Vol. 35-No.4 ISSN 0892-1571 March/April 2009-Adar II/Nissan 5769 NECHAMA TECH AUTHOR GAINS NEW GUEST SPEAKER AT THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM EXPOSURE FROM ANNUAL SPRING LUNCHEON HOLOCAUST FILM echama Tec, Professor Emerita of Sociology at Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. In 1997, she NUniversity of Connecticut, received her PhD was a Senior Research Fellow at the Miles Lerman BY BEN HARRIS, JTA from Columbia University. A Holocaust scholar for Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance, at the hen Nechama Tec set out to write a book about years, her research and publications have concentrat- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the Bielski brothers more than two decades ago, ed on the intricate relation- Washington, D.C. In 1995, W she sought to fill in omissions and correct distortions cre- ships between self preserva- she was a Scholar-in- ated by their almost total excision from historical accounts tion, compassion, altruism, Residence at the of the Holocaust. rescue, resistance, coopera- International Institute for "The omission is the conspicuous silence about Jews who, tion and gender. Holocaust Research at Yad while themselves threatened by death, were saving others," Her books help expand and Vashem, Jerusalem. Tec wrote in the opening to her 1993 book, “Defiance.” "The deepen our understanding of Her books have been distortion is the common description of European Jews as the Holocaust by venturing translated into Dutch, victims who went passively to their death." into overlooked territory, such French, Hebrew, German, With the release of a major Hollywood adaptation of the as the Christian rescue of Italian, Polish and book, Tec's efforts to correct the historical record have Jews (When Light Pierced the Japanese. reached a vast new audience. Darkness), Jewish and Nechama Tec is also the In its first weekend of wide release, “Defiance,” which stars Christian identity (In the author of over seventy James Bond hero Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as the Lion’s Den), Jewish wartime scholarly articles and con- Bielski brothers, Tuvia and Zus, grossed more than $10 mil- heroism (Defiance) and most tinues to be a frequent lec- lion, the eighth highest take in the country that weekend. recently, gender survival turer at international and Meanwhile, the book has been released in a new edi- (Resilience and Courage). national meetings and con- tion, with Craig's bellicose mug on the cover, and in audio This fascination with the ferences. Over the years book format narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. unexplored began with her Tec’s research has been “It is most gratifying,” Tec told JTA in an interview at own memoir (Dry Tears), funded by the National her Connecticut home. “I think I am very fortunate that which is unusual for its candid exploration of the ways Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science it happened.” in which a false identity can become all-consuming. Research Council, the Memorial Foundation for Like the book, the film version of “Defiance” has restored Tec’s next book will undertake a comparative analysis Jewish Culture, and others. to public attention a long overlooked part of Holocaust histo- of Jewish and non-Jewish resistance during the war. Her book, Defiance, was adapted for the screen in ry – the story of the small minority of Jewish victims who On May 23, 2009 Nechama Tec will receive an hon- 2008 by Writer/Director Edward Zwick. The motion pic- dared to fight back against their oppressors. Historians have orary degree from Lafayette College. She is also the ture stars Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell and Liev Schreiber, long known of uprisings at the Auschwitz and Treblinka recipient of two honorary degrees of Doctor of and is released by Paramount Vantage. camps, in addition to the better-known rebellion in the Humane Letters: Seton Hall University and Hebrew Two of her books have been nominated for the Warsaw Ghetto led by Mordecai Anielewicz, but the story of Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion. In 2002, Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. the Bielskis differed fundamentally in that it was successful. she was appointed by the President to the Council of Resilience and Courage won the National Jewish For years the brothers, sons of a large peasant family the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Book Award in 2003. In the Lion's Den won the from Stankiewicze in western Belorussia, led a band of Washington D.C. Tec also serves on the Academic Christopher Award in 1993. When Light Pierced the forest dwellers that ultimately swelled to 1,200. The com- Advisory Committee at the Center for Advanced Darkness received the Merit of Distinction Award from munity established a hospital, tannery, school and bath- Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. house, while remaining perpetually on the move and car- rying out acts of sabotage against German troops. Their efforts are considered the largest rescue of Jews by Jews “WOMEN, RESISTANCE & RENEWAL” during the war. The American Society for Yad Vashem Prior to the film, Tec was little known beyond the aca- demic world and the tight-knit community of American Annual Spring Luncheon Holocaust survivors. For nearly five decades she has lived quietly in Connecticut, producing mainly works of Honoring Holocaust scholarship and teaching sociology at the Anna Erlich Stella Skura University of Connecticut in Stamford, a satellite of the Thursday, May 21, 2009 university's main campus 100 miles up the road in Storrs. Now she is the focus of popular attention. Sales of the Rainbow Room, Pegasus Suite “Defiance” have exploded. The publisher, Oxford 49 West 49th Street, New York City University Press, says the book has been the label's top (Continued on page 15) IN THIS ISSUE Germany agrees to increase payments for Holocaust survivors...... 2 US to unveil court rulings against Nazis...... 3 Scrambling to preserve Holocaust memories...... 5 Visiting a mother’s grave at Auschwitz...... 6 The wedding gown that made history...... 7 American Society for Yad Vashem YLA Winter Gala...... 8-9 The murder sites of the Jews in the occupied territories...... 10 American corporate complicity created undeniable Nazi nexus...... 11 Holocaust museum chronicles Nazi propaganda...... 12 Double life of Witold Pilecki...... 13 Behind fairy-tale drawings, walls talk of unspeakable cruelty...... 16 Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769

GERMANY AGREES TO INCREASE PAYMENTS HIGHEST ANTI-SEMITISM RATES IN TWO DECADES FOR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS he number of anti-Semitic attacks increasingly global Holocaust education eedy Holocaust survivors in Eastern tion] with the Germans to continue their Taround the world during Israel's and resources, Holocaust educators say. NEurope will receive major increases moral responsibility," Stuart Eizenstat, three-week military operation against "Paradoxically, as interest in the in monthly payments from Germany. the former U.S. deputy treasury secre- Hamas in Gaza was up more than 300 Holocaust continues to grow around the The raise follows intensive negotiations tary and a special negotiator for the percent compared to the same period last world, we are also witnessing a rise in the between Germany and the Claims Claims Conference, told JTA in a tele- year, reaching a two-decade high, accord- provocative and cynical use of the Conference. phone interview . ing to figures released by the Global Holocaust in attacking Israel and Jews," According to the agreement, an addi- Roman Kent, one of several survivors Forum Against Anti-Semitism. Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said. tional estimated $80 million will be paid on the negotiating team and a board The bulk of the incidents were carried "Our hope is that by making comprehen- over the next 10 years to approximately member of the International Auschwitz out in Western Europe and were led by sive, credible information about the 13,000 Holocaust survivors in 22 coun- Committee, said that many of the sur- local Muslims, including 100 each in Holocaust available in a number of lan- tries. In addition, there will be major vivors in Eastern Europe live well below France and Britain, the report found. guages, that we build a cadre of people increases in monthly payments from the the poverty level. The violent assaults included attacks who know what the Holocaust really was, Central and Eastern European Fund, or "They lack money for food, medicine against both synagogues and Jewish who understand the realities and can CEEF, to survivors in European Union and and fuel," he told JTA. "And time is not the communities, as well as vandalism of pri- serve as a buffer against those who would non-EU countries, bringing the two groups best medicine for the survivor," many of vately owned Jewish property, the report deny the Holocaust, or make such manip- to parity. whom are alone in later years. "And when said. ulative comparisons that are so divorced As of next January, recipients of you are older, you think about what hap- The number and intensity of anti-Semitic from any semblance of reality," he added. CEEF pensions will receive about $339 pened not yesterday but what happened incidents during the Gaza assault were The New York-based Anti-Defamation per month, which represents a 35 per- 60, 70 years ago." "unprecedented" in the last two decades, League urged the leaders of several cent increase for those in non-EU coun- Claims Conference's chairman, said Jewish Agency official Amos Hermon European countries to publicly condemn tries and an 11 percent increase for EU Julius Berman, said there would be an at a press conference at Jerusalem's "the explosion of anti-Semitic rhetoric" residents. unprecedented second meeting before Jewish Agency headquarters, where the and Holocaust comparisons at anti-Israel “The agreement reinforces for me the the end of this year to deal with open report was released. rallies against the Gaza operation. commitment I saw during the lengthy questions such as home care funds for Ironically, the dramatic spike in anti- The American Jewish group reminded negotiations [for the Clinton administra- 2010. Semitism followed a year in which anti- the European leaders of the obligations Semitic incidents dropped by 15%-20% their countries had undertaken to combat from the previous year, according to the anti-Semitism in the 2004 Berlin BISHOP WHO DENIED HOLOCAUST LOST SEMINARY POST report. Declaration of the Organization for rehabilitated bishop at the heart of a Apparently surprised by the vociferous At the event, Jewish Agency Treasurer Cooperation and Security in Europe. A Vatican uproar for denying the reaction, including unusual public criticism Hagai Meirom predicted a fresh wave of The document declared unambiguously Holocaust ever happened has been dis- from Chancellor Angela Merkel of global anti-Semitism in the wake of that international developments or political missed as the head of an Argentine semi- Germany, the pope’s native country, the Operation Cast Lead – even though the issues, including those in Israel or else- nary, Argentina newspapers reported. Vatican has since said Bishop Williamson report noted a drop in incidents since the where in the Middle East, never justify They said the bishop, Richard must recant his views on the Holocaust. end of the operation – and stressed that anti-Semitism. Williamson, who has asserted that he The pope has also made efforts to the government needed to provide addi- Meanwhile, a renewed blast of anti- does not believe the Nazis used gas soothe offended relations with Jews and tional resources to effectively respond to Semitic vitriol is expected to be aired at chambers, was no longer the head of the other groups angered by Bishop such attacks worldwide. the Durban II United Nations World La Reja seminary on the outskirts of the Williamson’s rehabilitation, saying he had Over the last two weeks, a Vatican offi- Conference, to be held in Geneva in April. Argentina capital. been unaware of the bishop’s views. cial, a Norwegian foreign ministry official The very date of the opening, April 20, News of Bishop Williamson’s dismissal and a British MP have all compared demonstrates insensitivity to Jewish feel- from the Argentine seminary came after Israel's actions to those of the Nazis. ings, a Jewish Agency spokesman noted. the pope and Chancellor Merkel had a The upswing in virulently anti-Israel April 20, 2009 will mark the 120th “cordial and constructive” phone conver- Holocaust parallels comes at a time of anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler. sation, spokesmen for both said. A joint statement issued by the Vatican FRANCE RECOGNIZES ITS SHOAH GUILT and the chancellor’s office said that both or the first time, France officially rec- hold the legal weight of the court’s ruling. the pope and Mrs. Merkel referred to ognized it was guilty of helping mur- The council delegated to a lower court Benedict’s Jan. 28 remarks condemning F der French Jews during World War II. the final ruling on whether the daughter of Holocaust denial and expressing solidari- The country's high court, the Council of a Holocaust victim deserves financial ty with Jews. State, took the opportunity to hold France reparations. Their decision will make new A statement released by the Vatican "responsible" for sending Jews to Nazi requests for reparations more difficult to Secretariat of State called on Bishop camps, when asked about a related case on satisfy. Though the state should "compen- Williamson to recant his comments. In a Bishop Richard Williamson. granting reparations to a Holocaust victim. sate" Holocaust victims, the court under- rare case of the Vatican’s diplomatic arm The council said the French must lined that the government had already “Monsignor Williamson’s statements do furthering remarks by the pope, the "solemnly recognize the responsibility of paid them "as much as possible." not in any way reflect the position of our Secretariat of State also made clear that the state and the collective prejudice suf- Indeed, Serge Klarsfeld, president of the congregation,” the newspapers quoted the traditionalist bishops would not be fered "because the country "permitted or Association for Sons and Daughters of Father Christian Bouchacourt, the head of welcomed back into full communion with facilitated the deportation from France of Jewish Deportees, and vice president of the Latin American chapter of the Catholic the Roman Catholic Church unless they victims of anti-Semitic persecution," the the Foundation for the Memory of the Society St. Pius X, as saying. accepted the liberalizing teachings of the French Daily le Figaro reported. Shoah, agreed that French Holocaust sur- Pope Benedict XVI provoked wide- Second Vatican Council. It took until 1995 for former French vivors and children of deportees already spread anger in January when he rescind- Statement by the Secretariat of State President Jacques Chirac to become the received considerable financial repara- ed the excommunications of Bishop seemed to repair relations with the Chief first French leader to publicly assume his tions from the government. He cited a Williamson and three fellow bishops as Rabbinate of Israel, which plans to contin- country's responsibility for sending some $632 million sum dealt to Holocaust vic- part of an effort to heal a 20-year-old ue its dialogue with the Vatican, said its 76,000 French Jews to Nazi camps during tims and foundations this year, according schism within the church. director general, Oded Wiener. World War II. Approximately 2,600 sur- to le Figaro. vived, according to the Paris-based "It is a decision that satisfies me," GERMAN COURT RULES ON NAZI-CONFISCATED ART Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah. Klarsfeld said of the council's ruling, in an are posters seized by Nazi secret Washington Post reported. Sachs was Until Chirac's statement, German occu- interview with le Figaro. "France is now Rpolice and valued at $6 million belong deported to the Sachsenhausen concen- piers under the French Vichy government showing it is in the avant-guard of coun- to the son of a Jewish collector, not to a tration camp before managing to flee were officially blamed for the Holocaust. tries taking responsibility for their past, German museum, a German court ruled. Germany with his wife and son, then an Chirac's belated comments also did not which was not the case until the 1990s." The German Historical Museum must infant, the Post said. return some 4,200 posters of exhibitions, The museum, which said it plans to VANDALS STRIKE MEMORIAL TO AUSTRIAN JEWS cabarets, films and products – including appeal the court ruling, had argued Hans works by French artists Henri de Toulouse- Sachs had relinquished his rights to the n artwork remembering the suffering icated to the memory of the Jews of the Lautrec and Jules Cheret – to Peter Sachs, stolen collection when he accepted Aof Austrian Jews under the Nazis was Oberwart district. a retired airline pilot from Sarasota, Fla., $50,000 in compensation from the gov- destroyed days after it was installed. Oberschutzen Mayor Gunter Toth said Berlin's administrative court ruled. ernment of West Germany in 1961. Artist Peter Wagner had planted the 70 he had noticed that many stakes had The Gestapo seized the posters, collect- But his son and his lawyers said Hans Sachs wooden stakes alongside a road in the been removed but thought it had some- ed by Sachs's father, Hans Sachs, a had been told the posters were destroyed dur- town of Oberschutzen, near a controver- thing to do with traffic regulations. Jewish German dentist, in 1938. ing World War II, when they were actually held sial memorial that serves as a reminder of Wagner said the vandalism was proba- Hans Sachs was arrested shortly after- by the East German government. Germany's annexation of Austria . bly a deliberate act by those who disliked ward in a coordinated Nazi attack against Hans Sachs died in 1974 and his collec- According to the Kurier newspaper, being reminded of the past. Austria has Jews and their property known as tion was given to the museum in 1990 Wagner's project was called "zone38 – 70 been slow to recognize its complicity in Kristallnacht, Nov .9, 1938, The after the fall of the Berlin Wall. years after the annexation," and was ded- the Nazi crimes. March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

