AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 44-No. 1 ISSN 0892-1571 September/October 2017-Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 AUSCHWITZ ARTIFACTS TO GO ON TOUR millionaires over this,’ I would object,” um, which is on the site of the former the trust of the board of the Auschwitz BY JOANNA BERENDT, said Marvin Hier, who founded camp, in southern . “We had museum, which was surprised to THE NEW YORK TIMES the , a been thinking about this for a long receive such a request from an exhi- Jewish human-rights organization. time, but we lacked the know-how.” bition company outside the museum ore than 72 years after the lib- “But if they’re making what is normal- Even though remains world. eration of Auschwitz, the first M ly considered to be a fair amount of a major focus of study by historians The museum demanded that the traveling exhibition about the Nazi profit since the final end is that hun- and is a staple of school curriculum in artifacts be kept secured at all times death camp will begin a journey later dreds of thousands of people maybe many countries, knowledge about the and that the exhibition comply with this year to 14 cities across the museum’s strict conservation and North America, taking heart- requirements, including finding proper breaking artifacts to multitudes who transportation and storage, as well as have never seen such horror up choosing exhibition spaces with suffi- close. cient lighting and climate control. The endeavor is one of the most The museum also insisted that the high-profile attempts to educate and artifacts be presented in historical immerse young people for whom the context, especially because many Holocaust is a fading and ill-under- aspects of World War II are only stood slice of history. The Anne Frank vaguely understood by younger gen- House, the Jewish Museum Berlin, erations. For instance, in Spain, ask- the Holocaust Memorial ing about the history and place of Museum and others all find them- Jews in Europe “would probably get selves grappling with ways to engage some strange answers.” The exhibi- an attention-challenged world with a tion will show that Spain — which dur- dark part of its past. ing the war was led by Francisco Yet anything that smacks of putting Franco, a dictator and ally of Adolf Auschwitz on tour instantly raises Hitler — was not home to large sensitivities. Organizers of the exhibi- Jewish communities and did not have tion, which include the Auschwitz- A child’s shoe and sock. extensive connections with the Birkenau State Museum itself, took in different places all over the world camps is fading for younger genera- Holocaust; yet there were notable pains to explain that, yes, visitors will see the exhibit — I think that’s tions, he said. exceptions, like Ángel Sanz Briz, a would probably be charged to enter in quite legitimate.” he exhibition will make its first Spanish diplomat who saved more at least some locations. But officials The exhibition will include pieces stop in Madrid, aiming for an than 5,000 Jews in Hungary from at that museum and the company T from the museum such as a barracks; opening around December, and then deportation to Auschwitz. behind the exhibition say that their a freight car of the same type used to tour for seven years. “In other words, we want to show intent is not to create a moneymaker transport prisoners; letters and testi- It is no longer enough to “sit inside that the Franco regime was certainly out of the suffering of millions of Nazi monials; and a gas mask, a tin that four walls, stare at the door and wait very sympathetic to the Nazis,” said victims. contained Zyklon B gas pellets and for visitors to come in,” Mr. Cywinski Robert Jan van Pelt, a history profes- Several prominent Jewish leaders other grim remainders from the com- said, so museum officials decided to sor at the University of Waterloo in expressed support for taking pieces plex’s gas chambers. reach out to a more global audience. and a Holocaust scholar who of Auschwitz to people who might not Seven years in the making, the exhi- The exhibition was broached in has been working on the exhibition. otherwise see this history. They said bition is a response to growing anti- 2010 when Musealia, a family-owned “But individual Spaniards could make, that they were not overly concerned Semitism in Europe and elsewhere, company whose shows include arti- and made, a difference.” about an entrance fee; organizers those involved with it said. facts from the Titanic, approached the As for the morality of charging said that they would ask for it to be “We have never done anything like museum. money to see artifacts from a death small, if any, and for admission to be this before, and it’s the first project of Luis Ferreiro, the company’s direc- camp, and potentially turning a profit, free for students. this magnitude ever,” said Piotr tor, said the idea came while he was Mr. Ferreiro said that traveling exhibi- “If you’re telling me, ‘Gee, they’re Cywinski, director of the state muse- grieving the death of his 25-year-old tions like this one usually generated coming out and they’re going to be brother. He had found consolation in huge expenses. Putting the display Man’s Search for Meaning, a book by together has already cost more than a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, $1.5 million, and there are no guaran- IN THIS ISSUE Viktor E. Frankl, about his experi- tees “the exhibit will even be sustain- Yad Vashem marks 75 years since murders of Polish Jewish educators...... 2 ences in four extermination camps able,” Mr. Ferreiro said. The Nazis built a luxury camp to lull the Jews before murdering them...... 3 after his pregnant wife, his parents Musealia will offer museums that Stolen words: The Nazi plunder of Jewish books...... 4 and brother all perished. want to host the exhibition a flat fee Why are there crosses on Eastern Europe’s Holocaust memorials?...... 5 Inspired by the book’s lessons for for transportation, installation, design “He should be as well known as Schindler”...... 6 spiritual survival, Mr. Ferreiro said he and all the content. Saved by art: How one man’s skill got him through seven Nazi camps....8 decided to try to bring the subject of “We need to earn an income to sus- “I condemned my mother to the gas chamber with one wrong word”...... 10 the Holocaust closer to those who tain ourselves and keep the enter- The Jews who fought for freedom in the ring...... 14 might never have a chance to visit the prise going,” Mr. Ferreiro said, “but Jewish woman who entered the lion’s den...... 15 museum. our goal is to focus on larger social Save the date: ASYV Annual Tribute Dinner...... 16 It took time for Mr. Ferreiro to gain (Continued on page 13) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 YAD VASHEM MARKS 75 YEARS SINCE MURDERS OF POLISH JEWISH EDUCATORS lived in Korczak’s orphanage in uncompromising battle for survival, 1935, Wilczynska visited Mandatory BY TAMARA ZIEVE, Warsaw; the other is Yitzhak Belfer, the desperation, and often the Palestine and lived at kibbutz Ein POST 88. Neither man was able to attend extreme loneliness. But not about Harod before returning to Warsaw in the event owing to their health, but love. n August Yad Vashem hosted a Belfer, who had been scheduled to “Janusz Korczak was day of events to remember Polish I lay a wreath beside the monument the quintessential father Jewish educators Janusz Korczak commemorating Korczak and the chil- figure, educator and and Stefania Wilczynska, who sacri- dren sent to their deaths, released a democrat in a world of no ficed their lives to care for orphans in statement in his honor. tomorow,” Shik contin- the Warsaw ghetto. Yitzhak Belfer recalled the “great ued. “He was a man of Both refused to abandon the chil- love” he had for Korczak. “I was boundless love and dedi- dren for safer hideouts. On August 5, seven years old when I arrived at the cation toward the children 1942, the Nazis rounded up Korczak, orphanage, and under his protection and was granted the care in the orphanage.” opportunity to be At the conclusion of the educated under seminar, a memorial cere- him for eight of the mony took place at Yad most important Vashem’s Janusz years of my life,” Korczak Square, with a he said. “The doc- representative of the tor walked among Polish Embassy among us like any other those in attendance. After person, never that, Hamachanot Haolim patronizing — members flew dozens of spreading love kites, to represent and concern for Korczak’s educational Janusz Korczak Square at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. the children’s worldview, and to honor Janusz Korczak and Stefania Wilczynska. needs. In the his legacy of respect, love and equal- 1939. After the Nazi occupation of orphanage, we ity of rights. Poland, the members of Ein Harod Wilczynska and the 200 children of learned to believe in people, in the Janusz Korczak was the pen name arranged for her to leave Poland, but the orphanage. They marched in rows inclination for good that exists within of Henryk Goldszmit, a doctor, author she turned the offer down and moved to the Umschlagplatz gathering point, each and every one of us.” and educator. He dedicated his life to to the ghetto along with Korczak and with Korczak in the lead. Together “When we talk about the Holocaust, caring for children, and believed they the children. they were sent to Treblinka, where we are not used to talking or even should always be listened to and “The legacy of Janusz Korczak and they were all murdered. thinking about love,” said Dr. Naama respected. In 1912, Korczak became Stefania ‘Stefa’ Wilczynska is an Members of the Hamachanot Shik, director of the e-Learning the director of a Jewish orphanage in essential part of the educational mis- Haolim youth movement participated Department at Yad Vashem’s Warsaw. sion of Hamachanot Haolim youth in an educational seminar, conducted International School for Holocaust ilczynska and Korczak met in movement,” Avnat said. “Throughout by Yad Vashem in conjunction with Studies, who moderated the seminar. W 1909, and began working the year we discuss and utilize many Yossi and Reuven Nadel of the Israeli “We almost always think of the Shoah together. When World War I broke of their teachings and use many of Educational Institute in Memory of from the end —– the shooting pits, the out, Korczak became a military doctor the tools they left for us for our activi- Janusz Korczak, and Liron Avnat, gas chambers, the terrible journeys with the rank of lieutenant, leaving ties and all of our groups.... The prin- representing Hamachanot Haolim. toward them. We think about the Wilczynska in charge of the orphan- ciples and beliefs that Korczak devel- Yossi and Reuven are the sons of hunger, the cold, the horrors, the age. (He served again as a doctor in oped, nearly 100 years later are still Shlomo Nadel, who is one of two threats and the loss. We think about the Polish Army with the rank of major relevant and useful in educating our remaining Holocaust survivors who the breakdown of solidarity and the during the Polish-Soviet War.) In youth and future generations.” FAMILY PIANO THAT SURVIVED HOLOCAUST JOINS YAD VASHEM MUSEUM stands in Yad Vashem — a symbol of he Margulies are believed to be was no more space on the boat so BY PAUL GOLDMAN, NBC one family’s resilience. T the only family to escape Nazi decided to charter a plane instead. Germany by chartering an airplane and “I have no idea if this decision to he piano standing in the living Shlomo Margulies was 15 when he one of the few who managed to save charter the flight was naive, stupid or room looks and sounds like a escaped the German town of Chemnitz T such precious belongings. In October genius, but it saved our lives,” he said. typical instrument, but it hides in its with his parents and older brother. “The On March 26, 1939, the family left notes a story of defiance and survival. furniture we had was too heavy to ship, but my mother didn’t want to leave our Berlin on a three-day flight to piano behind,” he said. Palestine, stopping off in Italy and As with so many other Jewish fami- . Their belongings, including lies of the time, the piano had pride of the piano, were shipped to Haifa. place in the family living room and Most of their extended family, who was the center of entertainment and remained in Europe, were killed in the culture in the home. “It was common Holocaust. “The story of the piano and the arti- with many German families that kids facts here is a way to tell the stories of learn two crucial skills by the age of the Jews who managed to escape six — swimming and how to play the and those who suffered from the terri- piano,” said Margulies. ble Holocaust,” said Michael Tal, Margulies, 94, decided to donate curator and director of the Yad Shlomo Margulies, 94, sits in front of his fami- the instrument to Yad Vashem in Vashem artifacts department. ly’s piano, which is now part of a display at the Jerusalem as a reminder to future Recently, Margulies stood proudly Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. generations of his family’s journey. Bracha and her son Shlomo Margulies pose for with his wife, two sons and eight When the Margulies family fled Seeing the instrument in its new a photo. grandchildren next to the piano. He Germany in 1939 to escape their Nazi home, Shlomo refused to play it, say- and November 1938, Nazi paramilitary said he had decided the memorial oppressors, they refused to leave ing: “It reminds me of this whole story groups’ pogroms made the family center was the right place for it. behind the instrument on which their of survival, it was almost 90 years ago decide it was time to leave Germany. “If I were to hear this story told by two sons learned to play. that I played it, it’s like a dream but it’s Margulies, sent to Berlin to buy ferry another Jew I would have said he was Nearly 80 years on, the piano now a fact.” tickets for his family, found that there out of his mind,” he said. September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 IN HOLLAND, THE NAZIS BUILT A LUXURY CAMP TO LULL THE JEWS BEFORE MURDERING THEM experts on the Holocaust in the treatment in Westerbork that clinched set up an unarmed Jewish policing BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ, JTA . the illusion, according to Dormits. unit that was responsible for taking According to ten Cate, the deceit “People were operated on here by people to the trains to be shipped off othing about the footage that extended far beyond the possibly the best doctors, they would be hospi- to death camps in the east. Rudolf Breslauer filmed here on N staged scenes that Breslauer cap- talized for entire weeks as they healed, oday, what used to be the camp May 30, 1944, suggests that it was tured with his camera. (Breslauer was and when they were all better they grounds, in a grassy flatland, taken inside one of Europe’s largest T sent to Auschwitz with his wife and were put on a transport,” she recalled borders a large radio observatory. A Nazi concentration camps. three children in 1944. Only their in the documentary. “This was the memorial area contains informational In the film by Breslauer, a German daughter Chanita survived