Vol. 38-No.1 ISSN 0892-1571 September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 ENSURING THE LEGACY 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM sponding to the challenges of the 21st century. Joseph BY ELI ZBOROWSKI, Wilf, American Society Vice Chairman, was appointed as FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN the Chairman of the Yad Vashem 2001 Campaign. OF THE AMERICAN & IN- The projects of major benefactors of Yad Vashem 2001 TERNATIONAL SOCIETIES include: FOR YAD VASHEM The Partisans’ Panorama – Julia and Isidore Karten, Harry Karten, Marcia Toledano, and Berne Bookhamer ilestones provide an The Survivors Wall – Gale and Ira Drukier Mopportunity to reflect The Entrance Plaza – The Wilf family in memory of on the past and to project Harry Wilf plans for the future. We The Visitors’ Center – David and Fela Shapell began our efforts as the Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Gross of Rosedale, New York. In- Bridge to a Vanished World – Mr. and Mrs. Jan Czuker American & International So- terest and enthusiasm soon attracted Arie Halpern, Harry The Holocaust History Museum – Harry and Judith cieties united in the desire that the horrors of the Holocaust and Joe Wilf, and others. Wilf family and Joseph and Elizabeth Wilf family should never be forgotten. As we mark the 30th Anniver- The first major project the Societies undertook at Yad Gallery in the Holocaust History Museum – The Nor- sary of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem was the building of the Valley of Communities, a man Braman Family Foundation Vashem in 2011, we feel that we have successfully met our memorial to the more than 5,000 communities that were The Synagogue – Marilyn and Barry Rubenstein and envisioned goals. Our support has helped Yad Vashem destroyed during the Holocaust. During the nine years it family become one of the most significant landmarks in the moral took to build the Valley, the American Society completed The Museum of Holocaust Art – Dr. Miriam and Shel- history of humankind. the Jewish Soldiers, Ghetto Fighters, and Partisan Monu- don G. Adelson ment, an endeavor spearheaded by Frank Blaichman, The Learning Center – Stella and Sam Skura IN THE EARLY YEARS Jack Pomerance and Isidore Karten. Several other proj- The Exhibition Pavilion – Tina and Steven Schwarz t this time, I would first like to share with you the ects were erected through the generosity of specific and Rochelle and Henryk Schwarz A challenges we faced in the early years. As a mem- donors: The Children’s Memorial – Edita and Abraham Renewal of the Avenue of the Righteous Among the ber of the Yad Vashem Directorate since 1969, I regularly Spiegel; the Yad Vashem Candelabra – Stella and Sam Nations – Gladys and Sam Halpern family and Eva and attended quarterly meetings. I soon realized that it was Skura and Celina and Marvin Zborowski; the Auschwitz Arie Halpern family consistently difficult for Yad Vashem to cover its ex- Chimney – David Feuerstein; the Cattle Car Exhibit – Ber- The Visual Center – The Daniella and Daniel Steinmetz penses. I suggested that Jews all over the Diaspora nice and Izzy Merin and Benjamin Merin. Foundation and Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons should partner with Yad Vashem by contributing to its ex- The cornerstone for the Valley of Communities was laid Foundation penses in order to make it as vibrant and effective an in- at Yad Vashem in 1983 and the completed project, a mas- The International School for Holocaust Studies stitution as possible. It took more than a decade for the sive two-and-a-half-acre monument blasted out of natural Building – Marilyn and Jack Pechter and family Directorate to accept that fundraising was a respectful bedrock, was dedicated in 1992. In the center of the Valley The Family Plaza – Ruta and Dr. Felix Zandman and compassionate means of supporting an institution stands the Beit Hakehilot, which my late wife Diana and I The Library Building – Marilyn and Jack Belz and Philip and that it was a necessity in order for Yad Vashem to established in memory of our parents who perished during Belz and family move forward with its mission. This gave birth to two new the Shoah. The Warsaw Ghetto Plaza Refurbishment – David and organizations both founded and registered in the State Since 1985, Martyrdom & Resistance, a bimonthly news- Ruth Mitzner, Ira and Mindy Mitzner and family, and Phyllis paper chronicling current news and features on all aspects and William Mack family of New York in 1981: The American Society for Yad of the Holocaust, has been published by the International Vashem and the International Society for Yad Vashem. PAYING TRIBUTE TO SUPPORTERS Society for Yad Vashem. Inaugurated in 1974 by the Amer- The people who had expressed interest in this newly ican Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and he Annual Tribute Dinner of the American and Inter- organized Yad Vashem partnership came from various Nazi Victims, it is the first continuous periodical devoted to national Societies for Yad Vashem is the premier parts of the world. Groups were established in Brazil, T the Holocaust. Reaching 50,000 primary readers, its cir- event on the organizations’ calendar. It attracts 1,000 to Mexico, Chile, England, the Netherlands and Switzer- culation includes hundreds of teachers and Holocaust land. I also had contacts in Germany among survivors 1,500 guests and is a forceful demonstration of the scholars. who moved there after the war and did not relocate else- strength of the Societies. For survivors it is an affirmation, where. CHANGING THE YAD VASHEM LANDSCAPE more than sixty years after the liberation, that the memory of the Holocaust has not dimmed. For younger generations Our first meeting took place in the home of Sam and n 1993, Avner Shalev succeeded Yitzhak Arad as it is an inspiring evening dedicated to the “State of Remem- Stella Skura in Hillcrest, New York, with Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate. Shalev’s far- I brance.” Dinner honorees and guest speakers have in- Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, as the guest sighted vision and abundant energy and creativity ushered cluded Ambassador Abba Eban, Ambassador Ronald speaker. This event was followed by ones hosted by var- in a new era in which the entire landscape of the Yad ious individuals in different locations, including Mr. and Vashem campus underwent a vast transformation. In Lauder, Sir Robert Maxwell, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Mrs. Israel Krakowski of New York City; Mr. and Mrs. Isak 1996, Shalev enlisted the support of the American Society Wolf Blitzer, Edgar Bronfman, Matthew Bronfman, Dr. Levenstein and Mr. and Mrs. Sam Halpern of Hillside, in Yad Vashem 2001, a master plan designed to render Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, Fred Zeidman and Avner New Jersey; Mr. and Mrs. Mark Palmer of Chicago; and Yad Vashem as a state-of-the-art facility capable of re- (Continued on page 14) IN THIS ISSUE 30th Anniversary of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem...... 1,14 Holocaust survivors again seek insurance claims...... 5 Children at the Shabbos table: Dreams of a Holocaust survivor...... 6 Safe house...... 6 We must stop time destroying our last proof of the Holocaust...... 7 The American and International Societies for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner.....8-9 Historians debate: Could more Jews have been saved?...... 10 A Holocaust survivor raised a fist to death...... 12 Jewish texts lost in war are surfacing in New York...... 13 Neglecting the Lithuanian Holocaust...... 14 Berlin exhibition exposes police role in Holocaust...... 15 Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772

A TRUE SURVIVOR: ALICE SOMMER HERZ HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS TO RECEIVE MORE THAN HALF GETS AWARD AT 107 BILLION DOLLARS IN REPARATIONS he world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, he Claims Conference has negoti- “With restitution-related sources of fund- T Czech pianist Alice Sommer Herz, T ated a significant increase in funds ing on the decline, this long-term agree- has received a top cultural award on the from the German government for sur- ment obtained by the Claims Conference occasion of her 107th birthday, the Czech vivors’ homecare to ensure that victims of is vital to addressing the growing social News Agency (ČTK) reported. Nazism can live at home and receive the welfare needs of aging Holocaust sur- Sommer Herz received the Artis Bo- assistance they need. vivors,” said Julius Berman, Chairman of hemiae Amicis medal for the promotion of The Claims Conference reevaluated the Board of the Claims Conference. “It will Czech culture abroad from the Czech Am- reparations for Holocaust survivors and provide survivors and the agencies that bassador to Britain, Michael Zantovsky, in reached a landmark decision to increase care for them the certainty that funding will her adopted home of London. survivor homecare funding over the next be available to meet the anticipated grow- A world-renowed pianist based in Prague three years by a total of 564 million dollars. ing demand over the next few years.” before World War II who had grown up on Under the new agreement, in 2012 the The Claims Conference Special Negotiator, German government will provide approxi- Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, commended the knee of Gustav Mahler, a friend of her Alice Sommer Herz. mother’s, and who counted Franz Kafka composers Viktor Ulmann, Pavel Haas, mately $177 million for homecare funding; the German government for assuming re- among her own friends, Sommer Herz was Gideon Klein and Hans Krasa. in 2013, approximately $191 million; and in sponsibility for reparations and assisting sur- sent to the Terezin concentration camp In 1986, she moved to London to live 2014, approximately $196 million. This to- vivors as they enter advanced age. along with her family in 1943. with her son, renowned cellist Raphael tals approximately $564 million. “Once again, the German government has She performed some 150 concerts in the Sommer. She still plays piano there three The 2012 figure is a 15 percent increase recognized its historic responsibility to help Jewish ghetto when the Nazis allowed the hours a day. over the amount negotiated for 2011. The care for Jewish Holocaust victims in their inmates to organize cultural events in hope Three years ago, biographer Melissa money will be distributed to various agen- final years,” said Eizenstat, adding that “over of convincing the Red Cross that the living Müller and author Reinhard Piechocki, a cies worldwide to provide survivors with in- the decades, the government has demon- conditions were good there. close friend of Sommer Herz, published a home nursing and assistance in strated its commitment to alleviating the Sommer Herz’s husband died at the Nazi book on the time she spent in the concen- day-to-day activities. plight of elderly victims who need the care camp, but she survived and emigrated to tration camp, A Garden of Eden in Hell, The hope is that through providing at- that these funds will provide.” Israel in 1949. which went on to become an international home care, Holocaust victims will be able Greg Schneider, Claims Conference Ex- There she worked as a music teacher bestseller and has been translated into to remain living at home in spite of difficul- ecutive Vice President, emphasized the and focused on the works of Czech Jewish seven languages. ties associated with old age. importance of the increased funds, enu- The conference negotiated an increase merating the multiple ways in which sur- in pension payments to survivors. It was vivors will benefit from them. HOLLAND ASKS GERMANY also decided that while previously a mini- “With these increased funds, the Claims TO LOCK UP ELDERLY NAZI FUGITIVE mum of 18 months’ incarceration in a Nazi- Conference can provide more hours of era ghetto was the criterion for receiving homecare, addressing the most basic he Dutch government asked Ger- Westerbork camp in the Netherlands, a payments, the German government will needs of these aging and frail victims of many to jail an 89-year-old Dutch staging post for Dutch Jews on their jour- T now review individual cases and determine Nazism. We can enable more survivors to Nazi who escaped in 1952 from a Dutch ney to concentration camps in Germany, based on hardship and persecution if remain in their own homes, living in familiar prison where he was serving a life sen- Poland and Ukraine. His brother, who was those who spent less time in the ghetto are surroundings while getting the services tence for killing Jewish prisoners at a Nazi also a member of the Dutch SS, was shot eligible for funding as well. they need and deserve,” said Schneider. transit camp. by firing squad after the war, but Faber’s The Netherlands had already tried to ex- sentence was commuted to life imprison- tradite former SS soldier Klaas Carel ment. He escaped from the prison and fled LEADING EGYPTIAN POL CALLS HOLOCAUST “A LIE” Faber using a European Arrest Warrant – to Germany in 1952. top official with one of Egypt’s lead- He similarly dismissed The Diary of Anne a European Union-wide agreed extradition Dutch efforts to extradite Faber have A ing secular political parties called Frank, explaining that he had studied it as mechanism – but a court in Munich turned been frustrated by a German law prevent- the Holocaust “a lie” and Anne Frank’s a doctoral student in Sweden. down the application on the grounds that ing extradition of German nationals for war diary “a fake.” “I could swear to God it’s fake,” he said. “The Faber is now a German citizen. crimes although Germany sentenced an- Ahmed Ezz El-Arab, a vice chairman of girl was there, but the memoirs are a fake.” Dutch Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten other former Dutch Nazi, Heinrich Broere, the liberal Wafd party, also said in an inter- El-Arab, the chairman of Wafd’s foreign wrote to his German counterpart saying to life in prison in March last year. view with The Washington Times that the relations committee, also criticized Iranian that under European rules, Germany A German court ruled in 1957 that it had Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were “made President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. should impose on Faber the life sentence insufficient evidence to try Faber, who, ac- in the USA.” “He’s a hateful character, ” El-Arab said. he had been serving in the Netherlands. cording to Dutch newspaper reports, is liv- “The Holocaust is a lie,” he told the “What he says about the Holocaust is true, “The public prosecutor in Munich has in- ing in the Bavarian town of Ingolstadt and newspaper while in Hungary for the Con- but he doesn’t say it because it’s true. He formed the Dutch justice ministry it can worked at local carmaker Audi. ference of Democracy and Human Rights. says it out of hatred to the Israeli state.” apply for enforcement of the sentence to In her comments to the German press, “The Jews under German occupation The Wafd official also said there was “no be transferred. Opstelten considers this a German Justice Minister Sabine were 2.4 million. So if they were all exter- chance at all” that Egypt would cancel its sign of willingness to implement the sen- Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger has been minated, where does the remaining 3.6 peace treaty with Israel. tence in Germany,” the Dutch government sympathetic to the Dutch requests re- million come from?” “The Jews are there,” he told The Wash- said in a statement. garding Faber. Israel has also asked Ger- El-Arab conceded that “hundreds of ington Times. “Good or bad, they are Faber was sentenced to death in 1947 many to hand Faber over to the Dutch thousands” of Jews had been murdered, there. You cannot as a human being think for the killing of at least 11 people in the authorities. but pronounced the gas chambers “fanciful of exterminating 6 million or 5 million or stories.” whatever. That’s crazy.” UKRAINE TO MARK HOLOCAUST DAY y a large majority, the Ukrainian par- In September 1941, after the Nazi occu- PARLIAMENT URGES GERMANY Bliament has decided to turn Interna- pation of Ukraine, Babi Yar turned into a TO HIKE NAZI VICTIMS’ PENSIONS tional Holocaust Remembrance Day into an battlefield. More than 100,000 people were he Bundesrat (upper house) calls the former Soviet Union to emigrate to official commemoration day murdered and buried at the on the federal government to rec- Germany as refugees. in the country. site. Some 33,000 Jews “T ognize Jewish Holocaust victims from the The parliament also de- were slaughtered there That status, however, has meant they former Soviet Union as ‘persons perse- cided to mark the 70th an- within two days, on Septem- had no right to state pensions for cuted by the Nazi regime’ and to create the niversary of the Babi Yar ber 29 – 30. Nazi victims and must even report any sav- legal basis for independent pension claims massacre this year with a Kiev’s Jews gathered near ings they had accumulated, for for these people,” it said in a resolution. series of special events. a local cemetery, expecting example from support payments from the “Due to the age of the Holocaust sur- The decision of the Verk- to be taken to ghettos on Jewish Claims Conference. vivors, we call on the federal government hovna Rada (Ukraine’s trains. Instead, they were or- Germany has paid out the equivalent of to table a draft law without delay.” parliament) was unequivo- dered to undress and were more than 67 billion euros ($97 The Bundesrat, which represents Ger- cal, with 331 of 450 repre- shot in groups into the billion) to victims of the Nazis. many’s 16 states, said that the Jewish for- sentatives voting in favor of ravine, which turned into a During the Cold War, West Germany only mer prisoners of concentration camps and commemorating the Jews mass grave. offered restitution to people living ghettos had fallen victim to a legal loophole murdered in the Holocaust Soviet prisoners of war, in the West and referred those living in the that exempted them from the list of recog- in an annual state memo- gypsies, psychiatric patients, Eastern bloc to the government of Babi Yar memorial. nied victims of the Nazis. rial day, and marking the opposers of the Nazi regime, Communist East Germany, which refused to As such, they were not entitled to state 70th anniversary of the massacre in the and many Ukrainian citizens were mur- assume any responsibility for Hitler’s crimes. pensions accorded to people persecuted ravine west of Kiev with special events. dered in Babi Yar later on. After German unification in 1990 and fol- under the Third Reich and were thus de- According to the official document, a In August 1943, the Nazis tried to cover lowing negotiations with the Jewish pendent on much smaller monthly subsis- committee will be appointed to plan official up the crimes they committed at the site. Claims Conference, the country agreed to tence payments. ceremonies and events for the Babi Yar For weeks, hundreds of prisoners engaged establish a new fund for Holocaust A policy approved in January 1991 al- massacre anniversary in October. in burning bodies and scattering the ashes. survivors from Eastern Europe. lowed Jewish Holocaust survivors from September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

