AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR

Vol. 46-No. 1 ISSN 0892-1571 September/October 2019-Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 “TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE… AND A THREEFOLD CORD CANNOT QUICKLY BE BROKEN” n Sunday, November 17, 2019, the are leaders of numerous organizations, including membrance for their grandparents, and to rein- American Society for Yad Vashem AIPAC, WIZO, UJA, and American Friends of force their commitment to Yad Vashem so that will be honoring three generations of Rambam Hospital. the world will never forget. Oone family at our Annual Tribute Din- Jonathan and Sam Friedman have been ll three generations, including ner in . The Gora-Sterling-Fried- deeply influenced by Mona, David and their ex- David’s three children — Ian and his man family reflects the theme of this year’s traordinary grandparents, Jack and Paula. Grow- wife Laura, Jeremy and his wife Tribute Dinner, which comes from Kohelet. “Two ing up, they both heard Jack tell his story of AMorgan, and Melissa — live in the are better than one… and a threefold cord can- survival and resilience at the Yom HaShoah pro- greater New York City area. They gather often, not quickly be broken” (4:9-12). All three gener- ations are proud supporters of Yad Vashem and are deeply committed to the mission of Holo- caust remembrance and education. Paula and Jack Gora will receive the ASYV Remembrance Award, Mona and David Sterling will receive the ASYV Achievement Award, and Samantha and Jonathan Friedman and Paz and Sam Friedman will receive the ASYV Young Leadership Award. Jack Gora was born in , , in 1920 and lived with his parents and sister, Mar- illa, always surrounded by extended family. Jack had a zest for life and grew to be a mischievous child and a survivor with a remarkably vivacious spirit. During the Shoah, Jack fled to Lvov, where he was arrested and sent to Rybinsk. He spent seven years in hard labor, enduring perilous con- ditions working in lumber camps in Siberia, and then in coal mines during his conscription in the Russian army. After the war, Jack joined his mother, who had miraculously survived, unlike the rest of her fam- ily. His sister Marilla, a Polish and Jewish patriot, having been betrayed by her own housekeeper, took her own life, rather than allowing the Nazis to do so. In New York City, Jack met and married Paula, also from Poland, whose family had been in Japan during the war years. Jack and Paula settled on Long Island, raising their daughters, The Gora-Sterling-Friedman family. Mona and Bonnie, in a home filled with love, fam- ily and Judaism. gram at their Jewish day school. As an adult, joined by Sam and Paz’s young children Abra- Mona married David Sterling in 2006 at the Mona, too, listened and learned the details from ham and Benjamin, Bonnie and her husband Southern Wall of the Kotel in . They which her father had shielded her as a child. Tod, their daughters Rachel and Sofia, and the share a dedication to family and a deep commit- In 2018, Jonathan traveled on the Yad rest of the remarkable Gora-Sterling-Friedman ment to Yad Vashem’s mission of Holocaust re- Vashem Generation to Generation Mission. family. membrance and education, the strength of the Deeply inspired, Jonathan, Samantha, Paz and We hope you will join us in honoring this Jewish people, and the State of . David is Sam became trustees of Yad Vashem. They are wonderful family and their commitment to Yad a board member of the ASYV, and he and Mona forever proud to carry the torch of Holocaust re- Vashem. Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780

of running or begging for his life, he walked up to HOW POETRY SAVED THE the German and told him, “I’m glad I met you. Do you know where I can go, where there are no Ger- mans?” The sentry allowed him to escape, and a LIFE OF A WRITER non-Jewish woman hid him in her potato cellar hen Yiddish poet Avraham Jewish Rom Printing House in because until he joined the partisans, Sutzkever said. Sutzkever said that poetry “Jewish bravery that lies in words must echo in From the partisans, his poems and some res- saved his life, he meant it more the world in bullets,” as Sutzkever wrote. cued documents reached Moscow, providing literally than many of his listen- And still another verse recounts how Bruno early and chilling evidence of what was happen- W ing to the Jews of . The texts reached ers realized. Kittel, the Nazi SS officer who oversaw the liqui- In 1944, Sutzkever and his wife, Freydke, dation of the , executed a man while key individuals in Moscow’s wartime literary needed to walk through a minefield to reach the holding a pistol in one hand and playing a piano scene, including the Jewish writer Ilya Ehren- plane that would take them to freedom. And to with the other. burg, who was one of the few intellectuals that do so, they stepped to the rhythm of poetic meter Becoming a ghetto diarist — he began dating Stalin trusted. — short, short, long, and sometimes long, short, his poems and composing a new one nearly In 1944, a Red Army plane was sent to retrieve long. every day during his incarceration in 1941 — did the Sutzkevers from near the partisan camp, His poems about in Vilnius and not come naturally to Sutzkever. Before the war, where Freydke acted as a nurse. But it was his role in saving priceless Jewish texts from the his focus on nature’s beauty, as he recalled it downed by German anti-aircraft fire. A second Nazis led the Soviet authorities — likely Joseph from his childhood in Siberia, made him an out- plane was sent two weeks later. The Sutzkevers Stalin himself — to send not one but two rescue sider to Vilnius’ Yiddish literary scene, with its so- had to traverse a minefield to reach it. missions into Nazi-occupied Lithuania to fly the cialist and political themes. “Part of the time, I walked in anapests, some Sutzkevers to Moscow. Two years later he was In the ghetto, Sutzkever’s poems turned of the time I walked in amphibrachs,” Sutzkever tasked with testifying on behalf of the Soviet macabre, particular and personal. The most chill- told his friend and translator Dory Manor, refer- Union at the Nuremberg trials in aiming ing example is his description of holding the life- ring to lines of poetic meter. With Freydke walk- to bring Nazi criminals to justice. less body of his and Freydke’s first child. Born at ing in his footprints, “I immersed myself within a rhythm of melody and to that rhythm we walked a kilometer through a minefield and came out on the other side,” Sutzkever later wrote. He was carrying a suitcase made of metal sal- vaged from the wings of the first rescue airplane. It contained historical documents, including a program of a concert of the Vilna Ghetto Philhar- monic orchestra. (Nearly all its players had been murdered already by the time Sutzkever brought the brochure to Moscow.) wo years after his extraction, which was featured on the front page of the Communist Party daily Pravda, T Sutzkever testified at the Nuremberg trials in Germany. He wanted to deliver his testi- mony in Yiddish, but Soviet authorities forced him to do it in Russian. In 1947, the Soviets allowed Sutzkever to em- igrate. New York, where he would have expected Avraham Sutzkever, right, before World War II in Vilnius, Lithuania. a warm embrace from that city’s Yiddish literary Nearly a decade after his death in 2010 in Is- the ghetto hospital, the newborn was poisoned scene, would have been the obvious choice. In- rael, Sutzkever’s astonishing life story is being immediately after birth at the orders of the Nazis, stead, the Sutzkevers chose war-torn, pre-state told on film for the first time in an award-winning who forbade births there. Israel, where Yiddish was marginalized by a gov- documentary co-produced by his granddaugh- “I wanted to swallow you whole my child / ernment that reviled it as an ugly consequence ter, Hadas Calderon-Sutzkever, with funding when I felt your little body cooling between my of living in the Diaspora. from the Claims Conference. fingers / like a warm cup of tea,” he wrote. Nevertheless, Sutzkever established a highly “You could take Sutzkever’s life from begin- Sutzkever’s mother also was murdered near regarded Yiddish-language weekly in Israel, Di ning to end and it would be the most astonishing the ghetto, and he wrote about that, too. His fa- Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain), which re- guide to the most dramatic moments in Jewish ther had died in Siberia when he was 7, forcing mained active for 46 years until its closure in history of the 20th century,” Yiddish scholar Ruth the family to move to Vilnius. 1995. Wisse says in the film, which is titled Black In what seems like a trauma-induced delu- In Israel, Sutzkever was recognized early on Honey: The Life and Poetry of Avraham sion, Sutzkever said he believed that producing as one of the Yiddish language’s great poets — Sutzkever. It won the Yad Vashem award for excellent poetry would make him indestructible Dan Miron, the Yiddish scholar and literary critic, movies about the Holocaust at last year’s to the Nazis. This could explain his extraordinary has crowned him “the king of Yiddish prose in the Jerusalem Film Festival. willingness to risk his own life. second half of the 20th century.” But at his death Sutzkever’s accounts from the Vilna ghetto in As a writer in the ghetto, he was tasked in at the age of 96, Sutzkever remained largely un- Lithuania, which he wrote and dated in descriptive 1943 with sorting and cataloging select Jewish known to consumers of mainstream literature in poems, are among the most unusual and affecting writings that the Nazis wanted to preserve for Israel despite having won the country’s highest testimonies from that hell on Earth. Only 1 percent their archives about their annihilation of Euro- literary distinction, the Israel Prize, in 1985. of the approximately 40,000 prisoners survived. pean Jewry. But Sutzkever and a handful of Sutzkever didn’t lose his voice in his new One of the poems, “The Teacher Mira,” heart- other members of the “paper brigade” risked their country, and he composed one of the longest breakingly chronicles how teacher Mira Bern- lives to smuggle and stash hundreds of priceless and most complex poems ever written about Is- stein cared for her dwindling flock of charges in writings that are in Israel today thanks to their ac- rael’s War of Independence, Spiritual Earth. the ghetto — orphans whose parents had been tions. All of a sudden, “he was able to renew himself murdered. Sutzkever named one of his two In 1943, Sutzkever and his wife escaped the and Yiddish poetry with unprecedented material,” daughters Mira for that teacher. ghetto. said Benny Mer, a writer and Yiddish translator. Another poem documents how partisans During the escape, a German sentry spotted made weapons from the large lead plates of the Sutzkever after curfew, the poet recalled. Instead BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ, JTA September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

