JANUARY 2010 VOLUME 24 NUMBER 1 Elie Wiesel tells Hungary to ban Holocaust denial BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary should consider Peace Prize in 1986 told a meeting of Jewish and Hungarian leaders in parliament. banning Holocaust denial to improve its image abroad In July a court ruling dissolved the far-right Hungarian Guard, a radical and contain lurking hostility towards its minorities, nationalist organization, which staged intimidating marches against Roma Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner nationwide, in black uniforms and insignia, which critics say are reminiscent of Elie Wiesel said recently. the Nazi era. Hungary is grappling with its worst economic “I ask you, why don’t you follow the example of France and Germany and downturn in almost two decades and rising aversion declare Holocaust denial not only indecent, but illegal? In those countries Holocaust towards ethnic groups, mainly the country’s large deniers go to jail,” Wiesel said. Roma population, lifted the far-right Jobbik party into Wiesel warned against what he called the perils of indifference and said the European Parliament earlier this year. Hungarians were responsible for how they handle memories of the past. Based on poll readings Jobbik is also likely to Hungary at present has no law protecting communities against imflammatory win enough votes in next year’s elections to get into remarks. Attempts to outlaw such language have failed to pass in parliament or parliament. win the approval of President Laszlo Solyom. “Wherever in the world I come and the word Anti-Roma tensions have heightened in the country where 6-7 percent of the Hungary is mentioned, the next word is antisemitism,” said Wiesel, 81, who was 10 million population are Gypsies. deported along with hundreds of thousands of other Jews to Nazi death camps “Hungary does not meet European Union standards in this respect as there is during World War Two.“I urge you to do even more to denounce antisemitic no efficient protection for communities against hate speech,” Gyorgy Kollath, elements and racist expressions in your political environment and in certain constitutional law expert told Reuters. publications,” Wiesel said. After Hungary’s occupation by Nazi Germany in 1944 the Hungarian “I believe that they bring shame to your nation and they bring fear to its Jewish government actively collaborated in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of community and other minorities, such as the Roma,” Wiesel, who won the Nobel Jews to death camps. (Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; editing by Ralph Boulton) until a consensus on his actions—or PIUS XII FASTRACKED TO SAINTHOOD inaction—concerning the persecution of In a move that surprised Vatican watchers and Jewish and Israeli leaders, millions of Jews in the Holocaust is Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree on December 19, 2009 recognizing the “heroic established, a beatification is inopportune virtues” of Pope John Paul II and Pope Pius XII, a move that moves them both and premature. While it is entirely a matter on a faster track to sainthood. Benedict waived the customary five-year waiting for the Catholic Church to decide on whom period and allowed the investigation into John Paul’s life and virtues to begin religious honors are bestowed, there are immediately. But it was venerating Pius XII that has infuriated Holocaust survivors, strong concerns about Pope Pius XII’s who were already angered by the disappearance, just a day earlier of the iconic political role during World War II which “Work Makes Free” sign above the gates to Auschwitz. should not be ignored.” In response, the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Most Jewish leaders, including Yad Descendants issued the following statement: “One day after the Nazi death camp Vashem’s Avner Shalev, have repeatedly Auschwitz is desecrated, Holocaust survivors are shaken by the profoundly asked for the beatification process to be insensitive and thoughtless Vatican announcement advancing the wartime Pope stopped until the Vatican’s secret archives, containing thousands of documents, Pius XII on the path to sainthood.” is opened for review. But the Vatican says the 16 million files relating to Pius Elan Steinberg, vice president of the organization said that pairing the XII’s 19-year reign will not be ready for public viewing until 2014 at the earliest. announcement on Pius—who remained publicly silent during the Holocaust— The issue has been a thorn in the side of relations between Israel and the with that of John Paul II, himself a victim of the Nazis, is a particularly disturbing Vatican for years. Israeli Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog once called sainthood and callous act. Steinberg added that it went against private assurances the Vatican for Pius XII unacceptable, and President Shimon Peres believes that Pius XII did had given the Jewish community. “No documents have been released altering the not try hard enough to save Jews. view of Pius as ‘the silent pope.’” When Benedict XVI signed the papers, he placed Pius XII just two steps Steinberg noted that less than a year after Richard Williamson, a bishop from away from full canonization. In 2007, Benedict asked for time for reflection in the Society of Pius X, publicly denied the Holocaust, “we are left bereft in our order calm down interfaith tensions. That’s why his latest move is a surprise. feelings and appeal to the Vatican to prevent the inevitable blow to interfaith Once a member of the Hitler Youth, the current pope maintains that Pius XII relations which will follow from this.” saved many Jews by hiding them in religious institutions, and that he kept silent to The World Jewish Congress (WJC) also criticized the decision by Pope avoid aggravating their situation. Benedict XVI to pave the way for the beatification of his controversial war-time Abraham Foxman, a Holocaust survivor and the director of the US-based predecessor Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli), who was pontiff of the Catholic Church Anti-Defamation League, said “We are saddened and disappointed that the pontiff from 1939 to 1958. WJC President Ronald S. Lauder declared: “As long as the would feel compelled to fast-track Pope Pius at a point where the issue of the archives of Pope Pius about the crucial period 1939 to 1945 remain closed, and cont’d on p. 3

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January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 1 “Don’t let the light go out” by MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT TOGETHER “Don’t let the light go out, it’s lasted for so many years” sang Peter, Paul and Mary in “Light One January 2010 Volume 24 Number 1 Candle,” my favorite Chanukah song. c•o•n•t•e•n•t•s In late December 1948, my parents said a very Pope Pius XII Fastracked to Sainthood...... 1 special shehecheyanu prayer as they lit the Chanukah Elie Wiesel Tells Hungary to Ban Holocaust Denial...... 1 candles in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen- “Don’t Let the Light Go Out” by Menachem Rosensaft...... 2 Belsen in Germany. Remembering the Past...... 3 Barely five years after their entire families had been Peres Honors Survivors on Chanukah...... 3 murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, they could Ghetto Pension Payments Reviewed...... 4 not truly thank God for granting them life or for sustaining them as part of the Arbeit Macht Frei Sign Recovered...... 4 small surviving remnant of European Jewry that had emerged from the Holocaust. The Financial Sustainability of Holocaust Museums by Gail Beckerman...... 5 Too many faces were missing—their parents, their siblings, my mother’s first Never Forget: Holding Collaborators Accountable...... 6 husband and her five-and-a-half year old son, my father¹s first wife and her Holocaust Denier Fined by German Court by Jamie Romm...... 6 daughter. Gretel Bergmann: A Leap into History...... 7 30 years later, Holocaust Center Rededicated at Teaneck High...... 7 But for the first time, they were celebrating the festival of lights with their son—I was then almost eight months old—and their focus must have been on this Chanukah Miracles All Around by Yuval Azoulay...... 8 moment of rebirth, of renewal. Their shehecheyanu, I suspect, was in large part New View of the State Department’s Shameful Past by Gregory J. Wallance.....8 for me seeing the burning Chanukah candles for the first time, with no memories Kristallnacht Commemorated at UN...... 9 of the past, of death and destruction, of other flames. Holocaust Survivor Heirs Sue for Van Gogh Drawing by Dan McCue...... 9 By Working Together We Can Accomplish Miracles by Gloria Jacaruso.....10 Fast forward 61 years. On the first night of Chanukah, 2009, a display for a fragile Torah scroll Judges slam survivor benefit law as unclear by Ofra Edelman...... 10 which was brought from Hamburg, Germany, to the United States in 1939 by 90-Year-Old Charged in Nazi Massacre by David Rising ...... 11 Krakow Ghetto by Rita B.Ross...... 11 Rabbi Alfred Veis is dedicated at Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville, Singer Exhibit Honors Artists...... 12 Tennessee. Killing Kasztner: A Posthumous Thank You...... 12 Two days later, my wife Jeanie and I attend a memorial service for Rabbi Through the Generations by Joyce Ann...... 13 Alfred Gottschalk, the long-time President and Chancellor of the Reform They Didn’t Know What Hit Them by Gerhson Ron...... 14 Movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion who fled Nazi Bergen-Belsen survivors reunited after 64 years by David A. Schwartz...... 14 Germany as a nine-year-old boy and who died three months ago. On the sixth US Appeals Court Nixes Vatican Bank Holocaust Suit by Nicole Winfield....15 night of Chanukah, I am in the Grand Foyer of the White House together with Announcements...... 16 several hundred other American Jews as the children of Commander Scott Moran, In Memoriam...... 17 a U.S. Navy officer presently deployed in Iraq, light the candles on a 19th-century A Soup Surprise by Rose Dorfman...... 20 silver Chanukah menorah on loan from the Jewish Museum in Prague. It’s a Shoo-id by Sheldon P. Hersh...... 22 Standing beside them are President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Searches (contributing editor Serena Woolrich)...... 23 Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden. Chanukah, President Obama tells us, “was “Searches” is a project of Allgenerations, Inc. a triumph of the few over the many; of right over might; of the light of freedom over the darkness of despair.” NOTICE TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS He recalls how over the centuries “Jews have lit the Chanukah candles as symbols of resilience in times of peace, and in times of persecution—in NEEDING ASSISTANCE concentration camps and ghettos; war zones and unfamiliar lands. Their light Financial assistance is available for needy Holocaust survivors. If inspires us to hope beyond hope; to believe that miracles are possible even in the you have an urgent situation regarding housing, health care, food or other darkest of hours.” emergency, you may be eligible for a one-time grant. These grants are During the few moments I am able to speak with President Obama afterwards, funded by the Claims Conference. he tells me of his deep admiration and affection for Nobel Peace Prize laureate If there is a Jewish Family Service agency in your area, please Elie Wiesel who had accompanied him to Buchenwald in June 2009. discuss your situation with them. If there is no such agency nearby, “Light one candle for the strength that we need to never become our own mail a written inquiry describing your situation to: foe,” goes another verse from “Light One Candle.” Following the ceremony, a Emergency Holocaust Survivor Assistance group of us gather in one of the adjoining rooms, surrounded by Christmas wreaths, P.O. Box 765 for the evening Ma’ariv service. Murray Hill Station Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, the head of the international umbrella organization New York, NY 10156 of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidim, prays alongside Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the President of the Union for Reform Judaism. Elsewhere, members of the liberal, peace- American Gathering Executive Committee oriented J Street advocacy group are engaged in intense conversations with leaders SAM E. BLOCH • ROMAN KENT of AIPAC, the more conservative pro-Israel lobby. MAX K. LIEBMANN In the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp, the Jewish survivors of the MENACHEM ROSENSAFT • ELAN STEINBERG Holocaust, religious and secular, Yiddishists and Hebraists, lived and struggled together, as did Zionists covering the broad political spectrum from left to right who coexisted easily with non-Zionists. TOGETHER They understood that they had suffered a shared fate and faced a common future. In the White House during the Chanukah celebration, Jewish leaders of AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS all stripes and denominations seemed to let go of their differences, if only for a AND THEIR DESCENDANTS few hours, and revel in the freedom and dignity of America. 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 · New York, New York 10001 · 212 239 4230

“Light one candle to find us together with peace as the song in our hearts.” Founding President Vice Presidents Publication Committee EVA FOGELMAN BEN MEED, l“z SAM E. BLOCH, Chairman On the flight back to New York, I sit beside a stranger and we begin talking. Honorary President ROSITTA E. KENIGSBERG Hirsh Altusky, l“z VLADKA MEED ROMANA STROCHLITZ PRIMUS Roman Kent He is David Vise, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Washington Post reporter. President MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT Max K. Liebmann His grandfather was Rabbi Alfred Veis of Nashville, Tennessee. In 1939, David’s SAM E. BLOCH STEFANIE SELTZER Vladka Meed Honorary Chairman ELAN STEINBERG Dr. Romana Strochlitz Primus father came to the United States from Germany on the same boat as Alfred ERNEST MICHEL JEFFREY WIESENFELD Menachem Z. Rosensaft Chairman Secretary Editor Gottschalk, and the two became good friends. ROMAN KENT JOYCE CELNIK LEVINE JEANETTE FRIEDMAN Honorary Senior Treasurer Editor Emeritus MAX K. LIEBMANN “Don’t let the light go out; let it shine through our love and our tears.” Vice President ALFRED LIPSON, l“z WILLIAM LOWENBERG Regional Vice-Presidents Senior Vice President MEL MERMELSTEIN Counsel Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School and vice president of the MAX K. LIEBMANN JEAN BLOCH ROSENSAFT ABRAHAM KRIEGER MARK SARNA American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.

TOGETHER 2 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 With sincere appreciation Peres honors survivors on Child Survivors Meet: to our special donors... Chanukah Remembering the Past James B. & Esthy Adler By GREER FAY CASHMAN More than 400 survivors and their descendants Dr. Nathan & Janet Appel Atran Foundation came to Newton, Massachusetts in October for the Lola Blady President Shimon Peres acknowledged the 2009 World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of Sam & Lilly Bloch contribution made by Holocaust survivors to the the Holocaust, 21st Annual International Conference. Simon and Josephine Braitman Foundation Organized by the Greater Boston Child Survivor Joel Geiderman, M.D. establishment, security and continued existence of Marion Gendell the state at a Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony at Group and the Boston Generations After, a local William P. Goldman and Brothers Foundation Beit Hanassi. Second Generation organization, its participants Gruss Foundation included two members of the American Gathering Paula & Alain J. Hanover Speaking to Charles Hesdorffer some 250 survivors, Council, Isaac Kot and Lillian Fox, who also served Hitter Family Foundation most of them in on the 24-member team led by Marianne Kronenberg Francis Irwin their 80s, Peres told and Eva Paddok, leaders of the organization. Eric & Ruth Kahn As Kronenberg said, “We gathered to celebrate Sima Katz them that he stood Miriam & Marvin Katz before them with a the life of our survivor community and honor the lives Roman Kent Philanthropic Fund great deal of humility of loved ones whom we so tragically lost. We also Jakob Kryszek and respect. He celebrated the next generations of Jewish women Max K. Liebmann and men, girls and boys, who will carry the memory Lucius N. Littauer Foundation was aware that of the Holocaust into the future.” William J. Lowenberg each of them Dewilde Margot The main focus of Kronenberg’s remarks was carried a heavy Joan & Martin Messinger Holocaust denial, a subject that was addressed by Jack and Goldie Wolfe Miller Fund burden of trauma keynote speaker Prof. Deborah Lipstadt (Dorot Adam Novak and loss of family, Oster Family Foundation Associate Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Dagmar Phillips that each of them Studies at Emory University) and by Menachem Mr. & Mrs. Jonathan Polonsky in honor of was haunted at Rosensaft, Vice President of the American Gathering. Leo & Lola Wolsky night by the Robert & Michelle Reiner American Gathering officers, including Chairman Menachem & Jean Rosensaft shadows of the Roman R. Kent, Vice President Stephanie Seltzer Sheerit Hapletah of Metropolitan Chicago past, and yet each morning they swept away the (president of the World Federation of Jewish Child Jerald Wank nightmares, and with hope and courage faced a new Cary Weiss Survivors of the Holocaust), Vice President Dr. Eva Eli Zborowski day. Fogelman (author of Conscience and Courage: Whoever emerged from the horrors of the Pius XII Fastracked atrocities of the Holocaust, who experienced that cont’d from p. 1 Satanic evil and did not abandon his trust in humanity, symbolizes the purity of spirit and the miracle wrought record, the history and the coming to a judgment, is by hope, said Peres. still wide open.” “As far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing less “We do not forget the deportations of Jews from than heroes. Holocaust survivors made a very Italy and in particular the train that deported 1021 significant contribution to the victories of the State people on October 16, 1943, which left Rome’s of Israel against her enemies. In the War of Tiburtina station for Auschwitz to the silence of Pius Independence, only three years after the Holocaust, XII,’’ said one statement. the yishuv stood with its back to the wall, and the “While it is obviously up to the Vatican to fate of the Jewish state hung in the balance.” The determine who its saints are, the church’s repeated survivors made the difference, he emphasized. insistence that it seeks mutually respectful ties with During the years of World War II and the Jewish community ought to mean taking our immediately afterward, 70,000 European Jews, most sensitivities into account on this most crucial historical Stephanie Seltzer, president of the World Federation of of them young, served as soldiers in the War of era,” said David Harris, executive director of the Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust Independence, said Peres. American Jewish Committee. In the midst of the War of Independence, more Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust), and “I can’t understand the rush, especially while than 25,000 volunteers came from the refugee camps council members Isaac Kot (treasurer of the there are still survivors who are alive who feel the of Europe and together with the recruits from conference and of Generations After in Boston) and issue very, very deeply and are being told the files overseas went straight from the boats to the frontlines Lillian Fox (LICSW, founder of Second Generation need time to be processed. What’s the imperative?” Connections and Resources, board member of the battlefield. This reinforcement enabled the IDF Mr Foxman said. and events chair of Generations After in Boston) led to triumph in such a fateful conflict. The Israeli Foreign Ministry concurred, saying workshops that addressed the issues of the day— Among those who came to fight, recalled Peres, Pius’ actions are worthy of a “thorough historical from how to live with joy in the shadow of the past, were soldiers who were the sole survivors of their examination. History will be the judge of this to restitution issues and the Conference on Jewish families. Some fell in battle, anonymous heroes, with matter.” Material Claims against Germany. no one left to mourn them. Fogelman presented her pioneering film, Breaking “Our history is full of sadness,” said Peres, “but the Silence, as well as a Second Generation the festival of Chanukah is a festival of heroism and The workshop with Rosensaft on “What is the Meaning light. Just as Chanukah also symbolizes the victory of Our Voices.” Jeanette Friedman, founder of American of the few against the many, so Israel’s independence Second Generation North Jersey (1979), and author Gathering is both a victory and a miracle. Here too, it was the with David Gold of Why Should I Care? Lessons now accepts few against the many—and the few did great things.” from the Holocaust, presented a workshop on “The light of the candles that we lit here tonight is publishing one’s memoirs. Stephanie Seltzer discussed Visa, the light of life and hope, of prayer and triumph in which writing ethical wills, and Kot presented “Telling our Mastercard, light conquered the darkness of evil.” Parents’ and Grandparents’ History.” American As Kronenberg noted, “It is up to the next PLEASE SEND US YOUR STORIES, ARTICLES, generations to confront the lies about the Holocaust. Express, and Discover by phone POEMS, AND LETTERS FOR INCLUSION IN They are the ones that will have to remember the stories and in person for your TOGETHER AND OUR WEB SITE. PLEASE of their parents and grandparents, the stories of convenience. UNDERSTAND THAT WE CANNOT PRINT inhumanity and hate...As the generations change, we EVERYTHING THAT IS SUBMITTED. place our legacy into their hands. It is their heritage, and (212) 239-4230 SEND TO: [email protected] I am convinced they will give their all to protect it.” January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 3 Ghetto Pension Payments Reviewed American Gathering lauds Previously rejected applications from Holocaust Through the Monitoring Group, the Claims Czech action against survivors for German “Ghetto Pension” payments are Conference has insisted on the following conditions automatically being re-evaluated, that the Federal Social Court and the National Pension Holocaust memorial following three court decisions this Board are using to reexamine denied claims: vandals summer that greatly liberalized the criteria All rejected claims are being reopened By JPOST.COM STAFF for these German Social Security automatically, and denied claimants do not need to The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Payments. do anything to initiate the review of their claim. Social Survivors and Their Descendants commended the The Claims Conference initiated a Security offices are examining claims in order of Czech government recently for the stiff penalties Monitoring Group together with the date of birth, with the oldest claimants being handed out for vandalizing the Holocaust Memorial German Ministry of Labor and Social processed first. at Terezin. Affairs. The Monitoring Group is ensuring the Guidelines related to remuneration and “voluntary Miroslave Dano, Libor Mirga and Petr Hricko were successful reopening, under liberalized guidelines, of work” are to be considered in the broadest possible convicted for causing more than $100,000 worth of nearly 70,000 social security pension claims rejected terms. The kind of remuneration received for the damage when they stole 824 bronze plaques from the since 2002. The Monitoring Group examined key work performed (money, food, clothes, etc.) is no site in 2008 and sold them to a scrap dealer. Mirga and points of processing, criteria and administration. There longer a decisive factor, and remuneration need not Hricko, who fled to London, were sentenced in absentia are major open issues such as the date of back have been provided directly to the claimant. The court payment of newly approved cases and the speed of decisions in June also stated that ghettos in to 4 1/2 and 3 1/2 years in jail respectively, while Dano, processing. Transnistria should be covered under the Ghetto who was in police custody, was sentenced to four years. The Claims Conference is not involved in any Pension law. “Vandalism against places of Holocaust way in the processing or administration of these Additionally, individuals who are already receiving martyrdom have become all-too-frequent in Europe claims. Information about previously submitted a Ghetto Pension may, under certain circumstances, and are especially painful to those who suffered applications is available from German Regional be eligible for a re-assessment based on their age through the horrors of that time,” said American Pension Institutions, which are organized based on and circumstances during the years 1945-1949. Gathering President Sam E. Bloch. “It is reassuring the current country of residence of the applicant. These re-assessments must be requested by the that authorities in Eastern and Central Europe Germany’s social insurance legislation of 2002 pensioner (applied for) in writing. recognize the critical importance of punishing those (ZRBG, or “Ghetto Pension”) admits payments of It should be noted that the ZRBG/Ghetto Pension who would vandalize the sites where thousands upon old age pensions under certain conditions to survivors and the one-time “Ghetto Fund” payment of Euro thousands were murdered, and desecrate the memory of Nazi occupied or incorporated ghettos (including 2000 (established in 2007 to recognize work of the victims of the Holocaust. We are gratified that Transnistria) who performed “voluntary and performed in a ghetto) are separate programs. The neo-Nazis, skinheads and other thugs now know that remunerated work.” However, inconsistent and overly one-time payment does not preclude filing for, and their despicable actions have consequences.” strict interpretation of eligibility criteria by local award of, a ZRBG pension. However, receipt of a German authorities resulted in widespread denial of ZRBG pension precludes payment of the Euro 2000 claims. The Claims Conference has been pressing compensation. TO ALL SURVIVORS for changes in the law’s implementation and eventually spearheaded an international campaign for the More information on the criteria for Ghetto WHO PREVIOUSLY liberalization of the ZRBG conducted by governments, Pension and several current changes is available APPLIED FOR A grassroots organizations of survivors and community on the Claims Conference website at advocacy groups. www.claimscon.org/ghettopension. GHETTO PENSION Arbeit Macht Frei sign had trouble imagining who would steal the sign. OR WOULD LIKE “If they are pranksters, they’d have to be sick recovered pranksters, or someone with a political agenda. But TO APPLY FOR After a $40,000 reward was posted and 100 tips whoever has done it has desecrated world memory,” received, Polish police arrested five men ranging in Schudrich said. SUCH A PENSION age from 20 to 39 for stealing the 16 foot-long Arbeit The sign, unscrewed from one side of its supports, Macht Frei sign that hung over the gates of broken off the other and then cut into three pieces, NOW: Auschwitz. The sign, an icon of the Holocaust, reads was stolen in the hours after midnight a week before in German, “Work Will Make You Free.” Christmas. It was then carried out through a hole in a We, at the New York Legal Assistance When the theft was originally reported, Israeli concrete wall surrounding the camp. The gap was Group (“NYLAG”), have provided advice and Jewish groups feared that the act was politically left to preserve a poplar tree that dates back to the and representation to thousands of motivated. “The theft of the time of the war. Tracks in the snow survivors and their families since 2000 symbol of Auschwitz was not showed that the sign had been concerning all Holocaust-related restitution merely an act of vandalism, it dragged to a waiting vehicle. An programs, including the Ghetto Pension was a crime against mankind and exact replica of the sign, produced Program. Our legal services are entirely memory,” the American when the original received free-of-charge. Gathering of Holocaust restoration work years ago, was If you or a member of your family applied Survivors and their Descendants quickly hung in its place. for a ghetto pension in the past, and the said in a statement. Polish police indicated the men application was denied, please contact us “The theft of such a symbolic arrested for the crime were not for information. We are eager to answer any object is an attack on the neo-Nazis but common thieves questions regarding recent developments. memory of the Holocaust, and with previous police records. If you never applied for a ghetto pension an escalation from those elements that would like to Andrzej Rokita, district police chief in Krakow, the on your own behalf or on behalf of your late return us to darker days,” said Yad Vashem Chairman closest city to Auschwitz said, “We’ll be able to say spouse, please contact us. Avner Shalev. “I call on all enlightened forces in the later whether the crime was ordered or they acted We welcome your inquiries, and are world who fight against antisemitism, racism, on their own initiative.” eager to provide advice and representation xenophobia and the hatred of the other, to join together Polish inmates made the original sign in the free-of-charge. We are the only legal to combat these trends.” camp’s iron workshop after the camp was services organization in New York with the In Jerusalem, the International Auschwitz opened. This was the first major act of vandalism at expertise and experience to do so. Committee said the theft “deeply unsettles the the site, which has suffered graffiti including spray- CONTACT: Phyllis Brochstein or Laura painted swastikas. Other Holocaust sites in survivors. The sign has to be found,” said Noach Flug, Davis an Auschwitz survivor and president of the committee. Europe have also suffered neo-Nazi vandalism, Phone: (212) 688-0710 “The slogan and the camp itself will tell what happened including memorials in Germany, Ukraine, Hungary, Fax: (212) 750-0820 even when we won’t be able to tell anymore.” Romania and France. Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said he

TOGETHER 4 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 The Financial Sustainability of Holocaust Museums who was 18 when he survived is now 82. The survivor who was 30 is now 94. That generation is by Gal Beckerman executive editor of Commentary magazine. “This is unfortunately going the way of all flesh, and The numbers speak for themselves: There are a time when Jewish education is going begging, when therefore the question for every institution is, how now 16 Holocaust museums in the United States, from Jewish schools are under siege financially, as well do you create for the future. Endowments in Albuquerque, N.M., to Houston, to Richmond, Va. as having the need to maintain basic social services particular used to look like the safest bet, but these And these are just the biggest of nearly 150 Holocaust for the elderly and the poor. These things have to past years have shown us that they are not such a centers all over the country. be taken into consideration. It begs the question of secure choice anymore, which is why the presidents The proliferation of museums detailing the story how many of these institutions do we need in this of museum boards are pulling their hair out of their of what happened to European Jewry during World country.” heads.” War II has been largely a phenomenon of the 1990s, But the even greater worry about these local For many Holocaust museum directors across part of the general increase in Holocaust awareness institutions – shared by those who run them – is the country, the solution has been to look outside in the culture at large. But it has by no means slowed: how to keep them financially viable. the Jewish community for support. The most recent museum, in Skokie, Ill., opened last Unlike the national museum in Washington, Myers said that 50% of her donors in Houston spring, while construction continues on a second Los which, according to Bloomfield, is almost halfway are non-Jews. She has also Angeles museum, to open in the summer of 2010. toward its goal of raising a reached out to such corporate With a substantial, federally-backed national $400 million endowment, the sponsors as AT&T and museum in Washington, critics are increasingly majority of the regional Continental Airlines. The shift wondering about the need for so many local museums. museums were started by in focus away from a Jewish Even more important, the question of whether these survivors, with the goal of audience and donor base has institutions will be able to financially sustain keeping alive the memory of also affected the content of the themselves into the future – given the heavy costs of the Holocaust in their museum, which is evidenced, maintaining collections, and the dying off of the communities. The generation Myers pointed out, in its two Holocaust survivors who founded them – is of great that strongly supported them current exhibits: one about John concern to museum directors. is beginning to die out. Only Paul II’s role in Catholic-Jewish “We just had a board meeting in December in the larger of these museums reconciliation, and the other New York City, and we have endowments at all, and about Muslims who saved Jews during the all talked about the then relatively small ones. Holocaust. dwindling of funds,” In Richmond, the And still, the building of new museums continues. said Susan Myers, Virginia Holocaust Museum The latest is in Los Angeles. In a city that already executive director of was started in 1997 by Jay has a Holocaust institution in the Museum of the Holocaust Museum Ipson, who was born in Tolerance, a new 30,000 square-foot building is being Houston and vice Lithuania and was still a constructed for an older institution, the Los Angeles president of the young boy when he arrived Museum of the Holocaust, now housed on the ground Association of in the United States as a floor of the ORT building, on Wilshire Boulevard. Holocaust survivor. The museum was Mark Rothman, executive director, was Organizations, housed first in five small unapologetic about the addition of yet another referring to her fellow rooms at a local synagogue, museum to the Holocaust landscape. The Museum museum directors. of Tolerance, he said, “We’re all competing for the same money. It’s an and mostly told the story was more generally everyday conversation we’re having.” of Ipson’s family. In focused on human rights Those who defend the existence of the regional 2000, the State of – “It’s in the name,” he museums do so on the grounds that they serve Virginia donated a said – while his museum populations that cannot visit the nation’s capital. dilapidated 120,000 more narrowly tells the William Shulman is president of the association, square-foot tobacco story of the Jewish which was founded in 1985 with 25 members and warehouse as a new experience of World War now has 282 affiliated Holocaust centers worldwide, site. Ipson also managed II. the majority of which are in the United States. He to get the backing of Rothman sees denied that there are any serious, long-term financial Marcus Weinstein, a real hypocrisy in those who concerns for these institutions, and emphasized estate mogul and local criticize the building of Holocaust museums while instead that the museums are playing a critical role in Jewish philanthropist. using the Holocaust to raise funds for other Holocaust and genocide education. According to Ipson, who calls Weinstein his community needs, including for the local federation. “The rationale for having them is because most “angel,” the philanthropist has underwritten the “As soon as they can stop using the Holocaust in people don’t get to Washington,” Shulman said. transformation of the massive warehouse into a some way to raise money, I think that at that point Even Sara Bloomfield, director of the United sprawling museum that opened in 2003. It has no it’s valid to say maybe it’s not reasonable to spend States Holocaust Memorial Museum – the institution endowment, and Ipson’s hope is that Weinstein’s community resources on museums,” he said. that, by most accounts, would have to bear the burden promise of supporting the museum in perpetuity With a projected endowment of $2 million to $3 in the future of caring for the collections of any holds true. million – not yet raised – he, too, sees problems that museums that can no longer support themselves – “I’ve been told – I haven’t seen the paperwork his institution might face in the future. But, he added, agrees that these local museums are important. – that he left in his will that we should continue to they are no different from the challenges that will “The national museum is becoming so national get those funds at a minimum,” Ipson said. confront all institutions of Jewish life. and global in our work that we now are depending on Weinstein said he would support the museum “In 15 years, I think the questions being raised these smaller, local organizations to be on the ground as long as there’s funding. “I can’t say what will about Holocaust institutions are also going to need everyday in their communities,” Bloomfield said, happen in a hundred years,” he said. As for his will, to be answered by every Jewish federation in the “because we can’t be in all 50 states at once.” he declined to comment. country,” Rothman said. “In general, your profile The concerns about these institutions fall into two Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar who remains older people who are not going to be with broad categories. First is the worry that heavy is the director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at us at some very near point in the future. That’s the investment in Holocaust museums and monuments is American Jewish University, is not opposed to the profile of our donors, and that’s the profile of the taking away funds from other more critical needs in proliferation of these local Holocaust initiatives and donors for every Jewish organization in Los the community. has even acted as a consultant for many of them. Angeles.” “There is a very profound question of how much But he, too, has concerns about the future. “The of our limited resources we are going to put into that generation that would give huge money to create This article originally appeared in The Jewish Daily as opposed to other things,” said Jonathan Tobin, that is moving on,” Berenbaum said. “The survivor Forward; reprinted with permission.

January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 5 Never Forget: Holding Collaborators Accountable HOLOCAUST DENIER FINED BY GERMAN COURT WASHINGTON, D.C. – Bipartisan legislation re- impossible if not for the Nazis’ many willing By AMIE OMM introduced in the House by Reps. Carolyn Maloney accomplices,” said Nadler. “Among those many J R , JPOST.COM (D-NY), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Ileana Ros- accomplices, the French national railway knowingly Lehtinen (R-FL) would hold accountable those railroad transported tens of thousands of Jews and others to While Jewish groups are upset over Pope Benedict companies who worked with the Nazis during World concentration camps during World War II, and, for XVI’s efforts to reach out to a breakaway Catholic War II by making them subject to legal action in U.S. this, it has yet to be held accountable. This legislation group that includes a Holocaust-denier, Rabbi David courts. More than 75,000 Jews were transported would ensure that survivors of the Holocaust can Rosen of the American Jewish Committee recently from France to concentration camps by French confront the railway and hold it accountable for its announced he would be “very surprised” if the group railroad companies. terrible history.” were readmitted to the Catholic Church. “Almost 70 years after enabling the largest mass The bill provides plaintiffs the right to seek The Vatican held talks recently with a delegation murder of the 20th Century, railroads that transported damages against the French National Railway from the Society of St. Pius X, that it said were held tens of thousands to their deaths should finally be (Société Nationale Des Chemins De Fer Francais - in a “cordial, respectful and constructive climate” and held accountable,” Maloney said. “Nothing will ever SNCF) in Federal Court for its transportation of would continue frequently over the coming months. make up for the unthinkable atrocities undertaken by French and other Jews to Auschwitz as well as its One of the main sticking points to allowing the Nazi Germany and its sympathizers during World War supply of personnel to facilitate the transportation and society back in to the church stems from former II, but every bit of justice is important. This bill allows the assessed charges per person. The French excommunicated British Bishop Richard Williamson’s some measure of closure for those who have suffered Government claims immunity from legal action due comments regarding the Holocaust. for far too long.” to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, yet the FSIA Williamson was shown on Swedish state television “Companies that benefited from the deportation was passed 30 years after the action causing the in January saying historical evidence “is hugely against of persons to concentration camps during the damages for which the plaintiffs seek. The bill allows six million Jews having been deliberately gassed” Holocaust must be held accountable for their the plaintiffs to sue regardless of the strictures of the during World War II. Williamson was recently fined despicable actions. This bill will help ensure that FSIA. •120,000 by a German court for the remarks. He Holocaust survivors and heirs of victims are able to For complete bill text, visit http:// received a penal order to pay the fine for inciting seek legal redress against those who sought to gain maloney.house.gov/documents/foreign/israel/100709 racial hatred. from the blood of innocent people,” said Ros-Lehtinen. SNCF 111th Congress.pdf Rosen, director of the AJC’s Department for “The atrocities of the Holocaust would have been Interreligious Affairs, said that Williamson’s statements on the Holocaust lead him to believe that the society will not be let back into thechurch. Demjanjuk goes on trial in Germany “Now they are truly under the magnifying glass,” John Demjanjuk, 88, who worked and lived in Cleveland, Ohio for 50 years, and who was tried in Israel as Rosen said. “In the past they may have been able to a Nazi war criminal, is now on trial in Munich for the murder of 27,900 Jews. He will probably be the last Nazi slip under the ‘door,’ but after his [Williamson’s] war criminal, and the lowest ranking, brought to trial. Claiming to be a Red Army soldier captured by the Nazis comments, it won’t be so easy to slip in.” and turned, he became a volunteer in the SS, and is accused of shepherding the Jews into the gas chambers The society, founded in 1969 by the late of Sobibor. He denies the charges, and is facing a sentence of 15 years in prison. ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, split In 1986, the US Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, headed by a son of survivors, Eli from Rome over the modernizing reforms of the Rosenbaum, deported Demjanjuk to Israel. He was accused of being a notorious guard known as Ivan the Second Vatican Council, particularly its outreach to Terrible at the Treblinka death camp. Sentenced to death 1988 and after several years in prison the Israeli Jews and to non-Catholic Christians. Vatican II also Supreme Court overturned Demjanjuk’s convictionafter a judge decided that there was reasonable doubt. allowed for the celebration of mass in the vernacular, Demjanjuk returned to the US, and then, in 2001, was accused the murders in Sobibor. Germany agreed to put rather than in Latin. him on trial in April 2009. In 1988, the Vatican excommunicated Lefebvre His lawyer claims that since Demjanjuk is a Ukrainian, he is receiving harsher treatment than a German- and four of his bishops, including Williamson, after born Nazi would have gotten. “How can you say that those who gave the orders were innocent ...and the one Lefebvre consecrated them without papal consent. who received the orders is guilty?” Mr. Busch asked the court. “There is a moral and legal double standard In 2007, Benedict relaxed restrictions on being applied today.” celebrating the old Latin Mass, which the He also put the defendant “on the same level” as Holocaust victims, because his client was a “forced traditionalists had demanded. In January, he accepted laborer.” This assertion was greeted with anger by Holocaust survivors. another one of their demands by approving a decree On November 30, Demjanjuk was brought into court on a stretcher, and is said to be terminally ill. Doctors lifting the bishops’ excommunication. have limited the trial to two 90-minute sessions a day. The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Demjanjuk claims he is a victim of mistaken identity. He said that after his capture he was forced to fight Survivors and Their Descendants issued a statement against the Soviets as they approached Berlin in World War II’s final months, but one eyewitness, Alex calling on Benedict to “exhibit great caution in the Nagorny, who himself may be guilty of war crimes in Treblinka, will testify on behalf of the state. Vatican discussions with Society of Saint Pius X—so as not to touch on the dignity of the Jewish people or The Survivors Registry maintains the single most comprehensive listing to trivialize the memory of the victims of the Shoah. of Holocaust survivors in the world. The Registry has existed for over two IF YOU HAVE AN “The crisis in Jewish-Catholic relations sparked decades and currently contains over 195,000 names of survivors and their E-MAIL ADDRESS by the Vatican’s earlier overtures to the Holocaust spouses and descendants (including children, their spouses, and AND WISH TO denier Richard Williamson must not be repeated,” grandchildren). RECEIVE NEWS the statement said. “But the problematic nature of R Visitors to the Registry’s public area at the Holocaust Museum in AND Society of Saint Pius X goes beyond Bishop E Washington, D.C. can access basic information about survivors and their ANNOUNCEMENTS Williamson and centers on the tenuous state of family members via touch-screen computers. This information is based on BETWEEN Catholic-Jewish relations before Vatican II.” G registration forms submitted by survivors and their relatives. The Registry TOGETHER For Jews and the vast majority of Catholics, there is an invaluable resource for survivors still searching for family and friends, I PUBLICATION can be no compromise on the society’s acceptance, as well as for historians and genealogists. DATES, S Further information can be found at http://www.ushmm.org/ the group concluded. PLEASE SEND IT T remembrance/registry The Vatican has set out conditions for Williamson Survivors Registry THE AMERICAN to be fully brought back in, saying he must “absolutely R UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM GATHERING and unequivocally” distance himself from his Y 202-488-6130 Holocaust remarks if he ever wants to again be a or the American Gathering at 212-239-4230 SEND TO: prelate in the church. Please send e-mail addresses to: [email protected] AMGATHTOGETHER Williamson has apologized for embarrassing the or [email protected] @AOL.COM pope, but hasn’t publicly repudiated his views.