VIENNA MEMORIAL FOR NAZI VICTIMS UNVEILED FOREST FIRE NEAR YAD VASHEM edicated not only to Jewish victims and women who walked through the wildfire tore through a forest on the Dbut also to resistance fighters, a new dreaded doors. A outskirts of Jerusalem on July 17, remembrance site includes a small exhibit Wedged between a tanning salon and a moving within several hundred yards of Is- that shows how Gestapo officials often used video rental store, the memorial originally rael’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem torture to torment those they summoned. opened in 1968 but was closed for a and sending a huge plume of smoke bil- Austria’s president unveiled a newly re- makeover. lowing over parts of the holy city. vamped memorial commemorating victims The exhibit, consisting of a series of pan- Fire service spokesman Boaz Rakia said of the Nazis, including those who lost their els with photos and documents, also fo- the fire was under control at nightfall. He lives because they stood up to the brutal cuses on some of those who had the said Yad Vashem was not in danger. He said regime. courage to confront Hitler and his follow- investigators were considering the possibility The remembrance site is situated in the ers. of arson because of reports that the blaze heart of Vienna, the Austrian capital, where One of those portrayed is Jacob Kastelic, erupted in several places at once. eign dignitaries routinely stop at Yad a luxury hotel once stood that served as a a resistance fighter who was executed on Estee Yaari, a spokeswoman for Yad Vashem when visiting the country. coordination center for the Gestapo, Adolf August 2, 1944. Vashem, said the 45-acre campus was The memorial holds some 140 million Hitler’s secret police. His son, 71-year-old Gerhard, who was evacuated as the blaze approached. Po- pages of Holocaust documentation, the Dedicated not only to Jewish victims but not even 4 years old when his father was lice said the fire was a few hundred yards world’s largest such collection. It also ex- also to resistance fighters, it includes a killed, said he hoped the memorial would from the memorial. hibits artifacts, such as shoes, photographs, small exhibit that shows how Gestapo offi- help today’s youth realize that, during a “Everybody was evacuated calmly,” Yaari suitcases, and recorded testimonies of cials often used torture to torment those dark time in Austria’s history, there were in- said. “There was a lot of smoke on campus.” Holocaust victims and survivors. they summoned and notes how the feared dividuals who had the courage to stand up Two people required medical treatment, It also has an eternal flame in its “Hall of force was fed information from spies and for their convictions. she added. Remembrance,” as well as the “Hall of informants in the Austrian population. “It’s a way to show young people that Yad Vashem is one of Israel’s national Names,” where it is collecting the identities “The fates of thousands of people were while many Austrians at the time were, un- treasures, home to a museum and memo- of the 6 million Jews who perished during decided here,” Austrian President Heinz questionably, perpetrators... there was also rials for the victims of the Holocaust. For- World War II. Fischer told a small crowd. “Thousands resistance,” he told The Associated Press. became victims of torture and were often Austria became part of a Greater Ger- LITHUANIA APPROVES COMPENSATION sent from here to concentration camps.” many on March 12, 1938, when Wehrma- “Never Forget!” is written across the rear cht troops crossed into the country to FOR CONFISCATED PROPERTY of the small space that used to be the back ensure a smooth takeover. Just days after ithuania’s parliament agreed to pay The World Jewish Restitution Organiza- entrance of the Gestapo center. Leading to Anschluss, Hitler basked in the adoration L$52 million over 10 years to compen- tion, which is charged with securing resti- it are footprints that, according to Fischer, of nearly 200,000 in a downtown Vienna sate for properties confiscated from tution in countries other than Germany and symbolize the helplessness of the men square. Lithuanian Jews by the Nazis and Soviets. Austria, said that the law offered “a small International and Lithuanian Jewish or- measure of justice.” AUSCHWITZ “THIEF” REPENTS ACT ganizations have been pushing for com- “While the amount which will be paid pensation since 2002. over the next decade represents only a oti Posloshani, who was convicted Vashem,” he said, adding that “my wife The bill that was passed by the parlia- small fraction of the value of the communal along with his wife of stealing arti- agreed with me, and so we slipped the M ment would make Lithuania one of the few and religious property which was owned by facts from a Nazi death camp, explained items into our bags.” countries with a restitution law on the the Jewish community prior to World War what motivated him to nab the items. “I Posloshani broke out in tears when books. Outside of Germany and Austria, II, the passage of the law is historic, reflect- wanted to safeguard them, hand them to asked why he didn’t return the artifacts to European countries have been slow to ing the Lithuanian government’s recogni- Yad Vashem.” the display box. “I don’t see it as theft,” he sign on to any kind of agreement that tion of its moral obligation to return or “I know what the Holocaust is. My par- tried to explain, “I picked up some neg- would involve restituting property taken il- provide compensation for stolen Jewish ents are Auschwitz survivors. To say that I legally from Jews during the Holocaust property,” the organization said in a state- stole would be a mistake,” said Moti years. A compensation deal in Poland fell ment. Posloshani, who was convicted along with apart in March. The American Jewish Committee, which his wife Dominique of stealing artifacts Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius supported the Lithuanian Jewish commu- from the Auschwitz death camp memorial. praised the bill’s passage in a radio interview, nity in its quest for compensation, greeted Posloshani repented his acts, saying “I calling it a demonstration of goodwill and “un- the bill as “a hard-fought victory.” am ashamed and I ask for forgiveness, es- derstanding of the tragedy the Jewish com- Rabbi Andrew Baker, AJC’s director of in- pecially from Holocaust survivors whom I munity suffered during the Holocaust.” ternational Jewish affairs, said that delays might have hurt.” The properties in question are currently were largely due to concerns over domes- In an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, in the hands of the Lithuanian government. tic politics and nervousness about a pop- Posloshani, who resigned from his position The government reportedly would begin ulist, anti-Semitic backlash. Baker cited the as a department head in the Herzliya Mu- lected items. I wanted them to be in a bet- paying into a special compensation fund efforts of U.S. Ambassador Anne Derse nicipality, said he and his wife arrived at ter place – to be protected, here in Israel. starting next year. The funds will be used and her predecessors as instrumental in the Auschwitz death camp on a tourist bus, “I’ve made a big mistake. I shouldn’t in part to restore Jewish heritage sites. In winning over Lithuania’s legislators. but separated from the group and toured have picked the items up in the first place,” addition, $1.25 million would be paid di- According to the U.S. Holocaust Memo- the place on their own. he noted. rectly to Holocaust survivors next year. rial Museum, Lithuania’s prewar Jewish At some point, they entered a room that The couple was arrested at the Krakow Faina Kukliansky, deputy chair of Lithua- population was about 160,000, some 7 displayed the victims’ artifacts. “One of the airport during the weekend, after border nia’s approximately 3,000-member Jewish percent of the country’s total population. display boxes had silverware,” Posloshani guard officers detected the stolen artifacts community, told Reuters that the spirit of Lithuanian Jewry was nearly wiped out recalled. in their luggage. the bill was more important than the during the Holocaust, and Lithuanian per- “Suddenly, when we stopped next to the After spending the night at the detention amount. “This is what the state can afford petrators as well as German killing squads display box, we saw six or seven artifacts center by the airport, the two were indicted at this stage,” she said. were key to the genocide. lying on the ground, covered in mud. I for stealing souvenirs of great cultural and picked them up and tried to figure out what historical value, an offense that is punish- they were. able by up to ten years in prison in Poland. RUSSIANS MUM ON REQUESTS FOR WALLENBERG INFO “I saw a knife, a fork, and a kettle lid. The couple was brought in front of a Pol- ussian authorities have failed to re- and family members insist that Wallenberg They were partially burnt. At that moment I ish judge, who convicted them of the of- Rspond to requests for more informa- lived in the state-run gulag camps for decided that I – the son of Holocaust sur- fense, and gave them a two-year tion on the Raoul Wallenberg case. decades after he was declared dead. vivors – will safeguard the artifacts, clean suspended prison sentence and about The requests by The Associated Press Academics investigating the disappear- them and maybe hand them to Yad $1,450 fine each. and the American Gathering of Holocaust ance of Wallenberg for years have re- Survivors and their Descendants came in quested tapes of Roedel’s interrogation, WIESENTHAL CENTER: NINE STATES the aftermath of the release of a new book but the Russians have maintained that NOT CHASING NAZI CRIMINALS released by the Russian government on such tapes never existed. Wallenberg. Roedel’s published statements predate his yria, Austria, and Lithuania are of limitation) or ideological restrictions,” or “Secrets of the Third Reich Diplomacy,” introduction to Wallenberg, but focus on his among the countries that the Simon their “efforts (or lack thereof) have resulted S which was released earlier this year, con- relationship with Gustav Richter, a German Wiesenthal Center says “refuse in principle in complete failure during the period under tains quotes from the interrogation of Willy police attaché who was Wallenberg’s cell- to investigate suspected Nazi war crimi- review, primarily due to the absence of po- Roedel, a German officer who shared a mate for the first six weeks of his arrest. nals because of legal restrictions.” litical will to proceed and/or a lack of the req- cell with Wallenberg. Roedel was arrested While the new information does little to Syria, Austria and Lithuania are among 9 uisite resources and/or expertise,” according by the Soviets after World War II. explain the fate of Wallenberg, it does sug- countries where Nazi war criminals are to the center’s annual report card examining Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who gest that the Russians may have more in- not being brought to justice, the Center efforts to track down perpetrators of crimes helped tens of thousands of Hungarian formation on the diplomat’s life than has said in a statement. against Jews during WW II. Jews escape persecution during World been made public. Roedel’s statements These nations either “refuse in principle to The other countries named by the Cen- War II. He was arrested by the Soviet were pulled from an unpublished 549-page investigate, let alone prosecute, suspected ter in its report were Sweden, Norway, Union in 1945, and Soviet officals said he file that appears to have 57 unreleased Nazi war criminals because of legal (statute Canada, Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine. was executed in 1947. However, scholars pages. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS A LIFE OF LEADERSHIP A Life of Leadership: Eli Zborowski from and the moral underpinnings of business oners, he writes, “I was suddenly overcome studies in the world at Yeshiva University. He the Underground to Industry to Holocaust from my father.” The Bermans also de- with pity for them. I knew that they had not secured over $100 million for Yad Vashem in Remembrance. scribe Eli’s personality, how he was an in- had food or water for days. I decided to bring Israel. He instituted the study and under- By Rochel and George Berman. KTAV telligent and caring risk-taker. out some water for them. Now in retrospect standing of the Holocaust in many schools. Publishing House and Yad Vashem Publi- When Eli was fourteen, the Nazis took this incident still leaves me with an unsettled He was appointed by President Jimmy cations, 2011. 290 pp. control of his country and killed numerous feeling. I cannot really understand my moti- Carter and President Ronald Reagan to im- Jews, and many Poles joined in the mas- vations, except that in their disheveled and REVIEWED BY DR. ISRAEL DRAZIN portant posts. He received numerous sacre. When he was seventeen, Poles diminished state, I no longer saw them as awards and honors, including an honorary reat leaders possess courage and murdered his father. Even after menacing demons.” Later, doctorate. He helped people realize that al- Gvision. They see human and socie- the war, Poles threw three as a translator, he altered though they suffered enormous losses, they tal needs. They accept responsibility and grenades into his home, fortu- the story of a German sol- could move forward and develop a sense of step forward to aid others with persistence. nately not harming his family, but dier in a way that saved his hope and optimism that could pervade their making it clear that they must They have the ability to persuade and the life. He wrote, “To this day, lives and influence others. leave the land of their birth. strength to withstand difficulties when oth- I don’t know why I did it, And he saved lives. During the war he ers crouch in fear. li left Poland and started life and to this day I do not re- worked for the Underground. Once, to cite Rochel and George Berman tell the re- in the US with a pregnant E gret it.” an example, after he had escaped from the markable tale of such a man in their beauti- wife, no money, no contacts, and li’s lifetime achieve- Nazis through a hail of bullets, he remem- fully written analytical biography, which little knowledge of the English Ements take up bered a girl he knew who had not escaped reveals, among many things, the impact of language. He began by peddling dozens of pages in this bi- from the ghetto. He risked his life, turned early childhood experiences. It is about an camera parts door to door. Yet, ography and make inspira- back and saved her. On another occasion, individual who never saw himself as a vic- within ten years, because of in- tional reading. At the end of tim, a man who inspired countless people sight, understanding, and perse- to mention one of many, at age seventeen, World War II, when he was while running with their family from the and produced many needed world changes. verance Eli became the president just twenty, he led 116 of the Sheaffer pen company in Nazis, his brother sprained his ankle and Eli Zborowski was born in Žarki, Poland young Jewish orphans from Poland to safety Latin America. He also founded a highly Eli carried him miles to safety. in 1925 in a small town where two-thirds of in displaced persons camps in Germany. He the inhabitants were Jews. The Jews pro- profitable import-export business in Ar- Rabbi Israel Meyer Lau, former chief opened the door to diplomatic relations be- duced more than two thirds of the signifi- gentina, Panama, and Mexico. rabbi of the State of Israel, held up a silver tween Israel and Poland despite Poland’s cant contributions to the community. The Many of the events in Eli’s life are very Sheaffer pen that Eli Zborowski once gave complicity in the death of so many of its Jew- Bermans’ descriptions of Jewish life in moving, as, for example, how he knew the him as a gift and praised Eli, saying that he ish citizens. He helped many Jews leave Poland are fascinating. They describe the Nazis were defeated. He saw a Russian sol- “built an empire selling Sheaffer pens like wise ways that Eli’s father, a businessman, dier in white winter camouflage. He looked Poland. In 1964, he created the first com- this one. He could have built an empire taught him how to do business and how to to Eli like an angel sent by God. Eli fell to his memoration in the United States of Yom twice the size. Instead, he devoted his time treat customers, so that Eli would say later, knees and kissed the Russian’s boots. Hashoah, a day of Holocaust remembrance. and energy to holy causes on behalf of the “Unquestionably, I learned about business Later, when he saw captured German pris- He endowed the first chair for Holocaust Jewish people.” REFOCUSING LOSS 22 BRITANNIA ROAD 22 Britannia Road. the war. While these are often riveting, the THROUGH THE HOLOCAUST’S LENS By Amanda Hodgkinson. Penguin back and forth saps the novel of momentum, American Jewish Loss after the Holo- or far removed from the tragedy, come to Group, USA, 2011. 336 pp. $25.95. and at times the structure feels rigid. Yet caust. understand the Holocaust in relation to our Hodgkinson compensates with luminous REVIEWED BY SARAH TOWERS, By Laura Levit. NYU Press: New York, own individual, personal losses. prose and with her intense exploration of THE NEW YORK TIMES 2007. 