JANUARY 2003 VOLUME 16 NUMBER 3 THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM TO PAY TRIBUTE TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN NOVEMBER 2003 WASHINGTON, DC--Once a dream for send a message to the American people preserved, will be open. There will be honor the living,and offer hope for the many survivors, The United States about the importance of remembrance for presentations about the photo archives, future. The ceremony will be broadcast live Holocaust Memorial Museum is now a the future. survivor programs on the Website and on the Website, where visitors can post reality that reaches millions of Americans curator-led tours of the Museum’s special messages of honor and remembrance. from all walks of life every year, with its A Unique Living Legacy exhibitions: Hidden Children and American mission of remembrance and education. “Survivors Day at the United States Responses to the Nazi Book Burnings will Remembrance and America The Museum approaches its 10th Holocaust Memorial Museum” be offered continuously. President George W. Bush and Prof. Elie Anniversary when the world still faces Wiesel will be invited to speak. There will be deadly dangers, and the lessons of the brief remarks prior to a candle-lit procession Holocaust become ever more critical. Now to the Hall of Remembrance, where there will more than before, the mission of the be a memorial candle-lighting. Museum becomes urgent. As a token of gratitude to the U.S., The Museum’s sacred obligation to survivors will present the President with A preserve and transmit the legacy of the Living Legacy, a one-of-a-kind book of survivors, and their enthusiastic support photographs of themselves and their and involvement with the survivors, has descendants, now in the fourth generation, made the Museum an extraordinary success. who are symbols of the post-war renewal Therfore, on the occasion of its 10th made possible by America’s acceptance of Anniversary, the Museum will honor the them. survivors on a special day devoted to them. The book also serves as the basis of a It will be, perhaps, one of the last times special presentation on the Internet. (Long that the eyewitness generation will convene before the event, families will be able to send on such a scale. The Tribute is envisioned the Museum an intergenerational family as a reunion of Holocaust survivors, their photograph with a brief message about rescuers and liberators and their what America and the Museum mean to descendents. To underscore the importance them, along with a wish for the future.) of America’s role in winning World War II, The Museum will also seek timely the Tribute will be held on Veterans Day passage of a Congressional resolution to Weekend, Saturday evening, Nov. 8, after mark the 10th anniversary milestone by Shabbat is over, and all day on Sunday, Nov. recognizing the contribution of survivors 9, 2003. to American life. Survivors participating in The survivors succeeded in building new the tribute will be given a commemorative families and new lives, in making important For an entire day and into the night, the Preserving Memory copy of the resolution. contributions to their communities and their Museum will be open to survivors and other The Museum is in a race against time to After the candle-lit vigil, the evening will nation. As new citizens of the United States, eyewitnesses and their descendents. This reach survivors and other eyewitnesses in conclude with a tented buffet reception they developed intense loyalty to and love day is made possible by a special order collect and preserve artifacts, personal across from the Museum at Raoul for their adopted country and the ordinary declaration of the Presidentially-appointed papers, and oral testimonies. Reunion Day Wallenberg Place. Areas will be set up so freedoms of American life. The Reunion will U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and is will offer a unique opportunity for the staff that individuals from various communities, be designed to recognize the accomp- unique in the history of the Museum. to work with each person and showcase camps or ghettos, will be able to reconnect lishments of survivors as they made Survivors’ Day will be a day to bear witness activities like the Meed Survivors Registry, with one another. America their new home, and recognize how as a community those connected by history, the Jewish Communities project, the America served the survivors and the memory or family, to the Holocaust. All Memoirs project, the Geographical Fact Educational Outreach survivors served America. exhibitions, archives and memorial spaces Finder and NameSearch. The intent is to help The Survivors Day will reach those who Among the survivors’ greatest will be open to participants and the survivors, their families and other cannot attend by launching special accomplishments is the role they played in Museum, for the first time, will provide eyewitnesses to preserve memory, trace Internet programs on the Museum’s the creation of the Museum on the Mall in curators, educators, and scholars around families and leave a legacy for the future. Website and feature activities in the Washington, DC and their continuing role the building who will tell the survivors about Museum’s member publication and other in working with the Museum to preserve their programs and answer questions. A Moment of Silence materials. The entire day will be the survivors’ legacy. The Reunion will Special behind-the-scenes tours of the At noon, a special program in the Hall of photographed and filmed for use on the provide a forum where survivors will be able Museum, including the conservation lab Witnesses will call everyone together for a the net at www.ushmm.org and in other to express their gratitude to the U.S. and where artifacts donated by survivors are moment of silence to remember the dead, Museum programs.

American Gathering of NON-PROFIT Jewish Holocaust Survivors U.S. POSTAGE PAID 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 NEW YORK, N.Y. New York, New York 10001 PERMIT NO. 4246

TOGETHER 1 A SURVIVOR RECALLS TOGETHER by BENJAMIN MEED Those of us who survived the years of Nazi DECEMBER 2002 VOLUME 16 NUMBER 3 terror in the ghetto and death camps, in hiding and in the forests, live with the memories of c•o•n•t•e•n•t•s those who perished and by their cry to Holocaust Museum to Honor Survivors...... cover remember them. These memories are always A Survivor Recalls by Benjamin Meed...... 2 with us. We try to share these memories with Perspectives from the Material Claims Conference others. Share them we must, if our story and by Roman Kent...... 3 the lessons of the Shoah are to live beyond World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors us. by Stefanie Seltzer...... 4 For me, the most painful memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Hungarian Survivor Wins Nobel Prize...... 4 is not only the fire, the blood and smoke, but the “normal” News from Alumni of the Teachers Program on Holocaust and atmosphere on the other side of the wall, on the Aryan side. While Jewish Resistance...... 5 the guns and grenades were thundering and the buildings and Jews Zeidman Opens HUC Exhibit remarks by Fred Zeidman...... 6 burning inside the ghetto, on the outside, life went on as usual. It About the Survivor’s Organization of Pittsburgh is the sense of normalcy that made me so angry. I recall being on by Isabel Alcoff...... 6 the other side of the wall, in front of a church, watching a carousel The BergenBelsen Story by Sam E. Bloch...... 7 whirl with peals of laughter from the women and children on the Israel Singer by Jeanette Friedman...... 7 horses, in total oblivion to the slaughter of Jews and the sounds The Talmud and Holocaust Survivors by Dr. Alex Grobman...... 8 of their death coming from the other side. I wondered then and I Henry Taube by Michael Berenbaum...... 8 have continually asked since: How was it possible to be “normal” Bergen-Belsen: The End and the Beginning in the face of what was occurring to neighbors? To fellow human by Menachem Rosensaft...... 9 beings? It is the memory of the bystanders that troubles me. We were In Memoriam:HiramBingham...... 9 so abandoned, we felt so alone, and we were so lonely. The Son of Survivors Organizes Relief for the Hungry Nazi murderers wanted to kill us twice – spiritually and physically. by Syd Mandelbaum...... 10 It is the sounds of the death throes of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Auschwitz: Repair, Preserve or Let It Go?...... 10 mixed with the music of the normal life on the other side of the Restitution of Jewish Properties in Poland wall, that almost drove us into desperation and despair. It was by Kalman Sultanik...... 11 only the thought and hope that somewhere on the outside – Holocaust Bookshelf...... 12 perhaps in free America – there was a Jewish community which Newsbriefs...... 14 would not forget us and what was happening to us. And some Letters & Notices...... 18 help did come, but too late. The ghetto fighters vowed not to be In Memoriam...... 20 killed twice and it is for that reason that they resisted. They Restitution Tax Break Made Permanent ...... 22 resolved to fight back – even against impossible odds – and to Mormons, Jews Meet About Baptizing by C.G. Wallace...... 22 die resisting, not to be forgotten, so that the bestial enemy would know and the world would hear our outcry. They resolved, also, that they would live and fight as Jews. Embarking on the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I am filled with these memories and haunted by them. I Dear Readers: am haunted as well by the questions and challenges: How do we If you have any news to report about survivor or descendant commemorate the spirit of the ghetto inhabitants who resisted the activities in your community, please send a short description for Nazis in every shape and form? How do we transcend time and inclusion in Together to [email protected] (via email) distance to transmit this spirit to succeeding generations of Jews or by regular post to: and the non-Jewish world? Can we do so by a commemorative ceremony during the Days of Remembrance and Yom Hashoah? Editor, Together, American Gathering, Suite 205, By Holocaust remembrance on Kristallnacht in November in 120 West 30th Street, NYC, NY 10001 remembrance of the day of the first Nazi pogrom? By prayer in the synagogue? By lighting a candle? Six candles? Or millions We can’t promise every item will be included, but we will try to feature news that fits without duplicating material or printing of candles? By lighting a special candle on Sabbath? Can we misinformation. Program listings, community efforts, etc. and local communicate the ghetto’s fighting spirit by studying Jewish history? news about education, commemoration and activism on the part of By writing about incredible uprising in the midst of death camps – survivors and their descendants would be of interest. in Sobibor by Soviet Jewish POWs, or by those, already half dead, who, in spiritual and physical revolution, blew up the crematoria in Auschwitz? I am burdened by these questions. It is only in our most TOGETHER complete human reply possible to all of them that we will pay proper tribute to our colleagues, friends, and relatives who gave AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 · New York, New York 10001 their lives in 1943, so that we and our children may live. 212 564-1065 President Secretary Publication Committee BENJAMIN MEED LEON STABINSKY SAM E. BLOCH, Chairman Let us remember and not let others forget. Senior Vice Presidents Treasurer/Associate Editor Hirsh Altusky SAM E. BLOCH MAX K. LIEBMANN Roman Kent WILLIAM LOWENBERG Editor Max K. Liebmann Chairman of the Board JEANETTE FRIEDMAN Alfred Lipson ROMAN KENT Associate Editor Vladka Meed Chairman, Advisory Board PHILIP SIERADSKI Menachem Z. Rosensaft SIGMUND STROCHLITZ Editor Emeritus Romana Primus ALFREDLIPSON

TOGETHER 2 PERSPECTIVES FROM THE CONFERENCE OF MATERIAL CLAIMS AGAINST GERMANY By Roman Kent When the Claims Conference was formed Conference. Until about 1995, there seemed Roman Kent is in 1951, we survivors did not want to be to be no condemnation of the Claims Chairman of the NEW YORK--The only one who never part of anything that had to do with Conference as it secured additional moral Board of the American makes a mistake and cannot be criticized is the Germany. We wanted to put the past behind justice and financial compensation for tens Gathering of Jewish one who never does anything. The Conference us, pick up the pieces, start new lives, and of thousands of survivors with the active Holocaust Survivors on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany raise our families. Negotiating with Germany participation of a few survivors on the and has existed for 51 years, and during that was not uppermost in our minds, nor was it negotiating committee. But then again, in Treasurer of the Claims time has been called upon, on a daily basis, in the foreseeable future. effect, the Claims Conference was just a Conference. to execute voluminous decisions and duties Although the Claims Conference has Post Office, delivering directly to individual on behalf of the survivor community. So it been in existence for more than fifty years, survivors what was gained through the is certain that there are those who find cause interestingly enough it was only about 12 difficult negotiations they had with the to pass judgment on certain actions or years ago that two survivor organizations, German government. inactions by the Conference pertaining to one from the U.S. and one from Israel, So why is the Claims Conference the distribution properly documented with full Holocaust survivor issues. applied for membership. For historical target of a barrage of what I deem to be transparency.Detailed reports and finan- Understandably, no organization that accuracy, they were accepted as full unfair accusations? An old adage comes cial statements are publicly available. has existed this long and accomplished so members with some reluctance. to mind: “No good deed goes unpunished.” Based on a decision by the Board of much can escape some form of criticism. Today, much has changed, both in the Simply stated, this axiom can be applied Directors, about 80 percent of funds are Now I would like to ask those who are so attitudes of survivors and inside the Claims to the Claims Conference because the used to provide essential social services critical of the Conference of late, whether Conference. The impact of Holocaust organization now has funds available for to needy survivors, such as hunger relief, the recent disapproval aimed at the Claims survivors today inside the organization is distribution to organizations and home healthcare and medical assistance. Conference is justified or if it is undeserved. deeper than it has ever been. Of the four institutions that assist needy survivors. Approximately 20 percent supports Shoah As a Holocaust survivor intimately education, research, and documentation, involved with the Claims Conference for as the Claims Conference’s contribution to ensuring that future generations learn more than a decade, I have never met There is no doubt that survivors have become an integral part of anyone connected with or working for its about and from the Holocaust. the management of the Claims Conference. But we ... insist on having A key recipient of this money was Yad leadership who did not have the well-being even stronger and more influential voices. of survivors at heart. Some may differ in Vashem, an institution universally their thoughts, methods and approaches. respected among survivors. It is definitely But let us not forget that even among people in the key leadership of the Claims The funds that were obtained from the our obligation as survivors to preserve the survivors, we often have different ideas Conference, two are survivors. Also, under recovery and sale of unclaimed Jewish memory of the Holocaust for present and about what is beneficial for us and we the leadership of the new president, Israel properties in the former East Germany, and future generations. question the best means of how to Singer, whose parents fled Europe, the other compensation funds. Now every- Claims Conference funds alone are not accomplish our own goals. negotiating team consists almost entirely body wants a part of the action: individuals, sufficient to meet the needs of the aging In the long run, productive diversity of of survivors. organizations, and even lawyers! population of survivors. I hope that opinions generally turns out to be quite The Executive and Allocation Committees The lawyers are a breed unto them- additional funds will be forthcoming from constructive. Working harmoniously of the organization include numerous selves. One can say…First there were the the Swiss Banks Settlement and possibly together, we can achieve our common goal survivors. There is no doubt that survivors Germans, then the Swiss, and then the from the International Commission on of providing the maximum benefits for have become an integral part of the lawyers. The greedy attorneys have taken Holocaust Era Insurance Claims to ease our survivors, and for the needy in particular. management of the Claims Conference. substantial fees that otherwise could have needs. As far as I am concerned, we need the input But we continue to insist on having even been used by those who desperately The key issue currently facing survivors of each and every survivor. stronger and more influential voices. require our assistance. around the world is the need for home We survivors must ask ourselves Direct survivor participation in Let us place the source of this newly healthcare. Medicine and medical expenses honestly and objectively what we really negotiations with Germany for acquired “fortune” into historical terms. are just as high on the list of priorities. We want from the Claims Conference, and then compensation for former slave and forced In the early 1990’s, during German must face, however, the fact that the truthfully acknowledge to ourselves laborers resulted in obtaining hundreds of reunification, the Claims Conference, with resources of the Claims Conference are whether the Claims Conference is in a millions of dollars for individual survivors. the help of the U.S. government, nego- just not large enough to meet these critical position to fulfill our needs. I think we, as I must emphasize that though it was a tiated for the return of Jewish property in and immediate needs. survivors, could answer this question more significant achievement, the German the former East Germany to their original Therefore, it is my strong conviction, easily if we followed the sentiments of government specifiedthe eligibility criteria owners or heirs. Any property that went that the Jewish community at large must Samuel Gompers, a well-known labor leader the Claims Conference must abide by when unclaimed could revert to the Claims rise to the occasion and provide additional from yesteryear. processing claims. Conference. assistance, especially for impoverished In 1894, Mr. Gompers made reference to In retrospect, I can say that if survivors This was a tremendous accom- survivors. what he wanted from ongoing negotiations. had joined the Claims Conference 30 or 40 plishment for the Claims Conference. If not The community has a moral obligation As he put it, he wanted MORE JUSTICE, years ago, many, if not all, of the for its tenacious negotiations, all Jewish to actively participate in resolving this LESS REVENGE. As a survivor, I think I speak discriminatory eligibility factors presently property in the former East Germany would acute problem. For more than 50 years, for most, if not all, when I say that the same still in place would never have been allowed have reverted to the German state and been survivors have supported the Jewish philosophy concerns survivors and our to exist. lost forever to survivors and the entire community. needs. I have seen first-hand that, even with the Jewish community. During that time, both social and We need MORE: more home and medical best of intentions, no one can substitute Recovering the Jewish property proved educational Jewish organizations have care, more health insurance, more social care, for an actual survivor when negotiating with to be more than a monumental task for the collected vast sums of money in the name more compassion and understanding. And the German government. Survivor Claims Conference. As individual sur- of survivors and the Holocaust. we need much more help from the Jewish participation was more than essential, in vivors, we could never have accomplished I believe that now is the time for the community at large.To achieve the MORE, discussions regarding loss of health, liberty, it. Thorough and detailed research was entire Jewish population, as well as the we must take into account the past and and any other matters. required and documents had to be pro- German government, to step forward and future No one can take the place of a legitimate perly processed through various German show their support. In 1951, when the newly-formed Federal survivor in making authentic moral, ethical, institutions and courts. This exhaustive By joining hands with the Claims Republic of Germany announced its and medical demands. I believe that the procedure still continues. Conference, a program can devised to allow willingness to negotiate compensation for recent easing of some restrictions was By selling off these properties, the needy survivors to spend the remaining Jewish victims of the Holocaust, there was achieved because of the direct participation Claims Conference obtains monies for years of their lives in some measure of no one to negotiate on our behalf. States of Holocaust survivors. distribution. However, for practical pur- comfort with the dignity they so richly negotiate with states. Most of the Holocaust However, I would be remiss if I did not poses, this is the only source of funds that deserve. survivors were stateless persons, dispersed give credit where credit is due, and can be distributed by the Claims Con- I want to emphasize that we survivors throughout all corners of the world. acknowledge the contributions of the ference based on its own guidelines. must be united in order to achieve our goal Thus, the Claims Conference was formed Claims Conference. The Claims Conference Other sources, such as the German Foun- of protecting those who need our help. We from the union of the 23 largest Jewish has been an important meaningful dation and the Swiss Banks Settlement, survivors must be unified because of our organizations in the free world to negotiate ingredient in these negotiations. must be disbursed based on external common Jewish heritage and because of on behalf of “world Jewry” the material Still, it is ironic that in the past few years, criteria. our common heritage as survivors of the compensation to be paid by Germany for its an increasing number of individuals and Since 1995, the Claims Conference has Holocaust. damage to individual survivors and to the organizations have jumped on the distributed about $430 million worldwide United, we can overcome all adversities, Jewish people as a whole. bandwagon criticizing the Claims from such sale of properties; all divided we will fail. Let us keep in mind that we cannot, and must not, fail.

