AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 40-No.2 ISSN 0892-1571 November/December 2013-Kislev/Tevet 5774 The American & International Societies for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner LEGACY AND GRATITUDE he Annual Tribute Dinner of the ing remarks. contributions of Eli Zborowski, z”l. A This year’s dinner also recognized T American Society for Yad Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was member of the Jewish Fighters the tenth anniversary of the Columbia Vashem was held on Sunday, honored with the Yad Vashem Organization, Zborowski survived the shuttle disaster. Tributes to Petr Ginz November 10th. With inspiring Remembrance Award, given for his war in hiding along with his mother, and Col. Ilan Ramon were especially addresses from honoree Mayor visionary leadership and for his sup- sister and younger brother, and powerful, thanks to the presence of Michael R. Bloomberg, Chairman of port of Yad Vashem’s efforts to served as liaison between the Jewish Ginz’s nephew Yoram Pressburger

Leonard Wilf, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and Ambassador Ron Prosor. the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Israel strengthen the cause of Holocaust ghettos and non-Jewish par- Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad remembrance and education. Most tisan units. Upon arriving in Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, recently the recipient of the presti- America, Eli immediately and Mauthausen survivor Ed gious Genesis Prize, Mayor began devoting time and Mosberg, the dinner marked thirty- Bloomberg has been a central figure resources to Holocaust two years since the Society was in empowering New York City as the remembrance. In 1981, Eli established by the Founding capital of tolerance, innovation and founded the American and Chairman Eli Zborowski, z”l, along growth. In 2005, Mayor Bloomberg International Societies for with other Holocaust survivors. was the official representative of Yad Vashem, and served as The program, entitled “Legacy and President Bill Clinton at the opening its volunteer Chairman from Gratitude,” was presided over by of the new Holocaust History Museum its inception, guiding it to Dinner Co-Chairpersons Marilyn and at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. raise over $100 million for Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of the City of New Barry Rubenstein, with Chairman of The evening program featured a the benefit of Yad Vashem. York, 2013 recipient of the Yad Vashem Remembrance the Board Leonard Wilf giving open- special memorial tribute to the life and He established the Diana and Award. Eli Zborowski Interdisciplinary Chair for Holocaust Studies and and Ramon’s son Tal Ramon, who Research at Yeshiva University, and performed a song he composed in IN THIS ISSUE memory of his father. In addition to Tal The American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner...... 1, 8-9 endowed the Diana Zborowski Center Ramon’s appearance, the program Discovery of Nazi plundered art offers glimpse “into a dark story”...... 2 for the Study of the Aftermath of the The Nazi hunter...... 3 Holocaust at Yad Vashem. included performances by HaZamir: The International Jewish High School Chronicle of Two and a Half Years in Auschwitz...... 4 t the event, held on the 75th The vast reach of the Nazi Holocaust...... 5 A anniversary of Kristallnacht, Choir, with moving renditions of "Eli, “Being Jewish meant being dead”...... 6 speakers reflected on the Shoah and Eli," written by the young paratrooper Poland’s dark hunt...... 7 emphasized the importance of educa- Hannah Szenes, and the "Yugnt Yad Vashem exhibit honors saviors of Jews in WWII...... 10 tion and legacy, ensuring that the Hymn," dedicated to the youth club in In going after Nazi criminals, Europe is still divided...... 12 torch of remembrance is assumed by the Vilna ghetto and written by parti- The Munich crisis through the eyes of cartoonists...... 15 the second and third generations. san Shmerke Kaczerginski. Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 PAST TERRORS LIVE ON WITH HOLOCAUST’S CHILDREN pneumonia and malnutrition. Scores loss,” she said. “I carried that with me their offspring. But seven decades BY TIM MADIGAN, of her uncles, aunts, cousins and always.” after the war, there are a third gener- FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM friends were ordered to dig their own ecades later, Leslie faced the ation and a fourth. graves and then shot en masse. decision of when to tell her own Descendants remember the horror or the first-grade girl named D Brigitte’s father was sent to the con- daughter, 11-year-old Lauren. The girl but are increasingly inclined to talk Leslie, the playground antics centration camp at Dachau. Hitler, the F and her grandmother have shared a about something else, a new sense of seemed just that, a silly and harmless mother explained, was the German profound bond from the moment of healing and pride among the ones way for a few boys to spend recess. leader behind it all, the man who tried Lauren’s birth. who came after. That day in the 1960s, at the elemen- to kill all the Jews. “My hand was forced,” Leslie said. tary school in Fort Worth, the boys “She was aghast and mortified, hor- “Lauren was in kindergarten. I heard For decades now, survivors and started jutting their hands in the air rified, and understandably, because they were going to discuss the their descendants have been coming and shouting “Heil Hitler!” They this was many years after the Holocaust in Sunday school. I told her together around the world in formal laughed. Leslie had no idea what the there was a lot of sadness and informal ways, talking of the past, words and gestures meant. and death and that her looking to the future. At home after school she found her grandmother had been One new group is called mother, Brigitte Altman, sitting at her involved in it.” Generations, organized by the Dallas bedroom desk. Leslie began to Leslie has since tried to Holocaust Museum. Its mission state- describe the playground silliness. spare her daughter from ment says Generations is “committed “My mother had always been and the most haunting details. to educate our community and future still is mostly very calm, not easily But Lauren seems to generations by preserving the memo- upset,” the daughter, Leslie Magee, understand, one reason said. “But she was just horrified when she has always doted on ries of the past and keeping our fami- I mentioned this to her. She stopped her grandmother. lies’ voices alive.” what she was doing and she pulled “I’m very sad for what A handful of people were expected me aside.” This family photo shows Brigitte Friedmann’s family in she went through,” for its first meeting in June. More than Mother and daughter sat down on Lithuania. Only three members from Friedmann’s, (now Lauren said. “And I’m very a hundred showed up: survivors, sec- the bed and Brigitte spoke of a distant Altman’s), family did not perish in the Holocaust. grateful that she’s still ond, third, and in a few cases, fourth place, a small European country on Holocaust and in Fort Worth, some- here today. I don’t want anything bad generations. the Baltic Sea called Lithuania. The thing like this was going on on the to happen to her anymore.” “There was such excitement,” said country was occupied by the playground. I was shocked, and then They are complex feelings familiar Arlington artist Julie Meetal, the Germans during World War II. Brigitte there was this feeling of being deeply to thousands around the world in what daughter of Holocaust survivors and a had been a Jewish teenager then, saddened because someone that I is now an intergenerational story. founder of Generations. “There was herded by the Nazis into a squalid loved so much, my mother, had suf- Scores of studies have documented such a need for second and third gen- ghetto of 40,000 people. fered so much. how the trauma and horror did not just erations to get together and have She was one of only a few hundred “It hurt me to know that she had afflict one generation, how it was their voices heard.” to survive. Brigitte’s mother died of been put through such tragedy and often passed down by survivors to (Continued on page 12) DISCOVERY OF NAZI PLUNDERED ART OFFERS GLIMPSE “INTO A DARK STORY” the Third Reich by selling art that had then when he needed cash, the mag- ing to the U.S. National Archives. BY CARLO ANGERER been deemed degenerate by Adolf azine said. he Allies recovered and cata- AND ERIN MCCLAM, NBC NEWS Hitler. Much of the work was already Tlogued much of the art, which known from reproductions, said had been stashed by the Germans in undreds of works of art by Walter Grasskamp, a professor at the churches and other buildings. HPicasso, Matisse and other mas- Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. ters of the 20th century — seized by think the surprise will be bigger the Nazis, lost for decades and now “Iin terms of politics: who owned worth more than $1 billion — were it, how was it taken away, was it legal reportedly found among piles of rotting — obviously not,” Grasskamp said. groceries in a German apartment. “What about the original owners, The find would be among the largest where did they end? I think this is a in the worldwide effort, underway question as interesting as the value since the end of World War II, to for the art market.” recover masterpieces plundered by It was not clear why German author- the Nazis from Jews inside Germany ities kept the find secret for two years. and from elsewhere in Europe, con- The British newspaper The Guardian sidered the largest art heist in history. reported that it may be because of Experts will appraise the works — diplomatic and legal complications, paintings, drawings and prints — but particularly claims for restitution from the German news magazine Focus, around the world. The 1919 painting “Reading Girl in White and which broke the story, put the value International warrants were out for Yellow” by Henri Matisse. Other works by at more than 1 billion euros, or $1.3 German artist Max Beckman’s “Lion Tamer,” at least 200 of the prized works, Matisse and other artists were among almost billion. a 1930 gouache and pastel work on paper, was according to Focus. The magazine 1,500 discovered in a German apartment. German authorities have not recently sold by Cornelius Gurlitt — the reclu- sive son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, the art dealer reported that the recovered collection General Dwight Eisenhower person- released photos of the cache, which who in the run-up to the Second World War is being stored in a secure warehouse ally inspected some of the stolen also includes works by Marc Chagall had been in charge of gathering up so-called in Munich for now. treasures after the Allied victory. and Paul Klee. Investigators found it “degenerate art” for the Nazis. Asked about the Focus report, a Grasskamp, the professor, said that two years ago, after a man taking the When Hildebrand Gurlitt died, in a spokesman for the German govern- the discovery should be deemed not a train from Zurich to Munich was found traffic accident in 1956, his son inher- ment, Steffen Seibert, said that great find for Germany but a reminder carrying a large but legal amount of ited the art, apparently unaware of its authorities were aware of the case of its dark past. cash. origin. and supplying “advice from experts in “It is connected with the worst chap- The man was the son of Hildebrand Focus reported that the son, the field of so-called degenerate art.” ter of German history, so it’s not a tri- Gurlitt, who was a modern art special- Cornelius Gurlitt, 80, kept the works More than 20 percent of the art of umph, it’s not the ‘Nazi treasure,’ ist in the early 20th century. Joseph hidden in darkened rooms in his Europe was looted by the Nazis under which is rubbish,” he said. “I think this Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda min- disheveled, food-littered apartment in Hitler, and as many as 100,000 works is an interesting peeping hole into a ister, recruited Gurlitt to raise cash for Munich. He sold a painting now and are still thought to be missing, accord- dark story.” November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 THE NAZI HUNTER THE REMARKABLE STORY OF THE JEWISH REFUGEE RESPONSIBLE FOR TRACKING DOWN THE AUSCHWITZ COMMANDANT Jewish men, women and children. Rudolph Höss’s role in the Holocaust. farm under the name Franz Lang. BY SARA MALM, MAIL ONLINE Rudolph Höss was not only in Hanns Alexander then began his Rudolph Höss was arrested on charge of the deadliest of the hunt for Höss, knowing that the for- March 11, 1946. Hanns Alexander German-born Jewish refugee Holocaust concentration camps; he mer Auschwitz Kommandant would and his men dragged him out of hid- who served in the British Army A was also the mastermind behind the hold the key information to the work- ing and beat him until he gave up his during World War II has been use of Zyklon B to commit mass ings of the Nazi atrocities committed true identity. unveiled as one of the leading inves- killings of (mainly Jewish) prisoners. against his people. tigators responsible for the capture of Mr. Alexander’s story was uncov- fter the fall of one of the worst Nazi criminals of the ered by his great-nephew at the war Auschwitz, Holocaust. A hero’s funeral in 2006. Höss and his fami- During a eulogy, Mr. Alexander’s ly had fled towards nephews spoke of his past as a Nazi the Danish border. hunter, and Thomas Harding, whose British intelligence grandmother was Mr. Alexander’s sis- had tracked them ter, began to investigate his past. down to the anns Alexander fled from Berlin Flensburg area, Hto London in 1936 after his where Höss’s wife father, already in England, heard Hedwig and their rumors of what was about to take children lived in an place in their native Germany. old sugar factory. When Britain declared war on After the British Germany in 1939, 22-year-old Hanns managed to inter- and his twin brother Paul volunteered cept a letter from The