312 pp. $45 hardcover. he begins the book with a vignette how the past, no matter how horrific, no mat- about her own father’s family, about or Silvana, the Polish Holocaust sur- ter how much we wish to forget it, lodges REVIEWED BY ARLENE STEIN S how she learned late in life that the woman Fvivor at the center of Amanda deep in our innermost selves. lthough the Holocaust is increas- she thought was her grandmother was in Hodgkinson’s accomplished first novel, 22 he years Silvana spent in the forest A ingly visible in American life, it re- fact her grandfather’s second wife. She is Britannia Road, maternal love is a heart- T with Aurek, skinning rabbits and fend- mains forbidden territory. We distance haunted by this history, and takes it upon scorching, perilous emotion. During the ing off marauding soldiers, were nightmar- ourselves from it, bathing it in Hollywood herself to come to terms with her missing war, threats to the life of Aurek, her young ish. Yet that time grips both her imagination homilies to the power of human kindness. grandmother, who died when her father was son, were everywhere: from and her language, and pro- We draw boundaries around it, housing it a boy. In a process that bears similarity to the “filthy” skies, raked with duces a near-mythic closeness in concrete structures, hop- the journeys that many descen- thunder clouds and German with her son, who at the age of ing to contain it. dants of Holocaust survivors planes, to the sunless, 7 is still breast-feeding. “The The alternative — to look undertake, she movingly exca- brambly depths of the Polish boy was everything to her,” the clearly into the eye of vates and recasts her family forests, where she and book opens. “All the dark hearts unimaginable horror — history. It is partly through read- Aurek, like two figures in a of the lost, the found and the threatens to make us crazy. ing the art and literature on the fairy tale, hid out for years. never forgotten lived in his How can one enter that Holocaust that she gains a They are rescued from a child’s body, in his quick eyes. place of mass death without deeper understanding of her refugee camp by Janusz, She loved him with the same being driven to despair? own fractured legacy. the husband and father from unforgiving force that pushes How can Jews, in particular, Levitt’s claim that we experi- whom they were separated forests from the deep ground.” build clear-headed connec- ence loss in personal ways at the beginning of the fight- It is Hodgkinson’s portrait of tions to their murdered seems irrefutable. It’s true of ing. Janusz brings them to the primal bond between cousins while affirming the everyday, ordinary losses, to be Ipswich, to the small house mother and child, her visceral value of life in the present? sure, but it is also true of those and garden that give the understanding of the gorgeous, terrible These questions haunt who have experienced extraor- novel its title. There Silvana forces herself weight of love mothers must carry, war or many of us who have grown dinary losses. The now volumi- to believe that a normal life is possible: that no war, secret or no secret, that leaves an up in the shadow of the Holo- nous testimonies of Holocaust she and Janusz will rediscover themselves indelible impression. One of the novel’s caust, and they haunt Laura Levitt, whose survivors, after all, focus on the loss of moth- as husband and wife, that Aurek will have most powerful scenes comes in a flash- new book, American Jewish Loss after the ers, fathers, aunts, and uncles once known a father — and that the secret still threat- back, when Silvana and Aurek are stum- Holocaust, tries to come to terms with the and loved. (Indeed, the term “Holocaust” de- ening her son’s security will stay buried. bling through the snow-covered forest, meaning of the Holocaust in relation to the scribing the collective experience of destruc- Starting over is far from easy. Silvana, baf- close to collapse. Suddenly, in the midst of everyday, ordinary losses we all endure. tion, was not widely used until the 1970s.) fled by English customs, spends her days a clearing, they come upon a red velvet Levitt is a professor of religion at Temple But when Levitt writes that she “hopes to “wandering through the rooms in a daze.” chaise longue. How is this possible? she University, an American Jew who has no invert the all-too-pervasive logic that insists Janusz must teach mother and son “not to wonders. Is it an enchantment, a halluci- immediate connection to the Holocaust but that the Holocaust must always come first,” take a bath in their clothes, . . . not to steal nation, or simply a piece of furniture dis- has been moved by memoirs and litera- one wonders whether it is really true that vegetables from the allotments by the river.” carded by a fleeing family? It scarcely ture, and wishes to build a bridge between individuals’ ordinary losses have been Aurek hates school and misses the forest, matters. Holding Aurek close, she lies her own familial losses and those extraor- overshadowed by Holocaust memory. And where he learned to sing out like a bird. down on the couch, hoping death will dinary losses in order to understand both if so, who is making such demands of Jew- Moving between Janusz’s and Silvana’s come quickly: “This way, she reasoned as better. Her argument is simple but pro- ish Americans? (and occasionally Aurek’s) points of view, she let go of consciousness, they would be found: that all of us, no matter how close (Continued on page 15) Hodgkinson links each to flashbacks from together forever. She and the child.” September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 LAST SURVIVING AUSTRIAN WHO HID JEWS HONORED Walter Posiles as well as his brother Lud- Posiles, the last one of 88 Austrians known “I managed to keep him busy on the BY GEORGE JAHN, AP wig survived. Hans, the oldest brother, to have saved Jews from the Holocaust stairs just long enough for them to grab beat the odds of being found by the Nazis, who is still alive. their belongings and jump over a balcony t was 1942 in Hitler’s Austria, a time only to be killed by a Russian bomb during “Even though I’m a coward,” the former to freedom,” she said, adding that other when a late-night knock on the door I the dying days of the war. librarian adds after a pause, moving gin- quarters were found for the three until Fritz could have resulted in deportation or gerly from her walker to stand proudly be- left again. death. Edeltrud Becher shuddered as she fore banner letters prominently spelling out Even though leaving their shelter was heard the rap of knuckles from unan- her name on Vienna’s bustling Ring Av- dangerous, the brothers took chances. nounced visitors. Posiles recalls standing in a park in front enue along with Austria’s 87 other known of the apartment, handbag in hand, and lift- She opened the door and gasped: In- “Righteous Gentiles.” ing the bag with left hand if all clear, right stead of the Gestapo, her Jewish fiancé erman industrialist Oskar Schindler and his two brothers were on the hand if not, “because I’m left handed.” Gand Swedish diplomat Raoul Wal- “Once Walter and I went into a coffee doorstep, looking nervously over their lenberg are well known for rescuing thou- shoulders. house and minutes later the Gestapo sands, but others who saved more modest rushed in, looking for deserters,” she said. The three had fled to Prague after the numbers of Jews remain anonymous un- “Walter pretended to be a waiter, grabbing Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. But by less profiled by exhibits such as the Vienna a bunch of newspapers and distributing 1942, that city too was in the hands of show, put on by a Holocaust remembrance them among the guests.” Hitler’s henchmen. The three were told to group. Feeding three hungry men called for tak- pack essentials for deportation to a con- Posiles insists that what she did was ing further risks despite the consequences centration camp. nothing special, but it’s clear that she en- for being caught that included execution. They wrote suicide notes to make au- joyed the sudden prominence granted her “We made counterfeit food ration cards so thorities think they were dead, and then did by the exhibit that ran from late April that we could get food for five,” said what no one thought any Jew would do: through early May. Posiles. they took a night train straight to Vienna, Frail, but sharp as a tack and with a While many Austrians embraced Hitler Edeltrud Posiles, 94, is the last one of 88 Aus- back into the heartland of the Nazi Reich. wicked sense of humor, she willingly an- and his ideology, not all were enthusiastic trians known to have saved Jews from the Holo- followers. Posiles said that while some In deciding to protect them from the Nazis swered questions shouted into her ear as caust who is still alive. friends would not have hidden Jews out of that night, Becher now Edeltrud Posiles she related some of the more chilling mo- fear for their lives, they shared in her se- embarked on a dangerous game of hide- Hiding Jews was punishable by death. ments of her adventure while sitting in the cret and kept silent. and-seek that included some truly hairy But the feisty 94-year-old says “there was cafeteria of her seniors’ residence. “They behaved admirably,” she said of moments: on one occasion the three never a moment’s doubt in my mind,” when There was the time, for instance, when the dozen or so people she said she had jumped from a balcony to escape detec- asked if she hesitated as she was asked Fritz, the Nazi fiancé of Posiles’ sister, to confide in “for one reason or another.” tion, and Walter, her future husband, pre- by the brothers for sanctuary. came home from the front lines on leave “As for me, I have a clear conscience,” tended to be a waiter as the Gestapo And even though the marriage ended in unexpectedly while the three brothers were she said of the war years. “Not everyone stormed a cafe. divorce, “I would do it again,” declares being hidden in his apartment. can say the same.” HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS AGAIN SEEK INSURANCE CLAIMS The threat of private lawsuits, adminis- been ratcheting up its efforts to bring pres- resented only a small fraction of the $20 BY ERIC LICHTBLAU, tration officials say, treads on the presi- sure on the Obama administration and on billion in current dollars that was owed on THE NEW YORK TIMES dent’s authority to set foreign policy. The leading Jewish groups to change their Holocaust-era insurance policies. United States Court of Appeals for the Sec- stance on the volatile insurance issue. The bulk of the claims have gone unpaid, ixty-six years after she survived the ond Circuit last year validated the State The survivors group took out full-page Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, Mr. Dubbin said, while many of the sur- S Department’s position as it dismissed advertisements in Jewish and mainstream Renee Firestone is still trying to find out vivors are living in poverty in cities around claims brought against an Italian insurance newspapers accusing leading Jewish what became of an insurance policy that the United States. “It’s an utter disgrace,” company, Generali, which had issued groups like the American Jewish Commit- she suspects her father, who died in the he said. many policies before the Holocaust to Eu- tee of “dishonoring” the memories of the Holocaust, took out from an Italian insurer usan Rubin, 84, a Hungarian native ropean Jews who wanted to protect them- Holocaust. before the war. Swho survived Auschwitz and now selves financially against the rise of Nazi The ads accused Jewish groups of “pro- Ms. Firestone, 87, a naturalized Ameri- lives in Brooklyn, said that she spotted the power. tecting” European insurers like Allianz be- can citizen from the former Czechoslova- name of her father, Jozsef Rosenfeld, who “The State Department is concerned that cause the insurers gave money to kia who became a fashion designer in Los died at Auschwitz, on a listing of unclaimed lawsuits by the sur- American-Jewish Angeles, expected resistance from the in- insurance policies in 2001. It indicated that vivors could not only causes. (Allianz, based surance companies that fielded claims he had taken out a policy with Generali in disrupt prior agree- in Germany, had com- from many thousands of Holocaust sur- Budapest. But after she put in her claim, ments with European vivors and their heirs. What she did not mitted in 2008 to buy- the processors rejected it for lack of evi- governments but might foresee, she said, was the opposition from ing naming rights to the dence; she was unable to prove that her also have a negative her own government — including the State New Meadowlands father was the same Jozsef Rosenfeld who impact on other repara- Department and Congress — to her get- Stadium for $25 million took out the policy. tion agreements grow- a year, but the Jets and ting her day in court. Incensed and dejected, she and her hus- ing out of the Holocaust the Giants pulled out of “What’s so painful is that we can see band, Nathan, wrote to legislators in Wash- as well,” the depart- talks after publicity over they’re just waiting for all of us to die,” she ington and Albany to ask for help, but they ment said in a state- the company’s role in said. got no response. ment. insuring Nazi facilities, The legal claims by hundreds of Ameri- “It’s not about the money,” Mr. Rubin In line with the State including Auschwitz, can survivors like Ms. Firestone have set said. “It’s about what they took away from Department, leading and of blocking pay- off an intense lobbying campaign in Wash- us. You figure there’s any hope now? Jewish groups like the ment of survivors’ ington on their behalf. But opposition from There’s not too many years left for us.” American Jewish Com- claims after the Holo- the government and even from leading The accusation from Mr. Dubbin’s group Jewish groups has created an uncomfort- mittee and the Anti- caust.) Defamation League Eighteen survivors that Jewish leaders have neglected sur- able rift between groups that are normally vivors because of their own agendas “is in alliance and has created a potential have also opposed the also sent Secretary of survivors’ attempts to State Hillary Rodham awful and horrible and offensive,” said minefield for President Obama. Renee Firestone. plead their case in Clinton a nine-page let- Rabbi Andrew Baker, the director of inter- “The whole thing saddens me,” Elie national Jewish affairs for the American Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who is perhaps court and have lobbied against prior efforts ter expressing their anger and disappoint- Jewish Committee. the most well-known Holocaust survivor, by Congress to intervene, as have the in- ment over the treatment of their claims. He pointed, for instance, to a recent said of the rift over the insurance benefits. surance companies themselves. “It is beyond the pale that we should be agreement forged with Germany by the “I don’t know how or why this has hap- Now, however, a new push in Congress perceived as the adversary of our govern- State Department and Jewish groups to pened, but the survivors should be helped on behalf of the survivors appears to be ment, to be gamed and denied what was secure more than $500 million in financing however we can.” gaining some ground. ours and was stolen from us by companies The State Department, under both the “I’m feeling optimistic that this is our with the protection of the most vicious for home care for elderly Holocaust sur- Obama and George W. Bush administra- year,” said Representative Ileana Ros- regime in history,” they wrote. vivors. tions, has vigorously opposed the idea of Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who intro- Sam Dubbin, a Miami lawyer who works Stuart E. Eizenstat, a special envoy to allowing survivors to press claims in court duced legislation in the House in March with a number of Holocaust survivors, said the State Department who worked on the against European insurance companies that would force insurers to disclose the the current proposal in Congress was “the recent home-care agreement, said it was because they say it would undermine a names of Holocaust-era policy holders and last, best hope” for correcting what he said distressing to see the government’s efforts, reparations agreement that the United allow survivors and their heirs to seek was a historical injustice. He said that the and his own personal integrity, now under States reached in 2000 with Germany, claims in American courts. claims process set in place by the 2000 attack by some survivors. which led to $300 million in insurance pay- One group of survivors, known as the agreement with Germany was rife with “I can’t figure it out,” he said. “It’s just ments to survivors and their heirs. Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA, has abuse and that money paid out from it rep- very, very sad.” Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER

CHILDREN AT THE SHABBOS TABLE: DREAMS OF A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR Over the last year in Israel 13,000 Holo- in 2002 (The Living Miracle, Targum 105-degree fever and dehydrated, and BY RIVKA CHAYA BERMAN, caust survivors passed away. It’s esti- Press), where she recounted the horrors was treated in a makeshift hospital, once LUBAVITCH.COM mated that by 2015, only 145,000 she endured and the faith that carried her Bergen’s officers’ club. Margot had but Holocaust survivors will remain alive in Is- through. one answer for friends who asked her ime has blurred the A-4890 tattoo on rael. How many of them will possess the Sitting alongside a floor-to-ceiling win- what her last wishes were. A peaceful Margot Dzialoszynski’s arm. At 85, she T dow of her daughter’s gracious Bnei Brak passing? Some rest? Food? hesitates before offering details about how home, her clear eyes catching Israel’s “My dream is I want a big family to sit she survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, sunlight, Margot smiles at her daughter and sing around the Shabbos table.” Birkenau, Gross-Rosen and Bergen-Belsen. and her granddaughter Kreindy, who is In her memoirs, Margot later wrote, But she’ll sing Hebrew songs learned as back in Israel after teaching at Chabad “The vision of Shabbos is what kept me a first-grader in Berlin’s Rykestrasse centers in San Francisco and Cincinnati. going in the worst moments.” School, and she’ll rattle off the names of the That this woman survived Hitler’s death Margot’s dream has long been realized. 