SEPTEMBER 2013 VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 New Claims Conference Agreement US Holocaust Memorial Museum With Germany Marks 20th Anniversary By AMBASSADOR STUART E. EIZENSTAT By SARA J. BLOOMFIELD, Special to Together In November of 2012, the German government and the Claims After , survivors did an astonishing thing. They Conference jointly marked the 60th anniversary of the Claims could have responded to being abandoned by the world with anger Conference with a ceremony in Berlin. At that ceremony, Finance and resentment, but instead they focused on renewal and rebirth. Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany and I executed an over- And then, after rebuilding their lives, they did another astonishing all agreement that outlines the relationship between the two par- thing. They determined that their memories should not remain just a ties for the future. The fi rst fruits of the new understanding are re- source of private pain, but should become a source of public educa- fl ected in the monumental agreement reached in negotiations with tion. They wanted to make sure that no one’s future would be like the German government that recently concluded in Jerusalem. their past. Animated by that powerful dream, they spearheaded the The Claims Conference has successfully negotiated an agree- building of a permanent living memorial on the National Mall: the ment with the German government which, taken with the amount United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. previously agreed upon, will provide approximately $1 billion over the four-year-period, 2014- 2017, for homecare for Jew- ish Nazi victims, with the annual amount increasing every year through 2017. The amount the German government will provide in 2015— €205 million ($266 million)—is an increase of 45 percent over 2014. The government will also provide €210 million ($273 million) for 2016 and €215 million ($280 million) for 2017. The previously agreed-upon amount for 2014 is approximately €142 million ($185 million), an increase of €12 million ($15 million) over 2013 funding. Thus, taken together, this historic agreement is a commitment of €772 million or approximately $1 billion for the four years 2014 - 2017. The German government also committed to review annually the adequacy of these funding levels. This unprecedented amount of funding means that we can give Museum educator Rebecca Dupas, Museum Founding Chairman Elie Nazi victims around the world the aid that they desperately need Wiesel, World War II Veteran Scottie Ooton, and former President Bill Clinton spoke at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's as they grow more frail. Further, that the agreement encompass- National Tribute to and World War II Veterans. es funding through 2017 underscores the German government’s (Photo courtesy of USHMM.) ongoing commitment to Holocaust survivors. It is all the more impressive because it comes at a time of budget austerity in Ger- Since the 1978 President’s Commission on the Holocaust, many. chaired by Elie Wiesel, through the 20th anniversary of the Mu- This agreement for historic levels of homecare funding for seum this year, survivors have been the driving force of the Mu- Nazi victims is the result of many months of a sustained, con- seum. Before the Museum opened in 1993, they established our certed effort by our negotiating delegation and by Claims Confer- nation’s annual Days of Remembrance ceremonies in the rotunda ence staff. The German government agreed to provide this fund- of the U.S. Capitol, and their ideas helped shape our Permanent Exhibition. They remain involved with the Museum in numerous ing after reviewing extensive detailed material on the numbers ways both in Washington and around the country. Their commit- and distribution of Holocaust victims, poverty and disability rates, ment and passion are key to the Museum’s success.

cont’d on p. 2 cont’d on p. 9

PERMIT NO. 4246 NO. PERMIT

New York, New York 10001 York New York, New

NEW YORK, NY YORK, NEW

122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 Suite Street, 30th West 122 PAID

Jewish Holocaust Survivors Holocaust Jewish U.S. POSTAGE U.S.

American Gathering of Gathering American NON-PROFIT

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 1 Eizenstat Report cont’d from p. 1 TOGETHER governmental supports and costs of service as well as projections of future needs of Holocaust victims, which September 2013 Volume 27 Number 2 was prepared by your organization. c•o•n•t•e•n•t•s In advance of the meeting of our full delegation, New Claims Conference Agreement With Germany by Stuart E. Eizenstat...... 1 there were many working group level meetings between US Holocaust Museum Marks 20th Anniversary by Sara J. Bloomfi eld...... 1 Claims Conference staff and that of the Finance Min- A Meditation on Remembrance by Menachem Z. Rosensaft...... 3 istry. In addition, Roman Kent met with key German Inside the Claims Conference: An Update by Sam Sokol...... 4 government offi cials helping to solidify this agreement. Eli M. Rosenbaum-Keynote Speaker at National Holocaust Commemoration...... 5 I wanted to personally let you know of my gratitude The US Holocaust Memorial Museum at 20 by Susan Eisenhower...... 6 to Greg Schneider for having the vision and drive to Why I Resigned From Claims Conference Board by Samuel Norich...... 7 organize this campaign, which has culminated in this Hungarian Holocaust Survivors to Receive Reparations by Sam Sokol...... 7 agreement. Greg has made it a priority to gather detailed Tehran Jewish Committe Critizes Ahmadinejad by R. Zamanov...... 9 information and data on the growing plight of aging Trip Refl ections 2013 by Elaine Culbertson...... 10 Nazi victims and present it to the German government State Controller’s Database to Aid Holocaust Heirs by Stewart Ain ...... 12 in an effective and compelling fashion in order to dem- Prague Train Station to Become Holocaust Memorial by Sam Sokol...... 12 onstrate their increasing needs to the German govern- Michigan Holocaust Survivors Stories by Mark Stryker...... 13 ment. His dedication and professionalism are above and Holocaust Survivors Say Knesset Fails Them by Omri Efraim...... 15 beyond what could be expected, and he made it clear A Birkenau Survivor’s Memoirs by Etan Newman...... 16 throughout this process that he was absolutely commit- Survivor Backs Claims Conference by Jehuda Evron...... 16 ted to obtaining the funding to which the Finance Min- Searches (contributing editor Serena Woolrich)...... 18 istry ultimately agreed. Greg’s passion and integrity are Noted in Passing...... 19 well appreciated by our German government interlocu- In Memoriam...... 20 tors. The lives of tens of thousands of Holocaust victims A Message from the President and the Chairman...... 24 will be made easier in their old age due to Greg’s skill NOTICE TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS and vision. NEEDING ASSISTANCE Karen Heilig of the Claims Conference staff also de- Financial assistance is available for needy Holocaust survivors. If you have serves special recognition. an urgent situation regarding housing, health care, food or other emergency, Several other signifi cant agreements were reached at you may be eligible for a one-time grant funded by the Claims Conference. our Jerusalem negotiations: If there is a Jewish Family Service agency in your area, please discuss your situation with them. If there is no such agency nearby, mail a written inquiry Open describing your situation to: Blue Card Under the current regulations governing Claims Con- 171 Madison Avenue ference pension programs, those survivors who were in Suite 1405 “closed” ghettos, surrounded by a wall, are entitled to New York, NY 10016 receive payments if incarceration in a is the basis for applying. There are, however, thousands of survi- American Gathering Executive Committee vors who were in ghettos that were not closed, such as SAM E. BLOCH • ROMAN KENT • MAX K. LIEBMANN in Czernowitz, and many places in Bulgaria, GLORIA GOLAN • JOYCE CELNIK LEVINE • MENACHEM ROSENSAFT among other Nazi-allied countries. These lived un- ELAN STEINBERG,  der conditions similar to closed ghettos: under curfew; deprived of their jobs; subject to persecution measures; wore the yellow star; received reduced food rations; and lived in constant fear of deportation. TOGETHER Resulting from the negotiations, the German AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS government agreed to expand the eligibility criteria of AND THEIR DESCENDANTS the two pension programs, the Article 2 Fund and the President Vice Presidents Publication Committee SAM E. BLOCH EVA FOGELMAN SAM E. BLOCH, Chairman Central and Eastern European Fund, as of January 1, Chairman GLORIA GOLAN ELLEN S. GOLDSTEIN ROMAN KENT ROSITTA E. KENIGSBERG ROMAN KENT 2014, for those Jews who lived under the conditions Senior Vice President ROMANA STROCHLITZ PRIMUS JOYCE CELNIK LEVINE MAX K. LIEBMANN JEAN BLOCH ROSENSAFT MAX K. LIEBMANN noted above. A specifi c list of 300 “open ghettos” was Founding President MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT ROMANA STROCHLITZ PRIMUS BEN MEED,  STEFANIE SELTZER MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT agreed upon. The Claims Conference estimates that, as Honorary President ELAN STEINBERG,  result, an additional 2,000 to 3,000 Holocaust survivors VLADKA MEED,  JEFFREY WIESENFELD Project Director, Teachers Program Honorary Chairman Secretary ELAINE CULBERTSON will become eligible for a compensation pension. This ERNEST MICHEL JOYCE CELNIK LEVINE Treasurer Managing Editor will mean increased funding by the German government MAX K. LIEBMANN PHILIP SIERADSKI Administrative Director Regional Vice-Presidents of some 7 to 11 million Euros per year. Further, the Counsel ELLEN S. GOLDSTEIN VIVIAN GLASER BERNSTEIN BERNARD KENT ABRAHAM KRIEGER Claims Conference has the right to submit the names MICHAEL KORENBLIT MEL MERMELSTEIN cont’d on p. 3 SERENA WOOLRICH

TOGETHER 2 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 Eizenstat Report income ($25,000, previously $16,000), as of ence. Immediately preceding the negotia- cont’d from p. 2 July 1, 2013, to meet the income eligibility re- tions, our full delegations spent nearly three quirement. This fi gure had not been changed hours visiting in Yad Vashem, with our survi- of additional ghettos, together with historical since 1995, and will make many more people vors sharing their personal experiences. The documentation, for BMF review for eligible for Article 2 Fund pensions. negotiations themselves lasted nearly 5 hours, eligibility. without a break, and were very intensive. The historic work of the Claims Confer- Child Survivors ence still continues, and I am proud to con- The Claims Conference has been advocat- tribute what I can to help Holocaust victims. ing for several years for recognition of the We are seeing Germany’s continued commit- special needs of survivors who were children ment to fulfi ll its historic obligation to Nazi at the time of the Holocaust. We placed a spe- victims. This ensures that Holocaust survi- cial emphasis on it this year, led by Colette vors, now in their fi nal years, can be confi - Avital of our negotiating team. In the negotia- dent that we are endeavoring to help them tions last Thursday, the German government live in dignity, after their early life was fi lled committed to take a “sympathetic” approach As you know, for the fi rst time, negotia- with indescribable tragedy and trauma. toward the issue in discussions set for next tions with the German Finance Ministry were The impassioned involvement of our fall. The Claims Conference and German held in Israel. It was a terrifi c opportunity for negotiating delegation—Holocaust survivor government will be discussing the unique the German delegation to see fi rst-hand how leaders Roman Kent, Ben Helfgott, Marian traumas and late-onset symptoms associated the compensation they provide is life-chang- Turski and Uri Chanoch; Amb. Reuven with children who endured the Holocaust. We ing for individual Holocaust survivors. We Merhav, Rabbi Andrew Baker and Amb. hope the special conference on child survivors took the German delegation into the homes ; and Claims Conference scheduled for Berlin in the end of August will of Holocaust survivors who are receiving Executive Vice President Greg Schneider provide special impetus for our efforts to pro- homecare; we visited Senior Day Center and and staff Karen Heilig, Christiane Reeh, vide assistance to child survivors. met with a group of survivors; and we visited and Konrad Matschke—play a signifi cant a soup kitchen in which Holocaust survivors role in convincing Germany of its moral Income Limit Raised are receiving a hot daily meal—all of these responsibility to aid elderly Holocaust Applicants for monthly pensions from the programs are funded by the Claims Confer- survivors. Article 2 Fund are allowed a higher annual

A meditation on the Vistula river, or that he would return to chwitz. In 1986, Ann Weiss, the daughter of remembrance the ghetto even though he had been hit by two Holocaust survivors, came upon them three German bullets, or that he would learn almost by accident. She returned to Poland By MENACHEM Z. that all the Jews on his transport had been two years later and painstakingly copied the ROSENSAFT taken directly to the gas chambers. He did photographs. In 2001 many of them were There is such a not know when his picture was taken beside published in Ann Weiss’s book, The Last thing as kismet, fate. the Będzin castle that by the time a war that Album, Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz- The Yiddish term is had not yet begun would come to an end, he Birkenau. beshert—something would have survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, Fast-forward to several weeks ago when I that is meant to hap- including many months in the notorious was invited to a multi-media program on the pen. Block 11, known as the death block, as well “Lost Music of the Holocaust,” organized The black and as the Lagisha labor camp and the Langen- white photograph is by Olivia P.L. Hilton, Director of Special of a young man, not salza, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen Projects in the offi ce of the US State Depart- yet 30 years old. He concentration camps. All that was still to ment’s Offi ce of the Special Envoy to Moni- is standing near the come. tor and Combat Anti-Semitism. And so I tower of a 14th century castle in the south- The photograph itself also survived Aus- found myself in the State Department audi- ern Polish town of Będzin, wearing a long- chwitz. It was one of approximately 2,400 torium in Washington, DC, on a rainy June sleeved white shirt and tie but no jacket. He photographs that Jews had brought with afternoon listening to music that had been holds a hat in his hand as he looks into the them as they arrived there, unaware of their collected by an Italian pianist, Francesco Lo- camera. The picture was taken before the fate, and that they were forced to surrender toro, over the course of many years. Germans arrived, before the Jews of Będzin together with their other meager belongings, “It is diffi cult to imagine,” Ira Forman, were forced to live in a ghetto, before the their suitcases, their clothes. We will never who had only recently been named as the young man’s sisters and brother were taken know whether the picture had belonged to Special Envoy, explained, “how one could to their death at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The the young man’s wife, or to one of his sis- create in the face of the adversity and trauma young man did not know that day that he ters, or to a friend. All we know is that the experienced in the concentration camps and would eventually be deported from Będzin photographs were rescued by inmates and throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. But what together with his wife and her daughter, or hidden in the camp, lest the Germans burned can one do to hold on to and assert one’s that he would escape from the Auschwitz- them. For decades after the war, they lay in a cont’d on p. 14 bound train by diving out of a window into storage room in one of the buildings at Aus-

