AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 41-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2015-Shevat/Adar 5775 REMEMBERING HOLOCAUST VICTIMS On January 28, 2015, the United Nations held an event marking the tenth Visitors Lobby on January 28, 2015. United Nations Secretary-General anniversary of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Ban Ki-moon and the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, delivered Victims of the Holocaust, as well as the 70th Anniversary of the liberation remarks at the opening ceremony as well as statements by Ron Prosor, of Auschwitz-Birkenau, at the UN General Assembly. Avner Shalev, chair- permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations, and Leonard man of Yad Vashem, delivered the keynote address "Liberty, Life and the Wilf, chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem. Created with the Legacy of the Survivors," via video. Among those who offered remarks generous support of Cindy and Gerald Barad, the exhibition uses texts, were UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Israel's President Reuven Rivlin, images and video clips to recount a comprehensive history of the Holocaust survivor Yona Laks, and other dignitaries. Grammy award–win- Holocaust from 1933 to 1945. The event was held in cooperation with the ning violinist Miri Ben-Ari also performed. A new Yad Vashem traveling American Society for Yad Vashem and the Permanent Mission of Israel exhibition, "Shoah — How Was It Humanly Possible?" opened in the UN to the United Nations. he international community has gathered to establish the United T not yet found the antidote to the Nations, Mr. Ban continued. A deter- poison that led to genocide 70 years mination to uphold human dignity was ago, United Nations Secretary- written into the Organization’s found- General Ban Ki-moon said, marking ing Charter 70 years ago — and has the International Day of defined the UN’s work ever since. But Commemoration in Memory of the there is still a long way to go. The Victims of the Holocaust by calling struggle for justice and tolerance strongly for the world to work together faces widespread challenges. to stamp out all forms of bigotry, “Anti-Semitism remains a violent hatred and extremism. reality; Jews continue to be killed “As we remember what was lost in solely because they are Jews. the past, and as we recognize the Extremism and dehumanization are perils of the present, we know what present across the world, exploited we must do — and we know we must through social media and abetted by do it together,” said Mr. Ban in open- sensationalist press coverage. The ing remarks to the UN General targets are as diverse as humankind Assembly’s annual commemoration itself,” the Secretary-General said. of the Day. In Europe and elsewhere, Muslims Joining the Secretary-General at the are under attack, the victims of bigotry event were, among other speakers, at the hands of political opportunists Reuven Rivlin, President of Israel, and ultra-nationalists. Vulnerable and Denis Antoine, Vice-President of populations everywhere bury their the General Assembly, as well as dead and live in fear of further vio- Holocaust survivors and World War II lence. veterans. Maher Nasser, the acting “I take heart from counter-demon- UN Under-Secretary-General for strations, rallies and interfaith dia- Public Information, presided over the logue. We must all remain on our event. The president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, delivers his speech at the UN. guard. We must uphold human rights, The International Day of coincides with two milestone events: the infamous selections were made; democratic freedoms and our respon- Commemoration in Memory of the the 70th anniversary of the Second the barracks that held Jews, Roma, sibility to protect people at risk. And Victims of the Holocaust is marked World War’s end and the founding of Sinti, non-Jewish Poles, Soviet pris- we must respond to terrorism and every year on 27 January, the date on the UN. oners of war, dissidents, disabled per- provocation in ways that resolve — which Auschwitz-Birkenau was liber- Recalling his visit to the Auschwitz- sons and homosexuals; and finally instead of multiply — the problem,” he ated in 1945. This year’s observance, Birkenau camp in November 2013, the ovens where human beings were underscored. on the theme “Liberty, Life and the Mr. Ban said: “I saw the full machinery turned to ashes. n his address, Reuven Rivlin, Legacy of the Holocaust Survivors,” of murder: the railway platform where was especially moved by the Ipresident of Israel, recalled the “Idisplays of photographs and “brutal,” “perverted” extermination of films of European Jewish life before Jews during the Holocaust “in the IN THIS ISSUE tyranny took hold — family meals, most horrifying crime ever committed in the history of the human race.” The Remembering Holocaust victims...... 2-3, 14 weddings and other rituals, perform- United Nations rose on the ruins of Saving children: Diary of a Buchenwald survivor and rescuer...... 4 ances by the singers and actors who the Second World War, he said, The Swedes who told the world about the Holocaust...... 5 enlivened the cities in which they stressing that the International Day Diaries reveal Jewish suffering during Holocaust in Hungary...... 6 lived. We can still feel the pain of all was not just a gesture because the Hitler’s henchmen in Arabia...... 7 that was lost and destroyed in a fren- pledge “Never again” was “the very Photohighlights from the Holocaust Remembrance event at UN...... 8-9 zy of cruelty,” the Secretary-General essence of the UN,” and the principle “Do not lose hope”...... 10 added. and primary reason for its existence. The Jew who got a job offer from the Nazis...... 11 The images of emaciated camp sur- However, since the UN was found- Nazi diary depicts brutal tactics employed against Lodz Jews...... 13 vivors and piles of dead bodies were (Continued on page 2) Films shine new light on darkness of Holocaust...... 16 prominent in the minds of those who Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 REMEMBERING HOLOCAUST VICTIMS (Continued from page 1) entered Hamburg, the children were we did not turn into wild animals, hun- that is not true. ed, more nations and communities brought to a school building where gering only for revenge. This is a tes- “The Nazis sought to totally destroy had been slaughtered. “We must ask they were injected with morphine, and tament to the principles we possess the Jewish people and to impose a ourselves honestly: is our struggle — then hung to death on hooks set in as a people imbued with enduring ruthless totalitarian regime. This was the struggle of the General Assembly the wall. faith in both man and Providence. We conceived by highly educated indi- against genocide — effective “Nazi Germany and its collaborators chose life. viduals and implemented by a tech- enough?” he said. “Are we shedding had murdered one-third of the Jewish “During the first decades following nologically advanced German socie- too many tears and taking too little people. The extermination of six mil- the Holocaust, many of its survivors ty. action?” lion Jews in Europe was motivated expressed concern that it would fade “The deadly mentality that the Mr. Rivlin noted that the Convention and driven by a murderous, racist from the world's consciousness. They Nazis expressed and executed is not on Genocide was now 64 years old anti-Semitic ideology — that viewed feared that it would remain recorded likely to return in its exact historical but remained a merely “symbolic doc- all Jews, everywhere in the world, as only in history books. But it didn't. form of the 1930s and -40s. But as ument” that had not realized its objec- a lethal danger to the German nation “My mentor, Professor Yisrael Auschwitz survivor, author Primo tives. The international community and to Germany's new world order. Gutman, himself a Holocaust sur- Levi, cautioned: It happened. had a duty to lay down the red lines “So every last Jew, everywhere, had vivor, said: ‘The Shoah refuses to Therefore, it can happen again. defining genocide and to make clear to be destroyed, at any cost. become history.’ owadays, destructive evil, that crossing those lines must mean “Recalling the horrible scope and “In the decades since spring 1945, “Nincluding vicious anti- intervention. Humanitarian and moral nature of that genocide is the core of large portions of humanity have come Semitism, reappears in different con- considerations had to take prece- Holocaust remembrance, but remem- gradually to perceive the Holocaust texts and ideologies. These ideologies dence over economic, political or brance extends deeper and further. as a pivotal landmark event for mod- deny human rights and dignity in other other interests in the fight against hen the War ended, much ern civilization. dangerous ways and circumstances. genocide. “W of the world rejoiced in the “Even regions and cultures not orig- “Confronted by this reality, I ask: “Nations cannot be saved and How can we ensure that moral must not be saved as an after- values will still be as essential thought or from considerations to our lives as technology of cost-benefit,” Mr. Rivlin said. advances? “Unless the moral fire burns “With this question, I have within us, the lessons of the come to this General Holocaust will never be learned.” Assembly, a venue usually The General Assembly must associated with statesmen and act as a determined and unified politicians. international community or else “I am an educator and a risk leaving the “Never again” teacher of other educators. It is oath hollow and defiled. as a Holocaust educator, that I “We must remain silent no accepted the UN's gracious longer. We must rise up and take invitation to address you today, action,” he said. on this tenth anniversary of the vner Shalev, chairman of International Day of AYad Vashem, in his Commemoration for the keynote address delivered via Victims of the Holocaust. video, said: Together with partners and “On November 28, 1944, dur- associates worldwide, Yad ing the last months of the opera- Vashem teaches Holocaust tion of the Auschwitz-Birkenau educators — thousands yearly, extermination camp, twenty from dozens of nations, to Participants of the UN General Assembly session dedicated to Holocaust commemoration and the 70th Anniversary of Jewish children — ten boys and the liberation of Auschwitz listen to the video keynote address delivered by chairman of Yad Vashem Avner Shalev. draw contemporary insights ten girls, ages six to twelve — from the annals of the Shoah. were chosen by the notorious Nazi Allied victory. But the Jews who sur- inally related to the events of the “They learn that in addition to its doctor, Josef Mengele, Rivka, vived — could not rejoice. Mourning Holocaust find it compelling and immense atrocity, the Holocaust was Edward, Mania, Roman and sister for their families and communities, meaningful. also the context for a dramatic strug- Eleonora, brothers Edward and scarred by their own horrible Shoah “But why? Why does the Shoah gle of the human spirit. Alexander, Jacqueline, Sergio, Leah, experiences, they could well have refuse to become history? Why does “The Jews fought to retain their and ten others, were sent by train to become desperate, bitter and venge- it remain so relevant to so many dif- humanity through countless acts of the Neuengamme concentration ful. And yet, remarkably, they did not. ferent people? solidarity, mutual assistance and camp near Hamburg, Germany. “In fact, the vast majority of the “Genocides and other terrible physical, cultural and spiritual resist- “Mengele was cooperating with the Holocaust survivors did the contrary: human atrocities occurred before the ance. request of his colleague, the SS They chose hope. The majority of the Shoah, and — to our great sorrow — “The Righteous Among the physician Dr. Kurt Heissmeyer, to survivors chose to strike new roots in since the Shoah. Nations, though relatively few in supply him with subjects for his pseu- their ancestral Land of Israel, my own “It is not the specific Jewish identity number, chose heroically to endan- do-scientific study of infectious dis- birthplace, where they joined a viable of the victims that provides the ger themselves while attempting to eases. and self-sufficient pre-Holocaust Holocaust with its universal implica- rescue Jews. “Upon arrival, the children were Jewish entity. tions. “These inspiring role models help infected with tuberculosis, and the ter- “In every place around the globe “Rather, I submit — that what res- educators teach about our responsi- rible effects of the disease upon them that the survivors reached, they onates so powerfully in our modern bility to act as a buttress against were studied for several months. As demonstrated their restored commit- and postmodern existence is the social hatred and violence. Dr. Heissmeyer testified twenty years ment to human freedom, and faith in shocking ease and speed with which “To identify racism, xenophobia later, at his trial, in East Germany: ‘I humanity. the Holocaust's perpetrators and their and persecution and to fight them — did not think that the children had full “Upon these values they rebuilt their ideology succeeded. openly and effectively. value as human beings…. For me own lives, and those of their new fam- “To this day, we struggle to under- “Of course, the responsibility for there was no basic difference ilies and communities. stand how Nazi Germany and its col- moral education rests not only upon between Jews and guinea pigs.’ “In 2002, hundreds of Shoah sur- laborators were able to implement teachers. “Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated vivors gathered at Yad Vashem, on their brutal and barbaric ideology. “Political, economic and social by the Red Army exactly seventy the Mount of Remembrance in “How could hundreds of years of leaders — like many of you in this years ago, but the murder continued Jerusalem, to participate in an inter- human progress yield such massive hall and those whom you represent, wherever the Nazis still held control. national conference devoted to the horror? must also assume responsibility for “In Neuengamme this meant the legacy of Holocaust survivors. “Modern society deludes itself that shaping moral norms and ethical murder of the twenty Jewish children. “They signed a joint ‘Survivors’ technological progress goes hand in standards. Eight days before the British army Declaration’ stating: After the Shoah, hand with moral advancement. Sadly, (Continued on page 3) January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 REMEMBERING HOLOCAUST VICTIMS (Continued from page 2) the U.N. and among the family of American Society for Yad Vashem. It gone, and what it means in a time of “Our world today is plagued with cruel nations. Your presence pays tribute to begins with Avner Shalev, chairman fresh outbreaks of religious and eth- conflicts for dominance and resources. all those who perished and all those of the Yad Vashem directorate and my nic animosities. “In the shadow of those conflicts, we who survived the Holocaust. Thank partner in Yad Vashem’s mission of “Today, in the name of truth, we can and must educate the next gener- you. Holocaust remembrance, education need to fight the attempts to relativize ation of citizens and leaders to “The attendance of our good friend, and documentation, who is the mov- the Shoah,” President Bronislaw choose to behave ethically and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, is also ing force behind Yad Vashem’s inspir- Komorowski of Poland said as he humanely. noteworthy and deeply appreciated. ing work. opened the ceremony, using another “To Primo Levy's warning, we add: “The opening of this new Yad “It was created by Yad Vashem’s term for the Holocaust. “The memory It did not have to happen then, and Vashem exhibition — ‘Shoah: How traveling exhibitions department, of Auschwitz means the memory of so — it does NOT have to happen Was It Humanly Possible?’ on this which is supported by our friends, Dr. the importance of freedom, justice, again. day and at this place is particularly Miri and Sheldon Adelson. Its out- tolerance and respect for human standing curator, Rinat Pavis, is with rights,” he added. us tonight. This newest exhibition Dozens of heads of state and other came to life through the generous prominent figures took part in the cer- support of Cindy and Gerald Barad in emony, including the presidents of memory of their father, Holocaust sur- France, Germany and Austria, vivor Ulo Barad, and his parents and François Hollande, Joachim Gauck four brothers who were murdered in and Heinz Fischer; the kings of the Shoah. Belgium and the Netherlands, “We also want to acknowledge our Philippe and Willem-Alexander; and close cooperation with the U.N.’s Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. Holocaust outreach program and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew repre- exhibitions committee (with special sented the United States, while thanks to officer-in-charge Kimberly Russia was represented by Sergei Mann and her outstanding team) and Ivanov, President Vladimir V. Putin’s with Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs chief of staff. and permanent mission to the U.N. for The anniversary takes place at a Leonard Wilf, chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, delivers his speech at the open- making today’s program possible.” time when reports of anti-Semitism ing of the exibition “Shoah: How Was It Humanly Possible?”. *** are increasing across Europe. One “My dear friends, from this podium, I meaningful and symbolic. It links Yad n Europe the main event dedicat- Jewish organization said in a recent call upon my fellow educators in every Vashem’s remarkable scholarship Ied to Holocaust commemoration report that the incidence of anti- corner of the world — to strive and and creative abilities as the world’s took place in Poland. More than 3,000 Semitic acts in France had doubled persevere in our constant battle for leading institution for Holocaust edu- human morality. cation, research and documentation “A battle which helps ensure that no with the American Society for Yad person will ever again be referred to, Vashem’s long-standing commitment as were the twenty Jewish children at to honor the 70-year legacy of the Neuengamme, as having ‘no value as Holocaust’s victims and survivors and human beings.’ with the United Nation’s groundbreak- “Holocaust survivor, philosopher ing 10-year commitment to meaning- Victor Frankel stated: ful Holocaust remembrance. “Everything can be taken from a “This exhibition is a powerful man, except the freedom to choose response to a very real need across one’s own way. the globe. Our children and grandchil- “For mankind, there is always a dren need to understand why they choice.” should learn about the Shoah and Leonard Wilf, chairman of the incorporate its lessons into their own American Society for Yad Vashem, in lives. The story of the Holocaust has his speech at the UN General to be told and retold, with sensitivity to Assembly session, talked about the the world of today…and tomorrow. importance and significance of “In an environment of increased Survivors and their families carry candles as they visit the Birkenau Memorial. Holocaust remembrance. social tensions and hatred — includ- guests, including Holocaust survivors over the past year. consider it a great privilege to ing anti-Semitism and racism — the and foreign dignitaries, gathered on “Jews are targeted in Europe once “Istand before you today on story of the Holocaust is both com- January 27 at a site marking one of again because they are Jews,” Ronald behalf of Yad Vashem and the pelling and constructive; but only if history’s biggest horrors, the S. Lauder, president of the World American Society for Yad Vashem on appropriate up-to-date tools are Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Jewish Congress and a major contrib- placed at the disposal of Poland, which were liberated by utor to the preservation of the museum educators, decision-mak- Soviet troops 70 years ago in the complex, said at the ceremony. ers and opinion-shapers. closing months of World War II. Mr. Lauder, 70, said the recent ter- It’s what Yad Vashem Because of the survivors’ advancing rorist attacks in Paris, including one at does every day in age, this year’s ceremony at the a kosher supermarket, had prompted Jerusalem, in worldwide Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum him to radically change the remarks teachers’ seminars, on the may be the last major anniversary cel- he intended to deliver. He called on Internet and social media, ebration to include more than a hand- the world leaders in the audience to and through the exhibition. ful of people who endured the Nazi adopt policies of zero tolerance “A compelling, well- camps here, where about 1.5 million toward hatred of any kind. “Unless designed and inspiring people lost their lives, most of them this is checked right now, it will be too Candles burn in front of a memorial plaque. exhibition — like this one — European Jews. Some 1,500 sur- late,” he said. the tenth anniversary of the United is a concrete means of opening vivors attended the 60th anniversary teven Spielberg, whose Nations initiative to establish this hearts and minds to Yad Vashem’s in 2005, but this year there were SHolocaust film Schindler’s List worldwide day of commemoration for message of morality, tolerance and fewer than 300 on hand. Most are in won seven Academy Awards, raised a the victims of the Holocaust in close the struggle against prejudice, a mes- their 90s, and some are older than similar warning in a short speech on partnership with the state of Israel. sage that it shares with the state of 100. the eve of the anniversary, saying that “The participation of Secretary- Israel and the United Nations. Their dwindling numbers prompted Jews were once again threatened by General Ban Ki-moon at today’s exhi- his exhibit is only one of many many at the ceremony to raise the “the perennial demons of intoler- bition opening reaffirms the signifi- “T examples of the strong part- question of how best to sustain mem- ance.” cance of Holocaust remembrance at nership between Yad Vashem and the ories of the horror when they are (Continued on page 14) Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS

SAVING CHILDREN: DIARY OF A BUCHENWALD SURVIVOR AND RESCUER Saving Children: Diary of a anymore . . . For, indeed, as we soon benign in its actions toward the no more. With that, Werber “fell into a Buchenwald Survivor and Rescuer. learn, such was very much the case townspeople and, especially, the deep depression” and felt he had By Jack Werber with William B. with Jack Werber. Jews. It wasn’t long, though, before nothing more to live for — until the Helmreich. Transaction Publishers: ho was Jack Werber? Born in SS men arrived to replace the sol- 700 children came to the camp. New Brunswick, N.J., 2014. 141 pp. W Radom, Poland, on diers, and, among their countless ow did that happen? Early on, $19.95 softcover. September 28, 1914, he was one of ruthless acts against the Radom pop- HWerber had joined the eight children — actually the ulace, they separated Werber from Buchenwald underground. Among REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN youngest. Middle class, he went to his family and shipped him off to other things, they looked out for number of years ago this cheder. Later, he went to a Jewish Weimar Germany . . . and the hell inmates at the camp as best they A reviewer had the pleasure of high school. He learned called Buchenwald. How could. Concomitantly, they did their reviewing for this paper a unique and to play violin. He became Werber — or rather, best to rid the camp of ruthless collab- fascinating book by Samuel and Pearl a member of Hashomer #7197, his prison number orators. Then in August of 1944 when Oliner, entitled The Altruistic Personality. Hatzair. This meant, in and identity at those 700 boys came to Buchenwald, In that book the authors’ goal was to his own words, that Buchenwald — would Werber found himself taking a leader- try to better understand why some “Together with my manage to survive five ship role, along with other Jews in the ordinary people (Jews and non-Jews friends, we dreamed and one-half years in underground, making it his job to make alike) put their lives at risk in order to about returning to our Buchenwald, is nothing sure these children survived. We learn save others during the war. Thus, the ancient and beloved less than a story of mira- how the children were taken care of Oliners interviewed many who did just homeland. Helping to cles! There was the freez- physically, hidden in work details and that, diligently searching for that cer- rebuild it became an ing cold, the gnawing throughout the camp. We learn how tain something, that common denom- obsession with us.” Soon hunger, the deadly work at food was secured for all the children. inator they all shared. The conclusion he met Rachel the Buchenwald quarry Moreover, the boys were taken care of they came to? The rescuers’ upbring- Weintraub, also a and on the railway lines. mentally and spiritually as well, with ing, the role-modeling their parents Zionist, and fell in love. They married But, more than anything else, there classes in history, Yiddish song, and provided them, just how they were in 1937. Then the dreamed-of oppor- was the frightening and heart-stop- Hebrew language — all of this done, of raised by them — to be empathetic, to tunity arose to make aliyah, emigrat- ping unpredictability of camp life that course, unbeknownst to the Nazis. care for every human life: that made ing to Palestine. But Werber and his made it so very easy to be killed by Among these boys would be the Nobel all the difference. wife didn’t. Why? His father’s great any Nazi overseer at Buchenwald, for prizewinner Elie Wiesel and Rabbi In conjunction with the above, in the sadness at the very thought of his any infraction . . . or none at all! Israel Meir Lau, later chief rabbi of the preface to the paperback edition of son’s leaving . . . The life-changing Of course, during all this time, State of Israel. Saving Children: Diary of a decision Werber made: He “post- Werber had absolutely no idea what Why did Werber take on this mis- Buchenwald Survivor and Rescuer by poned” his plans. In 1938 Werber was happening in Radom. Surely the sion after hearing of the tragedy that Jack Werber working with William B. became the father of a lovely little girl, thought that things weren’t that bad had befallen his dearest? He did it in Helmreich, to tell Werber’s wartime Emma. In the midst of all this he there strengthened him. Surely the the name of his own daughter. He did story, the aforementioned Helmreich opened a store, going into the same thought that one day he would be it so that these 700 would not suffer makes a very astute point, seldom if business his father was in, fur and reunited with his wife and child and her terrible fate! ever given due thought and consider- textiles. Needless to say, Werber had return to the life he once knew kept Interesting, how life-giving is life-giv- ation: In sum, perhaps there is even absolutely no idea that a war and a him going. But then he learned the ing for all involved in the act . . . the more to this act of “saving” another. Holocaust were coming that would worst from an inmate more recently rescued as well as the rescuer. Perhaps actually saving another also change everything . . . come to Buchenwald from his home- gives one (the rescuer) a very real On September 8, 1939, the German town. Just about his entire family, Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of reason to continue living when there army marched into Radom. At first including his wife and daughter, had Media, Communication, and Visual doesn’t seem to be much of a reason this regular army seemed rather been deported to Treblinka and were Arts at Pace University. BOOK PORTRAYS EICHMANN AS EVIL, BUT NOT BANAL Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The pher based in Hamburg, she was home. “I was totally shocked. I could bones,” Dr. Lipstadt said. “This was Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. interested in the nature of lies, and not believe this man was able to write not a guy who just happened to do a By Bettina Stangneth. Knopf set out around 2000 to write a study something like this.” dirty job, but someone who played a Doubleday Publishing Group: New of Eichmann, the Third Reich’s head Ms. Stangneth’s book cites that doc- crucial role and did it with wholeheart- York, 2014. 