ROMANIAN HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR AT UNITED NATIONS HOLOCAUST MUSEUM PLANS HISTORIC OPENING ach year, the United Nations holds That day, her mother died, as had fficials with the Illinois Holocaust Museum officials say incomplete and Ean International Dayof Gold's father and brother. OMuseum & Education Center missing records have made them unable Commemoration in memory of the victims The same day in 1945, Soviet troops lib- announced the museum will open April 19 to say with certainty whether the muse- of the Holocaust. erated the death camp Auschwitz. to coincide with the anniversary of the um's train car was used to transport peo- This year’s theme was “An Authentic Einat Temkin, assistant public informa- 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, consid- ple, but they know it is German-made and Basis for Hope: Holocaust Remembrance tion officer for the UN's Holocaust ered the largest revolt by Jewish prisoners was refurbished during the Holocaust era. and Education.” Outreach program, said event organizers against the Nazis during the Holocaust. The museum will have some similarities Taking the podium before the keynote knew of Gold because of her book, Ruth's Architects, organizers and museum to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in speaker – Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Journey: A Survivor's Memoir and benefactors updated the public on the Washington, with rare documents, photo- Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council at because “she's rather well known as facility near the Edens Expressway graphs and clothing. the State of Israel's Holocaust memorial – being a good speaker and being very between Golf and Old Orchard Roads in But the Illinois museum also will contain is Aventura's Ruth Glasberg Gold. moving.'' Skokie, where construction began in June the audio testimony of Holocaust sur- ''We would like you to share your story Gold's story begins in Romania's 2006. The museum will be the largest of vivors who relocated to Illinois after World of survival, including Bukovina region, in the city its kind in the Midwest. War II, an exhibit on the neo-Nazi conflict your experiences at of Czernowitz. In 1941, "This is likely to be the last major Skokie in 1977, and an educational spot- the camp at Bershad Romanian soldiers and Holocaust museum built in collaboration light on other genocides, including the and your struggle to German Nazis marched into with survivors," said Richard Hirschhaut, massacres in Darfur. bring the plight of the town and massacred 2,000 the museum's executive director. Also under way: An extensive art exhib- Jews of Transnistria Jews. One exhibit is already in place: A wood- it showing works of art done in reaction to camps to light,'' a let- The ruling Romanian fas- en, windowless German train car of the genocide worldwide. ter of invitation reads. cists forced Jewish residents type used for transporting livestock until About 250,000 students are predicted to “Your remarks should into a ghetto. the Nazis used the cars to carry thou- visit the museum annually. Since 1990, last approximately 15 Gold, then 11, and her fami- sands of Jews to almost certain death at Illinois children have been required to minutes.” ly, survived a bone-chilling, concentration camps. learn about Holocaust. Fifteen minutes, to two-week march to the town of educate 1,500 people Bershad, where a concentra- SERBIAN CITY GRANTS NAZI HUNTER HONORARY CITIZENSHIP in the Trusteeship tion camp was established. Council Chamber Her parents and brother he chief Nazi hunter of the Los recognition of bringing Nazi war criminals about what Gold, 78, soon died, and during the TAngeles-based Simon Wiesenthal to justice even today. calls ''an obscure next three years, Gold Center has been awarded honorary citi- "It reinforces the important principles episode'' in Holocaust endured sub-human condi- zenship by the Serbian city of Novi Sad, in that the passage of time in no way dimin- recognition of his work in exposing a for- ishes the guilt of the perpetrators and that history. Ruth Glasberg Gold, survivor of the tions, fed only corn mush mer Nazi war criminal who helped organ- old age should not shield merciless killers ''The Romanian Transnistria concenration camp, once a day. Holocaust is almost addresses a ceremony at UN . Liberated in 1944, she ize the large-scale massacre of Jews, unknown,'' she said. went to a refugee camp in Serbs, and Gypsies in the city during “Transnistria means nothing to anybody, Yugoslavia, then a detention camp on World War II. even to Jews from Romania.'' Cyprus, then to Palestine, which became Novi Sad honored Dr. Ephraim Zuroff for Transnistria, in western Ukraine, was part Israel in 1948. his role in exposing former Hungarian of the Soviet Union. There were no gas She married, moved to Colombia, and gendarmerie officer Dr. Sandor Kepiro, chambers in the camps there, no numbers came to the United States in 1972. In 1990, who participated in organizing the mas- tattooed on inmates' arms. They were left to she co-founded the Child Survivors Support sacre of more than 1,000 Jews, Serbs, starve, freeze or die of disease. Group of Florida, which still meets. and Gypsies in the Serbian city on The retired nurse – who last worked at Now widowed, she has two children and January 23, 1942. Florida International University's North two grandchildren. Kepiro, whom the Wiesenthal Center Campus student clinic – noted the day's ''The child survivors are the last ones left to exposed two-and-a-half years ago while particular personal significance. tell the story, and we are slowly dying out,'' he was living in Budapest, has not been “January 27 is the same date in 1942 that she said. “We returned from the abyss and brought to trial due to a lack of political will I was left an orphan alone in the world.” survived to speak the unspeakable.” on the part of Hungarian authorities, Zuroff said. The Nazi war criminal, who was twice LEGISLATORS SAY NEVER AGAIN TO ANTI-SEMITISM convicted by Hungarian courts in the past, egislators from 42 countries Abraham Foxman, Israeli national ranks third on the Wiesenthal Center's L signed a declaration recommend- director of the Anti-Defamation League, 2008 list of most wanted Nazis. ing a series of strategies to tackle glob- told JTA that the Internet presents a new The American leadership of the al anti-Semitism. challenge, enabling the transmission of Wiesenthal Center welcomed the honor In a declaration released at the end of hate propaganda in seconds to people bestowed on its Israel director, and noted from being held accountable for their the first ever interparliamentary summit all over the world. its significance at a time when "the mem- heinous crimes," Zuroff said at the Monday on anti-Semitism, more than 100 law- Former Canadian Attorney General ory of the Holocaust and the victims of night ceremony at the Novi Sad city hall. makers called on their governments Irwin Kotler, a member of the summit's Nazism has been under such heavy He was the 11th person to receive “never again to allow the institutions of steering committee, said “There is a new attack by those seeking to besmirch the honorary citizenship from Novi Sad, the international community to be sophisticated, globalizing, virulent and State of Israel." which is home to Serbia's second- abused for the purposes of trying to even lethal anti-Semitism, reminiscent of Zuroff said that the honor constituted the largest Jewish community. establish any legitimacy for anti- the atmospherics of the '30s, and with- Semitism.” out parallel or precedent since the end US TO UNVEIL COURT RULINGS AGAINST NAZIS They also decried the 2001 U.N. World of the Second World War.” Conference Against Racism in Durban, Speaking as the declaration was pub- he criminal division of the US to nab suspected Nazi war criminals who South Africa, where the focus on Israel lished, British lawmaker John Mann, TJustice Department that deals with still remain at large enters its final stage. to the exclusion of all other issues was chair of the Parliamentary Committee cases of Nazis who entered the United The material, which will be published in widely perceived as anti-Semitic. A suc- Against Anti-Semitism and host of the States after the Holocaust is going to only three sets of multi-volume book-form, cessor conference in Geneva is planned conference, told the assemblage that make public three decades of American will be presented to Yad Vashem in for April. “The Internet, the globalization of the court decisions against dozens of Nazi Jerusalem, as well as to the US Holocaust The summit ended several days after media, a resurgence of the extreme right war criminals, Yad Vashem announced. Memorial Museum in Washington DC, the Obama administration announced and an anti-Zionist hard left have com- The vast amount of legal material, which while the final copy will be retained by the that the United States would send a del- bined to create a febrile environment in is slated to be published in the coming US Department of Justice. egation to a Geneva pre-conference which the spread of old and new anti- months and includes nearly 100 cases "This is one of the leading institutions before deciding if it will attend the con- Semitic theories and attitudes have against Nazi war criminals living in the US in the world for compiling cases against ference, known as Durban II, in been able to gain traction with alarming over the last 30 years, is one of the largest suspected Nazi war criminals," said Dr. Switzerland. ease. The Durban conference was contemporary sources of material in Haim Gertner, Director of the Yad The declaration calls for the European amongst the manifestations of this trend. English about the trials of Nazis. Vashem Archives. Union Council of Ministers to address “Anti-Semitism is a touchstone for The US Justice Department's Office of He added that some of the more low- the issue of combating anti-Semitism; other ills within wider society and unless Special Investigation, which handles profile cases have never officially been exposing and isolating governments and we move to address its spread now, and cases against people accused of being published, and that the material would individual politicians who engage in hate as a matter of the utmost urgency, we former Nazis, began operations in 1979 be of interest to scholars and histori- against the Jews; and establishing an will all pay a heavy price,” he said. and has successfully prosecuted more ans, as well as the public at large. international task force of Internet spe- The delegates agreed to continue than 100 participants in Nazi crimes. The American institution has in years cialists to measure racism and anti- coordinating their work and to meet The publication of the court records past turned to Yad Vashem as well as Semitism online and propose interna- again, using the same format, in two comes as the number of elderly Holocaust the Holocaust Museum in the US for tional responses. years in Canada. survivors is on the wane, and as the effort archival assistance in its work. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS ERASED: VANISHING TRACES OF JEWISH GALICIA IN PRESENT-DAY UKRAINE Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish deported to the Belzec help of the Ukrainians, in 1935!) It’s the place his mother told Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine. extermination camp or killed them in the town him about. It’s the place where, if not By Omer Bartov. Princeton University killed in the town and its or the forests nearby. for her untimely death, they would have Press: Princeton and Oxford, 2007. 232 vicinity.” Today, while there is visited together. pp. $26.95 hardcover. Today, there is very lit- a little synagogue on a Buchach is also known as “Buczacz, tle evidence that there side street that the Butshatsch, and Bitshutsh. When World REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN was once a substantial author never saw War II began, an “estimated . . . 10,000 “This is a story of discovery of what Jewish community living “`functioning,’” Jews lived in the town,” amongst Poles there once was, what has remained, in Drohobych. The City Kolomyia’s Great and Ukrainians. Once again the Germans and what has been swept away.” Synagogue has become Synagogue is gone. sent many Jews to Belzec and also, with n Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish a “sports club.” The “A modern building the help of the Ukrainians, murdered them IGalicia in Present-Day Ukraine, the building which housed and an open market- in Buchach. Later, “ethnic cleansing” author, Omer Bartov, presents us with a the Jewish Orphanage place” stand in its would rid Buchach of its Poles. unique kind of travelogue. Journeying is still there, but has stead, and next to it, a Today, as regards the Jews, according with him, we learn much about the various been altered, making it statue of two women to Bartov, an open market has replaced ethnic populations that lived in twenty difficult to see that it was and a baby dressed in the Great Synagogue. A shopping center cities and towns, once the territory of once a Jewish institu- traditional Ukrainian- has replaced the study house (“Beit Eastern Galicia and now part of Western tion. A park has been style, underlines Hamidrash”). Ukraine. Journeying with him, sadly, we “built directly on the “Ukrainian victim- And, in this Ukrainian town, signs also learn much about how the fact that grounds of the ghetto” hood.” Indeed, not memorializing World War II deaths either Jews ever made these cities and towns where the Germans penned up the Jews only is there little if anything left to reveal simply refer to “people” (not Jews specif- their home is being “erased.” Indeed, in of Drohobych before murdering them. that Jews were ever here, there is, con- ically) or Ukrainians as having been most cases, it’s almost as if Jews were Additionally, in the midst of this park is a comitantly, nothing to tell us what hap- murdered. In fact, only tombstones, never there. statue honoring a Ukrainian hero, “whose pened to them. Moreover, to add insult to found in a cemetery by one who must Typical of the places Bartov takes us is followers were deeply implicated in the injury, Bartov reveals that recently, already know the cemetery exists, iden- Drohobych, also known as “Drohobycz, genocide of the Jews . . .” In sum, only a Ukrainian dreams of developing a ski tifies the fact that Jews were ever here . Drogobych, Drohobets, and Drohovitch.” forlorn plaque, or a street name hints at industry in the Carpathian Mountains, . . and then there is a strange little muse- Now a Ukrainian town, Drohobych is the fact that another people’s story is hard by Kolomyia, now a Ukrainian town, um in the town with a few books written “some 40 miles southwest of” what we buried here. would have tourists unwittingly “treading by Yosef Shmuel Agnon, a “former resi- know as Lemberg. In 1939, according to artov takes us to Kolomyia, also on . . . thousands” of the town’s Jews dent” of Buchach . . . Bartov, there were “10,000 Poles” in known as Kolomyja, Kolomey and killed there during the war! B Needless to say, readers of M&R will find Drohobych, “10,000 Ukrainians, and Kolomea.” “On the eve of World War II,” inally, this reviewer would like to this book absorbing and thought-provoking. 15,000 Jews.” During the war however, “about 15,000” Jews lived here among mention another place the author F Put simply, it’s a must have for students of while “most of the Poles were” sent back “Poles, Ukrainians, Hutsuls, Germans, takes us — undoubtedly, the reason for the Holocaust and revisionism. to Poland (after they and the Ukrainians Armenians, Hungarians, Vlachs, and oth- his passionate interest in the area — immediately murdered some Jews), “the ers.” Once again, the Germans deported Buchach. Buchach is the place the Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Media vast majority of the Jews were either many of the Jews to Belzec or, with the author’s mother was born, (luckily, she left and Communication Arts at Pace University. SINS OF THE FATHERS: CHILDREN OF NAZIS DIG UP PAST IN NEW BOOKS ix decades after World War II ended, Hunt, who has had her whole life to Sthe number of people with firsthand come to terms with the past, blames her memories of the Nazi era is dwindling. mother for sins of omission. Many Germans and Austrians of that gen- Pollack, who was only 3 when his father eration are reluctant to talk about the rule died in 1947, has far more to swallow. of Adolf Hitler, preferring to tell stories of Gerhard Bast, whose surname Pollack postwar chaos and hardship. chose not to adopt, ordered the deaths of So it’s increasingly left to the children of Jews and Poles as head of a Nazis to explore how their parents were Sonderkommando in Poland, the author drawn to a party that carried out some of learned. Bast also rounded up Jews to be the worst crimes in history. deported and oversaw the hangings of Irmgard Hunt’s absorbing memoir, “On Polish workers as head of the Gestapo in Hitler’s Mountain: My Nazi Childhood” the German city of Munster. (Atlantic Books, 2005, $17.13, 322 pp.), he seeds of Bast’s extreme nation- was written partly to answer queries from T alism were planted during his child- her son, a historian. Austrian journalist hood in Slovenia, then part of the Austro- Martin Pollack investigates his father’s Hungarian empire and a tinderbox of ten- S.S. and Gestapo past in his harrowing sions between ethnic Germans and “The Dead Man in the Bunker’’ (Faber and Slovenes. The family in 1912 moved to Faber, 2006, $23.00, 216 pp.). the Austrian town of Amstetten, just Hunt was born in 1934 in across the border from Hitler’s mountain. Berchtesgaden, on the Bavarian mountain While studying law, Bast joined a national- where Hitler and his henchman had their ist fraternity and gained the dueling scars retreat. Her parents, ordinary working- brushed aside. When the mentally dis- mother with questions: “Who sent the that would mark him as a Nazi for the rest class Germans, were enthusiastic sup- abled child of a neighbor is taken by trains? Where were they going?” Her of his life. He joined the party in 1931 and porters: Their proudest moment was health authorities and “dies of a cold,” mother didn’t answer. remained a member after it was banned in when she was photographed sitting on the Hunt’s mother and her friend Susi discuss he describes her anger toward her Austria in 1933. Fuhrer’s knee. Her father taught her the it while doing laundry. Smother and her sense of betrayal. Pollack’s account, translated into English “Heil Hitler”’ salute when she was 3. ”It’s probably true” that the child died of “The guilt of genocide would be upon all of by William Hobson, jumps around chrono- rawing on her mother’s diary, her own a cold, says Susi. If Hunt’s mother, Albine us for generations,” says Hunt, who emi- logically, making it hard to follow at times. Dmemory and interviews with relatives Paul, had ``suspected foul play concern- grated to the U.S. in 1958. She currently The research is meticulous, though. Pollack and friends, Hunt shows how Hitler’s dicta- ing the Dehmel baby, she would have lives in Washington with her Jewish part- combed archives across the former Reich torship penetrated every aspect of family life. convinced herself that Hitler himself would ner of 17 years, Mike Shor. and interviewed aging Nazis. She describes her mother trying to make not condone such murder,’’ Hunt writes. Hunt says her mother didn’t know about How do you cope with the knowledge that Christmas cookies shaped like Nazi- During the war, an uncle on leave from the gas chambers and didn’t preach anti- your father was a cold-blooded murderer? approved symbols — such as Nordic “trees the eastern front mentions trains packed Semitism. Yet she blinded herself to Nazi Pollack seems numbed and traumatized. of life”’ or Celtic runes – instead of the tradi- with people heading east. On one, women crimes and “never thought beyond the ”The dark shadow of this question has tional stars and hearts. ``were so desperate to relieve themselves great immediate need at the end of the accompanied me for many years and I What scant evidence there was of Nazi that they actually did so out of the train twenties for someone, anyone, to end know I shall never be able to shake it off.” crimes against Jews and other groups in windows.’’ inflation, unemployment and the nation- this Alpine idyll was either hushed up or Hunt, then 9, says she plagued her wide disorder and violence.” First published by Bloomberg News March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 NAZI WOMEN EXPOSED AS EVERY BIT AS BAD AS HITLER’S DERANGED MALE FOLLOWERS “The participation of women in the would have denied them. Just as the promote, for they were avid denunciators BY ALLAN HALL, MAIL ONLINE crimes of the Nazis has been blended out “ordinary Joe” could become an extraordi- of their spouses. The surviving files of the ortrayed in soft tones and pastels, of the collective conscious of the nary killer, so could the “weaker sex” Gestapo in the city of Dusseldorf noted Ptheir beatific gaze stared from bill- Germans for a long time,” she writes. prove itself strong under the swastika. they “try to change the power balance of boards and free sheets across the land. The fairer sex venerated by the propa- nalyzing pre and post-war statistics, the household by denouncing their hus- Blonde, fresh-faced and pure, these A Kompisch found there were more bands as spies or Communists or anti- were the women of Hitler’s Third Reich. government, private sector and military Nazis”. They were prolific mothers, skilful home- jobs to be had for women under Hitler So what made the caring sex morph into makers, hard-working secretaries and than in peacetime. servants of evil on such a massive scale? dedicated auxiliaries. But those who stayed at home — and On one level, the women who served They supported their men at war and had the babies the regime craved — also helping the SS in the death camps — like devoted themselves to the cause of their bloodied their hands. Hermine Braunsteiner, the “Mare of Fuhrer. After all, it was largely women who Majdanek,” who killed her victims by And their Fuhrer treated them with all queued up at government warehouses to stamping on them and Irma Grese, the the delicacy of a courting lover. buy the furniture, jewels, household appli- “Angel of Death” at Belsen and Auschwitz When war began, Hitler forbade them to ances and clothes of their Jewish neigh- — were poorly educated, dysfunctional work in the munitions factories for fear bors who had disappeared in the night misfits who would have faced permanent they would lose their femininity under the without a word. rejection in ordinary society. stress of hard physical labor. The high-testosterone, all-male hierar- ome 3,200 women served in the Family income benefits were dispensed for chy of the Nazi state blocked out women Sconcentration camps. Female every new child, “childrich” families were from leadership positions from the very guards were generally low-to-middle publicly honored and the gold Cross of start — but the regime actively encour- class and had little or no work experi- Honor of the German Mother was bestowed aged female participation in enforcing the ence, although SS records show some on women bearing four or more babies. Some women had very close access to the Nazi terror at grassroots levels. were matrons, hairdressers, tram con- Hitler needed a docile and devoted Fuhrer. Most Blockwaerts — apartment house ductors or retired teachers. female population to breed the supermen he needed to populate his dream of the ganda machine of Josef Goebbels was, 1,000-year Reich. according to Kompisch, every bit as eager Even as Allied bombers turned to turn the thumbscrews on the victims Germany into brick dust, Hitler gave held in Gestapo cellars across Europe; orders that industries which logically every bit as fanatical as the male when it should have been transformed into arma- came to crushing resistance to the state. ments plants continue to pump out lip- They became assistants to the doctors sticks, nylons and fashion accessories who first sterilized, and later murdered, “for the gracious ladies”. the “useless” handicapped. In Nazi art, films and magazines, They became head guards in the gulag women were always the fairer sex, of concentration camps — like Herta defending the home-front as their menfolk Bothe, known as the Sadist of Stutthof for fought on the battlefields. her merciless beatings. But what did Hitler get in return for his And they were handmaidens to the SS dutiful attentions? as they staffed the “baby farms” where Until recently, the role of the Nazi “supermen” children were born. In these woman in the construction of the brutal ghoulish clinics, women were the man- state machinery of the Reich has never agers and nurses. been truly revealed. And, Kompisch points out: “One should Now a new book in Germany called never forget the legions of women who Female auxiliary guards at Auschwitz smile as they take a break. Perpetrators: Women Under National stood by their menfolk as they killed peo- Socialism explodes the myth behind the ple by the tens of thousands in Russia, in snoops who reported on un-Nazi activities Dorothea Binz, head training overseer propaganda. Poland, in places like Auschwitz and to the party — were female. Women also at the all-female camp of Ravensbruck In the first German post-war analysis of Treblinka.” made unofficial denunciations to the after 1942, trained her female students in the role of women in the crimes of the Kompisch says women under Hitler — Gestapo of suspicious neighbors, Jews the finer points of “malicious pleasure.” Nazis, historian Kathrin Kompisch docu- pushed though they were towards a and other enemies of the state at a rate of One survivor stated after the war that the ments the shameful truth about her sex in clichéd ideal of hearth and home — actu- three-to-one, compared to men. Germans brought a group of 50 women to the war, which until now has been a taboo ally found opportunities for advancement Women also undermined the sacred the camp to undergo training. The women subject in her homeland. in the regime that normal peacetime marriage illusion which Nazism tried to (Continued on page 14) SCRAMBLING TO PRESERVE HOLOCAUST MEMORIES technology officer. Defamation League’s Holocaust educa- digital format is preservation, it also has BY JOANNA LIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES Gustman said the foundation plans to tion committee in Los Angeles. allowed the foundation to correct digitize 12,000 testimonies a year, finish- “The feeling, the emotion of the event, the recording errors and reduce duplication ifteen years ago, nearly 52,000 ing the collection by 2013. The completion separation from the family, are difficult to time. The digital format allows staff to Holocaust survivors and witnesses F will mark the latest step for the Shoah put into words,” he said. “You hope by spot bad recording signals or tape began sharing their stories with a group project that began in 1994, when director relating these events of occupied Europe defects and fix them. that would come to be known as the USC Steven Spielberg established the founda- by the Nazis, that this can have a univer- he foundation hopes the digital testi- Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual tion to collect survivors’ stories after the sal meaning to those growing up later and monies will have a broader reach. History and Education. The testimonies, T debut of his film, “Schindler’s List.” Five in future generations.” Currently, all 51,682 testimonies are avail- averaging about two hours each, were years later, the foundation had amassed The foundation’s videotapes have been able at USC, the United States Holocaust documented on videotape, a format testimony in 32 languages and across 56 stored in a vast facility known as Iron Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., whose quality deteriorates over time. countries. Mountain, a former limestone mine in and several other research institutions And that’s why the foundation, intent am Goetz is among the survivors western Pennsylvania. The tapes are now around the world. But only excerpts of a on preserving its Holocaust material for Swho have added their stories to the being packed into trucks, 15,000 at a time, dozen interviews are available on the future generations, has launched a foundation’s collection. and hauled across the country to the foundation’s website. $10-million initiative to turn 105,000 As a young boy, Goetz survived con- Shoah Foundation’s office a few blocks Gustman said the foundation plans to add hours of videotaped testimony into a centration camps in Poland, Germany east of the USC campus. There, founda- 1,000 interviews, all in an upgraded digital vast digital archive. and Austria. He recorded his story with tion staff — with the help of two automat- format, to its website over the next year. The switch, foundation leaders say, the foundation in 1995. Documenting ed “robots” that look like large vending With the generation of Holocaust sur- cannot come a moment too soon — survivors’ stories, he said, is a “time- machines, and a massive archive with 9 vivors quickly vanishing, Gustman said it’s with the videotapes expected to start sensitive issue.” million gigabytes of memory — are dupli- all the more important for the testimonies decaying within five years and aging Knowing that his story and thousands of cating the tapes into Motion JPEG 2000 to last. Holocaust survivors dying off. other tales are being safeguarded for files, as well as other formats for comput- “When you don’t have the people to “It’s like a ticking time bomb,” said years to come has comforted the 80-year- er and television viewing. teach the kids, what do you do?” he said. Sam Gustman, the foundation’s chief old Goetz, chairman of the Anti- Although the primary benefit of the new “That’s where we come in.” Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SAY NO TO BLOOD MONEY dolf Hitler and Spritzer moved again, thinking he could BY CLAUDIA FELDMAN, A Joseph Stalin build a bigger, better fur business here. HOUSTON CHRONICLE were in the process of n the past half-century, the Texas Gulf he German government is looking splitting Poland in two, ICoast has agreed with him. The mod- Tfor Sam Spritzer. and Spritzer and his est enterprise he started in 1957 grew into Again. mother’s side of the fam- Furlan Spritzer Furs. He and his business In 1939, when Spritzer was 17, Nazis ily were fortunate to partner moved into the Galleria, where rounded him up and forced him into an old wind up on Soviet turf. they entertained Hollywood starlets, local theater hall with other boys and men from But the Nazis struck socialites, anyone and everyone wanting his Polish town. There was no running again in 1941. When knockout fur coats. water and only one toilet, and Spritzer’s Spritzer’s mother told him Along the way the amicable partnership tormenters made him spend his daylight to run for his life, he did, ended, but Spritzer kept the business hours cleaning up human excrement. disappearing into the going and contributed money and furs to Today, 70 years later, the German gov- Russian countryside. countless charities. ernment is offering to pay Spritzer and “It was a time of wan- “Why not?” he asks in an accent still thousands of other Jews for the work they dering,” Spritzer says. “If reminiscent of the Old Country. “I came you ask me where I went were forced to do in those Nazi ghettos. This Spritzer family photo was taken in 1937, shortly before the fam- into this world with nothing. I will leave The Holocaust survivors stand to gain or why, it’s almost ily was ripped apart. Sam Spritzer, in the center of the back row, was with nothing. All I really have is my wife, 2,000 euros, or about $2,500, from the impossible to describe.” 15 at the time. Pantipa, our daughter, Kristina, my name, Germans’ latest reparations program, Sometimes he walked, tance, but it was miles and hours away. and the good I did in this town.” launched in October 2007. But there’s a sometimes he hopped trains. He had no Deeply discouraged, he retraced his Spritzer is 86. He and Pantipa closed catch or two: The forms are difficult for money, not even a change of clothes. He snowy steps and prepared to board the their Galleria store in 2003, but they con- people in their 70s and 80s to complete. will never forget stooping to drink from a next train. In time a train did pull into the tinue to sell furs at Houston Jewelry. Also, there’s reluctance on the part of puddle “green from frogs.” station. But the doors wouldn’t open, and He also works as a volunteer and gives many survivors to participate. Eventually he was drafted into the Spritzer plastered himself to the side and speeches about his experiences during “It’s blood money,” Spritzer says. “In the Soviet army, but he didn’t fight, he dug held on tight. the Holocaust. past, I haven’t wanted any of it.” ditches. Sometimes, because he was “I cried,” he says. “That was one of “If we don’t talk about it,” he says, “we will Spritzer grew up in Rawa Ruska. On his adept at half a dozen languages, he many times.” not remember. And life will repeat itself.” father’s side were dairy farmers. On his worked as an army escort. In 1943, while still in the army, Spritzer’s In the past, Spritzer has ignored other mother’s side were furriers and tailors. Once, Spritzer took a group of soldiers fortunes improved. He got a job as a post- efforts by the German government to Until the German invasion, Spritzer led a to a training camp in Siberia. On the long man, and villagers gave him bread as he make reparations. sheltered, religious life. and lonely trip back to base, he got off the delivered their mail. This time, with the help of an army of “If my mother had told me to jump, I would train in search of food. Immediately he But he didn’t stick with it very long. In local attorneys, Spritzer will apply for the have said, how high?” Spritzer says. sank thigh-deep in snow. 1944 he got word that his Polish city had money. He encourages other survivors When the soldiers came with The wind was whistling, the tempera- been destroyed by the Nazis, and every- who qualify to apply, too. machine guns, Spritzer found himself tures were 30 or 40 degrees below zero, one in his family was killed. The volunteer attorneys are making the trapped in the theater. He endured for and there was nothing in sight except a Once again, he got back on the train. complicated process as easy as possible, a few days, scooping waste, then told distant light. He had to go to Rawa Ruska and see he says. a Nazi soldier he needed water from Spritzer trudged toward the beacon, for himself. And he thinks it’s time to accept the an outdoor pump. hoping he might find someone who would By 1950, Spritzer had only a few rela- help, which, truth to tell, would come in When the soldier wasn’t looking, the kid give him something to eat. Miles later, he tives left in the world. One was in Paris, handy. jumped the bushes and ran. As it turned realized he was making no progress. The and Spritzer moved to France. “I’m older,” he says. “I’ve cooled off. I out, his escape was perfectly timed. light was still there, shining in the dis- Another was in Houston, and in 1955, forgive.” VISITING A MOTHER’S GRAVE AT AUSCHWITZ the ladies and the ‘kinder’ my father, but he told me that he had BY STANLEY GLOGOVER first,” he said politely. “Mein found my mother and three siblings on the Frau, come with me.” metal corpse cart. Her lifeless fingers so remember, after the Kaddish was said, He ushered them away tightly gripped Itka and the boys that Azriel after the pale roses were laid down, a I quickly. And I hold this had to pry their dead fingers apart. He and light rain falling through trees. image forever: My mother another man had cremated their bodies On a gray March day in 2007, I made a smiling back at us, my two separately. visit to what in all likelihood was the grave brothers clinging to her “I put their ashes in glass jars,” my uncle of my mother, my two younger brothers, coat, baby Itka riding up said. “I waited until it was quiet and buried Hershek and Moshek, and my infant sis- close to her shoulder. them behind Crematorium Three. ter, Itka. The boys were only 11 and 9 “See you soon,” my Underneath a tree, you can’t miss it. It’s when they left the world; Itka was barely 6 mother called out, her the only thing growing there.” months old. voice warm with encour- Despite the curfew and the bitter cold, I Their nameless tomb rests in a loca- agement. The four of had to go and see for myself. The small tion to which I once vowed never to them disappeared in a birch was nothing more than a sapling. I return, a death-sown place that had huge wave of women and knelt and said Kaddish for them, not car- destroyed my teenage years and 28 Stanley Glogover, with his daughter-in-law Norma Glogover, at the entrance to Auschwitz, with the sign above reading “Work Makes children. ing if the night patrols came upon me with members of my family. You Free.” I never saw them again. their guns. Nothing in the future could But the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau the transport from the Mlawa Ghetto, in rom that day forth my ever be as horrible as this moment. are far different now from the time I was Poland. The rail head was crowded with Ffather, Lazer There are experiences that settle in a detained there, from 1942 to January bewildered travelers, snapping guard Glogover, and I entered the pit of the man like a stone buried permanently in 1945. It has the dubious honor of being dogs, heaps of abandoned luggage and beast the Germans had created. Days of the flesh. the most heavily visited museum in dull-eyed inmates in striped pajamas. We unceasing hunger, terror, illness and bru- The jars of ashes beneath the tree are Poland. Brightly painted buses from many had no idea of where we were and truly talizing work followed. A few weeks later my marker. I see the image of the birch countries are a regular sight in the parking believed that this was just a labor camp. my father disappeared. I could find no tree now. I shall see it forever. lot, and tourists line up in the cafeteria for I recall my mother, Anna Glogover, a trace of him. Through a miraculous fate and the com- its fine soups and pastries. pretty auburn-haired woman in her 30s, Eventually I found an uncle, Azriel passion of others, I lived through the next I went to give testimony to a hard-work- bouncing my sister in her arms and keep- Glogover, working as a Sonderkommando, a two years and survived to be rehabilitated ing documentary TV crew from the Britain. ing her good humor at the chaos around Jewish official forced to aid the Nazis by by the Allies Displaced Persons program. I went to make memory whole and love us, even when the German clerk came to disposing of Jewish corpses. After the war I wandered through vari- useful, and to honor my dead. separate her and my siblings from my At great risk, I went at night to his bar- ous DP camps, thinking I might at least My family and I first arrived in father and me. rack alley, whispering to him through a find someone from my hometown of Auschwitz-Birkenau in November 1942 on “We must consider bathing facilities for small window. He had no information on (Continued on page 14) March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 THE WEDDING GOWN THAT MADE HISTORY led before the world descended into mad- riage rate in the world, Lilly’s gown was in ing year with their children, their grand- HELEN ZEGERMAN SCHWIMMER, ness. Lilly and her siblings were raised in great demand. children and extended families to view the THE JEWISH PRESS a Torah-observant home in the small town In 1948, when President Harry Truman extraordinary exhibit created for the wed- of Zarica, Czechoslovakia where her finally permitted the 100,000 Jews who ding dress made from a parachute. illy Friedman doesn’t remember the had been languishing in DP camps since Lilly’s family, who were all familiar with last name of the woman who father was a melamed, respected and well L the end of the war to the stories about the wedding in Celle , designed and sewed the wedding gown liked by the young yeshiva emigrate, the gown were eager to visit the synagogue. They she wore when she walked down the aisle students he taught in near- accompanied Lilly found the building had been completely over 60 years ago. But the grandmother by Irsheva. across the ocean to renovated and modernized. But when of seven does recall that when she first He and his two sons were America. Unable to they pulled aside the handsome curtain told her fiancé Ludwig that she had marked for extermination part with her dress, it they were astounded to find that the Aron always dreamed of being married in a immediately upon arriving lay at the bottom of Kodesh, made from a kitchen cabinet, had white gown, he realized he had his work at Auschwitz. For Lilly and her bedroom closet remained untouched as a testament to the cut out for him. her sisters it was only their for the next 50 years, profound faith of the survivors. As Lilly For the tall, lanky 21-year-old who had first stop on their long jour- “not even good stood on the bimah once again, she beck- survived hunger, disease and torture this ney of persecution, which included Plashof, Neustadt, enough for a garage oned to her granddaughter, Jackie, to was a different kind of challenge. How Gross Rosen and finally sale. I was happy stand beside her where she was once a was he ever going to find such a dress in Bergen-Belsen. when it found such a kallah. “It was an emotional trip. We the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Person’s Four hundred people good home.” cried a lot.” camp, where they felt grateful for the marched 15 miles in the ome was the wo weeks later, the woman who had clothes on their backs? Fate would inter- snow to the town of Celle U.S. Holocaust once stood trembling before the vene in the guise of a former German pilot H T on January 27, 1946 to Memorial Museum in selective eyes of the infamous Dr. Josef who walked into the food distribution cen- attend Lilly and Ludwig’s Washington, D.C. Mengele returned home and witnessed ter where Ludwig worked, eager to make wedding. The town syna- When Lily’s niece, a the marriage of her granddaughter. The a trade for his worthless parachute. In gogue, damaged and dese- volunteer, told muse- three Lax sisters – Lilly, Ilona and Eva, exchange for two pounds of coffee beans crated, had been lovingly um officials about her who together survived Auschwitz, a forced and a couple of packs of cigarettes, Lilly renovated by the DPs with aunt’s dress, they labor camp, a death march and Bergen- would have her wedding gown. the meager materials avail- immediately recog- Belsen – have remained close, and today For two weeks, Miriam the seam- able to them. When a nized its historical live within walking distance of each other stress worked under the curious eyes of Sefer Torah arrived from significance and in Brooklyn. As mere teenagers, they her fellow DPs, carefully fashioning the England, they converted an displayed the gown managed to outwit and outlive a mon- six parachute panels into a simple, long- old kitchen cabinet into a Lily Friedman and her fiancé Ludwig in a specially strous killing machine, then went on to sleeved gown, with a rolled collar and a makeshift Aron Kodesh. on their wedding day. designed showcase, marry, have children, grandchildren and fitted waist that tied in the back with a “My sisters and I lost everything – our guaranteed to pre- great-grandchildren, and were ultimately bow. When the dress was completed parents, our two brothers, our homes. The serve it for 500 years. honored by the country that had ear- she sewed the leftover material into a most important thing was to build a new But Lilly Friedman’s dress had one more marked them for extinction. matching shirt for the groom. home.” Six months later, Lilly’s sister journey to make. Bergen-Belsen, the As young brides, they had stood under- A white wedding gown may have Ilona wore the dress when she married museum, opened its doors on October 28, neath the chuppah and recited the bless- seemed like a frivolous request in the sur- Max Traeger. After that came Cousin 2007. The German government invited ings that their ancestors had been saying real environment of the camps, but for Rosie. How many brides wore Lilly’s Lilly and her sisters to be their guests for for thousands of years. In doing so, they Lilly the dress symbolized the innocent, dress? “I stopped counting after 17.” With the grand opening. They initially declined, chose to honor the legacy of those who normal life she and her family had once the camps experiencing the highest mar- but finally traveled to Hanover the follow- had perished, by choosing life.