13 children she and husband Avraham camps, the murder of her parents and two Despite a doctor’s dire predictions about brought into the world after the Holocaust. brothers,and near-death from typhus and the effects of illnesses that left Margot (“Because the Germans killed so many of tuberculosis, and then went on to raise a desperately weak for years after the war, us, we have to make up for the loss,” she large family in Switzerland and enjoy she married Avraham Dzialoszynski, a told a washerwoman who questioned her golden years in Israel, qualifies as a text- doctor-to-be who followed the Lubavitcher family’s size.) book definition of the “living miracle.” Rebbe’s advice to stay in Basel, and But even when Margot is prompted by n her daughter’s household, there is teach Jewish children there and in Zurich. daughter Rivka Marules to retell the stories no danger of forgetting the circum- The Dzialoszynskis raised one of the she once shared, she cannot. Rivka asks, I stances of this miracle even if Margot can biggest families in Basel. “Remember when the Nazi shot in the air no longer tell the story of Chanukah, “As a child, I didn’t realize how hard it and did not shoot at you?” 1944. When Margot worked in the muni- was, how my mother managed. My “Thank G-d, I forgot.” tions factory at the Gross-Rosen labor mother had nobody,” said Rivka. “Despite Margot Dzialoszynski (right) with her daughter The call to the second, third, now fourth camp outside of Christianstadt, she scav- all the hardship, my mother never Rivka Marules. post-Holocaust generation to “Never Forget” enged wax from the camp dump and dreamed of giving up.” grows more urgent with each passing year. ability to share their experiences is far baked potato peels into latkes. Of all the messages from the Holocaust, Margot is one of Israel’s 208,000 Holocaust fewer than that. Soon the books, the To this day, “I cannot throw away food,” this is the one Rivka is most adamant survivors. The time when men and women Spielberg interviews, the artifacts in Yad said Rivka, now a grandmother and about passing on to her children. “Life can of Margot’s generation could be counted Vashem, the purposefully preserved mother of 10 children, ages 29 to 3. be tough,” but instead of welcoming a upon to bear witness to the Holocaust at memories will be all we have from this There are other lessons that endure and peaceful death, her mother wished for a school assemblies and speak at community generation that is both our sorrow and our serve to strengthen the next generation. family singing at a Shabbos table. memorials is quickly fading away. rebirth. Margot published her own memoir After the war, Margot was delirious with a “That’s how she made it.” SAFE HOUSE ishing, it is served all year round, even in There are clashes of personality and Most I speak to don’t share that sentiment. BY JONATHAN FREEDLAND, the height of summer. Thin soup is never squabbles, as there would be in any similar “We’re a diminishing flock,” says Harry Fox, THE GUARDIAN on the menu, says Rachelle Lazarus, one center (or youth club, for that matter). But 81, born Chaim Fuchs and a survivor of sev- here they have a different quality. eral camps, including Buchenwald. “If we t’s a building you would never notice, of the center’s full-time staff: thin soup is Before I visited, I had been warned that didn’t let others in, we’d be very small.” He on a busy traffic intersection in Hendon, too associated with the camps. I there was a “strong sense of hierarchy” endorses the center’s inclusion of those who a stubbornly unfashionable part of north Similarly, I notice that a basket carrying among the survivors, according to who had came to the UK as refugees after November London. Inside, there is nothing that would big, solid chunks of bread is out all the 1938 – the month of Germany’s Kristallnacht catch the eye: the meeting rooms are filled time, even after lunch has been cleared pogrom against the Jews – including many with basic, functional furniture. A quick away. That’s a legacy of the time someone on the Kindertransport, the prewar evacua- glance at the people who have come to took away someone else’s bread. “All hell tion route that saw Jewish parents in Ger- visit would suggest nothing more than a broke loose,” Lazarus says. The injured many and beyond send some 10,000 regular drop-in center for the elderly. party had saved that bread for later, a habit children to Britain for safety. Besides, Harry But linger more than a moment and you’ll developed seven decades ago and never shaken off. To this day, many of those who adds, “I feel sorry for those Kindertransport realize this is no ordinary place. I have endured enforced hunger – whether in a children. Eight or nine, and they were taken barely taken off my coat when Sam concentration camp or ghetto – need to away from their parents. I was with my Pivnick, strong-voiced and vigorous at 85, know there is food available, just in case. mother till 1942 and my father till 1945. I’m urges me to sit down with him as he fin- So the bread rolls stay out. lucky.” ishes off a bowl of thick, steaming soup. I’m also struck by the appearance of those he Holocaust Survivors Center We have not been speaking long when he who have come on this midweek day. Many, began with a gap. Judith Hassan, rolls up his sleeve to show me the bluey T especially those in their 70s, rather than 90s, then a newly trained psychotherapist with line of digits that still stains the skin of his are short. That’s how most of the world’s re- the Jewish Welfare Board – predecessor left arm: the tattoo that marks former in- maining Holocaust survivors look – short be- of today’s Jewish Care – was working in mates of Auschwitz. cause starvation stunted their growth as late-1970s Swiss Cottage. It was an area For this is the Holocaust Survivors Cen- children or teenagers. Harry Fox: “If you survive, it’s luck.” of north London she knew had become ter, the only place of its kind in Britain and hatever preconceptions you might endured the worst fate under the Nazis, home to many who had either escaped or the first of its kind anywhere. Its clients, W have about a day center for the with those who had been through the survived the Nazis’ war against the Jews. numbering 550 – including 300 regulars – elderly should be checked at the door. The death camps ranked above those who Yet they were not coming forward. “They are now deep into their 70s, 80s and 90s. men are smartly dressed, most in jackets were, for example, child refugees from didn’t want to seek help,” Hassan says What they have in common is direct expe- and ties; the women are elegantly turned Germany. now. “These were people who had sur- rience of the event widely regarded as the out. Judith Hassan, the center’s founder Sure enough, Sam Pivnick and I had vived by keeping a low profile; they had greatest crime in human history. and director, tells me that, too, is the prod- been talking for only a few minutes when learned not to appear frail or vulnerable.” Here, one regular tells me, “If people uct of a survival strategy. “If you looked un- another man wanted to join our conversa- They were especially wary of a formal or- ask, ‘Where are you from?’ they mean, well, you were going to be exterminated,” tion, standing over us, interjecting with ob- ganization, even a Jewish charity anxious ‘What did you go through?’” Here, memo- she says. Survivors have told her that, servations of his own. It turned out he was to help. In the war years, being on a list ries of tragedy, despair and the most ap- back in the camps, they would sometimes one of those who had escaped Germany held by a bureaucracy could spell death. palling suffering are not the exception; they prick their fingers, rubbing the blood on as a child, a baby in fact. Soon Sam’s pa- Hassan recalls the attitude: “It’s an institu- are the rule. their cheeks so they would not look too tience snapped. “Who wants to hear about tion, it’s an organization – it’s dangerous.” It manifests itself in the most unexpected pale to work. Because if you didn’t work, you?” he shouted. “What did you survive? But it was clear there were people who ways. Take that soup. Thick, hot and nour- you didn’t live. You were in your mother’s womb!” (Continued on page 11) September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7

ULTRA-ORTHODOX MAN WE MUST STOP TIME DESTROYING BUYS DIARIES OF NAZI DOCTOR MENGELE OUR LAST PROOF OF THE HOLOCAUST BY OFER ADERET, HAARETZ can read about what happened here but “The water level in the ground is very he diaries written by Nazi death BY ANTONELLA LAZZERI, THE SUN being here makes it very real.” high. In winter it freezes, then it thaws and T camp doctor Josef Mengele after he makes the foundations move. he found it tucked tightly into a shoe. Dr. Cywinski added: “It is especially impor- escaped to South America were auctioned “The camp was built by starving prison- A young child’s math test hidden by tant to preserve it for future generations. off in August to an ultra-Orthodox American S ers. It was never intended by the Germans a proud parent desperate to keep some- “If we want to avoid new genocides we man for $245,000. that Auschwitz or Birkenau would be per- thing he could cherish. must make new generations aware of the The man, whose name was not dis- manent. It is something of a miracle that Both father and child almost certainly tragedy of Auschwitz. If there is nothing closed by the auction house, is apparently they still exist.” died at Auschwitz. The paper is now care- here, memories will fade. an avid collector of WWII artifacts. fully preserved among the 35,000 other “The last survivors will eventually die. It One of the most infamous and gruesome war criminals of the Holocaust, Mengele, documents found at the concentration is only this place which will be left to tell nicknamed the “Angel of Death”, was camp after it was liberated by the Allies. their story.” blamed for tens of thousands of deaths in It was discovered by conservationist uschwitz was opened as a memorial his role as concentration camp doctor. Paulina Scigaj, 25, as she worked on A and museum in 1947. Last year it at- Over the objections of Holocaust sur- cleaning some of the shoes – there are tracted more visitors than ever before, vivors and historians, the auction took 110,000 – looted from the millions of Jews nearly 1.4 million, some coming from as far place at Alexander Historical Auctions in and other prisoners sent to Auschwitz by away as South Korea. Stamford, Connecticut. It will cost around £4 million a year to the Nazis during the Second World War. The price for Mengele’s nearly 3,400 preserve it. Dr. Cywinski wants to raise a Horrifyingly, 1.1 million victims died there hand-written pages of invective fell short of fund of £104 million. Governments all over and at its satellite camp, Birkenau. a widely cited estimate of the value at the world have donated but there is still a Now gently holding a woman’s red velvet $400,000 to $1 million. stiletto, Paulina said: “This job can be very shortfall of £31.2 million. All the money will The 31 ring notebooks and bound diaries emotional. Finding that test, thinking of be spent on preserving Auschwitz for fu- were written from 1960 to 1975, long after who that child was – it was very difficult. ture generations. Mengele had escaped following World War “Cleaning the children’s shoes and baby In the labs the scientists work on saving Moving ... Paulina Scigaj works to preserve vic- tims’ shoes. booties is the hardest. Some of the women all sorts of things, from paintings done by working here are mothers.” prisoners on the walls to the pots and pans Some of the barracks walls and chim- Paulina is just one of around 50 people and the meticulous hygiene records kept neys are shored up by wooden batons as employed in Auschwitz’s Preservation Unit by the Nazis. experts work out how they can be saved. near the entrance to the camp in Os- The artifacts pose unique challenges. Pawel said: “We cannot simply rebuild wiecim, Poland. The iconic displays in- For the documents alone, scientists had to and recreate. That would be wrong. clude shoes, suitcases, spectacles, baby identify 132 different types of ink and how “We need to find a method of preserving clothes, and even artificial limbs. best to preserve them. It took three years what is there. Not adding, not replacing.” But those items are, like the camp and to restore them. Crematorium No. 2 at Birkenau – in which the infamous gate themselves, crumbling The shoes have to be vacuumed to re- up to 2,000 people an hour were gassed – away with the passage of time. move dust and insects, then cleaned with was blown up by the Nazis as they fled the Pawel Sawicki, who also works there, camps. Pawel said: “Strangely, it is harder a special soap and oiled if they are leather. Dr. Mengele. said: “Left alone they would eventually But they are never mended – nor are any to preserve ruins than buildings. of the other artifacts. “A building has a roof to protect it from II to Paraguay and Brazil. He drowned in Paulina said: “Our the elements. Here we have injected the 1979 in Brazil. ground around the ruins with micropiles of job is not to restore During the Holocaust, the SS physician cement. them to original condi- carried out grisly pseudo-medical re- “It makes the area more stable. It would search. One of his main roles was in “se- tion but as they were not be right to simply recreate the crema- lection duty,” where he decided whether found after the camp torium. People died here.” arriving Jews and other prisoners went to was liberated. We do Many of the wooden barracks at the site the gas chambers or were kept alive for not do a makeover. have already collapsed. work details. That would remove The gate tower – seen in so many Holo- In his flight from Auschwitz as Soviet the authenticity of caust films – is also in danger, so now the troops advanced on Poland, Mengele kept things here.” number of visitors allowed to climb up it is under the radar at a refugee camp and as a Some of the shoes limited. farm worker in Bavaria until 1949, when he were ripped apart by Aside from preserving the camps, the escaped to South America. In the diaries he the Nazis looking for foundation money will also be used to writes about himself in the third person, but hidden precious jew- slightly change the focus of them. Pawel the books were judged to be authentic. elry, such as wedding said: “The museums were built by sur- The diaries had belonged for a time to Gone but not forgotten ... Jews arrive at the camp by train. rings. She added: “We vivors who at the time did not want to re- Mengele’s son, according to the Frankfurter do not repair those, just clean them.” member the perpetrators. crumble away like dust. It is vital we work Allgemeine Zeitung, but he was apparently Just as much in danger of crumbling “But now we want to personalize them. to preserve them. They are evidence of not the direct seller. A spokesman for the away are the buildings of Auschwitz and There were 8,000 to 9,000 SS men who what happened here. Stamford auction house confirmed the sale served here. “The shoes, the spectacles – they are as Birkenau, which was known to the Nazis to the German Press Agency dpa, but re- “We need to tell their stories, alongside important as the buildings.” as Auschwitz II. fused to give information about the seller or the victims. Aside from those on display, the experts Dr. Cywinski said: “If we do nothing then the buyer, saying it was up to customers “There were also 2,000 companies that have a huge number of other items looted I fear that within five years Birkenau will no whether or not to go public about a purchase. supplied these camps, like the builders of longer exist. The situation there is critical.” Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander from the prisoners by the Nazis that also the crematoria. Walking around Birkenau – known as the Historic Auctions, said that his intention need preserving. “This was a state-run institution. We extermination camp because it is where was for a Holocaust collector or museum They include pushchairs and family pho- need to illustrate that.” most gassings were carried out – it is clear to buy them, “for preservation.” In 2010, tos. Some of them will eventually become Pledging money to the foundation last to see what he means. the auction house sold another Mengele exhibits. One thing that the conservationists year, Prime Minister David Cameron said: Out of 35 brick barracks only two are diary, written right after he fled Auschwitz, do not work on is the mass of hair – two tons “Auschwitz-Birkenau is a very powerful re- open to the public. And they are in shock- to the grandson of a camp survivor. of it shaven from prisoners’ heads – which minder of the ultimate consequences of in- ing condition. Wolfgang Benz, former head of the Cen- is displayed in a glass cabinet. tolerance.” Huge cracks run down walls, the cement Over the years it has faded from brown, More than 60 years ago, the retreating ter for Research on Antisemitism of the blonde and red to grey. floors are buckled, the wooden pallets – on Nazis tried to destroy the camps – attempt- Technische Universitaet Berlin, con- Paulina said: “It is human remains. We which up to seven prisoners slept side by ing to remove all the horrifying evidence of demned the sale of Mengele’s diaries. He do not touch it out of respect to the victims. side – are disintegrating. the biggest mass murder in human history. said the documents belonged in the Ger- Eventually, it will turn to dust.” One of the few things remaining in good Now the experts at Auschwitz are locked man federal archives and called the auc- Standing under the sign at the entrance condition in the barracks that housed more in a battle to ensure the ravages of time tion “obscene.” of the camp – with its foreboding message than 700 people at a time are the slogans don’t succeed where the Nazis failed. “I think it’s even more obscene ... that “Work Makes You Free” – Dr. Piotr Cywin- scrawled on the walls by the Nazis. Auschwitz survivor Henry Appel says anybody expected a Jewish organization ski, the director of Auschwitz, said firmly: Messages including “Silence!”, “Be they must win. to buy these diaries,” the historian told “We are the curator of memories. Clean” and “One Louse is Your Death!”. He added: “There is only one thing worse German public radio. “Coming here is an experience like no Pawel said: “At Birkenau nature is our than Auschwitz itself – and that is if the Mengele biographer Ulrich Voelklein other. This site has a unique power. You enemy. world forgets there was such a place.” called the auction “distasteful.” Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 THETHE AMERICANAMERICAN ANDAND INTERNATIONALINTERNATIONAL SOCIETIESOCIETIE

THE AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM CORDIALLY INVITE YOU TO ATTEND THEIR ANNUAL TRIBUTE DINNER Celebrating 30 years of achievement PRESERVING THE PAST – GUARDING THE FUTURE Honoring: Pioneers and Visionaries

Sunday, November 20, 2011 Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers 811 Seventh Avenue at 52nd Street New York City Reception 5:00 PM Dinner 6:30 PM Dietary Laws Observed Black Tie Optional

