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Profile Interview by Bracha Mantaka and Shira Schmidt

Jewish businessmen forced to parade down a street in Leipzig carrying signs that read “Don’t buy from Jews. Shop at German stores! Photo from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), which appears in Witness to History (p. 34).

Up-Close A member of the German SS su- pervises Jews boarding trains during a deportation action in the Krakow Ghetto, 1941–1942. Photo from USHMM, which appears with Ruth in Witness to History (p. 146). Lichtenstein

In the years following , survivors were, for the most part, silent about the devasta- tion of European Jewry. Slowly, over time, a trickle of Holocaust memoirs and historical accounts appeared. Most of these works, however, emphasized physical heroism, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But there was no comprehensive country-by-country treatment of the Holocaust that fo- cused on the spiritual heroism exhibited by thousands of victims and survivors. Ruth Lichtenstein, a daughter of survivors and the publisher of the English-language edition of the Hamodia daily newspaper and the weekly Binah Magazine, has stepped in to fill this lacuna. Lichtenstein is a granddaughter of the Gerrer , Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, known as the Imrei Emes, and of Rabbi Itche Meir Levin, the leader of Agudath in prewar Europe and later in Eretz Yisrael, and the daughter of Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Levin, z”l, founding editor of the Hebrew-language Hamodia. Born in and currently living in New York, Lichtenstein published Witness to History, an extraor- dinarily impressive work that is part of her larger undertaking called Project Witness, a comprehensive non- profit Holocaust resource center that offers academically grounded and religiously sensitive Holocaust educational resources for communities worldwide. Through Project Witness, Lichtenstein hopes to radically change the way the Holocaust is taught in day schools and yeshivot across the country. Witness to History is currently going to print for the third time.

A view of the death march from Dachau passing through German villages, secretly photographed by a German civilian. Few civilians gave aid to the prisoners on the death marches. Germany, April 29, 1945. Photo from USHMM. which appears in Witness to History (p. 520).

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JA: What motivated you to undertake the publication of JA: How many years of work did this project take? Witness to History? RL: I thought about the project for decades, and the actual RL: I was very attached to my father, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh work took close to ten years. Leib Levin, a brilliant scholar, published author, and Holo- As editor-in-chief, I worked to bring together a team of caust survivor who passed away at a young age. While he ac- scholars, including Dr. Michael Berenbaum, a leading expert complished so much in his short life, he had so many more on the Holocaust, and Sir Martin Gilbert, a world-renowned plans. In addition to being a newspaper editor, he was a his- historian, to serve as the project’s advisors. We were under torian. In his writings on the Holocaust, he focused on the the constant guidance of renowned rabbis as well. Rochel victims’ religious responses to the suffering as well as on the Licht, a researcher and teacher who worked with historian destruction of the vibrant prewar Jewish world that existed Yaffa Eliach, worked intensively on the book. Matty Lichten- in Europe. These are the unique perspectives that historians stein, a gifted scholar, supervised a team of writers, editors, don’t generally focus on, but my goal is to bring these per- and a design team. This was a huge undertaking, but we were spectives to the forefront. It is my father’s work, his determi- a very productive team because we all believed in the impor- nation, and his legacy that has inspired me to educate future tance of this project. generations about the Holocaust. JA: Sixty-six years have passed since the end of World JA: Can you tell us why Witness to History War II. Why is it so important to teach about the Holo- is groundbreaking? caust now? Why is so much of your life devoted to it?