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 3 Inside the Claims Conference: An Update In Appreciation off our SpecS ial Donors able crimes and today our objective was ac- By SAM SOKOL, Special to Together Revell & Norman Alpert...... $ 500 complished.” Jews around the world, in particular Ho- Betty Doosemen...... $ 500 When news of the fraud fi rst came to locaust survivors and their families (not to Chris C. & Stacie W. Eggers...... $ 500 light, the Claims Conference’s leadership mention the German government), were Jonathan Horn...... $ 2,000 stated that all possible security measures had stunned to discover in 2009-2010 that a Roman Kent...... $ 1,000 nearly two decade long fraud scheme against been taken and that they had been shocked Jeffrey Kraines: In memory the Conference of Jewish Material Claims when they had discovered the criminal con- of his father, Sidney Kraines...... $ 2,500 Against Germany, more commonly known spiracy. However, during Domnitser’s trial Frieda Makon Charitable Trust...... $642.50 as the Claims Conference, had been perpe- it emerged that in 2001 Karl Brozik, who Jack & Goldie Wolfe Miller...... $ 500 trated. was then in charge of the Claims Confer- Edward & Cecile Mosberg...... $1,000 Over a period of 16 years, conference ence’s operations in Germany, had received Russell Steinweg...... $1,000 employees and outsiders had conducted a an anonymous letter alleging that Domnitser Tiferet Ani...... $ 500 conspiracy that had approved irregular claims. An investiga- Carl S. Wilner...... $ 500 managed to get tion undertaken at Brozik's behest did not re- $57 million in sult in any action at the time. false restitution According to the JTA, after Brozik ended resign from the Claims Conference board— claims approved his investigation, a paralegal from Berman’s see Norich’s article on page 7). and paid out. The law fi rm was tasked with leading a second In a letter to the members of the Claims fraud was dis- probe into the matter and an interim report Confeence board, Berman sharply criticized covered by Greg of that investigation was forwarded to the the Jerusalem Post and for their Schneider, the Claims Conference. (In 2001, Berman, who coverage of the controversy surrounding the then newly ap- became Chairman of the Claims Conference 2001 anonymous letter. pointed Executive the following year, was the organization's pro The American Gathering of Jewish Holo- Vice President of bono legal counsel and a member of its Ex- caust Survi- the Claims Con- ecutive committee.) vors and Their Rabbi Julius Berman, ference, and his Speaking with the Jerusalem Post, Ber- Descendants Chairman of the Board man would later say that he was not aware of of the Claims Conference colleague Karen then formally (photo courtesy of The Heilig. After in- any fraud until 2009. asked that the Jewish Week). forming Claims Claims Conference procedures in place to investigation Conference prevent fraud were “reasonably adequate,” Max K. Liebmann, Senior at the very Chairman Julius and the fraud was like 9/11, in that it could Vice President, American least be re- Berman, Schneider promptly referred the mat- not be anticipated, he told the JTA. The news Gathering ferred to the ter to the FBI and the United States Attorney agency also reported that Berman had said Claims Con- for the Southern District of New York. that no survivors had been injured by the ference Ombudsman. In a letter to Berman, The ringleader of the scheme was alleged fraud. Max Liebmann, Senior Vice President of the to be Semen Domnitser, the New York based After news of the 2001 anonymous letter American Gathering, asserted that while his director of two Claims Conference funds de- was published by the Jewish Daily Forward, organization did not question the integrity of signed to benefi t Holocaust survivors from President Ronald S. Ambassador Merhav and the members of the the former Soviet Union and other parts of Lauder, a member of the Claims Conference SLC, “the process of providing answers to eastern Europe, who was criminally charged board of directors, sent Berman a letter ask- the entire board...must be able to withstand for his role in the conspiracy together with ing whether the existence of this letter had any and all scrutiny.” 30 other defendants, 28 of whom pled guilty. ever been disclosed to the Claims Confer- Merhav then referred the investigation to The trial of the remaining three, including ence board, and “If not, why not?” Claims Conference Ombudsman Shmuel Domnitser, took place in federal court in Berman then appointed Ambassador Hollander in preparation for presenting a re- Manhattan earlier this year. On May 8, 2013, Reuven Merhav, Chairman of the Claims port for consideration at the Claims Confer- Domnitser and co-defendants Oksana Roma- Conference's Executive Committee, to lead ence’s board meeting in July. lis and Luba Kramrish were found guilty on a Select Leadership Committee (SLC) to The SLC and the Ombudsman reports all counts. investigate the events surrounding the 2001 were discussed at length at the board of di- “With the verdicts against these three de- letter. rectors’ meeting. Berman was then unani- fendants, all 31 people who played roles in Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish mously elected as were all others who were the theft of $57 million intended to benefi t Agency for Israel and the First Vice Presi- up for reelection. The Claims Conference victims of the Nazi genocide—one of the dent of the Claims Conference, then called leadership was able to gather such support darkest chapters in all human history—have for an independent investigation into the because there were no separate elections been convicted,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bhara- matter. Paul Edlin of the Board of Deputies for individual offi cers of the conference, ra said in a statement following the trial. “We of British Jews joined in the call for such an Stephan Kramer, the head of the Zentralrat said we would not stop until we brought to investigation, as did Samuel Norich of the justice those who committed these unthink- Jewish Labor Committee. (He would later cont’d on p. 14

TOGETHER 4 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 Eli M. Rosenbaum - Keynote Speaker at National Holocaust Commemoration On April 11, 2013, Eli Rosenbaum, Direc- rose to positions of prominence in a number police station in Lisets, Ukraine, and shot tor of Strategy and Policy of the US Justice of countries and in some major international her at point-blank range while she pleaded Department’s Human Rights and Special organizations. And some of the most heavily for her life. Little Monica Singer did not live Prosecution Section, delivered the keynote incriminated Nazis who were arrested, tried, to see justice done. address at this year’s annual Days of Re- and convicted—such as former SS-Stand- We found Jakob Reimer living the Ameri- membrance commemoration at the Capitol artenführer Martin Sandberger—soon had can dream in a New York City suburb, and Rotunda in Washington, DC: their sentences commuted. Sandberger had we brought him to justice. When I ques- Members of Congress, Ambassador Oren, commanded a detachment of the notorious tioned him, he confessed that he had led a Chairman Bernstein, Vice Chairman Bolten, Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units. He was platoon of men on a mission to, in his words, Director Bloomfi eld, cherished survivors convicted at Nuremberg, where he received “exterminate a labor camp.” We will never of the Holocaust, and other distinguished know the names of those who were massa- guests: cred by Reimer and his men, but we know For more than three decades now, my that they too did not live to see justice done. colleagues and I at the United States Depart- And we found Vladas Zajanckauskas liv- ment of Justice have been deeply privileged ing in Massachusetts. In fact, he still lives to pursue justice on behalf of Jewish victims there. As a non-commissioned offi cer in an of the Holocaust and also on behalf of vic- infamous SS auxiliary unit, Zajanckauskas tims of Nazi crimes committed against other took part, 70 years ago this very month, in groups. the brutal liquidation of Warsaw’s Jewish But...the Holocaust...and justice? Aren’t ghetto. My offi ce won a court order of de- justice and the Holocaust almost polar op- portation against him nearly six years ago. posites? After all, the Holocaust was argu- But our colleagues at Immigration and Cus- ably the most terrible injustice ever perpe- toms Enforcement can’t carry out that order, trated. Worst of all, it was a lethal injustice: because the European country to which Za- In a paroxysm of anti-Semitic violence, janckauskas was ordered deported has not the Nazis and their collaborators murdered agreed to readmit him. His victims surely some six million people—fully one of every did not see justice done in 1943. And if no three Jews who were then alive on the planet European government fulfi lls its moral ob- Earth. And, before they died, victims were ligation to take him back—and soon—then routinely subjected to other horrible injustic- justice won’t be done now either. es: expropriation, impoverishment, assault, a death sentence. But that sentence was later The list of injustices suffered by the sur- starvation, enslavement, torture, pseudo- commuted to life imprisonment, and then, in viving victims of the Holocaust is a long, medical experimentation, and many other 1958, Sandberger was released. He went on tragic, and, in many ways, continuing one. depredations. to live a prosperous life, in Germany. Actu- Most of the survivors lost numerous fam- Nor, for most doomed Jews, was it pos- ally, this confessed mass murderer lived a ily members. Many were orphaned. Count- sible to escape these grave injustices, in part prosperous and long life: He died, in Stutt- less survivors continue to experience serious because other nations—including, yes, our gart, just 36 months ago—after enjoying 52 medical problems directly traceable to their country—shut their doors. Among those who years of undeserved freedom. wartime mistreatment. The homes, busi- tried, in vain, to get U.S. visas was the Frank Some of the perpetrators fl ed to this coun- nesses, and possessions that were taken from family: father Otto, mother Edith, their try. Yet it wasn’t until 1979 that the U.S. gov- their families have not, in most cases, been daughter Margot, and their younger daughter, ernment fi nally launched a serious effort to restored to them. Compensation from Euro- Annalies Marie, known to most of us by the pursue them. Many, alas, had already died pean governments has been inadequate and Anglicized version of her name: Anne Frank. here. But our Justice Department eventually often decades late in coming. Today, roughly Imagine: Anne Frank might have joined us succeeded in building the most successful half of the estimated 120,000 survivors in here this morning, as...an American. program in the world directed against Nazi this country are living near, at, or below the After the war, injustice was compounded criminals, and we managed to track down federal poverty line. For shame. Moreover, when, after an initial fl urry of prosecutorial scores of perpetrators. even as they continue to weep for lost parents activity at Nuremberg and elsewhere in Eu- For example, we found former Mauthau- and lost siblings, the survivors are assaulted rope, the Allies largely abandoned their pur- sen concentration camp SS-man Stefan Leili by the lies of the haters, who brazenly deny suit of the perpetrators. By 1952, U.S., Brit- living in New Jersey, and we brought him to the reality of Nazi genocide. ish and Soviet prosecutions were essentially justice. But Leon Axelroud, the 16-year-old And yet, it is also true that a not incon- over. Most Nazi criminals were able to evade French Jewish boy whom he shot on Decem- siderable amount of justice has, in fact, been justice, and most got away with their crimes ber 9, 1942, did not live to see justice done. achieved. First, historical justice has been at- without even having to fl ee Europe. We found Bohdan Koziy living in Flori- tained. The fabrications of Holocaust deniers Meanwhile, governments on both sides of da, and we brought him to justice. His vic- have been no match for the tireless efforts the Cold War began employing some of the tims included four-year-old Monica Singer. perpetrators. Men implicated in Nazi crimes He dragged her to the courtyard behind the cont’d on p. 6

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 5 Rosenbaum Last, but not least, there is juridical jus- political will to do so is not being mustered. cont’d from p. 5 tice. Trials of Nazi criminals have produced It is enormously important that efforts of survivors, historians, and institutions such thousands of convictions. From the Nurem- to achieve justice be continued. Doing so as our magnifi cent United States Holocaust berg and Dachau trials in occupied postwar is a moral debt that is owed to the victims. Memorial Museum to ensure that the truth Germany to Israel’s 1961 prosecution of Moreover, the passage of time has in no way is both amply documented and disseminated Adolf Eichmann, up through the mid-1960s lessened the gravity of the crimes, and the globally. We can at last be certain that the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt and other cases perpetrators ought not be rewarded for their Holocaust will be remembered and studied prosecuted since then, some substantial pun- success in evading detection or concealing in perpetuity. ishments have been meted out – though it their misdeeds. And perhaps most impor- Second, there is compensatory justice. must be acknowledged that only a fraction tant of all, justice must be sought in order to Although compensation has fallen well short of the prosecutions that should have been send an unmistakable message to would-be of what, in fairness, ought to have been pro- mounted actually went forward and that perpetrators, namely: If you dare to commit vided, efforts to obtain recompense have many of the sentences imposed were dis- atrocity crimes, you will be pursued, how- recorded signifi cant successes. Landmark appointingly short ones. The trials that did ever far you run and however long it takes to agreements have yielded billions of dol- go forward have done much to educate the apprehend you. lars in reparations payments. Tenacious ef- public about the crimes, and they have been Elie Wiesel reminds us, “There may be forts by Jewish leaders and very hard work essential in building an irrefutable record of times when we are powerless to prevent in- by, among others, former Treasury Deputy Nazi inhumanity. justice, but there must never be a time when Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, the Justice De- Notwithstanding the lateness of the date, we fail to protest.” Let us act on that noble partment’s Foreign Claims Settlement Com- prosecutions continue. My offi ce still has injunction by recommitting ourselves to mission and former Offi ce of Special Inves- cases in court and under investigation, as do fi ghting injustice and to seeking justice – on tigations, and the State Department’s Special some foreign governments. Only the year behalf of all victims of intolerance, hatred, Envoy for Holocaust Issues, have prompted before last, German prosecutors, relying pri- and mass violence. In this way, each of us the return of individual and communal prop- marily on evidence amassed by my offi ce, can honor the survivors and each of us can erties in a number of European countries won the conviction of former Ohio resident fuse action to our collective memory of the and have traced Nazi-looted gold so that it John Demjanjuk on more than twenty-eight millions who did not survive. And let us could be sold for the benefi t of needy survi- thousand counts of serving as an accessory hope that by doing so, we will hasten the ar- vors. These accomplishments have not been to murders committed at the Sobibor death rival of the day in which the post-Holocaust equaled in the aftermath of any large-scale camp. Without doubt, therefore, it is still imperative “Never Again” becomes, at long state-sponsored atrocity crime committed in possible to secure a measure of justice in the last, not just a barely imaginable aspiration, any other era or place. Nazi cases. In many countries, however, the but a reality. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum at 20: Susan Eisenhower’s Tribute to Liberators and Survivors rope, was engrossed in decisions about Ber- time experienced an equal sense of shock. I Chairman Bernstein, Vice Chairman lin and other crucial matters. On the morning visited every nook and cranny of the camp Bolton, Elie Wiesel, distinguished veterans of the 12, Eisenhower visited the salt mines because I felt it my duty to be in a position and survivors—I am honored to accept this in Germany where the Nazis had hidden sto- from then on to testify fi rst-hand about these award on behalf of the World War II veter- len art work. Later that evening he received things in case there ever grew up at home ans. It is especially meaningful that it bears the news that Franklin Roosevelt had died. the belief or assumption that the stories of the name of Elie Wiesel. As Eisenhower wrote in Crusade in Europe: Nazi brutality were just propaganda. Some I am also pleased to be here this evening members of the visiting party were unable to to help celebrate the Holocaust Museum’s go through with the ordeal. I not only did so 20th anniversary. A remarkable set of ac- but as soon as I returned to Patton’s head- complishments have been achieved in the quarters that evening I sent communications last two decades. And what an appropriate to both Washington and London, urging the place to think about what happened nearly two governments to send instantly to Ger- seventy years ago and to refl ect on what it many a random group of newspaper editors means today. and representative groups from the national After the terrorist attacks in Boston much legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be has been written on why, in the face of the ex- immediately placed before the American and plosion, some people rushed in to help while “The same day, I saw my fi rst horror camp British publics in a fashion that would leave others ran away. It has been rightly pointed [Ohrdruf]. It was near the town of Gotha. I no room for cynical doubt.” out that no one can really know what he or have never felt able to describe my emotional Dwight Eisenhower showed extraordi- she would do until faced with a crisis. Would reactions when I fi rst came face to face with nary presence of mind. Instinctively he could one rise to the occasion or back away? indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality… Up imagine, even in the pressure of the moment, In April of 1945, it was a crucial period at to that time I had known about it only gener- that someday—at some distant time—there Allied headquarters as General Eisenhower, ally or through secondary sources. I am cer- Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Eu- tain, however that I have never at any other cont’d on p. 17