ported, the rest — mother, grand- ISRAEL COLLECTS mother and the two children — sur- vived by assuming false, Christian identities. HOLOCAUST ITEMS AHEAD Zeiger recalls several close en- counters when their cover was nearly lost. Once, the Gestapo ar- OF POST-SURVIVOR WORLD rived in the early morning hours to nder a fluorescent light, an archivist against the growing tide of denial and minimiza- seize a Jewish family hiding in the from Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust tion of the around the world. ground floor of their building. When the Nazis memorial snaps photos and scans On May 2 Yad Vashem laid the cornerstone knocked on their third-floor door, a teenage into her mobile database the last of its new campus for the Shoah Heritage Col- Zeiger presented their fake papers in her fluent U French to convince them they had nothing to remnant that a pair of elderly siblings have of lections Center — the future permanent home for their long-lost father — a 1943 postcard Samuel its 210 million documents, 500,000 photographs, look for there. Akerman tossed in desperation out of the depor- 131,000 survivor testimonies, 32,400 artifacts “I’ve never felt that way in my life,” she re- tation train hurtling him toward his demise in the and 11,500 works of art related to the Holocaust. called from her quaint house in Ramat Gan, just Majdanek death camp. “The German Nazis were determined not only outside . “I had to vomit after they left. My “It’s what we have left from him,” said Rachel to annihilate the Jewish people, but also to oblit- whole body clenched.” Zeiger, his now 91-year-old daughter. “But this is erate their identity, memory, culture and her- After the war, they returned to to find not for the family. It is for the next generations.” itage,” said Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. their home ravaged. They waited there several With the world’s community of aging Holo- “By preserving these precious items ... and re- years, in the faint hope that their father would caust survivors rapidly shrinking, and their live vealing them to the public, we make sure they somehow return, before giving up and moving to testimonies soon to be a thing of the past, efforts will act as the voice of the victims and the sur- Israel. The postcard remained stashed away as a vestige of their painful past for more than 75 years, until Moshe Ak- erman heard of the Yad Vashem campaign seeking personal effects of aging sur- vivors. “My kids are glad I did it so that this testimony will exist, because otherwise you don’t talk about it,” said Akerman, 84. “It’s a small testimony to what happened, another drop in this sea of testimony. It doesn’t uncover anything new. The facts are known. What happened happened, and this is another small proof of it.” Besides rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps, the Nazis and their collaborators confiscated their possessions and stole their valuables, leaving little be- hind. Those who survived Israeli Holocaust survivors Rachel Zeiger, 91, center, and her brother Moshe Akerman, 84, left, speak with Orit Noiman, head of Yad Vashem’s collection often had just a small item or and registration center, at their home at the city of Ramat Gan, Israel. With the world’s community of aging Holocaust survivors rapidly shrinking, two they managed to keep. and their live testimonies soon to be a thing of the past, Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial is preparing for a world without them. Many have clung to the senti- such as these have become the forefront of vivors and serve as an everlasting memory.” mental objects ever since. preparing for a world without them. Samuel Akerman’s jarring letter to his family But with the next generation often showing lit- Through its “Gathering the Fragments” pro- will soon join the collected assortment. tle interest in maintaining the items, and their gram, Yad Vashem has collected some 250,000 y heart is bitter. I unfortu- means of properly preserving them limited, Yad items from survivors and their families in recent nately have to inform you that Vashem launched “Gathering the Fragments” in years, to be stored for posterity and displayed I, together with 950 other 2011 to collect as many artifacts as possible be- online in hopes of preserving the memory of the people, am headed toward fore the survivors — and their stories — were “M gone forever. Rather than exhibit them in its flag- 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, even after the an unknown destination,” he scribbled in shaky last of the survivors has passed away. handwriting to his two children on February 27, ship museum, Yad Vashem stores most of the Copious video testimonies have been filmed, 1943, from inside the packed transport. “I may items in a specialized facility and uploads repli- and even holograms have been produced, to try not be able to write you again ... pray to God that cas online for a far wider global reach. to recreate the powerful impact of a survivor’s we will joyfully see each other again. Don’t give “These items complement other material we recollection, which has been the staple of Holo- up hope and I am sure God will help us.” have and help us complete the puzzle of the vic- caust commemoration for decades. This year, an Akerman, a diamond merchant who dreamed tims’ stories,” explained Orit Noiman, head of Instagram account was created based on the of moving to pre-state Israel, was never heard Yad Vashem’s collection and registration center. real-life journal of a teenage Jewish victim to from again. “The personal item becomes part of the collec- make her story more accessible to a younger A bystander likely found the discarded post- tive national memory. With the clock ticking and generation. card on the ground and mailed it to Zeiger and the survivors leaving us, this is what we can With the passing of time, any physical links to her younger brother, Moshe, in occupied France, make accessible to the public.” the Holocaust and its victims have become valu- where they had fled from their home in able means of remembrance and evidence after the Nazis invaded. After the father was de- BY ARON HELLER, Associated Press Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780

than just a Jewish problem.” Ironically, Nazis in America thought American veterans, unhappy HOLLYWOOD’S SPIES with their government benefits (like German Hollywood’s Spies: The Undercover Surveil- power and all it “promised” led them to see World War I veterans with their government), lance of Nazis in Los Angeles. “themselves as the vanguard of the international would eagerly join them in their efforts to bring By Laura B. Rosenzweig. New York Univer- National Socialist movement that would pave the Nazism to the United States and “overthrow the sity Press: New York, N.Y., 2017. 320 pp. $12.77 way for the new Jewish rulership [sic] which now exists.” But, that hardcover. German Em- was not the case at all! ....And who would come pire.” Soon after, to bankroll these willing veterans become spies “’Jews! Jews! Jews Everywhere!’ for the LAJCC? Hollywood movie moguls! OUT WITH THE JEWS!! with their goal of “tak[ing] back nterestingly, the substantial amount of in- LET WHITE PEOPLE RUN valuable information amassed by these un- THIS COUNTRY AS THEY DID the [United States] govern- dercover individuals would play a BEFORE THE JEWISH INVASION!” significant role in court cases and national he above noted is the content of a ment from Com- I congressional investigations — all of them shin- flyer disseminated not in Hitler’s Ger- munists and Jews” and re- ing a bright light on Fascism in the United States many nor in Nazi-occupied territories. and, concomitantly, making sure all Americans It was distributed in the United States placing it with a T Fascist one, were aware of this new and dangerous domestic in 1938, along with other “literature” just as hate- enemy. Additionally, the LAJCC’s own press ful — frequently arriving direct from Nazi Ger- “disparate pro- Nazi cells across agency published a weekly intelligence report on many — supplementing various Fascist Nazi activities in America called the News Letter, speakers and public rallies held here. Indeed, the United States” created distributed to “national opinion makers” and Nazism in the 1930s, cloaked in the misleading those who could make a difference. This, too, rhetoric of “patriotism,” tried very hard to gain a the national or- ganization known as Der Freunde des Neun helped expand the LAJCC’s influence and drive foothold in America. And, sadly, as polls taken home the treasonous aims of these domestic during those years reveal, many Americans were Deutschland, or Friends of the New Germany. Especially noteworthy here is the fact that the or- Fascists. In fact, the LAJCC, a local group, would open to its propaganda. Political, economic, and do as much for America’s Jews as other Jewish social uncertainty can do that to people . . . ganization was almost immediately “blessed by Nazi Party chief Rudolph Hess as the official organizations considered national, if not more. In Laura B. Rosenzweig’s book, Hollywood’s Hence, the Committee is most definitely deserv- Spies: The Undercover Surveillance of Nazis in Nazi Party in the United States.” Meanwhile, one of the first things the leader of this new group, ing of credit and historical acknowledgment. Los Angeles, we read the unknown and fascinat- In sum, Ms. Rosenzweig’s unique work easily ing story of the Los Angeles Jewish Community German-born Heinz Spanknoebel, did was cre- ate gauleiters or regional leaders . . . and an ag- earns its place in the library of all students of the Committee, a local organization which, as best it Holocaust generally. Why? Beyond telling the could, fought this growing anti-Semitism in Amer- gressive recruitment of members and followers began. story of a little-known Jewish organization, and ica. Moreover, in its own way, it would do this so the part Hollywood played in its efforts to protect well that it would come to play an important na- Luckily, in Los Angeles, a group called the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee America’s Jews, Hollywood Spies also clearly tional role. At the same time, where most re- shows why these selfsame Jews didn’t do more searchers of the period have “convicted” (LAJCC), led by two astute attorneys, Mendel Silberberg, and particularly, Leon Lewis, charged for their coreligionists suffering in Europe. The Hollywood movie moguls (most if not all of them answer: fear, and, more specifically, the fear that Jews) of showing little concern as regards with the day-to-day affairs of the Committee, dedicated themselves to doing all they could to what was happening to Europe’s Jews could Nazism and its infectious evils, in Hollywood’s happen to America’s Jews. Spies we discover how that wasn’t quite the undermine the growing Fascism in their midst. case. The LAJCC’s primary technique? The Commit- Nazism itself was actually brought to America tee hired non-Jewish American veterans to infil- REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN in the 1920s by Germans fleeing their country’s trate the Nazi organization, veterans who Professor of Media, Communication, and Visual economic depression. Hitler’s 1933 ascent to “believed that Nazis in Los Angeles were more Arts at Pace University FRANCE’S WAITING ROOM FOR AUSCHWITZ imon Gutman will spend this weekend it by pretending to be a five-star chef for SS offi- served as warehouses for property stolen from sitting quietly inside his Paris apart- cers. He could barely boil an egg. But, as a fellow the Jews of Paris. ment, contemplating the many friends prisoner warned him, it was a case of “cook or While so much is known about Eastern Euro- Sand family he has lost. die.” pean extermination camps, the true extent of Late August is a time when the city marks its Built in the 1930s, Drancy was once a mod- Gallic collaboration is less understood, in part liberation from Nazi occupation, and this year, ernist housing estate in the northeast Paris sub- because of shameful attempts at covering it up. three-quarters of a century since the start of the urbs before the occupying Germans decided to Finally, the French have admitted culpability six-day battle that finally forced the German gar- turn it into a holding pen for Jews and a small for the part they played in the Holocaust, but it rison to its knees, the celebrations are special. number of political prisoners. was only as recently as July 2012 that then-pres- But 95-year-old Mr. Gutman is in a more Its five-story apartment blocks were con- ident François Hollande publicly admitted that somber mood. He prefers to dwell on another verted into dormitory-style cells, and barbed-wire the deportation of Parisian Jews such as Gut- commemoration just a few days earlier, one fences and watchtowers were erected around man had been “a crime committed in France by which recalls the persecution of Parisian Jews the perimeter. France.” such as him. Letters from prisoners in the early days show Earlier this year, 49 survivors received the Recently, a dwindling band of survivors gath- a sense of baffled naivety. Fathers told their equivalent of £310,000 each in reparations for ered in the Paris suburbs to mark the liberation Parisian children they were “not far away” and France’s trains being used to deport them. of the Drancy camp, where Simon’s “would be home soon.” This was before Hitler The Nazis chose Drancy because it was next torment first began, a place known for good rea- had settled on his plan to eliminate European to Bourget-Drancy railway station, from which son as “the gateway to Auschwitz.” Jewry in its entirety. more than 70 deportation convoys of Jews would Thanks to astonishing good luck and no small There was an official capacity of 5,000 at the head across Europe to concentration camps amount of chutzpah, Simon survived one of the main center, and five subcamps were used for and, for the most part, to their deaths. bleakest episodes in human history, and he did “overflow” prisoners. These subcamps also (Continued on page 13) September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5