HONORARY CHAIRMAN Elie Wiesel PIONEERS AND VISIONARIES Judith & Harry Wilf z"l Toby & Charles Drukier z"l Elizabeth & Joseph Wilf Stella and Sam z"l Skura Gladys & Sam Halpern Julia & Isidore Karten z"l Eva & Arie z"l Halpern Diana z"l & Eli Zborowski PIONEERS Rochelle & Arthur Belfer z"l Paula & William z"l Mandell Regina & Salo Gutfreund z"l Elinor & Norman Belfer Sally & Isaac Levenstein z"l Lucia z"l & Joseph Distenfeld Rhoda & David Chase Doris & Solomon z"l Gross Eta z"l & Henry Wrobel Jean & Eugen Gluck Selma Gruder Horowitz Lillian & Sam Bloch Joseph & Al Bukiet z"l Renata & Murray Alon Halina & Samson z"l Bitensky Eta & Ulo Barad Pola & Henry Major z"l Murray Weiss Ellis & Israel Krakowski Sigmund Strochlitz z"l David Berg z"l Myrna z"l & Mark Palmer Louise & Murray z"l Pantirer Dorothy & Julius Berman Celina & Marvin Zborowski Cesia & Frank Blaichman Mina & Abraham Zuckerman and Marysia & David Feuerstein Sally & Jack Pomeranc Wayne Zuckerman Ronald Lauder Rosa & Herman z"l Strygler Raphael Recanati z"l VISIONARIES Dr. Miriam & Sheldon G. Adelson Gale & Ira Drukier Beth & Leonard Wilf Marilyn & Barry Rubenstein Sharon & David Halpern Fela & David Shapell Cheryl & Moshe z"l Lifshitz Audrey & Zygmunt Wilf Ruth z"l & David Mitzner and Jane & Mark Wilf Mindy & Ira Mitzner Marilyn & Jack A. Belz and Sarah Sima & Nathan z"l Katz and Rita & Lilly & Nathan Shapell z"l and Vera & Phillip Belz z"l David Levy & Paul Guerin Irma & Norman Braman Phyllis & William Mack Edita & Abraham Spiegel z"l Renee & Lester Crown Cecile & Edward Mosberg Steven Spielberg Claire Friedlander z"l Mark Moskowitz Moniek & Axel Stawski Families Gail & Colin Halpern Marilyn & Jack H. Pechter Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Rochelle & Henryk Schwarz Ruta & Felix z"l Zandman Seryl & Charles Kushner Tina z"l & Steven Schwarz HONORARY CHAIRMEN Sheldon Adelson Sam Halpern Julius Berman Rabbi Israel M. Lau Avner Shalev Hon. Ido Aharoni Edgar N. Bronfman Hon. Michael Oren Dr. Yitzchak Arad Matthew Bronfman Hon. Gideon Sa'ar Fred Zeidman HONORARY CO-CHAIRMEN Hon. Chris Christie Hon. Frank Lautenberg Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman Hon. Kirsten Gillibrand Hon. Charles E. Schumer

GENERAL CHAIRMEN Eli Zborowski Leonard Wilf Dr. Miriam Adelson Ira Drukier GENERAL CO-CHAIRMEN Cheryl Lifshitz Dr. Axel Stawski Jan Groveman Melvin Bukiet Zygmunt Wilf Marilyn & Jack A. Belz Sharon Halpern Marilyn Rubenstein Beth Wilf Roberta & Irwin Chafetz Richard M. Joel Steven Schwarz Jane & Mark Wilf Joan & Theodore Cutler Seryl & Charles Kushner Fela & David Shapell Ruta Zandman Gale Drukier Rita & David Levy Dr. Ingrid D. Tauber Murry Zborowski Dr. Lilly & Avner Naveh Audrey Wilf Rebecca & Michael Altman Annette & Barry Goldberg Dara & Brian Rubenstein Berne & James Bookhammer Elaine & Joel Goldstein Rochelle & Henryk Schwarz Drs. Rochelle & Robert Cherry Phyllis & William Mack Steven Spielberg Merry & Seymour Cohen Marilyn & Jack Pechter Marcia & Dr. Yaakov Toledano The Crown Family Karen & Harvey Pollak Mara & Richard Weissman September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 ESES FORFOR YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM ANNUALANNUAL TRIBUTETRIBUTE DINNERDINNER

DINNER CHAIRMEN Ira Mitzner Barry Rubenstein David Halpern DINNER COMMITTEE CHAIRWOMEN Gladys Halpern Elly Krakowski Stella Skura Elizabeth Wilf Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Elizabeth Zborowski Esther Born Celina Zborowski Selma Gruder Horowitz Rita Distenfeld Doris Gross Mindy Mitzner Anna Erlich Eva Halpern Lili Stawski DINNER CO-CHAIRMEN Rella & Charles Feldman Caroline & Morris Massel Mark Moskowitz Andrew Groveman Abbi & Jeremy Halpern Elisa & Alan Pines Debbie & Richard Born Michael S. Miller David Mitzner Fred Distenfeld Gail & Colin Halpern Anne Oster Cheryl & Mark Grunwald Jack Halpern Nancy & Larry Pantirer Batsheva & Murray Halpern Deedee & Mark Honigsfeld Galit & Ziggy Zborowski Cheryl & Fred Halpern Lee & Murray Kushner Judith & Mark Zborowski Tami & Fred Mack TRIBUTE CHAIRMEN Prof. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski Joseph Wilf Prof. Feliks Tych Prof. Yehuda Bauer Rhoda & David Chase Hon. Elie Wiesel Prof. Israel Gutman Renata & Murray Alon Rose Moskowitz Israel Krakowski Bernard Aptaker Susan Crown Connie & Harvey Krueger Ella & Ulo Barad Suzanne Czuker Cecile & Edward Mosberg Elinor & Norman C. Belfer Jean & Eugen Gluck Diana & Simon Mundlak Dorothy Berman Hannah & Bruce Goldman Mark Palmer Halina Bitensky Jill Goodman Evelyn & Dr. Israel Singer Mark Blum Sonia and Michael Gordon Reuven Spiegel Al S. Bukiet Beth & Benjamin Heller Rosa Strygler Rose Bukiet Danielle & Harry Karten Marvin Zborowski Barbara Kort TRIBUTE CO-CHAIRMEN Sara & Charles Bedzow Ruth Hart Mr. & Mrs. Jerry Pollak Mr. & Mrs. Zigi Ben-Haim Ruth & Mark Hasten Sally & Jack Pomeranc Patricia Willens & Scott Berrie Kim & Gary Heiman Sari & Israel Roizman Cesia and Frank Blaichman Martin Heinfling Hedda & Sheldon Rudoff Betty Breslaw Meredith Heller Nancy & Sam Shamie Susan & Stanley Chesley Pnina & Anatol Hiller Alan Silverman Mr. & Mrs. Victor Chaltiel Susan & Arnold Holtzman Jacqueline & David Simon Murray Chernick Doris & Simon Konover Sara & Moniek Stawski Joseph Distenfeld Cecile & Roman Kriegstein Lillian & Milton Steinberg Helene & Glenn Dorfman Mr. & Mrs. Herb Leshkowitz William Unger Claire & Issace Fenster Pamela & Joseph Lubeck Joy & Benjamin Warren Suellen & Gordon Freeman Paula Mandell Naomi Warren Doretta & Jona Goldrich Esther & David Mann Rose Zarucki Rachel Landau Gottstein & Eva Mellen Millie & Abraham Zuckerman Bernard Gottstein Lucy Pantirer Anne Zygelman TRIBUTE COMMITTEE Abe Besser Maria Herskovic Mr. & Mrs. Hans Seidmann Lilly & Sam Bloch Mr. & Mrs. Allen Hymowitz Fred Slifka Judy & Phillip Bloom Gustave Jacobs Charles Sporer Judi & Kenneth Burnstein Sima Katz Rudolph Tessler Jane & Alan Cornell Elsie Levy Olga & Herman Wachtenheim Vera & Joseph Eden Ardith & Charles Mederrick Regina & David Weinberg Lewis L. Fagen Mindyleah & Sam Pollak Bernice & David Weiss Lynn & Erwin Fisch Miriam & Louis Rosenbaum Steve Wolosky Jane & Ishaia Gol Lillian Rozmaryn Henry Wrobel Moritz Goldfeier Arlene & Jerry Sanders Julie & Scott Zelnick Menora & Ernst Hacke Dr. & Mrs. Stephen Schwartz Marjorie & Aaron Ziegelman DINNER COMMITTEE (in formation) Leslie & Michael Adler Rochelle & Maks Etingin William Z. Reich Barbara & Harvey Arfa Charles Fried Lidia & Jimmy Resnick Dr. Debbie & Sheldon Bootin Roselyn & Dr. Mark Friedman Jacqueline & Sigmund Rolat Gail & Bruce Bukiet Sharon & Dr. Jeffrey Frieling Menachem Rosensaft Karen & Michael Bukiet Dan Hoffman Stephen Savitt Bernice Cohen Margalith Hoffman Bella & George Savran Sherrye & David Dantzker Lindy & Murray J. Laulicht Betty & Howard Schwartz Cheri & Arnon Deshe Frank Levy Cynthia & Jeff Wisenfeld Edith Druyan and Martin Major David Mandelbaum Elaine & Irwin Zamore Sarah Eisner Stanley Nayer Amy & Brad Zelnick Trudy & Sol Englander Susan & Mark Nevins Wayne Zuckerman Shelly & Joseph Paradis YOUNG LEADERSHIP ASSOCIATES DINNER COMMITTEE Nadav Besner Rebecca Hanus Nicole & Joseph Meyer Keren Toledano Rachel Stone & Robert Ilana & Mitchell Kahn Sivan Ochshorn Ariel & Josh Weiner Bernstein Julie & Reuben Kopel Jaci & Gonen Paradis Cori & Jason Wilf Lauren & Justin Brody Alexandra Leibowitz Nina & Jeffrey Jeffrey Wilf Adina & Lawrence Burian Barry Levine Rubenstein Lisa & Orin Wilf Jennifer Drukier Nicole & Avi Lieberman Mindy & Alan Schall Rachel & Jonathan Wilf Alan Fried Ilana Lifshitz Aliza & Elie Singer Ariel Zborowski Yonina Gomberg Iris & Adam Lindenbaum Jennifer & Mark Smith Boaz Zborowski Jessica Mauk Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM

PORTRAITS OF JEWISH “COUNTERFEITERS” DONATED TO YAD VASHEM with other portraits created by artists im- British pounds that could be air-dropped Red Army approached the operation was BY CRISTIAN SALAZAR AND prisoned during World War II. on England to undermine the Allied coun- demobilized; the prisoners were sent with RANDY HERSCHAFT, AP Shendar said they belonged to a genre try’s economy, but the plan did not work the equipment to Mauthausen concentra- of portraiture by imprisoned artists who out. The bogus money was also used to fi- tion camp, then to a smaller camp in Redl- e survived the Holocaust carrying the sought to document the faces of people nance Nazi espionage. Zipf. The prisoners were then taken to solemn portraits he drew of concen- H who were likely doomed. Lawrence Malkin, the author of Ebensee, to be killed. tration camp prisoners who labored along- he Nazis hand-picked from death side him in one of the largest counterfeiting Krueger’s Men: The Secret Nazi Counter- But one day their Nazi guards disap- operations in history. For decades, those Tcamps a group of about 140 mostly feit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19, said peared, and Cytrin and the other members portraits have rarely been seen. skilled craftsmen at the Sachsenhausen in notes for a 2011 speech that at the of “Operation Bernhard” were liberated in Now the collection of 43 drawings by concentration camp north of Berlin begin- height of production in 1943 and 1944, the early May 1945. Felix Cytrin of his fellow Jewish prisoners prisoners were churning Cytrin, who had a brother in the Bronx, have been donated to Yad Vashem, Is- out 650,000 fake British came to the U.S. with his wife in 1949 and rael’s Holocaust memorial and museum, notes a month. That found his way to New Jersey. His family where researchers can study them and amounted to $6 billion or said Cytrin’s attempt to do portraiture pro- they will be exhibited for public viewing. $7 billion in 2011’s fessionally fizzled, so he turned to tool and They are among the few images that money, Malkin wrote. die-making. He died in 1971. exist of the young men who worked in an ytrin was born in For many years after he had moved to infamous secret Nazi operation to produce Cwhat is now War- the U.S., his family said he was suspicious fake money, fictionalized in the Oscar-win- saw, Poland, in 1894, and of being watched by the government. The ning film The Counterfeiters. Cytrin’s heirs his name appears on a Associated Press has identified Army intel- donated them to Yad Vashem at a special list of “Operation Bern- ligence documents about Cytrin that re- ceremony held September 1 in the office hard” inmates recovered main classified at the National Archives in of the American and International Societies from a lake in Austria, College Park, Maryland. for Yad Vashem in New York. where the Nazis dumped At the ceremony Marcia Friday, who had The works, most dated 1944 and 1945, documents about the been then married to Cytrin’s grandson, were drawn on paper in pencil, charcoal, Yad Vashem senior art curator Yehudit Shendar, left, holds a portrait plot, according to the In- said that about 25 years ago she discov- and chalk. of Felix Cytrin, a Jewish engraver, artist and forced-labor counter- ternational Tracing Serv- ered the disintegrating portraits in a card- feiter. Marcia Friday, right, heir to Felix Cytrin, listens as Yehudit “I think what is amazing when you look ice in Bad Arolsen. board portfolio at the family home in Shendar discusses Friday’s donation of 43 of Cytrin’s portraits of fel- at these portraits is how beautiful these A toolmaker and en- Pennsylvania. low German concentration camp prisoners to the Israeli Holocaust graver, Cytrin was work- Speaking at the Manhattan offices of the young men look,” said Yehudit Shendar, remembrance museum. the senior art curator for the Jerusalem- ing in Leipzig when he American Society for Yad Vashem, a U.S. based museum, who came to New York ning in 1942, and gave them the dubious was recruited to the secret plot and made organization that supports the Israeli City to receive the portraits. choice of creating bogus money for the chief of the engraving section, a critical job memorial’s mission, she said she was “Probably Cytrin felt a need to beautify Nazis or almost certain death. They were for the men working and living in Block 19. moved by how Cytrin was able to render them. Why to beautify them? To give them isolated away from the rest of the camp in Malkin called him one of the dozen or so his fellow prisoners’ emotions. back the individuality that they were barracks known as Block 19, surrounded people who “figured fairly importantly.” “He was able to capture in each of the robbed of during that time,” she said. by barbed wire. “There are people who stand out,” he men’s eyes an emotion that is below the The works will be integrated into Yad Initially, the goal of “Operation Bernhard” said. “And I’m sure that Cytrin stood out.” external expressions in their faces,” she Vashem’s art collection, and some will be (named for its lead SS officer, Bernhard In early 1945, the counterfeiters were said. “I think the emotions range from exhibited in Jerusalem in December, along Krueger) was to counterfeit millions of producing American dollars, but as the numbness to fear to terror.” HISTORIANS DEBATE: COULD MORE JEWS HAVE BEEN SAVED? calling for the creation of a federal govern- “The idea that there was nothing the world-class scholars gathered at Yad BY MORDECHAI I. TWERSKY ment agency to rescue refugees. American government could have done Vashem to present new research about According to Wyman, the War Refugee in 1944 to rescue more Jews, that is pre- eventy years after the Holocaust, the the legacy of the Bergson Group. “The Board played a major role in the rescue of posterous.” issue of America’s response to it, Bergson Group, in its time, aroused a lot S more than 200,000 Jews, and among other n another dramatic moment, panelist and whether more Jews could have been of controversy in the Jewish community things, sponsored the work of the heroic Moshe Arens, the former Israeli de- saved, still arouses passions. At a July 17 I and beyond,” he added. “The most impor- Swedish rescuer, Raoul Wallenberg. fense minister and ambassador to Wash- academic conference at Yad Vashem in tant thing is for scholars to look at the Yad Vashem scholars took a different ington who recently authored a book about Jerusalem featuring the institution’s lead- documents, go into the archives, find the view toward the extent of Bergson’s influ- the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, ing historians alongside scholars from the evidence, and then present it in public ence and the 200,000 figure cited by openly disagreed with Yad Vashem histo- settings like this so that we can really un- U.S.-based David S. Wyman Institute for Wyman. rians about the extent to which Jews could Holocaust Studies, they locked horns over derstand what happened in those days n a moment of high drama, Yad have – and should have – come together and the impact of what activists like the the question. Vashem’s Director of Libraries, Dr. in unity. I Bergson Group were able to achieve.” The historian David S. Wyman, in his Robert Rozett, read a letter from the noted “That Jews did not come together is be- Professor Wyman, 81, called the confer- book that appeared 28 years ago – The Yad Vashem historian, Yehuda Bauer – yond understanding and unforgivable,” he ence “a further step in bringing the mes- Abandonment of the Jews – exposed a who could not attend the conference – said. sage out about the things Bergson and pattern of apathy and obstruction at the openly refuting Wyman’s key contentions. Leaders of both institutions said the day- his group were able to achieve.” highest of levels of the U.S. Government “To claim today that Kook was responsi- long, joint conference was an important and among the Jewish organizational es- ble for saving lives in Budapest is a little step forward. “For many, many years, up until re- tablishment led by Rabbi Steven S. Wise. short of preposterous,” asserted Bauer in “I think it was a productive day that pre- cently, the activities of my father and his In his book, Wyman detailed the actions his letter. “I do not doubt that the Bergson sented new pieces of research in regard to various committees in the United States of an activist named Hillel Kook, who, Group contributed very much to aware- saving Jews,” said Avner Shalev, Chair- during the war years were literally written using the pseudonym Peter Bergson, led ness of the Holocaust in the U.S., although man of the Yad Vashem Directorate. out of — primarily Israeli, but not only Is- a series of political action committees pre- by 1944, forty-eight percent of Americans “For many years after the Holocaust, raeli — historiography about the Holo- cisely 70 years ago that came to be known were expressing anti-Jewish views, as For- the Bergson Group was not mentioned in caust,” said Kook’s daughter, Dr. Rebecca collectively as the Bergson Group. tune Magazine told us. But all these con- museums, in history books, and else- Kook, of Ben Gurion University. “The con- That group was said to be ahead of its troversies were marginal to any prospect where,” Dr. Medoff said. “Only in recent ference at Yad Vashem indicates a recog- time, as it took out full-page ads in leading of rescue. In a sense, the [U.S]. Adminis- years have a number of important muse- nition from the side of ‘official’ Israeli American newspapers; planned public ral- tration was right, as it was powerless to ums and other institutions begun to rec- scholarship, and that carries with it much lies; staged theatrical plays with the partic- save the millions. The only answer was to ognize the Bergson Group’s important significance,” she said. ipation of some of Hollywood’s leading win the war and kill the murderers. Kook role in helping to promote the rescue of As for the present-day lesson to be stars; planned a dramatic march of 400 and Wise could not do much about that.” Jews from the Holocaust.” learned from the initiatives of the Bergson rabbis to the steps of the Capitol and to the Those words provoked a nearly-10- An author and historian, Medoff looked Group, Bar-Ilan University historian Judith White House in 1943; and successfully minute rebuttal from Wyman Institute Di- past the tensions that permeated the con- Baumel-Schwartz summed it up in four lobbied Congress to introduce a resolution rector Rafael Medoff, who concluded, ference. He said it was significant that words. “Think outside the box.” September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11

