Vol. 35-No.3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2009-Shevat/Adar- I 5769 UN MARKS THE HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY ver six decades after 6 million the fourth since the General Assembly insti- intolerance and for relationships that Holocaust, not because of the numbers, OJews, nearly a third of the total, and tuted the annual commemoration. replace “us and them” with “we and ours.” the gas chambers but because of the sys- countless other minorities were butchered “But we can and must do more if we are Also about unlearned lessons of the tematic quest to liquidate a nation. First in the Nazi German Holocaust, it is more to make that hope a reality,” he stressed. Holocaust was the speech of Rabbi Israel Hitler declared it in his work “Mein Kampf.” vital than ever to learn from the tragedy to “We must uphold the standards and laws Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Years later came Nuremberg Laws that prevent further atrocities, United Nations that the United Nations has put in place to Council. Here are some excerpts from his declared that Jews have no rights to pos- Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned protect people and fight impunity for geno- very moving speech delivered at the UN sessions, to freedom, not to life. Years in his speech on January 27. cide, war crimes and crimes against headquarters in New York. later came the Kristallnacht, when 1500 humanity. Our world continues n April 11, 1995 50 years to the synagogues were burned and 30,000 to be plagued by ruthless vio- “Oday of liberation of the concentra- Jews sent to the concentration camps. lence, utter disregard for tion camp of Buchenwald I was invited to What was the reaction of the free world? human rights, and the target- Buchenwald. This was my second visit. What did they see? What did they say? ing of people solely for who The first time I arrived there, together with Now we know – almost nothing. they are.” my older brother Naftalie, in January of Three years later was Baby Yar. Thirty As well as the ceremony, 1945. I was seven-and-a-half-years old. three thousand, seven hundred seventy- chaired by Under-Secretary- We’ve got two prisoner numbers, one one victims: children, babies, women. General for Communications after another, and at that moment, I lost What was the reaction? Almost none. and Public Information Kiyo my identity. I was nobody. I was a number. Three months later the Wannsee Akasaka, the UN marked the On my second visit in 1995 I was a citizen Conference took place near Berlin: How occasion with panel discus- of the independent state, the state of to liquidate the Jewish people. They sions and other events, includ- Israel, and I was a Chief Rabbi of the state called it the “Final Solution.” The final ing an initiative by the UN of Israel. Not nobody, but somebody, and solution to solve the world’s problems Department of Public not a number any more. would be to get rid of the Jews, because Information called the You will agree that many things have we are the international poisoner. “Footprints of Hope,” which changed during these 50 years. May be et me tell you several things about brings the global network of you will say it is time to open a new chap- Lanti-Semitism. I believe that UN by the UN Information Centers ter. Let’s forget. Let’s forgive. I came to tell declaring January 27 the International together with local schools to you: We cannot forget. It is impossible to Day of Commemoration in Memory of the further youngsters’ under- forget and we are not authorized to for- Victims of the Holocaust is looking not to standing of the Holocaust and their respect for human rights Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Yad Vashem Council Chairman, through documentary and film addresses Holocaust Memorial Ceremony. resources. “We must continue to examine why the A new exhibit has also opened in the world failed to prevent the Holocaust and Visitors’ Lobby about the Nazi regime other atrocities since. That way, we will be called “Deadly Medicine: Creating the better armed to defeat anti-Semitism and Master Race.” other forms of intolerance,” he said in a eneral Assembly President Miguel message marking the International Day of Gd’Escoto echoed Mr. Ban’s call to Commemoration in memory of the victims the world to learn the lesson of the of the Holocaust. Holocaust. “We need to move beyond our “We must continue to teach our children statements of grief and memory, however the lessons of history’s darkest chapters. powerfully felt, and work to develop new That will help them do a better job than ways of thinking about the Holocaust, their elders in building a world of peaceful about genocide, about the apparently bot- coexistence. We must combat Holocaust tomless capacity for peoples’ cruelty to denial, and speak out in the face of bigotry each other,” he said in a message. and hatred,” he added in the message, “That capacity is shared by all of us. At read at a ceremony at UN Headquarters their core, all genocides, all holocausts, in New York by Deputy Secretary-General start with the alienation, demonization and Asha-Rose Migiro. the marginalization of the “Other” – those Holocaust Memorial Ceremony attendees at the UN observe Moment of Silence. Mr. Ban noted that new initiatives in citizens of another religion, another race, Holocaust remembrance and education ethnicity, another set of political ideas, or give. Even if I am a man of forgiveness just condemn anti-Semitism, but to defeat have given an authentic basis for hope, another sexual orientation than our own,” and kindness, I have no right to forgive on it, if it’s possible. Anti-Semitism is a spiri- which is the theme of this year’s observance, he added, calling for a struggle against behalf of my father, who was murdered in tual thesis, which has nothing to do with Treblinka at the age of fifty, of my 13-year logic. Why were we the target of the liqui- old brother Schmulik. I have no mandate dation? Did we threaten any nation in the from my mother, who died from torture, world? Did we have an army? IN THIS ISSUE and starvation, and diseases in concen- What did we do? Why did you hate us? tration camp of Ravensbruk, and my forty- Why did you kill us? UN marks the Holocaust Remembrance Day...... 1 two cousins. I cannot forgive. In Poland, were I was born, it was said Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorated around the globe...... 3 Sixty years later the UN was clever and that the society rejects us, Jews, because Rethinking Poles and Jews...... 4 kind enough to declare January 27, the we are different. We wear beards, black The unholy legacy of Pius XII...... 5 day of liberation of Auschwitz by Red hats, we look strange. If we were like The “no-parent” Kindertransport...... 6 Army, the International Day of everyone else the society would embrace As Nazis age, leads still alive...... 7 Commemoration in Memory of the Victims us. Next to Poland, in Germany, many Rabbi Lau visits office of The American Society for Yad Vashem...... 8-9 of the Holocaust. Sixty years after the hor- Jews were like everybody else. They con- New Yad Vashem books teach Holocaust to haredim...... 10 ror, but better later than never. tributed to arts, literature, politics, Three brothers defied terror...... 11 I want to share with you some of my finances, they were doctors, lawyers, A helping hand for Nazi victims...... 12 thoughts. Nothing can be compared to (Continued on page 2) The Holocaust, viewed not from then but from the here and now...... 16 Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769

BLUEPRINTS FOR AUSCHWITZ CAMP FOUND IN GERMANY JEWISH ANGER AS POPE REINSTATES HOLOCAUST-DENIER he original construction plans Hans-Dieter Kreikamp, head of the feder- srael’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memo- The pope cancelled the excommunica- Tbelieved used for a major expansion al archives office in Berlin, as saying the Irial and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre tion of Williamson and three other bishops of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in blueprints offered “authentic evidence of slammed a Holocaust-denying English in a bid to heal a 20-year schism with tra- 1941 have been found in a Berlin flat, the systematically planned genocide of bishop whose excommunication has been ditionalists led by rebel French archbishop Germany’s Bild newspaper reported. European Jews.” cancelled by Pope Benedict XVI. Marcel Lefebvre. The daily printed three architect’s draw- There were mass killings of about one “It is scandalous that someone of this The Roman Catholic Church published an ings on yellowing paper from the batch of million Jews before the Nazi’s “Final stature in the Church denies the Holocaust,” edict lifting the 1998 sanction on Lefebvre’s 28 pages of blueprints it obtained. One Solution” was formulated in late 1941. The the institution said in a statement referring to successor, Bernard Fellay, and three other decision to kill Europe’s 11 million Bishop Richard Williamson, who has publicly bishops in his breakaway conservative Jews was made at the Wannsee denied the murder of six million Jews during movement, including Williamson. Conference in January 1942. World War II. He is on record as denying the exis- A copy of the minutes, known as “Denial of the Holocaust not only insults tence of the gas chambers. the “Wannsee Protocol,” is one of the survivors, memory of the victims and “I believe there were no gas cham- the most important documents the righteous among the nations who bers.... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 from the war. risked their lives to rescue the Jews, it is a Jews perished in Nazi concentration The newly found Auschwitz blue- brutal attack on truth,” Yad Vashem said. camps but none of them by gas cham- prints are dated October 23 1941 “What kind of message is this sending bers,” Williamson was quoted as saying in and could offer historians earlier regarding the Church’s attitude toward the an interview with Swedish SVT television. evidence of Nazi plans to kill Jews Holocaust?” “There was not one Jew killed by the on a mass scale, Bild said. The Wiesenthal Center, an international gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!” “These documents reveal that Jewish human rights body, said: “The Italian Jewish groups criticized the deci- everyone who had even anything Pope’s decision to welcome back such a sion as a “negative, worrying and incom- One of the barracks and a watch tower are seen in the for- remotely to do with the planning hater into the Church lends moral cre- prehensible signal.” mer Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. and construction of the concentra- tion camp must have know that people dence to deniers of history’s worst crime. Uneasy relations between the Vatican has an 11.66 meter by 11.20 meter room were to be gassed to death in assembly- “In addition to Bishop Williamson’s and Israel have been further strained by marked “Gaskammer” (gas chamber) that line fashion,” Bild wrote. Holocaust denial looms the unchanging plans to declare Nazi-era Pope Pius XII a was part of a “delousing facility.” “The documents refute once and for all virulent anti-Semitism of the Society of saint, despite widespread criticism of his The plans, published ahead of the 70th claims by those who deny the Holocaust Saint Pius as a whole,” it said. inaction during the Holocaust. anniversary of the “Kristallnacht” also even took place,” it added. include a crematorium and a “L. Keller” — The concentration camp at Auschwitz- WARSAW MARKS BORDERS OF FORMER GHETTO an abbreviation for “Leichenkeller” or Birkenau in Poland was the largest — at corpse cellar. least 1.1 million Jews were killed there. olish officials marked the border of times better not to reflect too much — and A drawing of the building for Auschwitz’s Auschwitz I was set up in May 1940 in Pthe former Warsaw Ghetto with is strangely thankful that the whole area main gate was also found in the docu- an old Polish army barracks. The first vic- plaques and boundary lines traced in the was leveled by the Nazis and later rebuilt. ments that Bild said were believed to have tims were gassed in September 1941. ground to preserve the memory of the That way, she doesn’t have to walk past been discovered when a Berlin flat was Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, opened in tragic World War II-era Jewish quarter. the building where she lived with her par- cleaned out. October 1941. Four large gas chambers The head of Poland’s Jewish communi- ents, sister and six brothers — all of whom The mass-circulation newspaper quoted were added to the camp in January 1942. ty, Piotr Kadlcik, called the project “very were killed in the Holocaust. important” and “the fulfillment of a dream.” WITON TRAIN TO COMMEMORATE SAVED JEWISH CHILDREN “For many years it was deliberate — no one really remembered that there used to he CD Czech railway operator will route as 70 years ago be another city here, there used to be Ton September 1, 2009, dispatch a Winton saved a total of 669 Jewish chil- another reality,” Kadlcik said. train from Prague to London to commem- dren who were transported to Britain The Warsaw Ghetto was set up by orate the 70th anniversary of the rescue before the war erupted. Nazi Germany in 1940, the year after it transports of Jewish children from former He had to secure for departure permits invaded and occupied Poland, sparking Czechoslovakia organized by Briton for all children from Germans, entry per- World War II. Over the next three years, Nicholas Winton in 1939. mits from the British authorities and the half a million Jews were imprisoned in Within the project, The “Winton Train – admission to British families. Other the overcrowded enclave, many dying Inspired by the Good” art contest was Jewish children who stayed in the country of disease or hunger. For most, howev- launched for secondary school and uni- ended in concentration camps, where versity students aged 15-26. most of them died. er, it served as a holding place before They will compete in the categories of Winton received a high Czech state dec- they were sent to the death camps. photography, literature, plastic art and oration, and Queen Elizabeth II promoted Eleonora Bergman, the head of the film. All artifacts will be connected by the him to knighthood. Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, said topics of humanity, decency and charity. Some of the people whose lives Winton marking the boundaries of the ghetto — The winners will get a free ticket for the saved, and their descendants, will travel shaped like a ragged puzzle piece in the “Winton Train” from Prague to London. on the special train later this year. center of the city — will help people The train, with a steam engine and peri- Winton, who will turn 100 then, will proba- understand the suffering better. School children inspect a memorial plaque od wagons, will follow exactly the same bly attend the train’s festive arrival in London. “It’s not in a museum — it’s in a real that marks the border of the former Warsaw space,” Bergman said. “It seems huge, but if Ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. you know half a million people lived here, UN MARKS THE HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY you realize it was very overcrowded.” “It’s the same place, but at the same (Continued from page 1) we learn something sixty-four years later? Krystyna Budnicka, an elderly woman time it’s not the same place. Only the bankers, politicians. Did they like us, did they Two million children in Africa died of who lived in the ghetto as a girl and street names are the same,” said embrace us? So if you don’t like us because starvation twenty years ago, and what did escaped at age 11 through sewage Budnicka, who still lives within the bound- we are different and you don’t like us the world do? A million people were killed canals, was among the group, and also aries of the former ghetto. because we are the same as you – make a in Kosovo ten years ago for what? It praised the project. Officials said inhabitants in the area decision of what you want from us. means that the world had learned nothing “Many people don’t know anything about were supportive of the project, in some In Europe, they say it is not your home, from the Holocaust. We have to study the ghetto, and it’s important to make them cases allowing markers to go up on pri- we hate the foreigners, go to your home from the very beginning. Every day, eight- aware,” said Budnicka, 76. “There was fear, vate property. and we’ll embrace you. So we went to our een thousand children in the world die of hunger, extreme poverty, your life was con- Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz said home. Now that we are home do you like starvation, and this is happening more stantly in danger. I was a child, but I realized she wants the city to remember the suffer- us? Ask our neighbors… The anti- than sixty years after the Holocaust. And I could die at any time.” ing of a people who made up a third of its Semitism is beyond logic. this means that we have learned nothing For herself, though, she said it is some- population before the war. A friend of mine, a Holocaust survivor, from the Holocaust. once said that Auschwitz was on a differ- There is an alley at Yad Vashem in YAD VASHEM EXHIBITION AT THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ent planet. I told him that I totally disagree, Jerusalem lined with trees, each of which that it happened here, on our planet. They carries a name of a righteous gentile who uschwitz: From the Depth of the dier in the Red Army who was present at were people like us – they liked music, lit- saved Jews during the Holocaust. It is a “AAbyss,” an exhibition by Yad the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 erature, poetry, they could kiss their own small alley, but if the world was not silent, Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and January 1945. babies and they could tear our babies into if the Vatican would say a word to con- Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, The International Holocaust Remembrance two pieces. I saw it with my own eyes. We demn anti-Semitism and to fight Nazis this was shown on 27 January at the Day was marked at the European can’t escape the story of Holocaust by alley could stretch from Yad Vashem in European Parliament in Brussels in the Parliament by a special ceremony co- saying that it happened on another planet. Jerusalem to the UN building in New York. framework of the annual International organized by the European Coalition for They were human beings like us, and if This is my prayer to the Lord Almighty: Holocaust Remembrance Day. Israel and the European Jewish they could do what they did, we have to Lord, make peace in Heaven and create The exhibition comprises photographs Community Center, under the patron- investigate. How can we promise that peace among us and the entire world. And from The Auschwitz Album and sketches age of the parliament’s president Hans- these things will never happen again? Did let us say amen.” by Jewish artist Zinovii Tolkatchev, a sol- Gert Poettering. January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY COMMEMORATED AROUND THE GLOBE ISRAEL — An exhibition on Albanian but the Jewish Forum of Ukraine, the All- of the Holocaust.” play or even deny this unprecedented Muslims who sheltered Jews during World Ukrainian Association of Jews — made up In the keynote address, President crime against humanity,” it said. War II opened in a mixed Jewish-Arab of concentration camp and ghetto sur- McAleese said: “Our job is not done until all Rather than to impute to the State of the town of Ramle on January 27 to mark vivors — and the Ukrainian Center for can sleep easy in their beds at night and survivors of the Holocaust the most evil of International Holocaust Remembrance Holocaust Studies co-hosted a memorial freely go about their business by day.’’ all intentions, its biased critics ought to Day, but the event was overshadowed by meeting called “Six Million Hearts” in Kiev She said: “The wickedness and cruelty of have a closer look at the ideological foun- tensions from Israel’s offensive in the on January 27 at the Academic Institution the Holocaust lacerate our hearts to this day, dation of Hamas and of its parent, the Gaza Strip. for Political and Ethnic Studies. At the Muslim Brotherhood, which even pre- It was the first time that Yad Vashem, same time, a group of Ukrainian young- cedes the creation of the State of Israel. Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, has sters gathered to mark the event at the “If Catalunya were to take its anti-fascist hosted a standing exhibition in Hebrew and Jewish Council of Ukraine. stance and its solidarity with the Arabic. Holding the event in Ramle, a work- Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov Palestinians seriously, it would critically ing-class town where thousands of Arabs hosted commemorative meetings in confront this Islamist terrorist movement live alongside Jews, underscored the organ- remembrance of Holocaust. and its anti-Semitic agenda, which is also izers’ goal of improving relations. *** at the root of the civilian population’s suf- Some 20 Arab high school students GERMANY – Germany’s Central fering in Gaza, rather than to resort to toured the exhibition, confronted by a pic- Council of Jews boycotted a ceremony in the aggressive symbolic gestures that ture of strewn corpses in Bergen-Belsen Berlin parliament on Tuesday which com- amount to an insult to both the dead and concentration camp and then of black- memorated victims of the Holocaust, saying the survivors of the Holocaust,” B’nai and-white photographs of Albanian their leaders had been treated without the B’rith added. Muslims who sheltered Jews. proper respect in previous years. **** The Council said its representatives would BELGIUM – In the framework of the not attend a speech by President Horst International Holocaust Remembrance Koehler for the anniversary of the liberation Sister Carmel Niland, a member of the Council of Day, the European Jewish Community of Auschwitz concentration camp, as they Christians and Jews, and Shiela Zietsman, a Center and other European Jewish organ- had not been greeted personally and had chaplain of East Glendalough School, lighting izations took part in an exhibition about been treated merely as “onlookers.” candles during the Holocaust Memorial Day the Shoah displayed at the European “At some point, it is enough,” Stephan commemoration at the Mansion House, Dublin. Parliament in Brussels. Kramer, General Secretary of the Council, as they should. God forbid that any genera- The exhibition, featuring videos, testi- told Reuters. tion will ever know the indulgence of forget- monies and footages, is open at the lobby He also complained that in previous ting or ever cease to probe how it all came to of the Altiero Spinelli building. years, the Council’s leaders, including be. For somewhere in our world today, there On January 25, at the initiative of the Holocaust survivors, had been given are men and women who are teaching their European Friends of Israel, a delegation seats among other visitors in the gallery, children to hate the otherness of others and, of 20 members of the European rather than in the main plenary hall. in that toxic teaching, there germinates the Parliament and of EU national parlia- “This symbol speaks for itself and is unsur- seed that makes such a nightmare possible ments visited the former Auschwitz Nazi Holocaust survivors lay a wreath during a all over again.” death camp in southern Poland. Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at She continued: “Never forgetting is our Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. duty and our responsibility . . . Europe’s Students were clearly interested. But the laws and protective structures have pro- Gaza offensive, which ended just over a gressed considerably these 60 years, but week ago, was also on their minds. for all that, hate-filled ideas are still touted Yad Vashem’s chairman, Avner Shalev, and individuals still live in fear, and our job said the timing of the exhibit was unin- is not done until all can sleep easy in their tended, since it was planned months ago beds at night and freely go about their to coincide with the international business by day.’’ Holocaust day. Yad Vashem hosts a much The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Eibhlín larger ceremony on Israel’s annual Byrne, welcomed all at the beginning. Holocaust memorial day, which is marked Claes Ljungdahl, the Swedish according to the Hebrew calendar and Ambassador to Ireland, read the The International Holocaust Memorial takes place each spring. German President Horst Koehler delivers a Stockholm Declaration of 2000, which Exhibition displayed in the lobby of the Shalev said Yad Vashem does not speech during a commemoration service for promised to remember the victims and European Parliament building in Brussels. involve itself in the modern-day Mideast the victims of national socialism at the survivors of the Holocaust and reaffirmed They were joined by a delegation of the Reichstag building, seat of the German lower conflict, but said he hoped the exhibition humanity’s common aspiration to toler- Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and later visited house of Parliament Bundestag, in Berlin. would inspire and provoke discussion. ance and democracy. the Auschwitz Jewish Center, which opened “There is nothing in common with that passable in terms of its lack of respect,” A candle-lighting ceremony commemo- in 2000 to teach future generations about the period and this bitter conflict that goes on Kramer told Die Welt newspaper. rated all who died in the camps. destruction caused by the Holocaust. and on ... but if both sides recognize their He criticized politicians for failing to *** Before Auschwitz became the ultimate right to exist, side-by-side, we’ll find a adjust the protocol at a time when SPAIN – A Jewish human rights group symbol of the Shoah or Holocaust, it was way. This kind of exhibition sheds light, it Germany was seeing a record number of has condemned the cancellation of this just an ordinary town known as Oswiecim. gives hope of the humanity of human far-right crimes, and when Pope Benedict year’s ceremony marking International 1.5 million Jews died at the hands of the beings,” Shalev said. was rehabilitating a bishop who had Holocaust Remembrance Day by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau during WWII. Yad Vashem has honored 63 Muslim denied the extent of the Holocaust. Catalunyan government in Barcelona on On January 28, European Parliament Albanians for sheltering Jews during In his speech, Koehler said Germans the grounds of Israel’s recent military President Hans-Gert Poettering and mem- World War Two. They are among 22,000 had a duty to protect Jews and the con- operation in Gaza. bers of the assembly attended a special people that the museum recognizes as stant threat of anti-Semitic attacks was In La Vanguadia newspaper, an official commemoration in the parliament premises. “Righteous Among the Nations” — non- shameful in the country responsible for from the city of Barcelona explained the The event ceremony for the European Jews who defied their communities and the Holocaust. cancellation by saying:”Marking the Union member states was addressed by governments to save Jews from death at “It is a scandal that police have to pro- Jewish Holocaust while a Palestinian Moshe Kantor, President of the European the hands of Nazis. The exhibition will run tect Jewish places from old and new Holocaust is taking place is not right.” Jewish Congress. for three months in Ramle. extremists,” said Koehler. “Let us stand on “This remark came in the midst of a “With the palpable rise in anti-Semitism *** the side of our fellow Jews. Whoever flood of reports in the local media that and xenophobia felt in the European nations, UKRAINE – Jewish communities in attacks them, attacks us all.” drew analogies between Nazi atrocities the Holocaust is a crucial historical period to Ukraine lit candles and observed a *** and Israel’s actions against Hamas terror- be memorialized and never forgotten,“ the moment of silence to honor the 6 million IRELAND – Four Irish-resident survivors ism. Such discourse unfortunately seems EJC president said in a statement. Jewish Holocaust victims. of Nazi concentration camps took part in the to have become endemic in Catalunya,” “The lessons of the Holocaust are univer- The moment of silence culminated a National Holocaust Memorial Day commem- B’nai B’rith Europe said in a statement. sal ones which serve to remind all of human- week of events to commemorate oration at the Mansion House. “Not only is it cynical to relate the system- ity of the dangers inherent within hatred, International Holocaust Remembrance In a moving ritual at the Dublin event, atic mass murder of six million Jews and intolerance and ignorance,” he added. Day and to remember the 1.5 million Jews Tomi Reichental, Suzi Diamond, Jan numerous other victims at the hand of the “As an international community, it is crit- killed in Ukraine, including meetings, Kaminski and Zoltan Zinn-Collis spoke Nazis to the deeply regrettable plight of ical that we welcome this occasion to roundtables, seminars and discussions, separately and at intervals the words “I the Palestinian population in Gaza. It also once again educate people all over the exhibitions and film screenings. am here today not because of who I am abets the agenda of Holocaust deniers globe that this darkest of periods must There was no official national ceremony, but because of what I am. I am a survivor and other revisionists who seek to down- never be forgotten.” Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS THE MASCOT: UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY ANATOMY OF THE UKRAINIAN GENOCIDE OF MY JEWISH FATHER’S NAZI BOYHOOD The Shoah in Ukraine: History, The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of gion to himself. beginning to unravel himself. He sits, he Testimony, Memorialization. Edited by My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood. By So what is a “mascot”? In return for a thinks, he can’t sleep. All that he deter- Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower. Mark Kurzem. The Penguin Group: New name, a birthdate, food, and some kind of minedly repressed the many years he was Indiana University Press, US Holocaust York, 2007. 418 pp. $26.95, hardcover shelter in the world, the boy gathers wood with the Latvians has taken their toll. Now Memorial Museum. 392 pp. $35 REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN for these Latvian Nazis; he prepares tea; the only thing Kurzem wants is to find out, REVIEWED BY ALEXANDER ZVIELLI picks strawberries; he goes on sorties where he comes from, who his mother uring the war, on a stormy night, a was, and just about anything else possible his extensive collection of studies Dlittle boy of about five years old, about himself. The only evidence he has Ton the Holocaust in Ukraine origi- runs out of his home into the darkness. to go on are two words: “Koidanov” and nated in the summer research workshop Where to go? He has no idea. But in the “Panok.” He has absolutely no idea what held at the US Holocaust Museum in morning he has an excellent view of a hor- they mean. But those words have been 1999. Since then, the editors – Ray rific scene. He sees his mother and his with him for as long as he can remember. Brandon, a historian based in Berlin and siblings shot and slashed by the Nazis Perhaps they hold the key to his identity. the former editor of the English edition of and their Latvian collaborators. Kurzem goes to his son Mark for help, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and After a stunned silence, the boy simply and thus this “must read” book, this page- Wendy Lower, of the Ludwig Maximilian runs cold, and alone till he sees a house turner, this absolute thriller, begins. Mark University at Munich and the author of and frightened, enters. An old and kindly will leave no stone unturned. He will Nazi Empire Building and the Holocaust in woman lives there. She gives him food, patiently wait for just the right moment to Ukraine – sought out additional contri- clothing, a warm place to lie down. But ask his father questions. He will just as butions from international experts who then her own son comes home and every- patiently wait for the answers. He will get were doing groundbreaking research thing changes. He immediately realizes his father to tell him everything about the on this subject. the boy is a Jew, roughly and mercilessly contents of the battered suitcase of mem- They show how Hitler’s grandiose plan throws him into a wooden basket, and ories he always carries with him. Growing to settle 10 million Germans and establish takes him to the Latvians to be killed. up, his father shared a little bit of informa- his private paradise in Ukraine failed dis- Then the miracle happens. The Latvian tion from that case with his family. Now, mally, but more than 1.5 million Jews were sergeant, the leader of this band of killers, Mark needs to know much more. Mark will robbed and murdered there. somehow takes a liking to the boy. Was it find people who knew his father. He will (Jew killing expeditions) with them; and, in find photos, and even movies . . . the way the poor boy cried for a piece of the end, wears an SS uniform, like them, What exactly does he find out? That’s for bread just as he was about to be shot? and at times, a gun for photos. the readers of this fascinating and unique Could the boy have reminded the ser- The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of book to discover. Does it help Kurzem any? geant of someone else? We will never My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood by Well, that’s another question . . . know. But even after the sergeant knows Mark Kurzem picks up the story many, P.S. – While readers of M&R may feel for certain that the boy is a Jew, he con- many years later. The boy, now a man, they’ve read every kind of story about the vinces his men to make him their “mas- calling himself Alex Kurzem (the soldiers Holocaust, this true story will surely make cot,” keeping the secret of the boy’s reli- initially named him Uldis Kurzemnieks), is them feel differently. RETHINKING POLES AND JEWS Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Two articles deal with the depiction of The signal contribution of Robert Cherry Past, Brighter Future Edited by Robert Poland and the Poles in the cinema. has been the measurement of anti-Polish Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska. Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski reviews the neg- bias in this country. While there have Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ative presentations found in Hollywood been extensive surveys of anti-Semitism 230 pp. $75.00 cloth, $27.95 paper. productions, which avoid the realities of abroad, including in Poland, few similar REVIEWED BY CHARLES CHOTKOWSKI life in Poland, especially in wartime, and studies of anti-Polonism have been made are fundamentally dishonest. Lawrence here. His article surveys anti-Polish bias- hose of us active in Polish-Jewish Baron discusses the rejection of positive es among Holocaust teachers, finding Trelations have been doubly fortu- greater bias among non-historians than nate in 2007 with the appearance of two among specialists in the field. Lower describes how the Nazis devel- recent collective works in our field. The In “Polish-Jewish relations in America,” oped a sinister, utopian plan for exploiting first was Volume 19 of “Polin: Studies in Guy Billauer’s introduction to the second Ukraine’s human and natural resources. Polish Jewry,” which was dedicated to part, he notes “a steady but very slow They firmly believed that this was absolutely Polish-Jewish Relations in North America. improvement in the way Jews view Poles essential to secure the Reich’s future and the Now comes “Rethinking Poles and and Poles view Jews ... [but] the two com- continued sustenance of the Wehrmacht, Jews,” in which editors Cherry and Orla- munities still see each other largely in and since the largest population of Soviet Bukowska have assembled a foreword, a negative terms.” Jews resided there, they had to be eliminat- preface, four introductions, and thirteen Much of the negativity derives from con- ed, and as fast as possible. articles, all of which address forthrightly flicting memories of the Holocaust. The plan put an end to Ukrainian hopes the contentious issues that always seem Surprisingly, Havi Ben-Sasson finds that for independence, but this did not prevent to crop up in discussions between Jews during the Holocaust years in Poland, them from cooperating with the regime, at and Poles. Jewish attitudes toward Poles were initial- least insofar as the robbery and the mur- As a longtime participant in these discus- ly positive, and only later turned negative, der of Jews was concerned. sions, I can attest that the contributors to as expectations of Polish support and res- Hitler appointed the Nazi ideologue “Rethinking Poles and Jews” are knowledge- cue were disappointed. I believe the rift Alfred Rosenberg to be the minister of the able persons, experienced in Polish-Jewish was inevitable, given the different fates Reich Commissariat Ukraine. dialogue, whose individual efforts over the the Germans imposed on the persecuted Accompanied by top Nazis, Rosenberg years have helped to bring about the Poles and exterminated Jews. As Jerzy had brought in commissars, or “the torch- “brighter future” foreseen in the subtitle. Andrzejewski wrote in his novel “Holy bearers of the German nation,” especially The book is divided into three parts. Week,” “Affairs great and small divide educated for this purpose. They were no The first deals with anti-Polish stereo- depictions in Wajda’s “Korczak” and people, yet none so sharply as the types, the second with contextual Polanski’s “The Pianist” by critics who inequality of fate.” bureaucrats, but dictators who ruled with understanding and dialogue, and the prefer condemnation of the Poles over the Helene Sinnreich describes how “pow- the gun and a whip, which they placed on third with contemporary Poland. nuanced truth. erful national mythologies” affect histori- their desk in office hours. When one The first part unflinchingly addresses Shana Penn’s review of American press ography, with Poles emphasizing Polish became “too soft,” he was quickly side- stereotypes of the kind Polish-Americans coverage notes the positive changes in victims and Jews emphasizing Jewish vic- lined by others. Social outcasts, ama- have long had to deal with. In his introduction reports on commemorations of the libera- tims. She finds that some historians, both teurs, adventurers and careerists became to this part, Thaddeus Radzilowski writes of tion of Auschwitz in 2005, as contrasted to Polish and Jewish, now write “more bal- the colonial-style governors and decided “anti-Polonism,” a term avoided by others as 1995, as well as noting the success of anced, contextualized histories.” who shall live and who shall die. a neologism, although the prejudice it Polish diplomats in correcting references Father John Pawlikowski shares his The detailed history of the district of denotes is nonetheless very real. to “Polish death camps.” (Continued on page 15) (Continued on page 13) January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 THE UNHOLY LEGACY OF PIUS XII The man who presided over the Vatican “Benedict XVI cannot go to Israel because arrived under the Pope’s nose: in October himself vulnerable. Thousands of Jews, during the war stands accused of turning it would be a scandal for Catholics. The 1943, more than 1,000 Roman Jews had they point out, were hidden and protected a blind eye to the Holocaust. And his rep- Catholic Church is doing everything possi- been rounded up and were being by individual priests and nuns. They also utation is still a source of division between ble to have good relations with Israel, but processed for extermination in a military insist that Pius’s canonization is a purely Catholics and Jews. friendly relations can only be built if there school a few hundred yards from the internal matter for the Church. “For BY PETER POPHAM, is reciprocity.” Pope’s window. The Pope was personally Benedict and other conservatives in the THE INDEPENDENT A spokesman for the Israeli foreign min- Church,” says Mr Mickens, “Pius XII has istry skirted the museum issue in his reply. for a long time been an iconic figure, a fig- he “Pius Wars” that have long raged “If Benedict XVI would like to visit Israel, ure of reason and stability. They also like over the Vatican’s desire to declare T he would be a welcome and beloved the fact that he was a staunch anti- Pope Pius XII a saint flared up again guest,” said Yossi Levy. “Pope Ratzinger Communist. They say that, if he had spo- when the Jesuit priest in charge of the has already been officially invited and ken out against the Nazis, he would have canonization process declared that Pope whether he accepts or not depends entire- put even more lives in jeopardy.” Benedict XVI could not visit Israel until a ly on his will.” But Robert Katz, author of several nar- disputed panel in Jerusalem’s Holocaust But Sergio Itzhak Minervi, a former Israeli rative histories of Rome during the Nazi museum, which refers disparagingly to ambassador to Brussels and a historian, Pius, is removed. occupation, said: “They argue that a lot of commented: “No moral entity, and least of all worse things would have happened if he Pius XII, the austere, bespectacled Yad Vashem, can treat these historical ques- Vatican diplomat who reigned from 1939 had spoken. But what worse could have tions as if they were in a market, as Father happened than did happen?” to 1958, has long been regarded by con- Gumpel would wish: ‘unless you cancel servative Catholics as one of the greatest He went on: “It’s true that he did what he those phrases, I don’t come.’ Let us be seri- could to protect the Vatican, and it’s true of modern popes. His claim to sainthood ous. History has need of proof, of docu- was opened by Pope Paul VI, “with the that there were many individual acts by ments, which the church would be well to Catholics to save Jews. But these were same sort of urgency and certainty,” the show to the world.” Eugenio Pacelli: a controversial Pope who failed not ordered by the Vatican. If they made Vatican journalist Robert Mickens said, t the crux of the dispute, as the to condemn the holocaust of World War II. him a saint he would become a role model “as when John Paul II opened the case for museum caption states, is the fail- A warned by an Italian princess, Enza for Catholics worldwide. His deeds would Mother Teresa.” ure of Pope Pius to make a protest of any Pignatelli, who had managed to force a way be singled out for imitation and venera- But the Pius XII depicted in the Yad kind, either verbally or in writing, as mil- into his study, about the imminent assault on tion; virtue would be found in a passivity Vashem Holocaust Museum is a very dif- lions of Jews all over Europe were taken the city’s ancient Jewish community. “You that was sometimes indistinguishable ferent figure. Included among the to the gas chambers. By the end of 1942, must act immediately,” she had told him. from complicity before the acts of perpe- “Unjust,” those responsible directly or indi- he had received reports of the ongoing “The Germans are arresting the Jews and trators of crimes against humanity.” rectly for the Holocaust, he is castigated murder of Jews from at least nine different taking them away. Only you can stop them.” he new row over Pius emerges exact- on a large panel in the museum for his countries where the Holocaust was under failure “to leave his palace, with crucifix way, including Poland, Slovakia and He told her: “I will do all I can.” Tly 50 years after his death. “His sup- high, to witness one day of pogrom.” Croatia. The British envoy to the Holy On 18 October, the day the 1,000 Jews porters are extremely frustrated,” said Mr “When reports of the massacre of the See, Sir D’Arcy Osborne, practically a were dispatched to Auschwitz in cattle cars, Mickens. “They were hoping that his canon- Jews reached the Vatican,” it goes on, “he prisoner inside the Vatican after the Nazi Osborne was received by the Pope. Pius ization would have happened by that did not react with written or verbal occupation of Rome, wrote in his diary remarked that “until now the Germans have anniversary.” Instead, even Pope Benedict, protests. In 1942, he did not associate late in 1942: “The more I think of it, the always behaved correctly,” respecting one of Pius’s ardent admirers, is now calling himself with the condemnation of the more I am revolted by Hitler’s massacre of Vatican neutrality, but he hoped they would for a truce. The issue of the museum caption killing of the Jews issued by the Allies. the Jewish race on the one hand, and, on put more police on the streets. was “important but not decisive,” said his When they were deported from Rome to the other, the Vatican’s almost exclusive Supporters of Pius claim that his silence spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi. And Auschwitz, Pius XII did not intervene.” preoccupation with the ... possibilities of was necessary: to protest would have regarding Pius’s canonization, the Pope “As long as that panel remains in the the bombardment of Rome.” exposed the church and Catholics across “maintains that a period of deeper study and museum,” Father Peter Gumpel said, By the following year, the Holocaust had Europe to Nazi attack and made the Pope reflection is opportune.” ITALY’S MOVING EFFORT TO RECOUNT JEWS’ JOURNEY implement racial laws in 1938 that seri- Holocaust historians. Jarach, vice president of the Memorial BY JUDITH MONACHINA, ously restricted the lives of Italian Jews. The memorial will open a living history Foundation. THE BOSTON GLOBE The immediate family members of book. Visitors will hear the rumbles and Adovcates from the Center for n December of last year, the Italian Morpurgo, who is Jewish, were not screeches of arrivals and departures over Documentation of Contemporary Jewish Istate railway launched a 186-mile-per- deported, but his father suffered greatly them, just as the prisoners would have History and Children of the Shoah worked hour train that revolutionized travel in Italy. from the persecution. heard them 65 years ago, as they were to win support for the memorial and obtain But below the track of that train’s send-off the space from the railway. from Milan’s Central Station, another Throughout Italy, schools and organi- important door to history was opened. The zations commemorate the liberation of state railway recently signed an agree- Auschwitz every Jan. 27. There is so ment to allow work to begin on a much Day of Memory activity that one Holocaust memorial there. might think memorials unnecessary. The heart of the memorial will be the But the foundation representatives say track used to deport Jews and others from memory can slip away, especially as 1943 to 1945. It has remained untouched survivors die. since. “It’s a ruin, an archeological find,” ne point of contention is the memo- said architect Guido Morpurgo, and his Orial’s scope. Of Italy’s 23,000 politi- design, with the track as the memorial’s cal deportees, most of them not Jewish, heart, reflects this. hundreds were deported from the Milan During the German occupation of Italy, station, and their memory should be 8,628 Jews were deported from Italy and included here too, say some historians. its territories, according to historian Liliana Jarach understands, but makes a distinc- Picciotto. On Jan. 30, 1944, one of the 15 tion: “One thing is deportation, another is deportation trains to leave this station car- extermination.” ried 605 Jews to Auschwitz; most were Jarach hopes programs at the site will killed on arrival; 20 survived. Liliana The track that was used to deport Jews and others from Italy. deal with that part of the station’s history, Segre, who was 13, and her father were violently loaded from trucks to train cars in as well as Italy’s current problems inte- on that train. He was killed. She is active ussolini was deposed in July of this hidden, underground part of the sta- grating immigrants. in the memorial project. M1943; Italy surrendered to the Allies tion. The train cars were then raised on a However this debate is decided, the Advocates of the memorial say that Italy less than two months later, but Germany has had a difficult time coming to grips still occupied much of the peninsula. lift and sent to concentration camps. memorial may be an important step for with its role in this history, and indeed the It was in this chaos, in late 1943, that the Fifty years later, it was a church that first Italy. In such a public setting, where story is mixed. The great majority of Italian first train left Milan. Italians have naturally recognized the track’s role in history. For 320,000 people pass daily, it will be a Jews escaped deportation, in part due to wanted to remember their very active 10 years, members of St. Egidio have place to learn about what happened, and assistance from their non-Jewish friends resistance movements, and, compared held services at the track to remember the to help visitors reflect on the dangers of and neighbors, and there were no depor- with other occupied countries, their better deportations. “The most important guest tyranny and be alert to the first signs of it tations prior to the German occupation. record in terms of Jewish deportations. (at the services) was not the chief rabbi of in their own governments. Before the Still, Italy was Germany’s ally, and did But this focus has often frustrated Milan, but the archbishop,” said Roberto trains leave the station. Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR MEETS HER POLISH SAVIOR uring World War II, the Sozanska a bunker on their farm in Turka, Poland, Lucien, her father Mendel and D family gave shelter to Rozia from 1942-1944. aunt Fanya away, past Rothshild and her family, hiding them from “I cannot fully express how grateful I am patrolling Germans, and hid the Nazis. Sixty years later, Rozia reunites to Wiktoria and her mother Anna. They them in an underground with Wiktoria Sozanska for the first time. opened their home and their hearts to me, bunker in her barn for two “Her bravery is what has allowed me to risking their own lives in order to save years. Each day Wiktoria and live and build a wonderful family of my me,” said Rozia. her family brought food to the own,” she says. “Their bravery is what has allowed me to Sieferts and carried away their A moving reunion between a Holocaust live and build a wonderful family of my own, waste. While the Jaworska survivor and the Polish woman who risked with three children and four grandchildren. I family had very little, they her life to save her took place at JFK Airport am so thankful to them and the Jewish shared what they had with in New York in November of last year. Foundation for the Righteous for making this Rozia and her family. Organized by the Jewish Foundation for extraordinary reunion possible.” here were several the Righteous, the meeting brought In the fall of 1942, the Jews of Turka (now Tclose calls. Wiktoria together Rozia Rothshild, who now lives Ukraine) and the surrounding villages were had given her identity docu- A Seifert family photo from 1955. ordered by the Germans to move into ments to a Jewish neighbor “rose” – the same as her name in Polish. the Samberg ghetto. The Seifert fami- and was interrogated by the Gestapo for Wiktoria is in her 80s and lives in ly was among this group of 5,000 Jews days, never betraying her neighbor or the Wroclaw, Poland. who lived in Turka. Seiferts. Wiktoria was finally released by “In the many years we have worked While the able-bodied adults could the Gestapo, when she convinced them with survivors and their rescuers, I remain hide in a bunker in the woods, children that she had not given her identity papers awestruck by the heroism of the thou- and the unhealthy were forced go to to a Jewess. sands of rescuers who risked their lives to the ghetto, and the families had to sell In the summer of 1944, as the Soviet save others. By holding true to their val- all their belongings beforehand. army was approaching Turka, the ues, these individuals saved Jews from When Wiktoria Jaworska came Germans came though the area confiscat- certain death,” said JFR Executive Vice with her mother Anna, a widow with ing animals, taking food, and searching President Stanlee Stahl. six children, to look at the furniture, for both deserters and hidden Jews. “We owe a great debt of gratitude to her mother saw Rozia and her Wiktoria and her mother moved the these men and women, and through our brother Lucien and wondered what Seiferts to the woods, where they lived for work, hope to improve their lives and pre- would become of them. When she two weeks until the region was liberated. serve their stories,” he added. Wiktoria Sozanska and Rozia Rothshild meet in New York. heard they were going to be sent to Mendel, Fanya, Rozia and Lucien The Jewish Foundation for the in Tivon, Israel, with her rescuer, Wiktoria the ghetto with her father and aunt who returned to Turka and found devastation. Righteous was created in 1986 to provide Sozanska from Wroclaw, Poland, for the were disabled, she said, “We will take After the war, Mendel married Fanya financial assistance to non-Jews who first time in over 60 years. care of you. You will come with us.” and the family moved to the United States. risked their lives and often the lives of Sozanska and her widowed mother and In the middle of the next night, Wiktoria’s Rozia met an Israeli, they married and their families to rescue Jews during the five siblings hid Rozia Rothshild (nee brother Mikolaj came to the Siefert home in a moved to Israel, She now goes by the Holocaust. Today the JFR supports more Seifert) and her brother, father and aunt in hay cart and secreted Rozia, her brother name Shoshanna, which is Hebrew for than 1,200 aged rescuers in 26 countries. THE “NO-PARENT” KINDERTRANSPORT refugee question – without Britain? After all, here was the AMNON RUBINSTEIN, mentioning the word Jew - crème-de-la-crème of THE JERUSALEM POST and decided to do noth- European society – leading eventy years ago, the first of the ing. Almost all of the par- citizens who would have Skindertransport left Germany for ticipating countries openly enriched the economy, sci- safety in Britain. The first one arrived at refused to take in Jewish ence and arts of the