January 2004 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 TRIBUTE TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS HELD IN WASHINGTON For the first time in 10 years, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum closed its doors to In the basement of the museum is a photo display of the recent genocide in Rwanda and the public to pay tribute to the survivors. More than 7,000 people from all over the world Bosnia-Herzegovina. Other survivors, like Dr. George Schwab, a foreign policy expert in took part in an event that celebrated Holocaust survivors’ Manhattan, emphasized the future. “It’s important not only as lives and the 10th anniversary of the opening of the United a memorial,” Schwab said, “but also as an opportunity to learn, States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and to prevent something like this from happening again.” Nearly a third of those present were survivors like Joe and Julie Hantman, whose grandfather’s family was killed Ella Brandt, who said it was an important gathering because in the Holocaust, said she was having a hard time being at the time is running out. “We are all getting older. In order to museum and had to leave a tour that her mother, a museum prevent the bigotry and hatred that still exists today, we have volunteer, gave earlier this year. Hantman revealed the tension to come out and talk about it,” said Joe. between hope and horror, which she feels when thinking about For every attendee, the experience was different. the Holocaust. “It’s challenging to feel like I can own this After 65 years of searching for someone who knew history,” she said.” I haven’t dealt with it…I have a lot to about the deaths of her parents and sister, Leah Gutman found learn.” FOR POSITION closure. Gutman, a Glenview, Illinois resident, didn’t want Hilda Stern, a passenger on the ill-fated St. Louis and an to come to the Tribute. But at the last minute, she cancelled 80-year-old survivor from Chicago area, attended out of a a trip to Israel and decided to see if she could find a lost link sense of duty to serve as eyewitnesses to the past. “We have to her family. She patiently sat at the Bialystock table in the to pay tribute. It’s the least we can do for the families we lost Survivor Village when a woman asked, “Did you know Chja and for ourselves.” Grochowska?” As time marches on relentlessly, Holocaust survivors “That,” said Gutman “was my sister.” The woman met are beginning to tell the stories they have repressed for most Chja in a ghetto after Gutman had fled to Palestine. of their post-war lives. Stern’s daughter, Debra Green, feels ONLY “I cannot wait to call my brother,” Gutman said. “To hear a responsibility to learn all she can in order carry the memory someone that knew her story, her name. There were forward. assumptions in the past, but this was news from her best Miriam Kaufman says, “Having parents and many girlfriend. Finally, I know.” relatives that are survivors made this an intense and incredible “It was an unforgettable weekend,’’ said Agatha experience. The wave of emotions went from one extreme Neumann, who emigrated from post-war Hungary to the to another. My sister is from Los Angeles, I’m from San United States in 1956. It was her first visit to the museum. Diego and we met our mother from Cleveland in “Every time I saw a corpse I couldn’t help but think that maybe Washington. Many of our relatives and their children came it was my father,’’ said Neumann, who has never verified how as well from Cleveland, Columbus, Florida and Los Angeles. her father died. “I was impressed by the many survivors I met and heard Neumann and her mother, Elizabeth Schwartz, avoided experiences from. All of them were awesome. Their a similar fate by being hidden. While at the museum, accomplishments, strides and strength gave me chills. The Neumann was delighted to meet the niece of Swedish war museum, the dinner, the speakers, the survivors, the 2G’s hero Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg most likely provided and 3G’s all made this unforgettable. I would not have missed the false Swedish passports that Neumann and her mother this experience for anything. I will treasure it forever.” had obtained at one point. Leon Shear, 76, of South Euclid, Ohio, who was 12 when the Nazis plucked him from his “I felt this time I had to go,” said Eddie Weinstein. “Because I am getting old.” family in Poland, was there. He saw his mother and sister in Auschwitz several years later just Weinstein wandered the tent, slowly, with a cardboard placard resting on his chest. It before they were gassed. His sister was just 13. He prays for people to be good to each other. read: “I am looking for people who escaped from Treblinka.” “I didn’t find one person,” said “That there will be no more wars, no more suffering.” Weinstein, whose story of escape from the Polish extermination camp has been documented “Look what happened in Chechnya,” said Shear. “Look what’s happening in Yugoslavia. Look in a book, Quenched Steel. what happens anywhere in the world, look around, in Asia, that people are still killing because they “It was totally overwhelming,” said Rabbi Jay Miller of San Mateo, Calif. He happened have a certain belief, because what they don’t want others to learn. It’s not 1940. We’re talking to be in Washington and was one of the few in attendance whose family had not been directly 2004.” affected by the Holocaust. “It’s an incredible lineage we all share,” said Helen Burstin of Washington, who came with At one of the oral history sessions, Marlene Rubenstein and her children, all from her parents, both survivors. “It’s a remarkable thing to walk into this tent and see 6,000 people Illinois, learned the full story of her mother, Lola Nortman, a Holocaust survivor. “She’d connected to survivors.” never told her story,” said Rubenstein. “It was incredible.” At times the event resembled a wedding, with survivors and their families dancing the hora Hannah Rath, 80, from University Heights, Ohio, was taken from Hannover, Germany to Israeli folk music in the Survivor´s Village. Later, there was a sing-along in Yiddish with into forced labor. Her mother was picked for death. “It should never be forgotten,” she said, members of the Folksbiene Theater of New York. “and I hope it won’t. But it’s never the same. That is why we speak to young people. They According to the most recent census by the Israeli government, there were 140,000 to should know what can happen in a generation, what can happen with a dictator like Hitler. It’s 160,000 Holocaust survivors alive in the US in 1997. That total has decreased as the generation in the history books, but I don’t know how much they will [care] when we are all gone.” ages. “History dies,” said Freda Pollack, a New Jersey native and daughter of a survivor. “History Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, who helped bury a time capsule on the museum grounds, called becomes cold unless people, survivors, pass forward their stories.” Pollack had just lit candles the reunion a “victory over forgetfulness,” saving the six million Jewish Holocaust victims from in the Hall of Remembrance with her mother, Eva Kostre, who survived Auschwitz. “a second death.” For Herbert Kammer, the message has always been tolerance. As one of the “hidden “Your presence—our presence—here today is our answer to this silent question,” he said. children,” he lost his parents when he was sent to France to escape the Nazis. “We have kept our promise. We have not forgotten you.” American Gathering of NON-PROFIT Jewish Holocaust Survivors U.S. POSTAGE PAID 122 Weast 30th Street, Suite 205 NEW YORK, N.Y. New York, New York 10001 PERMIT NO. 4246

TOGETHER 28 TOGETHER 1 Message from TOGETHER President Benjamin Meed EARCHES The word “Amcho!” carries a very special meaning. VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 Our special family understands what it meant then. It meant JANUARY 2004 Roman Bornsztajn and my mother, Mina, My parents’ families come from Galicia. in Hungary. He was the sixth of nine one of our own whom we could trust.That was a lot in • • • • • • nee Flattau, Bornsztajn. My mother had My mother from Tomasow-Lubelski and children, born with the name Andras those trying times. c o n te n t s SStill Searching two sisters, Anna and Franna.The latter Tribute to Holocaust Survivors...... 1 my father from Tyczyn, a small town Fleischner. His father, Bela Fleischner, was When darkness descended on the Jews of Europe, there was married and a dentist who died of Message from Benjamin Meed...... 2 Bulletin Board outside of Rzeszow. (Poland). killed in Gyor. His mother, nee Kammer was, in each of our hearts, a torch, a beacon, however dim, typhus in Auschwitz close to the end of the Anna Salton Eisen Stuart Eizenstat’s Address...... 3 Piroska, was born in Bratislava, then a part of determination and hope. We maintained the spirit to Compiled by Serena Woolrich war. Also lost was Edmund or Mundek Dallas, TX of Hungary. She was deported to Auschwitz, Remarks by Elie Wiesel, Fred Zeidman and Ruth B. Mandel...... 4 hold onto life, a spirit of resistance and defiance. ([email protected]) Flattau, a brother to my mother. My along with two of her daughters, Zsuzsa Remarks by Vladka Meed...... 5 In our struggle for life, there were not too many who helped us. But there maternal grandparents who also perished My uncle Miklos/Micklosh? Schvartz / and Judit. Both daughters survived. Two From the Scrolls of Remembrance...... 5 were a few rescuers, and eventually there were the American and other Allied It is almost sixty years after liberation during the war were Herschel and Bertha, Schwartz, whatever the spelling, survived brothers, Laszlo and Gusztav, died in To Have Lived To See the Day by Arieh O. Sullivan...... 6 soldiers who liberated us. To the rescuers and liberators, I can only say, our and we are still searching for our missing nee Schwartz, Flattau. Buchenwald with my father and his brother. concentration camps, I think Bergen- The Commemoration by Roman Kent...... 6 gratitude knows no words. It is because of you that we are here today, as free relatives; I have been sending out e-mail Vic Borden They lost my grandfather and grandmother. Belsen or Dachau. After the war, four of I Was There by Martin Herskovitz...... 7 Americans. In this country, we found a home – a refuge. And, with us, we searches from people in Allgenerations Englewood, NJ This uncle, the rumor was, went to Israel the surviving children, Gyori, Andras, brought the torch. And that torch sustains our memories. A Gathering of Guardians by Menachem Z. Rosensaft...... 7 which include names of missing relatives, and tried to get in when the British caught Zsuzsa and Istvan (Pista) changed their Today, it is a torch of memory – a knowledge no others possess. Our torch Reflection on Restitution Funds by Sam Bloch...... 8 family names, names of hometowns, camps, Here is the background of my father, the him trying to get in and he was shot. When name to Takacs. Judit remained a is humanity’s hope. This is the spirit of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the institution Mormon Church by Ernest Michel...... 8 ghettoes and any other pertinent survivor in my immediate family. Born I checked the records there was a Schvartz Fleischner until she married, when her that we built in our adopted homeland and to which we entrust our memories. Auschwitz Visit by Gil Sedan and Martin Herskovitz...... 9 information which we might have. Shmuel Kohn in Plonsk, Poland in 1918, with the wrong first initial that was killed. name changed, I think, to Denes. Imre, who We now pass our torch on to our children and to their children, and beyond. Holocaust Education by Vladka Meed...... 10 If you would like for me to send out one of eight children born to Leib and I don’t believe it was him, although it could had immigrated to Italy before the war, went The torch of memory is precious. It can illuminate the world. We who bore the The Shoah and September 11th by Solomon Goldman...... 11 your searches in Allgenerations, or if you Mindel Kohn. Of course there were have been. I have a sense that he could very to Shanghai for the war’s duration, then torch in the darkest days now entrust it to the generations whose very lives are Holocaust Commemoration...... 12 have any information as to the searches cousins in Plonsk and in a neighboring well be alive somewhere in the world and settled in Israel. Katalin (Katus), our greatest triumphs. We do so with hope, resolve and love. Tribute Scrapbook...... 14 included below, please contact me at town whose name that I need to look up. I had a family. and we would never know. His immigrated before the war to Vienna, then News from Around the Nation and the World...... 16 [email protected]. These requests believe it is Mlawa or something similar. birth date was 10-25-1916 and was born in Albania, fled to Turkey, married Loro Momentous gatherings such as this Tribute weave together the threads of the Films & Theater...... 19 will also be published in Together Lynn Collins Varno Aronzi, or something spelled similiarly, Saraci, and finally immigrated to the U.S. past, present and future. We were together in the world of our youth, a world of Talking About Books by Paula David...... 19 whenever possible. Boston, MA in Hungary. Andras followed in 1957. My mother, Eva shtetls and cities teaming with Jewish life and pulsating with Jewish culture. We Holocaust Bookshelf...... 20 Larry Schwartz, Judi Klieg, was the second of four children My mother is were together throughout the years of destruction—in ghettos and camps, on Noted in Passing...... 22 I’m searching for Eva Markovits who lived ADSI, Chicago, IL born in Budapest, Hungary. Her father, from a small town cattle trains and on death marches. We were abandoned by the world. The only Holocaust History by Dr. Rafael Medoff...... 23 in Oradea (Nagyvarad) till deportation to Leader Klieg, was born somewhere in what called Pzorzheim, ones concerned with our fate were our killers. So we held on to each other. Second Generation ...... 24 Auschwitz in 1944. I know she survived the My father was from is now Romania. Her mother, Lion Banned, We have journeyed together from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom, Germany. She was Commemorating Deeds of Heroism by Dr. Alex Grobman...... 26 war, was sent to Sweden and in all Lodz and had two was from the small town of Rackeve. Ilona’s and from death to rebirth. As we came to our new homelands, we needed to be in a concentration daughters from his pre- Searches...... 27 probability lives now in the USA. This is father was the head rabbi there, followed together. Even in silence we understood each other as no one else could, for we her maiden name; I don’t know her married camp in Germany war marriage. They were by her brother. Ilona and her youngest child understand an unspoken language filled with anguish and hope. name or her whereabouts. I’m also looking and one in France, twin girls who also died in 1936. Her entire family died in the We drew strength from one another. And we gathered in this unforgettable for Dr. George Array, who graduated from then was hidden worked in the ghetto, war, except for one brother who reunion of our special family. the Rabbinical Seminary in 1943, and was throughout one died there, one was immigrated to Chile beforehand. My In 1981 at our first international gathering in Jerusalem, we came together teaching English at Miefhoe on Ship Utca France. Her maiden deported to Auschwitz, mother, her father, and two brothers, Gabor name is Zloczower. with new family members. We greeted each other with renewed vitality and plans NATIONAL LEADERSHIP in Budapest. Was anyone in hiding in 1944 last name Rosenwasser; and Istvan (Pista), survived. After the war, for the future. We pledged our commitment to our new homelands and to Israel– at the Vadasz Utczai Uveghaz, an annex of My father was first names, Rahel & they all changed their name to Kalnai. My to its people as they strive for peace and security. The bond to our brothers and CONFERENCE the Swiss Embassy in Budapest? born in Berlin, Raiszel (or something brother and I, Peter and Piroska sisters there is strong. OF THE AMERICAN GATHERING Agi Grossinger Germany. He was close). I have no more (Priscilla) Takacs, were born in Budapest, Holocaust survivors are a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and San Jose, CA. in a labor camp. information about immigrating to the U.S. in 1957, settling the ability to rebuild shattered lives. We were alone, our families lost, and yet we AT THE MAYFLOWER HOTEL IN WASHINGTON, DC His name is them except that they in Los Angeles. I would love to hear from chose life over hatred.We have traveled a long and difficult road to our new lives. FRIDAY, FEB. 13 - 16, 2004 Here are the primary family names – Birke Neumann. Does were born on Christmas. anyone who knew a family member of In America, in Israel, and in nations all over the world we found freedom and anyone know them? I think they lived on Milinarska Street and mine. HELD IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE 11TH BIENNIAL and Haber, from Uniejow and Lodz. restarted our lives with dignity. We achieved a great deal through tears and hard Dymantsztajn from Lodz. My father Jeanette Neumann Berstein my father was a shoemaker. I don’t know Priscilla Schneider work, but we are especially proud of our children. They are not just lawyers, REUNION OF THE TEACHER ALUMNI OF THE Noosen Birke and his uncle Eagleville, PA what school they went to. I know so little Los Angeles, CA: doctors, scientists and teachers, many are leaders in their communities. HOLOCAUST EDUCATION ______Haber lived in Uniejow originally, of these lost sisters of mine, because it was My mom’s side was from Lodz. Her At the same time, we sustain our rich heritage, traditions of our old life. We SUMMER FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM then owned an apartment building on 11 always difficult for my father to talk about. I am interested in knowing how many preserve the special culture of Yiddishkeit. The world must know us as the Listopada and other businesses in Lodz. His mother was a well known hat designer They are a generation older than I am. I was people from Kaunitz, near Dussledorf, are people we were before the destruction the Nazis unleashed. CONFERENCE FEES: mother was Ruchel Haber Birke. The named Ida Blanche. She had shows all over born in NY after myfather remarried in still alive. We were sent there after We must tell our story to be worthy of the memory of our six million martyrs $200 per person covers registration, Saturday and Sunday din- Dymantsztajn family were carpenters, Europe. The name of the family on my Landsberg, post war. liberation and I have lost touch with others who cannot speak for themselves. Some may ask, “Why is Remembrance ner, Sunday breakfast and Monday brunch. Shabbat dinner on making wooden paddles for bakers. mother’s maternal side, most of whom Roslyn Rossenwasser Ross who were there. were murdered, was Latowicz or necessary?” The answer is that only by committing ourselves to the sacred task Friday night is an additional $50. Szifra Birke New York, NY Klara Swimmer of remembrance can we fulfill the commandment given to us by our fallen brothers Ladowicz. The name is now transmuted to HOTEL REGISTRATION: Medford, MA Tucson, AZ and sisters. Our testimonies will stand against the deniers and falsifiers who deny Liatowitsch, and this name is used by the My Weiss family was from the small town We will reserve your room. It is your responsibility to pay the hotel us our Kedoshim. My father’s cousin was Max Abosch who surviving family in Switzerland. If anyone of Jovra (pronounced “Yo-rah”) just I’m searching for my first cousin We share our trauma not to divide us, but to unite us. By keeping alive the directly. There are a limited number of rooms for $119 per day during the occupation escaped from Vienna has heard of my Grandmother please outside of Ungvar (now Uzhhorod). The memory of the past we can build a better future. We offer our memories to the plus tax for single and double occupancy, provided on a first and went to England, but it is possible that contact [email protected] Kesslers (and Berkowitzes) were from Avraham Czarny. Perhaps he is in your world, not for ourselves. We offer our memories because the world still must come, first serve basis. he was interred (because he was Austrian) Lisa Reitman-Dobi Pinkovich (sp?) a hamlet a few miles from community? Second, I’m looking for a listen. Antisemitic acts in Europe and the Islamic world give us great pain and CONTACT THE AMERICAN GATHERING and could have been sent to Canada. During New York, NY Jovra with, maybe, three Jewish families. Rachela Rusin, also a Survivor. sadly remind us that our work is far from over. The world still needs our voice. My maternal grandmother was a sixth (I [email protected] OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS the same time, Max’s father (could be It still needs our lessons. Josef) but last name in an official letter is My father was from Krakovitz in Poland, think) generation Davidovich in Bilke Over the decades, we gathered to give voice to those lessons in Jerusalem, FOR YOUR REGISTRATION FORMS TODAY!!!!! spelt Abush (perhaps in error) was living and his last name was Fleischer. He was (there were three separate Davidovich Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Miami, Houston and many other places. in the Bronx, New York. I may also have a in various concentration camps during the families in that town.) Bilke is about 15 Does anyone have any information about Almost 20 years ago, we received the keys to the future U.S. Holocaust Memorial 212-239-4230 living relative somewhere (I have no idea war. The last few years of the war he was in km from Chust (Huzst), and had a sizable my mother Rosa Druck from Vilna who Museum, which was then just a dream. where) named Kurt Weisz who is in his Auschwitz and then was transferred to Jewish population before the war. Today survived Stutthoff Concentration Camp We can now sense the achievements of our generation taking hold in this 70s, and he would have been born in Vienna Nordhausen in the East of Germany where there is one (1) Jew left. The Mech- in 1945? museum and in other institutions around the country. Our collective presence also. he escaped during a bomb raid and lived in lowitzes were from Berezova (or Berehova Please reply to: a nearby forest with other escapees for reminds these institutions of their commitment to remembrance. If they are to TOGETHER Julie Jones - depending upon who’s telling the story). [email protected] speak in our names, they must respect our experience, respect both its Jewishness Burlington, Ontario, Canada eight days until the liberation. There are a lot of towns with similar names, and its universality. Lina Fiszman but this town is also close to Chust. I have AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS International Tracing Service We have come a long way from the ghettos and camps, from being ignored All the people mentioned below come Melbourne, Australia managed to track down tons of Davidovich and cast aside. We have become guardians of moral lessons of the utmost 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 · New York, New York 10001 · 212 239 4230 from Lodz. My paternal grandparents were “cousins”, but no Weisses, Kesslers Grosse Allee 5-9 importance. We know that evil has no limitations, neither time nor distance. If we Morris (aka Moshe) and Helena (aka My maternal grandmother’s family’s (Berkowitzes) or Mechlowitzes. I’m D34444 Arolsen, Germany President Secretary Publication Committee surname was Rechter and they were from are not prepared, if we are indifferent to the plight of others, humanity will suffer BENJAMIN MEED LEON STABINSKY SAM E. BLOCH, Chairman Genia) Bornsztajn or Bornstein. Their especially interested in finding is the place to write to, if people are a town called Nizni Verecky, again. Senior Vice Presidents Treasurer Hirsh Altusky Vladka Meed last known address was P.O.W. 15 Mechlowitzes - my paternal grandfather’s trying to locate people Today, we stand before humanity to bear witness at this sacred place, the SAM E. BLOCH MAX K. LIEBMANN Dr. Alex Grobman Dr. Romana Strochlitz Primus Czechoslovakia. My grandmother’s family. WILLIAM LOWENBERG Editor Roman Kent Menachem Z. Rosensaft Armiiludowej. The date they were sent on father’s name was Yozef Rechter from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. We stand with our children and their Chairman of the Board JEANETTE Z. FRIEDMAN Max K. Liebmann Dr. Philip Sieradski a transport out of Lodz ghetto was Sept. Rhonda Wenner th Nizni Verecky, Czechoslovakia. He was Unless otherwise indicated, children to mark its 10 Anniversary. This permanent, living memorial to the ROMAN KENT Editor Emeritus Alfred Lipson 10, 1942. My paternal great-grandparents Broomall, PA Jewish uniqueness of the Holocaust will remain long after we have gone. It is our Chairman, Advisory Board ALFRED LIPSON married to Roza Fischer from Poland. please send responses to SIGMUND STROCHLITZ were Usher and Rifka Bornsztajn, both of Felicia P. Zieff voice. It will continue to tell and retell our story. Remembrance will endure. My father was from a small city called Gyor [email protected] whom died before the war. My father was Chicago, IL TOGETHER 2 TOGETHER 27 OLOCAUST HISTORY COMPUTERS The Ceremony TRIBUTE TO SURVIVORS Rescuers are honored at a public ceremony at Yad REUNITE H Vashem. Until it ran out of space, a carob tree was planted NOVEMBER 1-2, 2003 by the rescuer along the Avenue of the Righteous with the COMMEMORATING individual’s name and nationality inscribed on a plaque at HOLOCAUST UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM its base. The carob tree was chosen because it is a perennial, DEEDS OF is sturdy and strong, but not dominating like the cypress SURVIVORS tree, which is associated with pride. REMARKS OF STUART E. EIZENSTAT (EXCERPTS) The ceremony begins at the Hall of Remembrance from a story by peggy anderson for HEROISM where a cantor recites the Kel Maleh Rachamim (God who associated press Stuart E. Eizenstat, a partner at the law firm of Covington & Burling, was President Jimmy with Holocaust remembrance contributing to the prevention of future horrors. As by Dr. Alex Grobman is merciful) and the mourner’s Kaddish. The rescuer then Carter’s Chief Domestic Policy Adviser. In the Clinton Administration he was U.S. Ambassador they put it, “a memorial unresponsive to the future would violate the memory of re- kindles the eternal flame. The main prayer is said in SEATTLE (AP) - Holocaust survivors to the European Union (1993-1996). He also served as Special Representative of President the past.” The Museum has fulfilled that vision. Shortly after it opened, the Museum created the Committee on Conscience, which has helped stir the conscience of the the rescuer’s native language. A wreath is placed on the Clinton on Holocaust-Era Issues. He is the author of Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave who had once despaired of finding world to genocides and threats of genocides, from Bosnia and Rwanda to Chechnya vault containing ashes of the Holocaust victims. Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II. long-lost loved ones are being reunited and Sudan. At the Wall of Honor the rescuer’s name is unveiled. If with them with the help of computer It is a privilege to speak tonight on the 10th Anniversary of the opening of the U.S. A third path to ZACHOR is to honor the survivors of the Holocaust, by helping the rescuer had not yet received a medal and a certificate Designating the databases and the opening of Soviet Holocaust Memorial Museum, and especially to the Holocaust survivors and your families the living and their families. The Holocaust was not only history’s gravest, most of honor from an Israeli embassy, a presentation is made. Righteous bloc archives. and the families of those who perished. This is your Museum, your history, and your systematic genocide, it was history’s greatest theft—the confiscation of bank They are inscribed with the Talmudic adage: “He who saves accounts, art, property, personal effects, insurance policies, along with brutal, In 1953, the Knesset passed the Martyrs and Heroes’ In just the past four months, the story. For me this is closing a circle of time. You have lived through Hell on Earth. But one life is considered as having saved the whole universe.” for me, like so many Americans of my generation, the Holocaust was a faint, distant uncompensated slave labor. With the initiative of leaders like Edgar Bronfman, Remembrance Law creating Yad Vashem. As part of its The rescuer is then invited to say a few words; those who Red Cross Holocaust and World War memory. Israel Singer, and Senator Alphonse D’Amato, the lawsuits filed by class action mandate, Yad Vashem established a Commission for the were saved then speak. II Tracing Center in Baltimore has My coming to terms with the Holocaust was due to a chance encounter in the 1968 lawyers, and with the strong support of President Bill Clinton, and his dedicated Designation of the Righteous to honor “the high minded Not everyone awarded the title “Righteous Among the reconnected at least 40 people with presidential campaign, with a fellow campaign worker, Arthur Morse. He had just team, the issue of justice for long-forgotten Holocaust survivors was forced back Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews.” A member Nations” accepts this honor. A number have refused. Some loved ones missing since the war. published a path-breaking book, While Six Million Died, which for the first time onto the world’s agenda. Yet the heart and soul of the efforts I helped lead for of the Supreme Court of Israel chairs the commission. disapprove of Israeli government policies. Those from The tracing center was established described the inaction of President Roosevelt and other American leaders in the certain Holocaust restitution, were inspired by Holocaust survivors like Roman Kent and To be granted the title “Righteous Among the Nations,” Eastern Europe in the past ran the risk of being ostracized Benjamin Meed. in 1990 to sort through 47 million knowledge of the mass slaughter of Jews at Hitler’s hands. This was a profound shock the rescuer must have: or worse. In the immediate post-war period, in Poland, for me. Years later my shock was reinforced when I met Jan Karski, who told me the Thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish communal properties—churches, a. On his own initiative been actively and directly Ukraine, and Lithuania some rescuers were murdered. papers released after the Iron Curtain chilling story of how he twice went into the Warsaw Ghetto to bear witness to western synagogues, schools, community centers, even cemeteries—are being returned to involved in saving a Jew from being killed or sent to What type of individuals risked their lives to save a fell, including records from the Soviet leaders, only to be rebuffed in meetings with President Roosevelt and with Supreme help the re-emerging religious groups after the Cold War rebuild their shattered a concentration camp when the Jews were trapped in Jew? Nechama Tec, a professor of sociology who survived Union and other East Bloc countries Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. communities. Tens of thousands of Swiss bank accounts have been discovered. Some a country under the control of the Germans or their the Holocaust by passing as a Christian with the help of and seized Nazi documents. On April 25, 1978, as his chief domestic policy adviser, I sent a memorandum to $8 billion in class action settlements were obtained from private Swiss, German, collaborators during the most dangerous periods of Christian Poles, has isolated several characteristics, which About 1,000 people have been President Carter recommending a presidential commission to propose a permanent Austrian and French companies, and their governments, and for the first time private the Holocaust and totally dependent on the goodwill shed light on this question. memorial in our nation’s capital to the victims of the Holocaust. President Carter enterprises were held accountable for aiding and abetting wartime activity. Art and of non-Jews. found by the tracing center since it announced the Commission on May 1 at the White House, during a visit of Israeli Prime property are being returned and insurance policies are being paid. Characteristics of rescuers included: was established. But not everyone is b. Risked everything including his own life, freedom, a. A high level of individuality, independence, and self- Minister Menachem Begin. A little more than a year later on But there is much more to be done here. Insurance and safety. reliance that caused them “to pursue personal goals lucky enough to find a relative. More September 27, 1979, the President’s Commission, headed by policies have been paid at a painfully slow rate. Additional slave labor payments are long overdue, while c. Not received any form of remuneration or reward regardless of how these goals” were perceived by often, said spokeswoman Elise Elie Wiesel, recommended a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It took another 14 years of effort before the Museum thousands of survivors are passing away before our very as a precondition for providing help. others. Babbitt, a search turns up “dates of was dedicated on April 22, 1993. eyes. Looted art remains hanging in public museums. d. Offered proof from the survivor or b. A commitment and involvement in helping the death, which camps family members Nothing can restore what has been lost in the Holocaust: Property payments in Austria remain hung-up over legal incontrovertible archival evidence that the deeds had needy that had preceded the war. were in, which deportation trains they “caused” a rescue that would not otherwise have Rabbis no longer teaching the next generation a tractate of disputes. Regaining personal property, or even a small c. A belief that their rescue activities were not heroic were on.” occurred and thus went beyond what might be Talmud; Cantors no longer chanting haunting melodies in percentage of its value, remains almost impossible in or extraordinary but part of their duty. many Eastern European countries, some now part of regarded as ordinary assistance. Even when the search turns up synagogues great and small; musicians and writers, poets and d. An “unplanned and gradual beginning of rescue at actors, business entrepreneurs and scientists whose creative NATO and soon the European Union, which should be Risk is the basic criterion—not altruism. Those who only a slip of paper, “people are just times involving a sudden, even impulsive move”. genius was extinguished; mothers never creating the warm held to western norms. aided Jews in countries not under Nazi rule or who happy to know anything, anything at e. A “universalistic perception of the needy” that candle-lit glow of a Shabbat evening; farmers and shopkeepers The bottom line is that far too many elderly had diplomatic immunity where there was little or “overshadowed all other attributes except their all,” said Seattle Red Cross volunteer no longer eking out a meager but proud living; one and a half survivors, from South Florida to Eastern Europe remain no risk are not eligible for consideration. Jews also dependence on aid.” Tammy Kaiser, who worked on million children never able to create their own Jewish sparks destitute, without access to life-sustaining medical and cannot be proposed for this honor. The three basic Pierre Sauvage asserts that religious belief was a Gordon’s case. “It documents the fact in the world; the Yiddish language, the transmission belt of European Jewish culture, pharmaceutical aid. We must use the 10th Anniversary of this great museum as an criteria are thus: risk, survival, and evidence. significant characteristic that has not been adequately that they were alive, they’re being barely a whisper; the heart of Jewish civilization in Eastern Europe torn asunder. We inspiration to put aside our differences, and work together to use the unclaimed Those who were saved nominate a candidate. Notarized addressed. His award-winning documentary, Weapons of remembered. Sometimes that IS a remain today the only religious group in the world whose number is smaller than in funds we have collected to assure that survivors are not neglected in their declining applications are sent to Yad Vashem through an Israeli 1939. years. You have suffered so grievously when you were young. You must not do so the Spirit, relates how the Protestant village of Le happy ending.” embassy or consulate. Data requested about the rescuer Chambon in southern France hid 5,000 Jews, including * * * * again. We must dedicate ourselves to make elderly survivors our top priority, above includes the individual’s name, approximate age at the he and his family, during the Nazi occupation. 34,000 people hoping to find ZACHOR — REMEMBER. We tell the world, and ourselves “Remember.” But all else. time, present address, occupation, and marital status during For all our valiant efforts to find the rescuers, their others lost during the war have how do we remember? Let me suggest five ways, each catalyzed by the Museum, by Another way to remember is for us to protect Jews wherever they are threatened, the war. names are “largely unrecorded and their good deeds remain contacted the U.S. Holocaust you and your fellow survivors, and by the memory of the Six Million. and to help defend the Jewish homeland in Israel. Yom Ha’Atzmout, Israel Independence In addition the witness-survivor is asked: anonymous and unrewarded, except in the emotions of Memorial Museum in Washington, First and foremost is to perpetuate the memory of the Six Million by telling the Day, comes soon after Yom Ha Shoah, just as Israel was born out of the ashes of the a. To describe briefly his or her life before the start those they saved” observed Sybil Milton, a Holocaust D.C., over the past year. The museum brutal truth about the Holocaust: the truth about the evil designs of the Nazi Holocaust. To neglect one is to forget the memory of the other. of the rescue story. perpetrators and their collaborators; the truth about those who allowed their It has become painfully evident that antisemitism did not end with the Holocaust, historian. Some Jews and their rescuers were killed during shares information with the Red Cross b. How and when the rescuer was met. the war; others died later, leaving no one to tell their neighbors to be taken to their deaths without protest; the truth about the role of and that a new, virulent antisemitism has arisen, aimed at Israel and its supporters. It tracing center. was visibly portrayed by the standing ovation Arab leaders recently gave at the 57 nation c. Who initiated the rescue. stories. Still others, rescued and rescuers, were unable to neutral countries who provided the financial and material support to help sustain the “We hear all the time, ‘Isn’t this German killing machine; the truth about how the allied leaders of the great western Organization of the Islamic Conference to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir d. Dates and places of rescue. locate each other after so many years of separation. democracies refused to ease their restrictive emigration quotas at the 1938 Evian Mohamad’s crude canard that after “the Europeans killed 10 million Jews out of 12 e. The nature of aid given and if this involved hiding, Although we will never know the precise number of all over?”’ Babbitt said. “That’s why Conference, signaling unmistakably to Hitler their blind eyes for the fate of Jews, million, . . . today the Jews rule the world by proxy,” and “get others to fight and die for what were the conditions. rescuers who saved Jews, we can learn much from the we’re working so hard to get the word that lasted throughout the War (soon after Evian darkness began with Kristallnacht). them.” There has been an upsurge of antisemitic actions by Moslem youth in Europe f. If there were any financial arrangements. testimonies of those we have documented. As Sholem out.” g. The rescuer’s motivations. And, yes, the truth about the heroic non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews, against Jews and Jewish religious property; European professors threaten to boycott Asch, the Jewish writer, acknowledged “It is of the highest Last week, Red Cross tracing Israeli universities, and some European labor unions refuse to off-load Israeli products. h. The risks involved. and the many brave Jewish partisans and fighters in the ghettos and forests of Europe. importance not only to record and recount, both for center reunited a Holocaust survivor Each day this Museum opens it doors it reminds the world of these long- And once again there is a deafening silence by many world leaders in the face of these i. How the cover-up story (presence of the witness) ourselves and for the future, the evidences of human suppressed truths. Each year, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reaches some outrages, a reminder that the work of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is not yet was explained to others. with the man who pulled him from a degradation, but side by side with them to set forth the crib 61 years ago to keep him from 150,000 teachers around the country to help them teach youngsters about the done. At the same time, we should take heart in some measure that, with U.S. leadership, j. The relations between the witness and rescuer at evidences of human elevation and nobility. Let the epic being sent to Auschwitz. Holocaust in terms they will understand. More than 2800 teachers come to the the 54-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has now taken up the time. of heroic deeds of love, as opposed by those of hatred, of Museum for Belfer National Conferences, and more than 179 Mandel Fellows in the issue of antisemitism and antisemitic violence for regular monitoring as a human k. The name and age of others in the rescuer rescue as opposed to destruction, bear equal witness to “I’m really shook up,” Hartogs, 46 states design original Holocaust education projects for their schools and rights issue. household who helped and the nature of assistance unborn generations.” now 65, said as he hugged the 75-year- communities. The memory of the Six Million who died simply because they were born Jewish, a provided by each individual. old Schipper on Tuesday at the Los A second way to remember is to insist that the lessons of the Holocaust be memory so brilliantly captured forever by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, must l. The nature of the departure from the rescuer. Dr. Grobman is a contributing editor of Together is a Holocaust Angeles airport. Both men now live in applied to contemporary problems, to make the protection of human rights a key inspire us to redouble our dedication to Jewish identity, education, observance, and m. The names and addresses of others who helped historian, who co-authored Denying History: Who Says The the United States. part of our personal, community, national and international agendas. institutions, to Israel, and to Jews in need everywhere. the rescuer. Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? His latest Here again the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has played a special role, May the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, its leaders and staff, and may you, the n. The type of incidents that occurred during the stay book on the Vaad Hatzala in post-WWII Europe will be published because of its unique call on the moral conscience of the world. Elie Wiesel and Holocaust survivors and your families go from “strength to strength,” and continue to early next year. at the rescuer’s home. the President’s Commission on the Holocaust recommended a “living memorial” tell your story, L’Dor V’Dor, from generation to generation.

TOGETHER 26 TOGETHER 3 FRED S. ZEIDMAN NOBEL LAUREATE ELIE WIESEL Chairman, United States Holocaust Memorial Council ECOND GENERATION This is a great day and its greatness thing to do. But that was not done I come from Wharton, Texas. Like is meaningful to you, when traumatized There was a time I arrived in Spain for my summer it was melodious Hungarian. To my mother, it was many of your hometowns, it’s a small survivors, for it survivors from S place that most people have never heard SOUNDS vacation. When I first heard the gong of the cathedral 1942. symbolizes our Auschwitz, Treblinka, by Lisa Lipkin of. But for a fateful decision by my great victory over Belzec, Majdanek and bells outside my rented apartment in Barcelona, I Apparently, the Hungarians, not the Germans, had grandparents to send my grandparents to forgetfulness, thus Ponar finally landed on The greatest sound you could hear as a teenager thought, “Enchanting.” My Danish, Jewish traveling been the ones to round up the Jews in Uzghorod, her America, I might have been born in a small saving the victims these shores. Of in Clifton, New Jersey, was companion thought, “Expulsion.” “When we sat next village in the Carpathian Mountains. But she had never town in Poland or Russia, rather than one from a second death. course, you obtained the blast of the old air raid to a group of elderly people and heard them speaking spoken about it, not once, and we never realized the in Texas. This Museum owes sympathy and siren on a snowy winter’s loudly in German, I thought, “Tourists.” My friend connection. Until then. Already there are young people you much. Look at it compassion from morning. That meant, thought, “Perpetrators.” But when an ambulance With one final, huge release of steam, the train growing up—in small towns and large and be proud. various quarters; many zoomed by, blasting its distinctly European-sounding cities alike—with only the most cursory Granted, your good people assisted Snow Day. School is rang its bell, a sound that signaled the start of another education about the Holocaust. My role in its existence you in rebuilding your photo by Gideon Lewin Cancelled. There were siren, my friend thought, “Hospital emergency.” I delicious rail adventure for me. For my father, it signaled generation has a duty to them—and to is not unique. Others lives and your hopes on nearly 1,000 kids in my thought, “My mother.” the start of pure hell. He had to watch my mother you—and we have to fulfill that duty now. have taken part in it. the ruins of a shattered high school class—far too It was 1973 when we decided as a family to travel disintegrate, moment by moment, into a helpless girl My generation lives at a vital juxtaposition in time. On one side of us are From the very past. But most of the many to telephone in person— to Budapest on a vacation. I was 11, young enough to of 12, and endure, with each clang of the bell, another the inspiring examples of survivors and the enduring memory of those who beginning, when the time you evolved in a so whenever there was still be fascinated by everything. We had been living in squeeze of her fingernails into the palm of his hand. perished. On the other side are generations upon generations who must remember idea of the project closed circle inhabited questionable weather, the Zurich, where my father was on a sabbatical doing There were moments of reprieve in Budapest. the Holocaust or be at risk of repeating it. had hardly been formulated, we received by your former comrades: cancer research at the university. We had taken lots of The choice is that direct—and so is the challenge. With every successive from both the White House and invisible walls separated survivors school blew that ear- When we bought a peasant blouse at a tourist shop. generation, memory dims. Only the torch you carry can light our way. This is Congress their enthusiastic support. from the rest of the nations. splitting horn instead. All trips that year. One to Florence. Another to Vienna. When we ate chicken paprikash in a small, family what remembrance is for, and a new generation now takes up that duty. Men and women from all social spheres In the beginning, you so winter we prayed for that siren to blow so that we Still another to Paris. All by train. It was all very restaurant. When we sat in a park overlooking the River The urgency of the task is in our newspapers each day. Violent antisemitism and religious or secular affiliations, wanted to share your memories could sleep in and spend the day at the mall. romantic to me. I loved the clanking of the wheels Pesht. But at night, when we lay on our sagging is on the rise throughout the world, and Israel—where so many survivors found rabbis and priests, businessmen and with others. But they refused to It’s funny how just one generation earlier, that against the tracks and the hissing of the steam, and the mattresses in our small rented room, and an ambulance a home—is under attack. scholars, rich and poor, young and old, listen. “Do not look backwards,” sound of the conductor screaming, “All Aboard!,” no As we take up the torch of remembrance, we can only hope to bear it as same sharp blast meant only bad things to high school rode by, it didn’t sound like “Hospital Emergency” to united by an extraordinary passion for people told you. “It is unhealthy. matter what language it was in. any of us. It sounded like thirty years of muffled pain. honorably, as effectively, as you have. We can only hope to be worthy of our truth and compassion, joined their Turn the page; the future is waiting students. One blow of that old, rusty, yellow siren, people’s ancient tradition—“tikkun olam” — to repair the world. talents and fortunes, inspiring America for you.” Then, you stopped which sat at the corner of Dwasline Road and Allwood But when we rolled across the border from Austria We watched mom curl up into a fetal position and Repairing the world is an ongoing obligation – a task that never ends. My to comprehend the weight of memory on trying, you would just whisper: Place, meant, “Hide under your desks! Duck and into Hungary, armed Communist soldiers climbed scream the whole night. We left for Zurich the next generation will continue the sacred task, but we must think about generations our collective aspirations. I salute my “What’s the use? Anyway, you Cover. It’s an air raid. A bomb. A nuclear war!” aboard. When my mother saw them, dressed in their morning. We didn’t talk about what had happened. hence. It is for that reason that today we are literally planting the seeds of predecessors on the Presidentially- won’t understand.” Sounds are like that. They have no loyalties. One uniforms, their rifles abutting their waists, her whole Instead, my mom said nothing. To her, it must have remembrance for those unborn generations. appointed Council. They worked hard. Do people understand now? minute they’re your source of comfort, the next, the body tightened. They opened our compartment door sounded like silence. To me, it was the noisiest train I will now ask our distinguished guests to join me and some of the very Nothing could stop them. And nothing Now, at least, they realize that this root of your pain. and asked for our tickets in a foreign language. To me, ride of my life. youngest members of our special family to bury a time capsule containing an did. is the place—together with Yad ageless message to the future from this gathering. Our proclamations of today, We salute the administration of the Vashem in Jerusalem—where one our affirmations for tomorrow, will now be buried in front of the Museum’s Museum with its staff of professionals can come close not to the Event most sacred space, its Hall of Remembrance. and volunteers, whose devotion brought itself, that is impossible, but to its “Never Forget.” This Tribute, today, was a mellower Dinner was bittersweet. People were just beginning We undertake this ritual for our lost families, for our new families, and for nobility into a world often known for its dark and fiery gates. OUR PARENTS, OURSELVES movement to remember. to orient themselves to the event and didn’t really know the generations to come. We pledge ourselves and our successors to uphold the icy winds of complacency and Much before the Museum was by Jeanette Friedman The Tribute was a gathering unlike any of the what to expect.. Besides, as everyone couldn’t stop torch of remembrance, and accept with a sense of privilege the legacy we have careerism. Rarely has a lofty dream built, I was asked what my hopes It hit me when Lily official gatherings that preceded it in 1981, 1983, 1985 saying, the food was pretty good too! The 7-layer cake been bequeathed: To participate in whatever ways we can—individual by attracted so many just persons, had been for its impact. Anyone Fogelman (born in a Polish was maybe a little dense, but, it was pretty good, and individual—in the effort to repair our world. and since. As unimaginable as it seemed, there on the galvanizing so many groups, and attaining entering it, I said, should not leave town fifteen minutes away grounds of an almost sacred place in Washington, D.C., so was the coffee! such a popular success in a such short it unchanged. Here children and from the one my mom was time. Remember the rainy morning of adults learn that Good and Evil are a place that tells the story of the attempted genocide Everywhere we went, museum staff and volunteers the inauguration ? Only ten years have part of the human condition, and born in) told me that when the of our people, of our families, those who survived the were there to help the survivors and their families find passed since then. When we see the they can be infinite. Here we learn World Gathering of Holocaust ordeal—and their liberators and rescuers—were their way around with friendly faces and intelligent outcome, we are filled with gratitude. that the loneliness of victims, their survivors took place in 1981 in toasted for their accomplishments and their hard- responses! The next morning we arrived on Wallenberg RUTH B. MANDEL No one is as open to sense of abandonment, Israel, she was 55 years old— earned happiness. Life was celebrated and cheered. Place to attend programs about memoir writing—and gratitude as we are. For us, their silent despair as Vice Chairman, United States Holocaust Memorial Council younger than I am now. Good Perhaps, some say, we have now succeeded too when they were done, drifted into the giant tents for every gesture is an they walked, in grief, I thought, we have well, considering the state of the world and the breakfast…and to listen to the music of the past. “Oh nocturnal procession offering, every dawn filled become our parents! duplication of institutions. On the other hand, it is very mein Gott, frishe frucht!!!! And so much of it. Lunch with grace. We watch a towards the flames, are child, ours, and we see our not to be forgotten; Lily Fogelman is a special lady. Straight as an arrow. hard for anyone to ignore the Holocaust anymore, and and dinner were terrific, too. More than six decades ago, a young Jewish couple from parents. And we would give they must leave a trace, Nisht du ka chochmas. She keeps on keeping on, not realize that genocide must not stand—that human The requisite bulletin board was outside the tent, Vienna boarded a ship with their infant daughter for what that child all that was taken a burning scar on man’s marching along on her own two feet up three flights of rights are paramount, that life is sacred. Perhaps where families, perhaps for the last time, mounted paper they believed was an escape from Nazi-dominated Europe. away from us. history, on its memory, stairs to her guest room in a 2G’s house. She spends Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans would have been searches for lost loved ones. And then there were the I was that infant. The ship was the St. Louis — and what However, in the spirit and God’s as well. was supposed to be an escape became that most familiar of part of one afternoon fitting me for a suit she decides I even worse calamities if we hadn’t told our stories tables where people sought out others from their old of the stock-taking Surrounded by Jewish journeys … a long wandering. We were shunned by must have, reminding me what it was like when I had and somehow forced someone to act somewhere to neighborhoods one last time—and I discovered a cousin solemnity of the occasion, your children and Cuba, and turned away by the United States. A few of us to stand still, elementary school age, as my mother made stop the insanity. Who knows? I didn’t know I had. He looked at my name tag— we recall, not without grandchildren, fellow were fortunate; we were taken in by the British. But the rest my clothes for me. All the survivor women are our On Saturday evening, we walked through a “Host a mol efsher gekent a Volvie Friedman?” he melancholy, the early days of your survivors, do you feel joy in your — who weeks earlier stood on deck to glimpse the promised arrival in this blessed land. You were hearts? If so, it is not void of mothers I realized. They are all different, and they are cavernous convention center the size of Central Park asked, “Did you once know a Volvie Friedman?” land of America — were sent back to tragic fates. received without fanfare and sadness; it cannot be. And yet, and all the same, and how wonderful can that be? They to get to our dining room, but lo and behold, for those I looked at him and said, “Volvie Friedman, z”l. I I have no memory of the St. Louis. All I can do is recount the impressions of ceremonies. No festive dinners were yet. Close your eyes and see the even talk about food and eating the same way! who couldn’t make it on their own, there was a little think so, I ought to, he was my dad.” others. How alone my parents must have felt — literally adrift on the vastness of the offered in your honor. No speeches, no invisible faces of those we have I came to know Lily through her daughter, Dr. ocean, trapped between a homeland that wanted to destroy us and a haven that refused to tram, World’s Fair style. The organizers, bless them, That happened two more times before the day presents. As if society left behind, or have accept us. Eva Fogelman, whom I met in 1979 at the Zachor thought of everything. was over, once, on my mother’s side, with the only had told you: You are left us behind as But here, in this place, for this occasion, we who escaped, you who survived, have Conference at Hebrew Union College in New York. More than 4,500 people were served in one Hasid I saw in the crowd. And then there was the 16- alive, that ought to be witnesses. found a haven from the solitude of memories that cannot be fully communicated because Dr. Eva Fogelman is one of the many catalysts in the room—an amazing sight. There was no crowding; the year-old from Baltimore in a crocheted kippah. “I sufficient. Our presence no words adequately capture them. Here we find in one another an implicit understanding creation of something called Second Generation. Since Not long ago, when here today is our seating was flexible. The speeches were short and wish more frum Jews were here,” he said when he that requires no speech, a unique bond of history and memory. There is a special comfort liberated prisoners or answer to their then, lots of water has passed under the bridge and sweet. We noted our losses, old and new, then listened was asked for his reaction to the time capsule in community tonight. hostages returned home, silent question: We we have, amazingly, accomplished so much! When to Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat talk about how we ceremony. “From the cross-section here, you can see These walls, this gathering, reverberate with memory — as do the walls of the they were celebrated by have kept our we first started networking, Holocaust education was had all come to be gathered in this one place at this the Shoah affected every kind of Jew that there is. extraordinary institution that we helped build — the United States Holocaust Memorial the entire nation. And promise. We have Museum. A picture of my parents and me aboard the St. Louis hangs in the Museum— first being born. Until then, Jewish leadership had tried one time, and what that meant to him as the son of But they tried to teach me it was a punishment for that was and is the right that place where memory lives and memory teaches. not forgotten. to ignore our parents and us—until the World American Jews and a member of the government that our sins. Do you tell people who have cancer that Gathering, that is. had ignored the St. Louis and the tracks to Auschwitz, God is punishing them? No you don’t. If all the The ship that was adrift long ago in an ocean of hate and rejection, in the darkest of Elie Wiesel and Jordan Penn, 7, and times, has sailed through the decades to serve memory in teaching powerful lessons for Adriana Geiderman, 8, bury a time capsule That long ago weekend at the Zachor Conference as well as rescue of the Jews. His point was that people different kinds of Jews were all here, maybe we could generations to come. Thus, for tonight, for us, for this weekend, and for the future, the on the Eisenhower Plaza. had galvanized us into social action, into becoming an had worked hard to bring the survivors some measure have unity.” ship is at port. Welcome home. international movement to remember the past and of justice, no matter how imperfect. From the mouths of our babes. “Am Yisrael Chai.”