POLAND AWARDS DOZENS BROOKLYN MAN SEARCHING FOR GIRL FOR SAVING JEWS HIS FAMILY HID DURING HOLOCAUST ozens of Poles were awarded Dmedals for risking their lives during underway when Teresa turned up in Germans raided. World War II to save Jews from the BY CORKY SIEMASZKO , DAILY NEWS Wlasnosc, a crossroads south of the city “Everybody knew we would all get a Holocaust. of Lublin that’s now called Kloczew. bullet to the head if Teresa was found,” verything about her was a lie. Her President Lech Kaczynski awarded state Teresa was 10 and may have been he said. “My father hid her in the woods name was not Teresa Wisniewska. medals – many posthumously – to around E from another flyspeck village called or took her to the local priest, who hid She was not a cousin from another 70 people from across Poland. First lady Olszyniak. The mysterious couple that her in a hole in his cellar. She came back Polish village. She wasn’t Catholic, she Maria Kaczynska presented them to the brought her said her parents had been when the Germans were gone.” was a Jew. people or their relatives in a gala ceremony murdered – and that she was taught The neighbors knew Teresa’s secret None of that mattered to Edward at Warsaw’s National Theater. “but nobody said a thing,” Pieniak said. Pieniak when he was a toddler and his Among those awarded was Zofia “She went to church with us. If strangers family hid her from the Germans in Brusikiewicz, 81, whose parents hid 13 asked, my mother said she was her World War II. Jews in an apartment in Warsaw and niece.” None of that matters now. Irena Gut-Opdyke, whose dramatic story Two years after the war was over, “She was like my older sister and I is narrated in a one-act play, “Irena’s Teresa suddenly announced it was time loved her,” said Pieniak, a 67-year-old Vow,” that opened Off Broadway in for her to return “to my people.” grandfather who lives in Brooklyn. “What September 2008. “My mother didn’t want her to go and I really want is to find her again. I want Gut-Opdyke hid 12 Jews in the base- cried a lot,” Pieniak said. “She bought to see Teresa one more time.” ment of an SS officer’s house, where she her a green dress and a burgundy-col- Finding Teresa, who would be about served as a housekeeper. She died, aged ored dress. Then my father drove her by 77 today, is like trying to track down a 85, in 2003 in New York, where her family horse cart to the town of Ryki, where she ghost. recently received her medal. boarded a train.” She never told them her real name. And she was gone. Poland was the only country under Nazi She did not say where she was going ieniak grew up, married and raised occupation where helping Jews was pun- when she left as a teen in 1947. She two children of his own. But he ished with summary execution of the never contacted the Pieniak family P Under the name “Teresa Wisniewska,” this never stopped wondering about Teresa. entire family. again. woman was hidden from the Germans during And once, on a train in 1965, he thought Most of the recipients are already All Pieniak has is a faded photograph World War II by the Pieniak family. he saw her. “But it was not her,” he said. among the 6,000 Poles holding the title of of Teresa, smiling at a family wedding in Catholic prayers to make it easier for her Pieniak said he tracked down a boy the Righteous Among the Nations from 1944. He has what his mother told him. to pass for a Pole. from his village “who had been in love Israel’s Yad Vashem. They were largely And he’s got fragmented memories of “My mother didn’t have the heart to with Teresa and had an address for her found thanks to testimony deposited with his “big sister.” turn her away,” Pieniak said, and Teresa in Krakow.” She was not there. the institute. “I was about six when she left, so I became the daughter his mother never He also contacted Jewish organiza- About 3.5 million Jews, or 10 percent of remember things like going with her had. tions in Poland, but they couldn’t track the country’s population, lived in Poland when she took the cows to graze in the They sewed together. They planted Teresa down based on the photograph before World War II. Most were killed in fields,” he said. tomatoes. They sang and tended to and what he and others told them. death camps. Many of those who sur- “I remember holding her hand and that young Edward and his baby brother, “I know what I would say to Teresa if I vived, left for Israel or other countries she had black hair and black eyes and Kazimierz. saw her again,” Pieniak said. “I would amid anti-Semitic purges of the 1960s. was very beautiful.” Pieniak has clear memories of the fear tell her how much I missed her and ask Jewish life is being slowly rekindled since It was 1942 and the Holocaust was that gripped the family whenever the her, ‘Why did you disappear?’” Poland shed communism in 1989. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769