pposite the Dutch national bank in he said. in retaliation for a Nazi officer’s assassination. lies one of Europe’s To tackle this storytelling challenge, Lürsen Historians to this day do not know why the Ger- least conspicuous monuments to a focused on the most daring action undertaken by mans arrested van Hall. Owar hero. the brothers: The theft and cashing in of central- The relative obscurity of the van Halls’ story Titled “Fallen Tree,” the metal statue for re- bank bonds, which at that point was the largest- — despite its significance, it has been the sub- sistance fighter Walraven van Hall looks so real- scale bank robbery in European history. ject of only one dryly written book, in the 1990s istic that for months after its unveiling in 2010, “This one element of the story contains every- — owes to more than just its complexity. the municipality would receive calls reporting the thing you need in a Hollywood action film,” or many decades there was a re- artwork, whose brown-painted branches are Lürsen said. “It’s as easy to follow and full of sus- luctance in the banking industry strewn over a small square, as storm debris in pense as a casino heist.” of this country to go into the de- need of removal. Not everyone is pleased with the shortcuts “Ftails of the van Halls’ actions, be- A departure from the bombastic reliefs com- and artistic license that Lürsen and his team cause doing so would expose many of the memorating other European World War II he- have taken. system’s weak points,” Lürsen said. “No one roes, it’s a fitting tribute to van Hall. For decades Harm Ede Botje, a senior analyst for the Vrij wanted to publish a manual for mass bank he had gone unrecognized even in his own coun- Nederland magazine and an expert in World War fraud.” try, despite the fact that he used cunning and II history, accused the filmmakers of gratuitous But the industry changed over time, and the courage to save hundreds of Jews from the melodrama and disregard for historical detail in unofficial veil of silence that bedeviled historians’ Holocaust while inflicting painful damage on the a withering critique of the film in March. attempts to get to the bottom of the van Halls’ op- Nazi war machine before his execution by Ger- He noted a powerful scene in which an ex- eration was lifted. man soldiers in 1945. hausted van Hall, nicknamed Wallie, draws re- Gijsbert van Hall, the elder brother, who later Van Hall’s bravery for the first time has moved solve from seeing from the window of his train a became mayor of Amsterdam, kept a meticulous from obscurity to the mainstream thanks to the transport of Jews in cattle wagons zooming past record of each and every cent dispensed by his production of a multimillion- dollar feature film titled , which won the ’ na- tional award for best film in 2018 and is the country’s A FILM ON A FORGOTTEN submission to the Oscars. The film, in which the persecution of Jews plays a HOLOCAUST RESISTANCE central role, is the first treat- ment of its kind about the actions of van Hall and his FIGHTER brother, Gijsbert — mem- bers of a prominent banking family who for three years bankrolled the Dutch resist- ance, supplying it with the equivalent of $500 million. It’s a surprisingly long delay considering the scale of van Hall’s actions, which historians say helped make This Amsterdam monument commemorates Walraven van Hall. the one of Europe’s fiercest as fellow passengers look away in embarrass- operation. Auditors after the war found no dis- and most effective. There are also powerful dra- ment. But Ede Botje says that Jews were never crepancies in the bookkeeping after studying it matic elements in the van Hall story, a tale full of transported in the daytime in occupied Holland. for months. valor, betrayal, death, devotion — and even a In the film, the trigger for van Hall’s decision The Netherlands had many collaborators bank robbery of unprecedented proportions. to enter the resistance is the suicide of a Jewish with the Nazis, who helped murder 75 percent “When people think of the resistance … they family of former clients in Zaandam. But there is of the country’s Jewish population — the high- rarely think of the enormous amounts of money no evidence to suggest this is true — and no est death rate in Nazi-occupied Western Eu- that it cost to keep this organization — the resist- record of such a suicide in that suburb of Ams- rope. ance — running,” the film’s director, Joram terdam, according to Ede Botje. But for the size of its population and Jewish Lürsen, told JTA. “It’s true,” Lürsen said of how persecution of minority, it also had a vastly disproportionate But resistance leaders knew this all too well the Jews is highlighted and perhaps amplified in number of Righteous Among the Nations — when they were joined in 1942 by van Hall, an his film. “I made a film about two courageous 5,669 of them, the second-highest number in ex-marine with banking connections, whom Is- brothers, their lives, their love. Of course I had the world, trailing Poland’s 6,863. Many of the rael recognized in 1978 as a Righteous Among to make cinematographic and dramaturgical de- rescuers’ efforts were facilitated by the support the Nations — a non-Jew who risked his life to cisions, but it was important to include in a di- extended to them by the van Halls. save Jews during the Holocaust. gestible way the background. Should I have Holland also saw the first major show of pub- He and his brother stole the equivalent of spent less attention to the worst genocide in lic disobedience over the fate of the Jews in $250 million from Nazi-controlled coffers and Dutch history because I have no evidence of Nazi-occupied Europe in the so-called February borrowed an additional $250 million from other Wallie ever witnessing it? I don’t think so.” Strike of 1942. bankers to carry out attacks, smuggle Allied pi- Another departure from the historical record For a small, flat country with few natural hid- lots to safety and provide financial support to at diminishes the van Halls’ incredible ability to ing places like woods, marshes or mountains, least 8,000 Jews in hiding during World War II. evade Nazi detection, Botje writes. In the film, resistance to the Nazis was in some respects They did all this “through an incredibly com- van Hall is executed two months before the war’s “fierce,” and in no small part thanks to the ac- plicated web of front companies, falsifications end after the Germans and collaborators identify tions of the van Halls, according to Johannes and bureaucratic sleight of hand that is tricky to him as van Tuyl and the “oil man” — one of the Houwink ten Cate, a historian who is one of the pack into a two-hour feature film,” or even a bi- many false identities he wore. world’s leading experts on the Holocaust in ographical novel, Lürsen said. An attempt to But in reality, the Germans had no idea who Holland. “truly explain the genius of their actions” would van Hall was to the bitter end. He was shot along lose most filmgoers within the first 20 minutes, with several other suspected resistance fighters BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ, JTA Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780

n the capital of Lithuania, an institution for- a bank in the city center, failed to get the pro- published a comprehensive essay on the sub- merly known as the Museum of Genocide posal approved. Opponents of the plan wanted ject. Victims barely mentions the murder of the museum moved to the city’s outskirts. After Katz writes of a “drive to equalize Nazi and Inearly all the country’s Jews by Nazis and protests by two groups — the government insti- Soviet crimes [that’s] part of a larger effort to locals, focusing instead on the years of abusive tution charged with running the museum, the Elie cleanse ‘the lands between’ (in Eastern Europe) Soviet rule. Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holo- of their historical record of wartime collabora- In , Lithuania’s second-largest city, an- caust in Romania, and the MCA Romania watch- tion.” other so-called museum hosts festivals and sum- dog group on anti-Semitism — Badulescu In museums in Eastern Europe, some of that mer camps on the grounds of a former announced his plan to honor Antonescu. effort takes place through omission. A municipal concentration camp for Jews known as the Sev- Badulescu also wrote to Maximilian Marco museum in Ukmergė near Vilnius, for example, enth Fort, where the victims are not commemo- Katz, a Romanian Jewish citizen who was born relays accurately the slaying of thousands of rated. in Bucharest and who heads MCA, a letter telling Jews there without once stating who killed them In the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, a Holocaust him to “go back where you came from.” The (it was local collaborators). museum called Tkuma features a controversial Bucharest museum’s future is currently uncer- A more sophisticated technique is what Katz exhibition on Jews complicit in Soviet policies tain. calls “double genocide” — the lumping together that led to a mass famine, known as the Meanwhile in Budapest, the House of Fates of the Holocaust and Soviet occupation, often Holodomor, a whole decade before the Nazis museum, located at a former train station where with the latter eclipsing the former, as in Vilnius’ began implementing their . Hungarian Jews were shipped off to be killed, genocide museum. n 2011, the museum direc- tors added a small plaque to IN EASTERN EUROPE, its cellar referencing the Ikilling of Jews, following years of complaints that their fate was ignored. Still, the museum is HOLOCAUST MUSEUMS almost entirely devoted to Soviet rule and to defending the position of Lithuania as the only country in ARE MISSING FROM the world that formally considers the country’s domination by the Soviet Union as a form of geno- KEY HISTORICAL SITES cide. (The museum changed its name to the “Museum of Occupa- tions and Freedom Fighters” last year amid pressure on this point, but its website still contains the word “genocide.”) The logic behind the “double genocide” effort is rooted in the popular perception across East- ern Europe and beyond that Jews were responsible for hostilities di- And in the capitals of Romania and Ukraine, has been standing empty for about five years be- rected against them during the Holocaust. Ac- where Nazis and collaborators organized the cause of a dispute between the Mazsihisz feder- cording to this theory, writes Katz, Jews are murder of more than 1.5 million Jews, there are ation of Jewish communities and the blamed for allegedly spearheading Communist no national Holocaust museums at all. Infighting government. It involves the government’s ap- atrocities in Eastern Europe before the Nazis and debates about history and complicity have pointment of Maria Schmidt, a historian accused took control from the Soviet Union. prevented their opening. of minimizing the Holocaust by equating it to So- Zsolt , a co-founder of Hungary’s ruling These are just a few examples of a broader viet domination, to head the museum. Fidesz party, provided a salient demonstration of trend in Eastern Europe where institutions whose To break the stalemate, the government this this in a 2016 op-ed in which he used the role of stated goal is to educate the public about the year tasked EMIH, a Chabad-affiliated group, to Jews in Communism to justify the Holocaust. Holocaust end up trivializing, inverting or ignoring head the museum. EMIH has said Schmidt is “Why are we surprised that the simple peas- it altogether. Commemoration activists from the out. The Jewish infighting has further stalled the ant whose determinant experience was that the region blame a varying mix of factors, including project, in a country where critics say a right-wing Jews broke into his village, beat his priest to nationalist revisionism, anti-Semitism, a lack of government seeks to whitewash Holocaust-era death, threatened to convert his church into a funds, personal animosities and incompetence. collaboration. movie theater — why do we find it shocking that All these elements are on display today in the An acclaimed Holocaust museum, the Holo- twenty years later he watched without pity as the ongoing sagas of the National Museum of Jew- caust Memorial Center, opened in 2004 on Bu- gendarmes dragged the Jews away from his vil- ish History and the Holocaust in Romania, which dapest’s Pava Street with government funding. lage?” Bayer wrote. does not yet exist, and the House of Fates mu- But it has suffered from internal fights, cutbacks Collaboration between locals and the Nazis seum in Budapest, Hungary, which exists but re- and a decline in visitors that have raised doubts occurred on a massive scale in Western Europe mains closed five years after its scheduled about its long-term viability, historian Ferencz as well. But that part of the continent was liber- opening. Laczo noted in a 2016 essay. ated after World War II, beginning a long and on- In Bucharest, disagreements over what Intercommunal rivalries have also figuered in going process of reckoning in France, the began as a generous municipal plan in 2016 to the seemingly interminable effort to build a Holo- Netherlands, Belgium and other Western coun- finally establish a Holocaust museum this year caust museum in Kiev, Ukraine. It began in 2001 tries. deteriorated. The city’s Deputy Mayor Aurelian and is ongoing. Eastern Europe, meanwhile, was taken over Badulescu threatened to unveil in Bucharest a But alleged attempts to whitewash Holocaust- by a brutal and anti-Semitic regime that, for its bust of Ion Antonescu, the wartime leader who era complicity in Nazi-occupied territories are at own interests, would only allow Holocaust vic- collaborated with Hitler. His threat was seen as the heart of much of the dysfunctionality sur- tims to be commemorated as “Soviet citizens,” a measure to spite local Jews. rounding Holocaust commemoration in Eastern Felicia Waldman, an expert in Jewish studies The municipality, which designated for the Europe, according to Dovid Katz, the American- and Holocaust education at the University of project a magnificent building that was formerly born, Vilnius-based Yiddish scholar who in 2016 (Continued on page 15) September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7