TOGETHER 6 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 Why I Resigned From Claims Conference Board — And Why You Should Care

By SAMUEL NORICH, The Forward had approved fraudulent applications. them from voting against, or even abstaining After serving for a decade on the Board That letter, containing details indicating on, the re-election of the chairman or other of Directors of the Conference on Jewish it likely came from an insider, came to the individuals involved in the breakdown of Material Claims Against Germany, I re- board’s and the public’s attention only a few control and accountability. signed in protest on July 10. weeks ago, when the Forward’s Paul Berger Berman and some of those who support The Claims Conference, discovered it in the trial record of his continued chairmanship posit a false con- as it is commonly known, three Claims Conference staff- fl ict between the needs and interests of Holo- was created in 1951 to se- ers convicted on federal charges. caust survivors and the purported calumnies cure some measure of jus- [As publisher and president of the and sensationalism of the press. I see it dif- tice for Jewish victims of Forward, I am responsible for ev- ferently. I stand behind and take great pride Nazi persecution. Its staff of erything it publishes, but have not in the work of the Forward’s editors and re- 400 administers direct com- been a source for its reporting, nor porters to illuminate mismanagement, lax pensation programs, funds had any hand in its editorial judg- oversight and defi cient accountability in this charities serving Holocaust ments on the Claims Conference most important Jewish organization. As Jus- survivors, and negotiates story. I served on the Claims Con- tice Louis D. Brandeis famously said, “sun- on their behalf with banks, ference board as a representative light is said to be the best of disinfectants.” other companies and the Samuel Norich not of the Forward, but rather of Some self-serving Israeli politicians and German and Austrian gov- (Photo by Nate Lavey) the Jewish Labor Committee, and I American lawyers have besieged the Claims ernments. Last year alone, did not participate in a decision by Conference for years, accusing its leaders the Claims Conference to grant the it disbursed $345 million to survivors and of corruption or worse. Those are lies. But Forward $22,500 to produce a collection of agencies charged with their care, around the organization’s own ombudsman and two the world. fi lmed interviews with ten postwar Yiddish of its senior board members have now veri- During 10 years on the board, I was writers.] fi ed mismanagement and negligence in 2001 an outspoken supporter of Julius Berman, Despite demands for an independent in- that allowed the costly fraud to persist for the chairman, as he rebuffed repeated at- quiry, Berman appointed four board members more than a decade. I regret that the board tempts by Israeli politicians and others to to investigate, and they, in turn, delegated the didn’t force the necessary reckoning within control or supplant the Claims Conference. task to the Claims Conference ombudsman, top leadership this week. But I believe, with I continue to believe that independence, Shmuel Hollander. Two of the investigating complete faith, that it will yet come. transparency and a reputation for probity committee members disowned Hollander’s are necessary for the Claims Conference scathing report on past management prac- At stake is not only the continued, and to carry out its sacred mission. But recent tices, and the executive vice president, Greg crucial, fl ow of German reparations for ma- events and revelations led me, reluctantly, Schneider, proffered a 21-page rebuttal. terial losses at the hands of the Nazis, but to conclude that these essential characteris- It is clear that the leadership of the Claims also the morale of hundreds of gifted, capa- tics have been deeply compromised. Conference is unwilling to acknowledge its ble and devoted Claims Conference employ- Thirty-one people, including 11 for- failures. Berman has gone to great lengths to ees in Europe, Israel and the United States; mer Claims Conference employees, have avoid accountability for his role in 2001 – the principles of transparency, accountability pleaded or been found guilty of fraud in as a member of the board’s audit and execu- and integrity in communal and charitable or- connection with false restitution claims tive committees and pro bono counsel to the ganizations; and the sterling reputation of an that senior management reported to law- Claims Conference – and more recently. organization that was, and must be, beyond enforcement authorities, in 2009. What’s When it came time to elect offi cers at the reproach. more, management failed to fully inves- board’s annual meeting this week, members tigate allegations, made in an anonymous were allowed to cast only a single up-or- Samuel Norich is president of the Forward letter in 2001, that a mid-level employee down vote on a 16-person slate, preventing Association and publisher of The Forward. Hungarian Holocaust survivors to receive reparations

By SAM SOKOL/JTA be transferred to the Jewish Heritage of Hun- ing and transparency regarding the disburse- The government of Hungarian Prime gary Public Endowment, or Mazsok. ment of the funds and sought the return of Minister Viktor Orbán settled an ongo- In 2007, Hungary pledged $21 million to $12.6m. that the government said it gave the ing feud with the Conference of Material be distributed over fi ve years to native Ho- Claims Conference. Claims Against Germany on July 6, sign- locaust survivors, facilitated in part by the The Claims Conference said it only re- ing a deal to resume providing reparations Claims Conference. ceived $8m. for distribution among Hungar- to Hungarian Holocaust survivors located A new settlement was to be signed last ian Holocaust survivors living outside that abroad. year before Budapest’s decision to freeze country. Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Orban’s money transfers. The money was transferred initially from chief of staff, said that $5.6 million would Budapest cited concerns over bookkeep- cont’d on p. 19

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 7 TOGETHER 8 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 US Holocaust Memorial Museum occurred during these interactions about the future, a member of the “Third Genera- Marks 20th Anniversary by Honoring family collections and personal research. tion” made a public pledge during each pin- Survivors In Boca Raton, Miriam Borenstein, who ning ceremony. Here is Lisa Zaid’s: cont’d from p. 1 was born in a DP camp in Ulm, Germany, “To the survivors who are here, I promise To recognize the survivors’ remarkable in 1947, mentioned to Museum researcher you this: Your lives will always be remem- contribution to the Museum and to our na- Steven Vitto that she never had a birth cer- bered and honored by us. We will never for- tion, the Museum’s 20th anniversary com- tifi cate. Before her eyes, Vitto searched the get you or the beautiful families from which memorations honored them as well as World more than 100 million digital images in the you came. And on the mall of our nation’s War II veterans and rescuers. In addition to Museum’s archives and found it. Borenstein, capital—the very center of democracy and the National Tribute in Washington, DC, on who said she encountered diffi culty through- freedom in the world—you have a perma- April 28–29, we brought the Museum to sur- out her life because she did not have a birth nent home in our museum. We will continue vivors, their families, and the public in four certifi cate, was thrilled. to make your voices heard by future genera- communities (Boca Raton, Los Angeles, tions as we have with the 35 million visitors New York, and Chicago) that have long pro- who have walked through our doors in the vided outstanding support to the institution. last 20 years.” The two-day National Tribute in April, a Lisa’s promise is just a symbol of what gathering of 4,000, included almost 900 sur- all of us must promise and a symbol of the vivors as well as World War II veterans, res- promise the Museum embodies. The survi- cuers, and Museum supporters. Participants vors did an astonishing thing in creating the conducted family research and consulted with Museum. They have given us this national curators about their family artifacts, often do- treasure and now it is our challenge to take nating them to the Museum’s collection. They it into the future. It is a rapidly changing, of- also received a behind-the-scenes look at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ten alarming future. That is why the Museum Chairman Tom A. Bernstein speaks at the is more important than ever and why on our Museum’s educational programs. The high- Museum's National Tribute to Holocaust light was when former President Bill Clinton Survivors and World War II Veterans. Seated are 20th anniversary we launched a campaign to and Founding Museum Chairman Elie Wie- Museum Founding Chairman Elie Wiesel, former secure the Museum’s future with a robust en- President Bill Clinton and Museum Director Sara dowment. sel, who dedicated the Museum in April 1993, J. Bloomfi eld. came together again to speak about the impor- Thirty years ago the survivors were re- tance of the Museum in the future. lentless in their determination, and so shall About 11,000 people attended the Nation- Another attendee asked researcher Jude we be. Complacency is not an option. We al Tribute in Washington and the four city Richter for information on his mother and must build on their success, secure the per- events, including 1,800 survivors and almost sister, who had been sent from Warsaw to manence of what we’ve built together, and 400 World War II veterans. At these events, Auschwitz with him, but whose fates he transform the Museum into a greater global survivors and their families donated over never learned. Records show they were sent enterprise with a larger role and a more pow- 200 collections to the Museum. The collec- from Auschwitz to the Stutthof concentration erful voice for a smaller, more dangerous tions included letters, photographs, diaries, camp. “At least they were together,” he said. world—a world facing Holocaust denial, an- clothing, two concentration camp uniforms “Every artifact has so much to teach us tisemitism, and continued genocide. worn by Jews who survived on Schindler’s about the experiences of ordinary people This is a turning point, because eventu- List, and even a small stuffed bunny that was during the Holocaust,” said Curator Suzy ally the task of testimony will soon be en- made as a gift for Eva Von Ancken when she Snyder. “By preserving these objects, we trusted to us—and from us to future gen- was a toddler imprisoned in Theresienstadt. will ensure that survivors’ and victims’ sto- erations, whose connection to the Holocaust Rescuing the evidence of the Holocaust is al- ries will never be forgotten.” will be only as close as the one we forge. We ways crucial for scholarship and education. Each tribute event also included a special assume that responsibility with great humil- But for us, it is our most important prior- ceremonial presentation of commemorative ity and respect. The extraordinary courage, ity since once the eyewitness generation is pins. The pins symbolized the commitment resilience and vision of the survivors will al- gone, the collection will be the sole authentic of those present to survivors and veterans to ways animate the neshuma of the Museum. witness to the Holocaust. transmit the memory and lessons of the Ho- Sara J. Bloomfi eld is the Director of the Some of the most meaningful moments locaust to future generations. Representing United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Tehran Jewish dent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the caused worldwide attention by media outlets. Holocaust after Ahmadinejad declared that The Tehran Jewish Committee, formally Committee criticizes his comments about the Holocaust had de- registered in 1934, is an umbrella group of Ahmadinejad over stroyed the backbone of capitalism. Jewish organizations that works on behalf of Holocaust denial In an article published in the Shargh the Persian Jews in Iran. Some 30,000 Jews comments newspaper, Yeshayaei said that the Iranian currently live in Iran, which is considered as president's remarks were self-productive and the highest number of Jews living in a Mid- By R.ZAMANOV, Trend far from political wisdom. dle Eastern country besides Israel. Baku, Azerbaijan—The head of the Tehran On January 26, 2006, Yashayaei's letter The community has a representative in Jewish Committee, Haroun Yeshayaei, has to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad con- Iran's parliament (Majlis). reacted to recent remarks of Iranian Presi- cerning his Holocaust denial comments had

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 9 Trip Refl ections 2013 physical beauty of the surrounding country- tory of the camp. His stories are sad, horrify- side and the proximity of the town of Had- ing, and poignant. The teachers are stunned. By ELAINE CULBERTSON amar to this hellish place are troubling. Who They had not really thought about women knew what and when? as perpetrators. When he talks about trans- Every year I write my impressions of the That evening we stayed in a small hotel in ports of women coming to Ravensbrueck annual trip to Poland, Germany and the Celle, a town close enough to Bergen Belsen in late 1944, I know that I am able to solve Czech Republic of the Holocaust and Jewish to allow us to make it to the camp in about the puzzle of when my mom was there. She Resistance Teachers Program—sometimes 30 minutes. We held our fi rst meeting after could not remember the date, as I am sure right after they have occurred, sometimes visiting an authentic site; the discussion was that after so much time in Auschwitz she after the events have had a chance to settle in my brain. The trip is both dizzyingly fast rich and full. may not have been aware of it any longer. and remarkably slow, all at the same time. I have written about Bergen Belsen be- We learn that the transports of women were Stephen Feinberg and I prepare for months, fore, so I will only say that our welcome by put on a death march from this place and that taking care of small details, fi ne-combing the the staff and their workshops and tours were is probably what happened to my mother, not schedule, and then it is upon us and the time well thought out and received by our teach- marching out of Auschwitz, but rather out of seems to have its will with us. No amount of ers. Our group was struck by the absence of Ravensbrueck. A small detail perhaps, but preparation and detail can actually shield us anything that might resemble a concentration one that explains the proximity to the town from the events and places we are about to camp. In their minds they had envisioned she recalls having walked through on a labor study together. barracks, an Appelplatz, perhaps the barbed detail as well as the closeness of houses to wire fence and the guard towers, but Belsen the camp. (Furstenberg sits directly across a Sunday, June 30 requires the visitor to imagine what it must beautiful lake; this detail is not lost on us as We meet for the fi rst time in Washington. have been like. we look over at the town.) Dr. Heyl makes The members of the class of 2013 are young- sure to tell us that people in the town worked er than they seemed on paper, the women in the camp, that deliveries were made to the outnumber the men 19 to 5. Survivors Max camp, and that the ovens of the crematorium and Hannah Liebmann, German Jews who spewed forth ash and a horribly distinctive were saved at Le Chambon, do a great job smell. telling their story of deportation to Gurs and Dr. Heyl offers to fi nd more information their wild escape to Switzerland. It is such a on my mother. I give him her maiden name different story from what most of the teach- and her tattoo number and he believes that he ers have heard; some of the teachers dare to will be able to discover the dates of her time ask questions, but mostly they are silent out in this hellhole. It won't make a difference to of respect and awe. have these dates, but something compels me to get the facts. Class of 2013. Thursday and Friday, July 4 and 5 When I tell the teachers that my mother We visited Hadamar, a euthanasia center, was here I am choking on my words. They near Frankfurt. This was part of the T-4 One of our group, Matt Rozell, has done are startled and horrifi ed. I have felt a lump program, a Nazi policy that called for the extensive work on a death train out of Belsen in my throat since we started for this place murder of anyone who was a burden to the during the last days of the war. Veterans in and now I am struggling to speak. Why? state. Loosely defi ned these are mentally and upstate New York have come to his class to This is not my fi rst time here. Yet something physically handicapped people who wasted speak about their experience of liberating about the fragility of my mother's present the resources that the Nazis believed should the train, and Matt has shared photos taken condition makes this place very diffi cult. be reserved for those who were productive by the soldiers of the survivors as they are in society. It was based on theories that freed from the train. The photos are heart- Wednesday, July 10 actually originated in the U.S., but that breaking and extraordinary. Matt has corre- In the morning we travel from Prague to were circulated world-wide in the ’20s and sponded with people at Belsen, but this is his Terezin. The day is warm, the sun unforgiv- ’30s. The undesirables were called “useless fi rst chance to meet those with whom he has ing. We wind in and out of the fortress. Some eaters,” and the origins of the Final Solution worked to verify and bring this story to light. of the teachers venture into the isolation were hatched in these sanitariums where It is exciting to see this collaboration morph cells. trusting families were urged to send those from virtual to actual. The event has been de- As we visit the reconstructed barrack and who fi t the description. Many of the doctors tailed into a book and has been featured on see the beautiful art work displayed, I sense in the camps trained at Hadamar and similar television. We are so proud of Matt and his a change coming over the group. They are facilities. students! It is through his dedication that this beginning to feel the presence of people, or While the original building still stands, story has received the attention it deserves. should I say, the absence of them. There are there is not much on the site except a me- real things here that were touched by real morial to those who died there and a garage Sunday, July 7 people. Children expressed their despair here where the buses transporting the doomed un- We arrive at Ravensbrueck and are greet- in poems and art, adults who were accom- loaded passengers. There is a poster display ed by Dr. Matthias Heyl, the educational di- plished artists have left us vivid depictions of in the main building with pictures and stories rector, who takes us on a tour, interweaving this place. Perhaps there is almost too much of what happened to those individuals. The stories of individuals as he narrates the his- presence of absence.

