AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 42-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2016-Shevat/Adar 5776 CEREMONY HONORING RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS IS A HISTORIC EVENT n extraordinary Yad Vashem honor and remember the unknown our children. carry a timeless lesson for us all.” A remembrance event took place and silent heroes of the Shoah. any elements of this ceremo- Pastor Chris Edmonds, who on Holocaust Remembrance Day at These were the rarest of men and “Mny make this so distinctive — accepted the Righteous Among the the Embassy of Israel in women who did not go along, or it is the first time in history that an Nations award on behalf of his late Washington, DC. Israeli Ambassador stand silently by, as their neighbors, American president has joined with father Roddie Edmonds said that “on Ron Dermer, joined by Yad Vashem friends, and countrymen were round- Yad Vashem to honor United States this noble occasion, my mother, Council Chairman Rabbi Israel Meir ed up and targeted for death. At risk citizens as Righteous Among the Mary Ann and our family are blessed Lau and American Society for Yad Vashem Chairman Leonard Wilf, hosted the posthumous bestowal of Righteous Among the Nations recog- nition upon four persons who risked their lives during the Shoah to res- cue endangered Jews. This was the first time that such a ceremony was held recognizing Americans as Righteous Among the Nations on U.S. soil. The ceremony was attend- ed by President Barack Obama. Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, chairman of the Yad Vashem Council and himself a Holocaust survivor who was res- cued by Righteous Among the Nations, in his speech recalled the terrifying six years he spent as a young child during the Holocaust, totally disconnected from the outside world. “But in this dark tunnel, there were some stars — the Righteous Among the Nations,” to whom many Jews owed their lives. “As far as we are unable to forget the horror, we (Left to right) Leonard Wilf, chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, chairman of Yad Vashem’s Council, wel- are also commanded to remember come President Barack Obama to the Righteous Among the Nations ceremony. the people who risked their lives to to their own and their families’ lives, Nations; it is the first time that to receive the remarkable honor save us.” Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, American citizens are being recog- Righteous Among the Nations on Chairman of the American Society Lois Gunden, and Walery and Maryla nized on American soil; it is the first behalf of my father Roddie for Yad Vashem Leonard Wilf, in his Zbijewski were guided by a strong time a U.S. soldier has been so rec- Edmonds. remarks said, “In the very first years sense of morality to save Jewish ognized; and tonight we distinguish “Thank you, Yad Vashem and the after the Holocaust, when the Jewish children and adults, who survived the fourth and fifth Americans out of nation of Israel for bestowing such a people were still grappling with the and whose descendants and families more than 26,000 Righteous Among high honor on Dad. aftermath of the horrors they are here tonight. In doing so, they the Nations honorees. As the first U.S. serviceman to endured, there was an understand- are identified by Yad Vashem and “As the son of two Holocaust sur- receive the award, and the first recog- ing that along with memorializing and the State of Israel as Righteous vivors who grew up in this country, nized for protecting American Jews, documenting the mass murders and Among the Nations, true exemplars this event, with its bond to American our family is forever grateful. destruction, the Jewish people would of courage and heroism for us and citizens who demonstrated enormous We are proud of him and humbled acts of bravery, gives me a strong that he joins a small minority of ordi- sense of pride. My family and I have nary people who mustered extraordi- dedicated ourselves to furthering nary courage to uphold the goodness IN THIS ISSUE Holocaust research and education and dignity of humanity. Righteous Among the Nations ceremony is a historic event...... 1, 8-9 both in Israel and in the United States. My Dad, like Ms. Gunden and the World marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day...... 2-3 As chairman of the American Society Zbijewski’s are heroes! The Polish underground and the Jews...... 4 for Yad Vashem, I am humbled by the “In a defining moment, when evil The grandson of infamous Nazi is making amends...... 5 great task to which we commit our- demanded their conscience and their He escaped death at the hands of the Nazis ... and British bombers...... 6 selves, to ensure that the world never very souls…they refused to follow the ASYV Professional Development Conference...... 7 forgets. crowd...but instead bowed to no Yad Vashem honors first Egyptian as “Righteous Gentile”...... 10 “Tonight, not only do we give honor one…and did what was right... Uncovering Holocaust perpetrators where few have looked...... 11 to these incredible men and women; My father’s legacy, like all of the The myth of the good Nazi...... 12 we also proclaim that despite the “Righteous”, is the children, grandchil- Holocaust art collector seeks to repatriate works to Poland...... 16 years that have passed, these stories (Continued on pages 8-9) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 WORLD MARKS INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY Poland — Under the imposing In an eloquent address, 86-year-old streets of Paris and Budapest and and the United Nations Outreach entrance gate of the Nazi extermina- Polish writer Halina Birenbaum, who London; once again, Jewish busi- Program has worked to educate tion camp Auschwitz, almost 300 sur- was led to the podium by her grand- nesses are targeted, and once again young people about the Holocaust, vivors and hundreds of dignitaries son, described Auschwitz as a “bot- Jewish families are fleeing Europe,” noting that many partners — including remembered its liberation 70 years tomless pit of hell that I couldn’t get he said. Holocaust survivors — continue to ago and paid homage to the 1.5 mil- out of,” recalling her impressions as lion Jews and other prisoners slaugh- an 11-year-old of the “grey bone faces tered there. with legs like sticks wearing muddy A huge tent spanned illuminated clogs, nothing reminding you of any- train tracks on which cattle trains had thing remotely human.” once brought prisoners from all over She said that even if she could Europe to the entrance, known as the have, trying to forget her experience death gate, at the very spot where had never been an option, because one former prisoner told an audience “it’s only in my memory that can I be of 3,000 he had witnessed enough next to my loved ones.” atrocities to “keep me awake until the She was given a standing ovation end of time.” by President Hollande and other urvivors from around 19 coun- guests, many of whom wiped away Stries and dignitaries — including tears. the French president, François inety-three-year-old Kazimierz Hollande, and the German president, NAlbin captivated the audience Survivors along with officials sit in a tent raised at the entrance of the Birkenau Nazi death camp. Joachim Gauck — crossed snowy with an account of his escape on the The screeching sound of the shofar, contribute to this work. train tracks to lay candles at the evening of February 27, 1943, one of a pitchless ceremonial horn, then “The memory of the Holocaust is a selection ramp where prisoners had the 10% of breakouts that were suc- filled the air, followed by a recitation of powerful reminder of what can hap- been chosen, often on the whim of SS cessful. He remembered the “excruci- the Kaddish. Survivors spontaneously pen when we stop seeing our com- guards, either for the gas chambers ating yell of the siren” as he ran embraced each other as David mon humanity,” he warned. “Let us all or for slave labor. through the icy river Sola, and named Wisnia, an 89-year-old survivor from speak out against anti-Semitism and An audience watched the moving Harald Fritz, the SS guard who had Philadelphia who as a teenager had attacks against religious, ethnic or scenes on television screens as greeted him and 727 fellow political been forced to sing for SS guards, other groups. Let us create a world grandchildren and children escorted prisoners as they arrived at Auschwitz chanted the funeral prayer “El Male where dignity is respected, diversity is their relatives across the concrete with the chilling message: “For the Rachamim,” his powerful voice celebrated, and peace is permanent,” platform, which glistened with ice and Jews, two weeks; for priests, a month; resounding around the tent’s walls. he concluded. falling snow and was flanked by a row for the young and healthy, three *** n a separate message, the UN of flags in the blue and white striped months … the only way out of here is USA — Marking the International IHigh Commissioner for Human material of the camp’s prison uni- the chimney.” Day of Commemoration in Memory of Rights said the Holocaust will “forever forms. Roman Kent, 86, fought back tears, the Victims of the Holocaust, United remain a terrible scar on the human The Polish president, Bronislaw his voice cracking, as he told political Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki- conscience.” Komorowski, called Auschwitz a leaders to strive to ensure no repeti- moon urged everyone to denounce “Its hideous reality of planned and political and religious ideologies that deliberate mass murder must lead us set people against people. to deep reflection on the roots and “The Holocaust was a colossal spread of such violence,” stressed crime,” said Mr. Ban in a message. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. “Today, as we “No one can deny the evidence that it commemorate the victims of the happened. By remembering the vic- Holocaust, I hope that all of us can tims and honoring the courage of the reflect on the need to continue to survivors and those who assisted and combat racism and religious or ethnic liberated them, we annually renew intolerance in every form, and with all our resolve to prevent such atrocities our might.” and reject the hateful mentality that A Holocaust memorial ceremony allows them.” took place at UN headquarters in New During the Second World War, six York, hosted by the Under-Secretary- million Jews were systematically General for Communications and Public rounded up and exterminated. The Information, Cristina Gallach. Following Delegations and survivors make their way to lay candles during the commemoration of the 70th Nazis also murdered Sinti and Roma, remarks by UN officials and represen- anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. political prisoners, homosexuals, per- tatives from the diplomatic communi- “wound that is open and hurting,” and tion of the Holocaust, because “we do sons with disabilities, Jehovah’s ty, a video tribute was made to Sir said it had signaled the collapse of not want our past to be our children’s Witnesses and Soviet prisoners of Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 civilization, “when German Nazis future.” He then repeated the sen- war. children from the Holocaust on the launched a real death industry and a tence because it was “the key to my “From the shadow of the Holocaust Czech Kindertransport. The event human being was reduced to a tat- existence.” and the cruelties of the Second World also included a performance by the tooed camp number.” The billionaire philanthropist Ronald War, the United Nations was estab- United States Military Academy at He expressed “gratitude and Lauder, who has donated millions lished to reaffirm faith in the dignity West Point Jewish Chapel Choir. respect” towards the Ukrainian sol- towards the preservation of the and worth of every person and to *** diers of the 101 Lviv infantry division remains of Auschwitz, including the uphold the rights of all to live in equal- Israel — In remarks marking who were the first to enter the camp mountains of shoes and suitcases of ity and free from discrimination,” the International Holocaust Remembrance on January 27, 1945. But his pointed prisoners, as well as the eight tonnes UN chief recalled. Day, Prime Minister Benjamin reference to Ukraine and his failure to of human hair which is on display at “These principles remain essential Netanyahu underlined the persistence specifically mention Russia’s Red the memorial museum, said that the today,” he continued. “People world- of anti-Semitism, but also noted how Army, coupled with his reference to anniversary had taken on a different wide — including millions fleeing war, different the condition of the Jews is the “two totalitarian regimes” (Nazi significance following the recent persecution and deprivation — con- today as a result of the existence of and Soviet) that held Poland in their attacks in France in which four Jews tinue to suffer discrimination and Israel compared to the period during grip for decades, will further infuriate were killed, and the rise of anti- attacks. We have a duty to remember World War II. He also called on the Russia’s leaders, who had already Semitism, which had made Europe the past — and to help those who civilized world to stand with Israel, made clear their anger at not being “look more like 1933 than 2015.” need us now.” saying that Iran and Islamic move- given an official invitation to the “Once again young Jewish boys are Mr. Ban further indicated that for ments such as Hamas and the Islamic memorial ceremony. afraid to wear yarmulkes on the more than a decade, the Holocaust State have declared their intention to January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 WORLD MARKS INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY commit another Holocaust against recently admitted that anti-Semitism against those who spread hatred. was one of several who spoke, includ- Israel. in Germany is “more widespread than Europe is your home today, every day ing Susan Pollack, who survived the The Holocaust would “probably not we imagine,” opened an exhibition of and forever,’’ concluding his address horrors of Auschwitz at 13: “The expe- have happened” had a Jewish state Holocaust art in Berlin featuring 100 with the pledge “Never Again!’’ rience shut me down, shut me off been established at the time, “since he ceremony was from the world: I survived as a robot,” we would have been able to act T organized by the she recalled. against those who sought to eradicate president of the European By 1945, Shipper had already spent our people,” Netanyahu said in a Parliament in partnership years living with his grandparents in Hebrew statement on his Facebook with the European Jewish one room in the Łódź ghetto in page. Congress (EJC). EJC Poland, working 12-hour shifts in a Later, in an English-language video President Moshe Kantor metal factory, almost starving, eating clip also posted on his Facebook insisted that a new type of horses or any food he could get hold page, the prime minister said: anti-Semitism “has taken of. He had jumped off a lorry suppos- “Preserving the memory of the the form of anti- edly taking him to another factory in Holocaust is more important today Israelianism that boycotts Germany and hidden, when he was than ever, for in this period of resur- Israeli products. It is dan- surprised to find it packed with gent and sometimes violent anti- gerous for Jews, for Israel women, children and babies. Semitism, it is commemorations like and for Europe,’’ Kantor He had watched his grandmother this that remind us all where the old- Ruth Klüger. said, in a reference to a taken away, never to be seen again, est and most enduring hatred can works by 50 Jewish Holocaust recent decision by the EU to label in Auschwitz. He had survived sever- lead,” he said. inmates and survivors, on loan from Israeli products from Israeli settle- al labor camps, and a death march “Unfortunately, in Europe and else- Israel’s Holocaust museum, Yad ments. “This is similar to putting a yel- when he was suffering from typhus where, Jews are once again being Vashem. low star,’’ he said. He expressed and felt he could not walk 15 cen- targeted just for being Jews. Around *** appreciation for recent comments by timiters, let alone 15 kilometers. the world, Jewish communities are Belgium — “’It pains me that Jews Martin Schulz in which he marked his There was not a hint of self-pity in his increasingly living in fear. We see again live in fear in Europe today, are opposition to the labeling of West account: “I have had the most privi- anti-Semitism directed against indi- not safe to go to a synagogue or a Bank products. leged and wonderful life,” he said. vidual Jews, and we also see this Jewish school, and that some consid- In statements made in honor of hatred directed against the collective er leaving Europe for good because Holocaust Remembrance Day, EU Jew, against the Jewish state. Israel they feel not safe,’’ said European foreign policy chief Federica is targeted with the same slurs and Parliament President Martin Schulz Mogherini called for the Holocaust to the same libels that were leveled as he addressed a ceremony marking “forever be seared into our collective against the Jewish people since time International Holocaust Remembrance memory.” immemorial,” the prime minister Day in the European parliament. “It is not only a responsibility added. Several Holocaust survivors were towards the Jewish people, it is a *** present. responsibility towards mankind, Germany — The guest of honor at Echoing numerous other European towards future generations, towards the German Bundestag’s hour of leaders, including President of the Europe itself. If we forget the dark his- remembrance was Ruth Klüger, an European Commission Jean-Claude tory of our continent, we run the risk Austrian Auschwitz survivor who flew Juncker, Schulz declared that “Jewish of underestimating how crucial it is to from the United States to accept the life is part of our culture and part of preserve peace, unity and diversity invitation to speak in front of the our identity’’ and that ‘’without the inside our continent,” she stated. Bundestag. Jews, Europe would not be Europe. However, Mogherini admitted that She spoke of “the coldest winter of Therefore it hurts that in today’s more than 70 years after the The chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, at the her life” in 1944 and 1945, when Europe, Jews again live in fear. Holocaust, there is still anti-Semitism Holocaust Remembrance Day event in the Auschwitz was liberated. She had “It is unacceptable that Jews are in Europe. Guildhall, London. spent months leading up to the libera- reluctant to wear their traditional *** tion working as a forced laborer. clothes and display religious symbols Great Britain — At the main event The day — celebrated on January She lied about her age when she in the public because of fear of marking Holocaust Memorial Day in 27, the date Soviet troops liberated the arrived at Auschwitz — she was 12 reprisals and aggression. the UK, there were many moving Auschwitz concentration camp, but was tipped off by another prisoner “Jews are again killed because they words spoken, but it was the cheerful months before the war officially came to say she was 15 — which landed are Jews,’’ Schulz, who is from insistence of Zigi Shipper that “I was to an end — was marked by commem- her a spot on the work crew. Other Germany, said, recalling the terrorist always lucky all my life” which left orations worldwide, and by more than prisoners who arrived with Klüger attacks in Toulouse, Brussels and many in the Guildhall discreetly dab- 3,600 events across the UK. weren’t so lucky, and were sent to the Paris. bing at their eyes. The announcement from the prime gas chambers at Auschwitz. This While warning that “the demons of By the time Shipper was liberated in minister, who later met Holocaust sur- would have likely been Klüger’s fate the past” were making a return to the May 1945, by a circle of British tanks vivors at a reception in Downing had she not been sent to work. shores of Europe in the form of rising surrounding the barge onto which he Street, that a site in the riverside gar- rior to Klüger’s speech, anti-Semitism and racism and that was about to be loaded — it was to be dens beside the Palace of PBundestag President Norbert there is a need not to repeat the mis- towed out to sea and then blown up Westminster has been chosen for a Lammert opened the hour of remem- takes of the past, Schulz also hailed with all Jews packed into it — he was new Holocaust memorial was wel- brance by announcing the opening of the “miracle” of the fact that more just 15. comed by many at the Guildhall. a new exhibit outlining the history of than 100,000 Jews live in Germany Shipper’s children, grandchildren He also announced that the govern- the more than 13 million men, once more. and two-year-old great-grandson ment would continue to fund the work women, and children from all over He said it was the responsibility of were among the 650 politicians, reli- of the Holocaust Educational Trust. Europe who were forced to work for Europe’s leadership “to fight” the gious leaders, representatives of A statement from the trust said the the Nazi regime. “demons of anti-Semitism, of ultra- Jewish organizations and community commitment sent a clear message German politicians spoke in front of nationalism, of intolerance. groups, and survivors of the about the determination of Britain to a full house in the German Bundestag “Some insult, threaten and attack Holocaust — and of other genocides, ensure the legacy was preserved for to mark Germany’s annual recogni- people because they are Jewish or including Cambodia, Bosnia, and generations to come. “With education tion of its role in the Holocaust of express support for Israel. They des- Sudan — in the audience. comes remembrance — this special World War II that saw 6 million Jews ecrate Jewish cemeteries, smear Sir Peter Bazalgette, chair of the place will give people somewhere to and other minorities killed at the hate speech on synagogues, or spit Holocaust Memorial Foundation, remember and reflect. When we no hands of the Nazi regime. on young people wearing a kippa.’’ called the survivors “primary witness- longer have survivors among us, this Two days earlier, German Schulz said, “our message is clear: es to one of the cruelest episodes in memorial will help to ensure that their Chancellor Angela Merkel, who Jewish friends, we stand with you 20th century history,” and Shipper experiences are never forgotten.” Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS THE POLISH UNDERGROUND AND THE JEWS The Polish Underground and the they really an altruistic, caring group war was an unexpected change in head of the Polish Underground.His Jews, 1939-1945. who have suffered from bad publicity? Polish leadership. While Władysław hostility to the Jews was obvious. By Joshua D. Zimmerman. It seems that the best that can be said Sikorski — an individual who continu- inally, since Polish Jews knew Cambridge University Press: New is that it depends. ally spoke of the “government’s com- Fthat the only thing that could York, N.Y., 2015. 454 pp. $118 hard- irst off, the Home Army, the mitment to full minority rights and the possibly save them from certain death cover. FUnderground’s military wing, rule of law” — led the Polish govern- at the hands of the the Nazis was the “represented a cross-section of Polish REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN ment-in-exile alongside the “apoliti- arrival of the Russians, and since society as a whole with members cal” commander of the Polish many Poles saw the Russians as adly, when most Jews who sur- drawn from all social classes and Underground, Stefan Rowecki, Jews Communists come to swallow up their Svived the Holocaust — and from all regions of prewar Poland.” could hope for compassion and even country and make it part of their even those who study it — think of the More specifically, since some form of measured Communist Empire, the hatred a Polish Underground during World the hundreds of thou- assistance. Indeed, the good many of them had for Jews only War II, they have nothing much good sands in the organization Polish government-in- grew... and palpably so. In fact, for to say. To put it bluntly, the Poles are ranged politically from exile came out strongly many Poles, Jews were or became generally remembered as being ruth- “socialists to nationalists,” against “any and all” synonymous with Communism: not lessly anti-Semitic, opportunistic the anti-Semitism, part Poles “particip[ating] in only a “foreign element” in their midst, blackmailers or, worse still, heartless and parcel of what some anti-Jewish actions but “unpatriotic” vis-à-vis their murderers no better than the Nazis. believed in before the war organized by the beloved Poland and, put simply, noth- Thus ironically, at the outset, Joshua remained and influenced Germans” even as the ing but traitors! Hence Zimmerman Zimmerman, the author of the consci- their actions during the Underground kept that presents us with the unbelievable and entiously written and thoroughly doc- war. Hence there were government and, through harrowing picture of some extremist umented book, The Polish some Underground units them, the world informed Polish Underground units eagerly Underground and the Jews, of the Home Army that not about what was happen- making agreements with the Nazis to 1939–1945, notes that, in fact, he only saved Jews but wel- ing to the Jews, including hunt down and kill Jewish partisans was drawn to this topic when he was comed them as fighting surprised at reading about how the members. At the same time, there the “emerging Nazi plan of [their] — enemies of them both! wife of acclaimed Nazi hunter Simon were others — right-wing nationalists industrialized mass murder.” For that Needless to say, this is an absorb- Wiesenthal was saved by the Polish and other extremists — who not only matter, the Underground would form ing, thought-provoking, and fascinat- underground! In sum, he immediate- robbed Jews they found, but killed its own Jewish aid organization, “code ing book that should be in the library ly realized there was much more to them. Then, too, there were the indi- named ‘Żegota.’” But all that quickly of any serious student of the the story here. vidual actions of the members of changed in 1943 when Rowecki was Holocaust. So, what is the story? Has the Underground units that made a differ- arrested, Sikorski was killed in a Polish Underground been maligned? ence . . . plane crash and, most particularly Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Is it just lies that have been spread by Another factor impacting the troubling, a right-wing nationalist, Media, Communication, and Visual those with a hidden agenda? Were Polish/Jewish relationship during the Tadeusz Komorowski, became the Arts at Pace University. DACHAU IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE HOLOCAUST Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners a Communist named Wilhelm Gesell, observed at that early stage of things this must be considered in the context in the Prewar Concentration Camps. joined the other three in repeatedly — an SS officer named Hans of its own time and not in light of sub- By Kim Wünschmann. Harvard loading debris onto a wheelbarrow Steinbrenner, known for his brutality, sequent events. “We must not forget,” University Press: Cambridge, Mass., and pushing it to the camp’s gravel interrupted the proceedings to she says, “that what might seem ‘nor- 2015. 376 pp. $45.00 hardcover. pit. SS guards, who had assumed demand that Benario, Goldmann, and mal’ or ‘common sense’ at later control of the camp from the Bavarian Arthur and Erwin Kahn report for stages of camp history evolved out of REVIEWED BY JAMES ROSEN State Police the day before, beat the more work in the gravel pit. A contin- deeply unsettling and ‘abnormal’ first- n the predawn hours of April 12, men as they worked. gent of SS men marched the four out- time situations — origins and prece- I1933, not three months into Adolf At noon, the men’s ordeal ended — side the camp’s walls, to the woods dents whose consequences and Hitler’s tenure as chancellor of or so they thought. Within a few nearby, and shot them. All died impacts were entirely unclear.” She Germany, a group of drunken SS offi- hours, Gesell was replaced in the instantly, except for Erwin Kahn, who writes: cers barged into the “Jewish block” of “punitive labor” detail by was taken to a nearby n the early concentration camps, the Dachau concentration camp, an Erwin Kahn, a Jewish hospital and died from “Ithe first killing of prisoners was abandoned munitions factory site businessman who had his injuries four days an event of enormous significance. It located in a wooded area two miles no Communist or labor- later. Though postwar constituted a radical break in the from the Bavarian town of that name, movement affiliation investigation of the camp experiences of both inmates and awakened the prisoners by firing (and no relation to incident was compro- and guards, a point of no return after pistols into the air. The SS officers Arthur). Unlike the other mised by incomplete which nothing was as it had been had restlessly anticipated the event, three men, who had all evidence and self- before. . . . To the prisoners, the first with one of them, Robert arrived on site the day serving testimony, it murder signaled that, inside the Erspenmüller, the camp’s deputy before, he had spent was established that camp, they bore the real risk of losing commander, having earlier boasted to three weeks interned at Erspenmüller and two their lives. From this point on, they a policeman he knew that “in the next Dachau, writing to his other SS guards, Hans knew that the guards would not stop [few] days he would kill some Jews” wife that his treatment Burner and Max their abuses at the ultimate border of as a “trial of strength.” under the custody of the Schmidt, committed death. The SS and SA men, on the Later that morning, at roll call, four Bavarian State Police had given him the murders. The next morning, other hand, for the first time tasted the prisoners were called by name to step “nothing to complain about.” He Dachau’s remaining prisoners, overwhelming and unbound “power to forward for special work duty. Rudolf looked forward to sorting out the rea- alarmed by the sound of the shots kill.” More than before, the camp per- Benario and Ernst Goldmann were son for his detention, which had not and fearful of what they portended, sonnel were now held together by a prominent young Communists in their been provided when a Nazi storm were informed that the four had been shared criminality . . . a camaraderie native Furth. Arthur Kahn held no trooper arrested him on the streets of killed while trying to escape. of crime structured by its very own Communist affiliation, but had been Munich in mid-March. As historian Kim Wünschmann codes of honor and morality.” swept up in the recent wave of Nazi Finally, when the prisoners had notes in Before Auschwitz: Jewish The circumstances surrounding arrests grouped under the misleading been assembled for the purpose of Prisoners in the Prewar these murders — the unprecedented label “protective custody.” The fourth, receiving their mail — an amenity still Concentration Camps, an event like (Continued on page 