attention to reports that sider the victim’s origins and identity,” he he helped save by issuing them travel marching over Europe, occupying France Nazi assets and war said. visas and false passports, and even at in 1940 and criminals were being Rojnica is allegedly responsible for times sheltering them in his home. working with given safe harbor in Only in recent years has his heroism the Vichy crimes committed against hundreds of Argentina, but the State been officially recognized by his own French gov- Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in the southern Department quashed his country. ernment. The city of Dubrovnik. Asner allegedly sent vic- efforts to investigate. Bingham, the Yale-educated son of a United States tims from the town of Slavonska Poega to Bingham resigned in former U.S. senator, died in 1988 at 84. had not yet protest in 1946 and a Croat-run death camp, where most of His own children did not learn the extent entered the returned to Connecticut, them later died. of his wartime deeds until 1996, when a war, and ending his career four “The passing of time does not diminish son found a cache of old journals and cor- President years shy of his pension. what those men did. If someone commit- respondence stashed in a hidden closet in Franklin D. It would be nearly six decades before ted a war crime in 1941 or 1942 and if 60 the family’s Connecticut home. Roosevelt’s State Department told con- Secretary of State Colin Powell honored Soon Bingham’s face — and, support- sular officials to keep the number of U.S.- years have passed and they were not Bingham posthumously with a special ers hope, his story — will be well known bound immigrants and refugees as low as brought to justice, it does not mean that “constructive dissent” award in 2002. across the United States, as the U.S. possible. person’s responsibility is not the same “He’s the only U.S. diplomat ... that we Postal Service issued a stamp in his As thousands of Jews fled the Nazis to today as it was then,” said Zuroff, who know of who risked his career, indeed honor. southern France, Americans concerned spearheads “Operation: Last Chance,” an sacrificed his career, in order to save More than a dozen family members, about their plight organized the Jews from the Holocaust,” said Rafael effort to get Nazi suspects arrested and joined by several members of Congress Emergency Rescue Committee. Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman tried before they die. and a few Jewish survivors whom They persuaded Roosevelt to authorize Institute for Holocaust Studies. Tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Bingham helped, gathered at the Rayburn a few hundred “emergency visas” for “We want young people to hear about Gypsies perished during the so-called House Office Building for an unveiling of artists and intellectuals, and they enlisted this courageous voice, because Harry is a the stamp. journalist and scholar Varian Fry to help Independent State of Croatia, which the great example of how at a time of crisis it Bingham, known to friends and family Jews in France get to the United States. Nazis set up when they invaded the for- is possible to stand up and to do the right as “Harry,” hailed from a prominent New But Bingham, in defiance of U.S. policy, mer Yugoslavia in 1941 and encouraged thing, despite the risks.” England family. went much further, helping thousands of ethnic violence among the country’s His father, Hiram Bingham III, was an Jews escape. He provided Fry with a visa First published in the Washington Post diverse population.

FASHIONING WOMEN IN THE THIRD REICH A RIGHTEOUS FAMILY IS HONORED... (Continued from page 10) (Continued from page 4) conscientiously tells it, neither the dirndl Vashem’s highest honor in the Garden The Hulatas immigrated to Israel in modern “New Woman,” independent and nor the uniformed look pushed by the of the Righteous. 1946. Ben Hulata had gone back to see wanton a la Marlene Dietrich (in pants Nazis met with much acceptance by Colenbrander, who broke out in tears the Dutch family in 1965 when he went yet!) and Greta Garbo. Thus, according to German women. But 100% of Germany’s at the emotion-fraught ceremony, never to study agriculture in Holland, and had them, it was the Jews who were destroy- Jews were thrown out of the fashion talked much about the war with his chil- then lost touch with them, although his ing true German womanhood and, hence, industry . . . ironically, for many, to contin- dren, and only discussed it when asked, brother had visited the family in 1992. undermining the “Fatherland.” ue their work now as slave laborers for the his daughter said. Last year, Ben Hulata tracked down And then there were those many more Nazis, making the same so-called “trashy” Over the years, he always said that he Elbert Colenbrander, 79, in Holland, Nazis who simply seethed with anger and gowns and dresses the SS wives and was taught that as a Christian, you do and worked tirelessly to have the family jealousy when they viewed the amazing even the “First Lady of the Reich,” Frau these things for other people, his recognized as “Righteous Among the success of Jews in the German fashion Goebbels, stubbornly never stopped daughter said. industry. Not surprisingly, many of them Nations” by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. wearing. Indeed, it appears that if the At the simple ceremony, the memories would soon become eager members of Colenbrander was very surprised dirndl or uniformed look was meant for of the war, and his family’s actions, “Adefa,” the organization charged with the when Ben Hulata contacted him with the anyone, it was a prescription for the mass- flooded the now-elderly man, and, for a “aryanization” of these businesses and idea, feeling it was “a big honor he did es . . . not the elite . . . moment, the decades of oft-hidden the “cleans[ing of] Jews from all areas of not deserve,” Colenbrander’s daughter emotions were overpowering. the fashion industry.” Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Media Wilma, 46, recalled, as her father, and Interestingly, in the end, as Guenther and Communication Arts at Pace University her late grandparents received Yad First published in The Jerusalem Post Page 16 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2006 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5767

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM & THE ASSOCIATION OF TEACHERS OF SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS (ATSS/UFT)

Invite all Superintendents, Principals and Educators of History, Judaic Studies, English, Humanities and Global Studies (history, social studies) to the 9th Annual Professional Development Conference ECHOES AND REFLECTIONS: A Multi-media Curriculum on the Holocaust This curriculum was created by the Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, and Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority

DATE: Sunday, March 11th, 2007 TIME: 8:30 AM - 3:00 PM 8:30 AM - Breakfast 9:00 AM Program Commences PLACE: Marymount School/Pratt Mansion 1027 Fifth Avenue (between 83rd and 84th Streets) New York, NY 10028

Featuring the Most Recent Educational Units on .Perpetrators Collaborators and Bystanders during the Holocaust . Ghettos . .Survivors and Liberators . Jewish Resistance Rescuers and Non-Jewish Resistance . .The Children.

All registered participants will receive a FREE copy of this newly developed curriculum upon completion of the program. Additional copies available at $100 each. Curriculum includes lesson plans and multi-media resources for implementing educational materials.

To register for this conference, please contact: Education Department American Society for Yad Vashem 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor, New York, NY 10110-4299 RSVP Tel: 212.220.4304 / Fax: 212.220.4308 [email protected]

Martyrdom & Resistance International Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. Eli Zborowski, Editor-in-Chief MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE U.S. POST Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Editor 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR, PAID *Published Bimonthly by the NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 NEW YORK, N.Y. PERMIT NO. 10 International Society for Yad Vashem, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor New York, NY 10110 (212) 220-4304 EDITORIAL BOARD Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura Israel Krakowski William Mandell Sam Halpern Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased