Vol. 34-No.4 ISSN 0892-1571 March/April 2008-Adar II/Nissan 5768 WOMEN OF VALOR THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM ANNUAL SPRING LUNCHEON TUESDAY, MAY 20, 2008, NOON GUEST SPEAKER DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT r. Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor Advisory Committee on Religious Dof Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies Freedom Abroad. In this capacity she, at Emory University in Atlanta, where she together with a small group of leaders and directs the Institute for Jewish Studies. Her scholars, advised Secretary of State book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with Madeline Albright on matters of religious David Irving (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2005), is the persecution abroad. story of her libel trial in London against David Dr. Lipstadt has also written Beyond Irving, who sued her for calling him a Holocaust Belief: The American Press and the denier and right-wing extremist. The trial was Coming of the Holocaust (Free described by the Daily Telegraph (London) as Press/MacMillan, 1986, 1993). The book, having “done for the new century what the an examination of how the American press Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did covered the news of the persecution of for earlier generations.” The Times (London) European Jewry between the years 1933 described it as “history has had its day in court and 1945, addresses the question “what and scored a crushing victory.” The judge did the American public know and when found David Irving to be a Holocaust denier, a did they know it?” falsifier of history, a racist, an anti-Semite, and he has taught at UCLA and a liar. Her legal battle with Irving lasted approx- SOccidental College in Los Angeles. imately five years. According to The New York She received her B.A. from City College of Times, the trial “put an end to the pretense that New York, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Mr. Irving is anything but a self-promoting apol- Brandeis University. Professor Lipstadt is ogist for Hitler.” In July 2001, the Court of frequently called upon by the media and Appeal resoundingly rejected Irving’s attempt Jewish interests. She has appeared on to appeal the judgment against him. CNN, CBS’s Sixty Minutes, NBC’s Today Her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, Growing Assault on Truth and Memory National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, PBS’s (Free Press/Macmillan, 1993), is the first Charlie Rose Show, and is a frequent con- full-length study of those who attempt to tributor to and is widely quoted in a variety deny the Holocaust. It was the subject of of newspapers, including the Los Angeles simultaneous front-page reviews in The Times, Washington Post, Cleveland Plain New York Times and the Washington Post. Dealer, Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore The book has been published in Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Sun, New York Times, Time, Newsweek, London Times, London Daily Australia and New Zealand. Telegraph, and Chicago Tribune. Lipstadt was an historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial She has received numerous teaching awards, including Emory’s student gov- Museum, and helped design the section of the Museum dedicated to the ernment association’s award for being the teacher most likely to motivate stu- American Response to the Holocaust. She was appointed by President Clinton dents to learn about new and unfamiliar topics, and the Emory Williams award, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, on which she served two for her courses on modern Jewish and Holocaust studies. Given to Emory’s out- terms. She was a member of its Executive Committee of the Council, and standing teachers, the award is based on nominations by alumni of the profes- chaired the Educational Committee and Academic Committee of the Holocaust sor who has had the greatest impact on them. She has received an Honorary Museum. Dr. Lipstadt has been called upon by members of the United States Doctorate from Yeshiva University, Bar Ilan University, and Baltimore Hebrew Congress to consult on political responses to Holocaust denial. From 1996 University. The Forward named her number-two on its list of the “Forward Fifty”: through 1999 she served as a member of the United States State Department the fifty top Jewish newsmakers for the year 2000. IN THIS ISSUE The American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Spring Luncheon...... 1, 16 Picture may reveal Anne Frank's mysterious love...... 3 U.S. intelligence and the Nazis...... 4 Zionism and the Holocaust: Lodz ghetto Jew dreams of statehood...... 5 “Deadly medicine” of Holocaust...... 6 German students confront the Holocaust...... 7 Young Leadership Association Winter Gala photo highlights...... 8-9 Three days to commemorate the Holocaust?...... 11 Austria’s film explores Jewish dilemma during the Shoah...... 12 Germany launches comic book on Holocaust...... 13 Conductor revives music of Holocaust...... 15 Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS BELGIUM TO PAY HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS MARK KRAKOW GHETTO ANNIVERSARY he Belgian government and banks issued instructions authorizing civil ser- n March 16, hundreds of Jews sand Polish Jews. Thave agreed to pay $170 million to vants who stayed to work with the Nazis to Omarked the 65th anniversary of the After the occupying Germans had liqui- Holocaust survivors, families of victims keep services running and prevent the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto with a dated the ghetto in March 1943, gunning and the Jewish community for their mate- economic breakdown that occurred during march commemorating the German busi- down those who resisted, they herded its rial losses during Word War II. the German occupation in WWI. nessman whose efforts had saved Jews survivors into the Plaszow labor camp. Campaigners welcomed the decision to During the war, that often led to Belgian from the Holocaust. “I saw the ghetto being liquidated,” compensate those whose property and officials collaborating with the persecution Some 700 Jews from Poland, Israel said Edward Mosberg of the U.S., now goods in Belgium had been looted by Nazi of Jews, although the resistance move- and other countries marched from the also in his 80s. “I saw hundreds of dead occupiers. Belgium is facing 5,210 out- ment was also strong in Belgium and site of the former ghetto to what had bodies strewn all about — it was a total standing claims for restitution stemming underground networks set up to save been a Nazi German labor camp in the cataclysm.” from the Holocaust. From those, 162 Jews were more successful than in many suburb of Plaszow, many of whose “I have come to bear witness to those amount to more than $30,000. other occupied nations. inmates were days, because the ranks Overall, $54 million will be paid to indi- “In a certain way, justice has been done. employed by Oskar of us survivors are grow- vidual claimants, with the rest going to a Unfortunately there are people who never Schindler. ing extremely thin.” Jewish trust which will help the poor and came back” from the Nazi death camps, “Schindler was Niusia Horowitz- keep the memory of the horrors of the said Eli Ringer, the co-chair of the commit- controversial, per- Karakulska of Krakow Holocaust alive. tee on the restitution of Jewish assets. haps even a bit mad, was only seven when Of the 50,000 Jews who lived in “The nice thing is that the rest of the but he was one of the ghetto was liquidat- Belgium in the 1930s, about half were money, about $100 million, will go in a the few Germans ed, but she and 15 fami- exterminated in the Holocaust. trust for the Jewish community in order to who did such a ly members owed their Last year, Prime Minister Guy help needy people, in order to remember thing,” said 86-year- survival to the German Verhofstadt apologized for Belgian author- the Shoah,” Ringer said. Of the total resti- old Jan Dresner of Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg talks entrepreneur. ities’ involvement in the deportation of tution payout, $69.8 million will come from Tel Aviv, one of with participants of a march marking the “Schindler was such a Jews to Nazi extermination camps. the Belgian authorities and $85 million some 30 marchers 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the warm, magnificent per- After the Nazi invasion in May 1940, the from banks. Most of the remainder come saved by the facto- Krakow ghetto. son, who had many Belgian government fled to Britain, but from insurance companies. ry-owner. problems of his own but felt human life “This is my first trip to Krakow since must be saved,” Hororowitz-Karakulska, “BRITISH OSKAR SCHINDLER” then, because I was afraid of those 72, told Reuters. IN RUNNING FOR NOBEL PEACE PRIZE memories, but I felt it was my duty to Poland, which was invaded by Nazi come with my wife and daughter to tell Germany and Soviet Russia at the start British man who saved hundreds of late 1980s, after his wife found a scrap- about it.” of World War Two in September 1939, AJewish children from Czechoslovakia book documenting his work in their Schindler, made famous by the 1993 lost six million citizens in the war, half of from the Nazi concentration camps in the attic. In October 2007, 98-year-old Steven Spielberg film, “Schindler’s them Jewish. Holocaust, has been nominated for the Winton was awarded the Cross of Merit List”, had used his influence with fellow Up to 1.5 million perished at the notori- 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. of the 1st class by Czech Defense Nazis as well as bribes and forged doc- ous Nazi extermination camp, Auschwitz, Sir Nicholas Winton, Minister Vlasta Parkanova for uments, to save more than one thou- some 25 miles west of Krakow. dubbed by former British saving the children. Prime Minister Tony Blair At the ceremony, Foreign ANTI-SEMITISM DOWN IN THE UNITED STATES as “the British Oskar Minister Karel Schwarzenberg Schindler,” was a young said that the Czech nti-Semitic incidents in the United incidents often involve expressions of stockbroker when he diplomacy decided to back A States declined for the third consec- anti-Jewish animus that are ugly and pressed the London schoolchildren who had collect- utive year, according to the Anti- deeply hurtful to their victims and the com- authorities into agreeing ed more than 32,000 signatures Defamation League. munities where they occur.” to take in the children if in their bid to nominate Winton The ADL’s annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Not surprisingly, the states with the high- he could find homes for for the Nobel Peace Prize. He Incidents catalogued 1,357 incidents of est numbers of reported incidents were them. And he did. was awarded another top Czech vandalism, harassment and acts of hate the states with the highest concentrations The 669 youngsters decoration, the Tomas Garrigue against Jews in 2007 — a 13 percent drop of Jews. New York topped the list with 351 were sent to foster par- Masaryk Order, in 1998. from the 2006 total of 1,554. Anti-Semitic incidents, up from 284 in 2006, followed ents – mostly in Previous Peace Prize laure- by New Jersey (144 incidents), California incidents had peaked in 2004 at 1,821 England, a small num- Sir Nicholas Winton ates include former prime minis- incidents. (186), Florida (127), Massachusetts (95), ber in Sweden. In all, ter Yitzhak Rabin and President Pennsylvania (99) and Connecticut (49). Data in the 2007 audit, drawn from offi- eight trainloads carried the mostly Shimon Peres for their efforts to reach a Most of the reported incidents of harass- cial crime statistics and information col- Jewish children from Prague through peace deal with the Palestinians; former ment involved anti-Jewish epithets and lected by the ADL’s network of regional Hitler’s Germany to Britain. prime minister Menachem Begin and for- occasionally a light assault. In one widely offices, include criminal and non-criminal reported incident, a Jewish man suffered Winton had kept his heroic deed to him- mer Egyptian president Anwar Sadat for activities. serious injuries in November when he was self for half a century. His pivotal role in making peace; and Jewish author and “We are certainly encouraged that the beaten by several assailants in the large- the rescue operation was revealed in the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. total number of anti-Semitic incidents has ly Orthodox enclave of Lakewood, N.J. declined for three years in a row,” said The audit noted that acts of vandalism HOLOCAUST EXHIBITION ABOUT WOMEN OPENS IN GERMANY ADL National Director Abraham Foxman. were mostly directed at synagogues and n exhibition about how women Some concentration camps, such as “Yet we are still troubled that there are so Jewish cemeteries, and often involved the coped in concentration camps dur- Ravensbrueck in northern Germany where many incidents reported, and that these use of swastikas. A ing the Holocaust opened in March for the 117,000 women and children died, con- first time outside Israel at a museum in the tained only women. Others, including PERMANENT OFFICES OF INTERNATIONAL eastern German city of Dresden. Auschwitz in Poland, were made up of com- HOLOCAUST EDUCATION GROUP TO OPEN IN BERLIN “This exhibition looks at the Holocaust pounds separated according to gender. from a very different perspective,” said The exhibition shows how women, n international coalition dedicated to Nazi-era government. Melanie Ottenbreit, a spokeswoman for robbed of their traditional roles, had to the remembrance of the Holocaust A Since its founding in 1998, the task the German state of Saxony which is forge new identities. has selected Berlin to serve as the site of force’s administration has rotated annual- financially supporting the show. “They (the women) weren’t passive. its permanent headquarters. ly among its 25 member countries. “It is not about the perpetrators. It does- They were very, very active,” said Inbar. Avner Shalev, the director of Israel’s Yad German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter n’t look at what people did to women in She described women who would strug- Vashem Holocaust memorial in Steinmeier, who presided over a ceremo- the Holocaust. It presents how they coped gle to observe good hygiene and try to Jerusalem, said in Berlin that he thought it ny marking the announcement, said his with their situation,” she said. look good when they were lined up in front a fitting location. country bore a particular and special The exhibition’s Israeli curator, Yehudit of guards for selections. ”This is the place where they gathered responsibility to always remember the Inbar, said it was impossible to take the at Wannsee to the discuss the details of “Looking good in the camps could mean Holocaust against the Jews. show out of the context of the Holocaust, the final solution,” he said, referring to life or death. These small things suddenly He said the commitment to “never but the idea was to highlight something Adolph Hitler’s plan to eliminate Jews. became very important,” said Inbar. again” allow another genocide must more positive. “And now it will unite us all to work for a remain a central tenet of the European “Normally, when you think about the The exhibition, in one of Dresden’s main culture of remembrance.” Union. art galleries, originally opened at The Task Force for International Holocaust, you think of evil and murder. Shalev said the group will face more Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem memorial to Cooperation on Holocaust Education But this ... has a very optimistic message,” challenges in the coming years because said Inbar. Holocaust victims last April. serves as a forum to coordinate efforts More than sixty years after the end of to memorialize the genocide of the remaining survivors of the Holocaust The horrors endured by women in the World War Two, Germany is still strug- Europe’s Jewish population. Its perma- are getting older. Holocaust serve only as background infor- gling to deal with the legacy of the nent offices will share the building that ”We need to use all pedagogical tech- mation in the exhibition. Pictures, photo- houses the Topography of Terror, a niques at our disposal, all available graphs, letters and artifacts describe indi- Holocaust. Berlin’s main Holocaust Berlin museum dedicated to educating media, to educate future generations,” vidual stories of victims and are projected memorial only opened in 2005, after years visitors about the crimes of Germany’s Shalev said. onto the museum’s walls. of delays and disagreements. March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

SEARCH FOR AUSTRIAN HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS PICTURE MAY REVEAL ANNE FRANK'S MYSTERIOUS LOVE GETS BOGGED DOWN British newspaper has published The Observer newspaper reported that s of January, all Austrian Holocaust Austrian spouses may have died a long A what it calls the first known photo- Ernst Michaelis, 81, of London, found a A survivors and non-Austrian widows time ago, and they themselves are neither graph of a boy Anne Frank fell in love with photo of Schiff in a family collection after or widowers of survivors are eligible for young nor very well-connected to the and wrote about in her famous diary. realizing that Anne Frank was writing special financial aid for medical needs, Austrian community.” Anne Frank, the Jewish schoolgirl who about a boy he had known as a fellow stu- following the signing of a new reparations “This new settlement is significant, and wrote her diary while hiding from the dent in Berlin. deal with Vienna. However, the group rep- it owes in part to a realization on the part Nazis in the resenting Austrian Jews in Israel says it is of Austrian authorities,” Gideon Taylor, the Netherlands during having difficulty tracking down all potential Claims Conference’s executive vice pres- World War II, was aid recipients. ident, said. captivated by Peter In January, the Austrian Ministry of Before 2003, Austria had not agreed to Schiff. Social Affairs agreed to pay up to $2.95 any reparations, claiming it had been under She met him at million annually to the Austrian Holocaust Nazi occupation during World War II. school in 1940, his survivor emergency-assistance program, Fruchter, who immigrated from Germany family also having following negotiations with the many years ago, said that, in her experi- fled from Germany Conference on Jewish Material Claims ence, Austrian Jews are especially resent- to Amsterdam the Against Germany – a New York-based ful toward their country of origin. previous year. At A handout picture of Peter Schiff along with a dedication are shown at the Anne Frank House in The Hague. Anne met Peter at school in 1940 body representing world Jewry in com- “For years they have seen German age 11, Anne fell in Jews receiving reparations, while they love with Schiff and and later, while in hiding in Amsterdam, wrote about how much she pensation talks. The Association of missed him. Israelis of Central European Origin, which themselves had been denied any sort of later, while in hid- payment because of this attitude by represents the local Austrian Jewish com- ing in Amsterdam herself, wrote Michaelis, who moved from Germany to Vienna,” she said. munity, subsequently launched a concen- about how much she missed him. Britain many years ago, said he has had the Austrian Holocaust survivor Shlomo trated effort aimed at finding all of the eli- Her last mention of Schiff was in 1944, photo authenticated and that it will be dis- Reitman, 73, who escaped Austria with gible survivors. the year her family’s safe house was raid- played on the Anne Frank House Web site. his parents when he was four years old, Hanni Fruchter, who handles the associ- ed by the German security police. She Schiff also is believed to have died in a said he considered the settlement “the later died in a Nazi prison camp. Nazi prison camp. ation’s contacts with Austrian Jews, said definition of too little, too late.” Reitman, that they are having an especially difficult who is blind and eligible for the special time tracking down the non-Austrian wid- aid, said his parents died without ever CANADA EXTRADITES FORMER SS PRISON GUARD ows and widowers. “The problem is find- receiving any compensation for having to SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON IN ITALY ing these people,” noted Fruchter. “Their leave all their possessions in Austria. n 83-year-old former SS prison guard Seifert, who has lived in Canada since AMichael Siefert, who was sentenced 1951, unsuccessfully fought efforts by the RAMPANT ISLAMIC JEW-HATRED IN EUROPE to life in jail in Italy for Nazi war crimes, was Canadian government to strip him of his uropean Commissioner for Justice, finding in light of the burgeoning Jew- extradited from Canada to Rome. citizenship based on allegations that he EFreedom, and Security, Franco hatred now evident in Europe’s Muslim Seifert, known as the “Beast of hid his past when he entered the country. Frattini, who is the European Union official communities, received much less atten- Bolzano,” was convicted in absentia in In January, Seifert lost a bid to have the 2000 by a military tribunal in Verona on Supreme Court of Canada consider his responsible “for combating racism and tion: in a controlled comparison to anti-Semitism in Europe,” has revealed nine counts of murder, committed while he appeal seeking to stop his extradition to European Christians (as the “referent” was an SS guard at a prison transit camp Italy, clearing the way for his deportation. that Muslims are responsible for fully half group), European Muslims were nearly in Bolzano, northern Italy. Avi Benlolo, president of the Friends of (50%) of the documented anti-Semitic eightfold (i.e., 800%) more likely to be At his trial, people testified that Seifert Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust incidents on the European continent. overtly anti-Semitic. starved a 15-year-old prisoner to death, Studies in Canada, said Seifert needs to Demographic data from 2007 indicate The intellectually honest assessment gouged out a person’s eyes and tortured a face justice in Italy. that the total number of Europeans is and understanding of Islamic anti- woman before killing her and her daughter. “It’s critical that this happens,” Benlolo 494.8 million; estimates of the number of Semitism, and the anti-Jewish violence it Seifert, a Canadian citizen of Ukrainian said. “It sets an example for other war Muslims in Europe range from 15-20 mil- begets must begin with an unapologetic origin, has acknowledged being a guard criminals, not only Nazi war criminals, but lion, or some ~3.0-4.0% of the total analysis of the motifs of Jew-hatred con- at the SS-run camp but denies being war criminals related to Rwanda, Bosnia, European population. Thus, on a popula- involved in atrocities. Darfur or any other genocide, that there’s tained in the foundational texts of Islam tion percentage basis, Muslims in Europe In 1944 and 1945, the Bolzano camp no time limit to justice.” (i.e., Koran, hadith, and sira), while identi- account for roughly 24.0 to 32.3 times the served as a transit point for Jews, Italian The Italian prosecutor, Costantini, said number of anti-Semitic incidents as their fying those, like Sheikh Tantawi, who con- resistance fighters, Italians drafted for fac- he planned to question Seifert as a wit- non-Muslim European counterparts. tinue to preach and sanction this religious tory work and German army deserters ness to atrocities committed by other But a much more striking and relevant bigotry, regardless of their “stature.” who were being shipped north. guards at the camp. YAD VASHEM MOURNS THE PASSING OF SAM SKURA would like to share some thoughts off the phone, I felt fortified and ener- Dinner, Cheryl opened her remarks to the Iwith you about the essence of my gized. Sam was truly a life-giving per- thousand guests who gathered for the friendship with Sam Skura and about his son. He served Society for 26 years as event with a Yiddish phrase: “Ich bin ale- lifelong achievements. Vice-Chairman. mens tochter.” “I am everybody’s daugh- Friendships formed after the Holocaust The years we worked together on ter.” And indeed, that is exactly how we were different than most conventional behalf of Yad Vashem were rich, reward- survivors felt about each other and about friendships. They were far more intense, ing, and fruitful. each other’s children — like one big family. more lasting and more meaningful. Sam and Stella’s devotion to Yad Today we mourn the loss of Sam Because the Shoah robbed us of our Vashem is visible throughout the Yad Skura, an irreplaceable member of the families, our homes and everything near Vashem landscape. Together with Marvin survivor family. His passing creates a and dear, we needed to recreate a world and Celina Zborowski, they donated the void for Yad Vashem as well as for the we could trust and we could believe in. Yad Vashem Candelabra, the symbol of officers, the board and staff of the We needed to find friends who under- Yad Vashem. Sam chaired the fundrais- American Society for Yad Vashem. stood our plight and who would give us ing campaign that enabled the erection of Personally, I have lost a dear and val- the strength to move on with our lives. the Monument to the Jewish Fighters, ued friend. The Skura family has lost How fortunate I was to find such a friend! the heart and to the language of unspo- Partisans and Soldiers. their champion. For sixty years, starting in the DP Camp ken words that comes from decades of The Skuras are Benefactors of the Stella, Cheryl, Iris, Adam, Ilana and the Feldafing, Sam Skura was my best shared experiences. Valley of Communities and were the first entire family: May Sam’s memory and friend, and my most trusted colleague. In 1970, when I founded the first Benefactors of Project 2001. The his many tangible achievements always Not only were we best friends, our wives umbrella organization for survivors, Sam Learning Center, which is an integral part be a blessing. And may the sympathy of friends who care bring you comfort. were best friends. Stella and my late wife Skura was at my side and served as vice- of the new museum complex, was estab- The great theologian, Rabbi Abraham Diana were soul-mates who spoke to president. In 1981, the Skuras hosted a lished through their generosity. Joshua Heschel said, “Death is the end of each other almost daily. Over a period of small parlor meeting in their home in the Sam was a devoted husband, a loving doing, not the end of being.” Sam Skura six decades we shared each others sim- presence of Dr. Yitzhak Arad, the former father and a dotting grandfather. He and will live on through his descendants, chas: births, bar and bat-mitzvahs and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Stella passed along the legacy and les- through his deeds and through his com- weddings. The highlight of any given Directorate. This meeting inaugurated sons of the Holocaust to their daughter mon destiny with the Jewish people. week was an evening out with the Skuras the American Society for Yad Vashem. In Cheryl and to their grandchildren, Iris and and some of our other close survivor all these endeavors, Sam Skura was Ilana. I am pleased and proud of Cheryl’s Eulogy delivered by Eli Zborowski, friends. When I say that we all spoke the always the first person I called. He lis- distinguished service to our organization. Chairman of the American Society for same language, I don’t refer to Yiddish, tened, he was supportive, he offered I recall when Cheryl and her late husband Yad Vashem and lifelong friend of Sam English or Polish, but to the language of opinions and he gave advice. When I got Mochi were honored at our Annual Skura, on February 22, 2008 Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE NAZIS U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. By Breitman with Norman J.W. Goda, deals the dollars and Chase National enjoyed uncover his true identity but did nothing Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda, with a question many continue to ponder: the commissions. Finally, in the ’40s, the about him. In fact, they protected him!! Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe. When did the United States learn that Rückwanderer case went to trial. Why? As Goda puts it, he was thought to Cambridge University Press: New York, Jews in Europe were being exterminated? Interestingly, Chase National never suf- be an “important anti-Communist figure in 2005. 495 pp. $26.99. Interestingly, many who worked for the fered any legal rebuke for this. A good [his] community.” In the end, though, OSS (Office of Strategic Services) still lawyer would make all the difference. because of what people knew, he was REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN claim the agency knew about camps, but fter the war, in the chapter entitled “obliged to leave the country and n 1998 Congress passed the Nazi not extermination camps. There was infor- A“Nazi Collaborators in the United renounce [his] U.S. citizenship in 1984”— “IWar Crimes Disclosure Act. This law mation coming to States: What the FBI never proving of any value to the FBI . . . obliged the CIA, the U.S. Army and the America, by way of the Knew,” by Norman J.W. In the chapter entitled “The CIA and FBI to declassify operational information British, that things were Goda, we find out the FBI Eichmann’s Associates,” by Timothy on their recruitment among Nazi and col- not good for the Jews in knew much . . . but Naftali, we see how the CIA tried to use laborationist veterans in the early Cold Europe. Refugees told because it felt that former former Nazis. Thus, for example, we are War. It also created a new organization, stories. Correspondents Nazis, now so-called told about Erich Rajakowitsch. During the the Nazi War Criminal and Imperial wrote. But confirmation émigrés, might be useful war “he worked with Eichmann.” Later, as Japanese Records Interagency Work and especially interest against creeping commu- regards Holland, “he participated in organ- Group (IWG), to implement and oversee a was late in coming. nism in the U.S., they izing the deportation of 80 percent of that declassification effort that turned out to be America needed informa- kept quiet. Such, surely country’s Jews to the death camps.” After the largest targeted declassification in tion about the Dora con- was the case of Viorel the war he was in Italy, running an import- American history.” centration camp because Trifa who, in America, export firm. The CIA, that really never The above noted is a part of the intro- V-2 rockets were being eventually became checked his files, wanted him to work for duction to the outstanding volume entitled assembled there. That Bishop Valerian. During them, specifically because of his contacts U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. Hired as information was of strate- World War II, Trifa was “a with East Germans and the Communist “historical consultants” by the IWG, the gic value. Otherwise, the leading member of the Chinese. And they still wanted him to work authors “looked closely at hundreds of goal was winning the war. Fascist, anti-Semitic Iron for them, even after his trial in Austria for thousands of pages of [these] recently In another chapter enti- Guard” in Romania. some of what he did during the war. So, opened records.” They synthesized them tled, “Banking on Hitler: Specifically, he had had what did the CIA get from him? Probably, with other materials – some also recently Chase National Bank and control over all the uni- not very much . . . but not for lack of trying. come to light and others already known – the Rückwanderer Mark Scheme, 1936- versity student groups, and on the night of Needless to say, this reviewer has noted to create here a work thick with informa- 1941,” by Norman J.W. Goda, “declassi- January 20, 1941, helped cause a pogrom here but brief snapshots of chapters – 15 tion. For the book is, in fact, about Nazi fied FBI records” have revealed how which, among other things, resulted in the in all – that have a great deal to offer the recruitment and more. Indeed, each chap- Chase National Bank helped Germany death of many “Jews . . . their shops serious Holocaust reader vis-à-vis U.S. ter in this work – whether by one author or earn dollars selling “Rückwanderer destroyed and their synagogues burned.” Intelligence and the Nazis. The book is sometimes by more – is about a different (returnee) marks – to U.S. residents of Nonetheless, in 1950 he arrived in the heartily recommended to them. This is a vol- aspect of the Holocaust, U.S. Intelligence, German descent.” Germans who were United States as a displaced person, went ume which is an eye-opener, to say the least. and the Nazis. thinking of returning to the Fatherland or on to Cleveland, and eventually became Thus, the first chapter entitled “OSS who “simply wished to purchase goods an important leader in the Romanian Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Media Knowledge of the Holocaust,” by Richard there” were interested. Germany needed Orthodox Church. The FBI began to and Communication Arts at Pace University. AN ENTIRE LIFE KILLING AFTER THE KILLING An Entire Life. By Aharon Appelfeld. lains for the author, and some stand out Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After revelations about Jedwabne promised to Keter: Jerusalem, 2007. 253 pp. for their outstanding attributes. Auschwitz. By Jan T. Gross. Random embarrass Poland and jolt the conscience Helga learns first-hand the cruelty of House, 2006. 