ver 800 people attended the American Society for Yad Vashem Youn OMetropolitan Pavilion in New York City. Featured at this year’s Gala was the No Child’s Play Exhibit from Yad Vashem, Je Unlike other Holocaust exhibitions, this exhibit does not focus on history, statistics poems displayed, highlight some of the personal stories of the children, providing a vival – the struggle of these children to hold on to life. It describes their attempts t ty from that which surrounded them. In many cases, it was the children who gave for survival. This exhibit is one of several available for loan free of charge by the A The Young Leadership Associates, a group of dedicated future leaders and Society for Yad Vashem’s efforts to commemorate the Holocaust through ed grams, social events and activities.

Rebecca Hanus, Event Co-Chair, Caroline Massel, Chair, Young Leadership Associates, Barry Levine, Event Co-Chair, Nicole Pines, Event Co-Chair.

The No Child’s Play Exhibit as it was seen at the 2009 Young Leadership Associates Winter Gala. Metrop February 12, 2009.

Jaci and Gonen Paradis. Jason Wilf and Cori Rothkopf.

Avi Lieberman, Nicole Pines, Tova Lieberman Garber and Scott Garber.

Matthew Rubin, Alicia Post and David Kaiyalethe.

Barry Levine, Jonathan Wilf , Jeffrey Hiller and Jeffrey Wilf. Adam and Iris Lindenbaum. Kevin and Amanda Cyrulnik. March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9

ng Leadership Associates’ Annual Winter Gala on February 12, 1009 at the erusalem which opened a window into the world of children during the Holocaust. or descriptions of physical violence. Instead, the toys, games, artwork, diaries, and a glimpse into their lives during the Holocaust. The exhibition tells the story of sur- to maintain their childhood and youth by creating for themselves a different reali- their parents the encouragement and hope to continue their desperate daily fight American Society for Yad Vashem. highly motivated young professionals, are an integral part of the American ducation. They ensure the continuity of this mission through educational pro-

Caroline and Morris Massel and Jennifer and Mark Smith.

politan Pavilion, New York City, Center piece and Event Program. Holly Newman and Noa Besner.