fall of a Nazi criminal: Rudolph Höss, pictured with Heinrich for the British Army and were placed Hedwig proving that Himmler during an inspection of Auschwitz, left, and battered and bruised following his arrest by the British, in March 1946. with the Auxiliary Military Pioneer she knew where her Corps, a unit of refugees who wanted husband was hiding, she had been Höss stood trial at Nuremberg in April to fight the Nazis. taken in for questioning. and was subsequently handed over to In 1945, having taken part in the D- Hanns arrived on March 7, 1946, Polish authorities on May 25, 1946. In Hanns Alexander, a Jewish refugee serving in Day landings in Normandy and wit- and began to interrogate Mrs Höss. Poland he stood trial accused of mur- the British Army, captured Rudolph Höss. nessed the liberation of Bergen- She would not budge. But neither dering three million people. Throughout his life in Britain, Hanns Belsen concentration camp, Hanns would Hanns Alexander. Höss was sentenced to death on Alexander never spoke of his involve- Alexander was chosen to take part in Hanns and members of his team April 2, 1947, and was hanged, imme- ment in the hunt for Auschwitz com- a 12-strong team, tasked with track- brought in Höss’s oldest son Klaus diately adjacent to the crematorium of mander Rudolph Höss, and the truth ing down Nazi war criminals. and threatened Hedwig with deport- the former Auschwitz I concentration was not unveiled until after his death. As the team rounded up the Bergen- ing him to Siberia. camp, on April 16. In 1946 he played a crucial role in Belsen guards and administrators, Ten minutes later, Hedwig had writ- Captain Hanns Alexander never bringing Höss to justice, a man interpreter Hanns became central in ten down the location and new alias returned to Germany, and died in responsible for killing millions of the interrogations and uncovered of her husband, who was living at a London in 2006, aged 89. HOLOCAUST RESTITUTION MAKING LITTLE HEADWAY IN EASTERN EUROPE Home to more Jews than any other most cases continues at a glacial from Jews and Christians by previous BY DINAH SPRITZER, JTA country before World War II, Poland is pace. Communist governments. If the bill n 1988, Yehuda Evron received a now the only European country to n Romania, all compensation to passes, the Czech Federation of Imemorable letter from Lech endure Nazi occupation that has not Iprivate property claimants has Jewish Communities is set to receive Walesa, the first post-Communist enacted a law to ensure some kind of been suspended; critics blame a cor- $500,000 a year over 30 years. president of Poland, on the eve of the private property compensation or rupt and bankrupt compensation The worst restitution record, confer- country’s transition to democracy. restitution to Holocaust survivors or fund. ence-goers said, belongs to Poland. “He wrote that within a few months their heirs. In Latvia, where 300 Jewish com- n 2010, Terezin Declaration signa- we would get my wife’s property Evron talked to JTA at a Prague munal properties were never Itories approved a set of nonbind- back,” recalled Evron, now 80. His meeting on Holocaust restitution, returned, a bill offering some compen- ing best practices, such as suggest- wife was the only Holocaust survivor called the Immovable Property sation has been stalled for six years. ing solutions to the problem of heir- of a family that owned a residential Review Conference, which was In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor less property and making the claims building and factory in Zwienec that organized as a follow-up to a 2009 Orban has withheld the final two process more transparent and afford- had been confiscated by the Nazis conference in this city that produced a years of a government compensation able. After initially agreeing to the and then seized by Poland’s historic resolution on Holocaust program to aid Hungarian survivors document, Poland made an abrupt Communist government. assets. The resolution, called the who reside outside the country. about-face and withdrew its support. Evron, a Romanian émigré and 2009 Terezin Declaration, was signed There have been a few bright spots. To add salt to an already festering leader of the New York-based by 46 countries that committed to In 2011, Lithuania authorized pay- diplomatic wound, Polish Foreign Holocaust Restitution Committee, speeding up the restitution of private ment of about $50 million over 10 Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in 2011 which represents claims of thousands and communal property to Holocaust years to compensate the Jewish com- went on Polish radio to complain of of survivors from Poland, chortled bit- survivors and their heirs. munity for communal property seized U.S. pressure on restitution issues. terly when recalling his initial opti- “In sum, restitution of property con- by the Nazi and Soviet occupation “If the United States would have mism after corresponding with fiscated during the Holocaust pro- regimes. Serbia passed a restitution wanted to help Polish Jews, a good Walesa. Nearly 25 years have passed ceeds exceedingly slowly, if at all,” bill affecting Jews and non-Jews that moment for that would have been since, many more survivors have died said a report prepared for the confer- the Jewish community expects even- 1943–44, when the majority of them and Polish leaders repeatedly have ence by the World Jewish Restitution tually will address Holocaust claims were still alive,” Sikorski quipped. reneged on promises to enact a resti- Organization, an umbrella group. specifically. Stuart Eizenstat, a former U.S. tution law to compensate for the bil- The focus remains on Central and Recently the Czech Republic’s deputy treasury secretary who served lions of dollars in property stolen from Eastern Europe, where compensation lower house of parliament approved a as special representative of the U.S. Jews and non-Jews during and after for communal and private property plan to return billions of dollars worth president and secretary of state for the Holocaust. seizures began in the 1990s and in of communal property confiscated (Continued on page 15) Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS A CHRONICLE OF TWO AND A HALF YEARS IN AUSCHWITZ Sky Tinged Red: A Chronicle of Two to do their damnable work — first she grabbed the gun and proceeded return to their comfortable former and a Half Years in Auschwitz. slaving to construct the place, and to shoot him and every other SS man lives.” In fact, though, the ruse played By Isaia Eiger. Translated by Dora then forced by them to do much of in the vicinity! True, in the end she on them was especially ruthless. Eiger Zaidenweber. Beaver’s Pond their dirty work. With that, Eiger herself was shot, but not before pro- Initially, they were solicitously kept Press, Inc.: Edina, Minnesota, 2013. shares with us the compelling story of claiming to her ruthless murderers “in together — young and old — in one 391 pp. $19.95 softcover. the Greek Jew Isaac Tsitgiyahu, a a clear proud voice” that “their end area. Additionally, unlike everyone member of the Sonderkommando in would soon come when they and their else brought to the camp, they REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN Birkenau. The Sonderkommando was country would pay dearly for the hor- weren’t searched. Their belongings t isn’t easy to write a book like Sky charged with the horrendous task of rific crimes they perpetrated.” were not taken. Instead, a hospital ITinged Red: A Chronicle of Two removing the corpses from the gas or that matter, because the job was set up for them, a school was and a Half Years in Auschwitz. In his chambers and then burning them in a FEiger had for the majority of his created for their children, workshops Introduction the author, Isaia Eiger, fiery pit. On occasion it happened that time in the camp gave him access to were organized for the adults . . . . In makes that clear. On the one hand, a small child, sheltered much information — he fact, Eiger and all the long-term Eiger explains, he felt the responsibil- in its mother’s arms, registered the endless inmates at Birkenau wondered what ity of recording what he experienced was still alive when the transports of people all this meant. What were the during those brutal years. On the chamber was opened. brought to the camp from Germans up to now? Six months later other hand there was the pain he felt Such was discovered by all over Europe and even these Czechoslovak Jews, with some reliving and writing it down... and the Isaac, who put the child North Africa — he records few who were saved by Eiger and his pain, he was sure, those who sur- aside as he continued the story of the nameless friends, were taken to the gas cham- vived would feel reading the material his work. An SS guard masses who fought with all bers . . . “even as they resisted and and reliving it themselves. In sum, he appeared and insisted their might once they actu- fought.” began to think, “Why should I open Isaac throw the child ally knew why they had The author writes about how inmates their wounds?” Meanwhile, he real- into the fire. A fight been brought to Auschwitz- at Birkenau, like himself, never stopped ized, there were people who weren’t ensued between the Birkenau. For, indeed, thinking of escape, of ruminating on there and who couldn’t possibly begin two men. One man another aspect of Nazi every possible method. Interestingly, to believe it all! Subsequently, howev- could not overpower the murder the author stresses they were all absolutely sure that once er, the author began reading the other. The result — Isaac fell into the continually in this absorbing work is the world knew what was going on at Holocaust literature being published fire and “with all his remaining the incredible level of deceit practiced Auschwitz-Birkenau, the world would and realized the world desperately strength” determinedly took the SS by the Nazis on their innocent victims. quickly act to end the inhumanity. needed to know what he knew .... man with him. Thus we are told the particularly Concomitantly, too, inmates like Eiger Thus, Eiger, a native of Radom, No less heroic and unforgettable is poignant and heartbreaking story of the also never stopped planning just how Poland, troubled by the idea that the story Eiger relates of the “28-year- Czechoslovak Jews from they could blow up the camp. And, in many might feel “Jews went to their old former dancer from Warsaw” Theresienstadt brought to Birkenau in fact, unbelievably, they would eventual- deaths like sheep to the slaughter,” Franciszka Manovna, “known as 1943. They were completely fooled ly blow up a part of it! finds it important for us all to know of Lusia in her circle of friends.” Naked into believing they were simply going In sum, Eiger has much to tell us, the courage and consummate hero- and knowing she was about to enter to be “resettled to the wide-open making his book an invaluable addi- ism he found around him even in the the gas chamber — most had no idea spaces of eastern Europe.” “They tion to Holocaust literature. Moreover, very heart of Birkenau, Auschwitz’s — an SS man, admiring her figure, firmly believed in the high standards it is a book only he could write! hellish extermination camp. It was invited her to go into a corner with him of German culture and civilization. there he spent those terrible two and for his pleasure. Her reaction in sum: They also believed that the present Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of a half years. Specifically, he was part She “spit in his face.” He drew his pis- problems were due to the war and Media, Communication, and Visual of the skeletal crew the Nazis needed tol. In the melee that quickly followed, that when it was over they would Arts at Pace University. “IF, BY MIRACLE”: A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR’S TALE If, by Miracle. name on the list of people designated neighboring villages supplied logs searched their backpacks at the end By Michael Kutz. Translated by to clean the streets and sidewalks. from the forests around Nieswiez. of each day. Vivian Felsen. Although I was only 10 years old, I Jewish men and older boys had to cut WIDESPREAD HUNGER Azrieli Foundation, 2013. 184 pp. was assigned to clean the public toi- up the wood and arrange it in neat $14.95 softcover. lets, but Tsalia somehow piles. Tsalia and I were ith each passing day, hunger At age 10, Michael Kutz is among arranged for me to go soon placed among W became more and more wide- the 4,000-plus Jews in his town in with his group . . . . the woodcutters . . . . spread among the Jewish population, present-day Belarus who will be Our group, which Jewish girls and and there were instances of sympa- marched to the Nazi death pits on included several other women worked at Nazi thetic gentiles selling potatoes and October 30, 1941. children, did eventually headquarters doing flour to Jews. Whenever the police In this excerpt from If, by Miracle, have to clean the public laundry, ironing shirts saw Jews with food supplies, they Michael Kutz remembers the German toilets, which the Nazis and uniforms, cleaning either arrested them or shot them on army occupying his town of Nieswiez, usually ordered us to do rooms, peeling pota- the spot and then punished the in present-day Belarus, in June 1941. with our hands. They toes and washing pots. townspeople for helping them. His father had been mobilized months often photographed us They were often raped My mother used to tell us that earlier by the Soviet Red Army, and doing the work. For the by the officers. Some necessity is the mother of invention. he was left with his mother and sib- most part, we complied of the young women When we suggested to her that in the lings to face the German soldiers and because we just wanted who had belonged to evenings, after dark, we could take deal with the Judenrat, a Jewish to return home safely to Zionist organizations our clean tablecloths and linen to council under the control of the Nazi our families — if some- before the war were exchange for food, she, her voice authorities. one disobeyed a command, they trained in the use of machine guns, trembling, agreed, choosing me for he Judenrat then began to reg- were beaten on the head with rubber revolvers and hand grenades, and this task because I was fast and care- T ister all the Jews in Nieswiez. truncheons. We also heard more seri- managed to smuggle out parts of ful. So I became a courier in the dark When the Judenrat presented the list ous warnings from the Nazi authori- weapons hidden beneath their cloth- of night, exchanging these items with to the German commandant, he ties that forced-labor workers were ing and deliver them to people in the non-Jewish acquaintances for bread. ordered them to organize work occasionally shot for disobedience. newly formed Jewish underground I had to assume the responsibilities of groups of men, women and even chil- To provide the Germans with heat resistance. These girls had to be very an adult, taking the place of our father dren. My brother Tsalia was the first for their lodgings, peasants from the careful because the police usually (Continued on page 14) November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 THE VAST REACH OF THE NAZI HOLOCAUST Seventy years ago a group of rab- lies?’ “ she said. “And they pointed to camps, what was going on in the being a Nazi. “Yeah, I was really bis and Jewish war veterans staged the chimney and they said, ‘That’s camps that were local, that would proud. Yeah, oh yes. Yeah.” a small march in Washington to where your parents are. That’s where have been impossible.” She was a member of the Hitler draw public attention to the your family is.’” Holocaust then taking place across “They pointed to the chimney?” Nazi-occupied Europe. We are still “The chimney. And we ignored it. learning more about just what hap- We ignored it totally. It cannot be.” pened, both from archives and from And then there’s this photo that cap- the personal witness of those who tured Irene’s family waiting in line for somehow survived. the Auschwitz gas chamber. “These two little boys are my two lit- BY LEE COWAN, CBS tle brothers, and for a long time I he remembers it vividly: “The could not find my mother here, and I Strain arrives, people getting out, was very unhappy,” Weiss said. “And lining up on the platform, and pretty then one day this little face here, soon they will be told, ‘Men to one sticking out, and I looked with a mag- side and women to the other.’” nifying glass, and I found her. Ah, To talk with Irene Weiss is to touch yeah, that’s the one.” the Holocaust in a truly personal way. The Holocaust, it seems, continues She’s a survivor, and yet — some even now to reveal its horrific reality seven decades later — she can bare- — and not just to survivors like Irene ly believe it actually happened. Weiss. “At first, this was pretty hard to talk t the United States Holocaust about, wasn’t it?” Cowan asked. A Memorial Museum in “Yes. It was extremely difficult. And Washington, D.C., a 13-year project then I realized that we have to share has uncovered evidence that the In the left foreground, Irene Fogel Weiss’ two brothers, Reuven and Gershon Fogel, are pictured the story. We can’t let people forget number of places where the at Auschwitz; their mother, Lenke Mermelstein Fogel, is seated on the ground behind them. All it.” Holocaust was put into practice was perished at the Nazi concentration camp. She was just 13 when the boxcar actually far more numerous than any- Which raises the question: Just who Youth at the tender age of 10. She carrying her and her family arrived at one imagined. beyond the notorious SS was com- was forced to join. Auschwitz on that all-too-busy plat- Geoffrey Megargee, the lead editor plicit in the persecution? “Everything the nation did was all form. of a multi-volume encyclopedia being For most of the last 70-plus years, right; everything that Hitler did was all Weiss knew little of what would written on the Holocaust, said that German women, for example, were right,” Mahlendorf said. “And if bad become of her when the doors of the when he started his research, his thought to be largely innocent things were done by the party, Hitler cattle car opened: “They were barking sense of the scope, of the number of bystanders. didn’t know about it.” But disturbing new research to be She later became a nurse’s aide at released in a book paints an unnerv- a field hospital. ing portrait of women’s participation in One day an injured Russian POW the Holocaust. They, too, could be was brought in. She had been taught brutal killers. to hate anything not purely German. t takes a certain cognitive ability Two orderlies asked her if they should “Ito carry out, to organize this kind kill him instead of treat him. of mass murder on this scale,” said What happened next surprised her. Wendy Lower, author of Hitler’s “I’ve never felt a hate, a wave of Furies: German Women in the Nazi hatred like that before, and I was just Killing Fields. “And women are not about to yell, ‘Yes, you do it,’“ innocent of that. They have that cog- Mahlendorf said. nitive ability.” Kill him? “Yeah, and I was aware of Lower said a generation of women what it was, of what I would have was swept up in the nationalistic fervor been saying. That was one realization of the Nazi movement. Banners like that always stayed with me: I could Members of the League of German Girls (the girls’ wing of the Hitler Youth) engage in paramili- one reading “Women and girls — the have killed.” tary training in 1936. Jews are your ruin” were pervasive. She didn’t; as far as she knows, that orders to get out. My father and 16- sites implementing Hitler’s orders was She points to 23-year-old Erna POW survived. year-old brother lined up with the in the range of 5,000 to 7,000, which Petri, who stumbled on six Jewish Mahlendorf eventually moved to the other men and boys, and the women to him was “an astounding number.” children who had escaped from a U.S. as a Fulbright scholar, and spent and children and elderly in another He now says the total is 42,500 — nearby train. She was so anxious to her life teaching at the University of line.” six times what he originally thought. prove her loyalty to the Reich that she California at Santa Barbara. But her “Where did your mom go?” Cowan “Exactly,” he said. “When you put shot them all in the back of the head. Nazi past still haunts her to this day. asked. them all together, this was a shock.” There was Johanna Altvater, who at “Have you forgiven yourself?” “Well, she and a very large number Megargee’s research doesn’t 22 had moved east to be a secretary. Cowan asked. of the people from the train were change the number of people exter- One day she was on a visit to a Jewish “That’s a hard one,” she said. “Yeah, headed right to the gas chambers,” minated; what it does is enumerate ghetto, one inquisitive child got too in part. I’ve got to live with myself.” Weiss said. “Within a half hour, they the mind-boggling number of concen- close: “She picked the child up by the She now counts among her friends were all dead.” tration camps, killing centers, ghettos, legs and slammed it against the ghetto Holocaust survivors who bear a differ- That was her childhood reality. But brothels and forced-labor camps wall, like she was, you know, kind of ent kind of witness. the older she grew, the more unimag- where the Nazis persecuted not only shaking the dust out of a carpet.” The extent of the Nazi brutality may inable it all seemed — until one day, Jews, but Poles, homosexuals, Soviet These women weren’t military — only be coming to light to researchers she heard about a set of photos that prisoners of war and many others, they weren’t under orders to kill. now, but for Irene Weiss, it was she never knew existed. They were too. Lower points out: it’s what they knew. always there. taken by the Nazis on the Auschwitz “So what does that say about the “They did it willingly,” she said. “This may be an odd question,” said platform on the very day Irene arrived. notion that this was just taking place “They weren’t just conforming, they Cowan, “but do you ever wonder why A picture captured that very in a few corners of Europe and was weren’t just getting along. They were you survived?” moment: Irene to the left, alone on the the result of Hitler and a few mad- ideologically hooked.” “Pure chance in every way,” Weiss Auschwitz platform. “I’m leaning in to men?” asked Cowan. Ursula Mahlendorf knows about get- said. “There were so many chances see where my little sister went.” “I think it destroys it, utterly,” ting ideologically hooked. “I was very to die, and so many, occasionally, “The very first thing we asked is, Megargee replied. “Really, to say that enthusiastic, there was no time that I chances to survive another day. The ‘When are we going to see our fami- you didn’t know that there were ever doubted anything,” she said of system was rigged against survival.” Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER “BEING JEWISH MEANT BEING DEAD” long, but the thing is, I became para- because I looked so gentile,” Mary child, at the Anglican church for con- BY JOE O’CONNOR, NATIONAL POST noid, and it got to the point during the says. “I was only ever stopped by the firmation classes. war where I couldn’t even think of Germans once.” “I always suspected that my mother here is a list of horrors rattling being Jewish because being Jewish was Jewish,” Anita Stern says. “My around inside Mary Gale’s The Warsaw uprising in August T meant being dead — they were the grandmother would have matzo and head. 1944 changed things. The city same thing to me,” says Mary Gale, halva hidden underneath her dresser.” The 86-year-old tells me the story of became a battleground. The sky was now living in a seniors home in Mary experienced a health scare a her life, starting from the happy begin- aflame. Mary’s father was killed by Toronto’s west end. few years back. She revealed her ning as a girl growing up in a middle- the Germans. Jewish identity to Anita then, swear- class Jewish family in Lodz, Poland, a “It got to the point that, even today, “I remember seeing his body,” she ing her to secrecy, a secret she let slip family that, like so many other Jewish when I had six teeth pulled out at the says, tears welling in her eyes. dentist I refused the anesthetic to her eldest daughter, Christine, dur- families would be torn apart by the ing a trip back to Warsaw for her 80th horrors of the Holocaust. because to take a needle was to never come back. And that was what birthday. But Mary Gale has spent the past 70 “I stood on the spot where my father years living with a burdensome being Jewish meant to me — it meant never coming back. was killed and I fell apart,” she says. “I secret, a lie she no longer wishes to couldn’t not tell the truth of who I was.” conceal. She can pinpoint exactly “I saw so many horrible things. I saw so many dead people. It is amazing ow she is telling the world, when the lie began because it had to thanks to a memoir written with what seeing these things can do to a N begin somewhere in order for her to the help of Ruth Krongold, a volunteer mind. I knew I was safe here in survive. Her father, Menachem, with The Azrieli Foundation and Canada. But I just couldn’t say I was obtained false identity papers for the Ryerson University’s Sustaining Jewish.” family and, in 1939, at the stroke of a Memories Project, which documents forger’s pen, Miriam Zimmerman — a Not even to her son, Tom, who, after survivors’ stories. blond-haired, blue-eyed Polish Jew a terrible car accident near Ottawa Mary Gale. Mary and Ruth met every day for — became Mary Plochocka, a blond- during his university years, went look- several weeks this fall. Mary talked. haired, blue-eyed Polish gentile. ing for the big answers in life and Mary, her mother Rosa and her sis- Ruth listened. It was a sleight of hand that ultimate- found religion, converted to Judaism, ter, Helen, were sent to Buchenwald “It was exhausting,” Mary says. “I ly saved Miriam Zimmerman’s life and changed his name to Gershon and concentration camp — as Polish polit- would go to bed one person and in a life-giving lie she continued to live moved to Israel where, to this day, he ical prisoners. She weighed 80 the middle of the night I’d be in with even after the war. Even after leads an orthodox life. (And where, pounds at the time of liberation and, Buchenwald. It was a therapy for me. marrying Arthur Gale and moving to until recently, his mother had never in the months ahead, would fall in I owed it to all those who died to talk. Canada and becoming a mother who told him he was Jewish to begin with.) love with Arthur Gale, a Canadian It took 70 years, but it was time to let never really talked to her children eeping her secret was essential, charged with running their displaced go of my lie.” about those terrible years, because Kin another time. A Christian persons camp. Mary Gale smiles. Her eyes are what could she possibly say? woman hid the Zimmermans in “I told my husband I was Jewish but warm, blue as the sky beyond the That she was a Jew? That most of Warsaw. Mary, with her hair, her eyes that I wouldn’t tell anyone else,” she nearby window. I ask her who she is her family had been wiped out? That and a phony identity card, was their says. “And he told me it was my life, now, what name she prefers to be her real name was Miriam window to the outside. She shopped, that I had survived the war, and that I known by: Miriam or Mary? Zimmerman and not Mary Gale? mailed letters, worked in a factory and could do whatever I pleased.” “I don’t really know myself,” she says, “It is hard for to me to explain why I hid in plain view. So she did, celebrating Christmas, chuckling. “To be honest, I don’t know kept my Jewish identity secret for so “Nobody thought I could be Jewish and dropping Anita, her youngest what name you should call me by.” OUR LOST WARSAW GHETTO DIARY My relative wrote one of the that is almost impossible to read with ty’s degradation. There is no doubt remained in the family home until Shoah’s most revealing docu- the naked eye, the diary is a remark- that the denizens of the jungle and about four years