TOGETHER 3 THE WORLD FEDERATION OF JEWISH CHILD SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST By Stefanie Seltzer, President

Where are the children who do not know their real names or their We offer workshops on how to speak most notable among them the reunion survived? The youngest, the most birthdates. appropriately to different age groups at of twin siblings, one living in the USA vulnerable, the ones who were not When we organized the first meeting schools, to business groups and and one, who did not know his identity, meant to live, the ones whose parents in 1988 we did not think more than a community organizations. One of my in Poland. Through our contacts we and elders thought that they were too handful of people would show up—154 most rewarding experiences was to have were able to locate a brother and a sister young to remember, the ones whom the came. The following year the number spoken at a tough inner city school to whose relative on a kibbutz had never psychiatric establishment believed doubled and the number of our contacts youngsters who were out on probation, been able to find them although he had would be destined to lives in institutions kept growing. In 1991 when the Hidden and to learn from the school heard that they had survived. Our project under permanent care? Child Foundation/ADL hosted the first administrators two weeks later that on Twinning for Bar/Bat Mitzvah gives The World Federation of Jewish Child Hidden Child Conference in New York, these same youngsters, who had at first the whole family the opportunity to learn Survivors of the Holocaust is an 1600 child survivors came from all over been unreceptive, rude, even belligerent, about a family member who perished, a umbrella organization with informal the world. had asked for a bus trip to the US child whose name we can supply, or the roots going back to the American The World Federation is now an Holocaust Memorial Museum. Another idea for twinning with a child survivor Gathering meeting in Philadelphia in umbrella organization comprised of over memorable experience was to address who did not have a bar/bat mitzvah and 1985. In a workshop offered by Dr. 50 individual, independent groups world- 800 military cadets, President so learn their story. To celebrate the 15th Judith Kestenberg, child survivors from Anniversary of our annual conferences all over the USA met for the first time. in 2003 our focus will be on honoring The floodgates of emotions and tears rescuers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, were opened, and the idea for getting The World Federation is now an umbrella and to spread the word about their form together emerged.The first meeting took of resistance, of refusing to be bystanders. place at a child-survivor-owned hotel in organization comprised of over 50 individual Our e-mail networking capabilities Lancaster, PA and a family came into with all our group representatives give being! independent groups world-wide, the Hidden us the opportunity to be actively involved It is variously estimated that 7 to 11% Child/ADL and the Kindertransport association in countering the current wave of global of all children in the countries of anti-Semitism by generating letters of occupied Europe survived either in (KTA) being the largest among them. protest from child survivors as well as hiding, on Aryan papers, in convents, our growing number of second even in concentration camps. Many generation contacts (over 100 attended child survivors had never spoken of their our last conference). We are a very experiences to anyone; in survivor wide, the Hidden Child/ADL and the Eisenhower’s grandson among them, inclusive, democratic organization families their experiences were not Kindertransport association (KTA) being and to have them come up to me wherein decisions are made by the body acknowledged because it was too the largest among them. Our groups and afterward to hug me, ask questions, and of representatives on the governing painful to think that children had such annual conferences differ from those of to talk some more. Through our website board and executed by an elected memories. Many had no family. They other survivor organizations in many www.WFJCSH.org we have reached executive committee. Our past came to their new countries and went ways. The emphasis in our meetings is hundreds of youngsters, teachers, conferences were held in the US, to school, went into jobs and on healing through the sharing of educators and researchers many of Canada, Israel, Prague and our future professions, married and had children, experiences; at our annual conferences we whom continue to keep in touch with conferences are already scheduled for and still did not talk of their memories offer a broad range of workshops led by the child survivors whose stories are Denver, Amsterdam, and Israel and and their nightmares. Many have only child survivor professionals in the mental posted on the website and with whom Australia are under discussion. in recent years learned of their Jewish health fields. Increasingly our many projects they have been corresponding. We who grew up without the warmth roots and are still now looking for some focus on leaving a legacy, on education both Our far-reaching network of child and caring of family now reach out to each knowledge of their families. Some are to the Jewish and non-Jewish communities survivor and second generation contacts other to offer the caring of an extended trying to find out who they are; some as the Last Living Witnesses. has brought about many family reunions, family. We are brothers and sisters. HUNGARIAN HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR WINS NOBEL FOR LITERATURE Imre Kertész, have in a world that is capable of Auschwitz. Holocaust as a catastrophe for all of group meant losing my identity. I had to a Jewish Hun- He also wrote The Pathfinder (1977) and European civilization. step out of this line. It was why I decided to garian Holo- The English Flag (1991) He began become a writer.” caust survivor, is publishing a fictional diary in 1992 that “The Holocaust is not history’s one-time He is married to another Holocaust the 2002 Nobel covers 1961-1991 and another called mistake. It belongs to European history, and survivor, but though he feels like he may Prize Laureate Chronicle of a Metamorphosis (1997). with it, the European values of the have gone from one misery to another by for Literature. staying in Hungary, he had to write, and if he left in 1956, he would have stopped. Born in Buda- “Hungarian society has still not faced the pest on Nov- Fateless took him 13 years to write, and ember 9, 1929, in skeleton in the cupboard,” he told a packed news is written in the voice of a boy who shares 1944 he was conference. “That is the systematic murder of the many of his experiences. “It seems like an deported to Auschwitz and later to Hungarian Jews.” autobiography, but it isn’t one, the language Buchenwald, where he was liberated in 1945. of the character is all fiction. It is the story From 1948 to 51 he worked for Világosság, a of someone who has no destiny, who is Hungarian newspaper, and was fired when Since 1989, Kertész has made public Enlightenment collapsed,” he said. It is why fateless, so it could not be a true the communists took over. appearances and given lectures around the the committee in Sweden chose his work. recollection. After serving in the military for two years, world. His talks and essays have been “For him, Auschwitz is not an exceptional “I wanted to convey the innocence of he supported himself as freelance writer and collected in The Holocaust as Culture occurrence that, like an alien body, subsists not knowing what was happening,” he said. translator of German authors such as (1993), Moments of Silence While the outside the normal history of Western “There is a dynamic character to the life of a Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Execution Squad Reloads (1998) and The Europe,” it said in its citation. “It is the camp. The faster things happen, the faster Roth, Wittgenstein and Canetti, all of whom Exiled Language (2001). Kertész was ultimate truth about human degradation in you adjust. It is the only way to survive.” have had an impact on his work. awarded the Brandenburger Literaturpreis modern existence.” Kaddish for a Child Not Born was Mr. He wrote his first book, Fateless, in 1975, in 1995, the Leipziger Buchpreis zur Why did he become a writer? It was not Kertesz’s first book to be published in it is an autobiographical novel that caused Europäischen Verständigung in 1997 and the to bear witness. He told a New York Times Germany. It was soon followed by hardly a ripple when it was first published. WELT-Literaturpreis in 2000. reporter, “It was in 1955 and I was in a translations of all his other books. So far, He wrote his second book, Fiasco (1988), Kertesz, now 73, spent a year in German corridor and I heard steps behind me. The only Fateless and Kaddish for a Child Not and it is often considered the second part concentration camps in his midteens and his steps grew louder, and I had this vision of Born have been published in English, by of a trilogy, with Kaddish for a Child Not writing has concentrated on the Holocaust. people marching behind me. It was a group Northwest University, but he would like the Born published as the last section, in 1990. He believes that Germany has accepted its that represented forgetfulness, conform- translations redone. The Kaddish is for the child he refuses to guilt. More fundamentally he views the ism, resignation. Belonging to this marching TOGETHER 4 NEWS FROM ALUMNI OF THE TEACHERS’ PROGRAM ON THE HOLOCAUST AND JEWISH RESISTANCE BY VLADKA MEED More than half a century separates North Georgia to plan and Rescue During the Holocaust” was graduate in-service courses for teachers us from WWII. Yet we see a growing and direct a week another of the projects she presented in the New York City metropolitan area interest in the history of those long program using at a staff development conference. on the Holocaust and other subjects. shattering years. Eighteen years ago exhibits from the Nancy Kersell (2000) Cincinnati, Mary Wright (1993) Terre Haute, a unique program was created with the Georgia Com- OH wrote that three of her Honors IN spoke to 14 schools (about 3,500 aim to prepare secondary school mission on the Students traveled with her to students.) She had a total of 2,345 teachers to enable them to implement Holocaust. Washington, D.C. to present their students and teachers visit the Candles Holocaust education in their classes. Students from project on the Holocaust at the National Holocaust Museum during the last Through the initiative of survivors, schools in five Honors Conference to a standing-room- school year. The museum has prepared members of the Educator’s Chapter counties participated and there were only audience. Several of their creative a traveling trunk which is available to of the Jewish Labor Committee and evening programs with speakers for pieces, scrapbook and posters are on schools in the Indiana/ the American Federation of Teachers, adults. display at the Center for Humanity and Illinois area. The trunk the Summer Seminar on Holocaust and Martina Fegan (2000) Chambers- Holocaust Education at Hebrew Union is Mary’s father’s Jewish Resistance came into being. burg, PA, together with Nancy Kersell College in Cincin- WWII trunk and Close to 800 teachers have taken part (2000) Cincinnati, OH, formu-lated a nati. Nancy is a bears his name, rank in this acclaimed academic program course to teach teachers how to effectively speaker for the and serial number. teach the lessons of the Holocaust. She Kentucky Human- Last July Mary taught her first graduate level course ities Council and has represented the through Shippensburg University for given presentations museum at the Uni- teachers just prior to September 11. about children of the versity of Salzburg, Austria and Since then, she has Holocaust to nume- discussed the importance of Holocaust conducted intensive rous local middle education in early childhood education. three day work- and high schools as well as area libraries. Later in the summer, Mary spoke on the shops for teachers Last fall Nancy participated in a special impact of the Holocaust on the Mengele and administrators in one week series of lectures on the twin at the Imperial War Museum. A Teachers at the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw Central PA and Holocaust and WWII sponsored by project was jointly conducted with completed the Northern Kentucky University’s history Loogootee Schools. A talented Jewish which has taken place in Israel at Yad second graduate department. artist worked with teachers in Vashem and the Ghetto Fighters House, course with teach- Robert Lehmann (2000) Westville, reproducing paintings depicting Jewish in Poland at the Jewish Historic ers from four different school districts. IL organized and conducted 3 teacher life. the history teachers taught the Institute in Warsaw with special the teachers Martina has worked with workshops in Central Ilinois. this brought Holocaust at the same time and the conferences in Washington, D.C., have asked her to create a new course the totla to over 500 teachers Bob has English/Language Arts teachers read cosponsored by the U.S. Holo-caust on women in the Holocaust, which she assisted in learning more about the and discussed this subject. Memorial Museum. In Poland teachers is currently working on. Holocaust. He was Dianne Zink (2000) Tampa, FL walk the roads to the crematoria. In William Fernekes (1995) a speaker at a launched the International Bookshare Auschwitz they see the valises, shoes Flemington, NJ recently had his book teacher’s workshop Project at Durant High School two and hair of the victims. In Treblinka published. It is a resource book about in Tulsa, OK. In years ago and it has proven highly they are surrounded by 17,000 stones, study of the Holocaust. Last spring he addition to the successful. It is the program linking monuments to the communities of the was invited to speak about Holocaust workshops, he was American students with those in Israel. gassed Jews. Educators from 48 states education in Prague. While there, he had invited to speak at Dianne has been working on a teaching have participated. Our teachers play a the opportunity to visit Terezin. Last June Southern Illinois trunk for the Florida remarkable role in their schools and Bill was honored by the NJ Commission Univeristy Holocaust Museum. It communities. Over a hundred thousand on Holocaust Edu-cation and the Anti- Carbondale’s “Ethics in Everyday Life” will be on monthly loan students and teachers have learned Defamation League with the Axelrod conference for high school students and to elementary, middle about the Holocaust and Jewish Awards for Distin- teachers. His topic was, “Ethics and the and high school Resistance. The program is supported guished Work in Holocaust.” Bob also assisted in the teachers. Last by: The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Education. planning with the Univeristy of Illinois October Dianne Holocaust Survivors, Atran Foundation, Gloria Glantz Continuing Education Department for presented the Conference on Jewish Material Claims (1993) Port Wash- their Summer Institute on the Holocaust. “Teaching Tolerance Against Germany, The Caroline and ington, NY was 3 He presented three different sessions Through the Arts,” a special interest Joseph S. Gruss Funds, Inc. years old when her during this workshop. workshop at the Florida Art Education Here are just a few examples of parents were MarkWillner (1985) New York, NY Association Conference. She continues to the activities and accomplishments of deported. She never was selected as the Outstanding Social serve on the Teacher Advisory Board of some of our teachers. saw them again. She was rescued by a Studies Supervisor in the United States the Florida Holocaust Museum. Jeanna Collins (1998) Clarkesville, Polish woman to whom she was for the year 2000. He is the only New GA made a presentation at the Annual entrusted by her parents. After the war, York supervisor ever Scholars Conference on the Holocaust her mother’s sister learned of her chosen to receive this and the Churches in Newark, NJ. She survival and brought her to Canada. prestigious nationwide was co-coordinator and planner for a Gloria is the 2002 winner of the “Spirit award. This past week long Teachers’ Institute for of Anne Frank Educator Award.” She August, Kaplan’s Georgia teachers at the Holocaust has developed an 8 hour workshop published an SAT II Teachers’ Resource Center at West entitled, “Teaching Toward a More United States History Georgia University. The center is part Tolerant Community,” which she taught preparatory review of the Georgia Commission on the in Port Washington and Manhasset book, Mark was the Holocaust. Last November Jeanna school districts. Gloria gave a course, lead author. He presented on the Holocaust at the “Perspectives on the Holocaust” to supervises several National Teachers of English Conference in teachers in the Oceanside and NYC Board of Atlanta. She worked with a liberator in rural Manhasset school districts. “Heroism Education approved Teachers at the monument at Treblinka.

TOGETHER 5 ZEIDMAN OPENS EXHIBIT IN NYC: ABOUT THE REBIRTH AFTER THE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Fred S. Zeidman, Chairman ORGANIZATION United States Holocaust Memorial Council for the first Hanukkah celebrated in the Bergen-Belsen Remarks at the opening of the photo-documentary DP camp. it is a symbol of the survivors irrepressible OF PITTSBURGH exhibition “Rebirth After the Holocaust: The Bergen yearning to live, their determination to rebuild a sense of Displaced Persons Camp 1945-1950,” Hebrew Union Isabel Alcoff is a member of College-Jewish Insitute of Religion, New York, October community and spirituality. That menorah is but one illustration of the outpouring the steering committee for 6, 2002. the Federation of Descen- of creativity that marked every aspect of life in the DP dants of Jewish Holocaust As Chairman of theUnited States Holocaust camps, from politics to religion, from work to culture, Survivors Memorial Council, I am particularly pleased to from education to entertainment. Inspired by their descendents, the By Isaebel Alcoff second generation, the museum’s The Holocaust Survivors Organization of commitment to Pittsburgh celebrated Chanukah with a video telling this remark- and jelly donuts at the local Holocaust Center. able story of The Center holds four events a year—a renewal in the wake Sukkot party, the Chanukah party, a Purim of unimaginable loss party and the summer picnic. One of the most and suffering led us important functions of our group is to support to the Life Reborn their fellow survivors in times of illness, project, the fruits of hospitalization and mourning. No survivor is which have enriched left alone at these times. our collections, our An annual cemetery service is held at the scholarship, our ex- memorial located in the Beth Shalom hibitions, and our cemetery; and the entire community is invited web site. to join the survivors in remembering their It is that same families. spirit of rebirth The survivors also have a biweekly Fred Zeidman, Chairman, United States Holocaust Memorial Council, and Jean Bloch Rosensaft, that illuminates Director, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, at the opening of “Rebirth discussion group to talk about local and this exhibition. In After the Holocaust: The Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, 1945-1950,” on view at the international events. They also often decide HUC-JIR Museum in New York through July 3, 2003. reflecting on the role to do more than talk and often initiate letter join with Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute each of us must play in the coming days, we can take writing campaigns in reaction to those current of Religion in bringing you RebirthAfter the courage and inspiration from the examples it offers, events. They also have a very active Holocaust, the story of Jewish renewal in examples provided by individuals who realized that their speakers’ bureau. theBergen-Belsen DP camp. Organized by the work on behalf of the Jewish people, and on behalf of The Center is the hub for all the survivor World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Associations all humanity, could not and should not end with them. activities and takes care of mailings for events in conjunction with the museum’s ongoing Life And so, it is especially moving that Rebirth After the and other programs. Survivors serve as Reborn project, it is a labor of love by two Holocaust grew out of a father-daughter collaboration. docents for exhibits at our center and are individuals whose commitment to Holocaust On a personal note, it is my mother and father’s involved in helping to plan the programs of education and remembrance need scarcely be legacy – which grew from what their parents taught remembrance and education that the center described to anyone here – Sam E. Bloch and them – that has inspired my own activism. A little offers to the public. Survivors also serve on Jean Bloch Rosensaft. over a century ago a 5’4" bald, bearded, Jewish the Holocaust Commission. I am with you today because more than two immigrant who spoke no English – not exactly the I have served on the executive committee decades ago a visionary few, including Sam and the traditional image of a Texas Ranger – wandered into of the survivors’ organization for many years, parents of others among us, conceived of a Living and settled in the very tranditional Texas county of serving as a liaison to the second generation Memorial to the victims of the Holocaust – the Wharton – by way of, I might add, Ellis Island. Rural, after being president of that group for almost United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It was agricultural Wharton, opened its arms to him and his eight years. It has been a great two way to be a living memorial to remind us that mourning family, enabling them to live out the American Dream. relationship. Today, The Legacy of the Second alone is insufficient, that honoring the victims and That man was my grandfather. And part of his dream Generation group is headed by Chana Brody survivors of the Holocaust requires us to learn their was that he and his descendents would live in freedom, and Fern Steckel. history, to celebrate their lives and their extraordinary a freedom they would work to preserve and protect. Many of the survivors in the community have resiliance, and to actively address our responsibilities Like all parents, Kay and I hope and believe that our written stories published under the title Flares children, and their children, will carry on the legacy of as citizens of our great democracy. of Memory. It began as a grass roots local I need scarcely tell New Yorkers that, at a time faith and community activisim that we inherited from project and blossomed into a book. The when people of goodwill everywhere are united to our families. And as I think about howI will measure survivors also benefit from Action resist the forces of hatred and evil, those individual my own success, I am convinced that transmitting this Reconciliation Service for Peace volunteers, a responsibilities are particularly acute. What could legacy is the only true test of all my efforts. program for young Germans who volunteer to be more resonant than the lessons offered by the As the Holocaust Museum enters its second decade, come to Pittsburgh and work at the Holocaust survivors? They oblige those of us engaged in the our challenge is not only to advance remembrance Center and Jewish Family and Children’s work of Holocaust remembrance and education to and education in today’s world, but also to engage those Service. Every year, two volunteers spend 18 play a particularly active role. who will follow us in carrying that mission forward. months in town, working with survivors and We must uphold the wisdom, strength, and As the first museum chairman who is not of the then go back to attend universities in Germany. inspiration handed down to us from the survivors survivor generation, I carry a solemn obligation to the They are bright sensitive kids who do a lot of and so well-captured in the exhibition we see here. survivors to ensure that their authentic experiences They, and it, charge us, in the words inscribed on are preserved and transmitted to suceeding growing up and learning while they are here. our museum walls in Washington – to “choose life, generations. They also go to schools and speak about the that others may live.” It is our task to affirm their hopes for the future. it neo- Nazi activities in Germany. It is an Among the objects in the museum’s collection is is we who must keep their legacy alive. it is an honor international program that sends young people a menorah, handcrafted from scraps of materials, to join you here in that effort. all over the world. with spent cartridges as candle holders. It was made