304 pp. $25.95. of the world. REVIEWED BY RABBI ISRAEL ZOBERMAN rejection by classmates and her own aunt A professor at Princeton now, Gross is a REVIEWED BY ELIE WIESEL he world’s most prolific Holocaust Brumhilda who begrudges her brother’s Polish Jew who knows his subject. T author, survivor Aharon Appelfeld, marriage to a Jewish woman. Helga’s n 1996, Poland’s Prime Minister, Neighbors — a book of high moral quality admirably continues to salvage from the saving grace is reserved for a selfless nun IWlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, invited a — described the massacre of Jews at Shoa’s vast darkness of evil nuggets of who reaches out to embrace one who Jewish American writer to speak at a com- Jedwabne as not carried out by Germans reassuring light. In this latest novel, An chose to identify with a vulnerable people. memoration marking the 50th anniversary but by native Poles. Published in English Entire Life, he focuses She directs her toward of the Kielce pogrom. The in 2001, it had formida- on the double torments an endangered Judaism speaker reminded his lis- ble impact in America of an Austrian child of a from without and within teners that if Auschwitz, and elsewhere. mixed marriage whose which Helga knows so Treblinka, Majdanek and One can easily predict mother, a Jewish con- little about. Helga ends Sobibor were German ini- a similar effect and suc- vert to Christianity, was up aiding and healing tiatives, the killers this time cess for his new work, taken away. survivors of the camps, on the ground were Polish, Fear. You read it breath- Thirteen-year-old and with some of them their language Polish and lessly, all human reason Helga, whose life turns she would travel to their hatred entirely Polish. telling you it can’t be so into a whirlwind, Palestine’s beckoning He took advantage of the — and the book culmi- painfully discovers her shores for more healing occasion to demand that nates in so keen a shock own Jewish back- and challenge. the Polish government that even a close student ground even as her Appelfeld’s powerful remove the crosses and of the Jewish tragedy mother Gizla, along terse style, in which other religious symbols during World War II can- with many in her gener- every word counts, is that, by chance, he had not fail to feel it. ation tried, unsuccess- truly a magnet drawing seen a few years before Bitterness, envy, mur- fully, to abandon their the reader deeper and strewn in the ashes at derous rage: Everything handicapping Jewish deeper into a thick forest Birkenau, where almost all that is low, primitive, vile faith. Helga refuses to rich in meaning, suffer- the burned dead had been and ugly in the human accept her beloved mother’s lot and at ing and courage. The original Hebrew Jews. The next day, virulent, deplorable animal is laid bare and analyzed on these risk to her own life embarks on a trying title, Chayim Shlemiym (A full or whole — essentially anti-Semitic — attacks pages. Reading this book — repugnant journey to find her and find herself. life) intimates more aptly than the given appeared throughout the Polish press. and revolting as it can be — one is seized While she would never see her mother English title, An Entire Life, both the bro- I was that speaker. by an impulse to close it and say: No. It is again, though ultimately learning of her kenness of the portrayed lives and their Some time later, the great Israeli histori- not possible for so many human beings to death, she comes closer and closer to times as well as the human drive toward an Israel Gutman spoke to me briefly have loosed their savage hounds on fel- her both in reality and dream. Helga’s wholeness and redemption. about the Jedwabne pogrom, in which vir- low human beings — men, women, chil- tually all of that small Polish town’s 1,600 dren, all of them innocent and defense- father, Zigfried, a farm owner and a dec- Rabbi Israel Zoberman, spiritual Jewish residents were killed in a single less in a place that was just waking from a orated former army officer, marries a leader of Congregation Beth Chaverim day in July 1941, and a new and important long nightmare. Christian woman following his wife’s dis- in Virginia Beach, is the son of Polish book, Neighbors , by Jan T. Gross, whose (Continued on page 14) appearance. Not all the Gentiles are vil- Holocaust survivors. March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 ZIONISM IN THE HOLOCAUST: LODZ GHETTO JEW DREAMS OF STATEHOOD forming the symbol of our shame to our productivity allowed the ghetto to survive the other side of the "declaration of inde- BY ELI ASHKENAZI, HAARETZ new emblem of newfound pride," reads until August 1944. pendence. " Paper, he said, was valuable the ninth and final clause in the three- he ghetto became the last ghetto for heating, padding, insulation and Jewish nation is something the page document. The museum announced in Poland to be liquidated when its world needs, and that is the rea- T shoes. “A the document yesterday, International remaining prisoners were transported to son it will be formed. If only one man The writing style makes Shavit suspect Holocaust Memorial Day. Auschwitz, along with Rumkowski and thought so, one could call it an insane that the author was Oskar Singer, who ccording to the museum's director his family. They were eventually deport- notion, but the idea of a Jewish state is often wrote during his stay at the Lodz general, Simcha Stein, the hand- ed to Auschwitz, where they died on certainly acceptable and feasible. It will A Ghetto. Some of his signed works can be written document includes detailed plans August 28, 1944. found in the records of the museum, The become reality without special difficulty. In for the formation of a Jewish state. Stein "Even if we have long, aquiline noses in the Jewish state, the young generation Ghetto Fighters' House – Itzhak says it also lists the reasons such a state our promised land, even if we grow black Katzenelson Holocaust and Jewish will discover a future of light, freedom and was needed and names the bodies or red beards and walk on crooked legs, dignity.” Resistance Heritage Museum. responsible for its establishment. It also we shall not be the object of ridicule and Oskar Singer died after the ghetto was This passage appears in a previously scorn," the document reads. "At last, we contains suggested sanctions for people liquidated. unreleased document from the Lodz who violate the state's basic laws. will live there as free men and women, "This is a man of extraordinary stature Ghetto in 1941 outlining the formation of a The declaration was written on the back and we would die in our homeland in and vision. I would call him a second future Jewish state. The document, which of papers that listed the people eligible to peace. There we will receive recognition Herzl," says Shavit. "He had to struggle to predates Israel's Declaration of receive clothes and food, alongside peo- for our tremendous achievements. " survive by then. Food was scarce, and Independence by seven years, will soon ple who were taken off that list. Being on The declaration, which the museum's everyone was trying to get their hands on be shown to the public at the Kibbutz the list could make all the difference archive manager Yossi Shavit says might Lohamei HaGetaot museum in the west- between life and death at the Lodz have been a draft, goes on to say: "We a crumb of bread, or a piece of wood for ern Galilee. Ghetto, which was the second largest will live there with the consent of the world fire to keep warm. And here this man was The author is anonymous, but the ghetto after the Warsaw Ghetto for Jews at large. Our emancipation will in turn able to retain his humanity, create and Polish-language declaration is written on and Roma in German-occupied Poland. serve to emancipate the world. Our rich- think clearly." the official stationery of the Lodz Ghetto About 200,000 people vied for survival ness will enrich the world, and our great- Stein, the museum's director, says what Judenrat, the Jewish administrative body. on the ghetto's area of four square kilome- ness will lend itself to the world. The word impressed him most about the document Signed at the bottom is Mordechai Chaim ters. Some 43,500 of them died of starva- zyd [zhid], which was used as an insulting was that as the Jewish people of Poland Rumkowski, head of the Lodz Ghetto tion, hypothermia and disease. Anyone and humiliating term, will become a and Europe were being rounded up and Judenrat. The document is dated May 18 who approached the ghetto's walls risked source of pride, as other people pride murdered en masse, "there were still and 19, 1941. being shot by the Nazi German guards. themselves in being called German, those who believed in the triumph of the “We will form a single legion based on Originally intended as a temporary gath- English or French." Jewish people in their own land. the example of the French Legion d'hon- ering point for Jews, the ghetto became Shavit says that any piece of paper in Releasing this hopeful and optimistic doc- neur and we will name it Jewish Honor. Its an industrial center of sorts, providing the Lodz Ghetto was a valuable posses- ument on the 60th year of Israel's exis- symbol will be a yellow ribbon, thus trans- supplies for Nazi Germany. Its remarkable sion, let alone the list that appeared on tence carries a special significance. " BY MAKING HOLOCAUST PERSONAL TO PUPILS, SARKOZY STIRS ANGER students to identify with a specific victim a dead child. The weight of this memory is Jews. He is, for example, the first French BY ELAINE SCIOLINO, would traumatize them. much too heavy to bear.” president to address the annual dinner of THE NEW YORK TIMES Political opponents dismissed the plan Ms. Veil was in the audience when Mr. France’s Jewish community. as his latest misguided idea, unveiled Sarkozy spoke, and said that when she Teachers defended the current resident Nicolas Sarkozy dropped without reflection or consultation. Some heard his words, “My blood turned to ice.” approach to the Holocaust in French an intellectual bombshell, surprising P But Serge Klarsfeld, a schools. Since 2002, fifth-graders have the nation and touching off waves Jewish historian who studied the Nazis’ systematic destruction of protest with his revision of the has devoted his life to of six million Jews as a crime against school curriculum: beginning next recording the list and humanity. fall, he said, every fifth grader will biographies of France’s Older children watch films on the have to learn the life story of one Holocaust victims, Holocaust, visit Holocaust museums and of the 11,000 French children praised the president for memorials and take field trips to concen- killed by the Nazis in the his “courage.” tration camps. Schools where students Holocaust. “This is the crowning were taken away for deportation hang “Nothing is more moving, for a glory of long and ardu- plaques in their memory. child, than the story of a child his ous work,” he said. “To he Holocaust has to be put in the own age, who has the same those who say it’s too context of the rise of the Nazis games, the same joys and the “T difficult for young chil- and the war, not just emotion and dramat- same hopes as he, but who, in dren — that’s not true. ic spectacle,” said Gilles Moindrot, secre- the dawn of the 1940s, had the What they see on televi- tary-general of the largest union for pri- bad fortune to be defined as a sion or in a horror film is mary school teachers. “If you do this with Jew,” Mr. Sarkozy said at the end much worse. This is not the memory of individual Jews, you’d of a dinner speech to France’s a morbid mission.” have to do it with the victims of slavery or Jewish community. He added Mr. Klarsfeld likened the wars of religion. We can’t have this that every French child should be the plan to a practice by approach.” “entrusted with the memory of a President Nicolas Sarkozy in Périgueux, France, where he promoted a curriculum Mr. Sarkozy’s advisers acknowledged based on young victims of the Nazis. the United States French child-victim of the Holocaust Memorial that he came up with his Holocaust plan Holocaust.” historians argued that the focus on victims Museum in Washington, D.C., which gives for schoolchildren without any formal con- Adding to the national fracas over the could steer attention away from the Vichy visitors small booklets describing the expe- sultation. In the face of the criticism, how- announcement, Mr. Sarkozy wrapped his government’s collaboration with the riences of Holocaust victims and survivors. ever, Mr. Sarkozy vowed to proceed. plan in the cloak of religion, placing blame Nazis. Still others warned that the plan On one level, Mr. Sarkozy’s plan is a “It is ignorance — not knowledge — that for the wars and violence of the last cen- could backfire, creating resentment logical extension of his sometimes senti- leads to the repetition of abominable situ- tury on an “absence of God” and calling among France’s ethnic Arab and African mental and pedagogical approach to gov- ations,” he said during a visit to Périgueux the Nazi belief in a hierarchy of races populations if they felt their own histories erning. Last year, he enraged politicians in central France, adding, “You do not “radically incompatible with Judeo- were getting short shrift. on the left, the biggest union for high traumatize children by giving them the gift Christian monotheism.” The initiative has also pitted some Jews school teachers and some historians and of the memory of a country.” Education Minister Xavier Darcos against one another. “It is unimaginable, teachers when he ordered all high schools Editorial note: A week after the explained later that the aim of the plan unbearable, tragic and above all, unjust,” in France to read a handwritten letter of a Sakozy’s proposal France has quietly was to “create an identification between a Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and 17-year-old student who was executed by dropped it. The government has appoint- child of today and one of the same age honorary president of the Foundation for the Nazis for his resistance activities. ed a committee to study how to improve who was deported and gassed.” the Memory of the Holocaust, told the On another level, it reflects his oft-stated Holocaust education in France, where the The Holocaust is already taught in Web site of the magazine L’Express. “You declaration that as president, he is also a history of the Nazi murder of European French schools, but some psychiatrists cannot inflict this on little ones of 10 years “friend” as he calls himself, of Israel. By Jews is studied, but does not include each and educators predicted that requiring old! You cannot ask a child to identify with extension, he is also a friend of France’s pupil learning about an individual victim. Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER “DEADLY MEDICINE” OF HOLOCAUST to disembark and go to the Swiss “After World War II,” Bachrach notes, idea,” Bachrach says, “is that you could BY ALLEN COSTANTINI, KARE 11 NEWS Consulate to obtain visas. In fact, they “there was definitely a whitewash of these breed better human beings.” were arrested and thrown into “Gestapo scientific and medical professions.” he Nazi propaganda films made visitor wonders how Margot prison.” Thus, began the terrible trek that The exhibit, entitled “Deadly Medicine,” claims that we now regard as ridicu- DeWilde can sit so comfortably in T A landed them at the most infamous of all documents how doctors, nurses and sci- lous. One in the “Deadly Medicine” exhib- her Plymouth home as she tries to explain the Nazi death camps. entists actively implemented the Nazi’s it is translated from German as “The her place in the greatest horror story of Margot remembers the handsome attempt to create a “master race” by elim- Jewish people represent an especially the 20th century. German SS officer high percentage of the mentally ill.” The “When we were there, a group of young standing at the end of video goes on to assert “The prevention of men came and tattooed the numbers on the Auschwitz train plat- genetically-burdened offspring is a moral our arms,” she says, pushing up the light form. He would take a commandment.” material of her sleeve. The somewhat prominent place in the Under such mandates, German soldiers softened numbers of old ink are blue pantheon of history’s and their collaborators seized European beneath her pale skin. “People became a worst war criminals. Dr. Jews, including Margot and Lodewyk. number and not a person anymore.” Josef Mengele super- They were sent to camps like Auschwitz The ugly marks of Auschwitz have been vised the medical experi- for experimentation, sterilization and, for seen before on other arms of other ments performed on six million, extermination. Holocaust survivors, but it is not so much helpless men, women Margot catches her breath, remember- what was put on the now 87 year old as what and children. ing that Lodewyk was just 23 years old. was taken away. Margot was sterilized. “He ordered young, She has a picture of a happy couple, pic- “I’m a fatalist,” she sighs. “It happened. I married women to step Margot DeWilde, victim of the “Deadly medicine.” nicking at a relative’s summer home, in always wanted 6 kids. So, now I had to do forward, which I did,” happier times. Their smiles give no hint of with doggies.” says Margo. inating anyone they considered lesser or the horror to come so quickly. Margot hasn’t lost her sense of humor, It was the second to last time she would “defective” humans. Children and adults By some chance, Lodewyk ended up in even though her Nazi captors lost their ever see Lodewyk. “I don’t remember hav- were treated as lab rats by Mengele and a barracks next to Margot’s at Auschwitz. sense of decency. What then 21-year-old ing said ‘goodbye’ to my husband or what- his cohorts. They were often then mur- She was able to see him once through a Margot Meyer did lose was the chance to ever, nothing. You had to step forward, so dered to facilitate post-mortem examina- crack in the boards of her barracks’ wall. bear children. you were taken away in a truck to a build- tions of their experiments’ effects. The He had been propped up in a window by Margot and her husband, Lodewyk ing what was not the crematorium, we doctors’ actions led to the post-war a male nurse. Meyer, were tricked into boarding a learned later, but it was a big shower “coverup” noted by Bachrach. “I saw a poor soul with big ears and no train from Holland in 1943. They building.” It was the beginning of the end “There was a claim that they had been hair and big face and nothing else. I could thought they were going to Switzerland for Margot’s dream of her own family. co-opted by the Nazi regime, that they send him my solid food once in a while, and safety. Margot had made false Dr. Susan Bachrach, Curator of Special didn’t willingly collaborate with the regime because I could “organize” (steal) extra identification papers for them and her Exhibitions at the United States and this exhibit shows that that wasn’t the portions of soup,” recalls Margot. She parents