TOGETHER 6 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 Gretel Bergmann: A Leap into History of the German National Sports Federation. Gretel Bergmann, also known as Margaret German record by crossing 1.60 metres. However, Bergmann, who had vowed never to set foot on Bergmann-Lambert (born 12 April 1914) is a German two weeks before the opening of the Olympics, German soil again, did not attend the festivities. Jewish athlete who competed as a high jumper during she received a letter from the German sport In 1996, she was admitted to the National the 1930s. authorities that she would be withdrawn from the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in the United States. Born in Laupheim, Germany, to Jewish parents, national team because her performance was not In 1999, she received the Georg von Opel-Preis she began her career in athletics in Laupheim. In sufficient to compete on an international level. for achievements in the sphere of sports and society 1930 she joined Ulmer FV Instead, she was without the prospect of 1894, achieving a German replaced by high material gains. record in high jumping in jumper (and In Laupheim, her 1931 when, during the South roommate) Dora birthplace, a stadium German Championships, she Ratjen, who was was named after her in crossed 1.51 metres. later revealed to 1999. Bergmann atten- After the Nazis’ be a man. ded the dedication accession to power on 30 In 1937, Berg- ceremony in person January 1933, she was mann emigrated to even though, initially, expelled from the club for the U.S., eventually she did not want to being Jewish. That April, her settling in New York, where she participate “but when I was told that they were parents sent her to the made a living doing casual work. naming the facilities for me so that when young United Kingdom, where in 1934 she took part in the That year, she married Bruno Lambert, a doctor, people ask, ‘Who was Gretel Bergmann?’ they will British Championships and won the high jump by whom she aided in his leaving of Germany through be told my story, and the story of those times. I crossing 1.55 metres. financial support, calling herself from then on felt it was important to remember, and so I agreed The German government wanted her to return Margaret Bergmann-Lambert. to return to the place I swore I’d never go again. to Germany in order to help portray the nation as a Also that year, she managed to win the U.S. But I had stopped speaking German and didn’t even [1] liberal-minded, tolerant country. Members of her women’s high jump and shotput championships, and try when I was there. They provided a translator.” family, who had stayed behind, were threatened with in 1938 she repeated the feat by again winning the On November 23, 2009 her German national reprisals if she did not return. She complied and high jump. record (1.60m) from 1936 was finally acknowledged. returned to Germany, where she was allowed to With the beginning of World War II in prepare for the 1936 Olympic Games. She won the September 1939, her career in sports ended. Margaret Bergmann Lambert’s memoirs, By Leaps Württembergian Championships in the high jump She received United States citizenship in 1942. and Bounds, was published in 2005 by the in 1935. On 30 June, 1936, one month prior to the In August 1995, a sport complex in Berlin- Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project and the opening of the Olympic Games, she tied the Wilmersdorf was named after her on the instigation U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Reprinted from Wikipedia

efforts. 30 years later, Holocaust Center rededicated at Teaneck High Alumnus Carol Faber, a daughter of survivors by JEANETTE FRIEDMAN, Jewish Standard Holocaust Center on the third floor of the school as a whose father died recently, was there. She no longer The 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht was a “back to resource for students and faculty and brought in lives in Teaneck, but said, “I always come to school” night of sorts. Teaneck, NJ residents, high Holocaust survivors to tell their stories. As the first Kristallnacht commemorations here when they have school faculty members, students, and alumni gathered of its kind in New Jersey, it predated the creation of them.” She found the rededication particularly at Teaneck High School for the rededication of New the three major Holocaust museums in the United poignant. Jersey’s first Holocaust Center, established in 1975 States. Today, there are approximately 400 such Alumnus Hank London was also there. He had by history teacher and Holocaust education pioneer centers in New Jersey schools. been a student determined to create a Jewish Studies Ed Reynolds. Reynolds, who marveled at the fact Now, 34 years after it all began, the Teaneck course way back, when Reynolds was chairman of that he hadn’t walked “these halls” for 17 years, was High Holocaust Center has come back to life. A small the history department. He had butted heads with the keynote speaker. Addressing some 60 people, he neglected room off to the side of the Student Center the board of education and Reynolds, who was described the long educational journey that began with has been refurbished and restocked with resource originally against the idea, for two years before the a telephone call, in 1975, from the Anti-Defamation course became a reality. Now he was happy to see League in New York. Reynolds was asked if he and the school hadn’t forgotten its pioneers. teachers Richard Flaim, Ken Turburtini, and Harry At the rededication Teaneck resident Linda Kraar read from Album Furman in Vineland would be interested in designing of the Holocaust of My Life, the posthumously published memoir of a curriculum for a course or unit to teach the Center at Teaneck her mother, Ann Szedlecki, a survivor of High School are (l- concentration camps and Siberia. Kraar’s daughter, Holocaust in New Jersey public schools. r) Ed Reynolds, At that time, history textbooks, if they covered Yona McGraw, Yona McGraw, sang an original composition about the Holocaust at all (and most did not), limited Linda Kraar, and the importance of remembering the past for the sake coverage to approximately one paragraph. But there Michal Krauthamer. of the future. was a need to address the subject in the classroom, Al Kirschman, a Teaneck H.S. faculty member at a time when antisemitism and Holocaust denial for more than 35 years whose father served in were beginning to seep through the cracks of materials, including copies of the original Teaneck- Patton’s Third Army, liberating Buchenwald, recalled America’s civilized veneer. Vineland curriculum and many posters. It is decorated that his father taught him to remember the Some parts of the journey weren’t pretty. When with a mural by student Michal Krauthamer. Principal photographs he had taken in the camps. Kirschman they trained other teachers, Reynolds said, the Angela Davis, faculty members Goldie Minkowitz — said his parents, safe in America, lost all their educators were accused by many of their colleagues who emceed the program — and Al Kirschman, as relatives in Europe, except for one survivor on each of bringing a Jewish subject, written by Jews for Jews, well as a long list of others on staff, encouraged side. into the public schools. At one National Education students Sharon Leonor, Samara Rosner, and Yael The Teaneck-Vineland curriculum project led Association meeting, hearing this accusation for the Osman and others who one year ago decided to to the creation of Gov. Thomas Kean’s Holocaust umpteenth time, Reynolds told the teachers that a clean up the room and make the center viable once Education Council, which evolved into today’s Catholic, a Mormon, a Presbyterian deacon, and a more. David Bicofsky, spokesman for the school Holocaust Commission. The thin book has turned Jewish son of Holocaust survivors were writing and district, summed it up this way: “Our Holocaust into a massive two-volume resource and curriculum implementing this innovative program. Parts of the Center is much more than a classroom for all our guide for teachers around the state. Working with curriculum were also challenged by Holocaust students. It is a living memorial and testament to Matthew Feldman, a Teaneck resident who had been survivors and their descendants as being inappropriate. the triumph of the human condition; of light over president of the state Senate, the teachers and their It was definitely an uphill battle, but the hearts and darkness; of knowledge over ignorance and of life supporters saw to it that Holocaust education minds at Teaneck High had been won from the outset. over death.” The students behind the project, he became mandatory in New Jersey, setting an As part of that project, Reynolds created a added, were to be highly commended for their example for the rest of the United States.

January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 7 Chanukah miracles all New View of the State transmit normal human empathy had simply atrophied in these officials. And, like all good bureaucrats, as around Department’s Shameful Past one Washington journalist observed, these diplomats By YUVAL AZOULAY, Haaretz by GREGORY J. WALLANCE, The Jewish Press were “masters of the negative, the gentle objection, More than 55 Recently, the Romanian government unveiled a long the postponement, the misplaced paper, the need million colorful overdue memorial to the 300,000 Romanian Jews and for further consideration.” Chanukah candles Roma who perished in World War II at the hands of The diplomats argued that the British would never were made by the their own government and the Nazis. Unfortunately, permit the Transnistrian Jews, whom they termed Menorah Candle the U.S. State Department, whose wartime diplomats “enemy aliens,” to emigrate to Palestine and therefore Company factory in doomed tens of thousands of the Romanian Jews there was no place to put the dying Jews. After the Sderot in the past commemorated by the memorial, has yet to American mission in Switzerland reported to the State two months. Most acknowledge its own role in the Romanian Holocaust. Department on the Jewish massacres in Europe and are sold in Israel, but During the war, the Romanian government on the plight of the Transnistrian Jews—“60,000 had many are shipped abroad, to Europe, Australia and the forced hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jewish already died and 70,000 were starving...living conditions United States. The owner of the company, 82-year- men, women and children out of their homes and indescribable”—the State Department dispatched a old Holocaust survivor Yisrael Sheiner, says he “can’t made them march hundreds of miles to the killing cable directing the mission to stop sending any reports complain.” Not about the distance between Sderot and fields of Transnistria, where the survivors were about the Nazis’ extermination of the Jews, told inquiring Tel Aviv, about the Qassam rockets, or about the global expected to die from cold, disease or starvation. A U.S. senators that there was no foundation to the economic crisis. gift from Hitler to his Romanian ally, Transnistria was Romanian offer, and refused even to forward the He seems to take it all this with a good measure a grotesque chunk of land carved out of the Nazi- Treasury Department license to the Jewish groups. of resignation—what’s a Qassam to someone who occupied Ukraine. In late 1943, young, middle-class Christian spent most of World War Two II the Polish woods, Romania turned it into the world’s largest lawyers at the Treasury Department, tough-minded hiding with his family from Nazi soldiers? Sheiner concentration camp. In one Transnistrian town, tens bureaucratic infighters dedicated to the defeat of sees it as symbolic that the most-bombarded city in of thousands of the deported Jews had to live in just Nazi Germany, discovered the State Department’s Israel is producing millions of candles that stand for a few hundred small houses made of clay, many in sabotage of the Transnistrian rescue and cover-up Jewish heroism and resilience. Sheiner’s own story ruins from bombing and shelling. of the Nazi extermination plan. They described the and that of his factory and its workers both have “As to the Jews,” the Romanian leader, Marshal State Department officials as “an underground their share of determination, faith and miracles. Ion Antonescu, told officials of his government, “I have movement to let the Jews be killed,” “vicious men” Evidence of one such miracle can be found in taken measures to remove them entirely once and for who were “accomplices of Hitler,” and “war the scarred asphalt of the factory’s loading yard. all from these regions [of Romania]. If I do not purify criminals in every sense of the term.” Two years ago, when “cast lead” referred only to the Romanian nation, then I have achieved nothing.” In memoranda, the young lawyers explicitly a Chanukah dreidel, or spinning top, a Qassam In early 1943, the German army and its allies accused the State Department of “willful attempts rocket hit the plant. It missed the thin aluminum suffered a devastating defeat at the battle of to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews roof of the factory and landed in the yard. The Stalingrad. The Romanian army alone had 160,000 from Hitler,” effectively charging their own blast sent doors flying off their hinges and blew casualties. Antonescu, no longer confident about the government with complicity in genocide. out the factory windows. The workers, who were outcome of the war and seeking to ease harsh peace Their morally redeeming outrage (and their direct inside packing the candle cartons, were sure it was terms, offered to allow the surviving Transnistrian threat to go public) eventually forced FDR to take the end. “The explosion was very powerful, and Jews to emigrate to Palestine (after the war the refugee and rescue affairs away from the State we all ran breathless for the bomb shelter,” relates Russians executed him anyway). The Romanian Department. The new rescue agency, the War Natasha Kosichevsky, 58, who has worked in the government requested $50 per Jew as a bribe. Refugee Board, which is generally credited with plant for 14 of the 15 years she has lived in Israel. By mid-1943, Jewish groups in the United saving 200,000 Jewish lives in occupied Europe, did “We didn’t go on working that day, we all went to States and Switzerland had put together an help to get thousands of Jews out of Transnistria. get medical checkups. All the workers who used elaborate rescue plan, including escrowing the Had the U.S. acted earlier, tens of thousands more to ignore the alarms and stay out of the shelter bribe monies in blocked Swiss bank accounts, and Romanian Jews would have survived. realized we were all a target too, and that our very managed to get it before FDR. survival was a miracle,” Kosichevsky said. Short of defeating Nazi Germany, the U.S. had ”This is a very fair proposal,” FDR told his “But I’d rather be here with my friends even no means to rescue most of the Jews who ultimately secretary of the treasury, who then issued the during the worst of it,” she adds. “We had work to perished in concentration camps such as necessary license for the Jewish groups to transfer do and orders to ship, and besides, there’s nothing Auschwitz. But that was not true of the private funds for the rescue. Roosevelt assured them worse than sitting at home on your own in times Transnistrian Jews and therefore their plight that “the matter is now awaiting a further exchange like these.” became a morally defining moment. The State of cables between the State Department and our Sheiner runs the factory from his office in south Department should acknowledge its shameful past mission in Bern regarding some of the details.” Tel Aviv, but there’s hardly a candle that leaves by creating its own memorial to the Romanian But very few Jews, blacks or women served in Menora without Seiner making sure it will last and Holocaust victims. The memorial would not simply the wartime State Department and the few who did keep burning. “He’s a world expert on candle- be an act of expiation, but rather a permanent were largely relegated to backwater posts. The State making,” factory manager Nir Ziv says. “He can reminder that, as the Talmudic saying goes, “To Department bureaucracy was run by a cadre of take one look at a candle and tell you how long it save one life is as if you have saved the world.” diplomats who were will last and the quality of the flame.” Gregory J. Wallance, a lawyer and the author of Two Men callous toward Jewish “It was the first thing I did when I came to Before the Storm, about the Dred Scott case, is the author of the Israel—buy a candle factory,” Sheiner says. “It’s suffering far beyond even forthcoming America’s Soul in the Balance, about the State an act of closure for me. All I wanted was a candle the antisemitic norms of Department’s response to the Holocaust.(Reprinted with permission.) factory in Israel. I wanted to give people work the era. Their elite, more than I wanted to make money.” cloistered upbringings Sheerit Hapletah of The closure Sheiner speaks of refers to his own had cut them off from the miraculous story. When he was 11 he, his parents ethnically divergent Metropolitan Chicago and his three siblings escaped from the Polish town American mainstream 64th Annual Memorial Service of Pinczow into the woods, fleeing the Nazi and imbued them with a occupiers. Hanukkah came as they were on the deep-rooted sense of Sheerit Hapletah of Metropolitan Chicago, the run. Seiner wanted to light the traditional hanukkiah. Anglo-Saxon superiority, umbrella organization for Chicago-area Holo- a “don’t rock the boat” Breckinridge Long, caust survivor groups, announces its 64th An- “I drew the chanukiah I remembered from home, Assistant Secretary of mentality, and disdain nual Collective Memorial Service to be held took a piece of wood and carved it out,” he says. State with jurisdiction “We celebrated Chanukah in some bunker in the for Jews and other over immigration and Sunday, April 11, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. at the middle of the woods, but the important thing is that minorities. refugee issues during Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob Synagogue, we all survived.” Whatever nerves World War II. 8825 East Prairie Road, Skokie, IL.

TOGETHER 8 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 KRISTALLNACHT COMMEMORATED AT UN Harold M. Schulweis, the co-founder of The Jewish Foundation of the Righteous. It premiered at a special The film is narrated by Maya Angelou and UNITED NATIONS, NY—In observance of the event for an audience of over 1200 people including produced in association with Sundance Channel. It is anniversary of the Kristallnacht Pogrom of 9 Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and important members hoped that the film will become required viewing in November 1938, in Germany and Austria, the United of the clergy, including Rabbi Harold Kushner and primary art survey courses at universities around the Nations Outreach Programme organized the Cardinal Mahoney. world. screening of the documentary film, As Seen through In 2004, she curated an exhibition of paintings, Helstein began her career at These Eyes by Los Angeles 2G Hilary Helstein, at Samuel Bak: Between Worlds on Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the United Nations headquarters in New York City. A the surrealist for the Finegood Art Shoah Visual History Foundation, conversation with Helstein, the film’s director, Gallery and before that co-curated where she directed and produced over producer, and writer, followed the screening, and the exhibit, Memory and Meaning: 200 segments and interviewed many focused on learning about the Holocaust through art. the Holocaust Through the Eyes of prominent Holocaust survivors, military More than 200 people, including Holocaust survivors the Artist, for the Jewish liberators and rescuers. She also and their descendants, as well as diplomats and others Federation’s Los Angeles Museum traveled to remote areas to interview attended the event. of the Holocaust. survivors with unique experiences, On that same night, the UN Department of Public As Helstein herself notes, these including several members of the Information launched The Holocaust and the United artists, some of whom passed on Varian Fry rescue mission, Chief of Nations Discussion Papers Journal, a publication before the film was completed, have Staff of the US Army, and a “Mengele filled with articles by nine scholars of Holocaust and given us something that history twin.” Genocide Studies from around the world. The event couldn’t—a journal of the Holocaust As Executive Director of the was opened with remarks from Under-Secretary- as seen through their eyes, the eyes Los Angeles Film Festi-val, for four General Kiyo Akasaka and was organized by of people who by the very act of years, Hilary has been single-handedly producing Kimberly Mann. creating, rebelled and risked their lives by doing what a week-long event featuring the newest American Filmmaker Helstein travelled the world for more they were forbidden to do. and international films that celebrate the diversity than 12 years, looking for artists who survived the The film will be screened in Miami at the Cosford of the Jewish culture. Her role includes: fundraising Holocaust to speak to, including Nazi-hunter Simon Cinema beginning December 18 and will also be and sponsorship, programming, developing Wiesenthal. The film uses their art work and music in shown in an exclusive event at the United Nations in an attempt to combat prejudice, bigotry and intolerance. partnerships with organizations (i.e., the ADL, Vienna, Austria on January 27 as part of the Each conversation she had with the artists Jewish World Watch and JDate), consulates and brought with it the realization that every painting or synagogues throughout the city, organizing events international Holocaust Remembrance Program. It sketch on a torn scrap of paper is a Holocaust diary. and venues, creating the festival brochure and will also show at the Port Washington (NY) Library As shown in the movie, their artistic words and images program guide, marketing and advertising; and in conjunction with Community Synagogue on are profoundly moving, and communicate the horror, talent coordination. January 31 for Holocaust Remembrance. while also expressing hope. In 2005, Hilary she directed a film about Rabbi

Holocaust Survivor Heirs Maries de la actress, who bought the painting in 1963 at a Sotheby’s Mer,” and ano- auction, failed to examine papers that detailed the Sue for Van Gogh Drawing ther, “Garden of painting’s provenance. By DAN MCCUE, Courthouse News Flowers.” But the appeals court ruled in 2007 that Orkin MANHATTAN (CN) - A Canadian attorney and his Eventually, and his family did not have the right to sue for the family sued the Swiss government and a prominent she showed about return of confiscated property. The U.S. Supreme Swiss museum for a Vincent Van Gogh pen-and-ink a half dozen of Court declined to hear the case. drawing they say their great-grandmother sold under Van Gogh’s Afterward, Orkin said his family was proud to duress as her family tried to flee the Nazis in their “Les Saintes-Maries de la Mer” works in her have brought the Holocaust-related art claim. “We native Germany. adopted home anticipated from the outset it would be a long and Andrew Orkin, of Ontario, claims Oskar Reinhart, city of Berlin. In 1906, she undertook the first tough case, and were not mistaken,” Orkin wrote. the Swiss art collector who bought the drawing and translation of his letters into German, and published “Our claim, like thousands of others in recent years, bequeathed it to the Museum Oskar Reinhart am articles on his work in Kunst & Kunstler, a German was prompted by the US 1998 Holocaust Victims Stadtgarten, took advantage of Margarethe art journal. Redress Act and related U.S. laws, which were Mauthner’s dire circumstances and bought the But that came when the Nazis enacted laws premised on the necessary setting-aside of common- drawing for considerably less than its market value. barring “non-Aryans” from employment. Mauthner garden statutes of limitations.” To bolster his complaint in Manhattan Federal and her family were dispossessed of almost all their Orkin claimed that the “knee-jerk application ... Court, Orkin cited precedents set by other museums, property, and their livelihoods. of the statute of limitations does not disprove the and the findings of the Swiss Federal Council on Nazi- To survive and finance the flight from Germany, fundamental legitimacy of our claim against Ms. Taylor. era Activities and Dealings, a government commission Orkin said Mauthner sold her home, its furnishings We have now established — at least in California and which concluded that the circumstances surrounding and important artworks in her collection at bargain with respect to Ms. Taylor — that these Holocaust Reinhart’s purchase of the drawing were “morally basement prices. Orkin says Mauthner asked for ‘redress’ laws were an empty promise. questionable.” 12,500 Swiss francs for the drawing, but accepted a “We look forward to a day when the fruits of Orkin, who unsuccessfully sued the actress counteroffer of 10,000 Swiss francs. genocide-related ‘thefticide’ are restored to their Elizabeth Taylor in 2005 for return of a Van Gogh oil Reinhart donated his collection of 18th to 20th rightful owners without the unjust application of painting believed to have been plundered by the Nazis century European art to the city of Winterthur, technical defenses,” he wrote. during World War II, wants the drawing declared a Switzerland, in 1940. Most of his collection has been Orkin’ s attorney, Richard Altman said the facts “flight asset,” which never legitimately passed from displayed at the defendant Museum Oskar Reinhart of the case and the fact standards in applied in case Mauthner to Reinhart. Therefore, Orkin says, am Stadtgarten since 1951. He bequeathed the rest against a private person are different that those against Mauthner’s heirs should get it back or be compensated of his collection to the Switzerland in 1958. That a foreign government, markedly distinguish the current at its current $5 million market value. collection was opened to the public in 1970. case against the Liz Taylor action. Moreover, New The survivors include Orkin, his two siblings and In May 2007, a U.S. Appeals Court upheld a York law is much more favorable to the recovery of two maternal cousins. ruling that the statute of limitations had expired for stolen property such as Nazi-era artworks that The complaint describes Mauthner, a Jew, as a Orkin in his claim against Elizabeth Taylor, seeking California, which is as it should be, Altman said. pioneer collector of avant-garde art in the late 19th the return Van Gogh’s “Vue de l’Asile et de la In the new case, Orkin asserts claims for and early 20th centuries. She acquired numerous works Chapelle de Saint-Remy,” then valued at more than recovery of chattel, rescission and conversion, and by Van Gogh after his death in 1890, including the 1888 $10 million. seeks damages for unjust enrichment and violation drawing that is the focus of this action, “Les Saintes- In that case, filed in 2005, Orkin claimed that the of international law. January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 9 By Working Together We Can Accomplish Miracles Serena was an interviewer for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foun-dation. By GLORIA JACARUSO The membership of Allgenerations has grown Among the most popular features of Together are related issues which she then disseminates to the tremendously, from the original 30 members to Allgenerations’ SEARCHES which are published in group’s membership via e-mails and e-letters. almost 1,700, and mainly accomplished by “word- every issue and on the American Gathering’s web According to Serena among the most important of-mouth,” members’ recommendations, professional site. These SEARCHES seek to find information and rewarding services that Allgenerations provides referrals and referrals from Holocaust related and locate family members and friends of are the SEARCHES, a compilation of museums and organizations, and direct requests from Holocaust survivors whose fate has not been inquiries received from members about missing people who have heard of them and what they do. determined since the horrendous years of World relatives and friends., sent out in e-Letters to Allgenerations provides educational tools War II. Some were last seen in a ghetto or camp, Allgenerations’ international membership. “By and research resources which are utilized by others at the moment of liberation. Often, they are working with the American Gathering, which educators, historians, students at all grade levels, vague memories from childhood days, a name or publishes the SEARCHES in Together and on its authors, and others. Allgenerations also assists with part of a name, mostly with only sketchy additional website,” she explains, “we have been able to school projects, facilitates contacting of Survivors or information, if that. increase the dissemination of the SEARCHES to their descendants for interviews, and obtaining These often moving and always fascinating Together’s readership, thereby greatly increasing the speakers. It also keeps its members updated about searches are the product of Washington, D.C. based number of possible responses.” Holocaust related events, seminars, educational trips, Serena Woolrich, née Wolvovits, the daughter of a Serena told me of one ”SEARCH” she received books and documentaries. Hungarian Holocaust survivor. where a 2g in Michigan, was Allgenerations’ members are deeply appreciative Serena is the founder and looking for anyone who might of Serena’s efforts. According to one 2g from president of Allgenerations, Inc., have remembered her father Sacramento, California, “Almost as soon as I got a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit from the concentration camps online, Serena connected me with a dear man across corporation. or a post-war Displaced Persons the country who was one of the few survivors from Allgenerations, a unique e- camp. A survivor in Melbourne, my mother’s shtetl in Poland. He wrote me and sent mail Network composed primarily Australia responded that he had me pictures. It was the first time in 65 years we found of Holocaust Survivors, their known her father in the Radom out what had happened to everyone my mother grew children (2g’s) and grandchildren ghetto and in Dachau and sent up with.” (3g’s)—in Serena’s words, it her a photograph of her father And according to another 2G from Brisbane, embraces “all the generations”— and his brother, in their Australia, “Apart from being an amazing resource – is an educational and concentration camp uniforms. [Allgenerations] is also a surrogate extended family informational resource whose Another successful SEARCH and makes those of us so geographically far apart purpose is to disseminate and was when a survivor in West feel connected to this global community of those share information about the Hartford, Connecticut sent an affected by the Holocaust.” Holocaust and Israel, related inquiry to Allgenerations seeking Serena said that by working together, issues and events, and to keep the her elementary school classmate Allgenerations and Together have been remarkably unique community of survivors from Vilna, Lithuania. This effective in finding information and locating friends and their descendants informed SEARCH was published in and relatives of Survivors who have been sought. And and connected. Beside Serena, Together, and a survivor living with a rapidly growing membership, and exponentially its three-member Board of in Florida read the SEARCH, a growing number of SEARCHES, Allgenerations is Directors, includes Audrey Kirzner Syatt, Vice- and saw that the person sought was his brother. pleased to be expanding its outreach through President, a 2g and attorney, in Boston, He called his brother in Israel and told him that Together. Massachusetts; and Ashley Taubman, Secretary, a someone in the United States was looking for him. Allgenerations has become a global resource for 3g and graduate student at Columbia, in New York, After several e-mails and phone calls a connection information about the Holocaust. Serena said that as New York. was made after 50 years! the organization continues to grow, it is constantly Allgenerations’ membership also includes Serena is retired from the FDIC and lives in developing new projects and initiatives. Serena hopes educators, historians, Holocaust centers, museums Washington, D.C. Born in 1947 in Brooklyn, New to seek new avenues of funding to continue with its and related organizations, social service York and raised in West Hempstead, New York, over efforts and plans for future endeavors, and seeks new agencies, colleges and universities, students the last 30 or so years Serena has participated in forums to display Allgenerations’ SEARCHES. “My from elementary school to graduate school, along with Second Generation groups in both Israel (Beer Sheva reason for founding Allgenerations was to provide a authors, filmmakers, genealogists, and other individuals and Netanya) and in the U.S. (Fort Lauderdale, clearinghouse for Holocaust information for our and institutions interested in the Holocaust and its Atlanta, Hartford, Connecticut, and Boston). She has members, and to educate and promote tolerance and aftermath. been the president and board member of several of understanding, through awareness and knowledge. I Serena is Allgenerations’ hub, receiving a steady these 2g groups, and has served on local and state am convinced that by working together, we can stream of inquiries on a wide range of Holocaust- committees for Yom HaShoah commemorations. accomplish miracles.” Serena can be reached: [email protected]

Israeli Judges slam “We must admit: The law does not create a even worse, it is a reference to an administrative practical way for Holocaust survivors, their decision by foreign statutory bodies and foreign survivor benefit law as representatives or judicial panels to determine governments, which were not published openly and unclear eligibility in a simple, easy, short and fast process.” officially,” said the judges. The law was intended to provide a monthly stipend The court quoted a meeting of the Knesset By OFRA EDELMAN, Haaretz and other benefits to former concentration camp, work Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora The 2007 Holocaust survivor benefit law is camp and ghetto survivors who do not receive any Affairs, where representatives of the Justice and unclear, making it difficult for survivors to know such support from Israel, Germany or any other Finance ministries said the process was intended to whether they are entitled to state support, the Tel Aviv country. make it easier for survivors. But despite the good Magistrate’s court stated recently, in its role as the The law says that the people eligible for benefits intentions, in practice there is no way to appeal to appeals panel under the Disabled Victims of Nazi are those who received a one-time payment from any body or receive information on whether a specific Persecution Law. This was the first decision regarding Germany under the agreement with the Conference camp or ghetto is recognized, said the judges. the law and the rights it grants survivors. on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or The court also attempted to receive such “The vision of those who drafted the benefits law received compensation from certain other German information itself, as a note to the law says the was that eligibility would be determined by a simple, and Austrian funds. agreements involved have been deposited with the easy, short and fast process...without the need for The court criticized the Knesset’s decision to refer Finance Ministry, but it turned out not to be so simple. complicated, drawn-out bureaucracy and lawyers,” to criteria set by foreign organizations. “The German reparations law is a thick book the judges wrote. “It is not even a reference to a foreign law. It is cont’d on p. 11

TOGETHER 10 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 90-Year-Old Charged in Nazi there is enough evidence to bring the case to trial. KRAKOW GHETTO Authorities did not disclose his attorney's name and Massacre the phone at his home in Duisburg went unanswered. by RITA B.ROSS, author of Running from Home Storms does not appear on the Simon (This episode is dedicated to my By DAVID RISING, AP beautiful, brave mother, Freda WiesenthalCenter's list of most-wanted Nazi war ww BERLIN — A former SS sergeant who worked un- Schmelkes, v g, who single- noticed for decades as a train-station manager was criminals, but the organization's top Nazi-hunter, Efraim Zuroff, said he was “very encouraged by the handedly saved my brother and charged with 58 counts of murder recently after a me from the jaws of Auschwitz.) student doing undergraduate research uncovered his indictment.” By the time we arrived at the alleged involvement in a massacre of Jewish forced "He wasn't on our radar — he wasn't on anyone's Krakow Ghetto we had been laborers. radar — and this is a case that clearly shows it is evading the Nazis and the zealous University of Vienna student Andreas Forster possible, even at this point, to identify perpetrators Polish antisemites by assuming a was working on a project about the slaying in a forest who bear responsibility for serious crimes commit- Catholic identity. We had hidden in near the Austrian village of Deutsch Schuetzen when ted during World War II and bring them to justice," churches, a furniture factory and the homes of Polish he stumbled across Adolf Storms’ name in witness Zuroff said. people, who turned a blind eye to our identities and testimony. Forster then obtained files from federal The remains of the victims of the Deutsch for the payment of a few zlotys rented rooms for us archives in Berlin that enabled him to link the former Schuetzen massacre were found in 1995 in a mass to hide in for short periods of time. The ghetto is our sergeant to the massacre, his professor Walter grave by the Austrian Jewish association. A plaque last refuge. We are hungry, freezing, and tired of Manoschek told The Associated Press. now marks the site. hiding, as well as desperate for a roof over our heads Manoschek visited Storms, 90, at his home in the Storms was interned in an American prisoner of city of Duisburg several times last year after finding war camp following the war, but was released in 1946. to shield us from the brutal winter. We are running him in the phone book. The professor conducted It was not uncommon for possible war criminals to out of hiding places and have to get off the icy streets about 12 hours of interviews in which Storms re- go undetected in the chaotic aftermath of the war. and howling wind. I am six years old and my brother, peatedly said that he does not remember the killings. Storms worked as a train-station manager after Bubbi (his nickname) is four. Forster and Manoschek notified authorities and the war until his retirement. The Austrian press has ...My mother, because of her Aryan looks, perfect state prosecutors near Storms' hometown in the in- reported he changed the spelling of his name. command of German and Polish is pressed into dustrial Ruhrgebiet region of western Germany filed Manoschek described Storms as “fully there” service. She is handed a black woolen coat. “Don’t the charges against him. mentally but in poor physical health. ask where it comes from,” she is told by the rabbi’s Storms and unidentified accomplices are ac- Prosecutor Andreas Brendel said there no living wife. “Just take it and wear it. The owner will never cused of forcing at least 57 of the Jewish laborers witnesses to the forest massacre but statements made use it again.” to hand over their valuables and kneel by a grave during an Austrian trial of others involved can be She removes the yellow armband from the coat before fatally shooting them from behind. A day used as evidence against the suspect. Brendel said and trudges through the streets of Poland, bargaining after the March 29, 1945, massacre, Storms is also three former members of the Hitler Youth who were with shopkeepers for potatoes, half rotten carrots, accused of shooting another Jew who could no helping the SS guard the prisoners on the march have anything she can get to keep us and the occupants of longer walk during a forced march in Austria from provided witness statements in Austria. A fourth the room we share from starving, thereby staying Deutsch Schuetzen to the village of Hartberg. former Hitler Youth member, now living in Canada, alive for one more day. The court described the suspect simply as a “re- is being interviewed this week, he told the AP. While she is away, Bubbi and I stay in the room, tiree from Duisburg,” but German authorities have According to Manoschek, several of the former playing under the table with the other children. In previously identified him as Adolf S. His full name Hitler Youth were tried in 1946 and convicted and that small space I feel protected and safe until dusk was given in previous trials in Austria related to other sentenced to two years in prison for their involve- creeps into the little room. It is dark and she has not suspects in the massacre. He also been identified as ment. returned. Panic stabs my heart sending out currents a former member of the 5th SS Panzer Division of terror that radiate through my chest. I take her "Wiking." Associated Press Writer Veronika Oleksyn contrib- photograph and hold it against the window pane, The Duisburg court still must decide whether uted to this report from Vienna. willing her to come back. In my mind, she has been caught, tortured, mutilated. I see her beaten and Israeli judges slam survivor Kindertransport survivor is bloodied. Even though I am just six, I have been benefit law listening to many adult conversations and know all cont’d from p. 10 knighted too well about the terrible things that happen to Jews written in German, with the law and its explanations (JTA) — A Jewish refugee from the Nazis who who are found outside the ghetto It doesn’t take long combined in a Continental fashion,” wrote judge Shlomo arrived in England on the Kindertransport was for my imagination to transport me to the forest of Friedlander. recently knighted. the orphan: abandoned, alone and frightened. No one The judges got an English version of the law Erich Reich, 74, has raised millions of dollars for has time to comfort two small children. Everyone in establishing the German fund, but it referred to the local charities through his company, Classic Tours, the little room is preoccupied with his own hunger, German reparations law for the list of camps whose which organizes overseas fundraising challenges. pain and loss. survivors are eligible for benefits. Reich, chairman I am ignored and left to my coping skill. I comfort “The German language is not an official language of the Kinder- Bubbi, who is crying loudly. in Israel, and most citizens don’t speak it,” admonished transport Group of “Shhh.” I whisper to him. “Mutti will be back Friedlander. He also said the long lists of names were the Association of soon,” I say, even though I am already making plans different in different languages. Jewish Refugees, for our abandonment. I put my arms around him and The Austrian law lacked a list of relevant camps, organized the rock him back and forth. “Bubbi, Bubbi,” I croon, “I and cited no source for such information, while the celebration last year will never leave you.” agreement with the Claims Conference had no official of the 70th anni- Suddenly she’s back. She’s safe and beautiful text in either Hebrew or English. versary of the and smelling of snow. She has had an exceptional Friedlander said the German government later decision by Britain’s day outside the ghetto. She comes in with a loaf of published a list of camps included in the agreement, parliament to accept bread, three tiny potatoes, a jar of yogurt and a maggot but it was not complete. the children escaping infested slab of meat. The kosher people won’t eat He recommended the Israeli law be changed to Nazi-occupied the meat, but we do. “This is war,” she says. “You state that entitlement should be set by Israel, “as after Europe on the eve of eat what you can.” all, Israeli money is being granted here to Holocaust World War II. survivors, and not German or Austrian money.” “I want to thank the people of Britain for allowing Rita B. Ross was born in Vienna, two years before the Friedlander also wrote that it would be proper if the Kinder to come to the UK and for this amazing annexation of Austria, just before Hitler’s troops stormed an appropriate Israeli authority would set the criteria honor,” he said. the country. She came to America in 1945 to begin a new and publish them in Hebrew, and expand the list to life.Running from Home, Hamilton Books, gives an include other places where Jews suffered from Nazi Reich arrived in Britain at the age of 4 and never saw his parents again. eyewitness account of her family’s survival. persecution. January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 11 SINGER EXHIBIT HONORS ARTISTS the vanished world of Polish Jews prior to and during Members of the American Tam, which was the the First World War, and in his Gathering of Jewish Holocaust critically acclaimed collection of eleven short stories Survivors and Their Descendants mainstage production constituting The Spinoza of Market were in attendance at the October for the theatre in the Street, published in 1961, and later 15 opening reception for the special fall of 2008. novels he depicted a post-Holocaust exhibition, “Isaac Bashevis Singer The program was world, no longer provincial but rife with and His Artists,” at the galleries of organized and curated contemporary chaos and paranoia. the Hebrew Union College Institute by Jean Bloch Rosen- Based on his observations and genuine Jean Bloch Rosensaft Dr. Jerome Chanes and of Jewish Religion in New York, in addresses attendees. saft, Senior National Mahli Lieblich. love of pious, superstitious, earthy, cooperation with the newspaper, The Director for Public heroic, resourceful, and tragic figures, Forward. Affairs and Institutional Planning for the university, his works continue to live in our collective memories. The exhibition, which runs until late June 2010, who is a vice president of the American Gathering Artist Irene Lieblich, a Holocaust survivor from presents the work of 17 artists who illustrated 25 of and Laura Kruger, curator of the HUC museum. Poland, shared a mutually life-enhancing friendship Singer’s novels and short stories, including Larry Among the guests were American Gathering Vice with Singer. Her memories of village life captured River, Maurice Sendak, Raphael Soyer, Roman President, Dr. Eva Fogelman, and her husband, Dr. with joyous naivete the evocative landscape that was Vishniac, William Pene Du Bois and Holocaust Jerome Chanes. faithful to Singer’s recollections of the shtetl. Singer survivor Irene Lieblich. Isaac Bashevis Singer, winner of the 1978 Nobel wrote that “Her works are rooted in Jewish folklore Zalmen Mlotek, a 2G himself, the Artistic Prize for Literature, created a legacy of 86 books and faithful to Jewish life and spirit.” Director, National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene directed and numerous stories that continue to delight people The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated and accompanied members of the cast as they of every age, circumstance, and nationality. He catalogue. For group tours or other information performed from the score of Singer’s story Gimpl depicted with a sense of humanity, humor, and clarity information, call Katie Moscowitz, 212-824-2293. KILLING KASZTNER: A POSTHUMOUS THANK YOU

Holocaust survivors who For those who managed to himself, Ze’ev Eckstein, who was left Budapest on June 30, board the train, it was hardly an recruited by Shin Bet to spy on a 1944 on a train organized by uneventful trip. Most of them were small right-wing radical group and Rezso Kasztner and others held hostage in Bergen-Belsen for then join them. He became part of gathered in New York City six months before they were a cabal to destroy Kasztner and at the YIVO Institute for released near St. Gallen, Switzer- perhaps, as a result, bring down the Jewish Research on land. But in the end they were Israeli government. Eckstein, the October 20 to pay tribute to saved, and most historians agree film’s major focus, was sentenced Killing Kasztner, Emmy that the negotiations landed Gaylen Ross and YIVO Exec Dir. to life and served approximately Award-winning filmmaker approximately 18,000 others in Jonathan Brent. seven years. His accomplices, Gaylen Ross, and Kaszt- labor camps in Austria, where they Joseph Menkes and Dan Shemer, ner family members. Ross’ were held as potential bargaining received the same sentence and also film describes, how, after the war, Kasztner, a chips with the Allies instead of being served just seven years. Israeli Prime spokesman for the Israel government working on deported to Auschwitz. Minister Ben-Gurion even asked the recovering looted Jewish assets in Hungary for the In 1953, Kasztner, then living in Kasztner family to give their approval Ben-Gurion government, was reviled by some who Israel, was publicly accused by to the release. His wife, Bogyo, said were not able to board the train. They accused him Malchiel Gruenwald, a Holocaust no. His daughter, ZsuZsi, said yes, in of being a Nazi collaborator and a thief, discounting survivor, of a host of charges: Zsuzsi Kastner and her order to spare the families of all the fact that he was able to save approximately 20,000 collaborating with the Nazis, stealing daughter Merav. involved more pain and anguish—she Jewish lives. ransom money, and essentially sensed Ben-Gurion was going to let The elderly survivors came to YIVO to pay their causing the destruction of them go anyway. respects to the man who saved their lives and to meet Hungarian Jewry. The Israeli According to the film, Shmuel his daughter Zsuzsi, and his granddaughters Michal, government, on behalf of Kasztner, Tamir, the defense attorney for Keren and Merav, so that they could personally say a spokesman for the ministry of Gruenwald, had been a member of thank you. trade and industry, sued the Irgun, while Kasztner, covering Kasztner, the Hungarian Zionist leader and liaison Gruenwald for libel. During a trial for the Sachnut, did not want to to the Jewish Agency (the Sachnut), managed to replete with political overtones, admit that he wrote affidavits on its ransom 1,684 Jews who departed Nazi-occupied the judge, Benjamin Halevi, Kasztner survivors Friedman, Spira behalf for Kurt Becher and his Budapest in June 1944 for freedom in Palestine via accused Kasztner of having sold and Mayer. cronies—the Nazi officials who Switzerland. Because so few Hungarian Jews his soul to the devil for making a deal with the Nazis. looted Hungarian Jewry. The Sachnut and later the actually managed to survive, there was a backlash of Gruenwald was acquitted of libel on several counts Israeli government under Ben-Gurion sought to rage and resentment toward Kasztner. and fined a mere $1. After Kasztner was assassinated recover Jewish goods and funds looted by the Nazis The film reveals that the arrangement, part of in front of his Tel Aviv house on the night of March and didn’t want people to know that they were in much broader Nazi negotiations that began in Slovakia 3-4, 1957, the High Court overturned the Gruenwald direct negotiations with war criminals. When asked with Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandl and his cousin, decision. But it was too late. Kasztner’s name was about the affidavit he gave to the Allies on behalf of Slovakian Zionist leader Gisi Fleischmann, was a besmirched. People even spat on his young daughter Becher, Kasztner lied on the stand to protect the backdoor attempt to save as many Jews as possible and threw rocks at her. Sachnut. The Zionists didn’t want anyone to know despite worldwide antipathy and condemnation. With the U.S. opening of the new documentary that everything Kasztner did was done at their behest, Working together in Nazi-occupied territory and in Killing Kasztner, the controversy surrounding the and Ross shows documents in the film, discovered Switzerland with Zionists and the Vaad Hatzolah, an negotiations for Jewish lives with Hitler’s deputies since the assassination, that bear this out. They had association of Orthodox Jews in New York seeking (Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, Dieter Wisliceny, not been released during his trial. to rescue members of the yeshiva world, millions had and Kurt Becher) is back on the front burner. For The film received rave reviews during its limited to be raised for ransom from individuals and Jewish some, this is a very personal story involving Kasztner’s New York run, and the survivors at YIVO were glad organizations. History proves how unreceptive Jewish family and the families of the Kasztner survivors. that the controversial Kasztner was finally receiving organizations were and how they sought to condemn For others, it is the story of political terrorism, recognition as the hero who saved their lives. those efforts. described in full in the film by Kasztner’s murderer Photos by Eric Weiss.

TOGETHER 12 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 Through the Generations a large field with a single tombstone. We walked with 22 years ago were now parents, and my sons through tall grass and weeds, but couldn’t read the played with their children as we had with them. by JOYCE ANN (ABRDIGED) stone because it was worn down. I looked at my During our first visit to Poland in 1986, I In 1922, Israel Wygodny, at the age of 3, walked home father’s face and will never forget the profound saw women pulling their cows on leashes and whole from his neighbor’s house chewing a big piece of sadness in it. The rest of the stones had been placed families riding in horse-driven carts. Now the town kielbasa, wonderfully flavored Polish pork sausage. in an old building or were used to pave roads. square—a cobblestoned center with outside tables He didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to eat the non- Leaving Chmielnik, we walked four kilometers and umbrellas—was thriving, with small food stands, kosher meat and his mother told him it was forbidden to Dad’s hometown, Sladkow Maly. Alongside us a statue and a fountain. People dressed in modern and took it away from him. That’s how my father, were horse-driven carriages and men riding bicycles clothing, jeans or skirts and high heels. There were Israel, began learning about the differences between returning from church in Chmielnik. Dad began to no carts and horses, only cars. himself and his Catholic neighbors. Growing up Jewish recognize and greet more people. We saw chickens Yet, underneath, I wasn’t sure if much had in Sladkow Maly, Poland, a small farming running free, and fly infested thatched roofed homes changed at all. During the Jewish Festival, great village, where only five of the 50 families were Jewish, and barns. My father became tearful when he saw a efforts were made to welcome and honor the four my father’s neighbors were his friends. They man with whom he used to play. Dad said, “He was survivors and their families who came to visit from remained his friends throughout WWII when Jews a nice guy as a kid.” Israel and the United States. We were greeted by all over Europe were being slaughtered. Kids were beginning to hang around and stare at the mayor and we were honored during Sunday us. Word was out that Israel Wygodny was back in morning mass and given a written English translation After experiencing the horror of the Holocaust, of the priest’s sermon. We visited Auschwitz with my grandfather, Itzchak Wygodny, told his son, “If Polish teenagers interested in meeting Jewish you survive the war, don’t remain Jewish. You cannot teenagers. build a five-story building on a one-story foundation.” I chatted with a Polish man whose grandfather But even after being put through various work was being honored for hiding five Jews for several and concentration camps during the war, my father, years. It was heart-warming when a group of Polish now Irwin Wygodny, married a Chicago girl. Together kids came to say goodbye to them the day we left for they raised four children. His three sisters, Helen, home, watching them exchange e-mail addresses. Esther, and Linda also survived, but lost their mother, At the rededication of the cemetery, hundreds father and brother, Elchanan, who was only 17 years of townspeople gathered to hear the mayor, old to the Nazis and their collaborators. government officials, and survivors speak. Polish “I would never have believed I would have 10 children stood at attention and sang Hebrew songs. Sladkow Maly Jewish grandchildren,” Irwin often said proudly. Yet, When my mother saw the sparsely placed nameless in raising us Jewish, through the pride, a sadness looms town after 41 years. We met Stanislaw (Stach) stones in the Jewish cemeterythis, she said, “I realize because his parents never knew this joy. My father Pietzcyk, a strong looking, weather beaten 65-year- now that there is no life in Poland for Jews anymore.” also expressed guilt for not following his father’s last old , who purchased the land from my father after My strong reaction took place when I visited the words of advice. the war. Stach told my father that he dreamed about remains of the Chmielnik synagogue built in the One day in 1986, my father told me he was going him two weeks earlier. In his dream my father 1600s. Standing in the balcony area of the almost to Poland. “Well, then I’m going too,” was my returned to Poland to see him. We were the only empty synagogue I could see some remnants of response. I knew that this would be a chance of a Jewish family to return to Sladkow Maly and, decoration on the walls. I looked at the original window lifetime. Two weeks later my parents, siblings and I according to my father, that was because our family frames leaning against the wall. There was no glass were in Poland and we just did what my father wanted was the only one of the five who survived. or windows, just the raw frame where the windows to do, saw what he wanted to see and visited places Stach invited us to his home, which sat in the had been. A spiral staircase led into further darkness. he had learned about as a child in school and never same spot where my fathers’ two-roomed, dirt-floored I saw children running around and laughing, exploring got a chance to visit. house used to be. There were fresh tomatoes, the nooks and crannies of the ruined synagogue, not Several times as we walked down the Polish cucumbers, pickles, tea, open-faced corned beef and realizing the building was once the center of streets, we saw men asking for money. More than schmaltz sandwiches, hot compote, homemade vital Jewish life. once my dad said to us, “That man’s a Jew.” Then sausage, and vodka. “Eat, eat” they said, but they Bittersweet is the only way I can describe he would ask the man if he was Jewish, and he always themselves did not all eat. Poland.Some Jews question Polish motives in received an affirmative answer. I was perplexed. I Stach’s children and grand-children joined us. In creating Jewish festivals. My father never questioned asked my dad how he knew, and he responded, no time, we bonded and were racing after them, their intentions. In June of 2009, at 89, my father took “because he speaks Polish with a Yiddish accent.” running up the heather covered hill behind my father’s his last trip to Poland and returned to the United States, How could that be? I grew up in suburban America. house, playing tag, and laughing with them, exploring feeling contented. On July 11, 2009, my father passed Jews were not beggars! But they were in Poland in lands and streams that were formerly my great- away. 1986. grandfather’s property. We saw my great- Though Irwin Wygodny was one of only a few Our visit to Chmielnik, where my father went to grandfather’s farmhouse and stable, where daily survivors who bore witness to the darkest, most evil school, was the start of a journey into my father’s prayer services had taken place and the village Torah side of mankind, the Holocaust did not define my childhood. It was a once thriving town of 12,000 had been stored. father. His willingness to build a new life in a new people, 75% Jewish. He showed us where his school Twenty-two years later, in 2008, we returned to country and raise four children with my mother, is a had been, as well as the bombed out bakery where Poland for the rededication ceremony of the Jewish tribute to his strength and character. And though his he hid for two weeks during the war. We met many cemetery and the sixth annual Jewish Festival in contentment from his visits to Poland later in his life people who remembered him or his sisters and Chmielnik. This time my father, 88, was not afraid. attest to his memories. He is remembered as a friend had conversations with familiar people, and as we Chmielnik was now a town of 4,200 people— to all—a gentle man, a man who adored his family, walked around he relayed his memories to us none Jewish—but we were we were warmly and built his own business and had a special way with We visited the synagogue but we were unable to eagerly welcomed as friends, hugging, laughing. In the animals. As a Holocaust survivor, he remembered enter it. We found the old cemetery next door, but morning, I looked out the window and saw what my what he experienced and managed to survive and needed to find the new one where my great- father had seen as a child. The children we played move forward. grandfather and uncle were buried. We found it in

From Ayelet Rubinstein, a 3g in Modi’in, Israel: I am looking for my grandfather’s niece, Nina Bella Goltz (maiden name), born 5-4-1942 and her mother, Lea Goltz from the town of Kaunas, Lithuania. My grandfather, Chaim Tzemach (Cemac/Semah/Zemach), now living in Israel, was born in Skidel, which is a town in Belarus today and was in Poland before World War II. Lea Goltz also had a relative named Moshe Selz who lived in Skidel. Lea Goltz lost her first husband, Yitzak Tzemach, in 1941 when he was killed in front of her in the Vilnius ghetto. She was pregnant at the time. After the war in Germany she married Mr. Goltz who adopted Nina-Bella. They emigrated from Germany to New York in 1949. They initially resided in Manhattan and then in Brooklyn (1949). My grandfather received a few letters from them from New York City in the early 1950s but then the connection “disconnected.” I would be thankful if you can help me.

January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 13 THEY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT HIT THEM the barbed wire fence. I don’t think it was electrified. BY GERSHON RON (FROM MY LITTLE BLUE TATOO) exodus. They looked terrible, maybe worse than It seemed to me that the camp had just been After a few days of lingering around the tent we did. erected. We, the striped ones, got the barracks. camp and getting bored, the gates opened. Men in At the villages that we passed, people watched Most of the Hungarians camped out under the Hungarian military uniforms marched in. Those with amazement, but not one dared to approach trees. As soon as we arrived, it started to rain. were the Jews who served with the Hungarian army us, or god forbid, give us a piece of bread. We The ground turned into mud. It was hard to walk. as slave laborers. To fit with the behavior of passed a potato field. The prisoners, like crazies, The lice were eating us alive. There was hardly Hungarian gentlemen, they marched like soldiers, ran from the formation and dug for potatoes. They any food. People got sick. An epidemic of typhoid like the English in the movie The Bridge over the ate the potatoes raw. The guards had a hard time broke out. Dead bodies were lying everywhere. River Kwai. But they didn’t whistle! restoring order. There was no shooting and no It was the end of April 1945! We old timers, the striped ones (they called us beating. Most of the prisoners who dared to step The Red Cross delivered a truckload of food. that because of our uniforms), lined up at the out from the formation were women. Everybody who could manage to stand on two feet, entrance road to the camp, cheering the Hungarians I salute them! lined up in front of a building next to the barracks. on. The poor bastards; they didn’t know what hit As darkness fell, we stopped at a meadow Standing in the line, I met a schoolmate of mine; them. They had no inkling about what hell they close to a forest. I looked for Zoli but to no avail. Finias. He was originally from Hust in were marching into. He was marching with his father and uncle. To Karpatorussia. We decided to support each other, Zoli, my childhood friend, and I, stood next to look for him was like looking for a needle in a because everybody was pushing to get to the front. each other and joined in taunting the newcomers. haystack. On the road, two Slovak kids stuck with To fall into the mud was as good, as saying good We stopped abruptly. We recognized two familiar me. One was 14, and the other 12 years old. bye to this wonderful world! figures. They were Zoli’s father and his uncle. They The idea of getting food from the kitchen didn’t The distribution started in an orderly fashion, also recognized us. They broke ranks and started look very promising. Roaming on the edge of the then, like on a command, the throng started to push. to hug Zoli, each other, and cry. I stood there and forest, I found snails crawling all over. I decided Everybody grabbed whatever their hands reached. hoped that my father would also be marching in. to cook a gourmet dinner. I sent the two kids to The German guards tried to keep the prisoners back He did not! find as many snails as possible. with their rifle butts, when this failed, they opened The four tents filled up in no time. The rest of When it came to food, my imagination ran wild. fire. A lot of people were killed. My schoolmate, the newcomers were camping out under the stars. I had never cooked in my life, not even a hardboiled Finias, was one of them. I came back with empty The slave laborers had marched from Hungary and egg. When the kids came back with the snails, I hands. My two Slovak friends and the Polish kid had a little food in their backpacks. They tried to had water boiling in a pot. I dumped the snails into were also disappointed. protect what little food they had, but were no match the boiling water. The smell was overwhelming. We slept next to each other; actually, more on for us 2,000 hungry wolves. Their food disappeared We didn’t see the German guard approaching. top of each other. I woke up in the morning, opened in the most mysterious ways. The Hungarians were It was too late to grab the pot. The guard kicked my eyes and saw a strange look in my Polish cursing and chasing us but didn’t dare touch us. the pot. The snail soup spilled, together with the friend’s eyes. He was dead! One night a plane flew by and dropped a bomb. half-cooked snails. Then he made us put out the We heard explosions all day. The day of Unfortunately the pilot missed its target and the fire. To make a fire next to the trees wasn’t the liberation seemed to be close. We didn’t know bomb fell in the camp. Some 40 people were killed, smartest thing to do. which army was closing in; Americans, English, or and who knows how many were injured? I slept When the guard left, we picked up the half- Russians. To us, it made no difference. through the whole incident. cooked snails. Instead of a well made gourmet I told my two little friends that I am going to It was less than a month before liberation! meal, which we would have preferred, with a little escape. Their eyes lit up. A week or two before liberation, we were snail soup to wash it down, we had to be satisfied Late the same evening, we saw a commotion. ordered to pack. To pack what? As I mentioned with a medium rare dish. Nobody complained. The Hungarians told us that the gate wasn’t before, we always traveled light. Nobody asked for seconds, either. As we were guarded. We went to investigate. They were right. We were moving again. The Hungarian slave munching on the snails, a young Polish kid The guards were gone. We didn’t go back to the laborers lined up again as soldiers do. We, the approached us. He finished the leftovers and joined barracks. The three of us took off in the direction striped ones, marched at the end of the column, our small group. of the explosions. clowning around, trying to imitate the Hungarians. The next morning we arrived at our destination; We were on our way to freedom! And a bunch of clowns we were! another camp. The gate had no welcome sign and Mazal Tov! On the road, women prisoners joined the the orchestra was absent. The only similarity was

Bergen-Belsen survivors reunited after 64 years Foundation and in December by Jill and Cliff Viner By DAVID A. SCHWARTZ, Palm Beach Jewish Journal of Boca Raton. Belsen in the weeks following liberation. Larry Blair, chairman of the Ruth Rales board of Teenagers Rosalyn Gross and Lucy Gliuck, Finding Jacobs at the luncheon was a “miracle,” directors, said the luncheons are an opportunity to imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen, met in April, 1945 said Haber, who has been searching for Holocaust bring people together to reunite with friends and when British soldiers liberated the death camp. survivors from her home town of Muncach, family from the past. “It’s an opportunity for two Recently, the two women, now Rosalyn Haber and Czechoslovakia since the end of the war. “All these individuals that hadn’t seen each other in 60 years to Lucy Jacobs, met again—64 years later at a Café years I‘ve been searching for one of them,” said reconnect,” he added. Europa luncheon to reunite Holocaust survivors. Haber. “I said,” ‘This is a familiar face.’ I asked her “One success story like this is worth whatever it “I just had a feeling to come today,” Haber, 78. from where are you and did you know Grosses?” takes,” said Stanley Gilbert, Holocaust Survivors Club of Boca Raton said. Jacobs replied that she had dated a young man of Boca Raton president, who brought people in two “God sent you,” said Jacobs, 80, who lives at named Gross, said Haber, realizing that Jacobs knew busses to the luncheon form Century Village west of Century Village in Boca Raton. one of her six brothers, all of whom survived the Boca Raton. Almost 70 years ago it may have been Jacobs Holocaust. And then the woman learned that they “It’s just the happiest day of our life,” Jacobs who God sent to Haber during their last days at the were together again after so many years. said. “From now on we’ll be together.” concentration camp in Germany. In the says Almost 450 Holocaust survivors attended the immediately after liberation, 14-year-old- Rosalyn Café Europa luncheon at B’nai Torah Congregation Gross was sick with typhus and Jacobs cared for in Boca Raton. PLEASE SEND US YOUR STORIES, ARTICLES, her, hiding the young girl in the barracks of German It was the ninth Café Europa luncheon in South POEMS, AND LETTERS FOR INCLUSION IN soldiers and nursing her back to health. “I saved her Palm Beach since 2005. The luncheon, put on by the TOGETHER AND OUR WEB SITE. PLEASE life,” Jacobs said, explaining that she was afraid the Ruth Rales Jewish Family Service, are sponsored in UNDERSTAND THAT WE CANNOT PRINT girl only two years younger than herself would die in June by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims EVERYTHING THAT IS SUBMITTED. a hospital. That was the fate of many at Bergen- Against Germany and the Humanitarian Aid SEND TO: [email protected]

TOGETHER 14 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 US APPEALS COURT NIXES Why has Pope Benedict chosen now to beatify Nazi-era VATICAN BANK HOLOCAUST SUIT pontiff? the windows of the Holy See. True, other Roman By NICOLE WINFIELD By ROBERT WISTRICH Jews were discreetly given sanctuary in ecclesiastical VATICAN CITY (AP) - An American appeals court Exactly ten years ago, on a cold winter morning establishments in and around Rome after October recently dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors in New York City, the Catholic-Jewish Historical 1943, but it remains unclear if this was the result of a who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of Commission, established to investigate Pope Pius XII’s direct papal instruction. In some instances we know dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers. response to the Holocaust, met for the first time to that Pius XII did try to intervene against Nazi or racist The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco discuss its future work. I was the only Israeli historian antisemitic legislation, but in general this was almost upheld a lower court ruling that said the Vatican bank among the six scholars (three Catholics and three always on behalf of baptized Jews since they were was immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Jews) designated by the Vatican and leading Jewish Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protected by the Church as Catholics. Pius’ rare organizations to study this hotly contested issue. protects foreign countries from being sued in U.S. references to the mass murder of the Jews were A little under two years later, the project was courts. invariably veiled and very abstract, as if he found it Holocaust survivors from Croatia, Ukraine and abandoned as a result of the Holy See’s unwillingness difficult to utter the word itself. Was it fear of further Yugoslavia had filed suit against the Vatican bank in to release materials from its own archives that could German reprisals? A latent antisemitism? Was it his 1999, alleging that it stored and laundered the looted help clarify issues that our team of scholars raised in visceral anti-Communism which also led him to hope assets of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies who our provisional report. for a Nazi victory in the East? Or perhaps the desire were killed or captured by the Nazi-backed Ustasha Already at that time, in the last years of Pope to spare German Catholics a conflict of conscience regime that controlled Croatia. John Paul’s pontificate, there were moves afoot to between their loyalty to Hitler, the fatherland, or their They sought an accounting from the Vatican, as place Pius XII on the fast track to sainthood, but they Church? Whatever the reasons, this was hardly heroic well as restitution and damages. were probably slowed down by Israeli and Jewish conduct. So why has Benedict XVI chosen to take The court didn’t rule on the allegations. In its protests and a desire by Church authorities to prevent this step now? Why risk unnecessary damage to decision, the court said the Vatican bank, formally a serious rupture in Catholic-Jewish relations. Catholic-Jewish relations? known as the Institute for the Works of Religion, or At issue was the silence of Pius XII during the My own inclination is to think that the present IOR, was a sovereign entity entitled to the protections Holocaust and his indirect complicity in the Nazi mass pope regards Pius XII as a soulmate—both of the foreign sovereign immunities act, and that murder of Jews. These allegations, which first theologically and politically. He shares with the therefore U.S. courts had no jurisdiction. emerged around 1964, had prompted the Vatican to wartime pontiff an authoritarian centralist world-view The pope himself has been granted such publish eleven volumes of its own documents (edited and a deep distrust of liberalism, modernity, and the protections in U.S. courts hearing clerical sex abuse by four trusted Jesuit scholars), most of them ravages of moral relativism. He was 31 years old cases. appearing in the 1970s. It was these documents in when Pius XII died in 1958, and already then regarded Jeffrey Lena, who represented the Vatican Bank Italian, German, French, Latin, and English that we him as a venerated role model. Moreover, the German- in the case, said he was gratified with the ruling since were originally asked to review. The million or so born Joseph Ratzinger (today Benedict XVI) certainly the court decided not only that the IOR was a unpublished documents from the pontificate of Pius knew that Pius XII (an artistocratic Roman) was also sovereign entity but that as such it was immune from XII (1939?1958) according to the Vatican’s most a passionate Germanophile, surrounded by German U.S. jurisdiction. recent estimate, will only be available in about four aides during and after the war, fluent in the German “In defending the lawsuit, the IOR did not year’s time. It is in this context that we need to see language, and a great admirer of the German Catholic challenge the allegations of the plaintiffs that they the recent decree onthe “heroic virtues” of Pius XII, Church. Not only that, but Ratzinger probably knows had suffered terrible losses at the hands of the just signed by Pope Benedict XVI. Most Jews have that Pius XII personally intervened after 1945 to Ustasha,” he told The Associated Press. “Rather the interpreted this act as yet another signal that the commute the sentences of convicted German war challenge was simply to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts Vatican is determined to beatify the controversial criminals. This solicitude for Nazi criminals contrasts over the IOR.” wartime pope—whom some even consider to have sharply with Pius XII ignoring all entreaties to make Jonathan Levy, who represents the survivors, said been antisemitic—regardless of what the historical a public statement against antisemitism even after he thought he had sufficiently shown that the Vatican evidence may indicate. The sharp response of Jewish bank engaged in commercial activities in the United the full horrors of the death camps had been revealed leaders to Benedict’s decree prompted the Vatican’s States, which can serve as an exemption to the in 1945. In this context it is profoundly unsettling to Press Office Director, Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., protections granted by the immunities act. think that the ultraconservative Benedict XVI and “The reason we’re disappointed is the court found to release a conciliatory note distinguishing between his entourage can identify so completely with Pius that dealing in gold teeth from concentration camps the historical judgment of Pius XII’s actions (still an XII as a man of “heroic virtue.” was not a commercial act,” he said. open question) and the saintly Christian life he The present pope, no doubt, deplores anti- In its ruling, the court said that the Vatican banks’ apparently led. In particular, Father Lombardi was semitism, though his statements on the subject have U.S. commercial activities were “too tangentially concerned to disclaim any notion that this decree was been noticeably less robust than those of his related to their legal claims to be considered the basis “a hostile act towards the Jewish people” or an obstacle predecessor, John Paul II. At Yad Vashem last for the suit.” to Catholic-Jewish dialogue. In the light of the pope’s summer he expressed no personal regret as a German Levy said he didn’t plan to appeal the judgment. forthcoming visit to the Synagogue of Rome, this was for the unspeakable horrors of the Shoah, even though The victims are also suing the Franciscans, the Roman a politically astute and welcome reassurance. he had once been a member of the Hitler Youth. True, Catholic order, on identical charges, and that portion Nevertheless, the decree on Pius XII still raises he had little choice in the matter. However, he was of the lawsuit is going ahead, he said. concern not only about the continuing drive to beatify disturbingly vague about the truly monstrous German The survivors filed suit against the Vatican Bank the wartime pontiff but also about the present pope role in the Holocaust. Earlier this year Benedict also a year after Swiss Banks agreed to pay some $1.25 and the state of relations between the Catholic Church showed remarkably poor judgment (to put it billion to Nazi victims and their families who accused and the Jewish people. Regarding Pius XII, I charitably) in reinstating an unrepentant Holocaust- the banks of stealing, concealing or sending to the personally have never seen him either as “Hitler’s denying British bishop into the mainstream Catholic Nazis hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Jewish Pope” (the theory of British historian John Cornwell— Church, an action he only retracted after worldwide holdings. a “lapsed” Catholic), or as the “Righteous Gentile” Jewish and Catholic protests. These serious mistakes The Vatican bank was famously implicated in a evoked by Rabbi David Dallin. My own provisional appear to follow a pattern and may even indicate a scandal over the collapse of Italy’s Banco conclusion drawn from the study of thousands of regression from the real progress in Catholic-Jewish Ambrosiano in the 1980s. Roberto Calvi, the head of documents is that the mass murder of Jews was fairly relations under Benedict’s predecessor. One can only the Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from low on his list of priorities. Of course, much the same hope they are not irreversible since the stakes are Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. The could be said of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, but high and no sane person can be interested in circumstances remain mysterious. they did not claim to be the “Vicar of Christ” or to undermining the bridges across the abyss that have More recently, Italian news reports said last represent the Christian conscience. Pius XII strikes been so painstakingly constructed. month that Italian financial police were scrutinizing me as a polished diplomat far more worried about Prof. Robert S. Wistrich is the director of The Vidal Sassoon tens of millions of euros worth of Vatican bank the Allied bombing of Rome than about the thousand transactions to see if they violated money laundering International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew Roman Jews who were being deported by the University of Jerusalem (http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/). regulations. Germans to their deaths in Auschwitz, virtually under January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 15 Att: Dr. Liliane Kshensky Baxter please contact Tosia Schneider at: [email protected]