TOGETHER 6 AFTER THE SHOAH: THE STORY OF DEATH AND REBIRTH By Sam E. Bloch A major comprehensive traveling exhibition, “Rebirth After the Holocaust: The Bergen Belsen hearts deep Jewish pride wherever they went and wherever they built themselves new Story,” has been traveling around North America and has been seen, with appropriate homes. The uniqueness of Bergen-Belsen survivors commemorative programs, in Washing-ton, D.C., Montreal, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Chicago. It is and other survivors dispersed around the world lies currently on exhibition at Hebrew Union College in New York City. in the preservation and transmission of their Wherever the exhibition has opened, it was greeted identities as with kudos by the survivors and general community alike. Jews and Because of its transformation after the war into a camp for survivors. It Displaced Persons, Bergen-Belsen has become a dual is why Ber- symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust and the miracle of gen-Belsen the survivors’ rebirth and the return to life. has also The infamy of the Nazi concentration camps will become a remain attached to Bergen-Belsen till the end of time. threefold For several years (1942-1945) it was a place of symbol of unspeakable horrors. Tens of thousands of innocent remembrance, Jewish victims met their deaths at the hands of the German the reality Nazi criminals, through hunger, starvation, shooting, of the present and the ideals of the future. torture and diseases. On the day of Liberation, April 15, This exhibition, with its comprehensive 1945, the British soldiers were shocked by what they pictorial record, depicts life in Bergen-Belsen in “Rebirth After the Holocaust: The Bergen-Belsen discovered: tens of thousands hounded and emaciated Displaced Persons Camp, 1945-1950” on view at the years 1945-1950, and highlights the social, human shadows, crowded into narrow, filthy barracks the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of political and cultural communal life of the Bergen- with thousands of corpses strewn across of the camp. Religion Museum through July 3, 2003. Belsen Displaced Persons Camp. The people in When freedom dawned over Belsen, it awakened all Belsen came from many lands, diverse cultures dormant springs of Jewish creativity and sent them streaming and traditions and various ways of life. Despite in all directions. The survivors, uprooted and homeless, despite their suffering and losses, possessed their differences, they were motivated by their belief in their common fate. This feeling a vision. They emerged from the Valley of Death with boundless dedication and determination to became part of their consciousness and forged a brotherly unity of common hopes, rebuild their lives. For more than five years after the liberation, the Bergen-Belsen Displaced aspirations and dreams. Persons’ camp was a vibrant center of rehabilitation, reconstruction and rebirth. The Displaced Persons Camp of Bergen Belsen was a unique example of The energy was manifest in individuals and organized groups, molded into a responsible organized Jewish political, cultural and social activity. It was the scene of a social aggregate. The people turned themselves into a thriving community from lifeless successful struggle for Jewish and human rights. It created bonds of friendship, heaps of bones. This community, in turn, became an important factor in the great historical solidarity and unity among the survivors, along with their dedication to memory struggle of the Jewish people for freedom and independence. Its members harbored in their and remembrance.

Sam E. Bloch is President of the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Survivors and Senior Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust.

PROFILES OF LEADERSHIP ISRAEL SINGER NEW PRESIDENT OF CLAIMS CONFERENCE BY JEANETTE FRIEDMAN (Israel Singer, Julius Berman, Roman people, and he’s driven to flag, and my classmates my Jewish education. Kent and Moshe Sanbar are now do it. and neighbors would “Real education in both societies calls cooperatively in charge of the Conference The child of refugees walk by our house and for the Jewish tradition that believes, in a of Material Claims Against Germany [the from Vienna, his parents, insult and attack that closed manner, that God created the world Claims Conference]. TOGETHER will trying to escape, landed in flag. and that He continues to run that world. profile leaders whenever possible.Dr. a detention camp in “There are those You are subservient to His commandments. Singer is also the chairman of the World France and eventually that say that the State “Secular studies are almost always Jewish Congress Governing Board.) arrived in America in 1942. of Israel is not a directly in conflict with this ideology. You You see him on TV, often enough, His father had a doctorate vessel or vehicle that are constantly in collision between the two, rambunctious and respectful at the same in economics, but found advances Judaism. I a collision that creates an artificial synthesis. time, making the case for the Holocaust success as a manufacturer am among those who Secular society bombards me like atomic survivors or oppressed Jews in different of costume jewelry. Singer believe that it is a particles. When I look in a mirror, I view trouble spots around the world. No one is was born in Williamsburg. godly vessel that was myself as constantly in conflict, constantly ambivalent about him. But who is Israel Despite the fact that he given to us as an in crisis, constantly at war with myself, with Singer and where does he come from? grew up around survivors opportunity. my Judaism…my Judaism is at war with Most lately, he comes from the World and refugees, he said with Sometimes things society; society is at war with me. I am never Jewish Congress, where he liked to make a grin, “As a result of happen there that are at peace with myself, except when I am doing trouble for antisemitic Christians, for Nazis that…or in spite of it, I unacceptable. the right thing. That’s the answer, and it like Kurt Waldheim, where he was an advocate became a relatively, normal, well-developed Nobody is perfect. But I do believe that it comes from continuous self-criticism and for Soviet Jewry before it was fashionable, person. What it’s about, really, he says, “It’s is a vessel created by God for us. How we criticism of the society in which I live. and worked for the Jews of Sarajevo and those about family, and the family is the cornerstone use it is what matters. “I try to run my life with a relatively scattered around the Balkans in the middle of of Jewish life.” Singer, who attended a Hasidic yeshiva fundamentalist view. I go by a Zionist an ugly and long racial war. What turned him into an activist? early on, switched to Torah Vodaath and national ideology, but I am very far to the As once highlighted by Mike Wallace “I’ve understood certain things since I was was raised in the tradition of Agudath right on religious principles. I wouldn’t on 60 Minutes, Singer’s eyes have nothing 2 years old, when we lived in a five-story Israel. His family eventually moved from even class myself as Modern Orthodox. I to hide. They are devoid of pretense, and, brownstone on Bedford Avenue with my Williamsburg to Crown Heights. It was a don’t belong to a one-fits-all-sizes Judaism, in case you didn’t know it, a TV camera is a grandfather and my Uncle Isaac. I was aware thriving, pluralistic Jewish community, even if I dress like a Modern Orthodox great lie detector. we were living in an ultra-Orthodox where people of every denomination person. I don’t fit into a category for two Singer is from Brooklyn, where he began neighborhood that was relatively non-Zionist, would greet each other on Shabbat. reasons: The Holocaust and the creation his professional life as an adjunct professor and my grandfather, who wore a full beard and He went to Brooklyn College at night, of the State of Israel. Because of the of political science and a campus activist. bekishe, had a seamstress sew a giant Israeli even when his yeshiva forbid it. “I did it qualitative difference that these two events He worked his way up the ranks of the World flag that covered the entire front of the house. in a kind of clandestine manner—it wasn’t made in Jewish history, they cannot be Jewish Congress since 1969 as an expert in We displayed it the day Israel became a state part of my Jewish education. It was ignored. They are two seminal events of East-West relations. Singer’s agenda never and for some time thereafter. Our house was separate, equal, but separate. And my the 20th century and I talk to Jews and changes. It is always to protect the Jewish the only one in Williamsburg with an Israeli secular education was contradictory to non-Jews about them.” I am never at peace with myself, except when I am doing the right thing. That’s the answer, and it comes from continuous self-criticism and criticism of the society in which I live.

TOGETHER 7 THE TALMUD AND HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, COMPLETING THE CHAPTER by Alex Grobman, Ph.D. The American Jewish studying in the yeshivas in the DP camps and those institutions in the United States and Palestine, with the Historical Society’s exhibit eager to participate in the Daf Yomi program. (At the majority supposedly going to yeshivas and libraries in “Particular Responsibility: Congress of the Agudath Israel in Europe in 1923, the U.S. Zone of Occupation. The Army Talmud “would The Making of the U.S. Rabbi Meir Shapira of Lublin had proposed that Jews be of such importance that it will deserve special Army Talmud,” has all over the world study the same page of the Talmud attention,” Hyman opined. Though the Vaad’s proposal brought an important part (Daf Yomi) simultaneously as a sign of a unifying had been “inspired by the best of intentions,” it was of the history of the Jews commitment to Judaism and Jewish learning. clear that there was no way an Orthodox group would in postwar Europe to the Observant Jewish males would complete the study of steal the thunder of the non-observant Jewish agencies. attention of the public. the Talmud every seven and a half years. The proposal As a result, Haber and Hyman felt “it would be Unfortunately, the chapter was accepted and a special calendar was created. imprudent to have the spotlight thrown on an occasion they cover is incomplete. Jews everywhere began to study the Daf.) such as that one.” In the late 1930s, the When Rabbi Baruch approached the military authorities Ironically, publishing the Army Talmud had been the Nazis began confiscating Jewish books and artifacts to publish religious material, they said the function of the “obsession” of Rabbi Samuel Abba Snieg, head of the in Germany. During the war they extended the Army was not to be the nursemaid to the Displaced Rabbinical Association of the American Zone, and his operation to Jewish archives as well. At the end of the Persons (DPs), but to keep order and to be a buffer against assistant, Rabbi Samuel Rose. But Rabbi Philip S. war, the Allies found huge amounts of books randomly Russian encroachment. Stonewalled by the bureaucrats, Bernstein, a Reform rabbi and the Advisor on Jewish strewn in “makeshift depots.” The American military Baruch turned to sympathetic military and civilian Affairs from May 1946 to August 1947 had joined in established the Offenbach Archival Depot (OAD) to personnel who had access to Army warehouses and were their plans and convinced General Clay to approve its house this enormous collection on March 2, 1946, and willing to provide paper and materials. publication. The JDC agreed to underwrite part of the by August 1947, 2,000,000 books were returned and As soon as the books were printed and bound, they production costs, and the Army guaranteed that the distributed to the survivors. The JDC received 24,000 were sent to the DP camps and to leading rabbis and Germans would contribute the rest of the funds. volumes to distribute to the people in DP camps. scholars throughout the world. To meet the demand Since the Army printed only a limited number of Since these “supplies” were insufficient to meet the for copies of the Talmud, the Vaad printed and copies, there were very few available for distribution needs of the survivors, Rabbi Avrohom Kalmanowitz, distributed 10,000 conveniently sized pocket editions to the DPs. Additionally, although the original president of the Mirrer Yeshiva in New York and a leader of individual masechtas. By the end of 1947, the Vaad, agreement indicated an earlier publication date—the in the Vaad Hatzalah, tried to fill this vacuum. He asked through Baruch’s efforts, had published some 240,000 first volumes were bound in 1949—it was not until General John Hilldring, Assistant Secretary of State for religious texts. 1951 that the work was actually delivered. As a result, Occupied Areas, to help him publish “200,000 Bibles The publishing program was so successful that the Talmud served little purpose for the survivors who and Prayer Books in the U.S. Zone of Germany.” Baruch decided to dedicate a book of Psalms, with an needed it the most. By the time the volumes were General Lucius Clay, Military Governor of Germany, English translation, to General Lucius D. Clay. Before available, the vast majority of the survivors were no rejected his request because there was an acute shortage proceeding, he asked Abraham Hyman, Assistant longer in Europe. (Between May 1948 and the end of of paper in late 1947 and only vital government Advisor on Jewish affairs to the Theater Commander 1951 about 304,000 Jewish survivors from Central documents could be published. of the U.S. Forces in Europe, to discuss the idea with Europe immigrated to Israel. Between July 1948 and Rabbi Nathan Baruch, Director of the Vaad his superior, Dr. William Haber. Haber agreed to the 1952 about 58,000 Jews left for the United States.) Hatzalah in Germany, undertook the task to publish idea. But Hyman quickly pointed out that Haber did not religious texts himself. The Vaad Hatzalah had been want to “make much ado” about the dedication by established in November 1939 to save rabbis and bringing in the press and photographing the event yeshiva students in Poland and Lithuania from the because of an existing agreement—signed on Dr. Alex Grobman is editor of Genocide: Critical Issues Nazis. After the war, the Vaad sent Baruch to direct September 11, 1946 between the JDC and the Rabbinical of the Holocaust (1983), as well as In Defense of the Survivors: The Letters and Documents of Oscar A. Mintzer, their relief and spiritual rehabilitation program for Council U.S. Zone Germany—to publish 750 sets of a AJDC Legal Advisor, Germany, 1945-46 (1999); and author observant Jews in Germany. The need to print the 19-volume Talmud. That edition was earmarked to be of Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and Talmud became important for the students who were distributed to the Theater Commander, educational the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948 (1992)

MICHAEL BERENBAUM REVIEWS HERMAN TAUBE He writes of Jan Karski, the recently deceased messenger from Poland who warned LOOKING BACK GOING FORWARD: New and Selected Poems while there was still time to save Jews. “You are the bird that sings once in a lifetime.” by Herman Taube (Takoma Park, Maryland and San Francisco: Dryad Press, 2002), It wasn’t easy to listen to you talk. 160 pp. It was difficult for me to concentrate I suspect that not many communities in the U. S. can boast of a senior statesman And absorb everything you said to us all. who was a gifted civil servant to the Jewish community and a writer of considerable I was distracted by rage listening to your report… talent, a man who mastered mama loshen and the native tongues of the land of his Of himself: “I say proudly - I am a Jew from Lodz, Poland.” birth, the land of his exile, the Jewish State and his adopted country, a person who is at He writes of old age with power and without self-pity, distilling into verse the struggle home with his people and their many worlds: religious and secular, political and to live with dignity and the gradual lessening of one’s physical prowess. intellectual, personal and historic. In Washington, despite its impressive Jewish Being old is no disgrace, but community, there is only one such man, the venerable writer, essayist, poet and novelist When knees no longer bend, Herman Taube. There must be others, elsewhere, of his generation, rooted deeply in Arms are unable to be raised, Jewish experience and schooled so painfully and honestly by the anguishes of life. And insomnia rules the nights, Survivors and non-survivors, it is an extraordinary generation. It doesn’t make you disposed This work, Taube’s 20th published book, is a poetic autobiography that spans the to go on living. Sometimes years of his strength. It begins in Siberia, to which Herman escaped from his native I wonder if it is worth praying Poland. He describes in harsh and brutal terms the anguish of those like him who for longevity. Sometimes. escaped the Nazis by fleeing eastward only to encounter the Russians whose treatment He writes of the love of a young man in the tones of Job and the Song of Songs: of the Jews seems humane only when contrasted to German policy. Naked I arrived in Uzbekistan, and Herman was in Siberia for three miserable years. During the most intense period of Naked, alone I returned to Poland. the Holocaust, he was in Uzbekistan, that strange and far off land that offered little But Eva still lives in my memory. refuge from the struggle to survive, but still remained at a safe distance from the killing I often dream of our Uzbek nights. centers in Poland. And then Herman found himself in Russia and then as a returnee to Elsewhere he writes of memory: Poland as part of the ambulance corps of the liberating Soviet army. Loss and survival are nothing more than chance - Much of this material has the quality of testimony written with insight and poignancy, My girl, her family and mine - all perished. without self-pity or self-aggrandizement, a faithful witness who knew that he was living I survived and fell in love with another woman. through historic times. Years passed, and now I am at the edge of my life. Herman was an early witness to Majdanek, and hence of the destruction. He wrote: Still, in my mind, in my dreams, lives an image Every piece of discarded shred had Of a girl with long braids, asking - Remember me? an owner; I could see their faces. Herman Taube has remembered and transmitted. He has borne witness and has been I could hear their voices. as able a servant of the Jewish future as he has been a messenger of the tragic and They were my people. fabled Jewish past.