14) January/February 2016 Shevat/Adar 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 GRANDSON OF INFAMOUS NAZI SPENDS LIFETIME MAKING AMENDS FOR NAMESAKE’S ATROCITIES will turn out. Rainer Höss is tall and only so that people can learn about time in her life she recalled as being BY TAL BASHAN, athletic and has a chiseled face (“I’ve what happened in history, but also so “heavenly, happy times.” THE JERUSALEM POST been told a number of times that I that history doesn’t repeat itself. “She was cold and tyrannical. When look like my grandfather. It’s not Rainer also works with Khubaib Ali she would enter a room, it would all of had to reread the email I received pleasant to hear, but there’s not much Mohammed, a German Muslim attor- a sudden feel like we were in a freez- Ifrom Masaryk University in Brno, I can do about it”). He’s used to meet- ney, to bring to justice other Nazi war er,” Rainer says. the Czech Republic, to make sure I ing with survivors, as well as children criminals who are still alive. “We work iving 150 meters from the understood it correctly: of survivors, and he speaks freely together — Christians, Muslims and LAuschwitz-Birkenau death camp “In commemoration of International with me. Jews — and I’m very proud of that.” certainly had an effect on the Höss Students’ Day, which falls on I, for one, am still keeping my dis- Rainer, 51, lives in Munich, is children: they all stayed supporters of November 17 — the day the Nazis tance. divorced and is the father of three Hitler and hated Jews. Rainer’s closed down all the universities in the To me, he’s first and foremost the children. He is a chef by profession. father, Hans-Jurgen, who worked as Czech Republic in 1939, and the day grandson of the man who command- At the age of 15, when he found out an engineer for Volvo, was, according students in Prague protested against ed Auschwitz-Birkenau, the hell my who his paternal grandfather was, he to Rainer, a cold and cruel man. “The the Communist regime in 1989 — we mother was sent into in September ran away from home. By 18, he was home I grew up in was hell on earth. are holding a major event and we 1943. Every once in a while I remind already married with a baby. Today, My father would beat me and my would like to invite you to be one of myself that Rainer was born in 1964, his eldest granddaughter is 15 years mother all the time. He ruled the two keynote speakers on a panel and that he isn’t responsible for his old. One of his daughters is married home with an iron fist. We were not titled ‘Humanity and Barbarism in the family’s horrific past. to a Bosnian Muslim, “and I’m so allowed to speak without permission. Holocaust and in Europe today.’” I happy for her — I’m in favor of We were forbidden to cry or show any was okay with everything up until the pluralism,” he says. feeling whatsoever. If we ever dis- next point in the email. “The other At the age of 21, Rainer cut off obeyed him, he would beat us to a keynote speaker will be Mr. Rainer all contact with his family — his pulp. My mother tried to commit sui- Höss, the grandson of Nazi war crim- father, brothers and sisters, cide a number of times.” inal Rudolf Höss, who, like you, also aunts and uncles. His mother, Rainer’s first encounter with the has a family connection with who divorced his father in 1983, “Jewish issue” was incredibly trau- Auschwitz.” is the only person he’s still in matic. “I was maybe five or six years Rudolf Höss? As in the comman- contact with. old, when a boy from school invited dant of Auschwitz — the chief com- Rainer’s father, Hans-Jurgen me over to his house for ‘Pesach- manding position within the SS serv- Höss, who was born in 1937, fest.’ I had no idea what this was. So ice of a Nazi concentration camp? His one of Rudolf and Hedwig I approached my father and stood still grandson? No way. I was freaked out Höss’s five children, grew up in until he gave me permission to speak, and closed the email, the instinctual a large villa near Auschwitz. just like I always did. In a hesitant reaction to that name by a child of There are color photographs voice, I asked for permission to go to Holocaust survivors. that were taken during the war Chris’s house for Pesach-fest. My The next thing I did was call my 92- (with the new camera that father leapt from his chair and hit me year-old mother, who survived Rudolf was given as a present so hard that he broke my nose, and Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. “I by Heinrich Himmler), which then he locked me in my room. ‘You don’t see what the problem is,” my show the Höss children frolick- will have no contact with those dirty mother told me in her matter-of-fact ing in the garden and swimming Jews,’ he screamed. The next day, I Czech. “Rainer is his grandson. He in the pool at the villa, with the saw that there was a new sign hang- hadn’t even been born yet when all of Rainer Höss. He has made it his life mission to promote death camp and crematoria in ing on our front door that read: ‘No this took place.” Holocaust education and tolerance. the background. Jews allowed.’” That’s true, I responded. he first question I ask him is, “The villa is still there today — it’s Until the age of 12, Rainer didn’t In the days leading up to my trip, I T why didn’t he change his name? owned by a Polish couple that I’m in know anything about his grandfa- obsessively read everything I could “Before he was hanged, my grandfa- touch with. Many people don’t know ther’s exploits. “My family would talk find on radicalization and racism in ther wrote to my grandmother that much about this house, such as the about how he was such a brave sol- Europe, about Höss the grandfather, she should change her name,” Rainer secret escape tunnel built by my dier, and that he was killed defending who was responsible for killing at explains. grandfather that reaches from the cre- the homeland. Leopold Heger, my least 500,000 Jews, and about Höss “Both my grandmother and my matoria to the house. A prisoner who grandfather’s driver in Auschwitz, the grandson, who is active in father were in complete denial of his worked for my grandfather told me would come to our home and take Holocaust education and preaches crimes, and so they adamantly that he would make the whole family long walks with me, while he told me tolerance. There is nothing like a dia- refused to change their names. ‘Höss practice using the escape tunnel at about my grandfather’s heroism. He logue between the descendants of will remain Höss,’ my grandmother least once a week. The management would call me ‘prince,’ because ‘your the victims and those of the perpetra- would say. I decided that if I kept the of the concentration camp doesn’t like grandfather was like a king.’” tors, so long as the latter want to name, this would enable me to do my to publicize this, because they’re wor- When he was 12, Rainer went on a make amends. part in repenting in my grandfather’s ried that neo-Nazis might turn this school trip to the Dachau concentra- The Old Town Square in Brno is full name. It’s not so simple, of course — complex into a pilgrimage site.” tion camp. “My grandfather com- of candles for the victims of the Paris you need to always be careful about Years after the war ended, Rudolf’s manded this camp before being trans- terrorist attacks. everything you say, because people children — and even his wife — ferred to Auschwitz — I saw his name Someone has hung up Lebanese are judging you. Sometimes people claimed that they did not know what written on a plaque with my own eyes: and Turkish flags — there were vic- curse me on the Internet, and neo- was taking place at the camp. “This is Rudolf Höss. I ran home at the end of tims there, too, a passerby mentions. Nazis are always trying to contact me. ludicrous, of course, because all of the day and asked my father if it was Brno, the capital of Moravia, is a Ultimately, the name Höss is connect- the servants at the house were pris- true, and he told me, ‘That’s a com- three-hour drive from Prague. It used ed with Auschwitz, where millions of oners from the camp,” Rainer plete lie.’ And I believed him, since at to be ethnically German, and tens of people were murdered.” explains. “All the gardening, land- that age you still believe everything thousands of Germans who lived For years, Rainer engaged obses- scaping, construction and renova- your parents tell you.” there before World War II were sively in rehabilitating his family tions were carried out by prisoners. When he turned 15, Rainer came deported en masse in 1945. In short, name. He researched his grandfa- Even my grandfather’s barber was across a book at home titled Men of this is an appropriate place for my first ther’s and others’ crimes, spent hours from the camp. My uncle used to use Auschwitz. meeting with Höss the grandson. We in archives, has had talks with groups his slingshot to shoot rocks over the “When my father saw me take that meet at a local café and drink Czech of teenagers about tolerance and wall at the prisoners. There are pris- book off the shelf, he bolted towards beer. fighting racism, and gives (self- oners who remember all of my aunts me, slapped my cheek and told me The organizers of the event are financed) guided tours of Auschwitz. and uncles.” Rudolf’s wife, Hedwig, never to touch that book again. Of walking around us on eggshells, a lit- He’s active in an organization called would later recall to friends how much course, the next day, after my father tle nervous about how the program Footsteps, which was founded not she had loved living in Auschwitz, a (Continued on page 13) Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER HE ESCAPED DEATH AT THE HANDS OF THE NAZIS ... AND BRITISH BOMBERS Bawnik was on the largest of the As a 14-year-old with a big appetite, know she was still alive.” BY GENE WARNER, three, the Cap Arcona, a former he ate his whole loaf in one day, nib- He never saw her again. THE BUFFALO NEWS German luxury liner. British pilots mis- bling on tiny morsels from his sister There were horrible sights of cruelty takenly bombed all three boats. and mother the rest of the week. at his camp. Two young brothers, enry Bawnik has no illusions The British Royal Air Force had “I looked like a Muselmann,” about how he survived the H been told that many of Hitler’s top he said, referring to a term for Holocaust. Nazi henchmen were aboard the starving concentration camp It wasn’t brains. Or toughness. Or ships in an attempt to flee Germany. inhabitants. “You looked like you faith. Swedish and Swiss Red Cross offi- had only skin, with no meat on He has only one explanation: pure cials informed British intelligence one the bones.” luck. day before the bombing that prisoners Bawnik remembered the “Nobody wanted me alive, that’s for were on board, but that message roundup of Jews one day, sure,” Bawnik said. apparently never got through. maybe in August 1941. He certainly had the will to survive. Only about 350 of the 5,000 prison- “We didn’t know where we He also was young and resourceful. ers on the Cap Arcona survived. The were going. There were a cou- But now, at almost 90 and looking others either burned to death on the ple thousand people in the back, the Amherst resident knows he sinking ship or drowned in the chilly roundup. They chose the young cheated death, not once but several 45-degree waters of the Baltic Sea. people that they could get work times, as a Polish Jew during World Skeletal remains continued to wash out of and put us in the ware- War II. ashore for 25 years. house.” “It was luck, strictly luck,” he said. Few people know the story about That was frightening for the Bawnik’s story is different from most the Cap Arcona. Records of what teen, but Bawnik was comforted Holocaust survivors’. Not only did he happened May 3, 1945, have been by the sight of an older boy and survive four Nazi concentration sealed, not to be opened until 2045. former neighbor named David, camps, but he also lived through an “Seven thousand people died on the whom he looked up to. Allied bombing of three ships carrying last day of the war, and by mistake,” “They started beating us. It concentration camp survivors during Bawnik said. “How can you make was terrible, terrible. They just the last couple of days of the war. sense of it? I’m bitter, but it was a mis- kept on beating him and kicking That attack, killing thousands of take made during war. That’s all you him. I saw him die, and I saw prisoners, has gone largely unnoticed can say.” them take him away. He was for 70 years. dead.” Henry Bawnik and his wife on their honeymoon in Lake Bawnik’s journey began when he THE BEGINNING OF WAR Placid. Bawnik had just learned his was rounded up on the streets of the awnik was 13 when Germany probable fate. about 11 and 13, were executed for Lodz ghetto at age 15. He spent four invaded Poland on September “That’s my future,” he thought. “I stealing potatoes from the field. years in the camps, including the B 1, 1939. He was living in Lodz with his knew I couldn’t get out alive. It was “They took them out to the courtyard notorious death camp Auschwitz. He mother, two older sisters and an older just a question of when.” and hanged them in front of every- saw death all around him, his fellow brother. His father had died earlier. body,” he said. “I saw it. One of them camp inhabitants dying from shoot- HIS FIRST CAMP Within days, German soldiers occu- survived after they hanged him. So ings, beatings, the gas chambers and pied Lodz, which had one of the train took Bawnik to Posen, to they took him out and shot him.” starvation. largest Jewish communities in the Gutenbrunn concentration At his first concentration camp, Then, in the last days of World War A Europe. Jews quickly became targets camp, where prisoners were building Bawnik learned about survival. II, Bawnik narrowly avoided death of beatings, property seizures and railroad tracks. “Survival is a very tough thing to again, in perhaps the most cruelly robberies. He remembers the small touches of (think about) when the Germans were “It started right that life, like the dish he always car- there,” he said. “They could shoot away,” he said. ried under his arm, in case he found a you. They could do anything to you, “Standing in line for little soup to eat. and no one could help you.” food, they picked “Then the dish was my pillow at THE DEATH CAMP out the Jews. They night.” said, ‘The Jews One day, while assigned to work ometime in 1943, he was taken have to come out.’ ” with a Polish truck driver, he drove Sto Auschwitz, where at least 1.1 His two oldest sib- past a group of women from a nearby million people ultimately were killed. lings, a brother and women’s camp. He wrote a short let- Including his mother, sister and sister, soon fled, ter, put it in a small box and threw it cousin, he later learned. leaving only Bawnik, toward the women. It turned out that One little lie helped him survive. his mother and one his female cousin saw the letter and Bawnik, then 17, claimed he was 18, The Cap Arcona was in the Baltic Sea carrying 5,000 concentration sister, Regina. gave it to his sister, Regina, who was old enough to work as a laborer. camp survivors when it was bombed and sunk by British fighter pilots On May 1, 1940, working in that camp’s kitchen. The “We slept in the barracks,” he said. on May 3, 1945. Only about 350 people survived. just eight months next day, his sister sent him a bag of “It was terrible. Three people in a ironic event of the Holocaust — the after Poland was invaded, the sugar and a loaf of bread. bunk, two sleeping one way, the other British bombing of the three prison Germans sealed the Lodz Jewish “It was like you were in heaven,” in the middle sleeping the other way. ships in the Baltic Sea. ghetto. The idea of the ghetto, histori- Bawnik said. “You can’t imagine what Somehow you did it.” It was three days after Hitler com- ans have said, was to put all the Jews hunger is unless you go a couple Others might have given up. He mitted suicide and one day before the in one place, to make it easier to find days without food.” wanted to live. unconditional surrender of German a “solution” to the “Jewish problem.” Thanks to the kindness of the “I knew I was going to die, but you forces in northwest Germany. More Hunger became overwhelming. female camp’s commander, Bawnik fought to live. You work as hard as than 7,000 concentration camp sur- “You got one large loaf of bread, and was able to reunite with his sister a you can, so that they let you live, and vivors who had lived through torture, almost nothing else for a whole few times. then you hope they lose the war.” slaughter and hunger were aboard week,” he recalled. “The hunger start- “It was unbelievable,” he said of the That formula worked for Bawnik, the ships off the northern edge of ed then.” chance finding of his sister. “I didn’t (Continued on page 13) Germany. January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 PSEUDO GESTAPO MAN TRICKED BRITISH NAZI SYMPATHIZERS IN WORLD WAR II Eric Roberts, aka “Jack King,” some particular work of national mation that could easily have led to The material Roberts gathered was was a Nazi impostor working for importance?” his supervisor wrote. more carnage on the home front. never given to police for possible UK intelligence whose role was to Roberts vanished for a time, re- n a 1942 report, he described prosecution, and Kohout and Brown collect potentially lethal informa- emerging as Jack King, who had as Imeeting a woman identified as were never charged with any crime. tion intended for Nazis. one of his duties gently discouraging Nancy Brown in the Brighton area The information was used by the intel- t the height of World War II, his contacts from sabotaging British along England’s vulnerable southern ligence service to keep track of active AHans Kohout wanted to give the soldiers and military installations. coast. He said her friendly manner Nazi sympathizers in Britain during Nazis advance word of a top-secret The files reveal little about Roberts’ made it “almost impossible” for him the war. British tactic that could neutralize an methods besides proficiency at sever- to believe at first that she would Intelligence files do not reveal what enemy’s air defenses, leaving major al languages. But he had only rudi- betray her country — but within an Roberts did after the war, Twigge cities exposed to devastating air mentary German and visited the hour she was giving him sensitive said. raids. Kohout, a naturalized British cit- country only twice before the war. military data. “There was a lot of derring-do and at izen, knew about it from his job at a He did display typical British “The fact that the items of informa- the end of the war, you basically don’t plant doing defense-related work. reserve: field reports show Roberts tion volunteered might have resulted say a single word about it,” Twigge He passed the information to Jack was able to contain his utter disgust in the deaths of many people counted said. “And probably no one would King, who he believed was a Gestapo for those Brits willing to provide infor- for nothing,” he wrote. have believed him anyway.” agent working undercover in Britain. Kohout expected King to give the information to the Nazis, so they could copy the technology. But King was an impostor working for British intelligence, not the Gestapo, and Kohout’s treasonous plan fizzled, according to secret intel- ligence files made public by the National Archives. The information The Association of Teachers of Social Studies School of Education United Federation of Teachers (ATSS/UFT) never crossed the English Channel. UFT Jewish Heritage Committee/ Time and time again, the low-key The Educators’ Chapter of the Jewish Labor “Jack King” was able to convince Committee British traitors that he was a Gestapo man, gathering up potentially lethal Barbara G. Arfa information intended for the Nazis. Professional Development Conference “It was a brave undertaking, mixing with Fascists, pretending to be some- on Holocaust Education one you weren’t. It was dangerous work that could have gone wrong,” Ethics and Responsibility: said Stephen Twigge, a historian with the National Archives, whose docu- The Investigation and Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals ments revealed that King was actual- ly Eric Arthur Roberts, a bank clerk in the United States and How It Relates to Our Children without special training. Twigge said King’s work helped to Keynote Address to be given by Eli M. Rosenbaum, neutralize a potential “fifth column” Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy, U.S. Department of Justice that might have damaged Britain’s war effort. The files suggest the num- ber of Nazi sympathizers willing to DATE: Sunday, March 13th, 2016 take action against British forces was larger than had been thought, he said. TIME: 8:30 AM–3:15 PM “He was infiltrating a network, put- ting himself forward as the middle 8:30 AM Breakfast man in German intelligence,” said 9:00 AM Program Commences Twigge. “He managed to flush them out and put a brake on their activi- ties.” PLACE: RAMAZ MIDDLE SCHOOL One of Roberts’ handlers, identified 114 East 85th Street only as T.M. Shelford, said many of (Between Lexington and Park Avenues) the Nazi sympathizers in Britain were New York, New York 10028 motivated by a dislike for Jews. “Many people who were never members of the Fascist parties have REGISTRATION: Free of charge, registration required* been actuated by their anti-Semitic feelings to express the opinion that a Workshop topics include: Survivors as Eyewitnesses — Personal Accounts of Children of Survivors — German victory would be preferable Teaching Liberation Using Testimony — Ethics and Responsibility and Seeking Justice to a British victory, since the latter would mean a victory for the Jews,” In-Service credit available he wrote in 1944. All registered participants will receive COMPLIMENTARY educational resources The documents show Roberts had a Kosher breakfast and lunch will be served solid if unspectacular career at Westminster Bank when Security *To register, please contact: Marlene W. Yahalom, PhD, Director of Education, Services asked for him in 1940. His American Society for Yad Vashem boss sounded surprised by the high RSVP Tel: 212.220.4304 / Fax: 212.220.4308 / [email protected] priority placed on his services: “What are the particular and especial qualifi- cations of Mr. Roberts — which we This Professional Development Conference is being generously supported by the have not been able to perceive — for Barbara Gutfreund Arfa Endowment Fund for Holocaust Education Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 CEREMONY HONORING RIGHTEOUS AMO (Continued from page 1) wartime activities. it, President Barack Obama dren, and great-grandchildren of these men. “Her fluency in French allowed her to com- said in historic remarks at the I’m often asked why did your father do what municate with the 60 children in the home Israeli Embassy. he did? and their parents. Lois was grateful for every “The Talmud teaches that if Dad’s life was guided by one eternal opportunity to ‘add just another ray of love to a person destroys one life, it truth…that there IS a God…and that God is the lives of these youngsters who have is as if they’ve destroyed an good, and his love, though free, has one already experienced so much of the misery of entire world, and if a person essential responsibility… we must be good to life.’ saves one life, it is as if one another…. “From contact with other relief workers from they’ve saved an entire organizations such as the American Friends world,” said the president. Service Committee and the Jewish organiza- “What an extraordinary tion OSE, Lois knew the dangers her children honor to be with you as we faced. honor four Righteous individ- On August 9, 1942 she wrote: ‘Mary Elmes uals whose courage is meas- informed me of the return of Polish and ured in the lives they German Jews to Poland where death by star- saved — one child, one vation awaits them.’ refugee, one comrade at a Mary Jean Gunden, niece of American Righteous A “Learning that the three Landesmann chil- time — and who, in so doing, the award from Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer a dren had been saved from deportation, on helped save our world. Buchenwald myself wit September 3, 1942 she wrote: ‘When I heard “I deliver a lot of speeches. Very rarely am Wiesel, and seeing the of how they were I so humbled by the elo- where he was held as finally snatched from quence that has preced- survivors in the old Wa the fate hanging over ed me — not just in the extraordinary honor them, I felt as if God words, but in the acts Vashem with Rabbi Lau must have had a that we commemorate and hearing the voices hand in preventing today.... memory. And then takin anyone from coming “To the survivors, fami- visit the Holocaust Mu after them during lies of the Righteous and children must know this Leonard Wilf, chairman of ASYV, gives his remarks at these two days; had those they saved, to all the event. and that we must never they been taken to the distinguished guests: he four lives we “And that’s what Dad did! Along with Ms. camp, all efforts We gather to honor the “T claim on our c Gunden, the Zbijewskis, and the enduring would have arrived newest of the Righteous our moral imagination. tribe we call the ‘Righteous.’ too late for any good.’ Among the Nations and and we are forced to as “Their actions were founded on God’s love “Marking a year in make real the call to same circumstances, and the extraordinary idea that all men are Vichy, on October 31, ‘never forget,’ not just on How would we answer created equal. Tonight we honor them 1942 she wrote: ‘But this day of remem- are you? Would we sh because they lived to ensure that idea. my year’s experience brance, but for all days and Maryla Zbijewski? While we honor them with words, nothing in relief work has and for all time. they could have been honors them more than their life-giving taught me more than “And at moments like home to a five-year-ol actions. ever that one has to this, as I listen to the for her like one of their Our duty now is to take strength from their live only a day at a extraordinary stories of President Barack Obama delivers his speech at the and shelter and mome example and resolve to live as they did…’lay- time. God’s faithful- Righteous Among the Nations ceremony. the four that we honor, ly and music — a shie ness towards those memories come rushing outside until her mothe who put their trust in Him can be counted back of the times that I’ve encountered the “Would we have the upon throughout the particular problems of history and the horror of the Shoah — grow- sion of Lois Gunden? S each day. Without the assurance of His abid- ing up, hearing the stories of my great-uncle ply hoped to ‘add just an ing presence and His sustaining help, I would who helped liberate Ohrdruf, part of lives of these youngst feel lost in an impossible tangle of circum- Buchenwald, and who returned home so endured so much. And stances.’ shaken by the suffering that he had seen that ing as many Jewish chi Lois refused an offer by the ray of Resistance to leave France and through, a avoid German detention. She, a families of pacifist, would not risk physical “Would danger to those helping her, nor of Maste others that might be harmed in Edmonds retaliation.” he was ju srael’s Prime Minister went abov IBenjamin Netanyahu delivered of duty, an brief remarks via a video record- joined in t ing, thanking Obama for speaking choice of at the embassy, as well as for soldiers o advancing talks on extending and Roddie lo expanding U.S. defense assis- and dared tance to Israel. moral com Steven Spielberg introduces the president of the United “We are forever indebted to States, Barack Obama. He was tr [these Righteous] because of the saved s ing down our lives’ for human freedom and Jewish children and Jewish sol- American human dignity.” diers who were saved due to their quence. ary Jean Gunden, accepting the award bravery,” said Netanyahu. son, by th on behalf of her aunt, Lois Mary The president of the United Wojtek Zbijewski, grandson of Polish Righteous Among the Nations Maryla and Walery M Zbijewski, accepts the medal from Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and Rabbi Israel Meir Christians Gunden, expressed her deep gratitude to Yad States was introduced at the event Lau. greater Vashem and the people of Israel for this great by Steven Spielberg, the Oscar- Christiani honor. winning director of the Holocaust film my grandmother would tell me he did not am a Jew.... “Our family was blessed to have Lois Schindler’s List and the founder of the Shoah speak to anyone for six months, just went up “Here, tonight, we m among us. She possessed an inspiring spiri- Foundation. in his attic, couldn’t fully absorb the horror that around the world, a tual dignity and grace. Humble about her Anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, and that he had witnessed. rise. We cannot deny i many achievements, we knew little about her the United States must lead the fight against “Then having the opportunity to go to Jews leaving major Eu January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 ONG THE NATIONS IS A HISTORIC EVENT their families have lived for genera- you? That’s the question that the Holocaust living them in our actions. As the book of tions — because they no longer feel poses to us. We have to consider even in Deuteronomy teaches us, ‘Tzedek, Tzedek safe; when Jewish centers are tar- moments of peril, even when we might fear for tirdof’ — ‘Justice, Justice you shall pursue.’ geted from Mumbai to Overland our own lives, the fact that none of us are pow- “I want to close with what I’m told is a Park, Kansas; when swastikas erless. We always have a choice. And today, Jewish legend. It’s said that within every appear on college campuses — for most of us, standing up against intolerance generation there are 36 virtuous individu- when we see all that and more, we doesn’t require the same risks that those we als — individuals so honorable, so filled with must not be silent.... honor today took. It doesn’t require imprison- compassion, that their good works sustain “All nations that prize diversity and ment or that we face down the barrel of a gun. the very existence of the world. They are tolerance and pluralism must speak It does require us to speak out. It does require called Lamed Vovniks, and without them, out whenever and wherever Jews us to stand firm. We know that evil can flour- society crumbles, according to the legend. and other religious minori- We don’t know who they are. ties are attacked. In recent They’re entirely indistinguish- years, we’ve seen leaders able, ordinary people — like in France, Germany, and Walery and Maryla and Lois Great Britain stand strong- and Roddie. You wouldn’t ly against anti-Semitism. necessarily recognize them in Among the Nations Lois Gunden, accepts and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau. In Israel, President Rivlin a crowd. But I believe that th my dear friend, Elie has spoken eloquently their generation — the gener- ovens, the Little Camp about the need for tolerance and ation of Schindler and s a boy. Standing with acceptance among all Israelis — Wallenberg and Karski — arsaw ghetto. And then Jewish and Arab. demanded a lot more than 36. r of walking through Yad “Meanwhile, governments have It called for more than 26,000 u and seeing the faces an obligation to care for the sur- Righteous Among the s of the lost, of blessed vivors of the Shoah — because no Nations. It called for the mil- ng my own daughters to one who endured that horror should lions of heroes who did not go useum — because our have to scrape by in their golden quietly and who stood up and s chapter of our history, years. So, with our White House fought back. r repeat it. initiative, we’re working to improve Pastor Chris Edmonds (right), son of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, accepts award from “And may we all strive to live Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau. e honor tonight make a care for Holocaust survivors in need up to their noble example, to conscience, as well as here in the United States. And with be the Lamed Vovniks of our We hear their stories, the compensation fund we helped create, ish if we stand idly by. generation, to do our part to sustain each sk ourselves, under the claims are finally being paid that even more “And so we’re called to live in a way that other and to embrace the humanity that we how would we act? Jews deported from France during the shows that we’ve actually learned from our share, and in so doing, save our world. May God’s question, where Holocaust, including survivors here in past. And that means rejecting indifference. It the memory of the lost be a blessing. And as how the love of Walery America, can benefit from. means cultivating a habit of empathy, and rec- nations and individuals, may we always strive ? There, in Warsaw, “But the task before us does not fall on gov- ognizing ourselves in one another; to make to be among the Righteous. shot for opening their ernment alone. Every faith community has a common cause with the outsider, the minority, Ambassador of Israel to the United States, d girl. Yet they cared responsibility. Just as all religions speak out whether that minority is Christian or Jew, H.E. Mr. Ron Dermer, thanked the President r own, gave her safety against those who try to twist their faith to jus- whether it is Hindu or Muslim, or a nonbeliever; for attending the special event. nts of warmth, of fami- tify terrorism and violence, just as all faiths whether that minority is native born or immi- "Your presence is a testament to the unique eld from the madness need to speak out when interpretations of grant; whether they’re Israeli or Palestinian. relationship between Israel and the United er could return. extraordinary compas- She wrote that she sim- nother ray of love to the ters’ who had already d by housing and feed- ildren as she could, her love always shone and still burns within the f those she saved. we have the courage er Sergeant Roddie s? I know your dad said st doing his job, but he ve and beyond the call nd so did all those who that line. Faced with a f giving up his fellow or saving his own life, ooked evil in the eye d a Nazi to shoot. His mpass never wavered. rue to his faith, and he some 200 Jewish soldiers as a conse- Members of the families of the Righteous Among the Nations with the representatives of the ASYV and attendees of the ceremony. It’s an instructive les- he way, for those of us their religion veer in an ugly direction, so, too, It means taking a stand against bigotry in all States... This is the first time that a sitting s. I cannot imagine a must they speak out against those who use its forms, and rejecting our darkest impulses President has ever spoken in our Embassy in expression of their faith to justify bias against Jews, or peo- and guarding against tribalism as the only Washington." ity than to say, I, too, ple of any faith.... value in our communities and in our politics. Recalling the courageous acts of the “All of us have a responsibility to speak out, It means heeding the lesson repeated so Righteous, the Ambassador said: "In honor- ust confront the reality and to teach what’s right to our children, and to often in the Torah: To welcome the stranger, ing these four righteous souls tonight, let us anti-Semitism is on the examine our own hearts. That’s the lesson of for we were once strangers, too. That’s how not only recognize their remarkable heroism. it. When we see some the Righteous we honor today — the lesson of we never forget — not simply by keeping the Let us hope that their light will inspire us to... ropean cities — where the Holocaust itself: Where are you? Who are lessons of the Shoah in our memories, but by build a better future for all humanity." Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM YAD VASHEM AND HEWLETT-PACKARD SEEK TO BRING BIG DATA TO HOLOCAUST EDUCATION files. According to Lander, this collec- lected during and after the war,” she Yad Vashem chairman Avner BY SAM SOKOL, tion will provide HP with a proving said. Shalev described the challenge of try- THE JERUSALEM POST ground for the cloud computing and d Lewin, a trustee of Britain’s ing to find “technological ideas and big-data-service technology it’s aim- EHolocaust Educational Trust solutions that would provide accessi- he Holocaust memorial and ing at corporations with similarly large and an HP vice president, agreed, bility to survivor testimonies — audio, T research center is sitting on mil- collections. telling the Post he believed that “peo- video or written — from the Yad lions of documents and testimonials During the Hackathon, program- ple want a personal experience, and Vashem collections.” that it has to make relevant, and it mers in casual attire ascended the the scale of Yad Vashem is daunting.” “Yad Vashem is relentless in its pur- does not have a way of quickly or effi- stage in Yad Vashem’s auditorium, Another presenter showcased a suit of innovation in the service of ciently sifting through such vast pitching apps, websites and programs website providing on-the-fly subtitling memory,” he said. amounts of data. of survivors’ video testi- “Through these efforts,” he contin- Touring the museum’s archives two monials collected by Yad ued, “Yad Vashem hopes to bring the years ago, David Lander, incoming vice Vashem, while another voices and stories of each individual president and general manager of tech created an online pro- survivor to the masses. For decades, giant Hewlett-Packard, began thinking gram for Yad Vashem’s we have looked for ways to make our about ways to make Yad Vashem rele- digital collection that pre- immense archives and collections, vant to the next generation. sented information as an which we have amassed over the “It’s all about big data,” he told The interactive map and time years, more easily accessible to a Jerusalem Post during the product of line. global audience.” his musings — a “Hackathon” in “We want to be rele- Speaking to participants, Education which Israeli university students and vant to our audiences,” Minister Naftali Bennett made paral- HP employees competed to find the Yad Vashem’s chief lels between the technology used by most innovative ways to merge cloud archivist, Dr. Haim those making the presentations and computing, Web applications and Gertner, told the Post. the interactive nature of the Passover Holocaust history for what one chal- Students from Germany visit the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem in “We are dealing with Seder meal, which has kept the mem- lenger termed the “ADD generation.” Jerusalem. very complicated and ory of the Exodus alive for thousands “The challenge they faced at Yad capable of transforming vast and dis- fragmented data,” Gertner said, “so of years. Vashem was about how much data parate sources of information into a the challenges of connecting such a “The best example for remem- they had and how to make it rele- user-friendly experience that can huge amount of data... in a relevant brance exists in Judaism,” Bennett vant,” he said. highlight individual victims and sur- way, when most of it was not created said of the Seder, citing the “interac- Aside from Lander’s passionate vivors of the Holocaust. in the digital age, is a huge challenge tive” aspects of the meal in which chil- belief in the importance of Holocaust “You are too old. You aren’t the main that Yad Vashem is in the forefront of dren are encouraged to ask ques- education, for HP the draw was obvi- client,” one software developer dealing with.” tions, as well as the “experiential” ous — a partnership with Yad Vashem quipped to the audience, describing He said that over the past decade, nature of many of the evening’s cus- would present it with significant the 30 teenagers she had gathered in his team had managed to digitize mil- toms that serve to make participants advantages. order to observe their online media lions of items and get them online, yet feel as if they had lived through the Yad Vashem has been working on consumption habits. there was still a long way to go. He events being commemorated. digitizing its massive archives for sev- This testing led her to develop a added that Yad Vashem was interest- By adopting technology of the type eral years, and has generated a mobile app. ed in several of the proposals pre- presented at the Hackathon, he said, wealth of data that includes video and “Most teens wanted to see a per- sented during the Hackathon. “we will be able to keep [the audio recordings, scanned docu- sonal page of each survivor and what “I’m sure this will enable us to con- Holocaust] relevant for thousands of ments, databases and other types of [memories and experiences] he col- tinue connections with HP,” he stated. years to come.” YAD VASHEM HONORS FIRST EGYPTIAN AS “RIGHTEOUS GENTILE” or the first time, Holocaust deportations of the Jews from Berlin under police investigation, Helmy mother, Julie; her stepfather, Georg Fmemorial center Yad Vashem began, and 21-year-old Anna Boros would arrange for her to hide else- Wehr, and her grandmother, Cecilie has recognized an Egyptian national, (Gutman after the war), a family where. “A good friend of our family, Rudnik. He provided for them and the late Dr. Mohamed Helmy, as a friend, was in need of a hiding place, Dr. Helmy…hid me in his cabin in attended to their medical needs. He “Righteous Gentile,” for the assis- Berlin-Buch from March 10 arranged for Cecilie Rudnik to be hid- tance he gave Jews during the until the end of the war. As of den in the home of Frieda Szturmann. Holocaust, at great personal risk. 1942 I no longer had any For over a year Szturmann hid and Helmy, born in Khartoum in 1901 to contact to the outside world. protected the elderly lady and shared Egyptian parents, went to Germany in The Gestapo knew that Dr. her food rations with her. 1922 to study medicine and settled in Helmy was our family physi- moment of great danger Berlin. After he completed his studies, cian, and they knew that he Aoccurred when the Wehrs were he went to work at the Robert Koch owned a cabin in Berlin- caught in 1944, and during their inter- Institute in Berlin, but was dismissed Buch,” Anna Gutman wrote rogation revealed that Helmy was in 1937. Not being of Aryan race, Dr. after the war. helping them and that he was hiding Helmy was forbidden to work in the “He managed to evade all Anna. Helmy immediately brought public health system; he was also their interrogations. In such Anna to Frieda Szturmann’s home, unable to marry his German fiancée. Irena Steinfeldt, Director of the Righteous Among the cases he would bring me to and it was only thanks to his In 1939 he was arrested, together Nations in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, displays the friends where I would stay for resourcefulness that he managed to with other Egyptian nationals, but he certificate and a medal that are given posthumously to Dr. several days, introducing me evade punishment by showing the was released a year later because of Mohamed Helmy, an Egyptian physician who was living in as his cousin from Dresden. police a letter Anna had allegedly writ- health problems. Nazi Germany and saved Jews. When the danger would ten to him, saying she was staying Despite his being targeted by the Helmy brought her to a cabin he pass, I would return to his cabin….Dr. with her aunt in Dessau. regime, Helmy spoke out against Nazi owned in the Berlin neighborhood of Helmy did everything for me out of the Dr. Helmy remained in Berlin and policies, and notwithstanding the Buch, which became her safe haven generosity of his heart and I will be was finally able to marry his fiancée. great danger, risked his life and until the end of the war. grateful to him for eternity.” He died in 1982. Frieda Szturmann helped his Jewish friends. When the At times of danger when he was Helmy also helped Anna Gutman’s passed away in 1962. January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 UNCOVERING HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS WHERE FEW HAVE LOOKED Muslim Nazis, female death camp same disdain that men in the SS were estimated that 15,000 Jews were cap- The third-generation truth-seekers guards, and Dutch “bounty viewed with,” said Daniel Patrick tured in hiding by reward-driven Nazi are a diverse bunch, including a black hunters” are coming out of the Brown, author of studies on the collaborators. His 2012 book, Jew German woman who discovered that archival closet, even as fewer involvement of women in the all-male Hunt, exposed files on 250 Dutch her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the Shoah eyewitnesses remain alive SS, including their training at police officers who organized units to pitiless Nazi commander made to testify. Ravensbruck. locate and arrest Jews in hiding. famous by the film Schindler’s List. “It helped, of course, that the “Every large town in the In her 2015 book, My Grandfather BY MATT LEBOVIC, women did not have the ‘tell-tale’ Netherlands had such units,” van Would Have Shot Me: A Black THE TIMES OF ISRAEL blood tattoo that every SS man had,” Liempt told The Times of Israel in an Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi ith new access to archives added Brown in an interview with The interview. Past, Jennifer Teege focused as W and other primary sources, Times of Israel. Though it is likely there were far much on her notorious grandfather as historians are supplanting archetypal Just as Anne Frank became a con- more than 250 police officers who she did on her grandmother, Goeth’s images of Aryan Nazi men as the venient, catchall symbol of Jewish participated in anti-Nazi resistance wartime lover. Throughout her life, Holocaust’s sole perpetrators. victims, one particularly gruesome activities, “the 250 who collaborated Teege’s grandmother — Ruth Irene Previously obscured perpetrator “sub- guard — Irma Grese, nicknamed “the in this brutal way did much groups” are being exposed one por- blond beast of Birkenau and Belsen” more harm to the reputation of trait at a time, ranging from women — came to embody female perpetra- the Dutch police than any other who guarded death camps to Dutch tors at large. The 2013 publication of group in history,” said van bounty hunters of Jews in hiding. Wendy Lower’s book, Hitler’s Furies: Liempt. And as researchers uncover an German Women in the Nazi Killing During two decades of pursu- array of Europeans involved in the Fields, helped expand understanding ing bounty hunters, the histori- murder of Jews and other groups dur- of women’s roles beyond the Grese an said he occasionally ing Hitler’s rule, perpetrators’ motiva- stereotype. incurred the wrath of people tions are being individually examined. According to Lower, half a million who accused him of “being too Digging in 70-year-old files and “ordinary women” from Germany’s critical.” knocking door-to-door for witnesses, “lost generation” — including teach- “But facts from the [police] Amon Goeth, the brutal SS commander of Plaszow con- scholars are honing the relatively new ers, nurses, and secretaries — files cannot be discussed