608 pp. $26.20 hardcover. of Jewish affairs, who was tried in ument and a mountain of others to ed commitment.” Israel in 1961, in light of offer what some scholars While Ms. Stangneth maintains that REVIEWED BY material that has say is the most definitive Arendt, who died in 1975, was fooled JENNIFER SCHUESSLER, emerged in recent case yet that Eichmann, by Eichmann’s performance on the THE NEW YORK TIMES decades. who was hanged in 1962, stand, she sees her less as a foil than ore than 50 years after its pub- Then, while reading wasn’t the order-following as an indispensable intellectual com- Mlication, Hannah Arendt’s through the voluminous functionary he claimed to panion. Eichmann in Jerusalem remains memoirs and other testi- be at his trial, but a fanat- “It wasn’t my plan to write a histori- enduringly controversial, racking up a mony Eichmann pro- ically dedicated National an’s book, just arguing against Arendt long list of critics who continue to pick duced while in hiding in Socialist. with historical facts,” Ms. Stangneth apart her depiction of the Nazi war Argentina after the war, If previous researchers said. “To understand someone like criminal Adolf Eichmann as an exem- Ms. Stangneth came have seriously dented Eichmann, you have to sit down and plar of “the banality of evil,” a blood- across a long note he Arendt’s case, Ms. think with him. And that’s a philoso- less, nearly mindless bureaucrat who wrote, dismissing the Stangneth “shatters” it, pher’s job.” “never realized what he was doing.” moral philosophy of said Deborah E. Lipstadt, Eichmann Before Jerusalem, based Bettina Stangneth, the author of Immanuel Kant, that a historian at Emory on research in more than 30 archives, Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The flew in the face of Arendt’s notion of University and the author of a 2011 certainly contains plenty of eye-open- Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer, Eichmann’s “inability to think.” book about the Eichmann trial. ing facts, including the revelation that published in an English translation by “I sat at my desk for three days, The facts about Eichmann in in 1956 Eichmann had drafted an Alfred A. Knopf, didn’t aim to join thinking about it,” Ms. Stangneth said Argentina have been dribbling out, open letter to the West German chan- those critics. An independent philoso- in a telephone interview from her “but she really puts flesh on the (Continued on page 13) January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 THE SWEDES WHO TOLD THE WORLD ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST who had risked their lives to tell the Swedish expatriates working for BY SARA MALM, MAILONLINE world about the Nazi persecution of corporations that would later Polish Jews. become Swedish Match and n June 9, 1942, a speech was News of atrocities committed by the mobile-phone giant Ericsson, broadcast on the BBC that O Nazi occupiers in Poland had reached were evacuated but later would change human history. the Allies before Sikorski’s speech, returned. Władysław Sikorski, Poland’s prime but never on this scale. orrman and the Swedes minister exiled in London, revealed Sikorski had even been advised by lived as comfortably as it that 700,000 Jews had been system- N a fellow Polish politician to “edit” the was possible in occupied atically murdered in brutal Nazi con- number of Jews murdered by the Warsaw; electrics, phone lines centration camps, quarantined and Nazis from 700,000 to 7,000, as the and matches were, after all, executed en masse in ghettos, and number was too shocking to be goods and services the walked to their deaths in gas cham- believed. Germans had use of. Most of bers. the time was spent living in a bunker in the Swedish embassy. Norrman, by then in his late 40s, spoke Polish and was well liked by his staff. Before the war, he had enjoyed hunts and collected Polish art, and had fallen in love with his secretary, a young Polish Jew named Gizela “Iza” Zbyszynska. Soon, Norrman and the others The documents Sven Norrman transported from Poland were witnessing increasing anti- to London via Sweden detailing the horror of the Nazi Semitic violence and oppres- concentration camps and the use of gas chambers were sion of the Polish Jews. translated into Swedish later in 1942, but banned by the Norrman was able to photo- then government so as to not upset Nazi Germany. graph the very first implementation of by the Polish resistance army, he and the others decided to take a stand. Sven Norrman, responsible for couriering the documents that would reveal the Nazi Holocaust and the law requiring Jews to wear a yel- slaughter of 700,000 Polish Jews out of Warsaw, pictured with his Polish-Jewish mistress Gizela low Star of David on their clothes, a Travel in and out of occupied “Iza” Zbyszynska in the years after the war. practice which began in Poland. Poland was heavily restricted, but the The information in Sikorski’s speech He was later able to lie his way into men from neutral Sweden could move This was the first time the world and would go down in history, but the man the ghetto in Warsaw and took thou- across the borders, and so became the Allied forces had heard of the who got it there, a Swedish business- sands of pictures of the horror within, the perfect couriers for Armia crimes of the Holocaust, a secret the man named Sven Norrman, was all before he was ushered out by a Krajowa – the Polish Home Army. Nazi leaders had been able to keep but forgotten. Jewish policeman for his own safety. The Warsaw Swedes had been told until then. Sven Norrman, born in 1892, was As the Nazis escalated their perse- by their employers in no uncertain The information, a dossier of photo- head of Swedish engineering compa- cution and harassment, friends and terms than nothing was to be done graphs and documents, had come to ny ASEA in Warsaw, Poland, when colleagues of the Warsaw Swedes that could anger the German occu- London from Poland via Stockholm, the Germans invaded in 1939. were jailed or simply disappeared, piers. thanks to a group of Swedish men Norrman and a group of fellow and when Norrman was approached (Continued on page 15) 1939 LETTER FOUND, PLEA TO FDR TO SAVE JEWISH KIDS “The man has an incredible amount urgency.” from the Department of State that BY EVIE SALOMON, CBS NEWS of chutzpah,” Langbart says in an he letter, dated May 16th, 1939, instructed the U.S. embassy in interview with 60 Minutes Overtime. “I addresses President Roosevelt London to “acknowledge receipt of ecently, 60 Minutes correspon- T thought this is an incredibly caring as “Esteemed Sir.” Mr. Winton’s letter” and “advise him dent Bob Simon told the R man who put himself on the line to “Perhaps people in America do not that the United States Government is remarkable story of Sir Nicholas help people that he didn’t even know.” realize how little is being and has unable, in the absence of specific leg- Winton, a stockbroker in London who After seeing the story, Langbart been done for refugee children in islation, to permit immigration in saved 669 Czech children — most of decided to look for evidence of Sir Czechoslovakia,” the letter reads. “Is excess of that provided for by existing them Jewish — from the Nazis during Nick’s letter to FDR in the Department it possible for anything to be done to immigration laws.” World War II. of State records at the National help us with this problem in The U.S. officially denied Winton’s England took in almost all of the 669 Archives. “And lo and behold, I came America?... It is hard to state our case request in a letter sent by the U.S. children. Winton, now 105 years old, up with his original letter to President forcibly in a letter, but we trust to your embassy in London. The original copy told 60 Minutes he had made a des- Roosevelt,” Langbart says. The imagination to realize how desperate- of that note, which Winton kept in his perate plea for help to the United whereabouts of the document had ly urgent the situation is.” personal scrapbook, appeared on the States back in 1939. He said he had been a mystery for almost 75 years. Also in the archives, Langbart 60 Minutes broadcast. written a letter to President Franklin Vanessa Fica, the story’s co-pro- uncovered a chain of internal govern- When asked for his reaction to the D. Roosevelt, describing the plight of ducer, says she got “goose bumps” ment communications about Winton’s U.S.’s response to Sir Nick’s plea, the Czech children and asking that when she learned of Langbart’s dis- letter. Langbart shared that he had roots in America grant refuge to a number of covery. According to Langbart, after the Eastern Europe and members of his them. “Winton scholars and even his own White House received Winton’s letter, family had perished in the Holocaust. “But the Americans wouldn’t take children were shocked when we told it referred the request to the “Personally, I wish that the United any, which was a pity,” Sir Nick said them the letter had been found,” Fica Department of State for action. States government could have done on the 60 Minutes broadcast. “We tells 60 Minutes Overtime. “I am Shortly thereafter, the Department of more,” Langbart says. “I’m not sure could’ve got a lot more out.” grateful that Winton will be able to see State forwarded the letter to the that anybody really recognized what David Langbart, an archivist at the his letter for the first time in 75 years.” President’s Advisory Committee on was coming as far as the Holocaust. National Archives and Records Winton’s “craft” is evident in the let- Political Refugees, suggesting that The United States opened its doors to Administration, happened to be ter he wrote to Roosevelt, says Fica: organizations involved might be inter- the extent that the law allowed at the watching 60 Minutes when the story “He kept it poignant and respectful ested in Winton’s cause. time. I wish it could have been more aired, and he was struck by Winton’s while conveying a real sense of Langbart also found another memo — but it wasn’t.” story. Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER

DIARIES REVEAL JEWISH SUFFERING DURING HOLOCAUST IN HUNGARY diaries, Madi’s is a rare account writ- Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their With his parents gone, and alone in BY MICHAEL E. RUANE, ten in English by a non-Jewish mem- allies, came relatively late to Hungary, his apartment, “Fredi” Lakos found THE GUARDIAN ber of a local gentry, the museum which was allied with Germany. But refuge with Madi, and a place in her said. It is blunt, harsh in parts, com- by the end of the war, more than n December 1941, when Hungary narrative. Madi, who had lived alone passionate, wistful, sarcastic. It tells 400,000 Hungarian Jews had been severed relations with the US fol- and was unaccustomed to children, I the story of an unusual woman, a murdered, many of them in the gas lowing America’s entry into the found “the poor little worm” exasper- British-educated, divorced Hungarian chambers at Auschwitz, historians Second World War, Maria Madi, a ating during the almost four months doctor in Budapest, started keeping a he spent cooped up in her apartment. diary for her daughter, who had just “I am never alone,” she wrote on 7 immigrated to Louisiana. January, 1945. “The child is all the Madi did not know if her daughter time talking, irritating, making noises would ever see her words. But she and trouble.” wrote anyhow. About the war. About Two weeks later, she wrote: “It is the Nazis. About the suffering of with the utmost self-control, I can tol- Jews. And about the two people she erate the boy here in my flat.” hid in her apartment, at times behind Yet she soothed him when gunfire a large mirror when visitors came to frightened him, and vowed to stay call. with him when he was in bed with By war’s end, Madi, who was not chicken pox, she wrote, and he came Jewish, had filled 16 notebooks in to be affectionate with her. handwritten English that serve as a The diary, which also contains snap- grim portrait of the Holocaust in shots of Madi’s dog, Joe; newspaper Hungary and of a defiant woman sick- Alfred Lakos, center, at age seven, is seen in 1944, flanked by his father, Laszlo, who was sent to a clippings; and comments about food ened by its cruelty. labor camp and survived the Holocaust, and his mother, Rosza, who was killed at Auschwitz. prices, the weather and politics, was “I am going to see, to hear, to wit- donated to the museum by Madi’s ness everything,” Madi wrote, adding doctor who held some negative views have said. grandson, Stephen Walton, of later, “it may happen of course that about Jews but risked her life to hide n Budapest, Madi, then in her mid- Amarillo, Texas. He said in a tele- neither myself nor my diary will ever a Jewish friend, Irene Lakos, and her I40s, watched in dismay as Jews phone interview that the notebooks reach you.” friend’s seven-year-old nephew. were humiliated, harassed and round- had been kept in plastic bags in a Now, Washington’s US Holocaust The nephew, Alfred Lakos, now 77, ed up to be sent to labor or concentra- family safe for 30 years. “Hardly ever Memorial Museum, which was given who lives in the US in Waleska, tion camps. Alfred Lakos’s father, looked at them,” he said. the diary last year, is preparing to post Georgia, said recently: “She was a Laszlo, for example, was sent to a After the war, Madi came to the it online in the coming months and hero, in my book.” His aunt survived, labor camp, from which he escaped, United States, bringing the diary, hopes eventually to have it fully tran- as well, and died in Italy in 1998, he and survived. His mother, Rosza, was which she later amended slightly in scribed. said. sent to Auschwitz, where she was pencil. She worked as a psychiatrist, Among the thousands of Holocaust The Holocaust, the