TOGETHER 4 TOGETHER 25 VLADKA MEED From the Scrolls of Remembrance ECOND GENERATION Introduction of notations by museum visitors... populated with children. And of course her children tery to me, a treasure of immeasurable proportion. They Yiddish Culture Event * This Tribute is an honor to attend because it passes on S provided her with a generous amounts of angst so es- were old and faded, but the people in them were smiling. Tribute to the from my parents’ generation, who are the survivors, the MEMORIAL CANDLE by Lisa Reitman-Dobi sential to her existence! My mother is amazing. She These photos were of cousins, aunts and uncles who were Survivors concrete evidence for our children and their children to can find epiphanies in the mundane because she has such murdered. see...May they never forget what happened to their I am the child of a child a keen appreciation of life. But she also has vivre con- I used to look at those photos and scan them for my at the grandparents and the millions of others. survivor. The biggest event fused with survivre. Everything is a Big Deal (capital- own features. I’d take them out, one at a time, and look United States Holocaust * We are here as three generations. I thank god my parents in my life happened 20 years ized) either worth worrying over or worth celebrating. very carefully. Mirror in one hand, photo in the other. It have survived so that we have this wonderful family. Their But what she didn’t see—and this was the Big Deal of was my ritual. I needed a sense of lineage, of hereditary Museum before I was born. It shaped legacy of our three generations will continue to grow and my childhood—was that I didn’t belong. My mother was qualities. I felt like an orphan in some odd ways: who was in Washington, DC my mother and therefore “Remember.” We are here to ensure that this will “Never” shaped me. I grew up the way a refugee, self-educated, resourceful, intelligent and I like? Why? Who is my mother talking about and am I at the Survivor Village happen to anyone again. I am proud to be a part of this she did: rootless. lonely. And I felt like the outsider. really a carbon copy of that person? Does that mean I My European mother I wanted my mother to be just as American as ev- have her profile? Will I outgrow it? incredible event that honors my parents and in was lost in suburban eryone else’s mother. I wanted her to play bridge. I Apparently, I was like a lot of dead people whom I Once again we greet all of you wholeheartedly. remembrance of those I never had the privilege to know. Thank you everyone for this memorial you have photo by Gideon Lewin America. She was plunked wanted her to join a club. She didn’t and she never would. never knew. My mother was good at telling me why I was A cultural event has become a tradition at the created. down in the middle of a for- My God, she wouldn’t be caught dead playing those like deceased relatives who died unnatural deaths. I was gatherings and conferences of survivors. It * With pain and joy we visit this special place. Thank you for the opportunity to share it with other eign culture without one beach club games or going to the Catskills. I can’t even compared to Max who was musical and adventurous. He symbolically expresses the link and the love that survivors and their families. —in my mother’s words and I’m quoting now—“fortu- single person who understood her. Although she was sur- picture that. My mother had nothing in common with we feel for our culture, for our traditions, for the May we have the courage to ensure it never happens again. rounded by American Jews, they may as well have been American mothers and no connection with survivor nately was killed in the Spanish Civil War.” I was com- * To all the survivors: Thank You. Without you we wouldn’t be here. mothers, save for a couple of women she knew from pared to Malka, who was smart and stubborn and prob- creativity of our people. During the darkest period from another planet. Planet Jewish America. Land of com- We bear witness to the evil that men can do and vow to not let it happen again. Morocco. But these women did not define themselves ably got shot since she wasn't the type to just go without of Jewish history, our culture sustained and petitive hospitality. She had few friends. Her life cen- * In memory of beloved family, my mother, my sister, my brother, whom I miss every day of my life. tered, and still does, around her family. Although she tried as survivors, no matter how awful their uprooted child- a protest. Being shot was a good thing. It showed, accord- nourished us. * In memory of an entire family I will never know. to give us normalcy, there was nothing normal about the hoods had been. Like any child, I wanted her to fit in ing to my mother, "strength of character" and an inciden- We who survived Hell remember that before way she got here. somewhere so that I would fit in somewhere. She didn’t, tal avoidance of what probably would have been a far worse the shadow of the Nazi nightmare fell upon Europe * In memory of my beautiful beloved mother and father and for my beautiful children and grandchildren, There was something in me that needed to under- and therefore, I didn’t. She was different, and therefore, fate. and extinguished its light, Jewish life sparkled with may this museum continue to educate and remember. stand my mother, and that something drove me to write I felt different. And if you feel different, you ARE dif- I’m told I get my creativity from my mother's mother, the glow of creativity. We took pride in our Jewish * In loving memory of my daddy … who lost his entire family … sweet little sisters, his dear about it, first in Second Generation Voices, a book that ferent. a well-known hat designer before the war. My grand- scholars, writer, books, newspapers, schools, parents, and who was tormented with grief, unable to tell his story. May all our children keep this recounts firsthand experiences of children of survivors Other children my age went to Hebrew school. For mother—and I have a hard time calling her that—died at synagogues, libraries, theatres, and sports clubs. history alive. the age of 39, 28 years before I was born. I look like her. and children of perpetrators, then in the play Tell Me me, it was not permitted. After the war, my mother Many of them were organized and supported by * I am a survivor of eight concentration camps. I survived and am glad to be able to come to this About It. The play is based on my insight and under- would have no part of a synagogue, because 1) it meant My mother stares at me sometimes. Maybe you can un- gathering with my daughter and granddaughter. Please remember the Holocaust and never to forget. having your name on a list, and 2) it involved praying to derstand. Maybe you stare at your own children. It makes the very active political mass movements such as standing of how the Holocaust continues to affect us. * I am here today as a wife of a survivor, my loving husband who died in 1994 at 63 … He left a a God who had permitted the atrocities of the Holo- you feel like another casualty, without the visible wounds the Socialists, Zionists and religious groups. And the Holocaust, is not easy to understand. legacy of two beautiful children who will bear his mark for future generations to live in peace and I grew up feeling confused and deprived. Not de- caust. I felt like Lisa, the Un-Jew. to prove your pain. But some wounds are not visible, and Even during the deportations, in the Vilna equality of our human race. Educate, remember and persevere. prived of material things–well, there was that much So I grew up with both feet firmly planted nowhere, those can be the deepest wounds of all. Ghetto, and during the Final Solution, poets wrote wanted pony, you know, a really cute one that I could or more accurately, one planted here on American soil, There was—and is—a history of which I ought to be songs, artists staged performances. In the Kloga * For my mother and in memory of my grandparents: sharing the painful history so we never forget. keep in the back yard or in my room…It was a much the other in a decimated Europe, a place that had once proud, a history of musical, literary, creative, and highly- Camp, composer Vladimir Dumarshkin wrote * As members of the second and third generation we are grateful for the Holocaust Museum and the deeper deprivation than that, I felt deprived of belong- been the thriving metropolis of my mother's Jewish fam- educated family members. But all that remains now is a box music. In the concentration camp Theresienstadt, opportunity to remember the six million, my father’s parents and family and my father’s survival. ing to something. ily. I also grew up with the implicit understanding that of photos and some stories. What would have happened if I children and their teachers painted scenes of their * I am very grateful, as a member of the Second Generation, to be here in our Nation’s Capital With the best of intentions, my parents settled in a my life could turn on a dime. It had happened before, hadn’t said, “Tell me about it” to the point of aggravating my homes, of butterflies, which could not longer be walking through the Holocaust Museum. I am hopeful that the suffering of my family, our people, poor Mom. completely American neighborhood. There was no sur- why shouldn't it happen again? “Have fun-Be careful” was seen. They did this on scraps of paper before they was not in vain. May the experiences of the past serve as a lesson for all generations. vivor community in my upbringing. Even if there had one phrase in our house. It just didn’t feel safe or com- I’m the only one in our family who wanted to know more * I am very sad to be here in memory of all my relatives who have died in the camps, but extremely fortable or right to be Jewish. Yet every year, we had about my mother. My sisters never needed to know about were put on trains to Auschwitz. been, my mother would not have embraced it. “I am not proud to be here for my surviving relatives. May the memories, stories, will to live and suffering what I now call “the Secret Seder.” And God forbid you that crack in time from which our mother came. It was a In the Warsaw Ghetto, the secret Oneg Shabbat a survivor,” she said for years. “We didn’t flee, we left.” always be preserved. This weekend has been a wonderful, moving, amazing experience for my Leaving, I’ve told her, is going to Club Med. Fleeing is didn’t show up. terrible crack in time, and for many people, it was easier to Club was organized – scholars and writers did when they’re going to kill you if you stay. In my play, Tell Me About It, I use humor to address not look back but rather say, Kadima. As a child, I heard research, collected documentary material, the so- family who attended. I hope that my children never forget this experience. My mother, an only child, and her parents ran from some difficult demons. People ask how a play about the Kadima a lot, closing the door on the past and moving for- called Ringelblum archives and buried them in milk * I sat on rain-soaked chairs in April 1993 to witness the opening of this amazing place. I witness this country to country under dreadful conditions. And then ripple effect of the Holocaust could be full of humor. ward. This was necessary in creating a life out of nothing. cans for future generations. Some of them were day of amazing accomplishment. I hope I may live long enough to witness the progress, the interest the worst happened. As refugees in Morocco, both my It’s a play about families, and the dialogue and cross-talk But at a certain point, especially when the ripple effect of the found and one of the milk cans is displayed in the of future generations in what happened in those days of the twentieth century when darkness fell mother’s parents died and she was alone at the age of that make for the most aggravating family moments can war impacts the family, it becomes helpful to look at the past. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to tell our story. upon the earth and eventually the Museum became a shining light for all humanity – Now and for the 14. Yet she insisted, “I am not a survivor.” be very entertaining to the observer. Jews have always My play deals with that ripple effect. Perhaps my sisters saw Although abandoned by the world, our people FUTURE. the past as too scary, maybe they thought it might swallow I grew up with my mother’s notion of a pecking or- used humor as a coping mechanism, and we have the jokes still held onto their belief in humanity, to our ethical * This has been a fabulous tribute to all the survivors and their courage and hope for the future. der of suffering. It measured and categorized loss, dis- and comedians to prove it. But nothing beats the humor them up, or likely they were just following my mother’s lead I’m proud to be here as a member of the second generation. We will carry on the torch!! of family discussions, where everyone is talking, no one and heading forward—Kadima—without needing an expla- values, our Jewish traditions. We survivors carry placement, fear and pain. This was why my mother gave * In honor of all who came before us and all our parents endured, we are so grateful this Museum will is listening, your original question is never answered and nation of our mother's tension level and her intense involve- this heritage with us everywhere. It has helped us low rank to her own experience, and by extension, mine. keep the legacy alive. I hope and pray that future generations will never forget their stories and the Not having been in a camp, she considered herself not there is a great big elephant in the livingroom around ment with her children and now grandchildren. to find a new place for ourselves in America, where only not a survivor but a lucky person to boot. This is which everyone tiptoes. What happened to Mom’s fam- They say that in survivor families there is often one we have rebuilt our lives, our homes and our horrors that hatred can create. an odd barometer by which one is taught to evaluate ily? Why is Mom so tense? Why is everyone dead? Why child—perhaps a firstborn, maybe a lastborn—who is a sym- families. * Remember and educate! pain, happiness and life in general. are we having chicken AGAIN? But under humor is some- bol of those who didn’t survive. This child becomes a living This great land, with its many nationalities and * In loving memory and tribute to my beloved parents … For teaching me to trust and to love despite As a friend of mine says, “It ain’t Auschwitz, keep times sadness or anger and in this case, I felt both. Sad testament to all that was lost. This child is called the Me- cultures has enriched us all, but our Jewish heritage the darkness they experienced. The horrors of the Holocaust become increasingly incomprehensible, on truckin’.” But this notion was how she undercut her that my mother had to go through what she went through, morial Candle Child. It seems that is my role. It’s a privi- has enriched America too. Survivors have made but the heroism and resilience are eternally inspiring. own indisputable grief and bereavement and—by exten- to lose so many and so much, and angry that the world lege. It was my choice—and my destiny—to look deeply their contributions and have won world recognition * I have survived and am here with my children and grandchildren. We will never forget and will into my mother's past and into the Holocaust itself. Writing sion again—mine. Maybe some people didn’t have num- stood by and allowed it to happen. through being awarded the Nobel prize in many pass on this memory so that this horror will never be forgotten. bers tattooed onto their forearms, but they have night- The play had the good luck to be read and to go into helps me to dissect and understand the multiplicity of emo- * Thank you for remembering my family – my aunts and my uncles and my cousins – and my half- production, but luck isn’t everything. Endurance is nec- tions I saw in my mother, and the refractions of those quali- fields, among them our own, dear Elie Wiesel, marish memories seared into their souls just as indel- brother, killed age 4, whose name my father never spoke. essary, and a strong degree of perseverance helps. We ties that I see in myself. Peace Prize recipient, who is with us at this ibly. While her emotions had to go someplace, in an * I’m from the second generation here with my parents, survivors – my father of the youngest of effort to spare her loved ones, and herself, my mother pass these traits on to our children whether or not they Now I’m the mother of two daughters. I see how the gathering. kept things bottled up. The result was tension, anxiety tell us about it. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re Holocaust has affected me, and the way in which I raise my Yes, many times throughout our history, Jewish survivors – to show our respect for those of our family members and all the others who were not and fear. She’s like a champagne bottle, my mother, capable of until we’re put to the test. There’s a saying daughters. Interspersed with the tension and anxiety comes culture has been forced to change. It was destroyed so fortunate to be here today. We are truly blessed. bursting to let it out. My mother is truly a great lady; I that a woman is like a tea bag: you don’t know how strong tremendous appreciation for the continuity of generations. in Poland and in other countries of Europe, * The time we spend on Earth, in this world, is so precious. We are here because those before us just wish she’d found a way to connect with other child she is until you put her in hot water. That’s the way I see This is something I didn’t see in my mother until now and uprooted in Russia, but revived in Israel and still sacrificed their entire world, and for what? It’s just that – as a third generation, I know the torch survivors and hidden children. She would be a happier the generations after the Shoah. Even my sisters, who something my daughters, no doubt, don’t yet see in me. I am continues here in America. The values of Jewish has been passed on, so we will NEVER forget. So teach your children, your grandchildren, great lady. never expressed interest in our mother’s past, have a cer- no longer lost, but part of something larger, of life remain eternal. otherwise the sacrifices made as to ensure our existence might go down the same path so many continuity…and I’m glad I went looking for it. To me, my People can be made of brick or glass. My mother tain strength and perseverance that is not unlike our Tonight, through words, songs, and music we of our brethren were forced to take. is brick with glass inside. She is strong but fragile. To mother’s. daughters are gifts. They are miracles. And so, I'm honored * I am a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and I am most grateful to this Museum for When I was little, I used to sneak into my parents to be a Memorial Candle kid. As a writer, as a daughter, and will share the dreams, the sorrow, the joy and the me, she is magical. She managed to dodge raindrops. letting the world know of the darkness that befell the Jews of Europe during World War II. bedroom when no one was around. In her closet, my as a mother, I won't let the flame go out. I promise. love and hopes of our people. Together with our She managed to escape the nightmare of her childhood, Thank you. to grow up and to create new realities, which she then mother had a box of photos. Those photos were a mys- Lisa Dobi is a playwright. artists, we will express what is in our hearts. TOGETHER 24 TOGETHER 5 THE AUSCHWITZ FLYOVER TO HAVE LIVED TO SEE THE DAY: OLOCAUST HISTORY Sep. 4, 2003 OTED IN PASSING Jerusalem Post and heavily overcast Polish skies. In the cockpits, shout of the grandchildren of those whose ashes by Arieh O. Sullivan the Israeli aircrews carried the names of all those are at Auschwitz.” He came to the United States in 1946 from Stuttgart, recorded murdered in Auschwitz on this date exactly The Nazis built the camp in occupied Poland in N H “CHRISTMAS Germany after spending six years (1939-1945) in dif- them to speak out.The last stanza of Hecht’s Three Israeli Air Force F-15 fighter jets recently 60 years ago. They had picked the names out of the 1940. More than a million people, 90 percent of ferent camps. At the age of 13 he worked at an ammu- “Ballad of the Doomed Jews” was the most jarring: thundered over the Auschwitz death camp in a records at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in them Jewish, perished in gas chambers or died of nition factory until he was taken on a death march to WITHOUT JEWS”: “Oh World be patient—it will take / Some time display of modern Jewish might. As the jets zoomed Jerusalem prior to flying to Poland last week. The starvation and disease at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Tomashow, where he was put on a train to Auschwitz. before the murder crews / Are done. By Christmas by at 300 knots an hour, jets, flying low enough for all to see the blue Star of complex before it was liberated by advancing Soviet After selection, he was subsequently shipped to A HOLOCAUST you can make / Your Peace on Earth without the formation leader Brig.- David, flew toward the Auschwitz-Birkenau troops on January 27, 1945. Vahingen, then to Underrixen, Niekagerach and Jews.” Gen. Amir Eshel read concentration camp as slowly as possible, following Niekarelz. He was liberated in a tunnel in Ostenburken. CONTROVERSY The ad was scheduled to appear in the New out the following the railroad tracks leading into the camp and York Times in early 1943, but was delayed because statement, which was crematoriums and then peeled away. SOL WEISS by Dr. Rafael Medoff of the wartime paper shortage. In the meantime, broadcast on the Among those on the ground was a contingent of Sol Weiss, born 12/1/29 in Csenger, Czecholosvakia. During the 1940s, Academy Award-winning someone at the Times leaked the text to officials of ground: “We pilots of 140 IDF officers who were selected to visit Europe’s Only survivor of family of five, survived Auschwitz. screenwriter Ben Hecht authored a series of the American Jewish Committee, a mainstream the Air Force, flying in death camps. Following the fly past, the jets, the Came to U.S. in 1949 where he married Alice Katz in controversial newspaper advertisements intended Jewish organization that strongly opposed Bergson’s 1952. They were married for 51 years. Worked as tie- the skies above the most lethal aircraft in the IAF’s arsenal, landed back to alert Americans about the Holocaust. But none outspoken approach. Bergson was urgently cutter in garment center, father to two sons, Glenn, camp of horrors, arose at Radom air base, refueled and set out on the 1,600 of the ads caused more of a stir than the one he summoned to the office of AJCommittee president 48, and Cary, 40. Grandfather of Sarah Weiss, 10. He Joseph Proskauer, who warned him that “such an from the ashes of the nautical mile route back to Israel. “They are passing died from a neuro-muscular disease named wrote in 1943, which declared that the world anti-Christian attitude [as implied in the ad] could millions of victims and over this most awful place on earth, a place where Myasthenia Gravis. He was an honest, hard-working, was looking forward to a Christmas with no Jews shoulder their silent the allies did nothing to even show they were even family man, supporter of Israel, and lived his life left alive in Europe. well bring on pogroms in the USA.” cries, salute their trying to save us,” said Prof. Shevach Weiss, Israel’s guided by principles of the Torah. Hecht’s ads were placed in major newspapers Bergson agreed to withdraw the ad, but insisted that Proskauer convene a meeting of Jewish leaders courage and promise to be the shield of the Jewish ambassador to Warsaw. “They asked me here in around the country by a Jewish activist to discuss taking concrete steps to press for U.S. people and its nation Israel.” Poland why we were disturbing the quiet (at TUVIA WIESNER organization known as the Bergson group. It was action to aid European Jewry. The meeting, held in The Israeli F-15s, originally invited to Poland to Auschwitz). This quiet is the silence that was forced Tuvia Wiesner and his brother, both Holocaust headed by Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), a Zionist survivors, came to Israel after World War II. His emissary from Jerusalem who organized protest New York City some weeks later, was attended by celebrate the Polish Air Force’s 85th birthday, were upon us,” Weiss told Israel radio. “This is a one- officials of more than a dozen prominent Jewish escorted during the flight by two Polish air force time event. I told them here that this quiet could be brother was killed in the 1948 War of Liberation. rallies, lobbied Congress, and sought to raise Subsequently, Tuvia married his late brother’s fiance, organizations. Bergson, who spoke at the meeting, fighter jets. The ceremony ignored marginal protests disturbed once by a screech. This screech is the public consciousness about the plight of Jews in and they had six children. As was his usual custom, Hitler Europe. urged them to sponsor an emergency conference Wiesner rose early every morning to attend prayer The advertisements featured eye-catching on the issue of rescuing Jews from Hitler. But “they services at the Nezarim synagogue. On Chol Hamoed headlines such as “How Well Are You Sleeping? wanted just to get a repeated assurance that [the (the intermediate days) Pesach, Chanan was one of two THE HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATION IN WASHINGTON, DC Is There Something You Could Have Done to ad] won’t be published,” he later recalled. men who were the first to arrive before the starting by Roman Kent Save Millions of Innocent People—Men, Bergson held back the ad for several more time for services. They were both stabbed and killed months, hoping that Proskauer and his colleagues st by terrorists as they approached the synagogue. Later Women, and Children—from Torture and On November 1 authored “Imperfect Justice” delivered the keynote and stars from the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater, might yet decide to take a more activist approach security forces discovered that the early arrival of Death?” and “Time Races Death: What Are We and 2nd, more than 7,000 address. with inspiring remarks by Abraham Foxman and Chanan and the other man had interrupted the terrorists Waiting For?” on the rescue issue. When no such action was Holocaust survivors Calling the Holocaust not only history’s gravest, Valdka Meed.. before they could complete the installation of a bomb In early 1943, Hecht read a newspaper report forthcoming, he decided to publish the ad. It with family members most systematic genocide, but also its greatest theft, The reunion drew such tremendous interest— in the Aron Kodesh (holy ark) of the synagogue, which in which Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels appeared in the