TOGETHER 8 BERGEN-BELSEN: THE END AND THE BEGINNING By Menachem Z. Rosensaft after V-E Day. But Belsen also and prevented a second transport from accidentally when Brachah, a 15-year- represents a beginning. leaving. For this defiance, he was put old girl from Hungary, came to me In order to contain the epidemics of on trial before a military tribunal, and crying. She told me that she was asked typhus and other virulent diseases that eventually acquitted. questions about her parents, if the were rampant throughout the And when the Jewish Agency and mother lit candles on Friday night, if concentration camp, the British Anglo-Jewish philanthropic organi- their store was open on the Sabbath, evacuated its survivors to nearby zations wanted to take approximately and was told that they wanted to send German army barracks that had 100 Jewish orphans from Belsen to her to a religious kibbutz. I became previously housed a Panzer training England and have them live with Jewish furious and opened the door of the In the morning Shaharit service, God school, and which became the largest families there, the Jewish Committee barrack, where the interrogators were is addressed several times as “the First sitting.... I reminded them that these and the Last.” The reference is meant children had spent their childhood in to describe God as infinite, as a timeless ghettos and concentration camps. They presence. In a strange sense, Bergen- were orphans; they had nobody in the Belsen can best be understood as the whole world except the friends with inverse of this description. It was, in a whom they were staying now, and they very real sense, “the Last and the First,” wanted to remain together. If there was the end and the beginning. no place for all of them in one kibbutz, The Holocaust, as it has become they should be allowed to form groups ingrained in the public consciousness, of friends with whom they wanted to evokes images of millions of Jews stay. Luckily, I succeeded.” murdered in ghettos and death camps. I mention these two episodes because Long before Auschwitz became the they are typical of the fierce dignity and defining term of the Shoah, the images independence with which the Jewish of the liberation of Belsen by British D.P.s of Belsen re-entered life after the troops on April 15, 1945, were shown in Holocaust. As one can see from the newsreels throughout the world. For documents on display in the exhibition, numerous reasons, most of which Josef Rosensaft, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the British Zone of it took more than three months until the require more an understanding of Germany, addressing a mass demonstration at the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp when the first representative of the JDC [Jewish psychology than of history, our society “Exodus” ship, filled with thousands of Holocaust survivors, was intercepted by the British off the Distribution Committee] came to Belsen shore of Palestine and forcibly returned to Germany in September 1947. Bergen-Belsen served as an prefers this concept of European Jews important staging ground for protest demonstrations on behalf of the survivors’ rights to immigrate to offer limited assistance. The survivors as faceless, nameless victims — either to Eretz-Israel. © The Josef Rosensaft Bergen-Belsen Archive, Yad Vashem, Israel. did not wait, helplessly; they took charge anonymous corpses or, if survivors, as of their lives and demanded what they two-dimensional skeletal figures staring displaced-persons camp in all of that ran the D.P. camp formally refused. believed to be their due. When one of blankly into the camera in their Germany. Within days of their liberation, The children had survived together and the heads of the JDC tried to explain concentration camp uniforms. the survivors of Belsen wrested control would find a home together in Eretz that food and clothing simply wasn’t “Rebirth After the Holocaust: The of their lives from all outsiders. They Yisrael, in Palestine. In April 1946, a available, my father replied, “Then at Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons were grateful to the British for ending year after the liberation, my mother, then least give us some Yiddish typewriters Camp, 1945-1950,” a historical photo- their captivity, but unwilling to obey Dr. Hadassah Bimko, who had kept the so that we can denounce you.” documentary exhibition on display anyone’s orders blindly. As soon as the children alive from December 1944 until The story of Belsen, as reflected in the (through July 3, 2003) at the New York yoke of persecution was lifted, they the liberation, escorted them, together exhibition, is an integral element of the Museum of Hebrew Union College- elected a political leadership of their with approximately 1,000 other surviving history of the Holocaust. It provides the Jewish Institute of Religion, curated by own, headed by my father, Josef Jewish children, to Palestine. There, essential connection between the pre- and Sam E. Bloch and my wife, Jean Bloch Rosensaft. When, in late May of 1945, they were taken to the clearing center post-Holocaust worlds. And it is of critical Rosensaft, gives the lie to this the British unilaterally decided to at Atlit, and local functionaries, importance for any understanding of who stereotype. Of course, the depiction of transfer several thousand Jews to D.P. representing the different Zionist the survivors are and what they represent. suffering is an integral element of the camps in other parts of Germany, he political parties and movements, again It is in this context that Belsen takes its historiography of the Holocaust, but it is refused to go along quietly. After 1,117 attempted to separate them. unique place as “the Last and the First,” only part of the picture. Yes, Belsen Belsen survivors had been taken to the In her as yet unpublished memoirs, the end and the beginning. epitomizes the final chapter of the Red Cross camp of Lingen near the my mother recalled: “The day after our Holocaust: Most of its victims perished Dutch border, where conditions were far arrival, members of all political parties worse than in Belsen, he demanded that in Palestine came to see the children. Menachem Z. Rosensaft, a partner in the law during the final months of the Second firm Ross & Hardies and a member of the United World War, and 13,944 liberated Jews they be allowed to return to Belsen. On Sunday morning, without consulting States Holocaust Memorial Council, is one of died there during the two months When the British refused, he simply told with the teachers or me, they started to more than 2,000 children born in the displaced following the liberation, many of them his D.P.s to return “home” to Belsen interview our children. I learned this persons camp of Bergen-Belsen. . IN REMEMBRANCE OF HIRAM BINGHAM IV, UNSUNG HERO OF RESCUE

Secretary of State, Colin Powell, fictional character Indiana Jones, an Washington, he granted over 2,500 USA In 1941, Washington sent him to recently gave a posthumous award for archeologist who unearthed the Inca visas to Jewish and other refugees, Argentina, where he continued to annoy “constructive dissent” to Hiram (Harry) city of Machu Pichu, Peru in 1911. In including the artists Marc Chagall, Max his superiors by reporting on the Bingham, IV. For more than 50 years, the 1939, Harry was posted to Marseille, Ernst and writer Thomas Mann’s family. movements of Nazi war criminals. State Department resisted attempts to France as American vice-consul. The He also sheltered Jews in his Marseille Eventually, he was forced out of the honor Bingham. They considered him an U.S.A. was then neutral and, not to home and obtained forged identity American diplomatic service and died insubordinate member of the US annoy Marshal Petain’s Vichy regime, papers to help Jews on their dangerous almost penniless in 1988. Little was diplomatic corps, a dangerous maverick Pres. Roosevelt’s government ordered journeys across Europe. He worked with known of his extraordinary activities they eventually demoted. Now, after his its representatives in Marseille not to the French underground to smuggle until his son found a series of letters in death, he has been officially recognized grant visas to any Jews. Bingham found Jews out of France into Franco’s Spain his belongings after his death. He has as a hero. this policy immoral and, risking his or across the Mediterranean and even now been honored by many groups and Bingham came from an illustrious career, did all in his power to undermine contributed to their expenses out of his organizations, including the United family. His father was thebasis for the it. In defiance of his bosses in own pocket. Nations and the State of Israel. TOGETHER 9 SON OF SURVIVORS ORGANIZES RELIEF FOR THE HUNGRY

My activism began in June 1981, events and to deliver it to the tables of Best known for heading the American by Syd Mandlebaum when I accompanied my father to the those who truly need it. With thousands team that did the DNA genetic “Eat the food on your plate, I starved World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust of volunteers in over 500 cities sequencing of Anna Anderson’s hair for four years in lager!” Survivors in Jerusalem. I came back to worldwide, the organization has fed over that disproved her relationship to the My sisters and I heard this whenever the States determined to devote my life 12 million people with millions of pounds Czar and Czarina Romanov, Syd we complained (rarely) about what we to stopping future holocausts by helping of collected food. Mandelbaum was a DNA Consultant at were having for dinner. My mother and to start Second Generation groups and Each year, Rock and Wrap It Up! the Harvard Medical School Center for father were teenagers—my mom 15 and by videotaping survivors and camp holds a Tribute Awards Dinner where Blood Research Laboratory in genetics my father 18—when they were enslaved liberators. After 10 years of taping the awardee is presented with the Lena testing and also founded the first DNA in concentration camps. Surviving against almost every week somewhere in the and Joseph Mandelbaum Award. This roundtable seminar series, New York all odds in an environment where United States, I gave the project to year’s winners were Sharon and Ozzy and Boston in 1989 to help police starvation and malnutrition were the Steven Spielberg. Osbourne. departments better use DNA in norm, they met in a German displaced Thousands of videotapes are now in The organization’s main goal is to have prosecuting rape and murder cases. He person’s camp, married and immigrated the United States Holocaust Museum bands incorporate a rider into their is the person responsible for knowing to the United States. and at Yale University’s Sterling Library. contract that indicates their request for how many m.p.h. that fastball is really Their years of struggle, however, I knew my small contribution had helped all edible leftover food to go to a local going. His method of measurement was they mostly kept to themselves. changed the world a little. And hundreds soup kitchen or shelter. Rock and Wrap introduced to major league baseball in When we were young, they didn’t of people now believed in my tactics and it Up! then arranges for the removal. 1991. talk about the horrors which strategies. The organization also works with enveloped their lives—my mother’s Rock and Wrap it Up! grew because existing local perishable food programs, brothers, 11 and 12 years old, and her I learned how to organize volunteers such as USA Harvest, food collection parents and my father’s parents, who believe in our vision of feeding the and rescue services. Current tours were all murdered and cremated at hungry. I am doing this work to honor contracting food recovery with Rock Birkenau. When they spoke of the my parents and those they left behind. and Wrap it Up! in their rider include war, it was to talk about the Founded in 1994, Rock and Wrap it Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, incredible hunger that they faced Up! is an international hunger relief Aerosmith, Usher, Linkin Park, Ozzy every minute of every day. As I grew organization and think tank that works Osbourne, Brooks and Dunn, Elton John up, I swore to feed all those who went closely with the music and and Britney Spears. hungry. That was how Rock and entertainment industries to recover If you would like to be a volunteer, Wrap It Up! was born. unused food from concerts and industry contact www.rockandwrapitup.org.

AUSCHWITZ: REPAIR, PRESERVE OR LET IT GO? (From The Wall Street Journal) makes the building look like a modern In 1989, Ronald Lauder, the France, Greece, Russia and Switzerland The death camp’s barbed-wire fences administrative center. In a corner of cosmetics heir, whose New York-based are paying for a $3 million conservation and their concrete fence posts, cast by Birkenau, brick barracks were foundation supports Jewish educational laboratory, set to open next year. prisoners 60 years ago, are crumbling. renovated with modern roof tiles and projects and sites in Eastern Europe, As for the objects that are For six years, an international decomposing, like the hair, James Young, preservation committee debated the Holocaust scholar, says what’s left whether and how to restore them. must be kept as long as possible as Restore it, and you maintain Nazi “evidence of the sheer numbers” killed. handiwork. Leave it alone, and it will But Jerzy Wroblewski, director of the eventually disappear. What does one do Auschwitz museum, would prefer to bury with the hair that is beginning to the hair, out of respect for the families of decompose? With the shoes? Historians, the dead, and because he isn’t sure what religious leaders and survivors, have else could be done. been grappling with the issues since The 3,600 arching fence posts, which 1989. They want to maintain the camp were once joined by electrified barbed just as visitors find it today, a ruin that wire, figure prominently in prisoner honors the more than one million people memoirs as symbols of captivity and murdered here, 90% of them Jews. hopelessness. Konior Sp.j., a Some historians argue that recreating construction firm from nearby parts of the camp would show how Katowice, manages the work and genocide was carried out. Some forbids the crew to play radios or talk preservationists counter that letting the with tourists. Each fence post takes site decay naturally would increase its approximately six weeks to restore. emotional power. Survivors pursue a In June 2003, a committee of middle ground, saying whatever decision preservationists, survivors and religious is made, the camp should be maintained leaders will gather at the death camp in indefinitely to bear witness when they top-grade masonry. Now conservators visited the Auschwitz complex, which hopes of finally agreeing to a plan. no longer can. let the grass grow high there to attracts about half a million visitors each Among the possibilities: rebuilding one In 1947, Poland decreed that discourage visitors. year. Shocked at its condition, he raised of the four Birkenau crematoria to its Auschwitz be preserved as a museum, Large swaths of the camp complex funds and set up a committee to draft a 1940s state while leaving the rest as but the communist government, lacking vanished. Wildlife chewed wooden conservation plan. Altogether $12.5 they are, constructing a walkway or an a plan and significant funding, made only buildings, moss weakened mortar, and million has been spent since 1992. entire building around the site, building haphazard efforts at preservation. The wind and rain battered what remained. Germany has supplied about $8 million a chimney-shaped memorial with photos entrance was moved to make room for Conservators managed to save fewer to repair museum buildings, windows, of those murdered, or simply letting the a parking lot. The showers building was than one-quarter of the concentration gates and guard towers, including the place decay further. outfitted with a handsome new roof that camp’s wooden buildings. $2 million tab for the fence-post repairs.

TOGETHER 10 RESTITUTION OF JEWISH PROPERTIES IN POLAND by Kalman Sultanik

presumably would be transferred to the the Republic of Poland, we were Local organizations took care of the I would like Joint Foundation. Time was running out assured that the deadline of May 12, cemeteries, as well as families and to share with for the registration of these claims, the 2002 for registration of restitution claims individuals who considered their you some deadline being May 12, 2002. for communal properties would be upkeep a sacred responsibility. information Michael Schneider, Deputy Chair of extended. We were also promised that Let us not forget we are dealing regarding the JOINT, was nominated to chair a preparation was made for the necessary with 1,000 cemeteries that must be Jewish com- committee to resolve the differences legislation for the restitution of private preserved. For this purpose we need munal and between the Jewish Communities in properties, to be adopted by the Polish to invest in a long-range program. private Jew- Poland and the WJRO. A compromise Parliament in 2003. This was In the guidelines stipulated in the ish properties in Poland. was reached regarding the distribution reconfirmed by Polish Foreign Minister Agreement between the Jewish In the mid 1990s, the Polish of the reclaimed properties and the Cimoszewiecz, when he met with Polish Communities in Poland and Parliament enacted legislation regula- establishment of a Joint Foundation on Jewish leaders of the American Jewish the WJRO, the Communities will be ting the status of various religions in a parity basis, with two co-chairmen: Committee. responsible for the conservation of Poland. The Law on the Relationship Jerzy Kichler representing the Jewish In order to succeed in reclaiming the the cemeteries under their between the (Polish) State and Jewish Communities in Poland and me, Kalman properties we filed at the last minute, jurisdiction, while the rest will be the Communities in the Republic of Poland Sultanik representing the WJRO. Eve without full documentation, we will responsibility of the WJRO. was adopted on 20 February 1997, Anderson was nominated CEO of the attempt to provide documents and any The cemeteries were also raised at the and came into force on 9 May, 1997 Foundation For The Preservation of information regarding the properties last meeting of the Board of Directors. (the “Law”). Jewish Heritage in Poland (Joint owned and used by the Jewish We stressed the need not to delay any According to this law, real estate Foundation). communities and organizations in the further the transfer of the cemeteries to owned by Jewish public institutions On June 5, 2002, we convened a towns of origin and their surroundings. Jewish hands and to immediately find the would be returned, on condition that meeting of the Board of Directors of Furthermore, there must be properties for finances required, without exempting the claims for these properties was to be the Joint Foundation. At that meeting which claims have not been filed because Federal and local Polish authorities from submitted by May 12, 2002. According we received a report by the CEO on they had no knowledge of their existence. their share of obligations. It was finally to the Law, only the Jewish the activities of the Joint Task Force We therefore appeal to the members agreed to provide a budget for a Rabbis Communities had the right to submit Committees of the Jewish Communities of the Societies of Polish Jews in the Committee that will be in charge of the claims for property restitution. The in Poland and the WJRO. At that U.S.A. to lend your help and support cemeteries. World Jewish Restitution Organization meeting, we were also informed that the in our efforts to return Jewish communal It should be pointed out that most of (WJRO) did not have the legal authority Joint Foundation was officially properties back to Jewish hands. At this the claims were submitted without full to claim the return of Jewish communal approved by the Polish authorities. initial stage we request you distribute legal basis, namely, without proper properties directly. After this Law was During a period of one year, as of May copies of the accompanying documentation that legally establish proof passed, difficult negotiations ensued, 12, 2002, a total of 3,500 restitution questionnaire among members of your and validity to the claims. It is, therefore, accompanied by sharp divisions claims had been filed. 3,200 claims were organizations and return them to us of utmost importance to complete the between the WJRO and the Jewish filed by the General Director Eve completed and signed. The Federation attached questionnaire so that we can Communities in Poland, regarding the Anderson, of the Joint Foundation and will then transfer these forms to those register all sites and locations of Jewish property distribution between these two its staff, for properties within its who are in charge of filing restitution cemeteries in your city of origin and its parties, as well as the establishment of jurisdiction, out of which 650 was for claims in Poland, and will follow-up surroundings, and to provide any a Joint Foundation for the Communities cemeteries. At the same time, the Jewish closely all activities in this matter. documentation available to you. Even and the WJRO. Communities prepared and filed 300 CEMETERIES limited data can be useful, so please As the only legal entity recognized claims, out of which 20 were for Settling the issue of the cemeteries include it in the questionnaire. by the Polish Government to file claims cemeteries. has been a painful process till this very Kalman Sultanik is President of the Federation of for the restitution of Jewish communal At a meeting in February 2002 in day. The care of the cemeteries in Polish Jews in the U.S. and Co-Chairman of the properties, the Jewish Communities, Warsaw, with Krysztof Janik, Minister Poland was never centralized in the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heri- began filing claim for properties that of Internal Affairs & Administration of hands of a central Jewish institution. tage in Poland.

