Spring 2015 Volume 29, Number 1

A Passover message from Speech by American Gathering our President Chairman Roman Kent at

By Sam E. Bloch others remember all those Auschwitz Commemoration who perished, lonely, and ach year at the abandoned by a cruel world January 27, 2015 EPassover Seder, we that stood by in silence recite the Haggadah’s and indifference. Seventy resident Komorowski, my fellow most important teaching: years later, our memories PAuschwitz survivors and guests – in each generation we are not extinguished. When I am often asked how long I was in should see ourselves as if the German Nazi murderers Auschwitz… my answer is I do not we were slaves in Egypt. and their accomplices know. What I do know is that a minute This passage serves as Sam E. Bloch destroyed our homes and in Auschwitz was like an entire day, a powerful moment for our communities, and a day was like a year, and a month an us, survivors of the Holocaust and our annihilated, with so much cruelty and eternity. How many eternities can one families, because we continue to bear the barbarism, six million of our martyrs – person have in a single lifetime – I don’t wounds of the bitter years of the Holocaust innocent men, women, children – they know the answer to that either. when we were enslaved, tortured, and lost obliterated their hopes and dreams, and the Zachor, Pamjentaj, Remember… our precious families. infinite creativity, beauty, and knowledge This was the word my father Seventy years ago, we were liberated that they could have contributed to the frequently uttered to me during the from oppression and death – but this betterment of our world. We grieve for Holocaust. liberation came too late for our six million them as if it were only yesterday. Today, seventy years later, that martyrs. In their sacred memory, we have There is a danger that their and our command to remember is indeed dedicated our lives to bearing witness and suffering and struggle will, with the superfluous. For me, a survivor Roman Kent to challenging the world to remember. passage of time, be forgotten. But as long of Auschwitz to forget the horrific just skin and bones, but still alive? How It is our sacred duty to remind all those as we live, and as long as there will be in experiences endured in the concentration can I ever forget the smell of burning who already know, those who don’t know, this world free people who care, we the camps even for one moment is flesh that permeated the air? Many of who don’t want to know, and who don’t survivors, our children, and grandchildren, impossible. Witnessing the atrocities us came to Auschwitz not knowing each want to be disturbed by such memories. and the generations to come will not stop committed at the entrance gate to other in life; but most left together in Just as the four sons of the Passover telling and retelling our tales of martyrdom Auschwitz was more than enough to death through the chimney in the form Haggadah must hear the story, so our and resistance. keep me awake at night… until the end of white-blue smoke. own children, our grand- and great grand- Together, we must transform our of time. It is there that the Germans The heartbreaking weeping of the children must hear it. And the world must individual memories into collective welcomed and began to brutalize their children, torn from their mother’s arms know that we will not be silent. To all those action. The conclusion we may draw new guests. Horses were driven into by the brutal actions of their torturers, detractors who try to deny or diminish our from the Holocaust, its aftermath, and families and groups forcing them apart will ring in my ears until I am laid to tragedy, we say we are here to tell the tragic today’s resurgence of antisemitism and and separating them – often forever – as rest. I continue to wonder if the cries truth in full. outright violence against Jews is the camp guards slashed at us with whips of these youngsters ever penetrated We are the living witnesses of the need for vigilance and effective action. that cut as sharply as finely honed heaven’s gate. Shoah. Behind us there are 20 centuries In recalling the past we must reflect on swords. We survivors continuously came of Jewish history, a history of exile, certain present day realities. It is the Even seventy years later, the daily face-to-face with death; yet, despair was oppression, discrimination, persecution, hatred of the Jew that culminated in cruelty and inhuman behavior in the not our response. Despite hopelessness, genocide, and a struggle for survival and the Holocaust. It started with speeches, camps is still indelibly etched in my we created life out of a world of renewal. Behind us are the victims of the burning of books, the burning of mind. The look of pleasure on the darkness, and we now remember the inquisitions, pogroms, death camps, and synagogues, and ended with the burning murderers’ faces and their laughter as all consuming evil we were forced to crematoria. The experiences of the past are of people. they tortured innocent men, women, endure. as much ours as the hatred we Holocaust The burning question persists: How and children is beyond description and We survivors cannot – dare not – survivors ourselves experienced. is it that the free world could not see the lingers in my consciousness. How can forget the millions who were murdered. We choose to remember and make enormity of evil and mass murder? How I erase the sight of the human skeletons, For if we were to forget, the conscience

continued on p. 23 continued on p. 9

PERMIT NO. 4246 NO. PERMIT

New York, New York 10001 York New York, New

NEW YORK, NY YORK, NEW

122 West 30th Street, Suite 304А 304А Suite Street, 30th West 122

PAID

Jewish Holocaust Survivors Holocaust Jewish

U.S. POSTAGE U.S.

American Gathering of Gathering American NON-PROFIT 2 together Spring 2015 Address by World Jewish

Congress President Ronald Spring 2015 Volume 29, Number 1 S. Lauder at Auschwitz on c•o•n•t•e•n•t•s A Passover message from our President...... 1 January 27, 2015 Speech by American Gathering Chairman Roman Kent at Auschwitz Commemoration ... 1 Address by World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder at Auschwitz...... 2 Following are My life as a Jew in wartime Berlin: How I outwitted the Gestapo...... 3 excerpts from the Israeli Settlers Use Nazi Imagery Against Jews...... 3 speech of WJC Muslim Scholar, Looking to ‘Speak the Truth,’ Teaches the Holocaust and Islam...... 4 Finding History and Myself in Vilnius...... 4 President Ronald Polish students honored for exploring history of Jewish towns...... 5 S. Lauder at Will Auschwitz make it to eighty?...... 5 Thanking my grandfather’s liberator...... 5 the ceremony at From the Pen of My Grandson...... 6 Auschwitz-Birkenau Don’t be a passive bystander. 70th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz...... 7 on the occasion of the Tour a Jewish Cemetery in Bialystok by Drone...... 8 Life-affirming observations from Holocaust survivors’ offspring...... 10 70th anniversary of In a town built on Jewish headstones, still no fixing what the Nazis destroyed...... 11 the camp’s liberation. Ronald Lauder (photo: Detlev Schilke) Tales from Auschwitz: survivor stories...... 12 When the office is a death camp...... 18 http://www.worldjewishcongress.org to come back. First in articles and on the internet, in some religious schools and Hungarian premier admits country’s 4shameful’ Holocaust role...... 18 am not a survivor, although I am even universities. From there it made its Searches ...... 19 I grateful for the survivors who are way into mainstream society. Benefits for Holocaust Survivors from Poland...... 19 here today. I am not a liberator, although It happened so slowly and it all Holocaust survivor recalls desperate battle to stay alive: I just wanted to live’...... 20 I salute the courage of the veterans who seemed so unimportant that few people Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs Yellow Candle Program – A History...... 20 are among us today. paid any attention. I am here, simply, as a Jew. And, Until now, when Europe suddenly Survivors return to Auschwitz determined to share their stories...... 21 like all Jews everywhere, this place, this awoke to find itself surrounded by anti- In Memoriam...... 22 terrible place called Auschwitz, touches Semitism again and it looks more like Luxembourg wartime bosses willingly helped Nazis find Jews’...... 23 our souls. I have always wondered if I 1933 than 2015. had been born in Hungary, where my Once again, young Jewish boys grandparents were from, instead of are afraid to wear yarmulkes on the Questions and comments should be directed New York in February of 1944, would streets of Paris and Budapest and to the American Gathering at 212-239-4230. I have lived? London. Once again, Jewish businesses [email protected] The answer is no. I would have are targeted. And once again, Jewish been one of the 438,000 Hungarian Jews families are fleeing Europe. Our office Has Moved! gassed by the Nazis here in Auschwitz How did this happen? Why, after in 1944. seven decades and three generations, is 122 West 30th Street, Suite 304A, New York, NY 10001 What was the reason that over one this new storm of anti-Semitism sweeping Same Building! Just Up One Floor! million Jews were murdered right here? through Europe and targeting Jews? The reason was they were Jewish. Nazi For decades, the world has been fed Germany believed Jews had no right to lies about Israel: that Israel is the cause live. Yes, the Holocaust was designed of everyone’s problems, that Israelis by the Nazis. But there was complicity are the villains of the 21st century, that AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS from almost every country in Europe. Israel has no right to exist. AND THEIR DESCENDANTS I was going to make a very different We all learned that when you tell a speech here today. But after the recent lie three times and there is no response, President Jean Bloch Rosensaft Sam E. Bloch Stefanie Seltzer events in Paris, throughout Europe and then the lie becomes the truth. Chairman Elan Steinberg z”l around the world I cannot ignore what This vilification of Israel, the only Roman Kent Regional Vice Presidents is happening today. Jewish state on earth, quickly became Senior Vice President Vivian Bernstein Bernard Kent Jews are targeted in Europe once an opportunity to attack Jews. Much Menachem Z. Rosensaft Treasurer Michael Korenblit again because they are Jews. Synagogues of this came from the Middle East, but Jeffrey Wiesenfeld Mel Mermelstein and Jewish businesses are attacked. it has found fertile ground throughout Secretary: Serena Woolrich There are mass demonstrations with the world. Joyce Celnik Levine Publications Committee, Chair: Honorary Senior Vice President Sam E. Bloch thousands of people shouting death The targets of this hate are not just Ernest Michel threats to the state of Israel and to Jews. Jews. Christians are being slaughtered Founding President Executive Director: Shortly after the end of World War in Africa and Syria. Women and girls are Benjamin Meed z”l Elaine Culbertson Honorary President II, after we saw the reality of Auschwitz killed in Afghanistan just for wanting to Vladka Meed z”l Administrative Assistant: and the other death camps, no normal go to school. Journalists are murdered in Honorary Chairman Luis Gonzalez person wanted to be associated with the the Middle East and right here in Europe William Lowenberg z”l Publisher: anti-Semitism of the Nazis. a terrible wave of hatred has descended Vice Presidents Eva Fogelman 3rd Rail Marketing Strategies, Inc. For a time, we thought that the hatred on our earth once again. Gloria Golan 917 776-3197 of Jews had finally been eradicated. But Rositta E. Kenigsberg For subscription information, slowly the demonization of Jews started continued on p. 23 Romana Strochlitz Primus call 212-239-4230 visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 3 My life as a Jew in Israeli Settlers Use Nazi wartime Berlin: How I Imagery Against Jews outwitted the Gestapo Settler group invokes notorious Goebbels propaganda film in new video

We routinely condemn anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi publications and other forms of propaganda and demand that the international community take action against these (something the Director General of UNESCO has done with respect to anti-Semitic posters that are part of a controversial Palestinian poster collection). It is now imperative that all Israelis, regardless of their political leanings, and all Diaspora Jewish groups similarly condemn the incendiary propagandists who conceived By Menachem Z. Rosensaft of and unleashed the “Eternal Jew” video. http://tabletmag.com We must not allow the video to be dismissed as mere rhetorical excess in the midst hideous video titled “The Eternal of a heated election campaign. Rather, it must AJew” was posted on YouTube, and, be unambiguously denounced as a despicable as of this writing, has been viewed more example of the vilest bigotry. Remember the than 130,000 times. The video, created placards with doctored photographs of Prime Marie Jalowicz Simon was 11 years old when Hitler came to power, early in 1933. by the Samaria Citizens Committee, a far- Minister Yitzhak Rabin in a Nazi uniform Some 400 Nazi decrees later, her friends and family were being transported from right settler group in Israel, is an obscene, that appeared at anti-Oslo rallies in the days Germany; and by May 1943, Berlin was declared Judenrein – clear and cleansed crudely anti-Semitic defamation straight and weeks before Rabin’s assassination? The of its Jews... out of the Nazi Jew-baiter-in-chief Julius “Eternal Jew” video appears to have been ut Marie Jalowicz was still there – among Now Frau Nossek told me that she had Streicher’s notorious pornographic tabloid, created in precisely the same spirit. Bthe 1,700 of her people who were able already received her deportation order, and Der Stürmer. Benny Katzover, the chairman of the to go to ground, remain in the heart of the had been duly picked up with her rucksack Indeed, a Stürmer-like caricature Samaria Citizens Committee, doubled Reich and survive the war. She was one of the and her bundle of bed linen. At the railway of a Jew—long-nosed, groveling, and down in an ill-conceived attempt to defend Untergetaucht – the submerged, also known station, however, she had suffered such money-grubbing—appears in the video as and justify his organization’s nasty screed. as ‘U-boats’. In this extract from Marie’s a bad attack of diarrhoea – which she the obedient acolyte/agent of one “Herr Israeli and Jewish doves, he contended, remarkable memoir, she describes the morning described in all its embarrassing detail – Stürmer,” who pays his employee to engage “are upset because they do not like what that she managed to outwit the Gestapo. that she had to go to the toilet. When she in anti-Israel acts. The video ends with they look like in the mirror.” Early in June 1942, I met Frau Nossek in finally came out again (“such bad luck”), the image of the Jewish traitor—for that Nonsense. What infuriates and repulses the street. In the old days we always used to the train had left. is how the Jew in the clip is depicted— us is to see Jews adopt and spew out see this simple-minded household help who So then, she told me, she had gone over hanged alongside the logos of Peace the very same venomous arguments and worked for my parents, in the Old Synagogue to a railwayman and described her situation, Now, B’Tselem, and other Israeli groups imagery used by the Nazis to justify the on religious festivals. She always sat in one whereupon he had run after the two Gestapo committed to Israeli-Palestinian cooperation brutal, systematic murder of six million of the cheapest places in the second women’s officers who were just leaving the platform and and interaction and an Arab-Israeli peace Jews. The relevant question that needs to be gallery. After the service she would come fetched them back. process. “The Europeans may seem different posed to Katzover and his Samaria Citizens over to us out in the yard to shake hands with to you,” a deep voice intones, “but to Committee is whether they have any shame everyone and wish us well. continued on p. 8 them you are exactly the same.” In other whatsoever or, to borrow a phrase from words, the twisted masterminds behind this another context, whether, at long last, they abomination are accusing dovish Israeli have left no sense of decency. groups and like-minded Jews of being in As we mark the 70th anniversaries the employ of European anti-Semites, and of the liberation of Nazi death and not-so-subtly implying that members of concentration camps such as Auschwitz these groups deserve to die. and Bergen-Belsen, let us not forget that the The Samaria Citizens Committee is atrocities committed in these places were taking its lead from a 1940 film produced and fueled by vicious incitement in the pages disseminated by Nazi Propaganda Minister of Der Stürmer and similar publications. Joseph Goebbels called—wait for it—“Der The “Eternal Jew” video belongs in the ewige Jude,” that is, “The Eternal Jew,” same category. Those responsible for which characterized Jews as “abnormal and disseminating this ignominy must be held depraved.” British filmmaker and historian accountable. Laurence Rees has described that original Menachem Z. Rosensaft teaches about incarnation as “the most appalling film ever the law of genocide and war crimes trials made” and “a disgusting and crude piece at the law schools of Columbia and Cornell of work that demonstrates the Nazis’ anti- Universities. He is the editor of God, Faith Semitic beliefs at their most base.” & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of The new version of “The Eternal Jew” Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust is just as abhorrent. For Jews—any Jews— Survivors (Jewish Lights Publishing). This to hurl Nazi-like calumnies at anyone, let article is reprinted from Tablet Magazine, at Survival in a hostile world: a park bench in Berlin in 1945 reads ‘Nicht fur Juden’, alone at other Jews, constitutes a political, tabletmag.com, the online magazine of Jewish Not for Jews (Corbis) moral and intellectual perversion. news, ideas and culture.

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 4 together Spring 2015 The lost stories of Muslims in the Holocaust

By Mehnaz M. Afridi miracles that the victims experienced. and the Holocaust. I am a Muslim woman http://blog.oup.com But never shall we forget the six million who teaches the Holocaust, Genocide, Jews that were murdered. There are many World Religions, and Islam; many ven in this place one can survive, and stories of the Shoah (Holocaust) that are questions are raised about my work and Etherefore one must want to survive, to told over and over again by survivors, identity. Some scholars and community tell the story, to bear witness; and that to witnesses, and children of survivors. members view the two areas of study, survive we must force ourselves to save at Today, the tenuous relationship between Holocaust and Islam, in contradiction; least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of Jews and Muslims around the world they seem puzzled and at times, accuse civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every echoes negative sentiments and feelings me of being “divided.” They ask me: right, exposed to every insult, condemned to about these two rich traditions. Anti- “How can you teach two unrelated fields? certain death, but we still possess one power, Semitism has been on the rise in Europe How can a Muslim teach the Holocaust? and we must defend it with all our strength and unfortunately some of the weight of What kind of a scholar are you?” I am for it is the last — the power to refuse our this tide rests on the shoulders of Muslim amused by these questions as I think of consent. ― Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz. immigrants in Europe. how much esoteric knowledge rests on As an Islamic and Holocaust scholar, dusty shelves, for I believe there is an Mehnaz M. Afridi teaches courses about On the 70th anniversary of the liberation I was always saddened to witness such important connection between my two both Islam and the Holocaust, and she is of the German Nazi concentration and animosity and tension between the two areas of research. director of the Holocaust, Genocide and death camp at Auschwitz, I hope we can traditions and decided to take another turn Interfaith Education Center at Manhat- keep telling the stories of survival and in the field of the Holocaust: Muslims continued on p. 15 tan College.