British Harwich on December 2 bringing 200 chil- refugees. isles. And there was not even dren from Berlin’s Jewish orphanage, Hitler rightly saw in an issue of immigration. The torched the month before during the that refusal a green light parents, like their children, pogrom named Kristallnacht. This event is to unleash his hordes in could have been granted tem- rightly celebrated in Britain. Here was an the November pogrom. porary shelter, thus avoiding a act of generosity and kindness which Then came the quick cruel separation. stood out in singular isolation. action of the British gov- But the children arrived Following the Kristallnacht pogrom, ernment which managed ohne eltern, without parents; the British Parliament and government – with the brave help of they were elternlose kinder – decided to give shelter to refugee chil- Quakers - to save almost parentless children. In other dren, mostly Jewish, menaced by the 10,000 children. words: the kindertransport is Nazi regime. Indeed, Britain’s excep- Having said that, there both testament to British gen- tional humanity and generosity contrast are other aspects to the erosity and to the then-pre- dramatically with the universal indiffer- kindertransport. The vailing prejudice against ence to the unfolding Jewish tragedy in British government did Jews. Most parents, needless not allow them to immi- to say, did not survive to see Germany of 1938. Moreover, the chil- Children of the Kindertransport. dren were generally well received: One grate to Britain. They their children. were given only temporary shelter, and ipants could have conceivably deluded hy is this important nowadays? of them – now 81 – told London’s themselves into believing that no mortal a condition was attached: They had to Because the events of the Evening Standard how he was elected danger awaited the Jews. But now, in W come without their parents. Thus the Holocaust are remembered by Jews as vice-captain in a Margate school, December 1938, after the pogrom, the children – ranging from infants to 17- characterized by two types of responsibil- although he hardly knew any English. readiness of the parents testified ity – for the actual murder, and for the fail- Britain’s act of humanity contrasts year-olds – had to leave their parents in to their realization that they had to save ure to save the menaced Jews. Of course, sharply with the American failure. A similar Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia the lives of their children. The mortal dan- there is no comparison between the actu- effort in the US failed to pass the congres- amid tragic scenes in which, by Nazi ger was palpable. From now on the failure al butchers and the indifferent onlookers, sional committees. Eventually, 1,000 orders, no emotion was allowed to be of the West to take in Jewish refugees but anybody who wants to understand the mostly Jewish children were allowed into shown. They made their way to Britain acquired a new dimension: indifference in America between 1934 and 1945 in a via Holland as de facto orphans. Infants the face of death. Israeli psyche must realize that even semi-clandestine operation, which has were carried by their older siblings and At the same time, the kindertransport Britain’s unique act of humanity delivers a come to be known as the “One Thousand the absence of their mothers and showed that the Nazis were ready to let double message – a double sense of hor- Children.” Britain was different. fathers was, naturally, traumatic. Jews out. The fate of the Jews was sealed ror at the actual slaughter, as well as a The year 1938 was a watershed: In July, This is significant. Here were parents by both the Nazis’ brutality and the sense of being betrayed by the Western the Evian conference ended in a fiasco. ready to send their unaccompanied off- absence of sheltering countries. But why democracies. Thirty-two countries deliberated the spring to a foreign land. The Evian partic- were the parents not allowed to enter Israelis live with these double traumas. January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 BATTLE FOR HOLOCAUST ASSETS ROILS ISRAEL community, within Israel. It’s not the same each of those accounts, the bank’s direc- it recovers. When it can’t find heirs, it BY CAM SIMPSON, as it being held by the Swiss,’” Michael tors said they would give about $4.79 mil- transfers the money to needy Holocaust THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Bazyler, an expert on Holocaust assets lion to the Company. Although insistent survivors living in Israel. Recovered pro- he global quest to ferret out money from the Chapman University School of that it owed nothing, the bank said the ceeds also fund the company’s opera- Tand property left behind by Jews Law in California, says Israeli bankers told payment was being made “out of public tions. killed in the Holocaust is now targeting him in 2006. “That was sort of their sentiment and as a gesture of goodwill.” Run out of a suite of offices in a glass- Israel, and investigators say it’s proving at excuse. And I’m saying, ‘Wait a second. The bank disputes many of Mr. Roet’s and-steel tower four stories above a hard- least as difficult in the Jewish state as it It’s not your money.’” claims and says it owes little. wood-flooring store in this suburb of Tel did in Europe. Mr. Roet, whose two sisters died in a While most of the Company’s focus has Aviv, the Company has so far recovered Many big banks and the government assets valued at just over $183.9 million. itself have resisted efforts to claim hun- That includes about $44.7 million from the dreds of millions of dollars in compensa- government. tion for bank deposits, land, corporate Mr. Roet estimates conservatively that shares, art and other assets that investi- there’s $500 million of victim’s assets in gators say once belonged to Jews killed Israel. That’s based on those already by the Nazis and their allies. recovered and claims either already made “I cannot say that the Israeli establish- or being prepared. He believes that figure ment has been, or is, happy about the could reach as much as $1 billion when return of properties,” says Avraham Roet, the quest is over, especially if land values the recently retired chairman of the continue to rise in Israel’s urban centers. Company for Location & Restitution of By comparison, a 2001 settlement Holocaust Victims Assets Ltd. The private between Jewish groups and Austria’s gov- firm, often referred to simply as the ernment and private sector totaled about Company, was created by the Israeli par- $360 million. A 1998 settlement between liament after its investigators identified up Jewish groups and a collection of Swiss to 9,000 bank accounts suspected of banks reached $1.25 billion. belonging to Holocaust victims. As in Europe, it’s impossible to know Thousands of European Jews deposited how much was really lost in Israel. The or invested tidy sums here during the Nazis and their surrogates tried to hide decades before World War II, often without their genocide. There is no reliable reg- istry of the dead, nor of their international visiting what was then British-controlled Estelle Sapir displays a photo of her late father Joseph Sapir, a World War II death camp victim, assets. Those who survived didn’t typical- Palestine. After many were killed in the during a news conference in 1998. Ms. Sapir announced she had reached a settlement with Credit ly hold onto the sort of records that can Holocaust, their substantial assets went Suisse over her claim on her father. unclaimed, passing into the hands of the buttress a claim. government of the newly created nation of concentration camp near Auschwitz, Poland, been on bank accounts, it says it has also n the 1990s and earlier this decade, Israel and some of its largest banks. started investigating and targeting some of located about $86.7 million worth of real IJewish groups threatened or took legal While some Israeli institutions have Israel’s most powerful institutions after his estate that had belonged to Holocaust vic- action against European governments challenged the validity of the Company’s firm opened last year. The 80-year-old tims and more than 1,000 stolen works of and businesses. The U.S. got involved, claims, they are generally loath to say stepped down from the Company’s top job in art in the Israeli Museum that had been threatening reluctant European compa- much about any of this in public. Mr. Roet August but remained a director and its most recovered by the Allies from the Nazis. nies with sanctions. and others say the institutions privately public face. Museum officials have published a com- Under intense international pressure, argue they should be treated more gently Earlier this year, he went after Bank plete catalog on their Web site and the deals were reached across the Continent. than their European counterparts because Leumi Le-Israel B.M., Israel’s second- Company’s Web site. They also spon- Settlements were often based on frag- they are in a different position than banks largest financial institution, claiming it sored a special exhibition earlier this year mentary evidence and statistical esti- and governments that actively assisted owed more than $34 million, a figure titled, “Orphaned Art: Looted Art from the mates of what banks and institutions the Nazis. They also say any assets once derived from a government-approved for- Holocaust in the Israel Museum.” owed. After hammering out a total price owned by Holocaust victims that were mula for fixing the value of roughly 1,300 The Company has sweeping powers tag, the targeted institutions funded settle- subsumed over the years served a public accounts once held at the bank. allowing it access to government and ment pools, or agreed to specific proce- good because they went toward building a Last year, on the same day Bank Leumi, business records to find lost assets and dures for paying claims. Heirs with verified Jewish homeland. the Company’s biggest private target so lay claim to them. It then tries to locate accounts or other documented assets typ- “They said, ‘We are not really cheating far, announced that it had hired a retired heirs — whose names it is forbidden by ically got top priority. The remaining cash the survivors. It’s all within the Jewish Israeli Supreme Court justice to scrutinize law to publicly disclose — for any money (Continued on page 14) AS NAZIS AGE, LEADS STILL ALIVE ix decades after the end of World was eventually discovered to be a former survivor of the attack today, now 79, has including that of Scheungraber. SWar II, the world’s remaining Nazi Hitler storm trooper. been called to testify as a witness. Schrimm’s prosecutors also recently war criminals and witnesses to their atroc- Until the 1970s, German law included a An Italian court convicted Scheungraber of the discovered that Josef Mengele, Adolf ities are fast dying of old age. But the statute of limitations on murder that crime in 2006, but in absentia, and he had Eichmann and other infamous Nazis who German office charged with preparing threatened to put an end to the office’s continued to live freely in southern fled to South America after World War II prosecutions of Nazi crimes, far from efforts to prosecute Nazi criminals. That Germany until the latest prosecution carried a particular type of International Red Cross travel document. Schrimm’s shutting down, has rarely been busier. was lifted. effort. agency is now combing through “Twenty-five years ago, we thought our Today, the biggest problem facing the Schrimm’s office also hopes within a Immigration records in Argentina and work would be coming to an end now,” agency is that both its targets and the wit- year to extradite Demjanjuk to face other South American nations looking for said Kurt Schrimm, lead prosecutor of nesses needed to effectively prosecute charges of murdering Jews at a Nazi similar documents and “people we don’t Germany’s central office for the investiga- them are generally in their mid-80s or prison camp in occupied Poland, where know the names of yet.” tion of “National Socialist Crimes.” older. Many have died, and others are too the Ukrainian-born U.S. autoworker The Ludwigsburg office, which celebrat- But as Schrimm and his staff of six comb frail for trial. allegedly was a guard. ed its 50th anniversary in December, has records around the world in a final push “You can start a trial only with the o prove there was killing isn’t suf- so far forwarded 7,394 investigations to for justice, they continue to come up with accused alive and witnesses alive that “T ficient,” Schrimm said. “You have Germany’s courts for prosecution. fresh leads and evidence. Today the office you can call to testify,” said Carlo Gentile, to prove it was murder find evidence of Keeping up morale in the German office is pursuing 20 to 40 cases, he said includ- an expert on Nazi war crimes at the motives like racism or show it was can be a challenge, particularly as an ing the extradition of former U.S. University of Cologne. “If you don’t have extremely gruesome. And after 60 years increasing number of prosecutions fail as autoworker and accused Sobibor death witnesses and perpetrators, then you can it’s extremely difficult to prove what some- the accused or key witnesses die. “I have long talks with everyone that you camp guard John Demjanjuk. At least a only work as a historian.” body thought.” can’t measure your success by the people few cases are still going to trial. Getting aging criminals to court is an With witnesses dying out, most of the you manage to jail,” Schrimm said. “There are still thousands of cases no increasing challenge but not an impossi- tips Schrimm’s office receives these Still, the office will stay open, German one’s ever heard of,” he said. “And I’m bility. Currently Josef Scheungraber, an days are from documents. In the mid- state prosecutors have said. sure there are still thousands of culprits elderly former German infantryman, is on 1990s, Italian officials discovered a These days, “the goal and satisfaction out there.” trial in Munich on charges of taking part in room full of files documenting Nazi war for us is to clarify what really happened,” “Last Chance” to find Nazi war criminals a massacre of 11 men and boys in the crimes. The trove of documents, creat- said Schrimm, whose team has amassed in South America Prosecuting Nazi war Italian village of Falzano. ed by the Allies, had been handed to a vast archive of documentation on Nazi crimes has always had its challenges. The German prosecutors hope to prove that the Italians for use in prosecutions but crimes. “Even victims say their interest is first head of Schrimm’s office, established Scheungraber and fellow soldiers commit- instead was locked away. Today the so- not that an old person goes to prison but in 1958 to pursue further Nazi prosecu- ted murder when they locked 12 Italians in called “Closet of Shame” has become a that the world knows what happened.” tions in the wake of the Nuremberg trials, a farmhouse and later blew it up. The sole major source of new prosecutions, First published in Chicago Tribune. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 RABBI LAU VISITS THE OFFICE OF THE After the official United Nation’s International Day of Holocaust ceremony Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairma the American and International Societies for Yad Vash before his appointment as a Chairman of the Yad Vash Annual Tribute Dinner of the American and Internatio Rabbi Lau briefed the Board that, in Yad Vashem i nerstone of the new International School of Holoca of this project since 91 seminars for teachers and e Yad Vashem last year alone. One of such seminars last summer was attended by 70 China. They bring back to their classrooms what they h “I am very happy that the torch of remembrance is vivors”, said Rabbi Lau, “because we are not allowed t At the end Rabbi Lau, recognized the great work for Society for Yad Vashem and its chairman, Eli Zborows

Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American and International Societies for Yad Vashem, Caroline Massel, Chair, American Society for Yad Vashem Young Leadership Associates, Ariel Zborowski and Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council.

Eli David Halpern, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Va and Jeremy Halpern. Ya

Mr. and Mrs. Arturo Constantiner, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American and International Societies for Yad Vashem, Elizabeth Zborowski, Eugen Gluck.

At the Board Meeting: Elizabeth Wilf, Eugen Gluck, Zygmunt Wilf, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Melvin Bukiet, Joseph Wilf, Lili Stawski, Ellis & Israel Krakowski, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Leonard Wilf, Eli Zborowski, David Halpern, Marilyn & Barry Rubenstein and Louis Rosenbaum. Zborowski, Chairman, American and International Societies for Yad Vashem. January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM f Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the an of the Yad Vashem Council visited the office of hem and participated in the Board Meeting. Twice hem Council, Rabbi Lau was a guest speaker at the onal Societies for Yad Vashem in New York. in Jerusalem just a week ago, he placed the cor- aust Studies. Rabbi Lau stressed the importance educators from all over the world were held in

00 teachers from 52 countries including Japan and have learned in three weeks at Yad Vashem. given to the second and third generations of sur- o extinguish this light of remembrance.” the cause of remembrance done by The American ski.

Hon. Kiyo Akasaka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Public Information, Hon. Asha-Rose Migiro, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Ambassaor Gabriella Shalev.

i Zborowski, Chairman, American and International Societies for Yad ashem, Israel Krakowski and Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of the ad Vashem Council.

Rebecca Hanus, Nicole Pines, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Ariel Zborowski, Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American and International Societies for Yad Vashem, Jeremy Halpern, Julie Kopel, Aaron Bernstein, Caroline Massel, Chair, American Society for Yad Vashem Young Leadership Associates and Alan Fried.