Nicole Pines, Event Co-Chair, Nadav Besner, Event Co-Chair, Rebecca Hanus, Event Co-Chair, Cadence Greenberg and Boaz Zborowski. Barry Levine, Event Co-Chair, Caroline Massel, Chair, Young Leadership Associates. Stacy Herzog and Ariel Zborowski.

We would like to acknowledge the generosity and support of the following vendors and raffle donors who helped make the 2009 Young Leadership Associates Winter Gala a success. 92nd Street Y The Francis and Fridman Brian Krawitz – Forum Schwartz Family Admiral Imports Families Lamour Hosiery Shoebox Barbara and Harvey Arfa Fred Marcus Photography Michael Kors Lori Silverstein Astor & Black Gagosian Gallery Mike’s Bistro Solo Big Apple Florist Tova and Scott Garber NY Streets Soul Cycle Debbie and Richard Born The Jewish Museum The New York Observer Supersol Caterers Bradford Renaissance Portraits Jim Beam Physique 57 Talia’s Steakhouse Rita and Fred Distenfeld Judith Ripka Pines Family Turquoise Seafood Lawrence Elbaum Daniel Karp – Knock Out Fitness Erica Pollack – Bloomingdales Restaurant The Eldridge Jocelyn Klar Prime Grill Wilf Family Michael Fields and Jessamyn Kate Spade Salon West Wine Library Hatcher Kennedy Funding Allison Schechter Wolf & Lamb Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM GERMAN OFFICER WHO HELPED “THE PIANIST” THE MURDER SITES OF THE JEWS HONORED IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES he German officer made famous in cred — in Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Pomerantsev’s article is displayed in a Roman Polanski's 2002 film The T BY DR. LEA PRAIS Latvia and Russia — were chosen. The special section devoted to the work of sur- Pianist for sheltering two Jews who historical background serves as the cen- viving Soviet Jews to commemorate the escaped from the Nazis during the n 1943, five years after he visited the tral feature of the site, from which links victims. Describing the exhumations at Holocaust has been posthumously recog- town of Lyady in Belarus, journalist I branch out to a variety of primary and sec- the murder site, he writes: “The bodies are nized as Righteous Among the Nations by Vladimir Pomerantsev returned as an offi- ondary resources — documents, photo- piled up three meters high in deep ditches Yad Vashem. cer in the Red Army. “The streets are graphs, letters, maps, illustrations, video […] As I stand there, four babies are Wilm Hosenfeld was drafted into the empty, there are no people, no houses,” brought up from the mass grave, one of German Army shortly before the out- he wrote in an article published in March them with a pacifier still in her mouth.” His break of World War II and was stationed 1944. In answer to his question regarding chilling descriptions are illustrated with in Poland, where he spent most of the the whereabouts of the residents, one of original photographs. war as a sports and culture officer. the locals pointed to the far side of the n total, the new website contains 139 During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, he Mereya River, and said, “Over there, video clips, of which over 80 are wit- interrogated prisoners. beyond the river, resting under the I ness accounts, most of them from the col- After the war, Hosenfeld was arrested ground.” lection of the USC Shoah Foundation and tried by the Soviets and sentenced to During the Nazi occupation, some Institute for Visual History and Education 2,000 Jews were rounded up from Lyady, life imprisonment. His sentence was sub- (formerly the Survivors of the Shoah the cradle of Chabad (Lubavitch) sequently commuted to 25 years, but Visual History foundation), founded by Hassidism, and assembled in the town. Hosenfeld died in a Soviet prison in 1952. Steven Spielberg. It also features 1,459 They were shot in September 1941 and Over the years, the testimony of two The town of Lyady, Belarus, in the 1930s. photographs, some of them scans of orig- April 1942, next to the village of Plauny, Holocaust survivors was presented to inal documents. and on the banks of the Mereya River testimonies, Pages of Testimony, film Yad Vashem, detailing how the German The manner in which the Jews of Lyady near the town. Only five Jews survived. clips, lists of victims and stories of officer had provided them with shelter were murdered was not unusual. Similar These locations are two of the 101 murder Righteous Among the Nations — which from the Nazis. events took place in most of the provincial sites at the center of a new project by the together create a multi-dimensional his- cities and towns throughout the former International Institute for Holocaust torical and human portrait. For example, Soviet Union. Jews were murdered with Research, which tells the hitherto untold alongside the basic information about the unspeakable cruelty, shot in or near their stories of the destruction of the Jews of murder of the Jews of Lyady, there is an hometowns. For many years, the separa- the Former USSR. original letter written in December 1944 by tion and isolation mandated by the Soviet The new project, recently uploaded to Musya Shulrikhter to her brother Grisha, a authorities pushed their stories to the mar- the Yad Vashem website, began with the Red Army soldier, in which she describes gins of historiography. Now, these stories collection and registration of all the mur- the murder of their youngest sister, Riva, are finally seeing the light of day. der sites in the former USSR being stud- and their cousins Vova and Marek on the ied by researchers at Yad Vashem. From banks of the river. Another link brings the The author is Project Director of “The this pool of data, 51 different communities visitor to photographs and the Pages of Untold Stories," International Institute for whose Jewish populations were massa- Testimony commemorating those killed. Holocaust Research. POPE PIUS XII AND THE HOLOCAUST – CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH Wilm Hosenfeld, a German officer who helped n international academic workshop referred in his remarks to the case of the for the truth. At the end of his remarks, save two Jews during the Holocaust. A looking at the current state of Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson the Nuncio also referred to the upcoming Leon Wurm testified that Hosenfeld research on Pope Pius XII and the and said, “It is clear that one cannot be visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Yad Vashem. employed him at the sports center after Holocaust took place at Yad Vashem in his meeting of scholars is being his escape from the train to Treblinka, the beginning of March. The 2-day work- T held to understand the present while Wladyslaw wrote to Yad Vashem, as shop was held in partnership of Yad state of research on the man and the well as in his diaries (which became the Vashem’s International Institute for topic, and is an opportunity for an basis for the film), that in November 1944, Holocaust Research and the Studium exchange of updated knowledge and a Hosenfeld helped him find a hiding place Theologicum Salesianum, Saints Peter. sharing of scholarly opinions. In the last and that he provided blankets, food and At the opening session, Chairman of few years, several important books and moral support. Yad Vashem Avner Shalev said, “The articles have been published, and new Yad Vashem had previously consid- complex historical issues that will arise material has come to light, and there- ered bestowing the German officer with during the workshop touch on basic fore there is a need to summarize what its highest honor for saving the pair, but human values, and questions of morality. information is known to scholars, to see waited until it was clear that he was not Serious academic research, whose goal whether there is any new information involved in war crimes during the is to uncover the truth, must rest on docu- not previously known, as well as any Warsaw Uprising. mentation. I was pleased to learn that the information that needs re-evaluating. Pope has directed that the cataloguing of Among the topics scholars discussed Recently, new material, including the Vatican archives related to the Avner Shalev, Chairman of Yad Vashem (left) were the pre-Papacy period; relations with Hosenfeld's personal diaries, and letters Holocaust be accelerated, so that the and Msgr. Antonio Franco, Vatican Nuncio. the German Bishops; Pius XII and the to his wife were reviewed by Yad Vashem, Archives can be opened up as soon as Catholic if he denies the Shoah.” He Holocaust; the situation in Italy during the which clarify his "consistent stance" possible to researchers.” added that the workshop is an important Holocaust; and the aftermath of the against the Nazi policy toward the Jews, Vatican Nuncio Msgr. Antonio Franco step in building cooperation in the search Holocaust. Yad Vashem said. In his writing, Hosenfeld stressed his growing disgust with the regime's oppres- “A PLACE WHERE THE GRAIN IS FED BY CORPSES” sion of Poles, the persecution of Polish film documenting the shooting of where the grain is fed by corpses.” the time of the filming and the circum- clergy, abuse of the Jews, and, with the A the Jews of Liepaja, Latvia was Over the years, the short silent film, the stances. Above all he describes, from beginning of the Final Solution, his horror publicly screened in Israel on June 9, only one of its kind documenting the mur- the German point of view, the story of at the extermination of the Jewish people. 1961, during the trial of Nazi war criminal der of Jews, became one of the represen- one brief instance of murder that rep- Although Hosenfeld supported the Nazi Adolph Eichmann. tations mostly closely identified with the resents the essence of the Holocaust party in its beginnings, it is clear that as he Haim Gouri, the poet and journalist who Holocaust: a 67-second clip screened within the area of the former USSR. saw the consequences of the Nazis' rise covered the trial, described the scenes in countless times in Holocaust museums he film documenting the murder to power, his opposition to them was deep short phrases: “A truck stops, it unloads and documentaries around the world. T of the Jews of Liepaja, the video and consistent, Yad Vashem said. Jews. They run […] You see an enormous How was it filmed? When? By whom? At testimony of the man who filmed it, as Hosenfeld's children, who live in German standing with his legs apart.” The the end of September 1981, the photogra- well as dozens of video testimonies of Germany, will receive the medal and cer- footage was blurry and filmed from a dis- pher, Reinhardt Wiener, a member of the survivors, and the testimony of the tificate on their late father's behalf. tance, but, “you multiply the number of SA and the German naval forces during locals who watched it happen, are all More than 22,000 non-Jews have been shot Jews by such and such a number, WWII, arrived in Israel. In his videotaped part of the vast research project now recognized as "Righteous Among the and you see the end of Russian and Baltic testimony, taken and documented by Yad available to visitors to the Yad Nations" by Yad Vashem. Jewry in those occupied areas: the place Vashem researchers, he shed new light on Vashem website. March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11