or centration camp near Krakow, Poland. “Holocaust as local history” method. worked near sites of genocide, as denied,” said van Liempt, who was Kalder — denied that Goeth commit- The trend departs from a generalized both assistants and even execution- born four years after the war. ted atrocities, attempting to hide his “Holocaust as universal history” ers. As researchers look east, some are actions from her daughter and grand- approach by focusing on interactions “Nearly all histories of the Holocaust studying the role of Muslims recruited daughter. between “ordinary” victims and perpe- leave out half of those who populated to the Waffen-SS in Yugoslavia. Up to After stumbling upon the truth by trators — zooming way in on the that society, as if women’s history 42,000 Muslim SS members and accident in a Hamburg library, Teege, action, as it were, and exploring a happens somewhere else,” wrote police troops were recruited by the whose father is Nigerian, uncovered site’s history before and after the war. Lower in her introduction. Nazis, and thousands of them partici- her grandmother’s role as both a pated in the slaughter of Jews and bystander and a denier. She visited Orthodox Christians in Bosnia and Plaszow concentration camp and Serbia, respectively. Krakow, where Goeth brutally liqui- For decades, Muslims’ involvement dated the Jewish ghetto. in the Holocaust has been told in “I want to see where my grandfather trope by a 1941 photo showing Hitler committed his murders,” wrote Teege meeting with Haj Amin al-Husseini, of her plan to visit Poland. “I want to the mufti of Jerusalem. Less remem- get close to him — and then put some bered is that actual Muslim SS divi- distance between him and me,” said sions, recruited in part by al-Husseini, the biracial granddaughter of an SS were key perpetrators of the monster. Holocaust in Bosnia. Muslim units *** also participated in the murder of n a few years, there will be no Jews in Greece and Russia. Isurvivors or perpetrators alive to According to IBM and the Holocaust testify. To prepare for that day, author Edwin Black, the slaughter researchers are digging deeper than inflicted by Muslim SS men in Eastern ever into all kinds of archives, as well Europe was exceptional, even by as literally digging at sites of mass Nazi standards, and involved a sur- murder for artifacts to bear witness in During the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April of 1945, guards with the SS prising collaboration. the future. were paraded for work in clearing the dead. “The Ustasha of Yugoslavia [was] a According to scholars, the role of Unsurprisingly, some of these inves- “The dramatic stories of these Muslim-Catholic alliance of Nazi Holocaust bystanders is an emerg- tigations are ruffling feathers. women reveal the darkest side of killers so gruesome and beastly that ing priority. During three generations In Sarah Helm’s 2015 book, female activism,” she said. “They even Berlin shrank in horror at the of collecting victims’ accounts and Ravensbruck: Life and Death in show what can happen when women slaughter,” wrote Black in his 2010 bringing perpetrators to justice, Hitler’s Concentration Camp for of varied backgrounds and profes- book, The Farhud: Roots of the Arab- these involuntary witnesses received Women, the historian biographized sions are mobilized for war and acqui- Nazi Alliance During the Holocaust. scant attention. When teaching the the camp itself, where 132,000 esce in genocide.” “This berserk army of ghastly mur- Shoah to young adults, some curric- women and children were impris- An expert on the Holocaust in derers, the Ustasha, and three related ula — like “Facing History and oned. Poring through postwar trial Ukraine, Lower has documented war- crack divisions of Arab-Nazi Waffen Ourselves” — ask students to envi- transcripts and archives opened after era atrocities throughout Europe. By SS comprised of tens of thousands of sion themselves as bystanders, the Soviet Union’s fall, Helm shed investigating farther east than Soviet- Muslim volunteers, terrorized people emphasizing that group’s role in light on Ravensbruck’s lesser-known era scholars were able to operate, of all faiths in Yugoslavia,” wrote enabling genocide. function as an SS training camp for and by widening the circle of perpe- Black. Among the camps staffed by As intoned by the late Primo Levi, women to become concentration trators to include collaborators and Muslim SS men was Jasenovac, cited an Auschwitz survivor from Italy, camp guards. bystanders, her work encapsulates by survivors for unparalleled displays “Monsters exist, but they are too few “The overwhelming majority of current trends in Shoah studies. of brutality. in number to be truly dangerous. these female guards were easily able fter exhuming police records Religious motivations aside, a fresh More dangerous are the common to get back into the social fabric of A and other documents tied to the source of information on perpetrators men, the functionaries ready to postwar zones of occupation, as they deportation of Dutch Jewry, Dutch is coming from an unexpected believe and to act without asking were not usually viewed with the journalist and historian Ad van Liempt source: their grandchildren. questions.” Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 THE MYTH OF THE GOOD NAZI friends in Vichy France. At ioning, he invokes Robert Musil’s sable go-between. It was Todt whom BY ADAM TOOZE, WSJ Nuremberg this was his defense: The Man Without Qualities. Such Hitler picked in March 1940 to be his How could anyone put him, this for- high cultural references would, one wartime minister for armaments and ust after midnight on October 1, ward-thinking, broad-minded, mod- fears, have suited Speer all too well. ammunition. Speer, meanwhile, took J1966, Albert Speer, the former ern individual, in the same class as Reading the shopping lists of luxu- charge of building the capital’s air- armaments minister of the Third the drug-addled and rapacious ries that Speer ordered from raid shelters and armaments facto- Reich, walked free from Spandau Goering or an odious anti-Semitic Spandau jail, including a Group One ries. When Todt was killed in myste- jail. Barely acknowledging creep like the publisher of Der Dunhill pipe, foie gras with truffles, rious circumstances in the crisis win- Margarete, his long-suffering wife, Stürmer, Julius Streicher? Beluga caviar and a Jaeger- ter of 1941–42, it was Speer to whom the mother of his six children and the t was an image that, for the first LeCoultre watch, one is tempted to Hitler turned. With the Wehrmacht once-proud bearer of a Nazi award Idecades after the war, dominated invoke instead American Psycho, stuck deep in snowbound Russia for fertility, Speer faced the flash- the historiography. But from the Bret Easton Ellis’s deathless evoca- and war with the U.S. looming in the bulbs and cameras of the world’s 1980s onward, the edifice began to tion of a murderous, product- West, it was now Speer’s task to rally media from the back seat of a luxuri- crumble. Doubts were raised about obsessed Wall Street yuppie. Even German industry to the war effort. ous black Mercedes provided for the Speer’s denials of complicity in the Speer’s high-cultural aspirations, his fter 1945, the German busi- occasion by an old industrialist Holocaust. In fact, it was shown, he patronage of classical musicians and A ness community constructed friend. Condemned by the had been involved both in the his dabbling in religious profundity its own myth of innocence. But as we Nuremberg Tribunal for war crimes Aryanization of the German capital had a shallowness that haunted know from the library of histories pro- and crimes against humanity, Speer and the genocidal food allocation those who knew him well. duced by the slave-labor litigation of was saved from the death penalty by he Speer myth was not the 1990s, it is hard to think of any an artful defense that separated him T the creation of Speer major industrial corporation that did from the other Nazi ogres in the alone. Mr. Kitchen’s study is not employ forced foreign labor. A dock. He would spend the last 15 at its best in tracing the net- shockingly large proportion even years of his life burnishing his image works that helped to create contracted with the SS for the use of as “the good Nazi.” After three best- him. As a young architect in concentration camp labor, including selling books and lucrative inter- the 1920s, Speer benefited Jewish camp inmates. Nor were the views with Der Spiegel and Playboy, from the support of Heinrich businessmen merely narrow-minded among others, he died in London on Tessenow, a noted architect profit maximizers “doing their job.” As September 1, 1981, attended rather and an advocate of arts and part of Speer’s organization, they conspicuously by a beautiful young crafts. Having started life as actively shaped and mobilized the mistress, after a long morning of an apolitical aesthete, Speer German economy for war. Most were interviews with the BBC and dinner was swept up in the dynamic nationalists committed to German with the historian Norman Stone. of Hitler’s movement during victory. Some were Nazi ideologues. Hitler’s closest companion, the archi- the disastrous first winter of They all had reason to fear Stalin’s tect of Germany’s wartime “arma- the Great Depression, joining Soviet Union. But the system that ments miracle,” had seized his time the party in March 1931. With Speer organized melded these in the spotlight. He had refashioned the advent of Hitler’s regime, impulses with a more abstract ethic: himself as a postmodern celebrity. modesty was out of style, and Its participants lived and died by the Already at Nuremberg, Speer had Speer shifted allegiance to the standard of “performance” presented himself as a penitent luxury designer Paul Ludwig (Leistung). Statistics and production prophet of a new age of technocracy. Troost. His first big break records were their religion, techno- He used his closing statement in the came first with the commis- logical improvement their mantra and dock to warn the world that the only sion for the remodeling of disruptive innovation their magic. forces that could “prevent unconfined Albert Speer photographed in his cell at Nuremberg, dur- Goebbels’s villa in Berlin and The obsession with short-term ing the Nuremberg trials. engineering and science from com- the renovation of Hitler’s Leistung displaced any wider consid- pleting the work of destroying human and labor-recruitment programs of offices in Berlin. This brought Speer eration of the strategic prospects for beings” were “individual freedom and 1942–43; and in 1944 he and his into daily contact with the Führer, Germany in a global war, let alone self-confidence.” In the aftermath of staff worked daily with the SS to who was taken with his youthful any ethical examination of the meth- Hiroshima and Auschwitz, the con- select slave labor from the hundreds energy and charisma. His design for ods that were used. The armaments junction of technology and power of thousands of Hungarian Jews the enormous party rally ground at miracle became an end in itself. had become an obsessive theme of arriving on the ramp at Auschwitz. In Nuremberg and the commission for Seeking to reconcile what she wit- cultural commentary, one that 1995, Gitta Sereny devoted a labori- the pompous new Reich Chancellery nessed at the Eichmann trial in offered Speer two advantages. It put ous but fascinating book to unpicking cemented Speer’s place at Hitler’s Jerusalem in 1961 with her theory of Allied strategic bombing alongside Speer’s struggle with the truth, side. In January 1937, Speer and his the modern human condition, him in the dock while distracting including his efforts to deny that he Führer began planning their magnum Hannah Arendt coined the controver- attention from more specific ques- was present on October 6, 1943, in opus, the reconstruction of Berlin as sial phrase “the banality of evil” to tions about his personal responsibili- Posen when Himmler initiated the Germania, the capital of a new capture the thoughtlessness and ty for the deportation of tens of thou- assembled Gauleiter into the horrific German Empire. It was to feature a incoherence of the Nazi personality. sands of Jews from Berlin and the secrets of the extermination pro- triumphal monument more than 300 According to Arendt’s archive, murderous exploitation of concentra- gram. In the past 15 years a cohort of feet high, large enough to straddle Speer’s newly released Spandau tion camp labor. economic historians have dismantled Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe, and a diary was one of the last books that Paradoxically, while muddying the the foundation of the Speer myth, Great Hall 16 times the size of St. she read before her death in question of personal responsibility, showing how the “armaments mira- Peter’s in Rome, designed to accom- December 1975. Would she have Speer succeeded in crafting an cle” was in fact an ordinary industrial modate 180,000 delegates. seen Speer as a more telling image of himself as the indispensa- process gorged on the violent mobi- Speer’s plans for Berlin provided instance of Nazi banality than ble mastermind of the Nazi war lization of labor, raw materials and for not just the official apparatus of Eichmann, one wonders? Or was economy. Under his command from capital from all over Europe and the Third Reich. He also made sure Speer an example of something even February 1942, production of tanks wrapped in the magic cape of to designate luxurious new office more troubling, a leading perpetrator and fighter aircraft soared, and path- Goebbels’s propaganda. space for Germany’s corporations, endowed, unlike Eichmann, with the breaking technical innovations such Martin Kitchen’s Speer: Hitler’s including the electrical engineering ability to interpret his behavior in as the V2 rocket poured off Nazi Architect does a workmanlike job of giant AEG and the chemicals super- terms of larger social and technical assembly lines. In 1945, before he converting this revisionist historiog- conglomerate IG Farben. Dynamic forces, a disturbingly persuasive was indicted, he seriously imagined raphy into biographical form. The technocrats who worked the angles “thought leader” who helped to playing a leading role in postwar result is a devastating portrait of an between business, the Nazi Party shape the myths of industrial and reconstruction, even styling himself empty, narcissistic and compulsively and the state apparatus were key fig- technological modernity — myths as a pioneer of European integration ambitious personality. As Mr. Kitchen ures in Hitler’s regime. Fritz Todt, the that both rationalized his own role for having promoted the outsourcing chronicles Speer’s acquisitive rise to engineer-architect of the Autobahn, and saved him from the hangman’s of production to his collaborator power and his compulsive self-fash- established himself as an indispen- noose? January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 HE ESCAPED DEATH AT THE HANDS OF THE NAZIS GRANDSON OF INFAMOUS NAZI ... AND BRITISH BOMBERS SPENDS LIFETIME (Continued from page 6) them on the floor, like a seat or a sands of concentration camp sur- though many of his close calls with bench, and you slept on them,” he vivors were on board, struck, bomb- MAKING AMENDS... death awaited. said. ing the Cap Arcona and two other The cold wasn’t the only threat. prison ships, leaving them burning (Continued from page 5) THE KILLER OF AUSCHWITZ “You know what the worst thing and sinking. left for work in Sweden, I read the he next stop for Bawnik was was? You couldn’t even get any snow Once again, Bawnik was in a fortu- whole book. This was the first time T