I am undertaking a new project that involves Holocaust survivors. The From Bernd Horstmann, Custodian for the idea for this project arose when I was volunteering with the Red Cross, Registry of Names, Department of Research assisting with the missing persons register. Part of what I did was enter and Documentation at the Bergen-Belsen information from letters sent in searching for family members missing Memorial: after World War II. These letters often contained copies of the last I am the Custodian for the Registry of Names correspondence received from the missing family member. I found these here in the Department of Research and letters incredibly touching. They made history come alive in a way nothing Documentation at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, I had ever read before had. These letters were rendered all the more touching by the knowledge that for these Anne-Frank-Platz, 29303 Lohheide, Germany. people, it did, indeed, become too late. I found myself crying as I entered the information, but also getting a I am working on compiling and registering the sense of what it meant to face the prospect of having to flee one’s home in a way I never had before. names and data of the former prisoners of the Bergen- I would very much like to collect as many of these last letters as possible and publish them as a book. I do Belsen concentration camp. not plan to add much to the text of the letters themselves, as there is very little one could add. Each letter will Since 1990 contact has been made with about be photographed and the photograph will be shown on one page. The text will be translated, if necessary, and 3,000 former prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen typed out on another page. If there is a photograph available of the person, I would like to show that, as well concentration camp. There are also many family as any commentary the family would like to include. members who are asking for information about their My first hurdle, obviously, is finding these families and the letters, especially after so many years. I am sisters and brothers, parents, grandparents and other hoping that you could help, by passing along my request in Together. I realize that this is a delicate, and sad, relatives. request, but I hope that the value of the letters in educating people, of both current and future generations, and Contact with the Holocaust Survivors and with giving them insight into the day-to-day concerns and considerations of people who were realizing that there the members of the next generations—all the was a time limit on how long they could safely remain in their home country, will outweigh the sadness. generations—is very important for us. Our permanent Elisabeth Pollaert Smith exhibition which opened in 2007 would not have been My colleagues and I are college professors and filmmakers currently working on a documentary film about possible without their enormous support. Czech prodigy, Petr Ginz. Petr, who was murdered at Auschwitz when he was 16, wrote five novels and About myself: I was born 20 years after WW II. produced 200 drawings and paintings by the time of his death. Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon took one of Petr’s I am not Jewish and my parents and grandparents drawings, Moon Landscape, into space with him aboard the Columbia space shuttle. My colleagues and I are were not persecuted by Nazi Germany, so I am not a working with Yad Vashem and with Petr’s sole surviving family member, Chava Pressburger, on the project. member of the 2nd or 3rd generation. I studied politics The film is being supported by the Yavitz Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. (For more and literature at Hannover University (my title is MA) about our work and our graduate program, see www.jou.ufl.edu/documentary) and I live in Hannover. I have been doing this work I was hoping your organization might be able to help us in our search to find individuals who may have for about 10 years, getting in contact with many known Petr Ginz. We are looking only for people who knew Petr personally and had interactions with him in Survivors of Bergen-Belsen and also members of the Prague and/or Terezin. We have individuals who describe Terezin in general, the terrible conditions and second generation. heartbreak, but we need individuals who had specific encounters with Petr Ginz. I would appreciate any assistance in contacting Cara Pilson, The Documentary Institute, University of Florida, PO Box 118400, Gainesville, FL 32611 Survivors of Bergen-Belsen and their descendants. I can be reached directly at: bernd.horstmann From Merle Funkenberg @stiftung-ng.de The survivors of concentration camps, who decided to appear as witnesses before a German court in the 1960 and the 1970, made an important contribution to the prosecution of the crime of the Nazis. The victims If anyone has facility in any of the following languages had to report on their experience in the Concentration camps. They suffered mentally: Talking about torture, (Albanian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, mindless violence and captivity was a daunting task for the survivors and the public seemed to be more on the Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Galician, Greek, Hungarian, side of the accused. Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, These witnesses were supported by German volunteers. The contact between the survivors and the Romani, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Sloven, german volunteers were the first peaceful meetings characterized by trust, understanding and sensivity. Despite Ukrainian) and is willing to assist the United States that, the support of the witnesses had been overlooked by the scientific research. Holocaust Memorial Museum in translating The aim of my dissertation is, to analyze the meaning of the volunteer work for the witnesses and its documents, please contact: Larry Garfinkel, Project particular importance for the international understanding and the controversy about the Nazi dictatorship in Coordinator, Registry of Holocaust Survivors, 202- the 1960 and 1970. To realize this project, I am looking for survivors who testified at German courts. 488-6145, [email protected]. Lichtenbergstr. 1 • 37075 Göttingen • Germany Worse Than War, an epic new documentary set Telefon +49 (0)179 9056470 • e-mail [email protected] for release on PBS in 2010, takes viewers on an From Rainier Voss, Head of County Archives, Celle, extraordinary journey with noted Holocaust scholar Germany: towards Bergen-Belsen and spent the night in Daniel Goldhagen as he travels to the sites in over I live in Celle, where I am the head of the county Wittbeck, about half way between Celle and Bergen- eight countries of the worst mass slaughters in the archives. Celle is about 20 miles south of Bergen- Belsen. past century. Together we encounter killers, survivors, Belsen, in northern Germany. As the Bergen-Belsen I am looking for any information on this march, witnesses, journalists and political leaders whose area became part of our county after World War II especially on what happened in the Celle area, names, stories provide powerful insights into why genocides there are quite a few files about Bergen-Belsen details, etc. This death march had always been mixed continue to plague our planet. More than 60 years concentration camp, DP camp and the Memorial in up with the march that took place after the bombing after the Holocaust inspired cries of “Never Again,” my archives. Moreover parts of the V-2rocket that of the Celle train station on April 8, 1945, when two is it possible for us to prevent genocide and save was assembled in Mittelbau-Dora were produced in transports with concentration camp inmates were hit. millions of lives? The film shows us how. our county and the death marches and transports from After the bombing, the survivors were chased “The real challenge in recalling any trauma is not Mittelbau-Dora and its subcamps to Bergen-Belsen by German police, soldiers, and even inhabitants of how many facts are preserved, but how our memory also came through our county. Celle, and many were killed after they had survived of the past prevents a recurrence of its horrors for I am looking urgently for information on a death the bombing. This became infamous as the “Celle any potential victim,” according to Brad Hirschfield, march that passed through Celle on April 10, 1945 on Hasenjagd” (“rabbit hunt” or “hare chase” of President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for its way to Bergen-Belsen. This march was part of Celle). These survivors were then put on a death march Learning and Leadership. “We need to learn how to the evacuation of Klein Bodungen, a subcamp of to Bergen-Belsen on the morning of April 10th. The remember forward, and this film helps us do just that.” Mittelbau-Dora. This death march of about 500 difference between these two marches is just a few prisoners left Klein Bodungen at the beginning of April hours. That may be the reason, why so far, everyone Rabbi Hirschfield’s most recent book, You Don’t and passed through Celle in the early afternoon of has thought that there had only been one march. Have to Be Wrong For Me to Be Right: Finding April 10th. Just northwest of Celle, in Gross Hehlen, Information on the death march after the Celle Faith Without Fanaticism, addresses the need to the prisoners wanted to rest for the night, but they bombing would also be much appreciated. Many combat extremism, be it religious, political or personal, were driven further on by the SS. Just outside Gross details about that march are still unknown as well. by nurturing commitment and openness Hehlen, the group ran into fire by the German If anyone has any information about either of simultaneously. Wehrmacht who had dug themselves in the woods. theese two death marches, please contact me directly Several people were killed. The survivors went on at: [email protected].

TOGETHER 16 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 received a B.A.from Colgate University in 1960. After Experiences at the Hands of the Nazi SS and graduation he was married, and then went on active Gestapo (1942-1945)(2000), in various interviews, duty with the U.S. Army. speeches, and published articles, and in Churban, a His professional career was spent in book documentary film currently being produced about the publishing and in graphic arts. He simultaneously lives of several Holocaust survivors. devoted much of his time working pro bono as an As the only Jewish worker in the Krakow Ghetto Yitzhak “Ike” Aharonovitch editor, and then as the chairman of the non-profit auto repair shop, Lewis stole a hacksaw blade from By Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Holocaust Library, which published 56 books about the shop after witnessing the first bloody liquidation The captain of the legendary pre-state Jewish Nazi persecution of Jews in Europe. He was a of the ghetto in June 1942. “I kept the blade in my immigrant ship Exodus, Yitzhak “Ike” Aharonovitch, member of the Editorial Committee of the U.S. boot in case I would need it someday,” Lewis often died recently in Hadera at the age of 86. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and an said. That day would come four months later, on Aharonovitch was born in Germany and came to active speaker for the Museum of Jewish Heritage October 28, 1942, when Lewis was rounded up in Palestine as a child in 1932 with his family. At the in New York. the ghetto for transport and extermination to the age of 17, he stole away on a ship and sought to join He participated in the editing of the republished Belzec death camp along with his parents, sister, the Soviet army to fight the Germans, but he was version of Alexander Donat’s The Holocaust brother, his future wife’s mother and two sisters, and caught and returned to Palestine. Kingdom, which is his father’s classic wartime 4,500 other Jews in the Krakow Ghetto. He later joined the Palyam, the naval unit of the memoir of their family. He subsequently participated After being forced into cattle cars, Lewis pre-state Palmach Jewish military force. He went to in a series of fundraising events where he was the informed his family of his plan to use his hacksaw to London to study seamanship, but returned to Palestine keynote speaker for the publisher, the U.S. Holocaust saw the bars of the cattle car and escape from the without completing his studies to get involved in Memorial Museum. transport. Victor and his brother, Leon, both jumped bringing in illegal Jewish immigrants. off of the train to save their lives. Their parents, In 1946, he boarded the Exodus in Baltimore and Jake Heifetz Abraham and Bertha, and sister, Greta, decided not worked on the ship’s renovation. When the ship’s to jump. The Lewis brothers never saw their parents By Samara Kalk Derby captain resigned, Aharonovitch, then 23, assumed the or sister again, and never again saw anyone else they Jake Heifetz, who survived the Holocaust in German- post. The ship left France in July of that year with knew on the transport. occupied Poland after three years in the woods 4,515 Holocaust survivors on board. After two months Both brothers survived the Holocaust, immigrated fighting with the resistance, has died of cancer. He of run-ins with the British, its passengers were to the U.S., and raised families in the New York was 92. returned to France; when they refused to disembark metropolitan area. Heifetz grew up in a family of seven children in there, they were deported to Hamburg, Germany. At the October 1965 Nazi War Crimes testimony Lachwa, Poland. In September 1942, Heifetz and Aharonovitch was shown to be a fascinating in Kiel, Germany, against SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer another brother fled into the forest to escape the figure. He charmed those around him, with his calm, Martin Fellenz, the Nazi commander of the Krakow destruction of their town by the Nazis. The rest of his determination and his devotion. ghetto deportations, Lewis testified against the alleged his family perished. suspect, recounting the roundup, Fellenz’ role, and Her father was a freedom fighter, Pauline Heifetz Lewis’ escape from the train. Fellenz was convicted Israel Berkenwald said. Young guys such as her father were in charge the following year of war crimes and sentenced to Israel Berkenwald, 86, of West Palm Beach, FL, died of going into the villages at night and getting food, prison. Oct. 18, 2009. Born in Lodz, Poland, he formerly lived drink and clothing, she said. A lot of the women would In the United States, Lewis became a founder of in Bloomfield, New Jersey and New York City. stay back and make the meals and take care of the the New Cracow Friendship Society in 1965 and Berkenwald arrived in New York City in May children, she added. It was in the underground camps served continuously on its Board of Directors. He 1946 on the Marine Flasher, the first ship of where her father met her mother, Fania. served on the Board of Directors of Beit Halochem Holocaust survivors to enter the United States. He “She never learned English. Her experience was (Friends of Israel Disabled Veterans) and was was the sole survivor of his large family. After a few worse than Dad’s as far as not having anyone left. honored to represent Krakow in candle lighting years as an operator in the garment trade, he became They burned her village,” Pauline Heifetz said. “She ceremonies at the American Gathering of Jewish an executive in the ILGWU, becoming the northern was just happy to have anything. Her wedding ring Holocaust Survivors’ commemoration ceremonies at region’s Administrative Supervisor until his was a wedding, a new life, a new start. They were Temple Emanu-El and at Madison Square Garden in retirement. very happy just to be alive.” Manhattan. He was active in the Workmen’s Circle, the The couple decided to come to Madison where Liberal Party of New York City, taught at the Fashion Heifetz’ older brother settled. Institute of Technology, and in retirement, was active Heifetz worked as a carpenter in Madison, and Naava Piatka in Holocaust Survivor organizations. after his retirement in 1974, he and Fania became Multitalented nternationally the caretakers for their synagogue. Even five weeks known artist/actress/play- William H. Donat ago he was mowing the temple’s lawn, said Rabbi wright/author, Naava Piatka, Joshua Ben Gideon. “Jake was the heart and soul of died peacefully at age 57 on William Donat was born in the congregation in a lot of ways,” Gideon said. September 17, 2009 after a Poland in 1937. After Given his life story, many people would be bitter brave struggle with cancer. Germany invaded Poland, and nasty, but not her father, Pauline Heifetz said. Born in Cape Town, he and his parents were He told everyone, ‘Life is short, live it.’” South Africa to Holocaust confined to the Warsaw survivor parents, Naava began her performing career Ghetto. He is one of a Victor Lewis as a child, singing on stage with her cabaret star handful of young children mother, Chayela Rosenthal. She taught at the Victor Lewis (Wiktor from the Warsaw Ghetto to Gertrude Haas Entertainment Educational Center, did Lezerkiewicz), a Holo-caust have survived. radio work and held her sold-out first art exhibition of survivor from Krakow, When he was 5, he was smuggled out of the paintings of Jerusalem at the age of 22. Poland, who escaped a train ghetto and given to Christian friends of his parents. After moving to Johannesburg, she worked as a transport from the Krakow Shortly thereafter, he was betrayed and had to spend freelance journalist, started the art department at a Ghetto to the Belzec death the remainder of the war in a Catholic orphanage. local private school, exhibited her artwork in local camp and became a Plaszow Meanwhile, his parents were sent to various galleries and co-founded Stages, a children’s theater camp prisoner and Schindler’s List survivor, died on concentration camps where they spent the remaining company. After marrying and immigrating to the USA, October 5th in Queens, NYC, at the age of 90. years of the war. Fortunately, both survived and the Naava continued exhibiting and selling her fine art, Lewis’ Holocaust experiences and transport family was reunited after the war. working as an actress in regional theater, writing and Immediately after World War II, he was brought escape were documented in testimonies to the Shoah directing original musicals for Showstoppers, the to the United States where he grew up in New York Foundation Institute (1994), in a chapter on his life in theater troupe for children she began at the Newton City. He attended public schools and graduated from the book, Schindler’s Legacy (1994), in his autobio- JCC. the Bronx High School of Science in 1956. He graphical memoir Hardships and Near-Death cont’d on p. 18

January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 17 As a writer, a gracious host. He invited us into his office and Stephen Goodman, described him as a righteous Naava received offered us refreshments. When we started to write person. “For 60 years he worked tirelessly bearing a Massachusetts the check, I will never forget how he took the witness to the horrors of the Holocaust,” Goodman Cultural Council invoice and tore it up in front of us. His words said. “He was a modest and humble man.” Grant to stage her still ring in my ears: ‘You don’t owe me any- Silberstein survived operations by Nazi “doctor” full-length thing...It is I who am indebted to you for bringing Josef Mengele and avoided near-certain death by musical, won several Boston Playwrights’ New Plays under my roof 20,000 survivors who endured the telling camp guards he was 15 and able to do manual competitions and received commissions for her musical horrors of the Holocaust, the President of the labor. His evidence at the Nuremburg trials in 1946 plays. Naava’s debut book No Goodbyes, a father- United States, and a considerable number of helped to convict Nazi leaders Hermann Göring and daughter memoir about love, war and resurrection, that renowned dignitaries.’ He said it was an Rudolf Heß. He moved to New Zealand in 1948. she finished while battling her cancer and other experience he would remember for the rest of his health complications, was just published. life.” Sali Szlam As an actress, Naava was best known for her Abe Pollin and the example of heartfelt By Rick Badie, The Atlanta internationally acclaimed solo musical performance generosity he set for the Jewish people will always Journal-Constitution piece, Better Don’t Talk (aka Finding My Mother’s be remembered with deep respect and fondness In 1942, a young Sali Szlam Voice) about the remarkable life and times of her by Holocaust survivors and their descendants. was herded from her home Holocaust survivor actress mother, star of the Vilna May his memory be a blessing. along with thousands of other Ghetto. Abe Pollin, a longtime supporter of Israel and Romanian Jews. German Jewish causes, has died at the age of 85. Best known soldiers marched them Alice Pfeffer as the owner of the Washington Wizards basketball through the woods for by Deanna Pfeffer Blair team and the Verizon Center the team played in, Pollin several weeks. Eventually, Alice Pfeffer nee Lilienfeld passed away at the age served on the boards of AIPAC, Hillel, and The Israel they were packed on a train of 94½. She came to this country in 1938, escaping Project, and was involved in numerous philanthropic like sardines, then shipped to a ghetto in Transnistria, the horrors of the Nazis. My Aunt Blanche (Lilienfeld) activities in and outside the Jewish community. More near the Ukraine border. There, her father died. Israel (1909 – 2001), her sister, followed her in 1939. recently, Pollin was one of three Washington real- Miraculously, she, her mother and her sister survived. She was a victim of Nazi abuse on Kristallnacht estate developers who in 2004 bought and restored In 1968, due to rising antisemitism in Poland, Mrs. whose parents were killed in Auschwitz. My father, the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, the former home Szlam and her family migrated elsewhere. By then, Isaac Pfeffer (1909 – 1981), also lost his parents and of the Adas Israel synagogue before it could be turned she was married with two children. Her daughter, sister in the Holocaust. My Mother never forgot their into a nightclub. The facility is now a magnet for the Melita, moved to Israel. The rest of the family settled loss. She always said that she had “Survivor’s Guilt.” city’s younger Jews, sponsoring a variety of Jewish in Rome, Italy, but had their eyes set on America. When she came to this country she settled in New and cultural programming, and is in the same In 1970, with the aid of the Jewish Federation of York City. She worked as a milliner, designing hats for neighborhood Pollin revitalized when he built the Greater Atlanta, they relocated to Atlanta. John Fredricks, Mr. John, Halston and Bergdorf Verizon Center. Through the years, Mrs. Szlam expressed Goodman. She made hats for the movie Gone with Pollin was born on 3 December 1923 to Mr. and gratitude for the Jewish organizations that helped the the Wind, and well-known individuals like Jackie O. Mrs. Morris Pollin. When he was 8, Pollin’s family family settle in America. She also was grateful for My mother was an intelligent woman. She was moved to the Washington area from Philadelphia. surviving the Holocaust. She showed it through action, an active member of the Rego Park Jewish Center, Pollin graduated from George Washington University not words. “The empathy, caring for others, being involved where the Sisterhood depended on her creativity for in 1945 and took a job with his family’s construction in the community—it came from her heart,” said a all their functions. company that lasted for 12 years. Pollin launched his son, Aleksander Szlam of Alpharetta. “Nothing Once the Anchorage Times came from Alaska own construction company in 1957. else. She was always doing things for other people. I to interview her about the emigration of German A successful contractor in the Washington area, grew up with this and understood the calling.” Jews during the Holocaust. During the war, her he headed an investment group that bought the then cousins tried to flee Nazi German by requesting Leopold and Sali Szlam were honored as Baltimore Bullets in 1964. He moved the team to the Holocaust Survivors by the Jewish National asylum in Alaska, but theywere denied access. They Washington area in 1973 after building the Capital remained in Germany, were placed in concentration Fund. The couple met in Poland after the war. He Centre and renamed it the Washington Wizards in was 99 when he died. camps and executed. 1996. (Abridged from story by Eric Fingerhut, JTA.) We all miss her very much, but take solace in In June, Mrs. Szlam was diagnosed with ovarian knowing she is with my Dad and her parents again. cancer. It spread quickly. She died at her home from Martin Marcel complications of the disease. She was 84. Abe Pollin Preisler The American Gathering Martin Marcel Preisler, 86, of Richard offers condolences to Elkhart recently passed away Weilheimer the Pollin family on in South Bend, IN. At the age of 7 Richard their loss. The Gather- Born November 5th 1922, Weilheimer witnessed the ing was founded at a in Cluj/Transylvania, Romania arrest of his father, the conference for Holo- to Adalbert and Hermina destruction of his home, and caust Survivors and (Lowinger) Preisler, he also had a sister Judith. His the burning of his synagogue their descendants in parents and sister died in the Holocaust. However, on Kristallnacht. In October Washington, D.C. in born of tragedy would be a man of heroic action the 1940 his entire family was 1983. Ben Meed, our world should know and never forget. deported to Camp de Gurs in president, was able to rent Mr. Pollin’s Capital His career was in the hospitality industry working Vichy-controlled France. Several months later the Centre for the opening ceremony on very short in many five-star facilities in Europe and owning the Quakers arranged for Richard and his younger notice.American Gathering Chairman Roman R. Tea Break in Paris. He married Dr. Sylvia Yvette brother to be placed in an orphanage in Aspet, southern Kent describes what happened next: “When the (March) Preisler in Miami, FL on July 2, 1979. France. His mother died in 1941 and two years later opening ceremonies were over, we wanted to pay his father was gassed in Sobibor. Subsequently, the our bill, about $150,000, so Ben Meed and I made Fred Silberstein Quakers arranged for Richard and his brother to be an appointment to see Mr. Pollin, and we took Fred Silberstein, 80, a survivor of Auschwitz who gave on the last ship out of Europe just five days before our wives along. We wanted to thank him for evidence at the Nuremberg Trials has died in New Adolf Eichmann came to Paris to demand the “Final making the site available to us at such short notice, Zealand. Silberstein, who was 14 when he was taken Solution of the Jewish Question.” and to express our appreciation for the to Auschwitz in 1943, spent much of his life educating Richard arrived in the United States at the age professionalism and thoughtfulness of his staff. people in New Zealand about the horrors of the of 10. He integrated into American society, fought in “We were impressed when Mr. Pollin greeted Holocaust and the subsequent dangers of racism. The In addition to writing three books about his us not as the owner of the Capital Centre, but as president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, cont’d on p. 19