TOGETHER 10 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 In the evening we board the train to Kra- teachers are startled by the size of the camp. in total burial. Even these ashes, cremated kow. The irony of trains does not escape me. They could not have imagined it. Now Ali- by the perpetrator, should not be kept above The people we are studying were transported cia walks us through the middle of the camp, ground. This monument is a desecration to by trains, not to hospitable stations or luxury taking the route that my grandmother would those it seeks to remember. hotels, not greeted by guides and taken for have taken with her two young children to One can't help but be struck by the close- lavish breakfasts with everything one’s heart the gas chamber. I am stunned by this. We ness of the camps to the surrounding villag- could desire spread before us. Their train have not walked this route before. I am alone es and towns. I know that there were harsh rides were more uncomfortable and the ele- in my thoughts as the teachers surround me. penalties for aiding Jews, particularly in Po- ment of the unknown was a constant com- What could have been going through my land. Even so, if one could not help directly, panion. There is no comparison… grandmother’s mind as she held the hands of perhaps there might have been some moral her son and daughter? Did she comfort them prohibition against benefi tting at the expense Friday, July 12 as she realized where they were headed? of your neighbor. How many moved into the At Auschwitz, I slip off to visit the newly What a perverse world that forces a mother homes of those who were deported or prof- renovated building housing the exhibit about into such a situation. Was she relieved, even ited from the goods that were distributed or the fate of the Jews. It has been redone by just a bit, that her two older daughters had “sold” to neighbors in order to have some- the Israelis and is a stark contrast to what been selected to live? thing to trade for food? had been here before. The exterior of the I want to be evolved enough in my think- building remains the same, but the inside Sunday, July 14 ing to understand the complexities of the that was once a dark warren of posters and I woke up this morning in Krakow at our situation, but I cannot help but think that photos is now light and serves a different hotel packed and ready to leave for Belzec people could have done less to abet the Nazis purpose. Where once the heroic efforts of and Lublin. As I was showering a fl utter- and more to help the Jews. some partisans and resisters such as Vladka ing thing caught my eye and frightened me. Meed were celebrated, now there is technol- There was a butterfl y in my room. It had not Tuesday, July 16 ogy that details through survivor accounts been there or I had not noticed it the night At Treblinka, our guide Waclaw takes us what happened to individuals here. The sur- before. I had stayed up reading with the light to the exhibition where he explains the lay- vivors’ words are translated into English on on and had never noticed anything being out of the camp from a model which looks one of the screens, as well as Polish. In an- drawn to the light or fl ying around. Did it eerily like a toy train station set-up. I look other room there is an exhibit devoted to the come in on my coat? The windows were not across at Talli, one of our teachers who is the power of propaganda, and fi lm clips depict open. At fi rst I was wary of it, not wanting to granddaughter of survivors. She looks as if the power of the words of Hitler, Goebbels, close my suitcase with it in there.… she will faint. As we leave the exhibition she Goering, and others. I hurry out of this room We drove to Belzec, the death camp where runs to me and I hold her in my arms while as his voice upsets me and I am surprised my grandmother, Malka Freilich, my father’s she sobs. I know the feeling of outrage and that Israelis would include footage of Hitler mother, was murdered in 1942 along with her sorrow, of anger and helplessness that she or the others. Another room has recreations three young children. She was taken from the is feeling. Yes, it was long ago, but she is a of children’s drawings faintly etched around Jewish Hospital in Drohobycz where she had young mother and she knows how this his- the perimeter about halfway up the wall. gone to give birth to her sixth child, a third tory invades and infects a family. I wonder They are so light that they are hardly vis- daughter, a child that we believe was killed for how many generations survivors’ descen- ible. I understand the symbolism, but I watch almost immediately upon being born. dants will feel as we do. as people scurry through the room without At the site, as I stood with the women looking, perhaps unaware of what is on the teachers and told them the story of my grand- Wednesday, July 17 walls. mother, a butterfl y fl uttered around us and As we are about to leave Warsaw, I warn The most powerful part of the exhibit landed on one of the teachers. It fl itted back the teachers to say goodbye now, because is the Book of Names, huge pages hanging and forth among us and stayed with us, land- the airport will change us as a group. Two almost from fl oor to ceiling with the names ing on one and then another of us. This is are fl ying off on their own, so our group is of those who perished, if their names were not a place of fl owers or plants. It is a stark shrinking. As soon as we get to Dulles, peo- registered at Yad Vashem by surviving loved memorial made to simulate ashes and burned ple will start running to make connecting ones. I fi nd the names of my mother’s fam- places. There is nothing to attract a butterfl y. fl ights and the cohesion and support that has ily and then of my father’s, and I touch each It was so peaceful in its movements, barely developed will weaken somewhat but never name. It is my custom to say the names when unfolding its wings. We stood perfectly still fade away. I know from experience that the I am in a place of memory such as this, to as it went from person to person. groups who have traveled together have a pay some small respect to them, to know that special bond that is renewed when they see someone remembers them. It is diffi cult to Monday, July 15 each other again. It is something magical, a hold the pages open by myself. I try to pho- Majdanek looks as if it could start part of this trip that even Vladka could not tograph the names with my phone, but I am functioning again at the fl ip of a switch. have foreseen when she fi rst had the vision to alone and the pages won’t stay open, and my It is eerie. The day is breezy. As we try to reach students with her message of spiritual phone won’t cooperate…. light our candles, they keep going out. We resistance through their teachers. We move on to Birkenau. It is pouring stand under the dome where the ashes of Elaine Culbertson is Project Director of the rain, fi tting for this place. We spend time 18,000 people killed in one day are kept. Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers in the guard tower surveying the area. The My heart cries out. Jewish people believe Program.

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 11 State Comptroller's in English and who had e-mails,” Brown Prague train station to said. Database To Aid He said he ran their claims fi rst “as a pi- become Holocaust Holocaust Heirs lot to see if there would be any results. If memorial By STEWART AIN, The there had been only one or By SAM SOKOL, Jerusalem Post Jewish Week two matches, we would not Site of mass deportations of Jews to ghet- have continued. We selected tos and death camps will turn into memorial New York State Comp- their applications because site set to open in 2017. troller Thomas DiNapoli they were in English and A train station in Prague from which tens has created a new link on there would be no mistake in of thousands of Jews were deported to death his website to help the heirs spelling – and we had e-mail camps and ghettos is to be turned into a Ho- of Jewish Holocaust victims addresses for them, which locaust memorial site by NGO Shoah Memo- claim money in the state’s makes it less costly to con- rial Prague. unclaimed funds database. tact them.” Bubny Station was the site of mass depor- An initial search of the He said he has requested tations during the fi nal years of World War II. site against the names of money from the State of Is- The memorial is set to open in 2017, accord- 50,000 Holocaust victims rael to hire staff to translate ing to the NGO. In June the organization held and survivors turned up the other applications. an exhibit entitled Kaddish—the name of the 4,000 matches. Now, the “None of the 180,000 ap- prayer recited by Jewish mourners—the fi rst NYS Comptroller state is asking those claim- plicants said he was look- of what is being billed as a series of events to Thomas DiNapoli ants to check the website ing for money being held generate public interest. and confi rm that there is by New York State,” Brown “The fi rst projects will take place before the building is renovated. They will initiate truly a match. said, adding that he is grateful to DiNapoli a public dialogue, offering examples of how The website is: http://www.osc.state. for agreeing to conduct the search. the Czech Holocaust might be presented at ny.us/ouf/holocaust.htm. “We are very encouraged by the 4,000 Bubny Station in the future. They will give Bobby Brown, director of Israel’s Proj- matches, and we would be happy if we were a clear signal that these smaller temporary ect HEART (Holocaust Era Asset Restitu- the vehicle that helped survivors or their exhibitions will one day grow into a center tion Taskforce), which asked the state to heirs get the money due to them,” he added. worthy of the memory of all who passed conduct the search, said his offi ce plans to The comptroller’s website pointed out through here,” according to Shoah Memorial also send e-mails to the 4,000 possible ac- also that the offi ce would do a search of its Prague’s website. count holders. dormant account database to help people “It is important for the temporary exhi- “We will say to them that we have rea- who believe it may be holding money from a bitions to focus on what actually took place son to believe there may be money held by Holocaust-era Swiss bank account that either here. The fi nal journey of thousands of peo- the state comptroller in the name of your they or a relative opened. “At the beginning of WWII many of the ple, as their identity was reduced to a mere relative,” Brown said. “We will ask them to number, began at a building in Veletrzní consult the website and apply for the money Swiss banks established branch operations in New York,” the website said. “The Swiss Street that stood right next to the Veletrzní if they believe it to be their relative’s ac- Palace, which now houses the National Gal- banks subsequently transferred funds to their count. Instructions for applying are on the lery’s collection of modern art. New York branches. After the war, the vast website.” They were then made to walk the short majority of those funds were transferred He said the e-mails would be sent as distance through the busy streets of this part back to the Swiss banks in Europe. How- soon as his offi ce is funded this year; Is- of Prague down to Bubny Station. Retracing ever, in some instances, funds belonging to rael’s 2013 budget has yet to be approved. their steps is an essential element in the com- Holocaust survivors and victims remained “We know people put money in Swiss memoration.” in those New York branches. Due to account banks [before World War II], maybe they Kaddish’s daily program included con- also put money in U.S. banks to protect it,” inactivity, some of those branch offi ces sub- certs, educational projects, public discus- Brown said. sequently reported those funds to the New sions, live readings, meetings with survivors Under New York State law, inactive or York State Comptroller’s Offi ce as dormant and witnesses and other activities. unclaimed bank accounts are turned over to accounts. While many of these accounts have the comptroller’s unclaimed funds account. already been claimed by the rightful owners, Brown said the 4,000 accounts were some accounts still remain outstanding. identifi ed when DiNapoli’s offi ce compared “If you have reason to believe that you are them against his list of 28 million unclaimed the owner of such an account, or you are an accounts – in particular those from the Ho- owner’s heir, you may write to this offi ce and locaust-era. He said the 50,000 were among our staff will conduct a thorough search of the 180,000 Holocaust heirs and survivors our records: Offi ce of Unclaimed Funds, Re: who fi led claims with his offi ce. Holocaust Era Accounts, 110 State Street, Bubny train station in Prague. “These were the people who fi led claims Albany, NY 12236.” Photo: Wikimedia Commons