“MEGILLAT HITLER,” SAFE HOUSE FDR, AND THE JEWS (Continued from page 6) The result of that anguish is an urgent, down or to sit. For a year, I didn’t see BY DR. RAFAEL MEDOFF needed specific help. She remembers even desperate desire to tell their story, daylight. I was 10.” one woman suffering terribly as she went to ensure it is passed on to the next gen- And Irka Reichmann, warm and engag- mong the more remarkable docu- through the process of moving house. eration. Freddie Knoller, 90 years old and ing at 78, tells me her story – one I can- A ments of the Holocaust is a scroll, The woman didn’t spell it out, but Hassan a tall, charismatic figure who chairs the not shake. She was in the Warsaw created in North Africa in 1943, called soon realized the experience was evok- center’s Camp and Ghetto Survivors ghetto. “I was six and my parents hid me “Megillat Hitler.” Written in the style of Megillat Esther and the Purim story, it cel- ing memories of a forced eviction back in Committee, tells me proudly that he in a cupboard.” Minutes later, just as her ebrates the Allies’ liberation of Morocco, Al- Germany. spoke at 54 schools last year – more than parents had feared, the Germans came. geria, and Tunisia, which saved the local Slowly, contact with a single survivor one a week. “To me it’s a mission that I Irka knew they were Germans because, Jewish communities from the Nazis. What led to the creation of a small, informal so- have to tell the young people what hap- from her vantage point in the cupboard, the scroll’s author did not realize, however, cial group, meeting at first in people’s pened – so that the Holocaust is not for- she recognized their boots. “They took was that at the very moment he was set- houses. Hassan did not lead, but listened gotten. That is the fear of us survivors. my father and mother and sister, and left ting quill to parchment, those same Amer- After we’re gone, will the Holocaust be me in the cupboard. I saw it through the and offered help. It’s an approach she still ican authorities were actually trying to keep forgotten?” Several have published, or keyhole.” That was the last time she saw follows today, ensuring that every deci- in place the anti-Jewish legislation im- self-published, memoirs. They want to her family. sion – from the type of cake served for posed in North Africa by the Nazis. testify. They didn’t always speak this way. In tea to new fabric for the sofas – is taken On November 8, 1942, American and And so it is that, within minutes of meet- the immediate decades after the war, in consultation with the survivors them- British forces invaded Nazi-occupied Mo- ing people and at next to no prompting, I selves. Why? “I can’t be the leader, be- many survivors were reluctant to talk rocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It took the Allies cause then I’ll be seen as the Nazi.” hear their stories. Sam Pivnick tells me about their experiences. “When you’re just eight days to defeat the Germans and Instead, the center aims to give a meas- young, you’re busy, you’re trying to build their Vichy French partners in the region. ure of control and autonomy to people up a life,” Irka says. “You have children, For the 330,000 Jews of North Africa, the who were robbed of every shred of it. you’re trying to make money.” Some Allied conquest was heaven-sent. The ne might think that the Holocaust feared passing a burden of heartbreak on Vichy regime that had ruled since the sum- OSurvivors Center is a place of hor- to their children, not wanting to “bring mer of 1940 had stripped the region’s Jews ror, drenched in melancholy. But that’s them up with hatred.” of their civil rights, severely restricted their wrong. On the walls are paintings from But if they were reluctant to speak, entrance to schools and some professions, the art group. They depict beaches and there was also a deep reluctance to lis- confiscated Jewish property, and tolerated woodland, scenes of bucolic beauty from ten. Some say their children never asked sporadic pogroms against Jews by local the English countryside. They once had them about their experiences: “I think my Muslims. In addition, thousands of Jewish a session dedicated to a shared passion son thought it would hurt me to talk about men were hauled away to forced-labor for chocolate. There is plenty of laughter it,” says one. Others say it was the wider camps. President Franklin Roosevelt, in – an emphasis on life rather than death. society that didn’t want to know, even his victory announcement, pledged “the Part of the explanation lies in the fact Britain’s Jewish community. “People here abrogation of all laws and decrees inspired that when the survivors look back, many were not interested, they couldn’t under- by Nazi governments or Nazi ideologists.” are keen to focus less on the agonies that Irka Reichmann was six when the Germans stand,” says another. But there turned out to be a discrepancy were visited upon them by Hitler and his came for her family in Warsaw. Her parents hid “Our so-called brothers and sisters between FDR’s public rhetoric and his pri- executioners and more on the lives they her in a cupboard: “They took my father and have so little knowledge,” Irka says, re- vate feelings. lived before. Harry Fox remembers being mother and sister… I saw it through the key- membering the British Jew who once told On January 17, 1943, Roosevelt met in Chaim Fuchs, growing up in a shtetl, a hole.” her, “We had it bad here, too; we had Casablanca with Major-General Charles village 12 miles from Lodz in the Polish that as a teenager his job in Auschwitz bombing.” “People know nothing. They Nogues, a leader of the new “non-Vichy” countryside. He can still hear the sound had been to empty the trains as they ar- have no insight whatsoever.” That will regime. When the conversation turned to the pigs made when the Polish farmers rived bringing Jews to the gas chambers. sound harsh to those in the Jewish com- the question of rights for North African Jewry, Roosevelt did not mince words: killed them, not in a slaughterhouse, but He had to sweep out “shit, piss and bod- munity who believe they value survivors “The number of Jews engaged in the prac- by whacking them with a plank of wood. ies – old people and children” who had enormously; they will point to the support tice of the professions (law, medicine, etc.) On one of the days I visit, there’s a ses- not survived the journey. He witnessed they give and the donations they make to the notorious selections, when Dr Josef Jewish Care, the center’s main funder. should be definitely limited to the percent- sion in Yiddish, five men and seven Mengele – known as the Angel of Death But for Irka the sentiment is real. She age that the Jewish population in North women sitting around a boardroom-style – assessed the Jews standing before felt a barrier, one that separates her even Africa bears to the whole of the North table – laden with pastries – exchanging him, deciding who would live and who from her own family – one that exists African population…” The President stated banter in the language of their childhood. would die. everywhere but here. Which only makes that his plan “would further eliminate the Instantly, the room fills with the ges- Joseph Kiersz, in shirt, tie and a hear- the Holocaust Survivors Center all the specific and understandable complaints tures, shrugged exclamations, and re- ing aid in each ear, tells me that he, too, more valuable to her. “It’s been my salva- which the Germans bore toward the Jews signed humor that are Yiddish’s had been a prisoner in Auschwitz, a slave tion,” she says, a “second home,” a place in Germany, namely, that while they repre- signature. Azoi vi a doktor vershtayte de laborer there for 18 months, before he where she feels truly understood. “If I’m sented a small part of the population, over krenk. “Like a doctor understands a sick- was dispatched to another camp at Nord- upset, if I’m hurt, I can come here, have fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school ness,” one says, to laughter. Harry tells a hausen. They went by train, travelling for a bowl of soup and talk. There are people teachers, college professors, etc., in Ger- joke, moving between Yiddish and Eng- six or seven days without food. They sur- here who went through what I did.” many, were Jews.” (It is not clear how lish. The teacher asks what they think of vived by constructing a box, attaching it And the need is greater now than ever, FDR came up with that wildly exaggerated the upheavals in the Arab world. Some- to their belts and lowering it outside to now that many are alone, without the statistic.) one responds that Israel should send a scoop up the snow below. Sometimes it daily distractions of raising children and Various Jewish communities around the message to Egypt, reminding them it was would be covered with oil from the train, earning a living. “This is the worst time in world have established local Purim-style the enslaved children of Israel who built but if it came up clean they would push a survivor’s life,” she says. “I think of my celebrations to mark their deliverance from the pyramids – and telling the Egyptians catastrophe. the snow into their mouths, sucking out parents more now than when I was that, if they knock them over, “the Is- The Jews of Frankfurt, for example, its moisture. younger.” Now a great-grandmother, Irka raelites won’t build them up again.” would hold a “Purim Vintz” one week after “We’d have to take off the dead peo- longs for just one photograph of the Purim, in remembrance of the downfall of Then Bella Kerridge – born Bella Zuck- ple,” he says. “You’d have to pick up the woman she last glimpsed through that an anti-Semitic agitator in 1620. Libyan erman 89 years ago – a woman with eyes dead people and lay them like you lay keyhole. “I would like to know what my Jews traditionally organized a “Purim that sparkle, sings a Yiddish song, acting herrings, one this way, one that way. I mother looked like.” Ashraf” and a “Purim Bergel” to recall the out the story, delivering a genuine per- was carrying them. They weighed noth- What, besides a tragic past, do these rescue of Jews in those towns, in 1705 and formance. Her voice is sweet and clear ing, they were like skeletons. I carried people have in common? “We don’t give 1795, respectively. as she sings of a now-vanished world – them under my arm.” His breaths are up easily,” says Janine Webber. “Re- The Jewish community of Casablanca, of Shabbos, of the rebbe and rebbitzen – coming faster and heavier as he speaks. silience, that’s the common thread.” a gentle melody of oy’s and bim-bom- for its part, declared the day of the 1942 Al- Eventually, when he recalls the wife he Freddie Knoller agrees: “All those who lied liberation “Hitler Purim,” and a local bom’s that ripples through the room like lost four years ago – “She was a lady, survived were optimists. The pessimists faint signals sent from a once-bright star, scribe, P. Hassine, created the “Megillat everybody adored her” – he starts to cry. gave up, but we are optimists. I love life. Hitler.” (The original is on display at the snuffed out long ago. But only then. Most of the people here love life and love United States Holocaust Memorial Mu- In conversation after conversation, a anine Webber, born in Lvov in 1932, people.” seum.) The seven chapters of the scroll common theme emerges. They are ap- Jtells me she survived by posing as a But Harry Fox is having none of it. He poignantly blend the flavor of the tale of an- proaching the end of their lives; in 15 Catholic and working as a maid. “I lived knows the part chance, random acts of cient Persia with the amazing stroke of for- years, they assume, they will all be gone. with two families: one betrayed me and kindness or savagery, played in deciding tune that the Jews of Casablanca had What if, they worry, the memory of the killed my brother. After that, we lived in who died, including his parents, and who themselves just experienced. It uses Holocaust dies with them? Aware that a hole, 13 adults and me, hidden by a lived, including him. “I can’t stick my phrases straight from Megillat Esther, such there are deniers of the Shoah all around, young Pole. His name was Edek. He hid chest out. If you survive, it’s luck. There as “the month which was turned from sor- starting with the president of Iran, their 14 Jews for nothing, for no money. For a are no heroes.” He pauses. “The heroes row to rejoicing” and “the Jews had light concern is intense. year, in a bunker. We took it in turns to lie are all dead.” (Continued on page 14) Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR RAISED A FIST TO DEATH Weinstein was beside himself. It is, he says, important to tell the story of Nazi guard say that German troops would BY KURT STREETER, What if the Gestapo took her from the his search for his little girl. soon send everyone in Radzymin to a LOS ANGELES TIMES police? einstein was born in the Jewish vil- death camp. What if they decided that she was a lage of Radzymin, Poland. As a He prepared to flee and begged his ex- he was Jewish, but to live she W Jew? child, he was independent, even stubborn. tended family to leave too. They refused, needed a Christian name. S oday, at his small Spanish-style His family adhered to Orthodox Judaism, saying Germans would never do such a She could not be Natalie Leya Weinstein, T home in Mid-City, Weinstein, 101, re- but he never fully believed. He defied his thing. not in wartime Warsaw. Her father wrote calls in agonizing detail what it was like to elders and grew into something of a tough. But Weinstein had seen Nazi cruelty first- her new name on a piece of paper. hand. So he slipped away, with his wife Natalie Yazinska. and daughter, into the nearby forest. It was Her mother, Sima, sobbed. far from a haven: anti-Semitic Polish thugs “The little one must make it,” Leon We- roamed there. instein told his wife. “We got no chance. Using forged papers that identified him But the little one, she is special. She must as a Christian, Weinstein and his family survive.” headed to Warsaw. They hoped that the He fixed a metal crucifix to a necklace and sprawling capital would be a good hiding hung it on their daughter. On the paper, he place. Sima had no papers; if the Nazis scrawled another fiction: “I am a war widow, caught her, all three might be killed. and I have no way of taking care of her. I beg A Polish couple promised to hide Sima, of you good people, please take care of her. but Weinstein and the baby would draw too In the name of Jesus Christ, he will take care much attention. They decided to leave Na- of you for this.” talie on the lawyer’s doorstep. Weinstein A cold wind cut at the skin that December would head for the confines of the Warsaw morning, so Leon Weinstein bundled Na- Ghetto, where fellow Jews would give him talie, 18 months old, in heavy pants and a shelter. thick wool sweater. He headed for a “This was a place completely unimagin- nearby apartment, the home of a lawyer able,” Weinstein says. “A place worse even and his wife. The couple did not have a than the hell that Dante described.” child. Weinstein hoped they wanted one. Leon Weinstein with his daughter Natalie Gold Lumer. The ghetto was surrounded by an 11- He laid Natalie on their front step. Tears give up his baby in 1941 amid the Nazi jug- Eyes gleaming, he recalls those who foot-high brick wall, barbed wire and ran down his cheeks. You will make it, he gernaut. He is frail, but his wit and memory called him a “dirty Jew.” thought. She had blond locks and blue guards. More than 400,000 Jews had been are keen. He remembers well what fol- “They’d meet my fists,” he says. “Then forced inside the 3.5-square-mile area. By eyes. They will think you are a Gentile, not lowed: killing Germans, dodging death, they’d be picking their teeth from the early 1943, an estimated 300,000 of them one of us. hunting for Natalie. ground.” had been shipped to Treblinka, a death Walking away, he could hear her whim- Holocaust scholars vouch for his ac- By 15, he had run away from home and per, but forced himself not to look back count, calling him one of the last living camp in northeast Poland. was living in Warsaw, where he worked as until he crossed the street. Then he turned fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Nazis rationed food for those who re- a tailor’s assistant, then for a clothing com- and saw a man step out of the apartment. almost certainly the oldest. mained and many died of starvation. Dis- pany. In his 20s, he married Sima. After The man read Weinstein’s note. He puz- For years, Weinstein kept his memories ease killed thousands more. Weinstein Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, they were zled over the baby. buried. feared constantly for Natalie and Sima and forced to live in Radzymin with other Jews. Cradling Natalie in his arms, the man No more. was certain he would die. Natalie was born the next year. When walked half a block to a police station and It is important to tell about Nazi horrors, He joined the ghetto resistance. “If we she was a year old, Weinstein heard a disappeared inside. he now says, so they are never forgotten. (Continued on page 15) THE DAY FRANCE BETRAYED ITS JEWS years of her life making a feature film where people had been starved, abused had been many instances of heroism. “On BY SIMON ROUND, about the episode. The resulting movie, and then deported to be murdered. That the morning of the roundup, 10,000 Jews THE JEWISH CHRONICLE ONLINE The Round Up, has had a massive impact would be very shocking.” just vanished – they must have hidden by in France. It was one of the top 10 films Bosch was adamant that all of the main non-Jews. This would have been very risky.” n the morning of July 16, 1942, of 2010, and was seen in cinemas by characters in the film should be real-life peo- osch, whose film career goes back some 13,000 Jews were arrested in O more than three million people – more ple. “I wanted it to be as accurate as possi- to 1987 when she wrote the screen- Paris and sent to internment camps B than Hollywood blockbusters Schindler’s around France. After months of near star- ble. We wanted to get this tragedy known play about Christopher Columbus which List and The Pianist. vation, the adults and children were sepa- and into the textbooks, rather than the two became the basis of Ridley Scott’s Holly- osch, who wrote the screenplay and rated and deported to Auschwitz. Only 25 lines that I read when I was directed the film, does not think of them returned to France at the end of B at school.” there was anything accidental about this the Second World War. Her research took three collective lapse of memory by the French. years, with two clear “It was completely intentional. I’ve been a strands developing, both journalist on news magazines for many of which are represented years and I know these things aren’t for- in the film. The first was gotten by accident. There was this terrible the political background – shame about what happened.” the horse-trading be- Bosch explains why this might be. “The tween the French author- French authorities negotiated with the ities and the Nazis. The Germans to take Jewish children that the second was the minutiae Nazis did not even ask for. Most French of life for the Jews in oc- Jean Reno (second left) plays a Jewish doctor deported to a death people did not realise that there were cupied France. She says; camp in The Round Up. more than 200 camps in their country. “I wanted to find survivors From 1940, Marshal Pétain, the president because I thought it would be tough to wood film, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, of the Vichy regime, had sent Jews to make a film in which all the children die. was not expecting The Round Up to be a those camps without any demands com- On top of this, I wanted it to be mainly from money-making venture. In fact, she and ing from the Germans. He also published the point of view of the children because I the stars of the film, including Jean Reno, anti-Jewish laws before the Germans remember from when I was a reporter that agreed to defer their salaries to keep costs asked him to.” children were always the victims – either down. So she is surprised that the film is She adds that France was the only losing their parents or witnessing horrors.” now being shown worldwide. Director Rose Bosch. country in Europe which sent thousands Children also composed a large part of She adds: “Our generation is the last one This may be only a short summary of of unaccompanied children on trains to the audience. “Children of 12 are taught which will be able to hear the memories of these horrific events, but it is more than the death camps. When they arrived at about the Holocaust in France, and it was these survivors. It is important to get these you will find in French textbooks. The Vel Auschwitz they were either marched to these kids who went to see The Round Up stories now while we still have the chance. d’Hiv roundup (named after the Winter the gas chambers or machine-gunned to and then told their friends about it. I think I fear a world where those people won’t be Velodrome, the cycling stadium where the death. they identified with the children in the film.” here to tell us what happened. The Holo- Jews were detained) has been almost to- For the French, discovering about their Bosch, who is not Jewish, said that she caust was something so gigantically hor- tally ignored in France. This appalled in- wartime past has been a traumatic expe- had expected during her research to dis- rific that when all the witnesses have gone, vestigative journalist and film-maker Rose rience. Says Bosch: “Imagine you just dis- cover that the French had been generally people may choose not to believe that it Bosch, so much so that she spent five covered there were camps in Britain, anti-Semitic. However, she found that there happened at all.” September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 JEWISH TEXTS LOST IN WAR ARE SURFACING IN NEW YORK stitute, found that her shelves had more during formal dinners in Washington young children were able to take most of BY SAM DOLNICK, than 1,000 of the lost titles. Heights parlors. They took typewriters their possessions out of Germany, said THE NEW YORK TIMES While scholars say the books in New along on vacation so they could keep their daughter, Lore Singerman, of An- York are probably not the same copies as working. napolis, Md. n 1932, as the Nazis rose to power in those lost from the Frankfurt library, their erbert A. Strauss, who came to New Mrs. Singerman, 78, remembered a Germany, a Jewish librarian in Frank- I rediscovery offers the chance to rebuild York with his wife in 1946, owned Manhattan childhood of heavy European furt published a catalog of 15,000 books he H what one professor called “a legendary one of the lost books, an 1843 volume by furniture and crowded bookcases. Reading had painstakingly collected for decades. collection.” Frankfurt librarians are putting Ludwig Philippson. Where he got it, his was highly prized — prayer books, The It listed the key texts of a groundbreaking the collection online, while the Center for widow, Lotte, has no idea. A historian and Saturday Evening Post, National Geo- field called the Science of Judaism, in Jewish History, the institute’s parent organ- a professor, he was always coming home graphic. which scholars analyzed the religion’s phi- ization, is seeking a grant to do the same. to their Upper Manhattan apartment with Her father owned one of the lost Wis- losophy and culture as they would study “This is very exciting,” said Rachel his arms full of new tomes. senschaft volumes, an 1888 edition of a those of ancient Greece or Rome. The Heuberger, head of the library’s Judaica di- “He was not only married to me,” Mrs. Hermann Cohen book. His family donated school of thought became the foundation vision. “You can reconstruct a collection Strauss said. “He was also married to his it to the institute in 1970, the year he died. for modern Jewish studies around the desk.” Mrs. Singerman does not know where her world. When he died in 2005, she do- father got the book, but said, “If it was in In the tumult of war, great chunks of the nated 4,500 of his books to the Leo German, he probably brought it with him — collection vanished. Now, librarians an Baeck Institute. he didn’t buy German books here.” ocean away have determined that most of The couple had met in Germany, red W. Lessing, another German the missing titles have been sitting for years and escaped together to Switzer- Jewish donor, built such a vast book on the crowded shelves of the Leo Baeck In- F land just steps ahead of the collection at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y., stitute, a Manhattan center dedicated to pre- Gestapo. They recounted their or- that he ordered catalog cards from the Li- serving German Jewish culture. deals in separate memoirs pub- brary of Congress to keep track of it all. He The story of how the hundreds of tat- lished in 1999. was chief executive of a Yonkers metal tered, cloth-bound books with esoteric Mrs. Strauss, 97, a great-grand- company, but his passion was his library German titles ended up in New York in- mother, recalled meeting her hus- and discussions with professors and writ- cludes impossible escapes, careful schol- band. “I was fascinated by him,” ers. arship and some very heavy suitcases. Lotte Strauss’s husband, Herbert, owned one of the books she said. “He was good-looking Mr. Lessing scoured auction catalogs for And while the exact trails of many of the in the collection on the Science of Judaism. and he had new ideas.” treasures, with a special focus on the his- volumes remain murky, they wind through that otherwise never would have come to On a recent afternoon in her sun- tory of the Enlightenment. His children book-lined apartments on the Upper West life again.” drenched apartment, Mrs. Strauss pulled knew enough not to touch his “good Side, across a 97-year-old woman’s clut- Scholars say the books were most likely out her husband’s brittle papers. There books,” said his daughter Joan Lessing. tered coffee table and into a library’s cav- brought to New York from Europe by pri- were Nazi-era ration cards decorated with “His library was part of our lives,” she said. ernous stacks. vate collectors and antiquities dealers. In swastikas — red for bread, blue for meat. “Books were in every room.” For Jewish scholars, the collection of the past 50 years, donors, nearly all of There was a lifeguard certificate from Mr. Lessing gave the institute an early- Science of Judaism texts (in German, Wis- them German Jews who immigrated and Berlin that showed a young man, sleeves 20th-century edition of a volume by Adolf senschaft des Judentums) is a touchstone prospered here, gave them to the Leo rolled up past his elbows, smiling at some- Eckstein, but his daughter did not know marking the emergence of Jewish tradition Baeck Institute. thing off-camera. where he had gotten it. as a philosophy and culture worthy of aca- The donors, photographed in their Did he carry books with him when he Even the Frankfurt librarian who cata- demic study. cinched ties and sober suits, represent a came to New York? loged the entire collection, Aron Freimann, “We’re all heirs to the legacy of Wis- generation of scholarly New York immi- Mrs. Strauss laughed. “We came here came to New York. After arriving in 1939, senschaft,” said Jonathan D. Sarna, a pro- grants that is nearly gone. They escaped poor as church mice,” she said. “You went he went on to work at the New York Public fessor of American Jewish history at the Nazis, built new lives and created a so- as you were; you didn’t carry a thing.” She Library. Brandeis University. phisticated community that centered on was eight months pregnant and had one Today, his granddaughter, Ruth Dresner, The University Library Frankfurt still books, culture and learning. Their ranks in- dress to her name. Mr. Strauss built his li- lives in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. houses the bulk of the collection, but ex- cluded the political philosopher Hannah brary, and their life, in New York. She keeps her grandfather’s catalog on perts there have determined over several Arendt and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Ludwig Schwarzschild, a dermatologist, her shelf — she calls it his “magnum opus” decades that they were missing some Many came to this country hauling suit- brought his library with him when he came — and plans to leave it to her children. 2,000 books listed in the 1932 catalog. In cases filled with books, and as they settled to the United States in 1934. Although his “I’m 80 years old, and I’m very devoted the last two years, a team led by Renate here, they created academic journals and practice north of Frankfurt was shuttered and dedicated to perpetuating tradition,” Evers, head librarian at the Leo Baeck In- scholarly institutes. They debated politics by the authorities, he, his wife and their two she said. “I am very proud.” ISRAEL, JEWISH AGENCY LAUNCH GLOBAL EFFORT TO LOCATE PROPERTY LOST IN HOLOCAUST Eastern European governments. Survivors sake, for a memorial sake and for the sake “Looted property has to be restituted − BY RAPHAEL AHREN, HAARETZ or their heirs whose families owned private of eventually coming forward in negotia- this is part of European policy, several property − including real estate, movable tions,” Brown, 59, told Haaretz. “We feel American presidents have said that’s our he Israeli government and the Jew- items or intangible personal property − and ish Agency launched a new world- that this is a critical moment that maybe we policy − and it’s part of Israeli policy,” said T have never been compensated will be wide initiative to identify Jewish property waited much too long for, but nevertheless, Brown. asked to contact the project’s staff. A web- lost or stolen during the Holocaust with the if we don’t do it now, we may have lost the The U.S.-based Claims Conference is site and a call center available in thirteen goal of obtaining restitution for survivors or last possibility of doing it altogether.” today perhaps the best-known institution languages has been launched to facilitate their heirs. Called Project HEART − Holo- roject HEART bases its hopes on a involved in fighting for restitution of prop- the information gathering process. caust Era Asset Restitution Taskforce, the Pnon-binding resolution passed dur- erty lost during the Holocaust. Founded in t is not necessary to have evidence initiative is chaired by Rafi Eitan, the for- ing the 2009 Holocaust Era Assets Confer- 1951, the group became one of the wealth- of property ownership to be eligible. mer senior citizen affairs minister, and di- “I ence in Prague, in which the 46 iest Jewish organizations in the world after rected by the Jewish Agency’s Bobby If individuals believe they owned or were participating countries agreed on their ob- the fall of Iron Curtain through the sale of Brown, a native New Yorker who has been beneficiaries of such property, they should ligation to compensate Holocaust victims buildings in Eastern Germany that had be- active in the field of Holocaust restitution fill out the questionnaire,” said Anya Verk- and their heirs for property lost on their ter- longed to Jews but whose heirs could not for more than a decade. hovskaya, who is overseeing the initiative’s ritory. be located. “This is the first time since the Holocaust practical aspects. Verkhovskaya is senior Eastern European countries shortly be- “The Claims Conference has done a that a general comprehensive program is executive vice president and COO at A.B. fore or immediately after the fall of Com- marvelous job but they are limited to Ger- being launched to gather information with Data, a company specializing in class-ac- munism passed legislation allowing Jews many and Austria,” Brown told Haaretz. the eventual purpose of receiving compen- tion suits. Based on the Milwaukee-based to claim restitution for property lost or “We are not focusing, at this point, on sation for property looted, stolen, or company’s extensive work on previous stolen during the Holocaust. However, due any one country. It is a wide net we’re forcibly sold during the Holocaust,” Jewish cases of Holocaust restitution claim, the to difficult restrictions, these countries only sending out, and hopefully we’ll have es- Agency chairman Natan Sharansky said. Jewish Agency and the government hired compensated a small number of Jews with tablished a registry for [survivors with legit- “This will be an opportunity for many peo- the company to do the actual legwork, minor payments, according to Moshe San- imate claims], many of whom have given ple to finally receive compensation for such as creating the call center and setting bar, who served for many years in senior up hope of ever seeing any compensation. property that was taken from them and up the advertising campaigns. “Unfortu- positions in several organizations fighting This is the last battle of the Holocaust and their families during the Holocaust era.” nately, Holocaust survivors are leaving this for Holocaust restitution. it is our obligation to find a modicum of jus- In its first stage, Project HEART − with world at a very rapid rate, and even their “With the Prague Conference we created tice in this area.” an expected annual budget of around NIS children are now in their sixties. It is ex- a new basis for new claims − it wasn’t Project HEART has received overwhelm- 9 million − will focus on identifying individ- tremely important to get as accurate infor- legally binding, but it was and is binding ingly positive responses from Israelis in- uals with potential claims mainly against mation as we possibly can for history’s morally,” said Sanbar. volved in Holocaust restitution issues. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 NEGLECTING THE LITHUANIAN HOLOCAUST nia, then annexed the whole country in between German forces and these Lithua- tional scandal ensued, and the thieves (a BY TIMOTHY SNYDER 1940. The NKVD, the Soviet secret police, nians allowed for a drastic escalation from Swedish neo-Nazi and two Polish accom- then set about deporting Lithuania’s politi- pogroms to mass shootings. plices) were apprehended. Perhaps re- n early July the words “Hitler was right” he mass murder of the Jews of Vil- were painted in Russian on the memo- cal and social elites — about 21,000 peo- porters and editors in western Europe and I nius could not have taken place with- rial stone to the 72,000 Jews who were ple in all, including many Jews. Thousands T the US do not associate places like Ponary out the assistance of Lithuanians: the murdered at the Ponary Forest near Vil- more were shot in NKVD prisons. This with the Holocaust. Our imaginations are Germans did not have enough men for the nius in Lithuania. On another monument level of wartime terror was unprecedented, dominated by Auschwitz, even though job. That said, it is important to remember close by, a vulgar reference was made to and its first perpetrators were Soviets more far more Jews were shot at places that the double occupation of Lithuania, by the compensation the Lithuanian govern- rather than Nazis. We remember, for ex- like Ponary than were murdered in its gas the Soviets and then by the Germans, was ment has made to the descendants of mur- ample, that the Japanese diplomat Chiune chambers. an exceedingly violent break with the pre- dered Jews. No one seems to have Sugihara saved several thousand Jews by For its part, the Lithuanian government vious history of Vilnius noticed. issuing them transit visas tends to focus on the Lithuanian victims of and Lithuania. Though Vilnius, now the capital of Lithuania, was from Lithuania in 1940; the Soviet occupation. The Germans the Germans had no known for centuries as the “the Jerusalem what is often overlooked is brought the first Soviet occupation to an trouble finding Lithuani- of Lithuania” because of its centrality to that these Jews were flee- end in 1941, but the Red Army returned in ans willing to kill Jews, medieval and early modern Jewish thought ing not the Holocaust, 1945, and remained until 1991. what happened in 1941 and politics. In the medieval Grand Duchy which had not yet begun, ithuanian authorities wonder, with jus- had no precedent in pre- of Lithuania and the early modern Polish- but the threat of Soviet de- Ltice, whether Lithuania’s fellow EU war Lithuanian policy or member-states understand the difficulties of Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jews settled in portations. in the history of Lithuan- its Soviet past. The current Lithuanian gov- Vilnius in considerable numbers from both eanwhile, the Ger- ian-Jewish relations. ernment thus emphasizes Soviet crimes, west and east. Over centuries, Jews pros- Mmans prepared to The German unit as- sometimes to the point of neglecting obvious pered under a regime that permitted them betray their Soviet allies. The desecrated memorial stone to the signed to kill the Vilnius opportunities to acknowledge the scale of local autonomy. During the waning of the Part of their planning for Jews murdered in 1941 at the Ponary Forest. The graffiti reads “Hitler was Jews was Einsatzkom- the Holocaust in Lithuania and the role of Commonwealth in the eighteenth century, the invasion of the Soviet right.” mando 9 of Einsatz- Lithuanians in the mass shootings on Vilnius was home to scholars such as Eli- Union was the recruitment gruppe B. By July 23, Lithuanian territory. Lithuania would likely jah ben Solomon, the “Gaon of Vilne,” the of local nationalists, who would help them 1941, the Germans had assembled a have been more energetic in informing the great opponent of the Hasidic movement. spread their anti-Semitic message: Nazi rule was liberation from Soviet crimes, Lithuanian auxiliary that marched columns world about an episode of vandalism at its In the nineteenth century Vilnius was which were in fact the fault of local Jews. of Jews from Vilnius to the nearby Ponary Museum of Genocide Victims, whose exhi- home to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlight- During the first few weeks of the German Forest. Jews were taken in groups of be- bitions concern Soviet crimes. enment, in the Russian Empire. After invasion, which first touched Lithuania and tween twelve and twenty to the edge of But indubitable Western ignorance of So- World War I the city was incorporated by other lands that the Soviets had just an- pits, where they had to hand over valu- viet crimes is no excuse for neglecting the Poland, though it was claimed by Lithuania nexed, local peoples took part in a few ables and clothes before they were shot. historical record of the tragedy of Lithuan- as its capital. There were far more Poles hundred extremely violent pogroms, killing Some 72,000 Jews from Vilnius and else- ian Jews. Horrible as the Soviet occupa- than Lithuanians in the city, but there were some 24,000 Jews. where were murdered at Ponary (as were tion was, the largest group of genocide about as many Jews as Poles, roughly German troops were followed by four about eight thousand Poles and Lithuani- victims in Lithuania were the Jews mur- eighty thousand each in the 1920s. In in- Einsatzgruppen, whose task was to mur- ans). Ita Straż was one of the very few dered by the Germans with the help of the terwar Vilnius, tensions between Poles and der groups who might resist