the war.) make-believe world in which we lived.” plaques and several monuments, Jewish inmate of the Westerbork “The size of camp Westerbork’s This form of deception was including a German cattle car of the camp in Holland’s northeast, prison- hospital, which was one of the best extremely effective, according to Dirk sort used to transport Jews and a ers are seen playing soccer enthusi- and largest hospitals of its kind, sym- Mulder, the director of the Camp statue featuring railway tracks that astically in team uniforms, complete bolizes the Nazi lie that Jews were Westerbork Memorial Center, a non- curl up heavenwards. with a referee in a special outfit. going to be put to work” further east, governmental organization with state Whereas elsewhere in Europe, for- A middle-aged man wearing a suit ten Cate told JTA in an interview funding that is responsible for com- mer Nazi camps were preserved and and a boy who may have been his ahead of the 75th anniversary of the memoration and educational work in used as educational exhibits about grandson stroll cheerfully in the sun first death transport out of the camp, the former camp. the Holocaust, the original barracks past spectators. In other segments, which took place on July 15, 1942. The message of the hospital was, and facilities of Westerbork were inmates are seen putting on theater “It was one of a great many German “We Germans have the best inten- used for housing refugees from performances, working in modern fac- efforts focused at making sure that tions for you, get better in this large Indonesia in the 1970s, until the facil- tories and even going to church — an Jews did not understand what the hospital so we can put you to work ities were stripped for wood. activity undertaken by many German Nazis were up to,” he added. Jews before the Holocaust, including These efforts paid off, according to some who had converted to Henny Dormits, 87, a Holocaust sur- Christianity just before or during the vivor who lived in the camp with her Holocaust in a vain effort to escape family for two years before they were persecution by the Nazis. sent to Theresienstadt. The film is one of only two cinemat- hile Jews in many other parts ic works known to have been pro- of Europe were subjected to duced inside a functioning concentra- W violence, torture, abuse and murder in tion camp for Jews — the other was in camps, in Westerbork, “people were Theresienstadt.

Jews from on their way to the transport to Westerbork transit camp .

elsewhere,” Mulder said in the Dutch The failure to preserve Westerbork documentary. was part of a greater reluctance in the Still, not everyone was duped. Netherlands, where many non-Jews Gemmeker, who had a friendly relation- felt victim to the Nazi occupation, to ship with the Jewish filmmaker acknowledge the uniqueness of the Breslauer, once told the cameraman Jewish tragedy, according to ten something that made Breslauer realize Cate. He said the Dutch also were the transports were a one-way ticket, reluctant to look at the role of ordinary according to Chanita Moses, Dutchmen, including police officers Breslauer’s daughter. Her father did not who rounded up Jews. say exactly what Gemmeker told him, This began to change in the 1990s, she told the Dutch television film crew. making way for a wave of renewed Philip Mechanicus, a Dutch Jewish interest in the Holocaust in recent Dutch Binyomin Jacobs’ parents survived the Holocaust in hiding, and he often speaks Holocaust victim who secretly chroni- years. But the belated timing means Westerbork about the genocide at to schoolchildren. cled his stay in Westerbork before he that Amsterdam is one of Europe’s not abused, they were treated correct- was murdered, wrote about his very last capital cities to receive a Commissioned by Westerbork’s ly,” she said during an interview for “tremendous fear” of when he would Holocaust museum: it opened last commanders for propaganda purpos- Dutch television in 2011. She spoke at be shipped out. year and is still in its “infancy stages,” es, Breslauer’s film is a rare documen- the former living quarters of Albert On September 13, 1943, a 65-year- ten Cate noted. tation of the sophisticated facade Gemmeker, the Nazi commander of old woman in Mechanicus’ barracks Back in Westerbork, Dutch Chief employed by the Nazis at the camp, Westerbork, which is the only part of committed suicide, he wrote. She was Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, whose par- where 75 years ago they began carry- the camp that still exists today. put on a list of deportees to ents survived the Holocaust in hiding ing out the systematic murder of three The Germans “did everything possi- Theresienstadt, prompting her daugh- and who often speaks about the -quarters of Dutch Jewry — the high- ble to keep people calm here so no ter to volunteer to leave with her genocide at the former camp to est death rate in Nazi-occupied one was afraid,” Dormits recalled. mother. The mother killed herself “to schoolchildren, told JTA that the Western Europe. Westerbork served And so when people were shipped off prevent her daughter from making the camp’s story is a constant reminder as a so-called transit camp from which in cattle carts, “everyone assumed sacrifice,” wrote Mechanicus. against giving in to wishful thinking. 100,000 Dutch Jews were shipped to we’d be going to another work camp.” Camp Westerbork originally was set “When disaster happens slowly, in Nazi death camps in Poland. Westerbork included many ameni- up in 1939 as a detainment facility by installments, people have a tendency The subterfuge maintained the illu- ties that Jewish concentration camp the Dutch government in a remote, to accept each installment,” said sion that the camp’s inmates were inmates elsewhere could only dream rural area of the country for fewer Jacobs, who in 2014 shocked many sent to work camps, giving them hope of, including permits to leave camp than 2,000 Jewish refugees who fled Dutchmen when he said that anti- and an incentive to comply with without supervision — given exclu- Nazi Germany. Two years after the Semitism in the Netherlands means orders that helped ensure sively to people with family still inside Germans invaded in 1940, they took he would advise his congregants to Westerbork’s deadly efficiency, the camp, so they would not escape over the space and massively live in or the United States. according to Johannes Houwink ten — and cabaret productions with musi- increased its capacity. They treated “This is what happened here. So I Cate of the University of Amsterdam, cal instruments. the first German inmates as a pre- think we cannot afford to stay silent who is among the world’s foremost But it was the quality of medical ferred prisoner population. And they and just hope for the best.” Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 STOLEN WORDS: THE NAZI PLUNDER OF JEWISH BOOKS Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of try among Jews. It is here, too, that “introduced” by the Nazis. Indeed, leaders, including Alfred Rosenberg Jewish Books. we read about the specific rules for the Nazis pillaged the books and and Heinrich Himmler, would compete By Mark Glickman. The Jewish the care, handling and disposal of reli- manuscripts of countless prestigious to see to its realization. Publication Society: Philadelphia, gious books especially — such was Jewish institutions, libraries, book- Finally, we come to what is surely Pa., 2016. 327 pp. $22.31 hardcover. the exceptionally high esteem they shops and private collections across the most absorbing part of Stolen were held in! the continent with cruel impunity, Words: the discovery of these books REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN As we approach the even as they forced those after the war, stored in “castles, aban- t this point, the world is well very heart of Jewish scholars who had doned mine shafts, and warehouses,” A aware of the six million Jews Glickman’s work, we once utilized these treas- and the story of the well-known schol- murdered during the Holocaust. learn that, in fact, the ured works into the ars and Jewish leaders, including Popular films like The Monuments idea of burning Jewish painful position of sorting Salo W. Baron, Cecil Roth, Lucy Men and Woman in Gold have also books was not “intro- them — and by so doing, Schildkret (soon to be Lucy S. made many aware of the invaluable duced” by the Nazis. deciding which would Dawidowicz), Hannah Arendt and artwork stolen by the Nazis during the “The first recorded “live” and which “die,” or Judah L. Magnes, who would dedi- Holocaust, a goodly portion of it from incident of Jewish be consigned to the cate themselves to finding a caring those selfsame Jews. Mark Glickman, book destruction dates “nearby pulp mill” for home for them once more. the author of the fascinating, thorough back to the second destruction. Interestingly, Needless to say, students of the and well-written book, Stolen Words: century BCE, during here Glickman tells us Holocaust will find Stolen Words: The The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books, the Maccabean revolt.” how two Jewish poets, Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books excep- now shines a bright light on the mil- Then, sadly, with time Abraham Sutzkever and tionally valuable. For that matter, this lions of books — many of them and more books avail- Shmerke Kaczerginski singular work belongs in the library of unique and priceless — stolen from able, came more con- tried to undermine this all those of us who love books! the Jews by the Nazis during those flagrations, often due to the rulings of “selection” process by saving the best P.S. On a more personal note: after years. various Popes. In sum: aside from the of them . . . a highly dangerous under- the war, this reviewer’s father, Wisely, in order for the reader to “sturdy, boot-pounding songs whose taking. Abraham Cypkin, a well-known lyricist fully appreciate the crime perpetrated lyrics the crowds sang with beer-hall So, why did Hitler and the Nazis of the Kovno ghetto, had the honor of by this ruthless looting, Glickman gusto,” and the “inflammatory Nazi want these books? having a number of his works appear begins his work by reviewing how oratory” culminating in excited mob mong other reasons, we read in Kaczerginski’s 1948 collection of central the word and hence the reli- responses of “Heil Hitler” and Nazi A how “during the late 1930s . . . poems and songs written in the ghet- gious book and, indeed, all books are salutes, the burning of Jewish books Hitler . . . envisioned an academy that tos and camps — Lider fun di Getos to . Thus, we are initially pre- in Germany in the spring of 1933 was would demonstrate the great achieve- un Lagern. In Stolen Words Glickman sented with a very interesting short nothing new. ments of German intellect and culture.” notes that this volume “remains the history highlighting the stages of the On the other hand, the premeditated “One goal of this developing academic largest and most significant collection development of the word becoming and organized extermination and cre- impulse was to provide scientific justifi- of its kind.” the Jewish religious book and books mation of a people, while the beloved cation for the Nazis’ racism and anti- generally, alongside no less interest- books they lived by — “the literary semitism.” In short, then, a great library Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of ing and important information on the legacy of an entire civilization” — of Jewish books was needed for Media, Communication, and Visual early development of the print indus- were taken: that was, it appears, “research and education,” and Nazi Arts at Pace University. SEVEN BOOKS ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST SCHOLARS SAY YOU SHOULD READ chair in Holocaust studies and East in July 1941, Bikont went to I first read about the Jedwabne BY JOSEFIN DOLSTEN, European Jewish history and associ- Jedwabne and its surroundings, inter- massacre in Gross’s book and still THE TIMES OF ISRAEL ate professor of history at viewing eyewitnesses to the crime in remember being riveted by the cover rom Anne Frank’s diary to Elie University, writes: the years 2000 to 2003, shedding image of a barn engulfed in flames. FWiesel’s Night, books about the This book, a winner of the 2015 new light on the character of the per- Perhaps because my paternal Holocaust remain some of the most National Jewish Book Award, was petrators, the bystanders and the grandfather was from Łomża, Poland powerful and well-known pieces of lit- written by a Polish journalist who dis- intricate way the crime was concealed — a city relatively near Jedwabne — erature published in the past century. I felt a particular connection to this Books have the power to educate atrocity, as well as gratitude to him for about the Shoah’s unimaginable hor- leaving the country years before the rors and bring to life the stories of its Holocaust. I directed Tadeusz victims, as well as unearth hidden Słobodzianek’s Our Class, a play details about wartime crimes. loosely based on the events in JTA reached out to Jewish studies Jedwabne, at Tufts in 2012, and scholars across the country, seeking remain fascinated by this story of their recommendations on recently greed, treachery and cruelty, a horrif- published books dealing with the ic crime in which as many as 1,600 Holocaust. Their picks, all published Jewish men, women and children per- in the past three years, include an ished. Bikont’s magnificent work of investigation into the 1941 massacre investigative journalism details her of Jews in the Polish town of meticulous reconstruction of the mas- Jedwabne (two scholars recommend- sacre and its subsequent decades- ed the same book on that topic), a long coverup. It is a sobering and critical examination of theories trying compelling account of anti-Semitism, to explain the Holocaust, and a look denial and isolated acts of heroism. at how Adolf Hitler saw Islam as a reli- covered she was Jewish in her 30s for 50 years after the Holocaust. It is The Archive Thief: The Man Who gion that could be exploited for anti- and became deeply engaged in the written in the form of a journal of the Salvaged French Jewish History in Semitic purposes. topic of Polish-Jewish relations. After author’s travels and conversations the Wake of the Holocaust (Oxford The Crime and the Silence: Jan T. Gross’ controversial book with people. University Press, 2015). By Lisa Confronting the Massacre of Jews Neighbors: The Destruction of the Barbara Grossman, professor of Moses Leff. in Wartime Jedwabne (Farrar, Jewish Community in Jedwabne, drama at Tufts University and former Jonathan Sarna, professor of Straus and Giroux, 2015). By Anna Poland (2000) proved that the local US Holocaust Memorial Council American Jewish history at Brandeis Bikont. Poles — not the Germans — commit- board member, also recommended University, writes: Joshua Zimmerman, professorial ted the massive pogrom in that town Bikont’s book. She writes: (Continued on page 13) September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 WHY ARE THERE CROSSES ON EASTERN EUROPE’S HOLOCAUST MEMORIALS? lagers remembered exactly