TOGETHER 12 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 Michigan Holocaust survivors’ stories told in new interactive online exhibit By MARK STRYKER, Detroit Free Press Detroit. tunately, every week we lose survivors. The A Slovakian-born Jew, Manny Mittelman While there are many online educational older ones are concentrated in their mid- to was 17 in 1942 when he was taken from his resources chronicling the stories of the Holo- late 80s and the younger ones in their 70s. home to a Nazi concentration camp in Po- caust, including the Voice/Vision Holocaust It’s a race against time.” land. Three months later he was shipped to Survivor Oral History Archive at the Univer- Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of all the sity of Michigan-Dearborn, “Portraits of Hon- A rescued baby death camps, where a million Jews died in or” appears unique in its user-friendly inter- Miriam Ferber (née Monczyk) was born the gas chambers. face, its accessibility from any computer and in Sosnowiec, Poland, in 1942. Seven months the way the layers of information allow view- later, her family was forced into the Srodula ers to go as deep as they like into the subject. ghetto, but her parents arranged with their The database is searchable by name as Catholic neighbors, Josef and Stanislawa well as experience, including the categories Laczkowski, to take their daughter for safe- of “death camps,” “escape,” “child survi- keeping. vors,” “labor camps” and others. One day Stanislawa obtained a Star of The technology opens a new front in edu- David and walked into the ghetto with empty cating the public about the dangers of big- arms and out with Ferber. otry and the heinous crimes of the Holocaust. Ferber lived as a member of her new “‘Portraits of Honor’ is extremely acces- family; her parents and brother perished in sible and user-friendly, especially for the the Holocaust. When Ferber was 3, her new younger generation and students,” said Scott parents were arrested for harboring a Jewish Manny Mittelman Miller, director of curatorial affairs for the child, but Stanislawa fought like a tiger, con- U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash- vincing the authorities that the little girl was Starvation and dehydration also claimed ington. “It is especially important that the the illegitimate child of her own daughter. many. When it rained, prisoners fell to the younger generation is comfortable with this Still, Josef Laczkowski was sent to a con- ground to try to suck up water. Others drank technology.” centration camp in , where he died of their own urine. Mittelman was so delirious In December, the Holocaust Memorial typhus. from lack of food and water that his mind, Center also launched a companion passport Baptized and raised a Catholic, Ferber he said, was dead. card reader system to forge a bond between was 15 when her mother told her the truth In 1945, Mittelman and others were tak- visitors and survivors. Museum goers are about her past. Ferber was relieved, having en on a three-day death march to Gleiwitz, given a passport with the name and photo of always suspected she was Jewish. She left a sub-camp 30 miles away. Half the pris- a survivor and a summary of their Holocaust Poland at 19, eventually landing in New oners dropped dead along the way or were experience. The passport includes a scan- York and later coming to Detroit, where she shot. Mittelman survived three years in the nable QR code that links to a full biography. met her husband, Fred Ferber, at a Holocaust camps, as did two brothers and a sister, who survivor dinner dance. also were at Auschwitz. His parents and Real people’s stories Mental scars remain. The trauma of three other siblings were shot in Poland in The ability of online technology to en- separating from her Polish Catholic mother 1943 by the Nazis. Of the 100 or so mem- hance the message of remembrance was on haunts her to this day, and she suffers from bers of his extended family, all but about 15 display at the center as two local teens sat at what she calls “an identity crisis.” died in the Holocaust. How and why he re- a computer keyboard exploring the “Portraits Though she embraced her Jewish roots, mained alive is an eternal mystery. of Honor” exhibit. The computer is linked to she retained strong feelings for her Catholic “I am thankful to the Lord that it hap- a large screen that allows other visitors to upbringing and remains close with members pened,” said the deeply religious Mittelman, read along. of the family that saved her. who turned 88 recently. “But why he picked “It was a really good way to learn their Ferber is especially proud that “Portraits me out of 6 million? I have no answer. There stories,” said Natalie Moesta, 16. “It made of Honor” helps memorialize the non-Jews is no answer that a human being would un- me feel more connected to the people. It who risked their lives to save others, a story derstand.” touches you.” she believes isn’t told enough. The Southfi eld man’s harrowing story is The exhibit and website grew out of “My story honors these righteous peo- among the 400 oral histories collected in the an initiative to document survivor stories ple,” she said. “Even some Jewish people new interactive online exhibit “Portraits of started in 1999 by Charles Silow, a metro don’t recognize it. But these people jeopar- Honor: Our Michigan Holocaust Survivors.” Detroit psychologist and child of Holocaust dized their lives. My Polish mother lost her The website www.PortraitsofHonor.org, survivors. Silow, director of the Program husband and ruined the reputation of her a companion to a permanent exhibit at the for Holocaust Survivors and Families, said daughter to save my life.” Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington an additional 100 interviews will be added Hills, offers access to a searchable database to the archive this year. He estimated there ‘I’m alive, thank God’ of survivor interviews, maps, photographs, were 750 survivors in Michigan, including Reading the “Portraits of Honor” inter- audio messages and a trove of authoritative not only those imprisoned in camps but also views is, of course, a sobering experience. historical information about the Holocaust. those displaced, persecuted or discriminated But what shines through so many of the The exhibit was created by the Program for against by the Nazis or their collaborators. stories is the resiliency of the survivors, the Holocaust Survivors and Families, a ser- “Every survivor story is unique and every vice of Jewish Senior Life of Metropolitan experience is different,” Silow said. “Unfor- cont’d on p.14

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 13 Michigan Holocaust survivors’ stories “I am happy because if I wouldn’t be happy yelling. Mittelman retreated to a corner, sit- cont’d from p. 13 I would still be in Auschwitz,” the man ex- ting quietly. A fellow passenger approached plained. and asked how he could remain so calm. way in the face of unimaginable evil so many Mittelman never forgot this. He married “I’m a Holocaust survivor,” he replied. “I were able to build new lives. Yes, there is his wife, Bessie, in Switzerland in 1948 and close my eyes and think, ‘I’m in Auschwitz!’ bitterness and anger at times, but more often came to Michigan in 1954, where he made Then I open my eyes and say to myself, ‘I’m pleas for sanity, for hope, for love. his living as a heating and cooling contractor. not in Auschwitz! I’m a free man, I’m in Mittelman recalled a night in 1944 The couple have six children, 22 grandchil- America, I’m alive, thank God. I’m in an air- when he and fellow prisoners were watch- dren and 40 great-grandchildren. port; I have a roof over my head, I have food. ing fl ames shoot out of the crematorium, In his “Portraits of Honor” interview, he There will be another fl ight.’ discussing their fate. One man shocked the recalls being in an airport once when a fl ight “Auschwitz taught me it’s not the end of others by saying he was happy at Auschwitz. was canceled. Everyone was upset, angry, the world. There is a tomorrow.” Inside the Claims Conference: sues—from person- being helped and the amounts they receive An Update alities to internal are greater. In many of their programs this cont’d from p. 4 Jewish politics—be increase amounts to as much as 700 percent. put aside so that the This huge expansion is a tribute not only to der Juden in Deutschland, the representative Claims Conference the leadership of the conference, but also to body of German Jewry, told the Jerusalem can continue in suc- its relationship with the German government Post. He explained that the directors were cessfully providing who recognize their effi ciency, integrity and only permitted a yes or no vote on a long for Holocaust survi- compassion,” he said. slate of candidates as a whole, and were not vors.” The Claims Conference board also given the option of abstaining. Vivian Wine- voted to establish a special planning com- Accordingly, Kramer said, a number of or- Claims Conference man, president of mission composed of Claims Conference ganizations, including the World Jewish Con- Executive Vice President the Board of Depu- directors, Holocaust survivors and “quali- Greg Schneider gress, did not vote as a form of protest. Max ties of British Jews, fi ed” outsiders tasked with promulgating Liebmann told the Jerusalem Post separately praised the work of “recommendations for the promotion of ap- that the American Gathering similarly had the Claims Conference following the board propriate Shoah research, education and re- refused to participate in the vote. meeting. membrance even subsequent to the demise “Our board spoke loudly, clearly and unan- “One cannot comment on the confer- of the living survivors.” imously,” Executive Vice President Greg ence without mentioning not only the excel- This group is to conduct a “review of the Schneider told the Jerusalem Post in an email lent work which it is doing, but the way in administration, management and governance after his reelection. “It was inspiring to see which it has increased so greatly during the structure of the Claims Conference,” among unanimous agreement that all extraneous is- last 15 years. More categories of victims are other things. A meditation on remembrance A short fi lm montage followed Werb’s (It may be that I build my castles in the air lecture, including excerpts from works by It may be that my God does not exist at all cont’d from p. 3 composers Robert Heilbut, who composed In my dream it is brighter, in my dream I humanity as it is forcibly stripped away?... while an inmate at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, feel better Victor Hugo once said, ‘Music expresses and Bergen Belsen, and William Hillsley, a In my dream the sky is even bluer than that which cannot be said and on which it is London born pianist and music teacher who blue.) impossible to be silent.’ As a universal lan- had moved to the Netherlands in 1935 and I understood as never before that perhaps guage, music has the power to cross chrono- was imprisoned by the Germans in civilian the most important aspect of all the music logical and geographical borders to share a internment camps. composed and poems written during the story, a history, to awaken in us the emotions A handful of images from Ann Weiss’s years of the Holocaust was that they enabled that once compelled the composer and which book accompanied a string quartet by the the composers, the interpreters, the writers, were originally shared with an entirely dif- French composer Emil Goué who had spent the listeners and the readers to escape if only ferent audience.” the war years in a prisoner-of-war camp. for a little while into dreams where the sky Bret Werb, the United States Holocaust Without warning, I saw the photograph of my was even bluer than blue. Memorial Museum’s Music Collection Cu- father, Josef Rosensaft, as a young man stand- And I am deeply grateful to Special En- rator, spoke eloquently about the compos- ing near the castle in his hometown of Będzin. voy Ira Forman and to Olivia Hilton for giv- ers of both classical and popular music in At that moment I remembered the lyr- ing me the incomparable gift of seeing my the ghettos and concentration camps of Nazi ics of a song by the Yiddish poet Yosef Pa- father on the screen in the State Department dominated Europe whose works illuminate piernikov and I could almost hear my father auditorium 38 years after his death as he had a far too often overlooked dimension of the singing it in his beautiful tenor voice: been before. genocide of six million Jews during World Zol zayn az ikh boy in der luft mayne Menachem Z. Rosensaft is General Counsel of the World War II. Theirs was simultaneously a mani- Jewish Congress and vice president of the American shlesser Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their festation of defi ance and a preservation of in- Zol zayn az mayn Got iz ingantsn nishto Descendants. He teaches about the law of genocide dividual sanity and communal culture in the In troym iz mir heller, in troym iz mir besser and war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia, face of uncompromising barbarity. In kholem–der himl–nokh bloyer fun bloy. Cornell and Syracuse universities.

TOGETHER 14 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 Holocaust survivors say Knesset fails them By OMRI EFRAIM, Israel News PLEASE KEEP US IN MIND A heated debate on State aid to Holocaust trol Committee, headed by MK Amnon Co- WHEN YOU THINK OF THE survivors was held recently in the Knesset hen (Shas), discussed fi ndings of the State FUTURE Comptroller’s report on the subject (and State Control Committee. The height of the OUR MISSION AS MEMBERS OF THE fi ndings of the Ombudsman’s report, which debate was when members of the committee AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLO- was published some two months ago). and Ministers were addressed by Holocaust CAUST SURVIVORS & THEIR DESCENDANTS Lapid attended the hearing and said, “We survivors who came to the Knesset and it IS TO PERPETUATE THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE are sending the Survivors Rights Authority was focused on the decision to transfer the SHOAH THROUGH EDUCATION AND COMMEMO- to the Ministry of Social Affairs, so that they handling of survivors from the Finance Min- RATION. istry to the Social Affairs Ministry. will be under one roof… Everything will be concentrated on one phone. Our goal is to WE EDUCATE OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS This raised the wrath of Avraham Berkow- optimize the factors and the Social Affairs WHILE REMEMBERING AND COMMEMORATING itz, a Holocaust survivor, who erupted in minister will head the umbrella organization OUR PAST. IN ORDER TO LEAVE A LASTING shouts directed at Welfare Minister Meir Co- which will handle it.” LEGACY TO SHOW THAT OUR LIVES HAVE MADE hen, “You want to move us to the most mis- In addition to Lapid and Cohen, the meet- A DIFFERENCE, EACH OF US CAN BE A PART OF erable, neglected department.” ing was also attended by the State Comp- ENSURING THAT OUR SACRED TASK OF REMEM- Even as he troller retired Judge Joseph Shapira, retired BRANCE WILL CONTINUE IN YEARS TO COME. was exchanging Justice Dalia Dorner, representatives of AS YOU PLAN YOUR LEGACY, WE WOULD harsh words with ministries and Holocaust survivors. A rep- BE HONORED IF YOU WOULD CONSIDER THE the minister and resentative of the Ombudsman’s offi ce told AMERICAN GATHERING AS A PART OF YOUR MK Elazar Stern, the committee that over the years, it handled “FUTURE.” YOU CAN ARRANGE TO LEAVE A Berkowitz turned many hundreds of survivors. According to BEQUEST TO THE AMERICAN GATHERING OF to Finance Minis- him, the rate of justifi ed complaints last year JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS & THEIR ter Yair Lapid and reached 38%, compared to the average of DESCENDANTS IN YOUR WILL. THE FOLLOW- said, “Don’t allow general complaints standing at 28%. “This ING WORDING IS RECOMMENDED: Yair Lapid this. You want to means that the survivors still need to over- “I GIVE AND BEQUEATH ______TO THE transfer the survivors to the department that come quite a few bureaucratic obstacles,” AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLO- is not allocated anything. We will get up on said the representative. CAUST SURVIVORS & THEIR DESCENDANTS, our feet and demonstrate.” Ofra Ross, the chair of the Survivors A NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION, WITH ITS Miriam Greiner, a Holocaust survivor born Rights Authority in the Finance Ministry said PRINCIPAL OFFICE LOCATED AT 122 WEST in Budapest, said, “For years we have been during the meeting, “We made major changes 30TH STREET, SUITE 205, NEW YORK, NEW saying that Holocaust survivors should be in 2010 in dealing with survivors. We entered YORK, 10001” under one roof, but we did not want to have tens of thousands of additional survivors un- WE ARE HUMBLED BY THE TASK AHEAD the stigma of the der the care of the Authority, and treated dis- OF US AND GRATEFUL TO EACH OF YOU FOR Ministry of So- eases that had been previously untreated.” YOUR CONFIDENCE AND SUPPORT. cial Affairs.” Lapid mentioned a fi ve-year plan to trans- fer NIS 500 million in aid to Holocaust sur- Chairman of LETTER TO THE EDITOR: vivors: “We have created a consolidated list the Center for Following the interest in my book on Ho- of all the survivors, about 200,000 people. Holocaust Sur- locaust Rescuers, The Other Schindlers, I We are checking to ensure that everyone gets vivor Organiza- am now researching into those who betrayed what is coming to them, it is not a gift, these tions, Colette Jews in the Holocaust. people are the founders of the country.” Avital, added, Dora Roth was another participant in the I should be really grateful to hear from “There is fear any of your readers who have stories to tell. Colette Avital discussions. A Holocaust survivor, she con- that they will sistently attends the relevant discussions I am particularly interested in cases of be- throw the baby and protests strongly against the shoddy as- trayal by neighbors, school friends, teachers out with the bathwater. Survivors fear they sistance, as she defi nes it, that she and other etc., but want to hear from as wide a spread will become survivors receive. of countries as possible. Any photos would welfare cases.” At the discussions, Roth addressed La- be copied and returned or can be emailed. But ap- pid, “I’m disabled at 65 percent because the All stories will be clearly acknowledged parently, the Germans shot me, and because I suffered as in The Other Schindlers. government from tuberculosis I have only one function- lf readers want to know more about me is determined ing lung. I’m not complaining about it, but they can visit my website www.agnesgrun- to transfer the National Insurance and the pension of my waldspier.com where they will read that I survivors to late husband were taken out of my 65 per- was a baby in the Budapest Ghetto. the Social Af- cent disability. And you are silent about that? l can be contacted by email—agnesgrun- MK Amnon Cohen fairs Ministry. You were born into the home of a Holocaust [email protected] and live in London The State Con- survivor.” Agnes Grunwald-Spier