New York Times on September gathered at the United Eizenstat advocated restitution as an important path with participants traveling to Washington from 38 they apparently intended to detonate in the middle of was quoted as vowing to finish the task of 14, 1943. States Holocaust to remembrance, Zachor, and to justice for long- states and 5 countries—that an enormous white morning prayer services, potentially killing many murdering all European Jews in time for Needless to say, the ad did not cause any Memorial Museum in forgotten Holocaust survivors. tent was erected on the field opposite the Museum more people. Christmas. The Nazi threat inspired Hecht to pen pogroms. On the contrary: “Ballad of the Doomed Washington, DC for the “There are some critics who questioned the to accommodate the crowds. To help survivors an advertisement headlined “Ballad of the Jews” and the other Hecht ads played a crucial Tribute to Holocaust whole effort at Holocaust restitution,” he said. “But in finding “landsmen,” the tent housed a “Survivor EDDY WYNSCHENK Doomed Jews of Europe.” Rumors about the role in the Bergson group’s campaign for U.S. Survivors- Reunion of a I found that for survivors it was not the amount Village” with tables staffed by survivors from a I met Eddy Wynschenk in September 1946 in ad, and the ballad it contained, reached some rescue action, by drawing attention to the plight of Special Family. Joined they recovered, but the fact that someone was held number of villages, cities, ghettos, concentration Amsterdam when both of us were residents of the journalists even before it was published. The Europe’s Jews and rousing public support for U.S. by children, grandchildren, liberators and rescuers, accountable during their lifetimes for the wrongs camps and displaced persons camps. Visitors Home for Jewish Boys orphaned by the Holocaust. Independent Jewish Press Service reported that intervention. The campaign culminated, in October While I had survived in hiding in the Netherlands, Eddy the survivors were honored for the extraordinary committed against them.” He continued with the could post questions on a large bulletin board to the ad “would have to be printed on asbestos, it 1943, in the introduction of a Congressional had been incarcerated in concentration camp Vught in resolution urging the creation of a U.S. government accomplishments they’ve made in their adopted statement that it w as survivors Roman Kent and seek information about those they lost during the was so hot,” because the ballad “says that there’s the Netherlands then, after a short stay in transit camp agency to rescue Jewish refugees. homeland. They were reassured that their shared Benjamin Meed who were the moral force behind war. Media flocked from as far as Japan. China going to be a very happy Christmas this year Westerbork, was deported to Auschwitz. There he was The public controversy caused by history and commitment to remembrance of the the negotiations. and Europe to cover the event. put to work on the ramps in Birkenau emptying the because by December there just wouldn’t be any Congressional hearings on the resolution, combined Holocaust would be preserved—within and Survivors and their families spent Saturday and Part of the Museum’s l0th Anniversary cattle cars of whatever arriving Jews had left behind, Jews left for the Christian world to spit at.” followed by working in a mine in Furstengrubbe. He That report was not far off the mark. Hecht’s with behind-the-scenes pressure from Treasury beyond the Museum’s walls—for generations to Sunday, November 1 - 2, at the Museum, where programming, the Tribute recognized all that the Department officials, convinced President come. they toured the Permanent Exhibition and special survivors who have contributed to the success of was sent on the death march in January 1945 to Dora- ballad began: “Four million Jews waiting for death Nordhausen where upon arrival he suffered from Roosevelt, in January 1944 to establish the rescue “This is a great day and its greatness is exhibitions on Anne Frank and hidden children, and the institution, from helping plan the Permanent / Oh hang and burn but—quiet, Jews! / Don’t be severe frostbite and all his toes, black from gangrene, bothersome; save your breath— / The world is agency the resolution had sought—the War Refugee meaningful to you, survivors, for it symbolizes our went behind the scenes to see the facilities used to Exhibition to raising money, to volunteering their were removed. busy with other news.” Board. The Board’s activities, which included victory over forgetfulness, thus saving the victims conserve the thousands of artifacts survivors have help in the day-to-day activities of the Museum. His wartime and postwar trauma forced him to The second stanza challenged the Roosevelt financing the rescue work of Raoul Wallenberg, from a second death,” said Nobel Laureate Elie donated over the years. There were writing “Without the support of the survivor community, stop working. The American government awarded him administration: “Four million murders are quite saved the lives of over 200,000 people during the monthly SSI payments. The Dutch government finally Wiesel to the crowd before him at the Museum. workshops for survivors interested in penning their this museum could never have been created,” said a smear / Even our State Department views / final 15 months of the war. “This Museum owes you much. Look at it and be own memoirs and opportunities for grandchildren Museum Director Sara Bloomfield. “We wanted recognized how it had added insult to injury in the Those American Jewish leaders who believed immediate postwar years and awarded him a small The slaughter with much disfavor here / But proud.” to interview their grandparents about their to pay tribute to them.” nothing could be done to help European Jewry, or monthly stipend in an attempt to make up for its then—it’s busy with other news.” Organized by the Museum with the help of the experiences during the war. Addressing fellow survivors gathered before negligence, and provided an automobile to ameliorate Such public Jewish criticism of the Roosevelt who claimed there would be a severe antisemitic American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust The staff helped visitors research the fates of him on the Museum’s Elsenhower Plaza on his growing immobility. Eddy dedicated himself to administration was quite unusual, given the high backlash if American Jews protested, had been Survivors, the Tribute was perhaps one of the last victims and survivors they had been unable to find Sunday, Benjamin Meed said, “We stand with our speaking in the local schools about his Holocaust level of American Jewish support for FDR and proven wrong. The Bergson group had opportunities for the eyewitness generation and on their own. There were also numerous children and their children to mark the 10th experiences. While he tried to teach about the dangers the New Deal. Even those Jews who were demonstrated that Jewish activism was a realistic their descendants to come together. Saturday night presentations offered throughout the weekend, anniversary of this Museum. This permanent living of intolerance, his main message to his students was privately troubled by Roosevelt’s refusal to aid and effective option in the United States during the featured a dinner for more than 4.500 people at covering everything from researching genealogy on memorial to the Jewish uniqueness of the never to miss an opportunity to tell their families “I European Jewry were reluctant to speak out, Holocaust years. Love You” even in moments of anger, for it was the the Washington, D.C. Convention Center where the Web to commercial publishing of memoirs to Holocaust will remain long after we have gone. It fearing that any public disagreement with the one thing he missed the most since he lost his family. (Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat, who led the U.S. understanding the Museum’s architecture. The is our voice. It will continue to tell and retell our Eddy Wynschenk passed away on December 16, president during wartime might provoke Studies, which focuses on issues related to America’s response to the government’s negotiations for Holocaust Tribute closed Sunday evening with a lively story. 2003 after a short illness. antisemitism. But Bergson and Hecht believed Holocaust - www.WymanInstitute.org) restitution during the Clinton administration and performance of Yiddish songs led by Mike Burstyn “Remembrance will endure.” he said. Louis de Groot the desperate situation of Europe’s Jews required

TOGETHER 6 TOGETHER 23 “I WAS THERE” A GATHERING OF For the first time, the survivors were guests rather by Martin Herskovitz, Petach Tikvah, Israel than hosts. They did not have to worry about logistics or OTED IN PASSING Moderator, [email protected] GUARDIANS OF SHOAH programming. Most importantly, they did not have to justify themselves to anyone. They were made to feel [email protected] MEMORY that their existences, their memories, mattered. DANIEL AARON writer Isaac Bashevis Singer—his distant cousin. The museum’s staff and volunteers made the N guards’ kitchen. On a Sunday morning, July 23, 1944, Should you decide to ask whether my trip from Israel by Menachem Rosensaft Daniel Aaron graduated from Temple University in 1950 Elberg was honored with numerous prizes during his guards burst into Kort’s barracks with a rough command: survivors feel not only welcome, but also special. And with a degree in Economics. He subsequently went on to to the US for the Tribute to the Survivors in Washington lifetime. In 1977, he won the Itsik Manger Prize, which is “Lie down wherever you are.” Instead, Kort ran, climbing the survivors, in turn, had a profound effect on the become one of the founders of Comcast Corporation, was worth it, my answer is an unequivocal yes. “Remember, fellow often called the Nobel Prize of Yiddish Literature; he was out a barracks window and hiding in a storage shed. museum’s staff. On Monday, the museum’s associate America’s third largest cable-television company. He was It was enthralling to see so many people pay tribute survivors, when we granted the award in Tel Aviv by Golda Meir, in her last Because of his photographic memory, Kort was a valuable director, Alice Greenwald, said that she had never seen a leader in the cable industry throughout its period of to the Holocaust survivors. Yet many survivors have emerged from the ghettos morale at the museum so high. The men and women public appearance. In 1984, he won the Prime Minister’s witness during war crimes trials against the Nazis. Kort greatest growth and served as chairman of the National already passed away and there was a general awareness that and the forests and the who work daily with the imagery and artifacts of Award, an Israeli literature prize that had been given only arrived in the U.S. in 1947 with a nickel in his pocket. Cable Television Association while helping build Comcast many more will not be with us for long. You felt the urgency death camps, hopelessly destruction had been reinvigorated by getting to know, once before to a non-Israeli: Singer. Under the wing of the American Jewish Joint Distribution into a Fortune 500 company. After retiring, he was active in the air as family members bent their heads to the determined to invoke hope even if only for a few hours, those for whom the Holocaust Committee, he lived in a modest Manhattan hotel, got a in leading efforts to battle Parkinson’s disease, along with whispered, half-choked words of the survivors as they told and tell the tales, few were must forever be a reality. job at Bendix Corp. and entered night school. In 1969, his wife, Geraldine, a Temple alumna. In 2001 Veritas ISSER HAREL their story, many for the first time. Many frail survivors, willing to listen. Survivors “We can now sense the achievements of our Kort took the Teeny Bouncer, a tiny high-bouncing ball, Press published his biography, Take the Measure of the Isser Harel started out in 1930 as a young Russian on canes, in wheelchairs, in obviously failing health made were understood by generation taking hold in this museum and in other $50,000 and, with a partner, set up Imperial Toy Corp., Man - An American Success Story. Aaron’s father was a immigrant to Israel. He later founded his own orange the effort to tell their story, to leave their legacy to next survivors alone. They institutions across the country,” Meed said. “Our collective which he grew into a multi-national, multi-million dollar spoke in code. Those who prosperous German Jew, whose law practice and politi- company. By the 1940s Harel joined the Haganah and generation. They made this effort because they knew that presence reminds these institutions of their commitment corporation. were not there will never know what it meant being cal career ended after Hitler came to power. When he the British auxiliary forces to fight the Nazis. He headed this may be their last chance, or if not the last, at least to remembrance. If they are to speak in our names, they there. All outsiders could do was to come close to must respect our experience, respect both its Jewishness was unable to find work in New York, the elder Aaron the intelligence branch of the Haganah in 1942. their best chance to tell their stories with Museum Harel quickly climbed the ranks of the Israeli elite, exhibits serving as reminders and guides. I passed them in the gates; those who were not in Auschwitz will and its universality.” committed suicide three weeks after his wife took her RAFAEL FELIX SCHARF never enter Auschwitz.” ultimately becoming the first head of the Shin Bet, the museum and marveled at their quiet strength, the same Far too often the Shoah is perceived as the domain own life. Aaron was orphaned at 13, along with a younger Rafael Felix “Felek” Scharf, who died in London aged Elie Wiesel spoke these words beside the of the dead—as if they alone experienced its horrors. brother. His biography not only encompasses his experi- Israel’s internal security service. He was the Mossad 89, was an educator, writer, historian and keeper of strength that allowed them to survive the Nazi horrors. I saw their children and grandchildren, with video Western Wall in Jerusalem more than 22 years ago, The survivors suffered no less, and their anguish ences as a foster child, soldier, family man in Levittown, director from 1952-1963. memory, who devoted his life to the tragedies of the Shoah, on June 18, 1981, at the concluding ceremony of cameras and tape recorders, documenting every word, continued far longer. Pennsylvania, but as a prominent cable-TV executive. It During his tenure as the Mossad chief, he led two and to the grim complex of Polish-Jewish relations. Very the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. every emotion. I saw their faces, too; eager for knowledge But the survivors are also the embodiment, the is a triumphant story of the human spirit-of courage, com- famous operations. The first was the capture in 1960 much a pre-war Polish Jew, and occupied for much of his That was the first large-scale reunion of those who yet appalled at what they have heard, a mixture of horror shadows and reflections, of those who perished. They passion and hope. In 1994, Aaron received the Diamond of Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi architects of the life with a business career, he became a crucial figure in had experienced the Shoah. Many of us, their sons are what, but for fate, those who were annihilated would and gratitude that is a special mixture found at such events Achievement Award from Temple University. Final Solution. The other involved Yosseleh postwar historiography. and daughters, came with them. We witnessed their have become. Not ghosts or two-dimensional stereotypes, and seldom elsewhere. I saw them in the Meed Center, Schumacher, the grandson of an ultra-Orthodox Scharf was born in Cracow, where he studied to rejoicing in seeing one another, all the while but loving, interactive, outspoken men and women. The Brooklynite, who, in 1959, was prevented from become a lawyer. He was a modern, exemplary Cracowian clustered around the small screen, scribbling down names remembering. sound reverberating through the two enormous tents set LOTTE BERK kidnaping his son and enrolling him in a religious of his times, inhabiting Polish, Jewish and European and details, verifying that every sister and brother is Today, the survivors remain the guardians of up across the street from the museum was a blend of Lotte Berk, who used her training as the basis for an school. Harel resigned from the Mossad in 1963. cultures. Increasingly, though, his love for Poland was recorded, never to be forgotten. their memories, of their legacy, except that now laughter, tales and, yes, nostalgia. Sadness and mourning exercise program that became popular with the stars, After his career in intelligence, Harel was primarily unrequited. Scharf left Cracow in 1938, going, he would And yet it was not only memories and sorrow, it was their voices are being listened to more and more. are part of the survivors’ collective persona, but not the recently died at 90. Berk, whose family was Jewish, was a writer. His best known book, The House on Garibaldi later say, voluntarily but guiltily, as if he were deserting a the joys of music and the joys of reunions, friendships This past weekend, they met again, more than 2,000 defining element. born Liselotte Heymansohn in Cologne. In the 1930s, she Street (1975), recounts the capture of Eichmann. He kind of battlefield. Life was being made increasingly renewed and friendships cemented. It was an amazing of them, accompanied by their children and The most striking aspect of the weekend was its fled the Nazis with her husband, Ernst Berk, a fellow dancer, died in Israel at 91. difficult for Jews, no matter how much they loved the great experience! grandchildren, some 7,000 persons in all. The tone. The mood was one of fulfillment. A sense of energy, and their baby daughter, Esther. Berk started modeling at Polish poets. venue was the United States Holocaust Memorial purpose and vitality permeated the multigenerational visits Museum in Washington, the occasion, a tribute by to the museum’s permanent exhibition and special exhibits Heatherley's School of Fine Art and later danced with the RABBI EPHRAIM OSHRY During the second world war, he served first in the Ballet Rambert at London's Covent Garden. During World infantry and then in British military intelligence. He the museum to the survivors. At a pivotal moment on Anne Frank and the hidden children, workshops where Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, leader for 50 years of the of transition, the survivors were reassured that their War II, she entertained British troops. She developed her worked for a while with Ignacy Schwarzbart, one of the grandchildren interviewed their grandparents, panels at landmarked synagogue Beth Hamedrash Hagadol on the history, their past and, yes, the remembrance of dancer's training regime into a set of exercises that two Jewish representatives to the Polish government in which survivors such as Adam Boren and Joseph Lower East Side and venerated among Orthodox Jews as their dead, would be preserved and protected within Tenenbaum talked about writing their memoirs, tables improved muscle tone and posture. At 46, she opened her exile in London. Scharf was with him when the telegram a sage of the Torah and author of a five-volume religious the museum’s walls. identified by the names of camps and ghettos at which women-only studio in London's Manchester Street. Clients from the Polish underground arrived with the first news included actresses Joan Collins and Sian Phillips, singer response to the Holocaust, died recently in Mt. Sinai “My generation lives at a vital time,” Fred survivors ate together and reminisced, and the joyous Hospital at the age of 89. of the death camps. Schwarzbart, that day, recorded in his “WE WERE THERE” Zeidman, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust closing concert of Yiddish music. Barbra Streisand and model Yasmin Le Bon. diary, “This is not possible.” Scharf spent the rest of his Born in Kupishok, Lithuania, in 1914, Oshry studied by Generations of the Shoah International Memorial Council, told them Sunday. “On one side Individually, each survivor may feel lonely, but life trying to explicate the impossible. of us are the inspiring examples of survivors and together they form a vibrant community. And their with the great rabbis of the day. He was interned in a [email protected]. YEHUDA ELBERG concentration camp near Kovno, Lithuania, by the Nazis At the end of the war, he was interrogating Germans the enduring memory of those who perished. On families, their children and grandchildren are an integral Award-winning Yiddish author Yehuda Elberg recently in Norway, which was when he made his first of many trips the other side are generations upon generations who part of that community, which speaks to the future and during World War II. His first wife and their children died Generations of the Shoah International (GSI), a died in his sleep in Montreal. He was 91. A widely in the camps before the end of the war. In 1949, he married back “home.” He combined his mission with family life must remember the Holocaust or be at risk of the continuity of their hopes and dreams. Second Generation group which networks and shares acclaimed Yiddishist whose body of work documented Frieda Greenzwieg, a survivor of Auschwitz. and business careers as the owner of a silkscreen printing repeating it.... We pledge ourselves and our For some sons and daughters of survivors, this information and resources about the Holocaust with shtetl life, he gained popularity in the English-speaking The volumes on the religious response to the Holocaust business and then as a dealer in English watercolors. successors to uphold the torch of remembrance gathering was also bittersweet, even painful. My father 2Gs and 3Gs across the globe, had the unparalleled world after a 1997 English translation of two of his novels: were begun while he was in the camp, written in Hebrew on Scharf became an important figure on committees and in and accept with a sense of privilege the legacy we died 28 years ago, but I had gone to the previous Ship of the Hunted and The Empire of Kalman the bits of paper, which were buried and retrieved after the war. publishing houses—he was one of the founders of the opportunity to attend the Tribute to Holocaust Survivors have been bequeathed: To participate in whatever gatherings in Jerusalem, Washington, Philadelphia and ways we can—individual by individual—in the Cripple. While he found new audiences with his English It was the rabbi’s life work. A one-volume version in English Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies in Oxford; he sat on in Washington, D.C—surrounded by, talking with and New York with my mother. Now both my parents are effort to repair our world.” translations, Elberg remained committed to the Yiddish won a National Jewish Book Award several years ago. the board of editors of the Library of Holocaust learning from 3,000 survivors, an almost uncountable dead, and I was there on their behalf as well as my own. Walking among survivors is always a unique, language. “I don’t accept what people say, that Yiddish is Testimonies. number of 2Gs, 3Gs and 4Gs, and many other guests. Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti- Rabbi Oshry and his wife left Lithuania and landed in uplifting experience. Each time we hear stories we dead or dying,” he told The Forward. “Something that is David Flusfeder Hundreds of wonderful connections, new and Defamation League, reminded us that because Rome where the rabbi organized a yeshiva for orphaned have not heard before: experiences from the ghettos, dead doesn’t grow.” rekindled, were lovingly braided. For many who were antisemitism is alive and prospering, the survivors’ legacy refugee children. In 1950 he managed to bring all the yeshiva nightmares from the death camps, reminiscences to future generations must become “one that inspires Born in Zgierz, Poland, in 1912, he published his first there, it was more than that: The Tribute a bracing, students with him when he moved with his family to Montreal. IRENE G. SHUR of chance encounters, humor and bittersweet leadership and action, that demands accountability from short story in 1932 and went on to write for several They came to New York in 1952 where he was invited to be bittersweet mixture of laughter and joys, tears and pain, melodies still echoing out of the postwar displaced Dr. Irene G. Shur, professor of history at West Chester all the denizens of this small planet to refuse to tolerate Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers. During the Holocaust, the rabbi of Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, a congregation a testament to the courage of those who survived and persons camps. University and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania intolerance.” Elberg was actively involved with both the Lodz and founded in 1852. The funeral, attended by nearly 1,000 those who didn’t survive the Shoah. Appropriately, the Not surprisingly perhaps, the sons and was one of the pioneers of Holocaust Studies in the United That, of course, must be the essence of our mission. Warsaw resistance movements, setting up safe houses and mourners, was at his synagogue. The body was taken to Tribute challenged all of us—survivors, 2Gs and 3Gs daughters of the survivors share similar poignant Neither the survivors, nor especially we, their children States. Since 1977, she taught thousands of students— managing to avoid deportation to a concentration camp. Jerusalem for burial. alike—to honor the memory of those who perished by moments: “My father told me that he and your and grandchildren, have the right to spend our time and undergraduate and graduate, teachers at the Intermediate Toward the end of the war, he got military accreditation working even harder to make this world a better, safer father...” Sometimes the revelations come from energies talking only to ourselves about ourselves. Unit in Chester County, and took groups of students to to trail the American military as a correspondent. Most place for Jews and non-Jews alike. strangers. A man who had been a child in Bergen- By coming together, Elie Wiesel told the thousands FRED KORT study the Holocaust in Israel. In 1990 she became the of his stories written during the war were lost. History is littered with many murderously Belsen said to me, “Did you know that your mother assembled at the museum on Sunday afternoon that they After the war, he lived in Paris and became close Manfred Kort, 80, one of nine survivors of Treblinka, the recipient of an Emmy Award for her work on a saved my life?” And then we learn, a generation ambitious efforts to obliterate the Jewish people, but had prevailed over forgetfulness: “Surrounded by your friends with the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade, who pushed man who created the bubble machine for Lawrence Welk documentary, CANDLES, which featured the return to removed, hitherto unrevealed insights into our none came closer to realization than the Holocaust. children and grandchildren, fellow survivors, do you feel Elberg to continue working. and built a toy empire in California, died recently. Kort, Auschwitz of some of the Mengele twins. She also parents’ lives. joy in your hearts? If so, it is not void of sadness; it Yet history wryly waited to show one of its hands in A committed Zionist, Elberg worked in New York who donated $5 million to the United States Holocaust introduced a Master of Arts degree and a Certificate of Last weekend, however, was different from cannot be. And yet, and yet. Close your eyes and see the after World War II, helping Jewish refugees immigrate Museum, was a major Jewish philanthropist who gave to Holocaust and Genocide Studies, as well as a Distance the form of the torch passed at the Tribute from previous gatherings. In the past — Jerusalem in invisible faces of those we have left behind or who have to Palestine. He married Tahilla Feinerman, who died in many causes, including Bar-Ilan University. Son of a Learning program which broadcast lessons to the Dixon survivors to their descendents. Who could have 1981, Washington in 1983, Philadelphia in 1985, left us behind as witnesses. Our presence here today is 1955. He relocated the following year to Montreal, where Polish Jew who lived in Germany, he was pushed with his Learning Center in Harrisburg, PA. believed it if they had been told nearly 60 years ago New York in 1986 — the survivors themselves, our answer to their silent question. We have kept our he remained for the rest of his life with his second wife, family into Poland and then, as the Germans overran that that the survivors—forgotten, abandoned and ignored led by Benjamin Meed, Sam Bloch and Roman promise. We have not forgotten.” Shaindle Stipelman Bloomstone, who died in 1987. In country in September 1939, into a succession of mean by the world—would one day, at a United States Kent, among others, had been the organizers. This his adopted city of Montreal, Elberg became a prolific ghettos and work camps. Kort was sent to the Treblinka STANLEY STEINBERG Holocaust Memorial Museum in the capital of the time, a federal institution opened its doors, in the Menachem Rosensaft is the founding chairman of the International writer and published many of his stories in literary labor camp and survived there for about a year, mainly Stanley Steinberg, a Holocaust survivor born in Radom, United States, be the honored guests of a great nation. words of the museum’s director, Sara Bloomfield, Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a member “to those whose lives we honor.” journals. Elberg was often compared to famed Yiddish doing water-carrying duty that got him food from the Poland in 1927 passed away recently in Los Angeles. Those who were there could—and did. of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

TOGETHER 22 TOGETHER 7 REFLECTIONS ON RESTITUTION FUNDS by Sam E. Bloch the world. The needs are great and diverse, with to the world around us, to those who were not in OLOCAUST LIBRARY I am a survivor of the assistance in more than 30 countries including Treblinka. And this is where grants for education, A PROMISE TO REMEMBER: The Holocaust. My fellow homecare, medical care and equipment, food packages research and documentation are vitally im-portant. Holocaust in the Words and Voices of its Warsaw in SeptemberH ideas, movements and instit- survivors and I are the and hot meals, winter clothing, rent payments, nursing Restitution funds must also be used for this purpose. Survivors by Michael Berenbaum (Boston, 1939, during his years utions. His extensive use witnesses who emerged beds and emergency cash grants. Claims Conference allocations in this area are MA: AOL Time Warner Book Group, 2003) 48p., in the Vilna Ghetto and in of survivor newspapers, from Nazi hell with a special The Claims Conference has established Holocaust used for Shoah educational programs and teaching US$29.45. CAN$39.95. the Klooga labor camp journals, local camp papers message, with a sacred Survivor Assistance programs in more than 50 materials, and efforts to document, archive and A “portable” Holo-caust museum, A Promise to where he was building and interviews with key legacy of remembrance and communities in the United States and has helped preserve irreplaceable documents, pictures, artifacts Remember is an interactive history of the Holocaust fortifications for the participants enables us to justified claims of restitution. reinvent care for the elderly in Israel. And although and firsthand survivor accounts of the Holocaust that includes removable documents—from cherished German defense. On understand how they confronted It is crucially important the funds derive from German Jewish property, they The funds come from the assets of those who recipes that were adapted to September 17, 1944, one their unbearable past, their that Holocaust restitution are used to care for survivors regardless of their country perished. Using a small portion to preserve their life in a Jewish ghetto to day before the Red Army intense present and their funds and other resources of origin or current residence. memory is fully justified. It is indeed gratifying. artwork created in a liberated the camp, Kruk views on Zionism that shaped within the Jewish commu- The conditions and the needs of Holocaust The vast majority of all Claims Conference funds concentration camp—and buried his last diaries in the their future. In the process, nity are used to assist my fellow survivors who need survivors, who have endured so much hardship in their go to direct compensation payments to survivors. an hour-long audio CD Lagedi camp in front of six Mankowitz shatters the witnesses. He and most of social services they cannot afford. These are brave lives, should be a permanent concern to the entire Thus, 1 to 2 percent of all restitution and capturing survivors’ voices myth of the survivors as broken and helpless the remaining Jews in men and women who are elderly now and need Jewish community and to all Jewish federations, not compensation funds distributed by the Claims and stories. Each chapter victims of history. Had he given more attention Klooga and Lagedi were shot and burned on a pyre assistance. They may not be able to meet the costs of only to the Claims Conference. Conference are used to preserve the memory of those addresses a different topic, to the spiritual and religious nature of the moving from the rise of the the next day. One of the six men survived the war She’arith Hapletah, and their attempt to their utilities. The scars left by the past affects their But the Claims Conference has also come under who perished—to remember how they lived and how and retrieved the diaries.Other portions of the diaries health and their entire existence. Funds from Holocaust criticism of late for its allocations that support Shoah they died, and the world that was destroyed. Nazis and creation of Jewish reconnect to their roots by establishing ghettos to life in were uncovered elsewhere. restitution and Jewish organizations must be used lo education, research and documentation. Some say all These efforts must be continued in order that yeshivas, kosher kitchens, mikvehs and concentration camps and help them live out their days with a measure of dignity. funding should go to the survivors themselves. Faced the legacy of the Holocaust may remain with the printing thousands of copies of the Talmud liberation. The interactive format, rich with photos GHETTO DIARY by Janusz Korczak with The situation of the needy survivors has only with the imperatives of both caring for elderly survivors world long after the survivors—and the generation and other sacred texts, this would have been and pull-outs, combined with the historical depth of intoduction by Betty Jean Lifton(New an outstanding book. Even with this glaring recently begun to come to the attention of many in the and ensuring that the lessons of the Shoah are that learned from the survivors—are gone. Berenbaum’s text, make this an invaluable tool for Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) wider Jewish community, but the Conference on Jewish preserved for generations to come, the Claims It is my firm belief that any survivor who needs omission, the book remains a major both family discussion and individual understanding 115 p., US$12.95. CAN$17.25. contribution to the field. Material Claims Against Germany has played a pivotal Conference has done both. It has used a small portion social service assistance should receive it. Those who of this darkest period in world history. Shortly after the German role for a decade in providing such assistance to of the funds from the recovery of German Jewish emerged from the camps, ghettos, forests and hiding invasion of Poland in MILITANT ZIONISM IN AMERICA: The survivors. Its funds for such assistance derive primarily property to fulfill an obligation to preserve the memory places already have endured more than any human THE GERMAN ARMY AND GENOCIDE: September 1939, and about a from the Claims Conference’s recovery of unclaimed of those who perished. being should. In their last years, Holocaust survivors Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews, year before the ghetto was Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Jewish property in the former East Germany. Survivors like myself want the world to know are entitled to care and comfort, and it is the and other Civilians in the East, 1939- established in Warsaw, Janusz Movement in the United States, 1926- The Claims Conference fought to recover this what happened. We who walked away from the responsibility of the Jewish community to 1944. edited by the Hamburg Institute for Korczak, a distinguished 1948 by Rafael Medoff (Tuscaloosa and property at the same time it ensured the right of heirs ashes of Nazi Europe knew we had the supplement the efforts already being made in this Social Research (New York: The New Press, Polish Jewish writer of books London: The University to stolen Jewish property to file claims for it. If the responsibility of bring the voice of those who did area with restitution funds. 1999) 224p., US$25.00. on parenting, plays and of Alabama Press, Claims Conference had not fought to recover this not survive. In recent years, as we have become But restitution funds have many worthy uses, For a number of years after the Second World children’s books, an inno- 2002) 290 p., property, the land would have reverted to the state fewer in number, many have acted on that among them ensuring that the names of the Six Million War, it was generally assumed that only the SS and vative educator, pediatrician US$39.95. CAN$53.25 [Germany] or to postwar non-Jewish owners, a simply responsibility, trying to tell the world our story while are recorded for all time. Those who perished wished the Gestapo were involved in the murder of Jews, and one of the first advocate From 1926 until the unthinkable outcome. we still can. to be remembered. We must honor their last wish. communists, civilians, war for children’s rights, began establishment of the State of The Claims Conference has used most of the It is not enough to repeatedly sound the slogan prisoners and others in the writing a personal memoir. Years before, he gave up a Israel in May 1948, the U.S. successful medical practice to set up progressive proceeds it has derived from the sale of or “Remember.” And neither is it the survivors who Sam E. Bloch is the senior vice president of The American East. This myth has been branch of Ze’ev Jabo- orphanages in Warsaw for impoverished children. compensation for that German Jewish property to need to be told to remember. When we sound this Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the president shattered for some time, tinsky’s Revisionist Zionist In1912, he opened the orphanage on Krochmalna pioneer specialized care for Holocaust survivors around command so loudly, it should be directed primarily of the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Survivors. but with the publication of movement played a very this book we have Street with a hundred Jewish boys and girls that significant role in the handwritten letters from focused on “moral education.” American Jewish community When the Germans forced the Jews into the German soldiers to their and in helping shape American and British foreign You may have read in THE MORMON CHURCH SCANDAL ghetto, he took his charges with him. In the families, official German policy. The Revisionists did this by using extensive your local paper that the introduction to the diary, Betty Jean Lipton correctly agreement, which was signed by him for the Ameri- ask President Hinckley and the leadership of the Army documents and 500 advertising in the press, holding dramatic protest Mormon Church, also can Gathering, the Mormons have continued to bap- Mormon Church to keep to the 1995 agreement and photographs providing further observes that the diary reveals how a moral and spiritual man struggled to keep alive the 200 orphans rallies and making strategic alliances in Congress and known as the Church of tize Jews. Names such as Theodore Herzl, David be sure that it is properly carried out. proof that the average who had come with him into the ghetto. When elsewhere. The leaders of this movement were Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Albert Einstein and other “It is entirely possible that some of your rela- German soldier serving in Benzion Netanyahu, Peter Bergson and Ben Hecht. Saints, despite agreements the Wehrmacht knew about these atrocities, and at Korczak’s Polish disciples on the Aryan side of the famous Jews are among those baptized. It is cer- tives, parents, uncles, etc. were posthumously bap- ghetto heard rumors of Jews being gassed, they They were mavericks who used their enormous with the American Gather- times even participated in the killings. tainly possible that some of your own relatives are tized by the Mormon Church. You can find out about offered to spirit him from the ghetto, but he refused talents to arouse the conscience of America to the ing, has continued the prac- At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, the Allies Holocaust, attempt to rescue European Jews and on this list. this by going to the nearest Mormon Temple and ask unwittingly helped perpetuate this fiction that these to abandon the children. When the time came for the tice of posthumously promote the cause of Jewish statehood. By enlisting With our support and that of the President's Con- to look at their IGI files. If you find names and if you German soldiers were above the fray by portraying group to be deported, Korczak held two young baptising Holocaust victims and other Jews. a wide-range of Americans to the cause including ference, the ADL, the Weisenthal do agree to write to the Church, you them as basically honorable and decent men who were children by the hand as he led the rest of the 192 The story was published in the New York Times Center and Senator Hillary Rodham should use these among your argu- just following orders and were merely victims children and 10 staff members in an orderly future political heavy weights Jacob Javits and Hubert and other papers and mentioned the American Gath- Clinton, the small group of indi- send your letters to: ments.” of Hitler, their mad leader. By exposing this distortion, procession to the Umschlagplatz, from where they Humphrey; actors Marlon Brando and Jane ering of Holocaust Survivors. Ernest Michel, who viduals involved in this effort are President Gordon B. As you may know, the Mormon we have a more accurate picture of what actually were transported to Treblinka. An inspiring and Wyatt, comedians Carl Reiner and Harpo Marx; moving diary. and Leonard Bernstein they were able publicize has been spearheading this effort since 1995, was now asking the Mormon Church Hinckley Church has a beautiful temple in Is- transpired which should help us better understand how their activities in a dramatic way. The Chairman of the World Gathering in Israel in 1981. to stop, once and for all, this ab- The Church of Jesus Christ rael and they are very friendly to Is- to deal with ongoing acts of genocide. LIFE BETWEEN MEMORY AND HOPE: Revisionists also established an underground At a special meeting of the Executive Committee of horrent, insulting practice. of Latter-Day Saints rael and the Jewish community in the American Gathering in early 1995, he was autho- THE LAST DAYS OF JERUSALEM OF The Survivors of the Holocaust in operation to smuggle weapons to Menachem We are asking each of you to Salt Lake Temple general. You should also know that Occupied Germany by Zeev W. Mankowitz rized to negotiate with the Church on behalf of the LITHUANIA: Chronicles from the Vilna Begin’s Irgun to fight the British. Medoff write your own letter to to Presi- 50 N.W. Temple St. a similar letter writing campaign is (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002) concludes that had Netanyahu, Bergson and American Gathering. At that time there was a total of Ghetto and the Camps 1939-1944 by dent Gordon B. Hinckley at The Salt Lake City, UT 84150 now being organized in Israel. There 335p., US$35.00. CAN$46.55. Hecht worked within a traditional Jewish setting 380,000 Holocausts victims baptized, including his Herman Kruk, Benjamin Harshav, Editor. (New Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- is no doubt that hundreds, and we Haven, Connecticut:Yale University Press, Most books about the Jews in post-war their talents would have been underutilized. “Free parents. Day Saints, stating that you (either hope, thousands of letters, will have Germany are written from the perspective from the shackles of diplomatic niceties and Subsequent negotiations lasted six months and 2002) 732p.,US$45.00. CAN$60.00. as a survivor or a descendant of survivors) deplore an impact on the Church and convince the Elders to When the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated in September, of outsiders and thus do not reflect the rich watchful boards of directors, these maverick supposedly resulted in the withdrawal of all 380,000 this practice by the Mormon Church and ask that it be stop this practice. 1943, Herman Kruk along with several and complex inner life of the survivors. Zeev Zionists were able to experiment with new, bold, names of Holocaust victims from the Church's stopped. We are sure you realize the importance of this thousand remaining Jews, were taken to camps in Mankowitz, a senior lecturer at the Melton Centre and effective varieties of Jewish political records, the first time they had agreed to do so. The You can add that you learned about it through the issue. Estonia, ”notably” to Klooga, near Tallinn. Kruk, a for Jewish education at The Hebrew University in activism.” Professor Medoff’s well-written and Church also agreed to discontinue the baptism of all media. The letter should not be an attack on the Mor- Presidium of the American Gathering of Jewish member of the Jewish Labor Bund from Warsaw, kept Jerusalem, has written an important internal history of brilliant study should be required reading for every Jews. Ernie has discovered that despite the 1995 mon Church. It must be polite but firm. It should Holocaust Survivors. a journal of daily life from the Nazi invasion of the German Jewish survivor community, its people, Jewish professional and lay person. TOGETHER 8 TOGETHER 21 along which my mother traveled 60 years ago. It is 5 a.m. AN EXTRAORDINARY VISIT TO AUSCHWITZ and I am completely awake; I get dressed to take a walk. OLOCAUST LIBRARY similar group was organized in France. Shoufani stood The early morning buses pass me as I wait for the light to Jews and Arabs call for on the podium at the Temple synagogue in Krakow, change; the destination names in Polish seem familiar, healing an hour’s drive from Auschwitz, and pledged: “We reminiscent of destroyed communities. And I think about H are here to be with the Jewish people and its suffering, what has happened so far. We have shared our impressions of our first day U. S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM AND WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS PUBLISH by Gil Sedan and tell them, we are with you.” Shoufani was aware together, touring Jewish Krakow and hearing the story of FIRST THREE BOOKS IN SURVIVORS’ MEMOIRS PROJECT KRAKOW, Poland, May (JTA) — A Hollywood of the fire his initiative had drawn from the Arab the Krakow Ghetto. One Arab participant, Youssef, speaks director could not have staged a more dramatic scene: community in Israel. In recent weeks, key Arab figures JOURNEY THROUGH YESTERDAY: My LEGACY and about a feud between families in his village, Kfar Kana, in In the middle of a forest, on the ruins of a former gas had charged that the initiative was serving Zionist the Galilee. He tells of risking his life to save a member THE INFERNO Story REDEMPTION: chamber at the heart of the Birkenau death camp, an propaganda. “The Zionist enterprise uses” the of the other clan whose house was torched. He says that by Adam Boren with an in- by Hadassah Rosensaft A Life Renewed Israeli rabbi from a West Bank settlement stood and Holocaust “to justify Israel’s crimes today,” journalist had he lived in Europe he would also have risked his life troduction by Menachem Z. with an introduction by Elie by Joseph E. Tenenbaum said Kaddish, surrounded by a group of Arabs and Amir Makhoul wrote. In his address, however, Shoufani to save my life. When we disembark near Auschwitz, we Rosensaft (Washington, DC: Wiesel (Washington, DC: with an introduction by Elie Jews. Birds sang along with the mourning prayer but took precisely the opposite tack: He used the Holocaust walk along and talk. United States Holocaust Mu- United States Holocaust Wiesel (Washington, DC: the group listened in total silence, noting that Rabbi to point out that pain is pain is pain, whether suffered Youseff says we are all human beings. Our talk turns to politics and the reporters begin to swarm around, seeking a seum, 2003) $15.95. Museum, 2003) $15.95. United States Holocaust Avi Gisser had changed the Kaddish’s traditional ending. by Palestinians, Jews or people of any nationality. “We story. Just as we were about to agree that finding a political Museum, 2003) $19.95. Instead of the usual “He will make peace upon us and come out of the pain or our own people,” Shoufani Adam Boren’s gripping Dr. Hadassah Rosensaft solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is more an upon all of Israel,” Gisser said, “and upon all the peoples said, “but it is out of this pain that we unite with you in account of how he fled east (1912-1997) described ghetto Joseph E. Tenenbaum emotional than a diplomatic problem, Abuna, Father Emil of the world.” It was a gesture of gratitude to the 120 your pain.” It was a courageous act, the first time since from Nazi-occupied Warsaw life in Sosnowiec, Poland, and describes his experiences as a Shoufani, who organized this historic trip, approaches. He Israeli Arabs who initiated this unusual visit to the death the October 2000 riots that an organized group of Arab as a teenager, only to fall into her deportation to Auschwitz- teenager during the Holocaust raises a finger and says, “We have agreed – no politics.” camps, an unprecedented act of Arab solidarity with public figures openly raised the flag of reconciliation German hands, along with Birkenau where her parents, and his later life as a major Chastened, we shrug our shoulders and continue silently. the greatest tragedy of the Jewish people. When Gisser with the Jews. They all visited Birkenau and Auschwitz, The reporters wait a few moments for us to continue, then his father and brother. Miraculously, he was able to husband and child were figure in Canada’s philan- concluded the prayer, no one said a word. People stood the twin death camps where much of European Jewry despair and go search for their next story. escape as they were being hanged and made his way murdered on arrival. At Birkenau, she was able to thropic and business communities. An ardent Zionist in silence for two or three minutes, Jews and Arabs, was killed in the Holocaust. The first stop was the As we continued our walk to Birkenau, a reporter back to Warsaw. Smuggled into the ghetto, where his save inmates from selections to the gas chambers, and and follower of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, He survived the some weeping, some lost in thought. One woman could Judenramp, the place where the trains came until May comes up to me and asks me about my conversation with later in Bergen-Belsen she succeeded in keeping 149 Zatorska, Plasow, Wielicza and Mielc forced labor mother and sister perished, he became a member of not fight her emotions and moved away from the group, 1944, unloading thousands of Jews to face the fatal Youssef. There will be those who will question how much Jewish children alive from December 1944 until camps near Krakow as well as imprisonment in the the Jewish underground resistance movement, hugging the trunk of a tree for selection: Some 15 percent Youssef and his talk of brotherhood is representative of liberation. One of the leaders of the Jewish Displaced Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee concentration camps. participated in the uprising, and was captured. He support and bursting into tears. of them would gain the Israeli Arab population, I say, but I don’t want to deal Persons in the British zone of Germany, she became At Ebensee, he was forced to work in quarries and with the question now. I prefer to concentrate on their survived Majdanek, Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen Nearly 60 years after the additional time working in a member of President Carter’s Commission on the underground tunneling amid the deaths of thousands feelings of empathy and brotherhood, to aid me in my pain. concentration camps as well as a death march. He Holocaust, the prayer in memory Auschwitz, but the majority of fellow prisoners. After liberation, he spent several By the time I finish talking, the main gate of Birkenau is immigrated to the United States in 1946 and now Holocaust and a pivotal figure in the creation of the of the 1.5 million Jews murdered would take the long walk to years in the Displaced Persons camps of Europe. He looming before me. Taken unawares, I stop suddenly and lives in New Jersey. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. in this camp, and the support of the nearby death camp of now lives in Toronto. exhale as if punched in the solar plexus, reflexively raising this unusual group of Israeli Arabs, Birkenau. Ida Grinspan my fist to my mouth. It is a moment or two before I can The Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project, under the auspices of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the was just too hard for the woman from Paris is one of the continue walking and breathe steadily again. It is through World Jewish Congress, collects, preserves, and makes available to scholars and the wider public to take. Gisser is the rabbi of Ofra, survivors. She stood at the this gate that my mother, her parents and eight siblings the autobiographical written accounts of survivors of the Holocaust, a Jewish settlement in the eye of very ramp where she passed in the spring of 1944. Only my mother and her so that their memories can be transmitted to future generations. the Palestinian intifada. When he arrived 60 years ago as a sister managed to exit. goes to Jerusalem, a 20-minute 14-year-old girl on a We enter silently, because silence is fitting. The tour “We have a solemn obligation to the survivors to ensure that their experiences and memories are preserved for generations to come. The Holocaust must never be studied exclusively from drive away, he must reckon with transport from France, guide reads a letter sent from a wife and a daughter to their husband/father. The girl, 9 years old, writes one the perspective of the perpetrators. Survivors’ recollections are integral to the historical record. Each story is unique, and crucial to future understanding of the Holocaust.” the possibility of a terrorist attack. separated by force from her The Palestinians are his enemy, and parents. She stood, remem- sentence about how terrified she is. As I hear these words ...Elie Wiesel bering quietly. Next to her I realize that my aunts and uncles – little children – must he is theirs. Yet he decided to go have spent their final hours in terror and suffering. They Books can be ordered from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Shop, P.O. Box 92420, Washington, D.C. 20078-7327 stood Majid Zerouali, 23, a on this visit to Auschwitz precisely have always been wraiths to me—not really alive and not 800-259-9998 (Mon-Fri. 9-5:30 EST) because Arabs—Israeli Palestinians, Muslim of Moroccan origin really dead. But here among their ashes, I also realize that Please include a $4 shipping and handling charge per book. as many now call themselves — now living in Toulouse. they were alive, and alive they suffered a terrible suffering initiated it. “I am sensitive to Zerouali was one of a they had done nothing to deserve. I begin to cry, not tiny Palestinian pain regardless of the number of Muslim boy tears that leak from the corners of my eyes, but a torrent ABIDING HOPE: Bearing Witness to the admitted that I did it in large part so that I would not underground press such as Vrj Nederland (The Free political dispute with them,” Gisser says. “I came scouts who decided to join the visit. “It is not just a of tears like those the prophet Jeremiah wept for the Holocaust by Benjamin A. Samuelson (Ulyssian have the time and energy to remember.” Netherlands) and Het Parool, and reconstructs a because they showed sensitivity to Jewish pain.” More Jewish tragedy, it is a human tragedy,” he said. countless dead at the Temple’s destruction: Publications, 2003) $24.95. Today, he says, “The most frightening thing is how different perspective of life in the Netherlands during than anything else, the visit of some 450 Arabs and I seek comfort for my pain from Abuna, that he might There are only six of them quickly the mind becomes numb and accepts things the Second World War than is generally portrayed. As Jews to Auschwitz and Birkenau was an act of courage: comfort me. He puts his arm around me as I cry Bolle notes, whatever else can be said about the book, surviving in the world. They are that only a few weeks earlier would have been It takes courage for an Israeli Arab or a French Muslim uncontrollably, “I can accept that they died, God had his Ben’s story touches us on the “deepest level.” reasons for their dying, but why did they suffer?” Abuna the “sonderkommandos,” one- inconceivable.” to identify with the Jews’ plight when it is so much AUSCHWITZ DIARY tries to answer when there is no answer, but the words are time Jewish slave laborers who After liberation from the camps, Samuelson left the easier these days simply to hate. And yet they came — comfort and security of the humanitarian relief center not important. It is the warmth behind the words that were forced to operate the gas SAFE AMONG THE GERMANS: Liberated 120 Arabs and 130 Jews from Israel, as well as a by Martin Herskovitz chambers at concentration camps set up by the Swedish government, to go to Palestine to eventually calms me. Still, I am glad for my tears because Jews After World War II delegation of 200 Jews and Muslims from France.The in Nazi-dominated Europe. fight for a Jewish homeland in Israel’s 1948 War of by Ruth Gay (New Haven, CT: Yale University Martin Herskovitz, child of an Auschwitz survivor it means I am beginning to touch my pain. I, who had never visit was the initiative of a group of Israeli Arabs headed Sonderkommandos were Independence. and resident of Petach Tikvah, was one of the Israelis mourned, have begun to grieve and to heal. Press, 2002) 347p., by Archimandrite Emile Shoufani, pastor of the Greek killed routinely after three month’s who went on that all-important trip to Auschwitz with a On the way back to the bus, Aziz from Nazereth comes US$29.95. CAN$39.85 group of Arab-Israelis. The following is an abbreviated service so that the world would Catholic community in Nazareth, one of the foremost up to me and says “I have no idea what to say,” and hugs BEN’S STORY: Holocaust Letters With Gay, a writer of Jewish history, version of the diary he kept while on this historic never know of their existence. leaders of the Christian community in Israel.After the me. Other Arabs will come up to ask if I am alright, I answer Selections From The Dutch wrote this book to bring attention journey in May, 2003. The purpose of the delegation I am, because I truly am. Perhaps never better. I have been Now, one of them has stepped forward, after 50 October 2000 riots among Israeli Arabs, as relations Underground Press edited by Kees W. Bolle to the experiences of the Jewish was to bridge the gap between the two peoples via Arab bequeathed a wonderful gift from my mother, the ability years of saying nothing, to reveal this little known and between Jews and Arabs in Israel deteriorated, and (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois survivors of extermination and understanding and empathy with the Jewish trauma of to touch even the most horrible trauma, and to climb out worst side of the Holocaust (aka the “Shoah”) in a new concentration camps and forced after endless discussions with Jewish friends, Shoufani University Press, 2001) 150 p., US $24.95. declared: “I understand that we did not understand.” the Holocaust. The delegation included 130 Israeli Jews from within its depths. If there is strength in touching one’s book, Abiding Hope: Bearing Witness to the labor, who sought refuge in Germany and 124 Israeli Arabs. The Israeli delegation was joined CAN$33.25. In July 2002 Shoufani published a book in France in pain and if there is power in pulling oneself out of its Holocaust. after the Second World War. World by a French interdenominational delegation of about depths, then today I have connected with an incredible Writing under the pseudonym of Benjamin A. In the 1930’s, Kees Bolle, a professor emeritus of Jewry has either been indifferent or which he noted that one “should learn the pain of the 170. strength. I am proud to have finally grieved, fulfilling a Samuelson, the Los Angeles based author tells his painful history from UCLA, and Ben Wessels were hostile to the notion of Jews settling other side to stop the death circles.” Seven months The clacking of the train wheels in the distance duty to the dead, to the unmourned. The Arabs look at my story of being a sonderkommando, assigned to the boyhood friends in Oostvoorne, a village in the in postwar Germany, but this is a mistake she contends. Gay later, Shoufani’s group called a press conference in awakens me on the first day. I get up and look out the tear-streaked face and see a person in distress. Yet I have children’s camp within Auschwitz. He was forced, as Netherlands. Ben died at Bergen-Belsen a month tries to show that these Jews have courageously built a Jerusalem announcing its plan to visit the death camps window at the foothills on the outskirts of Krakow. Soon never been more serene than now. a teenager, to gas thousands of Jews, including his 11 before the camp was liberated in April 1945. While new ”Jewish world” that is burgeoning and full of vitality. in order to better understand the Jews’ pain. A group another train passes, shrouded by the fog. The clatter of The quote running through my mind is wrong. “They year-old sister. Six decades later, he still says, “I don’t visiting a friend in Oostvoorne many years after the Given that this immigrant generation has little or no of some 150 Jewish public figures was organized to the train seems like a Morse code message to my psyche, jest at scars that never felt a wound.” Perhaps that is my understand how or why I made it through alive.” war, Bolle found Ben’s letters describing his family’s background of Jewish tradition, they will have the endorse the project, including Dan Patir of the Abraham beginning my journey back in history—my ticket was conditioning. What I see in their eyes is not jest, it is Even now, Samuelson, at the age of 78, a successful tragic experiences during the Holocaust. Bolle opportunity “to create a fresh way of living as Jews in Fund Initiative, Eliezer Ya’ari of the New Israel Fund validated at birth. concern and empathy and I am touched to the deepest entrepreneur, insists on using a pseudonym. “I never translated Ben’s letters and the reports from the Dutch modern times.” and Yeshayahu Tadmor of Jezreel Valley College. A I suddenly realize that I may be looking at the tracks reaches of my soul. TOGETHER 20 TOGETHER 9 daughter. Sifting through family documents, listen- OLOCAUST EDUCATION: THE TEACHERS ILMS HEATER ing to her father's anecdotes and contacting other survivors who remembered her mother from her days as a child star, Piatka pieced together the re- place from 1941-1945, ‘WE KNEW: America’s Hby Vladka Meed Europe, politics of the Weimar Republic, rise of the GLOOMYF SUNDAY markable beginnings of Chayela's career and cre- “BETTERT DON’T TALK!” Newspapers Report on the Holocaust,’ in the new book Third Reich and implementation of Hitler’s plan for by Aviva Kempner WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY NAAVA ated her one-woman musical show Better Don't For years, readers of Together have learned about jointly published in 2003, Why Didn’t The Press Shout? killing the Jews of Europe. Gloomy Sunday is an Talk! the well known program, initiated by survivors, which American and International Journalism During the “Teaching about the Holocaust is where I put most epic romantic story of PIATKA Blending personal narrative with humor and prepares U.S. middle and high school teachers to Holocaust. The chapter is based on primary source strength and energy. Few subjects so clearly delineate four intertwined song, Naava plays both herself and her larger-than- implement Holocaust studies in their schools. research conducted by me and my students in my what happens when hatred and bigotry are allowed to individuals who risk Naava Piatka takes audiences on a spellbinding life mother and is accompanied on piano this time Hundreds of teachers traveled to Poland, saw seminar on the Press and the Holocaust, the only college persist.” death, fall in love and theatrical journey of song, humor and powerful nar- by her own daughter Jackie, who is the same age traces of former death camps and crematoria in course devoted exclusively to this subject. As Holocaust survivors and the soldiers who endure a maze of rative as she shares a unique now as Chayela was in the and inspiring story of hope, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Maidenek, Treblinka. They saw “I presented a lecture on this topic at the Holocaust liberated the camps grow older and die, teachers with treacheries in 1930's ghetto. The title comes from survival, reconnection and the hair, shoes, eye glasses and valises of the victims. Museum Houston and lectured at the Museum of Jewish Rosemary’s dedication to the subject will help make Budapest. Using the “Yisroilik,” one of Layb They touched history. Heritage on American press coverage of anti-Jewish up for the loss of first person memory, said Miriam reconciliation - a moving, Rosenthal's songs in which a Holocaust as a backdrop, funny and uplifting tribute to Afterwards, they went to Israel and saw the actions in Germany from 1933-1935. Furthermore, I Greenbaum, co executive director of the Washington typical ghetto kid - a spunky Gloomy Sunday compellingly illustrates the her comedienne/actress vibrant life despite the constant threat of terrorism. chaired a panel, “Holocaust Museum Education in an State Holocaust Education and Resource Center. Jewish street orphan - says romantic longings and moral choices that confront mother's legacy of triumph These teachers in the vanguard of those bringing Age of Terrorism,” at the Association of Holocaust This past summer, Conroy traveled with teachers "Why dwell on pain and sor- lovers in any era. over tragedy through song the lessons of the Holocaust are important in guarding Organizations’ annual conference. from around the United States to Poland and Germany. row? Better don't talk!" It is Gloomy Sunday begins when the beautiful and humor. Better Don’t Talk precisely because her mother our freedoms and our way of life here in America. Marcie Schoenfeld (Seminar Accompanied by Holocaust scholars, the group visited Ilona (Erika Marozsan) captivates the hearts of honors the essential Jewish didn't talk that Piatka is now We would like to share with you the work, year 1989), Stamford, CT also the sites of six death and detention camps, attended three different men: Laszlo Szabo (Joachim Krol), spirit of survival through compelled to break the si- dedication and accomplishments of a few of our writes, “For the last five years services at local synagogues and met with residents a prosperous businessman who makes her the which voices once silenced lence and sing the songs she teachers. or so I have been representing who helped hide Jewish friends and neighbors during manager of his Budapest restaurant; Andras Aradi can be heard anew. never heard her mother sing Abbie R. Laskey (Seminar year 1996), East Hills, the Greenwich Public Schools World War II. The Jewish Foundation for the (Stefano Dionisi), a gifted musician who composes When Naava Piatka's and share the stories she was NY writes, “Dear Vladka: On on the Educators Planning Righteous, a New York based non profit organization the song "Gloomy Sunday" in her honor; and Hans mother, Chayela Rosenthal, never told. November 14, 2003, in the magnificent Committee of the Westchester dedicated to honoring and helping support non Jews Wieck (Ben Becker), an awkward, amiable died unexpectedly, the can- Naava Piatka also began State Education Department building Holocaust Commission (now who helped save Jews from persecution and death, German salesman. As the looming Holocaust cer that killed her was not the her professional career as a in Albany, the New York Board of the Education Center.) I am organized the trip. overwhelms Europe, Laszlo, Ilona and Andras only secret that the legend- child, and appeared in musi- Regents presented me with the 2003 the only Connecticut member on the Planning “Eighth graders are ripe to absorb the Holocaust’s form a turbulent, passionate menage a trois, while ary actress, singer and comedienne kept from her cal shows with her mother. Now, after an incredible Louis E. Yavner Teaching Award for Committee. My membership has been invaluable to historical and moral lessons” said Conroy. “They have Hans, now a top ranking Nazi officer, protects daughter. Naava was about to discover her mother's journey of discovery, to commemorate the 60th an- incredible past as "Wunderkind of the Vilna Ghetto." my work teaching about the Holocaust both my school and professionally to me. (I think there a real concrete idea of justice at this age. It’s important his Jewish friend Laszlo, while simultaneously niversary of the Liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, she Amidst the ghastly overcrowded conditions, in and Resistance. It was a wonderful are three to four “Vladka graduates” on the committee.) to teach kids not be bystanders.” engaging in corrupt treachery that could threaten was been invited to Lithuania to perform this play 1942, her mom, a shy petite 16-year-old Jewish moment. We have taken part in many programs and the each of the lovers' lives. on the very same stage on which her mother ap- “I have no doubt that I would not have merited Commission has supplied us with many speakers. girl, transformed herself into the vivacious sing- peared. She has already performed Better Don't Talk Adapting Nick Barlow's novel with co-writer ing star. In the tiny ghetto theater she told jokes any recognition had you not taken me to the camps in “The real exciting news is that my school, to rave reviews in Australia, South Africa, Canada, Ruth Toma, director Rolf Schubel creates a moving and performed in musical shows written by her lyri- Poland, to the museums and universities in Israel and Greenwich High School, hosted the Anne Frank: A USA and Germany. In 2002 she appeared in the "Acts tapestry in which the renowned title song—which cist brother Layb, bringing music and comedy into to a much deeper understanding of the Holocaust and of Courage" Performance Series at the US Holocaust History for Today exhibit for the entire month of achieved iconic stature in the ’30s after it was the bleak lives of fellow detainees. of resistance. I also owe you an enormous debt of October. I was responsible for getting my school to Museum in Washington DC, the Descendants of the popularized in America by Billie Holliday, among After Layb was murdered, Chayela secretly Shoah "Living Legacy" Conference in Chicago and gratitude for having introduced me, first to forty four, host the exhibit. I worked on this since early March. ELEVENTH NATIONAL ALUMNI many others—becomes a haunting leitmotif that wrote down his songs and plays in a little blue book at Boston's Brandeis University's Creative Arts Fes- and then at the reunions, to hundreds of Holocaust We had almost 30 schools go through the exhibit, mostly CONFERENCE illuminates the lives of these characters. which, after her own death, was handed down to her tival 50th Anniversary. educators from all over America who are also dedicated from Westchester and Fairfield counties. Every 8th, to ensuring that their students learn the lessons of the 9th and 10th grader in the Greenwich Public Schools PRESIDENTS WEEKEND Holocaust. I have been inspired by these women and went through the exhibit—this is about 2,100 students FEBRUARY 14 - 16, 2004 men who, through your doing, have become my dear just from my system alone. Altogether about 5,000 ALKING ABOUT BOOKS friends. students were signed up and there was a waiting list as Our acclaimed teachers program on suitcase contains large wooden puzzle pieces, combining to hundreds of hours. The school hired an artist as consultant “Indeed, I am so fortunate to have chosen a well. We had about 200 trained docents, including 55 Holocaust and Jewish Resistance sponsored make six stars of David...each one talking about a piece of and she kept coming back on her own time to see this through. profession in which the rewards have been countless. by the American Gathering of Jewish TSTORY IN A SUITCASE child survivor history...the children’s stories, the righteous The music teacher saw the artwork and wrote the song, and students. The students had a two-hour experience Teaching the Holocaust and Resistance unit to students including a brief video on Anne, a virtual tour of the Holocaust Survivors, the Educators Chapter by Paula David Gentiles etc. another musician donated the studio to record it. Its potential who have incorporated the lessons into their everyday Anne Frank House, a 45-minute tour of the 55 panels of the Jewish Labor Committee and the All year I’ve been working with an 8th grade class of One suitcase contains 30 bundles—one for each student is limitless and the teacher and I who started it all are still of a class. Each bundle contains different artifacts so that standing with our mouths open amazed at where it is going. lives and who will, I am confident, transform the and a 45-minute discussion with a survivor. public school kids on a unique project about child survivors. American Federation of Teachers, is holding It started with reading Hana’s Suitcase, a book by Karen Levine students can create stories about the child they might have Finally the kids invited their parents and friends to Baycrest, world for the better, has made all the difference for “My school has been very supportive and feels its Eleventh Biennial National Alumni that follows a Japanese group of young kids belonged to. One has a rosary and a bible, where I work, to launch their project so that the very elderly me. very honored. I am very proud that we are the only Conference, co-sponsored by the U.S. who received a suitcase belonging to one one has a bunch of family photos, one has a survivors I work with could attend. It was a bittersweet “Above all, I am grateful for the privilege of public high school to have hosted this international Holocaust Memorial Museum, over “Hana Brady, orphan” from the Auschwitz baby blanket and a kiddush cup and so on. occasion for them because most of their children did not meeting and befriending survivors like you. I am exhibit.” Presidents Weekend, February 14 16, 2004 museum. They began a long and difficult The third suitcase is resource material for survive.. But they got so excited to see kids of all races and inspired by your words, deeds and courage, and I will Rosemary Conroy (1996 Seminar year), search for Hana and her story, taking them teachers that we have all collected...as well religions learn about the Holocaust and try to understand. It always do my utmost to make sure that your story, Lynnwood, WA grew up Roman Catholic in Guam at the beautiful Mayflower Hotel in (the museum curator) across Europe and as a video of the yearlong process, tapings is truly a testament to child survivors and their unique together with the stories of other survivors—and of and Japan. Until college, Rosemary, the daughter of a Washington, D.C. eventually finding out that Hana died but her of the survivors’ classroom visits and the kids experiences during war. I am hoping it will act as a living their relatives and friends who were murdered by the pilot for the Central Intelligence Agency, had only vague brother George survived. George has been working on the project. reminder of what happens when the world turns its back on Nazis—will be told and retold in the generations of notions of the Holocaust. The teachers program, started in 1985, is alive and well in Toronto all these years, It also contains a CD of the song that children...and what will happen to the children in a world that a teacher wrote and the kids recorded about has ignored them since the Holocaust. It would warm your students to come. But for nearly a decade, supported by the Atran Foundation, the and a few years ago, received a letter in the mail from a young Japanese woman asking children and war...it is remarkable. They hearts to see what these kids have done. “I received the reservation form for the Reunion Rosemary, now the eighth Caroline and Joseph S. Gruss Funds Inc., and if he knew Hana. The book is the story of also wrote their reflections. The fourth The parents (all colors and cultures) were captivated a few days ago and will be sending it in shortly. I am grade social studies teacher at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Hana and George before the war, in suitcase is empty...and comes with a request and of course were so proud of their kids. They had no looking forward to spending Presidents weekend with St. Luke’s School, has devoted Against Germany. The program prepares Thereisenstadt, (who were ultimately that any group of children working with the idea of the extent of the project. The child survivors were all my friends.” much of her career and a secondary school teachers to implement transported to Auschwitz), paralleled with exhibit, put something about what they blown away by what the kids produced and perhaps one of Ron Hollander (Seminar substantial portion of her time the most touching things was watching George Brady’s Holocaust studies in their schools. the story of a unique woman in Japan and her desire to teach learned in the empty suitcase. It will be an ongoing and year 1992) Montclair, NJ, who off, learning and teaching about children how to strive for peace. This book captured the permanently growing piece of work. The process has been face as they sang their original song “Hana’s Suitcase” became a professor since his the Holocaust. “It started out imaginations of the kids, their special teacher and me! incredible for all of us. Karen Levine, who wrote the book about George’s murdered little sister. His wife held his participation in our Summer as a short unit, but the more I learned, the more I This three-day conference brings together the All year we’ve been involved in learning about child came to meet the students and brought along Fumiko from arm, and when he got up to thank the kids, you would have Seminar, writes “I contributed wanted to teach,” she said. extended family of scholars, educators and survivors, meeting them, studying Holocaust history and Japan (who found Hana’s story) and George Brady (Hana’s thought they were meeting a rock star...”it’s George...oh brother). They were blown away by what the kids did. It my god, I can’t believe George is here.. he touched me... the lead chapter on the American Every spring, Conroy leads her students at the survivors to share knowledge and visiting the older survivors where I work. Last night they presented the results of these efforts... and they are seems that anyone who heard about the project wanted to he spoke to me...it’s really George!” A 70-something child press’s actual coverage of the experiences. Catholic school through a 10 week course on the riches amazing. They created four suitcases as a traveling exhibit get involved and it just kept growing. survivor regular guy has become a folk hero to millions Holocaust while it was taking of prewar Jewish culture and community in Eastern to go to other schools and share the lessons learned. One The videographer came to tape one class and has put in of kids around the world!