TOGETHER 18 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 MAREK EDELMAN (1919—2009): A REMINISCENCE dissolve instead of yielding to communist pressure to merge with the Polish Workers’ Party. But he could by JERZY B. WARMAN not abandon the place that defined him for the rest of Marek Edelman, the last commander of the preparations for an armed revolt against the Nazis in his life. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, died in Warsaw on October the horrifying summer of 1942. During the Ghetto In 1945 Marek and Ala settled in £ódŸ, in the 2, 2009. He was fated to become a hero at the age of Uprising he commanded the Brushmakers’ factory villa of Dr. Anna Margolis, his mother-in-law, and 24 and, after the war, a complex symbol of Jewish area. After Mordechai Anielewicz’s death he became studied medicine. The couple became renowned resistance to the Nazis. He was the best known figure the last commander of the dwindling resistance forces. physicians—Ala as a pediatrician and a respected among the surviving remnant of Jews in Poland, the He and Ziviah Lubetkin led a handful of the surviving authority on childhood diabetes, and Marek as a personification of courage and a chafing embodiment fighters out of the ghetto flames to the “Aryan Side” cardiologist. In the 1970s Marek conceived of and, of moral authority. Since the burning days of April and into hiding. together with Professor Jan Moll, designed an 1943 he stood wholeheartedly in opposition to tyranny With the ghetto gone, with Itzhak “Antek” innovative surgical procedure for heart attack patients and evil, always on the side of the weak, the powerless, Zuckerman he organized and managed an who suffered usually fatal, extensive heart-muscle and the suffering. Before the memory of the man underground network to aid Jews in hiding. Marek damage. inevitably becomes a monument carved in the white fought the German army in the Warsaw Uprising in Even during the vicious antisemitic purges, marble of piety, I want to remember Marek as a man August-September 1944, in the Jewish unit accepted launched by the government in 1968, Marek refused who was—for a son of his comrades—a childhood by the communist-led People’s Army during the to budge. His wife and children immigrated to France idol, a stern and sometimes sarcastic battle’s first days. but he would not let others define him or tell him critic, a constant point of reference When Warsaw where he could live. He felt it was his duty to stand and an unwitting mentor. surrendered, a group of about guard over the ashes of Poland’s Jews, to keep the Marek was born in Homel, 15 Jewish fighters, including memory of his fallen comrades alive, and to serve as White Russia, and was orphaned as Marek, Ziviah, Antek, and my an eyewitness for young generations of Poles. a child. He was raised by friends of parents, Marysia Feinmesser He signed public protests against communist his parents, members of the Bund, and Zygmunt Warman, hid for attempts to sovietize Poland. In 1976 he joined the the General Jewish Workers Party six weeks in a cellar until they Committee for the Defense of Workers (“KOR”) of Poland and Lithuania, at the time were miraculously smuggled which became the intellectual godparent of Solidarity. the largest Jewish political out of Warsaw by rescuers led After the fall of communism in 1989, he was among organization in Poland. The Bund by Alina Margolis, Marek’s wife the most important public figures in democratic Poland. was his cradle, his home and school, after the war. He condemned contemporary assaults on human and the most significant formative Soon after the liberation dignity, advocated various humanitarian causes, and influence in life. It was through his most of the Jewish survivors left opposed nationalism, antisemitism, the semi-fascist spiritual grandfathers in the Bund, Poland. Marek stayed. This fringe, and the right-wingers in Polish politics. Poland Henryk Erlich and Wiktor Alter, that decision made him a honored him with its highest distinction, the Order of he became a Yiddish socialist, and controversial, if not a wholly the White Eagle; France made him a Chevalier de through Abrasha Blum, Bernard suspect figure, in Israel and with Legion d’Honneur; and he received honorary Goldstein and Maurycy Orzech, his North American Jewry. Yet it doctorates from Yale and Jagiellonian Universities. political fathers in the Warsaw was not in the least a betrayal These bare facts of Marek’s official biography Ghetto, that he joined the resistance. or evidence of political cannot capture the essence of the man. What was it As a representative of the Bund, opportunism. To the contrary— like to be a walking history and still be human—facing Marek was a deputy commander of the Jewish always faithful to the ideals of his youth, Marek was each day with a sense of ethical duty, love for his Fighting Organization (¯OB), which began instrumental in the Bund decision, made in 1948, to children, devotion to friends, anger at much that was happening in the world, sadness of immeasurable cont’d from p. 18 losses, and an extraordinary sense of professional responsibility to his patients? What does it mean to the Korean conflict, and had a successful career in the fashion accessory exist as a living memory? industry. He wrote a book for his wife and children, Be Happy, Be Free, At every opportunity Marek retold his Dance! A Holocaust Survivor’s Message to His Grandchilden and unvarnished memories of the Warsaw Ghetto. He was involved with The Child Survivors/Hidden Children group of Florida. insisted that what he and other young boys and girls He passed away on November 27, 2009. did in April 1943 was not heroism. They fought without hope, their only goal to die the way they chose for Leon Weliczker Wells themselves and to take a few Germans along with them. Not to “die with dignity”—the phrase made Leon Weliczker Wells was born in Stojanow near Lvov, Poland in March 1925. He lived him livid—because he saw both dignity and even through the Russian and German occupations, and was arrested with his father and one greater courage in the mass of humanity he watched brother. Released three days later, he was rearrested and incarcerated in the Janowska every day on the Umschlagplatz as inhabitants of Camp in 1942. He worked as a glazier, and after recovering from typhus managed to the ghetto were pushed into the cattle cars waiting to escape during a mass shooting. He returned to his shtetl to discover his sisters had been transport them to Treblinka. murdered and his parents deported when the town was liquidated. He lived with his two It is not for me to write about Marek’s remaining brothers in Lvov until June 1943, when he was rearrested and taken to Janowska experiences in the ghetto. He spoke about these things Camp, where he was put into a sonderkommando that destroyed the bodies (evidence) himself, as the author of The Ghetto Fights, a of the people murdered there. He escaped again, was hidden by a Catholic family who brochure written in 1945, and later in several book- saved 22 Jews and was liberated by Soviet troops. length interviews. No one has captured Marek’s voice Wells came to the U.S., and earned a doctorate in engineering and did post-graduate work in physics. better than Hanna Krall, a prominent journalist and From 1950 to 1953, he was an associate researcher at New York University and graduated from the School child survivor, in her Zd¹¿yæ Przed Panem Bogiem, of Mathematics and Mechanics. He served as research director at Commerce International and was a project a life story told in the mid-1970s, published in English engineer at Curtis-Wright Aeronautics. in 1986 as Shielding the Flame. In that book he Wells was a primary witness at the Nuremburg war crimes trials and at the Eichmann trial in Tel Aviv. speaks with such intensity that he sounds as if he In addition to writing three books about his experiences during the Holocaust—Death Brigade (1978) were sitting across the table from the reader. repinted as The Janowska Road (1999), Who Speaks for the Vanquished (1988) and Shattered Faith Even among his friends Marek was special. He (1995)—he published many papers on engineering and held several patents. He was one of the early pioneers could be gruff, even rude, but it was impossible to of VHS technology. ignore him or dismiss what he said. His wisdom did A member of the National Council of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their not originate from scholarly books or training with Descendants, Leon Wells passed away on December 19, 2009. great masters. It sprang from being forced to confront himself in the most extreme circumstances, from cont’d on p. 21

January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 19 “VOS IS GEVEYN IS GEVEYN Kippur. He tried to conform to normative Jewish “This synagogue for me was proof that what observance, but really could not. He came to was, was, and is no more. That sentence keeps IS MEHR NISHT DU” Chavurah Beth Shalom on Shabbat mornings to listen repeating in my mind again and again. As in the prayer In Memoriam: Leon Wells, 1925-2009 to and debate with his rabbi, Jack Bemporad, because of Hallel, it is not the dead who praise the Lord, it is Leon Wells was a gentle, quiet man who vented his he said, “A rabbi who talks about Plato is worth not those who go down in silence. Dead is dead. It is rage at injustice by bearing witness to the past. learning from.” all gone, completely eradicated, as it was on that first He testified at the Nuremburg war crimes trials and Leon loved Plato, and knew very well that the Yom Kippur after my liberation... at the Eichmann trial. His books, The Death Brigade “cave-dwellers” would prefer to keep him quiet. Yet “The love song of Kol Nidre that was once sung (reprinted by the USHMM as Janowska Road), Who almost to the end, he refused to be silenced. He told by the angels still echoes in my inner ear as a distant Speaks for the Vanquished? and Shattered the story of our legacy the way it needed to be told, remembrance. It may have ended only for those who Faith told the stories of those he left behind and never and called Jewish leaders and world leaders to suffered, were tortured and burned. For the living it forgot. account. Near the end, he was still writing letters goes on and on, year after year. Yom Kippur is for Though raised in a home and shtetl that could and articles about Jewish and political injustice to local the living, and they will praise you God. The ones come straight from a Sholom Aleichem story, Leon’s newspapers and Together. In his gentlemanly manner, lowered into the dark depths, the charred and the life was radically changed with the outbreak of World Leon never let leadership, Jewish or non-Jewish, ever maimed will be muted forever, and their pain will not War II. His story echoes the stories of thousands of intimidate him. be felt by the living. other survivor stories, each unique, each containing Leon summed up his philosophy of life “He feedeth on ashes.”(Isaiah, 44:20) ...and so its own horror, as the Jewish people slowly fell into in Shattered Faith, where he described visiting the the cycle goes on and on...And I, too, with the love the abyss. As a sonderkommando in Janowska camp synagogue in Warsaw in 1994. He concluded his of my family, in spite of knowing the pains and truths, in Lvov, his experiences were particularly bitter. memoirs with these thoughts: will continue in the same way. Therefore let every Despite the agony, Leon’s eloquence and “The synagogue was small, over 100 seats man remember all that happened from the day of determination to be completely honest never waned. downstairs and about the same number in the balcony Abraham, beginning of time until this hour. As it is He thought before he spoke, weighing each word for the women. It looked freshly painted, all white, said, ‘Remember these oh Jacob and Israel (Isaiah carefully, so that the brutality he had to describe might restored and quite beautiful in its stark simplicity. It 44:21).’ be less painful to the listener—and yet not a detail was Orthodox, like most synagogues prior to the war, “Oh that my words were now written! Oh that was dismissed and the obligation to remember was But when my wife and I arrived for Kol Nidre, it they were printed in a book! (Job 19:23).” first and foremost in his heart. bore no resemblance to the Kol Nidre from before As Leon always said, “Vos iz geveyn is geveyn When reminiscing about his childhood, his faith the war. There were no lighted candles, there was iz mehr nisht du. What was, was, and is no more!” in Judaism and God, he would say, “Vos iz geveyn is no sense of awe, no one without shoes or in slippers, And yet he never stopped caring and placed his faith geveyn iz mehr nisht du.” What was, was and is no no aura of fear for the Day of Judgment. The prayers in young people, hoping that they would break the more. were mumbled routinely, quickly and without any cycle of misery and violence to help repair the world. These words echoed in Leon’s mind every Yom special melody or sense of urgency.... —Jeanette Friedman

A Soup Surprise flowing into the throat that got one moving. People used to try to figure out where to stand in The soup used to come to camp in large kettles line for the best chance of mixing time. However, if By ROSE DORFMAN (MALCMAN) and was dished out with long-handled measuring cups. one got out of. line in order to go to the end, the Now that the Holocaust is an “in” subject, people The distributing was done by the kapos who were beating and abuse was not worth the pain and who have experienced it first hand are talking with careful not to mix the soup and disturb the solids that humiliation. So, you just stood in line hoping that his others even if it is painful; some in turn listen with settled to the bottom. That they kept for themselves arm would be making circle motions in the kettle. sympathy and understanding. I would like to tell you and their girlfriends. Sometimes those who were first Getting back to the amusing side of this story, it of an amusing incident that happened to me an the in line were better off because when the .lids of the was cold and blustery and as always it fell on Leah two sisters who befriended me when I was left atone. kettles were removed the kapo made mixing gestures, to go out and get the soup. She dressed in all the rags It happened in the concentration camp in of which they were experts, lowered the handle to we had, put my coat which supposedly was the Skarzysko (Poland) on a blistering cold warmest, took the one pot we had and went Sunday morning during the winter of 1943. out. After she left we didn’t sleep. We just The exact month I do not remember but I listened to the sounds around us, the coughing cannot forget the cold, the wind, the fine and grunting and also the lack of sounds from powdery snow blowing in the sunshine, the those who no longer were making any, those growing pain of hunger and the hopelessness who would be taken out later. One by one of abandonment, other people kept coming in and the smell of Sunday was our day off from work in the soup penetrated the air. Suddenly there the munitions factory. We could sleep longer was Leah, the clean cold smell of the outdoors and didn’t have to be in line early in the was all around her, the snow flakes still morning to be looked over and counted cling•ing to her eyelashes, and the soup pot repeatedly before being taken to work. We in her hands. could sleep and stay in bed which was In an excited but hushed voice she kept something called pryeze. It was rough hewn on saying, “Get up, get up! Something fell into wood made four levels high by four or six the soup.” We didn’t need to hear any more. low narrow compartments wide, with some Swiftly we slid to the edge of the bed where straw onto it. We three happened to have the Leah had put the pot. We reached under the corner pryeze on the second level into which straw at the head of the bed for our spoons. you could slide from two sides. We plunged into the pot like true hunters As a young teenager I was’ prone to seeking the prize that was to be ours. sleeping as !ate as possible. Many times Leah The humor of the situation didn’t strike would threaten me that she would not keep us then, but now when we meet yearly in on waking me up every few min•utes to get ready almost the middle, never the bottom, and pretended Miami, we do talk about those sad times and laugh for the lineup. She said she would let me sleep and to vigorously mix. Some, of the soup actually did get about our big prize in the soup. It isn’t a belly laugh that “they will come and just take you away.” Anyway, mixed and those few lucky ones who happened to be that comes out, it’s more of a hollow sound, but I still it was cold and getting late and time to get in line for in line at that moment of mixing were rewarded with remember well the sickening feeling of disappointment the daily soup ration which always smelled like burnt a piece of potato or a morsel of horse meat. When when we had pulled out our prize and found it to be a lentil beans. It wasn’t a smell that was in any way such s solid substance hit the tin cup it was a sound piece of dish cloth. We wrung it out as best we could appealing, but rather the thought of a warm liquid of joy to behold. and finished the soup to the last drop.