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 15 A Birkenau Survivor’s base. His compassionate narrative illumi- decades later by my grandmother, Eiger’s nates the constraints and impossible choices daughter, Dora, herself a survivor of Aus- Memoirs - an Addition to that governed life in the camps, while high- chwitz, and edited and brought to publica- the Literature lighting the courage of those who main- tion by his grandchildren and great-grand- By ETAN NEWMAN tained their humanity in a world dominated children. Sky Tinged Red is a tribute to the Sky Tinged Red: by brutality. The book includes an “Index of enduring power of survivor testimony and A Chronicle of Two Names,” a tool that tracks the stories of the the transmission of memory through succes- and a Half Years in hundreds of people Eiger met during his im- sive generations. More information about Auschwitz (Beaver’s prisonment. the book can be obtained at: http://www.sky- Pond Press, 2013) is When I fi rst read the manuscript, I dis- tingedred.com/ my great-grandfather covered a man whose humble narrative fo- Isaia Eiger’s chron- cuses not on himself but on the lives of those Researcher request icle of his imprison- who did not survive. I met a leader whose My name is Andrew Kornbluth; I'm a doc- ment at Auschwitz- ingenuity and compassion are revealed in his toral student in History at the University of Birkenau, beginning schemes to “organize” food and medicine for California, Berkeley, and the current Takiff in the spring of 1942, desperate fellow prisoners. I marveled at the Family Foundation Fellow at the Holocaust when he and his bravery that led him to bargain for his life Museum in Washington DC. My dissertation “comrades” were forced to help construct with an SS offi cer who discovered maps he is about post-war justice and the Holocaust the new death camp under unimaginable made for the camp’s underground movement. in Poland, specifi cally the trials of Poles ac- conditions. As a schreiber (registrar) and a And I was—and continue to be—inspired by cused of crimes against Jews held between participant in the camp's resistance move- my great-grandfather’s hope for the future, 1944 and 1956. If any of The Gathering's ment, Eiger’s acquaintance with Birkenau, emanating even from the depths of a bunker readers have fi rst or secondhand accounts its hierarchy, and its people was extensive. where he was forced to sleep standing up for or opinions regarding Polish justice or law Introducing the reader to the personalities more than a week. enforcement (be it the courts, prosecutors, there, he chronicles the extremes of human Written in Yiddish shortly after the end criminal or secret police) during this period, behavior, from the most noble to the most of the war, the manuscript was translated please contact me at: [email protected] Survivor Backs Claims nization arguing passionately for evermore money so that victims could age peacefully Conference in their homes. By JEHUDA EVRON, The Jewish Week And so, as a survivor, I would like to I am a Holocaust survivor who sits on the thank the individuals who work so hard on board of directors of the Claims Conference. behalf of thousands of survivors they will At the recent annual board meeting, we dis- never meet and whose homes they will never cussed this year’s negotiations with the Ger- see. Many of these individuals who are not man government, which led to, among other survivors were born after the Shoah or lived benefi ts, an agreement that will result in $1 amount for 2015 will be €205 million. elsewhere during that time, yet they have billion for homecare for Holocaust victims The German offi cials, as committed as made the welfare of elderly victims their from 2014 through 2017. they are to their country’s obligation to sur- life’s calling and their passionate crusade. For elderly, needy survivors who wish to vivors, did not come to this funding level of To be sure, there are many survivors who do age at home, there is no issue more important. their own, free accord; they have been hear- good work for the Claims Conference, and Holocaust victims alive today were denied a ing from the Claims Conference for the last they are to be thanked as well. normal youth in stable surroundings. They decade about the numbers of survivors who Together, the survivors and others who were uprooted, subject to indescribable tor- need and will need this aid, and about their comprise the Claims Conference leadership, ment, often lost all family members, and then strained fi nancial circumstances, much of as well as those who have preceded them, had to begin their lives anew after the war. which stem from their experience as victims are writing a page in Jewish history that is Now, in their old age, Holocaust victims often of attempted genocide. Survivors not only still not complete. For 60 years, the Claims suffer physically and emotionally more than suffered damage to health, but lost any family Conference has advocated for the rights other elderly. It is of paramount importance to inheritances or assets that might have accrued of survivors, and now the negotiations for them to be able to live out their days in stable, to them. In addition, most had to re-settle in homecare are the latest chapter in this orga- familiar surroundings rather than in a nursing foreign lands after the war, further stigmatiz- nization’s great history. As both a survivor home, and avoid even more trauma. ing and tramautizing their existences. and a director of the Claims Conference, I The current Claims Conference leader- have every confi dence that its current leader- ship has been able to convince offi cials in the In my youth, enduring all I did during the Shoah, I could never have possibly imagined ship will continue achieving as much as pos- German Ministry of Finance of their coun- sible for those of us who remain, for as long try’s obligation to support this need. When that 70 years later Jews would be working with Germany to attain care for those who as needed. negotiations for homecare funding began a Jehuda Evron is president of the Holocaust Restitu- decade ago, in 2004, the German govern- survived. I never could have conceived of tion Committee and president of Holocaust Survivors- ment committed €6 million for the year; the an empowered, international Jewish orga- Queens Chapter.

TOGETHER 16 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 Susan Eisenhower's Tribute He told of the more than 10,000 of them cont’d from p. 6 who had volunteered to fi ll out important divisions before the decisive Battle of the Survival has placed upon us the would be people who might try to deny such Bulge. 2,600 of them were American blacks. responsibility of making sure that the heinous crimes. What would you or I have “These are America’s fi ghting men!!” Holocaust is remembered forever. done at such a moment? Most people at the They did their duty, the general said, with Each of us has the sacred obligation time thought his insistence on document- “cheerfulness under conditions of unbeliev- to share this task while we still can. ing the camps was unnecessary. Yet Eisen- able hardship.” However, with the passage of each hower’s immediate response has had a last- What would you and I have done in their year, we realize that time is against ing, historic impact. Imagine today trying to places? And would we have responded, us, and we must make sure to utilize counter the Holocaust deniers, including Ira- when the call for volunteers had gone out? all means for future remembrance. nian President Ahmadinejad, without having We honor our veterans, and salute those A permanent step toward the historic evidence Eisenhower demanded. who are here with us tonight. achieving this important goal can My father, John S. D. Eisenhower, was There are many other people from all be realized by placing a unique and serving in the European Theater at that time. walks of life who exhibited uncommon visible marker on the gravestone of He saw his father the day after his visit to bravery during the war. But there is a spe- every survivor. The most meaningful Ohrdruf. Based on Ike’s account, a few days cifi c group that has not been given the at- symbol for this purpose is our later John visited Buchenwald to bear wit- tention it so richly deserves. They are the Survivor logo, inscribed with the ness as well. Jews in the ghettos and in the camps who words HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR. risked their lives to save other Jews. I was This simple, yet dramatic, marker moved by a recent story in the Washington will reaffi rm our uniqueness and Post by Menachem Z. Rosensaft. He told our place in history for future his mother’s story – of the tragic loss of her generations. parents, her husband and small son in the Our impressive MATZEVAH Holocaust. Despite this, Hadassah Rosen- marker is now available for purchase. saft never gave up. While at Bergen-Belsen It is cast in solid bronze, measuring she and her other campmates found count- 5x7 inches, and can be attached less ways to save lives—by stealing food, to new or existing tombstones. smuggling medicine, and nurturing the or- phaned children. She and others like her The cost of each marker is $125. On the morning of April 12th, 1945 General Additional donations are gratefully Eisenhower met Generals Bradley and Patton gave those terrifi ed children not just songs appreciated. at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp. Afterward and comfort—but more importantly—hope. Eisenhower also ordered every American Hadassah Rosensaft and a handful of Let us buy the marker now and soldier in the area who was not on the front leave instructions in our wills for its lines to visit Ohrdruf and Buchenwald. He campmates helped to keep as many as 149 wanted them to see for themselves what they children alive throughout the winter and use. This will enable every one of us were fi ghting against. to leave on this earth visible proof spring of 1945. Later, she refl ected on the inmates of of our miraculous survival and an A month later, on June 18, General Eisen- Bergen-Belsen: everlasting legacy of the Holocaust. hower held a press conference at the Penta- “For the greater part of the liberated gon. The press corps asked him about his de- The cost of each marker is US $125 Jews of Bergen-Belsen there was no ecsta- termination to shine a light on the atrocities. including shipping & handling. sy, no joy at our liberation. We had lost our Make checks payable to: “When I found the fi rst camps like that families, our homes. We had no place to go, American Gathering I think I never was so angry in my life,” and mail to: nobody to hug, and nobody who was wait- American Gathering of Jewish Eisenhower replied. “The bestiality dis- ing for us, anywhere. We had been liberated Holocaust Survivors and played there… and the horrors I really would from death and from the fear of death, but Their Descendants not even want to describe… I think people we were not free from the fear of life.” Attn: Markers should know about such things…I think the 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 What would you and I have done? With New York, NY 10001 people at home ought to know what they are courage and conviction, survivors of the fi ghting for…” Name ______Holocaust rebuilt their lives, and those same Address______From North Africa and Italy, to the people worked hard to help make the United City ______beaches of Normandy through France and States the free world’s global superpower. State ______Zip ______into Germany, those armed forces fought I cannot say it strongly enough: this Mu- Phone______hard, demonstrating legendary courage seum is more than a place for the remem- E-mail ______and tenacity. At the same press conference, brance of the victims of the Holocaust and Number of Markers ______Eisenhower spoke in emotional terms about those who liberated them. It is a monument Total Amount Enclosed $______the sacrifi ce of the American fi ghting men. to the indomitable human spirit.

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 17 took me there to visit someone; this is prob- I am also looking any information about ably where the gas stove in the kitchen blew my cousin, Moniek Moszkowicz (mother, up and I was taken to the military hospital in Balcia née Grundman, and father, Chaim Wildfl ecken because the injuries were too se- Moszkowich, who were also all from Lodz, vere for local care. Wildfl ecken (also called Poland. Fulda) US Military Hospital—I was in this FROM ALL GENERATIONS, Inc. hospital for about 2 months recuperating From Eveline Zimmerman, a Survivor in SERENA WOOLRICH, from burn and other injuries. A relative took Haifa, Israel. PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER me through Regensburg, Bremen/Bremer- I still haven't given up hope to, one day, PLEASE SEND RELEVANT RESPONSES haven, Frankfurt am Main, and , locate my maternal family from the Ukraine TO: [email protected] but I suspect that these were only temporary (as well as from Poland). transit sites before sailing. What I do remem- Odessa: Moniek/Monjek Neman/ From Aron Finkelstein, a 3g in Lakewood, ber are the "Old Ones" and their melodies, Naiman/Nejman. His wife Manya/Menje/ New Jersey. love and hope. Metije Tabak/Tabakhoff/Tabakow. Their My grandfather, Motel (Yisroel Morde- If you were too young to remember much daughter Mussia/Maria Neman/Naiman/ chai) Finkelstein, from Pinczow, Poland, of the camp events, could you please ask Nejman. They had another two children was married to Mindel Belfer from Wodzis- your relatives if anybody remembers inci- whose names I do not know low, Poland before the Holocaust. Mindel, dents like these? Further details of my Pervomajsk, Nikolaevna and Odessa: along with a few of their children, perished identity are tied to these events. Tabakov/Tabakowa/Tabacoff familiesI saac/ in the Holocaust. We are not sure of the Iszak Tabakow/Tabacoff/Tabakhof and Ma- names of these children. I would like to fi nd From Glenn Muenzer, a 2g in East Mead- riassa—shtetl of Bogopol out their names along with any memories of ow, New York. Pervomajsk/Olwiopol/Golta, Nikolaevna: my grandfather from before the war. If there My father's name was Wilhelm Munzer Saposznikow/Sapojnjekhov/Sapojnikov are any Survivors from Pinczow (in Yiddish (Munser); DOB 6/10/1924. In the US his familiesShlomo/Szlomo and Hana/ it was called Pinchiv) or Wodzislow (in Yid- name was William Muenzer. He was in the Khanje Saposznikow from Golta. dish it was called Voidislov) I would very Foehrenwald DP camp, in Munich, Germa- If anyone has any information about the much like to speak with them. ny. My father said he was a police offi cer town of Dzialoszyce (and/or names of vic- in the camp—he referred to himself as the tims from there )and about my maternal From Peretz Kranoth (formerly Kornstein, "police chief." cousin Mila Gryzocki/Gryzocka (maiden Pavle), a Survivor in Jerusalem, Israel. My grandfather's given name was Moritz name), her husband and three children. Her Me and my late mother, Kornstein, Ro- (sp?) and my grandmother's given name was parents' names: Dawid and Rywka Gryzocki zsi, from Subotica, Serbia, were deported to Matilda. My father's brother's name was Austria. We were in three villages: Brand, Felix (DOB 12/30/1930). They were from From Michele Blaska, a 2g in Woodbury, Gmund and Weitra from April 1944 till May Lemberg, Poland which is now L'viv, in New York: 1945. We were forced to work in fi elds of pri- Ukraine. My grandfather had two brothers I was going through some old papers of vate farmers. I am looking for Survivors who and one of them had two sons (twins) named my father’s. I’m not sure if you ever asked were in the same places to know more about William and Arthur and my father couldn't about, anyone living in the IRO Camp 231 at what happened there—I was 7 years old. track them down. Steyr, Austria. It turns out after the war end- My father's mother, Matilda née Rit- ed, my father, Velvel Szymanowicz, lived From Jacob (Jay) Kuperman, a Survivor tel, had two sisters and a brother. My father there from 1946-47. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. found out that his mother's brother was a col- I am searching for my family, the name was lege professor in Lemberg and his name was From Leo Braun, a Survivor in Sao Paolo, Hainfl ing—they lived in Warsaw on Pawia Janusz (PH) Rittel (my grandfather heard he Brazil: 14 (Pavia). Maybe someone knows of them? was killed by Ukrainian soldiers). My father I am an Austrian survivor born in 1926 told me he wrote books on philosophy. now living in São Paulo, SP, Brazil. In Vien- From Maria (Maruschia) Mackey, a 2g in I would love to fi nd out if I have any rela- na I had a school friend named Hans Heim. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. tives that are still around. My father told me As far as I know he escaped to Valparaiso First name, Maruschia (Maruschkada, that they all perished. or Santiago in Chile in 1938/39. I wonder Muschia). I am looking for anyone who re- whether you could help me to fi nd him or members a family whose child was run over From Ruth Minsky Sender, a Survivor in maybe his children, if any. and killed. That might have been my brother. East Setauket, New York. Germany between 1948-1951—some of DP I am Riva Minska (now Ruth Minsky From Erwin Deutsch, a Survivor in Tel camps were near these towns. Koblenz- An- Sender) from Lodz, Poland. I am search- Aviv, Israel. dernach (anyone been to the ancient mikvah ing for my brothers,Motel and Moisze Min- I am looking, for Survivors from there?) Hanau —anybody remember or have ski, both born in Lodz, sons of Nacha (née Neunkirchen Lager in Austria near Wiener pictures of the carousel? Schweinfurt—there Grundman) and Avrom Minski also from Neustadt; there were three lagers for Hun- was an old-folks home for displaced persons Lodz. Motel and Moisze were deported from garian Jews liberated by the Red Army in who were too ill to immigrate. My mother the Lodz ghetto in August 1944. April 1944.