cinematic representation of the Holocaust were shaped by Jakubowska, Asaf Tal wrote on the “” Yad Vashem website. “The Last Stage can be eventy years ago, in the summer of script for The Last Stage with Gerda Schneider, characterized as a paradigmatic and influential 1949, a distinguished group gathered a political prisoner from Germany, also a Com- work on Holocaust cinema,” Tal writes, citing at a Tel Aviv cinema for a preview munist, whom she met at Auschwitz. similar imagery in films like Sophie’s Choice Sshowing of a pioneering Polish film. Before Jakubowska’s film, scenes from (1982) and Schindler’s List (1993). The event was attended by members of the Auschwitz were filmed by the Red Army. In some Later Holocaust films inserted scenes from diplomatic corps, government figures and nota- cases, these were reenactments made after the Jakubowska’s film as if they were documentary bles from literature and art. camp’s liberation, using former prisoners or Pol- footage. Scenes that have been borrowed from The movie was The Last Stage — the first full- ish extras. But Jakubowska was the first to use her film — sometimes without approval and length feature film about the Holocaust, the first the camp as the setting for a feature film. credit — include the arrival of transports, the curl- to be filmed at Auschwitz, and the first to show Polish actresses and extras, including former ing of crematoria smoke, the hard labor of female all the stages of killing at the camp. The director, prisoners and residents of the adjacent town of prisoners and the barbed-wire fences. screenwriter and many cast members, all of Oswiecim, were cast for the film. The production The film centers around a Jewish heroine, them women, had been prisoners there. crew noted later that there was a certain advan- Marta Weiss, who is deported to the camp with “This film offers a terrifying documentary-like tage — not just because the cast already knew her family. During the selection, she translates depiction of episodes of the ‘life’ of the women the site well, but because they acted like prison- the commander’s instructions for the other pris- prisoners in the camp, including many Jewish ers on the set “and did everything automatically, oners and is chosen to serve as an official inter- women, and the inner spirit of rebellion, which because they knew it all from their own experi- preter. Later she exploits her position to help her was headed by a Jewish woman,” Haaretz wrote ence, as returning prisoners. It was frightening.” fellow inmates smuggle supplies and informa- at the time. Whether in Israel or the wider world, The production crew also spoke later of odd tion, and eventually escapes with a friend, Tadek, not many people at the time knew much about the incidents during the filming of the “half-documen- in order to tell the world about the plan to liqui- date the camp. But the two are caught and exe- cuted in a humiliating show parade. At her death, she is revered as a heroine when the prisoner-hangman gives her a knife with which she slits her wrists and shouts to the watching crowd: “Don’t be afraid! They can’t hurt us. Hold on. The Red Army is near.” As the furi- ous camp commander approaches her, she says: “You will soon be so small.” Then she slaps him and says, “You will not hang me.” At that dra- matic moment, Allied planes appear in the sky and the Germans flee. “Don’t let Auschwitz rise again” are her last words, as she dies in the arms of another prisoner. he Marta Weiss character is based on a true story — the story of Mala (Malka) Zimetbaum, a Polish Jew who moved to Belgium with her family as A scene from ’s 1947 film The Last Stage. T a child and was deported to Auschwitz in 1942. scope of the atrocities at Auschwitz. In this re- tary,” as the director called it. One example was Fluent in several languages, she was chosen to spect, too, The Last Stage was ahead of its time. the encounter between a female cast member, serve as an interpreter at the camp and used her Director Wanda Jakubowska, sometimes still dressed in an SS uniform during a break in job to help other prisoners. In the camp, she met called “the grandmother of Polish cinema” and filming, with genuine German prisoners – POWs. Edward (Edek) Galinski, a Polish political pris- “the mother of Holocaust movies,” was born in Another time, Jewish visitors touring the camp oner, and a romance developed. Warsaw in 1907. As a child, she moved with her were stunned to be greeted by SS troops with at- They decided to escape together, in the hope parents to Russia, but they returned to Poland tack dogs — actually actors attired for their roles. of bringing news about the camp to the free in 1922. Soviet soldiers also took part as extras. “I had world. On June 24, 1944, they escaped from A keen (non-Jewish) Communist activist, the entire Red Army in Poland at my disposal; it Auschwitz-Birkenau. Galinski disguised himself Jakubowska was arrested by the Gestapo and was very easy for me to make the movie. They as an SS officer and pretended to be escorting a was sent to Warsaw’s notorious Pawiak Prison, were very disciplined and trained,” Jakubowska Jewish prisoner to work outside the camp. They where she spent six months. Through the win- said. The clothes and other objects in the film — were caught two weeks later. One account says dows of her cell she saw the ghetto go up in suitcases, shoes, pots — were authentic. The at- Zimetbaum went into a shop to buy bread and flames during the uprising in the mosphere was so similar to the situation during was spotted by a German patrol that happened spring of 1943. In April that year, she was sent the war that the crew had to stop shooting some- to be passing by. The two were returned to to Auschwitz. When she heard the gates slam times when they were overcome with tears. Auschwitz and were executed together in Sep- shut, she told a friend that she had to record that The movie was filmed two and a half years tember 1944. sound. “At that moment, I realized that I had de- after the camp’s liberation, between July and The story of Zimetbaum’s execution is just as cided to make a film about Auschwitz,” she said September 1947. It was at this time that Poland’s dramatic as that of her escape. Naama Shik de- years later. parliament decided to turn the camp into a me- scribed it in an article on the Yad Vashem web- The Soviet Novosti news agency wrote in morial that would emphasize the sacrifice and site in which she examined Zimetbaum’s story 1965: “Jakubowska swore that if she lived, she suffering of Poles and other prisoners. from the perspective of gender studies. would make a film about the horrors of Certain aspects of the horror were censored. “When the verdict was read, she slit her wrists Auschwitz, and thus arose the terrifying truth of “The reality of the camp was emaciated prison- and slapped the SS man in the face with her the film The Last Stage.” Jakubowska later said ers, piles of corpses, lice, rats and all kinds of bloody hand when he tried to stop her. The exe- she survived Auschwitz because of her burning horrible diseases,” Jakubowska said. “On cution was interrupted,” Shik writes. “I will die as desire to make a film about it. She survived even screen, this reality would cause terror and revul- a hero and you will die as a dog,” Zimetbaum though, as the Red Army advanced on sion. We had to forgo these aspects despite their said to the SS man, according to eyewitness tes- Auschwitz, she was sent on a death march to the authenticity, because they were too unbearable timony. She was taken in a wagon to the camp Ravensbrück women’s camp in Germany. for the postwar viewer.” hospital to stop the bleeding — so the execution Right after the war, she began writing the A number of the iconic visual images in the (Continued on page 14) Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ASYV SE he American Society for Yad Vashem — Western Region hosted its first-ever Seattle Gala on Jews saved by Oskar Schindler. Steven is commit September 16, 2019 at the Columbia Tower Club. Friends and supporters gathered to honor and he is wholly committed to the mission of Holo ASYV Executive Committee Board Member and Yad Vashem benefactor Steven Baral with the We were also very fortunate to have Israeli fil TPhilanthropic Achievement Award. Steven's father, Martin Baral, z"l, escaped from the Krakow Skin won the 2019 Academy Award for for Best L ghetto one day before it was liquidated, while his grandfather, Samuel Baral, z"l, was one of the 1,098 by his grandparents, who are Holocaust survivors

Bill Bernstein, West Coast director of institutional advancement, American Society for Yad Vashem; and Steven Baral, honoree and Shaya Ben Yehuda, Managing Director of International Relat board member. Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

Paul Kirschner, Nancy Powell and Steven Baral. Guest speaker Guy Nattiv, 2019 Academy Award Winner.