slaughter of killed. (Continued on page 12) HOLOCAUST REFUGEES SET SAIL TO PALESTINE – ONLY FOR BRITISH TO SEND THEM BACK sengers, who came from all over Exodus’s passengers back to France, BY JULIAN GAVAGHAN, Europe, and members of the rather than Cyprus, where most of YAHOO NEWS Jewish militant group Haganah. the others were being detained. olocaust survivors set sail to During the clash, one crew But the French authorities said they HPalestine on board the SS member and two refugees died would only allow voluntary disem- Exodus in 1947 — only to be turned and two Royal Navy servicemen barkation, and the Jews resisted. back by the British and trigger global suffered fractured skulls. So, in a move that sparked wide- support for an Israeli state. The passengers, who had all spread outrage, the Jews were taken Around 4,500 people crammed on fled German and Austrian dis- to northern Germany, which had to the biggest-ever Jewish refugee placed persons camps where been occupied by British troops since vessel, which was later described as 850,000 Jews still languished in the end of World War II. the “ship that launched a nation,” at 1947, were then forcibly taken to Media coverage of their treatment Seté, France. Haifa. triggered a tidal wave of Western They were defying a ban on immi- Among them was a newborn support for a Jewish homeland in the gration to the then British-controlled baby, who would die three Middle East. and largely Arab-populated Holy weeks later after his own mother And Jews continued to illegally emi- Land, which is also cherished by had died in childbirth during the grate to Palestine. Muslims and Christians. voyage. Most of the 4,500 on board the The Zionist organization Hamossad British Pathé newsreel Exodus were eventually smuggled LeAliyah Bet — Hebrew for Institution Around 4,500 people crammed on to the biggest-ever Ashows British troops tak- into the U.S. occupation zone in for Immigration B — hoped it could Jewish refugee vessel in France. ing injured passengers off the Germany, where Americans turned a beat a Royal Navy blockade. refugee ship — was rammed by the boat while other illegal immigrants blind eye to fleeing Jews. But as they approached the coast of British destroyer HMS Cheviot. stand around in ragged clothes. In November 1947, the UN voted to Palestine on July 18, the Exodus Sailors then boarded the immigrant The British, hoping to stem the tide back partition of Palestine between 1947 — the biggest-ever Jewish vessel – but were challenged by pas- of immigration, deported the (Continued on page 12) January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 HITLER’S HENCHMEN IN ARABIA mooching around the streets of the Unlike Brunner, Remer was itiner- the relationship between the crescent GUY WALTERS, THE DAILY BEAST Syrian capital. In terms of gruesome ant, and spent much time in that other and the swastika. That was, of numbers, Franz Stangl, the former nest of postwar Nazis — Cairo. If any- course, a hatred of the Jews, and in hen most of us think of the commandant of Treblinka extermina- thing, the Egyptian capital was even particular, a desire to see the eradica- W premier retirement destination tion camp, had some 800,000 mur- more appealing than Damascus, and tion of Israel. for unrepentant Nazis, our minds ders on what remained of his con- had been playing host to Nazis imme- That shared exterminationist desire immediately turn to South America. science, and he arrived in Damascus diately after the war, when King had been born during the war itself, We think of Josef Mengele hidden on in September 1948 with the assis- Farouk opened his arms to scores of when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a lonely estancia in Paraguay, or tance of a Roman Catholic bishop. former SS and Gestapo officers. Haj Amin al-Husayni, had made his Adolf Eichmann ensconced in a two- Although Brunner is said to have That hospitality continued even after home in the luxurious Hotel Adlon in bit suburb of Buenos Aires. variously worked as an intelligence Farouk was deposed by the Free Berlin in 1941, and had impressed This perception was magnified by a agent, an arms dealer, and a security Officers Movement in 1952, as Hitler with his hatred of the Jews. The slew of sensational books that were advisor, Stangl took more menial Nasser regarded German scientific Mufti lobbied the Nazis hard to kick published in the early 1970s, many of positions in textile firms. Life was and intelligence expertise as being an the British out of the Middle East, and which promoted a very iffy thesis that somewhat frugal, but manageable. essential component of his regime. he was instrumental in raising recruits former Nazis were using the continent No less a figure than for a largely Muslim unit of the SS as a launchpad for a “Fourth Reich” Joachim Daumling, the called the 13th Armed Mountain that would, yes, take over the world. former head of the Division of the SS Handschar. This culminated in Ira Levin’s 1976 Gestapo in Düsseldorf, In addition, throughout the war in thriller, The Boys from Brazil, in which was tasked with estab- North Africa, German intelligence had fiendish Nazis hatch a diabolical plot lishing Nasser’s secret worked closely with the Egyptians, to unleash several cloned Hitlers onto service. and the Mufti is thought to have been the world. The book was made into a In fact, the list of a key intermediary between King film in 1978, and starred no less than some habitués of Cairo in Farouk and Hitler himself. If further Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, the 1950s and the 1960s evidence of the roots of the Nazi-Arab who were presumably behind on the reads like a who’s who of affair were required, then it is worth rent. Nazi Germany, featuring considering the fact that both Nasser But as the recent declaration of the as it did the rescuer of and his successor, Anwar Sadat, had death of the former SS officer and Mussolini, Otto Skorzeny; been wartime agents for the Eichmann henchman Alois Brunner the ace Stuka pilot Hans- Germans. reveals, the boys didn’t just go to Alois Brunner (left) and Franz Stangl. Ulrich Rudel; the leader Throughout the late 1960s and Brazil. For Brunner, like so many Unfortunately for Stangl, the local of a notorious SS penal unit, Oskar 1970s, many old Nazis managed dis- other Nazis, found the Middle East an chief of police took a fancy to his 14- Dirlewanger; and the particularly odi- creetly to trickle back to what they equally hospitable location, and far year-old daughter and wanted to add ous and violently anti-Semitic stooge regarded as the Fatherland. However, less out-on-a-limb than a chalet in the child to his harem. Stangl didn’t of Goebbels, Johannes von Leers. others, such as the former SS “doc- Patagonia, no matter how gemütlich. tarry, and packed his bags and shep- What made the relationship tor” in Mauthausen, Aribert Heim — Brunner, who sent an estimated herded his entire family to — you between these former Nazis and the and indeed Alois Brunner — would 130,000 Jews to their deaths, made guessed it — Brazil. Egyptians and Syrians so successful end their days in the Middle East, his home in Damascus, Syria, where Stangl seems to have been one of was that it was a genuinely two-way dying lonely deaths in obscure dusty he found the conditions much to his the few Nazis who didn’t find the air deal. The Arabs offered the Nazis a back streets of Cairo and Damascus. liking. Although there has been much pleasing in Syria. Most, such as Major- haven, as well as a market for all their It is hard to feel sorry for such lone- guff peddled about Brunner’s postwar General Otto-Ernst Remer, prospered nefarious dealings in arms and black- ly demises, but in the end, those activities over the past few days — on Arab Street. Remer was, frankly, a market currency. The Nazis, mean- Nazis who escaped to the Middle some of which may be true — there is real piece of work, and having found- while, were able to provide technical East found permanent sanctuary. no doubt that he worked in cahoots ed the swiftly banned Socialist Reich and military experts, as well as the Remembering that may seem inflam- with the Assad regime, or at least cer- Party in West Germany in the early know-how of establishing the instru- matory when the West struggles with tainly enjoyed its protection. 1950s, decided that working as an ments of repression. its relationship with that part of the However, Brunner was not the only arms dealer with the likes of Brunner However, below the back-scratching planet, but it is nonetheless the awk- perpetrator of the Holocaust wasmore rewarding. lay a deep and dark underpinning to ward truth. US SOCIAL SECURITY PAYMENTS TO NAZI WAR CRIMINALS SEND RIPPLES THROUGH JEWISH WORLD evelations that the United States try, by promising them they would con- Council appointed by former President complex than presented in the media, Rcurrently pays Social Security tinue to receive benefits after leaving. Bill Clinton, called the payments “outra- said Dr. Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter and other benefits to concentration Most Nazi war criminals and collabo- geous, especially if it were done to with the Simon Wiesenthal Center. camp guards and others involved in rators were never held accountable, make the OSI’s stats look good.” “The maximum ‘justice’ available in carrying out the Holocaust has scan- Estee Yaari, a spokeswoman for Yad The OSI, or Office of Special these cases under US law was depor- dalized the Jewish world, eliciting Vashem, told The Jerusalem Post. Investigations, was a unit in the tation, except in cases in which there harsh condemnations from many quar- Asserting that there can be no statute Department of Justice tasked with was a country seeking extradition to ters. of limitations on Holocaust-related uncovering Nazi war criminals. put the Nazi on trial, which was a very The Associated Press revealed crimes, Yaari called on the US to stop amuel Dubbin, a Florida lawyer rare occurrence,” he explained. recently that such payments continue the payments and bring the recipients Swho has represented Holocaust “Under those circumstances, the US to be made to participants in the Nazi to justice in their respective countries. survivors in a number of high-profile pushed to get as many of these out of genocide who were deported from the “It’s maddening that some of these restitution cases, said the “survivor the country, and one of the ways of US because of their crimes. criminals who were forced out of the leadership supports the immediate doing so was to offer them the possibil- According to the investigation, war US once their past was uncovered elimination of the Social Security loop- ity of retaining Social Security privi- criminals who emigrated to America were able to collect Social Security hole, yet are not surprised to learn that leges, if they would depart before a and were outed and subsequently and live free lives,” she said. the US government has been refusing court ordered them deported, thereby expelled have collected millions in Polish Chief Rabbi Michael to acknowledge or correct its actions, hastening their departure and saving state benefits. Schudrich went even further in his crit- as it has protected the thefts perpetrat- the US endless legal proceedings (and The wire service claimed it was able icism of Washington, stating that using ed by global insurers like Allianz and the expenses involved). to account for four such beneficiaries government funds “to help war crimi- Generali, and refuses to press “The thought of these Nazi war crimi- who are still collecting Social Security nals is to desecrate the memory of the Germany to fully fund the needs of nals and collaborators enjoying their payments. The payments, AP alleged, victims of the Shoah.” Holocaust survivors worldwide.” final years courtesy of US payments is were used by the government to pres- Deborah Lipstadt, a former member of Despite all of the furor over the pay- absolutely abhorrent,” he said, “but the sure Nazi suspects to leave the coun- the United States Holocaust Memorial ments, however, the issue is more reality is much more complex than that.” Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 PHOTOHIGHLIGHTS OF THE EVENT AT THE UNITED NATIONS HEADQ OF THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION AND THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE L

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Leonard Wilf, chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, and Zigmund Wilf, board member, American Society for Yad Vashem.

Jessica Glickman Mauk, board member; Abi Halpern, chair; Barry Levine, chair — Young Leadership Leonard Wilf, chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, with the president of Israel, Reuven Associates of the American Society for Yad Vashem. Rivlin.

Alexandra Lebovits, Young Leadership Associates of the American Society for Yad Vashem; and Mark Mr. Harry Karten, board member of the American Society for Yad Vashem, shaking hands with the Moskowitz, board member, American Society for Yad Vahsem. president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin. January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 QUARTERS IN NEW YORK CITY, MARKING THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY N IN MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST, LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

Lawrence and Adina Burian, board members of the American Society for Yad Vashem, with Ron Leonard Wilf, chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem; Colin and Gail Halpern; and Shaya Prosor, ambassador of Israel to the UN. Ben Yehuda, managing director of the International Relations Division of Yad Vashem.

Shaya Ben Yehuda, managing director of the International Relations Division of Yad Vashem; Barry and Marilyn Rubenstein, board members of the American Society for Yad Vashem; Ron B. Meier, exec- David Halpern, treasurer, American Society for Yad Vashem; Sharon Halpern; Abi Halpern, chair of utive director of the American Society for Yad Vashem. the Young Leadership Associates of the American Society for Yad Vashem.