TOGETHER 20 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 MAREK EDELMAN (1919—2009): splendidly. He did it by teaching younger generations you knew yourself. Even if you sensed that you were A REMINISCENCE and serving as their role model. He repaid it by being not quite up to his expectations, you also felt that he cont’d from p. 19 the closest friend to his surviving comrades-in-arms still had faith in you. This was the essence of his and their children, and through his political and authority: his very presence challenged you for the having to face his own weaknesses, perhaps even a humanitarian actions. better. He provoked awe that, in turn, inspired hope long-remembered failure to do what may have been But he repaid it most of all to the ill and infirm and the desire to join his side in the eternal battle on beyond possible. And it was informed by the ever- from all walks of life. For Marek was an incredible behalf of ideals. present memory of the fallen, those he deemed better doctor. He had an unbelievable diagnostic intuition, a than he and more deserving to survive. sixth sense almost. I am told that this is a gift, American Gathering Marek rescued many, and he was himself rescued something that cannot be learned from textbooks or by others. He owed his life to Dr. Anna Braude-Heller, in medical school. But I wonder. A few times, I compliments Polish judge the director of the Bersons and Baumans Children watched him examine my parents’ friends. If their The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Hospital in the ghetto, where he was a messenger problem was beyond medicine’s power he would Survivors and Their Descendants commends and and took his first steps into armed conspiracy. dismiss their complaints, almost derisively saying there applauds a Polish judge who has fined the Catholic During the Great Deportation in the summer of was nothing seriously wrong with them. But if he magazine Gosc Niedzielny •7,400 for comparing a knew that something could be done to cure or help, 1942 only those with official work permits could avoid woman’s desire to have an abortion to medical deportation to Treblinka. The Germans gave them he would devote hours talking to the patient and experiments perpetrated by Nazi war criminals at out sparingly—they issued so few for the Children’s conducting the most thorough examination. I am Auschwitz. Hospital that only a fraction of the staff could be convinced that his experiences in the ghetto—where Judge Ewa Nowicky also ordered the magazine spared. Dr. Braude-Heller had to decide who would he had only seconds to decide who could be helped to issue a formal apology to the woman, Alicja get one and who would not. She did not keep one for and who had to be let go; in the ¯OB, where he had Tysiac, who had unsuccessfully sought an abortion herself. Instead, she bet on youth. She believed that to judge in a blink of an eye the essence of a fellow and whom the magazine had accused of wanting, young people had a better chance of survival and a fighter’s character; or in hiding where only instinct but “not being able to kill her child.” greater claim to life. Marek and several others, my could tell him whom to trust—were what honed his mother among them, received these “numbers for unerring perceptiveness as a doctor. “Comparing a mother’s always painful decision life.” What a bet Dr. Braude-Heller made! And how All of us who knew him, children and friends, to terminate a pregnancy for health reasons to the much had she won in return… sensed this. He was someone who knew. Marek reprehensible crimes committed by the notorious Dr. Marek was later saved by Simha “Kazik” appeared to be a skeptic, even a cynic—more often Joseph Mengele and other SS doctors at Auschwitz Ratajzer, who coerced two water workers in Warsaw than not, a pessimist. He used to say that man was trivializes the memory of the Holocaust and makes to lead him through the sewers into the dying ghetto, by nature a wild beast, an evil creature. He learned offensive analogies that border on the obscene,” said where he found the remaining fighters and brought truths of which others had only a vague inkling. And Menachem Rosensaft, Vice President of the them to the “Aryan Side.” He was hidden in a secret he told these truths in startling and confounding ways. American Gathering. “It is gratifying that Judge apartment in Warsaw by Marysia Sawicka, Vladka In the preface to the reissue of The Ghetto Fights Nowicky had the moral courage to declare such Meed and other girls who were indispensable ¯OB he wrote: “In principle, the most important thing is unseemly exploitation of Holocaust imagery off messengers and caretakers of its hiding places. He life. And when there is life, freedom becomes the limits.” was rescued again by Anna and Ala Margolis from most important. Then you give your life for freedom. The article followed a ruling by the European the deserted ruins of Warsaw in November 1944. So, in the end, it’s impossible to know what is most Court of Justice which had ordered the Polish Marek knew he had a debt to the dead and to the important…” government to pay Ms. Tysiac • 25,000 in living. And he repaid it throughout the rest of his life, He made you feel as if he knew you better than compensation for denying her an abortion. Sao Paulo sets Shoah Special “Matzevah Marker” Remembrance Day RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — Sao Paulo Mayor Available for Survivors’ Graves Gilberto Kassab recently signed a measure that sets Survival has placed upon us the dramatic, maker will re-affirm our Jan. 27 as a municipal day to honor Shoah victims. responsibility of making sure that the uniqueness and our place in history for Sao Paulo Municipal Holocaust Remembrance Day Holocaust is remembered forever. Each of future generations. will be held for the first time in 2010. us has the sacred obligation to share this Our impressive MATZEVAH marker is task while we still can. However, with the now available for purchase. It is cast in solid “The Holocaust was a terrible period passage of each year, we realize that time is bronze, measuring 5x7 inches, and can be in the history of humanity,” Kassab told against us, and we must make sure to utilize attached to new or existing tombstones. Brazilian media. “This date is our all means for future remembrance. The cost of each marker is $125. opportunity for the city of Sao Paulo to A permanent step toward achieving this Additional donations are gratefully have a special day of reflection.” important goal can be realized by placing a appreciated. Jewish council member Floriano unique and visible maker on the gravestone Let us buy the marker now and leave Pesaro had proposed the bill. of every survivor. The most meaningful structions in our wills for its use. This will Several Jewish officials attended the symbol for this purpose is our Survivor enable every one of us to leave on this earth announcement, including the presidents logo, inscribed with the words visible proof of our miraculous survival and of the Holocaust Survivors Brazilian HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR. This simple, yet Association, the Latin American Jewish The cost of each marker is US $125 including shipping & handling. Congress, the Brazilian Israelite Make checks payable to: American Gathering Confederation and Sao Paulo State and mail to: Jewish Federation. At the end of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants ceremony, the fourth Chanukah candle 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 was lit. New York, NY 10001 Sao Paulo is the capital city of Sao Please allow sixty (60) days for delivery. Paulo state, which has a 60,000-member Jewish community, or half of Brazil’s Name ______Jews. Address______PLEASE SEND US YOUR STORIES, ARTICLES, City ______State __ Zip ______POEMS, AND LETTERS FOR INCLUSION IN Phone______TOGETHER AND OUR WEB SITE. PLEASE Number of Markers ______UNDERSTAND THAT WE CANNOT PRINT Total Amount Enclosed $______EVERYTHING THAT IS SUBMITTED. SEND TO: [email protected]

January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 21 starvation for just a little while longer. Words, like philosophy that had proven so critical to their survival. IT’S A SHOO-ID “it’s a shoo-id,” took on new meaning and conveyed When it came to food, “It’s a shoo-id” took on by SHELDON P. HERSH an added sense of importance to so many of the little the status of a biblical injunction. Wasting food was things in life that we so often take for granted. sacrilegious and intolerable. Hunger and the misery As the number of Yiddish speaking individuals So who but a Holocaust survivor is better and disease it brought were everywhere…in the continues to decline, some pivotal Yiddish expressions prepared to provide a true understanding and ghettos, in the camps, in the forests. Food was life. have fallen by the wayside, unfortunate victims of appreciation of “It’s a shoo-id.” The time spent in Given their experiences, there is little wonder that neglect and non-use. For those of us who sprinkle ghettos and slave labor camps left survivors with a my parents were incapable of wasting food. They our daily conversation with the confection that is compulsion to save and conserve and an impulse to were clever improvisers who would immediately jump Yiddish, this unfortunate turn of events has started to hold on to items that may one day prove instrumental into action at the first indication that food was about whittle away at our appreciation and command of in assuring one’s survival. For those who struggled to to turn. The food was carefully examined and if this most expressive of languages—leaving us stay alive wasteful behavior was an unforgivable sin. deemed salvageable, was immediately incorporated deprived of the schmaltz that makes idiomatic Yiddish My parents, typical survivors, had the phrase into an innovative dish such as compote, kugel or so engaging. permanently embedded in their vocabulary. Caged in cholent. All were tried and true recipes and nearly Shoo-Id or Shawd (the proper pronunciation the hermetically sealed Lodz Ghetto, they never let always guaranteed satisfaction to its consumers. My depends upon where in Europe one’s forbearers called anything go to waste and started a collection of odds mother would place heaping portions onto our plates— home) is one such word that Yiddish dabblers fail to and ends once they took up residence in America. With a reaction to a time when parents had so little to offer use with any regularity—a shoo-id and a bit of a a conviction that many religious zealots would envy, their starving children. This led to occasions when shande to boot. As simple translation of “it’s a shoo- they stockpiled orphaned objects in case they should food remained on our plates; an act that would cause id” would be inadequate and does little justice to eventually be needed. Our basement was a storeroom visible concern and more often than not, gave rise to words or phrases that are endowed with a spontaneous chorus of “It’s a shoo-id!” overflowing content. Word for word translation accompanied by an assortment of sorrowful certainly offers convenience but the subtle tales of hunger in the ghetto that were nuances that make up “it’s a shoo-id” would intended to instruct and inspire naive children inevitably be lost—a clear disadvantage for to eat. those seeking to become more acquainted with Dieting left my parents perplexed and the ins and outs of the Yiddish language. (Alas, without words. It was viewed as the height another shoo-id.) of folly for normal, healthy individuals to place Simply put, a shoo-id is translated as a limits on the types or amounts of food they pity or a waste. For example, when served a consumed to lose weight. More than once, pastrami sandwich without a pickle, one would when I discussed the possibility of dieting, say it is a shoo-id (pity) that I didn’t get a my mother would look at me in disbelief and pickle for it would have made the sandwich so exclaim “For five years, your father and I much better. But in the event that part of the were on enough of a diet in the ghettos and sandwich is left over, it would be a shoo-id camps—no one else here should have to diet. (waste) to leave behind perfectly good food It’s a shoo-id (pity and waste) to even think that will end up in the trash. Many readers may about it.” remember 24- hour-yahrtzeit candles in small They were of the opinion that anyone juice-sized glasses. Subscribing to the wise appearing too thin was likely ill, while those adage, waste not; want not, my parents, along amply filled out in all directions were clearly with many other obsessive savers, were symbols of good health. recycling candle holders into juice glasses as it Rebelling against “it’s a shoo-id” in my was both a pity and waste to throw out these perfectly- for random articles, carefully boxed and catalogued youth, I had imagined that one of the benefits of sized glass chalices. Once they had amassed enough as though by a staff of devoted museum curators. adulthood would be the freedom to waste things and glasses to supply a small catering establishment, my Here one could find an eclectic potpourri of doodads overwhelmed with guilt. I tried and failed abysmally parents finally murmured it’s a shoo-id as they and knick-knacks or spur of the moment purchases as a result of a defining moment. begrudgingly tossed out any new arrivals. others had tired of or no longer needed. Whenever I While in a bagel store a number of years ago, I So to appreciate “it’s a shoo-id,” requires looked askance and questioned the need for objects stood behind a customer who asked for a scooped clarifying examples—without them, Yiddish that appeared outdated or superfluous, I was out bagel, something heretofore unfamiliar to me. The terminology, like our fragile greenery, will likely be immediately put in my place by a timely parental counter person grabbed the innocent bagel, gouged devoid of color and vibrancy and with time, will wither rejoinder. “Who is so smart to know what tomorrow out its’ soft innards and nonchalantly discarded the away. will bring? Perhaps one day you will finally heart of the bagel into a trash can filled with other “It’s a shoo-id” predates the Holocaust years, understand.” bagel remains. “It’s a shoo-id,” I heard myself but became all the more poignant and exceptional My father was attracted to the voluminous trash whisper, “It’s a pity and a monumental waste of a during that tragic time. Starvation and deprivation our neighbors so casually discarded. Lumber, clothing, perfectly good bagel.” were rampant and the bare essentials of daily living— tools and the like adorning the sidewalk prompted I was overcome with a sense of purpose, and food, adequate clothing, protection from the elements him to observe with a note of dismay that many, if neglected teachings took on new-found relevance as and minimal health care—were nowhere to be found. not all, of the things waiting to be picked up by the images of starving ghetto dwellers grabbing wildly at Nothing went to waste as one never knew when any sanitation department would have been fiercely discarded bagel innards began dancing in my head. object might mean the difference between life and fought over and picked clean in the Ghetto. “It’s a At that moment, I decided to practice a modified death. Waste was unimaginable and patently shoo-id,” (pity), he would sadly whisper, “It’s a shoo- version of “it’s a shoo-id,” one that would fit my unforgivable. Shoo-id was no longer simply a id” (waste). “People’s lives could have been saved suburban lifestyle. With my priorities and perspectives perfunctory remark but was infused with palpable just with the things that lay here for the taking.” somewhat altered, visitors who happen to pass relevance as the barbarity of the Holocaust “It’s a shoo-id” was never part of my vocabulary through my overcrowded basement, are quickly taken unfolded. and was as foreign to me as baseball was to my father. aback by my expansive collection of oddities and A broken stick or pieces of discarded wood could I was often at odds with my parents about a concept unexpected artifacts. My response to their wide-eyed provide a bit of warmth during brutal, frigid Eastern that had such little relevance in a country awash in bewilderment is usually along the lines of “Hey, you European winters. Worn clothing or rags were food and consumer goods and services. The notion never know when some of this stuff will come in commonly wrapped around feet and hands as many of “it’s a shoo-id” was of little concern to many handy.” I never ask for a scooped out bagel and I had no shoes or gloves. Crumbs, peels and scraps Americans as the blessings of abundance blinded a have become quite adept at making great compote that would have been discarded during better times, naive public to the realities beyond America’s and an above-average kugel. And why not? It would now attracted skeletal figures rummaging about borders. Many Holocaust survivors were now citizens be a shoo-id not to. looking for anything that would help stave off in a land of plenty but found it difficult to let go of a

TOGETHER 22 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010 FROM ALLGENERATIONS, Inc. I am a Holocaust survivor that was in several concentration camps. In the SERENA WOOLRICH, winter of 1945, I was in the city of Bendorf, Germany. During our time there, we PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER marched at night to some sort of elevator that went below ground. After two more elevator rides, we entered a tunnel that looked like salt mines. We walked PLEASE SEND RELEVANT RESPONSES for a while and then climbed a flight of stairs. The stairs led to a munitions factory TO: [email protected] where we were told to work silently. We sorted different metal parts. We worked there for about three weeks. I am trying to find anyone that also worked in this From Steve Moss: munitions factory in Bendorf or knows any information about this place. Contact: I’m looking for Jewish immigrants who returned to Europe to fight the Nazis with [email protected] the Allied forces. I’m particularly interested in finding Jews from New England. Contact SteveM@thejewish advocate.com. From Rose Berl, a 2g in Amsterdam, the Netherlands: My aunt, Hilda Berl (maiden name) and her husband, Kurt Hirsh, were from From Clara Spektor Grossman, a survivor in Florida: the Czech Republic. She lived in Krnov in Silesia and later in Prague. I believe I’m looking for my brother, David Spektor, who lived with his family before WWII that my Uncle Kurt through marriage) also lived in Prague before being transported. until he went into hiding with our father. Since that time I have not heard from him They married inTerezin. My aunt was murdered in Auschwitz and my Uncle and wonder if he is still alive. Kurt died or was murdered in Dachau on January 24, 1945, I believe. I have not been able to find out if any of my uncle‘s family survived. Further, I am looking From Peter Wittman in Deland, FL: for any relatives who were on the Kindertransport of Mr. Nicholas Winton. Does anyone know any member of the Wittman family from Budapest, Hungary? I would like to find some members or friends of my family. From Evelyne Haendel, a Survivor in Belgium, and Director of Family Tracing Services, Hidden Child Foundation in New York, New York: From Joseph Wolfowicz, a survivor in Brookline, MA: Perhaps someone knows something about Perl Farkasova (Freymowitz). She I am desperately trying to find the whereabouts of Mr. & Mrs. David Linder. was approximately 10 years old at the onset of WWII. She lived with her parents, Abraham and Kreindla, in Belovarec (near Khust), Czechoslovakia. She From Vera Hecht, a Survivor in Brooklyn, New York: had five older sisters and two brothers. It is believed that she may have survived, I am looking for Survivors who were in the same block in Auschwitz with me perhaps having been taken out of the Khust ghetto and possibly adopted. She and Elly Berkovits Gross: Auschwitz-2 / Birkenau - Lager C. Block may still be living today under another identity. 18, June, July and August 1944. The Block Elteste was Miri Leichner from Bratislava; her assistants were Ibi from Valea Lui Mihaly From Kathi Keys (Fenyves), a 2g in Auckland, New Zealand: (Mihályfalva) and Brochy from Marghita. In this block there were My father was Fenyves Gyula; he was born (July 1915) and over 1,000 female deportees from Northern Transylvania mostly from raised in Budapest. the Bihor Region. There was a young girl there who carried water in He attended Piarista. He was a munkaszolgalatos and was a large pot for everyone; we called her “Elly kis kalyhas hozzal vizet” also sent on the road to Russia.My mother was Antal Jutka (Elly little kind bring water). She carried the water to the beds every (Csuti) before she married my father. She was also born in day. Elly [Berkovits Gross] was deported from Simleu-Silvaniei, Budapest (September 1925). She had a sister, Antal Lili (b. Romania. Maybe one of you were there and remembers me and/ 1923 approximately), who emigrated to Israel around or Elly. I survived with my mother. 1948.Does anyone know my family, or by some miracle is related to us? From Oleg Ignatyev (Aleh Ihnatsyeu), a 3g in Minsk, Belarus: I am searching for any information about my grandfather who disappeared during From Betty Weiss, nee Fleischman, a 2g in Skokie, Illinois: the Second World War. His name was Ivan Antonovich Brengosh (Ivan Antonavich My mother, Sara Fleichmanova, z”l, nee Schulcz, survived both Auschwitz and Brengosh in Belarusian). My family has been doing research for several de- Allendorf (she had been in a Hungarian transport). She had a brother, Jozsi cades. From local official bodies I have received negative answers to my ques- Schulz, who lived in Budapest on Mazsa utca 10, Budapest X kerulet. He was tions about information on my grandfather. By September, 1941 Minsk had been married to Magda Fogel and they had a son named Laci Schulz, born April 1943 occupied for three months by the Fascists. One day there was an Aktion, to in Budapest. Before they were transported to Auschwitz, a nurse named Hilda search and catch Jews. Armed soldiers of the Vermacht entered the courtyard Schulz (a cousin) made arrangements in Budapest with an opera singer for Laci’s and silently took away my grandfather. During this period the Germans still kept safety. We know Laci was saved by an unknown woman, and possiblely was detailed accounts of those who had been killed, or sent to Germany. My taken to Israel or the US under false papers, a different name, etc. - we do not grandfather’s name does not appear on any list I have found. Please help me to know. The nurse passed away just last year and told the story to my brother in learn about the fate of my grandfather. My mother is still alive and all her life has Galanta (Slovakia). (My mother, z”l was from Galanta and I was born there in also searched for him. His wife, my grandmother, died 40 years ago in ignorance 1957). My husband is from Bratislava, but lived in Galanta). Since we escaped of his fate.Do you know of any organizations for me to contact where it is pos- the Communists and immigrated to the US in 1981, I have been searching, but no sible to learn about the fate of people who were lost during the war; with data on luck - only dead ends. There are no records of a “Laci Schulcz.” but he might be communities of people originally from the Soviet Union that may be helpful with also under the name, “Laci Fogel.” this search? From Roxanne Dennis: From Gunther Katz, a Survivor in Encino, CA: Surname: Dudinskas or Dudinskaite On February 22, 1943, I crossed from France to Switzerland at Annemasse as part Given Name: Reiza of a rescue of OSE children. There were 18 or 19 of us. I have always wondered Nationality: Lithuanian how all these people fared after the war. After crossing we all wound up at a Date of Birth: 18 September 1918 vacant school, Les Charmilles, in Geneva until we were moved to various “children’s I am trying to find information about my great grandmother. My family does not homes.” Some of us wound up at Lilly Volkert in Askona. One girl in particular that have much information about her, and what we do have leaves a lot of our past I wonder about was a dark-haired 14-year-old from Belgium who had been hidden shrouded in mystery. I would love to be able to get into contact with any of our in a convent in France. Another was Ernst Kirschheimer (now Hirsch), with whom family members or their surviving relatives. I am in contact. Anyone out there have any information for me? From Deborah Ross, a 2g in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: I am a 2g; my mother is a Holocaust survivor who left Berlin, Germany via the If anyone knows the fate of my grandmother, Devora Baltupski Ramm, or my Kindertransport. I am interested in writing a book about Nazi survivors and their uncle, Israel Ramm (her son) or my grandfather, Chaim Ramm from Vilna, pets; specifically what actions they observed or were forced to take with regard Lithuania, I would LOVE to know. My mother’s name was Nechama Baltupski to their pets (i.e., abandonment, death of, attempts to save them) and the ensuing Ramm and she was married (before she married my father) to Yonia Fain, also impact on their lives of these circumstances. Any narratives can be forwarded to from Vilna. Would love to be connected with others from Vilna or anyone with [email protected] either of those last names.

January 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 23

For 26 years the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, the largest umbrella organization of survivors, has been at the forefront of all issues pertaining to survivors and their An Urgent families. Despite extraordinary economic challenges and confrontations with Holocaust deniers, this past year has been no exception. We are determined to continue our work and know that together, with your Appeal generous contributions, we will be able to insure that our fight for remembrance will live on. With your support and that of the more than 80,000 survivor families who make up our organization, we to Our will be able to continue our critical work in the coming year and build on our past accomplishments. Please send what you can. Contributors of $180 or more will receive a special gift, and contributors of Readers $500 or more will be acknowledged and listed in forthcoming editions of our newspaper, Together. In 2009 alone we have:

· Represented survivors’ interests at diplomatic conferences and negotiations in Berlin, Washington and Prague to secure and increase reparations and restitution for those victimized by Nazi persecution and plunder;

· Fought those who would deny or trivialize the evils of the Holocaust, both here and abroad;

· Ensured that survivors receive proper care and assistance through our work with social agencies like the Jewish Board of Family Services, Self-Help and The Blue Card;

· Advocated our cause in newspapers and on television, with more than a dozen columns since the beginning of 2009;

· Promoted Holocaust education, with the participation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, and the Study Center of Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot, by sponsoring the non- sectarian Summer Seminar Program on Holocaust The and Jewish Resistance that takes American teachers American to Poland, Israel and Washington to give them a Gathering personal appreciation of the Holocaust; now · Worked with the U.S. Justice Department in the accepts search for and prosecution of Nazi war criminals, Visa, including the recent successful deportation to Germany Mastercard, of the notorious John Demjanjuk; American Express, and Discover · Promoted the search for “lost survivors” sought by by phone and in person for your relatives and friends, in cooperation convenience. with AllGenerations, Inc., headed by Serena Woolrich; (212) 239-4230 · Continued the solemn observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the largest annual commemoration in the United States, in association with New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage – a Living Memorial to the Holocaust;

· Maintained and updated the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors which now includes the records of over 185,000 survivors and their families who came to North America after World War II; · Disseminated Holocaust-related news and other items of interest to the survivor community on our website, www.americangathering.com. In order to continue these important efforts, the American Gathering needs your ongoing financial commitment and support, NOW more than ever. We face tremendous fundraising challenges and are confident that we can count on you, our Survivor family, to help us continue making the difference we do.

Your generous, tax-exempt (U.S.) contribution to the American Gathering will help us greatly in our continued activities.

We thank you in advance for your generosity, and wish you health and happiness in the coming year. American Gathering, 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205, New York, NY 10001

Name: Please make a meaningful, ______tax deductible Address: contribution payable to the ______City: State: Zip: Phone: “American Gathering.” ______Thank you. qMastercard qVisa qAmerican Express qDiscover Amount: ______Credit Card #:______Expiration Date:______

TOGETHER 24 visit our website at www.americangathering.com January 2010