TOGETHER 18 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 HERSCHEL US Army Chaplain to enter and participate in Meir Lau, who grew up to become the Ash- SCHACTER the liberation of the Buchenwald concentra- kenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. Later he aided Herschel tion camp on April 11, 1945, barely an hour in the resettlement of displaced persons, one Schacter (October after it had been liberated by Gen. George of whom was teenaged Elie Wiesel, one of 10, 1917-March Patton's troops. Rabbi Schacter remained some thousand Jewish orphans liberated that 21, 2013), a for- at Buchenwald for months, tending to sur- day. He was discharged from the Army with mer chairman of vivors and leading religious services. One the rank of captain. the Conference of of the children who he personally rescued Schacter was the rabbi of the Mosholu Presidents of Major from the camp was then 7-year-old Yisrael Jewish Center in the Bronx from 1947 until American Jewish it closed in 1999. Organizations and a prominent student of In 1956, he went to the Soviet Union with Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, died March 21, an American rabbinic delegation as advocate 2013. He was 95. for the rights of Soviet Jews and an adviser Schacter was born in Brownsville, Brook- on the subject to President Richard M. Nix- lyn, the youngest of 10 children. His parents on. came from Poland. His father, Pincus, was a One of the world’s most respected Tal- seventh-generation shochet; his mother, the mudic scholars, he had a distinguished as- former Miriam Schimmelman, was a real es- sociation and career with RIETS for more tate manager. than 40 years. A renowned posek [decisor of Schacter earned a bachelor’s degree from Jewish law], he held the Nathan and Vivian Yeshiva University in New York in 1938 and Fink Distinguished Professorial Chair in Tal- Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary mud and lectured in communities around the in 1941. He spent about a year as a pulpit Noted in Passing world. Rabbi Schachter also served as senior rabbi in Stamford, Connecticut before enlist- posek for the Orthodox Union and authored ing in the Army in 1942. more than 100 scholarly articles and numer- earned a second master’s degree, an MBA During World War II, he was a chaplain in ous books. from George Washington University. the Third Army's VIII Corps and was the fi rst During the Clinton Administration, as During her professional career she the wife of the Ambassador to the European worked in a variety of jobs that focused on FRANCES Union, Fran Eizenstat pushed to make the helping low-income Americans achieve the EIZENSTAT ambassador’s residence the fi rst kosher resi- American dream. These included working dence in the history of the U.S. diplomatic Frances Eizen- in the Model Cities program (1968-70) in corps. stat combined a Atlanta; the Children’s Defense Fund with For the past 12 years, Fran Eizenstat life of professional Marion Wright Edelman in Washington; a served on the international board of directors accomplishment leader of the White House Conference on of the American Jewish Joint Distribution focused on the dis- Families (1979-81), where she helped shape Committee, which serves Jews in distress advantaged in the federal programs to strengthen low income around the world. She has been an indefati- U.S., and on Jews in families; and after earning her MBA, serv- gable member of the board, participating in distress around the world, especially in the ing as a Housing Manager in the low income trips from Argentina and Russia to Israel. former Soviet Union, with a deep commit- housing section at FNMA. For the past four years, she has served on ment to Judaism and the State of Israel. Her non-profi t leadership took on na- the board of directors of the Defi ant Requiem She obtained her undergraduate degree at tional and international dimensions when Foundation, which has sponsored “Defi ant Brandeis University (1965), where her deep she moved with her husband, Stuart Eizen- Requiem: Verdi at Terezin,” a concert drama affection and ties to the State of Israel began, stat, to Washington, when he became Chief which honors the courage of the Jewish pris- spending part of her junior year there in the Domestic Policy Adviser to President Jimmy oner choir and its leader Rafael Schechter at Hiatt program. Carter. She served for two terms on the na- the Theresienstadt concentration camp dur- She obtained a Masters in Social Work tional board of directors of Mazon, the Jew- ing the Holocaust. from Boston College (1967), and then ish response to hunger. Hungarian Holocaust survivors to However, Gustav Zoltai, the executive refugees arriving in Israel and Hebraicizing receive reparations director of the Federation of Jewish Com- their names. cont’d from p. 7 munities in Hungary (Mazsihisz), told The “They could not identify the persons. the treasury to Mazsok, a committee of gov- Jerusalem Post that the issue came down to That was the problem,” he said. ernment offi cials and Jewish representatives. a simple problem of mistaken identities. Speaking with the Post shortly before Last year the Hungarian Ministry of Public “The Claims Conference did not make the completion of the deal, György Szabó, Administration and Justice said that based on this money disappear,” he said. Rather, the president of the Mazsok, said the negotiations the report submitted by the Claims Confer- Claims Conference’s list of survivors in took fi ve months, but that all outstanding ence to date, “it is impossible to identify the Israel did not match the list of survivors issues had been resolved. individuals eligible for compensation.” held by the Hungarian government due to

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 19 Noted in Passing was stirred. It was “those children sitting in When the Nazis fi nally fell, more than the station, with those enormous eyes, look- 800 of Beitz’s Jews were still alive. Berthold Beitz ing at you,” he recalls. At the end of 1953 Alfried von Berthold Beitz was a person of deep Protestant Bohlen und Halbach appointed Berthold Be- Beitz was one principles and convictions, who had never itz as his chief executive. Beitz, vice presi- of the few Ger- succumbed to Nazi propaganda or joined the dent of the Krupp Foundation, set up by the mans who pro- party. When he was sent to Eastern Poland he German industrial conglomerate to benefi t vided refuge and was shocked by the brutality of Germans and the arts, said he did it “for humanity.” And he risked their lives Ukrainians. Beitz was able to employ Jews added softly, “As I look back, I can now say to save Jews. for several years because of the German that I did something in my life.” He added: The son of need for oil. He was under constant pressure “I am proud of what I did out of a sense of a wealthy Nazi-sympathizing family, civil to surrender them, but Beitz found he could humanity. engineer Beitz was a 27-year-old junior ex- “control” the local SS offi cer, Friedrich Hil- In announcing Beitz’s passing, World ecutive at Royal Dutch Shell’s Hamburg of- debrand. During tennis matches or hunting Jewish Congress President fi ce when the war broke out. One evening in trip he would convince Hildebrand to leave noted that Berthold Beitz, who died recently 1941, his grandfather, a Nazi notable, took his Jews alone. at the age of 99, was “one of the great Ger- him to dinner at the lavish home of German Beitz began to save Jews by hiring them. mans of the past century” who had “earned munitions magnate Alfried Krupp. Among “I should have employed qualifi ed person- the everlasting love and gratitude of the the guests was Reinhard Heydrich, one of nel. Instead, I chose tailors, hairdressers and Jewish people” for saving hundreds of Jews Hitler’s senior henchmen. Germany had just Talmudic scholars and gave them all cards as in the Boryslav region, nowadays part of attacked the Soviet Union, and the Weh- vital ‘petroleum technicians.’” Ukraine, between 1941 and 1944. “For many rmacht, Heydrich noted, was taking over Beitz and his young wife also hid a Jew- Jews he was a beacon of hope in a sea of oil refi neries in western Poland. Enthusias- ish child in their own home. And like Oscar despair. He not only risked his own life by tically, the young Beitz offered his services Schindler, Beitz often went to the train sta- providing false papers to several hundred and was named a director of the Karpaten Ol tion to pull his Jewish workers off the death Jewish workers in the oil refi nery he ran in company in Boryslaw, Poland. trains. “Once I found one of my secretaries Boryslav, but like Raoul Wallenberg, Chiune Beitz soon found that while there was and her aged mother,” Beitz recalls. He got Sugihara, Oskar Schindler, Nicholas Winton, relatively little oil in the mountain region, them out, but the SS would not be fooled. Irena Sendler and others, Berthold Beitz was there were a lot of Jews—almost 50 percent They judged the mother too old, and forced a true mensch. He was a hero of the Holo- of the population. Most were in ghetto work her back on the cattle car. “The daughter caust at a time when it was a crime to be a camps. When death trains began running turned to me. ‘Herr Direktor, may I also re- humane person. He will never be forgotten to Auschwitz and Treblinka his conscience turn to the car?’” Beitz never saw her again. for his tremendous acts of kindness.” STEVE ABRAMOVICI a family that was paid to hide him. Steve Abramovici, 78, of Fort Lee, for- Living apart lasted two months, but even- merly of West New York, NJ, died on Janu- tually the family was reunited after being lib- ary 17 at home. erated after the Soviet army passed through Born in Europe, he was a Holocaust sur- Slovakia. Jan and his parents became the Ba- vivor and an engineer for Block Drugs in Jer- lans and immigrated to the United States in sey City. He was a member of Talmud Torah 1948. His grandparents had been deported in of West New York. 1944 and perished in the Holocaust. Though now free, the Balans chose to JOHN keep their Christian identities. But John’s BALAN able to Jews at the time. partner of 36 years, Annie, was Jewish, and Born Jan The decision to go into hiding was made made him aware of the Jewish world. This Braun on Nov. in 1944 as the Nazi occupation of Slovakia awareness, combined with dozens of trips to 29, 1934 in became more and more dangerous for the Israel, helped to erode what John referred to Bratislava, the family. John’s elementary school homeroom as his religious “charade.” only child of teacher, Nora Palethys, and her husband, Following a diagnosis of cancer in 1997, Alexander and Karel, became friends with John’s parents and John sought help through meditation led by Cornelia Braun, he lived with his parents and offered to hide the family. But soon it became a rabbi he liked very much. He attended ser- maternal grandparents in a villa owned by increasingly diffi cult to maintain a safe haven vices and gained a sense of community un- them until they were forced to leave in 1938 for the household of six. Eventually the time known to him before. He became more in- as a consequence of anti-Jewish legislation. came for the Brauns to separate from their volved and became a founder of the Shul of Baptized just before his 4th birthday by a friends and from each other. John’s mother New York on the Lower East Side, where he man his father befriended, the family imme- bribed her way into a Catholic-run tuberculo- would take on the role of treasurer for many diately began their efforts to lead their lives sis sanitarium. John’s father left for the farm years. You can read more of John’s history as Christians in the hope that their efforts of a woman who had been close to the family in the book To Life: 36 Stories of Memory would provide protection otherwise unavail- when John was a baby. John went to live with and Hope.

TOGETHER 20 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 Survivor’s Group in Cedarhurst, NY 22 JOHANNES years ago and was in the movie Paper Clips. JACOBUS He was a cutter in the garment industry in BOS Born on Feb- NewYork City. ruary 21, 1925 in Rotterdam, PERETZ HOCHMAN Netherlands, By Amanda Borschel- Bos was the son Dan, The Times of Is- of the Adria- rael nus Bos and Peretz Hochman, Katharina Hen- was cut short by the Nazi invasion. one of the last of the drjn DeRoode. When World War II broke out, the Frie- Warsaw Ghetto upris- John’s mother was Jewish but his father was denson family fl ed to Warsaw, eventually be- ing heroes, died March Christian. coming prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto where 31. He was buried in When Germany took over the Netherlands young Yosef married Gittel Leah Zilberman, Herzliya. in 1942, John and his family were forced into of Shidlovicz, Poland. They were smuggled Hochman, whose hiding in separate locations where they re- out of the ghetto and subsequently ended up story was told in Joseph Zhimian’s 1962 mained until the Netherlands was fi nally lib- spending several years in the slave labor camp book The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses erated on May 8, 1945. At one point, John of Starchowicz, before it was liquidated. Square, was one of a group of youths who was captured by the Germans but Resistance On Tisha Ba’av of 1944, they arrived in escaped the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, as- members helped him escape. Auschwitz. While Mrs. Friedenson remained sumed false Aryan identities and survived by It was not until after liberation that John in Auschwitz until she was liberated by the peddling cigarettes. and his parents were reunited. All of John’s Russian Army in early 1945, Reb Yosef en- Born in Warsaw in 1927, he was the fourth maternal relatives perished during the Ho- dured death marches, confi nement in Ohrduf of eight siblings in a middle-class family and locaust. John met Julia Blaaser with whom and several other concentration camps, and was schooled in both a traditional cheder he came to the United States in 1953. They- was fi nally liberated from Buchenwald in and a Polish institution. From October 1940 married in Reno on February 26, 1953 and April by the American Army. They were Hochman and part of his family were im- settled in Sacramento where they owned a reunited several months later, spent several prisoned in the ghetto (his older siblings succession of successful beauty salons. years in post-war Germany working to help remained outside its walls). As the situation John was very active in the Sacramento other survivors rebuild their shattered lives, worsened there, Hochman would sneak out, Jewish Community and a founding member and immigrated to the United States in 1951. using his little brother Zanek as a lookout, to of Congregation Beth Shalom in Carmi- At the behest of Rav Reuven Grozovsky, smuggle in food and clothing for the family chael. He served in various capacities such Reb Friedenson soon joined the Agudath Is- from the black market. as President of the Men’s Club and Congre- rael, where he established himself as one of His father, Benjamin, died of starvation gation Treasurer. He also established a choir the world’s leading Yiddish writers and Ho- and his mother, Miriam, was killed during memorial fund to honor his mother. locaust historians as editor of Dos Yiddishe the summer of 1942. One brother, Itzik, was Vort, a title he held until his passing. caught and sold out to the Nazis. Peretz and REB SHMUEL From that day onward, his life was dedi- Zanek escaped the ghetto in 1942 and, with YOSEF cated to spreading stories of spiritual hero- a group of Jewish children who had also as- FRIEDENSON ism during this darkest of times. sumed Christian identities, sold cigarettes Reb Shmuel Despite his age, Reb Friedenson found the and newspapers at the bustling Three Cross- Yosef Frieden- strength to travel throughout North America, es Square, hiding in stairwells at night. Of- son, the longtime regaling his audiences with war-time stories ten, Hochman stated, he would attend church editor of Dos of faith and Kiddush Hashem. In addition, he on Sundays to “enhance his Polish image.” Yiddishe Vort, Agudath Israel of America’s also authored several ArtScroll books on the Author Zhimian, a member of the Jewish Yiddish-language monthly, passed away on Holocaust. underground, supplied the children with Pol- February 26, 2013. Born in Lodz, Poland in ish identity cards and suggested they move to April of 1922, to Rabbi Eliezer Gershon and YVONNE SARAH FRYDEL a section of the city under Red Army control. Esther Baila (Pelberg) Friedenson, his father Yvonne Sarah Frydel, née Rotblit, 79, of Hochman and his brother remained, was a noted activist for Agudath Israel of Tenafl y, NJ died on February 5, 2013. however, and volunteered in the Breakers Poland and was the editor of the Beth Jacob Born in France, she was a Holocaust sur- Through unit of the August 1944 Warsaw Journal, a curricula used throughout the Bais vivor and a secretary for the Board of Educa- Uprising, where he collected unused bullets Yaakov movement in pre-war Europe. tion of Tenafl y. from corpses in the heat of the battle. Friedenson thrived in the atmosphere of After the Polish resistance surrendered to Torah activism that permeated every aspect JOSEPH GRABCZAK the Germans, Hochman and his brother were of his home, attending cheder in Lodz. At the Joseph Grabczak, 92, of Fair Lawn, NJ, imprisoned and eventually taken to Stalag young age of 16 he entered the Yeshiva of died January 16, 2013. 4B in Milburg. They were released by the Lublin; his formal Torah learning, however, A Holocaust survivor, he organized the Red Cross in May 1945 and Hochman made