Jaci and Gonen Paradis, Young Leadership Associates of the American Society for Yad Vashem. Ron B. Meier, executive director of the American Society for Yad Vashem, with Lawrence Burian, board member of the American Society for Yad Vashem. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM “DO NOT LOSE HOPE” they were married and had a son, Poremba decided to approach Yad road by which individuals will travel.” BY LIMOR BAR ILAN Yakov. Two years later, the Porembas Vashem, hoping its staff could shed “I hope you’ll remember me,” wrote immigrated to Israel, where their light on his mother’s life story. After David Lirens to Frida on September “One who has never eaten his daughter Ora was born. the book was donated, a careful 28, 1942. It turns out that Lirens was bread at faraway places, one who rida preserved the precious investigation was carried out using a businessman from Amsterdam has never sat on his bed at night autograph book through the Yad Vashem’s numerous databases. whose property was confiscated and filled with grief — he does not F years, yet she never told anyone Extensive information was discovered who was then deported. Three know You, Ye Heavenly Forces. about it — not even her children. Only regarding the book itself, as well as months after writing in Frida’s book, In memory of our times when she was over 80 years old did about Frida’s biography and the sto- he lost his life at the Spytkowice together at Camp 13, from your she take the book out of the closet ries of many other Jews from the camp. brother, Emanuel.” same area. Out of Some two years after writing a Dedication written in Frida some 30 people dedication in his sister’s journal at Gutman’s autograph book by who wrote in Frida’s Gross Sarne, Frida’s brother Emanuel (Manek) Gutman, book, ten survivors Emanuel (Manek) Gutman wrote March 19, 1942, Gross Sarne. were located. another inscription, apparently on he autograph book made for Others had been the day when brother and sister T Frida (Friedl) Gutman at the murdered, their were separated again, this time at Gross Sarne concentration camp names commemo- Freiburg: “3.5, Freiburg, on the day accompanied her upon her transfer to Dedications and drawings from Frida rated in the Central of the tragic separation. Although a Gross Masselwitz and then to Freiburg. Gutman’s autograph Database of Shoah heavy blow has landed upon us After liberation, the book became a book. Top left, the Victims’ Names. again, always stay joyful. After being precious memento left to her by Jewish book’s cover; bottom, nscriptions in together for three years, fate has prisoners with whom she had crossed wedding photo of (left), Stuttgart, 1946. The Ithe autograph turned and separated us. May you paths at the camps, among them her Frida and Yitzhak Poremba, with photo is glued to the inside book reveal the merit to see your brothers again. brother, Emanuel. The book has a Emanuel Gutman cover of the book. state of mind of And now, dear Friedl, do not lose cover of wood and tin, adorned with a some of the prison- hope. Please continue hoping that Star of David and the inscription: “RAB: where she had hidden it and hand it ers at the three camps where Frida we will meet again. Never forget Lager Gross Sarne, 1942.” Prisoners over to her grandson, Ben. After Frida was incarcerated — their personal your brother, just as you forever pre- made the journal out of materials they passed away, members of the feelings, their hopes and their fears at serve the memory of our parents. managed to procure at the camp and Poremba family were left with many a time when their very lives were in Cheer up — from Manek, who owes filled it with poems, dedications, mem- questions surrounding the contents of the hands of the concentration camp you much gratitude and who will ories and words of farewell. the book — which was crumbling with regimes. In some cases, the inscrip- never forget you.” Frida Gutman was born in Chorzow, age — and indeed its very nature, tion in the book is the last written tes- The hope of brother and sister to Poland, in 1916, one of nine children especially as the inscriptions in the timony of a Jewish prisoner. One of see each other again indeed came to parents Leon (Leib) and Klara. It book appeared in four different lan- the dedications is dated April 4, 1942: to fruition; they were reunited in was at Gross Sarne that Frida met guages: German, Polish, Dutch and “Clench your fists; grind your teeth; Poland after the war. In 1948 Frida her future husband, Yitzhak Poremba. Hebrew. walk under the winds beating in your and her husband immigrated to Both survived the war and were Hearing about the “Gathering the face; march to the sounds of music Israel, closely followed by her sister, reunited in Stuttgart, Germany, where Fragments” campaign, Yakov like true fighters. This is the straight Ruth, and her brother, Emanuel. THE VIOLIN FROM BERLIN his wife was not Jewish. Theo’s march to Mauthausen, and from however, Ruth came to the conclu- BY SARA SHOR youngest brother Hans, a typesetter there to Melk and Ebensee. Hans sion that Yad Vashem was the only ecently, Yad Vashem’s Artifacts by profession, was an active mem- survived, yet many of his family truly suitable place for the precious RCollection received a precious ber of a communist group. In addi- members were less fortunate. His memento. addition: an ancient violin that tion to his involvement in the theatri- wife Ruth was also deported to the pon arrival at Yad Vashem the belonged to an anonymous Jew who cal sphere, Hans also distributed camps and murdered, as were his Uviolin was examined, and an had been deported from a Jewish brother Theo, Theo’s inscription found stating the year retirement home in Berlin. The wife and daughter, 1715. In an initial investigation car- home, located on Grosse Hamburger their father Manheim ried out by the Artifacts Department, Strasse, was used during the war as and their sister Rosa. it was established that Theo was a temporary collection point for Jews When Hans returned deported on August 15, 1942 and awaiting deportation to the East. to Berlin, his brother sent to Riga, where he was mur- In the summer of 1942, a 40-year- gave him the violin that dered. It appears that the man who old Jewish man named Theo (his full had been hidden gave him the violin was also deport- name is recorded at Yad Vashem) throughout the war. ed in August 1942, but his identity was working as a janitor at the retire- Marrying for the sec- remains unknown. The violin is ment home. One day, he was ond time, Hans settled scheduled to undergo examination approached by an older Jewish man in the city of Weimar. The 300-year-old violin that survived the Shoah. by a professional violin appraiser who said: “Tomorrow I will be deport- He and his wife had a and historian, which may reveal fur- ed; I would like to give you the most printed Communist propaganda. In daughter, whom they named Ruth. ther clues as to the identity of the precious thing that I own. You are February 1943, Hans was captured For 40 years, Hans kept the violin owners and artisans of the violin. still young — you will certainly sur- and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, under a bed in his house. When he The violin will be joining other instru- vive this inferno. This violin was where he became Inmate no. passed away in 1992, Ruth inherited ments already safeguarded in the passed down in my family; everyone 103926. He quickly located fellow the instrument. For her, the violin has been deported. I am the last one Communists in the camp and, with was a symbol of the suffering that Artifacts Collection that tell the stories left.” Several days later, Theo was their help, was assigned to forced befell her father during the war — of many Jewish musicians who per- deported to Riga. Before leaving labor at a Nazi printing house. When and a means of commemorating formed in Europe during the war. For Berlin, he managed to give the violin Auschwitz-Birkenau was evacuated family members murdered during the a few, music saved their lives — yet to one of his brothers, who had man- on January 18, 1945, Hans and other Holocaust as well as the original most were murdered, and their instru- aged to escape deportation because prisoners were sent on a death owners of the instrument. Recently, ments plundered and lost. January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 BRITAIN MAY HAVE SUPPRESSED “MASTERPIECE” HOLOCAUST FILM SO AS NOT TO HELP ZIONISTS inet minister Richard Crossman, who anthropologist André Singer has be a producer for Schindler’s List. BY STUART JEFFRIES, wrote the film’s lyrical script, and made a documentary called Night Will Lustig has a theory about why British THE GUARDIAN Alfred Hitchcock, who flew in from Fall, telling the extraordinary story of authorities suppressed Bernstein’s Hollywood to advise Bernstein on its filming the camps and the fate of n the spring of 1945,” says the film. “At this time, the Brits had structure. They set to work on a doc- Bernstein’s project. narrator, over bucolic springtime enough problems with the Jews.” By “I umentary entitled German ...Singer also interviews another shots of the German countryside, “the that, no doubt, he means that Britain Concentration Camps Factual illustrious Holocaust survivor, a Allies advancing into the heart of was dealing with Zionists agitating Germany came to Bergen-Belsen. for a Jewish homeland in the British Neat and tidy orchards, well-stocked mandate of Palestine — and seeing farms lined the wayside, and the the full extent of Jewish suffering British soldier did not fail to admire would only inflame them. the place and its inhabitants. At least, inger says he’s already had flak until he began to feel a smell …” Sfor including Lustig’s theory. So begins a British film about the “Why the film was scuppered is not Holocaust that was abandoned and very well documented,” he says. “But shelved for 70 years because it was Branko may well have a point.” Singer deemed too politically sensitive. The points out that in 1945, the incoming smell came from the dead, their bod- Labour government’s foreign secre- ies burned or rotting; or from malnour- tary, Ernest Bevin, was anti-Zionist ished, often disease-ridden prisoners and unsympathetic to the foundation in the concentration camp of Bergen- of a Jewish state. But he concedes Belsen, near all those thriving there is no strong proof. “The only German farms. documentary evidence we have is a A US combat cameraman, featured in Night Will Fall. As Allied troops liberated such memo from the Foreign Office saying that screening such an ‘atrocity film’ camps across what had been Survey. As they worked, reels of film Croatian named Branko Lustig. He would not be a good idea.” German-occupied Europe, the British kept arriving, sent by British, was a child in Belsen, so sick at the Lustig’s theory, if it could be Ministry of Information’s Sidney American and Soviet combat and time of liberation that when he heard proven, would be a bombshell. Bernstein (who later founded newsreel cameramen from 11 camps, a strange noise he thought he’d Britain suppressing a hugely impor- Granada Television) was commis- including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, arrived in heaven to a chorus of tant Holocaust documentary sioned to make a documentary that Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. As well angels’ trumpets. In reality, they were because it didn’t want to help the would provide incontrovertible evi- as the dead, the footage showed the bagpipes played by Scottish sol- dence of the Nazis’ crimes. starved survivors and human remains diers. Jews who were trying to rebuild their Bernstein assembled a remarkable in ovens. Many years later, Steven Spielberg nation after the Holocaust? Sadly, team, including the future Labour cab- ...Now, 70 years on, director and chose Lustig, by then a filmmaker, to the idea is not far-fetched. THE JEW WHO GOT A JOB OFFER FROM THE NAZIS recognized as a Jew. is parents sent him to stay with enemies instead of earning money BY LUCY WALLIS, BBC NEWS “He said, ‘Oh yes, I can see you Hfriends in Belgium where they from them,” says Knoller. come from a good German back- thought he would be safe, but when He learned how to shoot a gun and efore World War II 170,000 ground and I think you should be join- Hitler invaded the country in 1940, wire up explosives to derail an enemy Jews lived in Vienna — by the B ing our organization as an interpreter, Knoller had to flee for a second time. troop train. end there were just 6,000. One of you will be earning a lot of money and He chose to go to France. “I read in “Our leader… made sure that when- those who fled the Nazis was Freddie finally you will be working with your these naughty books all about Paris, ever we put explosives on to the rail- Knoller — now 93, he survived a own people.’ about Montmartre, about the Moulin way line, we hid it with leaves, grass, Gestapo interrogation, Auschwitz and “I felt so amazed, laughing [to] Rouge with the half-naked dancers on so it shouldn’t be noticed immediate- a death march in sub-zero tempera- myself…. ‘Wow, what an adventure to the stage and this is where I wanted ly. Then he told us that we should go tures. be able to get away from the Gestapo, to go,” he says. and observe, but quite far away, what “I saw two civilians coming towards But things went is going to happen, up in the hills. me. Each one had a hat on and a long wrong almost immedi- “The train came, we heard the black leather coat, and I recognized ately. He was arrested explosion, we saw the first engine them immediately, this must be two at the French border topple over on the side and the whole people from the Gestapo,” says for having a German thing just collapsed, but we ran away Freddie Knoller. passport and was immediately back to our resistance It was July 1943. Twenty-two-year- interned in a camp for group. I must say it was wonderful.” old Knoller had managed to obtain France’s enemies in He soon fell in love with a beautiful false papers and get work in occupied May 1940. After the local girl called Jacqueline. But after Paris introducing Nazi soldiers to the Nazis invaded France an argument, she betrayed him to the nightclubs and brothels of the red light a month later, he man- gendarmes. district. But that day he was arrested aged to escape and They burned his body with ciga- and taken to Gestapo headquarters. finally made his way to rettes to find out more about his In a large room with a portrait of the bright lights of resistance group, and when he could Adolf Hitler hanging on the wall, one Paris. not stand the pain any more, Knoller of the officers interrogated him. Knoller (far left) with his brothers and parents - he did not learn the But his run-in with revealed his true identity and was “While he was talking, I saw on his fate of his mother and father until 1995. the Gestapo made handed over to the Gestapo. desk a plaster head of a human being and they want me to work with them.’” him realize it was too dangerous for t was September 1943, and the and he saw me looking at it and he But it was a job offer that Knoller him to stay there. Nazis had finally caught up with said, ‘Oh, this plaster head, that’s the I had no intention of accepting. He Instead of taking their job offer, he him. Knoller was sent to Auschwitz, head of a Jew, because we were quickly made himself scarce. turned to a friend for help and was where he was imprisoned until the taught how to recognize Jews by the This was the third time he had found introduced to the leader of the French war was nearly over. He worked in structure of their head,’” says Knoller. himself under Nazi occupation. The Resistance. He went to live in the temperatures as low as -25°C carry- “With that he got up from his desk, first, he had to leave his home in mountains near the town of Figeac in ing 25-kg cement bags in the camp went behind me and he took my head Vienna as a 17-year-old in 1938 when southern France, fighting the occupy- and was forced to run with them — he between his two hands, tracing it. I’m Austria was annexed by Germany in ing German soldiers. was whipped if he was too slow. not ashamed to say I wet my pants the Anschluss. “It was a great joy for me to fight my (Continued on page 14) because I was so sure I would now be Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 DIARIES REVEAL JEWISH SUFFERING DURING HOLOCAUST IN HUNGARY (Continued from page 6) entry: “I am rather astonished I am “Jews will have to wear the yellow star made, I was a pain in the butt. She Walton said. The family called her not … reported for my allied sympa- from April 5 on,” Madi wrote on 31 was not used any more to a seven- “Mami.” She died in Houston in 1970, thies.” March. “They are sick with shame and year-old.” at age 72, he said. ritten mostly with a fountain fear, marked thus, they may be set “I may have made her mad or some- “I’m humbled by the fact that she W pen, the diary begins on 23 out to any brutality.” A few weeks later thing,” he said. “Let me put it this way, never mentioned” what she had done, December 1941, after Hungary’s dec- she wrote: “Almost every day new I was very spoiled.” he said. “It was just something she laration of war on the United States. atrocities and cruelties happen. It is “Don’t hold this against her,” he said. felt she had to do.” “Since we are at war with the states, difficult to register them all and too “She risked her life to save two addi- Walton said the family had always there’s no more any hope for me to painful too.” tional lives.… She is a hero. Thank kept the notebooks private. “These join you, my only ones,” she wrote, y the autumn, violence, arrests God that we had people like her.” are about my grandmother,” he said. addressing her daughter, Hilda, then Band deportations were increas- On 30 October 1944, with the Nazis But recently he wondered if the 21; Hilda’s husband, George Walton, ing, and on 17 October Madi came in control of Budapest and the SS Holocaust Museum might be interest- home and found Irene Lakos extermination chief, Adolf Eichmann, ed. It was. and her nephew waiting for her. hard at work there, Madi worried that “Hungary is such a specific story in She took them in. As the days snooping neighbors or officials might … the Holocaust,” said Rebecca passed, and visitors came to discover her guests. Erbelding, a museum archivist who call, she often hid her “friends,” “Tonight the janitor was here to reg- has studied the diary. “It happens as she called them, in the bath- ister the amount of hot water used completely differently in Hungary than room and in an adjacent apart- this month,” she wrote. “I had to show it happens anywhere else.” ment. him therefore into the bathroom, but “It’s so late in the war … 1944,” she Outside it was the “darkest put my friends — before opening the said in a recent interview at the muse- middle ages,” Madi wrote. door — behind the book mirror. It was um. For “the Jews of Germany it’s been There was shooting. Neighbors a splendid joke, like hide and seek.” coming since 1933. For the Jews of Excerpt from the diary of Hungarian doctor Maria Madi, turned up missing. Yet she On 5 February 1945, she wrote that which she began writing in 1941. She attached a piece of Hungary, they had been safe.” Some shrapnel she found outside her home. maintained some of her era’s there were German soldiers in her Jews had even fled to Hungary, she prejudices. “The more I am building, replaced two days later by the explained. “It’s the largest and last 29; and their four-month-old daughter, attached to my Jewish friends, there Russians. On 17 February she wrote Jewish community left in Europe,” Barbara. She might not see them is a certain Jewish type I hate,” she that Fredi’s father, who had also been Erbelding said. “There’s 800,000 Jews again for years, she wrote, according wrote on 28 October. “And the best in hiding, had arrived the day before. still in Hungary in 1944.” to a partial transcription compiled by joke is this seven-year-old child is just “Exhausted … he was still happy to find But that March, the Nazis, suspi- Erbelding. “And who knows whether the worst type, whom I try hard to his sister and son safe,” she wrote. “He cious about Hungary’s wavering alle- we’re going to survive at all.” save. No bad quality, we used to and Fredi are off this morning, early, giance, occupied the country. By early Four months later, on 24 April 1942, know as Jewish qualities, is missing.” they have to do a good day’s walk and July, 437,000 Hungarian Jews had Madi was worried about her Jewish Alfred Lakos, who has a copy of the the child is untrained.” been rounded up and were sent to friend, Irene Lakos, whom she called diary on a CD, remembers little from On 5 November 1945, with the long ghettos and Auschwitz. “Lacy.” “She is nice as always and those days. In old family photographs war in Europe over, she made a final adi’s journal, which chronicles tries not to be bitter …. She says they he appears as a handsome boy in entry for her daughter: “This is the Mmuch of this, was a risky enter- … are grateful for every day they can shorts, high socks and sport coat. end of scribbling,” she wrote. “Last prise. “This diary would be sufficient still spend in their flat.” “Based on the diary, I was a very ram- night I addressed my first direct letter to hang me five times a week,” she Things got worse after the German bunctious child,” he said. “According to you. From now on there’s no more wrote in 1944, adding in another occupation started on 19 March 1944: to some of the statements Maria sense in writing in this diary.” HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTARY SHEDS LIGHT ON HITLER’S REFUGEES SET SAIL $5 BILLION MISSING FORTUNE TO PALESTINE... new British documentary in the documentary how his counter- extent of his wealth. (Continued from page 6) A exposes the secrets of Adolf intelligence unit spotted a suspicious “What emerges is a picture of a an independent Jewish homeland Hitler’s missing fortune, which is esti- man dressed in civilian clothes in smart property and art investor — a and a separate Arab state, a plan mated to be worth more than $5 bil- Berlin, shortly after Hitler took his shrewd manager of cash with a love Britain agreed to. lion, reported the International own life. of money,” the documentary makers And by the time Israel declared Business Times. elieving the man to be a Nazi said. independence from Britain on May The documentary The Hunt for Bon the run, Rothman and his “Hitler’s actual tax records survive 14, 1948, only 1,800 Exodus passen- Hitler’s Millions reveals that the Nazi team arrested him. Inside his jacket, and suggest that he was a ‘cash-in- gers remained in displaced persons dictator squirrelled away a consider- hand’ business- camps. able fortune, amassed from image man and a serial But on May 15, the armies of the rights, personal appearances and his tax evader. He Arab nations of Egypt, Jordan, Syria refusal to pay income tax. owed the German and Iraq invaded, determined to If the money were ever found, one taxman a small destroy Israel before it was a day old. participant in the documentary says, fortune when he Yet within a year, the country, which relatives of Hitler could conceivably became supreme had already been fighting a civil war claim a portion — or earn a continuing leader in 1933.” since 1947, had defeated its neigh- wage from the Nazi’s image rights. Also appearing bors and seized 60 percent of UN- The documentary also reveals that on the program is designated Palestinian land. Hitler levied a royalty on German Dr. Cris Whetton, The remaining Arab territory was stamps that used his image and hid author of a book on later mostly swallowed up by Jordan the money away in secret bank Hitler’s finances, before being seized by Israel in the accounts. Undated photo of Adolf Hitler and his then girlfriend Eva Braun posing who said a signifi- on the terrace of the Berghof, Berchtesgaden, Germany. 1967 Six-Day War. Details about Hitler’s hidden for- cant proportion of The Exodus was later described by tune were contained in a will drawn they found Hitler’s seven-page last the Nazi dictator’s wealth was from Abba Koushi, the mayor of Haifa, as up by the dictator just before his will and testament. royalties on his book, Mein Kampf, the “ship that launched a nation.” death and discovered by Herman The first section of the document which was given by the state for free The Palestinians, on the other hand, Rothman, a German Jew who was a manifesto blaming the Jews to couples on their wedding day. describe the destruction of their state worked with British intelligence dur- for starting World War II, Rothman “He loved money,” Whetton says in as “al-Nakba” (the catastrophe), and ing World War II. said. The second part revealed how the documentary. “He just wasn’t almost five million officially remain Rothman, now in his 90s, discloses Hitler had attempted to hide the prepared to pay for it.” refugees. January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 NAZI DIARY DEPICTS BRUTAL TACTICS EMPLOYED AGAINST LODZ JEWS Recently uncovered diaries writ- unknown. that he was pretending to be a Pole, which a hunt for him was conducted ten by Nazi officers meticulously The difficult text shows another and trading textile products that he by the Munich police under an arrest document horrifying occurrences aspect of the violent and brutal had acquired in the past,” the German warrant, according to regulations.” within Lodz ghetto. regime directed against the locals, officers wrote in one of the diary’s “ANOTHER CHARACTERISTIC OF which showed no patience to those pages. BY KOBI NACHSHONI, YNETNEWS EXTENT OF GERMAN EVIL” who failed to obey cruel orders. The description is followed by many nother entry described the bru- eventy years after the liquida- The diary features descriptions of the general reports about detainees and tal harassment of a family that tion of the Lodz ghetto during A S tried to hide a Jewish boy in their World War II, a diary containing metic- home: “The boy Haimovich Hanek ulous documentation of day-to-day had been staying at Foulkes life within its walls, as depicted by Deutsche (a Polish of German Nazi officers, was recently uncov- descent). Following a quarrel ered. between neighbors, we received Using laundered language, the information that the Yaeger family Germans describe their treatment of had taken in a Jewish boy — his the local Jews, including how they family gave them a great amount of punished them over thoughts of money to take care of him. The escape, and their use of brutal meth- Yaeger couple was caught after a ods to extract information from the manhunt, and the boy claimed he “smart alecks” among them. was their son. His name was During World War II, Lodz was revealed later on. In the morning, a home to the second-largest Jewish unit will head out to confiscate the ghetto. Over 200,000 Jews are said to property in their home.” have passed through the ghetto, Rabbi Dr. Avraham Krieger, director many later going to the notorious of the Shem Olam institute, said: Auschwitz death camp. Only 10,000 “The diary, which was revealed for are said to have survived. Lodz ghetto. use of torture in interrogations of Jews hunts for Jews: “Shtayer, David, born the first time, displays another char- “HUNT AFTER CROSSBREED” who are termed as “smart alecks,” October 21, year of birth unknown, acteristic of the extent of German he Shem Olam Institute for arrests of Jews suspected of possess- from Turek, about 160 centimeters evil. The ghetto officers used any T Education, Documentation and ing “prohibited items,” and an account tall, thin, black hair, brown eyes, also possible means to create a regime of Research on Faith and the Holocaust of contacts with the Judenrat, a Jewish called by the name of Anthony terror and fear among the Jews of recently managed to get hold of the governing council, from which the offi- Brodziak.” the ghetto, and used the cruelest, rare find which the Nazis attempted to cers extracted incriminating inside Another section read: “The mis- most despicable tools to serve the hide, and has now revealed it, on the information against Jews who did not chling (“crossbreed” in German) Nazi destruction machine. This diary occasion of Yom Hakaddish