d Vashem Council, Elizabeth Zborowski, Eugen Gluck, Rebbetzin Lau, and Eli Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American and International Societies for Yad Vashem, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Harry and Danielle Karten. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM NEW YAD VASHEM BOOKS TEACH HOLOCAUST TO HAREDIM examples of physical courage, militarism of the haredi Jew as coming exclusively devoted to the attempts by Rabbi Chaim MATTHEW WAGNER, and revolt against the Nazis that helped from Eastern Europe. Michael Dov Weissmandl to save Jews THE JERUSALEM POST shatter the myth that Jews were led as “It presents the heritage of Rabbi through bribery. new four-book series entitled Years sheep to the slaughter. Samson Raphael Hirsch, the forerunner The fourth and final volume is devoted But over the years, people at Yad Vashem Wherein We Have Seen Evil that of modern Orthodoxy, who combined to the Final Solution. A realized the absurdity of it all. How can you teaches the Holocaust from a religious Torah scholarship with work and world- unding of the series was provided by focus on the few incidents of partisan perspective was launched by Yad FRudolph and Edith Tessler in memory uprisings when these make up just a of the children of Shlomo and Esther Tessler Vashem. fraction of Holocaust experience?” and the children of David and Fradel The books, and the accompanying testi- Nava Weiss, head of Yad Hoffman. monies preserved on CD, will be used as Vashem’s Haredi Department, which Until recently, the haredi education sys- the basis for teaching the Holocaust in was established seven years ago, tem did not teach the Holocaust. haredi educational institutions. said that tailoring the teaching of the In part this was due to a dearth of teach- The books mark an ongoing trend at Holocaust to the special needs of the ing materials, said Weiss. But it was also Yad Vashem to emphasize the particular, haredi community is part of larger part of the haredi rejection of Zionist nar- subjective experiences of individual trend in Israeli society. rative of the Holocaust and its refusal to Holocaust victims over attempts to view ver the past few decades we recognize Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Holocaust as a collective experience, “O have seen the focus move which fell on the anniversary of the said historians, educators and haredi fig- from the collective to the individual,” Warsaw Ghetto uprising. ures involved with the project. said Weiss. “Israeli society has Even today, the teaching of the Holocaust “The secular Zionist state originally cre- matured. We no longer think in terms of and other “secular subjects” are discontin- ated Yad Vashem to present the a monolithic whole. Rather, we recog- ued for boys when they reach the eighth Holocaust as a collective memory that fit nize the diversity of different groups. liness,” he explained. The second vol- grade and graduate from Talmud Torah to nicely into a secular Zionist narrative,” Teaching the Holocaust is no different.” ume traces the life of religious Jews in yeshiva. In yeshivot, studies are restricted to said Dudi Zilbershlag, the first haredi The four-book series focuses on the the ghettos. the learning of the Talmud and other strictly board member of Yad Vashem. lives of Orthodox Jewry during the Specifically religious dilemmas, such as religious subjects. “It basically ignored the courage of spir- Holocaust and the special moral and reli- maintaining a kosher diet when starvation Females continue to devote themselves it demonstrated by so many pious Jews gious dilemmas they faced. is rampant, or celebrating the holidays to general studies through high school who did not lose faith throughout the hor- The first volume tells the story of the without being allowed access to houses of and there is even Holocaust studies at the rors of the Shoah. Orthodox community in Germany during prayer, are examined. women-only Beit Vegan College in Haredim distanced themselves from the the 1930s. According to Zilbershlag, the The third volume is about various res- Jerusalem, which has a predominately Zionist tendency to emphasize the few book intentionally shatters the stereotype cue attempts, including an entire chapter haredi student body. NEW YAD VASHEM RESEARCH CENTER PIECE BY PIECE FOCUSES ON POST-WAR EXPERIENCES YAD VASHEM ARCHIVES REVEAL THE FATE OF RABBI DAVID HALIVNI’S FAMILY viewed by young people today - will ETGAR LEFKOVITS , receive the same scholarly attention it so which can be found in the Yad Vashem THE JERUSALEM POST richly deserves,” said Yad Vashem chair- BY SHALOM BRONSTEIN Archives, Zaler Wiedermann was indeed erusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust man Avner Shalev. he Yad Vashem Archives hold solu- on the death march from Warsaw to JMemorial inaugurated in December critical aspect of the story of the Ttions to questions many people never Dachau. However, he arrived in Dachau 2008 a new research center on the aftermath “AHolocaust survivors is how we thought could be answered. In his 1996 on 6 August 1944, and died there on 11 of the Holocaust, focusing on survivors’ post- struggled to return to life. How were the book The Book and the Sword—A Life of March 1945. war experiences in an attempt to better pre- survivors received by their countrymen Learning in the Shadow of Destruction, my Halivni also mentions his great-uncle, serve the memory of the Shoah. and societies? How did our new countries teacher, mentor and friend, 2008 Israel Rabbi Leib Weiss of Tyachevo, “whose The establishment of the Diana treat us and view us? These questions, I Prize Laureate Prof. David Weiss Halivni picture on the ramp in Auschwitz has been Zborowski Center for the Study of the believe, are vital to a deeper understand- writes: “I do not say kaddish for my sister reproduced, unidentified, in many books Aftermath of the Shoah, which will operate ing of the long-lasting effects of the Channa Yitte or for my father, because I do on the Holocaust, including the under the auspices of the International Holocaust,” said survivor Eli Zborowski, not know when they Encyclopedia Judaica.” Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad chairman of the American Society for Yad died. But I do remember The Encyclopedia credits Vashem, comes amid widespread Vashem and a donor of the new center. them during the Yizkor Yad Vashem for the pho- Holocaust revisionism as the number of Due to time constraints, the center - service.” After I read the tograph. I brought this survivors continues to dwindle. which will operate with a basic staff of six book, I asked Rabbi information to the Yad Dr. Ze’ev Mankowitz, the center’s direc- people but will work with researchers Halivni if anyone had Vashem Photo Archives. tor, noted that it was being launched at a around the world - will initially focus on the checked Yad Vashem for Since German soldiers time when contemporary Holocaust edu- consequences and implications of the more information about took the photographs cators from around the world were trying Shoah for the Jewish people worldwide in the fate of his family. secretly, often to show the to grapple with how to preserve the mem- the first quarter-century after the With his permission, I humiliation of Jews, it is ory of the Holocaust today. Holocaust, primarily during 1944-1961. began a search that con- extremely rare to know “Until now, the priority of Yad Vashem “This is a huge undertaking, and we are tinues to this day. the identity of people in has been to focus on the issue of the trying not to bite off more than we can I first discovered that such photos. The naming Holocaust itself, but now the question of chew,” Mankowitz said. the story he was told of Rabbi Weiss then led to the memory of the Holocaust has He noted that the center’s work would and believed for many further identifications by emerged to be of equally crucial impor- include the debate among survivors in the years about his father, Halivni and his late wife tance,” Mankowitz said in an interview. early days of the state regarding whether Zaler (Bezalel) Tziporah of people in Serving as a hub for higher learning, the to accept money from Germany, as well Wiedermann, turned other pictures at Yad as the trials of Nazi war criminals such as Vashem, enabling former- center will promote research and educa- out to be incorrect. In Rabbi Leib Weiss of Tyachevo (center), tional activities relating to the study of sur- the 1961 Eichmann trial, the struggle for his book, Halivni relates ly anonymous Jews to his son Shlomo Weiss (right) and Itzo regain their true identities. vivors’ post-war experiences. It will focus return of Jewish property, and memorial- that his father was Einhorn (left) in a group of men under- The picture is now dis- on topics such as Europe as viewed by ization of Holocaust victims. deported to Auschwitz going selection after their arrival at played in the Holocaust survivors, early attempts to institutionalize “Our priority is to give survivors a micro- in 1944: “I was told by Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944. the memory of the Holocaust, the crisis of phone so they have an opportunity to some people that from History Museum with all liberation for the survivors, and the Shoah make their voices heard,” Mankowitz said. Auschwitz he had been taken to Warsaw its subjects properly identified. as depicted in modern literature and films. About 250,000 Holocaust survivors live to clean up the rubble, and from there, on In describing his own experience, “For decades, we have addressed in Israel. his way to Dachau,he had stepped off the Halivni writes that when he jumped off the aspects of the Holocaust through the aca- “The Holocaust has become so critical wrong side of a train, was attacked by SS train upon arrival in Auschwitz, his aunt demic work of our research institute. Now, in public debate about human rights in dogs, and consequently died.” According called out to him in Yiddish, “May the post-Holocaust issues dealing with the Europe,” he said. “Holocaust remem- to the “Original Dachau Entry Register” in Torah that you have so diligently labored survivors, history and memory - which brance is becoming something of a litmus the postwar International Tracing Service on protect you!” Halivni knew that Josef directly relate to how the Holocaust is test of decency.” Repository at Bad Arolsen, a copy of (Continued on page 15) January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 FIORELLO H. LAGUARDIA: A FRIEND TO EUROPE’S JEWS? and Russian empires.” Because of this, Nordics were “superior” and more worthy in Germany, he retaliated when an American BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN he introduced “a resolution of protest” of United States citizenship. Jew could not be assured of his safety when oliticians, the best of them, are a which would direct the delegates to the hen, in 1933, LaGuardia was quick traveling to Germany, soon he wanted Ppeculiar breed. Sometimes they do Paris Peace Conference to make it clear Tto recognize who and what Hitler America to sell planes again to Britain and things because they care. Sometimes that the United States would neither con- was about, and, as was LaGuardia’s France – hence ending “the restrictive neu- they do things for the vote. And some- sort with nor aid nations wont, he shared his opin- trality laws” (Kessner 469). times, due to political expediency, they that allowed such acts ions with everyone! In Indeed, throughout the war LaGuardia countless passionate tried to do what he could for us . . . but, he move on to another issue . . . . to be committed in their speeches, according to La never went so far as to confront the president Interestingly, when we, survivors, chil- midst. The result: “civil Guardia historians Ronald vis-à-vis rescuing the suffering Jews of dren of survivors, or great-grandchildren and religious rights” for H. Bayer, Alyn Brodsky, Europe. Why? LaGuardia had dreams, of survivors, think of World War II, the Jews were made a part Lawrence Elliott, J. Paul dreams of acquiring a national post . name Fiorello H. LaGuardia seldom of the treaties formally Jeffers, and Thomas n later years, LaGuardia was director comes to mind. If we do think of him at all, organizing these “new Kessner, who wrote of that general of the United Nations Relief it’s in terms of his being the beloved states in eastern and I period, he railed against and Rehabilitation Administration. In later mayor of New York City from 1934-1945. central Europe.” (That Hitler calling him all kinds of years, he also visited Germany and could- However, this five-foot man, described as these treaties, in the names. In fact, “he called n’t believe the horrific evidence of German “pugnacious, loquacious, competitive, and end, would mean little, him `that brown-shirted evil that he saw there. So, while many blunt” in the book by Thomas Mann enti- well, that’s another fanatic now menacing the American soldiers were good to the tled, Fiorello LaGuardia: A Fighter Against issue.) Additionally, through- peace of the world’ and Germans, LaGuardia, was totally unfor- His Times 1882-1933, always tried to do out his early career in suggested that he be giving. It was then that he told the world what he could for the European Jews the House, LaGuardia enshrined in a chamber of to remember what the Germans had whenever he could . . . that is, when he Fiorello H. LaGuardia determinedly fought horrors at the forthcoming done. It was then, that he truly realized all was politically able to . . . against the tightening of immigration quo- [1939] New York World’s Fair.” that the Jews of Europe had suffered. For example, in 1919, United States tas – especially of southern and eastern Moreover, as the expression goes, “La P.S. – While LaGuardia’s mother was House of Representatives member Europeans, in other words, Italians and Guardia didn’t just talk the talk, he walked Jewish, he considered himself an LaGuardia, then thirty-seven years-of- Jews. Thus, he found himself often the walk.” Among other things, according American Protestant of Italian descent. age, was concerned about the anti- defending their ways and their lifestyles. to the above-noted, he didn’t want Semitic riots going on in the “new nation Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Media For, sadly, even among Americans, there Americans to buy German goods, he did- and Communication Arts at Pace University. states carved out of the German, Austrian, were a growing number of those who felt n’t want the city to utilize materials made THREE BROTHERS DEFIED TERROR Holocaust Museum’s curator, the tale idea how many people were in the for- Everybody had a little something — a BY SHERRI DAY, unfolds this way: est or their fighting strength. When the shirt, a book. The collectibles, along with ST. PETERSBURG TIMES Tuvia Bielski was one of 11 children in a Germans did attack, the Bielskis and artifacts unearthed in a dig in Belarus, s a child, Brendon Rennert always family of millers in what is now known as their allies fought back and retreated make up the 50 items in the display. There A knew his grandfather was special. Belarus. The family’s farm bordered a deeper into the forest. are also photographs and video testimony Strangers would wait outside his grand- thick forest. As the Nazis made their way n the summer of 1944, German sol- from survivors, 29 of whom are still alive. father’s Brooklyn apartment to talk. His through Belarus, they hauled off Bielski’s Idiers came upon the encampment as Robert Bielsky, Tuvia’s son and house teemed with “aunts” and “uncles” parents and two of his brothers to a ghet- they fled from Russian soldiers. In the Rennart’s uncle, who has a different who constantly enveloped him in hugs to. Bielski later learned his family had standoff, a handful of Jews died, but more name spelling, has seen Defiance six and kisses. A memorial in Brooklyn bore been executed. than 1,200 walked out alive. The Bielskis times. He organized the Lithuania his name. Fearing the same fate for themselves, emerged as well: Asael joined the excursion and a side trip to Belarus to Rennert’s mother told him his grandfa- four of the Bielski brothers — Tuvia, Zus, Russian army and later died in battle. trace their ancestors’ journey. He keeps ther was famous, but Rennert was a Asael and 12-year-old Aron — fled to the Tuvia and Zus eventually came to the the names of each person who lived in teenager before he fully understood. His forest. The land seemed dense and unin- United States and settled in Brooklyn. the forest. They are family. grandfather, Tuvia Bielski, was a habitable to outsiders, but it had been Rennert’s grandfather, Tuvia, died in He appreciates the film and takes pride in Holocaust survivor. But more than that, their childhood playground. After learning 1987, Zus in 1995. his father’s heroics, but Bielsky suspects he Bielski and two of his brothers were part of their family’s fate, the wouldn’t have sought a fascinating but little-known chapter of three older brothers the spotlight. World War II when they hid 1,200 Jews in decided to save as hat was a forest in Belarus for more than two many Jews from “W very impor- years. Together, they evaded the Nazis extinction as they tant to my father was and likely avoided certain death. could by harboring to see those babies Although the Bielski brothers’ story has them in the woods. and those children of been told in two books and a documen- uvia, whose the descendants tary, it remains widely unknown. But not T fluency in sev- being born and grown for long. eral languages and up because of his In January, the Bielski brothers’ story physical appear- feats,” said Bielsky, makes its big-screen debut in Defiance, ance allowed him to 50, who owns a com- directed by Ed Zwick, who also directed pass as a non-Jew, mercial real estate Blood Diamond and Glory. Daniel Craig, made frequent trips firm in New York City. the British actor and reigning James to ghettos where he “When (he) attended Bond, has the lead role of Tuvia Bielski. implored Jews to flee Three Bielski brothers - (from left to righr) Tuvia, Asael, and Zus – used a thick forest in parties, like weddings And in November, an exhibit that focus- to the forest. Later, Belarus to conceal about 1,200 Jews during World War II. and bar mitzvahs, his es on the brothers’ exploits opened at the when visits became satisfaction was to see Florida Holocaust Museum in St. more difficult, he sent notes telling of free- Last year, Rennert and his relatives the children and the grandchildren of the Petersburg. Museum officials say the dom beyond the ghetto. His was a fighting traveled to Lithuania to see Defiance survivors — the regeneration of families exhibit, Courage and Compassion: The force. But any Jew — the old, infirm, being filmed. On the way home, the that never had the chance to survive.” Legacy of the Bielski Brothers, is the only women and infants — was welcome. They grandson got the idea to create an exhib- Hollywood being Hollywood, the movie one of its kind. called it Jerusalem in the woods. it to share his grandfather’s story with takes liberties. Tuvia, for instance, didn’t Rennert, who lives in Tampa and helped In the forest, the brothers had built a another generation. die penniless and was not a cab driver, engineer the St. Petersburg exhibit, can community blanketed by dense foliage The Florida Holocaust Museum was but owned a trucking company, Bielsky barely contain his excitement. Finally, the and invisible by air. There was a bakery, a happy to oblige. said. Still the film lives up to the family’s world will know about his grandfather’s blacksmith shop, a tannery, an ammuni- “The Bielskis are such a unique story expectations by telling the truth about heroism. tion workshop and a bath house to ward because they weren’t only focused on what happened in the forest. “To me, it’s one of the greatest stories off typhus. The inhabitants slept in under- fighting back,” said Erin Blankenship, Now that his grandfather isn’t around to that have ever been told,” said Rennert. “I ground dugouts. museum curator. “They were focused on tell the tale, Rennert wants to ensure it always get the same look from people They made their living repairing weapons saving as many people as they could, and lives on. when I tell them about it. Jaws open.” and providing other services for Russian par- they took in anybody, the old, the sick, “It’s a really great story in every Although Rennert, 40, says his grandfa- tisans, who paid them in arms. They took children. A lot of other partisan groups aspect of it,” Rennert said. “It’s not ther talked little about what happened in other necessities by force. turned those people away.” about death and destruction. It’s about the forest, he remembers his stories well. The alliance with the Russians pro- Rennert, who is in telecommunications life and living. To me, that’s the greatest As told by Rennert, his uncle and the tected them from the Nazis, who had no sales, reached out to family for artifacts. story that’s around.” Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR RECONNECTS WITH FAMILY THAT SAVED HER LIFE complex in Herzliya Pituach. ful to even venture to a small bathroom Israeli official with the New York-based BY ETGAR LEFKOVITS, A week later, Maiman was able to get outside the house. The residents placed a International Raoul Wallenberg THE JERUSALEM POST her mother smuggled out of the ghetto piece of spoiled meat at the entrance to Foundation and recounted her mother’s and into Slawinska’s home, as well. 94-year-old Holocaust survivor, the the hiding place to repel the dogs of the story. Her husband was caught and murdered mother of the prominent Israeli busi- German soldiers if they ever searched the The decade-old organization, which A by the Nazis on one of his underground nessman Yossi Maiman, has reconnected house. seeks to identify stories of Holocaust res- missions. with the Polish family who saved her life Though at one point she was black- cue that have not been previously uncov- Maiman and her mother spent the next mailed by a Polish neighbor who knew ered, rushed into action. and that of her own mother by sheltering two years in the safety of Slawinska’s she was hiding Jews, Slawinska, who was Maiman was sure that Slawinska, who them from the Nazis in Poland during home, which she also opened to other childless, never turned them out, despite was about seven years older than she World War II. the danger to her own life. was, was no longer alive, but she remem- The story of life and bravery amid death fter the war ended, bered her nephew, Roman, who was a and destruction begins nearly a century Maiman remarried, boy during the war, and who kept the ago in Poland. A and spent the next year secret of the hidden Jews. Esfira Maiman was born in 1914 in the and half in a DP camp in Within weeks the Foundation was able central Polish city of Lodz, where her fam- Germany, where her son to locate Roman Slawinska, who was still ily was in the textile business. Yossi was born. living in the same Warsaw suburb, and After the German invasion of Poland in In 1948 she and her hus- found documentation of his aunt’s coura- 1939, she and her parents made their way band and mother moved geous deeds. to Warsaw, where they were incarcerated to Peru, where she had a Maiman and Slawinska were soon on in the Warsaw Ghetto. cousin who survived the the phone, sharing stories of their linked In 1942, she managed to escape the war, and where they lived past, crying tears of joy. ghetto, where her father had died of a for the next two decades. In September, Yad Vashem posthu- heart attack, due to her job as a steel Over the years, she mously bestowed the Holocaust laborer, which afforded her the rare privi- would send packages of Memorial’s highest honor on Stanislawa lege of leaving the restricted zone. rice and flour – along with Slawinska, said Danny Rainer, the vice Abetted by her husband’s contacts with Esfira Maiman (center) with daughter Michelle and son Yossi. some money – to her president of the International Raoul the underground, Maiman quickly con- Polish savior, but never Wallenberg Foundation . nected with a Polish woman, Stanislawa Jews hiding from the Nazis. got a reply, she said, and contact between “We feel that the rescuers have to be Slawinska, who lived in the rural commu- The home was situated in a rural area, the two women was lost. recognized – especially by the younger nity of Grodzisk Mazowiecky, about 30 with train tracks one side and a bloc of The Maimans moved to Israel in 1972; generation,” Rainer said. km. from Warsaw. German soldiers on the other, she said. today, Yossi Maimon is chairman of the “I am very happy that my mother is with Slawinska, a Polish Catholic, vehement- “Every day I would see the trains going Merhav Group, which is known worldwide us to live this moment of joy,” Yossi ly opposed the Nazis even though her by, taking the Jews from their homes and for project development, contracting and Maiman said. own father was German, and readily took villages to their death, and on the other finance. “Now she feels at peace,” her daughter Maiman in. side, the German soldiers drawing water Despite the passage of time, the nona- Michele added. “From the minute we entered her home from a well,” Maiman recalled. genarian never forgot the woman who “It is the realization of a dream,” Esfira we became friends,” Maiman recounts To avoid detection, Maiman rarely left saved her life. Maiman said, adding, tearfully, “She from her home in an upscale retirement the home for the next two years, too fear- Six months ago, Michele approached an should have gotten the award herself.” A HELPING HAND FOR NAZI VICTIMS The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, known as Claims tion payments as a result of the work of the Claims Conference. Conference, works to secure compensation and restitution for survivors of the Holocaust. Payments to Holocaust survivors as a result of the work of the Claims Since 1951, the Claims Conference – working in partnership with the State of Conference have come to more than $60 billion. Israel – has negotiated for and distributed payments from Germany, Austria, other The Claims Conference has allocated approximately $1 billion to organizations governments, and certain industries; recovered unclaimed German Jewish proper- meeting the social service needs of Holocaust survivors, and engaging in educa- ty; and funded programs to assist the neediest Jewish victims of Nazism. tion, research, and documentation of the Shoah. More than 500,000 Holocaust survivors in 75 countries have received compensa- Today we publish the latest news on the accomplishments of Claims Conference. NAZI VICTIMS IN GAZA REGION also include home modifications, counsel- payments from Germany for certain Jewish receive a one-time Hardship Fund pay- RECEIVE AID ing, security, and socialization programs. victims of the Nazi siege of Leningrad. ment, if they meet the other requirements he Claims Conference is allocating The Claims Conference allocated In recent negotiations, the German gov- of the Hardship Fund. $250,000 for this program in 2008. ernment has Tmore than $428,000 to assist Nazi CLAIMS CONFERENCE The Claims Conference has enhanced its agreed to victims, living in areas under missile SECURES €12 MILLION attack from Gaza, who may be especially ongoing support of AMCHA, the National include these Israeli Center for Psychological Support of Jewish vic- FOR JEWISH BUDAPEST Nazi Victims, with a $50,000 grant for 2009, tims in the HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS specifically to provide psychosocial support Claims n negotiations with the German gov- to Nazi victims living near Gaza. In 2008, the Conference Iernment, the Claims Conference has Claims Conference funded a new AMCHA Hardship secured payments for certain Jewish sur- branch in Sderot. Fund, provid- vivors of the Nazi occupation of Budapest. Special emergency allocations in 2009 of ed they meet In recognition of the incarceration and suf- $36,000 to provide shatter-proof glass win- the program’s fering of Budapest Holocaust survivors, dows in three nursing homes – Beit Avot other eligibili- certain Jewish survivors of Nazi-era Ashdod, Association for the Welfare of the ty criteria. Budapest, who currently reside in Eastern Aged in Beersheva, and Neve Oranim in The program Europe and previously did not receive any Gedera – in southern Israel. A total of 290 issues a one- payments from certain major compensa- Nazi victims live in these nursing homes. time payment tion programs, will receive a one-time Hunger relief programs in Ashkelon and of €2,556. payment of €1,900 from the Claims traumatized by the current conflict. These Ashdod. For 2009, the Claims Conference It is expected that this agreement will Conference Budapest Fund. new grants build on the Claims allocated $74,088 to Eshel Ashdod and lead to the payment to thousands of Payments totaling approximately €12.3 Conference’s support over the past years $32,256 to Eshel Ashkelon for food pro- Jewish victims of Nazism from the former million will be issued to approximately to help Nazi victims in southern Israel grams that include hot meals for Nazi vic- Soviet Union now living in Israel, the 6,500 survivors living in Hungary. tims, a program that can be of great comfort United States, Germany and other cope with the additional distress evoked To streamline the process and distribute in a traumatic time. For 2007 and 2008, Western countries. It is the first time that by their present situation. the funds as quickly as possible, the these agencies received a combined the persecution of Jews who lived through Claims Conference assistance includes: Claims Conference has reviewed over $268,000 for hunger relief for Nazi victims. the 900-day siege of Leningrad has been $268,000 to pay for full memberships in 25,000 files to identify eligible survivors. recognized by Germany. 2009 for Nazi victims in “supportive com- PAYMENTS FOR SURVIVORS Brief and simple waiver forms, as required munities.” Supportive communities pro- Because of the Claims Conference negoti- OF NAZI SIEGE OF LENINGRAD by the German government, are proac- vide emergency life buttons, enabling eld- ations, certain Jewish persons who stayed NOW LIVING IN WEST tively being sent by the Claims erly residents to easily contact (without in Leningrad at some time between n an historic breakthrough, the Claims Conference to 5,790 survivors who it use of a telephone) emergency medical September 1941 and January 1944, or Conference has negotiated one-time assistance directly. Additional services I fled from there during this period, may believes may be eligible for this payment. January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

JEWISH MUSEUM BREAKS TUSKEGEE AIRMEN OVER AUSCHWITZ GROUND IN SAN FRANCISCO prisoners’ barracks], it alone would have caring for large numbers of refugees. And he Jewish museum that opened in DR. RAFAEL MEDOFF, claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. its ally, Great Britain, would not open the TSan Francisco is unlike almost THE JERUSALEM POST But we were no longer afraid of death; at doors to Palestine to the Jews, for fear of every other such institution in the world: It he invitation to members of the any rate, not of that death. Every bomb angering Arab opinion. The result was that is a light-filled place focused on the future, T Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black that exploded filled us with joy and gave the Allies failed to confront one of history’s not the darkness of the past. units of World War II pilots, to attend us new confidence in life. The raid lasted most compelling moral challenges. The Contemporary Jewish Museum the presidential inauguration, is an over an hour. If it could only have lasted oday, America again faces the does not contain permanent space dedi- cated to remembering the Holocaust, important reminder of the long road ten times ten hours!” T challenge of responding to geno- housing Jewish artifacts, or recording the America has traveled from the era of But it did not. Even though there were cide. The Darfur genocide continues, genealogy of the Jewish diaspora. segregation to the election of the first additional US bombing raids on yet the Arab League, China and Russia German industrial sites in the are trying to prevent the prosecution of Instead, it is a fresh, happy site that African-American president. asks the Jewish people to create new Auschwitz region in the weeks and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for It also offers an opportunity to reflect on a expressions of who they are, in a city month to follow, the little-known episode involving the Tuskegee where Jews have always thrived. Airmen and the Holocaust – and on the gas chambers and “This is a museum of life,” Director question of how the new president will crematoria were Connie Wolf said. “It’s not that we aren’t respond to genocide in our own time. never targeted. embracing the Holocaust, that incredibly Defying racist War Department officials he Roosevelt important and pivotal moment in world who regarded them as inferior and did not T administration history. We just always want to be thinking want them to fly, the Tuskegee Airmen knew about the mass about other issues as well.” The new building is designed by famed scored extraordinary achievements in bat- murder going on in architect Daniel Libeskind. tle. Tuskegee squadrons shot down more Auschwitz, and even Libeskind is best-known for designing than 100 German planes and repeatedly possessed diagrams of the camp that were Berlin’s Jewish Museum, where visitors won Distinguished Unit Citations and are asked to acknowledge that the hor- prepared by two other medals for performance in their mis- ror of Jewish and German histories are escapees. But when sions over Europe. They were so admired linked forever. by their fellow pilots that bomber groups Jewish organizations “Despite all the things that have hap- often specifically requested the Tuskegee asked the Roosevelt pened, life is about celebrating,” said units as escorts for their bombing raids. administration to order Libeskind, also the master planner for the One of those raids took place in the the bombing of the World Trade Center memorial in New York skies over Auschwitz. camp and the railways City. “This museum is not in the shadow of leading to it, the the history that will always be part of On the morning of August 20, 1944, a This aerial view shows the layout of the largest concentration camp and Europe. The optimism of this museum group 127 US B-17 bombers, called requests were reject- death camp run by Nazi Germany during World War II at Auschwitz and America are intertwined.” Flying Fortresses, approached Auschwitz. ed. US officials near the Polish town of Oswiecim, Poland, Aug. 25, 1944. Auschwitz is claimed such raids the main camp and Birkenau is the nearby extermination center. The sentiment could not be more wel- They were escorted by 100 P-51 Mustang come in San Francisco, a city founded fighter planes. Most of the Mustangs were were “impracticable” because they would require “consider- his role in the slaughter. What will the partly by Jewish pioneers like Levi Strauss piloted by Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd and the forefathers of Wells Fargo Bank, able diversion” of planes needed for the United States do? Iranian leaders have Fighter Group. The attacking force said Marc Dollinger, professor of Jewish war effort. threatened genocide against Israel, and dropped more than 1,000 500-pound Studies at San Francisco State University. bombs on German oil factories less than But the Tuskegee veterans know that Syria is developing nuclear weapons to “To Jews, California was the new Zion, five miles from the gas chambers. Despite claim was false. They were right there go along with its other weapons of and San Francisco was the new German anti-aircraft fire and a squadron in the skies above Auschwitz. No mass destruction. How should America Jerusalem,” Dollinger said. of German fighter planes, none of the “diversion” was necessary to drop a few respond? The Roosevelt administration As a result, Jews were largely assimilat- Mustangs was hit, and only one of the US bombs on the mass-murder machinery had the opportunity to send the ed: The San Francisco and Oakland area planes was shot down. All of the units or the railways leading into the camp. Tuskegee Airmen and other pilots to has the third highest number of Jews of any U.S. metropolitan area, after New reported successfully hitting their targets. Sadly, those orders were never given. interrupt the Nazi genocide, but it chose York and Los Angeles. But there are no On the