PLEASE FILL OUT THE QUESTIONNAIRE BELOW, CUT ALONG THE DOTTED LINE AND SEND THIS INFORMATION TO: THE AMERICAN GATHERING, 120 W. 30th Street, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001 Phone: (212.239.4230) QUESTIONNAIRE REGARDING JEWISH COMMUNAL PROPERTIES IN POLAND This questionnaire relates to any property owned by a Jewish community or organization in Poland on the ever of World War II. Any detail can help identifying, locating or proving such properties and/or cemeteries existed, and can to authorize us to claim their return to Jewish hands. Please complete the following questions. Even if you do not have all the information, a partial response is also helpful. 1) Type of property: Synagogue/Cemetery/Mikveh/School/Social Club/Community Center/Land/Etc.

2) Address of property: Street & No. Town

3) Does the building still exist: Yes/No. If No, is there a vacant lot or was another building constructed on this land after the War?

4) How many floors did this building have before or after the War? If you are in possession of any document relating to a communal property, such as a photograph and a plan of a building, a deed certificate, receipt of tax payments etc., please attach a copy of it to this questionnaire.

Name of Organization: Name of Signee (Print):

Address: Signature: TOGETHER 11 the daily humiliation, the quiet heroes Nazi persecution intensified, the more A HOLOCAUST who helped them, and the painful stringent the American laws were abandonment by neighbors as Jews applied. Who was responsible for BOOKSHELF were restricted to ghettos, forced to don keeping the Jews out of the United yellow stars, and loaded like cattle in States? Professor Bat-Ami proffers that the Holocaust at all. Now he has trains destined for the camps. Vivid American consuls in Germany, who compiled a summing up, so to speak, as memories of hunger, disease, and a daily were responsible for issuing visas had the survivors pass on. The coffee table- existence dependent on cruel luck in “a significant” impact on immigration sized book contains photographs from Dachau, Auschwitz, and other policy. Some of the most important legal the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum concentration camps provide penetrating clauses prohibiting visas—particularly and reminiscences of survivors and testimonies to the ruthlessness of the the ”likely to become a public charge” others to cover all aspects of the Nazi killing machine, yet they also bear one—were vague enough to allow Holocaust, from its beginnings to its witness to the resilience and fortitude the consuls to decide themselves who aftermath in the DP camps and the of individual souls bombarded by evil. qualified for admission to the United reestablishment of the Jewish people in This book also includes poignant States. By examining the role the Israel and other countries. The book recollections of American liberators who consuls played in implementing takes a look from a decidedly different were often devastated by the horrors immigration policies between 1933 and perspective and makes the past just a that they discovered after the fall of the 1941, this book provides new insights tinier bit easier to confront. Nazis. “A mix of emotions— disbelief, into how these men obstructed Jewish rage—overwhelmed us; tears blinded immigration to America. THE JUDGES: A Novel our eyes,” recalls one soldier. Flares of by Elie Wiesel (NY: A.A. Knopf, 2002) Memory, will inspire emotions that will Bat-Ami Zucker, is a senior lecturer at US$24. CAN$36. stay with you long after you finish its Bar-Ilan University in Israel. pages. The Judges is a compelling new novel that forces each character in the story Anita Brostoff is a retired Carnegie- to face himself, their pasts, damaging Mellon University Professor and secrets and death. The story is about consultant in communications. fellow passengers en route from New York to Tel Aviv whose plane is forced down by bad weather. There’s Bruce, a would-be priest turned philanderer, a woman who left her husband for a new love, an Israeli commando with a terminal disease, and a Holocaust archivist with a secret that could destroy a politician. They take refuge in the house of the The Judge, who balances the FLARES OF MEMORY: scales for all of them and condemns the stories of childhood during least worthy of them to death. The book the holocaust ed. By Anita THE HOLOCAUST ON forces readers to think about the varying Brostoff (NY: Oxford University TRIAL by D. D. Guttenplan (New definitions of philosophy, religion and Press, 2002), 344p., US$15.95. morality that we confront daily. We are York: W.W. Norton & Company, forced to ask ourselves what we are In a series of writing workshops at 2001) 224 p., US$29.95. CAN accountable for in our own lives. the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, IN SEARCH OF REFUGE: $35.99. Thought-provoking and different. survivors assembled to remember the Jews and US Consuls in Nazi pivotal moments in which the Nazis Germany 1933-1941 by Bat-Ami For those interested in a journalistic irreparably changed their lives. These Zucker (Portland,Oregon: Valentine account of the Deborah Lipstadt/David “flares of memory” invoke lost Irving Trial, this is one of the books to Mitchell, 2001) 229p., US$49.50. childhoods, preserving the voices of read. Guttenplan, a contributing editor over forty Jews from throughout Europe $66CAN. of The Nation, explains the intricacies who experienced a history that cannot of the trial and British libel laws in an be forgotten. In 1938 it became clear to many exciting and informative manner. What Flares of Memory contains a timeline German Jews they would have to distinguishes this trial from others is that that chronicles the rise of the Nazis, their emigrate to escape Hitler’s Germany. despite denials that history was not on devastating campaigns for control of When masses of innocent people sought trial, it clearly was. As Guttenplan Europe, and the successive edicts that refuge in the United States, Americans explains this was a “Holocaust trial would annihilate millions. The ninety- was faced with a moral dilemma and a without victims and without perpetrators, two brief vignettes that follow, arranged challenge to their core beliefs. George a trial in which history is judged, as well both chronologically and thematically, Washington had proclaimed that ”The as made.” Although Professor Lipstadt illuminate the terrible truths of survivors bosom of America is open to receive not won her case, the deniers will continue from Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, only the opulent and respectable stranger, their war against the Jews because they Romania, and other countries throughout but the oppressed and persecuted of all are true believers. Understanding what AFTER THE DARKNESS: Europe. Their memories recreate the nations and religions.” The Jewish transpired at the trial will help us in our Reflections on the Holocaust world of disbelief and chaos that ensued plea for sanctuary challenged the efforts to confront those who attempt to as families were separated, political country’s commitment to freedom and distort the historical record. by Elie Wiesel (NY: Schocken Books, rights were abolished, and synagogues democracy. 2002), 48p. US$20. CAN$30. and Jewish businesses were Zucker notes that the quotas for D.D. Gutenplan is a London-based writer destroyed—before and especially after Germany(25,557) and Austria for The Nation and a former contributing As Elie Wiesel likes to say, he is a Kristallnacht. “We had entered a (1,413) were inadequate to meet the editor to the Coumbia Journalism Review. professor of literature, not a Holocaust twilight zone between memories of increasing demands for immigration. Yet writer. He is a man who is a seeker, earning our keep and the fear of except for 1939, these quotas were not who wants answers, and so most of his becoming game during hunting season,” fully used because of American books do not deal with the subject of writes one survivor. Others remember bureaucratic red tape. Significantly, as continued on pg. 13