without the tell-tale “J” that Holocaust Memorial Museum in case,” says Bachrach. received word that her husband was dead identified them as Jews. Washington, D.C. explains, “There was Among the experiments at Auschwitz of sickness. She doesn’t believe it. “He When the train passed into Germany, an attempt to come up with a more effi- was the sterilization of men and women passed away of, I got to say something stopping at Cologne, they were instructed cient way of sterilizing people.” as efficiently as possible. “And the whole (Continued on page 15) HIDDEN STORY OF BAD AROLSEN would be returned. About half the 106,000 member of the group from Putten. requests for historical research,” said BY TOBY AXELROD, JTA prisoners held in Neuengamme from 1938 ntil recently, the Bad Arolsen Reto Meister, the director of the to 1945 died. archive was used solely to assist International Tracing Service. hile Holocaust museums in U At the end of January, the children and survivors or heirs to determine eligibility Most of the material consists of forms Jerusalem and Washington this W grandchildren of eight men who died at for compensation, or to help them find lost the Nazis filled out as the people were month unveiled access to digitized the camp arrived at Bad Arolsen from a relatives. Inquiries have been made deported from one concentration camp to parts of the massive archive in Bad small town in the Netherlands, Putten, regarding nearly 3 million names. another. Allied forces confiscated these Arolsen, some relatives traveled to the For decades, historians had records and created an archive to assist in German town to recover their loved fought for access to the tracing missing persons. ones’ personal effects. archive while Bad Arolsen Prisoners’ arrival dates are noted. The On index cards, letters and crumbling digitized its documents. lack of a departure date is a euphemism ledgers, a numbing 17.5 million names of Last year, the 11-member for death. those trapped in the Nazi camps and international commission “Every page, every name is a life story,” ghettos are held on rows of shelves. that controls the tracing said Maria Raabe, an archive spokes- The numbness cracks the moment a service finally agreed to woman. But “for a large number of people, visitor shakes open a small brown enve- grant that access. As it is we don’t know what happened to them.” lope and the photos spill out: a wedding, a digitized, the archival mate- With all the attention to detail, why were picnic, a passport. Out tumbles a ring from rial is being released — the 2,300 envelopes containing personal one envelope; an ID with a thumbprint documents relating to effects never returned to the people falls out of another. wartime incarceration and whose names and addresses were print- Since the end of World War II, some concentration camps — to ed on them? 2,300 such envelopes have been sitting at museums in the 11 member In part, the problem was time. For the International Tracing Service archive nations. decades the archive had been helping Maria Raabe, a spokeswoman for the Bad Arolsen archive, in here gathering dust. They hold rare per- All the documents, including survivors qualify for compensation or find front of some of the millions of postwar cards tracking the pas- sonal effects among millions of docu- material relating to forced sage of individuals through Nazi camps or ghettos. lost relatives, and the addresses on the ments stored here. While Holocaust labor and postwar documen- envelopes were old, Raabe said. If one of museums in Jerusalem and Washington and each family received an envelope. tation, should be digitized and available to the 2,300 names on the envelopes were in January unveiled access to digitized Some had only an identification card the museums by 2010. mentioned in a query letter — a rare documents from the massive Bad Arolsen inside, while others had photos. For some In the middle of January, Israel’s Yad occurrence — the items were returned. archive, some of those rare personal the envelopes contained the only belong- Vashem Holocaust Memorial was the first to The most dramatic such case took place effects are being reunited with relatives of ings the descendants ever recovered from establish a service for processing requests in September, when members of their owners. their lost relative. for information. The U.S. Holocaust Foundation October44, which honors the Sixty-three years ago, arriving prisoners One man, born a few months after his Memorial Museum in Washington unveiled memory of men deported from the town of at the Neuengamme concentration camp father was deported, had never before its service a week later. Putten after Resistance fighters captured near Hamburg deposited valuables in an seen a photo of him. The archives’ Web site, www.its- a Wehrmacht soldier, visited the newly envelope that was then inscribed with “The German staff was crying together with arolsen.org, “provides access to regula- opened archive. their contact information, as if the items the Dutch people,” said Pieter Decker, a tions and the possibility for online (Continued on page 15) March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 GERMAN STUDENTS CONFRONT THE HOLOCAUST executive director. was taken to Dachau, then released as we have to hear these remarks,” said BY JOSEPH BERGER, German School students and visitors inexplicably as he had been arrested. Hanna Streck. THE NEW YORK TIMES like those from Rye Finally, his father put the But Julia Litzkow countered: “It’s not a Country Day School boy — just 13 —on a burden. It’s a responsibility. We can’t deny here are probably few places in this were touched by train that would take him it happened. But we have to make sure it country where lessons on the T photographs of to England in the doesn’t happen again.” Holocaust touch as exposed a nerve as Frank before she Kindertransport pro- Udo Bochinger, the headmaster, said they do at the German School here. went into hiding, gram that saved 10,000 that some restless students have com- Not many people in its Westchester including one of her Jewish children. plained, “Why can’t we stop talking about backyard know about the German School, poised on a beach “I looked in his eye the Holocaust?” His response is to find which serves children of Germans and with her sister and he looked in mine more arresting ways of imparting the other German speakers posted in this Margot. Such com- and we both knew we story, including discussions of contempo- country by companies like Lufthansa or monplace experi- would never see each rary failures to stop genocide in Rwanda Mercedes-Benz. ences made it all the other again,” Mr. Hubert and Darfur. It is important to note, he sug- Most of the 375 students know in their more shattering for said. In fact, they did gests, that even today, people are acqui- marrow that grandparents and great- the students to learn not. escing to mass slaughter. grandparents were German citizens when she died of typhus in But Mr. Hubert also Still, Günter Zloch, a history teacher, six million Jews were murdered. But they Bergen-Belsen wanted students to pointed out that Germany’s genocide was do not want to go through life ashamed of when she was 15. know about the English unique in its bureaucratic, industrial thor- being German. The students were people who safeguard- oughness. “Everyone has the potential to “It’s something we always have to deal Selmar Hubert discusses being a Jewish boy also spellbound by a in ’30s Germany. ed him and his sister become this evil, so it’s not history for with, that our country did something like talk given by Selmar and about his return me,” Mr. Zloch said. that,” said Julia Vogt, a 10th grader. “I feel Hubert, 82, of Rye Brook, who described seven years ago to Cronheim, where he That’s why Lukas Litzkow, Julia’s twin, proud to be German, but we can’t say it the brutality he experienced growing up in was warmly greeted by children from the was pleased that the exhibit highlighted that way because of what happened.” the 1930s in the Bavarian village of very village that had once scorned him. the story of Mies Giep, a Gentile who So the arrival last month of a traveling Cronheim. He told of the day his school- He echoed Anne Frank. helped hide the Franks while they were in exhibit on Anne Frank’s life and accompa- mates pounced on him and his sister, “You have to have faith in the goodness hiding in Amsterdam. nying programs, all sponsored by the cursing and spitting at them, while the of people,” Mr. Hubert said. “I would not “It shows that not all people were Nazis, school and by Westchester’s Holocaust teacher, a Nazi, egged them on. The be sitting here if not for that.” that there were people who stood up and and Human Rights Education Center, in school forced him to shout slogans like he program set off a tumult of feel- said this was wrong,” he said. Purchase, was a moment that required “Kill all Jews.” Tings in the students. They told of Mr. Hubert like to tells young Germans finesse on everybody’s part. “Imagine what it feels like to shout ‘Kill all American youngsters who ask them, troubled by guilt over atrocities they did not “The kids are not responsible, but it’s Jews’ when you’re Jewish,” Mr. Hubert said. when they identify themselves as perpetrate that he suffers from survivors’ their legacy, so how to do it in a way that Mr. Hubert held the students riveted, like German, “Isn’t that the country Hitler was guilt. “Neither your feelings nor my feelings it’s not shoved down their throats so they a counselor telling a ghost story around a from?” make any sense,” he will say. “How can we don’t feel guilty,” is the way the challenge campfire. On Kristallnacht in 1938, Nazi “I had nothing to do with it, my parents overcome that guilt? That’s one of the was stated by Donna Cohen, the center’s vandals ransacked his home; his father had nothing to do with it, so it’s unfair that things we do here — help each other.” MUSEUM WILL EMPHASIZE PORTUGAL HONORS DIPLOMAT RICH HISTORY OF POLISH JEWS WHO SAVED JEWS culture. The project began small but is now ountry rights long-standing wrong Salazar’s dictatorship fell in a 1974 PETER O’NEIL, CANADA.COM a major international event each summer. Cby launching virtual museum in army coup, but Sousa Mendes was large- Janusz Makuch said the Holocaust hangs honor of diplomat who helped save thou- ly forgotten until 1988, when the country’s tone-faced tourists spill into this city over his festival as a reminder that it would- sands of Jews during World War II and political parties voted unanimously to by the thousands each day to S n’t have been necessary had Poland’s was consequently fired in disgrace by make amends. retrace grim Holocaust history, from Jew- Jews not been so brutally wiped out. government. arliament approved a bill that saving hero Oskar Schindler’s famous “But my God. The Holocaust lasted six Parliament Speaker Jaime Gama posthumously reinstated him as a enamelware plant to the Nazi death facto- P years. The Jewish life in this country lasted ry in nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau. presided at the official launch of a website diplomat, promoted him to the rank of 1,000 years. I’m most interested in how the But some want the visitors to focus a lit- chronicling the life and work of Aristides ambassador and paid compensation to Jews lived and how they created the culture.” tle less on Hitler’s Final Solution and more de Sousa Mendes, a career diplomat who his surviving relatives, who used the Jews began arriving here after the on Poland’s rich Jewish history and cul- died in poverty and obscurity more than money to repurchase the family house. founding of the Kingdom of Poland in the ture that spanned almost 1,000 years. 50 years ago. They are trying to raise money to turn it 11th century. The pre-war presence of more than three Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese into a museum. They were invited to form a professional million Polish Jews was vanquished due to consul general in middle class between the aristocracy and the Nazi genocide, post-war pogroms and a Bordeaux, France, when the peasants. 1968 communist purge that killed or drove the Germans invaded oland later became known as a out all but a few thousand. that country in 1940. “Jewish paradise” during the period “We have tens of thousands of young P Defying his govern- of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth people coming not only from Israel, but ment’s instructions, he that began in the mid-16th century. from all over the world, each year to visit issued visas to an esti- Life got tougher at various times for death camps,” said Agnieszka Rudzinska, mated 10,000 Jews and Jews from the 17th century onwards due development director of Warsaw’s pro- 20,000 other people to both domestic pogroms and the intoler- posed $60 million Museum of the History fleeing the Nazi ance of foreign occupiers such as Russia of Polish Jews. “It’s important to give them advance. and Germany, finally culminating in the context. Those who perished in the For many, the only way Nazi extermination program. Holocaust deserve, and we owe this to out was through Lisbon, The Warsaw museum, strangely them, to be seen not just as victims. They Portugal’s Atlantic coast enough, might have never gotten off the were creators.” capital, and a Portuguese ground without the help of Polish The facility is also needed to counter transit visa was needed President Lech Kaczynski. Portuguese parliament launches website. Polish anti-Semitism that is so main- to leave France and Museum director Rudzinska said stream that Poland’s governing Law and cross Spain. Sousa Mendes and a hand- In 1998, Sousa Mendes received a Kaczynski offered the museum critical finan- Justice party is politically allied with the ful of staff worked furiously to issue visas posthumous tribute from the European cial support from the city at a point when the Radio Maryja station, which has been to thousands who queued around the con- Parliament and two years later his efforts project might have been abandoned. denounced by the Vatican and the sulate for days. were commemorated at a United Nations Israeli high school principal Menachem “I’d rather be with God against man than ceremony. European Commission against Racism Shelef, who was showing his 35 students with man against God,” Sousa Mendes The website, initially in Portuguese but and Intolerance because of its anti- around Warsaw’s Nozyk Synagogue one Semitic broadcasts. October afternoon, said there is a cruel said later. due to be translated into several lan- “This is the best activity to fight Polish irony to the museum’s launch. But his actions got him recalled to guages, is supported by foreign and anti-Semitism,” Rudzinska said. “They are constructing this place because Lisbon, where then-dictator Antonio national universities and institutions, The museum, which has raised roughly there are no Jews in Poland,” said Shelef, Salazar fired him from Portugal’s diplo- including the German Foreign Ministry half the funds it needs to open by 2010, is who lost most of his Polish family in the matic service. Shunned socially, denied a and Jewish associations. being applauded in Krakow by a Roman Holocaust. “But it’s important because at pension and barred from practicing law, “Bit by bit, he’s getting more widely Catholic-raised Pole who since 1988 has least it’s going to show something about he lived out his life in poverty with his wife known,” Alvaro de Sousa Mendes, the run an annual festival celebrating Jewish Jews in Poland, their life and culture.” and 14 children. He died in 1954. grandson, said. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM YYoouunngg LLeeaaddeerrsshh

sold-out crowd of nearly eight hundred young leaders j music, fun and friends. While the dress was casual ATestimony project. Manhattan ‘s Prince George Ballro the evening’s revelry. The key to the evening’s success was the h Rebecca Hanus, and Nicole Pines. Thanks are also in order for Lieberman, Jennifer Smith, and Jonathan Wilf, as well as the e Distenfeld, Michael Distenfeld, Gabriella Francis, David Fridm Kessler, Aliza Kollander, Barry Levine, Avi Lieberman, Mi Pinewski, Daniel Rieger, Emmy Salama-Caro, Danielle Schwartz Proceeds from the evening’s events will benefit Yad Vashem’s P who perished in the Holocaust. We are now faced with a historic for present and future generations. For more information about the Pages of Testimony, www.yadvashemusa.org.

Eli Zborowski, Chairman American Society for Yad Vashem and Caroline Massel, Co-Chair Young Leadership Associates.

YLA Winter Gala Chairpeople Rebecca Hanus, Nadav Besner, and Nicole Pines.

Members of the Committee. YLA Winter Gala participants and their friends. March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 hhiipp AAssssoocciiaattiioonn WWiinntteerr GGaallaa

joined together on Thursday night February 21 for an evening of l chic, the evening benefited the critically important Pages of oom quickly filled up as hundreds mingled, danced and enjoyed hard work of the committee and its three chairs: Nadav Besner, the Event Committee Chairs: Mindy Schall, Julie Schwartz, Tova entire Event Committee: Eric & Sara Abitbol, Brad Cooper, Claire man, Jonathan Hanus, Julie Hanus, Danna Katzourin, Jennifer chelle Osband, Jaci & Gonen Paradis, Justin Pines, Michael z, Jessica Sigall and Jeffrey Wilf. Pages of Testimony Project, an attempt to give back to the victims opportunity to collect, record and preserve these names for eternity,

, including making a submission, visit our website at

David Fridman and Gabriella Francis.

Danielle Schwartz and Barry Levine.