Fürstengrube, only 19 miles to melt in your mouth. We didn’t have nate position. He was on the deck, that I read about what my grandfather from Auschwitz, where two lucky any water.” away from the direction where the did at Auschwitz. I was overcome with breaks again saved him. Yet on that same death trip, Bawnik wind was blowing. an intense mixture of shame, anger When Bawnik and the other prison- also saw the best in mankind. It was “After about two hours, we see the and sadness.” ers arrived, commandant Otto Moll at a railroad station in floor of the deck is starting to smoke, He never suspected anything before greeted them. Moll already had a rep- Czechoslovakia. People living in so we thought this was the end,” he then? “I knew they were hiding some- utation as the “killer of Auschwitz,” nearby apartment buildings threw said. thing from me, and I saw how my running that camp’s crematorium. bread and cake to the prisoners. Then the ship started turning onto father reacted when I asked him Bawnik remembered part of Moll’s “It was unbelievable that there were its side. Bawnik couldn’t swim, so questions, but to discover that your speech to the prisoners: “You’ll work still human beings who would do after taking off his clothes, he ran to grandfather was the commandant of hard, we’ll feed you well, but let’s do that,” he said. “We didn’t have any the high side of the ship to grab a Auschwitz, that your father grew up a little exercise.” faith in humanity. It was the rope. Somehow, the vessel stopped breathing in the smoke from the cre- Just then, someone from the Germans. They weren’t human.” sinking, with about six feet of the ship matoria, I never expected anything kitchen asked whether anyone in the still sticking out of the water. like that. The very next day, I packed HEADING OUT TO SEA group was a gardener. But that didn’t last long. With the a few things and left home. I went to “I raised my hand and said yes. I fter a weeklong stay at the water quickly getting closer, Bawnik live at a boarding school where I stud- was taken to the garden, and 15 peo- A Dora-Mittelbau camp, the knew he soon would be joining the ied culinary arts. But I was just a kid ple were beaten to death while doing death march to avoid the approach- others in a cold, miserable death. with no framework and no family, so their exercises.” ing Allied liberators continued, before “Because it was so cold, I knew I of course I soon got into drugs and Bawnik was ticketed for the coal a more compassionate SS officer and was going to let go pretty soon,” he alcohol.” When Rainer was just 16, he mine at Fürstengrube. But his second camp commander (“He didn’t kill any- said. “I thought I had no chance at all. got his girlfriend pregnant, but when cousin was an amateur boxer who body that we saw”) took Bawnik and It was just a matter of minutes.” he turned 18 he married her and man- became a kapo, a prisoner who got other prisoners to his family’s Once again, fate, or the gods, or aged to create a normative and warm just luck intervened. family with her. “I wanted so badly to “All of a sudden, I looked up and form a new family, to disconnect from saw a good friend of mine from the my family’s gene pool,” Rainer says. camps, Peter Abramowitz. When he Did your children ever ask about your saw me hanging from the ship, he grandfather, about their aunts and said, ‘Henry, Henry, I’ll help you up.’ ” uncles? “I told them the truth from a And so he did. pretty young age. I also told them they As tugboats came to rescue the were welcome to contact my relatives survivors, Bawnik thought he was whenever they wanted, but they didn’t. headed to a new camp. ‘We’re with you,’ they told me.” “What concentration camp are we “It’s interesting that concealment going to now?” Bawnik asked the tug was very common among the second captain. and third generation on both sides,” “There are no more concentration says Don Sperling, the moderator of camps for you,” the captain replied. the panel we were on. “The English are in town.” “In my house, no one hid the truth, The war in northern Germany they just downplayed the horrors,” I ended the next day. respond, kind of shocked by the com- parison of the two sides. But then THE AFTERMATH again, the truth is that on both sides there were black holes of silence and Holocaust survivor Henry Bawnik and his wife, Linda, have been married for 66 years. awnik eventually made his way Bto America, where he met his secrecy. extra privileges for doing minor German estate. Then, on the night of future wife, Linda Gordon, in After his parents divorced, Rainer administrative work. The cousin May 2, they were awakened and Hartford. They have been married 66 began investigating his grandfather’s recruited Bawnik to become a brick- marched 13 miles to Neustadt. years. exploits. layer, not a coal miner. That brought “We thought we were going on a They moved to Buffalo in 1959 and “My mother went through a pretty extra privileges, like going on night boat, to Denmark,” Bawnik said. have three daughters, seven grand- difficult time herself. I would sit with patrols with a German soldier and He was half right. children and two great-grandchildren. her for hours and make recordings of having more access to stealing a Instead, they boarded the Cap Bawnik worked as a dry-cleaning her talking about her life. She would piece of bread or a bowl of soup. Arcona, a 225-yard-long former owner and operator, but his story also cry a lot, and say over and over “Because you were a professional, German luxury liner, sitting idle about went untold for decades, other than again how sorry she was. She herself a bricklayer, you were treated well. two miles offshore in the Bay of an article that his grandson, Jeremy didn’t know anything about my grand- You weren’t beaten to death. If I had- Lubeck. So massive and impressive Elias, wrote for the Jerusalem Post. father until 1963, when the Frankfurt n’t been a bricklayer, I wouldn’t have was this ship that it once was used to In the article, Elias recounted how Auschwitz trials began [which the survived. I would have starved.” portray the Titanic in a 1942 German his grandfather faced death as the movie Labyrinth of Lies was based propaganda film. Cap Arcona was sinking. on — T.B.] Following the trial, an arti- TRAIN TO GERMANY Prisoners boarded in reverse alpha- “Fighting for each day for the last cle titled The Gas Man from is next close call came aboard betical order, and when Bawnik’s turn five years, it would all end in a minute Auschwitz was published, alongside a Ha German transport train, in came, the ship was full. The captain or two,” he wrote. “The exhaustion picture of the entire Höss family. My January 1945. said there was no room, but the SS would be over. The struggle would mother ran home and asked my The trains, which typically trans- officer insisted that Bawnik board. So finally end.” father if that was really them. ‘Yes,’ he ported cows or horses, had no seats, he went up on deck. Most of the pris- He still wrestles with what hap- told her. ‘Do you have a problem with and each car carried some 100 to oners, thousands, were packed tight pened to him and millions of others, that?’” 150 prisoners. They traveled 10 days in the ship’s hull, out of sight. including the sinking of the Cap Rainer began digging through all of in the middle of winter in subzero Bawnik was on board for only Arcona. Several historical sites have his family’s documents, and then temperatures, and the cattle cars hours. reported that the British government afterwards in archives in Germany were open. Not everyone survived. In midafternoon of May 3, 1945, the sealed the Cap Arcona records for and Russia. “When somebody died, you put British bombers, unaware that thou- 100 years, to be opened in 2045. (Continued on page 15) Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 DACHAU IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 4) and, as mentioned above, a large a local girl sometimes played out, And yet one of the author’s most appearance of the SS guards in the body of previous historical investiga- under dramatically altered terms and perceptive insights is how little the prisoners’ barracks before dawn, the tion. often with violent endings, in the con- Jewish populations of Dachau, singling out of the eventual victims for n her effort to “reconstruct the real- fines of the camp. For the last page — Osthofen, Breitenau, Oranienburg punitive work and their removal from Iity of the imprisonment of Jewish indeed, her last sentence — and the other prewar camps felt they the grounds immediately prior to their inmates,” Wünschmann is also mind- Wünschmann saves her most arrest- had in common with one another — deaths, all in the wake of ful that some of the most extensive ing statistical insight of all, which is until their arrival at such places, their Erspenmüller’s dark vow of impend- and seemingly reliable sources, such the fact that “most of the Jewish pris- immediate segregation into “Jew ing murder — strongly suggest that as survivor testimonies and memoirs, oners of the prewar period stayed companies” (barracks) and their tar- the killings were premeditated. Thus are freighted toward “unusual occur- alive and were able to escape Nazi geting for abuse. “Here in the camp did Dachau become, in the words of rences such as extreme manifesta- persecution.” they distinguish between prisoners German historian Jürgen Matthäus, tions of violence.” She cites the writ- A research fellow at the Hebrew and Jews,” observed the Buchenwald “the first institution in which the Nazi ings of Paul Martin Neurath, a Jewish University of Jerusalem, inmate Julius Meyer, wryly. “So, we slogan ‘Jews, perish!’ was officially sociologist who was imprisoned at Wünschmann devotes an entire are now officially the Jews.” put into action.” Dachau and Buchenwald, and who chapter to the experiences of Jewish It is not among the author’s principal Matthäus’s work may militate warned that a relentless focus on women in the prewar camps, and aims to weigh in on the great historio- against Wünschmann’s claim that the beatings and killings provides a “dis- occasionally delves into a kind of graphical debate of the last genera- lives of Jewish prisoners in places like torted” picture of the prisoner’s life, machismo psychology, virulent tion of Holocaust studies: the ques- Dachau prior to the outbreak of World which was instead dominated, he among the SS but hardly unknown to tion of what, at bottom, motivated the War II is “an under-researched topic.” said, by “the 120 loads of gravel and the prisoner populations, to explain mostly Christian citizens of Europe’s She asserts that in the vast literature the roll call and the construction of the various behaviors. Thankfully, this most culturally and technologically about the Final Solution, “Historians bed and other routine jobs.” approach stops short of the most advanced country, at a time of post- have rarely given Jews’ imprisonment Enlightenment modernity, to organize in the [prewar] concentration camps and participate in the innumerable more than a passing glance.” The cor- cruelties known as the Holocaust. pus of writings cited in the author’s Wünschmann does cite approvingly footnotes, including several hundred the work of Karl Schleunes, whose titles in German and English, sug- pioneering 1970 study The Twisted gests otherwise. And there is some- Road to Auschwitz stands as a foun- thing a bit strained about the terms dational text for “the functionalists” — Wünschmann sets forth to stake her that is, those who argue that the Final claim to scholarly uniqueness; until Solution, commenced in earnest after now, we are told: Germany launched its invasion of the o all-encompassing mono- Soviet Union, was not foreordained “Ngraph has brought together by the Nazis’ earlier oppression of the the wealth of empirical information Jews, nor even by Hitler’s worldview, unearthed by numerous local studies but emerged, rather, as the last in a of individual camp sites and an ana- series of policy experiments undertak- lytical approach that not only illumi- en in response to external events. nates the bigger picture of Jewish Inadvertently, however, camp imprisonment, but also embeds Wünschmann provides support for Survivors of Dachau, both young and old, cheer as the U.S. troops approach. it in the broader context of anti-Jewish the other school of thought — “the persecution before the war [emphasis More than just an aggregation of polarizing features of gender studies intentionalists,” exemplified by Daniel added].” violent anecdotes, Before Auschwitz and makes for some of this volume’s Jonah Goldhagen in his controversial There is also, in the book’s title, a uses statistical modeling and other most enlightening observations. 1996 best seller Hitler’s Willing violation of the very principle the tools of political science to establish, Again, she cites Neurath, who arrived Executioners — when she quotes author aptly insists we observe, as as best as can be accomplished in at Dachau in April 1938 and whose from an article that Hitler published in students of history, about considering these murky circumstances, such memoir provides a veritable taxono- March 1921. “Let us stop the Jews events in their own temporal context. basic data as fluctuating camp popu- my of the “honorable” and “shameful” from undermining our nation, if neces- Wünschmann skillfully brings to life lations, average inmate ages, geo- reactions a prisoner could exhibit in sary by keeping their germs safely in an entire universe of people, events graphic concentrations of inmate and the face of beatings by camp guards. concentration camps,” the future dic- and dynamics — a feat she manages guard origins, and so on. This kind of “If he cries and weeps, he is consid- tator wrote, adding: “In short, clean through precise attention to detail and research enables Wünschmann to tell ered a weakling,” Neurath wrote, our nation of all poison above and her maintenance of humanistic sensi- us that Jewish prisoners of the prewar adding that the expectations of other below.” Only a few years would pass tivity for the feelings, motivations and camps “were mostly of a mature age prisoners, reflecting their own back- before the publication of Mein Kampf perceptions of all relevant actors, the — in their thirties or older — when grounds and times, demanded that in 1925, in which Hitler lamented how killers included. These elements they arrived. . . . Almost one-third of the stricken should “remain silent and “millions” of German deaths on the deserve to be understood and framed them were over the age of forty.” By stolid, both before, during, and after front lines of World War I could have in terms that do not render them mere contrast, she cites the work of histori- the beating.” been prevented if “twelve or fifteen antecedents to more monstrous an Christopher Dillon in establishing hile the Nazis’ first deporta- thousand of these Hebrew corrupters atrocities. This the author accom- that the average age of the Dachau W tions to the camps focused as of the people had been held under plishes at all points — except on the SS guards declined, between 1933 much on “political” prisoners as on poison gas.” cover and title page. and 1939, from twenty-five to twenty. Jews — brutal roundups of To the early inhabitants of the By and large, though, students of “This means,” she writes, “that Jewish Communists, Bolsheviks, members of camps, a straight line to Auschwitz, or this dark chapter in twentieth-century prisoners, on average, were ten to fif- the labor movement, and journalists something like it, may have been dis- history should regard Before teen years older than the young men and lawyers who had bravely cernible within a few months of Auschwitz as an important