TOGETHER 12 continued from pg. 12 ing. Their own ferocity threatens to over- whelm them until a fortuitous encoun- A HOLOCAUST ter with an orphaned girl sets the men on a course of action—rescuing Jewish BOOKSHELF war orphans and transporting them to Palestine—that will not only change their Olomouc. The photographs were brought to policies affect Jewish workers? And lives but also help create a nation and the camp by one family or by those living what can we learn about the motivation forever alter the course of world his- in one house, but they arrived on of the local perpetrators? As always, tory. the same transport. Browning has a done a masterful job in Such Parts of the photographic marshalling his evidence. is the in- collection were displayed in Poland, used troduc- in a film and in books, but they did not Professor Browning is Frank Porter Graham tion to show the entire collection at one time Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His publications include: this no- because they had been glued on pages Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and holds that could not be easily separated. After the Final Solution in Poland (1992); The Path to barred, painstakingly restoring the photographs, Genocide (1992); Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution (1985); and lean re- the Auschwitz Museum decided to publish The Final Solution and the German Foreign telling of the collection in memory of the Jews who Office (1978). He is currently writing a two volume SECOND GENERATION study of Nazi Jewish policy during the Second VOICES: Reflections by three died and to help those who survived World War, as part of Yad Vashem’s multi-volume Children of Holocaust members reconnect to their past. Copies of the comprehensive history of the Holocaust. He is of the photographs were sent to Holocaust also working on a case study of the Jewish slave Survivors and Perpetrators labor camp in Starachowice in central Poland, by Alan L. Berger and Naomi famed museums in Germany, Washington, and based on nearly 170 survivor testimonies. Berger Editors (Syracuse: Syracuse Jewish Brigade whose personal stories to the worldwide Jewish organization of University Press, 2001) 378p., act as the focal point for this story. There Jews from Zaglebie in Tel Aviv. US$24.95. CAN$33.50 are no artistic perambulations, no flow- Pictures of families, vacation haunts, ery phrases to describe the glory of war city streets full of people, holidays and Although members of the second in Blum’s extensively researched tale. every day life provided a whole new generation, children of Holocaust The story is told briskly, yet often packed perspective to the losses sustained. This survivors, did not experience life in the with emotion. One cannot help but be book, with its companion catalogue explaining concentration camps, they live in the amazed at the audacity and courage of what is known about each picture, an essay on shadow of the camps. As such, they those who sought payback for Nazi conversations that were held with the have questions about their identity as atrocities but in the process found them- survivors, and the history of the Jews of Bedzin Jews and as children of survivors, their selves reborn. make this a powerful and touching work. connection to the Shoah and to their As a reporter for the New York Times, parents, and where they fit into the Howard Blum was twice nominated for the history of the Holocaust. This legacy Pultizer Prize. Currently, he is contributing edi- effects their identity, their concerns for tor to Vanity Fair. HOLOCAUST: A History by multicultural issues, and social justice. At the same time, there is Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van another second generation, descen- Pelt (New York: W.W. Norton & dants of perpetrators, about whom very Company, 2002) 444p., US$27.95 little is known. This German second CAN$39.99 generation has to confront a repressed past in which the Shoah is not This one volume history of the acknowledged by their families. Holocaust is a remarkable and elegantly In this anthology of 29 essays, written work of scholarship. Deborah German and Jewish members of the NAZI POLICY, JEWISH Dwork, Director of Holocaust and second generation provide personal WORKERS, GERMAN Genocide Studies at Clark University, accounts of their search for their roots, and Robert Jan van Pelt, a professor of KILLERS by Christopher R.. their journey to the birth places of their cultural history at the University of Browning (Cambridge, England: parents and to the extermination and Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario have BEFORE THEY Cambridge University Press, 2000), concentration camps, questions of faith PERISHED: Photographs added an important dimension to our and doubt, inheriting parental trauma, 185p., US$49.95 CAN$66.50. under-standing of this cataclysmic event confronting a repressed past and is Found in Auschwitz Given the controversy surrounding by placing the Shoah in the context of dialogue possible? by Kersten Brandt (Munich:Gina the slave-labor reparations settlement in the political, social and cultural history Keyahoff Publishers,2001)Text Germany, Professor Browning’s book of of the period. In searching for the volume with 134 p.,; reproduction essays is very timely and an important origins of the Holocaust, they argue THE BRIGADE: An Epic volume with 492 p.,US $145. contribution to our understanding of the convincingly that the Europe that allowed the Story of Vengeance, When the Jews arrived at the events leading up to the Final Solution. Holocaust “was not created in 1933” but Salvation, and WWII concentration and extermination camps Originally presented as lectures at was rooted socially and politically in the by Howard Blum (NY: Perennial, they were stripped of their clothing and Cambridge University, Browning medieval kingdoms that superseded the 2002), 326p., US$13.95. their personal belongings. A collection of discusses some of the most contro- Roman Empire. Using letters, archival CAN$20.95. 2,400 photographs showing Jewish life versial questions being debated among documents, survivor testimony, diaries November 1944. The British govern- before the war was found after the Holocaust scholars today: How did the and maps, the authors weave a personal ment finally agrees to send a brigade liberation at Auschwitz either at the Nazi policy toward the Jews evolve dimension into the narrative that is full of 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Pal- barracks of “Kanada” or on or near the during the first years of the war? When of poignant quotes and illustrations. The estine to Europe to fight the German grounds of the camp. did they decide to initiate the total people have names, families and army. But when the war ends and the Today the photographs are part of and systematic destruction of the Jewish histories. Activities of the rescuers, soldiers witness firsthand the horrors the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum people? How did the Nazis reconcile including Jewish ones—an area which their people have suffered in the con- archives. The largest number of their need for Jewish slave labor during is often overlooked—provides an centration camps, the men launch a photographs belonged to a few the war with their obsession to wipe understanding of the difficulties they brutal and calculating campaign of ven- Jewish families from Zaglebie-Bedzin, them off the face of the earth? What had to surmount and why so few people geance, forming secret squads to iden- Sosnowiec and vicinity. Other photo- role, if any, did the local authorities play were able or willing to assume this tify, locate, and kill Nazi, officers in hid- graphs are from Lodz, Warsaw, Leipzig and in these decisions? How did these role. An important and vital book. TOGETHER 13 Russia over the past half-century and asset lists Nazis ordered 40,000 Jewish warn that antisemitism still plagues the citizens to submit in 1938 to prove that NEWS BRIEFS country. The ceremony at a synagogue the banks held seized funds. The lists, dedicated to victims of the Holocaust which include detailed explanations of THERESIENSTADT NAZI DEATH MARCH commemorated the Aug. 12, 1952, Jewish citizens’ bank accounts, FLOODED MUSEUM FIREBOMBED execution of 13 members of the Jewish investments, furniture and appraised TEREZIN, Czech Republic (AP) – BERLIN (AP) - German authorities Anti-Fascist Committee in the basement jewelry, remained in Austrian archives. Theresienstadt, where 10,000 Holocaust posted a $10,000 reward for clues of Lubyanka, the infamous Moscow The case began in 1998, when attorneys victims are buried at the former Nazi leading to an arrest in the worst building that was headquarters of the filed against Austrian and German banks concentration camp, was swamped last antisemitic attack on a Holocaust Soviet secret police. for converting customers’ assets and fall by floodwaters, submerging memorial in a decade, the firebombing profiting from slave labor. Qualified gravestones under a vast, muddy lake. of a museum honoring the victims of a CALIFORNIA PASSES victims should receive at least $5,000 The water Nazi death march in early September. each from the settlement. and sewage, The attack destroyed the main exhibition TWO HOLOCAUST RELATED BILLS rising as high of the death march museum in the RESURRECTING WAR as 10 feet in Belower Woods, which detailed how the California, JTA—State legislators places, were Nazis drove concentration camp inmates passed a bill to create a Holocaust CRIMES LAWS IN pumped into deeper into Germany as the Soviet Army education center to provide teachers BELGIUM the nearby advanced at the end of World War II. with training and tools. Another bill, JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel told Ohre River, The area had not seen such a serious which was subsequently signed into law Belgium’s ambassador that two and authori- attack on a Holocaust site since 1992, by Governor Gray Davis, extends the proposed Belgian laws could be used to ties in the when neo-Nazis burned the rebuilt prisoner deadline on claims to recover Holocaust- prosecute Prime Minister Ariel Sharon town of barracks inside the Sachsenhausen era artwork to Dec. 31, 2010. and other Israelis for alleged war crimes. Terezin may concentration camp outside Berlin. Belgian prosecutors accused Sharon of need JEW HATRED RISING IN the 1982 massacre of Palestinians by months to restore the site. In the GERMANY Lebanese Christians near Beirut. That COURT DENIES EX- case - filed under a 1993 law granting meantime, no visitors are allowed. BERLIN (AP) - A new survey shows NAZI’S REQUEST Belgian courts “universal jurisdiction” About 250,000 people visit Terezin antisemitism is on the rise in Germany, BERLIN (AP) – A former Nazi labor over war crimes committed anywhere each year. Only the two memorials on with more than a quarter of people camp commandant convicted of in the world - was dismissed in June by either side of the cemetery, a Star of surveyed saying they believe Jewish murdering Jewish prisoners must serve a Belgian appeals court because Sharon David and a cross wound with a crown influence is too great and 17% saying 10 more years of his life sentence, a does not live in Belgium. That ruling now of thorns, remained visible. The camp they believe Hitler would be viewed as court ruled Friday, arguing that his is being appealed. One of the proposed is about 35 miles outside the Czech “particularly cruel’’ crimes outweighed capital, Prague. laws would allow suspected war concern over the 90-year-old’s frailty. criminals to be tried in absentia. The law, Josef Schwammberger was convicted if passed, would be retroactive and could HOLOCAUST DENIAL in 1992 in the deaths of hundreds of possibly reopen the case against Sharon. SYMPOSIUM NO Jews during his time as commandant at The second proposed law would grant SURPRISE several SS labor camps near Krakow, Belgian courts jurisdiction over cases American Jewish Congress President Poland, from 1942 and 1944. In a that cannot be brought before the newly and Second Generation member Jack routine review the state court said the formed International Criminal Court. a great statesman if not for the Rosen responded angrily to the “physically aged’’ Schwammberger has The U.N.-sponsored court can only Holocaust. Researchers at the antisemitic conference organized by the served 15 years on Nov. 12 this year prosecute people for crimes committed University of Leipzig and Berlin’s Free Zayed Center for Coordination and but cannot be considered for release after its formation July 1, 2002. Israeli University said the increase in Follow-Up in Abu Dhabi. “Anyone because of the seriousness of his crimes and Belgian leaders have not exchanged antisemitism was greater in western who would expect better from the and because he avoided prosecution until visits and there is virtually no dialogue Germany than in the former communist Arab League just doesn’t realize that 1987. between the countries because of the east. The findings come after neo-Nazis the League and its member states have Sharon case. Recent acts of firebombed a museum honoring the been supporters of and participants in antisemitism have further strained JEWISH VILLAGE victims of the Nazi death march through Nazi and neo-Nazi activities both relations between the two countries. CREATES Belower Woods, northwest of Berlin in during World War II and ever since. REMEMBRANCE eastern Germany. Some 28% said It should come as no surprise, CENTER Jewish influence was too great, while therefore, that the League is now KRISTALLNACHT 2002 Florida—JAFCO, the Jewish Adoption another 32% partially agreed. Overall, denying that Nazis killed millions of BERLIN (AP)–Warning against and Foster Care Options service, was 53% of the respondents either agreed Jews—even as they encouraged the resurgent antisemitism, Berlin’s Jewish founded in 1992 to provide foster and or partially agreed with the statement Nazis to commit genocide during the community marked the 64th anniversary adoptive homes and services to abused, that “more than others, Jews cheat and Holocaust. What should be of the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, seen neglected and at-risk Jewish children in use tricks in their work in order to get surprising,” Rosen said, “is that the as a precursor to the Holocaust Several South Florida. A new Jewish Children’s nations of Europe have accepted what they want.’’ hundred people, among them German Village will open later this year and these purveyors of bigotry into the Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and includes a Children’s Holocaust family of nations.” He then called on $40 MILLION Israeli Ambassador Shimon Stein, Remembrance Center–the concept and the nations of Europe to educate the gathered at the city’s main Jewish artistic plan for the center have recently SETTLEMENT Arabs about their own bloody past, and been completed by reknown artist REACHED WITH TWO confess to having committed the Kenneth Triester. If you are interested AUSTRIAN BANKS Holocaust. “The fact that the very in being involved with JAFCO and its (From the Washington Post) Survivors same Arab League whose members programs contact: Vicki S. Katz (954) began receiving the first checks from a would be expected to establish full and 749-7230 Fax (954) 749-7231 email: historic $40 million settlement reached friendly relations with Israel according [email protected] with two Austrian banks that Nazis to last spring’s Saudi peace plan are seized in 1938. The case marks one of still denying the Holocaust, sends a the first payouts to Holocaust victims powerful message that Arab JEWS MARK KILLING OF whose funds were stolen more than 60 governments remain committed to the ANTI-FASCISTS years ago. More than 1,000 survivors ‘big lie’ that for more than half a century MOSCOW (AP)–Jews gathered in a and their relatives held funds in Bank has fueled Arab efforts to eliminate the Moscow synagogue Monday to reflect Austria and Creditanstalt, which were Jewish state,” Rosen said. on the improvement of their condition in seized by the Nazis. Lawyers used the continued on pg. 15 TOGETHER 14 continued from pg. 14 $96,000, was recovered last year in community center, that stands on the site Bavaria’s Chiemsee Lake. Bavarian NEWS BRIEFS of a synagogue destroyed Nov. 9, 1938. officials are weighing whether the 20- By the time the rampage ended on Nov. inch-high cauldron is simply “discovered WARSAW DEDICATES initiated after revelations that Poles 10, more than 1,000 synagogues had been treasure,’’ which would give the diver JANUSZ KORCZAK carried out a massacre previously destroyed. In the following days, several equal ownership rights with the state MEMORIAL blamed on the Nazis. hundred people were killed or committed The 1,500-page, two-volume report government. The cauldron is decorated WARSAW, suicide. A surge in hate crimes in 2000 Around Jedwabne, brings together with Celtic figures, which ARD Poland (AP)– prompted the German government to details of incidents that have shaken television said suggests it was made on Last August, a launch a crackdown on right wing many Poles’ view that they were only the orders of a top Nazi ideologist, Alfred memorial was extremism - including an application to victims in World War II. Rosenberg, who drew inspiration from dedicated to outlaw the far-right National Democratic “It brings to light information that was mythology. Janusz Party, which officials blamed for so far buried in the archives and puts Korczak, who encouraging that increase. the facts in a broad perspective, ran an orphan- HUMANIZING HITLER? reflecting all the complexity of the age in the TORONTO (AP)–It’s a delicate events,” Pawel Machcewicz, the editor MEMORIAL DEDICATED Warsaw Ghetto matter, putting a human face on a of the report, told the Associated Press. IN VIENNA and chose to monster. Two entries at the Toronto While the survivors named dozens of Vienna—A memorial to the 65,000 stay with the children in his care as they International Film Festival presented victims and perpetrators, Machcewicz Austrian Jews who perished in the went together into the gas chambers at personal, often uncomfortable glimpses said it was hard to establish figures for Holocaust was unveiled in the city’s Treblinka on Aug. 5, 1942. Hundreds stood of Adolf Hitler, one in a fictional setting the number of Jews killed by Poles central synagogue recently. Vienna’s in the rain at Warsaw’s Jewish as an aspiring artist, the other in real, because of conflicting testimony and head rabbi, Paul Chaim Eisenberg, Cemetery while Sandra Joseph, a child firsthand recollections from an aide. The lack of other evidence. described the memorial as a “symbolic psychologist, who donated the $19,000 feature film, Max, stars John Cusack A government institute began grave” for Austria’s Jewish Holocaust for the bronze statue of Korczak as a fictional Jewish gallery owner in investigating the persecution of Jews by victims. “One-third of Austria’s Jews walking into the gas chamber with the Munich at the end of World War I who Poles in northeastern Poland two years were murdered, and most of them never orphans, eulogized the good doctor. becomes mentor to angry young painter ago, after a Polish emigre historian, had a grave or a gravestone,” he said Korczak, born Hirsz Goldszmit in Hitler (Noah Taylor). The documentary, Tomasz Gross, published a book claiming Dozens of people, including President Warsaw in 1878 or 1879, was a pedia- Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary, offers that Poles murdered as many as 1,600 Thomas Klestil, gathered under the sky- trician who wrote books for children, a rare account of the dictator from of their Jewish neighbors in the village blue, star-studded domed ceiling of the broadcast radio talks on education and Traudl Junge, one of his private of Jedwabne. synagogue to inaugurate the memorial, ran two orphanages, one for Jewish secretaries from 1942-45, who had Previously, Poland had blamed the which bears the names of the Austrian children and another for non-Jews. declined to tell her story publicly for massacre on German forces, and the victims. almost 60 years. The film is condensed revelation lead to painful soul-searching from 10 hours of interviews last year SURVIVORS GATHER among Poles, many of whom could not ENCYCLOPEDIA with Junge, who died in February at age FOR HOLOCAUST believe that their countrymen were ORDERED TO AX 81. The movie shows a disturbingly CENTER involved. PASSAGE human side to Hitler, portraying him as FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. (AP)— The investigation by the Institute of PARIS (AP)–A French court ordered a disillusioned war veteran whose About 30 survivors of the Holocaust National Remembrance put the number the publisher of France’s leading frailties–envy, fear, loneliness– placed bricks on what will become part of victims at Jedwabne as high as 1,000, reference book to remove from its next transformed him into a fiend. of a new Holocaust Memorial Center. Machcewicz said. edition a passage that raises questions Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig, founder of In compiling their report, researchers about the number of people killed in the RIEFENSTAHL FILM the center and himself a Holocaust dug out records from 1946-58 Holocaust. The ruling came after AIRS; OLD survivor, said it’s important for people investigations and trials and translated publisher Robert Laffont failed to heed CONTROVERSY BURNS who witnessed so much destruction to written testimonies that Jewish an earlier order in 2001 to remove the COLOGNE, Germany, (Reuters)– be part of the center’s construction. survivors gave to a regional Jewish passage from the Encyclopedies Quid German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl Rosenzveig told the survivors the new history commission. by 2003. The reference guide is updated wanted to make center will “embody the best in human Survivors told of crimes from robbery each year. In a section on World a comeback nature that you so nobly personify.” to pogroms across the northeast of War II extermination camps, the with her first Officials recently broke ground on the Poland in the weeks after the Nazi book says that the official movie in half a 51,000-square-foot building in invasion in 1941. In most places, the number of deaths at Auschwitz- century, but her Farmington Hills, 15 miles northwest of aggression against Poland’s Jews was Birkenau was 1.2 million. past haunted Detroit. It’s scheduled to open in planned and inspired by the Nazis—but However, it adds that “other her with a September 2003. not everywhere, Machcewicz said. figures have circulated’’ and threatened Since it opened in 1984 on the Jewish The report also draws on the records cites one by a revisionist lawsuit about Community Center in Oakland County’s of about 60 investigations and trials in historian, Robert Faurisson, who her last feature- West Bloomfield township, the existing the years after the war, when Poland claims that 150,000 people died length film in Holocaust Memorial Center has become came under communist rule. at the camp, of which 100,000 were 1954. The director of Triumph of the one of the state’s top tourist destinations At that time, some 93 Poles were Jews. Judge Marie-Therese Feydau Will, a documentary on Adolf Hitler’s and a regular field trip site for charged with crimes against Jews in 23 refused to grant destruction of 300,000 1934 Nuremberg Rally, premiered schoolchildren. locations. Seventeen people were copies, but ordered the publishers to Underwater Impressions on European About 2,000 Holocaust survivors and convicted and received sentences remove the offensive passage from its television a week before her 100th their heirs live in Michigan. ranging from prison terms to the death 2004 edition and its Internet site. birthday. The 45-minute celebration of penalty. One was executed. underwater life mostly in the Indian POLISH CRIMES “The facts were not known at the GERMANY DECIDES ON Ocean created a calm impression in AGAINST JEWS national scale because there was no free TREASURE’S OWNER stark contrast to her black and white press in Poland then and no papers DETAILED wrote about them,” Machcewicz said. MUNICH, Germany (AP) - Officials Nazi-era work that led to a postwar WARSAW, Poland (AP)—Poles are trying to determine who should get boycott. Her comeback was marred by Witold Kulesza, the institute’s chief committed wartime crimes against their investigator, said the issue was also a solid gold cauldron that was found in charges that Riefenstahl had long lied Jewish neighbors in at least 24 places, a overshadowed by hundreds of large- a German lake by a diver and may have about the fate of more than 100 gypsies government researcher recently scale trials against Nazis. been sunk there by the Nazis. The from Nazi camps who were used as announced. “There was nothing in the court cauldron, which weighs 23 pounds and extras in her movie Tiefland between The claim was released in advance contains gold worth an estimated 1940-42. The film premiered in 1954. of the publication of a report on a study continued on pg. 16 TOGETHER 15 Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation’s memories of a once-vibrant Jewish third annual Witness to Justice Award. culture in Poland, Russia and Lithuania NEWS BRIEFS In a recent telephone interview with The have been subsumed by sorrowful continued from pg. 15 The women were reunited by the Associated Press, he said“It is a kind of images of the Holocaust. She said she records to suggest that the communists Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, a solid validation for me of what I tried to hopes her museum could remedy that. were trying to put a lid on the nonprofit organization that identifies, do as a novelist.” The Shtetl Museum would combine information,” Kulesza said. honors and supports non-Jews who Sophie’s Choice won the National elements of several old European Of 3.5 million Jews in Poland before saved Jews during the Holocaust. The Book Award and later was adapted into villages, including Eliach’s own World War II, about 3 million died in the group provides monthly financial a movie, starring Meryl Streep who won Lithuanian hometown, Eishyshok. A Nazi Holocaust. About 20,000 live in the assistance to more than 1,700 aged and an Academy Award for her stone-brick castle would house the country today. needy rescuers, including Kopec, in 27 performance. shtetl’s library and arts center. A market countries. The Auschwitz Jewish Center square is expected to feature era- ACCORD ON NAZI- Kopec, a devout Catholic, said to Foundation was established in 1995 “to appropriate drugstores, restaurants and LOOTED PAINTINGS reporters: “Whoever believes in God and support the creation of a Jewish cultural barbershops. Visitors would be able to and educational center in Oswiecim (the marry in the shtetl’s synagogues. A Jewish family reached an whoever is religious will never turn Polish name for Auschwitz), Poland.’’ The ambitious plan carries an agreement with a German art museum away from another person. They will Organization founder Fred Schwartz, is estimated $100 million price tag. The over a painting looted during the always help another human being,’’ she a close friend of Styron’s. foundation received $2 million from an Holocaust era. Terms of the agreement said. “That’s what I was taught.’’ Previous winners of the prize include Israeli company and has collected tens negotiated by New York state´s Jewish Foundation for the Righteous: former U.S. envoy Stuart Eizenstat, for of thousands of dollars in the United Holocaust Claims Processing Office for http://www.jfr.org. his help obtaining compensation for States through individual donors. the Bamberger family and the Kunsthalle Holocaust survivors, and HBO for the Eliach also compiled hundreds of museum in Emden, Germany, were not film “Conspiracy,” about the Nazis’ interviews she had conducted with announced. But the museum will get to decision to exterminate the Jews. villagers from her shtetl to create her keep Emil Nolde’s “Bauernhof,” or 1998 book, “There Once Was a Town: “Farm.” In 1940, Elizabeth Bamberger SWISS PROPOSE A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of left the painting behind when she was Eishyshok,” a finalist for the National forced to flee Germany. Bamberger REVERSING Book Award. “I feel I belong to the last survived the war and began searching CONVICTIONS generation of survivors who still for the painting, and her heirs later The Swiss government backed a remember the past,” Eliach said. continued the search. After changing proposal to overturn the wartime “Therefore, I believe it’s important to hands several times, the painting was convictions of people who broke laws build it as fast as possible.” acquired by the museum in 1984. then in effect when they sheltered Jews and others fleeing Nazi Germany. AGENCY MOUNTS SYNAGOGUE SEARCH FOR ORIGINAL VANDALIZED IN “Rehabilitation of people who aided refugees should take place because BLUE CARDS AND WESTERN FRANCE convictions no longer can be seen as Vandals broke into a synagogue in IDAHO’S ANNE FRANK RELATED DOCUMENTS just from today’s vantage point,” the Perigueux, in the Dordogne NEW YORK—The Blue Card, the only MEMORIAL UNVEILED Justice Ministry said Monday. It issued region,southwestern France, ransacking BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Last August, agency in the United States providing the statement after the Swiss Cabinet the sanctuary and destroying holy books human rights advocates and state cash to needy Holocaust survivors and supported a legislative commission´s in early December 2002. Rolph officials dedicated the Anne Frank their children, is mounting a search for suggestion to reverse the convictions. Hammel, one of the synagogue’s Human Rights Memorial, a counterpoint original Blue Cards. The Blue Cards, officials, said the vandals ripped apart to the state’s reputation as a home to letters and other documentations of the paintings and holy books inside the white separatists. The $1.5 million A SHTETL GROWS IN agency’s work over the last 65 years temple and stole money hidden in an riverside memorial features a reflective ISRAEL will be added to the organization’s archives, which will be offered to office. The synagogue is 50 yards from pond, waterfalls and an amphitheater. Dr. Yaffa Eliach, retiring chairman of the town’s police headquarters and But the centerpiece is a bronze statue the Judaic Studies Department at museums with exhibits on the municipal offices.It was the first of Anne Frank peering out from an attic Brooklyn College, founder of the Center Holocaust. reported attack on a Jewish target in window. “We understand this space…as a for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn-the Donations of documents or queries France in several months. sentinel–keeping vigil for human rights and first center of its kind in New York- should be directed to: Ms. Sandra French Interior Minister Nicholas inspiring and challenging us to keep that teacher, author and lecturer Weisel, Exec. Dir., The Blue Card, One Sarkozy urged legislators to back a vigil today, and tomorrow, and every day extraordinaire and architect of the West 34th Street, Suite 404, New York, proposed law that would toughen in Idaho,’’ said the Rev. Nancy Taylor, Tower of Eishyshok at the U.S. NY 10001. Telephone: (212) 239-2251. penalties for antisemitic and racist acts. former pastor of the First Congregational Holocaust Memorial Museum, is doing All donated materials will be credited Church of Christ in Boise. Idaho, the something new. She isn’t growing a tree with the name of the donor. HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR longtime home of the Aryan Nations and in either Brooklyn or Israel; she’s The Blue Card was founded in Germany in 1937 to help Jews who were REUNITES WITH other white separatist groups, began building a 124-acre shtetl in Rishon Le planning the memorial in 1995. “We’ve Zion. early victims of persecution, and was RESCUER got to understand that there’s great It’s planned as an interactive museum, reestablished in the United States by Holocaust survivor Sally Charsinsky was wisdom and great value in different with two synagogues, a market square, people who were recent refugees recently reunited with Anna Kopec, the cultures,’’ said philanthropist and Idaho a library and a fortified castle, all themselves. At that time, Blue Cards woman who saved her life, at John F. native Greg Carr, whose foundation remnants of a bygone era, available for were circulated among the immigrant Kennedy International Airport. donated $500,000 to the Boise memorial. public use. Jewish population in the United States. Kopec, 83, and her husband, ‘“There is always a major focus on A series of commemorative stamps Stanislaw, hid Charsinsky’s father and death and destruction,” said Eliach. were created, and a stamp was issued brother in a room of their home in SOPHIE’S CHOICE WINS “When people go to Eastern Europe, all to cardholders to mark each donation. Sowina, Poland during the Holocaust, JUSTICE AWARD they see is concentration camps. I The mission of The Blue Card is to often hiding the young girl, too. Once NEW YORK (AP) - For more than 20 wanted to restore the great Jewish provide direct financial assistance, with she posed as a relative from out of town years, William Styron’s “Sophie’s past.” a minimum of obstacles, to needy Jewish when the Nazis came looking for Jews. Choice” (1979), has been praised as a The goal is to recreate daily life in survivors of Nazi persecution and their “I can’t do enough for her. She sacrificed novelist’s worthy dramatization of towns that were essentially decimated children in the United States. The her life for my family,’’ said Charsinsky, human cruelty and criticized as a by the Nazis. Eliach, 65, a scholar in organization is dedicated to meeting the 79, who married an American and now gentile’s limited view of the Holocaust. Eastern European history and a lives in Longport, N.J. Now the author has received the Holocaust survivor, said she worries that continued on pg. 17 TOGETHER 16 continued from pg. 16 The Austrian government had sought to have the case dismissed, arguing any NEWS BRIEFS needs of survivors unmet by other lawsuit should be pursued in Austria. agencies, public and private. But the appeals court said the Foreign protesters, “Whether you like it or not, “Our hope,” says Joseph, “is that no To find out more about The Blue Sovereign Immunities Act puts the case you have placed yourself alongside the visitor to the garden will leave Card programs and events, call 212-239- within U.S. jurisdiction. Nazis.” unchanged; that through an 2251. “There’s never been any doubt in my The street originally had been named understanding of the Holocaust all who mind that these paintings need to be Judenstrasse, German for “Jews’ come will be touched by the beauty and BABI YAR IN TURMOIL returned to my client,” said Altmann’s Street.” But in 1938, Nazi officials— endurance of the human spirit.” KIEV, Ukraine, Nov. 4 (JTA)—Efforts attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg. “The objecting to names that had a Jewish are under way to broker a compromise Austrians have no defense other than reference or glorified representatives U.S. COURT UPHOLDS over a proposed community center at the jurisdiction issue.” of opposing ideologies—renamed the HOLOCAUST-ERA the site of the Babi Yar killings. Klimt was a founder of the Vienna street Kinkel-strasse after Gottfried DISCLOSURE RULING Secession art movement that for many Opponents of a plan for the center have Kinkel, a 19th-century German The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals became synonymous with Jugendstil, written an open letter to the Ukrainian revolutionary figure. in San Francisco recently refused to the German and central European president, expressing their misgivings. Since the mid-1980s, the local branch review a three-judge panel’s decision version of art nouveau. At issue is a multimillion-dollar project of the Free Democratic Party has that California-licensed insurers and Altmann, 86, filed the suit in 2000, saying financed by the American Jewish Joint campaigned to restore the original name reinsurers must disclose information the Nazis stole the paintings from Bloch, Distribution Committee to build a of the street, located in Berlin’s Spandau about Holocaust-era insurance policies who died in exile in Switzerland in 1945. district. that affiliates sold in Europe. In recent decades, many pre-Nazi Last July the panel unanimously REMEMBRANCE names—as well as names changed by overturned a federal trial judge’s order Estonia’s Ministry of Education has Communist officials in the former East that blocked enforcement of a 1999 announced that an annual Holocaust Germany—have been restored California law: the Holocaust Victim Memorial Day will be insti-tuted in the throughout Germany. Insurance Relief Act. The same panel Baltic republic’s schools. The day will Elsewhere in Berlin, politicians and this week refused to rehear the case. be on January 27, the anniversary of religious leaders are fighting to change The appellate decision effectively means the liberation of the Auschwitz death the name of another street. California is entitled to require disclosure camp. According to them, the street should as a condition of holding an insurance be named for Protestant Bishop Kurt license, and that the state is not community center at Babi Yar, a ravine RESTORATION Scharf, who died in 1990. It currently is attempting to regulate transactions on the outskirts of Kiev where some German Culture Minister Julian Nida- named for 19th-century historian outside its borders. 33,000 Jews were killed in September Ruemelin has laid a foundation stone at Heinrich von Treitschke, who coined the California’s Holocaust Victim 1941. An estimated 200,000 people in the former Sachsenhausen concen- phrase “The Jews are our misfortune.” Insurance Relief Act of 1999 requires total were slaughtered there during the tration camp near Berlin, inaugurating a Another case revolves around a street insurers to disclose the status of life course of the war. The Heritage Center $14 million project to repair or replace in the Grunewald section of Berlin. A street insurance policies sold to Europeans was originally designed to include a badly weathered existing monuments there likely will be renamed next month to between 1920 and 1945, even if that museum, research institute and and turn the site into a vivid Holocaust honor Jewish educator Toni Lessler, means local insurers must obtain the community center with a theater. But memorial. who founded a school there in 1939. information from affiliated companies since details were revealed at a public An estimated 120,000 of the 204,000 The street currently is named for the located overseas. forum held in Kiev last May, the project mostly Jewish people interned there late theologian Reinhold Seeberg, who The circuit court panel rejected the has divided the capital’s Jewish between 1936 and 1945 died of wrote antisemitic texts. industry’s assertion that the statute community. Proponents see it as a way mistreatment and starvation, and many essentially forces European insurers to to help build Jewish life in a community more were deported to the Auschwitz HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL turn over policy information, because of at least 80,000 Jews. Opponents of death camp at the hands of the Nazis OPENS IN SALT LAKE CITY those insurers have the information in the plan object to the idea of constructing SALT LAKE CITY—A Holocaust their files. anything on top of what they consider a RIGHTEOUS GENTILES Memorial, donated by John Price, U.S. Several insurers challenged the law, mass grave—and object in particular to The French mountain village of Le Ambassador to the Mauritius, opened contending it interfered with the US the theater. Opponents would like to see Chambon-sur-Lignon has announced in September at the I.J. and Jeanne federal government’s control of the 7,000-square-meter project plans for a museum detailing the villagers’ Wagner Jewish Community Center in foreign affairs. But the court said a divided—with a memorial or, at most, a rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. Salt Lake City. The Price Family California insurance company that museum located at Babi Yar, and the During the Nazi occupation of Holocaust Memorial was designed by claimed it had no control over foreign main community center constructed France, the village became a haven at Wendy Evans Joseph Architecture of insurance information had several elsewhere in the city. the urging of local Protestant ministers, New York. Two elements comprise the options under the law: travel abroad Both sides claim to have the support and an estimated 5,000 Jews found Memorial: an exhibition and a garden. to examine the records; cut its of the majority of the local Jewish shelter in Le Chambon and surrounding One informs and teaches, the other connections to the foreign affiliate; or population. And the results of a soil hamlets. inspires and provides space for do nothing and risk losing its California analysis commissioned by the steering contemplation. license. The ruling also rejected the committee indicating there are no human WHAT’S IN A STREET “The garden has no specific or implicit insurers’ claim they were being remains under the proposed Heritage NAME? references to the concentration camps, unconstitutionally singled out for site have not appeased critics. BERLIN (JTA)—The battle to the Nazi regime or other abuses of war,” punishment after the fact. overcome Germany’s Nazi past is being says Ms. Joseph. “Instead, it is a tribute COURT: WOMAN CAN fought over many issues, including one to the Jewish people and their ability to MASS GRAVE SUE AUSTRIA FOR ART that might at first blush seem innocuous survive.” Authorities in the former Soviet SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal — street names. A recent street-naming The wood used in the garden was republic of Belarus have discovered a appeals court recently ruled that a Los ceremony here proved anything but salvaged from the nearby Great Salt mass grave outside of Slutsk, with the Angeles woman can sue the Austrian innocuous. Lake. Preserved in salt, as if in tears, it remains of as many as 12,000 people government in U.S. court to try to During the ceremony, at which a serves as a sun shelter, a shutter or an murdered during World War II. recover six Gustav Klimt paintings she street was renamed Judenstrasse, inviting bench. Glass aggregate laid in Between 1942 and 1944, Jews from says Nazis stole from her uncle in 1938. protesters shouted, “Jews out” and “You the ground carries from the exhibition Slutsk and prisoners from a nearby If Maria Altmann’s claims are true, the crucified Jesus.” through the glass wall. It serves as an concentration camp were executed by 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, The shouts interrupted the speech of echo of Kristlilnacht, when the SS Nazi troops and buried at the site. the paintings were taken in violation of Alexander Brenner, leader of Berlin’s soldiers destroyed many of the temples international law. Jewish community, who told the in Germany. TOGETHER 17 LETTERS & NOTICES