Inside the Ballroom. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL CEREMONY HONORING RIGHTEOUS VISITS YAD VASHEM AMONG THE NATIONS erman Chancellor Dr. Angela Nazi past and was determined to work GMerkel, accompanied by Prime together with Israel for a common future. n a moving ceremony recently held at found refuge at the farm of Jozef and Minister Ehud Olmert and eight Ministers Merkel also was given the honor of IYad Vashem the title of Righteous Rozalia Streker, ethnic Germans from each government, visited Yad addressing Israel’s parliament, the Among the Nations was posthumously (Volksdeutsche) living with their daughter Vashem on March 17, 2008. Knesset. Merkel opened her speech with bestowed upon Jozef and Rozalia Streker Helen in a rural area called Jagonia. Josef A memorial ceremony, with the partici- a Hebrew sentence, thanking the parlia- of Poland. Streker had been a regular customer of pation of the Chancellor and the Prime ment for giving her the “great honor” of The ceremony took place in the pres- the Stromers before the war, and had addressing them in German. ence of Stanislaw Briks, grandson, and even once borrowed some money from She immediately paid tribute to Eugeniusz Piatek, great-grandson of his Jewish business acquaintances. Now those killed by Nazi Germany it was Stromer who was desper- during World War II. ately in need of help. Other “The mass murder of six mil- acquaintances of his had turned lion Jews, carried out in the him down and wouldn’t let him name of Germany, has brought into their homes, but when he indescribable suffering to the came knocking on Streker’s Jewish people, Europe and the house, he was invited in, given entire world,” she said. milk and bread and a big coat to “The Shoah fills us Germans warm himself. with shame. I bow before the he Strekers hid Moty in the victims. I bow before the sur- Tattic of one of their barns, vivors and before all those who and took care of all his needs. helped them survive,” she said, Every day, Rozalia brought him using the Hebrew word for food. Moty was grateful for any German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel lays a wreath in the Holocaust. task that would provide a dis- Stanislaw Briks receiving the certificate of honor from Hall of Remembrance. To the Chancellor’s left is Prime The plan to deliver the traction from his daily tedium. To Minister Ehud Olmert and to her right is the Chairman of Director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department keep him busy, the Strekers also address in German captures the Irena Steinfeldt. the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev. highly complex nature of the brought Moty a blank ledger Minister, and Chairman of the Yad Germany-Israel relationship. Jozef and Rozalia Streker, both from book and a pencil, and he began to write Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, took For some, especially Holocaust sur- Poland; Sue Stromer Talansky and Nina a diary-memoir – a poignant document place in the Hall of Remembrance. vivors, the idea of German being spoken Gaspar, of the USA, daughters of Moty describing his experiences since the Following the ceremony, the Chancellor in the Knesset is anathema. For others, Stromer; Polish Ambassador to Israel beginning of the war. In his diary he visited the Children’s Memorial, signed the strong support for Israel from such a Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska and Ms. describes the terrible fear – his own and the Yad Vashem Guest Book, and offered powerful European country, especially Irena Steinfeldt, Director of the Righteous his rescuers’. For hiding Moty placed the a short statement. given its Nazi history, is seen as one of the Among the Nations Department. Strekers in grave danger – from the A visibly moved Merkel declared that major diplomatic achievements of Israel’s Upon accepting the medal and certifi- Germany accepted responsibility for its 60 years of statehood. cate of honor on behalf of his grandpar- ents, Mr. Stanislaw Briks said: “My grand- parents were quite modest people. My ISRAEL’S HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL PROTESTS grandmother was a very religious person; LITHUANIAN INVESTIGATION OF HOLOCAUST she had always told that we are all chil- dren of one God. Their strong faith in God Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memori- illegal activities, thereby defining them as helped them not to hesitate to give a man al in February handed a harsh letter of criminal, is a dangerous perversion of the of Jewish origin, Mr. Marek (Moty) protest to visiting Lithuanian Foreign events that occurred in Lithuanian during Stromer, a helpful hand.” Minister Petras Vaitiekunas, denouncing the War.” In addition to the recognition ceremony an investigation of a renowned Holocaust The Holocaust in Lithuania was unique the launch of Moty Stromer’s diary (written historian and World War II resistance in that it is believed that most of the Jews while in hiding while at the Streker’s farm) fighter. there were murdered by local citizens. also took place. The diary Memoirs of an Last year, Lithuania opened a criminal The “Order Police” began killing Jews as Unfortunate Person was translated into investigation against Yitzhak Arad, a for- soon as the Soviets left in 1941, and even English from its original Yiddish as part of mer director of Yad Vashem, who survived before German troops arrived. Out of a Yad Vashem’s Holocaust Survivors’ the Holocaust in Lithuania and fought with prewar population of 220,000, only a few Memoirs Project. Dr. David Silberklang, local resistance fighters against the Nazis. thousand Jews survived the war in Editor-in-Chief of Yad Vashem Lithuanian authorities officially asked Publications spoke about the unique diary Israel to allow it to investigate the 81-year- and its historical significance. old Arad on suspicion that he took part in Moty (Marek) Stromer was born in the murder of Lithuanian civilians during Kamionka-Strumilowa, near Lvov, Poland, the Holocaust. The case is based on in 1910. The Stromers had a liquor busi- The Strekers: Rozalia, Helen and Jozef in Arad’s memoir, in which he describes his ness in Kamionka, and also ran a small Jagonia, 1943. experiences as a partisan in Nazi-occu- retail business in the town. Moty worked in pied Lithuania. the family business, and lived in Kamionka Germans, from their neighbors, from In the letter, Yad Vashem chairman with his parents, siblings and extended fam- nationalist partisans. The danger was Avner Shalev charged that Lithuania was ily until the outbreak of the war. present and became part of their lives. conducting “historical revisionism and dis- When the Nazis invaded Kamionka in Sometimes their resolve wavered, but tortion” that aimed to compare the parti- 1941, Moty was 31 and about to become they let Stromer stay on. He remained hid- san activity with the crimes of the Nazis engaged to Pepi Haberkorn. The planned den in the attic from the Summer of 1943 and their collaborators. wedding was never to take place. Soon until the Spring of 1944, almost a whole “Destructive historical revisionism Yitzhak Arad their lives, the family and the community year. As the Russian front moved closer, seems to be taking place in Lithuania were to be destroyed forever. Shortly after the Strekers had to abandon the farm and regarding this case, by calling into ques- Lithuania – representing the largest per- the German occupation, Moty Stromer’s move westwards. They too had become tion legitimate, previously lauded wartime centage of Jews murdered in one country grandfather Reuven and his great uncle refugees. combat in an obvious attempt to propa- during the Holocaust. Chaim-Hersh were brutally murdered. Moty kept in contact with the Strekers gate unfounded beliefs and distort histori- About 6 million Jews were killed by the Moty fled to Lvov, where he was incar- after the war. The contact was maintained cal truths,” he wrote in the letter, handed Nazis and their collaborators in Europe cerated in the ghetto with his married sis- with their daughter Helena even after they to Vaitiekunas. during World War II. ter Zlata, his brother-in-law Mechel Eisen passed away. ”It is clear that initiating criminal pro- Arad, a retired Israeli army general, and their children. From there, Moty was In its meeting of February 18, 2007, the ceedings into Dr. Arad’s involvement in headed Yad Vashem for 21 years until his sent to the Janowska forced labor camp. Commission for the Designation of the Lithuanian partisan activity during World retirement in 1993. His comprehensive All Stromers in Poland, the entire family Righteous Among the Nations at Yad War II is tantamount to a call for an inves- study on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, with the exception of Moty, were mur- Vashem, decided to award Jozef and tigation into all partisan activity,” he wrote. including Lithuania, was published three dered. Moty managed to escape and Rozalia Streker the title of Righteous “Any attempt to equate those actions with years ago. headed back to Kamionka, where he Among the Nations. March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 BELGIAN AUTHOR OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVAL STORY ADMITS IT’S A FAKE lmost nothing Misha Defonseca were arrested and killed by Nazis as Others also had doubts. Defonseca’s admission is just the latest A wrote about herself or her horrific Belgian resistance fighters. “I’m not an expert on relations between controversy surrounding her 1997 book, childhood during the Holocaust was true. The statement said her parents were humans and wolves, but I am a specialist which also spawned a multimillion dollar She didn’t live with a pack of wolves to arrested when she was 4 and she was of the persecution of Jews, and they legal battle between the woman, her co- escape the Nazis. She didn’t trek 1,900 taken care of by her grandfather and (Defonseca’s family) can’t be found in the author and the book’s U.S. publisher. miles across Europe in search of her uncle. She said she was poorly treated archives,” Belgian historian Maxime efonseca had been asked to write the deported parents, nor kill a German soldier by her adopted family, called a “daughter Steinberg told RTL television. “The De Dbook by publisher Jane Daniel in the in self-defense. She’s not even Jewish. of a traitor” because of her parents’ role Wael family is not Jewish, nor were they 1990s, after Daniel heard the writer tell the Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in the resistance, which she story in a Massachusetts synagogue. in Massachusetts, admitted through her said led her to “feel Daniel and Defonseca fell out over prof- lawyers that her best-selling book, Jewish.” its received from the best-selling book, “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust She said there were which led to a lawsuit. In 2005, a Boston Years,” was an elaborate fantasy she moments when she “found court ordered Daniel to pay Defonseca kept repeating, even as the book was it difficult to differentiate and her ghostwriter Vera Lee $22.5 mil- translated into 18 languages and made between what was real lion. Defonseca’s lawyers said Daniel has into a feature film in France. and what was part of my not yet paid the court-ordered sum. “This story is mine. It is not actually real- imagination.” Daniel said she felt vindicated by ity, but my reality, my way of surviving,” ressure on the author to Defonseca’s admission and would try to Defonseca said in a statement. Pdefend the accuracy of get the judgment overturned. She said “I ask forgiveness to all who felt her book had grown recently, she could not fully research Defonseca’s betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my after the release of evidence story before it was published because the place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very found by Sharon Sergeant, a woman claimed she did not know her par- lost,” the statement said. genealogical researcher in ents’ names, her birthday or where she Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis Waltham. Sergeant said she was born. seized her parents when she was a child, found clues in the unpub- “There was nothing to go on to forcing her to wander the forests and vil- lished U.S. version of the Misha Defonseca. research,” she said. lages of Europe alone for four years. She book, including Defonseca’s maiden name registered as Jewish.” Lee, of Newton, muttered “Oh my God” claimed she found herself trapped in the “De Wael” — which was changed in the Defonseca’s attorneys, siblings Nathalie when told Defonseca made up her child- Warsaw ghetto and was adopted by a French version — and photos. and Marc Uyttendaele, contacted the hood and was not Jewish. She said she pack of wolves that protected her. After a few months of research, she author to show her evidence published in always believed the stories the woman Her two Brussels-based lawyers said the found Defonseca’s Belgium baptismal the Belgian daily Le Soir, which also ques- told her as they prepared to write the author acknowledged her story was not certificate and school record, as well as tioned her story. book, and no research she did gave her a autobiographical. In the statement, information that showed her parents were “We gave her this information and it was reason not to. Defonseca said she never fled her home in members of the Belgian resistance. very difficult. She was confronted with a “She always maintained that this was Brussels during the war to find her parents. “Each piece was plausible, but the diffi- reality that is different from what she has truth as she recalled it, and I trusted that Defonseca says her real name is culty was when you put it all together,” been living for 70 years,” Nathalie that was the case,” Lee said. “I was just Monique De Wael and that her parents Sergeant said. Uyttendaele said. totally bowled over by the news.” THREE DAYS TO COMMEMORATE THE HOLOCAUST? CONDUCTOR REVIVES rabbis marked the beginning of the Beginning with the eve of the day thus MUSIC OF HOLOCAUST BY DR. ERVIN BIRNBAUM, process of Hellenization and degenera- set aside, all entertainment and dining THE JEWISH PRESS tion, and the tragic death of Ezra, who in facilities are to be closed, flags on public BY ARTHUR SPIEGELMAN, REUTERS the rabbis’ eyes was a close second – if buildings are lowered to half-mast, com- he observance in January of the he Nazis destroyed their lives, not an equal – to Moses our Teacher. memorative services are held for the mar- UN-sanctioned International crushed their souls and burned their T The rabbis did that, in full awareness tyrs and the heroes of resistance, in the T Holocaust Memorial Day once again music. Now more than 60 years after that the yahrzeit of Ezra was really on the morning the sirens are sounded for two raised the issue of a multiplicity of World War Two ended, an American con- 9th of Tevet, and the anniversary for the minutes calling on the country’s residents Holocaust memorial days. Does this add ductor is trying to restore the lost music of Septuagint was the 8th of Tevet. They to unite in memory with the victims, to the stature and significance of the Holocaust and its composers before found it necessary to combine dates so as schools hold commemorative assemblies, Holocaust remembrance, or just the oppo- history forgets. not to crowd our calendar with days of and more. site? And what does each of these memo- Los Angeles Opera conductor James mourning and sorrow. The original Knesset proposal envi- rial days signify? Conlon last year started a program called Therefore, it seemed reasonable and prac- sioned the 14th day of Nissan, the Once World War II was over, the Jewish “Recovered Voices,” designed to introduce tical to also utilize the 10th of Tevet as the Yom anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto people felt a need to follow the traditional operagoers to a lost generation of com- Kaddish Klali for the victims of the Shoah Uprising (April 19, 1943) as Yom requirement of reciting Kaddish for the posers. Some people questioned whether whose date of death remained unknown. Hashoah; this, however, proved problem- departed. This is normally done on the the $5 million program was needed, but Combining events for a joint memorial is atic, as that date is the eve of the joyous anniversary of a person’s death. What now the whole town seems to be cheering. not unknown in the Jewish tradition. Why should be done, however, in instances festival of Pesach. So it was moved to the Two fully staged one-act operas, “The then could not the Shoah be latched on to where the day of death is not known, as 27th day of Nissan, which falls between Dwarf” (Der Zwerg) and “The Broken Jug” Tisha B’Av, an idea that in fact was con- was the case with many, if not most, of the Pesach and Israel Independence Day. (Der zerbrochene Krug) opened to rave sidered by a number of Jewish communi- Shoah victims? Given that the Jewish people had two reviews in February. The audience’s initial ty leaders? The answer lies in the unique- Israeli Chief Rabbis Herzog and Uziel days for marking the Shoah – the 10th of silence, after Conlon put down his baton, ness of the Nazis’ destruction process. determined, late in 1948, that the most Tevet as the Yom Kaddish Klali with its quickly turned to applause and an extend- his wasn’t a butchery where the Nazis appropriate day for the recital of Kaddish deep personal, religious significance, and ed standing ovation. literally waded in rivers of Jewish on behalf of those whose day of demise is T the 27th of Nissan as the day of remem- The acclaim came too late for their respec- blood, comparable to so many tragic not known is the fast day Asara B’Tevet brance of the victims and fighters of the tive composers, Alexander Zemlinsky, who episodes in Jewish and world history. No, (the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Shoah who died only because they were died