RL: With its 632 pages, 1,500 RL: On the one hand, there are fewer and pictures, and 57 maps, Witness fewer survivors among us. On the other to History is more than a history hand, Holocaust denial has become an in- of the Holocaust. It is an epic dustry. So how do we remember? Every one undertaking that aims to present of us has an obligation, a chiyuv: “Zachor es a country-by-country history of asher asah lecha Amalek.” The Slonimer the Holocaust and to include the Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Noach Berezovsky, z”l, underreported wartime experi- emphasized the word lecha. “Remember ences of religious and Sephardic what Amalek did lecha—to you.” That is, in Jews—something no textbook your generation. He said that Amalek repre- has ever done. It also focuses on sents the epitome of evil that is the Jewish spiritual resistance to manifested in every genera- the Nazis, which remains a tion. The Nazis were the model for all communities, Amalek of that generation, teaching us how to live with and, as such, it is our obli- compassion, faith, and dignity. gation to remember the I asked one of my non-Jew- evil that they perpetrated. ish staff members to choose a few stories illustrating spiritual JA: You have said that as heroism that impressed him. He a child of survivors, you came back with four, although read voraciously about the he said he could have picked Holocaust for decades; you made a 400. One story was about David Pishon, a Greek Jew from point to speak with survivors, and to write about the Saloniki. Despite the intense suffering he endured, every Fri- Holocaust in the newspapers. Did you ever feel you had day night David was found singing many traditional Saloniki reached a point of saturation? piyyutim that he remembered from home. Another example he cited was the underground Chassidic yeshivah in the War- RL: About eighteen years ago, I told myself, It’s enough. At saw Ghetto. The teenage boys and young men in the ghetto that time I thought I had read enough books about the Holo- had no food. Yet they studied Torah until the bitter end. caust, seen enough pictures. Then something happened that Those are only two of the hundreds of examples. taught me that I cannot stop my work. I came across an album titled And I Still See Their Faces, Bracha Mantaka is a freelance writer living in Bnei Brak. Her sister, published by the Shalom Foundation in Warsaw. It contained Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, recently co-translated Rabbi Israel Meir photographs of Jewish men, women, and children in Poland Lau’s autobiography. The book, Out of the Depths: The Story of a that had been collected by Polish non-Jews who happened to Child of Buchenwald Who Returned Home At Last, will be pub- find them. Leafing through the album, I came across a photo lished by OU Press.

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of someone who looked like a rav. I know this man, but from photo of the inauguration of the Yeshivah Chochmei Lublin. where do I know him? I thought. He looks very familiar. But I Rabbi is seen standing with a small sefer Torah. cannot remember his name. The caption read: “This picture But the caption, written by a non-Jew sheds new light on was found wrapped in rags near the liquidated Warsaw the event. It indicates that also pictured is a demonstration Ghetto. The Jews’ clothes were used as cleaning rags in a by the anti-religious against the new yeshivah. Additionally, German weapons factory.” I sent the picture to the Hebrew- the caption states that a Polish princess sent thousands of language Hamodia (the English-language Hamodia did not plants in order to beautify the yeshivah. This is one example exist yet), asking readers to help me identify the rav. of how we can mine photographs to learn history. It took exactly twenty-four hours to get a reply. In fact, I A caption under another photo in the album states: “We got a very angry phone call from my cousin. “Aren’t you em- live near the train station where the trains to the death barrassed?” he asked. “How could you not recognize your camps passed. My parents helped the Jews escape by hiding own great-grandfather?” It turned out that the rabbi in the them in our home. One of the Jews left a photo behind. It photo was Harav Chanoch Tzvi HaKohen Levin, who was has been hanging in my room for fifty years. It fell off the the rav of Bendin (Bedzin), a city in southwest Poland. He wall and the glass frame broke. I am an old Polish woman; I was the son-in-law of the Sefas Emes, the brother-in-law of realize that when I cross the barrier of life, this picture will the Imrei Emes, and the father of Rabbi Yitzchok (Itche) wind up in the trash.” Meir Levin, zichronam livrachah. I learned my lesson: if I Needless to say, if that is what an old Polish woman feels could not recognize my own great-grandparents, I still had about the loss of Jewish photographs, how should we feel? much to learn. JA: In the introduction to Witness to History, JA: Is it more important to study about prewar Jewish you quote this passage from your father’s book Megillat life or about the Holocaust? Polin (1960): They are gone, millions of our brothers, without leav- RL: We must teach the younger generation about life, not ing even their memories behind. They disappeared with- only about death. We must describe the creativity, the learn- out even stone markers to designate their graves. They ing, the endless varieties of schools and synagogues, the are gone, and their bones did not merit a Jewish burial, youth groups, clubs, music, scholarship, family life, and piety disappearing instead into the furnaces of Auschwitz and that existed in prewar Europe. We also have to teach about Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, their bodies burnt and the challenges; not everything was rosy, not everyone was their ashes scattered to the wind. They were not permit- religious. ted fresh air during their lives, and in their deaths, were How do we convey the vitality of Jewish life that existed? forbidden even a tiny plot of land in which to be buried. Even from one picture you can learn about the bubbling di- Even the most wretched human being deserves to be versity. For example, a photo from the album I mentioned buried. Millions of tortured martyrs, those pure and good earlier is probably familiar to many of your readers. It is a individuals, were not buried, and their mass graves have

SS leader Heinrich Himmler tours the Janowska concentra- tion camp, circa Au- gust 1942. Photo from USHMM, which appears in Wit- ness to History (p. 141).