GERMANY CONVICTS AMERICAN CORPORATE COMPLICITY NON-RESIDENT BLOGGER FOR INCITING HATRED CREATED UNDENIABLE NAZI NEXUS laiming the Holocaust is a hoax is HITLER WAS COMPLETELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HOLOCAUST. BUT HE HAD HELP. Cillegal in Germany, even online, and a non-resident alien man who denied the est the laws of several American states Using a charade of interlocking boards veracity of the Third Reich's "Final BY EDWIN BLACK, JTA concerning prevention of reproduction by and executive committees, Sloan kept Solution" on a blog was imprisoned for the people whose progeny would, in all prob- GM’s role secret as long as possible. hen zealous Nazis waged war act. A German court sentenced Ernst ability, be of no value or be injurious to the nternal Business Machines, inventor against an imaginary generation- Zundel, a former Tennessee, USA and W racial stock.” of the Hollerith punch card, precursor to-generation Jewish conspiracy; when I Canadian resident, and lifelong Holocaust Hitler was so steeped in American race to the modern computer, custom- Nazis created ghastly extermination plans denier to five years in prison for incitement science that he even wrote a fan letter to designed and co-planned the Nazi solu- to help ensure their master race would of racial hatred. His publications include American eugenic leader Madison Grant, tions to Jewish existence. IBM enjoyed a rule the world; when the German military "The Hitler We Loved and Why." Zundel called his writing “my bible.” Der Fuehrer monopoly on information technology. smashed across Europe with lightning was convicted in Berlin on February 15, merely exchanged the American term Under the micromanagement of its presi- speed in heavy Blitz trucks; when 2007, and received the harshest sentence “Nordic” for the Nazi term “Aryan" and dent, Thomas Watson, while advertising Mengele undertook heinous medical possible for his acts. then medicalized his pre-existing virulent itself as “a solutions company,” IBM in experiments on twins in Auschwitz; and The accused 67-year-old man was con- anti-Semitism and fascist nationalism to 1933 reached out to the new Hitler when the Reich identified the Jews every- victed in the regional court in Mannheim, formulate the concept of the blond, blue- regime. It offered to organize and system- where in Europe and then systematically Germany on 14 counts of incitement, eyed Master Race he deified in "Mein pauperized and destroyed them – when including one charge involving offense Kampf." As Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess all these terrible things were done, the and slander to the memory of the dead. insisted, “National Socialism is nothing shape and scope of the horror was piv- The successful prosecution was a sym- but applied biology.” otally determined by major American bolic win for Germany, which has The Rockefeller Foundation, the philan- industrial giants. expressed a strong interest in making the thropic incarnation of Standard Oil, acted Now the dots can be connected. They act of Holocaust Denial an EU-wide crime, as a full partner with Carnegie in estab- create an undeniably Nazi nexus between which has been defeated in such coun- lishing eugenics in Germany. In the quest iconic American corporations and the tries as Spain and Italy. to perfect the master race, millions of greatest crime of the 20th century: the Mr. Zundel is a German citizen born in Depression-era dollars were transmitted Holocaust. the Black Forest region, who immigrated by Rockefeller to Hitler’s most anti-Jewish to Canada at age 19 to avoid the draft. He doctors. In this quest, one specimen was spent the next four decades in Canada, desired above all: twins. Rockefeller fund- where he began his pamphleteering ed Hitler’s chief raceologist, Otmar career, releasing Nazi and anti-Jewish Verschuer, and his insatiable twin experi- works. In the late 1970s he created mentation programs. Twins, it was Samisdat Publishers, one of world's biggest thought, held the secret to industrially multi- distributors of Nazi and neo-Nazi propagan- plying the Aryan racial type and quickly sub- da and memorabilia. He has also become a tracting biological undesirables. central "revisionist" figure and author for his Verschuer had an assistant, Josef Zundelsite, since 1995 a hub for Holocaust- Mengele. Rockefeller funding stopped denial propaganda. during World War II, but by that time Zundel was not popular with the Canadian Thomas Watson. Mengele had transferred into Auschwitz to Government, as his activities led to many tri- continue twin research in a monstrous ize any solution the Reich desired, includ- als when he lived in the country, between fashion. Ever the eugenicist, he sent pre- ing solutions to the Jewish problem. 1958 to 2001. Zundel married his neo-Nazi cise clinical reports weekly to Verschuer. With IBM as a partner, the Hitler regime Webmaster, Ingrid Rimland, and they immi- was able to substantially automate and grated to Tennessee, USA in 2001. But his accelerate all six phases of the 12-year stay was short-lived, as U.S. officials deport- Holocaust: identification, exclusion, confis- ed him back to Canada for visa violations, Henry Ford. cation, ghettoization, deportation and even due to his Nazi-promotions as a security risk. extermination. As it did with any other cus- When Zundel arrived in Toronto, he was Henry Ford, acting directly through the tomer, IBM simply asked the Hitler regime arrested and detained until a Canadian judge Ford Motor Company, virtually invented what result was desired. Then company ruled in March 2005 his activities posed a political anti-Semitism when he published engineers devised custom-tailored punch threat to national and international security. worldwide the fake "Protocols of the card systems to deliver those results. There He was deported back to Germany. Elders of Zion." Ford’s book quickly was an IBM customer site in every concen- German courts wasted no time prose- became the bible of German anti-Semites tration camp. Machines were serviced cuting Zundel, charging him with inciting and early incarnations of the Nazi party. monthly, sometimes weekly, by IBM on site racial hatred, for publishing on his site Nazis shipped the work throughout the – whether that site was Auschwitz or down- such works as Arthur Butz's "The Hoax of country “by the carload.” town Berlin. the Twentieth Century," and Austin App's Among the many Germans massively Had it not been for the continued con- "The Six Million Swindle." influenced by the book was Adolf Hitler. scious involvement of iconic American The law used in Zundel's prosecution is Der Fuehrer read the work at least two corporations in Hitler’s war against the found in the German Criminal Code years before "Mein Kampf" was written. In Jews, the speed, shape and statistics of (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB), promulgated on "Mein Kampf," Hitler wrote, “The whole the Holocaust as we know it would have November 13, 1998. existence of this people is based on a been dramatically different. No one knows One of the most controversial aspects of continuous lie [as] shown incomparably how different, but the astronomical dimen- this case was the fact that all the publica- by the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' ” sions could have never been achieved. tions had been made outside Germany, The Carnegie Institution, the philan- For their part, American corporate col- which some analysts argued took the thropic incarnation of America’s greatest Alfred Sloan. laborators have long tried to obscure or crime outside of Germany's jurisdiction to steel fortune, propagated the deadly rom the first weeks of the Third hide the details of their collusion using the prosecute. Since all of Zundel's publica- American race science of eugenics that Reich, General Motors president well-known tools of corporate misinforma- tions were made outside of Germany, and idealized a blond, blue-eyed superior F Alfred Sloan committed the company and tion, financial contributions, and bought created in Canada and the U.S., it could race. In pursuit of that dream, Carnegie its German division Opel to motorizing a have been argued that the robust Anglo- scientists believed some 90 percent of and paid for historian reviews. But in an substantially horse-drawn Germany, era when people no longer believe big American law of freedom of speech humanity was to be eliminated using vari- preparing it for war. Prior to this, Germany should have applied. ous methods. These methods included corporations, the dots can be fully con- had been a nation devoted to legendary nected to unveil the outlines of an indis- But German courts had already ruled on organized identification, seizure of assets, automotive engineering but only one vehi- this issue, in the case of German-born Dr. marriage prohibition or nullification, forced pensible Nazi nexus. The words “never cle at a time, built by craftsman. GM again” must resound not just among the Fredrick Toben, who was also charged with surgical sterilization, segregation into brought mass production to the Reich, denying the Holocaust from the Adelaide camps and publicly operated gas cham- victims, but within board rooms of corpo- converting it from a horse-drawn threat to rate perpetrators. Institute, in Australia. Toben was sentenced bers. Carnegie spent millions to propa- a motorized powerhouse. to 10 months in prison. He appealed on the gate American eugenic theories in post- Sloan and GM knowingly prepared the Edwin Black is the award-winning, New grounds that since his Internet material was World War I Germany, financing race sci- Wehrmacht to wage war in Europe. GM York Times and international investigative "printed" outside Germany, it should not be ence programs in universities and official built the Blitz truck for the Blitzkrieg. author of 65 bestselling editions in 14 lan- subject to German legislation. In response, institutions. Detroit even secretly moved massive guages in 61 countries, as well as scores the German Federal Court of Justice ruled While in prison, Hitler closely studied stores of spare Blitz parts to the Polish of newspaper and magazine articles in the that any persons publishing pro-Nazi materi- American eugenics. He proudly told his border in the days just before the Sept. 1, leading publications of the United States, al on the Internet is subject to German law, comrades, “I have studied with great inter- 1939 invasion to facilitate the Blitzkrieg. Europe and Israel. regardless of their country of origin. Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 HOLOCAUST MUSEUM CHRONICLES NAZI PROPAGANDA After coming to power in 1933, Hitler espite the demonizing rhetoric, BY NAFEESA SYEED, AP established a ministry of “public enlighten- D curators said references to the earing a black hat and a suit bear- ment and propaganda.” Visitors can use a atrocities that were committed were rare. W ing the yellow Star of David, a touchscreen monitor to see and hear Officials focused on presenting a positive man recoils from a large finger pointing at examples of the ministry’s work, including image of Germany. him from above. music they used. “I think that represents real danger,” “He is to blame for the war,” reads the Newspaper reports also played a role in Luckert said. “That you could be so poster caption. gaining support for the Nazi agenda. swayed by something that seems so pos- Similar images, along with newspapers, Curators said many Germans didn’t share itive to you, that you neglect the conse- speeches and broadcast clips, tell the story Hitler’s desire to go to war in 1939, so fab- quences that it has for somebody else.” of how Nazi Germany’s propaganda ricated reports of countries such as Following World War II, the Allied forces machine cultivated hatred and suspicion and Poland threatening the country were print- that toppled the Nazis worked to destroy ed to make it seem like an invasion was the party’s propaganda. They renamed necessary. streets, closed newspapers and banned At its core, the Nazi party promised to symbols. A 1945 photo shows an unite Germans under a national, Aryan American soldier in Germany searching identity regardless of class, religion or for Nazi content in a large pile of books. region — but excluded were Jews, the Kerry Overbeck, 19, a sophomore at mentally and physically disabled, gays American University, visited the exhibit as and other groups considered “impure.” Anti-Semitic propaganda accused Jews of conspiring to take over the world, describing This poster from 1943, titled He is to blame for them as “aliens” and “parasitic.” the war!, is displayed in the exhibit. A photo slide depicts a white ence as the government and its allies went woman with her arm around a from hostilities to mass atrocities of the black woman, both smiling, Holocaust, when millions of Jews and other warning: “Racial pride fades” groups were killed between 1933 and 1945. with such friendship. useum officials hope visitors will Films and other entertainment Mbecome more critical of information mocked those branded as the and more aware of anti-Semitism and intol- enemy. A movie poster shows a One page of an antisemitic coloring book wide- erance. For instance, the exhibit touches on thick-browed, grimacing Jewish ly distributed to children with a portrait of a the 1994 Rwandan genocide and Iranian caricature for “The Eternal Jew,” a Jew drawn by the German caricaturist known President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call to 1940 documentary-like film with as Fips. In the upper left-hand corner is the wipe Israel off the map. footage of Jewish ghettos. The Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Allies dismantled, Der Stürmer logo featuring a Star of David “It’s to alert people to the fact that hate film failed at the box office. demolished, or confiscated monuments, statues, and other superimposed over a caricature of a Jewish speech and language like this didn’t go But another movie with public artwork glorifying Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich as face. The caption under the star reads: away when the Nazis fell,” said Steven famous actors and a well- part of a systematic program of denazification. This photo- “Without a solution to the Jewish question, Luckert, the exhibit’s curator. “These are known director, was more sub- graph shows a bust of Adolf Hitler being carted away with there will be no salvation for mankind.” things that we have to be constantly tle in its message. Jews were other refuse. portrayed Jewish people as the enemy in the aware of in our own day.” expelled at the historical drama’s end. part of her class on Holocaust history. The new museum exhibit, “State of Deception: Nazi leaders branded Adolf Hitler as a Nazi propagandists spread radio broad- propaganda targeting the youth especially The Power of Nazi Propaganda.” savior. The swastika logo became instant- casts and news reels in dozens of lan- shook her, she said. The exhibit opened Jan. 30 at the U.S. ly recognizable in posters and other mar- guages across Europe and overseas, “What people always ask is, ‘Why learn Holocaust Memorial Museum and runs keting used to attract votes from women, including to the U.S., South America and about the Holocaust still?’” she said. “But through December 2011. It documents laborers and students as the Nazis rose India. At the same time, they banned for- there’s so much more to teach us, how propaganda fostered public indiffer- from a little-known party. eign news broadcasts. because it’s an ongoing cycle of hatred.” USING THE HOLOCAUST TO ATTACK THE JEWS Jews, the haters say, have always been “Upgrade to Holocaust Version 2.0.” but reliable Middle East Media and BY WALTER REICH, WASHINGTON POST evil, and their evil is only growing. The Gaza war provoked similar attacks Research Institute has been documenting Of course, not all criticisms of Israel are anti-Semitism on Palestinian television for ozens of cities held ceremonies on from some world leaders and people of the product of such bigoted logic. People years, including calls for the murder of January 27 to mark International influence. “The Holocaust, that is what is D of good will around the world are natural- Jews. It reports that, the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day. The good happening right now in Gaza,” ly shocked by the tragic and appalling International Holocaust Remembrance news is that the dead were remembered. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said deaths of Palestinian civilians, including Day, one Egyptian cleric admitted on an The bad news is that even as the in televised comments, according to those killed in the recent war in the Gaza Islamist TV channel that the Holocaust had Holocaust is becoming a fixture in the Reuters. The New York Times quoted a Strip. Like any country, Israel can be criti- happened — and added that he hoped that world’s memory, it is also being increas- Catholic cardinal who argued that Gaza cized. But the massive and unceasing one day Muslims would do to the Jews ingly used as a weapon against the Jews increasingly “resembled a big concentra- eruptions of outrage against the Jewish what the Germans had done to them. To and the Jewish state. tion camp.” And according to the state — in a world in which other countries demonstrate what he had in mind, accord- For some, ironically, the acknowledg- Jerusalem Post, a Norwegian diplomat and groups have, often provoking barely ing to the institute, he showed footage of ment of the Holocaust’s reality has based in Saudi Arabia sent out an e-mail any outrage, engaged in immensely more heaps of Jewish corpses being bulldozed become a screen behind which anti- from her Foreign Ministry account in destructive and immoral behavior — can into pits. Semitism has gathered new force. The which she wrote, “The grandchildren of only be explained in a few ways. One is In designating an International hard-core Jew-haters spent decades Holocaust survivors from World War II are that attacking Israel has become a means Holocaust Remembrance Day back in denying that the best-documented geno- doing to the Palestinians exactly what was of attacking Israel’s ally, the United States. 2005, the U.N. General Assembly acted cide in world history ever took place. That done to them by Nazi Germany.” Another is that over-the-top attacks on with noble intentions, even if parts of the won them such derision that even many re all those who have accused Israel, particularly those invoking world body still aim to delegitimize Israel. anti-Semites have begun to admit the A Israel of being a Nazi state anti- Holocaust language, have become a Such commemorations help the world reality of the Holocaust — and now are Semites? Hardly. There’s genuine anger means of once again attacking the Jews. understand that the goal of the Holocaust hoping that simply by doing so, they can in the Muslim world, as well as in Europe The Anti-Defamation League has docu- was the annihilation of an entire people — immunize themselves from the charge and elsewhere, about Israel’s actions in mented the way this weapon was used dur- and help them appreciate the vast differ- that they’re anti-Semites in the first place. Gaza. The suffering is terrible. So are the ences between that event and, for exam- How can you be an anti-Semite, they fig- ing the recent war with Hamas. Here are a images of devastation Israel left behind. ple, the war in Gaza. But even as the ure, if you recognize the Holocaust? few of the placards spotted at rallies: In And there are also plenty of people who Holocaust has been increasingly acknowl- But as some people who don’t like Jews Times Square, the group reported such are angry at Israel because it stands for edged and explained, it also has been have found, it’s worth acknowledging the signs as, “Israel: The Fourth Reich,” “Stop the reviled United States. increasingly used as a cudgel to beat Holocaust if you can then turn it into a Israel’s Holocaust,” “Holocaust by Holocaust But the reality is that much of the vitriol Jews and the Jewish state. cudgel against the Jews. And that they’ve Survivors.” In Chicago: “Palestinian directed at Israel has indeed been spouted done, in spades. According to this crowd, Holocaust in Gaza Now.” In a Los Angeles by anti-Semites. Not only have they hurled Walter Reich, a professor of internation- the Jews today have become Nazis. The demonstration, the Star of David in an Israeli the Nazi canard at Israel, they’ve expressed al affairs at George Washington Jewish state is now supposedly carrying flag was said to have been replaced by a clear anti-Semitism — some of it openly vio- University, is a former director of the U.S. out a Holocaust against the Palestinians. swastika, accompanied by the words, lent or even eliminationist. The pro-Israel Holocaust Memorial Museum. March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 DOUBLE LIFE OF WITOLD PILECKI of the camp spewing out dead bodies has ticular Winston Churchill, never did any- agency,” one accusation reads. “The BY KAMIL TCHOREK, TIMESONLINE claimed many of my friends ... We have thing to stop the atrocities there. “We can worst crime committed against the state sent messages to the outside world which only assume the British thought we were t was perhaps the bravest act of espi- was that he was acting in the interests of were then transmitted back by foreign onage of the Second World War. After exaggerating,” said the Polish historian foreign imperialism, to which he has com- I radio stations. Consequently, the camp voluntarily being imprisoned in the Jacek Pawlowicz. “I'm certain Poles pletely sold out through a prolonged peri- guards are very angry right now.” Auschwitz concentration camp for 2½ shared their intelligence with MI6 and the od of work as a spy.” The implication is Mr Pilecki's reports from the camp were years, and smuggling out its darkest highest levels of British Government, clear: Mr Pilecki was providing information channelled to the Allies secrets to the Allies, Witold Pilecki over- which, for some rea- on the Soviet-backed regime that was via a courier system that came a guard and, with two comrades, son, remained silent.” finding its way to MI6. the Polish Resistance escaped almost certain death. After his escape, Mr After his death, Mr Pilecki was demo- operated throughout Now new details have emerged of the Pilecki was captured nized by the Communists and his heroics occupied Europe. By extraordinary tale of the Polish officer who fighting in the Warsaw re-emerged only after 1989. 