Haklali, adhere to the strict rules. Oscar Steiner, born February 26 reveals precisely what they Germans the memorial day for victims of the “The Jew Goldberg Meyer was 1901, from Melsdorf, lives in Oberau wanted with all their might to hide — Holocaust whose dates of death are caught after we received information within Garmisch district, fled, after but they didn’t manage to do so.” BOOK PORTRAYS EICHMANN AS EVIL, BUT NOT BANAL (Continued from page 4) “We waste a lot of time waiting for adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, whose would help them defend “pure cellor, Konrad Adenauer — discov- spectacular new material,” she said. participation in some of the interviews, National Socialism” against the slan- ered by Ms. Stangneth in a trove of “We haven’t sat down and taken a she said, had gone undetected. derous charges of its enemies. For Eichmann’s papers held in German very close look at the material we Together, in Ms. Stangneth’s depic- Eichmann, the Sassen conversations state archives — proposing that he have.” tion, these men formed a kind of per- were good practice for Jerusalem, return to his homeland to stand trial. That material forms a veritable verse book club, meeting almost where his Israeli interrogator, Ms. Ms. Stangneth also describes the mountain. Eichmann’s testimony in weekly at Sassen’s home to work Stangneth writes, noted his facility in sometimes surprisingly open postwar Jerusalem runs to thousands of through the emerging public narrative answering historical questions, networks that protected Eichmann, as pages of transcripts, notes and hand- of the Holocaust, discussing every although in service of a very different well as the reluctance of West written texts, including a 1,200-page volume and article they could get their image of himself. German officials — who knew where memoir he produced after the trial. hands on, including ones by “enemy” If Arendt, like many others, was Eichmann was as early as 1952, Ms. Stangneth, building on the work authors. Their goal was to provide taken in, some historians say, his per- according to classified documents of others, has also pieced together material for a book that would expose formance still led her to valuable published in 2011 by the German the so-called Argentina Papers, a tan- the Holocaust as a Jewish exaggera- insights about the mentality of many tabloid Bild — to bring him and other gle of more than 1,300 pages of tion — “the lie of the six million,” as of those who carried out the killing on former Nazis to justice. handwritten memoirs, notes and tran- one postwar Nazi publication in the ground. uch revelations drew headlines scripts of secret interviews of Argentina put it. But Eichmann had “She had the right type but the wrong Swhen Ms. Stangneth’s book Eichmann in 1957 by Willem Sassen, another, contradictory goal: to claim guy,” said the historian Christopher R. appeared in Germany in 2011, the a Dutch journalist and former Nazi liv- his place in history. Browning, the author of Ordinary Men, 50th anniversary of the Eichmann ing in Buenos Aires. The facts and figures confirming the an influential 1992 study of a German trial, contributing to renewed debate he Sassen transcripts, scat- scale of the slaughter piled up as police battalion that killed tens of thou- about whether Germany’s postwar T tered across three German Eichmann recounted the rigors of sands of Jews in Poland. “There were government had made a complete archives in incomplete and confusing- what he called (without irony, Ms. all sorts of people like Eichmann was break with the past. (The full 3,400- ly paginated copies, have long been Stangneth notes) his “killer of a job.” pretending to be, which is why his strat- page file on Eichmann held by the known to scholars, and small portions Ms. Stangneth quotes a long egy worked.” German intelligence service, the were submitted as evidence in Eichmann tirade on his “duty to our Listening to Eichmann in Jerusalem, BND, has yet to be declassified.) Eichmann’s trial, where he dismissed blood” — “If 10.3 million of these ene- Arendt saw an “inability to think.” But the core of Eichmann Before them as loose “pub talk.” (Two brief, mies had been killed,” he declared of Listening to Eichmann before Jerusalem, which was translated into edited excerpts also ran in Life maga- the Jews, “then we would have ful- Jerusalem, Ms. Stangneth sees a English by Ruth Martin, is a detailed zine.) filled our duty” — that left his sympa- master manipulator skilled at turning portrait of Eichmann and the circle of Ms. Stangneth uncovered hundreds thetic listeners unnerved. reason, that weapon of the enemy, former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers of pages of previously unknown tran- “I cannot tell you anything else, for it against itself. surrounding him in Argentina, based scripts in mislabeled files. She also is the truth!” Eichmann said. “Why “As a philosopher, you want to pro- largely on materials previously avail- found evidence that the Sassen circle should I deny it?” tect thinking as something beautiful,” able to scholars but never, Ms. included more people than scholars For the Sassen circle, Ms. she said. “You don’t want to think that Stangneth said, fully or systematically had previously recognized, among Stangneth writes, this tirade marked someone who is able to think does mined. them Ludolf von Alvensleben, former the end of the fantasy that Eichmann not also love it.” Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 “PERUVIAN SCHINDLER” GOES TO HOLLYWOOD babysat, Pascal, she wrote and ded- ering from a vehicular accident that had ended in a concentration camp. BY CARMEN LLONA, FOX NEWS icated a book, L’ Enfant du Metro caused head trauma and left her When Cam heard the name Truel it ithout a dab of Jewish blood (The Boy of the Metro), about a kid with a severe limp. sounded familiar, and he was able to W in her veins, born and raised that lived in the subway and imag- Her specialty within the resistance locate a niece of Madeleine, Teresa, thousands of miles away in Lima, ined the world on the surface based movement was forging every kind of working at the university he had Peru, this bank clerk and occasional on the names of the Parisian sta- documentation, which was handwrit- attended years before. He arranged babysitter gave her life to save hun- tions. The book includes drawings ten at the time, including safe-con- a meeting between the two, and was dreds of lives in France during World ducts for Jewish fami- allowed to sit in during the interview. War II. lies to exit the country “When I heard the story I was “She was a working-class hero,” and official papers that shocked. I said to myself, ‘This story said Luis Cam, who directed a docu- allowed members of cannot be forgotten,’” he said. “I mentary about her. When the film the Allies forces to thought an audiovisual project would came out, in Peru the media proudly move in France with a reach more people than a book.” dubbed her “the Peruvian fake identity. Hundreds Madeleine died a horrible death on Schindler.” of saved lives are May 3, 1945, just four days before But Madeleine (also Magdalena) attributed to her and Germany’s surrender. She was arrest- Truel’s story remains largely unknown the forged documents ed in June of 1944 and spent almost a — albeit not for long now. A she provided. year captive in a Sachsenhausen Hollywood studio, Transcendent t is a nice heroism camp, north of Germany. She died Entertainment, plans to take to the big “Istory because we when she was being transferred — by always have the choice screen the suspense and drama that foot — to Lubech with dozens of other of doing nothing,” said ensued when in 1943 Truel joined the prisoners. Rosa Maria Palacio, a French Resistance and became one According to Coya’s research, of the best-regarded forgers. Peruvian Madeleine Truel (sitting) was the youngest of eight in a Peruvian journalist family of French immigrants. Madeleine was one of the many who The setting is Paris, where interviewed in the doc- were fatally beaten after expressing Madeleine had arrived in 1924 at 20 by her sister Lucha, who had umentary. “She could have abstained a hint of joy when she saw German years of age. She got there with her remained living in Paris as well. from participating; however, she did troops blending in with civilians: the seven older siblings, after both mom Along with the language — she what she thought was her duty: to Allied victory was imminent. and dad died within a year of each was fully bilingual — from Peru Truel help other people.” other back in Lima. Following philos- also brought a deep Catholic faith Luis Cam, who is actually an odon- “She is probably the main Peruvian ophy studies at the Sorbonne, she she would keep until her very last tologist, bumped into the story one hero of World War II,” Coya said. took a job in a branch office of the day, Cam said. day in 2012 when chatting with his “She was deeply Catholic, deeply Spanish Banco de Bilbao and moon- Her decision to join the French net- friend and journalist Hugo Coya, Peruvian, from a large family of lighted taking care of children — work in support of the Allies and who was researching for his nonfic- entrenched Christian values, and including Jewish children. against the Nazi forces came after a tion book La Estación Final (The when she had the chance to do To one of the Jewish kids she one-year stay in the hospital, recov- Final Station) about Peruvians who good, she did it without hesitation.”

REMEMBERING HOLOCAUST VICTIMS THE JEW WHO GOT A JOB OFFER (Continued from page 3) those who were killed at the camps. FROM THE NAZIS Speaking at a Shoah memorial in “Only in my memories, I can be with Paris before flying to Poland for the my loved ones who died here. Only in (Continued from page 11) to trains and sent to Bergen-Belsen ceremony at the museum, Mr. my memories, I can recognize right “From time to time we were told to concentration camp in northern Hollande pleaded with Jews in his from wrong.” line up in front of the SS and told to Germany, where Knoller remained country not to react by emigrating. “People forget what Auschwitz was,” walk,” says Knoller. until liberation by British troops on “The place of Jews is in France,” he Ms. Birenbaum said, “and that terri- “The SS either said to us go left or April 15, 1945. By the end of the war said. “France is your homeland.” He fies me, because I know to what kind go right. I put my chest out and I he weighed just over 41 kg. called on Internet service providers to of hell it leads.” smiled at them, more or less to say, take action against anti-Semitic com- Administrators of the museum, ‘I’m OK to continue working.’ I wasn’t meek at all about it because I knew if ments posted online. which includes the remaining grounds you were ever taken on the left-hand Mr. Gauck also gave a speech at of the Auschwitz and Birkenau death side, they would gas us.” home before traveling to Poland. He camps, said that the museum’s mis- In January 1945, as Russian troops told a commemorative session of the sion, once focused primarily on sur- approached, Auschwitz was evacuat- German Parliament that “while the vivors, was evolving toward memori- Holocaust will not necessarily be ed. Knoller and most of the other pris- alizing the Nazi atrocities for genera- among the central components of oners were sent on a 31-mile death tions born after the war. German identity for everyone in our march in the freezing cold to the town Roman Kent, chairman of the country, it will still hold true that there is of Gleiwitz. As the German army retreated, camps near American Gathering of Jewish no German identity without Auschwitz.” “We walked on that big road on ice the eastern front were evacuated and prisoners Holocaust Survivors and Their He spoke of the difficulty many and snow and some people just col- sent westwards. Descendants, was a teenager when lapsed of the freezing cold in our thin Germans had over the years in Afterwards, Knoller traveled to the US he was imprisoned in Auschwitz. As clothes,” says Knoller. acknowledging what had happened and was reunited with his two brothers. he spoke, he struggled to keep his “As soon as people could not walk during the war. “Remembering the He met his British wife Freda there, and Holocaust remains a matter for every emotions in check. any more the Germans, who sur- the couple moved to London. citizen of Germany,” Mr. Gauck said. “How can I forget the smell of burn- rounded us, shot them. Some people For 30 years Knoller was unable to For the first time, the memorial cere- ing flesh that constantly filled the air?” ran away into the woods, the speak about his experience of the mony here was sheltered from the he said in a trembling voice as tears Germans killed them.” Holocaust, but he was finally per- January weather, under a tent large rolled down his cheeks. “Or the heart- Almost 60,000 prisoners from suaded to do so by his children. enough to enclose the entire red brick break of children torn from their moth- Auschwitz were forced on death It was not until 1995 that Knoller gateway to the Auschwitz II camp, for ers? Those shouts of terror will ring in marches, and more than 15,000 peo- learned the fate of his parents. They many a symbol of the Nazi atrocities. my ears until I am laid to rest.” ple died. Several survivors were among the The ceremony concluded with the “I walked and walked without caring had been deported from Vienna in speakers. survivors, who were awarded medals, what happened to anybody else. We 1942, and by a strange coincidence “The greatest debt we have today is and the assembled dignitaries placing saw people being killed, but it didn’t were in Auschwitz at the same time as to pass on the memory of their lives to candles in remembrance of Holocaust affect me. I’m still walking and I’m still he was, but they were killed in 1944. others, their desire and will to live,” victims, arranged symbolically in a alive, that’s the only thought that I “I’m proud to have fought for my life, Halina Birenbaum, who was at straight row that was called “a line had,” says Knoller. and proud to be able to tell the world Auschwitz-Birkenau