ago, when his ments. Why doesn’t anyone know able account, clear-eyed and animals will never behave this way. Israeli-born son Kami showed all 800 of it? poignant, spanning roughly the time The dead are naked. When someone pages, stored exactly as they had from the establishment of the ghetto to has just starved, they cover him in been in Warsaw, to a researcher BY SARAH WILDMAN, TABLET the arrival of Soviet troops in Warsaw. wrapping paper and lay him down on named Laurence Weinbaum, who had ews began to write,” wrote It contains references to everything its the sidewalk, and at night his friends, stumbled upon the name Reuven “JEmmanuel Ringelblum, the author had ever studied — from or just beggars, walk out, and undress Ben-Shem dotted throughout Chaim most famous Warsaw ghetto chroni- Mishnah and Torah to secular literature him completely, and leave him all Lazar’s Muranowska 7, a biography cler, recalling efforts to document the and the work of Sigmund Freud, with naked with no shoes, no dress or of the Revisionist Zionist underground destruction. Ringelblum founded the Oneg Shabbat group, the collection of whom Ben-Shem learned in Vienna in even underwear. And in the morning, in the Warsaw ghetto. Intrigued, “journalists, writers, teachers, public the interwar period — as well as a as you go out in the street and the Weinbaum tracked down the Ben- figures, youth, even children,” who close observation of the ways in which wind blows off the wrapping papers Shem family and was eventually invit- decided they would record their expe- Jews were forced to become animals, covering the dead, you see the ed to see what the family had at riences. The group buried an archive not metaphorically, but actually. And it organs of men, women and children home. “You can imagine it felt like the of selected materials, to bear witness. is written in modern Hebrew. “It is a all scrawny, the quivering organs of moment when the bedouin presented “A great deal was written,” Ringelblum fabulous document,” said Amos death in the street. You see the naked the Dead Sea Scrolls,” he told me, recounted, before his own murder, Goldberg, senior lecturer in Holocaust bodies, frozen stuck to the sidewalk. during a recent interview in his “but most of it was lost during the studies at the Department of Jewish The body becomes one with the Jerusalem office. deportations and extermination of History at the Hebrew University in stone, congealed. One dead chunk What Weinbaum found was, in his Warsaw’s Jews. Only the material Jerusalem, who recently wrote a book screaming with poverty and disgust.” opinion, one of the most important hidden in the ghetto archive remained.” on Holocaust diaries. “It has incredible en-Shem kept his diary in a works of first-person narrative to have That’s what Ringelblum believed. descriptive force.” Bleather satchel that he carried survived the Shoah. The diary, he But missing from the famous ghetto “February 1942. The street is teem- with him from the ghetto to the Aryan says, “is extraordinary for several rea- archive is the diary of a man named ing with sights so maddening, so side of Warsaw, to Lublin, through sons: one, it is contemporaneous. It is Reuven Ben-Shem. About 800 pages depraved that it is hard to find any Romania and onto the illegal ship that also in Hebrew. Most of the diarists long, penned in minuscule handwriting equivalent in the treasury of humani- ferried him to Palestine in 1946. It (Continued on page 13) November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 POLAND’S DARK HUNT HOLOCAUST RESCUES Countries and communities that New research reveals some Poles before mid-1942, when they were are getting condoned by the authori- prominently resisted Nazi efforts to were encouraged by the Nazis to rounded up in a series of “liquidation ties. The Jews were perceived by deport their Jews. actively persecute the Jewish pop- actions.” many —not by all — as no longer Italy: Despite Rome’s alliance with ulation. After the mass deportations to the entirely human. Once you dehuman- Nazi Germany, the Italian military Belzec extermination camp, only 337 ize someone, everything becomes BY PATRICIA TREBLE, MACLEAN’S Jews were left. In a meticulously much more easy.” generally refused to accede to here were approximately 3.3 detailed micro history, Grabowski And that meant some Poles began German demands for the deportation T million Jews in Poland before pieced together their stories by comb- to organize their own hunts. In Hunt of Jews either from Italy itself or from the Germans invaded in September ing survivors’ accounts, as well as for the Jews, the author reveals the territory it occupied. After the 1939. At the end of the war, that num- records that had never before been untold story of the involvement of the Germans occupied northern and cen- ber had plummeted to about 30,000. examined. Sometimes he found the Polish “blue” police. Made up partly of tral Italy, in September 1943, they Now, in pathbreaking research, Jan same event described by Jews, Poles prewar police, it was the only uni- ordered the immediate roundup of the Grabowski, a history professor at the and Germans. Through those histori- formed, armed Polish police force Jews in those areas. To a large University of Ottawa, reveals what cal documents, he discovered that working under the Nazis, and used its extent, the Italian public did not coop- happened to those Jews who tried to 286 later perished. (While knowledge of the area and networks erate, nor did Italian police, and in the hide in rural Poland after the Nazis of informants to track down Jews. end, “only” 4,733 Jews, out of about violently emptied the ghettos. “The Polish doctor Zygmunt Klukowski 50,000 in total, were deported to locals had everything to say about recorded how, with the SS gone after Auschwitz. who could survive and who could the liquidations, “today it is the turn of Denmark: In late September 1943, not,” he says. In his new book, Hunt ‘our’ gendarmes and our ‘blue’ police- a nationwide effort in Denmark result- for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in men, who were told to kill every Jew ed in 7,200 of the country’s approxi- German-Occupied Poland, he on the spot. They follow these orders mately 8,000 Jews (and an additional explains how, all too often, Poles with great joy. Throughout the day, 680 non-Jewish family members) turned on and killed Jewish neighbors they pulled the Jews from various being smuggled out of the country to they’d known for decades. And, in hideouts” and, after robbing them, Sweden, where they were given particular, he destroys the myth that “finished them off in plain sight of refuge. the Polish “blue” police had nothing to everyone.” Albania: In the years leading up to do with killing Jews. or peasants who no longer want- World War II, a number of Jews from When an earlier Polish version of Fed to hide Jews, an option was Germany and Austria took up refuge his book was released in 2011, to hand them over to the blues, who in Albania. None of them was deport- Grabowski’s findings deeply polarized would rob and shoot them before noti- ed, either during Italian or the subse- public opinion in that country. In fying the Germans. In all, while seven quent German occupation. Neither media interviews and debates, his Jews were discovered and murdered were the approximately 200 Albanian was the face for a hot-button topic: a by Germans alone, Grabowski found Jews. Thus, at the end of the war, reevaluation of Polish actions during 220 who were denounced and/or there were some 1,800 Jews living in the Holocaust. Poles have long, and killed by locals or Polish “blue” police. the country. In 1995, Yad Vashem rec- rightly, perceived themselves as vic- It’s the latest chapter in an emotion- ognized the Republic of Albania as tims in the Second World War, at the al reexamination of Polish-Jewish Righteous Among the Nations. On the expense of exploring their involve- relations that exploded into the other hand, some 600 Jews living in ment in the Holocaust. Now, national consciousness in 2001, territory under Albanian occupation Grabowski says, “You show that, when Jan Gross published (including Kosovo) were deported to sometimes, victims were victimizing Neighbors, an account of how Poles Bergen-Belsen and murdered. even more desperate people.” in Jedwabne slaughtered their neigh- Bulgaria: Although Bulgarian Though his Ph.D. is on New France, Grabowski’s numbers are precise, he bors on July 10, 1941. Gross, a pro- authorities imposed a wide variety of an interest in the Holocaust had cautions that they are what can be fessor at Princeton University, restrictions on the country’s 50,000 “always been sleeping in me,” he found in historical records. Countless believes public opinion is slowly Jewish citizens, and also cooperated says, “but woke up in a vengeance” a others perished in anonymity.) Only becoming more open to acknowledg- with the deportation of non-Bulgarian decade ago while he was visiting his one percent (51) of the county’s pre- ing the dark aspects of the war, partly Jews from territories under occupa- parents in Warsaw. He went to the war Jewish population would survive because of the work of Grabowski tion by Bulgaria (including Macedonia archives and stumbled upon German in Dabrowa Tarnowska. That’s and others at the Polish Center for and Thrace), King Boris III success- court files from the war that hadn’t because the Nazis’ relentless cam- Holocaust Studies, established in fully avoided deporting a single one of been opened by historians. paign to slaughter every Jew didn’t 2003. “Each time a book came out the country’s Jews to the death Grabowski, whose Jewish father and stop after the ghettos were emptied. It that dealt with these issues,” says paternal grandparents survived by continued in the form of organized Gross, about his own works, “the camps. “passing” as Poles in Warsaw during Judenjagd (hunt for the Jews). debate was shorter and less acrimo- Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France: the war, began his work. While Grabowski expected to find “a nious.” Though well received in aca- Between 1940 and 1944, the resi- He focused on one rural county in degree of treachery, of complacency, demia, the Polish version of dents of this Protestant town in south southeastern Poland, Dabrowa of violence,” he found an astounding Grabowski’s book triggered a wave of central France hid some 5,000 peo- Tarnowska — chosen simply because level of betrayal. Germans needed hate among the nationalist right. The ple, more than half of them Jews, there is a lot of preserved, archived local help to ferret out the Jews from author was even “disinvited for secu- from German arrest. documentation of what happened the scores of small villages. Token rity reasons” from debates. Finland: Between 1939 and 1945, there. While the central events of the rewards were offered to participants And interestingly, when a TV crew Finland fought in three wars, the first Holocaust are infamous, little was — sometimes sugar, often clothes spent a day in Dabrowa Tarnowska to two against Russia, the third against known about events “at the margins, stripped off dead Jews. And to ensure investigate Grabowski’s findings, they Germany. During the second war, the far away from the factories of death, cooperation from even the reluctant, were told of several killings that he’d so-called Continuation War, Finland and far away from historical scrutiny.” the Germans would demand never heard of, now included in the was actually allied with Germany. What he uncovered was an “in-your- “hostages” from the villages who new English version of his book. Nonetheless, Jewish citizens fought face” Holocaust. “Everything that hap- would chivvy their neighbors to join. Currently, the historian is investigat- with the army in all three conflicts, and pened to them was extremely public.” “If the local population did not partici- ing counties in northeastern Poland. even operated their own field syna- Before the war, there were 66,678 pate in sufficient numbers in the Jew The initial results are “even more gogue under the noses of the people in the poor, agrarian county, hunt, then these 10 would be in for a depressing,” he reports. German allies. Finland did turn over including 4,807 Jews. While nearly very rough ride,” Grabowski says in Today, the synagogue of Dabrowa eight Jewish refugees to the Nazis in 2,000 were farmers, most lived in an interview. Tarnowska, which was in ruins when 1942, out of approximately 500 that town, also called Dabrowa For the historian, one explanation Grabowski researched his book, has passed through the country; later in Tarnowska. Unlike urban Jews, who for widespread involvement in the been restored to its former glory, the war, Germany’s ambassador in were quickly isolated in ghettos, their hunts is a change in attitude: “At a thanks to European Union money. But Helsinki wrote to Adolf Hitler that it rural brethren lived and worked amid certain point, you see that torture and it’s too late. There are no longer any was his impression that Finland would the non-Jewish population until just extermination become normal and Jews in the county. not deport any of its Jewish citizens. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ANNUAL TRIBUTE DINNER OF T

Leonard Wilf, Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem; and Edward Tal Ramon, the son of Colonel Ilan Ramon, z”l, and Yoram Pressburger, nephew of Petr Ginz z”l, rec- Mosberg, Holocaust survivor and guest speaker. ognized on the 10th anniversary of the Columbia shuttle disaster; and Leonard Wilf.

Gale and Ira Drukier, and Leonard Wilf. Harry Krakowski, and Elisa and Alan Pines.

Lawrence and Adina Burian. Maya Naveh. Boaz Zborowski. November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 THE AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Rebbetzin Lau, Eugene Gluck, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, and Sharon and David Halpern. Lily Zborowski-Naveh, Leonard Wilf, and Marilyn and Barry Rubenstein.

Rafi, Rose, Wendy, Dan, Paula and Jacob Moskowitz. Abbi Halpern and Barry Levine.