TOGETHER 10 TOGETHER 19 HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE Petition to Bring THE SHOAH AND SEPTEMBER 11TH AWARDS HONORS ORLD NEWS by Solomon Goldman ELIE WIESEL AND Raoul Wallenberg Home MENACHEM ROSENSAFT The enormous growth of Holocaust literature, way of talk.” WBULGARIAN COMMEMORATION To: The President of the United States, the its history, poetry, drama and theology is being For the historical record, it must be recalled that it SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - Bulgarians celebrated the country’s to sift through the museum’s vast files on Holocaust Prime Minister of Sweden, the Prime Minister augmented by many feature films, documentaries was the same Truman who was the first among all unique and unheralded role fighting the Nazi extermination victims. The project, will give open access to the largest other world figures to recognize the newly-born State of Israel, and the President of Russia and stage plays. Serious attempts to treat it of the Jews with speeches and special classes for compilation of Holocaust information anywhere, and will humorously, objectionable to some, understandable of Israel, literally minutes after its birth. A further schoolchildren. Addressing a conference in Sofia, Peter be fully operational in June of 2004. This includes to others, only prove how deeply affected sensitive discussion of this incident would detract from the main Schieder, head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the testimony from relatives and friends about the victim, Dear Sirs: people are by what happened in the twentieth purpose of this article. Council of Europe, praised the resistance 60 years ago photos, witness confirmation of the victim’s death, and We, the undersigned, feel that the governments century in the heart of Europe — the center of Juxtaposing the Holocaust with the American that led to Bulgaria’s refusal to deport any of its 50,000 other relevant data. Internet users would be able to add of the United States, Sweden, Israel and Russia Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II. new names and new information to existing files and should cooperate to determine the fate and Western civilization. Indeed, the claim that the tragedy of September 11 is not intended to draw either whereabouts of Swedish diplomat and hero Raoul “Sixty years ago, the Bulgarian people gave a correct any mistakes the files may contain. world will never be the same is attested to by the historical or moral parallels. Except for the irrational wonderful example to the rest of the world. By saving the Wallenberg. We recommend the creation of an behavior of many people, institutions, and wickedness and evil that generated these two events, lives of Bulgarian Jews, it showed that even the darkest international commission to investigate these governments. The most painful soul-searching and they were generically different. The Holocaust SURVIVOR SIBLINGS ARE REUNITED IN matters. We also recommend that all sources of evil such as the Holocaust can be stopped by tolerance, examinations of tenets of faith — a process still in perpetrated by a godless criminal tyranny was tragically ISRAEL AFTER 65 YEARS information including archives and eyewitness peace and love,” he said. partially nurtured by traditional Christian doctrine that On November 9, 2003, State of Israel Bonds honored By Reuters reports be freely exchanged to that end. its infancy — befell the two major religions, the Jewish and the Christian, the first one groping with condemned Jews to martyrdom for their sin of rejecting Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel and Second A brother and sister who were split up as children in Fifty-nine years ago, as a young man, 31 year Generation activist Menachem Rosensaft at its 19th annual UKRAINE HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL the eternal question “why,” the other with the Jesus as the savior and son of God. September 11 was Poland and survived the Nazi Holocaust apart have been old Raoul Wallenberg volunteered for an incredibly Holocaust Remembrance Dinner at the Grand Hyatt Hotel Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine — On a frosty evening last week, dangerous mission on behalf of the United States reunited in Israel after 65 years. Both Shoshana November, unfathomable “silence.” perpetrated by fanatical Muslim extremists in the name in New York. Speakers at the dinner included Israel Bonds 1,200 people gathered around an empty lot on Gogol of America, the War Refugee Board, and on behalf 73, and Benny Shilon, 78, had lived there since 1948 Conquering the sin of silence is not limited only to of God. president and CEO Joshua Matza and Israel Singer, Street in this former military-industrial city for what some of humanity. He arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944, without knowing the other was alive. the Vatican. At the 1943 Bermuda Conference, the Allies What motivated me in undertaking this very chairman of the World Jewish Congress and president of observers said was a long-overdue dedication. Shivering with instructions to help save the remnants of November said the reunion only came about by chance still did not see fit to organize any rescue of the Jews delicate analysis of the two events was only one striking the Conference on Material Claims Against Germany. Holocaust scholars, local businessmen and boldface Hungarian Jewry. In seven months, he succeeded in after a friend pushed her to visit Jerusalem's Holocaust though cognizant of the Nazi implementation of a plan similarity. One remembers an utterance by the late Former dinner honorees Dr. Henry Kissinger and Steven names from Israeli politics and society — including Israeli saving tens of thousands of lives and in restoring museum, Yad Vashem. She started looking through the for Jewish annihilation. Not until January 1944 did Golda Meir characterizing the Shoah to this effect: “The Spielberg saluted Elie Wiesel in videotaped tributes. Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Natan archive for her husband’s family because she herself “had hope to mankind, becoming an international symbol Sharansky and Chief Rabbi of Israel Meir Lau — presided of bravery and the pursuit of human rights. Roosevelt agree to establish the War Refugee Board, tragedy of the Holocaust is that the unthinkable “Israel Bond wanted to express its thanks to Elie no one left,” but a member of staff came up with the news Wiesel, the conscience of the Holocaust, who inspired over the laying of the cornerstone for Ukraine’s first that Benny was still alive. After successfully helping to save these lives, the rescue agency. Alas, too late. The tragic happened.” The same applies to September 11: again memorial to the Holocaust, the Tkuma Ukrainian Wallenberg was unjustly abducted by the Soviet consequences of untold human suffering, mass murder, “the unthinkable happened.” As a result, America will the dinner and was its first honoree in 1985,” said David Shilon had left his details just two weeks earlier in Halpern, a son of Holocaust survivors and dinner chairman. Memorial Holocaust Museum. The museum will be Army in Budapest in January 1945. He was imprisoned and genocide of an entire people are still visible as never be the same. the museum's “Pages of Testimony.” “His identification with the event has enabled survivors, attached to Dnepropetrovsk’s main synagogue, a gleaming “We jumped on one another and we hugged and kissed in the infamous Lubianca prison and many other manifested by the survivors, by the many memorial The trauma of our nation and the civilized world Soviet prison camps and gulags, and was kept their families, and other supporters of Holocaust modern building and the focal point of the growing Jewish and it was hard to talk—it was hard to think,” November museums that have sprung up all over the world and has so deeply cut into our consciousness, that hereafter incommunicado from the outside world. At that time, remembrance to unite in strengthening Israel’s economy community there. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, said of their meeting. we will forever speak of the pre-or post-September 11 both his homeland, Sweden, and the United States of by the vanished and devastated Jewish communities through the Bonds program.” Dnepropetrovsk — with a population of 1.3 million, Shilon then found out that one of the photos in the America ignored his fate. No one sought his release. of Europe. era. Our domestic and foreign policies will hereafter At the dinner, Professor Wiesel voiced concern at the including 78,000 Jews in the metropolitan area — has museum was actually of November and he had passed it come to be known to some as the Jewish capital of Over the ensuing decades, he was sighted in Soviet For decades now Jewish scholars and be dictated by our collective and individual memories. rise of antisemitism throughout the world. “I gaze at the many times without recognizing the young girl staring prison camps, and still the world did nothing. philosophers have struggled with the concept of The upsurge of patriotism, the outpouring of emotions, storm clouds gathering in Europe today and am deeply Ukraine. through the wire fence at Auschwitz, the biggest Nazi death In the ensuing years, Raoul’s mother and father “uniqueness” of the Holocaust. Internally this the ecumenical spirit have rallied our ethnically troubled,” he said. camp. pursued justice for their son. They both died in 1979, characterization of the Holocaust affected both diversified nation into a new, renewed nation of In accepting the 2003 Elie Wiesel Holocaust ARCHITECT COMMUNICATES LESSONS “I looked for her and my siblings during all the years brokenhearted at never having been reunited with Remembrance Award, Menachem Rosensaft, a New York after the war. In the end it happened like a Hanukkah Jewish individual and group behavior and Americans. The moral lesson derived from these two OF HOLOCAUST their beloved son. His brother, Guy, and his sister, “ attorney who is president of Park Avenue Synagogue and miracle,” Shilon added. religious practice as well. In fact, the Holocaust unique,” “unthinkable” events can be only one: Evil Toronto, CAN—Architect Daniel Libeskind, designer of Nina, then took up the mantle and have been pursuing director and editor-in-chief of the Holocaust Survivors’ Shilon and November were split up in 1936, when became for many Jews the rationale for either wherever and whenever it appears must be confronted the acclaimed Jewish Museum Berlin, spoke to a capacity justice for more than 50 years. Memoirs Project of the World Jewish Congress, recalled their father left home because of economic crisis. Their affirming or rejecting their faith. Its impact on Jews forcefully and uncompromisingly. Alas, we are not yet audience at Beth Tzedec Synagogue Nov. 8 as part of We would like your help in convincing the above- his parents, the late Josef and Hadassah Rosensaft, who mother could not cope with four children and they went the world over and on the State of Israel in particular at this level. The world community and the UN have Holocaust Education Week. In a talk called “Designing named governments to release all their relevant had both survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and who, to separate orphanages. Sacred Space: Memorializing the Holocaust,” he discussed documents with the goal of finally determining what has translated itself almost into an article of faith. so far failed to create an instrumentality capable of he said “taught me that for remembrance to have meaning, “You cannot describe this in words,” Shilon said about his efforts to communicate the lessons and stories of the happened to Raoul Wallenberg. The world has become impatient and irritable halting atrocities. These atrocities continue daily it must be a source of strength, just as Elie Wiesel has their reunion. “I grew up alone and I was immune to crying, Holocaust through architecture. “There is a need to bring We ask their help specifically to resolve the with Jews’ using the Holocaust as a placard. The throughout our globe. Is this an absolutely unavoidable taught us that we must at all times remember our past for I didn't know how to. But last night, I cried.” the memory [of the Holocaust] to Germans,” said following questions: ritual of taking every foreign dignitary visiting Israel fact of the human condition? the sake of the living as well as the dead.” • Why was Raoul Wallenberg taken by the Soviet Libeskind, who also designed the Felix Nussbaum Museum to the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem resulted In the meantime, we ought to be more understanding Union in January 1945? in Osnabruck. “The Holocaust is about how the past is KRISTALLNACHT COMMEMORATED IN THURSDAY June 3, 2004 • Where was he kept in the Soviet Union? sometimes in unpleasantness, as was the case with and charitable toward the victims of “God’s wrath,” communicated to the present and future generations.” INDIA • Why was he not returned to his homeland of the German Chancellor Kohl, who refused to don a who resort to the “never again” slogan as the rationale THE FOLKSBIENE PRESENTS New Delhi, India—”Only take heed to thyself, and keep Sweden? cap on his head during the memorial service in keeping for their existence. It is not only the leitmotif of Jews a Moishe Rosenfeld Production thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine HOLOCAUST EDUCATION WEEK The research for the last 59 years has never with Jewish tradition. The policies of the State of and Israelis. (All Americans and primarily the bereaved famed recording star and composer Toronto—Commemorated in rich in emotion, history and eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the satisfactorily resolved the fate of Raoul Wallenberg. Israel were often severely criticized even by its families are determined to fathom the yet undisclosed days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ NEIL SEDAKA artistic expressionism. Events included film, music, We know that you share in Raoul’s family’s friends as being primarily nurtured by the “never intelligence which would bring some solace to their sons.” Deuteronomy 4:9 Sol Teichman, 75, carries this discussion and personal accounts Shannon Halliwell is not concern for justice. If we do not pursue this justice, it again,” combative post-Holocaust psychology. This despair. Their aim is not so much the pointing of fingers SINGING IN YIDDISH at message around the world, telling people about the trauma sends a clear message to future heroes that they can Jewish, but she participated in the world’s largest hypercritical attitude towards Jews is best illustrated as the assurance that never again shall this happen to CARNEGIE HALL Holocaust education program. She was chosen among he and his fellow Jews suffered at the hands of Nazi do the right thing, but still be left behind. It serves no by the recently discovered diary of the late 33rd our nation. Lt. Kevin Shaefer, one of the victims of the hundreds who auditioned to be part of the Oratorio Terezin forces.A social worker based in Los Angles, Teichman was good for them to think that their country and the featuring The Klezmatics and children’s choir, which performed on Nov. 1 and 2 to nearly part of a US delegation in Delhi to organize a photo world might abandon them. president of the United States, the folksy and attack on the Pentagon, was burned over half of his The Yiddish Chorale sold out crowds. 120 events took place through Nov. 11 exhibition on the holocaust. We know that you will join us and the world in generally admired Harry S Truman. On July 21, body and had only a fifty percent chance of survival. Babyboomers and their families will thrill to pursuing justice for Raoul Wallenberg. 1947, after a ten minute telephone conversation with He underwent seventeen surgeries and suffered two making up the 23rd annual Holocaust Education Week. hear former teen idol and current Vegas The program offers numerous ways to learn about the SWISS PARDON SOUGHT If Raoul Wallenberg is still alive, we urge that he Henry Morgenthau Jr., he penned the following near-fatal heart attacks. He was discharged from the Holocaust with books on the subject (displays at various Bern, Switzerland—A woman who was punished by be returned home immediately. If he is no longer alive, entry: “The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They Walter Reed Army Medical Center on December 14, headliner, Niel Sedaka, sing in Yiddish for The stores), music, art exhibits, films, cultural events, the Swiss government for smuggling Jewish refugees into we urge that his remains be returned to his family in care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, 2001. He is now a staff member for the independent 9/ Folksbiene Theater Gala at Carnegie Hall. The Sweden for proper burial. memorial services and first-hand accounts from the country during World War II became the first person Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as 11 Commission. He signs his e-mails “‘Never Forget.” event will feature Sedaka, who will sing in On the 60th anniversary of his mission to Holocaust survivors and family members. Events also took to seek a pardon under a new law that seeks to make DPs (displaced persons) as long as Jews get special Indeed, were commanded to “blot out the Yiddish as a tribute to his heritage growing up amends for the neutral country's refusal to help Jews Budapest, we ask you to sign this petition to urge a place in 35 churches as well as synagogues. And for the treatment.” It should be noted that this entry was remembrance of Amalek from under heaven, thou shalt in Brooklyn. The Folksbiene is the last first time ever, events branched out into surrounding cities. escape the Nazis. unified effort by the nations of the world to bring Aimee Stitelmann helped 15 refugees cross the border Raoul home. made only two years after WW II, when the ovens not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:19). The often quoted remaining professional Yiddish theater in from France to Switzerland between 1942 and 1945, when ofAuschwitz, Buchenwald.,and Dachau hardly had American philosopher and poet George Santayana said America. For ticket and journal information, YAD VASHEM’S SEARCHABLE DATABASE she was a teenager. She was caught in 1945, convicted of THE WALLENBERG FAMILY ASKS THAT time to cool off. Sara BIoomenfeld, director of the it more gently: ‘Those who do not remember the past visit www.folksbiene.org or call 1-800- Jerusalem—Yad Vashem has unveiled a giant search engine violating Switzerland's border laws and sentenced to 15 YOU COPY THIS LETTER, COLLECT U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, explained are condemned to relive it.” YIDDISH or 212-213-2120. Make your Dr. Solomon Goldman is Director of Department of for its data base, that cost millions of dollars to develop. days in prison. Stitelmann, 79, told reporters that she was SIGNATURES, AND SEND IT TO U.S. Truman’s comments as “typical of a sort of cultural reservations now for an unforgettable and By entering data—including name, birth date, place of seeking the pardon to draw attention to “the injustice of antisemitism that was common at that time in all Education, Emeritus of the Jewish National Fund of GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES unique evening. birth and occupation—users all over the world will be able being punished for sheltering illegal immigrants.” parts of American society. This was an acceptable America.

TOGETHER 18 TOGETHER 11 OLOCAUST COMMEMORATION ORLD NEWS

reinforcements are needed in schools, and prosecutors are Graichen’s experiences so they will resist similar situations Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center at the El Paso IG FARBEN DECLARES BANKRUPTCY HWISCONSIN COMMEMORATION W to signal cases of antisemitism to the justice minister. in the future. Marriott. More than 500 people attended. She shared speaking Frankfurt—IG Farben, the former German company that Wisconsin Rapids, WI—To commemorate Kristallnacht, duties with Fred S. Zeidman, chairman of the United States CANADA OKS HOLOCAUST DAY used thousands of slave laborers at Auschwitz, has filed Holocaust survivor Henry Golde spoke to students in the HEARING HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Holocaust Memorial Council. “We don’t know how much Winnipeg—The recent antisemitic remarks of Malaysian for bankruptcy. It means IG Farben will probably not pay HOLOCAUST WREATHS VANDALIZED Wisconsin Rapids School District and at the First longer we’re going to have people like Nesse Godin around Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad were on many further compensation payments to victims. Once the Berlin—Vandals defaced wreaths laid at a Berlin Congregational Church. He told how he endured a lifetime PROMOTES UNDERSTANDING to tell their story,” he said. “That’s why it’s up to us to learn people´s minds as Canada´s Parliament unanimously world's largest chemical firm, most of IG Farben's assets Holocaust memorial to commemorate the 65th of horror and tragedy in a matter of five years, and it made Cincinnati, OH—Many of those who endured the horrors of the message.” passed a motion establishing a national Holocaust day. Leo were confiscated after World War II and transferred to anniversary of Kristallnacht. The memorial, a stone set in him bitter and angry. “I can interpret prejudice and bigotry in World War II were children at the time. Now their stories Adler, director of national affairs for the Friends of Simon Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa and BASF. Jews in Western Europe a bridge over a railway line, recalls local Jews who were one word: hate,” said Golde. He met with an attentive audience are coming to life in Mapping Our Tears, an interactive Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, said, “The fact forced to work at IG Farben plants by the Nazis received deported to Nazi death camps from a nearby freight of teenagers at River Cities High School. Students were exhibit designed and produced by Jack Rouse Associates for PEORIA COMMEMORATION that all five parties unanimously supported this bill speaks compensation in the 1950s. But the company refused to terminal in the 1940s. A police patrol discovered that four assigned to look up a Holocaust survivor on the Internet, The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Peoria, IL—Jane Ising, the wife of the late Dr. Ernest Ising, a volumes about Canada´s response to racists like Mahathir contribute to a $5.9 billion national fund in 2001 to wreaths had been thrown over the side of the bridge and read the survivor’s story, and in their own words tell why Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of long time Bradley professor, spoke during a presentation Mohama.” Then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien was compensate remaining former slave laborers, most from others defaced, with flowers torn out and ribbons cut. they think that person was able to survive. But this was the Religion. Mapping Our Tears immerses visitors in an given by the Jewish Federation of Peoria. Because Dr. Ising criticized for his failure to condemn Mahathir. East Europe. They claim all legal claims against the Police said there were no suspects. first time they heard a survivor’s story firsthand. Golde said environment designed to resemble an attic from a European was Jewish and Jane was not, they hoped they would be able company have been settled and they had hoped to put he realized he did have hate inside and decided at that moment home of the 1930s. Personal testimonies are combined with to maintain an almost normal life in Germany, but he was money from the real estate sales toward cases involving to start to love. It is the message he has been spreading for special effects, sound and multi-media to illustrate the Jewish arrested and forced to leave the country. ISRAELI BANKS HOLD ONE BILLION IN BELZEC PROJECT PROCEEDS experience. The exhibit will evolve as additional stories are people who missed deadlines or lacked documents to several years, ever since a radio station host asked him to UNCLAIMED ASSETS Warsaw—“The lawsuit is frivolous,” American Jewish gathered. receive payment from the national fund. talk about his experiences. CHURCHES JOIN COMMEMORATION Jerusalem—The Yediot Ahronot Hebrew daily reported that Committee Executive Director David A. Harris declared Marple, PA—When the Jewish citizens of Denmark were the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee for the Location responding to queries about an action brought against the DRAMA EMERGES FROM HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SHARE STORIES ordered by the Nazis to wear armbands bearing the Star of and Restitution of Assets of Holocaust Victims estimates LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE national organization in a New York court regarding a highly Dover, DE —Jack Ratz, the author of Endless Miracles, Pittsburgh, PA— Three Harrisburg-area Holocaust survivors, David, they did not don them alone. The example of King Holocaust victims’ assets held in Israeli banks at NIS $1 Vilnius—Just over a year ago, the Simon Wiesenthal acclaimed project to erect a memorial at the site of the shared his story to commemorate Kristallnacht with Dover Sam Sherron, Rabbi Menachem Bornstein and Kurt Moses, Christian X and the Danish population, who in solidarity billion in 4,000 separate accounts. The figure includes Center, in cooperation with the Targum Shlishi Foundation former Nazi death camp at Belzec in southeastern Poland. middle and high school students at the invitation of Michelle told 150 people that the history of the Holocaust must live wrapped their sleeves with the same marking, was one of the interest and linkage. The accounts were opened by headed by Miami-based Jewish philanthropist Aryeh An earlier lawsuit against the AJC, filed in Simonetty, a middle school teacher. At the beginning of on so it is not repeated. The three spoke at the Jewish stories told by Rabbi Peter Hyman and congregant David European Jews in Israeli banks before WWII, or were Rubin, announced Operation Last Chance, offering Washington, was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff World War II, Ratz was among the 35,000 Jews who lived in Federation of Greater Harrisburg Kristallnacht observance Rosenberg of Temple Sholom during services at St. Mark’s opened with funds smuggled to Israel from Europe during rewards of $10,000 for information leading to the after he met with Rabbi Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi Riga, Latvia. By its end, he was among the fewer than 1% in the Jewish Community Center. “My parents, two brothers United Methodist Church. The exchange commemorated the the war. The committee, headed by MK Colette Avital conviction of any Holocaust criminal in the Baltic states. of Warsaw and Lodz, who is overseeing the construction who survived. Principal Michael Tierney said students should and four sisters all died in the Holocaust,” Bornstein said. 