German Jewish survivors. She was taken by local population. These people were, of Jews and between Poles and Lithuanians power. In Lithuania, more quickly than any- Lithuanian policemen to a pit full of course, Lithuanian citizens. The responsi- were high, but relations between Lithuani- where else, this mission became mass corpses. The shots missed her, but she fell bility to announce and resolve the crime ans and Jews were relatively peaceful. murder. The Germans’ anti-Semitic equa- into the pit, and was covered by the rests with the Lithuanian authorities, and In 1939, as World War II began, the tion of Jews with Soviet rule allowed corpses of the people who came after. the local police have accordingly been in Jews, Poles, and Lithuanians of Vilnius fell Lithuanians (and others) to find a scape- Later she climbed out and away: “I was contact with the Jewish community of Vil- under Soviet power. By the terms of the goat for their own humiliation and suffering barefoot. I walked and walked over nius (today only some three thousand peo- Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the alliance be- under Soviet rule. It also provided an es- corpses. There seemed to be no end to it.” ple). Aside from basic decency, respect for tween Nazi Germany and the Soviet cape route for many who had collaborated Why has the desecration of such a place the history of Lithuania and its peoples Union, eastern Poland (including Vilnius) with the prior Soviet regime. The Germans escaped our notice? When the “Arbeit would demand that immediate and deci- came within the Soviet sphere of influence. had been sheltering Lithuanian nationalists macht frei” sign was stolen in late 2009 sive measures are taken to bring those in- The Soviets in 1939 gave Vilnius to Lithua- who had fled Soviet rule, and cooperation from the gates of Auschwitz, an interna- volved to justice. “MEGILLAT HITLER,” FDR, AND THE JEWS ENSURING THE LEGACY (Continued from page 11) tary occupation and the U.S. could not dic- (Continued from page 1) tragic period in Jewish history. The and gladness, joy and honor,” side by side tate how the local government ran things. Shalev. On the occasion of the Soci- Young Leadership Associates, co- with modern references such as “Cursed “The under secretary of state was per- eties’ twenty-fifth anniversary in 2006, I chaired by Caroline Massel and Jeremy be Hitler, cursed be Mussolini.” haps right from a strictly formal viewpoint,” was recognized with a Lifetime Achieve- Halpern, both grandchildren of survivors, The Jews of North Africa had much to Prof. Michael Abitbol noted in his study of ment Award. was founded in 1997. Its first event at- celebrate. But after the festivities died North African Jewry during the Holocaust. In conjunction with the tribute dinner, tracted just over 200 people. In recent down, questions began to arise. The Allies “But he was strangely underestimating the the Societies publish a commemorative years attendance has swelled to over permitted nearly all the original senior offi- immense influence wielded by the United journal which illustrates the transcen- 800. An annual highlight of the YLA ac- cials of the Vichy regime in North Africa to States over North African internal politics.” dence of the Holocaust over the gener- tivities is a Professional Development remain in the new government. The Vichy Eventually, under the accumulated ations and becomes a treasured Conference for public school teachers “Office of Jewish Affairs” continued to op- weight of public protests, the Roosevelt keepsake with enduring interest and on the methodology and curriculum con- erate, as did the forced labor camps in administration made it clear to the local au- value. The 2000 journal, The Jewish tent for teaching the Holocaust. Utilizing which thousands of Jewish men were thorities that the anti-Jewish measures Child from Then to Now, a memorial trib- the resources of the Yad Vashem De- being held. needed to be repealed. ute to the 1.5 million children who per- partment of Education, Conference American Jewish leaders were loath to The implementation process, however, ished in the Holocaust, won the themes have included “Holocaust Edu- publicly take issue with the Roosevelt ad- was painfully slow. In April 1943, the prestigious Clarion Award. cation Towards the Next Century,” ministration, but by the spring of 1943, they forced-labor camps in North Africa were of- An annual spring luncheon was added “Using Survivors’ Testimonies: Wit- began speaking out. The American Jewish ficially shut down, although some of them to our calendar of events in 2000. The nesses to the Past and Voices for the Congress and World Jewish Congress continued operating well into the summer. event attracts more than 250 people, Future,” and “Echoes and Reflections: A charged that “the anti-Jewish legacy of the The Jewish quotas in schools and profes- and has featured outstanding Holocaust Multimedia Curriculum on the Holo- Nazis remains intact in North Africa” and sions were gradually phased out. In May, authors and scholars as guest speakers caust.” urged FDR to eliminate the Vichy laws. “The the racial laws in Tunisia were abolished. such as Nechama Tec, Deborah Lip- I am pleased and proud to conclude spirit of the Swastika hovers over the Stars Two hundred Italian Jews who had been stadt, Melvin Bukiet and Sir Martin this essay with a quote by Adina Burian, and Stripes,” Benzion Netanyahu, director taken by the Allies to a Tunisian forced- Gilbert. a fifth generation American and member of the U.S. wing of the Revisionist Zionists labor camp, because they were citizens of of the Young Leadership Associates. LOOKING TO THE FUTURE (and father of Israel’s current prime minis- an Axis country, were released after sev- She wrote in the Societies’ 25th Anniver- ter) charged. A group of Jewish GIs in Al- eral months. ith each passing year, there are sary Journal: giers protested directly to U.S. ambassador And on October 20, 1943, nearly a year W fewer and fewer survivors with “The first and second generations built Murphy. Editorials in a number of American after the Allied liberation, full rights for direct memories of the Shoah. In re- the infrastructure that ensures that our newspapers echoed this criticism. North Africa’s Jews were at last reinstated. sponse, the American Society has devel- past will never be forgotten. It will be the At first, Roosevelt administration officials The victory that “Megillat Hitler” celebrated oped Holocaust-related educational and task of the third generation, and indeed, dug in their heels. Undersecretary of State was finally complete. cultural programs that have inspired the next generation, to ensure that the Sumner Welles insisted that technically, Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. younger people to become invested in past is linked inexorably to the spirit, the region was no longer under Allied mili- Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. preserving the memory of this most unity, and vibrancy of the Jewish future.” September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 BERLIN EXHIBITION EXPOSES POLICE ROLE IN HOLOCAUST REFOCUSING LOSS THROUGH THE majority of police officers, war criminals cluding those administered by the Allied BY AMRIT NARESH, THE LOCAL themselves, escaped justice and were powers occupying West Germany. HOLOCAUST’S LENS never held accountable in court. ne section of the exhibition tells the n exhibition at the German Historical (Continued from page 4) he global public knew little about the story of former SS officer Julius Museum in Berlin explores the role O clue emerges in Levitt’s discussion of A role of the police for several decades Wohlauf, a “good example” of a police of- the police played in the Holocaust, with T AYaffa Eliach’s “Tower of Faces” exhibit after the war, but the DHM exhibition rare documents offering insight into how ficer, who took up a job as a salesman im- at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in delves into the gritty details. It tracks the and why ordinary officers were complicit mediately after the war in 1945, before Washington, D.C., in which thousands of with the worst of the Nazi crimes. lifespan of the force from its right-leaning rejoining the Hamburg police force ten family photographs have been assembled In the decades following the Second origins in the Weimar Republic to its use years later. to commemorate the Jewish dead of a sin- World War, thousands of former police of- as an instrument of terror during the Third In all, he lived and worked freely for gle Polish town. “I wanted to imagine these ficers for the Nazi regime slipped back into Reich, to the eventual return of thousands nearly two decades until he was brought to people as my own,” Levitt writes of the of former Nazi officers to police forces trial for war crimes in 1963, and sentenced sense of familiarity and identification she felt across both East and West Germany. in 1968 to eight years in prison for complic- when viewing the images. This exhibit pro- During the war, according to the exhibi- ity in the murder of 9,200 people during the vided, for her, a way into the enormity of the tion, the 355,000 men and women serving war. Holocaust, and a way to bridge the gap be- in the police force methodically carried out The curators postulate that Wohlauf, tween ordinary and extraordinary loss. their duties of registering, collecting and alongside many officers like him, partici- While Levitt recognizes the extraordinary exterminating undesirable groups in occu- pated in the Nazi scheme for various rea- nature of the Holocaust, her book is, in pied territories. These were not just officers sons – out of “blind obedience, vocational essence, an argument for its universaliza- of the infamous Gestapo, but belonged to ambition, ideological schooling, peer pres- tion. Survivors and their descendants can- all branches of the police. sure and racism,” but also out of “sadism not and should not be the privileged Even without any official punishment for and personal gain.” bearers of moral authority related to loss, the refusal to carry out an she seems to suggest. Once we acknowl- Deportation of Jews from Ludwigshafen, in the order, few officers ab- edge the connection between the extraor- Rhine Neckar Area, October 1940. stained from their role in dinary losses of the Holocaust and the their country’s civilian workforce with im- the killing, imprisonment ordinary losses of everyday life, we en- punity, their crimes lost to history. and forced labor of millions large the pool of those who are able to in- Now, building on over 30 years of re- of civilians in occupied ter- tegrate the Holocaust and its victims into search, the new exhibition, “Order and An- ritories. their moral universe. This, she implies, is nihilation – The Police and the Nazi “The manuscripts, the a good thing — and I agree. Regime,” sets the record straight on the photos and videos the mu- And yet, American Jewish Loss after the crimes of the police work in that era. seum has compiled are dis- Holocaust inadvertently reminds us of the “The very normal uniformed green police turbing, but also compelling continuing divide that separates those who [the regular urban police] force was, until and I think important to grew up relatively insulated from Holocaust 1942 ... a primary perpetrator of the Holo- see,” said Werner Hinrich, trauma and those of us who did not. For the very possibility of viewing those images of caust,” says museum project director Dr. a history professor visiting smiling Jews in the Holocaust Museum’s Wolfgang Schulte. from Potsdam. Police participating in the execution of Jews in the central Ukrain- Tower of Faces divorced from their ultimate “The police had various functions and re- “We’ve known about the ian city of Lubny, October 1941. fates remains, for many of us, a luxury that sponsibilities in the Nazi state,” continues crimes for a few years is out of reach. The trauma wrought by ex- a placard at the exhibition, “and as a gen- now,” he added. “But it’s important to re- Despite such an explanation, the motives traordinary loss, though increasingly recog- eral rule, police officers dutifully performed member and revisit the past, always, so we behind the police crimes during the Nazi nized by a wider swath of the population, their given tasks – be it traffic control or can make the future better.” era remain difficult to understand. But the continues to be borne disproportionately by mass executions.” Almost as unsettling as the crimes them- new exhibition goes a long way in expos- those closest to the destruction. The 1945-46 Nuremberg Trials indicted selves was the re-employment of former ing a history that remained hidden for scores of high-ranking Nazi officials, but a Nazi officers in German police forces – in- many years. First published in Forward. A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR RAISED A FIST TO DEATH (Continued from page 12) “I was alive at least for another day.” The nuns there remembered, too. The Weinstein and Natalie moved to France. were going to die,” Weinstein says, “we Weinstein hid in sewers that swarmed baby was among several they tried to shel- In time, he married Sophie, another would do it on our own terms. We would with rats and human waste. He eventually ter. Disease claimed some, but the baby Holocaust survivor, and they had a son, die standing proud, on our feet, making a found a way out that seemed safe, but was named Natalie survived. When the fighting Michael. statement to the world. We would take as too weak to lift the iron cover. drew near, she was sent to a cloister in the n 1952, the family took a ship to New many of those bastards as we could kill.” Was this how he would die? countryside. IYork, then a train to L.A., where We- He helped organize and train resistance He fell asleep and dreamed of his grand- Over bombed-out roads, pedaling hard instein became a successful clothing fighters. On occasion, using his forged pa- father, a deeply religious man. “ ‘You must on his bicycle, Weinstein made his way manufacturer. In 1993, Michael died in a pers, he talked his way out of the ghetto keep going,’” his grandfather told him. there. But Natalie was gone, sent to an- car accident. Twelve years later, Sophie and smuggled weapons back inside. “‘You must. Don’t stop.’” other group of nuns. On he went, to con- died of heart disease. n April 19, 1943, the first night of Weinstein awoke with new energy. He vent after convent, sometimes sleeping in Weinstein remains full of life. He recites OPassover, the Nazis began their hunched his back against the manhole fields. the Torah at Congregation Atzei Chaim, final push to wipe out the ghetto. When cover, gathered all of his strength and The story was the same. Natalie had the Beverly Grove synagogue he has at- German tanks rolled forward, Jewish fight- pushed. It opened. been there, but nobody knew where she tended for seven decades. ers appeared at windows, on rooftops, n the early morning darkness, he was now. Nobody knew if she was alive. He reads three newspapers and sips at along street corners. They hurled Ihunted for someone who would shelter After six months, Weinstein returned to least one glass of Chivas Regal, on the grenades, Molotov cocktails, bricks, and a fleeing Jew who stank of sewage and the city, exhausted. rocks, every day. rocks. Weinstein ran along rooftops in a looked as though he might collapse and Then, against all hope, he decided to He rarely goes more than two waking fury, strafing Nazis with a machine gun. die. visit a convent near the ghetto. He walked hours without telephoning the woman The resistance held, but only for a while. A Warsaw couple he had known before past a statue of the Virgin Mary, then into who fusses over him, who tends to his “When could I have been killed?” Wein- the war took him in. a hall where dozens of pale, thin orphans every need. She is a psychologist known stein says. “Every five minutes.” He says it Weinstein asked after his relatives who stood. by her married name: Natalie Gold again, pausing between each word. had stayed behind in Radzymin. All were “Mister, mister.” They grabbed at his tall, Lumer. “Every…five…minutes.” dead. He looked for Sima. He learned she brown boots. “Mister, mister, take me, take Every Friday night, father and daughter One day he was crouched on the second was dead too. me.” share a Shabbat meal. They gather with floor of an abandoned building when he By spring 1945, the war was over, and As he drew away, frustrated, a nun family and friends, light candles, hold heard the footsteps of Nazi troops on the surviving Jews began to leave the country. walked past, carrying a bony, blond girl, hands, tell stories and offer lengthy stairs. Weinstein was not among them. He had to who looked about 4. He looked into the prayers of thanks. It’s over, he told himself. find Natalie. child’s eyes. They were blue. “It was terrible, what I went through,” He looked out a window. A solitary sol- His first stop was the street where he’d This, he said, was Natalie. Weinstein said at a dinner not long ago. dier stood guard below. left his little girl. It was mostly rubble, but “She is yours?” the nun asked. “How can “But it was worth what I came away with: Weinstein leaped. His steel-toed boots one building stood untouched — the police we know?” my beautiful daughter.” slammed into the soldier’s head. “He fell station. “If she is,” Weinstein said, “then she has like a sack of stones,” Weinstein says. “I He walked in. “Do you remember hearing a little brown birthmark, the size of a pencil Natalie looked at him, shaking her could see his skull, his blood, brains. For about an abandoned girl who was taken eraser, just near her right hip.” head. There was a long silence. killing a man who hunted me, I felt noth- here?” The nun lifted the girl’s dirty gray shirt “To have a father with such courage,” ing but good — and I was so excited I felt One officer did. The girl had been taken and they looked. she said, finally. “Well, I owe everything no pain. to a nearby convent. He had found Natalie. to him....I owe him my life.” International Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE U.S. POST 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 NEW YORK, N.Y. Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org PERMIT NO. 9313 ** ** Editor International Society Eli Zborowski, (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL New York, NY 10110 NY York, New *Published Bimonthly by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp In- mates, and Nazi Victims **deceased Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski Mandell William Sam Halpern Isidore Karten Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet September/October 2011 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5772 - Tishri/Cheshvan 2011 September/October MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM Page 16 Page