Caroline Massel, Iris Lifshitz Lindenbaum, Stella Skura and Adam Lindenbaum. HaZamir: The International Jewish High School Choir. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM YAD VASHEM EXHIBIT HONORS THOSE WHO RISKED THEIR LIVES TO SAVE JEWS IN WWII about these rare stars amid the dark- describes those who offered shelter Minister Yitzhak Rabin) came upon new BY ARON HELLER, AP ness,” said Israel Meir Lau, who and cared for those they hid. “Under information, gleaned from an Israeli doc- heads Yad Vashem’s advisory coun- the Benefaction of the Cross” pays torate student’s research on hidden chil- n the spring of 1943, the friend of cil, and who himself credits one of tribute to rescuers who were mem- dren during the Holocaust, that brought a Polish Catholic family discov- I those honored, a non-Jewish Russian bers of the Christian clergy. “Paying her background to light. She informed ered a naked Jewish baby in a near- named Feodor Mikhailichenko, with the Ultimate Price” is dedicated to Heller, leading to information about her by dark, cold cellar. The child, not saving him as a child in the those who were killed as a result of biological parents, the Kagans, and the even two years old, could neither walk Buchenwald concentration camp. their actions. “The Courage to Defy” discovery of her adopted sister nor talk. Her Jewish parents had been Lau, a former chief rabbi of Israel, honors those who refused their Stanislawa Roztropowicz, known as murdered, and the family they paid to said that those who experienced the bureaucratic orders to help Jews. And Stanka. protect her had abandoned her. worst evil of man also know they finally, “Parting Once Again” tells the An emotional phone call followed. could not have sur- stories of those hidden children, like “I said, ‘Stanka, this is Inka,’” she vived without the Heller, who lost their identities. recalled. “And then Stanka said, ‘Inka, goodness of man, Heller is now widowed and has two we have waited for this call for 50 either. grown sons. years.’” “These people She was born to the Kagan family in They have since reconnected, with risked themselves, the city of Radyvyliv, today in Ukraine. Heller visiting Ukraine and filling in the risked their families Though she doesn’t even know the missing pieces of her past. She to protect us,” he names of her biological parents, who learned that the Roztropowicz family said at ceremony in June. “There were lots of righteous, but not enough.” About six million European Jews Rescuer Genowefa Majcher from Poland, with rescued Michael were killed by Rozenshein, summer of 1947. German Nazis and their collaborators Taking on considerable peril, Jozef during World War II. The names of and Natalia Roztropowicz took in the those honored for refusing to be indif- child, baptized her as Irena and ferent to the genocide are engraved raised her as their own. Five years along an avenue of trees at the later, they made another gut-wrench- Jerusalem memorial. ing choice: returning their beloved he most famous cases are daughter to an adoptive Jewish fami- TOskar Schindler, whose efforts ly, who moved with her to Israel two to save more than 1,000 Jews were Rescued Alexander Groenteman with the daughter of Klaas and Hendrika van der Knoop, the res- years later. documented in Steven Spielberg’s cuers. The child, now a 71-year-old woman 1993 film Schindler’s List, and Raoul were burned to death inside a barn never stopped its quest to find out named Sabina Heller, says they are Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who shortly after giving her up, and has no what happened to her and had kept a the reason she is alive. is credited for having saved at least memory of them, she considers them childhood picture of her in its home for “I would have been dead if they had- 20,000 Jews before mysteriously dis- heroes just like her Christian adoptive five decades. n’t taken me in ... (they gave me) not appearing. But the new exhibit aims parents. “Attachments that you make in the only life, but love,” said Heller, a to tell the stories of the lesser-known “Imagine the kind of decision they very early years in life somehow stay teacher and writer who now lives in had to make, a deci- with you,” said Heller. “You cannot Los Angeles. “The Roztropowicz fam- sion that no parents explain it rationally, because I didn’t ily did two courageous things. First should have to make remember them and yet this feeling they took me in, and the second time — to separate them- was there. I felt that they loved me.” they let me go.” selves from their Museum official Yehudit Shendar, Heller only discovered the full baby,” she said. “They who curated the exhibit, said the sto- details in 1999. The following year, gave me life by doing ries spoke volumes about the courage Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust that. There were a lot of the righteous and about the fortitude museum and memorial recognized of Jewish parents at of the survivors who pushed for their the Roztropowicz family as that time who couldn’t rescuers to be recognized. Righteous Among the Nations, the bring themselves to do “They survived, they made it, and highest honor given to non-Jews that, and as a result they tried to get a positive to remem- who risked their lives to save Jews they are all dead.” ber the horrors, remember the evil, during World War II. With the Roztropowicz but also take out some hope, some- In June, Yad Vashem unveiled a family she went by the thing positive,” she said. new exhibition that marked 50 years name Inka, before tak- Heller concurred, saying her own of recognizing these saviors, and Rescuer Johanna Kuiper (The Netherlands) with the rescued Ennie ing on a new name existence was a direct result of this dedicated it to the 24,811 people from Kater, 1948. with the Jewish family sliver of hope to emerge from the 47 countries who have been honored cases, such as the Roztropowiczes. that moved her to Israel. Her Jewish ashes of the Holocaust. as Righteous Among the Nations. The exhibition, “I Am My Brother’s adopted mother kept her past a secret “Some people have the strength of A special committee, chaired by a Keeper,” features five 8-minute-long, from her, hoping to give her a new character to go against the stream retired Supreme Court justice, is animated video presentations of res- beginning. and do the right thing. Sometimes it responsible for vetting every case cue stories projected in a dark, cav- It was only in 1999, when she was has to do with religion and sometimes before awarding the title. Following a ernous hall. 58 and after her mother had passed just faith in the goodness of man,” she lengthy process, between 400 and Yad Vashem broke down the res- away, that her mother’s cousin said. “I like to dwell on the positive — 500 are typically recognized a year. cuers into five different categories: Rachel Rabin (incidentally, the lone on that one positive element of the “The next generations need to know “In the Cellars, Pits and Attics sister of assassinated Israeli Prime Holocaust.” November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 HOLOCAUST GRAPHIC NOVELS GIVE ISRAELIS A WAY TO CONNECT TO A PAST NOT QUITE THEIRS humor. Belgium to grieve with his family. On panies such trips. On the plane to BY ANAT ROSENBERG, TABLET Kichka opens Second Generation the first evening of the shiva, as the Poland, when a guide accompanying with the line, “My father almost never last guests remain, Kichka’s father Israeli students on a March of the he words Holocaust and graph- spoke about his family.” The panel abruptly says, “On September 3, Living trip tells Regina how moving it ic novel generally bring to mind T underneath it shows the author, as a 1942, the Gestapo arrested us,” while is to be able to show Mica her old Art Spiegelman and his trailblazing, child, looking at the tattoo on his on the next page Kichka tells us, “and haunts, she responds, “Warsaw does- Pulitzer Prize–winning work Maus, father’s arm and wondering, “Who he talked and talked and talked and n’t interest me. It’s one big cemetery,” which got its start as a three-page wrote a number under his arm hair?” talked and talked,” repeating the adding that they’re going simply to comic in 1971. Fifteen years later it The book’s first two chapters focus on Hebrew word for “and talked” more claim their property. was published in book form, paving Kichka’s early curiosity about his than 100 times. On the same page, Once in Warsaw, however, Regina’s the way for an unlikely new genre. In father’s wartime experiences, blend- he portrays his father as a young man true motives for the trip emerge, as the more than two decades since the ing well-known Holocaust imagery standing next to Hitler, with a yellow she stealthily tracks down an old love publication of the granddaddy of with his father’s personal story of sur- Star of David, a cattle car, a canister interest — a non-Jewish Pole named Holocaust graphic novels, Anne vival. of Zyklon B, and other Holocaust Roman Gorski who (spoiler alert) Frank’s diary has been published in Kichka’s father, Henri, made only symbols. fathered her son, Mica’s late father, comics form; the story of the Warsaw passing references to his life during “Suddenly I understood that, for the before Regina fled to Mandatory ghetto has been turned into a graphic the war — whether joking about how first time in his life, my father is telling Palestine to escape the Nazis. Mica, novel, and other children of survivors his wife’s soup reminded him of his Holocaust story,” Kichka writes. meanwhile, treks all over Warsaw in have embraced the genre to recount “But I came to mourn search of the lost property; she is their families’ histories — pointing to my brother, to talk alternately accompanied by a gentile the fact that, tragically, Spiegelman’s about him. Instead, tour guide of Jewish Warsaw, with father wasn’t the only one to “bleed Dad is talking about whom she becomes involved, and history” (to borrow a phrase from the himself, and I can’t shadowed by a family acquaintance subtitle of Maus). bear to hear it. I stand driven by his own motives. With two recent publications, Israel on the sidelines Unlike Kichka, Modan doesn’t has further embraced the form of the rather than sit down explicitly depict Holocaust imagery in Holocaust-related graphic novel. The with everyone, and The Property. Instead, her clear draw- first is Michel Kichka’s memoir whisper to myself, ing style, switches from vividly col- Second Generation: Things I Never ‘What shitty timing!’ ” ored panels to sepia-toned ones Told My Father, which was originally From that moment when characters discuss the past or on, Kichka said, his flash back to it. The only Nazis pic- father began sharing tured in the book appear when Mica Auschwitz because he never ate soup his story at Belgian schools, joining inadvertently gets “caught” in a reen- like that there, or lamenting how the high school trips to Auschwitz, reliving actment of the Warsaw ghetto upris- Nazis destroyed his feet by forcing his past and even writing a book ing and is rescued by the wily family him to march in the snow. about his lost youth. “Time trans- friend. As a child, Kichka searched for his formed him from a victim of father, to no avail, in the haunting the Holocaust to a Holocaust photograph of emaciated survivors hero,” Kichka writes. “And lining barracks in Buchenwald on the now you can’t talk to him day the camp was liberated. He writes about anything else. So, I how he felt like “that boy,” drawing wonder: What’s better, to himself as the Jewish youth holding keep quiet or to talk? I wish I his hands up in the iconic photo from had an unequivocal answer.” the Warsaw ghetto. He depicts his Perhaps there is a happy childhood nightmares using a combi- medium, Rutu Modan seems nation of his father’s gaunt, naked to suggest in her latest graph- corpse, the Arbeit Macht Frei sign, ic novel, The Property. railroad tracks, and a crematorium Loosely based on her person- scattering his family’s ashes to the al experience of meeting her released in French and, like Maus, wind. At the top left corner, Kichka estranged maternal grandfa- recounts growing up in the shadow of appears as a crying, frightened child ther, the book opens with an a Holocaust survivor. The second is hiding under the covers. epigraph attributed to Rutu Modan’s The Property, a fiction- Yet the war featured in some of Modan’s mother: “With family, al account of a young Israeli woman Kichka’s more pleasant recollections you don’t have to tell the and her grandmother who travel to as well. In describing how he inherit- whole truth and it’s not con- Poland to reclaim an apartment that ed his love of drawing from his father, sidered lying.” belonged to the family before the war, Kichka depicts himself as a child, sit- That sentence sets the published simultaneously in Hebrew ting on his father’s lap while he draws stage for the fictional story of and English. Hitler — with a runny nose and buck- Regina Segal and her grand- At first, these two works appear to teeth, wearing flowered boxer shorts daughter Mica to unfold, as be united solely by the fact that they and carrying a broom instead of a the two feisty women travel both fall into the “Holocaust graphic rifle. On the same page, below that from Israel to Warsaw osten- novel” category — one is autobio- memory, Kichka depicts a black-clad sibly to deal with prewar prop- graphical, the other is fictional; one is Nazi surrounded by three drawings of erty issues. Soon enough, the seem- Fittingly, the action comes to a head drawn in stark black and white, the his father: One is mooning the Nazi, ingly straightforward plot thickens into as all the characters unite in a other bursts with vibrant color. Yet one is giving him a bras d’honneur, a yarn that’s part love story, part who- Warsaw cemetery on Zaduszki (All while profoundly different in narrative and one is sticking out his tongue. dunit, part screwball comedy, and part Saints’ Day), the day that souls of the and graphic style, Second Generation You can almost hear him say, “I sur- exploration of Jewish-Israeli identity. dead return to visit their homes, and The Property have more in com- vived Auschwitz — na-na-na-na-na.” Modan even uses different typefaces according to Polish tradition. This not mon than meets the eye. Both center The book’s turning point comes for the different languages — Hebrew, only echoes Regina’s remark about on family bonds, secrets, and intrigue; about midway, when (spoiler alert) Polish and English — spoken Poland being one big cemetery — it both feature journeys to reclaim Kichka’s younger brother, Charlie — throughout the novel, adding a graph- also underscores the fact that family something tangible or intangible that whom he describes as the spitting ic element to the drama. skeletons often have a way of creep- was lost; both are characterized by a image of their father — commits sui- From the start, Modan depicts the ing back to life despite painstaking bittersweet intensity and off-kilter cide, and Kichka returns from Israel to ambivalence that sometimes accom- efforts to keep them buried. Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 IN GOING AFTER NAZI CRIMINALS, EUROPE IS STILL DIVIDED load of 30 arrested persons, whom that strongly influenced their out- rent ties to Germany, but instead BY DR. EFRAIM ZUROFF, HAARETZ Kepiro reportedly sent directly to the come. The first was the fact that both made a determined effort to try him in Danube River to be shot, instead of to defendants had previously been con- Munich (his port of embarkation for n 2011, for the first time in a a collection point in the city center, victed in legal proceedings connected America), the Hungarians’ reluctance decade, two trials of Nazi war crim- I where their cases would have been to the crimes, but not for these specif- to prosecute Kepiro was clearly evi- inals indicted on criminal charges — reviewed by Hungarian officers. In ic charges. Also in both cases, prose- dent from the almost five years it took with the defendants present and in theory, he also could have pointed to cutors were aided by the fact that dur- them to put him on trial, despite his reasonable health — were concluded the many dozens of people who were ing the course of the proceedings, advanced age and the strong possi- in two different European countries. arrested by Kepiro’s subordinates critical evidence was obtained that bility he might elude justice due to The first to be completed (in May 2011) and subsequently murdered by the made it possible to mount a case infirmity. (In fact, he died in was that of Ivan Demjanjuk, who was Hungarian forces at the Danube. many decades after the fact, even September 2011, less than two tried in Germany for his role as an months after the trial ended.) And his armed SS guard in the Sobibor death acquittal by Judge Bela Varga, who camp, where approximately 250,000 dismissed all the evidence from 1944 Jews were murdered during the years without taking into consideration that 1942–1943. The second, which took it was the Nazis who pressured the place in Hungary and was concluded Hungarians to cancel Kepiro’s original in July, was that of local gendarmerie conviction, also underscores this real- lieutenant Sandor Kepiro, who was ity. In fact, it is highly likely that if not charged for his role in the massacre of for the fact that Hungary assumed the 3,300 civilians in the Serbian city of rotating presidency of the European Novi Sad and its vicinity in the latter Union in January 2011, and was half of January 1942. under harsh criticism for legislative On the surface, there are several initiatives considered anti-democratic noticeable differences between the by the EU, its right-wing government two cases. John Demjanjuk (left); Sandor Kepiro. would never have even allowed Most significant is the difference in n Demjanjuk’s case, on the other without any living witnesses. Kepiro to be put on trial. rank of the accused. While Kepiro, a hand, no evidence of any specific Based on evidence alone, it would hese two cases clearly reflect lawyer, was an officer, and even I crimes was presented to the court appear that the likelihood of Kepiro’s the significant gap that persists acknowledged that he was personally T aside from the fact of his service as being convicted was much higher between Eastern and Western responsible for the roundup of civil- an armed guard at the death camp. In than that of Demjanjuk. Yet ultimately, Europe in dealing with the Holocaust ians in a specific area of Novi Sad on fact, the indictment was unprecedent- it was Demjanjuk who was convicted and its aftermath. Clearly, the January 23, Demjanjuk was a guard ed in German legal history, since it in May, whereas Kepiro was acquitted Communist domination of countries who only received orders. Another was the first time ever that a Nazi war last July. In this respect, one of the like Hungary prevented the soul- significant difference between the criminal was charged in the Federal most critical elements of each trial searching necessary to enable any cases was the amount and specificity Republic without any evidence of a was its venue, and the extent of polit- meaningful acknowledgment and of evidence of the crimes alleged to specific crime against an identifiable ical will, in Germany and Hungary, confrontation with local guilt and com- have been committed by the accused victim, a decision that reflected a far respectively, to bring elderly Nazi war plicity. Unfortunately, by the time such available to the prosecutors to pres- more historically realistic approach to criminals to trial. a process will, if ever, take place, it ent to the court. the cases of men who served in And in fact, the contrast between will be too late to hold any of the local In Hungary, Chief Prosecutor Zsolt camps like Sobibor than had previ- the two countries in this regard was perpetrators accountable, and thus Falvi was able to name six persons ously been applied in German courts. patently obvious. Whereas Germany an opportunity to achieve a measure who were murdered by Kepiro’s men Aside from these differences, how- could easily have ignored the case of of justice, one of the most important during the roundups in Novi Sad and ever, there were several significant Demjanjuk, who was neither German dimensions of reconciliation, will have to submit evidence regarding a truck- similarities between the two cases nor Volksdeutsche, and had no cur- been squandered irrevocably. PAST TERRORS LIVE ON WITH HOLOCAUST’S CHILDREN (Continued from page 2) began in 1941, Brigitte’s family was infirm, was to come to a place of months after, Brigitte watched the And to share a new sense of hope. forced into the infamous Kovno ghet- assembly called Democracy Square. Nazis collect thousands of young chil- eslie Magee has carried the sad- to, an enclave with primitive homes My mother was still an invalid and I dren. Lness from that day in first grade. and no running water, surrounded by remember putting some lipstick on “That was the day the famous But she has watched her mother sol- barbed wire. Food was scarce. her cheeks to give her a healthier Children’s Action took place,” she dier on through life with a remarkable Brigitte’s mother suffered a stroke. appearance. said. “That was really the catalyst that equanimity. She has witnessed first- “We bundled up. It was a prompted my father to try and get me hand the power of a child, her child, to mixture of rain and sleet out of the ghetto.” vanquish old horrors. coming down,” she rigitte left the ghetto on a work “My mother just beamed like I had recalled. “The German Bdetail and slipped away, aided never seen before,” Leslie said of the sergeant, he may have by her father’s former bookkeeper, a day of Lauren’s birth. “Not that this been eating a sandwich gentile woman who took her in. one child could replace all the lives while he was directing Brigitte spent the last years of the war that were lost. But she represented people to the right and left hidden on a distant farm. hope in the future, and happiness, with his whip. I forget “The day I was liberated it was sum- and the continuation of her family.” which side was life and mer,” she said. “I had gone to one of Brigitte Altman was an only child, which side was death, I the outer buildings. It was still dark born August 15, 1924, in Memel, had become so numb outside. I heard a very slight noise Lithuania. Her father was a wealthy Holocaust survivor Brigitte Altman, center, poses for a photo- standing there and waiting behind me. I turned around to see businessman. graph with her daughter, Leslie Magee, right, and granddaugh- for our turn to pass before who or what it was. It was a Russian “My mother tried to teach me the ter Lauren Magee. him. soldier. I was startled but overjoyed.” social graces,” Brigitte said. “I hope I The intentions of the Germans “But apparently he was not looking Somehow her father had survived did not disappoint her.” became clear. at us,” she said. “The three of us, my Dachau. He and his daughter were In the 1930s, her parents talked at The day in late October 1941 was mother in the middle, we were kind of reunited in Italy. dinner about what was happening to known as the Great Action. holding her by the elbows. We made In 1949, Brigitte came to live with Jewish relatives in nearby Germany. “That was the most horrifying of all,” it to the good side. The other side had relatives in Dallas. A few years later The family tried to flee to the United Brigitte said in a 1997 interview. “Ten small children, the elderly. Wailing she married a dashing American war States or Canada but could not obtain thousand people were taken away. At and crying from family members that hero, Fredric Altman. The couple set- visas. Eventually they lost everything. six or seven in the morning, every had been forcibly separated.” tled in a quiet, leafy neighborhood in Soon after the Nazi occupation person in the ghetto, including the Brigitte’s mother died in 1942. A few south Fort Worth. November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 OUR LOST WARSAW GHETTO DIARY (Continued from page 6) soon after, her mother, Pnina, a musi- word his father had been murdered in about Reuven’s faithful documenta- wrote in Yiddish or Polish. And cologist, took her own life. Only a Ukrainian pogrom; the news came tion of Nazi occupation of Warsaw, life Feldschuh (Ben-Shem’s original Reuven survived. After the war, just before a radical split with his left- in the ghetto, and the Soviet invasion, name) had extraordinary intellectual Reuven never spoke of Josima, but wing Zionist roots, and he went on to nor did they know of his role as a horizons.” He was also, points out her framed photo hung like a ghostly become a leader in the burgeoning leading revisionist Zionist. We, the Havi Dreyfus, a senior lecturer in the mezuzah in the doorway to his home, movement of right-wing Revisionist American cousins, knew little to noth- Department of Jewish History at the so each member of Ben-Shem’s new Zionism. He was a friend and devotee ing of Josima — although we knew University of Tel Aviv, a broad observ- postwar family would see her as they of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a founder of Reuven had lost everyone and that er, from the deportations, to religious came in and as they went out. Betar, and then he founded another he had named Kami, whose full name life, to the extremes of ghetto poverty Yet the fact that few outside Ben- nationalist right-wing group called is Nekamia, “Revenge God.” His sec- — to intense, painful, descriptions of Shem’s immediate family circle ever Hashomer Haleumi — National ond marriage was to another survivor, his desperate desire to allow his learned of the diary’s existence was Guard (one of his scouts, a woman with an equally harrowing tale: she young daughter Josima, a piano not because the family kept it squir- named Shoshana Kossower- survived after jumping from the train prodigy, to live. He was a brilliant reled away. Reuven himself contacted Rozencwajg, would one day be his to Treblinka, leaving behind a half- Hebraist and fluent in — at least — Yad Vashem in the 1960s about his rescuer from the ghetto). dozen siblings. With her he eventual- three other languages. Agrees David text; his cousin was Rachel Auerbach, Reuven’s right-wing activity, and his ly also had another daughter, Rina, Silberklang, senior historian at Yad the first person tasked by Yad aggressive polemics against social- who now lives in America. Vashem, “What Reuven Feldschuh Vashem with collecting survivor testi- ism and Marxism, suggest one theory In their correspondence after the did was of great significance. It will be monies after the war. (Though she on why his name was buried in the war, Reuven chided my grandfather a huge book if the entire diary is pub- lived with Reuven in the ghetto, if postwar period. Reuven’s published for not living in Israel — the only lished.” Silberklang believes that the Auerbach knew of her relative’s diary, papers in the 1920s talk about “a place, he wrote, that a Jew could ever diary’s impact is “potentially similar to” Jewish race,” refer to be comfortable or happy. To some the impact Victor Klemperer’s diaries Communism as a “poison to degree, Reuven’s emphasis on the had in the 1990s, “because of the Jewish children,” and express importance of postwar life in Israel — quality of the writer and the richness a militant, militaristic vitriol for he was a cultural attaché to Argentina of experience and expanse of years.” all things of the then-ascen- in the 1950s, tasked with drumming I wouldn’t know of Reuven Ben- dant left, explains Daniel up interest in aliyah; upon return, his Shem’s diary, either, except that he Kupfert Heller, a newly minted daughter Rina Ben-Shem (now was my grandfather’s first cousin. historian who wrote on Betar Mariuma) was given the first bat mitz- *** for his doctoral dissertation at vah in Israeli history, she told me — ate on a recent Friday night in Stanford. Though Reuven may have contributed to his diary’s Lthe Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat broke with Jabotinsky in 1933 sequestration. But the forgetting, or Gan, I attended a Shabbat dinner. At (essentially calling him a burying, of the diary is also a reflec- some point, the guests moved from Fascist), the revisionists, tion of a trend in historiography that is table to couch, and an array of liquors says Kupfert Heller, were only changing now, some 70 years was lined up on the coffee table. Our “swept under the rug in the after the events took place: the val- host, Kami Ben-Shem, receded into a 1950s” as Israel grappled orization of eyewitness accounts. back room and returned with a selec- with “who owned the legacy hat may sound absurd — after tion of crumbling, yellow paper. The of fighting and self-defense” T all, the diary of Anne Frank is first page — kept in a plastic sleeve, during the Holocaust. perhaps the best-known testimony of the sort that might be used by chil- “The standard narrative was the Shoah, and it has been celebrat- dren in a binder for school — was an it was only the Zionist social- ed, read, performed, since the 1950s. announcement for a concert. ists,” who had been active in But the truth is, Frank is an exception. “15 March 1941” it is dated, at the the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Alexandra Garbarini, chair of the top; “Josima Feldschuh” it says, historian Kupfert Heller says, Jewish Studies Department at above the image of a rosy-cheeked “So, one might think of Williams College and the author of girl with a bow in her hair, sitting at a Reuven’s diary as part of this Numbered Days: Diaries and the piano; and then, below her photo, it is broader embarrassment in Holocaust, explained to me that these written in Polish, “11 year old piano Israeli national culture around documents were long seen as of lim- Poster for Josima’s concert. virtuoso.” The program promises the idea of right-wing Zionists. ited value, because diaries are inher- selections from Mozart’s Marriage of she never wrote of it.) Reuven’s diary … Jews that espoused ideas that ently local, narrowly focused, and, in Figaro and Schubert’s Unfinished disappeared in plain sight in part were parallel to the Fascists were the case of Holocaust diaries, the Symphony, a concert held at because of the layered nature of his- embarrassing.” But its purposeful for- diarists themselves were often isolat- Rymarska 12, the heart of the toriography, the way in which popular getting, he says, may be a means of ed from outside news sources. So, Warsaw ghetto. Two years later, the writers and academics alike have understanding “how we commemo- historians first had to see that diaries girl, Kami’s half-sister, was smuggled changed their perception of what first- rate the past. One of the things that were sources both resonant and rele- to the Aryan side just before the upris- person accounts mean to the narra- Reuven represents to me are the vant to telling a larger story, and also ing. Her father had feared her death tive of the Holocaust — and also complexities and nuances that have see the importance of telling smaller for all his months in the ghetto. because of Reuven’s own meander- really been [lost] by so many who stories about everyday life. “You have “January 1942. There’s talk recently ings through Zionist political move- commemorate the experience of to both care about and think there is of the vandals murdering the children ments. The fate of his work under- Polish Jewry — we know so much something historically significant in and the blood of all the fathers hard- scores the arbitrary nature of those about how they died and so little on what happens to that corpse on the ens in their veins as they listen to we celebrate, those who become how they lived.” street in the ghetto, and what that such whispers… I returned home and heroes, and those who are forgotten. “March 1942: I do not know if I will helps us to understand about Nazism, I am all shaken. My child is sleeping, *** be able to get this journal out of here, genocide, anti-Semitism and Jewish I am looking at her. My eye deceives y grandfather and his cousin or if it will live on without me after I relations,” she said. “What the diary me and I don’t see her. She disap- MReuven lived together in have been covered by a layer of earth most reveals is daily life in the ghetto pears, the bed grows empty. I was Vienna, when Reuven was a student and oblivion. In any case, it is my wish and helping to understand one man’s frightened. I bent over and held her so in the 1920s, studying psychology that the truth be reflected in this jour- perspective — one insightful, intelli- forcefully that she woke up, quizzical under Freud, and also rabbinics at a nal — the truth of how people lived gent, educated figure — to under- and afraid. She calmed down as she modern rabbinical school. Reuven inside the earth, in a place where stand through his perspective what saw me, and her face radiated with a had recently spent several years in scorching lava is being formed under was happening to Jewish society in lovely smile. She sent me a kiss by Palestine, where he had been, briefly, the burning, spewing volcano that is Warsaw under wartime occupation. air, turned over to her side, and fell a halutz, and a founder of the kibbutz Hitler’s Europe.” “But I also wonder,” she mused, asleep. Inside of me fritters a demon Kiryat Anavim, outside Jerusalem; at My grandfather was 12 years “how forthcoming [Reuven] was” of fear.” the time he was active in Hashomer Reuven’s junior, also orphaned, and about what he had carried to Israel Josima died of tuberculosis some Hatzair. Yet he returned to Europe in they were very close. And yet no one with him. Amos Goldberg, the Hebrew weeks after she went into hiding; the early 1920s, when he received in my part of the family ever knew (Continued on page 15) Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 “IF, BY MIRACLE”: A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR’S TALE (Continued from page 4) we expected the worst. Gymnasium. run for it. in the home. My mother and my sib- On October 29, 1941, the chairman At the square, families were soon As our column passed under the tall lings and I missed him very much, but of the Judenrat received an announce- separated — children from parents trees of the thickly forested park . . . I our lives had to go on without him. It ment from the German commandant of and parents from children. This caused heard more shots and understood felt as if my childhood had vanished Nieswiez that the Gebietskommissar a huge commotion of people shouting what was happening. There, among overnight, stolen from me at a time (district commissar) of Baranovichi had and crying. Everyone wanted to run, the trees, we were stopped and when my friends and I should have ordered all Jews to gather in the market without knowing where. My mother’s ordered to get completely undressed. been playing outside and going to square in the center of town at 8 a.m. last words to me were, “My dear, Those who did not obey were beaten. school. Although I had always hoped the next day, October 30. The Jewish beloved child. If, by miracle, you sur- Pious bearded Jews and young that I would learn the haftorah for my police went from house to house with vive, you must bear witness. I believe women covered parts of their bodies bar mitzvah, I now sensed that this the militia to inform us that the next day that God will protect you so that you with their hands. I heard the cries of would never happen. I began to we were to put on clean, warm clothing will remain alive to tell the free world children and the prayers of their par- understand what was happening and bring our passports and birth cer- what happened to us.” My mother ents and more shots — the execution around us. tificates. We couldn’t sleep that night .... pressed me to her and kissed me. of the groups that had preceded ours. Every day, the Nazis imposed new By 6:30 a.m. the next morning my When the shots stopped, our group laws that led to more hardships. The mother and all of us children were was led forward about 140 meters to curfew remained in effect; we were for- dressed in our best clothes and warm open pits that were now mass graves. bidden to walk on the sidewalks; and coats. It was cold outside. At 7 a.m. the People were ordered to jump in. I we had to wear white armbands and a Jewish police went from street to watched the Einsatzgruppen tear tiny black Star of David over the heart, street, ordering people to leave their infants from their mothers’ arms, throw which was later changed to a yellow homes and march to the market them into the air with one hand, and Star of David on the right side of the square. By 8 a.m., we had to be stand- shoot them with the revolver they held chest and on the back. The Nazis ing in rows with our families. Parents in their other hand. When the infants called us names such as verfluchte made their way through the streets, fell to the ground, the Nazis picked up Juden (damned Jews) or Jüdische some carrying small children in their the small bodies and threw them into Untermenschen (subhuman Jews). If a arms. Older children held their parents’ the pits. The mothers who witnessed Nazi noticed a Jew not wearing a Star hands. The elderly — grandmothers this execution of their children threw of David, he or she would be shot for and grandfathers — many of whom themselves on the murderers and not following orders. These incidents were in poor health, also marched to were shot on the spot. Parents who usually involved the elderly, children or the market square. Those who were tried to protect their children with their the mentally challenged. very sick remained bedridden in their own bodies were also shot . . . . Jews were frequently arrested without homes. I later found out that the I clearly remember standing with my knowing why, taken to Gestapo head- Belorussian police searched all the back to the pit, facing the murderers. quarters and shot. The collaborating houses that same day and killed any- One ran over to me and hit me on the Belorussian police killed anyone who one who had remained at home. head with his rifle. The next thing I resisted arrest. I heard that some were When my mother, my brother, my knew, I was inside the pit, and at tortured and brutally beaten, their heads two sisters and I arrived at the market some point, I opened my eyes to a bashed with pickaxes. Afterward, the square, we were put into a row. After horrifying sight. I lay among the dead commandant would order the Judenrat the entire Jewish population of the Michael Kutz (front row on the right) with the and dying — there were people under to bring Jews to remove the bodies and town — about 4,500 people — had partisans. Lodz, 1945. me who were buried alive. I heard the bury them in graves that they had been assembled in the square, Lithuanians, Then shots were fired into the air, pos- moans of people underneath me and forced to dig. Another group had to Ukrainians, Belorussians and the aux- sibly intended to quiet us, but the situ- on top of me. Although I was only a wash the blood from the commandant’s iliary police, all with automatic ation only worsened. People started child, I somehow found the strength to courtyard. weapons on their shoulders and pushing and stepping on one another. push the bodies off me and tried to Not far from Nieswiez was a village revolvers on their hips, suddenly During the pushing and shoving, I was stand up. My head was spinning. My called Glinistcha, where Jews who appeared on trucks. Most of these separated from my family. body and face were covered in blood. had been caught buying food from murderers — known as the The confusion did not last long Realizing that I was not seriously gentiles were imprisoned, along with Einsatzgruppen — were drunk and because the killers soon got the upper injured, I managed to stand up and Red Army soldiers, Roma (called reeked of vodka. Minutes later, these hand. They placed us into groups of look for anyone else around me who Gypsies at the time), Jewish Red Nazi collaborators, many of whose uni- about 100 to 200 people. When it had was not either dead or fatally wound- Army officers and Communists. forms were already covered in blood, quieted down, I saw that the ed. There was no one. Hundreds of prisoners were killed surrounded us. I learned later that they Einsatzgruppen had again surrounded SUMMONED STRENGTH there every day and early every morn- had carried out an earlier Aktion in the us on all sides. No one had any ing, Jewish men were ordered to dig town of Kletsk, 15 kilometers from chance of escaping. Almost everyone he pit in which I found myself had graves for the innocent victims. When Nieswiez. At 8 o’clock sharp the was crying in despair at being separat- T not yet been covered over. Much the executions were over for the day, German commandant and several SS ed from their loved ones. Hopeless, later, I found out that this was because prisoners were ordered to cover the officers, one of them a red-headed our spirits broken, we stood in line and the last remaining Jews from the sur- graves. We got this news from peas- high-ranking officer, began to carry out waited for the order to march. Where rounding villages were to be brought ants in the area around Nieswiez, their gruesome plan. we were marching, no one knew, but here the next morning. When I could who could hear the screams of those we all seemed to sense that we were no longer hear any shooting, I careful- FAMILIES SEPARATED being tortured prior to their execution. going on our final journey . . . . ly tried to see what was happening They told us that the Roma fought irst, all the tradesmen and pro- The day grew colder. In the cloudy above ground, to check whether the back with their bare hands. We were Ffessionals and their families sky high above us I could see birds graves were being guarded, but I was also told that the Soviet prisoners of were ordered to stand in separate that had stayed for the winter still fly- too small to see out of the pit. I sum- war shouted slogans such as, “Long rows. The commandant had a list of ing freely. If only I could fly, I thought, moned the strength to drag some of live the Soviet Union!” “Long live the these workers — doctors, engineers, I could escape. Instead, I stood under the bodies into a pile and, by climbing Red Army!” “Our Fatherland will take textile workers, carpenters, painters, close surveillance, wondering what up on top of them, was able to stick my revenge on you for the bloodshed of bricklayers, mechanics, tailors, shoe- was going to become of me . . . . head out of the pit. our people!” and “We will fight and makers — and how many of them Some young people broke away In my mind I could still hear my destroy you for