Stanley Stone, executive director, American Society for Yad Vashem; Steven Baral; and Bill Bernstein. Steven Baral and Hannah Rubinstein, Yad Vashem Builder. September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 EATTLE GALA tted to ensuring that his family's stories are not forgotten ocaust education. lmmaker Guy Nattiv as our guest speaker. Nattiv’s film ive Action Short Film. Nattiv’s work is greatly influenced s.

ions, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; and Jeremy Weiss, director of US Desk, Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780

marrying and having two children, she returned to raising dogs. “I never feared dogs; they sense HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR it when someone loves them,” she says. inar had never told her story before outside her family. Bar-Yosef, who OWES HER LIFE met her as part of her historical re- Dsearch, posted the main parts of the story on Facebook. Bar-Yosef, a dog lover her- TO A NAZI OFFICER’S self, turned her love of canines into the subject of a unique academic study: dogs in the Holo- caust. GREAT DANE “The Nazis used 200,000 dogs during the war, for policing, deterrence and guarding, but ina Dinar from Kiryat Ono recently dog,” she says. also as attack dogs, tormenting and killing Jews,” fulfilled a dream, a strange-sounding And then, in contrast to numerous stories Bar-Yosef says. “Many survivors have described one to anyone not familiar with her about vicious attack dogs used by the Nazis, the how Nazi dogs were present at many way sta- amazing story. Dinar, who is 94, dog left its owner and turned to Nina, “the tions of the Holocaust, as well as describing the wishedN to hug a Great Dane, “like the one that wounded, barefoot, pathetic Jewess standing in traumas inflicted on them by Nazi dogs.” saved me during the Holocaust.” For two hours the ranks,” she says. For a few minutes she These testimonies, backed by photographs, she stroked, hugged and patted the backs of two stroked it and it licked her. The women around films and terrifying drawings, enlarged the image dogs that were brought especially to her house. her told her she was mad since the dog was of the vicious dog during the Holocaust. Among The moving encounter was orchestrated by probably trained to attack Jews. The officer was the more “famous” ones were Rolf, the dog be- Tammy Bar-Yosef, who in recent years has been also surprised by what he saw. longing to Amon Goeth, commander of the Plas- investigating an unusual branch of history: dogs in the Holocaust. Along with many testimonies of Nazis using dogs to attack Jews, she is docu- menting less-known stories having to do with Nazi-owned dogs saving Jews. This is how she reached Dinar, hearing for the first time her res- cue story. Dinar was born in Warsaw in 1926. Ever since she was a child, she loved and raised dogs. “Even though it was said that Jews don’t have dogs, I grew up with some,” says Dinar. “Even my grandmother had dogs.” Her first memories are from when she was three, sitting happily on a sofa with a German shepherd at her side. Eighty years ago, when World War II broke out and Warsaw was bombed, her dog “went crazy with fear,” she recalls. Her mother asked some soldiers in their yard to shoot it, thinking the dog would be dangerous to the public. “I buried it with a neighbor in a bomb crater Holocaust survivor Nina Dinar and a Great Dane that was brought to her Kiryat Ono home. on Jerosolimskie (Jerusalem) Street,” she says. Over the following months Nina had to do zow concentration camp, memorialized in Even later, when her family was deported to hard labor. There too, “the dog would always find Schindler’s List, and Barry, a dog belonging to the ghetto, she continued raising dogs. “I took a me wherever I was,” she says. When it came Kurt Franz, commander of Treblinka, which was dog from a neighbor who had two. It was really close, she petted it. The special tie between her also trained to attack inmates. hard to raise them,” she says. She doesn’t know and the dog, whose name she didn’t know, Nevertheless, by analyzing and documenting what happened to it in the end. caught the attention of its owner, the Nazi officer. memories of survivors, Bar-Yosef has found that Her father was murdered in April 1942. A year Nina says he gave her some of the dog’s food there are other stories as well. “These describe later, when the ghetto uprising began, Nina and as a supplement. Perhaps that is how she sur- dogs that helped Jews, sharing their kennels or her mother moved from cellar to cellar, “thanks vived there despite the inhuman conditions, food, or even protecting them and saving them,” to our Jewish underground,” she says. while her mother died of hunger. she says. Nina’s story, in this context, “allows us Later, when the Germans attacked the bunker n August 1944, as the Russians were ap- to move beyond the standard image of Nazi dogs they were in, Nina and her mother were caught proaching, the Germans decided to evacu- and relate to dogs as man’s loyal friend.” and deported to the Majdanek death camp. They ate the camp and kill the weakened This is a rare story, but not unique. Bar-Yosef took with them a suitcase full of photos, jewels Iworkers. Nina was sent to a group marked found 10 more cases of dogs saving Jews. “All and whatever else they could, but the Germans for death. Weighing only 32 kilograms, she was the children who were saved by dogs were dog later stole these. They were in the camp for four swollen from hunger, hairless and suffering from lovers who raised dogs before and after the months, lifting heavy rocks. One day Nina was several maladies. Holocaust, and their ability to relate to dogs injured by gunfire while working. From there, the And then, as if in a fairy tale, the Nazi officer helped them communicate with Nazi-owned two were taken to the Skarzysko-Kamienna arrived with his dog. Rost checked to see if there dogs, helping the dogs save them and survive.” labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, in which were enough people in the group marked for Another story Bar-Yosef discovered was of Jews worked as slave laborers in a German ar- death. He didn’t identify Nina. “It was impossible Roman Schwartz, also a survivor. Amon Goeth maments factory. to recognize me,” she says. However, the dog set his dog on Schwartz, who was caught steal- Here is where her remarkable story begins. recognized her immediately and went to her. ing potato peels. Schwartz, a dog lover, ordered When Nina and her mother arrived at the camp, Rost took her out of the condemned group and the dog to halt and sit. Goeth was impressed and they were sent to the parade ground, presided put her in another one, of those destined to live. spared his life. “These stories are another facet over by a Nazi officer, Dr. Artur Rost. “He stood “Come here, you’re going this way,” he ordered. of survival stories,” she says, “affording a differ- there with his dog, a white Great Dane with Thus, because of a Nazi officer’s dog, Nina ent kind of memory, stretching the boundaries of black spots. I loved dogs, so I called it. I didn’t survived. She was later sent to Buchenwald the more established and known memories.” even whistle, I only did like this (she demon- camp in Germany, subsequently escaping a strates a lip-smacking sound). What a great death march. In 1948 she came to Israel. After BY OFER ADERET, Haaretz September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11

or years there himself on the camp’s have been A SHOFAR THAT DEFIED electrified wire. He was fragmentary initially assigned to a reports of al- construction detail carry- F ing large sacks of ce- most unbelievable acts of faith at the Nazi THE NAZIS ment, leaving him with a death camps during cites a 14-year-old prisoner, Wolf Greenbaum, permanently disabled World War II: the sounding of shofars, the ram’s who saw a rabbi visiting a doomed barracks at shoulder. But as an older prisoner with experi- horn trumpets traditionally blown by Jews to wel- Birkenau on Rosh Hashana 1944 and blowing a ence in the camps, he was designated a block come the High Holy Days. smuggled shofar there. secretary, responsible for assigning work details. These stories of the persistence of hope even Yad Vashem in Jerusalem displays a shofar By attaching names of the dead to some assign- in mankind’s darkest moments have been fabricated in 1943 in the Nazi labor camp of ments, he was able to afford others relief in the passed down despite limited evidence and eye- Skarzysko-Kamienna. In Auschwitz, said Robert sick bay, “enabling him to save hundreds of Jew- witness detail. Jan van Pelt, a Holocaust scholar and chief cu- ish prisoners,” Dr. Schwartz said. But could camp prisoners have found ways to rator of the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s exhibi- Around Rosh Hashana 1944, she said, he sound these horns, piercing the heavens with tion, “We know from a number of eyewitness arranged to send some religious prisoners out sob-like wails and staccato blasts, without put- testimonies that shofars were blown.” where they might constitute a minyan, or quorum ting themselves in immediate mortal danger? But where and how were they hidden? How of 10 adults to conduct a prayer service. When Now a new account that addresses that ques- did they make their way into the camps? And they returned, he learned about the shofar’s tion, and is embraced by several historians as how did their sounding go unpunished? Ac- sounding. reliable, has emerged from the daughter of an counts say guards were bribed and distracted by “I was told of the person who had it, but when Auschwitz survivor, along with one of the se- prisoners. asked he denied, maybe from fear,” Mr. Tydor creted shofars itself. ome shofars likely arrived in told his daughter in a recollection quoted in one Dr. Judith Tydor Schwartz, an expert on the Auschwitz in mid-1944 with the of her books. Holocaust, says her father, Chaskel Tydor, a 440,000 deported Hungarian Jews. n January 1945, the Germans hurriedly longtime prisoner entrusted as work dispatcher STheir belongings, left at the camp’s began dynamiting Auschwitz and emptying at one of the more than 40 Auschwitz subcamps, railway platform known as the ramp, where ar- the camp as the Russians approached. Mr. contrived on Rosh Hashana 1944 to send fellow rivals were selected to live or die, were stock- ITydor and some 60,000 other survivors prisoners on a distant detail where they might piled at Birkenau in an immense goods were herded on a 30-mile march to another sub- safely, and privately, pray. He did not know that warehouse dubbed “Canada” whose loot they carried something with them. But when they was often smuggled out. Schemes were returned, she said, one confided to her father hatched in the repulsive latrines, where that a shofar had been produced and blown. guards disdained to enter. What is more, according to the account of Dr. Jack Kliger, the president and chief Schwartz, who directs Holocaust research at executive officer of the Museum of Jew- Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, her fa- ish Heritage and the child of Holocaust ther was given the shofar for safekeeping in survivors, said he remembers hearing 1945 by a fellow prisoner as the Nazis emptied from a friend of his parents that a shofar the camp and fled the advancing Russians. had sounded at Auschwitz. A week before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish “If there’s an artifact that symbolizes New Year 5780, and 75 Rosh Hashanas since the Jewish soul,” Mr. Kliger said, “you’d that clandestine act of faith, that ceremonial be hard-pressed to find something more ram’s horn was installed at the Museum of Jew- indicative than a shofar.” ish Heritage near Battery Park in Manhattan. It Dr. Schwartz’s father, a modest man, is part of “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far never revealed much in interviews she Away,” a traveling exhibition from Poland. conducted with him before he died in While it may never be possible to fully corrob- 1993 at 89. But until the end of his life, orate the story of the museum’s shofar, Holo- she said, “the Auschwitz shofar accom- caust historians say it is credible, and resembles panied his wanderings.” He ran a travel other witness accounts of concentration camp agency in Manhattan; married his secre- shofars and is more detailed. tary, Shirley Kraus, who became the Dr. Schwartz said she was loaning the shofar mother of Dr. Schwartz; managed ura- Chaskel Tydor, a survivor of Auschwitz, described for his family how, as additional evidence of the lengths to which im- nium mines in Montana and South despite the danger, this shofar was blown at the camp during prayers. prisoned Jews went to practice their religion in Dakota; and eventually moved back to Israel. the face of their German tormentors. Born in 1903 in Bochnia, Poland, near camp. But the night before they left, she said, an- Their efforts included the mouthing of bless- Krakow, her father and his Hasidic family fled to other prisoner came up to him — “my father ings during beatings and the trading away of Germany during World War I. Living in Frankfurt never said who it was” — and pressed on him a bread rations during Passover when leavened as Hitler rose to power and war loomed in 1939, rag-wrapped object: the shofar. products are forbidden. Abandoned oil drums at he and his wife, Bertha, sent their young son and Her father told her the man had said: “I’m Auschwitz were used in place of traditional huts daughter to safety on a Kindertransport to Bel- going to die on this march. If you live, take this for contemplation during the harvest festival of gium. Mr. Tydor was arrested later that year and shofar. Tell them we blew the shofar at Sukkot. Rabbis in the camp decreed that even imprisoned in Buchenwald, one of the first and Auschwitz.” one minute spent inside was a sufficient mitzvah, largest concentration camps, near in Mr. Tydor survived the march and ended up or good deed. central Germany. From there, in October 1942, back in Buchenwald, where he was liberated by And then there were the shofars whose bleats he was transported to Auschwitz III, the forced the American army on April 11, 1945. Later that are meant to variously evoke Abraham’s sacrifice labor camp also known as Monowitz/Buna where year, he joined a group of former concentration of a ram in place of his son Isaac, the summon- the authors Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel were also camp prisoners and other freed Jews aboard the ing of the Israelites to Sinai for Moses’s giving of held. Within several miles stood the gas cham- steamship Mataroa to Palestine, then under the law, and the most fervent expression of Jew- bers and crematories of Auschwitz II, Birkenau. British mandate, and soon to become Israel. ish hope — “next year in Jerusalem.” In the camp he learned that Bertha, fleeing Off the coast of Haifa on Rosh Hashana 1945, An installation that opened last summer, Germany for Poland, had been caught and mur- he blew the shofar. “Through the Lens of Faith,” at the Auschwitz- dered in Auschwitz, along with other family mem- Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim, Poland, bers. In despair, he was restrained from killing BY RALPH BLUMENTHAL, The New York Times Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780