HELFT UNDZ BOYEN YIDISH- Dear Editor: Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation KEHILES IN 2003! 285 Clinton Park I would like to congratulate Daniel Mendelsohn on his San Francisco, CA 94103 Help create Yiddish-speaking 415-861-2525 communities and earn money! moving account of his journey to the Ukraine to unravel My name is Mitch Braff and I am the executive director Two programs from Yugntruf Youth for the details of his family’s experience during the Holocaust of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF). I Yiddish/The Yiddish Communities Fund: (What happened to Uncle Shmiel?, July 14, 2002). For am writing to request your help in finding Jewish Partisans the benefit of others seeking similar information, the from Greece, Italy, France, Yugoslavia and Belgium. JPEF * Awards to cover the costs of those is trying to locate Jewish Partisans so that we can who move closer to other Yiddish United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in interview them and preserve their unique stories of speakers Washington, D.C, house America’s leading resource on resistance. * Yiddish speakers anywhere in the the fates of Holocaust victims and survivors. Our mission is to celebrate the strength of the human The Museum’s Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors spirit over bigotry and oppression by sharing the stories world are encouraged to apply of the Jewish Partisans with students all over the world. * Deadline for applications: 1 July 2003 features a database with names and biographical We are creating a comprehensive collection of video- * Total of US$3,000 available information on over 180,000 survivors and family based interviews to be incorporated into our website, http:/ The Yiddish Apartment Database members, listed according to prewar and wartime /www.jewishpartisans.org, as well as other educational locations. Since the Museum opened in 1993, the Registry materials. Our website will be the most in-depth and * On-line information about Yiddish focused effort to document Jewish Partisan activities to speakers and where they live. Apply has facilitated hundreds of contacts between family date. today! For more information: members and other individuals. If you were a partisan we would like to speak with you www.yugntruf.org/dires In fact, just last month a survivor from Karlsruhe, about your experiences. If you know someone that was a Germany, who was searching for a childhood friend not partisan it would be a great help to us if you would tell [email protected] him or her about our organization or contact us with (212) 252-9765 knowing if she survived located her through the Registry, information on how to reach the partisan you know. Yugntruf, Inc. and they met for the first time in 64 years. With the Thank you for your help, [email protected] survivor generation diminishing with each passing year, Mitch Braff Git a kuk af undzer vebzaytl: the work of the Museum’s Registry has never been more Executive Director See our website: urgent. Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation http://www.yugntruf.org/ Those wishing additional information may contact the Museum or visit the Registry’s web site at: http://www. ushmm.org/remembrance/registry/. Helga E. Milberg 5448 E. Placita Apan Scott Miller, Director Tucson, AZ 85718 Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust I am writing to you as Holocaust survivor and member of the One Thousand Children who found Survivors new homes and refuge in America in the 1930’s and during World War II. Our story is one of triumph out of tragedy and hope rather than hopelessness. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum It is a story that should be included in the U.S. Holocaust Museum Anniversary program and perma- 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW nent exhibition. We have made this request many times to no avail and with no explanation for our exclusion. Washington, D.C. 20024 The Holocaust Museum exists to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust, so that the million of (202) 488-6130 e-mail: [email protected] deaths, imprisonments, and privations have meaning in preventing such inhumanity for ever happening again. The One Thousand Children and our families are an integral part of the Holocaust. We should not be forgotten either. Belated Memoriam Please support the efforts to include the One Thousand Children in the U.S. Holocaust Museum Anniversary program and permanent exhibition. Helen Gluck died on March 19. 1998, at the age of 73 in Los Angeles, California, at U.C.L.A. Medical Center THE PIANIST, NEW FILM OPENS IN THE U.S. after complications due to open heart surgery. Helen was born January 3, 1925 in Kisvarda, Hungary to Sandor and Bertha Rosenbaum. Helen’s mother died of cancer remained in the devastated Warsaw Ghetto. when she was a young girl of 15, leaving her to take care There, he struggled to stay alive even when of four brothers and her father, all of whom perished in cast away from those he loved. He would Auschwitz. Helen luckily survived Auschwitz and Bergen eventually reclaim his artistic gifts, and

Photos by Guy Ferrandis confront his fears, with aid from the unlikeliest Belsen death camps. source—a German officer who helped him After the war she met Leslie (who is also a survivor hide in the final days of the war. from Buchenwald and Dachau) in a displaced person’s Adrien Brody (Summer of Sam, The Thin Red camp at Feldafing. They got married in Munich, Germany, Line) portrays Mr. Szpilman. The supporting on February 1, 1948. They stepped foot on American soil The winner of the top prize, the coveted cast includes Thomas Kretschmann (Blade on March 17, 1949. Afterwards they settled in New York, Palme d’Or (Best Picture) award, at the 2002 II), Frank Finlay (The Four Musketeers), where their daughters Betty and Karen were born. They Cannes International Film Festival, The Maureen Lipman (Educating Rita), Emilia moved to California in 1958, where Helen was a Pianist is the latest film from Roman Polanski. Fox (the David Copperfield mini-series), Ed housewife and later helped Leslie open his own bakery. The film is Polanski’s most personal Stoppard (The Little Vampire), Julia Rayner Raising her two daughters was her top priority and statement, the one he has waited four decades (Topsy-Turvy), and newcomer Jessica Kate passion. Helen was also a volunteer for the City of Hope to make, a testament to the belief that the Meyer. triumph of the human spirit is wedded to the for over 25 years, giving countless hours of her time. transforming power of art. Besides her husband, her daughter Betty, director of The Pianist was adapted by U.K. Temple Ramat Zion Pre-School, and her husband Steve playwright/screenwriter Ronald Harwood Gorelick, and her two grandsons, Brian and Jeffrey were (The Dresser) from the autobiography of with her throughout her illness, as was daughter Karen, Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who an independant producer, and her husband Tom Shepos. detailed his survival during World War II. A We miss her terribly and will cherish her memories celebrated composer and pianist, he played forever. Her beauty, strength and spirit will always be the last live music heard over Polish radio remembered by her family. airwaves before Nazi artillery hit. During the brutal occupation, he eluded deportation and Leslie Gluck

TOGETHER 18 Opportunities for Former Slave Laborers: Due to changes in the German Social Security law, if you worked Conference On Jewish Material Claims within one of the following Polish Ghettos or within the annexed region Against Germany, Inc. of Poland during the time of German occupation, there are now Claims Conference website: oppportunities to: • Apply for a new German Social Security pension, or www.claimscon.org • Increase your current German Social Security pension Holocaust Compensation (Please note: Additional Polish ghettos may be considered in the near future.) Polish Ghettos: In recent negotiations, the German government agreed to pay survivors of certain camps it had previously determined were not Beichatow Bendzin Chrzanow eligible for the Claims Conference Article 2 Fund. Dombrowa Gornitza Lodz Olkusc Jewish Holocaust survivors of certain concentration camps Ozorkow Pabiance Pajenczno and forced-labor battalions in Libya, Romania, (under restricted Piotrokow TribienaIski Prystain Sieradz criteria) Czech Republic, Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia, Sosnowicz Stremiesryce Sucha Somovit in Bulgaria, and Ferramonti di Tarsia in Italy during a Trzebinia Warta Warthenau specific time period who were incarcerated for at least 6 months Wielun Zelow may now be eligible for monthly pensions from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims The German government does not usually recognize slave labor Conference). as contributing to the accumulation of pension benefits. Since 1997, Survivors currently receiving pensions from the German however, German Social Security pensions have been available to Government (under the BEG) are not eligible. Applicants who at survivors who performed labor for nominal pay in the Lodz ghetto, the time of persecution were citizens of certain Western European and were residents of Germany between 1945 and 1949. A later countries may also not be eligible. Current income will also amendment extended eligibility to certain other ghettos with similar determine eligibility. conditions in the annexed or occupied area of Poland. If an application has already been submitted for the Article 2 Now a further change in legislation is being considered by the Fund, it is not necessary to re-apply. German Houses of Parliament, which would liberalize and expand German Social Security pensions to cover work performed in all ghettos during Nazi occupation. With respect to Polish ghettos, the new legislation would extend For more information, contact: eligibility to all ghettos in annexed or occupied Poland and would Claims Conference remove the 1945 through 1949 German residency condition. Since Article 2 Fund work in the ghettos would also be evaluated on a higher scale, survivors who are currently receiving a German Social Security 535 Eighth Avenue, pension might be able to apply for an increase in their present rate 8th Floor in certain cases. New York, NY10018 We want to emphasize the above information has not yet become law. If and when these amendments pass through Parliament, we Tel: 646-536-9100 will of course inform everybody. As of now, the expected deadline Email: [email protected] Website: www.claimscon.org for filing is June 30, 2003.

DOES YOUR STATE LEGISLATURE MATCH THE FUNDS THE CLAIMS CONFERENCE GIVES TO SOCIAL SERVICES FOR ASSISTANCE TO AGING HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS?

NEW YORK STATE DOES. FLORIDA DOESN’T.

HOW ABOUT YOUR STATE? FIND OUT.

IF YOUR STATE LEGISLATURE DOESN’T SUPPORT MATCH- ING FUNDS FOR THE ELDERLY, LOBBY THEM AND MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD! ASK FOR MATCHING FUNDS.

