Beth Tfiloh Commemorates Hashoah 2019

Today is the 27 day of Nissan, Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. This morning we welcome from the greater Baltimore community, all of whom were just children when they experienced the horrors of the Nazi regime. They are here to help us commemorate this solemn occasion. We are truly honored to have with us Mr. Howard and

Mrs. Esther Kaidanow, Mr. Herbert Hane, Mrs. Martha Weiman, Mrs. Vera Kestenberg, Mrs.

Edith Cord, Mr. Morris Rosen, Mrs. Golda Kalib, Mrs. Ruth Goldstein and Mrs. Rose

Mantelmacher.

MR. MORRIS ROSEN

Mr. Rosen was born in Poland, one of eight children. His father owned a general store. As the

Nazis descended upon his native lands, his family was moved into the ghetto. In 1942 Morris’ job was to build scaffolding for the town square which was used to hang Polish rebels. He survived by working as a painter for the chief. He was sent to a number of different camps and survived a death march to Buchenwald in 1945. His final camp was Theresienstadt.

The Russian army liberated him from there. He came to the U.S. in 1949.

MR. HOWARD AND MRS. ESTHER KAIDANOW

Mrs. Kaidenow was born in 1935 in a lovely town in Croatia on the Adriatic. When the Nazis invaded in 1943, they initially targeted Jewish men. Esther’s father and brother fled to the mountains to hide and her sister joined a partisan group. When women became targets as well, Esther, her other sister, and her mother hid with families in their town until their

1 protectors became fearful and asked them to leave. They then also joined a partisan group and survived the war in that way.

Mr. Kaidenow was born in a small town in Poland in the region now known as Belarus or White

Russia. When the war broke out the region was occupied by the Soviets. In 1941 the Nazis took over and began to kill Jews. In 1942 his parents were both brutally murdered. He escaped with his brother and joined the partisans in the forests fighting with them until 1944 when liberation came. Mr. and Mrs. Kaidenow met in Philadelphia after the war.

MR. HERBERT HANE

Mr. Hane was born in 1935 in Giessen, Germany. His father was an active Social Democrat, who had was forced to give up the gun that he owned when Hitler came to power. During the boycott of April 1, 1933, the family lost much of its retail oil business. In 1933, his father was arrested by the S.A., the Nazi brown shirts, and taken to Osthofen, a concentration camp for political prisoners. He was there for three weeks. By 1938, due to all the decrees against the

Jews, the family could no longer own a radio, bicycle or motorcycle. On , he and the other Jews in the town were made to report to the town hall, and were placed in protective custody. The windows of their houses were stoned and the china and furniture destroyed, but they escaped physical harm. In 1939 Herbert and his brother were baptized as Catholics in order to protect them. Herbert and his family were able to come to America in 1946.

MRS. EDITH CORD

Mrs. Cord was born in Vienna in 1928. Her family fled Vienna in 1937, eventually settling in

France. After her father and brother were deported to Auschwitz and she and her mother were separated, Edith went into hiding in a convent in 1940. In 1944, the underground informed her

2 of plans to sneak her into Switzerland. She later became ill and was taken to a Red Cross camp in Geneva, where she was treated for tuberculosis. She and her mother were reunited after the war, but her father and brother were murdered in Auschwitz.

MRS. VERA KESTENBERG

Mrs. Kestenberg was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936. She survived by hiding and using false papers for the duration of the war. She graduated from a Jewish high school and obtained a

Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry, at the University in Budapest. She escaped from

Hungary during the 1956 revolution. After living in Argentina for two years she came to the U.S.

She was married to Felix Kestenberg, also a survivor of , who was from Poland. He survived many concentration camps. He passed away in 2008.

MRS. ROSE MANTELMACHER

Rose was born in Uzgorod, Czechoslovakia in 1925, the oldest of seven children. She helped raise her siblings and spent most of her free time reading. If she had extra money, she would go buy a book rather than a treat. She was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 where her parents and youngest brother were killed. From there she went to Bergen Belsen. She developed typhus and was close to death when the camp was liberated by the British in 1945. After she recovered, she made her way to a displaced person’s camp in Landsberg, Germany. There she met and married Leo Mantelmacher, a survivor from Poland. After four years living in the camp, they were sponsored by a Jewish agency to immigrate to Rochester, New York. In 1957 they moved to Harrisburg, PA, where Leo, with Rose’s help, ran a tailor shop, and they raised three children. Both Leo and Rose ultimately became Holocaust educators in the central

Pennsylvania area.

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MRS. MARTHA WEIMAN

Mrs. Weiman was a young child in 1938, living in Frankfurt, Germany. Her family’s plans to immigrate to the United States fell through when their documents never arrived. Then,

Kristallnacht occurred in November, and the Nazis looted the across the street from her home, then burned the and prayer books in the street. Shortly thereafter, her father was arrested and taken to Buchenwald. After two months, her father returned home and the family finally escaped. After an arduous journey, they made it to London where they lived in a small apartment for 11 months with the help of the local Jewish community. In December 1939 they arrived in the port of Boston, following three weeks on the seas in a British freighter.

MRS. GOLDA KALIB

Mrs. Kalib was seven years old when World War II broke out. She was the youngest of five children. She experienced the harsh life of a slave labor camp. By July 1944, as the Russian army was approaching, the Germans abandoned the factory and placed the inmates on trains bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp. The journey was some two-and-a-half days. Her father and her youngest brother did not survive the journey. After being in Auschwitz for about four months, she and her mother were selected to be sent to the gas chambers. Miraculously they were saved by an order to dismantle the camp. After surviving a death march she arrived at

Bergen Belsen where she was liberated by the British army.

MRS. RUTH GOLDSTEIN

Like many Polish Jews born in the 1920s, Ruth Waldman Goldstein grew up in an Orthodox home in the Bendzin and Sosnowiec area. Her family lived in a large apartment on the main street until shortly before the war.

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When the war began, Ruth and her sister, Hala, hid in the ghetto for weeks, in the basement of a kitchen. They survived on dry barley with three older women and a young boy, sharing a single pot of jam that was parceled out to a single sticky finger each evening. She was one of the last Jews to leave the ghetto for Birkenau, the death camp. After being liberated, the sisters returned to their hometown to search for other survivors. Their parents had told them to return — no matter what. Ruth was told by a family member that her parents were sent to the gas chambers. She also lost a brother during the war; he was beaten for trying to escape.

Ruth met George Goldstein — who she had known before the war. They later married and moved to New York, where they raised two children.

MRS. HALINA SILBER

Halina was born in Krakow, Poland in 1929. Following the German invasion of Poland, the family moved to a small village in the hope that they would avoid the concentration camps. As hope faded, Halina’s mother arranged for her to enter the forced labor camp outside of

Krakow, thinking the job might save her life. Just after she departed for the camp, her parents and two siblings were murdered at Belzec . Once at the forced labor camp, she learned that she’d been selected to work in Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow. She still worked there at the time of liberation in 1945. We later found out that she was #16 on

Schindler’s List, and she credits Oskar Schindler with saving her life.

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