Together with hundreds of other people from this and neighboring buildings, we were assem- MAJA HRABOWSKA: bled on the street. Some people carried their possessions in valises or bundles, but most of us (like our family) had lost everything during previ- “MY LIFE IN HIDING” ous escapes, and were clinging together. Moth- In 2013, Frontline released Never Forget to were there. I remember thinking with envy of ers carried children; our hope for survival was Lie, an autobiographical film from Emmy H.G. Wells’ “Invisible Man” and fantasying of re- dim. The long procession was formed, and with award–winning director and Holocaust survivor maining invisible, and not just hidden in the cel- accompanying shouts and screams of the Ger- Marian Marzynski. In the documentary, Marzyn- lar, a hole in the ground, under the bed, in the mans we were led to the , a cou- ski returned to Poland to probe his feelings about closet, or behind the furniture. ple of streets ahead. Of course we heard about his homeland, the Catholic church and an iden- rom the beginning of the Aktion my this place, but curiously, didn’t know what to ex- tity fractured by the traumas of the Warsaw family worked hard to find the shelter, pect. ghetto. At its peak, more than 400,000 Jews even while not knowing at first the final We entered the hell. If the ghetto during the were crammed into the ghetto — no more than Fdestination of cattle trains leaving daily Aktion was the vestibule of hell — this place was 20,000 of them survived the Holocaust. Marzyn- from the Umschlagplatz on Stawki Street. Day the hell itself. When our group entered, the load- ski was one of them. after day the Germans were carrying out the bru- ing of cattle wagons was in full swing. The long In the film, Marzynski offers heart-wrenching tal, human hunting, combing block after block for lines were formed in the yard, with the Germans observations about how the Holocaust has the whole month. The Aktion was proceeding running around. shaped his life. But he also spoke to other sur- Hundreds of people were pushed into the rail- vivors, children at the time of the Holocaust, cars, and those who were not fast enough were many of whom lived in the Warsaw ghetto. Below beaten, or shot. Screams of mothers who lost is one of the testimonies. their children in the melee, wailing/moaning of in- he past is always with me. It has long, jured or dying, shouting, and sounds of rifles fir- cold fingers, and catches me unpre- ing blindly into the crowd by black-uniformed pared, at night mostly, when I wake up guards, filled the court with inhuman noises. Tin sweat. I’m part of the generation that Jewish policemen participated in this Aktion, survived the Holocaust — the total war on Jews, under German guidance, pushing people and and particularly on Jewish children. We were creating the incessant terror. hated, the first to suffer, the first to perish. I with a lot of shouting, screaming, beating the It was already the late afternoon, and the last blamed myself. What did I do to deserve it? helpless, firing at them and using all kind of train was full; the Germans exceeded their daily At that time we didn’t understand the extent abuse by the uniformed German troops. Even quota for this day. We were the last in the long of horror of this, the most hideous crime in his- surviving the first wave, it left us frightened and line waiting for our turn. But the train could not tory. We were looking at this as an isolated terrorized. accommodate more people, even with all those drama, which for some unknown reason befell For simplicity, I am using the term “Germans” pushing. At last some guard came to our group us. For years we tried to retain sanity by silenc- because any other name doesn’t sound ade- and told us to enter the nearby building (I believe ing the scream, by hiding our memories deep in quate, even if I know that there were not only that it was originally a hospital), and wait subconsciousness, and for some time it worked. Nazis there. Latvians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians overnight for tomorrow’s train. We knew something that others didn’t, and this and representatives of other nations participated he last train left, leaving on the plat- secret was with us only; we carried this burden enthusiastically in the ghetto liquidation, and be- form dead and dying people. I heard alone. The war was over, but we were different haved even more brutally during the mass killing. horrifying screams. Blood was flowing from other young people, quieter, more careful There were many nations which collaborated so profusely, that it was pouring into whom we talk to, feeling still unsafe. with Nazis, and even more, who refused to help, T the building. The corpses were brought in, to be Many years passed, and now unexpectedly I and remained unmoved in view of this tragedy. later removed for sanitary reasons. The German found that there are others with similar pasts, From the start of the Aktion our small family guards were laughing, obviously excited by so and hidden memories. It was a shock; it was as group — mama and I, my grandparents, and my fine an attraction. Some of them went looking for if I found the family I missed so much. It doesn’t aunt Ania Szlajfsztajn with 6-year-old Lenka — food, some started to escort the remaining group matter that not everybody is pretty and speaking moved several times, because our first tempo- to the building. nicely — the family can have its differences. rary home at 26 Zamenhoff Street was searched We entered the big, empty hall, and sat in the Thanks to this group I finally found the a couple of times, and left deserted. Those who corner. There were some rags on the floor, and courage to speak of my past, which was a shock were not successfully hidden were taken to the Granny and my mom hid the children, Lenka and by itself, because up to now I was enveloped in Umschlagplatz and perished. me, under the rags in the corner. silence. I decided that it would be selfish not to My immediate family was then still intact. In After the scenes we had just witnessed, we speak; that my family, which disappeared by the apartment on the Zamenhoff Street, where were desperate and terribly frightened. We ex- Hitler’s bloody hands, deserves some legacy, we spent the previous two years, there were pected some period of quiet, but the group of and I am the only one left to remember. I can’t many more people; the ghetto was crowded, and Germans entered the building looking for more afford to stay silent, the time is pressing. the average was 13 persons per room. We didn’t fun. In one of the corners there was a group of One of my most terrible wartime experiences know them, and they disappeared at the begin- about 20 people, mostly women with small chil- was our short stay in the Umschlagplatz — the ning of the Aktion. dren. The Germans approached them, and assembly point in the Warsaw ghetto for people I don’t remember any of them. In each house picked out the children from their mothers’ arms. waiting to be sent to the Treblinka 2 death camp. we moved into, the first thing to do was to find They pushed the screaming children against the Under the German occupation there were two the hiding place, an attic, or cellar, or some wall wall, and began shooting randomly at them. types of camps: concentration camps, such as closet, which we could disguise. The ghetto — Women went hysterical, screaming and shout- Auschwitz, where not everybody died, and by so crowded not a long time ago — was almost ing, and trying to reach their children. They were miracle one could survive the hardship, and the empty; houses were abandoned, apartment brutally pushed back by Jewish policemen. Sev- other type — death camps, where nobody was doors wide open. In succeeding rooms we en- eral children were lying in the pool of blood, oth- meant to survive. Gas chambers were the only tered there was still food on the table, clothing ers were screaming shrilly. We looked at this facilities there. People from the Warsaw ghetto and toys around, unmade beds. Tenants disap- scene with horror. At last the laughing guards left, were destined to this type of camp. peared, probably already gassed in Treblinka. leaving behind this terrible scene on the floor: It was during that hot summer of 1942. The We slept in crumpled beds, hugging each other. blood, parts of the flesh, dead children and Aktion in the Warsaw ghetto was proceeding/in But this time our luck ran out. Shortly after we screaming mothers. progress. Aktion — this word will haunt me for- moved in, the next roundup began, and our hid- Everything went quiet; it was late, and we ex- ever; it has a special meaning for those who ing place in the attic was discovered. (Continued on page 14) September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