TOGETHER 19 IN MEMORIAM

Henry C. Baigelman Vilna Great Synagogue. During the Died in June 2002. Born in Poland, Holocaust, she would entertain her 1911 to Shimon and Rivka Baigelman, fellow Jews with performances in the one of eight children. The Baigelmans ghetto, and was liberated during a death were a well-known music family with march from Dachau in 1945. She and her sister were the only members of their family to survive. Her brother, the world famous conductor, Wolf Durmashkin, was murdered a scant one hour before the march was liberated. Later, Gurko joined the St. Ottilien Orchestra, which performed in Landsberg, Feldafing and Munich in the DP Camps. She also performed with Leonard Bernstein, later director of the NY Philharmonic and composer of West establishment of annual Holocaust Helen Ross Side Story, when he came to visit the commemorations on Yom Hashoah in Died September 14, 2001. Was born camps in the aftermath of the the synagogues of his home borough of Chaia Kochaisky in Nowy Dwor, Holocaust. Gurko also performed at the Queens and for many years aserved as Poland, October 18, 1920. Helen spent Opera House in Nurenberg, where she president of the Utopia Jewish Center. much of the war in hiding and in forced a prominent music school in Lodz, and her fellow musicians wore their old His commitment to remembrance and labor in Gorky and in Kazakstan. She Poland. The family also performed in camp uniforms while performing for the to the State of Israel continued until his lost her entire family save one brother the Lodz Symphony Orchestra and in tribunal at the War Crimes Trials. She passing. who escaped the Korczak orphanage as the Jewish Theater in Warsaw. Henry and her sister recorded the album, they marched to the train to Treblinka. was a talented musician who played Songs to Remember, in 1960. On 9/11/ She lived in Israel for five years, then violin, sax and clarinet. He was also a 97, she sang the National Anthems of came to the United States to join her composer, a bandleader, and began his the U.S. and Israel at the Opening brother who had made his way to Los professional career at 16. Ceremonies of the Museum of Jewish Angeles shortly before her. He survived the Lodz Ghetto, Heritage, Living Memorial to the She moved to San Francisco and Auschwitz and a death march and was Holocaust in Lower Manhattan. In began art education at Fort Mason liberated by American troops. He and January 2000, the U.S. Holocaust Center as one of their first art students. his band, The Happy Boys, performed Memorial Museum honored her for her Her passion for life was expressed for US troops and the displaced persons musical contributions at the Displaced through her paintings, sculptures and in the camps. Persons/Life Reborn Conference in memoir, When Tears Fall Short, Henry and his wife Gita (who Washington, DC., and distributed her published two months before her death. survived the Lodz Ghetto and album on CDs. She was a graduate of She was a long time member of the World Ravesnbruck) came to the US in 1949, JTS in NYC. She is survived by three Affairs Council, San Francisco Jewish where he continued to perform. In children, Vivian Reisman, Rita Lerner Community Center, San Francisco Jewish addition to a successful musical career, and Abe Gurko, and six grandchildren. Community Agency Holocaust Survivors Henry also did very well in the real Julia Melcer Group, Commonwealth Club and a well- estate business in New York, and Nathan Magier Died in September 2002, after a short loved face in the San Francisco Marina enjoyed playing at Jewish life cycle Nathan Magier, 76, of Lake Hiawatha, illness. Mrs. Melcer was born in District. events around the city. died in Saint Claire’s Hospital in enville, Warsaw and spent the war in the Ghetto, NJ, May 1, 2002. Magier was the in various labor camps, and survived William Spitzer proprietor of Major Tile Co., Parsippany, Auschwitz. After the war she was reunited with her husband, Adam, a The founder and former Chairman of before retiring in 1985. Earlier, he had the Jewish Holocaust Survivors of been employed with the Defense Dachau survivor and her daughter Alice, a hidden child. Arizona, died July 20, 2002 in Tucson, Department of the U.S. Government for AZ. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family 18 years. A World War II Holocaust Mr. Benjamin Meed, a childhood friend and president of The American in Krakow, Poland, Bill’s parents told survivor, he was a prisoner at the him to flee when the Nazis invaded Auschwitz and Birkenauer concentration Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors eulogized Mrs. Melcer at the Poland. In Russia without proper camps.Born in Bendzien, Poland, he documents, he was arrested and came to the U.S. in 1955 and lived in funeral and told mourners how Julia and Adam worked with the sentenced to hard labor in the Gulag. Orange,NJ before moving to Lake While imprisoned, Bill was conscripted Hiawatha 48 years ago. Surviving are underground to help Jews in the Liliana, his wife of 54 years; a daughter Radom camp. Marie Pettoni and a brother, Roman. Bracha Patt Died January 23, 2002. Born Sheva Henry Major Brucha Zalcman in Warsaw in 1915, (Heinz Majorczyk) Born in Breslau, she was a member of a generation Germany, Henry was a survivor of the of idealistic Jewish activists who Holocaust. He arrived in the U.S. in 1947 believed that justice and peace are Henny Durmashkin Gurko and became a successful businessman possible in a pluralistic society. She Holocaust survivor, whose operatic and an active force in organizations arrived in America in 1940 with her singing career was about to take off dedicated to the survival of Judaism and husband, Dr. Emmanuel Patt, a when the Holocaust began, died in Israel. He was involved in the Jewish war veteran who was a camp August, 2002. She hailed from Vilna, organization of the World Gathering of liberator, and was active in Bundist, where her father and brother were Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Israel in Yiddish and community organizations, prominent musicians, and she studied 1981 and was one of the co-founders especially the Workmen’s Circle/ at the conservatory. Her father was the of the American Friends of Yad Vashem. Arbeiter Ring. cantor and wrote liturgical music for the He was at the forefront in the continued on pg. 21 TOGETHER 20 IN MEMORIAM continued from pg. 20 to 1962 and minister of religious affairs stopped writing. After the war, she by the Poles and his tank division Born from 1962 to 1974. helped organize the Jewish Committee successfully pushed the Germans back Efraim, in Innsbruck, Austria, to support and to Berlin, where he was shot in the leg called John Weitz assist the survivors. She became a by a German sniper just months before Froyim by dedicated voice for remembrance of the the end of the war. Bill returned to friends and John Weitz, 79, the fashion designer Holocaust. Her work has included Krakow at war’s end to find his only family in known for licensing a variety of volumes on Dr. Korczak, poetry, surviving brother and learn his parents Kreszow, products under his name and for his Holocaust stories and her own amazing were marched to the woods, shot and Poland in second career as a novelist and biography. An active member of buried in a mass grave. No other 1917, he historian. Weitz, a Shanghai refugee Hadassah, she was also involved in members of his large extended family was the son from Germany, came to America in many survivor organizations and survived the Nazis. In 1946 he met and of Meyer 1941 and enlisted in the US Armed societies. As she herself wrote, “I try to married Genia Lipnicka, another Polish and Sheva Forces. He worked for the OSS. In tell that story the way it happened, Holocaust survivor. As young Urma. His parents, sisters and brothers, 1943, he went behind enemy lines to because it should live in our memories immigrants, they made their new home Chaim, Ethel, Hannah, Getzel, Abraham, assist German officers plotting Hitler’s and hearts as long as the world exists.” in New York City. Arthritis forced him Gittele and Aaron Israel were killed assassination, and later was one of the to relocate to Tucson 33 Years ago, and during the Holocaust. In remarks at a liberators of Dachau. Per Anger he loved his new community and its Society meeting he said , “When I was Weitz was one of the first American people with a passion. a boy, the Poles called me a dirty Jew. fashion designers to enter into licensing Bill gave his time and energies to When I came to this country people deals in the 1950s. He licensed items anyone who needed a hand. Schooled called me a greenhorn. Now I have a in Orthodox Judaism, Bill spoke seven new name, a name I am proud of. I am languages and was unabashedly proud a Survivor.” to be an American citizen. A kind and When the Germans invaded, his gentle man, who was much loved and mother pleaded with him to flee, on the respected, Bill remained active in the off-chance that he might survive. He Jewish Holocaust Survivor’s of Arizona did as she asked. For six months he lived until his death and was the organization’s in the woods, foraging and hiding. Finally Honorary Chairman. He cared deeply he was taken in by a Christian farmer, about educating Tucson’s youth on Andreas Szeil, who hid him in the loft of Holocaust issues and leaves a strong a barn for 26 months. Per Anger, a former Swedish diplomat who and enduring legacy of Holocaust worked with Raoul Wallenberg in shielding education in the community. On July Rabbi Zorach Warhaftig like socks, neckties and men’s thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi 22nd, Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup, and Rabbi Zorach Warhaftig, who fragrances, though he had his limits. He death camps, has died. He was 88. the Tucson Human Relations persuaded the Japanese Consul in Riga, would not use his name on clothing for Anger, who was awarded honorary Commission issued a proclamation in Latvia, Chiune Sugihara, to issue transit large women, or police and airline Israeli citizenship in 2000, died in a recognition of the true humanitarianism visas to Japan, died in September in uniforms (“They wanted to tell me how exhibited by William Spitzer. Stockholm hospital after a stroke, Jerusalem. Warhaftig was also one of to design them”), or cigarettes (“I according to the Swedish Foreign 37 people who signed Israel’s thought it would be immoral”). Ministry. Dr. Laszlo Tauber Declaration of Independence. As an author, Weitz wrote Hitler’s Anger, who was working as first Hungarian-born surgeon who risked Zorach Warhaftig was born in Diplomat: The Life and Times of secretary of the Swedish Legation in his life treating sick and wounded fellow Volkovysk, in Byelorussia. He studied Joachim von Ribbentrop; Hitler’s Budapest when the Germans occupied Jews during the Holocaust and later built at various religious schools, received Banker; Man in Charge: The Hungary in 1944, began issuing a thriving surgical practice, as well as smicha, and a doctorate in law from Executive’s Guide to Grooming, temporary “Schuetzpaesse,” or making a fortune in the Washington, Warsaw University. A delegate to the Manners, and Travel, a bestseller in protective passports, that identified Jews D.C., real estate market. Dr. Tauber, Zionist Congress from 1936 until the 1974; and two novels, Friends in High as Swedes to keep them from being who arrived in the United States with outbreak of World War II, he escaped Places and The Value of Nothing. sent to Nazi death camps. little more than $700 after the war, later with his family from Warsaw the day He was soon joined by Wallenberg, used a small loan to begin buying and before the German Army arrived. In Lorraine Justman-Wisnicki who extended the practice and is developing properties and went on to Kovno, Lithuania, he set about credited with saving some 20,000 Jews become the federal government’s largest encouraging the many Polish Jews. from deportation before he was arrested private landlord. He established his own When Jan Zwartendyk began issuing in 1945 by Soviet troops and hospital in 1965, the now-closed “non-visa visas” to Curacao, Sugihara disappeared at the age of 32. Jefferson Memorial Hospital in cabled his government for instructions After the war, Anger was one of the Alexandria, VA, where he served as but received no reply and started issuing leading figures trying to learn what medical director and as chairman of the Japanese transit visas on his own happened to Wallenberg, traveling to department of surgery. Giving was also authority, allowing Polish Jews to travel Moscow in the 1980s to appeal important to Dr. Tauber, who donated by way of the Soviet Union and Japan personally to Soviet leader Mikhail tens of millions of dollars to medical to Curaçao and other destinations, Gorbachev to reveal the diplomat’s fate. research, education and Holocaust- including Palestine and the United Anger received several awards for related causes. States. his heroic actions to save Jews during Judith Leiber, the well-known In 1942, Rabbi Warhaftig moved to the war. He was awarded by the State handbag designer credits him with saving New York. He was elected to the of Israel and Yad Vashem Holocaust Died March 7, 2001, at 77. A survivor her hand during the war in Budapest. executive board of the World Jewish memorial in 1982 as a gentile who with of the Holocaust, she distinguished He also was known for serving patients Congress. In early 1947, Rabbi danger for his own life rescued Jews herself with a lifetime of courage and regardless of their ability to pay. Warhaftig moved to Jerusalem, and a tree was planted in his honor on accomplishment. As a teenager in the becoming a member of the provisional the Avenue of the Righteous in Warsaw Ghetto, she worked with the Felix Urman Israeli parliament. After Israel’s Jerusalem. In 1995, he was awarded the heroic Dr. Janusz Korczak at his Felix Urman, 84, of Cliffside Park, NJ independence, he was a member of the Hungarian Republic’s Order of Merit. and Hallandale, FL, died at Mt. Sinai new Israeli Parliament. He was deputy orphanage, writing and organizing plays Hospital in New York City in September. minister of religious affairs from 1952 for his young charges. She never continued on pg. 22 TOGETHER 21 IN MEMORIAM RESTITUTION TAX BREAK MADE PERMANENT continued from pg. 21 illness. Yitzhak was a dear friend and Legislation that would extend the editor of Together. Referring to himself tax-exempt status of reparations sense of security for these people, at as an Israeli living in New York, Yitzhak payments to Holocaust survivors was least. was a prominent journalist writing for a passed by the Senate last week under “Current estimates are that there number of Israeli newspapers and unanimous consent. Senate passage will be 88,000 Holocaust survivors in magazines, such as the Tel Aviv daily of the measure, which was initially 2010 when the tax cuts sunset,” he Maariv and local publications—the sponsored by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, R- said. “Congress should be prepared Zionist Voice, Jewish Week, Forward Fla., chairman of the House Ways to give these survivors the security and others. He also served as public and Means Social Security of at least knowing that their relations Subcommittee, comes nearly six settlement claims will not be reduced director months after the House passed the by taxes.” JJ Greenberg for Israel measure by a vote of 392-1. Senate passage of the measure Esteemed colleague of the young Jewish Bonds, the “Although no amount of money comes only weeks after Lawrence community in America and Israel, World could ever compensate the victims of Eagleburger, chairman of the responsible for many innovations, Zionist the Holocaust for the crimes International Commission on including Makor and many of the Organiz- committed against them, it would be Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, birthright israel programs he helped ation- wrong for the United States Tax Code signed an agreement with former create. He worked at the Jewish Life American to treat these modest settlements as ambassador and German Foundation Network to realize the lessons of the Section some sort of financial windfall,” Shaw representative Hans Otto Brautigam, Holocaust to reestablish a thriving and se- said at the time. The bill makes and Bernd Michaels and Jorg Freiherr Jewish community. Son of Rabbi Irving veral other permanent tax provisions exempting Frank von Furstenwerth of the and Blu Greenberg, leaders of the Jewish institutions. restitution payments to Holocaust German Insurance Association. community and leaders in Holocaust The level and nature of his writing and survivors initially passed as part of Signing the agreement triggered the Education and Commemoration, JJ editorial skills were quite impressive. He President Bush’s 2001 tax legislation, release of roughly $100 million for embodied all that was good about had exceptional qualities as a friendly the Economic Growth and Tax Relief authenticated Holocaust era Judaism. His smile was real, his chesed outgoing individual with a good sense of Reconciliation Act. The provisions in insurance claims as well as an was real, and his loss to our community humor. He had a profound love for Israeli that legislation excluded any additional $175 million for is devastating. Our condolences to his music, especially the nostalgic songs of restitution payments received by humanitarian purposes. Also under bereaved family. the early Zionist pioneering years. victims of the Nazi Regime or their the agreement, those seeking After the resignation of our founding heirs from taxation, but also included information will be provided access former editor, Alfred Lipson, he took a “sunset” provision that would have to the most comprehensive list ever over the responsibility of editor of our eliminated the exemption as of Dec. assembled of insurance policies publication, where he showed great 31, 2010. Shaw noted, however that issued to Jewish resident of Germany understanding for the interest of the many Holocaust survivors would during the Nazi era. survivors community, introducing some outlive the provisions if they are new ideas both in the editorial and Copyright 2002 American Banker-Bond allowed to sunset, and called upon Buyer a division of Thomson Publishing graphic presentation of its contents. The federal lawmakers to provide some Corporation Insurance Chronicle entire family of our readers, the editorial board of Together and the leadership of the American Gathering will miss MORMONS, JEWS love and concern for those who have Yitzhak very much and will always preceded us. It is a freewill offering.” cherish his memory. We extend our MEET OVER Independent researcher Helen Radkey, heartfelt sympathy to his family. who prepared a report for Michel, is certain BAPTIZING DEAD the agreement has been broken. In her Solomon Radasky By C.G. WALLACE research of the church’s extensive Zvi Kolitz .c The Associated Press A long-time resident of New genealogical database, she found at least Zvi Kolitz, 89, a producer and author 20,000 Jews - some of whom died in Nazi Orleans, Solomon Radasky died August of a well-known short story about the Mormon and Jewish leaders met recently concentration camps - were baptized after Holocaust, “Yosl Rakover Talks to God,” 4, 2002 at the age of 92. Born in in New York City to discuss the Mormon they died. died in New York in September. Warsaw, he survived the Warsaw church’s apparent breach of its agreement “There shouldn’t be one single death Considered a classic of Holocaust Ghetto Uprising, Majdanek, Dachau not to posthumously baptize Holocaust camp record in those files,” Radkey said. literature, he wrote the story in 1946 for and 18 months internment at Auschwitz. victims and other deceased Jews. Radkey has been researching Jews a Jewish newspaper in Buenos Aires. In 1946, he married his wife, Frieda Mormon leaders requested the meeting included in the Mormon databases since Kolitz was born in Lithuania and Bernstein, whom he met in the with Ernest Michel, chairman of the World 1999, when she found Anne Frank and her Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors extended family listed as being baptized. immigrated to Palestine before 1948. Feldafing displaced persons camp. Also who helped broker the 1995 agreement Also among those baptized There, he was arrested by the British a Warsaw native, Frieda was a neighbor and childhood friend of Mordecai with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- posthumously by the church, according for his role in recruiting for the Zionist day Saints. to Radkey’s research: Ghengis Khan, Joan Anielewicz. She was a survivor of the Revisionist movement. In 1954, while Mormons believe proxy baptisms give of Arc, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and living in Israel, Mr. Kolitz co-wrote and Pawiak Prison and six concentration those in the afterlife the option of joining Buddha. co-produced Israel’s first-full motion camps. She died January 8, 1999. His the religion. It’s primarily intended to offer Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean picture, Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer. numbers, 128232, never faded over salvation to the ancestors of Mormons, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Kolitz, who also had written works of time, just as his message never lost its but many others are included. Angeles, said the Mormon church needs fiction and Jewish philosophy, contributed impact. “These numbers,” he would Baptisms for the dead are performed inside to rein in its members if it is serious about a weekly column for the Yiddish say, “add up to 18, chai, life. When I Mormon temples, with a church member its pledge to stop baptizing Holocaust victims. newspaper Algemeiner Journal for 32 realized this, I knew that God was with immersed in water in place of the deceased person. Names of the deceased are gathered “If these people did not contact the years and taught Jewish philosophy me and I knew that somehow, I would survive this ordeal. But when it was by church members from genealogy Mormons themselves, the adage should courses at Yeshiva University. records as well as death and governmental be: Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” Hier said. over, I also knew that I had learned documents from around the world. “With the greatest of respect to them, we Yitzhak Rabi something important. It is not enough “For Latter-day Saints, the practice of do not think they are the exclusive It is with deep sorrow that we record to survive. A person also needs to know proxy baptism is a means of expressing arbitrators of who is saved.” the passing of Yitzhak Rabi, after a long how to live.” TOGETHER 22 for position only for position only for position only for position only for position only for position only for position only

TOGETHER 23 We will accomplish a mission that the victims assigned to us: to collect memories and tears, frag- ments of fire and sorrow, tales of despair and defiance and names...above all names.”--Elie Wiesel HOLD THE DATE Join us in Washington, D.C.

November 8-9, 2003 Under the auspices of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. On the occasion of the Tenth anniversary of the opening of the Museum And remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

TOGETHER 24