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht. They told the story of Alfred (Labor), has finished its report and is now waiting to Websites were swamped with record numbers of anti- at Belzec. think of the several hundred children, who attend their school, “How I survived, I don’t know. After liberation, I went to Italy, Neugebauer, a firefighter in Dresden who was ordered to stand complete its inquiry and obtain the banks’ response. semitic comments and angry attacks on Ephraim Zuroff, The Belzec Memorial Project, a joint effort of the and how they would feel if a tragedy occurred and fewer than then to Israel, where I joined the Israeli Army for 22 years.” idle as flames destroyed the city’s 100-year-old synagogue. Accountants appointed by the Knesset have been tracing the head of the SWC in Jerusalem. Most Lithuanians are AJC and Poland, with support from the U.S. Holocaust a dozen survived. Addressing the students, Ratz held up a Eventually, he got married and had four children and 16 He saved one of the six-foot Stars of David atop the building, the accounts of Holocaust victims in Israeli banks and totally opposed to efforts to bring those countrymen who Memorial Museum, is the first effort in 60 years to black-and-white photograph and passed it around the grandchildren. “Whatever Jews go through, they always will hiding it in his in-laws’ home. The act, if uncovered, guaranteed estimating their value for the past two years, according took an active part in the murder of Jews to justice. And preserve and protect the long ignored Belzec death camp auditorium. He said he had found the image hanging on a have hope,” he said. “God will help us.” Moses, who grew up imprisonment in a concentration camp or death. The same to an agreement in principle signed between the Knesset independent Lithuania has not sentenced a single person and establish a permanent memorial to the hundreds of wall during a recent trip to Riga’s Holocaust Museum. The in Holland and survived three concentration camps said he stories were recounted at Grace Lutheran, Marple Christian, and the major banks: Bank Leumi, Bank Hapoalim , Israel in the slaughter of all but 8,000 of the 220,000 Jewish thousands of Jews who perished there during the photograph showed a teenager being processed by Nazis as a was liberated in 1945. Sherron grew up in Lithuania . He said Marple Presbyterian, Messiah Lutheran, St. Peter’s Episcopal, Discount Bank, United Mizrahi Bank, and Mercantile population under Nazi occupation. Lithuanians complain Holocaust. slave laborer. The boy’s head was shaved, and he stared down he lost 72 family members in the Holocaust. Sherron came St. Pius X Roman Catholic and Trinity Christian Reformed. Discount Bank. they are held collectively responsible for the actions of a “For decades the site has been totally and tragically at the number he held in front of him. It was 281. “That was to the United States in 1948. The synagogue members also lit a Yahrzeit candle on each altar. few criminals, and there is almost total denial of any wider neglected,” said Harris. “This memorial will finally explain my number,” said Ratz. “It’s a photograph of me.” Ratz said YAD VASHEM RESPONDS TO ITALIAN Lithuanian role. The SWC has received leads to 241 the full story of Belzec, pay tribute to the victims, provide he was at the Dover school to bear witness to his past. HOLOCAUST J.W. TALK IN ROCHESTER possible suspects—184 from Lithuania, 38 from Latvia, a permanent protection for the mass graves, and serve as a Looking at the crowd of students, he told them they were the Rochester, NY—Researcher, archivist and writer Jolene Chu DENIAL POLL six from Estonia and 13 from Ukraine. Thirty-two names reminder that we should never forget.” future and that they must tell his story to the next generation. was the featured speaker at Monroe Community College’s Jerusalem—Yad Vashem called upon the Italian government have been given to prosecutors in Lithuania, 13 to the U.S. Rabbinical authorities in Europe and Israel have given “You must tell your children and your grandchildren, because 12th annual Kristallnacht program hosted by members of the to step up educational efforts among its teachers and students, and 10 to Latvia. Official murder investigations of 24 their full approval to the memorial design. Rabbinic they will not have met a Holocaust survivor,” he said. Holocaust Genocide Studies Project. Chu’s presentation, and to send of teachers from Italy to seminars held at Yad suspects have now been initiated in Lithuania. And this representatives are on site during the construction. titled “Witnesses of the Holocaust, Witnesses to the Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies. The has now prompted the SWC to expand the project to “The project should be advanced without any IOWA COMMEMORATION Holocaust,” explored the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses International School has conducted seminars in seven Poland, Romania and Austria. Still, the Lithuanian postponement or delay,” Rabbi Elaykim Schlesinger, dean languages for teachers from many countries around the world. Walcott, IA—Sixth- through eighth-graders at Walcott under the Nazi regime. Chu serves on the board of the prosecutor in charge of Holocaust and war-crimes cases of the Harameh Yeshiva in London and President of the Among the findings in the poll: 11% claim that the Jews are School received a personal lesson when two Holocaust Jehovah’s Witness Holocaust-Era Survivor’s Fund, which says Lithuanian police and security agencies are having Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in lying when they say millions were murdered in gas chambers, survivors, Joseph Kempler, 75, and Rudolf Graichen, 78, coordinates humanitarian and social programs for Jehovah’s trouble locating the people named. Operation Last Chance Europe. “This plan is a great improvement to protect this 8% believe Italian Jews ought to leave the country, and 22% spoke to them about their lives in captivity. The visit by the Witness survivors of Nazi persecution. is or will be operational in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, sacred site from 60 years of terrible neglect,” said Rabbi two men, both Jehovah’s Witnesses, was sponsored by Greg say Jewish citizens of Italy “are not true Italians.” Poland, Romania and Austria, with Belarus, Ukraine, Schlesinger. He added that anyone who has the concern of and Sandra Milakovich of Davenport. HOLOCAUST LIBERATOR HONORED Hungary and Germany scheduled for launch later. the martyrs in mind “would do nothing at all to delay this.” Kempler was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1928 to a devout SHARING EXPERIENCES Washington, DC—As a 20-year-old GI during World War II, PETA HITS WALL IN BERLIN The vast majority of funds raised by AJC for the Corpus Christi, TX—In 1939, when Hilda Mantlemacher was Jewish family. He spent time in six concentration camps Vernon Tott saw someone waving to him and thought he and Berlin—An ad campaign by People for the Ethical project have come from Holocaust survivors and families 8 years old, Adolf Hitler announced he would kill all Jews, MANUSCRIPT RETURNED during his teen years. He was sent to Plaszow concentration his captain had stumbled upon American POWs. But what he Treatment of Animals (PETA) called “Holocaust on Your of survivors. “There is a great deal of support for the she said. “The only way to avoid death was to avoid being a Vienna—A 14th-century Jewish manuscript seized by the camp in July 1943 and then on to the Zakopane, Mauthausen saw on that April day in 1945 was a place he can only describe Plate,” which juxtaposes images of Jews in Nazi death Belzec Memorial Project in the survivor community,” said Jew,” she said. Mantlemacher joined sixth-, seventh- and Nazis from a library in Vienna was returned to Austria and Melk camps. Kempler’s entire family, except for a sister years later as “hell on Earth”—a German slave labor camp. camps with chickens in industrial farms, is meeting Harris, himself the son of Holocaust survivors. eighth-grade students at Corpus Christi School in after it turned up in a New York auction house. Officials who was hidden by a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Poland, Tott, 78, was honored by Holocaust survivors he helped free outraged resistance in Germany. The PETA campaign, Chambersburg recently to give a presentation about her presented the rare Kabalistic manuscript, valued at more perished during the Holocaust. from the Ahlem labor camp near Hanover, Germany, nearly earlier waged in North America, has already been HOLOCAUST BROUGHT HOME experiences during the war. Born in the former than $68,000, to the Jewish Community Organization of Graichen was born in Germany in 1925. In 1937, the six decades ago. The ceremony at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial condemned by the ADL and others. The PETA posters are Czechoslovakia, Mantlemacher was always surrounded by her Vienna. U.S. Customs, prohibited the auction house from London, UK—In a ground-breaking program run by the Gestapo arrested all the male members of the local Jehovah’s Museum was a surprise “We owe him a lot,” said Holocaust to be part of a traveling display starting next March, and parents, grandparents, younger brother and friends—friends delivering the manuscript to the buyer and later seized Hampstead-based London Jewish Cultural Centre, Witness congregation, and Graichen’s father was sentenced survivor Abraham Stern of Sumter, S.C. Stern and three other the Central Council of Jews in Germany is considering that were later taught to despise her because she was Jewish. the manuscript. Holocaust survivor Trude Levi travelled to Austria to help to five years in prison. That same year, as a student at the age survivors who were on hand for the tribute—Moniek Milberger, legal action to halt the campaign. The head of the Council As Mantlemacher looks back on her “difficult and degrading” school pupils deal with their country’s troubled past She of 12, Graichen withstood intense pressure, refusing to join Ben Sieradzki and Sol Bekermus—watched with smiles and called the PETA initiative the most disgusting abuse of experiences, she said she doesn’t hate Germans. She only gave a two-hour lecture on the evils of Nazismbasement Hitler Youth. A year later, Graichen and his sister were taken tears as the museum unveiled Tott’s name etched in granite on the memory of the Holocaust in recent years. PETA claims FRANCE HAS NEW POLICY VS. ANTI- tries to educate those who don’t know about the Holocaust. in Salzburg’s state business school, the Handelsadademie, by police from their school to a reform school in an attempt a wall in the building’s donor lounge. to have 20,000 members and supporters in Germany. SEMITISM to indoctrinate them with Nazi ideology. From there they “I feel as though I have a responsibility,” she said, “to speak Paris—President Jacques Chirac announced a tough new where hundreds of 18-year-old students listened intently. went to live with a Nazi foster family. When he was 17, the voices that aren’t heard.” FOUR SPEAK IN TENNESSEE policy to combat antisemitism, saying that an attack on a Hungarian-born Ms Levi was just 20 when she was taken Graichen was reported to the Gestapo for having illegal Nashville, TN—Four survivors of the Berga concentration FRENCH RABBI WARNS OF ANTI- Jew is an attack on the entire nation. The president spoke at to the death camp at Auschwitz.The Mill Hill resident was religious literature. The Gestapo arrested both Graichen and GODIN SPEAKS IN EL PASO camp—now all in their late 70s—stood on a Vanderbilt SEMITISM a news conference following arson attacks on a private one of eight Holocaust survivors from London his mother, who died in the Ravensbruck concentration camp El Paso, TX—Holocaust survivor Nesse Godin, who lives in University stage and spoke to an audience of teenagers Paris—France's chief rabbi has cautioned Jewish men Jewish school. Chirac said a plan of action was laid out that participating in a week-long trip to schools in Austria, shortly before liberation. He was released at the end of the Washington, DC, was in El Paso to commemorate not much younger than they were when captured. The event against wearing yarmulkes in public, suggesting they wear includes extra security at Jewish places of worship and organized by a group of volunteers funded by the Jewish war. In 1950, he was tortured by East German police and Kristallnacht and educate the public about the horrors of the was part of the Tennessee Holocaust Commission’s baseball caps instead. Rabbi Joseph Sitruk urged young schools, “exemplary sanctions” against anyone found guilty Welcome Service in Vienna. Her talk was the first of its sentenced to four years in prison. He now resides in Brady, TX. Holocaust. “You cannot bring back the dead, but you can continuing educational programs aimed at high school men to be extra cautious, saying they could become targets of antisemitic acts and reinforced civics courses in French kind at the 700-pupil college, which sits in the heart of a Noting that other Holocausts have taken place in recent change the future. We can teach people that we are all God’s teachers and their students. About 300 attended. The four of violence if they wear the yarmulke, or skullcap. “It hurts schools “to educate each child on the respect of others, on socially deprived suburb of Salzburg. Alfred Frauscher, years in places like Kosovo, Kempler said it’s important to children and that we can respect each other.” Godin, 75, was were among 350 Americans sent to the camp because they me” to make such a recommendation, he said, “but I say dialogue and tolerance.” Local prefects are to meet with deputy headteacher of the school, said he thought it was remind people, including youngsters, about his and a guest speaker at the annual fund-raising dinner for the El “seemed” Jewish. Most, like Carden, were not. The story that to protect our young people.'' Jewish leaders to decide what kind of security great. . [email protected]

TOGETHER 12 TOGETHER 17 ABOUT THE OFFICE OF ROUND THE NATION OLOCAUST COMMEMORATION SURVIVOR AFFAIRS

EXHIBIT HONORS LOCAL SURVIVORS the Wilf Family Foundation, established by Holocaust of the U.S. soldiers in the Berga camp was a little-known concentration camp survivor. Teddy Duckworth was the The United States Holocaust Memorial A H Museum created the Office of Survivor Affairs in ANTISEMITISM ON SCREEN Santa Barbara, CA—The Santa Barbara Jewish Federation, survivors who settled in the state. All major expenses were part of Holocaust history until filmmaker Charles 26-year-old British soldier, now 84, who saved her life. New York, NY—A series presented at the JCC in Manhattan in collaboration with UCSB, will open a permanent covered, including travel, hotel accommodations and books. Guggenheim made the documentary Berga: Soldiers of Lorraine was 13 when she and her family from 1997 to serve survivors and their families, the used a select group of films—historic and contemporary, exhibition to honor Holocaust survivors and refugees in Another War, which recently aired on PBS. Obernkirchen were taken to the camps. Lorraine would museum’s most important and unique foreign and American—to explore how movies promoted, Santa Barbara. The exhibit, titled “Portraits of Survival: Life ARKANSAS COMMEMORATION be spared, but she'd be the only survivor. Her mother, her constituency. The office represents and works reflected or responded to antisemitism. At each screening, Journeys During the Holocaust and Beyond,” was unveiled Springdale, AK—Helen Lebowitz Goldkind a survivor of A LESSON IN HATRED father, her grandmother, her great grandmother—virtually with the museum’s more than 60 Survivor the social and historical context of each production and at the Federation’s headquarters in downtown Santa Barbara. two of Nazi Germany’s deadliest concentration camps, Carthage, MO—The pictures that Hedy Epstein showed her entire family—were all gassed by the Nazis. She Volunteers. Our volunteers serve the museum in returned to her home town and thought she was safe, until the film's means of expression was discussed by Jerome related her experiences at the Jones Center for Families as the students at the local high school look like any in a many ways, including providing precious two soldiers came to the door. “She went hysterical Chanes, professor and author of A Dark Side of History: SURVIVOR SHARES STORY part of an annual Holocaust presentation for area high family album. But Epstein doesn’t show the pictures to translation services to our Collections department, Anti-Semitism through the Ages and Stuart Klawans, film because she thought we were the Gestapo coming to take Pawnee City, NE—Survivor Leo Fettman recently told his school students. Goldkind joined historians, political depict her happy years as a young school girl, because when by helping museum visitors and by providing critic of The Nation since 1988, who writes frequently she was a teenager she was a Jewish girl growing up in a her back.” They were reunited recently when her eldest story at The Pawnee City High School auditorium during a scientists and lecturers in “The Economics of the about film for The New York Times and recipient of a John small town in Nazi Germany. “Hatred is what led to son Lenny got married. “Without him,” said Lenny, he administrative help in all different parts of the school assembly to commemorate Kristallnacht. He tells Holocaust: Moral Bankruptcy” program. Begun in 1994, Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for 2003-04. Auschwitz,” said Epstein. “It’s a very destructive emotion. said, I wouldn't be here.” Said Lorraine Erlanger: “He's museum. We have a Survivor Volunteer group his story of survival in an effort to spread his message.”We the Holocaust presentation is a way to bring history to The films included: Jüd Suss, Crossfire, Gentleman's There’s nothing whatsoever to be gained from hatred.” She just an extraordinary man. He's not Jewish, it has nothing that meets once a month to review general business life for area students and to help assure that younger Agreement, Memories of a River and Homicide. are all children of the same God,” he said. asked students to make good choices. And she urged the to do with religion. He just did the right thing because it related to survivors’ interests and for special Fettman was 19 years old when they came to his home generations don’t forget the dangers of totalitarian students to take steps toward peace. “Each and every one was right to do.” presentations. ANNE FRANK EXHIBIT IN GEORGIA in Hungary and deported him to Auschwitz. His family was authority. The prestige of the event has grown and of us can and must make a difference,” she said. Epstein, Throughout the museum, the Office of forced to leave all of their belongings behind to be taken annually attracts well-known and respected national Atlanta, GA—The Anne Frank in The World exhibit who now lives in St. Louis, said she continued to harbor LUNCH N’ LEARN Survivor Affairs supports private and public on a journey that only Fettman would survive. Fettman has experts to Springdale as presenters. officially opened on Friday, November 16, 2003 in Atlanta. hate toward the entire German population until the 1970s, Livingston, NJ—The Holocaust Council’s second Lunch programs, such as First Person, and advises on written a book, Shoah, that took him approximately 15 years when she spoke out against the war in Vietnam. She realized n’ Learn featured Marsha Kreuzman, who focused on her The Governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, cut the ribbon, matters relating to working with survivors and their and then led a group of Survivors and liberators thru the to write. On the front cover of the book is a photo of his THE STATE DEPARTMENT IS STILL that although she was allowed to protest the U.S. experiences in Plaszow Labor camp, working under Amon children. Every month there is The Memory exhibit. The project was successful beyond the planners father and brother as they stood in front of the boxcar that LOOKING FOR HOLOCAUST government’s military actions, citizens in Germany during Goeth, the sadistic commander (played by Ralph Fiennes Project, a writing workshop for Survivor wildest expectations. The Georgia Commission on the carried them to their death. Fettman found the photo while COLLABORATORS AND MURDERERS the 1930s and 1940s would have been jailed and killed for in Spielberg’s film, Schindler’s List.) The third Lunch n’ Holocaust, Kennesaw State University and it's foundation looking through a book about the Holocaust. voicing opposition to Hitler and his policies. Learn featured Barry Berger, born in Czechoslovakia and Volunteers. Washington, D.C.—Christopher A. Wray, Assistant are extremely proud of their accomplishments. the survivor of several concentration camps. The Lunch In reaching out, the office organizes Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, HOLOCAUST TOLD IN FILM AT LONG LAST n’ Learn project is an ongoing series at the Metro-West conferences, programs and events of interest to recently announced that the Justice Department has asked Portland, OR—The Portland City Council has moved ahead Federation. the survivor and Second Generation communities. TOLERANCE EXHIBIT DEFACED Atlantic City, NJ—Nearly a lifetime ago, Sonia Kaplan of a federal court to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a Chicago St. Petersburg, Fla. - An exhibit promoting peace and Cambria Heights became one of the victims of the great with a memorial that means a lot to Oregonians. In 2000, We represent the museum and our office at resident for his role in a Ukrainian police unit that helped the World Jewish Congress estimated that there were 6TH ANNUAL SETON HALL CONFERENCE understanding was slashed and defaced with racial slurs, crime of the 20th century. She survived, but the Holocaust conferences and programs across the United administer and annihilate a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied 500,000 Holocaust survivors remaining worldwide. Greensburg, PA—The National Center for Holocaust authorities said. A passer-by called police to report that scarred her. And one night in early November, “Broken States and around the world by presenting papers Poland during World War II. Although it is unknown how many live in Oregon, it is Education held its sixth annual conference at Seton Hall Silence,” was shown in The Richard Stockton College of and giving talks about the role of the museum and the “Coexistence” exhibit’s billboard-size panels had been In a complaint filed December 29, 2003, the Criminal University. Entitled “Remembering the Shoah, an New Jersey to commemorate Kristallnacht. Kaplan and known that dozens of survivors in the Portland area serve vandalized, The exhibit was in a downtown park. All but one Division’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and the in a speakers’ bureau organized by the Oregon Holocaust Educational and Theological Challenge for the third our office and what services we can provide to other family members were on hand for the hour-long of the 39 artworks had been cut or spray-painted with anti- U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois Resource Center. A wall will also honor 750 people— millenium,” Dr. Phillip Cunningham of Boston College survivors and their families. screening and took questions from students. Polish non- black slurs, and police have labeled it a hate crime. There allege that Osyp Firishchak, 84, who was born in what is somehow connected to Oregonians—who died in the gave the keynote address. Father John T. Poliakowski, The United States Holocaust Memorial were no suspects. The exhibit, which began in Jerusalem in Jews saved her life on four different occasions. At one point now Ukraine, joined the Nazi-operated Ukrainian Auxiliary Holocaust. well-known as a pioneer in the field, was also a main Museum defines a Holocaust survivor as a person 2001, has toured cities in Europe and Africa. St. Petersburg she realized she had to leave one hiding place or the Polish Police (UAP) in October 1941 and was a member of its 1st speaker. who was displaced, persecuted, and/or woman’s life would be in danger. She hid in the woods with is the second of 14 stops in the United States. Commissariat in L’viv until at least October 1943. During STUDENTS LEARN FROM SURVIVORS discriminated against by the racial, religious, 15 other Jews from the town and the remnants of the Soviet this time, the 1st Commissariat, along with other armed Ellicott City, MD—Two Holocaust survivors told their ALL SAINTS' ACADEMY PROGRAM ethnic, and political policies of the Nazis and their RECONNECTING WITH THE PAST occupiers.Finally, returning Soviet troops liberated the L’viv UAP units, rounded up Jews, imprisoned them in a stories of courage to a group of about 40 sixth-graders Winter Haven, FL—Dr. Pierre E. Chanover spoke for the town. allies. In addition to former inmates of Students from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University of ghetto, terrorized them, oversaw their forced labor, killed and their parents at Folly Quarter Middle School in Ellicott first time about his experiences during the Holocaust to concentration camps and ghettos this includes, City for Kristallnacht Commemorations. The two women a packed audience of teachers and students at All Saints' Pittsburgh, PA, recently took a Hillel-sponsored trip to those attempting to escape and delivered others to killing among others, refugees and people in hiding. the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in INDIANA COMMEMORATION recounted their childhood memories—one of being hidden Academy's Hampton Campus. Years ago, his mother, who sites for mass execution. If you are a survivor in the Washington, DC- Washington, D.C., were able to view many exhibits and South Bend, IN—Temple Beth-El commemorated Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray noted, in convents and homes, and one of being sent to America also survived the Holocaust, tried to make Chanover come area and are interested in volunteering at the artifacts from the Holocaust. “It was a truly sobering Kristallnacht night with a prayer service in memory of “This case reaffirms the Justice Department’s dedication to live with strangers—with a positive message of the to terms with his past and brought him to Auschwitz where museum and being a part of our Survivor Volunteer experience,” said Jackie Braslawsce, the Jewish student life Holocaust victims and with a lecture by Renee Firestone. A to the principle that those who helped the Nazi regime goodness of those who helped them. Trudy Turkel, now a his father was exterminated. As a child, the speaker had coordinator for Hillel. “It made me proud to be Jewish. It survivor of Auschwitz and a lecturer with the Simon carry out its evil designs do not deserve the privilege of grandmother living in Ellicott City, told her story of escape been hidden by French Catholics and converted. Chanover group, please contact Jill Greenstein (202-479- is a French professor at Florida Atlantic University, editor made me want to learn more about being Jewish. It made Wiesenthal Center’s Education Outreach Program in Los American citizenship.” from Hitler's reach in 1938. “About 1,000 children were 9737 or [email protected]) or Cyndy Clovis saved by an American Kindertransport,” Turkel said. “I was and publisher of Poesie-USA, an American magazine of me want to carry on the legacy of the Jewish people and Angeles, Firestone told her story of spending 13 months in This case is a result of OSI’s ongoing efforts to identify, (202-479-9738 or [email protected]) in our 14 years old. My parents were willing to sign a release French poetry and is the president of Child Survivors- carry on the story of the Holocaust.” the concentration camp. At the outset of her lecture, investigate, and take legal action against former participants Volunteer and Intern Services department. Firestone said that although it is painful to do so, the past that I could travel all the way to America alone.” A German Hidden Children of Palm Beach County. Chanover To receive our monthly email newsletter to in Nazi persecution who reside in the United States. Since soldier, Carl Frishbaur, saved the life of Flora Singer, now dedicated his speech to the 1.5 million children who died. TEENS RAISE $12,000 FOR MUSEUM must be remembered. In response to a question from the it began operations in 1979, 73 individuals who assisted in survivor and Second Generation groups and audience, Firestone said that unlike some other survivors, a grandmother living in Potomac, and the lives of her Highland Park, MD—An estimated $12,000 was raised to Nazi persecution have been stripped of U.S. citizenship and mother and two sisters. Before the war, he used to come individuals and other friends of the office, she couldn’t remove her identification tattoo from PAYING RESPECTS commemorate Kristallnacht in Highland Park at the first 59 such persons have been removed from the U.S. for dinner, said Singer. “I only knew him as Uncle Carl,” describing items of interest to survivors and their Auschwitz. “That number is me,” she said. “It’s a part of me Boca Raton, FL—Holocaust survivors who pass their event ever organized and executed by teenagers to benefit Members of the public are reminded that the complaint she said. In 1942 [in Belgium], Carl came to the door one families email us at [email protected] like my eyes or my nose are a part of me. How could I stories on to students were honored in a ceremony by the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Three of contains only allegations. night and said, ‘Take the children and go. Don't ask the League for Educational Awareness of the Holocaust and we will add you to the list. If you do not remove it? ... It’s part of who I am.” the nine high school students involved are grandchildren questions, just go!’ Singer and her sisters were hidden in (LEAH) in the Boca Country Club. The event was held have email, please call us at the numbers listed of Holocaust survivors. Dena Rubenstein, a senior at New convents and homes until the liberation, she said. in remembrance of Kristallnacht. “The survivors rose below so we can add you to a “regular mail” SENIORS JOIN 100 YOUTHS FROM Trier High School, spoke about the experiences of her up and they chose life. They rose up and started families mailing list. grandmother, Lola Nortman, for the fund-raiser at the North AROUND COUNTRY TO TOUR MUSEUM HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR SHARES STORY and told their stories,” said LEAH President Connie Martin Goldman, Director Suburban Synagogue Beth El. Nortman, now 81, was a farm Gloucester Twp. NJ—Two Black Horse Pike Regional WITH O’NEAL STUDENTS Packman. “People will come to understand that this Office of Survivor Affairs laborer at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in School District seniors recently embarked on a four-day If you know a evil we have witnessed can’t be ignored.” Pinehurst, NC—Seventh and eighth graders at The O’Neal Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum Germany. One day, on her way back from the fields, she youth mission to Washington, D.C. to revisit what happened Holocaust survivor school had the opportunity to hear Ralph Jacobson share Ernest Kan lived in a Berlin apartment with his family. 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW collapsed and was later found in a pile of corpses. “She was during the Holocaust. The experience has made them look who recently passed away, his experiences relating to the alienation and evacuation Thanks to his Latvian origin, his family was spared and he the same age, 17, as I am now,” said Dena, whose twin at the world—and themselves—differently. The New Jersey of Jews during the period before and during World War II. was able to protect several other Jewish families. Washington, DC 20024-2126 brother, Jared Rubenstein, also helped plan the event. Also office of the ADL contacted five high schools or high school please notify the Jacobson moved from Germany to New York at age 11 However, Kan was soon expelled from high school—as Email: [email protected] sharing a grandparent’s story was Aaron Dubnow. His districts participating in its anti-hate project called “A World American Gathering. with his mother. The presentation was particularly moving educating Jews became illegal—and moved back to Tel: (202) 488-0414 grandfather is Leo Melamed, chairman emeritus of the of Difference.” Each one picked a number of students to to students, teachers and parents since eighth graders Latvia, where his family was forced into a ghetto after Fax: (202) 488-2693 Chicago Mercantile Exchange and a member of the U.S. apply for the mission, and the ADL whittled the number recently completed a review of World War II. the German’s invaded. His mother was one of many killed Holocaust Museum Council. The other participating teens down to two from each school or school district. During 212-239-4230 by German troops on a death march into the forest during Betsy Anthony, Senior Associate a mass liquidation of the ghetto in 1941. Kan survived are Kali Bale and Ali Redfield, both at Highland Park High the mission, students heard from Holocaust survivors, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR INVITES HE WHO Email: [email protected] stays in three concentration camps until being liberated School, and New Trier students Alex Berlin, Laura Miller, including Nesse Godin, who survived four labor camps and SAVED HER in April 1945. Tel: (202) 314-0399 Barry Ronner and Katie Scheyer. a death march. New Jersey participants were sponsored by New City, NY—Lorraine Erlanger was a 16-year-old

TOGETHER 16 TOGETHER 13 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF MUSEUM IN WASHINGTON 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF MUSEUM IN WASHINGTON

Image of time capsule that was buried on the Eisenhower Plaza. The capsule contains memorial candles, photographs, copies of the cermony remarks, a copy of the November 2, 2004 Washington Post, and the most recent edition of the Museum’s membership publications. It will be unearthed in 2043, the Museum’s 50th anniversary.

The American Gathering and the participants in the Reunion wish to thank Sara Bloomfield and the Museum staff for their excellent organization of this event.

TOGETHER 14 TOGETHER 15