Oberscharführer (senior squad leader) Hendler, the chief cook, was impressed, and ap- FRANCE'S WAITING pointed Simon as his only Jewish assistant. “No- body knew that I had no idea how to cook,” says Simon with a wry smile. ROOM FOR AUSCHWITZ The kitchen role also meant that he could (Continued from page 4) conditions aboard were already unspeakable. care for his father when he arrived at Auschwitz, Between August 1941 and August 1944, “We were piled on top of each other, and were handing him scraps of food. He says that it was some 70,000 passed through. unable to move during a trip that lasted three common at Auschwitz for fathers to be ordered Simon was one of the first. He spent eight days and three nights,” Simon recalls. “Not even to kill their sons, and vice versa, with refusal months in the camp before he was herded on to leading to both being shot dead. But they were the infamous Convoy Number 1 to Auschwitz. spared this fate. Today, he weeps as he describes the “barbarous Toward the end of the war, Simon contracted days that seemed to last a lifetime” and which typhus and “was left for dead under a pile of bod- continue to dominate his waking hours and his ies” rather than being rounded up and sent to a nightmares. Almost all of his family were interned . at Drancy before they, too, were sent 1,000 miles n February 1945, he finally escaped with away to Eastern Europe. Only Simon and his fa- four other friends during one of the notorious ther survived. death marches organized by the retreating The Gutmans had originally been from War- ISS. They eventually met up with elements of saw, but with anti-Semitism on the rise in the France’s Second Armored Division — the one that 1930s, the family fled to France and settled in a had helped liberate central Paris, and Drancy just tiny studio flat in the 10th Arrondissement, both a few days earlier — in August 1944. “There was parents working 15 hours a day as tailors. Simon great emotion,” he says. “The soldiers stood in was six. front of us and saluted.” Yet Paris was no safer than Warsaw. Follow- The five Jews were still in their striped con- ing the German occupation of 1940, all French centration camp uniforms which, with typical Jews were listed as enemies by Theodor Dan- black humor, Simon referred to as “our tuxedos.” necker, the German SS officer responsible for They briefly stayed near Altshausen in southern “roundups” in the city. Germany, and it was there that the five posed for As a Judenberater (translated as “Jewish ad- a remarkable photograph. viser” — Nazi SS officials who supervised the de- Simon sits on the left of the group, which in- portation of European Jews), Dannecker worked cludes a 12-year-old boy who had escaped with with French officials and the collaborating Vichy him. “I often said I was born in April 1945 — the Simon Gutman, pictured sitting left, and his friends managed time I escaped from imprisonment,” Simon says government in the south to rid France of its Jews. to escape while on a death march in 1945. imon was an 18-year-old student reflectively. when police officers first summoned the Red Cross workers gave us a drink of water.” He finally returned to Paris in April 1945, him and his family to their local station “In Reims, the French gendarmes were re- where he learned that the only other member of in Paris on August 21, 1941. placed by SS guards, and we then understood his family to survive was his father David, then S 46. When they were reunited at the five-star They were told it was a “situation review,” but that the situation was very serious because we for Simon the result of the “review” was a rat-in- knew we were going east.” He was right. The ul- Lutétia hotel — which had been transformed into fested cell in Drancy, deprived of food and water. timate destination of Convoy 1 was a then-un- a regrouping center after years of use by the At that time, the camp was controlled by heard-of place near Krakow in occupied Nazis, Simon was distressed by the skeletal man French police. Poland — the death camp now infamous as in front of him. Time passed painfully slowly for Simon. He Auschwitz-Birkenau. “The killing started as soon So ill was his father, he was at first unable to was locked up for long hours in a cramped cell as we got there,” he continues. “We were recognize Simon. But the pair were soon united with other inmates of all ages and, even when he stripped, and given a prison uniform and a num- in an “indescribable grief” that would never leave was allowed into the courtyard, this was often a ber that was tattooed on our arms in blue. them. They discovered that other family mem- form of punishment, with the guards forcing pris- “If we forgot this number, we were immedi- bers had been caught in the Vel d’Hiv roundup oners out whatever the weather. ately beaten or killed. We were given wooden of July 16, 1942, when more than 13,000 Jews, “It felt like time stopped still. Every day felt like shoes that didn’t fit and walked to the Birkenau including 4,000 children, had been taken to a century,” he says. camp, around three kilometers away. The road Paris”s Winter Velodrome (Vélodrome d’Hiver) Then, after eight months’ imprisonment, he was muddy, and anyone who fell was shot.” before most were deported to their deaths. was ordered on to the first convoy heading east. Simon’s number was 27815 — it remains Today Simon sits at home in the Marais, once He can remember the day vividly. The weather clearly visible on his right underarm to this day. His a Jewish quarter and now one of the most was unseasonably warm and, huddled together brother Maurice was on Convoy 4, leaving in June sought-after locations in Paris. It is less than ten with thousands of other prisoners, he listened 1942, while his sister Hélène and other brothers miles from Drancy, which is once again a hous- nervously as a guard barked out 565 names who Serge and Isidor were on Convoys 15 and 23. ing estate, albeit one with a monument, a mu- were told to “be ready in a quarter of an hour” for David, Simon’s father, was on Convoy 12 that de- seum and an original railway wagon marking its a 5 pm departure. parted in July 1942. His mother, Cyma, was sent terrifying past. “We remained silent, and strangely optimistic east with her sister, Bella, in March 1943. Simon was one of only 19 men out of 1,112 about at least getting out of Drancy,” Simon says fter just a few weeks came the stroke from Convoy Number 1 who ever saw Paris pensively. “We had no idea what was to come.” of good fortune that would save again. Staying alive, he says, has been his way More prisoners were collected from the Roy- Simon’s life: a fellow prisoner helped of defying the “sadists” who took so much from allieu-Compiègne internment camp, 60 miles him get a job in the kitchen feeding him and his people. He has since been deter- A mined to lead as successful a life as possible, north of Paris, making a total of 1,112 men. German officers. This man was not Jewish but a Simon had no idea of the real horror that lay so-called “Red Triangle” — a German in prison for building up the tailoring business started by his ahead and, as he boarded the first convoy along- opposing the Nazi regime (the triangle refers to father — and raising a family of his own. side various friends, he believed they might be an identification badge). “He told me that my only “This was all so important to me — to carry on the way to cut timber in the Ardennes. chance to live was cooking — to cook or die,” re- on with my life, and to show that survivors would Cattle cars were not yet used for deporta- calls Simon. “He then told the other German pris- not be defeated,” he says defiantly. tions — this would start a few months later when oners that I was an impeccable cook who had women and children arrived at Drancy — but the worked in the best hotels in Paris.” BY PETER ALLEN, Daily Mail Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780

(Continued from page 4) still alive. Tales of her heroism were recounted it’s a Communist propaganda film. Praise for could then continue as planned. right after the war. One of the earliest testi- Russia, Stalin and the Red Army is woven in. Several prisoners reported that she died on monies, also cited in Shik’s article, was given by They are depicted as the prisoners’ only sav- the way to the crematorium. Others say she was Bila Bender in November 1945. In her testimony, iors — without any mention, of course, of Stalin’s shot to death. Edek, her beloved, who is said to provided in Yiddish, Bender called Zimetbaum cooperation with Hitler at the start of the war or of the war crimes committed by the Russians. In the film, all resistance to the Nazis is led by Com- “THE LAST STAGE” munist women. There is no trace of any resist- ance by other groups. The prisoners’ social solidarity in the face of evil is portrayed in the spirit of “The Internationale.” The internal rivalries and acts of cruelty among the prisoners receive no place in the film. Nor is there anything on how Jewish prisoners were harshly discriminated against by prisoners of other nationalities; this wouldn’t serve the message. Also, in the film one hears Polish, Russian, German and French, but no Yiddish. This is no coincidence. Produced under the auspices of the Soviet Union, the film deliberately avoids any mention of the uniqueness of the Holocaust and instead emphasizes the universality of the war’s victims. In this, the film betrays the truth. Most of have etched her name into the walls of his prison “the martyr Mala” and said she deserved a place the 1.1 million victims at Auschwitz were Jews. block, shouted “Long live Poland” as he was of honor in the history of heroism, and as a Jew- But unlike with other works produced under the being hanged. Zimetbaum became a legend ish martyr. Communist regime, the Jews aren’t completely after her death. In the Encyclopedia of the Holo- eventy years after its premiere in Is- absent from this one, thanks to Jakubowska’s caust edited by Prof. , she is listed rael, the film has returned as part of stubborn insistence. Describing it years later, she as the first woman to escape from Auschwitz. the Polish ZOOM events, a project of said she was pressured to alter the plot and re- The choice to put the char- Sthe Polish Institute in Tel Aviv and the move any mention of Jews. Seventy years ago, acter at the center of a feature film as early as Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Poland. Haaretz lauded her for not paying heed. 1947 is interesting. She had become a heroine Reexamination of the film all these years later among the other women prisoners while she was clearly reveals its historical weaknesses; after all, BY OFER ADERET, Haaretz MAJA HRABOWSKA: “MY LIFE IN HIDING” Continued from page 12) walk we found an abandoned house, where we uniformed guard. I lost the rest of my family too, pected it to be our last night. Suddenly aunt Ania spent the rest of the night. I don’t remember how because without my mother I was unable to or- shouted: “Max, Max!” She saw her estranged hus- we survived the next couple of days. ganize the escape for them. They all died during band Max Szlajfsztajn, whom she divorced in he Aktion in the ghetto was suspended the ghetto’s final liquidation, at the ghetto upris- Wloclawek just before the war because of his cru- shortly after our miraculous escape. ing, in April 1943. elty. We hadn’t seen him in years. Now he was However, this time we knew what was fter my mother was shot I came back moving freely around, dressed in a police uniform, T awaiting us/planned for us, and we just to my family and I told what happened. obviously serving in the Umschlagplatz unit. lived from day to day. We started to work in the My Granny was devastated. She had Six-year-old little Lenka was his daughter. factory Shopa Shultza on Leszno Street, where A already learned about the fate of her Max saw us, and realized immediately the dan- we sewed German uniforms. We were hoping for son Benek Berglau, who was killed in Wloclawek ger we were in. He told us not to move, and stay some documents which could exclude us from de- around the same time. His wife Mania and two of there, and he went away to find the way out. portation. We all were working there, even Lenka. his daughters (Judyta and Stella) were sent to Deep into the night he came again, and ordered During control visits we were hidden in the cellar Treblinka. His older daughter Niunia tried to es- us to follow him. We went through the under the stock of fabrics. It was a dark room; I cape to Russia, but later was caught near the east cellar/basement to the back door and Max took don’t remember much more. border and shot in the forest. out the key. The ghetto was sealed tight, but obviously My dearest aunt Ania told me that from now We almost made it when, suddenly, another some contact with the outside world existed. One on she would be my mother. We never recovered Jewish policeman of higher position appeared. day we got a letter from my father, who was living my mother’s body. The next day my grandma He started to shout at Max trying to push us back in hiding on the “Aryan” side of the wall. Before contacted the truck driver commuting between into the main floor. I don’t exactly remember what the war he was active in the Polish Socialist the ghetto and the Aryan side, and organized my happened next. The other policeman threatened Party (PPS), and his friends from these circles transfer with me hidden under some rags at the Max, that he would remove him from the force helped him to hide. Father found out that we back of the truck. for insubordination, and would send him with the were still alive, and started organizing for us a I don’t remember the last/hasty farewell. I next transport. place to stay with his Polish friends. Mama didn’t felt suffocated with all the stuff over me, then I I believe that my grandmother, or maybe Max, want to leave her mother and sister in the ghetto, heard the German guards’ voices, and at last I bribed this policeman with some money, or the but she realized that it could be our only chance was standing in the entrance of the apartment ring, and he finally left. Max quietly opened the for survival. She planned that with the help of the house. There were people on the street, walk- back door leading to the deserted street and let Polish friends she could later organize an escape ing, talking; everything looked strange. The us out. The ordeal was over. for the rest of the family. woman was waiting for me, and we entered the We were completely exhausted and half con- The big problem was how to cross the over- apartment, where my father was waiting. He scious after the scenes we witnessed. Our prob- six-feet-tall brick wall surrounding the ghetto. All asked about mama. It was the only time in my lem was not finished, and we could be shot at any the gates were guarded, and we were trapped life when I saw him crying, after I told him what time on the ghetto streets during curfew at night. inside. We tried our escape three times, but we happened. I was placed with some worker’s Somehow we were not afraid. Quick and possibly were spotted and turned back. During the third family, where I spent the next couple of months. painless death looked good. Anyway, after a short try I lost my mother, who was shot by a black- My life in hiding began. September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15