and finely who guarded and abused them — a inveighed against Hitler and the Hitler’s assumption of power. Kasimir written contribution to the literature on fact not unimportant to bear in mind brownshirts — Wünschmann demon- Dittenheber, an inmate at Dachau Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. when analyzing their conflicting rela- strates authoritatively that the Jews who heard with his own ears the shots While repeatedly taking pains to note tions.” existed at the bottom of the prisoner that killed Rudolf Benario, Ernst the fragmentary nature of the eviden- Wünschmann also describes how hierarchy, suffering most acutely as Goldmann, and Arthur and Erwin tiary record, Wünschmann synthe- some camps, by virtue of their rural outcasts among outcasts. “From the Kahn, later wrote that the four had sizes from an enormous array of location — Osthofen, for example — beginning,” she writes, “Jews in the been “defenseless” and “selected” for available sources: camp administra- were more likely to see guards and early concentration camps were their fate, even though none had tion files, SS records, newspaper prisoners originating from the same exposed to an extreme degree of vio- shown any intention of escape. “Now reports, prisoners’ mail and memoirs, towns, with the predictable conse- lence, manifested most strikingly in a we knew it,” Dittenheber would write, contemporaneous and postwar judi- quence that lingering disputes about stark overrepresentation of Jews “and we knew that this murder would cial proceedings, survivor testimony land, cattle prices or the affections of among the deaths.” be followed by others.” January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 GRANDSON OF INFAMOUS NAZI SPENDS LIFETIME MAKING AMENDS FOR NAMESAKE’S ATROCITIES (Continued from page 13) Hodys disappeared overnight, so it’s In Israel, rumors began circulating found that the children of survivors He even located Holocaust survivors possible that somewhere out there that he was interested in selling are more belligerent towards me. who worked in the Höss villa at is another one of Rudolf Höss’s chil- items in the archive. “But that’s just You yourself told me that your moth- Auschwitz, including his grandfa- dren. Hodys died in 1964.” not true. I handed everything over to er is the one who persuaded you to ther’s barber: Josef Paczynski, who With help from the Institute of the IFZ, on condition that they be meet me,” Rainer says to me. wasn’t even a barber by profession, Contemporary History (IFZ), Rainer used for research purposes only. I did begin to wonder how the but a metal worker. succeeded in finding Hodys’s estate, The IFZ is currently preparing a trav- entire time we’d been talking, I was “One day, they got rid of my grand- which was located in a storage room eling exhibition with these docu- the one asking questions, whereas father’s regular barber, an SS offi- of the executor of her will in Vienna. ments called ‘The documents of the Rainer had never asked me any- cer, and were looking for someone “Inside a box, we found gloves with Auschwitz commandant.’” thing about what had happened to to volunteer to replace him, and so my grandfather’s initials on them, Gradually, Höss abandoned all my mother. Paczynski volunteered out of a uniforms and a ring with his initials other activities. He sold his catering “Over the years, I’ve learned that desire for self-preservation. on it that was made of gold taken business and now devotes all of his some people view my questioning time and money to Holocaust and as an invasion of their privacy. Some tolerance education. people have responded by telling “The current situation in Europe me, ‘Why would you be interested in highlights the lessons of the what happened to my parents at Holocaust. In Germany alone, there Auschwitz? Your grandfather didn’t are 360,000 active Nazis. In all of seem to care.’ So now, I let people Europe, there are more than 2.6 mil- tell me their story if and when they lion Nazis,” Rainer says. He works feel comfortable doing so.” alone (“I can’t trust anyone”) and is h, yes, and one more thing. careful not to take personal dona- OThe panel was a huge suc- tions, “since that would just generate cess. One thousand two hundred gossip. All donations go directly people filled the auditorium, and toward projects.” many more tuned in to listen to the bout a year ago, Rainer joined broadcast live on the Internet. A Ben Lesser, an American Apparently, the discussion taking businessman who survived the place between the daughter of a Holocaust and founded an organiza- Czech woman who survived tion called Zachor. Together they Auschwitz and the grandson of the are working on a project called Six notorious Rudolf Höss interested Million Screams. “People ask me many people, although it was quite how I can be friends with someone clear to me that Höss was the main whose grandfather murdered my attraction. Rainer Höss and Tal Bashan visit a candlelight vigil in Brno. “Every day for two years, he would from the teeth of Jewish prisoners. come to the villa and give my grand- My daughter, who’s a dentist, helped father a shave and a trim. For two me investigate this. years, Höss didn’t exchange even “It turns out there were 153 grams one word with Paczynski, but when of gold in the ring. If you consider he would leave, he would be given that the average person had another helping of food, which between one and five grams’ worth helped Paczynski and his friends of gold fillings in their mouth, quite a survive.” lot of Jews died to make that ring.” ainer spent hours and hours ver the years, Rainer become Rlooking through archival infor- Omore and more obsessed with mation, and this is how he found out his family’s personal connection to about his grandfather’s mistress, the Holocaust, and his marriage suf- Eleanore Hodys, who was probably fered as a result. not Jewish, and was impregnated “We used to go to Bavaria every twice by the commandant. year for vacation. I would tell my fam- Dr. Glauberg, a Nazi doctor who ily that I was going out for a bike ride, experimented on Jewish women in but really I would take a taxi to the the camps, carried out the first abor- central archive and spend hours tion. “When my grandmother found there,” Rainer says with a smile. “One out about the affair, she called time, my oldest daughter followed me, Rudolf Höss shortly before his trial. Himmler and told him to deal with it since she suspected I was meeting a straight away. At the time, my grand- lover. I love researching and figuring family,” Lesser writes. “The answer After all, there are many, many father had been in the hospital, hav- out how all the puzzle pieces fit is simple — you can’t control the children of Holocaust survivors, but ing just been in an accident. together to form a big picture. Over reality you were born into, but you not so many grandchildren of senior “They put Hodys in solitary con- time, I discovered that my grandfather can choose which reality you want Nazi officials who want to atone for finement, preparatory to being taken did not operate in a vacuum. to live in. the atrocities performed by their to the gas chambers, but then my “He had many contacts in a num- “I see before me a strong, coura- grandfathers. grandfather suddenly came back ber of different camps, like geous and caring man who is trying “Have you two known each other for and ordered her brought back.” Mauthausen and Buchenwald. to make amends for what his grand- a long time?” the reporter from the When Hodys once again got preg- Auschwitz was actually much more father did.” Czech radio station who interviewed nant, she was sent to the complex than most people know. Rainer wears a Star of David neck- us after the event asked me. “You Ravensbrück concentration camp. There was one main camp, but there lace around his neck that he look like old friends.” We looked at “Somehow she managed to escape was also IG Farben, a chemical fac- received from a Holocaust survivor. each other, and couldn’t help but to Vienna. tory, and a sub-camp called Buna.” He does not hide how proud he is to burst out laughing. “So I guess there’s “I managed to locate a man who At one point, Rainer received the have relationships with Auschwitz a place for humor in all of this,” the was her neighbor in Vienna, who rights to his grandfather’s archive, survivors. “Somehow, I manage to reporter continued. “Of course there corroborated that she did indeed which consisted mostly of docu- connect with them well. They carry is,” we replied. “Black humor. We’re arrive pregnant. After she gave birth, ments and photographs. with them such wisdom. I have just getting ready for our joint tour.” American & International Societies for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE U.S. POST 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO. 9313

Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org Society Editor (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for New York, NY 10110 NY York, New Ron B. Meier, Ph.D., Ron B. Meier, EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL *Published Bimonthly by the American by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased January/February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776 January/February Money she earned working as “My friends tell me how differ- works) “Giving up (Koscielniak’s Nomura has now owned the care of them anyway. a family court mediator helped but the works, her maintain managing them turned out to be very costly. ent my life would have (been) if I hadn’t spent all my time and care of the money on taking works,” she said, recalling that stor- of renting suitable the costs age facilities exceeded the rent on her home. is like losing a son who cost me a throughout all these lot of effort years,” she said with sadness. works for two decades. During that time, she has organized exhibitions and lectures to about the spread understanding Using art materials supplied for his Using art materials The drawings, smuggled out of the Also in the collection are sketches of — Nomura thought Japan Initially, She has also written about and “I’ve felt obliged to speak on behalf Although she will return the artworks She says many young Japanese Poles, paint portraits of SS officers portraits Poles, paint and design posters. secretly document- work, Koscielniak ed the reality of the camp — slave torture and death. labor, camp with help from underground organizations, depict prisoners tor- one Some portray tured by SS troops. contemporaries at the of the artist’s a camp, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, priest inmate who volunteered his life in place of a stranger’s. Army General Dwight U.S. Eisenhower and General George Koscielniak Patton, whose troops joined upon liberation. and her home — “might not be the right place” for storing works of such a high historical value, but she decided to take victims. Holocaust’s exhibited the works of Komski, a sur- who vivor of five concentration camps the war settled in the United after Until their deaths she main- States. with a correspondence tained widows. and Koscielniak’s Komski’s of those who are not able to do so,” she said. to Poland, Nomura plans to continue conveying the horrors of war to the younger generation. know little about the Holocaust. 212-220-4304 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE year later she managed to bor- row several drawings from “I thought the victims themselves Auschwitz the Nomura contacted widow, Urszula, Koscielniak’s arrested Koscielniak The Gestapo A In 1993, when Nomura was working She said the drawings depict the “I wanted to share that with people bequest to ASYV, please contact Jonathan Gudema at please contact ASYV, bequest to must have left something to docu- must have left ment their lives,” she said. museum and was introduced to works Among them were by five survivors. — Jan Komski and two Polish artists Koscielniak, who died in 1993. to present Nomura with 19 of offered his drawings. he did, in 1941 for a political painting Auschwitz. But and he was sent to he was assigned owing to his talent, work useful to the Nazis: He would confiscated from evaluate paintings Prague, and exhibited them nation- wide. She still has replicas of the images for display. on a book to commemorate the 50th of anniversary of the liberation Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was perus- in ing stocks of photos at museums Israel and Germany depicting Jews felt dis- and transported to the camps, by the appointed that “all were taken perpetrators.” locked up in small cells, their heads locked up in small were colorful and full shaved. But others a circus, playground, of memories from homes. school or children’s both during and before lives, victims’ the war. she said. from Japan,” helps keep the memory of the Six Million alive... keep the memory of the Six Million helps For more information, or for help with proper wording for the Please remember us in your trust, will, estate plan or with the Please remember us in your trust, will, estate planned gift. It’s your legacy... to your family, and your people. and to your family, your legacy... It’s planned gift. A bequest to the American Society for Yad Vashem Yad American Society for bequest to the A “The Dying Father Kolbe,” a watercolor by Mieczyslaw Kolbe,” a watercolor “The Dying Father Koscielniak, portrays Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe, who gave inmate to die of starvation his life when Nazi officers picked another as a form of collective punishment. Nomura is HOLOCAUST ART HOLOCAUST COLLECTOR in Poland.

riter Michiko Nomura was riter Michiko Nomura bursting with anger at what Oswiecim

Some drawings showed children So when she visited a tiny museum in Born in 1937, Nomura, too, experi- She plans to donate the “At this age, it’s become hard “At this age, it’s As 70 years have now passed Artwork of the prisoners, Since then, Nomura has fought to W their was to realize “Most painful Human hair, shoes and prosthetic Human hair, SEEKS TO REPATRIATE WORKS TO POLAND WORKS TO REPATRIATE TO SEEKS forced into slave labor, sick and starved, forced into slave labor, Prague in 1989, a dozen drawings in They were caught her eye. particular done by children interned in a concen- tration camp in Czechoslovakia before the youngsters were sent to camps Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s such as largest concentration camp, where most of them perished. enced war. When she was an ele- enced war. school child, she and her mentary family lost their home in the firebomb- in 1945. Tokyo ing of works to the Auschwitz- works to the Museum, a Birkenau State memorial and museum co- founded by Koscielniak in what is now for me to take care of these for me to take about time.” pieces. It’s considering returning the art- works to Poland. Her advanc- ing age, she said, is also a factor. since World War II, War since World telling of their lives, struggles the sole and hopes, represents remaining evidence of the Holocaust, she believes. memorialize the victims in a way that people her relate their story to the lets She acquired 19 paintings of Japan. and drawings by Mieczyslaw Koscielniak, a Polish survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, and uses them and other artworks to spread understand- ing of what happened. names would forever remain of (unknown),” Nomura, 78, recalled million peo- Around 11 the 1989 visit. ple died in the Holocaust. limbs taken from victims at Nazi con- from victims at Nazi limbs taken as were displayed centration camps belongings.” “victims’ BY MAGDALENA OSUMI, MAGDALENA BY TIMES THE JAPAN to she saw during her first visit Holocaust memorials in Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1989. Page 16