where the dren in our village, so afterwards we POLIN Museum of Jewish history, in BY JULIE MASIS, FORWARD Jews were murdered, because after decided to mark the spot,” he said. Poland. the war they planted poplar trees to Zeltser said he does not think such But in Moldova, the response has hen school principal Ivan mark the spot, Timoshko said. He still monuments are anti-Semitic or inten- been more positive. Timoshko decided to do W uses these tall trees as a guide when tionally meant to erase the memory of “If Christians honor the memory of something to mark the spot in his vil- he tries to find his cross, because it is genocide against the Jews. their Jewish neighbors in a fashion lage where dozens of Jews were exe- hard to see it from the road. “If they wanted to forget that Jews which is familiar to them, that’s a very cuted by the Nazis, he did it the only “There are just a handful of these were killed there, they wouldn’t put a wonderful thing,” said Irina Shihova, way he knew how: he built a cross. monuments, because most of the monument at all. When people put in curator of Moldova’s Jewish Heritage Together with the children from his [Holocaust] monuments are built by their own money and their effort — I Museum. school in the village, he cut down an Jews,” said Arkadi Zeltser, director of don’t think those people wanted to While there are no Jews left in the acacia tree, chopped away the the Center for Research on the forget that Jews were executed village of Stolnichani, Leon Akerman, branches and erected a three-meter- Holocaust in the Soviet Union at the there,” he said. “Do you think they who is one of the 10 Jews who still high cross on the top of a hill, just Yad Vashem museum in Israel. “Most know that Jews don’t put a cross on live in the nearby town of Edinits, said above a ravine into which the bodies likely, they were built by local the grave? I am not sure. Believe me, he sees nothing wrong with a cross fell. He painted the cross bright blue, activists. The authorities probably did- it doesn’t even occur to them that for that marks the spot where a mas- simply because that was the only n’t build them.” Jews it might be offensive.” sacre took place. color he had. To this cross he He said he knows of two more such But others in the Jewish community “It’s better than nothing,” said attached a wooden board with hand- monuments — in Cherikov, Belarus, said a cross that marks the spot Akerman, 72, whose grandparents, written words: “Jewish families were and in Yudendorf, in Crimea, where where Jews were killed is not histori- aunt and uncle were murdered during executed on this spot by the Nazis.” cally accurate and is disrespectful to the Holocaust. “A lot of places where those who died. people were executed have no monu- Boris Bruk, who helped to build 17 ments at all, a lot of places have been Holocaust monuments in Belarus in forgotten.” recent years, said it’s important that For instance, retired city councilor the word “Jew” be written clearly on Iurii Zagorcea, who is Christian, has memorials. erected five Holocaust monuments in In particular, the Jewish community northern Moldova and has lobbied the in Belarus is working to replace the president of Moldova to include a unit old description of the victims as on the Holocaust in the country’s “Soviet citizens” with the word “Jews.” schoolbooks. In the coming years he “If it’s only a cross and Jews are hopes to build five more Holocaust buried there, we are not happy about monuments. that,” Bruk said. “It’s not right. It cre- “My goal is to educate the future ates the wrong impression about who generations so that it doesn’t happen was executed there. It needs to be again,” he said. “We must tell the truth changed.” — so that people see the stones and A Holocaust memorial with a Christian cross in Edinits, Moldova. “We didn’t know that the Jewish the Holocaust monument has a custom is to put a six-pointed star on Christian cross on one side and a the grave,” he said. “We did what we Jewish star on the other. He said could do by ourselves; we didn’t have there might be one or two more simi- any financial help.” lar monuments in Russia. In There are a few similar monuments Cherikov, Belarus, on the spot where in villages and small towns in Belarus, between 300 and 500 Jews were exe- Ukraine and Russia — although the cuted in the fall of 1941, a monument phenomenon has remained largely with a cross was built after the original unknown until now. Experts who have monument was vandalized in the glimpsed these rare memorials say 1980s, according to information on they are created with the best of the Yad Vashem’s website. intentions, but some Jewish leaders This journalist independently dis- in the former Soviet Union object to covered three more Holocaust monu- the crosses. ments with Christian symbols in According to the Yad Vashem muse- Petrikov, Begoml and Anatovka in um’s database, Romanian Fascists Belarus and one more in Moldova — murdered almost 100 Jews in Holocaust memorial in Orhei, Moldova. all of them built after the fall of the Stolnichani, which sits in the north of Soviet Union. A cross that stands on a Jewish they will know what happened here.” Moldova, near the Romanian border, “It’s a new phenomenon — in Soviet grave is problematic from a religious Most of the monuments he built in July 1941. One of the peasants wit- times this didn’t happen,” Zeltser said. standpoint as well, said Boleslav have the Star of David on them, but nessed the massacre as it happened: “Now it’s the new generation who Kapulkin, spokesman for the one — in the village of Terebna — The Romanian Fascists forced believe that it’s not good when a Lubavitch community in Odessa, features a cross on the left side with Jewish children, women and elderly grave of hundreds of people isn’t Ukraine. Jewish souls can’t rest in the names of the six Christian soldiers into the forest, lined them up and taken care of. So they put a monu- graves marked by the symbol of a for- who were executed by Fascists, and began shooting. Many people who fell ment in accordance with their own eign religion, he said. on the right a six-pointed star for the were only injured. But for days, the ideas of how to take care of these Then, too, the people who murdered 64 Jewish victims from the same vil- soldiers guarded the spot so that no places.” the Jews were Christians. lage. one could come to help the injured, Indeed, people in Stolnichani “I can understand the reaction of the Next to this monument stands a tall Timoshko said. always wanted to build some kind of Jewish community to Holocaust mon- cross. It is hard to imagine that something monument, said Timoshko, a 69-year- uments that are built by Christians “People ask why we put a cross so terrible could have happened here: old Communist and the son of a because the Germans were there,” Zagorcea said. “It is our cus- Cherry and apple trees grow all World War II veteran — but no one Christians and the Nazi uniforms had tom to put a cross in the honorary around, fat rabbits jump into the bush- took the initiative until he became the the inscription, ‘God is with us,’” said place at the entrance to the village. It es when they hear someone principal of the school. Hanna Wegrzynek, the chief special- shows the respect of the local people approaching, and sunflower fields “We had a discussion with the chil- ist in the research department at the to those who were killed.” beg to be photographed. But the vil- Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 “HE SHOULD BE AS WELL KNOWN AS SCHINDLER” The effort continued for two years — they could be traded for German citi- dynasty, which has since reestab- BY MARK MACKINNON, until Swiss police, anxious to avoid zens detained in camps in Canada lished itself in Israel. THE GLOBE AND MAIL irritating Hitler’s Germany, broke up and the United States. Mr. Kuhl’s tombstone near Bnei the fake documents ring. They But the sheer number of Latin Brak in Israel says he saved the lives e lived for decades in relative brought Mr. Kuhl and his collaborators American passport holders in occu- of thousands of Jews, including that anonymity in Toronto, where he H in for questioning and demanded that pied Poland eventually raised suspi- of Mr. Rokeach. Mr. Singer says the ran a construction company. But doc- the Polish legation, which represent- cions. As Swiss police moved to shut inscription was added at the “insis- uments shared with The Globe show ed the London-based government-in- down Mr. Kuhl’s passport ring in the tence” of the rabbi’s son. that Julius Kuhl — who died in 1985 exile of Nazi-occupied Poland, dis- fall of 1943, Germany demanded that — should have been one of Canada’s miss Mr. Kuhl. Latin American countries verify that most celebrated citizens, a hero of the “He should be as well known as the passport holders were really their Holocaust who saved hundreds, per- Schindler, because he saved as many citizens. haps thousands, of lives. lives as Schindler,” said Markus hen Latin American govern- Julius Kuhl arrived in Toronto short- Blechner, who worked for years to ments said they had no ly after the Second World War with his W collect the documents proving the tale knowledge of the passport holders, young family and a suitcase full of he heard as a child about Mr. Kuhl the Jews in Vittel and other intern- Swiss watches that he hoped to sell. and the life-saving passports. Mr. ment camps were sent to Auschwitz and the horrific fate from which Mr. Kuhl’s network had tried to save them. Another reason Mr. Kuhl’s exploits went unheralded is that Mr. Kuhl him- self was uninterested in publicizing or romanticizing his exploits. “[He] wasn’t interested in fame. He did this for a certain period in time, then he was selling watches in Toronto, then he became a construc- tion magnate. People say, ‘Why didn’t Rabbi Aharon Rokeach at Marienbad in 1937 he promote his story?’ Because he for the famous rabbinical congress. The rabbi was busy,” said Mr. Kuhl’s son-in-law, was one of many who were saved by Mr. Kuhl’s efforts. Israel Singer. “He was a man trying to build a new life, just like the Mr. Kuhl was born into poverty in the [Holocaust] survivors were.” southeastern Polish town of Sanok in Julius Kuhl. But Mr. Kuhl did tell his four children 1917 but was sent at the age of nine He was also carrying a story of brav- Blechner, the grandson of Holocaust — two of whom still live in Toronto — to live with his uncle in Zurich. His ery and sorrow that he shared only victims, took up the cause of preserv- and many grandchildren about the father had died when he was young, with those close to him — one that ing Mr. Kuhl’s story after Mr. Kuhl work he did during the war. The inspir- and his mother wanted him to get a might have made him an international attended his bar mitzvah as an hon- ing story they heard is supported by better education than he could celebrity had he chosen to tell it. ored guest shortly after the war. documents seen by The Globe and receive in Sanok. Mr. Kuhl fulfilled Mr. Kuhl’s death in 1985 made no Mr. Schindler protected more than Mail in Bern, as well as by photo- that wish by obtaining a PhD in eco- headlines in Canada or beyond. But 1,000 Jews by employing them at his copied passports and other records nomics shortly before the outbreak of documents stored in Switzerland, factory in Nazi-occupied Poland. Mr. that were anonymously donated to the war. Jerusalem and Washington — shared Wallenberg saved almost 10,000 the United States Holocaust Memorial His mother was deported to Siberia exclusively with The Globe and Mail Hungarian Jews by issuing them pro- Museum shortly after Mr. Kuhl’s after the Nazi-Soviet invasion of and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, a tective passports identifying them as death. Other documents that corrobo- Poland on September 1, 1939. She Polish newspaper — reveal Mr. Kuhl’s Swedish citizens. rate Mr. Kuhl’s heroics are stored in died shortly after the end of the war. role as a savior of hundreds, perhaps One of the reasons Mr. Kuhl’s story the archives of the Yad Vashem In 1940, Mr. Kuhl was hired by the thousands of fellow Jews during the isn’t as widely known is that his pass- museum in Jerusalem. Polish legation as deputy head of the Holocaust. It is a story that deserves port scheme was only partly success- A 1945 letter from the Agudath consular section, with a special remit to be considered alongside those of ful. Mr. Blechner, who now serves as Israel World Organization states that to aid Polish refugees. famous Holocaust heroes such as the honorary Polish consul in Zurich, Mr. Kuhl and his colleagues played a The passport-smuggling operation Oskar Schindler and Raoul says thousands of fake passports critical role in “rescuing many hun- began in October 1941. The first res- Wallenberg. were distributed via Mr. Kuhl’s net- dreds of Polish Jews.” cue was accomplished by Eli Described by his family as a short, work, but only a minority of the recipi- “These stories are not apocryphal. Sturnbuch, a Polish Jew living in devout and gregarious man who was ents are believed to have survived the They’re actually real. There’s docu- Switzerland who purchased a blank Holocaust. mentation,” said Mr. Singer, who Paraguayan passport in Bern and constantly puffing on a cigar, Mr. Kuhl Jews holding passports from neutral served from 1986 to 2001 as secre- filled it in with the details of his was a low-level diplomat at the Polish countries were considered exempt tary-general of the World Jewish fiancée, Guta Eisenzweig, who was legation in Bern, the Swiss capital, from Nazi laws that confined Jews to Congress and then as chairman until trapped in the Warsaw ghetto. during the Second World War. He was ghettos and mandated that they iden- 2006 —– doing work, he said, that When that effort succeeded, also the center of a network that man- tify themselves by wearing yellow was frequently inspired by the legacy Switzerland’s Jewish community real- ufactured fake Latin American pass- stars on their clothing. Those third- and teachings of his father-in-law. ized they might be able to save far ports that were then smuggled into country passports allowed many Jews One of the many saved by Mr. more people. Mr. Kuhl and his net- Nazi-occupied Europe. to flee ahead of the mass extermina- Kuhl’s efforts was Aharon Rokeach, work began buying dozens, then hun- Personal letters, diplomatic cables tions that followed. the chief rabbi of the Hasidic dreds, of blank Paraguayan passports and Swiss police records show that, An estimated six million European dynasty. Mr. Rokeach was considered from the cooperative Paraguayan starting in 1941, Mr. Kuhl acquired Jews were murdered during the a top target of the , and sav- consul in Bern. thousands of blank passports from Holocaust. ing the rabbi became paramount for As the operation expanded, the net- the consuls of Paraguay and other While some of the Jews who the Hasidim. work began buying blank passports South and Central American coun- received passports produced in He escaped Nazi-occupied Europe from other countries that had tries in Switzerland. He and a col- Switzerland used them to escape in 1943 using a passport created by remained neutral. Bank transfers league then entered by hand the from Nazi-occupied Europe, the Mr. Kuhl and sent via diplomatic found among the documents in Bern names and dates of birth of European majority were sent to internment pouch by Archbishop Filippo show that American Jews aided the Jews — including many who were camps — many, apparently, to a Bernardini, the papal nuncio to Bern effort by sending money via the Polish trapped inside the Warsaw ghetto — camp in Vittel, in Vichy . Mr. who repeatedly used his office to aid consulate in New York. before pasting in their black-and- Blechner says the Nazis’ original plan Mr. Kuhl’s efforts. The rescue pre- Mr. Kuhl and his colleague Konstanty white photos. was to hold the “Latin Americans” until served the lineage of the Belzer (Continued on page 11) September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 THE DAY NAZIS TOOK WARSAW GHETTO JEWS TO TREBLINKA EXTERMINATION CAMP They include people such as Ed H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man and fantasiz- Davidowicz, 87, recalled how the BY ALAN HALL, EXPRESS Herman, an economist, who was born ing about remaining invisible and not ghetto Jews were lied to — promised in Warsaw in 1931. A decade later he just hidden in the cellar, under the bed, bread if they went willingly to the col- uly 22, 1942, dawned hot and was walled up with all the other Nazi- in the closet or behind the furniture. lection point to board the trains. muggy in the Warsaw ghetto. J defined Untermenschen or sub- “We slept in crumpled beds, hug- She said: “People were offered two Two years earlier, the Nazis had humans — including Roma, Slavs, ging each other, but this time our luck loaves of bread, some margarine or forced the Jewish population of the mentally disabled and physically ran out. Shortly after we moved in, the some sugar if they reported to the German-occupied Poland into an handicapped — in the ghetto. Umschlagplatz. Nobody area occupying just 1.3 square miles, “I had close relatives who lived right imagined they were surrounded by a 10-foot wall topped across from Pawiak prison, run by the going straight to a gas by barbed wire. Gestapo, where executions took chamber. And this was the day on which they place daily,” he recalled. “I used to “You heard every lan- were to embark on one of the most visit my family there often. On one guage in the street — horrifying examples of mass murder such visit to their house, crossing a Yiddish,Polish, in human history. checkpoint manned by Hungarian, German. We police, I was beaten up by cooked on sawdust a policeman simply between two bricks and because I was there. fetched water from a “In the early summer of communal tap. Food was 1942, my mother decided bread mixed with saw- that for my survival it was dust and potatoes.” necessary for me to be Her father joined the smuggled out. It was just police and ensured their in time, because the trans- survival while their neigh- port of Warsaw Jews to bors vanished around the death camp of them. Treblinka started a few “Our block of flats was months later.” empty. The father of the etween July 22 and twins living above us BSeptember 21, up to threw himself out of the 300,000 inhabitants of the Janina Davidowicz recalls how the Jews were promised bread if window when he came ghetto were deported to they willingly boarded the trains. home and didn’t find his Treblinka. Herman sur- next round-up began and our hiding children there.” vived by being taken in by place in the attic was discovered.” In the winter of 1942 Janina’s father a Christian family before She was marched with her family to smuggled her to a Christian district. making his way to the Umschlagplatz — known as the As he had police identification papers, Hungary. He lost many rel- “vestibule of hell” — but their fate was he was allowed to escort lorries out atives, but his mother and deferred because the last train of the through the gates, and she slipped Deportation of Polish Jews to Treblinka extermination camp father survived. day was full. out under his watch. from the ghetto. Maja Grabowska was “The last train left, leaving on the Outside the ghetto in the city, she also a child when she platform dead and dying people. I was kept hidden by nuns and changed Armed with lists and maps, SS sol- heard the nail-studded Nazi jackboots heard horrifying screams. Blood was her name, but neither her mother nor diers moved methodically among the clattering through the ghetto streets. flowing so profusely that it was pour- her father survived the war. filthy, disease-ridden Jewish apart- “Day after day the Germans were ing into the building nearby.” She now lives in London. German ment blocks to round up the first can- carrying out human hunting — comb- In the event, a Jewish policeman troops returned to the ghetto in April didates for extermination. ing block after block for the whole working for the Nazis led them to 1943 to remove its remaining inhabi- Children cried, women screamed month,” she said. “The action was and old men begged for mercy, but proceeding with a lot of shouting, this was an operation that was to be screaming, beating the helpless, firing carried out with no consideration of at them and using all kinds of abuse. age, sex or infirmity. Surviving the first wave left us fright- On that first day 6,000 Jews were ened and terrorized. put aboard trains as the Holocaust “From the start of the ‘action’ our moved into its industrial-scale phase. small family group — mama and I, They were told they were to be reset- my grandparents, and my aunt, with tled in the east. six-year-old Lenka — moved several Instead, the cattle wagons they times because our first temporary boarded were destined for a complex home at Zamenhoff Street was called Treblinka, just two hours north of searched a couple of times and left the city. It had been fitted out with 10 deserted. Those who were not suc- gas chambers disguised as shower cessfully hidden were taken to the blocks which could suffocate thou- Umschlagplatz — the collection point sands of people per day in batches of for the trains — and perished. 200. “In each house we moved into, the There was no need to tattoo the first thing to do was to find the hiding inmates with serial numbers. place: an attic, or cellar, or some wall Treblinka was purely a death factory, Treblinka closet, which we could disguise. The Ed Herman escaped the ghetto a few months before Nazis started moving its residents to . with most of its victims dead and ghetto was almost empty. Houses safety. While the rest of her family tants. But by then news of the mass buried within two hours of arrival. were abandoned, apartment doors were to perish in the Warsaw ghetto murder had spread and hundreds of The courage and suffering of a wide open. In succeeding rooms we uprising the following year, Maja, now brave Jews rose up. doomed people, carted away day entered there was still food on the 84, was smuggled out of the ghetto. They all perished, but the “Jews of after day during that terrible summer, table, clothing and toys around, But the horror of those days has Warsaw” had defied the evil Nazi is recalled by the very few who sur- unmade beds. Tenants disappeared, never left her. German state, and in doing so gave vived the ghetto to bear witness to a probably already gassed in Treblinka. “It is always with me,” she says. the future state of Israel, God’s prom- dark period the Jews called “the great “I remember thinking with envy of Another child survivor, Janina ised land, its motto: “Never again.” deportations.” Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 SAVED BY ART: HOW ONE MAN’S SKILL GOT HIM THROUGH SEVEN NAZI CAMPS rials in the camps was considered a Aron moved to in 1949 a pencil and paper. BY EITAN AROM, risk, so German troops who wanted a with a young wife, $4 in his pocket “I mean, in my head is, ‘Am I going JEWISH JOURNAL likeness would hide him in a locked and zero English proficiency after fin- to be alive tomorrow?’ ” Aron said in barrack while he drew them or worked ishing art school in Vienna. In 1951, his apartment nearly eight decades alman Aron is a prolific artist. from a photograph to draw their rela- he had a job illustrating maps in later. “Watching them killing the Jews Even during his internment at K tives. Glendale when one day, he decided was terrible, terrible, terrible. I have seven Nazi camps, he didn’t stop “Once I did a portrait and other peo- to glue two city maps to a board to very bad nights sleeping here.” drawing — and his artwork saved his ple liked it, they would do the same create an 8-foot-tall canvas. life. thing: lock me in the room, not let me He brought home the oversized “I probably have in Germany a hun- out,” he said. sheet, and after four or five nights of dred drawings, drawings of soldiers,” Aron managed to leverage his skill laboring past midnight, he finished a the 92-year-old artist said during a anywhere he spent a significant pastel, showing a scene he had wit- recent interview. “They wouldn’t pay amount of time, particularly the Riga nessed many times in the camps: a me anything, but I would get a piece ghetto and the labor camps of mother clutching her child tightly to of bread, something to eat. Without Poperwahlen in Latvia and her face, as if they were one, bound that, I wouldn’t be here.” Rehmsdorf in Germany. In each together no matter what abuse they Speaking in the living room of his place, he attracted a clientele of rank- might have to face. modest Beverly Hills apartment, Aron and-file soldiers and high-ranking offi- As he worked on the painting, he was surrounded by his artwork, col- recalled, “I wasn’t feeling. I saw it happening.” He went on, “I just said, ‘I’m going to put it on paper.’ I wanted to draw them. That’s why.” “Mother and Child” sat in his studio for nearly 60 years as he found him- self unable to part with it, the glue he used to create the canvas bleeding slowly through the paper to create a brownish tint. Today, it is considered one of his masterpieces. At the time he painted it, Aron was unable to put his trauma into words. During his later Shoah Foundation interview, as a videographer switched tapes, Aron chatted with the inter- viewer, a fellow survivor, apparently unaware that audio still was being recorded, and described his difficulty. “About 30 years ago, I couldn’t do Self-portrait. it,” he said. “I couldn’t do it. I would cers who rewarded him with scraps of choke up if I did it. I’m fine now.” lected over decades. Paintings are food and pulled him out of hard labor. Sherri Jacobs, an art therapist out- stacked five and six deep against What seems like lifetimes later, he side Kansas City, Mo., told the each wall, with more in his bedroom believes painting still keeps him alive Journal that art sometimes enables and even more in a basement store- today. survivors of trauma to express what “Mother and Child” (1951), pastel on paper on room. “Friends of mine, they get old and they otherwise could not. Jacobs has a board. Aron immigrated to Los Angeles in they don’t know what to do, and they conducted an art therapy workshop at The task could have taken him two 1949 and built a life, a career and a die of boredom,” he said in his dining a Jewish retirement home near days, he said. But he stretched it over circle of friends. They were artists and room, his eyes widening with intensi- Kansas City for 15 years, working more than a week for the exemption it musicians. Now, apart from his wife ty. “Boredom! And I’ll never die of with many Holocaust survivors. afforded him from back-breaking and a part-time caretaker, it’s his boredom, as long as I have a piece of Though they rarely paint explicitly labor. paintings that keep him company. paper.” about their Holocaust experience, as It’s difficult for Aron to estimate how Aron was born with a preternatural Aron has, creative expression many portraits he drew. He knew only talent for portraiture. At 3, he was “MOTHER AND CHILD” nonetheless helps put shape and that the same interaction repeated drawing likenesses of family friends in ecades before he spoke openly form to their trauma, she said. itself many times with Nazi troops. Riga, Latvia. At 7, he had a one-man about what he saw during the “They can express things in a “Wherever I was, I made sure I had show at a local gallery. At 13, he won D Holocaust, Aron painted it. metaphorical way,” she said, “in a way a piece of paper and pencil,” he said. a commission to paint the prime min- Until 1994, when he was inter- that it’s leaving their mind, leaving As the months passed, he parlayed ister of Latvia. He was 16 years old viewed by the USC Shoah their body and going on paper.” his skill into gaining more materials, and a student at Riga’s art academy Foundation, he tended not to describe piecing together a sheaf of drawings in 1941 when the Germans occupied PAINTING MEN AND MONSTERS what he had seen. But during those that he carried with him. Observing the country. long decades of silence, he produced rawing in the camps, Aron said his assured manner and his materi- Seven camps, four marriages and a number of artworks — in oil, water- he was not thinking of his als, camp guards mostly left him nearly 80 years later, he’s proven to D color, pastel and charcoal — depict- hatred or fear of his subjects — only alone. be a resourceful and dogged survivor. ing his memories of that trying time. of surviving. “When they saw that, they knew, In the long and circuitous course of There was Aron at the head of a line In Poperwahlen, for instance, the ‘Don’t touch this guy, he’s doing his life, art and survival have gone of inmates on a forced march. There camp commandant gave Aron a pho- something for us,’ ” he said. hand in hand. was Aron at Buchenwald, sleeping tograph of his parents and ordered By the end of the war, his skill It began in the ghetto in Riga, when outside with a rock for a pillow. There him to draw a miniature that could fit accounted for perhaps an extra five he did a pencil drawing of a guard and were haggard portraits of fellow in a locket mounted on a ring. pounds on his skeletal frame, he told showed it to him. The guard liked it inmates. Aron had seen Jews randomly beat- the Shoah Foundation interviewer — enough to spread the word about his But the most well-known of these en or shot by guards at the camp. a small but critical difference. talent. The formula repeated itself paintings is “Mother and Child,” which More than anything, he was thinking “There also were people that were over and over in the coming years of now hangs in the lobby of the Los about his own survival as the com- tailors and shoemakers,” he said in persecution and hardship. Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. mandant locked him in a barrack with Still, for a Jew to have writing mate- (Continued on page 9) September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR’S LIFELONG SEARCH FOR HER DEAD PARENTS They suffered in hot, cramped con- tryside for a short while.” train out of . BEAU DONELLY, THE AGE ditions with no food or water. Most It has been more than seven decades But for 40 years Vivianne didn’t utter were sent to transit camps, then herd- since the last of the men and women s she has done for so long, a word about her parents. Not even to ed onto cattle trains destined for the and their children arrived at Death Vivianne Spiegel searches the the family who adopted three orphans A gas chambers at Auschwitz. Gate, were divided into groups and fading photographs for her parents’ of the Holocaust shipped to Australia In a lifesaving turn of fate, Tauba were sent either to work or to the grave. faces among the piles of bodies. after the war. and her three children were released Tauba and Moshe were among She was seven years old when she Now 81, the grandmother shares after appealing to a sympathetic more than 1.1 million people who per- saw her mother, Tauba, for the last her story at the Jewish Holocaust French policeman. ished at the Nazi concentration camp time. It was Paris, July 1942. Her Museum in Elsternwick. She speaks When they made it back to their that stretched to the horizon, span- father, Moshe, a Polish shoemaker, apartment, police tape stretched ning a terrifying 40 square kilometers. had already been captured and across the front door. Tauba knew the Mostly they were Jews, but Poles, turned over to the Nazis. only way to protect her children was Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, to get them out of the city. gay and disabled people were also She put them on a train bound for targeted. Chaufour-Notre-Dame, in the coun- ivianne doesn’t know if her par- try’s northwest, to the small farm Vents were reunited behind the where they would spend the next two barbed-wire fences before they died. years in hiding. She hopes they were. They are Vivianne remembers her mother together now, in the frame she keeps crying at the station. She promised on the dressing table in her home. the war would be over soon; that the The black-and-white photograph of family would be together again. She each of her parents, taken from their told Vivianne to take care of her little identification papers, is all she has left brother, six-year-old Albert, and her of them. Holocaust survivor Vivianne Spiegel with her 14-month-old baby sister, Regine. In 2010, Vivianne and her two sons Not long after the train pulled out, only picture of her parents, who were both retraced her childhood in France and killed at Auschwitz. Tauba was denounced. Years later travelled to Auschwitz for the annual Vivianne Spiegel (right) with her two younger Vivianne would learn how her mother about her fear of death and of the siblings, Albert and Regine. This photo was March of the Living. They walked three ran up the stairs of their building when recurring nightmares. But she is given to their father when he was at an intern- kilometers from Camp Number One to the police came for her. Tauba was haunted most by photos of the ment camp in Pithiviers, France. His family Birkenau in tribute to her parents. hope he had it with him when he was deported finally captured on the roof. massed bodies. “It was a nightmarish experience for to Auschwitz. This is the last thing Vivianne knows “At first I couldn’t look, but slowly I me, but it was also a form of closure,” about what happened to her mother, acquired the strength. And then I He was among the first prisoners she says. “I’ll never go again. It’s too except that she, too, was murdered at started looking for their faces,” delivered to the concentration camp horrible.” Auschwitz. Vivianne says. “When I think of them where history’s largest genocide in “We never saw her again,” Vivianne Born Berthe, she changed her one location would take place. on top of the piles of corpses it sends says. “She knew what was going to name to Vivianne — meaning life or Then came the notorious Vel’ d’Hiv shivers down my spine. happen, but we didn’t know and she alive — after coming to Melbourne. Roundup: more than 13,000 Jews “But I still look for them when I see certainly didn’t tell us. She told me She feels her mother gave her a arrested and locked in a bicycle velo- new footage. It’s something I’ve that we were only going to the coun- second life when she put her on the drome not far from the Eiffel Tower. always done. I’ve never found them.” SAVED BY ART: HOW ONE MAN’S SKILL GOT HIM THROUGH SEVEN NAZI CAMPS (Continued from page 8) a baseball cap during their honey- tured in an upcoming documentary home studio. “I used to meet people. 1994. “They would also get fed much moon in Hawaii. about his life and art, backed by tele- Now, I’m not allowed to drive at my better. They were indoors. They His earliest landscapes in Los vision producer Norman Lear. age. So I’m here all the time.” would sew, you know. These are the Angeles are often devoid of color: A “We’re going for the Oscar on this Lacking subjects for portraiture, kind of people that had more of a rambling house in Bunker Hill is ren- thing, and you can quote me on that,” Aron paints sheet after sheet of chance of survival than a guy who dered in shades of gray with no sign said Edward Lozzi, Aron’s longtime shapes and colors. was digging ditches.” of life; a monochromatic landscape of publicist, who introduced him to the “I enjoy the design, the design,” he Silver Lake shows not a single inhab- documentary’s director and executive said, holding up a recent painting, a RECLAIMING A WORLD itant. But soon enough, he took to producer, Steven C. Barber. set of undulating neon waves. OF LIGHT AND COLOR painting colorful tableaus of the city at Aron said he hopes the extra public- “Movement, movement. This moves, acobs, the art therapist, said various times of day. ity will help him sell paintings and pay it doesn’t stay still.” Junderstanding Holocaust sur- Eventually, he made enough money rent, which even at his advanced age Aron considers himself lucky to vivors as the product of a single expe- to rent a West Hollywood studio with continues to be a concern. But in gen- have a gift and a passion that keeps rience can be misleading, traumatic high ceilings and northern light, where eral, he’s content to sit at home and him occupied into his old age. though it may have been. And in trying he hosted parties that lasted until sun- paint. “My situation may be a little bit bet- to understand Aron through his art, put- rise. Over the years, his art has been Though Aron sometimes struggles ter than some people who came out ting the Holocaust constantly front and exhibited at several museums and to remember words and names, he of the camps,” he told Magee during center would indeed be a mistake. galleries. He has painted a number of remains spirited enough, painting for their interviews. “They may have Of the hundreds of paintings that celebrities and public figures, includ- hours each day and eagerly engaging nothing else to do but watch televi- line his apartment, relatively few deal ing novelist Henry Miller, pianist and visitors in conversation. “I can man- sion and think about those bad days with the Holocaust. More often, they composer André Previn and then- age six languages,” he said. “But I in the camps. I did that in the begin- are landscapes of the places he’s vis- Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. can’t remember people’s names.” ning, but I got away from thinking ited, views from his balcony looking For months at a time, he traveled These days, his paintings are main- about it by doing portraits, land- out at downtown L.A. and portraits of through North America and Western ly nonobjective rather than represen- scapes, traveling and painting. I the women he’s loved. Prominently Europe — though never to Germany tative. think that kept me away from all this displayed is a 2006 oil portrait of — stopping whenever he was moved “I used to go to the park,” he said, sit- agony of ‘How did I survive?’ or ‘Why Miriam Sandoval Aron, his fourth and to paint. ting in an airy corner of his apartment, did I survive?’ current wife, straight-backed, wearing Recently, Aron agreed to be fea- next to the kitchen, where he keeps his “I did, and that’s it.” Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 “I CONDEMNED MY MOTHER TO THE GAS CHAMBER WITH ONE WRONG WORD” Edith Eger was just 16 when she tect her. I don’t think at all. “Mother,” I I wasn’t the only one with a talent. If I do anything to displease him, it and her family were sent to say. My sexy and flirtatious sister Magda could be me. Auschwitz in 1944. She accidental- As soon as the word is out of my played the piano, and our middle sis- I’m dancing in Hell. I close my eyes ly sentenced her mother to death mouth, I want to pull it back into my ter Klara had mastered the and hear my mother’s words again: by revealing she was over 40. throat. Too late, I have realized the Mendelssohn violin concerto when “Just remember, no one can take Here’s her story. significance of the question. “Sister, she was five. away from you what you’ve put in usic is playing as we arrive at sister!” I want to scream. She was away studying music in your own mind.” MAuschwitz. It’s a cold dawn in Mengele points my mother to the Budapest on the night the Germans And as I dance, I have a piercing April 1944 and we’ve just been left. Panicking, I start to run after her came for us. Storming into our flat, insight. Dr. Mengele, the man who decanted from a cattle car, in which but he grabs my shoulder. they told us we were being resettled has just murdered my parents, is several people have died along the “You’ll see your mother very soon,” and had to leave now. more pitiful than me. I’m free in my way. he says. “She’s just going to take a Despite a chill in the air, I put on a mind, which he can never be. He will But my father has just spied a big shower.” He pushes me to the right. thin blue silk dress — the one I’d been sign above the gates: “Arbeit macht Toward Magda. Toward life. My moth- wearing when my boyfriend Eric gave frei,” it says — work sets you free. He er turns to look at me and smiles. It is me my first kiss. It made me feel pro- is suddenly cheerful. a small, sad smile. tected. “You see,” he says, “it can’t be a ter- Magda and I are marched off to aylight was breaking as we rible place. We’ll only work a little, till stand in front of some low buildings. Darrived at a large brick factory, the war’s over.” We are surrounded by thin women in where 12,000 Jews would be held for If the platform weren’t so crowded, I striped dresses. One reaches for the nearly a month without beds, running swear he’d break into a dance. tiny coral earrings, set in gold, that water or adequate rations. A girl only Soldiers start herding the men into a have been in my ears since birth. She a little older than me tried to run away. separate line — maybe they are being yanks and I feel a sharp sting. The Nazis hanged her in the middle of sent on ahead, to stake out a place “Why did you do that?” I ask. “I’d the camp as an example. for their families. I wonder where we’ll have given you the earrings.” All too soon we were on our way to Auschwitz, 100 of us crammed in each cattle car. For what seemed like days, my parents didn’t speak. Then, one night, I heard my moth- er’s voice in the dark. Dr. , the infamous Angel of “Listen. We don’t know where we’re Death. going. We don’t know what’s going to always have to live with what he has happen. Just remember, no one can done. take away from you what you’ve put in I close my routine by doing the your mind.” splits, and pray he won’t kill me. But Her words helped to save my life. he must like my performance I am in shock. I can’t picture my because he tosses me a loaf of mother being consumed by flames. I bread — a gesture, it turns out, that can’t fully grasp that she has gone. will later save my life. When he And I can’t even grieve. Not now. It leaves, I share the bread with all my will take all my concentration to sur- bunkmates. vive the next minute, the next breath. “My little dancer. Come.” Night is falling when we are After that, I work hard at developing marched to gloomy, primitive bar- my inner voice. This is temporary, I The Elefant family in Czechoslovakia in 1928 (left to right: Helen, Edie, Magda, Klara, Ludwig). racks where we will sleep on tiered tell myself. If I survive today, tomor- shelves, six to a board. row I’ll be free. sleep tonight. I wonder when we’ll eat. She sneers. “I was rotting here while With our bunkmates, Magda and I ne day, as I’m taking a shower My mother, my elder sister Magda you were free.” try lying on the top tier. Then I hear Owith other inmates, I notice a and I stand in a long line of women I wonder how long she has been the sound of woodwind and strings sudden quiet. I feel a chill in my gut. and children, inching toward a man here and why she is so angry. “When and think I must be imagining it. An The man I fear above all others is at with cold and domineering eyes. I will I see my mother?” I ask her. “I was inmate quickly explains that the camp the door, gazing right at me. don’t yet know that this man is Dr. told I’d see her soon.” has an orchestra. “You!” Dr. Mengele calls. “My little Josef Mengele, the infamous Angel of She gives me a cold, sharp stare. The door rattles open. On the dancer. Come.” Death. There is no empathy in her eyes; just threshold is the uniformed officer from He leads me, naked and wet, down As we draw near, I see a boyish rage. She points to the smoke rising the selection line. a hall and into an office with a desk flash of gapped teeth when he grins. from a distant chimney. Dr. Mengele, it turns out, is not only and chair. He leans against the desk His voice is almost kind when he asks “Your mother is burning in there,” a killer but also a lover of the arts. He and looks me over, taking his time. I if anyone is sick. Or over 40 or under she says. “You’d better start talking trawls the barracks in the evenings in hope whatever he plans to do to me 14. When someone says yes, he about her in the past tense.” search of talented inmates to enter- will be over quickly. sends them to a line on the left. tain him. “Come closer,” he says, and I inch “WE DON’T KNOW WHAT’S My mother has grey hair, but her He walks in tonight with his forward, shaking. I can smell menthol. GOING TO HAPPEN” face is as smooth and unlined as entourage, casting his eye over the His fingers are working over his coat mine. She could pass for my sister. ust a month before, I had been a new arrivals. The inmates already buttons. I am naked with my mother’s Magda and I squeeze her between us Jpretty ordinary teenager — but know I’m a trained ballerina and they killer. and we walk three abreast. with an extraordinary ambition. I push me forward. Just as I’m close enough for him to “Button your coat,” says my mother. wanted to represent Hungary at the “Little dancer,” Dr. Mengele says, touch me, a phone rings in another “Stand tall.” There is a purpose to her Olympics. his eyes bulging, “dance for me.” room. He flinches. He re-buttons his nagging. I am slim and flat-chested, For years I’d done five hours of rig- The familiar opening strains of the coat. “Don’t move,” he orders as he and she wants me to look every day orous ballet practice every day after Blue Danube waltz filter into the room. opens the door. of my 16 years. Unlike me, she has school; then I’d discovered gymnas- I’m lucky. I know a routine to this. As I I hear him pick up the phone in the realized my survival depends on it. tics and joined an Olympic training step, bend and twirl, he never takes next room, his voice neutral and curt. Our turn now. Mengele lifts his fin- team. his eyes off me. But he also attends to And I run for my life. . “Is she your mother or your sis- Recently, my teacher had taken me his duties as he watches. I can hear The next thing I know, I’m sitting ter?” he asks. aside. She was crying. My team place him discussing with another officer beside Magda as we devour the daily I cling to my mother’s hand. But I had to go to someone else, she said, which one of the 100 girls in our bar- ladle of weak broth, with little pieces don’t think about which word will pro- because I was Jewish. racks should be killed next. (Continued on page 12) September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 “HE SHOULD BE AS WELL KNOWN AS SCHINDLER” LOOTED HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 6) “Mr. Lados was the head and he tol- He said the network paid anywhere BOOKS ARE BEING Rokicky filled in each document by erated and protected what Mr. Kuhl between 550 Swiss francs for a blank RETURNED TO THEIR hand from the safety provided by the did,” said Mr. Blechner, who believes Haitian passport and 1,200 for a RIGHTFUL HEIRS Polish legation’s diplomatic status. Mr. Lados should be added to the Paraguayan one. (The average nother key figure in the opera- Righteous Among the Nations, an hourly wage at the time was less than new search in Germany for A tion was Adolf Silberschein, a honour bestowed by the state of two francs.) Abooks stolen from Jews during Polish Jew who fortuitously happened Israel on non-Jews who risked their But when asked how many pass- the Third Reich is beginning to bear to be in Switzerland attending a con- own safety to rescue Jews from the ports he had helped smuggle in, Mr. fruit. ference when the war began. In exile, Holocaust. Silberschein claimed not to know. “I Recently, a man in California who Mr. Silberschein established a group The possibility of obtaining a Latin don’t have a very good memory for was the only survivor of the Holocaust called the Committee for Relief of the American passport was a ray of hope numbers,” he told the police. in his family received a book from War-Stricken Jewish Population and for those trapped in Nazi-occupied By the fall of 1943, Swiss police had Germany that had been dedicated to sent regular lists to Mr. Kuhl and Mr. Poland. focused their investigation on Mr. him by a teacher. The only other Rokicky — sometimes two or three a “I’d like to have Uruguayan pass- Kuhl, and Mr. Lados was summoned things he has from his childhood are a week — containing the names, per- port, Costa Rican, Paraguayan — just by the Swiss Foreign Ministry to piece of clothing and one family sonal details and photographs of so one can live peacefully in Warsaw, explain the activities of his diplomat. photo, the Deutsche Welle news Jews trapped in occupied areas and after all, it is the most beautiful of Mr. Lados swung between pleading agency reported. in need of fake passports. lands,” wrote Wladislaw Szlengel, a with the Swiss — telling them the Last fall, it was announced that 500 Rodolfe Hugli, the honorary poet who lived in the Warsaw ghetto passport scheme had been motivated books from the library of Jewish Paraguayan consul to Switzerland, until he was executed in May 1943. by “the desire to save the lives of also played a vital role — though a As the pace of the killings accelerat- many good people” — and subtly department store owners Edith and controversial one, because of the ed, so did the secret passport opera- threatening to expose how Swiss Georg Tietz had been rediscovered in profit he made. Mr. Hugli sold blank tion — until Swiss police broke it up. police had themselves granted state- the city library of Bautzen. Paraguayan passports to the network, less passports to Jews crossing the The “Initial Check” project — dedi- then affixed his official stamp to the country on their way toward neutral cated to finding stolen books and their documents after Mr. Kuhl and Mr. Portugal and Spain. rightful heirs — is a relatively new part Rokicky prepared them. Mr. Lados and Mr. Kuhl remained in of Germany’s government-sponsored Some of the documents were collect- their posts until September 1945, search for stolen art, coordinated by ed by Mr. Blechner, while others were when they were replaced by emis- the Magdeburg-based Lost Art assembled by diplomats currently sta- saries from Poland’s postwar Foundation. For over a year, three tioned at the Polish embassy in Bern. Communist government. provenance researchers have been While many details of the passport- Stripped of his diplomatic status, Mr. searching through libraries, starting in smuggling operation have become Kuhl was told that, despite having a the former East German state of public over the decades, the scale of Swiss wife and two Swiss-born chil- Saxony-Anhalt. In all, there are some the Polish legation’s involvement was dren, he had to leave Switzerland. He 6,000 libraries that eventually will be not publicly known until now. Nor was moved to Toronto with his young fami- examined by researchers, Uwe Mr. Kuhl’s Canadian connection. ly “because the Canadians would have Hartmann, head of provenance “It is unfortunate to note that some him. Jewish migrants were not wel- research at the Lost Art Foundation, officials of the Polish Legation were come everywhere,” Mr. Singer said, very closely mixed up in this affair,” adding that his father-in-law also tried told Deutsche Welle. reads a 1943 Swiss police document living in New York but “felt lost” there. The successes may not be as sen- that lays out the scheme and its par- “Toronto’s Jewish community was sational as the returns of paintings by ticipants. “Mr. Julius Kuhl was repeat- very welcoming to immigrants. He famous artists to heirs. But according edly given Paraguayan passports by found his Judaism renewed in Toronto to a report in Deutsche Welle, the Photos of scanned docs held in the Yad Vashem return of a book can be just as mean- Mr. Hugli, which he then took to the archive in Jerusalem. to a degree that never would have Polish Legation, where the names of happened to him in Switzerland,” Mr. ingful to the family involved, as in the Polish Jews were entered [into them], Police records show Mr. Singer said. “He arrived with a brief- case of the Holocaust survivor from although [the recipients] had no claim Silberschein and his colleague Penny case full of watches and became an California. to the possession of such papers.” Hirsch were arrested in September important businessman and a According to Hartmann, the Nazis Several documents demonstrate 1943, and found to be in possession Canadian citizen.” began confiscating books from Jews that the entire effort took place with of an assortment of Latin American Mr. Kuhl remained in Toronto until in Germany after the so-called the active assistance and protection passports, as well as several foreign 1980, when he moved to Miami. By Kristallnacht pogrom in November of Aleksander Lados, Poland’s de currencies. that point, he was already suffering 1938. Some Jews fleeing Germany facto ambassador at the time. Under interrogation, the Moscow- from the emphysema that would claim sold their books and other belongings It was Mr. Lados who had hired Mr. born Ms. Hirsch told police she was his life. for far less than they were worth. Kuhl and — despite increasing pres- aware of “between 200 and 300 pass- A curiosity among the documents Other books were looted from homes sure to dismiss his deputy consul — ports” that had been distributed to seen by The Globe is a 1960 letter Mr. and collections in Nazi-occupied gave his activities diplomatic protec- Jews living in German-occupied parts Kuhl received from Roland Michener, areas during the war. tion. of Europe. She told the police that then a Progressive Conservative MP (The government-in-exile of Nazi- she and Mr. Silberschein knew they and the Speaker of the House of One source of information for prove- occupied Poland had diplomatic rep- had been breaking the law but that Commons. nance researchers is a list of books resentation in Bern via the same their motivations were purely humani- “It is indeed a remarkable story of kept by the Reichstauschstelle, an building that now houses the coun- tarian. “We did not intend to harm which you have reason to be proud,” office of the interior ministry that was try’s embassy here. The Swiss gov- Switzerland,” she added, according to wrote Mr. Michener, who would created in the 1920s. The Nazis ulti- ernment granted Mr. Lados and his a police transcript. become Canada’s 20th governor- mately used it as a resource, essen- colleagues diplomatic status through While American Jews provided general. But Mr. Michener appears to tially making stolen books available to Switzerland but, to avoid provoking financial support to Mr. Kuhl and his have been referring to Mr. Kuhl’s help restock German libraries that the Nazis, never formally accepted network, the U.S. government was career in the construction industry, had been damaged in the war. Mr. Lados’s credentials as Poland’s less helpful — apparently out of con- not his life-saving efforts during the But for the most part, the ambassador.) cern that German spies might reach Holocaust. researchers rely on help from local “The Polish Legation in Bern, wish- North and South America using the Mr. Singer says that while Mr. Kuhl librarians, who know the contents of ing to save its citizens, is doing all it passports. “The Legation of the never saw himself as a hero, it’s time their shelves and have picked up can,” reads an August 1943 letter United States in Bern informed the his father-in-law was acknowledged clues over the years. from Mr. Silberschein, the man who Polish Legation some time ago that it as such. In addition to books and paintings, compiled the lists for Mr. Kuhl’s net- was not satisfied with this traffic in “My view is that Dr. Kuhl was in the the Lost Art Foundation is seeking to work, to Archbishop Bernardini. passports,” Mr. Silberschein said dur- right place at the right time, and reconnect musical instruments, furni- “Thanks to these means, a few thou- ing his own interrogation by Swiss instead of doing nothing — like most ture, household articles and even sand lives have been saved.” police. people — he did the right thing.” cars with their proper heirs. Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 “I CONDEMNED MY MOTHER TO THE GAS CHAMBER WITH ONE WRONG WORD” (Continued from page 10) thread factory. After a few weeks, the We limp on. A march of skeletons and now Magda is beside me in the of potato skin bobbing up like scabs. SS come for us one morning with from Mauthausen to Gunskirchen. It grass. She is holding her can of sar- But the fear never goes away — that striped dresses to replace our grey is a relatively short distance, about 50 dines. he’ll find me again, that he’ll finish ones. km (31 miles) or so, but we are so We have survived the final selec- what he started, that he’ll select me We board a train carrying ammuni- weak that only 100 of the 2000 of us tion. We are alive. We are together. for death. tion. This time we are forced to sit on will survive. We are free. As the months go by, we starve and top of the cars — human decoys to Magda and I cling to each other, COULD I HAVE SAVED MY MOTHER? lose strength. In our heads, though, discourage the British from bombing determined to stay upright. Each it’s a different story: we spend most of the train, but they do anyway. hour, hundreds of girls fall into the fter recuperating, Magda and I our time cooking. Somehow, Magda and I survive. We ditches on either side of the road. Too A were reunited with Klara. My At 4 am roll-call in the freezing dark, get off the train and march, maybe for weak or too ill to keep moving, they boyfriend Eric had died in Auschwitz we can smell the rich aroma of meat weeks. There are fewer of us every are killed on the spot. the day before liberation. we have just roasted. We give each day. The roadside ditches run red with Every part of me is in pain. I don’t other cooking lessons; we salivate blood from those shot in the back or realize I’ve stumbled until I feel arms over our imaginary dishes; we fight the chest — those who tried to run, lifting me. Magda and other girls have over how much paprika you put in those who couldn’t keep up. laced their fingers together to form a Hungarian chicken paprikash, or how We’ve gone without food for days human chair. to make the best seven-layer choco- and now we are at Mauthausen, a “You shared your bread,” one of late cake. concentration camp at a quarry, them says. A girl who shared I try to blank out the horrors. The where prisoners have to hack and Mengele’s loaf with me nearly a year day SS officers tie a boy to a tree and carry the granite destined for Hitler’s ago has recognized me. use his limbs for target practice. The new Berlin. When we stop marching, we are day a woman goes into labor and they Rumors shudder down the line. crowded into huts where we sleep tie her legs together. I have never They make you stand along the so- three deep. If someone below us dies, seen such agony. called Parachutist’s Wall, at the edge we don’t have the strength to haul ne day, an officer separates us of a cliff. At gunpoint, you then have to them away. Oall into two lines. It’s impossible choose: either push the inmate It is now five or six months since we to tell which one leads to death. beside you off the cliff or be shot your- left Auschwitz. I can no longer walk. Magda and I are in different lines. self. Magda and I agree to push each Although I don’t know it yet, I have a Nothing matters except that I stay other. fractured spine and I’m suffering from pleurisy, typhoid fever and pneumo- nia. Here, in hell, I watch a man eat human flesh. I can’t do it; I eat grass and try to stay conscious. Once, I see Magda crawling back to me with a Red Cross can of sardines that glints in the sun. But there’s no way to open it. One day, the SS rig the ground around us with dynamite. With my eyes closed, I wait for the explosion that will consume us in its flames. “THE AMERICANS ARE HERE!” othing happens. I open my Neyes and see jeeps rolling Edith Eger in 1956. slowly in through the pine forest that obscures the camp from the road. At 19 I married Bela, a Slovakian Feeble voices shout: “The whose mother had been gassed at the Americans are here!” camp. He wasn’t the love of my life but Watching from the tangle of bod- he made me laugh and feel protected. ies, I see men in fatigues. I see an Later we’d have three children, divorce Edith with her husband and baby Marianne in 1947. American handing cigarettes to and marry each other again. inmates, who are so hungry that In 1949, my husband, Magda and I with my sister; even if she’s in the Night falls and word goes round: they eat them. emigrated to the US, where she death line, I want to die with her. we’ll be killed tomorrow. Have we “Are there any living here?” the worked as a piano teacher and I did a I don’t have a plan. And then I’m really been marched these many hun- Americans call out in German. PhD in clinical psychology, becoming suddenly doing cartwheels, hands to dreds of miles only to die? What has “Raise your hand if you’re alive.” an expert on post-traumatic stress earth, feet to sky. I expect a bullet at it all meant? I think of my boyfriend I try to move but I can’t. A soldier disorder. I was helping others, but it any second but I can’t stop myself. Eric’s voice and lips. If I die tomorrow, shouts something in English. They was years before I felt free in my own A guard raises his gun. But he does- I’ll die a virgin. are leaving. mind. n’t shoot; he winks at me. In the few I wonder what a man looks like And then a patch of light explodes Could I have saved my mother? seconds that I hold his complete naked. There are naked dead men all Maybe. I can continue blaming myself attention, Magda has run across the around me: it wouldn’t hurt their pride on the ground. The sun is flashing forever for making the wrong choice yard into my line. for me to have a look. Afterwards, I on Magda’s sardine tin. Whether on — or I can accept that the more Now they are herding 100 of us feel satisfied: at least I won’t die igno- purpose or by accident, she has important choice is not the one I made toward the platform. As we stand rant. caught the soldiers’ attention with a when I was 16 and hungry and terri- there, waiting to climb a narrow ramp At daybreak, the line starts to move. tin of fish. into a cattle car, the Russians are Some wail. Some pray. Everyone is I feel a man touching my hand. He fied, when we were surrounded by approaching Poland from one side, being sent in the same direction. It presses something into it. Beads. dogs and guns and uncertainty. the Americans from the other. The really is the end. Red, brown, green, yellow. It’s the one I make now, to accept Nazis have decided to evacuate And then the line stops. We are led “Food,” the soldier says. He helps myself as I am: human, imperfect. Auschwitz, bit by bit. toward a crowd of SS guards by a me lift my hand to my mouth. I taste The choice to stop asking why I I lose track of the time we are in gate. “If you fall behind, you’ll be chocolate. deserved to survive. The choice to motion. We end up working at a shot,” they shout at us. He pulls the dead away from me, stop running from the past. September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 AUSCHWITZ ARTIFACTS TO GO ON TOUR (Continued from page 1) not been displayed before. Vienna who was a prisoner at Nazi Mr. Fedrid, who died in 1963. goals such as enlightenment and Each artifact, however, was chosen camps in Lodz, a city in central Mr. Fedrid shared the blanket with education.” to help lay out the history of the Poland, and Auschwitz. The blanket is five other prisoners, probably saving The Auschwitz museum will get a Holocaust. Mr. van Pelt mentioned a on loan to the exhibition from the their lives during a grisly winter march. fixed amount that will be given to it Rabbi Hier said that the Holocaust yearly to cover any expenses arising artifacts must travel the world to make from the project, though neither sure memories of the era do not fade museum officials nor Musealia speci- away. fied how much. If the exhibition is “We’re in the period of the last rem- profitable, the amount the museum nants, last decades, where personal receives will be increased, Mr. survivors or witnesses, who can Ferreiro said. describe the events, are living on this The story of Auschwitz, as told planet,” he said. “We will soon have through the artifacts, will cover the no survivors.” physical location of the camps and their Mr. Cywinski, of the Auschwitz status as symbols of structuralized museum, said he expected the exhibi- hatred and barbarity. The exhibition will tion to be provocative, with some begin with the history of Oswiecim, the patrons drawing connections between Polish site of the German camps, the rise of Nazism and events around whose population was about 60 per- the world today. He mentioned pop- cent Jewish before the war. That histo- ulism, propaganda, institutionalized ry will be followed by the origins of hatred and an international communi- Nazism after World War I. ty that he regarded as sometimes Of the 1,150 original pieces to be dis- seemingly blind to these social forces. played, 835 will come from the state “Memory that is intelligent, reflexive, museum. The rest have been lent by Siegfried Fedrid, who survived Nazi camps in Lodz, Poland, and Auschwitz, with his family before is not limited to the past, but allows other institutions, like Yad Vashem in the war in 1927 Vienna. you to define the reality and project Israel, or directly by survivors and their brown blanket that belonged to Holocaust Center for Humanity in the future,” he said. “Otherwise, why families; many of those pieces have Siegfried Fedrid, a Jew born in Seattle, which got it from the family of would we even need memory?” SEVEN BOOKS ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST SCHOLARS SAY YOU SHOULD READ (Continued from page 4) where it did, in the manner it did and Motadel. Schindler’s List. Because Teege is This award-winning book recounts with the results it produced. It offers Susannah Heschel, professor of herself a black German woman — the the amazing story of Zosa readers a window onto how historians Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, daughter of a Nigerian father and a Szajkowski, the scholar who rescued go about finding answers to these writes: white German mother who was her- archives that might otherwise have questions, why some answers turn This is a major work of scholarship, self the daughter of Goeth’s mistress been lost in the Holocaust. out to be more compelling than others examining the various ways the Nazis — her story takes on additional reso- Szajkowski wrote numerous books and how new evidence can change fostered a relationship with Muslims nance. Intercut with contextualizing and articles, but was also a known understanding. both before the war and especially passages by Sellmair, a journalist, archive thief, caught red-handed Probing the Ethics of Holocaust during the war. Jeffrey Herf wrote a Teege’s memoir both confronts histor- stealing valuable papers from the Culture (Harvard University Press, book a bit earlier, Nazi Propaganda ical conundrums about race, reconcil- New York Public Library. Leff’s metic- 2016). Edited by Claudio Fogu, for the Arab World, detailing Nazi anti- iation and responsibility for the past, ulous account reads like a thriller, yet Wulf Kansteiner and Todd Presner. Semitic propaganda sent, in Arabic and offers glimpses of very contem- conveys invaluable information con- Omer Bartov, professor of European translation, to North African Muslims, porary questions about the contours cerning the fate of Jewish archives history and German studies at Brown and Motadel expands the range of of German identity. Her earnest reck- during and after the Shoah, and why University, writes: influence: that Hitler understood Islam oning with family and national history removal of archives from their original This book comes out a quarter of a as a warrior religion that could be can inspire us all to reflect on what it home matters. Brandeis University century after the publication of Saul exploited for propaganda efforts and means to be implicated in histories of and my late father, Bible scholar Friedlander’s crucial edited volume, to serve in both the Wehrmacht and racial violence, even those we have Nahum Sarna, play bit parts in this Probing the Limits of Representation: the SS. The indoctrination of Muslims not participated in directly. story. I remember Szajkowski, too; in Nazism and the “Final Solution“ with Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda They Were Like Family to Me: fact, I took a class with him as a (1992), which had challenged the con- may well have had effects lasting long Stories (Scribner, 2016). By Helen Brandeis undergraduate. He told lots ventional discourse on the mass mur- past the end of the war, a topic that Maryles Shankman. of stories in class about his archival der of the Jews and critiqued its popu- deserves additional attention. Jeremy Dauber, director of the experiences during and after World lar representation. The current volume My Grandfather Would Have Shot Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies War II, but it was only after reading attempts to grapple with the wider Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her and professor of Yiddish at Columbia Leff’s wonderful book that I under- impact of Holocaust scholarship, fic- Family’s Nazi Past (The Experiment, University, writes: stood “the rest of the story.” tion and representation in the interven- 2015). By Jennifer Teege and Nikola Writing literature about the Why? Explaining the Holocaust ing period. It includes fascinating Sellmair. Holocaust is many things, but it is (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017). essays on new modes of narrating the Michael Rothberg, professor of English never easy; and writing Holocaust lit- By Peter Hayes. Shoah, the insights provided by the and comparative literature and chair in erature in the vein of magic realism is David Engel, professor of Holocaust “spatial turn” on research and under- Holocaust studies at the University of more difficult yet. It risks taking the studies and chair of Hebrew and Judaic standing of the event, and the politics California, Los Angeles, writes: great horror of the 20th century and studies at New York University, writes: of exceptionality, especially the con- Teege’s memoir, published in rendering it ungrounded, imaginative, I recommend this book for a lucid, textualization of the Holocaust within German in 2013 and translated into even — God forbid — whimsically well-crafted introduction to the history the larger framework of modern geno- English in 2015, is a fascinating con- slight. But when a skillful writer pulls it of the Holocaust. Unlike most works cide. As such, it enables readers to tribution to the discussion of the ongo- off — David Grossman, for example, on the Holocaust written for a general understand both the ongoing presence ing impact of the Holocaust over mul- and now Shankman — the fantastic audience, which tend to emphasize of the Holocaust in our present culture tiple generations. When she was in casts illuminating and terrible light on how the Holocaust was carried out and the different ways in which it has her late 30s, Teege discovered that the dark shadows of the history of the and experienced, Hayes’ book con- come to be understood in the early her grandfather was a Nazi war crim- war against the Jews. The stories in centrates, as its title suggests, on 21st century. inal. And not just any Nazi: he was her collection are by no means factu- helping readers to understand why Islam and Nazi Germany’s War Amon Goeth, the commandant of al in all respects. But they contain the Holocaust occurred when it did, (Belknap Press, 2014). By David Plaszów depicted in the film unmistakable truth. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 THE JEWS WHO FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM IN THE RING Back in the 1920s, there were sports organizations were founded, name was Dov Ber ben Avraham Nazi opponents. He won them all more Jews with professional box- including Hakoach, Shimshon, Gershon and who later adopted the except for one particularly cruel and ing licenses than any other ethnic Hagibor and others. American name Benny Leonard. unusual bout that he fought against group in the United States. It was There was a new Jewish ethos: the Leonard was born on the Lower East an extremely heavy German. During part of a new Jewish ethos that ethos of boxing. This influenced not Side in New York. He commented, “I this time the Nazis made sure Perez called for self-defense. only the Ostjuden (Eastern European grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. ... worked in the kitchen so he could Jews) who migrated eastward toward to the south were the Italians, to the BY USHI DERMAN, HAARETZ have enough food to continue to fight. the Vistula River, but also the many north were the Irish, and the public In the kitchen Perez met another uscular Judaism,” which Jews who crossed the ocean at the bathhouses were down the block on great Jewish boxer: Salamo Arouch, “Mbecame a popular Zionist end of the 19th century and emigrat- our street. When the Italian and Irish the Balkan champion who lived in slogan, was a term coined by Max ed to the United States. The fact that kids came to bathe, we had two and, like all the city’s Nordau during the Second Zionist in the New World pogroms were not a options: to fight, or not to leave the Jews, was sent to Auschwitz in 1943. Congress in Basel in 1898. Nordau, a significant threat did not mean that house.” In one of the first roll calls in physician and Hungarian Jewish these Jewish immigrants were able to Leonard, who regularly boxed with a Auschwitz after Arouch’s arrival, an author, was a dignified, proud individ- leave their sense of fear and victim- Star of David on his shorts, symbol- ization, inherited from their ancestors, ized the New Jew, who was no longer at Ellis Island, the entry point to the a wagon driver, a peddler or a money- U.S. However, in contrast to previous lender, but rather a determined fighter generations, these immigrants adopt- who went into the ring and raised his ed the new ethos and chose to fight fists in the name of all of the previous (both literally and figuratively) for their generations. Leonard was already freedom. crowned as the greatest Jewish boxer of all time at the beginning of his RAISED FISTS IN NEW YORK career, over the course of which he n his fascinating book When earned 88 victories, 68 of which were IBoxing Was a Jewish Sport, Allen knockouts. His love for boxing did not Bodner describes the golden age of end with his retirement, when he Jewish boxing in the United States, chose to become a referee. He also from the days of mass immigration fulfilled the phrase “he died doing until the Second World War. During what he loved” when he died of a this period, Bodner counts 23 differ- heart attack in the middle of a fight he ent Jewish boxers who won world was refereeing in New York. titles. The scope of the phenomenon FROM THE RING TO THE CAMPS of Jewish boxing is reflected in the fact that in 1928 there were more he connection between death Max Nordau sought to fight the image of the Jews with professional boxing licens- and boxing became more chill- Diaspora Jew as a weakling and a coward. T es than any other ethnic group in the ing during the period of the Holocaust, ual. He sought to fight the image of United States. Between 1905 and and was embodied by two famous the Diaspora Jew as a weakling and a 1934 there were 10 world champion Jewish boxers: Salamo Arouch and coward, someone who, during title matches that were fought Victor Perez. A Tunisian Jewish boxer pogroms, chose to hide behind the between two Jews — when there who found success in Europe, Perez pages of his Talmud and Mishna could be only one champion from was born in 1911 in Dar El-Berdgana, Victor Perez. instead of swinging a punch. each weight category. the Jewish quarter in , the capi- SS officer walked among the prison- Nordau’s call for a conscious revolu- tal of . At 5’1” (158 centime- ers and asked if anyone there knew tion did indeed resonate here and ters), his short stature did not prevent how to box. Arouch was pushed out of there. However, old habits die hard, him from dreaming about a boxing the line by those who knew him and and aversion to the use of force was career, and when he was 17 he his boxing history. That night he won still deeply rooted in Jewish con- forged a passport and moved to Paris his first fight in the camp. He would sciousness during this period. to make his dreams a reality. During fight approximately 200 more times, Five years later, in 1903, a Jew the day he worked as a shoe sales- all of which he finished on his feet as named Hayim Nahman Bialik visited man, and in the afternoon he would the winner. Because of boxing, the city of Kishinev in the Bessarabia train. After three years in Paris, Perez Arouch was able to survive Auschwitz region of the Russian empire, and was crowned the premier flyweight until he was transferred to Bergen- was shocked to discover tens of boxer in Europe and France. Belsen in 1945, where he worked as Jewish women, men and children When he returned to Tunisia in a slave laborer until the camp was lib- spread out lifeless on the ground, 1931, Perez was given a royal wel- erated. After the war, Arouch met their limbs askew and the fear of come. At the port, no fewer than Marta Yechiel and they fell in love. death reflected in their wild eyes. 100,000 fans waited to receive him: The couple was among those who Appalled by the barbarity of the the biggest welcome in the history of pogroms, but even more so by the the country. The celebration upon his came to Israel during the illegal immi- helplessness of the Jews, Bialik wrote return also included donations to the gration of 1945. Once in Israel, his famous poem “In the City of synagogue and the Jewish school in Arouch continued to box during his Slaughter.” In it, Bialik rebukes his fel- his city. One of the most famous fights free time, but not professionally. low Jews who hid in their holes and in Perez’s career as a boxer took Unlike Arouch, Victor Perez did not prayed that the evil would not come to place in 1938 — days after survive the Holocaust. During the them, when in front of their eyes their Kristallnacht — when he fought in death march, Perez tried to give food mothers, wives and daughters were Berlin against a German champion to a friend, but was shot by the Nazis. raped and killed. while wearing shorts embroidered His body was left to freeze on the The Kishinev pogrom was a water- with a Star of David. When he entered snowy ground on the side of the road, shed moment in the history of Jewish the arena, the Nazi spectators booed without a burial or a sign marking the power. Bialik’s poem shook the Perez, who surveyed the anti-Semitic place where he was murdered. A Jewish public, and Jewish self- Benny Leonard, crowned the greatest Jewish crowd impassively. number of years later, the stories of boxer of all time. defense units sprang up like mush- In 1943 Perez was deported to these champions were told on film in rooms after the rain. In Palestine, a Among the major Jewish boxers Auschwitz. Nazis in the camp identi- France and the United States — group called Bar Giora was created; during this era — including Eli Stoltz, fied him, and not long thereafter he Triumph of the Spirit, about Salamo the Bund, a socialist self-defense Artie Levine and “Lefty” Lew became the camp’s boxing entertain- Arouch (1989); Victor “Young” Perez, organization, was established in Tendler — the most prominent was er. Perez was forced to participate in (2013); and a short film by ESPN Eastern Europe; and in other areas Benjamin Leiner, whose Hebrew a series of showcase fights against about the career of Benny Leonard. September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 JEWISH WOMAN WHO ENTERED THE LION’S DEN Jewish, and her grandfather was a left and then I sat down in a chair and Behind Enemy Lines. “To be thanked BY ALEX SUSKIND, rabbi who founded the Orthodox syn- wondered if I was a little crazy, and for my efforts so publicly was some- THE TIMES OF ISRAEL agogue in town. But with the rise of what predicament I had put myself in. thing I hadn’t expected.” Adolf Hitler, everything changed. But it was too late.” When the war ended, she wasn’t he 4’11” French Jewish woman “We were horrified, but we never able to grasp why she was alive and was walking through a field of BEHIND ENEMY LINES T thought that it could come to France,” so many others had perished. It would snow when the ground underneath she said of the Third Reich. “We were ff Cohn went to Mulhouse, and be seven years before Cohn even her began to crack. She was a spy for so naïve.” later Colmar, in eastern France learned of her sister Stéphanie’s fate, the Allies, sent to infiltrate the German O When the Germans pushed into to train, learning how to identify which was ultimately deportation to front, but her military guide had neg- France, her family was urged by the German uniforms, read maps, fire Auschwitz. lected to mention the frozen body of French government to leave their guns –– something she had never “I always thought I may find her,” water along the way. When the ice home and head south to Poitiers. done before. said Cohn. “But I didn’t. We didn’t broke and Marthe Cohn fell into the There, they assisted Jews fleeing per- “It was amazing, I was 100 percent. know what was going on in the con- canal, she wondered if this was final- secution. I had very, very good eyesight,” she centration camps. The American and ly the end. “Hundreds of people would ring our said. English governments kept us in the “I told myself, if you don’t get out bell,” said Cohn. “We never knew Most importantly, she developed her dark.... from here as fast as you can, you’re where they came from or who they alibi: that of a young German woman But when we drove north with the going to die of hypothermia,” recalled were, but they needed help.” named Martha Ulrich, whose parents regiment, I met survivors. I thought Cohn, now 97. Meanwhile, Cohn was training to had been killed in a bombardment they were coming from a psychiatric But perishing wasn’t an option. become a nurse at the French Red and whose Nazi fiancé had been cap- hospital. I couldn’t believe what they Dying would mean giving up on her Cross School of Nursing. After Paris tured by the Allies. were saying. It was inconceivable that top-secret mission and squandering was liberated in 1944, she joined the She was then assigned to the com- it happened. That’s where I under- the courage those closest to her had army, expecting to put her medical manders of Army of Africa, a regiment stood that she probably didn’t live.” shown in the face of terror. of the first French Her siblings worked to save fellow THE SECRET IS UNVEILED army. Cohn was Jews from the horrors of the Nazi asked to interro- ears later, Cohn would marry an regime. Her fiancé, Jacques, was gate prisoners of American medical student also involved with the resistance. He Y war, and eventual- named Major L. Cohn, move to the was later executed by the German ly sent to cross the States and give birth to two children. army for his actions. German front, a But she would keep her past a secret. Cohn herself had been threatened mission that failed “I felt as long as I didn’t talk about it, and insulted for her religion. But she more than a dozen it was a very pure story,” she said. was a spy now — a spy with an times (including “And once I talked about it, it was not important task, and she had no inten- that ill-fated night as pure anymore.” tion of returning to her superiors when she fell into “I never even asked how she got into empty handed. the canal) owing to the army. All I knew was that she was “I was very lucky,” Cohn told The faulty intelligence a nurse and she ended up in Times of Israel recently about that and the rapidly Germany,” added her husband, Major. night. After pulling herself out of the changing condi- But in 1996, the truth finally came canal, she wandered around in circles tions of war. out when she reached out to the for hours. In the morning, she met up Marthe Cohn being filmed by director Nicola Hens for the upcoming But her biggest Shoah Foundation after spotting an with a Moroccan army regiment. She documentary An Unusual Spy. challenge was yet advertisement that asked for those would have to try again another day. skills to use. But when she arrived, to come: going into Germany itself. who fought the German army to be In the chaos and confusion of war, she faced immediate pushback from “I was sent to Germany for two pur- interviewed about their experience. countless stories of bravery and hero- a superior officer, who accused her of poses,” she said. “To get military infor- Then, in 1998, on a trip back to ism can slip through the cracks. For not doing her most for her country mation, but also information about France, Cohn decided to approach five decades, one of those tales since she never officially joined a how the German civilians were react- the French military for copies of her belonged to Cohn, a young Jewish resistance group. She explained to ing to the war, because we didn’t records, which led to her being woman who snuck into Germany to him that she had tried but had been know. We had very little information.” awarded the Medaille Militaire, one of spy on the Nazis at the tail end of the rebuffed. After crossing through Switzerland the highest military honors in France. war. Her rise from loving sister and “Several times I was interviewed by into Germany, she stayed in the coun- She was later given the title of friend to nurse, to intelligence officer, the chief of the resistance,” said try for a month, gathering intel and Chevalier of the Order of the Legion is one of remarkable perseverance, Cohn. “They looked at me — I was sending it back to her handlers. d’Honneur, in 2005, and the and will soon be explored in an only four-foot-eleven, I was very thin, For a Jew in Nazi territory, the work VerdienstKreuz, the Order of Merit of upcoming documentary, An Unusual I was very blond with blue eyes and was extraordinarily dangerous. But Germany, in 2014. Spy, from German director Nicola had light skin — and they felt I had Cohn survived thanks to her strong Along with her memoir, the additional Hens. absolutely no substance. So they alibi and the relationships she devel- honors gave Cohn’s story a boost. The “This woman needs to be portrayed never accepted me.” oped with Germans. new documentary aims to do the same. as long as she’s still alive,” said Hens. Instead of letting her become a mili- “I helped them any time I found the Back at home, in between sips of “There are not so many witnesses to tary nurse, the officer relegated Cohn possibility to do it, and in exchange tea, Cohn joked that the filmmaking the life [of a spy in World War II], and to social work, which she didn’t know they offered me to stay at their homes process, which included Hens docu- not so many who have such a great anything about, but accepted and fed me,” she said. “That did not menting her speeches and trips back ability to express themselves and are nonetheless. A few weeks later, she prevent me of getting in deep trouble to France, has been “a pain in the actually willing to talk about it.” met another officer, Colonel Fabien, several times, but I always found the neck,” but she appreciated that her “WE WERE SO NAÏVE” who asked her to answer his phone right thing to tell them to get out of it.” story will continue to get told. The information Cohn would gather Even at 97, Cohn’s mind is still rom her home in Rancho Palos during a lunch break. there about a military encampment in sharp, and she is able to recall dates, Verdes, sitting among framed “I went with him to his office, he F the Black Forest — along with infantry names and other events with remark- family photos and the honors and showed me around, and said, ‘I am units, numbers and strengths she had able clarity. awards she received for her work in sorry, there is nothing to read here for memorized thanks to her near-photo- “I think it’s just important to keep the World War II, Cohn spoke about her you. I have only German books,’” graphic memory — helped Allied memory alive,” said Hens. “I think upbringing and the events that led to recalled Cohn. “And I said, ‘But I read commanders prepare for German World War II for many people is far her work for the Allies. German fluently.’” troop movements. For her efforts, she away. But if you look at [Cohn] still Her story begins in the city of Metz, Intrigued, Fabien asked if she spoke was awarded the Croix de Guerre, a alive, it’s not so far away, and if you where she was raised with her four German as well. When Cohn said she French military decoration given dur- look at world politics, there is danger sisters and two brothers. Her parents, did, he offered her a transfer into the ing World Wars I and II. that things might repeat themselves. both fluent German speakers (a skill army’s intelligence service. Cohn said “I hadn’t become a spy for the glory,” It’s important to not forget what hap- they passed onto their children), were yes immediately. “I didn’t even think,” she said. “He wrote Cohn in her 2002 memoir, pened.” American & International Societies for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE U.S. POSTAGE 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID SMITHTOWN, N.Y. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO.15

Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org Society Editor (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for New York, NY 10110 NY York, New Ron B. Meier, Ph.D., Ron B. Meier, EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL *Published Bimonthly by the American by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased September/October 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5778 2017 - Tishri/Cheshvan September/October or by phone at: , its victims, survivors and heroes victims, survivors , its Empower, educate and strengthen our educate Empower, can make a generous contribution You future by making an endowment gift to the future by making an endowment gift Your Vashem. Yad American Society for in Vashem Yad legacy will help to support Jerusalem and keep the memory of the Shoah alive forever. through a bequest in your will by desig- ASYV as a beneficiary of a nating or Charitable Trust Remainder Charitable can also contribute You Annuity. Gift [email protected] MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE A PLANNED GIFT TO ASYV PLANNED GIFT TO A FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION: GENERATION: TO FROM GENERATION Our ASYV staff are here to help you accomplish your estate planning goals. are here to help you accomplish your estate ASYV staff Our Chris plan, please contact with your estate For more information or assistance Morton, Director of Planned Giving: through a life insurance or retirement plan, by naming ASYV as a beneficiary of a through a life insurance or retirement plan, by naming or other retirement vehicle. IRA life insurance policy, 212-220-4304, extension 213. Page 16