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 21 aliyah in 1946. ing the Nazis’ death camps, Joseph met his “Even when others were afraid, he, a 15- wife Lena at a displaced person’s camp near year old in the Polish uprising, volunteered Munich. They were married for 65 years. for every mission, receiving a number of The Mandelbaums came to the United awards for his courage,” said Rachel Barkai, States in 1950 and settled in the Brownsville director of the Yad Vashem Public Relations neighborhood of Brooklyn, then Canarsie. Department. He enlisted into the Palmach Joseph worked for Christian Dior as a tailor and then the IDF, where he fought with dis- on the Molly Parness line. tinction. In 1997 Hochman lit a torch at the Said his son Syd Mandelbaum, “My fa- annual Independence Day ceremony. ther was a great man and a hero to me. His Warsaw Ghetto uprising hero Peretz Ho- part of Belarus. voice is silent, the twinkle in his eyes gone, chman. (photot: Israel Hadari/Yad Vashem) When the Germans but his shadow is long and soothing. I hurt came to Eastern Po- but celebrate a life well lived.” LEON LEYSON land in 1941, they Joseph Mandelbaum was interviewed on The youngest began the whole- video about his Holocaust experience in 1981 person saved by sale slaughter of for the Second Generation of Long Island German industrial- the Jews. Litman documentation project founded by his son ist Oskar Schindler and several family Syd, who gave it to Spielberg in 1993. Joseph has died of lympho- members escaped was also the fi rst person to donate DNA to ma on January 12 in to the nearby forest, where they joined the the DNA Shoah Project in 2007. He helped Whittier, Calif. He partisans. His future wife, Zelda Gilero- the CIA identify Russian bases when his lost was 83 years old. vitch, made her way to Litman’s group after brother Joshua came out of Russia in 1972. Leon Leyson was her family was killed and remained with him 13 when he went to work at Schindler’s factory thereafter. For a while they were a part of the ESTHER in Krakow, Poland, where he had to stand on a Bielski group. MORDECHAI Esther Morde- box to operate the machinery. Litman and Zelda were married on the chai passed away Two of Leyson’s brothers were killed in day that Berlin fell in 1945. They returned to peacefully on Feb- the Shoah, including one whom Schindler her town of Baranowicze and eventually im- added to his list but who refused to get off ruary 20, 2013 at migrated to the US in 1948. They fi rst settled the train to Auschwitz because his girlfriend the age of 93 at the in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware, and ultimate- was not on the list. Schindler placed Leyson’s Hebrew Home of ly in Salisbury, Maryland. Litman returned mother and two other siblings on the list of Greater Washington to his agrarian roots, working for a poultry 1,100 lews, along with his father, making in Rockville, MD. company in Harbeson, and establishing his it one of the few families that he protected. Esther lived in own successful poultry business, Litow, Inc. Leyson’s siblings later immigrated to Israel. Greensboro for over 50 years, immigrating Litman was very involved with Beth Isra- In 1949, Leyson immigrated to America to the United States from Ioannina, Greece el Synagogue in Salisbury, serving as its ex- and later fought in the Vietnam War. He with her husband, Elias, and two daughters offi cio cantor, occasional fi ll-in rabbi, presi- taught machine shop and was a guidance in 1951. She was a member of Beth David dent, school principal, founder of their adult counselor at Huntington Park High School, Synagogue and had many friends in the Jew- retiring in 1997. He rarely spoke about his education program, and leader of the local ish congregation, the Greek community in Holocaust experience until the 1993 re- Jewish War Veterans. He spoke at schools Greensboro and in the Sunset Hills neighbor- lease of the Academy Award-winning fi lm and churches, primarily about his experienc- hood where she took her legendary two-mile Schindler’s List. Following the interest gen- es in and lessons of the Holocaust. walk every day. erated by the Steven Spielberg movie, Ley- Zelda died in 1969, and Litman married Esther was a Holocaust survivor, impris- son traveled throughout the United States Jean Mandel Hayes in 1973. Jean passed oned in Auschwitz for 18 months during telling his story. away in July shortly after Litman’s death. WWII. Although it brought back painful memories, she recognized the importance ILSE LIEBERMANN JOSEPH MANDELBAUM of telling her story as a tribute to those who Ilse Liebermann, née Rothenberg, 102, of By Stephen J. Bronner, Five Towns Patch were killed and as lesson for future genera- Rockleigh, formerly of Fort Lee, NJ, died on Joseph Mandelbaum, the fi rst Holocaust tions. She was one of the fi rst Holocaust February 9, 2013. survivor to be interviewed on video for what survivors to be videotaped by the Steven Born in Germany, she was a Holocaust would eventually become Steven Spielberg’s Spielberg Foundation and was frequently survivor and a retired nurse. the Shoah Project, recently passed away. He invited to speak at schools in the area. was 90. LITMAN (LITOWARSKI) LITOW Joseph, a resident of Monroe Township at HELEN NOWAK by Dena L. Hirsh and Leon Litow the Ponds at Clearbrook, was born in Szcza- Helen Nowak, née Weintraub, 89, of Fair Litman Litow died peacefully on June 22, kowa, Poland, in 1922. Most of his family, Lawn, NJ, died on January 10, 2013. 2012 in Salisbury, Maryland at the age of 90. including seven brothers and a sister, were A Holocaust survivor, she and her hus- He grew up in Eastern Poland which is now murdered during the Holocaust. After surviv- band were former members of the Fair Lawn

TOGETHER 22 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013 Jewish Center. 15, 1926 to Hershel and Rachel Rudnik. He passed away on August 16, 2012 in Roch- HENRY PESTKA ester, New York. His fi rst ghetto experience Henry Pestka was in his town and then, from 1942 to 1944, passed away on he was in the Vilna Ghetto, the Kovno Ghet- February 15, 2013. to as well as two camps in the area. In 1944 Henry was born he escaped to the Ponary forest with others to in Poland in 1919 fi ght the Germans. This group was referred the son of Saul and to as the Lithuanian Brigade of the Partisans. Marie. Saul Pestka At the time of liberation he returned to was a builder and children, she took a position as a Systems Vilna and eventually to his hometown. There developer who Analyst with the Department of Agriculture. he rejoined his younger brother Sanford and taught his son his Leonie further received a second Masters friends. Together they went to Austria, Italy craft. After the Nazi occupation of Poland, Degree in Computer Sciences from the Uni- and eventually to Germany where he lived Henry was interned in a number of con- versity of Maryland. After retiring from the at a Displaced Persons Youth Camp. One of centration camps. In 1944, Henry and two Department of Agriculture she established her these places was called Prien. other prisoners escaped from Auschwitz and own home-based database consulting fi rm, In August 1949, he came to the US and re- were found by members of the Free French Penney Associates. sided in Albany with an uncle. Soon after he Army. Henry joined the Polish Battalion and Leonie loved her American hometown of moved to Rochester to join his older brother, became a decorated combat veteran. Tragi- Greenbelt, MD. Throughout the 56 years she Irving, and older sister, Rhoda, along with cally, both his parents and siblings perished; lived in Greenbelt, she served the community brother Sanford. he was the only survivor. through her involvement with a varied group In 1950 he married Hilda Singer, also Henry immigrated to the US and settled of organizations. Leonie won numerous a survivor, that he had met in the German in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended medals at Senior Olympics events. She was youth camp. In 1963 they started Rudnick’s classes at Union High School, learned Eng- awarded Greenbelt’s Citizen of the Year in Unfi nished Furniture Store together. lish, and was employed by a family friend. 2008; she received the Greenbelt Outstand- In 1948 Henry married Beatrice Bergman. ing Service award for her work on the Senior SHMARYAGU SHARGEL In the 1950’s Henry and his brother-in-law Advisory Board, and she received a Gover- Shmaryagu Shargel was born on May 15, began developing shopping centers, offi ce nors Citation from Governor O’Malley of 1927 in the town of Yanov, Ukraine (Trem- buildings, restaurants, apartment complexes Maryland in 2013. bovlya, formerly Poland). In 1941, most of and industrial buildings. Leonie was instrumental in creating the the people there were killed by the Nazis Henry’s philanthropy was legendary par- body of work dedicated to her childhood including his parents and all his relatives. ticularly towards those institutions fi ghting friend Etty Hillesum. These works detailed Shmaryagu was one of the few survivors. bigotry, and helping the sick and disabled. the struggles Etty endured in concentration During the war he was moved to several He was married to the love of his life, Bea- camps during the war through her diaries ghettos and labor camps. Finally, he man- trice for 59 years prior to her death in 2007. and letters to Leonie. She dedicated the Etty aged to escape to a nearby forest, where he Hillesum memorial at the National Holo- fought alongside Polish Partisans. In 1944, LEONIE PENNEY caust Memorial in Washington DC, and was he became a standing soldier for the Soviet Leonie Penney invited back 20 years later as one of the last military for 13 years until he met his future died peacefully in remaining survivors, where she was met by wife Riva. Shmaryagu and his wife had two her home in Green- President Clinton. belt, MD on July children: a son named Alex and a daughter 22, 2013 at the age named Rosa. In 1968, at the age of 31, Riva ILSE ROTHSCHILD AND RABBI MAX of 95. Leonie was died and he was left with two little children. born on March 29, ROTHSCHILD In 1974 he located two cousins, Isaac and 1918 in The Hague, Ilse and Max Rothschild of River Edge Sam Brandes, who lived in the United States the Netherlands, to a Jewish family, the only and Fort Lee, NJ died on January 10 and and helped him obtain an immigration visa. child of Bernard and Olga Snatager. Growing January 18 respectively and were buried in On October 3rd, 1976, the family left the So- up in the Netherlands Leonie earned her Mas- Har HaMenuchot Cemetery in Jerusalem. viet Union and made their way to America. ter’s degree in Economics in 1940 from the Together for 75 years, they were active in the He passed away on February 12, 2013. University of Amsterdam, the fi rst woman in Dutch Resistance against the Nazis. her fi eld to do so. Leonie survived the Holo- Max Rothschild taught midrash at the TERESA (TOLA) WIDAWSKI caust of World War II by adopting an assumed Jewish Theological Seminary and Ilse Roth- Teresa (Tola) Widawski (descendant of identity and going underground. In 1948, she schild, a special education teacher, worked at Vilna Gaon) gently past away on May 19, emigrated to the United States with her job as Mountainside Hospital. 2013, at Hospice of the Upstate. A Holo- Senior Economist for the World Bank. She caust survivor, this remarkable, strong, and met Walter Penney at the International Stu- ABRAHAM RUDNICK loving woman, was able to maintain a very dent House in Washington, DC and they mar- In Olshana, Poland, located on the border special sense of humor throughout her 92 ried on October 11, 1952. After raising three of Lithuania, Abe Rudnick was born January years.

September 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org TOGETHER 23 A Message from the President and the Chairman Dear Friends: their students and schools. The ranks of the The American Gathering of Holocaust survivor community are Survivors and Their Descendants sadly diminishing each year, carries on a unique mission as the yet the needs of the survivor largest umbrella organization of community and our work is survivors and their children in North greater than ever. All of our America. For the past 29 years, the activities require signifi cant Gathering has been at the forefront funding and the American of all issues pertaining to survivors Gathering is fi nding itself Roman R. Kent Sam E. Bloch and their families. facing increased strains on The organization’s mission is dedicated to remembrance, its already limited budget. We are turning to you and ask you education and commemoration. In addition to the important to help support us now more than ever. work carried on by its leadership in representing survivors We are counting on our survivors’ family and friends to interests at diplomatic conferences and negotiations in Europe help us in our fundraising challenges by making a contribution and Washington to secure and increase reparations and restitution according to your means. All contributors will receive a yearly for those victimized by Nazi persecution and oppression, subscription to TOGETHER and those able to contribute the American Gathering continues to fi ght the deniers of the $500 or more will be acknowledged in our next edition of the Holocaust who continue to gain strength and persist in spewing publication as Guardians of our legacy. their hatred and denial of our tragic past; advocate for survivors Let us continue to raise our voices to defend the dignity and causes and helps to ensure that survivors receive proper care and address the needs of Holocaust survivors. assistance when necessary; promote and Help play a vital role in the important work that we continue the solemn observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust continue to do. It is up to all of us to be sure that the legacy Remembrance Day nationwide. of our martyrs lives on forever. If not us, who will do it? We take great pride in our stellar publication TOGETHER We thank you in advance for your generosity and are grateful which serves over 80,000 survivors as well as our annual for your friendship which we cherish. We take this opportunity Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teacher Program, which as the New Year approaches to wish you and your families a has been acclaimed by Jewish and non-Jewish educators very healthy, peaceful, prosperous and sweet New Year! nationwide. To date over 1,000 teachers throughout the United Sincerely, States have participated and continue to teach over 100,000 students annually. Just this past month 26 teachers were accompanied by program director and coordinators Elaine Culbertson and Stephen Feinberg to Washington D.C., Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic for an unforgettable and life- Sam E. Bloch Roman R. Kent changing educational experience which they in turn transmit to President Chairman Please make a meaningful tax deductible contribution American Gathering, 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205, New York, NY 10001 The American Gathering now accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover by phone. (212) 239-4230 “If you prefer to contribute by mail, please send your check and form to us.”

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TOGETHER 24 visit our website at www.amgathering.org September 2013