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been turned into grazing pastures destruction quaked from the hands younger generation already view the and areas of new construction. We of men transformed into carnivorous Holocaust like that. cannot correct these wrongs, but we beasts (Ber Mark, Megilat Auschwitz I frequently repeat the story about a can and must recount the stories of [, 1978]). man who came to my office to share these Jews to those who will come Why is this so meaningful? with me the experience of his ninety- after us, so that their memories do four-year-old father who survived not disappear into the abyss of RL: There was a burning desire among Auschwitz. His father used to go to the forgotten. many victims to leave testimonies de- daven daily in shul; going to shul gave Why do you feel so strongly about scribing what happened to them. This him the strength to get through the this quote? is most tragically expressed by the day. One day he realized a young man writings left by the Sonderkommando, was staring at him. The young man RL: So many years have passed, and so the Jewish slave laborers sentenced to turned to him and said, “Reb Yid, you little has changed. In 1960, my father moving bodies out of the gas chambers most probably didn’t realize your arm finished one volume of his monumen- into the crematoria. Some were Greek is dirty. There is a number on your arm. tal work on 1,000 years of Polish Jewry. Jews who suffered a tragic fate. They You cannot put tefillin on because this The volume, dedicated to the Holo- were thrown into this hell, where, be- is a barrier, a chatzitzah.” The old man caust, was published during the very cause they did not speak Yiddish, they fainted, and when they brought him early years of Holocaust study. His were not even able to converse with back to consciousness, he couldn’t stop work preceded the Eichmann trial, their Jewish brethren. The Son- crying, and kept asking rhetorically in which in 1961 marked the beginning of derkommando were assigned the most Yiddish, “I lived to be so old, just to a change—it forced the Shoah into the grisly jobs. Few went through such a hear this?” public arena. The Holocaust was no horrible experience as they. Some of So I say let’s not build a chatzitzah longer a taboo subject. Some of the wit- these men wrote of murders, of the between us and the six million ke- nesses described incredible feats of number of Jews killed, of their pain doshim. One day we will have to give an spiritual heroism, as in the testimony and terror. They wrote on scraps of accounting, a din v’cheshbon, explain- of Yosef Kleiman, for example, about paper, pushed into bottles they sealed ing what we did in order to fulfill the his friend who suffered a beating in with wax and buried in the ground. mitzvah of zachor. At that time, we bet- order to sneak a prayer book into an They left these bottles because they ter have a good answer. g Auschwitz barrack. People started to wanted the world to know of pay attention to survivors’ accounts, Auschwitz; they wanted their testi- whereas before people would vilify mony to survive even if their people survivors for being passive [and allow- perished. They were afraid, truly ing the Holocaust to happen]. afraid, that no Jew would live to tell the world what they had experienced. JA: Another powerful quote in your They also felt they had to apologize for book is by Zalman Gradowski, scrib- being assigned the most abhorrent bled on one of the many notes he and tasks. They knew the Germans would his friends buried in the Auschwitz kill them because they did not want grounds before his death. [Grad- the world to know what they were owski, a member of the Sonderkom- doing. They were trying desperately to mando, was killed in the leave a description of the gehenom Sonderkommando Revolt in they went through. We have an ab- Auschwitz in October 1944.] solute obligation to share this with He wrote: younger generations. We must be the With the rising of tomorrow’s sun voice of these victims. who knows if we will be able to testify to this cruel, dark night? Your heart JA: What has kept you going all will tell you that the cannon’s decree these years? sealed the shattered landscape that surrounds you. Surely, you will rea- RL: I view educating the public about son, this destruction was the collat- the Holocaust as a life mission; I feel eral damage of the war. You will very strongly that if we, children of think that the decisive elimination of survivors, are not going to do some- the European Jewish nation came thing for the next generation regard- about by way of a natural disaster, as ing the Holocaust, our children are if divine hints had sufficed to open going to regard the Holocaust as we the earth beneath all the gathered regard events in the history books. Un- Jews. You will refuse to believe this fortunately, some members of the

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