Finding History—and Myself—in Vilnius

The grandchild of Lithuanian Jews hidden Jewish identity unlike the one I grew up during the Holocaust goes back with: one that didn’t have the darkness of the Holocaust as its central force. But could there really be an alternative, something that authentically celebrates what existed before the war? As these thoughts and questions were coalescing in my mind last spring, I happened upon the website for a writing residency in Vilnius, and I applied. I was accepted. And, as fate would From left, author’s grandmother, have it, that same week my father got an uncle, grandfather, and father at St. unexpected email from Lauras Sabonis—a Ottilien Displaced Persons Camp man we didn’t know, but who was the in 1947. Image courtesy Ipp family 27-year-old great-nephew of the Lithuanian archive. family that had saved my grandparents during that what I had assumed were staunchly the Holocaust. My grandparents escaped the separate “Lithuanian” and “Jewish” traditions fate of their families (and almost 95 percent had sometimes influenced each other of the Jews in Lithuania at the time) because over generations. I saw “Jewish” foods a Lithuanian family—strangers—offered to everywhere—sufganiyot (spurgos), latkes hide them during the last months of the war. (bulviniai blynai), and blintzes (blynai)—and This courageous couple, Jonas and Antanina Lauras and I bonded over a home-cooked meal Paulavicius, and their teenage children, that we realized either of our grandmothers Kestutis and Danute, built and sustained an could have prepared. While exploring Vilnius, the author stumbled upon this graffiti that summed up her experience there, for better and worse. (Sarah Heady) underground shelter for eight Jews, selling I discovered that Lithuanians use the property and risking their own lives to word chebra to refer to a group of friends, By Maia Ipp imagination—cold, gray, hostile, and, most provide for them. They ultimately saved 16 mostly unaware that it’s a word derived http://tabletmag.com emphatically, empty. I collected the shards individuals in different hiding places. from the Hebrew chevra. I learned that of my grandmother’s stories and absorbed My grandmother participated in Yad Vilnius had famously been called “the ike many grandchildren of Holocaust the community directive to never forget. But Vashem’s honoring the family as Righteous Jerusalem of the North” by Napoleon for its Lsurvivors, I grew up with the sense that there was also an unspoken imperative that Among the Nations in the 1980s, but contact renowned scholars and thriving Jewish life. Eastern Europe was a toxic wasteland of exhorted us precisely to forget—to forget that had been minimal since. Lauras had been I spent hours talking with survivors who had suffering and loss. On those rare instances so much of the Jewishness we still see, hear, researching his family’s history and was stayed in Lithuania, their Yiddish-inflected when Lithuania, home to my family on both and taste around us is a product of those now- moved by this chapter, and reestablished English much like my grandmother’s. I was sides for generations, was mentioned, it trayf places. contact between the younger generations. We confronted by a history of Jewish spiritual, was as the backdrop for my grandmother’s Five years ago, I began participating in began an email correspondence, and then, in artistic, and cultural life in Eastern Europe stories about the Kovno ghetto: forced a group with a dozen other grandchildren July, when I began my residency, we met. that allowed me to see myself as part of a labor, humiliations, and deportations. of survivors. Over years of often-difficult In Vilnius, I experienced delightful Lithuania became a mythical place in my meetings, I began to form an image of a shocks of recognition and familiarity. I saw continued on p. 6 visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 5 Polish students honored Thanking my for exploring history of Jewish towns grandfather’s http://www.jta.org At a gala, the most interesting liberator projects created by the students were ARSAW, Poland (JTA) – Some 1,200 honored. WPolish students and teachers took part Forum for Dialogue is the largest by Ronit Treatman His prisoner ID card from Buchenwald in the concluding program of the School and oldest Polish non-governmental http://blogs.timesofisrael.com indicates that he was married before of Dialogue, which explores the history of organization engaging in Polish-Jewish the war. His first wife was killed in the Jewish towns and cities in the country. dialogue. Its School of Dialogue project he Holocaust was never discussed in Holocaust. Even my mother didn’t know Bogdan Borusewicz, the speaker of works with youth from all over Poland, Tmy family until I was in third grade. about that. Were there any children from the Polish Senate, thanked the students helping them discover the Jewish past Then I found out that my grandfather this first marriage? No one knows. All for their participation in the project, which of their towns, as well as making them was freed from Buchenwald by the the relatives who could inform us have builds “tolerance and understanding of other feel responsible for preserving the Americans. Who were these Americans? passed away by now. He worked as a cultures and religions.” memory... No one could tell me. Seventy years after slave laborer at Buchenwald. Toward the Second World War ended, I had the the end of the war, he was subjected to privilege of meeting Leon Bass, one of radiation experiments. No one thought the first American soldiers to enter the that he would be able to have children. Buchenwald concentration camp. He was When my mother and aunt were born one of my grandfather’s liberators. after the war, the doctors called them Will Auschwitz make I found Leon Bass by coincidence. My “miracle babies.” dear friend, Susan Schwartz, who teaches On April 11, 1945 the administrators it to eighty? at the Jack M Barrack Hebrew Academy, of Buchenwald fled the approaching invited Dr. Bass to speak to the students. Allied troops and the prisoners of My son David missed the presentation Buchenwald overthrew their guards. by Thane Rosenbaum in the welcome sign above the gate: “Arbeit because he was away, spending a They knew the Americans were coming. http://blogs.timesofisrael.com Macht Frei” (work will set you free). semester in Israel at the Alexander Muss At 3:15 PM, the troops of the American The emotional power that the Holocaust School. This program included a visit to Third Army arrived at the camp. s northeastern United States braced once held on humanity has lost much of its Poland, and the Auschwitz concentration The United States army was still Afor a blizzard that will test the survival momentum in recent years. In our post-9/11 camp. I knew that meeting his great- segregated during the Second World War. instincts of many, there is irony that as one consciousness, there is no shortage of other grandfather’s liberator would be a very The 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion storm approaches a far more lethal one is atrocities to lament: ongoing genocides in the powerful experience for him after visiting was an African American unit. On April being remembered: the 70th anniversary of Congo and Sudan; the raping of children in Auschwitz. When David returned, I 12, Leon Bass, a sergeant in this battalion, the liberation of Auschwitz. Nigeria; daily beheadings in Iraq. Even our arranged for my family to meet Leon Bass. arrived to bear witness to the atrocities A blizzard, of course, is mostly just cartoonists are no longer safe. Both of my grandparents on my a burden. Acts of God are not the same as And the moral authority that Auschwitz maternal side were Holocaust survivors. manmade atrocities. Hopefully this storm once possessed as a mandate against anti- My grandfather, Yosef Flaum, spent the has passed and leave few, if any, casualties. Semitism has apparently vanished, as well. war in Buchenwald, and my grandmother, Auschwitz, on the other hand, the most In last year’s European Parliamentary Dvora, was sent to the Lodz Ghetto, and industrious death camp among the constellation elections, neo-Nazis in Hungary and then several camps including Auschwitz. of such monstrous facilities under the Nazis, Greece won seats. Anti-Israel protests in I am not sure which camp she was was the capstone in man’s inhumanity to France, Britain, Belgium, and Italy this past liberated from. The last place that I can man. Over one million people, mostly Jews, summer, ostensibly over the war in Gaza, verify her presence is called Flossenburg. were murdered there. Liberating Auschwitz more resembled the anti-Semitic orgies of During the height of the Cold War, we 70 years ago epitomized Germany’s defeat, yesteryear. Slogans such as “Death to the knew that my grandmother was grateful although it arrived too late and came without Jews!” were resurrected in front of a French to the Russians, and my grandfather to the victory. What redemption can be expected synagogue with 200 Jews trapped inside. In Americans, for they had liberated them after mass murder on such a grand scale? May, three Jews were shot dead in the Jewish each respectively. Still, for 70 years, the word Auschwitz Museum in Brussels; in 2012, a rabbi and It was difficult to talk to them about has served as a synonym for moral failure and three children were murdered outside of a their experiences during the war. You as the defining symbol of the Holocaust. If one Jewish school in France. never knew when a question you asked survived with a tattooed number on his or her All this on the same continent where could trigger nightmares and trauma. arm, chances are they were in Auschwitz and Auschwitz purportedly symbolizes anti- The only positive conversation I ever lived to tell about it. Semitism at its most barbarous and extreme. had with my grandmother was about her On January 27 in Poland, a ceremony It is true that Holocaust education is liberation. She didn’t say much. I can still Leon Bass in his military uniform was held at the camp to mark the anniversary, taught throughout Europe. But the success remember sensing how grateful she felt to (Photo courtesy of Leon Bass) attended by many world leaders, including of these programs seems to depend on the people who had rescued her from the the presidents of Germany, France and Holocaust survivors visiting schools. Will Nazis. When she told me about it, I stood of Buchenwald. He was one of the first Poland. Nearly 300 survivors of Auschwitz video archives of survivor testimony carry by her side and felt the warmth radiating American soldiers to be seen by the attended, as well, including the youngest, who the same emotional weight when the human out of her, like the glowing embers of a prisoners. is 72-years-old. experience of seeing a living survivor is no fire, enveloping me and making me feel Leon Bass described the day he was It’s worth pondering, however, whether longer possible? as safe as she had felt then. told to go to a concentration camp. He this ghostly graveyard, with its dreaded The heyday for Holocaust memory was I have tried to reconstruct Yosef’s had never heard of a concentration camp, name, will hold any symbolic meaning the 1990s when “Schindler’s List” dominated life from the oral history of my family and didn’t know what had been going on at all ten years from now? An 80th-year the Academy Awards and the Holocaust and whatever documents I could obtain. in them. He related seeing the sign that commemoration may not be in its future. By Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. According to my mother, Yosef Flaum said “Buchenwald,” as he approached 2025 few, if any, survivors will be alive who was born in Piotrków Trybunalski, bore witness to the sadistic evil represented continued on p. 17 Poland in 1918. His trade was carpentry. continued on p. 6

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 6 together Spring 2015 Thanking my grandfather’s liberator Finding History—and Myself—in Vilnius

continued from p. 5 continued from p. 4

rich lineage, an inheritor of something Lauras would say, to be there with Kestutis profound and creative. I talked with other and his wife Janina, with Lauras and his young Lithuanians about how the country uncle, and my father, who joined us for a is dealing with—and avoiding—the very meaningful few days. Holocaust, especially in the context of the It’s unusual that Lauras and I ensuing Soviet occupation. Every day in developed a deep and lasting friendship, Vilnius I had encounters that challenged “across 70 years and 6,000 miles,” my assumptions about pre- and post-war as he once said. But my grandparents Jewish life there. being saved, and Lauras being invested I realized that reexamining the past isn’t in that history, isn’t the only thing only enlightening for Jews. When I asked that allowed me to feel connected to Lauras why this history felt so important to Lithuanian heritage. Going there, both him, he looked to the distance and said, “For metaphorically and geographically, I Lithuania to become a truly modern country, found a deeper connection to my past it needs to deal with this past in a way that and the possibility of a future that isn’t it hasn’t yet. And the history of Jews and saddled with unconscious, inherited Lithuanians is shared—you can’t have one anxieties. without the other!” In Lithuania I was able to really feel Here were strangers, in this place I was something new, something alive, alongside a never supposed to visit, who saw their history deep acknowledgment of what was lost. I felt Leon Bass surrounded by his grandchildren and two of Yosef Flaum’s great- grandchildren. (Photo courtesy of Ronit Treatman) as inextricably linked to my own. connection—to my grandparents, to Jewish Though Jonas and Antanina life and heritage, and to many individuals, the camp. When he arrived, he was lot of discrimination in the world, and that Paulavicius are no longer alive, I was Jews and non-Jews, who call Lithuania home. instructed to step into one of the “inmate sometimes it produced worse consequences able to visit with Kestutis, now 87, who I couldn’t have started this journey without dormitories.” As soon as he stepped into than what he had personally experienced. still lives on the property where my the courage and support of fellow Jews; but the room, the stench of dead and dying When he returned to civilian life, he grandparents were hidden. It was epic, as I couldn’t continue it without Lithuanians. bodies hit him, and it was hard for him embraced the views of Dr. Martin Luther to breathe. King Jr. Leon Bass adopted Quakerism, He told me that one starving prisoner and has been sharing a message of peaceful struggled to look up at him and make eye relations between people ever since. contact. “I just looked at him, and I could When the history of World War II not say a word to him,” he told me. “I left began to be recorded, there was an effort From the Pen of My the room without saying anything.” I could to deprive the black American soldiers of tell that Leon Bass had felt very badly the credit for their service. Some white Grandson about this for the past seventy years. I told American soldiers tried to deny that the him that even if he had spoken, these were black unit had helped liberate Buchenwald. Thu, 29 Jan 2015 lived as a frum Jew in America when mostly Polish Jewish prisoners. They did The survivors always remembered them. it was very difficult to do so. He was not speak English, and he did not speak They testified that the black soldiers had his beautiful little essay was written a “talmid chacham,” and it is said that Polish. I told him that seeing an American been there. Some of the Jews referred to Tby my ten year old grandson with whenever anyone on the block had a soldier had meant everything to these these liberators as their “black angels.” his mother’s help. He is a 4G (fourth question regarding “halachah,” they prisoners. It signified that their ordeal Leon Bass was the last of the American generation). Words cannot express how came to knock on his door. From him was going to be over. A burden seemed to soldiers to be recognized as a “liberator” touched I was when I received it. My I can learn ahavas torah. My last name be lifted from Leon Bass’s heart when he of Buchenwald. prayer for all 2G’s is that we should all is Merl. My great grandfather, Asher heard this. I grew up surrounded by survivors, have children and grandchildren who Tzvi “Hakohen” Merl, was courageous. When Leon Bass volunteered to and the children of survivors. Hearing the will write beautiful statements like the one Before the Holocaust, he decided that serve his country, he was treated like a perspective of a soldier who had rescued below. --- Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg Eretz Yisroel was where he needed to second-class citizen. By the time his unit them was a new undertaking for me. I be. At a young age, he left Germany arrived in Europe, he didn’t really know never thought about what a transformative My name is Akiva Yosef “Hakohen” all by himself, without any family, and what he was fighting for. Witnessing what experience witnessing the camps was for Merl. My name is very important because moved to “Palestine”. He built a new the Nazis had done to the Jews, Gypsies, the liberators. This was especially true it tells me where I come from. My first life for himself in Eretz Yisroel. He had Homosexuals, and disabled people at for Leon Bass. He has spoken widely of name is Akiva, named for my great seven children, and many many many Buchenwald, gave Sergeant Bass a new his experiences during the war, he wrote grandfather, Yaakov Rosenberg. He was grandchildren and great grandchildren perspective. He realized that there was a a memoir about the war, and he was a survivor of Auschwitz, a concentration ka”h. From him I can learn courage. In in an academy award camp. He lost his wife and two children, just a few years iy”h I will be called to the nominated documentary. his parents, and siblings, all because Torah for the first time at my Bar Mitzvah. Connecting with the they were Jewish. He was strong, and I will be called by my full name, because descendants of the he survived. He built a new family, and every part of who I am is because of where people he liberated started a new life. From him I can learn I come from. I hope that as I begin this was as rare for him strength. My second name is named for next important chapter of Torah learning, as encountering one my great-great grandfather Yosef Beer. Hascholas Gemora, I can live up to my of the liberators was He was an immigrant from Europe, and name, and make my namesakes proud. for me. He met two of Yosef Flaum’s great grandchildren. If it If you would like to receive Together electronically weren’t for him, Yosef’s please e-mail us at [email protected] in order children, grandchildren, to opt out of receiving a print copy. Ronit Treatman with Leon Bass (Photo courtesy of Ronit and great-grandchildren Type the words OPT-OUT in the subject line. Treatman) may not be here today. visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 7 Don’t be a passive bystander! 70th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum News thought flashed across my mind, that they “It is our mutual obligation, that of Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, Director will finally burn me in this fire from the survivors and national leaders, to instill of the Auschwitz Memorial, thanked n January 27, about 300 Survivors, crematorium behind the wires and I will in the current and future generations the all the participants of the ceremony for Owitnesses of the history of Auschwitz, never experience the kiss of love like those understanding of what happens when their presence during this special day. In assembled in front of the Death Gate of that I had been reading about in books in virulent prejudice and hatred are allowed his speech he also included his message the former Birkenau camp in order to the ghetto in Warsaw before the Auschwitz to flourish. We must all teach our children for the anniversary. “Auschwitz is not commemorate the 70th anniversary era… At the age of fourteen, one has those tolerance and understanding at home a source of strength. If anyone came of the liberation of the German Nazi important, supposedly deathbed, ideas and in school. For tolerance cannot be here to feel strength, wisdom, catharsis concentration and extermination camp. and worries”, said Halina Birenbaum, assumed …. it must be taught. And we - they are wrong. Auschwitz is darkness, They were accompanied by the Israeli poet born in Warsaw, deported to must make it clear that hate is never right destruction, annihilation. This is why it leaders of over 40 countries who listened Auschwitz at the age of 14. and love is never wrong!”, he added. takes on the form of a warning, a horrid to their words. Among the leaders, there Kazimierz Albin, who was deported In his speech Roman Kent, who warning. We still cannot cope with were the crowned heads, presidents, to the Auschwitz camp on June 14, 1940 in now lives in the United States, included Auschwitz as we cannot save [human] prime ministers, ministers and diplomats the first group of Polish political prisoners, his message for the future: And yet, in face, at the same time consenting to as well as representatives of numerous recalled that the prisoners, in spite of view of the current participation and hatred, contempt, antisemitism, and first international institutions, community great risk, were fighting in the camp for awareness of so many world leaders, and foremost our daily indifference. organizations, clergymen, employees of preserving their humanity. “From the there is visible proof of compassion and This is why Auschwitz is so frightening. museums and memorials devoted to this very first day, there is an ongoing struggle involvement instead of indifference. Today, it no longer awakens the demons, subject as well as millions of others who for biological survival, for delivering as This is progress …. it is now up to the it awakens the conscience. And this were able to share the ceremony through many lives as possible from death, for leaders of tomorrow. But there remains conscience - accuses each and every one broadcast media. preserving human dignity. so much more to be done. We all must of us”, he said. The guests were welcomed by In the camp and around it, an be involved and stay involved .... no “It would seem that the world should Bronisław Komorowski, the President organized resistance movement was one should ever be just a spectator! I stay different for good. That no one of the Republic of Poland. He addressed also functioning, led by the Home Army, feel so strongly about this point that if I should be innocently killed. It would the former prisoners with the words: the Polish Socialist Party and Peasants’ had the power, I would add an Eleventh seem that we can no longer propagate “Every one of you is the guardian of the Battalions. The sacrifice of Poles from the Commandment to the universally accepted hatred, that no one is going to try to memory of Auschwitz. Every Survivor zone adjoining the camp was priceless”, Ten Commandments: “You should never, change borders by force, It would seem who was saved from the camp, the hell he said. never be a bystander.”, emphasized that indifference and passiveness should of hate and violence. You are the most Roman Kent. stir disgust. We have, however, so many important guests of the event today. During the ceremony commemorating times seen that the remembrance has Being the guardian of memory is not the 70th anniversary of the liberation of not yet matured in us. ‘Never Again’ is only about protecting the memory about Auschwitz, among the speakers there not a political program, but a personal the crime itself, but also about reflection was also Ronald S. Lauder representing decision. It means - never again because of its sources which lay in people, “Pillars of Remembrance”, individual of me, never again in me, never again nations, ideologies and policy of states. donors who supported the Auschwitz- with me. I believe that never again with This is memory about totalitarianisms, Birkenau Foundation. all of us”, he summarized. xenophobia, and antisemitism which “There are representatives from 40 After the speeches, rabbis were the foundations of the 20th century nations here with us today and we, the and clergymen of various Christian www.zimbio.com collapse of our civilizations. Poles are Jewish people, are so grateful that you denominations said the prayers: Kaddish, also the guardians of memory in a special Mordechai Ronen, who was a prisoner have joined us. You are good, decent El Mole Rachamim, Eternal Rest and God way, because in the occupied Poland two at the Auschwitz concentration camp people. But because of where we are and of the Spirits. totalitarianisms started to implement their when he was an 11-year-old child and what this place means your governments Moreover, the premiere screening of genocidal plan at the same plan.” lost his mother, father and sisters there, must stand up to this new wave of hatred. the documentary “Auschwitz”, prepared “It is our duty, the duty of Europe embraces Ronald Lauder, President of the Schools must teach tolerance of all people. by the Museum in cooperation with the and the world to remember because of World Jewish Congress, while visiting Houses of worship should be places of Shoah Foundation from Los Angeles, those who suffered here, because of you, the former Auschwitz I concentration love, understanding, and healing; they took place during the ceremony. The film, who survived the camp horrors. But it camp, on January 26, 2015. The World should not be telling their people to kill directed by James Moll, was produced by is also our obligation to remember for Jewish Congress together with the USC in the name of God.”, he said. Steven Spielberg. ourselves, for our future”, said President Shoah Foundation brought 100 survivors “All countries must make hate a At the end of the commemoration Komorowski. from around the world to Auschwitz- crime. Any country that openly brags event, delegations of former prisoners, On the day of the anniversary, the Birkenau to join world leaders there about the annihilation of another country representatives of state delegations, most important speeches were delivered on January 27, 2015, to mark the 70th should be excluded from the family of “Pillars of Remembrance” and guardians by former prisoners of the camp: Halina anniversary of the liberation of what nations. Every government must have of the Memorial placed candles on the Birenbaum, Kazimierz Albin and Roman was the largest and most notorious of absolutely zero tolerance for hate of any monument in Birkenau commemorating Kent. the Nazi death camps. kind. Unless this is checked right now, all victims of the camp. “Countless times, I was dying, it will be too late. We still have a chance Until the liberation of the camp by freezing with fear, pain, stress of selection, Roman Kent, who was deported to stop this, but if every government the Red Army, German Nazis murdered watching the torment and agony of my by the Germans to Auschwitz from the does not act quickly, then the tragedy of in Auschwitz about 1.1 million people; fellow female prisoners, my neighbors Litzmannstadt ghetto, said that people often this terrible place will darken our world mostly Jews, but also Poles, Roma, from overcrowded bunks, who shared the ask him how much time he spent in the again. Soviet prisoners of war and people of same fate in this indescribable, endless camp. “My answer is I do not know. What World silence leads to Auschwitz. other nationalities. Today Auschwitz is horror, where every minute was a century I do know is that a minute in Auschwitz was World indifference leads to Auschwitz. the symbol of the Holocaust and of the and an imploring question: will there be like an entire day, a day was like a year, and a World anti-Semitism leads to atrocities of World War II. In 2005 the another one? Once during a long standing month an eternity. How many eternities can Auschwitz. United Nations designated the 27th of roll call, when the sun was shining and one person have in a single lifetime – I don’t Do not let this happen again.”, Ronald January as the International Holocaust they were not beating us, a pathetic know the answer to that either”, he said. Lauder emphasized. Remembrance Day.

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 8 together Spring 2015 Tour a Jewish My life as a Jew in wartime Berlin: How I outwitted the Gestapo Cemetery in Bialystok continued from p. 3

by Drone comes, you will hear my voice.” A short time later, a man with an arrest Technology keeps tabs on cemeteries in warrant did indeed turn up. As it happened, I was not on top of a church tower but in my places where few Jews still live room. It was 22 June 1942, and the doorbell rang at six in the morning. In the Germany of those days, that was not the milkman arriving. There was no one who didn’t fear a man who came to the door at 6am. He was in civilian clothes. My landlady Frau Jacobsohn opened the door to him, and he said he must speak to me. I was still asleep, but woke in a terrible fright when I saw him standing beside my bed. In a calm and friendly tone he told me, “Get dressed and ready to Marie today, dictating her memoirs to go out. We want to ask you some questions. her son Hermann It won’t take long, and you’ll be back in a “Those two gentlemen from the Gestapo couple of hours.” That was the kind of thing were ever so nice,” she went on. They had been they always said to prevent people from falling kind enough to take her back to the place where she had been living and unseal the door of her room, she said, and now she was waiting to be deported in line with regulations a week later. Later, I was on my way to see my friend Jewish cemetery in Bialystok, Poland, viewed by drone. (Podrozniccy.com) Irene Scherhey and her mother, and I told them By Gabriela Geselowitz So what can scholars and international this story, which was weighing on my mind. http://tabletmag.com Jewry do? A lot, apparently. Starting big and “Drunks, small children and the simple-minded growing more detailed, satellite and drone have a special guardian angel,” was Selma ith centuries-old Jewish populations photography like Google Earth can record Scherhey’s comment. It set off a strange idea Win many parts of Europe practically precise locations of cemeteries, as well as how in my mind, an idea that was to prove useful: if eradicated, many Jewish cemeteries are they are arranged. As Jewish Heritage Europe you pretended to be simple-minded, a guardian unattended or abandoned. There are active reports, an exciting new online project allows angel would come to your aid. attempts to keep an eye on old grave sites, but users to tour a Jewish cemetery in Bialystok, Another incident also influenced me at Marie as a young woman in 1940s Berlin it has been historically difficult to maintain Poland, by drone. Beyond that, the site points this time. A family friend, Frau Koch, knew ancient cemeteries, often in the presence of out, radar can search beneath the ground for a clairvoyant through a laundry customer of into a fit of hysterics, or swallowing a poison an indifferent, or even hostile, local populace. burials no longer marked by stones. As for hers. This woman practised her craft in Grünau capsule, or doing anything else that would have In Poland, for example, Jewish tombstones time-weathered memorials, 3D scanners once a week, although such things were strictly been inconvenient for the Gestapo. have been looted and used for mundane can help reconstruct a marker’s original text. forbidden at the time. Hannchen Koch had a At that moment, I really did hear the purposes—both during and after World Researchers and documenters can also weak spot for mysticism and magic of that kind, clairvoyant’s voice in my room – loud and War II—including as construction material. easily share their findings in the age of the and had insisted that we must both go. clear – and as if automatically, I concentrated (This became the subject of the controversial Internet, as in the case of researcher Tomek I assume that this Frau Klemmstein, who on the plan I had already hatched: I wouldn’t 2013 film Aftermath, about Polish brothers Wisniewski, who shares his extensive work allegedly didn’t know who I was, had some go with him, I would pretend to be half-witted. trying to restore the graves, angering their in Poland on his website. idea in advance of my particularly dangerous Making out that I believed the man, I neighbors in the process.) Other countries are Not only do new technologies facilitate situation. In any case, she told me, “No one assumed a silly grin and asked, lapsing into less pragmatic in their desecration; the ADL the recording of information before it grows can pretend to a person like you. I don’t need a Berlin accent, “But questions like that, they reported half a dozen incidents of cemetery even more difficult to grasp, but it makes it cards or a crystal ball. We’ll just sit quietly could take hours, couldn’t they?” vandalism worldwide in the last year alone, easier to keep watch over these cemeteries in together and close our eyes. Either I’ll make “Yes, they could take some time,” he most of them in Europe. the future, even from a distance. contact with you and have a vision, or I won’t. agreed. If I don’t, I’ll say so honestly, and Frau Koch “But I got nothing to eat here. Now my

In MemoryIn Memory / Honor / Honor of Cards of Cards will get her money back. And if I do, I’ll tell neighbour downstairs, she’ll always have In Memory / Honor of Cards you what I saw.” coffee or suchlike on the stove, and I reckon After we had been sitting in silence for a she’d lend me a bit of bread. Can I get a bite to while, she said, “I see. I see two people, with a eat? I mean, like this in my petticoat – no one Schein.” [Translator’s note: the German noun has sees me this time of day, and I can’t run away three distinct meanings: brightness, appearance, from you dressed just in a petticoat, can I?” and a piece of paper.] I thought: “She’s crazy.” So I went out. The only thing I I took her to mean a bright halo such as saints unobtrusively snatched up was my handbag, are shown wearing. However, I had mistaken with my purse in it, and an empty soda water Front of the card Inside of the card FrontFront of the of card the card InsideInside of the of card the card her meaning; she meant a paper document, and bottle. I knew that they always came in Minimum $10.00 donation per card MinimumMinimum $10.00 $10.00 donation donation per card per card more specifically an arrest warrant. pairs to take people away. And if the second Name of the person being honored or remembered:______NameName of the of person the person being being honored honoredor rememberedor remembered:______:______“These men, or one of them, will tell you man was waiting for me downstairs, either Name, address & e-mail of the recipient of the card: ______to go with him. If you do, you are going to the bottle or his head would be broken. I Name,______Name, address address & e-mail & e -ofmail the of recipient the recipient of the of card the: card______: ______certain death. But if you don’t – even if you get wasn’t going to do as they told me without ______away by jumping off the top of a church tower defending myself. ______– you will arrive at the bottom of it safe and We now have honor and memory cards for sale. To send one, contact [email protected]. sound, and you will live. When that moment continued on p. 9 visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 9 Speech by American Gathering Chairman and to racism of any sort should be We thereby posthumously lessen the commonplace and not the exception. atrocities of the perpetrators. Roman Kent at Auschwitz Commemoration Unfortunately, the passage of time And yet, in view of the current makes it more and more apparent that participation and awareness of so many continued from p. 1 there is an effort by the ideological world leaders, there is visible proof of of mankind would be buried alongside faith in mankind. Without hesitation, successors of the perpetrators, as well as compassion and involvement instead of the victims. the courageous and heroic deeds of non- by the “deniers” and the ignorant, abetted indifference. This is progress …. it is Today, in this place, we are part of the Jews, those we call Righteous Gentiles, by much of the media, to “sanitize” the now up to the leaders of tomorrow. But 70th Anniversary Commemoration of who saved Jewish lives during the Shoah. They employ language to describe there remains so much more to be done. the Liberation of Auschwitz held by the Holocaust, fall into this category. the Holocaust so that it appears less We all must be involved and stay involved government of Poland. What a superb To save innocent Jewish lives, the wicked and brutal; that effort obscures the .... no one should ever be just a spectator! opportunity to extend a meaningful, Righteous Gentiles endangered their own truth of what actually happened. I feel so strongly about this point that if I heartfelt message to leaders of all nations lives, and in most instances, the lives of For example, it has become routine had the power, I would add an Eleventh and the world at large. their families. These Righteous Gentiles, to use the word “lost” when referring to Commandment to the universally We must all Remember! just a few among tens of millions, showed relatives and loved ones who were brutally accepted Ten Commandments: “You For, if you, the leaders of the world the world that the answer to tyranny murdered during the Holocaust. But the should never, never be a bystander.” will remember, and also teach others to and indifference is involvement and the term “lost” does not accurately describe Thus, I hope against hope that there is remember, then the Holocaust and other courage to make moral choices and act in what happened. “Lost” refers to something a brighter future for mankind. After all, atrocities in Darfur, Biafra, and Kosovo, accordance with those choices. that has been misplaced or has gone astray; we all live together on the same planet. as well as attacks such as the one now in Their deeds should serve as an example 11,000,000 people, including 6,000,000 Perhaps when we all finally realize that Paris, will have no place on the face of of what could have been done; as an Jews and one and a half million Jewish we are one people, we can then make the earth. indictment of what was not done; and as a children, were not lost and/or misplaced sure that a tragedy such as Auschwitz But just to remember is not enough – moral torch in a world of oppression and in the Holocaust. These children were will never happen again to us or any Deeds! Deeds as well as thoughts are darkness. These rescuers, noble by deed murdered, as were the generations that other people. critical. but modest by character,taught us that would have followed them. I am going to end my remarks by It is our mutual obligation, that of even in the hell known as the Holocaust Similarly, we often hear that millions quoting from the writings of Primo survivors and national leaders, to instill the individual had the choice and the “perished” during the Holocaust. Let me Levi, expressing his thoughts about in the current and future generations the capacity to behave humanely if she or be clear – those who died in Auschwitz Auschwitz – understanding of what happens when he only cared and had the courage to act did not perish in the normal sense of virulent prejudice and hatred are allowed accordingly. the word… they were viciously killed, From whatever country you to flourish. We survivors share a common goal with murdered, burned in crematoria. look at the ruins of the camp. We must all teach our children tolerance the current generation, and hopefully with For all intents and purposes, by not Think, and do all you can, and understanding at home and in school. all future generations: we do not want our telling it as it brutally was, clearly and so your pilgrimage be not in vain, For tolerance cannot be assumed… it past to be our children’s future. I hope without qualification or hedging, we as was not in vain our death… must be taught. And we must make it and believe this generation will build offensively diminish the outrage that For you and your children, clear that hate is never right and love is on mankind’s great cultural traditions, should exist, and in effect, we protect the ashes of Auschwitz are a warning. never wrong! tempered by the understanding that these the perpetrators who performed these Act so that the terrible fruit of hatred, When I think of the Holocaust, as I traditions must embrace pluralism and reprehensible deeds. By using sanitized whose traces you saw here, often do, there are only a few acts that I tolerance, decency and human rights for words – by “cleaning up” what happened will never grow a new seed consider “holy,” and which redeem my all people. Opposition to anti-Semitism – we unknowingly help the deniers. neither tomorrow, nor ever!

relationship with a much younger girl when he When both men realised what had My life as a Jew in wartime Berlin: was in charge of everything and made decisions happened there was a frightful row. Each How I outwitted the Gestapo for the family. They couldn’t stand me, anyway. of them was blaming the other, until Frau But now they helped me at once. Thea Jacobsohn told them: “Gentlemen, I can continued from p. 8 Wolff gave me a summer dress in which I could tell you that you’ve wasted an hour here for venture out on the streets again. Apart from that, nothing. That young woman, my sub-tenant, When I left the apartment, I saw my “Well, there’s no one going to see me like I had almost nothing left: a few pfennigs in my isn’t the respectable sort. She often doesn’t landlady turn white as a sheet, but she invited the this,” I said. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” purse, and my Jewish identity card. For now, I come back all night. I’m afraid you’ve first man into her kitchen and said, “Come and It cost me a great effort to walk slowly to kept the empty bottle. drawn a blank.” sit down; it’ll take some time for her downstairs the next street corner. Then I ran. I spoke to the Later, by devious routes, I got back in But each of them was so mortally to make a sandwich.” She steered him over to a first person I met, an elderly labourer, briefly touch with the Jacobsohns and found out frightened of the other that they couldn’t agree chair and moved the kitchen table in front of it, explaining my predicament. “Here, come into that my landlady had kept the Gestapo man on that version of events. Instead, they were so that he was more or less penned in. the entrance of this building,” he said, “and I’ll engaged in conversation for a whole hour, stupid enough to tell the truth. Frau Jacobsohn The second man was waiting down in lend you my windcheater. You’re small, I’m tall, even getting around to the silly delaying was asked to go and see the Gestapo, and found the front hall of the building. I spontaneously I bet it’ll come down over your knees. Then we’ll tactic of showing him family photographs. herself confronted by the two men, whose faces switched the role I was playing. “Well, guess both go to people you know who can lend you And I truly revere the generosity of Frau had been beaten black and blue. what?” I said, giving him the glad eye. “I come clothes.” He seemed positively pleased. “And Jacobsohn, a modest soul who had moved “Do you know these two gentlemen?” out to polish my door knob before I go to work, if I’m late to work, who cares? It’ll be worth it from the provinces to Berlin. She knew that she was asked. and my little boy, he’s only two-and-a-half, he to put one over on those bastards for a change!” she, her husband and their children would “They look very different now,” my slams the door on me! So now I got to get the My hair was loose, lying over my not be able to escape; but even taking that landlady said in reply. spare key from the mother-in-law, and me in my shoulders. He tied it up with a piece of into account, she was ready to accept that One of the pair said, “If we’d known a petticoat, and here’s a fellow as I guess wants a string and escorted me to the Wolff family’s they could all be murdered a few months young girl like that was such a tough nut to bit of the other! At this time of day, too! I never apartment. At the time, my lover Ernst was early, so that she could give me a head-start crack, we would have surrounded the whole heard the like of it! Men, I ask you!” And so on. living in Neue Königstrasse with his parents, on my pursuers. block with police officers.” He laughed uproariously, gave me a his aunt and his younger sister, the art historian I also discovered how it had turned out. On that occasion, Frau Jacobsohn was little slap on the behind, and thought that Thea Wolff. His father was already over 80, so After more than an hour, the second Gestapo allowed to go home unharmed. But the my conclusion about what he wanted was Ernst was the real head of the family. His female man had come upstairs and asked his colleague, following year, along with her whole family, very funny. relations were indignant about his beginning a “Are you two nearly finished?” she was deported and murdered.

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 10 together Spring 2015 Life-affirming observations from Holocaust survivors’ offspring By Marisa Fox-Bevilacqua And that’s an unexpected turn for second- www.haaretz.com and third-generation literature, which often is God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children steeped in trauma and laden with the sorts of and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors is available from Amazon, he stereotype of Holocaust survivors as tormented characters and psychodramas found Barnes and Noble, better bookstores nationwide, or from Jewish Lights Ttortured souls only capable of damaging in David Grossman’s novels. By focusing on Publishing at www.jewishlights.com, Telephone: 800-962-4544. their offspring once led filmmaker Aviva actions and limiting his authors to noteworthy Kempner to remark, “Can someone go insane figures in their respective fields, Rosensaft and President/CEO of the International Rescue think that the children and grandchildren without being a victim of the Holocaust?” Not was able to present the upside of this heavy Committee David Miliband to Justice Rosalie of these survivors would be any less diverse surprisingly, Kempner is one of 88 second- and heritage, how it can be a catalyst instead of a Silberman Abella of the Supreme Court of somehow.” third-generation survivors offering a far more yoke. Then, he grouped their essays into four Canada, from former New York Times Israel positive take on how this legacy affected them loose categories showcasing just how the correspondent Ethan Bronner to founder of the No agenda in “God, Faith & Identity From the Ashes: Holocaust impacted each of them: God and Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw Eleonora Though Rosensaft says he had no Reflections of Children and Grandchildren Faith, Identity, Legacy of Memory and Tikkun Bergman, from filmmaker Kempner to author particular agenda when assembling this of Holocaust Survivors,” a collection of Olam (“Healing the World”). and Shalom Hartman Institute fellow Yossi tome, he did not expect the overwhelmingly essays that is more inspiration than trepidation, “It’s not meant to be an introverted Klein Halevi. forward-looking, positive approach he more a testament to function than dysfunction. examination of ourselves,” says Rosensaft, “There is a stereotype of the Shoah received. If you think Perel’s essay is Edited by founding chairman of the who was born after the war in Bergen-Belsen that its victims were all rabbis or mothers unusual, guess again. Each contributor International Network of Children of Jewish after it was a concentration camp and became clutching their children on their way offers a unique and surprising take on the Survivors Menachem Rosensaft, this nuanced, a deportation camp, a lawyer, Columbia and to the gas chambers, or else they were 2G or 3G legacy, with almost no redundancy varied look into the effects of having a parent Cornell University law professor in New York brave resistance fighters, and while they among them. For example, Dr. David Senesh or grandparent as a survivor posits that being and a two-time presidential appointee to the were all there, they were also assimilated of Tel Aviv drew strength by connecting a 2G or 3G isn’t a burden, but rather an awe- United States Holocaust Memorial Council. industrialists from Berlin, communist with his aunt Hannah Szenes when he inspiring responsibility. “The problem with the psycho-social intellectuals from France, boxers and found himself captured by the Egyptians Each contributor was asked: How has approach is not that it’s inaccurate. It’s athletes, pick-pockets and prostitutes,” this legacy impacted your life and what are accurate. But it’s as if one were to determine says Rosensaft. “There is no reason to continued on p. 17 you doing with it? To answer that profound the drinking habits of the mass public based on question, Rosensaft, general counsel of the a control population of alcoholics anonymous. th World Jewish Congress, culled from an The goal of the book was to go beyond the 122 West 30 Street, Suite 304A New York, NY 10001 From Holocaust international roster of A-list politicians, writers, psycho-social.” The desire to buck clinical (212) 239-4230 to New Life! judges, rabbis, professors, categorization led Rosensaft to Fax (212) 279-2926 lawyers, doctors, artists and cofound his second-generation E-mail questions to: [email protected] even a sex therapist. Yes, sex network back in 1979. If you have access to the internet order directly from our website therapist. One might wonder “I had just started my http://amgathering.org/buy-markers/ how having the Holocaust in legal career and was invited It is the easiest, fastest & safest way to order a Matzevah Grave Marker. one’s rear view mirror leads to a conference at Hebrew TO ORDER A MATZEVAH MARKER FOR A HEADSTONE one to sexpertise, for which Union College on children of Markers are $125(US) which includes shipping & handling within the continental United Esther Perel, a couples and sex survivors,” he says. “As I listened States. Payable by check, money order, or credit card. Make check payable to: American therapist in New York, has an to psychologist after psychiatrist, Gathering. Credit card orders are processed through PayPal. answer: “For me, being able after mental health specialists NAME: ______to connect my family’s history explained what was wrong with of suffering and death with the us, I looked at Jeannie [his wife, ADDRESS: ______erotic dimensions of sex as an also a contributor to the book] expression of aliveness has been an epiphany and said, ‘that’s not us, and I don’t want these that has shaped and continues to shape who birds to define us.’ If we have a voice, I want CITY, STATE & ZIP: ______I am and what I do,” writes this daughter of it to be our voice, and it’s going to deal with Polish Holocaust survivors. what we want to accomplish both in terms of E-MAIL: ______PHONE: ______Her glowing perspective may not Holocaust remembrance and social activism.” represent all second- or third-generation That same proactive quality defines ‘God, CREDIT CARD #: ______survivors’ experiences, but she symbolizes Faith & Identity from the Ashes’ which grew the crème de la crème Rosensaft was out of a guest sermon he delivered at Park EXPIRATION DATE: ______SECURITY # ______interested in showcasing. Avenue Synagogue a year ago in which he The application of a Commemoration Marker to a headstone is “The overwhelming majority of grappled with how to reconcile the presence contingent on permission from the cemetery/memorial authorities. contributors to this book had the benefit of of G-d with the horrors of the Shoah. parents who did not overburden their children The speech, which found its way onto with trauma,” says Rosensaft, whose own The Washington Post religion blog and mother was a distinguished figure during and eventually into the hands of Pope Francis, after the Holocaust, saving lives as a doctor in landed him a book offer on the theological Auschwitz and serving as a principal witness response to the Holocaust. in one of the first post-war tribunals against But Rosensaft suggested broadening Nazi war criminals. “If you grew up in a home the discussion beyond theology to include in which the Holocaust was presented not as political, cultural and historical perspectives, an all-enveloping trauma, but rather as ‘this is pooling from a wide array of professions, Markers are 4”x6” what it was, and this is what we did, and this is geographic locations and political leanings, who I was before, during and after,’ then you and featuring an almost equal number of MARKER A ______MARKER B ______better integrate it and draw strength from it as women to men. To wit, the range goes from The Hebrew lettering peh nun are the first two letters of “poh nitman” (or “poh nikbar”) opposed to being suffocated by it.” former United Kingdom Foreign Secretary which means “here is the grave site of…” It is normally found at the top of the tombstone. visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 11 In a town built on Jewish headstones, still no fixing what the Nazis destroyed

Ariel Sharon’s parents were born here. Menachem was in the heart of the Pale of Settlement, the counted 16,934 Jewish souls out of a population Begin grew up here. And then the Nazis came. More area of Imperial Russia in which Jews were of just over 41,000. The census record for the permitted to reside. Jews first arrived in the next day has the Jewish figure struck out, and than 70 years later, even efforts for a monument to the medieval town in the 14th century. At its peak the population set as 21,462. The Jews of Brest annihilated Jewish community of Brest are frozen, with at the turn of the 20th century, Brest was nearly were carted off and killed in the ghastly woods 70 percent Jewish. at Bronna Gora. just one charity group pressing ahead The gravestones date from after 1830, Though the Nazis planned to destroy when the old city of Brest was destroyed to the massive cemetery, they left the job only make way for a massive fortress that serves as half finished. The rest of the city, including the modern city’s main tourist attraction. The 40 synagogues, was destroyed. (Only one town was moved a mile to the east, and a new synagogue remained after the war, and it’s since Jewish cemetery was founded on its outskirts. been converted into a cinema.) Brest was a center of Jewish thought Pesach (Paul) Novick, editor of the and culture for centuries. It was home to the Morgen Freiheit Yiddish newspaper, visited Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty, a family of famed Talmudists whose scion, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, was a seminal figure in the modern Orthodox movement in the United States (and the founder of this author’s high school). A Belarusian Embassy official in Tel Aviv took pains to point out to me that “Belarus is the birthplace of the State of Israel.” As a secretary began filling out a visa, he rattled off a list of the Jewish state’s founding generation who were born in the country: ex- presidents Shimon Peres and Chaim Weizmann, both of former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s parents, and prime minister Menachem Begin. The tombstone of Rabbi Haim Leib Barit atop a pile of gravestones at the Brest Fortress in Belarus. (photo credit: Ilan Ben Zion/Times of Israel staff) Begin grew up in Brest, and a monument was recently raised in his honor in the city center, By Ilan Ben Zion maintenance crews. A crude enclosure made http://www.timesofisrael.com of gravestones stacked 14 high cordons off the accumulation from curious intruders, though A German census of the city of Brest, in modern Belarus, from the week of Oc- REST, Belarus — A frozen, stony tendril few ever venture back there. Some of the tober 15, 1942. The Jewish population Bpokes through the damp leaves clumped gravestones have been stacked in an orderly was exterminated on the 16th. along the base of one of the burned out houses of fashion, like cordwood, but most are strewn in a the Warburg Colony, where destitute Jews were pile several feet high and some 20 feet in length. the city in 1946 and noted that although the provided homes after World War I. Nearby, A rare few are intact, such as the monumental city lived, “the Brest Jews, our dearest and surrounded by leaf litter, plastic bottles, pill green lichen-covered tombstone of Rabbi Haim most beloved who were brutally murdered by packs and condom wrappers, some engraved Leib Barit, who died in 5696 (1935/6), but the the Nazis – exist no more.” stone books show through, and beneath them majority were smashed into tiny fragments, What remained after the Holocaust fell Hebrew letters in the memory of “a man young some no larger than a copy of “War and Peace.” victim to the Soviets a decade later. in years, plucked at the age of 23.” These are A cursory examination of the stones decorations atop two Jewish gravestones, two that are still legible finds them to be adorned Discovery among thousands demolished by the Soviets six with engraved beasts, birds, flowers, Shabbat Arkady Bljacher, a spry nonagenarian decades ago that have surfaced in this western candles and other Jewish votive items. The veteran of the Great Patriotic War, welcomed Belarusian city over the past decade. Hebrew dates hewn into the stones range from us into his home in a gray apartment block on Since they began turning up after the fall the outskirts of the Brest. In his youth he served of the USSR, efforts to preserve the headstones as an intelligence officer with the Red Army as have failed to make any progress. Members A monument to Israeli prime minister it advanced from Donetsk to Berlin. A photo Menachem Begin in Brest, Belarus, his of the tiny local community have even turned hometown. (photo credit: Ilan Ben Zion/ Bljacher took of a fellow officer on the ruins of to Israel and the US of late, without much Times of Israel staff) the Reichstag stood on the armoire behind him success, for help in erecting a monument to the as he explained how he first started collecting thousands of Jews who once called this border next to the Jewish school where he studied as and protecting the gravestones in the 1990s. town home. a child. Bljacher was born in Minsk and moved to Most of the stones that have been collected What the third consul failed to mention is Brest after World War II, as did the rest of the have, in an ironic historical twist, found refuge a what compelled those illustrious souls to leave 700 Jews who currently inhabit the city. The 15-minute drive from the old Warburg Colony and found a state of their own far from their city was in ruins for the second time in three at the Brest Fortress, a 19th century Russian birthplace. decades, and the Soviets rebuilt. fortification straddling the confluence of the 1868 to 1936, just before the community was Brest fell under Nazi occupation at the In 1956, the government bulldozed the Muchavets and Bug rivers, which now serves extinguished by Nazi Germany. outset of Operation Barbarossa, the German Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town as a shrine to Soviet soldiery. invasion of the Soviet Union, on July 22, 1941. and put up a soccer stadium, a one-bleacher They’ve been heaped in mounds beneath Brest-on-the-Bug At the time, the city’s population was just over affair, surrounded by a low concrete wall, that a brick vault in one of the fortress’s northern The Bug River now divides Brest from half Jewish. A census conducted by the German earthworks alongside workshops for the site’s neighboring Poland. Under the czars, the town civil administration on October 15, 1942, continued on p. 16

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 12 together Spring 2015 Tales from Auschwitz: survivor stories 27 January is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Six survivors, some of whom returned to the site for the last time, tell Kate Connolly their stories By Judah Ari Gross get beaten up or thrown off the train. http://www.timesofisrael.com It’s an incredibly scary feeling when you’re exposed to anyone’s raw feelings rene Fogel Weiss was born in 1930 in and enmity. These young Nazis habitually ICzechoslavakia, now Batrad, Ukraine. She roamed around and did tremendous damage lives in Virginia, US. She will be returning to many individuals. But at least we were to Auschwitz for the third time, as part of still in our community and were not evicted the US presidential delegation, along with from our home, so that was some comfort. her daughter, Lesley Weiss. We didn’t have radio or much access to A doctor escorts a group of Auschwitz survivors from the camp in January 1945. We lived in Bótrágy, a very small, newspapers, so all the children were reliant Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images mostly poor town in Czechoslovakia with a on listening to their parents for information. population of approximately 1,000 mainly But I remember many things about the Poland of lots of mass shootings of Jews or Another picture we discovered shows farming families, including about 10 Jewish course of the war, who was winning and people being taken into the forest and shot, my family waiting in line for the gas families. The town was a typical low-income losing, and the repression of Jews elsewhere. so it was a relief to see out the window that chamber. Two little boys, my brothers community with a tailor, a shoemaker, a Hungary didn’t give up its Jewish there was actually a system. Even though we Reuven and Gershon, are shown dressed in grocery store, where people struggled to population until it was invaded by Nazi were victims of discrimination at that stage hats, one struggling to put on his winter coat. get by, but where everyone knew each other Germany in 1944. The very first task the that’s all it was, as we had no clue then that For a long time I failed to find my mother and and there was easy communication between German government gave the Hungarians this was a very carefully orchestrated plan was very unhappy. But I spent hours looking the neighbours, though that didn’t mean we was to round up Jewish families and deport of genocide. We could not have imagined at these photos with a magnifying glass and were equal. them to Auschwitz. There was a huge rush that they would kill little children, until one day I found her little face sticking out. When I was eight years old to take half a million Hungarian Jews to we realised that killing children was their The pictures only came to light 25 years Czechoslovakia broke apart and we became Auschwitz and it was completed in just six primary goal to prevent any new generations. ago and, despite them showing moments part of Hungary. That was when our problems weeks, in 147 cattle cars. So in the spring of Because desperate people will always look from around 45 years before that, they started, because the Hungarians were allied 1944 my family – my parents and their six to find some sign of hope, we thought to completely captured the entire experience as with the Nazis. It was a difficult time for children, the oldest of whom was 17 and I ourselves even if we have to work, at least it had been in my mind all that time. I was Jewish families, as suddenly the law no was 13 – found ourselves in the Munkács we’ll see each other occasionally. dumbfounded and devastated, having had no longer protected us and overnight we lost ghetto and from there being taken on cattle But the German system was full of this idea they existed, and I have spent literally our civil rights. My father’s lumber business carts to Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland. sort of deception. It counted on people’s hundreds of hours scouring them, trying to was confiscated and given to a non-Jew, Imagine it like this: three generations of normal perception of things. Thinking we find my father and brother. The pictures have and we received no compensation. Jewish your family have lived in the same house in were going to a work camp. Thinking that reassured me that I was not imagining it all, children were thrown out of Hungarian the same town. They’ve struggled to raise a you were going to take a shower when in fact as I sometimes thought I might have done. schools, so right away we had no choice family, put kids through school, to feed them you were going to the gas chambers – that The reality of where we were, struck but to concentrate on hunkering down and all. You have your friends and family. All of was the ultimate deceit. home fairly quickly. I was stationed near trying not to bring attention to ourselves. We a sudden you are told to leave it all and walk When we arrived it was, as I later found crematorium number four, and we witnessed couldn’t ride the trains and we had to wear out with a single suitcase. out, the usual story, though not to us at the columns of unsuspecting women and the yellow star. It was a free for all. With no I remember the night of the packing the time. Our family was torn apart on the children entering the gate of the crematorium; law to protect us, it was common for Jews to very well. Things went in the suitcase, things platform on arriving. My sister, Serena, was they would have been dead within half an were taken out of the suitcase. In the end my chosen for slave labour. My mother and the hour. When the Hungarian Jews arrived they mother filled it with food she had cooked younger children were sent off to one side had the gas chambers going day and night. and warm clothing and bedding. Then it was and my father and 16-year-old brother to How can you wrap your imagination round full. Plus we took a watch, some earrings, a the other side. I held tightly on to the hand that? I still can’t. wedding ring with us to exchange for food of my 12-year-old sister and for an instant I was with my older sister Serena and if necessary. The next day my father was I was mistaken for being older than I was, we were sent to be forced labourers together forced to hand over his remaining money probably because I was wearing a headscarf in the Birkenau section of Auschwitz. Many to a delegation that included the mayor and that my mother had given me. times we were threatened with separation the school principal as they rounded us up My sister was sent with my mother, but somehow we managed to stay together. at the town hall. while I went to the opposite side. That was Later on, to our great relief we ran into my We had been absolutely unaware of such a the first chance I had to survive. Unbeknown mother’s two younger sisters, our aunts Rose place as Auschwitz. It was a stunning reversal to any of us at the time, two Nazi soldiers and Piri, who were in their early 20s. It was of the life we had had up until then. And I had been asked to make a photographic like finding our parents. They were such a cannot emphasise enough how utterly scary document of the deportation of Hungarian huge moral and emotional support for us. it is to be at the mercy of your fellow human Jews from the moment they got off the On about 17 January or 18 January 1945, beings. As a child I could not understand what train – through the entire system of arriving, the SS dragged thousands of us out of the we had done to deserve going there. going to the bath house and getting their camp to walk to Ravensbrück concentration My father surveyed the scene from the prison clothes – so I ended up in a picture at camp deep into central Germany. I don’t train and could see prisoners, uniforms and the very moment I was separated from my really know why. We were in terrible straits barracks so we immediately thought it was sister. It captures me standing alone without with no proper clothes, nothing suitable for Irene Fogel Weiss holds a photo of her a work camp, and that was reassuring – if my family on the Auschwitz platform, and marching through the snow. It was as if the that was taken at Auschwitz by two Nazi we can work, it can’t be such a dreadful I’m leaning inwards to see where my little guards. Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino for the Guardian place. We had heard about the stories in sister has gone. continued on p. 13 visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 13 Tales from Auschwitz: survivor stories lined us up one day and told us to empty our destroyed. For 17 days we had no water, no pockets. If they found even a single zloty in food, nothing. Despite the hardship I was continued from p. 12 anyone’s pocket, they were shot on the spot. doing OK compared to others. I still had the We were transported to Majdanek, which capability to clamber on to the cattle trains cruelty would never end. If anyone sat down was only 19 miles away – a torture camp in without help. out of exhaustion, they were shot. Later we the true sense of the word. For 500 metres We were liberated from the Russians at were transported yet again, and my aunt Piri there were just ditches full of bodies, legs, Theresienstadt on 9 May. I developed typhus became ill and was killed. heads. We were deported to Auschwitz four and spent several weeks in hospital before I As the Soviets approached, the SS left weeks later. We arrived in the early morning could go anywhere. and I, Serena and Rose took shelter in an and they gave us a bed, a real shower, they I decided to go back to my village as I empty house nearby. The Russians came but cleaned us well with disinfectant and shaved had nowhere else to go. But of the 1,000 or for some reason left again immediately, so us. After that they gave us striped uniforms so of us who had been deported, only eight we were left to fend for ourselves. and tattooed us. I was given the number to 10 had survived. Some people had warned We spent months trying to get to Prague Child inmates of Auschwitz concentration 128164 on my left arm and from that point me not to go back, saying there had been camp after liberation in January 1945. where we knew we had some relatives and on I was a number, no longer a name. attacks on those who had returned, including Photograph: The Weiner Library/Rex From there we were sent to Buna (an the Jewish woman I had worked for when I’d I threw myself into family life. I married Auschwitz sub camp) and were set to work. done my tailor apprenticeship. She’d gone young, I had three children, (I now also After a few months there, I went for a walk back to reclaim some possessions she had have four grandchildren) and then I went one day and saw a few tomatoes growing. left behind in somebody’s house and they to college and became a teacher. You fall I was starving by then so tried to take them killed her rather than return the items. She into a routine and do the best you can. But and was given a beating so severe, I don’t and her husband had been the only couple in I’ve never lost the feeling of how unreliable know how I survived it. I still have the scars Czemierniki to survive and then they went human beings are and neither am I fooled by from it today. I was taken to hospital and and murdered her when she came home. superficial civilisation. But I realise that loss knew the rule: if you didn’t heal in four to I had had parents, two brothers, three Some of the 600 children who survived of faith in people is more devastating than five days, they’d take you to Birkenau and sisters, two nephews, two nieces, an aunt, Auschwitz show their identification num- loss of faith in God. you’d be gassed. an uncle, and all of them died. I found out bers. Photograph: Reuters I won’t be going back to Auschwitz I was 20, about 1.7 metres (5ft 7in) the rest of my family were taken to Treblinka again after this visit. So it’s my last chance tall, blond, not bad looking and, despite the in 1942. from there we went to the Sudetenland. I to make sure this tragedy is not forgotten. I beating, in pretty good shape. When my When I finally returned to Czemierniki got to go to school, my sister found work in found out only about a week before I was due limit in the hospital was up, they sent me to in 1993, despite the years in which Jews a factory and Rose was sick at home with to leave that I will be one of two survivors the gas chambers. There I met Dr Mengele, had lived there I could not find a trace either tuberculosis. who will be part of the US presidential who asked me what was wrong. I said: “You of my family or of Jewish life. Even the We initially had no idea what had delegation, headed by the secretary of the can see, I’ve been beaten up.” Instead of cemetery where my grandfather had been happened to the rest of the family and had sending me to the gas chambers, I was sent buried had been razed. The synagogue was no access to a phone. But on buildings back to the hospital, presumably he saw the gone. I went to ask the local priest, who said everywhere lists were put up stating who potential for labour in me. As I had trained they had taken the tombstones and crushed was still alive. Everyone you met you asked, as a tailor, he decided I had my uses there. them for building materials or something like every meeting of refugees was dominated by The soldiers wanted to look nice, so they’d that. I believe they deliberately destroyed trying to find out where your relatives were. come to me in the hospital if they wanted any sign of Jewish life so as to be rid of us Eventually I discovered that of around their uniforms fixed up. The very fact that my for ever. 100 people from my town who were new job meant I didn’t have to get up in the When I watch programmes on the deported, only about 10 survived, only two morning in the harsh winter in thin clothes Holocaust it’s as if I’m watching some made- of whom were children – my sister and me. standing around for hours for the headcount up horror film But there was not one parent and child who was a big thing. It meant that being a tailor The Jewish Federation brought me to lived. All of them were killed. Joseph Mandrowitz, Auschwitz survivor saved my life. America. I deliberately chose against going Serena now lives in New Jersey with Photograph: Tim Knox That Mengele – they call him a doctor, to Israel as it would have meant I would have her family, including three children and but he was as much a doctor as I’m an army had to fight and kill and the US seemed the grandchildren. We’ve both managed to treasury, Jack Lew, and I feel very honoured, general. A complete fake of a man who I was next best choice. They put me up in a hotel on hang on in there, but she can’t come to but it has much to do with the fact that many too scared to look in the eye. I saw him day 35th and 36th street until I got myself sorted Auschwitz because her elderly husband is others who could go are ill and unable to in, day out for months and was one of 152 out. I was desperate to get to work and make sick. For years when we talked about our travel. Jews in his “care”. One of the experiments up for all those wasted years. experience she’d say to me: “You probably Joseph Mandrowitz was born in Poland he carried out on me was to take blood from I started looking for work as soon as don’t remember, you were too young,” as in 1923. He now lives in Toms River, New my arm and inject it in my rear end. I’ve no I arrived, finding a job earning $35 (£23) I was four years younger, but some things Jersey, and is returning to Auschwitz for the idea what that was trying to prove. a week and by 1955 I had opened up my I remembered even more sharply than her second time with his second cousin. For some astonishing reason he “saved” own business in Brooklyn, Queens, as a and my aunt. We had a quiet life until the day they me a second time, after the decision was tailor and I think I did OK. I worked for I’m often asked how I have coped. I took 1,000 Jews away from my village of made to clear the hospital and 150 people some dignitaries, including Henry Kissinger never went to a psychologist and I never Czemierniki, a typical Polish village with were sent to the gas chambers except for me and Nancy Reagan, and I also did a lot for will. Quite simply, I kept it at a distance. I a big square around which community life and a boy from Saloniki. That’s not to say I the Johnsons. I’d be putting together the saw and understood, and yet I didn’t. I’ve took place. My father was a bootmaker, liked him at all – he was a hateful man, who garments designed for them by the likes of never cried over the columns of children and my mother was a seamstress and everyone hated himself first and foremost and then Oscar de la Renta and Geoffrey Beene. mothers I saw. When I was in Auschwitz I worked hard. There was always some everyone else around him. The US gave me a pretty good life. In thought: ‘This is not actually on earth.’ It antisemitism, but it was mainly fairly In 1944 we were sent on a death march fact I’d say I found my heaven here. was a system of masters and slaves, gods and harmless, consisting of kids at our school from Birkenau to Oranienburg and from Of the 1,000 Jews taken from my subhumans and I thought to myself: ‘No one who during religious education taunted the there to Buchenwald. Then to a quarry, where village, only three of us are still alive, one knows about it. It’s the forest, surrounded five or six Jewish kids in the class with “Jews we were ordered to drill into the mountains living in Israel, one in Baltimore and myself. by multiple layers of fence, it’s not actually killed Jesus.” to make some sort of secret city. From there We stay in touch. real.’ I never let it penetrate that my parents I had trained as a tailor and had left we walked back to Buchenwald. Whoever I still drive my car, though not at night were killed and I even thought: ‘After this home before we were deported, when I went was incapable of walking was shot. From any more. I get jumpy when someone honks we’re going home and everyone will be there to work four miles away on a ranch. It was there, big trains took us to Theresienstadt just their horn, and occasionally I have bad again.’ Those who never managed to keep it taken over by the SS, so suddenly I found as the Soviets were bombing the rails. We distant killed themselves. myself working for them. In May 1943 they could sense that the Germans were almost continued on p. 14

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 14 together Spring 2015 Tales from Auschwitz: survivor stories Susan Pollack, born Zsuzsanna Blau in of the word. After their long battle to reach Felsogod, Hungary in 1930. She now lives Belsen, they had a campaign to organise continued from p. 13 in London. She is returning to Auschwitz for a rescue mission. To this day I’m aghast the first time, with her grandson Anthony, 33. that they were so saintly. They brought dreams and wake up at night, my wife asking on speaking about any of it. We went back From the moment I arrived in Auschwitz little ambulances in and drove around me: ‘What’s up?’, and I tell her I’m being to live in Trenčín, the small town in Slovakia with my mother and brother in May 1944, picking us up. I was trembling and virtually chased by Germans. But that’s the story of where my mother had moved when she the terror of it just invaded my whole being. lifeless, lying near the barracks, the stench my life. I still can’t believe it happened. married my father, and where the Red Cross My mother was immediately taken away and of corpses everywhere, and unable to walk When I sit down and watch programmes on found us a room. I later learned that she had been gassed. I or lift myself up, when they arrived with a the Holocaust on the History Channel it’s as There was a frantic search to see who only recently discovered that my father had little ambulance. I don’t think I was able if I’m watching some made-up horror film. had survived and to look for relatives. But been there too. to talk to the soldier who approached me, I have to go back to Auschwitz one last none of our relatives were still alive. My My whole world was turned upside my comprehension had long gone, but I time. I feel like I own the place, having spent grandmother, great-grandmother and great- down by the brutality of it. We had not in remember the gentleness in him. We couldn’t almost two years of my life there. I never grandfather, my mother’s three siblings – all any way understood what had been going eat and I remember fainting when I tried to forget it and I don’t want to forget it because had died. on, only later recognising all the sources get out of bed. Gradually they administered it’s effectively the story of my life.” Probably my earliest memories of and streams that led to the Holocaust. In the food, but I didn’t trust anyone and I hid Eva Umlauf, born in December 1942 at anything at all are of walking through the my small Hungarian village, information the food in my bed, afraid that they would a labour camp in Nowaky, Czechoslovakia, streets of Trenčín and people stopping in had been very restricted. We didn’t know suddenly take it away. Even now I feel that in what is now Slovakia. She now lives their tracks and saying with amazement: about anything, like the Wannsee conference sense at every meal time of how lucky I am, in Munich, Germany, and works as a ‘You’re back!’ “What a miracle that you’re (where the Final Solution was planned), and I often say to those at the table: “Isn’t psychotherapist. She is returning to alive!” I understood as a three-and-a-half to and neither could we have imagined it. We this wonderful?” and “ Aren’t we lucky?” Auschwitz for the third time. Her book on four-year-old that I was a miracle because were told by the authorities that we were After our liberation I went to Sweden the Holocaust is due to be published in 2016. I got to hear it so many times, but I didn’t being resettled, which is why I took my where we were looked after marvellously. “I was not even two when we arrived really understand what the word meant. Only sewing machine with me. I took my sewing The physical recovery was not as bad as at Auschwitz in 1944. I have no conscious much later could I recognise what a miracle it machine! the emotional and mental one, which I’m memories of that time, but plenty of really was that I had survived, when I learned The process of losing any kind of hope still working on. I am still touched by the subconscious ones. My mother told me that of the thousands of Slovak men and was a very gradual one. We were transported memory of a doctor who taught me how to later how when they tattooed my arm with women who were deported to Auschwitz, in cattle wagons in which many babies and walk again, as through the malnutrition I was a needle, it was so painful that I passed out. only a few hundred returned. children suffocated, in what it turned out incapable. Such a simple thing, but he told The number they gave me and that I still My mother put every effort into giving was the last transport of Hungarians. We me: “I have a daughter like you,” and how have was A26959. My mother’s ended in 8. us a normal life. She sent us to school and had no water, no food, there was no hygiene. vital that statement of his was to my sense I was probably the youngest child to have made sure we studied. She was loving and That diminished our hope and increased the of becoming a human being again. It was been tattooed who survived. resourceful. It was only later when she got feeling of being trapped. But despite that, amazing to be compared to someone having My mother was four months pregnant old that she was gripped by depression. you always retained a glimmer of hope. felt completely dehumanised for so long. when we arrived. My sister Nora was born Having held everything together and been Always. After what happened, and having lost 50 there in April 1945. so capable and diligent for so long, she just I had become aware of antisemitism members of my family, it was very important Had we arrived just two days earlier, we fell apart as if under the burden of it all, and from a young age, when my uncle had his for me to have my own little family, to have would have been gassed immediately. Our she died at the age of 72. It’s no accident head chopped in two when he was attacked again that sense of belonging. I really wanted transport was the first from which no one was that I and my sister became doctors – we by fascists while driving up to Novograd to have children and was just 18 when I got taken to the gas chambers, probably because had an absolute primal need to help people where he lived. While his attacker was married to a fellow Holocaust survivor from they knew by then that the Russians were and save lives. convicted, he was hardly punished, and Transylvania. But I’ve always been careful very close. We arrived on 2 November and on I later qualified as a psychotherapist, continued to live opposite my uncle’s wife not to tell my children too much about what 30 October, 18,000 mothers and children who a job which I enjoy immensely, but which and child. But as a child you don’t think I went through so as not to traumatise them. had arrived from Theresienstadt were killed. confronts me with the suffering caused by about these things all that much. My family They’re entitled to a carefree youth, I always On the two occasions I have returned the Holocaust on a daily basis. My patients had a wood and coal business and, like most thought, and I didn’t want to be spreading to Auschwitz, in 1995 and 2011, although are from “both sides” – either victims or people in those days, my father was self- bitterness and hate. I haven’t got memories as such of the time perpetrators, or their relatives – and many are employed. As they started to restrict us, he I have had a good life. I was a Samaritan I spent there, something is triggered deep what you’d call transgenerationally affected lost his licence to operate and then he faced and I’ve been going to schools and talking inside me, both physically and in my inner – carrying around with them the issues and the enormous task of trying to find work. to 15-year-olds for the past 20 years. I try being. I get very nervous and the death, the traumas that their parents or grandparents Meanwhile, my mother was at home trying to tell them how small streams of hatred cold, the expanse and the emptiness of it never dealt with, and which unless cured are to keep the family together, with all of us all can quickly lead to unstoppable, horrific swamps me – it’s a feeling that it’s hard to like a contagious disease that they’ll pass on involved in domestic life. things, so they should stand up to any type explain but it’s everywhere. I can feel the to the next generation. I recall the time in Auschwitz as single of persecution or discrimination, whether burnt earth everywhere I walk. I married a Polish Jew and we settled moments, short encounters, smells. We tried bullying or malicious gossip. When Auschwitz was liberated in in Germany, the “Täterland” – the land of to distract ourselves from the reality of it I did go back to my village, in 1995. But January 1945, we were already extremely the perpetrator – after being forced out of by trying to recall our home lives in what there was never any sense of any culpability sick, so we had to stay there. A Jewish Czechoslovakia after the collapse of the turned into a game of momentary escapism. and it seemed a futile exercise for me to try paediatrician from Prague said my mother Prague Spring in 1968. It does sometimes Quietly, the children would huddle together to find out who had betrayed us. and her baby would not survive. She had feel like a strange decision to live in and ask each other: “What will you have for Returning to Auschwitz is going to be rickets, TB and jaundice. But in April, Germany because the Holocaust is just so breakfast?” And I remember saying: “Maybe a cold, painful and tearful experience. It against the odds, my mother gave birth to my omnipresent here and there is a growing an egg or a piece of bread and butter,” and is a shadow that has always been with me sister, helped by prisoners who were doctors. antisemitism that scares me, especially when tried to conjure up memories of home. and I’m hoping that by facing it for one last My mother never talked very much you feel it in Germany, of all places, which is I vaguely recall the death march to time at the age of 84 I will be able to live about our time there, mainly to protect us why I always repeat what Primo Levi wrote: Bergen-Belsen. I was so weak by then. The my life more peacefully, but I am extremely and herself. She was 21 when we were “What happened can happen again.” conditions were appalling and they’d put us anxious. I lost my husband just days ago finally able to leave, with a two-year-old That’s why I go into schools and talk to in a barracks. I remember crawling out of it – and I’m hoping I’ll finally be able to release and a six-week-old. She also took with us 15 year olds in and around Munich because because by that time I was too weak to walk, my emotions when I’m there, as I’ve never a four-year-old boy who was parentless and we have to repeatedly confront it. That’s why but I couldn’t bear to stay among the corpses really been able to cry much about anything. she spent months searching for his relatives, I’m returning to Auschwitz on Monday. It any longer – and bumping into a neighbour I’m comforted by the thought that there will who she did finally track down. At the same will be the last time many people return, the who was as surprised to see me as I was her. be strength in numbers and that I’ll be there time, she had lost her husband and was end of an epoch. The wounds might heal, but Our British liberators were amazing – mourning him. There was an unspoken ban they leave scars which are still very visible.” they were heroes for me in the real sense continued on p. 15 visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 15 Tales from Auschwitz: survivor stories The lost stories of Muslims continued from p. 14 in the Holocaust continued from p. 4 with perhaps 100 or so other survivors, which makes it Other Jews responsible for telling us the rules easier. I would not go on my own. I appear to be a strong approached us and said: “Farvos inem gehenem zayn’ My work has steered me to confront my own Muslim person, but inside I’m really quite fragile. du kumen aher?” (“Why the hell did you come here?”) community on the suffering of “others,” which I argue Mordechai Ronen, born in Dej, Transylvania, in what “Didn’t you hear the warnings?” can become a bridge of mutual understanding and is now Romania, in 1933. He now lives in Toronto with his I saw some soldiers toss a baby up and shoot it in mid interreligious dialogue. How can we create interreligious wife, Ilana. He is returning to Auschwitz for the third time. air for fun and from then on I had no doubt about what dialogue and confront the suffering of one another at His autobiography is due to be published in September. awaited us here. different historical moments? How can we discuss and We lived in a white-painted brick house on Kodur Street I worked out pretty quickly certain survival tricks. sustain dialogue, which by its very nature also risks in Dej, which had a population of about 15,000, around That if the guards called us to line up in front of the dehumanizing the “other”? What aspects about Islam a quarter of whom were Jewish. I was the youngest of barracks, I should hide or sneak into another barracks. and about the Holocaust might connect both Muslims and five, and we spoke Yiddish within the community and The safest place I could find to hide was in the yard near Jews? And in a greater sense, what does my work offer Hungarian and Romanian outside. We had a garden and the bathrooms where all the dead bodies were brought and students, communities, and academia? These and other backyard, full of plums, peaches, cherries and apples. piled up … I would get on the pile, lie down next to the questions haunt me every day, knocking on my faith, my Among the smells of my childhood were my mother’s dead bodies and pretend I was one of them. study of Holocaust memoirs, my study of new research on goulash and the scent of Shabbat candles. My father was They gave us food in barrels. When the barrel was Muslims and Jews during the Holocaust and colonialism. a merchant, a travelling salesman. My mother had the full- empty, I could get inside and scrape the leftovers from the The lost stories of Muslim rescuers and the time job of keeping the house and family. I remember the bottom. In that way my dad and I got extra food. relationship between Jews and Muslims in Arab countries lullaby she used to sing me, Schaefeleh, schluf mein tier I remember the chimneys with dark, thick smoke rising have been lost under the noise of media portrayal of these kind (Sleep well, my precious little child). The synagogue from them; dogs barking all the time. From Auschwitz, faiths being at war throughout time. Israel and Palestine or shul was the centre of communal life, and the centre they moved us to Birkenau, then to Mauthausen-Gusen. seems to carve the relationship for the rest of us and I feel of my life from three years upwards. I don’t remember Every morning there were dead bodies along the barbed that we must change that for the future of Judaism and any overt antisemitism, just my parents warning me to be wire fences around the camp. The electrified fences Islam. To tell the stories of positive cooperation between inside before dark: “Lest some Christian kids decide they instantly killed anyone who touched them. Perhaps these Jews and Muslims is crucial in my work. To reflect on don’t like the look of your sidelocks and pick on you.” I were simply acts of suicide. the deep-rooted anti-Semitism and Islamophobia within just thought my parents were being overprotective. When we were in Gusen penal camp, my father, who each community is an important. We had no daily paper, no radio or phone, so the only was 50, one day just gave up and said he couldn’t continue. Teaching the Holocaust to young students with very news we got of the second world war was from newcomers From that moment I was totally alone. In February 1945 little knowledge of the Holocaust or Islam has been to town. The change started at the end of 1942-43, when they moved us to Gunskirchen, Upper Austria. It was here challenging. I invite Holocaust survivors to visit our people began expressing their anger towards us, especially that I witnessed starving people eating human flesh. We classes and they are stunned and shocked at the stories the Hungarian neighbours. We’d hear: “Zsidók, menjetek were liberated by Americans and Canadians in Gunskirchen. of survival and loss. The personal connection creates ki, Gyerünk haza!” (“Jews, get out of here, Go home!”) I The Germans had simply left the camp, and with an absence an intimate reaction within the classroom and that is was in the synagogue singing when a rock shattered the of drama we just walked through the gates. The first thing why I embarked on the idea of interviewing survivors. stained-glass window. The rabbi tried to convince us it I did was to knock on a local resident’s door and ask for Interviewing survivors as a Muslim was an uncomfortable was just some drunk, but as a 10-year-old, I knew better. permission to take a shower. Somehow, I managed to meet experience because I did not know what to expect and One day, four or five men came to our synagogue. up with my brothers, David and Shuli. We had no desire to neither did they. There is one man I will never forget for They had escaped from Poland and came with stories we return to Dej, to the people who had betrayed us. the rest of my life: found impossible to believe – of Nazis rounding up Jews, I wanted to go to Israel, as that had been my father’s On February 27th, 2010, I looked into the sky-blue looting their possessions, murdering them. People said the dream, but it wasn’t easy to get there. There was no eyes of Albert Rosa, an 85-year-old Shoah survivor, for men were meshuggah (crazy). independent Jewish state then and it was run by the British, three hours as he spoke about his experience at Auschwitz- The only impact these stories had on my family was who wanted to limit immigration. Birkenau. As I left him, he told me with tears in his eyes the cache of extra potatoes and bread that I discovered In Italy I joined the Irgun, the Zionist underground that he wanted someone to write his life story, since he stashed away in our basement. But by 1943, we started organisation fighting for Israeli independence led by had very little formal education and would not be able to getting clearer signs. Menachem Begin (later prime minister of Israel), and express in writing his feelings on the Shoah. He asked me, My father’s beard was shaved by some locals, who travelled with an arms smuggling ship, the Altalena, to “How can I express in words how I felt when my sister grabbed him. I stopped going to school. My parents gave Tel Aviv. All the time I kept with me my prison uniform, was bludgeoned to death in front of me by a Nazi woman, me a lantern to carry with me after dark. Then I wasn’t as proof of what had happened to me. We arrived on the or when I saw my elder brother hanging from a rope when allowed out at all. shores of Tel Aviv on 20 June 1948 and I found myself I had tried to defend him?” I looked into his eyes, which One day the Hungarian gendarmes came to our house at a pivotal moment in Israeli history, in a boat full of had pierced me all day, and wondered how I could tell his and ransacked it. In 1944, the Nazis ordered all Jews living weapons that Ben-Gurion would not let on shore. It could story in words without losing the sense of the emotional and outside Budapest to be rounded up and placed in ghettoes. easily have turned into a civil war. I was shot at by Israel physical strength it had taken him to survive the horror of Then it was our turn and that was the day our misery truly Defence Force troopers as I jumped into the water and the his life in the camps. He spoke of maggots crawling on his began. In the spring of 1944 we were part of a contingent Altalena was set ablaze and sunk by the IDF. With it sank body as he was ordered to move the dead Jewish bodies, the of 7,500 Jews who were corralled into a makeshift ghetto my suitcase of clothes and my striped prisoner uniform, gold he stole from the teeth of the dead, the urine he saved in the Bungur forest. We had to wear the yellow stars of including my hat, coat, shirt and a knife. to nurse the wounds inflicted by a German Shepherd, the David. That was the day when almost one-and-a-half Henry Korman, 94, born in Radom, Poland. He now plant roots that he dug out with his fingers for nourishment, centuries of Jewish life in Dej came to an end. lives in Hanover, north Germany. He will be returning to the ashes he swallowed from the crematorium as he helped In our forest ghetto I remember a local man, Mihai, Auschwitz for the first time, with the 17-year-old son of build Birkenau. How was I to give these events any life with who brought his cow to help us out with milk, having his nephew, Ethan. mere words? These feelings of paralysis emerge as I write heard we were starving. He was arrested and beaten to a “I had just finished high school in 1939 and had had this testimony; how I can give the Shoah a life of its own pulp and remained a paraplegic for the rest of his life. Two all sorts of plans for my future. My family ran a hat factory, without trespassing on politics, ethics, and the millions of weeks into our ghetto life, we were sent to Auschwitz, 435 making hats for every occasion and purpose. But as the victims? In some ways, I felt like abandoning this project miles north-west of Dej. authorities began clamping down and the antisemitism because I feared that I could not do it justice. (Shoah through At this point my family was still together. They told grew, much of it fuelled by the Catholic church, gradually Muslim Eyes (Academic Studies Press, 2015)) the women and children to go to the left, and that’s what everything was confiscated – our house then the business. Finally, I hope to take the testimonies of survivors, lost my mother and two sisters did. My father and I were We tried to get out – we’d seen the signs of what stories of Muslims during the Holocaust, and the memory of two inspected by [Josef] Mengele, who was holding a baton, was to come, not that we could really have known the traditions to a new level where one can speak up for one another. and went to the right. It was the last time I saw my mother The author was the subject of a recent article in the and sisters alive. continued on p. 17 NY Times,

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 16 together Spring 2015 In a town built on Jewish headstones, Survivors who need help may contact: American Society for Yad Vashem [email protected] still no fixing what the Nazis destroyed 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor New York, NY 10110 - 4299 http://www.yadvashemusa.org/ continued from p. 11 Phone: 212-220-4304 Fax: 212-220-4308 The wooden houses were condemned in The Blue Card, Inc. [email protected] 2010 and their residents evicted. Several were 171 Madison Avenue bulldozed to make room for college dorms and New York, NY 10016 http://www.bluecardfund.org/ the supermarket, and the remaining four have Phone: 212-239-2251 Fax: 212-594-6881 been gutted by fire and are inhabited by drifters. An inspection of one house’s cellar revealed Claims Conference [email protected] 1359 Broadway, Room 2000 no sign of spolia — material pilfered from old New York, NY 10018 http://www.claimscon.org/ ruins for construction — but no shortage of 646-536-9100 fresh stool. Fax: 212-679-2126 Sticking out of the dark earth in the Jewish Board of Family and [email protected] overgrown yards, however, were dozens more Children’s Services 135 West 50th St http://www.jbfcs.org/ gravestones that have yet to be collected. New York, NY 10020 There’s no clear estimate of how many more 888-523-2769 lurk underground. New York Legal Assistance Group [email protected] Local activists are pushing for preservation 7 Hanover Square, 18th Floor of one of the houses as a museum, but according New York, NY 10004 http://nylag.org/ to a report on a local website from October 212-688-0710 Laura Davis (212) 613-5040 2014, “the Brest-Litovsk authorities do not care for its preservation.” New York City Brooklyn Holocaust Survivor Program Selfhelp Community Services, Inc. 1512 Avenue Z, Brooklyn, NY 11235 “When this house is demolished, more th Arkady Bljacher at his home in Brest, 520 Eighth Avenue, 5 Floor (718) 646-7500 Jewish gravestones are bound to turn up,” Artur New York, NY 10018 Belarus. Bljacher has worked to protect (212) 971-7600 Jewish gravestones in the Belarusian Beth Zeidel, Administrative Director city. In the background are photos he [email protected] Kensington/Russian Nazi Victim took with the Red Army at the Reichstag. http://www.selfhelp.net/ Services Program (photo courtesy of The Together Plan) 419 Church Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11218 Selfhelp Washington Heights Nazi (718) 633-1300 Victim Program wouldn’t seem out of place at a high school. Queens Nazi Victim Services Program 620 Ft. Washington Ave. 70-20 Austin St., Forest Hills, NY 11375 Local residents pilfered the demolished New York, NY 10040 (718) 268-1252 gravestones. (212) 971-5475 “There was no construction material, so Bronx Holocaust Survivor Program Nassau County Holocaust Survivor people used what they could, including the 990 Pelham Pkwy S., Bronx, Program NY 10461 50 Clinton Street, Hempstead, NY 11550 tombstones,” Bjacher said. They ended up as (718) 239-3177 (516) 481-1865 paving stones for garden walks and reinforcing A Warburg Colony house in Brest, Be- (718) 239-3229 Fax slabs for cellars. Some of their new owners larus. (photo courtesy of The Together Plan) Westchester County Levittown Selfhelp-Nassau County chiseled away the Hebrew letters as much as (914) 761-0600 3601 Hempstead Turnpike, Levittown, NY they could. Livshits, co-director of The Together Plan, a (516) 520-9192 After gravestones started turning up Jewish charity group working to empower in 1992, Bljacher pulled some strings and Belarus’s dwindling Jewish communities, said The Times of Israel that it wasn’t involved in and Diaspora Affairs Committee to discuss managed to get the stones stored temporarily as we stood on the boggy ground. any efforts to finance or construct a monument the issue of the graves in Brest. Belarusian at the fortress. They’ve remained there ever to Brest’s Jewish past. Ambassador to Israel Vladimir Skvortsov since. Future “JDC is an apolitical, humanitarian told the Knesset panel that Minsk “believes “Some of the tombstones are probably still Although the Jewish community would organization that provides welfare and renewal in the preservation of the memory of the under the stadium,” Bljacher said, “along with like to see the stones preserved along with the services to Jewish communities and individuals Jews and of all peoples who suffered in the thousands and thousands of bones.” memory of those who once resided in their in the former Soviet Union,” the organization’s previous century.” In 2002, nearly a decade after he began city, it lacks the funding to properly document spokesperson said. “JDC is generally not “The Belarusian people also suffered collecting the stones, Bljacher petitioned the the stones and catalog the names upon them. involved in cemetery projects or Holocaust greatly, and this is the shared history of ours and local government to help erect a memorial The average annual income in Belarus is a memorials as they are not part of its core the Jewish people,” he said at the November next to the stadium, on the site of the former meager $6,000, and an estimated 27% of the mission.” hearing. He said that since the turn of the cemetery. He and the community received population lives below the poverty line. The Brest’s Jewish leadership has turned to the century the Brest municipality has turned up permission to put up a monument using the Jewish community remains heavily reliant upon Israeli and American government for help in nearly 2,300 stones from beneath the city’s fragmented gravestones on the bare patch of aid from outside charity organizations such as preserving the remnants of a once-prosperous asphalt roadways and is working toward their earth just west of the stadium, but the Brest the American Joint Distribution Committee. past. The Together Project, a UK-based preservation. municipality refused to contribute any funds Regina Simonenko, chair of the Jewish charity organization, has helped the Jewish “We are interested in helping preserve to the project. community of Brest, said the historical community put together a case for support from the memory, but we can’t raise this initiative “Everyone who came made promises,” he backbone of Jewish communities in Belarus are American and Israeli institutions to help put up alone — we need economic support,” he said. said. “Ten years of promises.” overlooked by the larger charity organizations a monument and preserve the stones. Although MK Yoel Razvozov (Yesh New development near the former operating in the former Soviet republic. “This is a heritage project that we feel Atid) voiced interest in the Israeli government cemetery site in recent years has turned up “We can’t do everything ourselves,” is important for the small existing Jewish providing financial support for a monument in hundreds of stones. Just a block away on she said as we sat in the five-room Jewish community in Brest, as we are hoping it will Brest, there are no immediate plans to do so Pushkin Boulevard, the recent construction of community center in the basement of a attract attention to them and give them pride at the moment. Any assistance for the Jewish a dormitory and a supermarket unearthed scores building on Lenin Boulevard. “The plight of and ownership of an important piece of Jewish community is held up because the country of fragments, as well as human remains. the Jewish Diaspora in small communities like history that needs to be preserved,” director is going to elections in March, Razvozov’s But the modern buildings also threaten Brest is being overlooked by the big charitable Debra Brunner said in an email. “The US office said. another Jewish historic site: the Warburg organizations.” Commission for Jewish Heritage Abroad has The Together Plan couldn’t provide an Colony, a clutch of 12 two-story buildings The American Joint Distribution expressed an interest in supporting this.” estimated cost for the proposed memorial at erected after World War I to house destitute Committee, one of the largest Jewish aid groups Brunner also attended a recent session the time of publication. For the time being, the Jews who had lost their homes. operating in the former Soviet republic, told of the Knesset Immigration, Absorption project remains frozen. visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 17 Tales from Auschwitz: survivor stories was bleeding so much, I didn’t dare go in. I Will Auschwitz walked up the street and it was like walking continued from p. 15 on history – something lost and far away, make it to eighty? but also very close. Here was the road on continued from p. 5 full extent of what would happen. My thumb up high, so they gave me the striped which I used to run to school, to the factory, uncle had worked in Palestine in 1917 but uniform and sent me to get a number tattooed but I had to get away very quickly. I was became the hottest ticket in town. Today, had been forced to return to Poland when on to my arm. I don’t remember the number. thinking: “I’m here, but where are all of the urgency and cautionary lessons he got sick. We tried to use the contacts It’s there still, but I never look at it because them, my family?” surrounding the Holocaust has dissipated, he still had there to escape, but the British it brings back too many painful memories. I now live in Hanover, Germany, which if not all but disappeared. (who were in control of it) wouldn’t give After Auschwitz they transferred me to doesn’t feel strange to me to be living in the In the United States there is waning us permission to go there. In my mind they Mauthausen, then Gozen and Hanover. From land of the murderers, because it’s a different interest with far fewer communities hosting carry a lot of the blame for the deaths of there they sent us on foot to Bergen-Belsen, country now. At least people listen to my annual Yom HaShoah commemorations many of the Jews – especially the Polish where I was finally liberated. It was 14 April story here. When I travel to the US nobody and fewer schools teaching the Holocaust Jews – who perished. (1945). I was so weak I could hardly stand asks me, so I never say anything. But I have as a subject. Despite all appearances, Israel We were sent to the Radom ghetto, and it was all I could do to lift my head a hunch that as soon as his feet touch the has often displayed ambivalence toward where I spent the first years of the war slightly from the ground where I was lying ground in Auschwitz, my nephew’s son will the Holocaust. Too much Ashkenazi working for the Jewish committee. But as British army tanks started arriving to save start to ask questions. passivity clashes with a national ethos of when they started taking the ghetto leaders to us. But for all the great things the British did I never dared to start my own family Sephardic valor. Auschwitz, I quickly changed jobs and began then, I can only say they made many other or have children of my own. I was just too Meanwhile, plans are underway to working in a munitions factory instead, mistakes and what’s going on in Israel now afraid of making those close bonds. repair some of the buildings at Auschwitz hoping that if I kept my head down, I might is largely Britain’s fault. When your relatives die, there’s usually and to landscape its grounds, all in an effort be OK. But after moving from one factory I also resent the Americans for knowing a place you can go to pay your respects, like to ensure that it remain a vibrant memorial to another, I too was deported to Auschwitz what was going on but doing nothing about a cemetery with a grave where you can lay a and a tourist destination. The paradox when the ghetto was liquidated in 1942. I it until 1944. As soon as Hitler wrote Mein stone and talk to them. The only place I have that Europe’s memory of the Holocaust was separated from my parents and three Kampf they should have known what was is Auschwitz and going back there for the is being forgotten, if not desecrated, is sisters, all of whom were taken to Treblinka. going on. first time will be the first and last chance I lost amid all the good intentions. In ten On our arrival at Auschwitz they chased So I ended up in Sweden where I learned have to be able to return to the people I loved years Auschwitz may attract no visitors us off the cattle wagon, which stopped right that my sister had also been in Belsen. In who I lost there and in other concentration at all. Instead of a renovation, some in front of the gate with the sign Arbeit Macht Stockholm I studied chemistry and it was camps. will invariably suggest that its infamous Frei (Work Makes You Free). I thought I was there I found out, having lost all my family My family are always with me. I carry grounds be converted into a parking lot. entering a labour camp, but little did I know. in Europe, that I had relatives in America, an pictures of them in my pocket the entire time, Thankfully, at least on this They asked me my profession, and I said aunt – my father’s sister – who had emigrated wherever I go, even when I go to sleep they inauspicious day when those who painter as I’d picked up the advice en route in the 1920s, so I went to live with them. are with me. To this day I still don’t know managed to stay alive in a death factory to say something practical and useful. If I’d I’ve never sought any counselling or the circumstances of their deaths or even were liberated, Auschwitz is being said I’d just finished high school they’d have professional help – I never thought it would where they died. recalled for what it once was—fresh coats sent me straight to the gas chambers. help. My therapy has been to go and talk to Auschwitz has been in my head all of paint be damned. One of the first people I encountered schoolchildren about my experiences. My these years. I just need to close my eyes and It still exists under a smoke-filled was Mengele. He told us to undress and advice to them is to respect their teachers instantly the pictures of the horror come back cloud of the unfathomable. But now its stand in line and he went through the ranks and have a clear plan for the future. to me. I worry what will happen when I and future holds a similar mystery. We better deciding who was strong and healthy and fit I did go back to my home town, Radom, others like me are no longer here to tell the brace ourselves for more surprises. There for work, and who was only fit for the gas just once in 1996 or 1998. I saw our house, story. I want people to keep reading about it may soon come a day when Auschwitz chamber. After inspecting me, he put his and stood in the backyard, but my heart and for them to leave tears on the paper. will become completely irrelevant.

Life-affirming observations from Holocaust That said, some essays take a very into empowerment? How to turn pain into hard look at Israel’s treatment of its Arab compassion? survivors’ offspring and Palestinian populations. For example, Rosensaft likens this double-edged sword continued from p. 10 senior attorney at the Center for Constitution to a Hasidic story Elie Wiesel refers to in his Rights in New York Ghita Schwarz, author book “The Gates of the Forest,” in which Baal during the Yom Kippur War, and once freed, Rosensaft. “But it also gave him a sense of of ‘Displaced Persons’, discusses how Shem Tov, when confronted with a looming devoted his life to the field of psychotherapy, ‘there is a tomorrow,’ that the horror is not her parents’ experiences shaped her into catastrophe, goes to a spot in the woods, builds specializing in the treatment of victims of exclusive to them. And by looking at this becoming a tireless civil-rights advocate and a fire, says a prayer and thereby averts the political oppression and the traumas of legacy as a source of strength, not as doom, eventually led her to eschew the point of view calamity from occurring. A generation later, captivity and war. you can get to a place of ‘lets do something of so many Israeli politicians and right-wing his descendent faces a similar catastrophe, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide constructive with it.’” Jewish groups who use the Holocaust or the goes to the forest, can’t recall how to build a Centre director Tali Nates, whose father And that’s another refreshing quality possibility of another one to justify oppressing fire but remembers the prayer and the calamity was saved by Oskar Schindler, relates how of “God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes”: another group. is averted. On and on until a few generations the first time she voted in South Africa’s It doesn’t devolve into isolationist thinking, In another poignant think-piece, later, all that’s left is the memory of the story. apartheid-free elections in 1994, there was that this legacy only belongs to us Jews, and Vancouver-born sociologist and one of the “We are now in the second stage,” a genocide underway in nearby Rwanda. therefore we must gird ourselves against other book’s four ordained female rabbis, Tali says Rosensaft. “The survivors transmitted She writes about later visiting one of the people. Zelkowicz of Los Angeles, writes about how their memories to us and we know the churches there where 4,000 men, women “There is a problem with the right wing the best way to honor her grandmother’s past place in the forest. But there is absolutely and children were murdered, and meeting and xenophobia,” Rosensaft says, “but there is by learning to let go of her miasmic lens, no way for us to know how the Holocaust one of the survivors, who bore a machete is something just as dangerous on the extreme liberate herself from her ghosts and assume will be integrated into Jewish and general scar on his skull. As she told him of her own left, where there is a present-day exploitation her own place in the inter-generational passing consciousness 50 or 100 years from now. family’s Holocaust story, how it was a case and misuse of Holocaust imagery so that of this torch. This dialectic seems to be at But how it gets transmitted and what is being of white people murdering other whites, the when someone like [Turkish President Recep the core of so many of the essays, though done with it, at least for the next generation, young man’s eyes opened wide in disbelief. Tayyip] Erdogan talks about last summer in articulated in a multitude of ways – how to is within our control. And the important “Obviously, it didn’t make the Rwandan Gaza as a genocide, it becomes singularly identify with the victims without becoming thing to remember is that no single approach genocide any less horrible to this man,” says problematic.” a victim oneself? How to turn powerlessness is better than the next.”

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 18 together Spring 2015 Hungarian When the office is a death camp premier admits Along with the 1.5 million annual visitors, dozens of people — conservators, country’s researchers, curators — come to Auschwitz every day to work ‘shameful’ emergence of new historical sources, there is Holocaust role always more to learn. Several years ago, Setkiewicz caused a In first, Viktor Orban mini-crisis in Polish-Russian relations when he pointed out to a journalist errors in an exhibition says many chose ‘bad about Soviet prisoners at Auschwitz prepared instead of good’ in by the Russians. His comment led to claims in the media that Setkiewicz was denying the helping deport Jews to suffering of the Russian people. Shortly after, Nazi death camps Russia stopped importing Polish pork. “They began to connect me with this, as By AFP the one who stopped the delivery of Polish meat http://www.timesofisrael.com to the east,” Setkiewicz said. “To this day, on Google you can find several thousand hits on UDAPEST, Hungary — Many the subject.” BHungarians chose “bad instead The conservation laboratory at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which Pawel Sawicki, 34, works in the museum’s of good” in helping deport Jews to was established two years after the German army’s retreat in 1945. (Photo credit: Katarzyna Markusz) spokesman office. Among his duties is the Nazi death camps, Prime Minister photographing of personal items that belonged Viktor Orban said, in his first By Katarzyna Markusz in the museum. She returned later for a six- to the prisoners — shoes, glasses and other acknowledgement of his country’s http://www.timesofisrael.com month internship. personal effects. complicity in the Holocaust. “This stay has changed everything in my The photos show the scale of the tragedy “We were without love and SWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — Seventy life,” Bormann said. “I got to know the place that occurred at Auschwitz, but also its human indifferent, when we should have Oyears ago, Germany evacuated 58,000 and its history even more. I knew a lot about the dimension — what Sawicki calls “the power helped, and very many Hungarians prisoners from the concentration camps at Shoah, but now I got to know the testimonies of a single personal experience” as reflected in chose bad instead of good, the Auschwitz and Birkenau, burning documents of Polish prisoners, about whom in German individual objects. shameful instead of the honorable,” and blowing up gas chambers and crematoria. schools very little is said.” Sawicki is also the compiler of Orban said at a memorial in a Jewish On Jan. 27 — the day now celebrated as After graduation, she went to work full- “Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Place Where You cemetery in Budapest on the 70th International Holocaust Remembrance Day — time at the museum. Two years ago she was Are Standing,” a photo album that juxtaposes anniversary of the liberation of the the Soviet Red Army arrived, liberating several asked to take care of the maintenance of six archival photographs taken by the Germans in Auschwitz camp. thousand sick prisoners left behind. baskets of shoes that once belonged to prisoners. 1944 with contemporary shots of the same spots. The Holocaust was a “national Two years later, the camp that has since “I wanted to be close to this place, these “Taking these photos, more and more tragedy for Hungary and irredeemable become nearly synonymous with the Nazi objects, but with shoes I felt afraid,” she said. I felt a special emptiness,” Sawicki said. “I loss for the Jewish community,” he attempt to eradicate European Jewry became “There was some bad energy. When I returned missed the people who were the essence of the said. a museum. home from work, my whole body hurt.” photo album. Today, those people are not here Some 600,000 Hungarian Jews Last year, 1.5 million people visited the Bormann would pick up a shoe and stare at anymore. Only the place where most of them perished during the Holocaust, most Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, most of it. One seemed to have been repaired multiple were killed still exists.” deported with the aid of local gendarmerie them from Poland, Italy, Germany, Israel, the times by a cobbler. Maybe the owner walked in Piotr Cywinski, 43, has been the museum to Auschwitz after Germany occupied United Kingdom and the United States. it to work, perhaps wearing a suit and carrying a director since 2006. A historian whose interest Hungary in March 1944. The visitors generally come for a day, but briefcase. Such thoughts would occur often, but was the Middle Ages, he was asked several Approximately half a million dozens of people come to Auschwitz every day Bormann would try to inhibit them and focus years ago by his professor, a former camp people or every third victim in — the conservators, researchers and curators on the object at hand. One day she began to cry. inmate named Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, to Auschwitz was a Hungarian Jew. who work to disseminate new information “I knew the story, the facts, the number of help in the work of the International Auschwitz Unlike Hungary’s president about the Holocaust and preserve the museum’s victims, the memories of former prisoners,” she Council. When his predecessor retired, he was Janos Ader, Orban had not explicitly legacy for future generations. said. “It brought me sadness, but I never cried asked to take over. acknowledged Hungarians’ role in the “For me, Auschwitz is a place of reflection so hard. I acted that day like I was at a funeral. Cywinski says it’s easier to work at deportations before Monday. and meditation,” said Piotr Kadlcik, the When I cried for the victims, something was Auschwitz than to visit. Visitors come for their During events to mark the 70th former president of the Union of Jewish passing from me and I could get back to work.” own purposes, he says, while the museum anniversary of the Holocaust last year Communities in Poland and a board member Piotr Setkiewicz, 51, the head of the employees work on behalf of others. At night his government was accused by Jewish of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which museum’s Research Center, has worked at he dreams of the camps and the war, though he organizations of “whitewashing raises money for the museum. “I think it is Auschwitz since 1988. His uncle died in the prefers not to discuss the details. history.” important for many people who come here camp, and his grandmother was an employee “This place is impossible to ignore,” he The government sparked to work. They cannot really imagine that they of IG Farben, the chemical company that said. “It is a turning point in human history. particular anger by commissioning could work elsewhere. They are somehow supplied the German army’s war needs. A plant Nothing that preceded it will ever return. Ethics, a statue that honors “all victims of shaped by this place.” producing gasoline and rubber was located at morality, law, faith, science, enlightenment, the German occupation of Hungary”, Below are short portraits of several Auschwitz, and 20,000 prisoners worked there. positivism — all died here. A man lost his sense and which shows an eagle attacking employees of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State “During the school years I had no of innocence that he cherished and found so the Archangel Gabriel, a Hungarian Museum. awareness of the uniqueness of this place,” comforting.” symbol. Orban denied it was a Margrit Bormann, 34, is a conservator Setkiewicz said. “That changed when I started Cywinski is mindful of the survivors and Holocaust monument. from Germany who works in the building working here.” their stories. He knows they will soon pass The head of the main Jewish where newly arrived prisoners were registered. Setkiewicz is involved in efforts to away and only the museum will remain, which group Mazsihisz, Andras Heisler, Through the window is a clear view to the disseminate new historical information about will have to carry their stories forth for future however called Orban’s presence at nearby cell blocks behind the barbed wire. the camp. Occasionally he hears people generations. the service Monday an “important In 2005, as a university student in Cologne, asserting that there is nothing more to learn “There will be no great silence,” Cywinski demonstration” that “Jews have been she participated in a two-week educational about what transpired there, but Setkiewicz says said. “We are too many and we know too part of the Hungarian nation for program at Auschwitz, helping preserve objects it’s not true. With advances in research and the much.” centuries.” visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 19

willing to give us a little of their time to I also have hard copies of the survey the town of Perpignan where he may then share their powerful stories and continue available for distribution. have been interned until put on a transport inspiring the generation that will one day Please let me know if you have any to Auschwitz. inherit this world. more questions, I appreciate the help and My mother’s grandmother, Gittel Searches Our event will take place the week of support! Satz, and my two great aunts, Ruchela Yom Hashoah, on Friday, April 17, 2015. If you would like to participate in this (Rosa) Satz and Rifka (Rebecca) Satz lived If needed, Poly Prep will provide study,please contact Katya Ekman directly at Am Wert- House 9- Door 18, ll Bezirk. transportation to and from the event. at: [email protected]. Gittel Satz was deported toTheresienstadt FROM ALL GENERATIONS, If you are interested in participating in Thank you for your time and assistance! and died there on January 27, 1943. There Inc. this event, please contact Gabriella Shpilsky Katya. is no information regarding Ruchela Satz. SERENA WOOLRICH, directly at: [email protected]. Rifka Satz was deported from Vienna on PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER We look forward to hearing from you. rom Ruth Kurschner, a Survivor in May 15, 1942; nothing further is known PLEASE SEND RELEVANT RESPONSES Many thanks! Gabriella. FVoorhees, New Jersey (originally of her fate. TO: [email protected] from Vienna, Austria). My father was born in Rozniatow, rom Katya Ekman, in Berkeley, If you’re interested in putting people Poland. His parents, Sarah and Ben David rom Steve Ben-Canaan, in Coral FCalifornia. together - I would love to get in touch Jampel (Yampel), both died either shortly FSprings, Florida. Hello Serena, with any women who were in the Shield before or during the war (neither died in I am seeking someone to conduct I’m a third year doctoral student at of David Home for Orphan Girls on a concentration camp nor at the hands of a video interview of my father-in-law the Wright Institute located in Berkeley, Bryant Avenue in the Bronx, New York Einsatzgruppen); nothing further is known Moshe Harel, a Survivor at Kibbutz Gat California, conducting my dissertation from 1939-1940 when I was a 4-year old of their deaths. (near Kiryat Gat) in Israel (originally from research on potential resilience factors in refugee girl there. My father had a brother named Jacob Chernowitz, Russia /Romania). the grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors My father was in Kitchener Camp in who remained in Rozniatow and fought Moshe has agreed to do an interview (3g’s). England, and my mother had to work, so she and died as a partisan the the forests in the about his childhood during the Holocaust, I myself am not the grandchild of a placed me in the Home for a year until my vicinity of Stry (or a river by that name) as and would like the interview to be conducted Survivor, although I am deeply connected father’s Polish quota number was reached noted in a Yahrzeit book about the town in in Hebrew. to my Jewish heritage, and my grandmother (my mother and I had Austrian quotas, so we which they lived. Nothing further is known If you are willing and able to conduct had a few Survivor friends, so I heard their came to New York in May 1939). about him. a video interview of Moshe Harel, please stories growing up. I would very much appreciate any contact Steve Ben-Canaan directly at: I spoke with William Connelly at rom Jeffrey Jampel, a 2g in Brookline, further information. [email protected]. the United States Holocaust Memorial FMassachusetts. Thank you so much for your efforts. Thank you. Steve. Museum who suggested I get in contact Dear Serena, with Ms. Ashley Taubman (Secretary I am hoping to learn more information rom Hesther Weisberger, a 2g in New rom Gabriella Shpilsky, a 3g in of your organization) for assistance in about both my father’s and mother’s family FYork, New York. FBrooklyn, New York. distributing my survey or putting me in members and perhaps find anyone who may Hi Serena, Good evening, Serena, contact with anyone who might be interested have known them. My parents separately Hope you’re doing well today. My name is Gabriella Shpilsky. I in participation. were able to find refuge in England just I have a lingering question that perhaps am a high school senior at Poly Prep I settled on this topic because I am before the start of WWll. someone in Allgenerations can answer? Country Day School in Brooklyn, New primarily clinically interested in trauma My mother, Sylvia Jampel, nee Linder, My father was in Auschwitz-Birkenau, York, and am a member of my school’s work, and particularly the intergenerational left Vienna, Austria in July of 1939 leaving but had no tattoo. It states this on his Red Jewish Caucus. transmission of trauma. I chose to focus on her mother, grandmother, two aunts and a Cross identity booklet, the kind many Several years ago, we established an the grandchildren of Survivors because of my brother. Her mother’s name was Sali (Sara) refugees got because they had no passports. annual Holocaust Remembrance Panel personal vested interest, as well as the sheer Linder nee Satz; there is no information as His wife and children were murdered. at my school in honor of Yom Hashoah, magnitude of the communal trauma and what to her fate. There were many sub-camps within inviting Survivors to share their stories with it carries with it. She lived with her son Bernard Linder the larger one, is my understanding. Were my community in a spacious library on a The survey can be taken online and on Franz Hochlinger Str. in the II Bezirk. people sent to slave labor also given cozy April afternoon. should take no more than 20 minutes. Here He was born August 18, 1914 and was numbers? Our Caucus values the importance of is an online link to the survey: killed in Auschwitz in 1942. He had fled Thank you for any help you can give. perpetuating a tradition of remembrance http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/ to Vichy France, but was then captured on All the best to you and the work you do. and tolerance, and we would like to ask if 1906897/Perceived-Parental-Commu- a bus on the border of France and Spain just Hesther Weisberger you know of any Survivors who would be nication-Questionnaire as he was to enter Spain in or close by to [email protected]

Benefits for Holocaust Survivors from Poland he World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) Polish underground during the Second applying: http://www.udskior.gov.pl/ Twishes to inform Holocaust victims from Poland that World War; or Home,page,71.html they may be eligible to receive monthly payments of about • otherwise is considered a veteran or a victim 4. What is WJRO Doing to Help: WJRO has been $130 from the Polish government. A recent law enables of oppression. advocating for the Polish government to make the eligible war veterans or victims of oppression to receive 2. Who Decides if I am Eligible: This is a Polish government application process easier for survivors. WJRO posts the payments outside of Poland. program. Eligibility is determined by Poland’s Office for information about the program, including updates 1. Who is Eligible Under the Law: Any person who was War Veterans and Victims of Oppression. and links to the application and other resources, a Polish citizen on September 1, 1939, and: 3. how Do I Get an Application or Ask Questions: You on http://polishrestitution.com/pensions. WJRO • was detained by the Nazis in ghettos, prisons, can contact the Office for War Veterans and Victims of is working with the Claims Conference, American concentration camps, extermination camps, or Oppression at: Gathering, social service agencies, and others to similar places of detention; • Phone: +48 22-661-81-29 publicize information about the program to survivors • was forcibly deported to the Soviet • Email: [email protected] who may be eligible. Union; • Mail: Wspólna 2/4, 00-926 Warsaw, Poland 5. Note: You can apply for this Polish government • served in the Polish military, the Polish • The Polish office’s website has the program even if you receive(d) compensation from units of the Allied militaries, or in the application form and information about other programs for Nazi victims.

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 20 together Spring 2015 Holocaust survivor recalls desperate battle to stay alive: I just wanted to live Sabina Miller hid in the woods after fleeing the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. As the world marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she shares her story

Small acts of human kindness in this time of terror eyesight was too bad. Her eyesight was perfect, but the lie was contributed to her survival. On the Polish farm near her aunt’s, plausible enough for a woman to take up the offer and hand where she worked with other Jewish girls, an overseer warned over her crucial identity papers. them: “The lorries are coming for you. I don’t want to see But Sabina’s troubles were not over, and officials who you dead. Run to the woods.” She did, with another Jewish suspected she was Jewish sent her to Pawiak, the notorious girl, Ruska. There was the villager who showed them a hole Warsaw prison where political prisoners and Jews were held. abandoned by the Partisans in which to hide. “We had to slip Three times she was interrogated by the Gestapo but down and slide in, with just enough room for the two of us to continued to deny her faith. The other Polish women crammed lie down,” she said. It was winter, 1942-1943, and so bitter she with her into cell number nine, taught her the Catholic mass to got frostbite in her feet. help her. She never broke under questioning and after several Aged 20, louse-ridden and starving, she survived by begging weeks imprisonment, was finally sent to Germany as a Polish Sabina Miller: ‘I wanted to survive for my family to from nearby homes at night. She and Ruska took it in turns, then farm girl. It was late 1943, and she remained in Germany under say who we were, what we did and what we gave.’ one night Ruska did not return. Sabina never discovered why her false identity until Poland’s liberation in 1945. Photograph: David Levene/Guardian but she had no option other than to carry on alone. Sabina married Arthur, a Polish soldier who, because he http://www.theguardian.com And there was the woman who, on seeing Sabina at her was attached to the British army, had the right to resettle in door, immediately ordered the men from the house and gave the UK. Starting with a market stall, they built a fashion retail hen Sabina Miller awoke from typhoid fever in the her a bath. “I will never forget that kindness,” she said. and wholesale business, had two children, and today she is a WJewish ghetto in Warsaw she had a vivid memory. It was Luck contributed, too. Polish girls were being called up grandmother of six and great-grandmother of four. of her mother standing at her bed in the one room the family of for enforced labour on German farms. At one house a mother Of her siblings, she has no news, despite trawling records six shared, telling her: “You will survive.” whose daughter had been so summonsed asked Sabina if she in Poland and Israel. She believes they perished. The only Sitting in her flat in West Hampstead, London, Sabina, would take her place. She agreed, and was given slippers for possession she has from her childhood is a red tartan cardigan, now 92, does not know if it was a hallucination. She does know her damaged feet and a little case with some clothes. given to her by her mother, which remained with her throughout. when she came round. After 18 days of fever, both parents were Why would she want to go to Germany? “Because it was The small bag she took with her from the ghetto was stolen dead of typhoid. the only place I felt I could be safe,” she said. “Once I am there, from her hole deep in the woods. Inside were photographs and a That memory sustained her in the ghetto “where people no one will ask me who I am, what I am. They would accept postcard from her sister, Ester, who was trying to flee to Russia, fell ill very quickly, were hungry and you walked in the me as a Polish girl.” and which arrived at her aunt’s house in Sokolow. middle of the street where they were bodies, covered with She was transported to Warsaw for processing, under the It read: “I am in the train. I don’t know where I am being newspaper, dead”. identity of Kazimira Kuc. taken to. Please God you will survive and I hope someone will It spurred her on when she fled the ghetto – her identifying The Germans rejected her because of her damaged feet, pick up the card and send it to you.” armband hidden under a raincoat – to fight a desperate and but she persuaded them to let her go to hospital. There, she Sabina believes that, like many others being transported to lonely battle for survival during Europe’s darkest days. confided in a Polish doctor: “I am Jewish. I’m in trouble.” He the concentration camps, Ester threw it unstamped from the train And it remains with her today as she prepares to take part kept her there for six weeks before she reported back. Again, in the hope someone would find it and post it. It seems they did. in national commemorations to mark Holocaust Memorial because of her feet, she was rejected and told to go home. But Sabina was determined to share her story through the Day and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz- she had no home. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, “because I feel the world should Birkenau. The doctor suggested a plan. She would study the women know about this. That the world should learn. Something like Miller fled to an aunt in the country with her youngest being sent to Germany and approach the most upset. She would this just cannot be forgotten.” brother, David. An older sister, Ester, tried to make it to the offer to take their place. To avoid suspicion she would pretend “I wanted to survive,” she says. “I wanted it for my family, Russian border. The oldest brother, Chaim, stayed behind. her motivation was money, demand payment and tell them to be able to say who we were, what we did, what we gave. I Despite her efforts, no trace of her siblings has ever been found. the Germans were sure to send her back anyway, because her wanted to do this. And I just wanted to live.” Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs Yellow Candle Program – A History ver seventy years ago, half of the earth’s Jewish families had been wiped out? An idea was born, a special young people visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration Opopulation perished at the hands of another Amalek, memorial candle with yellow wax, in remembrance of the camp. This reflects the importance of teaching our youth an Austrian house painter who seized control of Europe and yellow stars forced upon European Jews in the 1930s. the lessons of the Holocaust and of remembering the Six threw the earth into darkness. God’s light unto the other The Yellow Candle™ was created in 1981 by FJMC Million. In addition, the program logo is a yellow Magen nations flickered but did not die. A new, modern Exodus arose clubs in Canada, New England and elsewhere to keep alive David (Star of David) outlined with barbed wire, with the from the depths of despair and tragedy. From the ashes of the memory of the Six Million who perished in the Shoah. word “Jude” in the middle. This preserves the memory of Europe, survivors of the Holocaust, or Shoah, made their way The Candle is modeled after a traditional Jewish memorial the armband or cloth patch that Jews were forced to wear towards new lives. Emigrants dispersed around the world, Yahrzeit candle that burns for 24 hours during periods in the ghettos of Eastern Europe. to the new State of Israel and to the western hemisphere. In of mourning and on the Yahrzeit anniversary of a family Never Forget! Zachor! these places, they began to rebuild shattered lives. In the member. The candle’s yellow wax serves to remind us of following decades, survivors asked another question. How the yellow arm band which Jews were forced to wear during Contact Us could Yahrzeits be observed for those victims whose entire the Nazi regime. A photo on the candle container shows [email protected] 1-800-391-7293 visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 21

with us,” said Irene Weiss, 84, of Fairfax, Survivors return to Auschwitz Va., who traveled with her daughter Lesley. Her key message to today’s youth: “[Don’t] be deceived by demagogues.” determined to share their stories On Monday at a ceremony for visiting survivors, Spielberg, whose Oscar-winning A source who asked not to be named said movie “Schindler’s List” was filmed partly ceremony organizers from the Auschwitz in Krakow, told the survivors, “I found my Museum had simply wanted to create a own voice and my own Jewish identity good photo op, with survivors flanked by thanks to you.” dignitaries. But this faux pas brought past Spielberg, whose USC Shoah Foundation and present together in a disturbing way for has interviewed more than 50,000 Holocaust some, against the backdrop of the Birkenau survivors since it was founded 21 years gate — dressed up and lit to look like a ago, said he was first confronted with the stage set. Holocaust as a child reading the numbers on At the event, Ronald Lauder, president the arms of survivors being taught English by of the World Jewish Congress, addressed his grandparents in Cincinnati, Ohio. the crowd. Edgar Wildfeuer, 90, came here this “Auschwitz never goes away,” he said. week from Argentina with his daughter, “This awful place stands as a reminder Doris Wildfeuer, wanting to show her both that propaganda leads to anti-Semitism the camp he survived and city where he … that anti-Semitism will grow if nobody grew up: Krakow, with its parks and market speaks out.” squares, its church spires and streetcars. Anti-Semitism, he said, “leads to places They planned to visit the street where he like Auschwitz.” had lived and the synagogue where he had Auschwitz survivor Marcel Tuchman, 93, meets with Jewish students in Krakow on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by Soviet soldiers, He added: “After the recent events in his bar mitzvah. Jan. 26, 2015. (Toby Axelrod) Paris and throughout Europe and around the Wildfeuer, who was deported to world, I cannot ignore what is happening Auschwitz in 1944, lost 32 relatives. http://www.jta.org Roman Kent, president of the today. Jews are targeted in Europe once “I was the only one left,” he said. by Toby Axelrod International Auschwitz Committee, which again because they are Jews.” Still, his daughter said, “He wanted to was founded by a group of Auschwitz The ceremony was the culmination of show me not only that place but the place RAKOW, Poland (JTA) — What survivors, said his experience in the camp several days of events and meetings attended where he grew up and was happy.” Kkept you alive? Did your non-Jewish was “more than enough to keep me awake friends reject you? Could you ever forgive? at night until the end of time.” Those were some of the questions He added: “How can I ever forget the posed by Jewish young adults to Holocaust smell of burning flesh that permeated the survivor Marcel Tuchman on Monday at the air” or “the cries of children torn from their Galicia Jewish Museum here. mother’s arms.” “What kept me alive was having While survivors cannot forget, others my father with me,” said Tuchman, 93, a simply must remember. Otherwise, Kent physician from New York who was born in said, “the conscience of mankind would be Poland and survived several concentration buried alongside the victims.” camps, including Auschwitz. “And another Tuesday’s memorial was sponsored by thing was the hope I had that one day I will the World Jewish Congress, the USC Shoah be able to tell the story to the likes of you, Foundation and Discovery Communications, so you can tell it to the next generation.” whose subsidiary, Discovery Education, His meeting with young Jews was is working with the Shoah Foundation one of many such encounters taking place to develop digital teaching materials in and around Krakow on the occasion of about Auschwitz. The event also featured the 70th anniversary of the Soviet army’s the screening of a short documentary, liberation of Auschwitz, where an estimated “Auschwitz,” co-directed by the famed 1.1 million people were murdered — many filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who started of them gassed. the Shoah Foundation. On Tuesday, in a tent set up around the In a moment of disequilibrium, A view of Birkenau, the site of the memorial ceremony. (Toby Axelrod) gaping entrance to the Auschwitz-adjacent survivors watched the film about their Birkenau concentration camp, survivors and former place of imprisonment, sitting in in total by some 300 Holocaust survivors. Tuchman, too, recalled a happy their companions were joined by dignitaries front of the very gate through which cattle Few of them were actually liberated at childhood in Poland. But when the question from more than 40 countries for ceremonies cars once passed, delivering so many Jews Auschwitz. But all passed through its gates. of forgiveness came up before the youthful that may well mark the final time that so many to their deaths. Just outside the tent, a light Today they are in their 80s and 90s, crowd on Monday evening, he paused. Auschwitz survivors are together here again. snow was falling on the remaining barracks and fit enough to have traveled from Israel, “Forgiveness is a very complicated Halina Birenbaum, who survived of Birkenau, surrounded by barbed wire. America, Argentina and elsewhere. thing,” Tuchman said. After the war, he Auschwitz as a child, described to the crowd For some guests, the entire ceremony A group of survivors who was to visit testified on behalf of a German engineer of 3,000 her impressions of the Nazi camp 45 began on a bizarre note: with ushers the Auschwitz exhibit on Monday never who had overseen slave laborers, including miles east of Krakow, calling it “a bottomless instructing survivors and their children, got beyond the infamous gate, marked Tuchman himself, in Auschwitz. pit of hell that I could not get out of.” grandchildren, friends, to enter the tent “Arbeit Macht Frei” — so crowded was But Tuchman also dealt out his own “All around us was electric barbed through separate doors and sit apart. All this, this threshold with eager journalists who justice. In postwar Germany, he and a fellow wire. Rows of barracks, stinking mud … mere steps from where they had been selected had come from around the world. And yet survivor spied a man who had tortured them. a disgusting mass of people all in lousy upon arrival some 72 years ago, told to go to the hubbub didn’t seem to faze them a bit. In “He was a sadist: He pounded on our wet rags, with numbers and shaven heads,” one side while their parents, siblings, spouses fact, most of the visitors seemed determined stomachs when we were sick with diarrhea,” she said. “Those gray faces with legs like and children were sent to the other. to tell their stories to all who inquired. Tuchman recalled. “We recognized him on sticks, wearing those muddy clogs. Nothing Marcel and his son, Jeffrey, were among “I know that we’re getting old and have the street and grabbed him, and beat the hell reminded you of anything human.” those who politely refused to be parted. to make sure that the memory doesn’t die out of him.”.

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 22 together Spring 2015 George Gerzon friends, borne of his helpfulness and He continued to change and grow congeniality. Adored and treasured father throughout his life. For decades he had GERZON, George of Canton. Died and father-in-law of Jack and Susan, and had no desire to visit Germany, the country January 30, 2015 at the age of 92. A Elan. Loving Zaida of Jessica and Alex, which had betrayed his family, but in his 70’s, Holocaust survivor who immigrated to the Sam and Andrea, Daniel and Naomi, accompanied his wife on a tour of Berlin. United States after the war with his wife and and Rebecca. Proud great-grandfather While there, he met with a former third- son. Beloved husband of the late Gertrude of Annabel Rose. He will be lovingly grade (non-Jewish) classmate, speaking and (Blenkitner) Gerzon. Devoted father of remembered and deeply missed by his listening for hours. He realized that he and Ben Gerzon and his wife Kathy of Broken nieces, nephews, family and friends in his classmate had been both caught in the tide Arrow, OK, Shirley Papp and her husband North America, Europe and Israel. of history, and forgave him. Julia Welcher Alexander of Tewksbury, MA, Helen In recent months, he and his wife relocated Goransson and her husband Paul of Eliot, to a senior residence after 54 years in their 2/12/1926 - 12/29/2014 ME and Len Gerzon and his wife Nancy stefan Weinberg home in Queens. After a brief adjustment, he Dallas, Tx - Born in Poznan, Poland where of Amherst, NH. Loving brother to his settled in. He played piano, accompanying she survived the Holocaust after the loss of late brother and two late sisters. Cherished Stefan Weinberg of Purchase, NY on the visiting rabbi’s Friday services, as well as her entire family. She met and married Alex grandfather of Sara Gerzon, Kirimi Fuller January 11, 2015. Holocaust Survivor of entertaining residents in the lounge with jazz Welcher and they immigrated to Hot Springs, and her husband Kevin, Jonathan Papp, The Krakow Ghetto, Plaszow, Buchenwald, and popular music. Ark in 1949, then settled in Lafayette, La Peter Goransson and his wife Rachel, Jenny Gross Rosen and Sonnenberg concentration He was deeply attached to his mother, where they owned and operated a successful Goransson and her husband Glenn Sewell camps. Passed away in Aventura, FL. He Lotte, who died in 2003 at the age of 100. shoe business and raised their three children. and great grandfather to Elijah Gerzon. was predeceased three years ago to the He leaves behind his wife of 60 years, Ellen After the death of her husband in 1988, she He was a proud 50 year member of the day by his dear wife of 68 years, Anna. He (Platt) Loewenthal; his sister, Erika Reis; moved to Dallas to be with her children and Masons. is survived by his three loving sons Saul, his two daughters and their spouses, Laura grandchildren. She was an avid Mah Jongg Bill and Ted; daughters-in-law Audrey and (Loewenthal) and Robert Fechter, and Rabbi player and an excellent cook, quite famous Franne. He was the devoted grandfather of Amy Loewenthal and Dale Rosenberg; two for her strudel. However, her greatest joy Nathan Gutman Blake, Jordan, Taylor and Adam. Cherished grandchildren, Michael and Arielle Fechter; was being “Bubbie” to the grandchildren, son of the late Blanka. and two great-grandchildren, Aiden and who adored her. She was preceded in GUTMAN, Nathan Age 87, Holocaust Holden Fechter. death by her parents, brother, her husband Survivor, of Simsbury, CT, formerly of Israel, and a granddaughter, Sarah Hirsch. She is died on January 28, 2015. Beloved husband Herbert Rolf Loewenthal survived by her children, Clemens Welcher of Zahava (Kaplan) Gutman for 61 years. Rae Weiss Lafayette, La, Isabell Welcher Rossignol, Devoted father of Abe Gutman and Karen 1925 - 2015 Helen and Julian Hirsch all of Plano, TX. Halperin Gutman of Washington Crossing, H e r b e r t R a e W e i s s nee Grandchildren Kirk Welcher and partner PA, Tania and Michael Gray of Brookline Loewenthal passed Hoffman, “A Woman Daniel Hight Dallas/New York, NY , Melissa and Ilana Temple of Vienna, VA. Cherished away early in the Of Valor”, 92, and Brad Welcher, Plano, Tx. Kimberly grandfather of Jennifer, Erica, Jonathan and morning of January beloved wife of the and Juan Montini Astoria, NY, Joshua Arie Gutman, Zachary, Jordan, Adam and 11, 2015, at the age late Benjamin for 50 Rossignol Aspen, CO, and Leah and John Daniel Gray, Jedidiah, Caleb, Noah, Jace and of 89, from a sudden years. Loving Ferguson Frisco, TX. Great Granchildren Eli Temple. cardiac arrest. mother of Jerry (Liz) Bree Welcher, Alexis Welcher, Julia Montini, He was a sweet, Weiss, Robert Javier Montini, Alex Ferguson, Sophia warm, and scholarly man, with a gentle sense (Karen nee Kaplan) Ferguson and Nicholas Ferguson. Leslie Prince of humor. Leaving Plauen, Germany as a Weiss and Helen (Hillel) Singer. Cherished Holocaust refugee at the age of 11 with his grandmother of 8. Adored great PRINCE, LESLIE 87, of Aventura, Florida family in 1936, he grew up in Washington grandmother of Vivian, the newest joy in Esther Mudrick passed away after a long battle with Parkinson’s Heights, NYC. her life. Devoted sister of the late Frida (the disease and a stroke. Leslie, a Holocaust He was proud to serve his adopted country late Harry) Litke, Moshe and Josef. September 10, 1917 - December 27, 2014 Survivor and true humanitarian was the in WWII in Okinawa in the Navy’s construction Treasured sister in law of Frances (Albert) MUDRICK, ESTHER (BORNSTEIN), consummate ‘Gentleman’ with the utmost brigade, the “SeaBees.” Simon. Holocaust survivor. 97, passed away December 27, 2014. Born integrity, honesty and moral excellence. His In his long-standing career in education, he Published in Chicago Tribune on Jan. 5, in Poland, she was the daughter of the late family was his universe. Leslie’s wife of 65 was an elementary school reading specialist, 2015 Moshe and Chaya (Platner) Bornstein. years, Toby, his daughters and son-in-laws, taught third and fourth grade, and served as a Esther stemmed from the Gur(Gerri) Pearl and Sonny Levitt, Susan and John vice principal. In his professional life as in all Chasidim. Turchin, grandchildren Eric, Lukana, Brian, other aspects of his life, he was patient, kind, Nina Feldman She was a Holocaust survivor who Ashley, Jordan, Rachel, and great-grandsons and encouraging. overcame many hardships. Even though she Luke and Jett, were the loves of his life and his A lifelong learner, upon retiring from Nina Feldman Holocaust survivor, of and her late husband Ezra came to the USA pride and joy. teaching, he returned to school to get a Master’s Palm Beach, Fla., formerly of Millburn, after the Holocaust without money they often degree in Library Science, using his new skills N.J., died on Jan. 2, 2015 A Holocaust went without because they wanted to make as a librarian for the Merchant Marine Academy survivor who was born in Poland, Nina sure their only daughter would receive a good Zwi Waserman in Kings Point. lost all of her family during World War Jewish Education and Jewish values so they He loved listening to classical music but II. She and her husband, Mark, came to sent her first to Providence Hebrew Day School December 25, 1926 - January 15, 2015 played jazz standards and popular music the United States in 1948. She worked and later on to the Jewish Stern College in Passed away peacefully in his eighty- from the 40’s and 50’s on piano. In recent as a dental technician in New York New York. ninth year, in Florida. Known as “Mr. years he volunteered as an entertainer in City before devoting her full time to Esther was a dedicated and devoted wife to Fix-It”, he had the remarkable capacity senior residences, and was active in a local raising her two sons, Samuel and Joseph. her husband who was ill during much of their for ingenious solutions to any problem; yet archeological society. Predeceased by her husband, Mark, also married life. he was unable to fix his broken heart after He loved Jewish texts and Torah. His a Holocaust survivor, she is survived by In the last few years of her life she was the passing of Rachel, his beloved wife of favorite texts were Jonah, the Psalms, her two sons of Short Hills, N.J., and five “adopted” by the high school girls at the over sixty-four years, several months ago. Pirkei Avot and Job. He was keenly grandchildren, Marin Erica Feldman, Providence Hebrew Day School/NEAT He survived the Holocaust, but his parents, interested in Mussar -- Jewish ethics. He Aliza Stacy Feldman, Jenna Lauren – New England Academy of Torah, who grandparents, six siblings, aunts, uncles had a second Bar Mitzvah at the age of Feldman, Jacob Aaron Feldman (Robin) became like her surrogate granddaughters and most cousins perished. His undaunted 83, where he chanted from the Torah and and Miriam Stephanie Feldman. and made her last years more joyous ones spirit helped him overcome many of life’s gave a sermon reflecting on his life and all Published in Star-Ledger on Jan. 4, 2015 terrible challenges. Missed by his many its changes. continued on p. 23 visit our website at www.amgathering.org together Spring 2015 23

continued from p. 22 his computer playing yet another game of Malka bridge. More than anything, John loved (Molly) because of the love and affection they being a doctor. From the time he was a small Perman bestowed upon her. child, he knew that he would practice She is survived by her daughter Chaya medicine. His father’s last words to him Malka (Molly) Bouganim and her husband Shimon; her were to never lose sight of his dream. He Perman was born grandchildren Yitzhak Moshe, Yosef David, was nine years old. John’s practice Malka Fajerman Shlomit Mazal and their spouses; her great- specialized in geriatrics and he was very in Ryki, Poland on grandchildren Lior, Inbar, Ori, and Liad; and her fond of his patients, many of whose children February 15, 1911. She was the oldest of 3 they went back to Poland to find surviving two nieces Gitta Katz and Regina Navidal - all also became his patients. His uncanny knack sisters. After her father died in the influenza relatives. Malka found that none of her of whom live in Israel. to diagnose illnesses was remarkable. John epidemic of 1918 her mother remarried and family had survived. Like many other Jews is survived by his wife of 29 years, Millie, she had two half-brothers. She lived on a they made their way to the displaced persons daughter Suzanne Liberman of Canada, farm until 1938 when she married Fiszel camps that had been set up. They were in Dr John Pataki daughter Sylvia Vermeulen and husband (Philip) Perman who was from Warsaw. Hifgeismar, Germany where a daughter William of Houston, grandchildren Justin, They moved to Warsaw and were there when Chaya Ita (Eileen) was born and then in PATAKI, Dr. John Jarid, Michael and Nicole and stepchildren war broke out September 1, 1939. They had Landsberg , Germany. In May 1950 they Peacefully, in his Sharon and Joey Daniel. John was proud of a son, Yitchak, and the three ran from the arrived in New York. Malka spent the rest of sleep, Dr. John Pataki his heritage and the fact that he was a Warsaw Ghetto to the Bialystok Ghetto and her life in the Bronx. She never lost her love passed away after a Holocaust survivor. Together with his from there were deported to Siberia. Their of Jewish culture and loved to sing Yiddish courageous and hard- mother, the late Maria Pataki, he fled son died in Siberia of pneumonia but Malka songs with her three granddaughters, Dara, fought battle. Hungary to Canada in 1956 where he and Fiszel persevered and went with many Dawn, and Erica. She lived to see the birth Beloved husband, fulfilled his dream of becoming a doctor. other Jews to Tashkent where they remained of two great- grandchildren. She died on father, grandfather John moved his family to Texas in 1977 until the war ended. Never having taken January 1, 2015 just six weeks short of her and bridge player where he lived until his death. Russian citizenship they were allowed to 104th birthday. extraordinaire, he would often be found at leave the Soviet Union after the war and

A Passover message from our President Luxembourg wartime continued from p. 1 could so many people become accomplices commitment to freedom and justice, and a bosses ‘willingly helped to inexplicable cruelty? How could they continued dedication to all our endeavors pretend not to see, not to hear, not want of remembrance. to know, not stop the genocide, while Let me conclude with the following Nazis find Jews’ millions of our people were murdered? closing lines of the poem, entitled “The http://www.timesofisrael.com the administration did not hesitate to take the Our infinite loss and grief is also Oath” by the Israeli poet Avraham Shlonsky: initiative,” it said. a powerful source of commitment – to In the presence of eyes uxembourg’s wartime bosses willingly Luxembourg was neutral when Germany our values, hopes, and faith in the future. Which witnessed the slaughter Lcooperated with German Nazis in the invaded in 1940, and was eventually annexed. From the depth of destruction we brought Which saw the oppression persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, a There was a national uprising and a general forth a new spirit to rebuild our lives, to The heart could not bear, government-commissioned study determined. strike after the annexation. Once that reestablish families, to raise a wonderful We have taken an oath: The report by a panel of historians was suppressed, the Germans instituted generation of children and grandchildren To remember it all, led by Vincent Artuso of the University of mandatory military conscription for men. – the living bridge between our past and To remember, not once to forget! Luxembourg was published on Tuesday, two A discovery in 2013 by historian Denis our future. We have instilled in them a Forget not one thing to the last years after it was commissioned by Jean- Scuto of a list of 280 Jewish children pride in our heritage, love for humanity, generation! Claude Juncker, a former prime minister of transported to their deaths generated a public the small, landlocked country situated on debate that prompted former prime minister Belgium’s border with France and Germany. Juncker to commission the study on local “The Luxembourg administrations under complicity during the Holocaust. occupation were not forced to participate in According to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Speech of World Jewish Congress Nazi anti-Semitic persecution under threat,” museum in Jerusalem, Luxembourg had President Ronald S. Lauder at the 190-page report said. 3,500 Jews before Germany invaded, of “They collaborated once they were invited whom 1,945 were murdered in death camps Auschwitz on January 27, 2015 to by the occupier and often fulfilled their task and in the country itself. Only a few Jews continued from p. 2 with diligence, zeal even — certain heads of returned after the war. There are representatives from 40 of another country should be excluded nations here with us today and we, the from the family of nations. Every To submit an obituary please Jewish people, are so grateful that you government must have absolutely zero follow these guidelines: have joined us. You are good, decent tolerance for hate of any kind. people. But because of where we are and Unless this is checked right now, it 1. All obituaries should be submitted electronically to luis@ what this place means your governments will be too late. We still have a chance to americangathering.org must stand up to this new wave of hatred. stop this, but if every government does Schools must teach tolerance of not act quickly, then the tragedy of this 2. Obituaries should not exceed 300 words all people. Houses of worship should terrible place will darken our world again. 3. A photo may be included but is not necessary be places of love, understanding, and World silence led to Auschwitz. healing. They should not be telling World indifference led to 4. Obituaries may be edited to accommodate available space their people to kill in the name of god. Auschwitz. 5. Obituaries received after printing deadline will be printed in the All countries and the European Union World anti-Semitism led to next issue must make hate a crime. Any country Auschwitz. that openly brags about the annihilation Do not let this happen again.

visit our website at www.amgathering.org 24 together Spring 2015 Please Support Our Programs - We Need Your Help Sam E. Bloch Roman R. Kent

This and the other programs of the American Gathering of Decades ago, Vladka Meed had a vision about the unique role Jewish Holocaust Survivors have made a definite and lasting impact that truly exceptional teachers could play in advancing quality Holocaust in many crucial areas, but two in particular stand out. We have education. Those teachers -- inspired, dedicated and passionate -- are been on the front lines in the battle to obtain proper reparations now having that kind of impact in schools all around the country. funding and maintain restitution for survivors, working to modify and increase benefits to accommodate the needs of our aging Sara Bloomfield, population. We are partners with the United States Holocaust director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Memorial Museum in the maintenance of the Survivor Registry which provides valuable information to those seeking relatives Pilgrimage is the most ancient and still one of the most powerful and to scholars researching the history of the Shoah. We publish of rituals. First begun by the legendary heroine of the Warsaw Ghetto this paper and provide an online newsletter with the latest updates Uprising Vladka Meed, this pilgrimage of the Holocaust and Jewish on pertinent information for our readership. And on the education Resistance Teacher’s Program is a significant journey of the soul and front, our Teachers’ Program has served more than 1000 educators of the mind. These teachers are accompanied by skilled educators all over the United States, who in turn have influenced more than and they meet some of the world’s most distinguished scholars in one million students. a travelling seminar. What they see and what they learn and what Our work is not done. As long as survivors are alive, we must they begin to understand makes them better educators committed insure that their needs are met. Even at this late date we are partnering to teaching the history of the Holocaust and its implications for with the Claims Conference and the World Jewish Restitution our day and our time. Organization to help Polish survivors receive additional aid. The information is inside this edition of TOGETHER. Michael Berenbaum, We need your help. Please enable us to keep these projects going director, Sigi Ziering Institute at American Jewish University by making a generous donation to the American Gathering of Jewish The Teacher’s Program of the American Gathering is recognized Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. Your contribution makes as one of the most original and important educational initiatives, all the difference in the world. enabling educators at public high schools across the United States to teach about the Holocaust from the perspective of the survivors. This summer, thanks to your generous support, our Teachers’ Program will again travel to the authentic sites of the Holocaust in Poland and Germany, with 25 participants selected from hundreds Sam E. Bloch Roman R. Kent of applicants President Chairman

Please make a meaningful tax deductible contribution American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants 122 West 30th Street, Suite 304A, New York, NY 10001 The American Gathering now accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover by phone. (212) 239-4230 All credit card orders and donations will be processed through PayPal. “If you prefer to contribute by mail, please send your check and form to us.”

Name: ______Address: ______City: State: Zip: Phone: ______E-mail: ______Mastercard Visa American Express Discover Amount:______/______Credit Card Number Expiration Date Security Code visit our website at www.amgathering.org