as a child, said of under history.” Those who survived were loaded on what has happened,” says Knoller. January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 THE SWEDES WHO TOLD THE WORLD LATVIA BLOCKS NAZI HOLOCAUST ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST EXHIBITION IN PARIS (Continued from page 5) between Warsaw and Stockholm “To their contemporaries, the DUE TO IMAGE FEARS The Swedish government wanted could be involved.” Warsaw Swedes were no heroes, atvia has cancelled a Holocaust to avoid an invasion at all costs, and Seven Swedish men — Nils but a risk factor,” Mr. Thorsell adds. Lexhibition in Paris for fear of tar- as a result, remaining neutral was Berglind, Carl Herslow, Sigfrid “They had put Sweden in danger nishing the country’s image, as the paramount. “Sigge” Häggberg, Tore Widén, Einar through their efforts for the Polish Baltic nation currently holds the EU Moreover, the Warsaw Swedes Gerge, Stig Lagerberg and Reinhold resistance army and by raising the presidency. The exposition was to tell knew that being discovered would Grönberg — were arrested by the alarm about the Holocaust.” the story of child prisoners at a con- lead to certain death. Gestapo in July on Heinrich A book based on the documents centration camp near Riga. Norrman transported from Poland The display was organized by histo- via Stockholm to London was pub- rians from Latvia, Russia and Belarus lished in Sweden during the war, but and was scheduled to open on every single copy was confiscated by January 25 under the title “Hijacked the government before it even childhood. Victims of Holocaust as reached the shelves. seen by the child prisoners of Nazi The then prime minister, Social concentration camp Salaspils.” Democrat Per Albin Hansson, had Salaspils is southeast of the Latvian personally ordered that the book, capital, Riga. called A Polish Black Book on the The exhibition was all set to open its German “New Order” in Poland, be doors. However, there proved to be a collected from the publishers and last-minute hitch: the Latvian delega- banned. tion to UNESCO decided to block the After the war, Norrman had one pri- planned project. One of the organiz- ority: find Iza. ers, the head of a Moscow-based his- Although Iza had lived as a This picture was taken by Sven Norrman in October 1939 in Wloclawek, where the law forcing tory group, said that the decision was Christian while in Warsaw, the Polish Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes was first implemented by the Nazis. The explained by the fear that it would Jews were also banned from using the sidewalks. The picture bears the sarcastic caption: “The Gestapo uncovered her Jewish her- “harm Latvia’s image during its EU master race’s cultural endeavors in Wloclawek. Even women and children walk in the street in itage shortly after her capture, and presidency.” Wloclawek with yellow marks on their backs.” she spent the remainder of the war in “The fact that Latvia’s Permanent Despite this, Norrman and his fel- Himmler’s order. a part of the Moabit prison reserved Delegation to UNESCO has blocked low Warsaw Swedes began trans- Sven Norrman was lucky. He was for Jews. this exhibition is, in my view, a porting goods with secret compart- in Stockholm, and his mistress, Iza, strange and unpleasant surprise for ments in which they had hidden doc- had been able to get a message to uments, photo negatives and money. him that the Gestapo was looking for us,” said Aleksandr Dyukov of the Norrman, working under the alias him. As he was the main suspect, it Historical Memory Foundation. “Hjalmar”, would become the most is likely that she saved his life. It is unclear how revealing Nazi important connection between the Iza herself was also captured by crimes could harm Latvia’s present- Polish exile government in London the Gestapo and taken to the Moabit day image, Dyukov said. The country and the resistance in Warsaw. prison in Berlin. could only suffer if Latvia looked at n May 16, 1942, the com- Four of the men, Berglind, Herslow, the Nazis crimes as its own, he Omander-in-chief of the Polish Häggberg and Widén, were sen- added: “The sad fact is that it seems Armia Krajowa, General Rowecki, tenced to death in July 1943. to be that way.” telegraphed to London: “The However, all seven would return The Salaspils concentration camp Swedes take a very irregular route; safely to Sweden. was created at the end of 1941 and still, they are fast and reliable and here are several theories why was used to imprison Jews and those moreover can be entrusted with T the four Warsaw Swedes were who came into contact with the Nazis large deliveries. We cannot allow pardoned, and all are thought to around the Latvia-Belarus border. them to be exposed.” have contributed to their final release The camp was located just 18 kilome- Just days later, on May 21, Sven in the autumn of 1944. ters away from Riga. Norrman would take a very important Upon hearing that four Swedish More than 100,000 people lost their Sigfrid “Sigge” Häggberg was photographed in lives in the camp, according to data suitcase with a hidden compartment men had been sentenced to death in the Moabit prison in Berlin after the Gestapo from Warsaw to Stockholm. Nazi Germany, the King of Sweden, sentenced him and four other Warsaw Swedes from the Nuremberg trials protocols. It contained documents detailing Gustav V, wrote to Hitler himself and to death in 1943, one year after their arrest. Many perished due to illnesses, the systematic slaughter of 700,000 asked that the Warsaw Swedes be She survived her ordeal, and in intense heavy labor and inhuman Polish Jews by the Nazis, including released. 1945, Iza and Sven Norrman could treatment. 2,000 photo negatives of Nazi war Hitler admired royalty, and in partic- be reunited in Warsaw. Riga’s stance has been controver- crimes in Poland, some taken by 51- ular those in countries that he per- In his book about the Warsaw sial regarding the assessment of its year-old Norrman himself from inside ceived to be the birthplace of the Swedes, Mr. Thorsell writes that Nazi past. Latvian officials have been the Warsaw ghetto. Sikorski held his “Aryan” race, and personally assured Norrman most likely saved her life criticized for plainly presenting the BBC speech a week later, and it did King Gustav V that he would look through bribes passed via Swedish Nazis as a viable opposition to the not take long before the Gestapo into the matter, in a letter sent at the Match’s director in Germany to Soviets. Parts of the Baltic nation sup- began rounding up the Warsaw end of July 1943. Himmler’s man Walter Schellenberg. ported pro-Nazi movements in the Swedes. It is also known that Heinrich Norrman divorced his wife, and the country while rejecting the Soviet sol- “Personally, I think the Germans lis- Himmler’s personal physical thera- couple married in Sweden. Norrman diers’ crucial role in World War II. tening in June 1942 grew worried and pist, Felix Kersten, a man who has was later rewarded the Armia In 2012, a video was released of pissed off that the BBC was able to been credited with saving the lives of Krajowa Cross by the Poles. two men in Waffen SS uniforms con- reveal in such detail exactly what was some 60,000 Jews from the Nazi In an interview with Polish historian ducting a kindergarten lesson, com- going on in Warsaw, and started to concentration camps, put in a good Jozef Lewandoski in the 1970s, plete with handouts, grenades and wonder how the hell the information word with the Nazi top brass. Norrman explained why he decided pistols. The class took place on had leaked,” says Staffan Thorsell, However, most importantly, Nazi to risk his life to help tell the world March 16, the day which commemo- author of Warszawasvenskarna: De Germany relied on neutral Sweden about the Holocaust. rates hundreds of Latvians joining the som lät världen veta (The Warsaw to supply it with iron and ball bear- “During my entire life I was a busi- Nazis to fight against the Soviet Union Swedes: The men who let the world ings for its weapons, and it is highly nessman. I liked my job and I was during the Second World War. know). likely that the four Warsaw Swedes good in my field. The Latvian legion of the Waffen SS “The Gestapo did not have to be were kept as leverage, to ensure that “I joined the struggle because I consisted of almost 150,000 Latvians. Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Sweden would fulfill its end of the wanted to do something that was not It was among the last of Nazi forces to the Swedes who traveled regularly weaponry bargain. for profit for once in my life.” surrender in 1945. 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 Ron B. Meier, Ph.D, Ron B. Meier, New York, NY 10110 NY York, New 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 *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** January/February 2015 - Shevat/Adar 5775 - Shevat/Adar 2015 January/February The Decent mpathy is in short supply in a is in short supply in mpathy third documentary, third documentary, , an intimate look at the private E It is based on another stunning find, dated 1927–45, The documents, juxtapos- Lapa Filmmaker Vanessa In the letters, which are also studied She playfully tells him “I am so There are few references to the What emerges is not a split person- “Heinrich Himmler is not a character “Whenever there is a sentence or Haggith said that, as the war was Haggith said that, screening the He added that by what they “They were angered One life of Hitler’s chief henchman, head of the SS and Heinrich Himmler, secret police. Gestapo the discovery of hundreds of private letters between Himmler and his wife, as children and mistress, as well diaries, photos and even recipe books of the family. from Himmler’swere taken Bavarian resur- and home, likely by US troops, via an decades later, Aviv Tel faced in unclear route that may have involved a Brussels flea market. mundane es voiceover of the often family correspondence with archival horrific Nazi frequently of footage, crimes. and book in major new newspaper his wife Himmler calls projects, Marga, seven years his senior and a visceral anti-Semite like him, “my good, pure woman.” happy to have such a good evil man who loves his evil wife as much as she loves him.” Holocaust, only allusions, including the chilling line, “I’m driving to Heini.” Your Auschwitz. Kisses, a man devoid but the portrait of ality, and fully committed to his of empathy cause. Hyde,” Lapa Jekyll and Mr. like Dr. “I believe he is the same AFP. told person in private as in public. two where he is seemingly kind, lov- ing, banal, you quickly see the hate always in there.... He is again. It’s point he chose banal, and at a certain evil.” Allies to cooperate with the occupied Allies to cooperate German population. film simply “had missed its the over, moment.” would also be a tribute to now footage “the real heroes of the cameramen, the film.” said. “They were shocked, he saw,” for but they also had a great ability empathy.” Camps . tells the story of ), told the Berlin MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE which was started while the which was started Night Will Fall Night Will ight Will Fall ight Will Sidney Bernstein, then head of The accompanying documentary is documentary The accompanying Bernstein “anticipated that in the Bernstein “anticipated Croatian film One camp survivor, Some of the footage was used as Some of the footage sever- Andre Singer offers Director N Schindler’s List the “making-of” story of the the “making-of” story Survey, but shelved by the battles still raged, before the end of British government 1945. veteran, fighting back tears decades veteran, fighting back an interview for the compan- in later, ion film Hitchcock. future people would deny the extent of the atrocities,” said Imperial War Haggith, Toby Museum curator restored whose team painstakingly the archival footage. producer Branko Lustig, 81 ( audience that “this kind of movie must be shown every 25 years, to every new generation.” evidence at the Nuremberg trials, and shorter versions were screened but the major documentary later, envisioned by Bernstein in 1945 was never released. al possible reasons, including the postwar focus on the looming shifting Soviet threat, and the need for the Britain’s Psychological Warfare Britain’s “a Division, who wanted to create lesson to all mankind,” even enlisting Alfred the help of his friend , FILMS SHINE NEW LIGHT NEW SHINE FILMS camp in ON DARKNESS OF HOLOCAUST OF DARKNESS ON Bergen-Belsen Majdanek , takes an unflinching , takes and Auschwitz.

ilmmakers using long-lost or ilmmakers using forgotten material are shining forgotten material

“It’s hard to imagine for a normal “It’s The relentless message is the Like a time capsule from hell, it Like a time capsule The restored footage — shot by The restored footage One of them, with the sober title In a year that marks the 75th In a year that F human mind,” recounts one British human mind,” recounts Poland shows heaps of victims’ per- of victims’ Poland shows heaps from eyeglasses to sonal effects, toys. suitcases to children’s industrial scale of the mass murder. from the Footage takes a clinical look at what the Allies a clinical look at what the takes saw: survivors with hollow eyes and skin stretched tightly over their bones amid vast piles of decompos- ing human remains. British, US and Russian liberating forces, only to vanish for decades in even the archives — is hard to take for modern audiences numbed by frequent on-screen violence. Buchenwald World War Two memorial of mass killings on the banks of the Danube River is seen in Budapest. memorial of mass killings on the banks of the Danube River Two War World look at the atrocities committed at such as camps German Concentration Camps Factual Survey anniversary of the outbreak of World anniversary of the II, three new documentaries War Berlin film festival screened at the of help illuminate the darkest chapter German history. new light on the Holocaust, from the new light on the Holocaust, to the private life Nazi death camps of the “Final of a chief architect Solution.” Page 16 Page