all time!” there should be. Most of the families from our column and started to run, mother saying, “My dear child, you We were not only aware of what was were divided because people did not but I immediately heard shots and must survive.” I didn’t see anyone out- happening in Glinistcha, but through- want to leave their elderly grandpar- then saw them fall down. Not far side the pit, so I jumped out. Although out August, September and October ents. There were close to 600 people away, the same happened in other it was getting dark, I knew the area we also heard news about mass mur- selected, a very small number of them groups. I, too, had considered escap- very well and started running. I had ders in nearby towns and villages, as with their families, and they were sep- ing, but walking beside me was a the feeling that my mother was run- well as in bigger cities like Minsk, arated from the rest of us and ordered Belorussian policeman with a loaded ning beside me and calling out to me, Slutsk and Pinsk. We felt hopeless and to march the short distance to the rifle, ready to shoot. I didn’t have an “Michael, run faster and don’t look our morale was very low. Every day, schoolyard of the Nieswiez opportunity to even try and make a back!” November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 THE MUNICH CRISIS THROUGH HOLOCAUST RESTITUTION MAKING THE EYES OF CARTOONISTS LITTLE HEADWAY IN EASTERN EUROPE repeatedly urged the parties to reach (Continued from page 3) tiations and works as a pro bono con- Holocaust issues during the Clinton sultant to the Claims Conference. BY RAFAEL MEDOFF AND a negotiated solution. In practical administration, told JTA that he was Eizenstat said he hopes economic CRAIG YOE, THE JERUSALEM POST terms, that would mean ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. disappointed in Poland but insisted arguments will convince Polish offi- the country was not a lost cause. cials to move ahead with restitution. eventy-five years ago, Adolf In late September, with Hitler seem- “When I began going hat in hand to Such appeals to the pocketbook are Hitler provoked his first major ingly on the brink of invading S these Eastern European governments significant, since the West can no international diplomatic crisis. Czechoslovakia, the British and in the 1990s, no one would have ever longer hold out admission into or rejec- It would ultimately help pave the French prime ministers rushed to imagined we could have gotten all the tion by the European Union or NATO as way for World War II and the Munich for a late-night conference agreements that are in place for the an incentive, said Rabbi Andrew Baker, Holocaust. with the Nazi chief. The Czechs were return of property,” Eizenstat said. “In director of international Jewish affairs Hitler sought a pretext to invade not even invited. Poland, you have a process for the for the American Jewish Committee Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain and Daladier quickly return of religious communal property, and a longtime restitution negotiator. If Throughout 1938, the German gov- gave in to Hitler’s demands, agreeing and that’s thanks to the pressure of you cannot prove economic self-inter- ernment-controlled news media pub- that all Czech regions where the pop- conferences like these.” est, then you need to convince govern- lished a flood of wildly exaggerated ulation was more than 50 percent eth- Baroness Ruth Deech, a property ments to provide restitution by continu- accounts of the Czech authorities nic German should be transferred to expert and member of Britain’s House ing to appeal to the leaders’ moral con- supposedly persecuting ethnic Germany. Abandoned by their allies, of Lords, said Poland’s position is science, Baker suggested. Germans who were living in the west- the desperate Czechs went along infuriating. For his part, Evron continues to ern border region known as the with what Chamberlain called “peace “Looking at it from the outside, we press his wife’s case with Poland. But Sudetenland. (Because of the in our time.” In Washington, President read that 60 percent of Poles oppose he doesn’t have high hopes. redrawing of the region’s borders Roosevelt said he “rejoiced” that a private restitution and that the Jewish He bemoaned Poland’s tactic of after World War I, there were more diplomatic solution had been community in Poland today is fearful forcing claimants to spend years and than three million ethnic Germans achieved. that pressing for justice will give rise thousands of dollars pressing their to anti-Semitism,” she told an audi- cases in Polish courts, where they are residing in Czechoslovakia, constitut- merica’s cartoonists were not ence at the Prague conference. frequently asked to produce evidence ing about one-fourth of the popula- quite so starry-eyed. In two A Poland’s chief rabbi, New York destroyed during World War II. Even tion.) At the same time, pro-Nazi consecutive cartoons in the Daily native Michael Schudrich, countered when victory is achieved, like a posi- Sudeten Germans staged violent Oklahoman, Charles Werner (who that Poles’ aversion toward restitution tive decision recently granted for his demonstrations, claiming they were would win a Pulitzer Prize for editorial is economic, not anti-Semitic. wife’s residential building claim, victims of “discrimi- But failing to come to agreement on cases are turned over to the Finance nation” and demand- a restitution bill could be more costly Ministry for review, Evron said. ing “self-determina- for Poland, restitution advocates note. “I asked my lawyer how long the tion.” Jews could press private property review would take. He answered, Matters reached a claims in court, and the lack of clarity could be a year, could be forever,” boiling point in early on land ownership in Poland hinders Evron said. “I have now spent more September, as the economic development. In Warsaw, for money on this case than the building Nazis financed a example, one-third of the city’s real is worth, and my son asks, why both- wave of mob vio- estate was in Jewish hands before er? My answer: It’s the principle that lence by Sudeten World War II, according to Eizenstat, matters. You take something, you Germans, including who is still involved in restitution nego- give it back.” attacks on local Jews. Hitler then began threatening to OUR LOST WARSAW GHETTO DIARY intervene to “restore order.” cartooning the following year) (Continued from page 13) not to be separated, but to die togeth- In the American press, a number of mocked the British and French for University historian of diaries, points er, to run away, to go into hiding political cartoonists drew attention to sacrificing Czechoslovakia on the out that Victor Klemperer’s diary only together! The city burst into tears, the the spiraling crisis. Some focused on altar of an illusory peace. Rollin Kirby came to light during the debate among sound of which was certainly heard all Hitler’s hypocrisy. Jerry Doyle of the (himself a three-time Pulitzer winner), ordinary Germans sparked by Daniel over the world, but not on high. Philadelphia Record, for example, in the New York World-Telegram, Goldhagen’s 1997 book Hitler’s Willing ‘Deportation,’ cried every child, every Executioners. “You need good public old person, every stone, every wall, depicted the German dictator brutaliz- invoked Christianity’s most poignant relations,” said Goldberg, especially if every sidewalk. The street shook as if ing Austria, Czechoslovakia and symbol to skewer the abandonment the author is dead. “It’s arbitrary, in a millions of terrified demons had Jews, even as he pointed an accusing of the Czechs. sense,” who succeeds, whose work jumped on it, and were running and The title of Werner’s cartoon asked finger at Czech president Edvard becomes iconic. being pushed.” Benes. Likewise, Grover Page, in the how long appeasement would keep “Monday, July 20, 1942. At half past Perhaps, says Sharon, Kami’s Louisville Courier-Journal, and the Germans quiet. The answer: not ten the rumor is spreading. Suddenly, daughter, who is my age, publishing George White, in the Tampa Tribune, very. Just six weeks later, the Nazis from underground — deportation, the something about the diary can be a emphasized the absurdity of the unleashed the nationwide deportation of [the Jews of] Warsaw. bit of a tikkun — a reparation, a balm. Nazis complaining about alleged mis- Kristallnacht pogrom against All of Warsaw! Half of Warsaw! One Yad Vashem has promised to publish treatment of Sudeten Germans while Germany’s Jews. And once again, hundred thousand! Two hundred the diary, but so far there doesn’t they themselves were persecuting the international community failed to thousand! Only the foreigners! Only seem to be a concrete plan in the German Jews. mount a meaningful response: not a the beggars! Everyone, except the works. It will require someone to Great Britain and France had been single country ended diplomatic or officials! … Deportation, deportation spend a few years transcribing — and Czechoslovakia’s allies, but their fear economic ties with Germany. … then … like madmen, like people then, hopefully, translating — before it of being drawn into a war with The Allies’ sacrifice of on fire, everyone started to run, half a even has the chance to meet Germany quickly superseded their Czechoslovakia, followed by their million people running — to the com- Klemperer on the shelf. Sharon and I friendship with Prague. weak response to Kristallnacht, munity [building], from the community looked together at the pages of notes By the summer of 1938, British helped convince Hitler there would [building] home, to the police, to rela- her grandfather kept on Josima, her tives, to strangers! Everyone is run- piano-prodigy aunt. After the war, prime minister Neville Chamberlain be no real effort to stop him. In the ning, running, deportation, deporta- Weinbaum tells us, Reuven wrote a and his French counterpart, Ѐdouard spring of 1939, the Germans took tion! What we have feared has come children’s book called Beyn Chomot Daladier, were pressing Czech presi- over the rest of Czechoslovakia to pass! Vernichtung [extermination] HaGhetto — Between the Ghetto without firing a shot. The West did dent Benes to make territorial conces- commando, deportation! We ran Walls. The book is a work of fiction sions to Hitler. not respond. An emboldened Hitler home, we fell into each other’s arms, whose heroine is named Josima — President Franklin D. Roosevelt, prepared to plunge the world into we hugged, we kissed, we bid one and she fights the Germans. In this while not endorsing any specific plan, war and unleash the Holocaust. another farewell forever. We swore story, she wins. American & International Societies for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE U.S. POST 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO. 9313

Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org Society ** ** Editor Leonard Wilf, Leonard Wilf, (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief 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 Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased , November/December 2013 - Kislev/Tevet 5774 2013 - Kislev/Tevet November/December Bayreuth n America, the Halperns rebuilt n their lives, starting a leading real their lives, starting I saddened at are tremendously We are sympathies Our heartfelt Sam met Gladys in Sam met Gladys estate development firm, becoming development estate of the Jewish prominent members and devoting themselves community, to Holocaust education, commemora- tion and remembrance. Gladys and Sam Halpern were major supporters and Benefactors of Vashem Yad of receiv- of the Communities, the Valley Remembrance Vashem Yad ing the in 1992. Award an the loss of such a great leader, inspiring man to all. His memory as the torch of lives on in his family, on remembrance has been passed to the next generations: the and grandchildren children Halperns’ are involved as members of the Vashem Yad American Society for Leadership Young and as personal respon- Associates, taking sibility for the future of Holocaust remembrance. extended to his wife, Gladys; his children, Fred, David, Murray and May Jack; and to the entire family. they be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. where they married; in 1949 they where they married; United States. immigrated to the MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Together, they escaped the camp Together, Halpern the war, For decades after He curried favor with a Nazi com- He curried favor with and made it back to their hometown, where they were hidden for eight months until the end of the war by a Catholic family. continued to send money to the fam- ily who hid him in a barn. us, and the fields, which in the sum- us, and the fields, corn and wheat, mer were filled with and lifeless.” were gray and brown and was able to mander at the camp himself and his save the lives of Arie. brother, one of the Darkness and ghetto and then Kamionka, . labor camp, only 36 sur-

Chorostkow

SAM HALPERN, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, DEAD AT 93 AT DEAD SURVIVOR, HOLOCAUST SAM HALPERN, am Halpern, who narrowly am Halpern, who escaped the Holocaust and escaped the Holocaust

, Halpern described the horror of Kamionka Both Sam and his wife Gladys came For generations, Sam and his fam- For generations, Sam “When we reached the camp, S transported to with personal stories of loss and hard- ship during the Holocaust: Sam Halpern and his family were forced into the smaller but most savage slave-labor “out It has been reported that camps. of 16,000 slave laborers in the Kamionka ily have served as models of leader- Yad American Society for ship for the Vashem. account Halpern’s Mr. vived the war.” of his experiences there is among the to endure. most searing and difficult In his 1996 book, though, a hush settled over the looked and carefully lis- group. We The entire area was eerily tened. silent,” he wrote. “The cloud of death hung over the camp that stood before went on to become one of the most went on to become in the history of prominent builders Thursday, died on New Jersey, 93. October 31. He was Hope being herded with hundreds of others out of cattle cars and first setting sight on Page 16