thousands of Jews were murdered by locals, the IN EASTERN EUROPE, museum at the Ponar killing site near Vilnius fea- tures, curiously, a display about the Japanese diplomat , who worked in Kaunas HOLOCAUST MUSEUMS and saved mostly Polish Jews. In March, Lithuania’s Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum began a mobile exhibition about the ARE MISSING FROM country’s Righteous Among the Nations — non- Jews who have been recognized by Israel as having risked their lives to save Jews. KEY HISTORICAL SITES In 2016, Poland, amid a polarizing international (Continued from page 6) One way of sweetening the bitter pill of com- debate about Polish Holocaust complicity, opened Bucharest, noted in an interview with the Jewish plicity has been to elevate in museums the role a museum about its rescuers. Another such mu- Telegraphic Agency. of Holocaust-era rescuers. seum is planned for Auschwitz. Polish officials Because of this, “it’s have claimed that only in the past 20 years there were about that you have local schol- 70,000 Righteous in ars in Eastern Europe Poland, although Is- who have become ex- rael’s Yad Vashem perts on the Holocaust,” Holocaust museum she said. Beyond that, has recognized fewer “the legacy of the Com- than 7,000. munist regime makes it With rescuers who hard for some people to have been recognized admit what happened, by Yad Vashem, their because they understand elevation in Eastern their own nation’s role as European museums a victim, not a perpetra- is “in itself a worthy tor.” And it’s of course “an cause,” Efraim Zuroff, issue of national pride” to the Eastern Europe deny Holocaust-era com- director of the Simon plicity. Wiesenthal Center, ndeed, throughout told JTA. “But not much of Eastern Eu- when it comes instead rope, and especially Part of an exhibition about Communist Jews who killed non-Jewish Ukrainians at the Tkuma museum in Dnipro, Ukraine. of the recognition of local complicity in in Ukraine and Lithuania, collaborators who In recent years, a number of museums for res- I Nazi crimes, that is so sorely missing in the post- were responsible for killing Jews while fighting cuers have opened in countries where a signifi- Communist countries today.” alongside the Nazis are celebrated as national cant part of the population collaborated with the heroes because they fought against the Soviet Nazis, including the Jānis Lipke Museum in Riga, Union. Latvia, which opened in 2012. In Lithuania, where BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ, JTA

amount to $10,000, which includes income, END-OF-YEAR sales and property taxes. The effect of this lim- itation on deductibility has been quite significant for most upper-income individuals and families. TAX PLANNING FOR DONORS There was an expectation that this limitation IRA ROLLOVER itable recipients of an IRA charitable rollover. might be eliminated in 2019 by Congress, but If you are now over the age of 70½, you can The donor must notify the administrator of the that has not come to pass. dake a qualified charitable Distribution (QCD) of IRA to make a direct distribution to the charita- In addition, the standard deduction for indi- up to $100,000 annually from your individual ble beneficiary in order to qualify. viduals will be $12,200 in 2019, for heads of IRA (traditional or Roth) to the American Society This giving opportunity was made permanent household will be $18,350 in 2019, and for mar- for Yad Vashem before the end of the calendar by the passing of the PATH (Protecting Ameri- ried couples filing jointly and widows will be year. This type of gift is also commonly called cans from Tax Hikes) Act in December of 2015 $24,400 in 2019. Some additional consequen- the IRA charitable rollover. Many charities are by Congress. tial income tax deductions were eliminated by recommending this option for donors over the TAX CUTS AND JOBS ACT OF 2017 Congress as a part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act age of 70½, especially toward the end of the The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 made a of 2017, a few of which are listed here: most in- calendar year. number of significant changes regarding income surance casualty and theft losses; tax prepara- DETAILS taxes for individuals and families; most important tion charges; moving expenses; and employee A donor older than 70½ can individually dis- among them is that there are now a total of seven expenses not reimbursed by the employer. tribute up to $100,000 each year from his or her income tax brackets, lowering taxes for some Many more individuals and families utilized the IRA (through its administrator) to the American and raising taxes for others. We are living with standard deduction in 2018 than in past years. Society for Yad Vashem without having to rec- the impact of the 2017 law, as it has simplified tax Remember, it is always wise to check with ognize the distribution as income to the donor. preparation for many, but significantly increased your accountant or tax advisor as part of your This distribution can be used to satisfy the taxes for individuals living in states where there review process. RMD (Required Minimum Distribution) for the are high state income taxes. If you have any questions, please feel free to year the distribution has been made. Please DETAILS contact me by telephone at 212-220-4304 ex- note that the gift must be completed by Decem- This coming tax season will again produce tension 213, or by e-mail at cmorton@yad- ber 31 (check cashed by ASYV) in order to qual- much angst for individuals and families domi- vashemusa.org. ify and no benefit may be received by the donor ciled in states that have state income taxes, as from the charity. the final version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of BY ROBERT CHRISTOPHER MORTON As the American Society for Yad Vashem is 2017 maintained the deductibility of state and Director of Planned Giving a public charity, it falls within the permitted char- local taxes, but limited the total deductible American Society for Yad Vashem American Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE U.S. POSTAGE 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID SMITHTOWN, N.Y. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO.15

Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org Society Editor (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief Stanely H. Stone for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for New York, NY 10110 NY York, New EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL *Published Bimonthly by the American by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp In- mates, and Nazi Victims **deceased Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer** Joseph Bukiet** September/October 2019 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5780 - Tishri/Cheshvan 2019 September/October

for more than thirty , who was greatly re- , who was greatly z”l, z”l

MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE The Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle is The American Society for Yad Vashem Yad American Society for The was founded in 1981 by a group of was founded in 1981 and led by Eli Holocaust survivors Zborowski, approved by the years. Recently American So- of the Board of Directors our Legacy Cir- Vashem, Yad ciety for in memory of Eli cle is being named Zborowski, and accomplish- spected for his work and is Vashem Yad ments on behalf of missed by all who knew him. ELI ZBOROWSKI LEGACY CIRCLE LEGACY ELI ZBOROWSKI 212-220-4304; [email protected] Director of Planned Giving at ASYV, who can be reached at: who ASYV, Director of Planned Giving at Robert Christopher Morton, For further information about the Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle, For further information about the Eli Zborowski The Talmud “I did not find the world desolate when I entered it. As my fa- I entered it. “I did not find the world desolate when By including Yad Vashem in your estate plans, you assure a Vashem Yad By including please contact who will come after me.” thers planted for me before I was born, so do I plant for those thers planted for me before I was born, serve as a powerful antidote to denial, hate and indifference. serve as a powerful antidote to denial, future in which Holocaust remembrance and education will future in which Holocaust remembrance with substantial wealth. that can accommodate those of modest means, as well as those that can accommodate those of modest through a broad range of programs and investment vehicles through a broad range of programs Charitable Lead Trust. Individuals can make gifts of any size, Charitable Lead Trust. an IRA or retirement plan, or making ASYV the beneficiary of a ASYV the or retirement plan, or making an IRA ing a paid-up life insurance policy or contributing an interest in ing a paid-up life insurance policy or contributing a Charitable Remainder Trust or Charitable Gift Annuity, donat- Annuity, or Charitable Gift a Charitable Remainder Trust in their estate plans. This can include a bequest by will, funding in their estate plans. This can include open to and will recognize anyone who includes Yad Vashem Yad includes open to and will recognize anyone who Page 16 Page