broke and forgotten in exile in New Tevet). the Nazis constructed a carefully designed, Jews – why did the United Nations find it York, and Viktor Ullmann, who was killed Indeed, the first time the fast day arrived well-oiled machinery designed to accom- necessary to pass a resolution on in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. after the chief rabbis’ decision – January plish the total annihilation of the Jews, down November 1, 2005, establishing January Conlon, 57, said in an interview with 11, 1949 – Jewish communities worldwide to utilizing the parts of their bodies for the 27 as an official day of commemorating Reuters that “Recovered Voices” had been accepted it as the “Yom Kaddish Klali,” the advancement of their economy and con- the Holocaust, designating it as Holocaust dogged by a nagging question — why was day of general Kaddish for all victims of ducting medical experiments on them for Memorial Day? he bothering to revive these works? Nazi persecution who perished with their the greater welfare of Western Man. It took the world 60 years to come to Was it because the music was of such precise day of death unmarked. The 10th of Tevet answered a deep terms with its conscience and face up to high quality that it needed to be heard Originally the 10th of Tevet signaled need for religious expression on a pro- the most extraordinary annihilation again — Conlon’s belief — or because it the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by foundly personal level. It did not satisfy process ever undertaken – and to which it was time that the music world honored the Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, lead- the need of a nation to express its com- was a silent bystander and witness. composers, mostly Austrian and German ing to the destruction of the First Temple. munal horror at a diabolical attempt to liq- Nevertheless, the United Nations resolu- Jews, silenced by the Nazis. Later, the Sages attached to that day uidate it to the last infirm old and the last tion is a laudable document. It rejects “The Dwarf” is the tale of an ugly but noble other events, such as the order by King newborn infant. For that purpose, Israel’s denial of the Holocaust. It declares that dwarf given as a birthday gift to a Spanish Ptolemy of Egypt to translate the Bible Yom Hashoah was set by an ordinance of every member nation has an obligation to princess, who considers him her toy. into Greek by seventy sages, which to the the Knesset on April 12, 1951. (Continued on page 15) (Continued on page 15) Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 AUSTRIA’S FILM EXPLORES JEWISH DILEMMA ANTI-SEMITISM DOWN IN THE UNITED STATES DURING THE SHOAH nti-Semitic incidents in the United States declined for the third consec- pound notes so perfect that even the Bank paintings to his repertoire. He died in A utive year, according to the Anti- BY TOM TUGEND, JTA of England accepts them as real, or Argentina in the 1960s. Defamation League. instant death, Sorowitch does the Nazis’ uch of the Jewish Oscar buzz was The film’s ending, building on hearsay The ADL’s annual Audit of Anti-Semitic bidding. focused on director Joseph evidence, has Sorowitch after liberation Incidents catalogued 1,357 incidents of M By the end of the war, the Sachsenhausen Cedar’s “Beaufort” and the chances of an toting a suitcase full of fake currency and vandalism, harassment and acts of hate team had turned out 134 million pounds, Israeli film picking up an Academy Award heading for Monte Carlo, where he pur- against Jews in 2007 — a 13 percent drop three times the amount of British currency for the first time. posely loses the entire fortune at from the 2006 total of 1,554. Anti-Semitic But another Jewish-themed the gaming tables. incidents had peaked in 2004 at 1,821 film — the Austrian-made Director-writer Ruzowitzky’s incidents. “Counterfeiters” – received for- background and motivation is as Data in the 2007 audit, drawn from offi- eign-language Oscar honors. interesting as the movie itself. cial crime statistics and information col- Set in 1943, the film probes he Viennese filmmaker’s lected by the ADL’s network of regional the moral dilemmas facing a T grandparents on both offices, include criminal and non-criminal special group of Jewish concen- sides were Nazis or Nazi sympa- activities. tration camp inmates in a little- thizers, who, like most Austrians “We are certainly encouraged that the known and remarkable episode of the war and post-war genera- total number of anti-Semitic incidents has of Word War II. tion saw themselves more as declined for three years in a row,” said As the Nazis realize that the victims than perpetrators of the ADL National Director Abraham Foxman. war is going against them, they German atrocities. “Yet we are still troubled that there are so try one more ploy — to wreck “My grandparents would many incidents reported, and that these the economies of Britain and the acknowledge to me the facts of incidents often involve expressions of United States with massive the Holocaust, but considered anti-Jewish animus that are ugly and amounts of perfectly counter- it a collateral damage to the deeply hurtful to their victims and the com- feited pounds sterling and dol- “The Counterfeiters,” an Austrian film that probes the moral dilemmas war,” Ruzowitzky said during a munities where they occur.” lars. Under the codename of concentration camp inmates, won the foreign-language Oscar. phone interview. Not surprisingly, the states with the high- “Operation Bernard,” the est numbers of reported incidents were reserves, and was getting close to pro- Given his background and nationality, Germans comb concentration camps and the states with the highest concentrations ducing equally perfect dollar bills. the director felt he had a responsibility to put together a team of more than 100 In the film, director Stefan Ruzowitzky deal with the Holocaust era, but an equal of Jews. New York topped the list with 351 skilled Jewish printers, photographers does not draw Sorowitch, portrayed by duty not to exercise moral judgment on incidents, up from 284 in 2006, followed and engravers. by New Jersey (144 incidents), California Karl Markovics, as just a craven collabo- the Jews who collaborated in Operation In Sachsenhausen, the prisoners are (186), Florida (127), Massachusetts (95), rator. Sorowitch protects a fellow prisoner Bernard. placed in two completely isolated bar- Pennsylvania (99) and Connecticut (49). who is trying to sabotage the operation, One reason he closed the film with the racks, dubbed “The Golden Cage,” where Most of the reported incidents of harass- and uses his skills to get medicine for an scene at a Monte Carlo casino “was to they are given soft beds, good food, civil- ment involved anti-Jewish epithets and ill inmate. give Sally some redemption, or atone- ian clothes, first-class equipment and occasionally a light assault. In one widely “Counterfeiters” retains the tension of a ment, at the end,” Ruzowitzky said. piped-in music. reported incident, a Jewish man suffered top thriller, but it goes deeper than that. It From his considerable research on con- Heading the team is Salomon serious injuries in November when he was probes a haunting moral question — centration camps, he concluded that “the Sorowitch, a character based on one given a chance at life, even temporary life, beaten by several assailants in the large- system was designed so that the inmates Salomon Smolianoff, a Russian-born Jew at the price of aiding the enemy, what path ly Orthodox enclave of Lakewood, N.J. would harm each other.” nicknamed “Sally,” who lived high in the will a man choose? The audit noted that acts of vandalism He cites one survivor, a doctor, as say- Berlin of the 1920s and early 1930s as The actual Smolianoff survived the war were mostly directed at synagogues and ing, “If you tried to do anything good, it “The King of the Counterfeiters.” and soon resumed his old occupation, Jewish cemeteries, and often involved the Faced with the choice of producing adding the “rediscovery” of Old Master would lead to catastrophe.” use of swastikas. WRITING ABOUT THE ALLIES AND THE HOLOCAUST: THE YEAR’S TEN MOST ABSURD STATEMENTS to be learned from those experiences. bers even remotely close to the number of Comment: In fact, Churchill refused to BY RAFAEL MEDOFF To help counteract such misinformation, those being killed by the Nazis; (2) bomb- deal personally with news of the a panel of prominent scholars assembled ing the railroad lines in all likelihood would or many years after World War II, it Holocaust or appeals for rescue, directing by The David S. Wyman Institute for have resulted in few if any Jewish casual- was widely assumed that the Allies all such inquiries to the Foreign Office, F Holocaust Studies has published its first ties, since the planes would be targeting did all that was possible to save Jews which prepared the replies. annual list of the “Ten Most Absurd the railroad tracks and bridges, not the from the Holocaust. The process of shat- 4. “Churchill’s emphatic instruction [in railroad cars moving along them; and (3) tering that myth began in 1968 with the Statements” about how the U.S. and its favor of bombing Auschwitz] did not need the Jews in Auschwitz were not dying publication of two groundbreaking books: allies responded to the Nazi genocide. to be carried out. Three days after he “slowly”; during the period when Allied journalist Arthur Morse’s While Six Million The list was released in conjunction with the endorsed the bombing of railway lines bombing was feasible, they were being Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy, recent commemoration of International leading from Hungary to Auschwitz, the gassed at the rate of as many as 12,000 and the first scholarly study of the topic, Holocaust Remembrance Day. deportation of Jews from Hungary to Prof. David S. Wyman’s Paper Walls: The judges were Prof. Wyman; Prof. daily. Auschwitz was halted.” – Martin Gilbert, America and the Refugee Crisis 1938- Laurel Leff, author of Buried by “The 2. “The United States accepted about “Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong twice as many refugees as the rest of the 1941. In the four decades since then, Times”; Dr. Racelle Weiman of Temple Friendship,” Henry Holt and Company, world combined, 200,000 out of 300,000.” numerous important scholarly studies University, director emeritus of Hebrew 2007, p. 212. Union College’s Center for Holocaust and – Robert Rosen, “Saving the Jews,” have been published, led by Prof. Comment: In fact, Churchill and his Humanity Education; Prof. Bat-Ami paperback edition, Thunder’s Mouth Wyman’s bestseller The Abandonment of aides did not know the deportations had Zucker, author of In Search of Refuge; Dr. Press, 2007, p. 442. the Jews. stopped until fully eleven days after he first Alex Grobman, author of Battling for Comment: In fact, “the rest of the Yet despite these advances in scholar- made that July 7 “instruction” to bomb Souls; Prof. Judith Baumel-Schwartz, world” took in about 365,000 refugees, ship, as well as a widespread public Auschwitz; it was not until July 18 that the author of Unfulfilled Promise; and meaning that the approximately 200,000 awareness that the Allies’ response to the news of the halt to the deportations myself. admitted by the United States represented Nazi mass murder was grossly inade- reached the Foreign Office. Thus, between quate, a number of serious factual errors Our final selections for the Ten Most about 35 percent of the total, according to Absurd Statements in 2007 About the the figures reported in widely accepted July 7 and July 18, the Foreign Office and and distortions of the subject continue to the Air Ministry were passing the proposal surface each year in various books and Allies’ Response to the Holocaust: history texts concerning refugees from back and forth between them, despite their articles. 1. “Within Germany, bombing the camps Nazism. assumption that deportations were contin- Some of these ill-informed statements or the railroad lines carrying people to the 3. “Amid all the pressing concerns of the uing; and Churchill did not pursue the are motivated by political partisanship. camps would only have killed swiftly men war on land, at sea and in the air, and the matter in any way during that period, even Some are the result of carelessness or and women who would otherwise have desperate struggle to find the means to though he had no reason to believe the ignorance. They are usually made by indi- died slowly and miserably.” – Arthur M. challenge the continuing Nazi domination viduals who have done little or no original Schlesinger, Jr., “Journals 1952-2000,” of Europe, Churchill always made time to deportations had stopped. scholarly research in the field. Whatever Penguin Press, 2007, p. 675. deal with Jewish issues.” – Martin Gilbert, Even after the Hungarian deportations their source, they undermine the public’s Comment: In fact, (1) bombing the “Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong stopped on July 18, Auschwitz continued ability to understand what really hap- camps might or might not have resulted in Friendship,” Henry Holt and Company, to function and approximately 150,000 pened during the Nazi era and the lessons some Jewish casualties, but not in num- 2007, p. 196. (Continued on page 14) March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

ISRAEL MUSEUM EXHIBITS ART YAD VASHEM MOURNS THE PASSING LOOTED BY NAZIS AND UNCLAIMED OF TOM LANTOS includes mostly lesser-known paintings part in Nazi Germany’s methodical murder ad Vashem mourns the passing BY ASSOCIATED PRESS and items of Judaica, a small sampling of of Europe’s Jews and others they deemed of US House of Representative the some 1,200 pieces given to the Israel Y srael’s national museum opened two undesirable. Gerstein was responsible for Tom Lantos and extends its sincerest Museum decades ago by a group known new exhibits of paintings with a tragic transporting Zyklon B, the gas used for condolences to Mrs. Lantos and the I as the Jewish Restitution Successor history: They were stolen from the muse- mass killing at the Nazi death camps. entire Lantos family. Organization, which was entrusted by the ums and salons of Europe by the Nazis The painting was found by Allied troops Rep. Tom Lantos, the only survivor of Allies with returning unclaimed Jewish during World War II and never reclaimed hidden in an alcove behind a plaster all in the Holocaust elected to the U.S. by their rightful owners, many of whom property in postwar Europe. Gerstein’s house after the war. The Nazi perished in the war. The pieces were amassed in Allied col- officer killed himself in July 1945. The exhibits are meant to bring to life lection points set up to process artwork The exhibit also includes several pieces the dramatic stories behind the art, and looted by the Nazis. that were successfully restored to their perhaps reunite the works with their right- Also on display are photographs taken owners, like La Buveuse, a 1658 painting ful owners. Visitors who recognize a paint- after the war showing warehouses with by Dutch master Pieter de Hooch that ing as their own and can prove it can file thousands of crates of looted paintings, hung in the salon of financier Edouard de a claim and potentially take it home. shelves of sculptures, and dozens of Rothschild in Paris before the war. Torah scrolls stacked like logs. The “It is possible that someone might surface “This painting was coveted by Hitler. He exhibits include computer terminals con- who might find something that belonged knew about it, he wanted it, and he made nected to databases of looted art, so visi- to his or her family,” said James Snyder, every effort to get it,” said Shlomit tors can research the pieces on view. the Israel Museum’s director, as workers Steinberg, one of the exhibit’s curators. Over the years, the Israel Museum has put the final touches on a red-walled Reclaimed after the war and returned to the gallery at the museum in Jerusalem. returned some 20 pieces to owners or heirs, Snyder said. Rothschilds, Le Buveuse was later donated “Frankly, if that happened, it would really to the Louvre by Edouard’s daughter. underscore the point that museums are The exhibit of art the museum received from JRSO includes a 19th-century All in all, the Nazis took 100,000 pieces making an effort to close this still-open of art from France during the war. Of chapter in the history of the loss that wedding portrait of the beautiful Charlotte those, 60,000 were recovered, and occurred broadly during the war,” he said. de Rothschild, scion of the wealthy Jewish 45,000 of them were returned to their Worldwide, experts say, anywhere banking family, along with one of her hus- owners or heirs. Most of the rest were between 250,000 and 600,000 pieces of band and cousin Lionel. The paintings auctioned off. art looted by the Nazis were never claimed hung in a Jewish nursing home in ith the new exhibit, the Israel and remain in the possession of museums, Frankfurt before they were taken by Congress, and who became an expert governments and private collectors. German troops. W Museum is also making the point in foreign affairs and champion of Consisting of some 80 pieces in all, the The most famous painting in the JRSO that it is forthcoming about the looted art human rights, died on February 11, exhibits at the Israel Museum include exhibit is one by the early 20th century in its possession, in the wake of the accu- 2008 after recently being diagnosed works by masters like Henri Matisse and Austrian master Egon Schiele thought to sations leveled against it last year by the with cancer. Georges Seurat, paintings owned by the be worth more than $20 million. Holocaust restitution group. The 80-year-old Democrat, who rep- Rothschild banking family, and other mas- n the exhibit of art from France, nearly The group, headed by a Holocaust sur- resented his northern California