1942 Mr Pilecki's organ- hatched a plot with the country's resistance Uprising in 1944 and His son, Andrzej Pilecki, who was 16 isation realised the exis- to be rounded up by the occupying Germans spent the rest of the when he learned that his father had been tence of the gas cham- in September 1940 and sent to the most conflict in a prisoner-of- executed, said: “There'd be no better bers and he worked on war camp. In July 1945 notorious Nazi extermination centre. memorial to my father than for the young several plans to liberate At the time Auschwitz was predominant- he joined Free Polish Auschwitz, including to learn of his example. I was at school at ly a camp for captured resistance fighters, troops in Italy, from one in which the RAF the time, it was a terrible shock, but now although Jews and anyone considered a where he agreed to would bomb the walls, after 60 years of waiting, I am thrilled to threat to the Nazi regime were also being return to Poland and or Free Polish para- see justice.” sent there. gather intelligence on troopers would fly in The Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Newly released documents from the the Soviet takeover of from Britain. Schudrich, said that Mr Pilecki was “an Polish archives reveal how Mr Pilecki, the country. owever, in 1943, example of inexplicable goodness at a going under the false name Tomasz He was, however, realizing that the time of inexplicable evil. There is ever- Serafinski, went about setting up an H caught by the Polish growing awareness of Poles helping Jews underground resistance group in the Allies had no plans to Communist regime. In in the Holocaust, and how they paid with camp, recruiting its members and organiz- liberate the camp, he Witold Pilecki a twist of fate, a Polish their lives, like Pilecki. We must honour ing it into a coherent movement. and two others escaped. The new docu- Jew administered the torture during his these examples and follow them today in “In order to assure greater security, I have ments include a Gestapo manhunt alert interrogation. Mr Pilecki's wife was invited the parts of the world where there are hor- taken the view that each cell of five will not after his escape. to visit and he told her that his time in be aware of another cell,” he wrote in one of Mr Pilecki ensured that a full report on Auschwitz was child's play by compari- rors again.” his reports smuggled out to the Resistance, the camp reached London, and the resist- son. After a show trial he was given three The historian Michael R.D.Foot said that and which has now come to light. ance group he started in Auschwitz con- death sentences and shot. the life and death of Mr Pilecki brought “This is also why I have avoided people tinued to feed information to Britain and he new material includes his charge shame on the British and the Allies, who who are registered here under their real the United States, confirming that the Tsheet, which has 132 subsections, turned a blind eye to Stalin's European ambi- names. Some are involved in the most Nazis were bent on the extermination of each listing a separate alleged crime. tions as well as the Holocaust. “The Foreign incompetent conspiracies and have their the Jews. “From July 1945 to May 1947 the accused Office's betrayal of Poland is the darkest own plans for rebellion in the camp.” The archive material will again raise worked against the Polish state as a paid chapter in its history, even if that betrayal was Later, he wrote: “The gigantic machinery questions as to why the Allies, and in par- resident of an overseas intelligence a strategic necessity,” he said. BELARUSIAN BUILDS MONUMENT TO HOLOCAUST VICTIMS in the nation of 10 million. stones around the monument. concrete Star of David. Six red teardrops BY YURAS KARMANAU, AP Soviet-era monuments erected on the "The children would come home and run down the side like dripping wax. sites of mass shootings of Jews noted the simply collapse from exhaustion," said Their families were rounded up and sent ikolai Ilyuchik was 11 when his deaths only of "Soviet citizens." their mother, Raisa Ilyuchik. "For them it to a ghetto. Ilyuchik was unable to deter- mother first told him how the Nazis N So the determination of Ilyuchik, a was a difficult history lesson." mine whether any of the women or chil- killed all the Jewish men in their Christian, to honor a handful of Jews was efore the Nazis invaded the Soviet dren had survived. Belarusian village during World War II. met with deep suspicion in the regional Union in June 1941, five Jewish But two teenage boys who managed to Three decades later, in defiance of the B government, which threatened to hit him families lived in Bogdanovka, then a vil- escape the Nazis were saved by Ilyuchik's local government, Ilyuchik has built his with huge fines if he put up a monument lage of 1,000 people 150 miles (250 kilo- grandfather, who hid them in his barn for own memorial to the six men shot Aug. 2, on village land. But he pushed ahead with meters) southwest of the capital, Minsk. about six months. They later joined partisan 1941, on the outskirts of Bogdanovka. It forces fighting with the Red Army, where they was something he just had to do. became friends with Ilyuchik's father. "I was shaken by my mother's stories, "Belarusians and Jews won this victory because there was almost nothing in our together," Ilyuchik said. textbooks about the Holocaust," the 42-year- For support for his project, Ilyuchik old fireman said. "I built the monument to turned to his pastor and fellow villagers, honor the memory, not for money or glory." about half of whom belong to the same The Holocaust has been hushed up and Protestant church. His pastor allowed him largely forgotten in Belarus, a former to keep the 10 percent of his income he Soviet republic between Poland and usually gives to the church, so he could Russia where 800,000 Jews lost their buy the building materials. lives during the war. Protestants are a small minority in Even though President Alexander Belarus. Roman Catholics make up about Lukashenko in 2007 compared Jews to 15 percent of the population and the over- pigs, the Belarusian government denies whelming majority belong to the Russian the existence of anti-Semitism. It pays lip Orthodox Church. service to Holocaust victims while at the Ilyuchik's church and Jewish groups same time allowing the destruction of offered to collect money for the monu- Jewish cemeteries. ment, but he said it was important to him "In school textbooks, the history of the to do it himself. Holocaust is told in several paragraphs," So far, the regional government has not Belarusian Jewish community leader made good on its threats to fine him, and Yakov Basin said. "In encyclopedias and the monument has become a fixture in the academic literature, the history of the Nikolai Ilyuchik stands near a memorial he built to the six men shot Aug. 2, 1941, in defiance of village, where 2,000 people now live. Jews is still suppressed." the local government, on the outskirts of the village of Bogdanovka. Children visit the monument on school Belarus lumps Jews together with all support from his family, neighbors and There is no historical record of the Jews excursions, and newlyweds come to lay those who died during World War II, rather Protestant church, building the monument or their fate, so Ilyuchik questioned elder- flowers, honoring a Soviet tradition in than acknowledging they were victims of from metal and concrete in his own yard. ly villagers and appealed for information which brides and grooms visit war memo- genocide, he said. He then called on his three sons — 12- through the local newspaper about the six rials on their wedding day. About one-third of its population died year-old Anton and 11-year-old twins Viktor men who were shot — two blacksmiths, "When I see flowers on the monument I in the war, including about 90 percent of and Vitaly — to build a gravel footpath from two farmers, a trader and a rabbi. know that the memory of the murdered the Jews, who formed a substantial the village to the site of the killings, about a They are honored on the monument, a Jews is alive," Ilyuchik said, straightening minority in the predominantly Slavic kilometer (half mile) away. The boys also laid black candle rising from the center of a a wreath that someone had left. nation. Only about 25,000 Jews remain Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 NAZI WOMEN EXPOSED AS EVERY BIT AS BAD SEARCH LAUNCHED FOR AS HITLER’S DERANGED MALE FOLLOWERS “UNSEEN” SURVIVORS’ MEMOIRS (Continued from page 5) stormed the building accusing her of war forward to survivors’ groups, and hun- were then separated and brought before crimes. Kellermann never served any HAVIV RETTIG , THE JERUSALEM POST dreds more wanted to write their memoirs the inmates. Each woman was then told to prison time, and she never apologized. ith even the youngest Holocaust but never did.” beat a prisoner. And take Dr Herta Oberheuser. W survivors in their late 70s, a new The project is at a very early stage. The Of the 50 women, three had asked for a Although happy, talented and a woman of Claims Conference project seeks to budget will depend on response, and news reason and only one had refused. She independent means, she joined locate, digitize and present to the world of the project has yet to reach the Jewish and was later imprisoned. Ravensbruck concentration camp. thousands of as-yet unknown memoirs general media around the world. But not all women were like Binz or Oberheuser killed healthy children with and diaries from that period. According to he structure of the catalog is also Grese. injections made from oil, mixed with the Claims Conference officials, thousands of Tunfinished. Though the details have Kompisch draws on several case histo- barbiturate evipan, and then removed unpublished memoirs are thought to exist. yet to be finalized, the Web site is expect- ries of other more outwardly civilized their limbs and vital organs. The next few years may be the last oppor- ed to be arranged according to countries, woman to try to get to the core tunity to preserve and make public the last historical periods and types of story. of the corruption of their sex of these texts. The system currently cannot accept hand- by the Nazi regime. Now, the Worldwide Shoah Memoirs written manuscripts, and no plans are in Karin Magnussen, 20, born Collection hopes to create a database of place to help survivors type up their mem- in 1908 in Bremen, was a bril- these memoirs that will offer future gener- oirs. Claims Conference officials are con- liant biologist and physicist. ations living after the last survivors have sidering using community Here was a woman venerated died direct access to original testimony in center volunteers who are teaching com- by her profession, unaffected the language and style of the survivor. puter courses for the elderly. by the financial and political “There are thousands of writings and The Web site, memoirs.claimscon.org, upheavals that propelled Hitler diaries in the hands of survivors or their currently operates in two languages, to power — and who ended up families that lie at home because there Hebrew and English, with translation using the eyeballs taken from wasn’t the money to publish. Some print- under way into French, German, still-living prisoners at ed just 10 or 20 copies for the close fami- Hungarian, Yiddish, Spanish, Russian and Auschwitz by the demented Dr ly. There are texts catalogued in small Polish. Josef Mengele for experi- archives somewhere that nobody touch- Yet, Bron is optimistic that the project ments on the pigmentation of es,” according to Gabi Bron, the project’s will be a success. First announced on the human iris. Female SS guards after Belsen was liberated by Allied forces. coordinator in Israel. Tuesday, two manuscripts were located She became a fanatical Nazi out of The time from injection to death was “We know dozens of people have come before the end of the workday. choice and belief, not for any advance- around five minutes, with the person ment of social or fiscal standing that such being fully conscious until the last a step offered the less intelligent or less moment. FUGITIVE “DOCTOR DEATH” DIED IN 1992 fortunate in society. At the end of the war Oberheuser also performed gruesome orn on June 28, 1914, in she was one of the legions who claimed to and painful medical experiments, focusing BY RICHARD CARTER, AFP Radhersburg, Austria, Heim joined be “dragged along in things.” on deliberately inflicting wounds on the B the Nazi party before Germany annexed “I was a Nazi fellow traveler, that’s all,” subjects. ne of the most wanted Nazi war Austria, when membership of the party said Magnussen in 1945. She was In order to simulate the combat wounds criminals, Aribert Heim or “Doctor O was still illegal. allowed to teach for another 20 years of German soldiers fighting in the war and Death,” thought to be in his 90s and in He then became a member of Hitler’s elite before dying peacefully in her bed, aged identify ready cures, Oberheuser rubbed South America, actually died in Cairo in SS guard in 1940 and, after stints at camps 89 in 1997. foreign objects, such as wood, rusty nails, 1992, according to media reports. in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen in Dr Ruth Kellermann, born in 1913, was slivers of glass, dirt, or sawdust, into the Heim was wanted for killing hundreds of Germany, was posted to the infamous another female intellectual who willingly wounds of prisoners. concentration camp victims with horrific Mauthausen camp in Austria. joined the Nazi crusade. Oberheuser was the only female defen- medical experiments, including perform- It was at Mauthausen that he became A gifted scientist, she worked at the sin- dant in the Nuremberg Medical Trial, ing operations without anesthetics and known as “Doctor Death” ister Race Hygiene and Peoples’ Biology where she was sentenced to 20 years in injecting petrol directly into after performing sadistic Research Institute in Berlin where she jail. their hearts. and grotesque medical experimented on the cadavers of gypsies She was released in April 1952 for good German public TV channel experiments. Survivors of killed in Ravensbruck. behavior and became a family doctor at ZDF said in a statement that Mauthausen allege the She moved to Hamburg, where she was Stocksee in Germany, only to lose her Heim died of bowel cancer father of three cut prison- ‘instrumental’ in the round-ups of local position in 1956 after a Ravensbruck sur- in 1992, citing his son and ers open, removing their gypsies to extermination camps. vivor recognized her. acquaintances in Cairo livers, among other things. After the war, there was no longer any Her license to practice medicine was where he had been living His cruelty was such that call for eugenics and she satisfied herself revoked in 1958. under the assumed identity he has frequently been with a research job as a social historian. She said of her service: “Being a woman of Tarek Farid Hussein after compared to Josef Her past was forgotten until the 1980s, didn’t stop me being a good National converting to Islam. Mengele, the so-called when one of her lectures at Hamburg Socialist. I think female National Socialists ZDF and also the New “Angel of Death” who was University about the history of housekeep- were every bit as valuable as men in York Times claim they have a doctor at Auschwitz. ing turned into a melee as protestors keeping what we believed in alive.” more than 100 documents Heim was Number Two including Heim’s passport, on the Simon Wiesenthal bank statements, personal Centre’s most wanted Nazi VISITING A MOTHER’S GRAVE AT AUSCHWITZ letters and medical records Police handout dated 1950 shows list, after Alois Brunner, that prove without a doubt Aribert Heim. Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann’s main (Continued from page 6) majestic birch, its bark silvered with age, that Heim lived in a Cairo Aribert Heim, known as “Doctor assistant, who is thought to Makow-Mazowiecki. My search took me its trunk durable and wide, its leaves hotel until his death. Death.” be dead. across Europe to Italy. At the very last shimmering in the wind. Just beyond are He had been in hiding since Heim was arrested by US troops in 1945 camp in Santa Maria Di Bagni, I was the ruins of the crematorium where the 1962. Leading Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff but was released two-and-a-half years later. blessed to find my father — alive! grandchildren of former inmates light from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said last My father and I hadn’t seen each other yahrzeit candles in honor of the lost. July that he believed Heim was still alive and He subsequently set himself up as a gyne- I stand with my daughter-in-law, since our time in Auschwitz in 1942; his living in either Argentina or Chile. cologist in Germany, but fled in 1962, when Norma, and together we lay the roses work detail had been shipped to a camp in Zuroff said that the German TV report authorities were poised to arrest him. among the birch’s winding roots. We Austria. But somehow, when the war was sounded authoritative but that he would There had been numerous reported recite the Kaddish and I can’t tell over, we became each other’s miracle. be seeking further confirmation. sightings of him as far afield as South whether I grieve or feel relief, or maybe In 1947, the two of us left Europe to “The report on the death of the “butcher America, Egypt and Spain. both. Just as the birch grips the earth, I begin a whole new life across the Atlantic of Mauthausen” is apparently reliable but Nazi-hunters thought twice in recent feel anchored with it and sense some with relatives in the United States. we don’t for the moment have either a years they were close to pinning him emanation of peace from the much- More than 60 years have passed since body or a grave...,” he said. down, once in Spain in 2005 and again loved presences that lie here. that tumultuous period. The image of the tree “Some people have an interest in sub- last year in a small Chilean town some A light rain begins to fall through the and all that is beneath it rises before me. stantiating this death, so we are going to 600 miles south of Santiago. pale gray branches, and it’s time to go. I A British writer friend connected me to check the available documents on the However, Heim’s son Ruediger told ZDF kiss the tree’s trunk and whisper, “I did not the Holocaust documentary crew from subject.” in an interview that his father went to forget you.” Britain. He added: “Personally, I would be very ground in 1962 and travelled to Cairo via “Will you come with me to Poland,” Stanley (Szlamek) Glogover was born disappointed if Heim had been able to end France, Spain and Morocco. she asked, “to give your story to the 1925 in Makow-Mazowiecki, Poland. After his life without being tried, but I do not Here he contracted an incurable form of cameras, to bear witness for Mama surviving Auschwitz, he immigrated to the regret the efforts that we have made to try bowel cancer in the early 1990s and died Anna and the kids?” United States in 1947. He lives in Florida and have him arrested because through following several months of radiotherapy The sapling in Birkenau is now a tall, with his wife, Joanie. this the world came to know what he was.” and chemotherapy. March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 RECORD PARTICIPATION AT THE AMERICAN HOLLYWOOD AND THE HOLOCAUST SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM PROFESSIONAL films include A Secret and One Day You'll BY ANDREW JOHNSON, Understand, both from France, in which a CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST EDUCATION THE INDEPENDENT younger generation tries to piece togeth- he Education Department of the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ hen Tom Cruise dons his eye er wartime Jewish history through the American Society for Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem T patch and steps into the world's stories of their parents and grandparents. and its Young Leadership Associates held under the direction of Ms. Dorit Novak W multiplexes on Boxing Day as Colonel Even Quentin Tarantino is making a the Eleventh Annual Professional who was present at the conference. The Claus von Stauffenberg in the much- Nazi-themed film. His much-anticipated Development Conference on Holocaust conference featured the most recent edu- anticipated biopic Valkyrie, he will be Inglorious Bustards is about a Jewish girl Education. The Conference took place on cational units: “Through Our Eyes” and leading an attack. It's the first of a host of seeking revenge alongside a platoon of Sunday, March 22, 2009 at the Pratt “How Was It Humanly Possible?” “We films starring A-list actors that revisit the Jewish-American soldiers. Mansions/Marymount School in New York work to put a face on individual Holocaust Nazi era in Germany and show how it hile war films are nothing new, Dr City. This year’s conference was largest victims in order to introduce a human ele- W Helmut Schmitz, who lectures in in recent years. ment to the story. Transmitting these mes- has affected subsequent decades. The brutality of the Nazi regime and the post-war German literature and culture at The Association of the Teachers of sages is our hope for the future,” the University of Warwick, believes this explained Eli horror of the Holocaust have held a grim fascination for 60 years. Until now, how- slew of new films comes from a younger Zborowski, Chairman generation attempting to deal with a sub- of the American ever, the subject has mainly been tackled in the cinema through romanticized war ject that is moving out of living memory. Society. "We are now in a generational shift," he This year’s keynote films or hard-hitting attempts at docu- drama, such as Schindler's List. said. "Over the past 10 years or so we have speaker was Dr. a whole new generation of consumers who Miriam Klein Cruise's film dramatizes the failed plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944. Like do not have a big connection with this histo- Kassenoff. Herself a ry. Films such as Downfall perhaps began child-survivor, Dr. Downfall, the groundbreaking German the trend to look at these events from a Kassenoff made a film about Hitler's final days in his post-cold war perspective." presentation on litera- bunker, it shows the war from a He added, however, that he was ture of the Holocaust German point of view. "ambivalent" about whether the new for classroom use and It will be followed by several films trend was a good thing. "There's an argu- led a workshop on the that look at the aftermath of the ment it could increase knowledge," he “Power of Film in Holocaust. Adam Resurrected, starring Holocaust Education.” Jeff Goldblum and Willem Defoe, is said. "But to engage with it in the form of Close to two hun- about a circus entertainer who, spared entertainment is perhaps not appropriate dred educators from the gas chamber, comes to terms with to the sober subject matter. Even if you the tri-State area his history while in an Israeli mental empathize with the victims you can't fully Carolyn Herbst, UFT/ATSS Rep, Eli Zborowski, Chairman American attended this year’s institution in 1961. understand the situation they're in." Society for Yad Vashem, Miriam Kassenoff, Keynote Speaker, Ilana Apelker, conference. “The lost The Reader has Kate Winslet as a The critic and playwright Bonnie Greer Education American Society for Yad Vashem, Caroline Massel, President world of European German woman with a secret past and pointed out that these films were made Young Leadership Associates, Dorit Novak, Director International School Jewry and the tragic while wars raged in Iraq and Afghanistan. for Holocaust Studies Yad Vashem and Elizabeth Mundlak Zborowski Ralph Fiennes as her former lover, who consequences should "We've been in a longer war than the Cultural Director American Society for Yad Vashem discovers that secret during the be used as points of Nuremberg trials. Defiance sees Daniel Second World War, and in order to Social Studies/United Federation of departure to educate younger generations Craig switch the guile of James Bond for explain what that means, we have to go Teachers which once again co-sponsored of the importance of tolerance, under- that of Tuvia Bielski, one of three Jewish back over other wars. I think the the Conference, pointed out that, “This standing and the dangers of hatred and brothers who became resistance fighters Holocaust has to be retold for each gen- conference is an invaluable resource for discrimination,” said Mr. Eli Zborowski. in the Belarussian forest. eration, and in the language of that gen- increasing awareness and sensitivity to The conference included the following: Germany itself is also seeing a new eration," she said. intolerance and injustice, especially in • An overview of the Yad Vashem edu- generation tackle the subject of the The veteran film critic Barry Norman today’s world.” cational philosophy. Nazis, which for decades was too difficult agreed. "If they are accurate films then This year’s conference focused on three • Diverse hands-on workshops on les- for the nation to face. North Face, set in they will probably provide some much- themes of the Holocaust: Children, son modeling for Holocaust education. 1938, looks at the German attempt to needed education to the 12- to 25-year- Rescuers and Perpetrators. The curricu- • Interactive workshops using Holocaust conquer the north face of the Eiger for olds who make up the majority of film lum was developed and prepared by the educational units prepared by Yad the glory of the Nazis. Recently released audiences," he said. International School of Yad Vashem, The Vashem. AUTHOR GAINS NEW EXPOSURE FROM HOLOCAUST FILM (Continued from page 1) Tec's intention in documenting the encouraging students to grapple with the not willing to resort to violence under any seller the past two weeks and has gener- Bielski history, to challenge the dominant thorny ethical questions raised by their legacy. circumstances," Loew said. "We don't ated new interest in several of Tec's earli- Holocaust narrative of Jewish passivity, is Jon Loew, the founder of the pro-Israel want to 'lower ourselves to their level.' But er works. Interview requests have poured also what has made the brothers' story group Fuel For Truth, says he has given out unfortunately, the only way to get a bully in from around the world. appealing to Jewish educators and scores of copies of Tec's book in an effort to to stop picking on you is to stand up to Tec, a Lublin native, was 8 years old them and, if necessary, punch them in the when the Germans arrived. She and her eye. So we can negotiate and beg and sister survived three years by posing as plead all we want, but I'm not sure if in the the nieces of a Catholic family. Her family history of the world an aggressor ever was one of only three that survived the stopped pursuing its prey because the war intact from a prewar population of prey asked nicely." some 40,000. ec is not unaware of the implications After the war Tec immigrated to Israel, T of the Bielskis' story for contempo- where she married. Later she moved to rary Jewry. If Tuvia Bielski saw how south- the United States, where she earned a ern Israeli towns were enduring waves of doctorate at Columbia University. She has Hamas rocket fire, Tec said, “he wouldn't two children, one of whom – son Roland – take it. He'd probably kill them.” co-produced the film. But while Tec believes the film will do ec met Tuvia Bielski only once, in away with the notion that Jews are cow- TBrooklyn, N.Y., just weeks before his ards, she is under no illusions that Jewish death in 1987. Bielski's legendary charis- toughness will bring about the end of anti- ma still was manifest, Tec says, even Semitism, an illness she attributes – like though he was old and frail. racism and sexism – to an impulse to "He was whispering,” she recalled. “I blame the victim. thought that my tape recorder won't get “Anti-Semitism is with us; it is like a per- anything. And I was trying to have the petual, chronic addiction of humanity,” she information flow. And as he got into his said. “You cannot learn about anti- past, he sort of just, before my eyes, he Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski in “Defiance.” Semitism by examining what the anti- became the person that he was, this activists. The Jewish Partisan Education awaken Jews to their own history and inspire Semites tell us because this is not based charismatic leader, that has this absolute Foundation has crafted an entire curricu- them to stand up for themselves. on fact. It is based on their need to blame power in the unit." lum in response to the film in the hopes of "One of the challenges we face as a somebody for something that they have She added later, "When he came into perpetuating the memory of the Bielskis and people is that many Jews living today are not done.” the room, he filled it with himself." Page 16 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2009 - Adar II/Nissan 5769 E YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 NEW AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR, 500 FIFTH RESISTANCE AND MARTYRDOM International Society for Yad Vashem BEHIND FAIRY-TALE DRAWINGS, Web site:

WALLS TALK OF UNSPEAKABLE CRUELTY www.yadvashemusa.org Coercion,” will not end the lingering con- Landau did save Schulz for more than a BY ETHAN BRONNER troversy over whether Schulz belongs year, until November 1942, by providing more to Polish than to Jewish culture, or him with work and the means for minimal e occupies the driver’s seat with an whether the wall drawings should have sustenance. Schulz, whose literary repu- air of insouciance, a blue helmet H remained in Ukraine rather than go to tation as a short-story writer had already atop his head, two proud white steeds under his command and a sly smile across his lips. Bruno Schulz looks out at the world from his painting as if he owns it. But like much else in his life, cut short by a Nazi bullet, this is pure fantasy. The work and story of Schulz, a Jewish writer and painter in Poland who was forced to illustrate a children’s playroom in a Nazi officer’s home and then killed, have long attracted literary attention. There was some- thing about his humility, talent and fate that captivated writers like Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth and David Grossman, who all made him a character in their works.

“The Enchanted Town II, Drohobych” 1920-1922. O-RFTORG. NON-PROFIT EMTNO. 9313 PERMIT Israel, it offers a poignant example of been established, had obtained false N.Y.NEW YORK, artistic defiance in the face of overwhelm- Aryan papers and was about to escape U.S. POST PAID ing cruelty. when another Gestapo sergeant, Karl “There was something very Kafkaesque Günter, angry that Landau had killed his about his abhorrence of bureaucracy and Jewish dentist, put a bullet in Schulz’s authority,” said Yehudit Shendar, senior head. He is said to have told Landau: “You art curator at Yad Vashem. “He is some- killed my Jew. Now I’ve killed yours.” times called the Polish Kafka. He took chulz was 50 and a bachelor, and courage with a brush in his hand. It Sthough he had published only a hand- discovery of the murals was greeted in became a weapon of rebellion.” ful of works, he was viewed as brilliant by Eastern Europe as the retrieval of a piece For example, the Cinderella, Snow those who mattered most in Polish literature. of national heritage. White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Hansel His reputation later grew immensely. As For officials at Yad Vashem, however, Bruno Schulz, in 1934 on stairs of his house. and Gretel that Schulz created for the offi- Isaac Bashevis Singer put it, “What he did in Schulz was killed for being a Jew, and his cer’s children’s playroom bore the faces of his short life was enough to make him one of work belonged here. When they learned of Ye,t until the wall drawings for children real people: Schulz himself, his father and the most remarkable writers who ever lived.” the discovery, they negotiated with the fami- were discovered in 2001 by a documentary other members of the Jewish population Always rooted in Drohobych, his work ly living in the house and the municipality to filmmaker, fading and peeling like ancient in their town, Drohobych. Putting himself had a magical vitality to it. get permission to rescue the paintings from Roman frescoes, they were thought to have at the reins in his drawing struck a note of As one of his famous lines reads, “My their neglected circumstances. been destroyed. Spirited out of Schulz’s defiance, since Nazi law forbade Jews colored pencils rushed in hometown in what is now Ukraine under from riding in or driving carriages. inspiration across columns contested circumstances by the Yad His face is also that of the witch, a refer- of illegible text in masterly Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, they ence, curators believe, to the witch hunts squiggles, in breakneck zig- have been painstakingly preserved and put that Jews faced in eastern Galicia, then zags that knotted them- on view here for the first time. part of Poland, in those months after the selves suddenly into ana- And while this haunting show, a perma- Nazi conquest of his town in June 1941. grams of vision, into enig- nent exhibition titled “Wall Painting Under Instantly, some 900 Jews were rounded mas of bright revelation, and up and shot. Most of the rest were then dissolved into empty, pressed into forced labor before being shiny flashes of lightning, Martyrdom & Resistance killed. Schulz was a sickly man and a tal- following imaginary tracks.” Eli Zborowski, Editor-in-Chief ented one, and the Gestapo sergeant in Mr. Grossman, the Israeli charge of Jewish laborers, Felix Landau, author, says he discovered Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Editor held him aside and ordered him to deco- Schulz when someone told *Published Bimonthly by the rate a riding school and his children’s him that Schulz’s influence “Carriage Driver (Self-Portrait), Drohobych” 1941-1942. International Society for Yad Vashem, Inc. nursery. It seemed to be his salvation. was evident in his own first 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Marila B., who was 11 at the time and novel. He had never heard of Schulz, but What happened next is disputed, but New York, NY 10110 lived in the house next to the riding he picked up his stories and felt a chill of most of the paintings were removed and (212) 220-4304 school, eventually escaped through the admiration and recognition. Upon learning taken to Israel without the Ukrainian gov- forest with her family and lives today in of the infamous line about Nazis’ killing ernment’s permission. After years of bad EDITORIAL BOARD Israel. She remembers the Nazi sergeant each other’s Jews, Mr. Grossman was feelings, a deal has been struck whereby Eli Zborowski and the wall drawings because she was filled with the ambition to write about the the murals belong to Ukraine but are on Marvin Zborowski ordered to baby-sit for the officer’s chil- Holocaust. long-term loan to Yad Vashem. The Mark Palmer dren, aged 4 and 2. In his widely admired novel “See Under: Ukrainian deputy culture minister attend- Sam Skura** “I would play with the children in the Love,” a character named Bruno escapes ed the exhibition’s opening. Israel Krakowski garden and then take them up to the a ghetto under Nazi occupation and jumps So did Mr. Grossman. He told the audi- William Mandell playroom, and there I saw the draw- into a river, joining a school of salmon. ence an anecdote from Schulz’s childhood. Sam Halpern ings,” she said in a brief interview at the Most of Schulz’s artwork has not sur- His mother caught him feeding sugar water Isidore Karten** opening of the exhibition at Yad vived, but was also esteemed by his con- to flies one autumn day, and she asked him Norman Belfer Vashem . Loath to be obliged to repeat temporaries. Expressionist in the way of what he was doing. “Helping them get Joseph Bukiet** her story, she asked that her full name Middle European artists of the interwar through the long winter,” he replied. *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American not be published. “Landau used to walk era, it mixed dreamlike fantasy with a That, Mr. Grossman said, is what Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp around with a pistol in one hand and a touch of erotica. Because he was an Schulz’s work does for us all. Inmates, and Nazi Victims whip in the other. He was the very assimilated Jew who wrote in Polish and **deceased embodiment of evil.” whose hometown is now in Ukraine, the First published in The New York Times