ground below, Jewish slave The decision to refrain from bombing not to do so. The Obama administration distinctly Jewish neighborhoods, and laborers, including 15 year-old Elie Auschwitz was part of a broader policy by will face comparable moral challenges. the Roosevelt administration to refrain inter-marriage rates reach 90 percent, Wiesel, cheered the bombing. In his best- The writer is director of the David S. Dollinger said. from taking action to rescue Jews from the selling memoir, Night, Wiesel described Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, This reality is also reflected in the muse- Nazis or provide havens for them. The US their reaction: “We were not afraid. And which focuses on issues related to um, which has taken a decisively pluralis- yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks [the did not want to deal with the burden of America’s response to the Holocaust. tic approach to its exhibits. ANATOMY OF THE UKRAINIAN GENOCIDE (Continued from page 13) they were cheated by Germans, but this writes about the Thoroughfare IV, Hitler’s describes Galicia’s past and present. The Zhytomir provides an example of such a “set- did not stop them from serving in various grandiose plan to build a highway across “white spaces” illustrate the omissions tlement.” Dieter Pohl, of Munich’s Institute of German military detachments, robbing Ukraine, which was expected to support both and poverty of the Ukrainian Holocaust Contemporary History, describes how the first and killing Jews, and being described as the conquest and the German settlement. memory, while the “black holes” note the mass killings by the Einsatzgruppen and the “the worst” by Holocaust survivors. The Soon, however, the Germans realized that selective marginalization of the past. Wehrmacht, accompanied by Ukrainian auxil- Ukrainian auxiliaries were often assigned the anticipated large numbers of Jews and n extensive index accompanies this iaries, were followed by a planned, systemat- the bloodiest tasks, and their collaboration Soviet POWs needed for the heavy labor Awell-edited, printed and bound vol- ic murder, robbery and destruction of Jewish made a significant contribution to the had already been murdered. German civilian ume. Ukraine has almost completely communities. Jewish genocide. authorities, who badly needed slave labor, erased its Jewish past. In the town of he Jewish existence in Western Dennis Deletant, of London University often vainly tried to persuade the SS that it Kosiv, for instance, where once 2,400 TWolhynia from 1921 to 1945 in gen- College, examines the deportation of Jews would be more convenient to murder Jews Jews lived, the house which belonged to a eral, and in the typical village of Kolky in from Bessarabia and Bukowina to by hard labor, hunger and exhaustion. local rabbi was turned into a museum in particular, is described in depth by Transnistria, which Romania occupied after Martin Dean, a scholar from the US memory of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which murdered Jews. We find Timothy Snydor of Yale. There was not the joint German-Romanian attack on the Holocaust Museum’s Center for Advanced almost no traces of shame or regret. much love lost between the local Jews, Soviet Union. Transnistria became the Holocaust Studies, describes how the eth- Bitter memories and the specter of the Ukrainians and Polish settlers. Each com- graveyard of more than 250,000 Jews, the nic Germans who settled in Russia before Holocaust continue to haunt Jewish- munity lived more or less according to its principal victims of Romanian dictator Ion the October Revolution served Hitler Ukrainian relations. However the fact that own agenda. Poles sought to “polonize” Antonescu and his deputy Mihai Antonescu. rather well, with few exceptions. 1,200 Ukrainians were awarded the title of the area; Ukrainians fought for their inde- Both subscribed to the “ethnic purification” of Alexander Kruglov, a writer from Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem testi- pendence and were largely responsible Romania, free of Slavs and Jews, sharing a Kharkov, provides us with detailed statis- fies that there must have been many more for violence. The Soviet occupation of common border with Nazi Germany. tics of the Jewish losses during those cru- Ukrainians who helped Jews in hiding. But September 1939 offered Jews compara- It was only after Stalingrad that cial years of 1941-1944. only a full admission of the disturbing facts tive safety and new opportunities, but the Antonescu put a stop stop to the Jewish Karel Berkhoff, of the Center for of the past and a full respect for the per- German invasion of June 1941 turned deportations and turned down the Holocaust Studies of the University of petuation of the memory of the former their lives into burning inferno. German request to send the remaining Amsterdam, comments on the story of Jewish communities may at least partly Frank Golczewski, of Hamburg Romanian Jews to the extermination Dina Pronicheva, one of the few survivors exorcise the guilt and open a new page of University, presents Galicia as an impor- camps in Poland. of the Babi Yar massacre. the mutual relations. Perhaps this book tant case study of mutual German- Andrei Angric, of the Hamburg Foundation Omer Bartov, of Brown University in his may serve as one of the guiding lights in Ukrainian relations. Ukrainians knew that for the Promotion of Science and Culture, “White Spaces and Black Holes” this direction. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 NEWS OF FABRICATED HOLOCAUST MEMOIR SPARKS ANGER, SADNESS In the November/December issue of Rosenblat, 79, has been married to the for- of “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust ing, it is heart-rending. All this shows some- M & R, a story, “Romance in the mer Roma Radzicky for 50 years, since meet- Years,” pretended she was a Jewish girl who thing about the broad unwillingness in our Holocaust,” about Holocaust survivors ing her on a blind date in New York. In a state- lived with wolves during the war, when she culture to confront the difficult knowledge of Herman Rosenblat and his wife Roma ment through his agent, he described himself was actually a non-Jew who lived, without the Holocaust,” Waltzer said. “All the more was published on page six. Same story as an advocate of love and tolerance who fal- wolves, in Belgium. important, then, to have real memoirs that tell with slight variations appeared in sified his past to better spread his message. Historical records prove Rosenblat was of real experience in the camps.” numerous other newspapers, maga- wanted to bring happiness to peo- indeed at Buchenwald and other camps. mong the fooled, at least the partially zines, and Internet editions. As it turns “Iple,” said Rosenblat, who now lives “How sad that he felt he had to embel- Afooled, was Berenbaum, former direc- out a big part of that story is not true. lish a life of surviving the Holocaust tor of the United States Holocaust Research Many Holocaust experts and survivors and of being married for half a cen- Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial came forward with proof of tury,” said Holocaust scholar Museum in Washington. Berenbaum had Rosenblat’s lies, which eventually Michael Berenbaum. been asked to read the manuscript by film forced Herman Rosenblat to recant his The damage is broad. producer Harris Salomon, who still plans an own story. Below, we are offering you Publishing, the most trusting of adaptation of the book. an article published by Associated industries, has again been burned Berenbaum’s tentative support — Press about Herman Rosenblat’s hoax. by a memoir that fact-checking “Crazier things have happened,” he told erman Rosenblat and his wife are might have prevented. The dam- The Associated Press last fall — was cited the most gentle, loving, beautiful “H age is deep. Scholars and other by the publisher as it initially defended the people,” literary agent Andrea Hurst said, skeptics, as well as fellow survivors book. Berenbaum now says he saw factu- anguishing over why she, and so many fear that Rosenblat’s fabrications al errors, including Rosenblat’s descrip- others, were taken by Rosenblat’s story of will only encourage doubts about tion of Theresienstadt, the camp from love born on opposite sides of a barbed- the Holocaust. which he was eventually liberated, but did wire fence at a Nazi concentration camp Herman and Roma Rosenblat. not think of challenging the love story. in Germany. in the Miami area. “I brought hope to a lot “I am very worried because many “There’s a limit to what I can verify, “I question why I never questioned it. I of people. My motivation was to make of us speak to thousands of students each because I was not there,” he says. “I can believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled good in this world.” year,” says Sidney Finkel, a longtime verify the general historical narrative, but story.” Rosenblat’s believers included not only friend of Rosenblat’s and a fellow survivor. in my research, I rely upon the survivors Last month, Berkley Books canceled his agent and his publisher, but TV talk “We go before audiences. We tell them a to present the specifics of their existence Rosenblat’s memoir, “Angel at the Fence.” show host Oprah Winfrey, film producers, story and now some people will question Rosenblat acknowledged that he and his journalists, family members and strangers what I experienced.” with integrity. When they don’t, they wife did not meet, as they had said for who ignored, or did not know about, the “This was not Holocaust education but destroy so much and they ruin so much, years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, warnings from scholars that his story did miseducation,” Ken Waltzer, director of and that’s terrible.” where she allegedly sneaked him apples not make sense. Jewish Studies at Michigan State “I was burned,” he added. “And I have to and bread. The book was supposed to Other Holocaust memoirists have devised University, said in a statement. read books more skeptically because I come out in February. greater fantasies. Misha Defonseca, author “Holocaust experience is not heart-warm- was burned.” BATTLE FOR HOLOCAUST ASSETS ROILS ISRAEL (Continued from page 7) For example, suppose a European Jew paigning to recover dormant accounts. After Holocaust-related records are hidden was designated for other victims of Nazi who would later perish in the Holocaust a nearly five-year parliamentary investiga- behind the covers of blue and red binders persecution, including refugees and slave opened a bank account in 1936 with the tion, lawmakers identified up to 9,000 bank shelved near a Homer Simpson poster. laborers. equivalent of $1,000. If heirs eventually iden- accounts investigators suspected belonged Although the parliamentary findings he European cases led Israeli schol- tified the account and recovered the money to victims. made banks natural targets when the Tars in 2000 to publish research this year from the bank or government cus- Banks implicated in the report rejected Company opened, there were few clues showing heirs had been having difficulty todians, Mr. Roet says they most likely got 2005 findings as speculative. So lawmak- about land in Israel purchased by those recovering assets in the Jewish state. The only the face value of the original investment, ers established the Company in 2006. who were later killed in the Holocaust. revelations led to a parliamentary investi- or minimal interest on top of it. But the legal- A $3.15 million claim the Company has Jewish academics documented a more gation, and, in 2006, the law creating the ly mandated formula the Company uses cal- prepared against Mizrahi Tafahot Bank than threefold increase in Jewish land Company. culates the “lost value” in that account over Ltd. grew out of a faded banker’s memo purchases in British Palestine from 1914 The Israeli law sets up a process similar the years. Under that formula, the $1,000 that drew attention during the Knesset to 1940. Parcels were sold in Europe by to the one in Europe. Verified heirs are deposit in 1936 would be valued today at the hearings. Dated Oct. 29, 1939, eight traveling Zionist salesman. supposed to get paid first, with needy equivalent of about $23,000. weeks after the Nazis blitzed Poland, the cross Israel, the Company so far Holocaust survivors getting the rest. But And Mr. Roet says the banks — even document pledges deposits held by A has title to about 480 individual there’s a crucial difference from earlier those that have already paid out at face European Jews, mostly in Poland, as col- parcels, 300 of which were handed over settlements: The Company must target value — still owe the difference for that lateral on a loan from another bank. by the government. They are in some of each institution over each asset that it legally defined lost value. Without any of “The depositors cannot claim their Israel’s hottest areas, including trendy Tel allegedly held. As with Bank Leumi, this the international pressure that European deposits now because they are abroad or Aviv. The Company values the lands it gives the targeted institutions a chance to firms faced, however, many Israeli institu- we foresee that they won’t claim the holds so far at about $86.7 million. fight claims case-by-case, then shekel-by- tions are offering stiff resistance. money for other reasons,” the memo Based on evidence uncovered thus far, shekel within each case. Aviram Cohen, a Bank Leumi reads in Hebrew. A representative of Mr. Roet believes there are scores of still- Company investigators have traveled to spokesman, says the bank’s own investi- Mizrahi Bank declined to comment. hidden parcels across the nation. Poland, Latvia and Lithuania to dig up gation shows 600 accounts identified by Mr. Roet has proved to be a dogged While the quest for assets is under way, so school report cards, birth records and Mr. Roet belonged to people who couldn’t adversary. He was chosen as the is the hunt for heirs. While trying to piece marriage documents to try to make their be Holocaust victims, since there was Company’s chairman because he had led together records in Europe and listing recov- cases. They also check Holocaust activity in the accounts after the war. a group that helped secure a series of ered assets on its Web site, the Company archives in Israel, Germany and else- The Company’s lawyer, Nadav Haetzni, Holocaust settlements in the Netherlands has reached into the country’s Holocaust where to try to prove account holders died acknowledged that about 100 of the 1,300 valued at more than $300 million. legacy to seek out victims’ families. in the tragedy. cases were submitted to the bank by mis- After the arrest of his two sisters in 1943 The Company’s Elinor Kritoru appears Making matters more complex, many of take. They involved Holocaust survivors, and their deportation to Auschwitz, he regularly on an Israeli radio show called the dormant bank accounts the Company rather than confirmed victims, he says. shuttled among more than a dozen Hipoos Krovim, which means “searching has tried to recover have been transferred However, Mr. Haetzni also says the error Christian homes, finishing out the war pre- for relatives” in Hebrew. It first aired in from one institution to another or from a was quickly corrected, that the accounts tending to be the son of a Catholic couple 1945, broadcasting the pleas of Holocaust bank to the government, and, in some in question had little value and that the on a dairy farm in southern Holland. “I survivors looking for lost loved ones. It cases, back again. sum of the claims against Bank Leumi learned to milk cows,” he says. later went off the air, but returned in 2000 Some of the contested accounts have won’t be materially diminished. He came to Israel alone in 1946 at age as a more generic reunion show. even been paid out to heirs. These cases In addition, he says the Company 17, then went on to build successful busi- Ms. Kritoru’s appearances echo bygone get at a particularly contentious issue recently slapped a second round of claims nesses, including one importing raw broadcasts, as she calls out the names of between the Company and the banks. against Bank Leumi seeking an additional materials for Israel’s booming pharmaceu- the dead. The heirs may have gotten the face value $31.5 million. tical industry. But he has dedicated his “We’re looking for the heirs of Yitzhak of the accounts, but the law provides a for- On the issue of lost value, Mr. Haetzni retirement to Holocaust victims. Meir Abeliov, from Bialystock, Poland,” mula to calculate what the account should said the law is clear. It appears the dis- Last year, Mr. Roet began assembling she said earlier this year. “We’d be very be worth when factors such as inflation, pute is headed for the Israeli courts. his team. Accountants, archivists and self- happy to find the descendents of David currency revaluations and accrued inter- From the beginning, Israeli banks have styled gumshoes occupy workspaces that Tishanski....We’re also looking for heirs of est are taken into account. had an uneasy relationship with those cam- offer few hints about the task at hand. Lazar Abeleff from Kononov, Ukraine.” January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 THE “MEXICAN SCHINDLER” IS HONORED RETHINKING POLES AND JEWS BY THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE (Continued from page 4) became a turning point in Polish-Jewish manifold experiences as a leading mem- relations. Natalia Aleksiun considers the Saldívar,” he said. ber of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial impact of the book on Polish historians, BY ARI B. BLOOMEKATZ, As a young boy in Poland during the Council and the National Polish American producing a permanent change in the way LOS ANGELES TIMES war, Foxman was sheltered by a Catholic -Jewish American Council; both groups they approach the Polish-Jewish past. ilberto Bosques Saldívar has never woman in an “overwhelmingly unfriendly” have had disputes over the precise defi- Polish-Americans, who have long been Gbeen the subject of a major motion Europe. nition of “Holocaust,” as it relates to Nazi concerned about the negative stereotypes picture by Steven Spielberg. American “Were it not for her, I would not be alive persecution of the Poles. Regrettably, promoted by the March of the Living, will