district terpieces worth millions. every painting has a story. vivor and entrusted by Israeli law with I since 1981, had announced on January The first exhibit, Looking for Owners, is Some were seized by the Nazis for returning looted property to Holocaust vic- 2 that he would retire from Congress at made up of 53 paintings on loan from inclusion in a museum of European art tims, demanded the museum turn over all the end of this year because of ill French museums. Put together by a team that Hitler planned to build in Linz, Austria. of the unclaimed art in its possession and health. He was diagnosed with cancer of Israeli and French curators, it includes The Bathers, an 1858 nude by the French charged that the museum was not doing in late December. several works owned by prominent Nazis realist Gustave Courbet, was purchased enough to return the art to its rightful owners. Lantos was born in Hungary and as a like Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s top by von Ribbentrop, the Nazi Foreign The museum rejected the criticism, say- teenager twice escaped Nazi labor diplomat. Minister, in a legitimate transaction with a ing that as a national institution of the camps. Lantos was part of a resistance Most of the French paintings are well- Parisian art dealer. Jewish state it was a fitting place for the movement against the Nazis during the known and have been painstakingly The Allies took the painting after the war, art. Since then, the institution has German occupation of Hungary. In his researched, meaning that there is little and Von Ribbentrop was hanged for war launched an Internet database of all of the floor speeches, he sometimes referred chance that they will be claimed 60 years crimes in 1946. Landscape, the Pink Wall, looted art in its storerooms, and the resti- to himself as one of the few living mem- after the war’s end, Snyder said. an early Matisse, was owned by Dr. Kurt tution group has dropped its demand for bers of Congress who fought against The companion exhibit, Orphaned Art, the artwork. Gerstein, an SS officer who took an active fascism. Lantos made his first run for office in 1980, and was reelected 13 times. GERMANY LAUNCHES COMIC BOOK ON HOLOCAUST When he announced his retirement erman schools “We hope the comic will and, finally, sent to camps to be worked to from Congress, Lantos expressed his Glaunched a comic get even underprivileged death or gassed. gratitude toward his adopted country, book that aims to teach kids interested in learning After five decades, when it had only a saying, “It is only in the United States above all underprivileged about the Holocaust.” handful of Jewish residents, Germany that a penniless survivor of the children about the Nazi The 61-page book, already now has the world’s fastest-growing Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi era and the Holocaust. available in various European Jewish community, with 220,000 arriving underground could have received an Although German languages, will be used from the former Soviet Union since 1990. education, raised a family and had the schools already make a alongside worksheets in his- But violent anti-Semitic crime is also privilege of serving the last three big effort to give pupils a tory classes at sec- decades of his life as a member of thorough education about ondary schools Congress.” the Nazi era, racist vio- in Berlin for six During the war, Swedish diplomat lence remains a problem, months, after which Raoul Wallenberg protected Lantos and the revival of the project hopes to and other occupants of a Budapest Germany’s Jewish com- go nationwide. “safe house” apartment building from munity has brought a rise The book, based arrest by Nazi soldiers. in anti-Semitism with it. on fact, describes Four decades later, Lantos, by then a The Tintin-style comic book is called how Jews in Germany and the member of the U.S. Congress, suc- “The Search,” and tells the story of Esther, Nazi-occupied Netherlands cessfully pushed legislation granting a fictional Jewish survivor of the experienced the genocidal Nazi honorary U.S. citizenship to Holocaust. persecution that took the lives of Wallenberg. Created by the Dutch cartoonist Eric 6 million European Jews. Tom Lantos was an honorary member Heuvel, it is already available in the It includes the Night of Broken of the International Raoul Wallenberg Netherlands. Berlin’s Anne Frank Centre, Glass in November 1938, when Foundation. which is backing the project, thinks it will Jews were beaten and their homes, busi- increasing. Last month, five Jewish serve a purpose in Germany, too. nesses and synagogues were ransacked teenagers were attacked by a group of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza “There is not a major gap in the way and, later on, the deportations to the punks and subjected to anti-Semitic Rice said Lantos was “the embodiment Germany teaches the history of this era, Auschwitz concentration camp. abuse. of what it meant to have one’s freedom but this is a new approach,” said spokes- Through pictures and realistic dialogue, The new comic book is a sequel to denied and then to find it and to insist woman Melina Feingold, noting that the the book depicts the suffering and humili- Heuvel’s “The Discovery,” also aimed at that America stand for spreading the book could reach some of the children ation that Jews endured as they were school children, based on Jewish history benefits of freedom and prosperity for who are least interested in schoolwork: stripped of their livelihoods, ostracized in Europe from 1933 to 1940. others.” Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 WRITING ABOUT THE ALLIES AND THE HOLOCAUST: THE YEAR’S TEN MOST ABSURD STATEMENTS (Continued from page 12) France in 1942 by fleeing to Spain. 7. “[E]ven had American Jews acted in Shertok, head of the Political Division of Jews were murdered there between July Thousands of Jewish refugees man- complete solidarity, they could not have the World Zionist Organization/Jewish 7 and the liberation of the camp six aged to reach Allied-liberated Italy. altered American policies in an era when Agency; Yitzhak Gruenbaum, chairman of months later. Even though bombing still Pressure by the U.S. government’s War the nation was consumed by the Great the Rescue Committee of the Jewish needed to be carried out during that peri- Refugee Board in 1944 played a key role Depression and the Second World War.” – Agency Executive, in Jerusalem; and the od, Churchill never revisited the issue. in Rumania’s agreement to move 48,000 Beth S. Wenger, “The Jewish Americans: Jewish Agency representatives in Cairo, 5. “During WWII as prime minister, Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in Budapest, and Geneva. Churchill encouraged more Jewish immi- America,” Doubleday, 2007, p. 217. 9. “Nine days after meeting with Wise gration into Palestine ...” – Michael Comment: In fact, even though [i.e., December 17, 1942], Roosevelt Makovsky, “Winston Churchill Was a they were divided, Jews did suc- induced Churchill and Stalin to join with Zionist at Heart,” Washington Jewish ceed in altering America’s rescue him in a Declaration on Jewish Massacres Week, November 8, 2007. policy. The Bergson Group played a ...” – Jean Edward Smith, “FDR,” Random Comment: In fact, Churchill continued major role in generating the public House, 2007, p. 609. the White Paper policy of severely restrict- outcry and Congressional pressure Comment: In fact, the British Foreign ing Jewish immigration to Palestine in late 1943 that helped bring about Office, not President Roosevelt, proposed throughout World War Two. President Roosevelt’s creation of the idea of the declaration. Roosevelt admin- 6. “[A]fter the war began, virtually noth- the War Refugee Board. Wenger istration officials actually watered down the ing could be done to rescue or even assist mentions the creation of the Board wording of the original British draft. the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe, who (p. 215), but depicts Treasury 10. “[W]hile accusations have long been were prisoners of a madman who was Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. as made about [The New York Times’] failure bent on killing all of them as his life’s mis- being single-handedly responsible to publish news about events related to sion and who was dictator of a continent.” for its establishment, without any the Holocaust, the record shows that arti- – William D. Rubinstein, “Response to the reference to the role of the Bergson cles about the [American Jewish] Conference appeared at least six times David Wyman Special Issue,” Journal of Group or Congress. from August 31 to September 3, 1943, Ecumenical Studies 40:3-4, dated Summer- Children of the Auschwitz after liberation by the Red Army. 8. “Nor did notable or important twice on the front page.” – Bette Roth Fall 2004 but published in June 2007. Jews of Transnistria out of the path of the Jewish leaders or organizations in Young, “The American Jewish Response Comment: In fact, there are numerous retreating German Army and into America or Palestine request that to the Holocaust – a Reconsideration,” examples of Jews being “rescued or Rumania’s interior, saving their lives. The American forces bomb Auschwitz at a Midstream, March/April 2007, p. 33. assisted after the war began.” About WRB also financed a variety of operations time when bombing might have accom- Comment: In fact, the Times sought to 26,000 European Jewish refugees to help refugees survive in France, plished something.” – Robert Rosen, undermine the American Jewish reached Palestine between 1941 and Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and “Saving the Jews,” paperback edition, Conference by “balancing” its front-page 1944 in transports organized by Zionist Hungary, including bribing German offi- Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007, p. 404. coverage of the Conference with a half- activists. An estimated 27,000 Jewish cials, providing supplies and forged docu- Comment: In fact, numerous important page story about the alleged increase in refugees escaped to Switzerland and ments, and sustaining some 8,000 Jewish Jewish leaders or organizations in Jewish support for the anti-Zionist were granted haven during the war years, orphans hidden in France. America and Palestine asked the Allies to American Council for Judaism. though thousands were turned away. The War Refugee Board mobilized the bomb Auschwitz in 1944, when it might More than 7,000 Danish Jews were smug- international diplomatic pressure that have saved many lives, including Nahum Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of The David gled out of Nazi-occupied Denmark to stopped the deportation of Jews from Goldmann, co-chairman of the World S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. safety in Sweden in 1943. Bulgaria’s Budapest to Auschwitz in 1944, and Jewish Congress; Maurice Perlzweig, His latest book, “Blowing the Whistle on Orthodox Church, in partnership with its through Raoul Wallenberg saved many head of the British section of the World Genocide: Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. and the right-wing government, refused Nazi thousands from the Nazis in Budapest. As Jewish Congress; Chaim Weizmann, Struggle for an American Response to the attempts to deport its 60,000 Jewish citi- a result, some 120,000 Jews were still president of the World Zionist Holocaust,” will be published this summer by zens. Thousands of Jews escaped alive in Budapest at war’s end. Organization/Jewish Agency; Moshe Purdue University Press. KILLING AFTER THE KILLING (Continued from page 4) wounded — orphans beyond hope. fueled by ancient religious prejudices as as the politicians; neither could have pre- ear is a word we use often in refer- To put it clearly: Like many of us, they well as individual and collective hatreds. dicted it. Gross quotes Tacitus, who once Fence to dictatorships and totalitarian had thought all too naively that anti- Then there were the pogroms. First in said, “It is indeed human nature to hate regimes; it is, for want of a better term, Semitism, discredited 6 million times over, tiny villages, followed by those in the big the man whom you have injured.” Taking it employed inadequately to speak of the had died at Auschwitz with its victims. cities. Gross’s reader is suddenly thrust one step further, the author posits that Holocaust. In a dark time, on a continent They were wrong. Only the dead perished into the Middle Ages. In Krakow and in Polish antisemites detested their Jewish overcome by the din of triumphant at Birkenau; anti-Semitism itself survived Kielce, those thirsting for Jewish blood victims for their suffering, which caused Nazism, fear gripped the occupied coun- in most places, and mostly in Poland. This didn’t hesitate to maim or murder. In these such shame: “Jews were so frightening tries and all nations in Germany’s shad- is, in sum, what Jan Gross reveals in a two towns, it began with that old canard and dangerous, in other words, not ow; but, mostly, fear gripped the Polish style that is at once sober and overwhelm- claiming that Jews slaughtered Christian because of what they had done or could people, whom Hitler wanted reduced to ing in its very bluntness. There were man- children to use their blood for the ritual do to the Poles, but because of what slavery, and the Jewish people, singularly hunts, public humiliations, insane acts of preparation of Passover matzos. In Poles had done to the Jews.” destined for isolation, humiliation and total brutality. The rare escapees who thought Kielce, it was rumored, Jews had lured a oes it follow that all of Poland was to extermination. Had these last two commu- themselves fortunate to return home Polish boy into a cave so that they could Dblame? I do not believe in collective nities acted logically, they might have found their property occupied by murder him. Little did it matter that there guilt. Only the guilty are guilty; their con- understood that they faced a common strangers who chased them away with was no cave in the local Jewish temporaries are not. The children of killers enemy and worked to combine their scornful cries: “What, you’re still in this Committee’s building at 7 Planty Street. are not killers but children. Today, a new strengths to help each other. world?” Eventually, they were made to Little did it matter that, for centuries, the generation will assume responsibility for Unfortunately, that was not to be. Gross regret their very survival. Trapping a Jew highest authorities of the Catholic Church its history. And yet there is this: The past describes how Warsaw’s onlookers was reason enough to beat him senseless. had repudiated and condemned these lives on in the present, impossible to for- watched young Jewish fighters throw Discover another, and pelt him with stones. accusations as stupid and malicious lies. get. Jan Gross forces Poland to confront themselves from burning windows during This anti-Semitic blight, all too insidious The Polish population clung to such myths that past. Just as he forces his readers. the pathetic yet glorious ghetto uprising in and thorough, infected every level of the to feed their hatred and rage against the One of his saddest revelations? During 1943, then applauded when German sol- population. There were those who killed Jews, who were guilty of nothing more the war, here and there, there were Polish diers set upon them below. Jews in order to steal from them; others than having survived Treblinka and citizens with generous and brave hearts But in this strongly sourced work, anoth- who coveted their stores and homes; oth- Auschwitz. And more: The Polish clergy in who, risking life and liberty, hid and protect- er fear emerges. It is that felt by Jews, not ers, to avenge the Jews’ mythical power in towns and provinces, almost to the last ed Jews. But rather than be proud of such during Poland’s occupation by the Nazis, communist secret circles; and then there man, chose to guard its silence. acts, they preferred not to talk about them. but afterward, even as the country was were those who killed for the simple As he has done for Jedwabne in They were afraid of the anger and the being liberated by the Red Army. pleasure of it. Neighbors , Gross here shows the horror recriminations from their neighbors. Based on official documents as well as There was the official version: of Kielce in all its aspects. Hatred for Jews numerous testimonies, Fear recounts Authorities minimized the tragedy’s seemed to render the whole world blind. Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize events as they unfolded in 1945-46. The Jewishness. Even as they commemorat- Old and young, men and women, soldiers in 1986. He is the author of more than 40 most heinous and outrageous cruelties, it ed the dead, they forgot to mention that and police — even Boy Scouts — took books, including “Night” and, most recent- appears, were inflicted by civilians, sol- they were Jews. And the public version: part in the lynchings. And spectators ly, “The Time of the Uprooted.” This diers and policemen on a benighted pop- Jews were barred from civic life — from either applauded or did not care. How to review was written in French and translat- ulation of Jewish survivors from hells near schools as well as public office. explain so much hate, at so many levels? ed by Marie Arana. and far, who were returning sick, poor, Traditional anti-Semitism, too, lived on, It is a question for the intellectuals as well First published in the Washington Post. March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 THREE DAYS TO COMMEMORATE CONDUCTOR REVIVES THE HOLOCAUST? MUSIC OF HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 11) Pesach, April 19, 1943. While one of the (Continued from page 11) ing home one night when he heard an honor the memory of Holocaust victims favorite tactics of the Germans was to She is repulsed by his looks and cruelly unfamiliar, yet magical, piece of music on and develop educational programs as part exploit Jewish festivals for their murder- forces him to look into a mirror for the first the car radio. It was Zemlinsky. of the resolve to help prevent future acts ous actions (in the ghetto of Minsk, for time. Horrified at his reflection, he dies. “One thing led to another. I was working of genocide. example, they drowned 5,000 children in in Germany at the time and recording with he UN Resolution makes no men- a big pit of lime on Purim), the real cause EMI and we decided to record almost Ttion of the torture, pain or suffering of the Warsaw Revolt was not of German everything Zemlinsky wrote,” Conlon of the Jewish people as a result of the choice. It was the Jewish remnant that recalled. world standing idly by, but it does empha- reacted in the spirit of Pesach. Soon, he was recording other com- size that it wishes to honor “the courage German attacks were unrelenting. But posers of the era, men like Ullmann, and dedication shown by the soldiers who Pesach came to remind us of our age-old Walter Braunfels, Franz Schreker, Ernst liberated the concentration camps.” aspirations for freedom. Religious, irreli- Krenek and Erich Korngold, who spent the The last clause is no doubt directly gious and anti-religious, all sensed the war years writing Hollywood movie music. linked to the deliberate choice of the date, call originating in ancient Egypt and knew Krenek also thrived in exile, but many fell January 27, for the commemoration. For that this was the moment of destiny, of into obscurity, like Braunfels. on January 27, Soviet troops liberated standing up to evil and madly resisting. Next year’s “Recovered Voices” pro- Auschwitz, the greatest of the extermina- he Warsaw Revolt inextricably links tion camps in which one million four hun- Tthe Pharaoh of Egypt with the dred thousand Jews perished. Pharaoh of the 20th century. It is one story It would appear that the nations of the that spans ages and brings to life fables world were more anxious to demonstrate and stories of old. One of the monumental to future generations the readiness, glories of the Revolt is that it shows how courage and dedication of their soldiers in our age-old tradition renews itself in our liberating the camps than in portraying actions today. There would not have been what actually transpired within the camps. a Revolt without Pesach, which spurred The Jewish date for Yom Hashoah has the desperate remnant to heroic action. a very different slant to it. Justice demands that our Yom Hashoah Composer Alexander Zemlinsky. It is generally assumed that the April remain where it is, as close to Pesach as She momentarily regrets the loss of her “toy,” date for Yom Hashoah, as set by the possible, to remind future generations of but returns to her birthday party dance. Knesset, marks the beginning of the the living, dynamic impact of our past on “I think of ‘The Dwarf’ as one of the great Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. This is an incor- our national future. The day of Kaddish is operas of the 20th century and Zemlinsky as rect assumption. The revolt actually start- also in its right position, allowing individu- one of its great composers,” Conlon said. ed on January 18, 1943. als to intimately unite with the memory of Zemlinsky, once a prominent member of Gerald Reitlinger describes the follow- their particular beloved. Gustav Mahler’s circle, is said to have ing situation within the Ghetto: On that It is to be hoped that the UN’s International fashioned the 1921 work because of his day “a miserable column of deportees Holocaust Memorial Day will be utilized by own short stature and homely looks. started to march down Niska Street, but at the nations to learn the lessons that will By contrast, the Ullmann piece is a light the junction of Zamenhova Street several prevent future occurrences of the evil that satire written by the Czech composer two of them pulled out firearms and shot at the led to the murder of six million human years before he was sent to the Terezin SS and militia…. For three days, a house- beings only because they were Jews, with “showplace” concentration camp where Composer Viktor Ullmann. to-house round-up was conducted. In the the world standing idly by. the Nazis used artists as proof that the gram will include operas by Braunfels and northeast corner of the Ghetto four of the Dr. Ervin Birnbaum is founder and direc- Jews were being treated well. He was Schreker, who succumbed to a stroke in fifty Jewish combat groups barricaded tor of Shearim Netanya, the first outreach later shipped to Auschwitz. 1934. Both may have escaped the themselves and after four days (German program to Russian immigrants in Israel. . Paradoxically, Conlon noted, the 20 Holocaust, but anti-semitism cut short commander) von Sammern had to use He has taught at City University of New works Ullmann wrote in the camps were their careers. two field guns to pound up the buildings.” York, Haifa University and the University saved while many of his pre-war composi- The Nazis destroyed so many voices Von Sammern decided to call off the of Moscow; served as national superin- tions are lost. that “there was no one left in Germany action that took the lives of 20 German tendent of education of Youth Aliyah and Conlon, 57, said he was drawn to the who knew their work,” Conlon said, soldiers and wounded 50. as the first national superintendent of edu- project by happenstance. A student of adding that thanks to small car radio, he The full-scale revolt exploded on erev cation for the Institute of Jewish Studies. classical music since age 11, he was driv- had gained “a mission.” HIDDEN STORY OF BAD AROLSEN “DEADLY MEDICINE” OF HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 6) and eventually “somebody phoned me (Continued from page 6) sterilized in the 1920’s and 30’s. This was Of the 589 local men who ended up in that pictures and other personal items else, he passed away of tuberculosis, but I done with approval by the State legisla- Neuengamme, only 49 came back. belonging to him were found.” heard, but between the lines, I hear that this tures. The U.S. Supreme Court even “We hoped perhaps some personal In October she received the small enve- was a fantasy of the person who brought me joined the Eugenics cause. The highest effects would be” at the archive, said lope during the annual memorial ceremo- the news, that he was taken to the gas court in the land ruled in favor of the ster- Decker, 48, who lost two great-uncles in ny in Putten. Inside was a wallet still bear- chambers, the last day,” she says. ilization in 1927. the raid. ing traces of paint; her great-uncle worked Margot survived the camps, but would never One prominent Minnesota physician, Dr. Almost everyone in Putten lost some- as a painter before being deported. be able to fulfill her dream of having children. Charles Dight, penned letters of praise to one, he said. “It is an everyday topic. And “There was a personal ID card with a Bachrach understands what was done. Adolph Hitler. Dight wanted to extend sterili- there are still 10 or 12 widows and two or picture and his fingerprint, and it is written “One of the methods that was zation to individuals deemed inferior outside three survivors living there.” where his scars were. It is very beautiful,” researched was injecting cold carbon the institutions, in the general population. The Dutch visitors searched the archive Dashorst said. “And there are four or five dioxide into the uterus and thereby scari- The Nazis were not restrained by the for information. pictures with my grandma” — the only fying, you know, creating scars on the fal- American democratic system, as was Dight lopian tubes, instead of cutting them,” and his ilk. Hitler’s dictatorship used “We found the personal effects of five family member to survive. says Bachrach. Eugenics as a warped, pseudoscientific men,” Decker said. “Four had died in the The one survivor to receive his own per- Margot remembers, “They inserted that justification for sterilizing and killing millions concentration camp and one is still alive.” sonal property, Jacob van Wincoop, 81, with a big, not syringe with a needle, but a of Jews, Gypsies, gays and others. After the visitors returned home, archive got back his ID card and wallet, and a pressure syringe into the vaginal area and The reality of their intentions is chilling. staff continued searching. note confirming that he needed his horse took an X-ray.” Margot repeats it in the matter-of-fact tone “We hoped for one person, and we and wagon to deliver milk. It was signed Perhaps the most startling information in of someone who has spent six-plus found 22,” Decker said. by his father, who also was deported but the exhibit is the American involvement in decades telling the story. “(It was) to get rid One of the first five packages was never returned. the so-called “Eugenics” movement. It of large amounts of unwanted people in the given to Nicole Dashorst, whose great- “It was not a lot that he got back, but he involved a misreading of Charles Darwin’s easiest possible way,” says Margot. uncle, Leon Roos, was among the few took it in his hands and didn’t let go,” evolutionary theory. She married again, twice, after the war, Jewish deportees from Putten. Roos Decker said. Bachrach frowns. “Eugenics, the word finally settling in Minnesota with the late ultimately was among the nearly 8,000 Like Decker, Most descendants of the itself means ‘well born,’ had a lot of popu- Rudy DeWilde, her third husband, but, of prisoners killed in the British bombing Putten deportees will never receive a thing. lar support in many western countries in course, she never had children of her own. of the German ship Cap Arcona days The remaining envelopes will wait until the early 20th century, including the In the new millennium, Margot speaks to before the armistice. another letter arrives, another inquiry, United States, including the state of thousands of school children each year in Dashorst, 39, of Niew-Vennep, recog- another request for one last sign of some- Minnesota.” Minnesota, explaining her first-person nized a family photo on the October44 one who never came home from In fact, 19,000 patients in Minnesota experience as one of the ultimate exam- Web site. She contacted the foundation Neuengamme. and other states’ mental facilities were ples of “Man’s inhumanity to man.” Page 16 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2008 - Adar II/Nissan 5768 WOMEN OF VALOR HONOREE ROCHELLE CHERRY HONOREE JEAN GLUCK ochelle Silberzweig for Yad Vashem. The ean Gluck was born in Eugen, she is a Founding RCherry and her Cherrys are deeply JSlotvina, member of the Young Israel family have always been committed to teach- Czechoslovakia to proud of Forest Hills, and dedicat- committed to Jewish cul- ing the lessons of the parents Rochel and ed the new building of the tural preservation and Holocaust and Robert Mordechai Gedalovits. In Rabbinical Seminary of Holocaust remembrance. recent co-edited April, 1944 the Germans America. She is the oldest of three Rethinking Poles and occupied Slotvina and all The Glucks are Century children of Szulem (Sol) Jews: Troubled Past, the Jews were rounded up Builders of Yeshiva University and Gloria Rosen Brighter Future. and forced into the Jewish Holocaust Studies Chair. Their Silberzweig. Both of her She and her hus- area, which became the philanthropic work in the US parents fought in the band, Robert, are sealed, guarded ghetto. includes the United Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising founders of the Fortunately, the family’s Appeal, Israel Bonds, Keren and survived numerous Brooklyn Kindershule house was incorporated Kayement L’Yisrael – The labor and concentration – an after-school pro- into the ghetto, where Jewish National Fund, and camps. gram for children 9-13 they shared their home many other organizations that Rochelle was born in years old that instills with other people who support Israel. Germany and came with her parents to the in them an appreciation for the Eastern had been displaced. Jean and Eugen are founders of the United States in 1949. The Holocaust was European Yiddish culture and the experi- From Slotvina, Jean and her parents Great Synagogue of Jerusalem, and always a part of their lives. Her parents ence of Jewish immigrants. They are also were deported to Auschwitz, where her received numerous awards and acco- were active in the Warsaw Ghetto active members of the Brooklyn College parents were sent directly to the cremato- lades in Israel. Through their vision and Resistance Organization (WAGRO). After Hillel. In addition, Rochelle served as the rium. She was put to work for four months generosity, Bet-El has become the thriv- her mother’s death in 1979, Rochelle’s Co-Chair for the 2007 Annual Dinner and from there was sent to work in a ing center of learning it is today. Jean and father became active with the American Journal, which received many accolades. munitions factory in Freudenthal, Eugen are Benefactors of Shaare Zedek Society for Yad Vashem and eventually Rochelle is proud to accept this award in Germany where she was liberated by the Hospital, Jerusalem, and have recently became a Benefactor. He underwrote the memory of her late parents, Gloria and Russians in May, 1945. dedicated The Jean and Eugen Gluck Auschwitz-Birkenau model displayed in the Sol Silberzweig. She has always been Jean and her husband Eugen are Department of General Pediatrics. Museum at Yad Vashem, as well as other proud to be their daughter and is commit- founding members of the American The Glucks are also Benefactors of the projects. In 2004, her father completed his ted to continuing their legacy, so that the Society for Yad Vashem and Benefactors recently completed Menachem Begin memoir, “Mama, It will be Alright,” which lessons of the Holocaust will not be forgot- of the historic first Project, “The Valley of Heritage Center in Jerusalem. was published after his death that year by ten and can lead to a more tolerant world. the Communities” built at Yad Vashem. Jean is deeply committed to the memo- Yad Vashem. Rochelle is a professor of Audiology at The Glucks have been participants and ry of and the lessons of the Holocaust, Following in the footsteps of her father, Brooklyn College. She has been married supporters of the American Society and and the American Society recognizes her Rochelle and her husband Robert to Robert for 40 years and is the proud from our inception, Jean continues to be Lifetime contribution to the Cause of became Trustees of the 21st Century mother of Sara and Joshua, and grand- deeply involved in the Society’s activities. Remembrance. Endowment Fund of the American Society mother to Jacob and Gita. Her husband, Eugen, is Vice Chairman of Jean and Eugen are proud of their chil- the American Society for Yad Vashem. dren – Sidney and Cheryl Gluck; Rose Jean’s work for the Bikur Cholim organ- and Dr. Mark Friedman; and Barbara and LUNCHEON CO-CHAIR RITA LEVY ization in Queens helped make the organ- Alan Weichselbaum and their grandchil- eeply committed to and the American ization what it is today. With her husband dren and great-grandchildren. DIsrael, Holocaust Gathering of Holocaust remembrance, and Survivors. Rita and her Jewish cultural preserva- mother were founding LUNCHEON CO-CHAIR MINDY SCHALL tion, Rita Levy and her members of the member of the 700 participants per year. family have been active in International Women’s A third generation, She is involved with San Francisco, New York, Division of YIVO. Rita was Mindy Schall is the numerous charity organi- Washington DC and Yad a founding member of the daughter of Sharon and zations, including: Vashem Jerusalem. They San Francisco David Halpern and her Chabad’s Children of were founding members Jewish Community grandparents, Sam and Chernobyl, Israel Bonds, of the United States Federation Working Gladys Halpern, are Israel Defense Forces, Holocaust Museum in Women’s Forum and Washington, DC, and the served on the Strategic Founders of and active The Jewish National Fund, Museum of Jewish Planning Committee of the leaders in the American and United Jewish Appeal. Heritage in New York City. Brandeis-Hillel Day School. Society for Yad Vashem Mindy inherited a strong Committed to continuing Holocaust Rita’s husband, David, is currently Vice since its inception. sense of Jewish values Remembrance through the legacy of her President of the Board of the Sid Jacobson Mindy lives in from her parents and parents, Rita was honored by the Jewish Community Center. The Levy’s are Livingston, NJ with her grandparents, and is American Society for Yad Vashem at the active supporters of Hadassah, UJA, their husband, Alan, and her deeply committed to many Annual Luncheon in 2007 when she was synagogue, Temple Beth Sholom of two daughters, Emily and Sophia. She philanthropic causes. presented with the award for Roslyn, and of course, Yad Vashem. has been a member of the board of the Mindy has dedicated her life to raising her Remembering the Past, Ensuring the Rita has an MBA from Columbia American Society for Yad Vashem’s family and helping others. She has a strong Future. She has also served as the Co- University. She and her husband work Young Leadership Associates for the past personal connection to the Holocaust and Chair for the 2007 Annual Dinner Journal together in the family’s real estate busi- few years. Serving as co-chair for the through her grandparents’ eyes, she has which received many accolades. ness. Rita and David are the proud par- Young Leadership Associates Winter Gala witnessed the horrors they endured and Her father was a Member of the Board ents of two children, Rebecca and for the past two years, Mindy has helped wishes to do all that she can to assure such of the American Society of Yad Vashem Matthew. to make this a successful event, with over a tragedy never occurs again.

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