history books seldom, if ever, mention his today to bear witness,” he said. Father Pawlikowski criticizes the attitudes appreciate how Carolyn Slutsky confronts name, and he does not have his own Foxman described Saldívar’s efforts when of some Polish participants without provid- the problems with this organization, which Wikipedia page, in Spanish or English. he served as Mexican consul general in ing the background information needed to brings Jewish teenagers to Holocaust But the former Mexican diplomat, stationed Marseilles in 1939: He rented two understand their positions. sites in Poland. One outrageous example in France during World War II, helped save chateaux to house European Jews and This part concludes with Antony was the Jewish leader who showed his as many as 40,000 Jews and other refugees other refugees, including leaders of the Polonski’s reflections on his participation group the houses next to the Majdanek from Nazi persecution. Spanish Republic, who were defeated in in Polish-Jewish relations since the con- concentration camp and claimed, “these “It is still a chapter of the Holocaust that has the Spanish Civil War by the Fascist ference on “Polish-Jewish Relations in people were just sitting in their backyards not been written,” said Abraham Foxman, forces of Francisco Franco. Modern History” at Oxford in 1984; he barbecuing while this mass murder was national director of the Anti- foresees a “normalization” in relations. taking place.” Of course, the houses Defamation League. “I believe that None other than Michael Schudrich, the were built after the war, German food there are a lot of other cases that we chief rabbi of Poland, wrote the introduc- rationing did not allow for barbecuing, and do not know about that are surfac- tion to the third part on contemporary Poles too were murdered at Majdanek. ing little by little.” Poland, describing how Poles of Jewish And as Annamaria Orla-Bukowska notes At a reception held in origin recovered their heritage after the in the final article, Jewish visitors to Saldívar’s honor in Beverly fall of Communism. On the Poles, he Poland will find that from the mostly non- Hills, the ADL presented his writes, “To view Poles today as being Jewish people of Poland, — and not daughter with a posthumous mostly antisemitic is false and unfair.” from Jews from abroad — will arise the Courage to Care Award, which One can see how things have changed scholars and curators who will research was created in 1987 to recog- for the better in articles by Stanislaw the Jewish heritage of Poland, and protect nize non-Jews who helped res- Krajewski on “a new atmosphere” in its artifacts. cue and hide refugees during Catholic-Jewish relations in Poland since In their preface, the editors state their the Holocaust. 1989, thanks to major contributions by goal: “to make an intellectual contribution Foxman noted that, other Pope John Paul II, and by Joanna B. to a field that is often emotional.” In this, than industrialist Oskar Michlic on anti-Semitism in contemporary they have succeeded. Schindler and Swedish diplo- Laura Bosques Manjarrez, 83, is presented with the Anti- Poland. She finds that opposition to anti- Charles Chotkowski, a member of the mat Raoul Wallenberg, most Defamation League’s Courage to Care Award on behalf of Semitism “has succeeded in gaining influ- executive board of the National Polish- non-Jews who defied the Nazis her father, Gilberto Bosques Saldívar. She called the cere- ence in mainstream politics and culture, American Jewish-American Council, is and helped Jews during the mony a “symbol of human solidarity.” especially in the last decade.” Director of Research for the Holocaust Holocaust are not well-known. The publication of Neighbors by Jan T. Documentation Committee of the Polish- Even Schindler’s efforts were largely n two years, he issued about 40,000 Gross, on the Jedwabne massacre, American Congress. lost to history until Spielberg made the Ivisas, and chartered ships to take movie, “Schindler’s List.” Jews and other refugees to various Calling Saldívar the “Mexican African nations, where they then went on JERUSALEM CONCERT FEATURES VIOLINS Schindler,” Foxman said, “Bosques’ life is to Argentina, Mexico and Brazil. a shining example of human decency, Saldívar was arrested, along with his SAVED FROM NAZIS moral courage and conviction, and his family and about 40 consular staff mem- ixteen violins used by Jewish setting them off, Hanegbi said. actions highlight the less well-known ini- bers, by the Germans in 1943, and was SHolocaust victims — including an Motele was later killed in a German tiatives of Latin Americans who helped to held for about a year near Bonn until instrument whose case was used to ambush, and Hanegbi’s family brought his save Jews during the Holocaust.” Mexico reached an agreement with the smuggle explosives that blew up a Nazi violin to Israel where it sat in a closet for Foxman reflected on others who Nazis for his release. base — were played in September in a decades. Weinstein first restored it about reached out to Jews in need. Their gen- According to the ADL, in 1944, concert in Jerusalem. eight years ago. erosity, he said, is “difficult to comprehend Saldívar wrote that he had implemented “Each violin has its own story,” said he oldest violin in the collection, because they frequently risked every- Amnon Weinstein, 69, who, together with Weinstein said, had been donated “a policy of help, of material and moral T thing, including the lives of their families, his son has spent over a decade restoring to the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra by support to the heroic defenders of the to help people who, very often, they did the violins collected from across Europe. revered 19th-century Norwegian violinist Spanish Republic, to the relentless not know at all. Difficult also because — Weinstein, a violin maker, said he Ole Bull. apart from their willingness to help others brave people who fought against Hitler, received the instruments in various states Ernst Glaser, a Jewish musician, was — they do not seem to have had much in Mussolini, Franco, Petain and Laval.” of disrepair, many of them decorated with set to perform with that violin in the common. They were Catholic, Orthodox (He was referring to Philippe Petain and stars of David, a testimony to their former German-occupied Norwegian city of Christian, Evangelical, Baptist, Lutheran, Pierre Laval, French leaders who coop- Jewish owners. and also Muslim.” erated with the Nazis.) “By restoring their violins, their legacy is Foxman owes his own life to such a person. Saldívar later served as an ambassador born again,” said Weinstein, who lost “I stand here before you because of to Cuba, Finland, Portugal and Sweden. most of his family in the Holocaust. someone like Gilberto Bosques He died in 1995 at the age of 103. They were played together for the first time in a concert entitled “Violins of Hope” by members of Israel’s Raanana Symphonette PIECE BY PIECE and the Philharmonia Istanbul Orchestra. World-renowned Israeli virtuoso Shlomo (Continued from page 10) Yitte.) These cards track Halivni from Mintz will play one. Mengele sent his mother and grandfather Wolfsberg in Gross-Rosen to Ebensee One of the featured instruments, called to the left (i.e., to death in the gas cham- in Mauthausen and then to Munich after Motele’s Violin, belonged to a 12-year-old Bergen in 1941, but the concert was inter- bers), but what about his 20-year-old sis- liberation. The Wolfsberg Labor Camp Jewish boy who played it for Nazi officers rupted when local pro-Nazi youth began ter and his 29-year-old aunt Etel? When Machzor, published by Yad Vashem, from Hitler’s SS in Belarus in 1944. rioting and threatened to lynch Glaser for more Bad Arolsen material arrived at Yad features his moving article on prayer. Motele, with his violin, had joined other “befouling” the famed instrument. Vashem in early 2008, I discovered a doc- After showing him all the information I anti-Nazi partisans in a village near the Only when the conductor instructed the ument with his aunt’s personal details and found, Halivni asserted that, “the credit for border with Ukraine and managed to infil- orchestra to play the Norwegian national signature in one of the files. She had been anything we have uncovered goes first trate a Nazi building there. anthem, prompting the rioting youth to and foremost to Yad Vashem. Had it not sent from Auschwitz to Stutthof. “The German officers heard him play in stand at attention, was Glaser able to been for Yad Vashem, I never would have In February 1945, when the Gross- the streets one day and later brought him escape, Weinstein said. had what I now know. I lost my entire fam- Rosen camp was liquidated and occu- to perform every night in their compound “The violin was our savior,” said Helen ily, and from 1944 until I married Tzipora pied by the Russians, Halivni was in town,” said Sefi Hanegbi, whose father Livnat, 68, who donated the instrument in 1953, I was totally alone. The records transferred to Ebensee, part of the played alongside Motele in a partisan her father used to earn food for her starv- we found provide some consolation. Their Mauthausen complex in Upper Austria. camp in a forest during World War Two. ing family in a ghetto in Ukraine in the names are recorded for posterity.” The original Mauthausen prisoner After each performance, Motele hid his early 1940s. admission cards are at Yad Vashem, so The author, ordained by the Jewish violin in the building and walked out with “It’s an honor knowing the violins that I photocopied his card for him, as well Theological Seminary, is a Jerusalem res- an empty case. He would return with the were once played in a time of hunger and as that of his parents, which include the ident, researcher, and Deputy Director of violin case full of explosives, stuffing them suffering will be heard again with pride in names of his grandparents. (No trace the Jacobi Center of the International into cracks in the walls, and eventually the country that we love,” she said. has yet been found of his sister Channa Institute for Jewish Genealogy. Page 16 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2009 - Shevat/Adar I 5769 THE HOLOCAUST, VIEWED NOT FROM THEN BUT FROM THE HERE AND NOW those farmers and villagers recall on tently) for its revival. The announcement graphs and films made by arriving British BY MICHAEL KIMMELMAN, videotaped interviews the endless lines of that he would visit Nazi graves at Bitburg troops to show what once was here. THE NEW YORK TIMES walking dead. It was impossible not to see in 1985 resulted in an uproar that forced Various camps liberated before Bergen- abbo Knoch, who runs the new what was plainly in front of them. his staff to scramble, and Bergen-Belsen Belsen had been evacuated or HBergen-Belsen Memorial at the for- Videos are only one form of evidence, a was suddenly added to his itinerary. destroyed, but the Germans turned this mer concentration camp, invited various French researcher ventured, inadequate Embarrassed Germans, who preferred to place over as it had been. Circulated scholars and museum directors to a four- by themselves as history. day conference called “Witnessing: Sites True. of Destruction and the Representation of hat said, the Holocaust has become the Holocaust.” He asked a question one Twhat one expert here called the evening during a break: “Will people in 20 “master narrative” for suffering, shaping years look back and say we built a muse- discussions about every present conflict um that focuses on Nazi genocide while over genocide and human rights, even as Darfur was happening? Will they ask comparisons distort history and can serve whether anyone raised this issue?” the purposes of propaganda as often as Consider it raised. the truth. “Every generation gets the sto- The new memorial is an immense con- ries it wants to hear,” is how Heidemarie crete and glass museum emerging from a Uhl, an Austrian scholar, put it, which is to copse of trees beside the cemetery of say that the master narrative of the Shoah mass graves (there are more than 70,000 itself has evolved to suit different eras. bodies buried there), which had been the She pointed out that the memorial at the camp site. The permanent exhibition is a former Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria was for several years model of its kind, focused on the meticu- after the war controlled by the Soviets, lous and sober reconstruction of the past. who put up a monument to In the permanent exhibition there, testimonies by Jewish survivors. Communist resistance but worldwide in newspapers, magazines none to the Jews. forget the site, threw together a small doc- and movie theaters, the pictures made Today the message at umentation center. It soon became inade- unconditional surrender obligatory and Mauthausen has come to quate to the accumulating archives, to the the site forever synonymous with the reflect Austria’s “negative general liberalizing process of German worst Nazi atrocities. memory,” Ms. Uhl said, refer- identity building after the wall fell, and to In a sense, the images have become too ring to the collective sentiment the growing public appetite abroad for familiar, too loaded. The museum stresses of Austrians (many of them, Holocaust museums, along with the the survivor testimonies instead. These run she might have added, but tourist economy they generated. silently on monitors throughout the galleries, alas, still not enough) who Nothing about the present museum admit their country willingly dramatizes information for visitors the accompanied by subtitles in German and committed genocide. As at way, say, the United States Holocaust English. As Geoffrey Hartman, the literary Bergen-Belsen, the perma- Memorial Museum in Washington appar- scholar who helped start the Fortunoff Video nent exhibition there now ently feels it needs to. Divorced as it is Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, speaks to a kind of post-ideo- from the sites of persecution, it turns relics remarked after walking through the museum, the quiet promotes a space in which “to think The new Bergen-Belsen Memorial museum in Germany, located logical, post-cold-war world of genocide, like a Zyklon B canister and that thinking is important.” beside the former camp site, is focused on the meticulous and that prizes victimhood and a cattle car that transported Jews to sober reconstruction of the past. individual resilience, just as the Auschwitz into props. But you can also wear headphones to Communist memorial spoke to Soviet priori- ergen-Belsen has the camp as evi- hear the voices. Mr. Hartman borrowed From time to time, the present literally ties. Bdence, or what’s left of it. After liber- Paul Celan’s famous phrase about bot- intrudes with a bang, though, when practice History keeps moving, in other words. ation, the British burned down the prison- tles in the ocean tossed at “the shoreline rounds of tank fire from the British military Here at Bergen-Belsen, after liberation in ers’ barracks to stem the spread of of a heart” to describe the effect. base next door boom over the treetops. April 1945, the military training barracks typhus, and hired an architect to turn bull- One survivor is Robert Rijxman. “I was Otherwise, you might be struck by how became a camp for displaced persons. dozed graves into a pastoral cemetery. sitting on a rock,” he recalls on screen. ordinary the whole area seems. During Jews awaited transport to America, The architect turned out to be a favorite of “It was sunny, in winter. I just prayed to the war, prisoners — at first Soviet sol- Australia and to the new Israel, a flash- the Nazis, adding insult to injury, but by die, but it didn’t work.” diers, later Jews — used to be marched point with British authorities who also con- the time that scandal broke, it was already Without sound, he’s the picture of defi- several miles from a railway terminal trolled Palestine. Some Jewish survivors too late, and the graves today look like ance, elfin and smiling, clutching a pipe beyond the base, which was then for the inaugurated a theater company called Teutonic mounds, covered in lavender. like an old Swiss mountaineer after a Wehrmacht, and past fields, farms and Kazet (the name played on the German In the absence of original buildings, the walk in the Alps. But listening to him, you houses. Some survivors have said they KZ, for concentration camp). Life started aura of Bergen-Belsen now, as at all hear that he needs a moment to collect were struck by the pretty scenery. over in other ways, too. Henri Lustiger- haunted places, can be linked to the himself and it suddenly becomes clear At the camp, corpses lay in piles and Thaler, who helped organize the confer- superstition people tend to bring to it — that Mr. Rijxman wishes to convey a thousands were dying of starvation and ence, recalled that his mother, a former the vague hope that our presence might thought darker and more complicated disease, from genocide by neglect. The prisoner, returned from Paris to give birth somehow help renew the ground. than simple defiance. farmers and villagers who had watched at the camp hospital because her friends Meanwhile the sheer emptiness of the Praying for death “didn’t work,” is what the prisoners go by afterward mostly were here. landscape, never mind the graves, he said. claimed they knew nothing about it. Then Bergen-Belsen fell into neglect. speaks clearly to loss. “Not to this day,” he added. Times change. Some of the children of Ronald Reagan was responsible (inadver- Of course, there are still the photo- Another reminder of history’s relentlessness.

Martyrdom & Resistance International Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. Eli Zborowski, Editor-in-Chief MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE U.S. POST Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Editor 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR, PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. *Published Bimonthly by the NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO. 9313 International Society for Yad Vashem, Inc. Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor New York, NY 10110 (212) 220-4304 EDITORIAL BOARD Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski William Mandell Sam Halpern Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased