Vol. 33-No.5 ISSN 0892-1571 May/June 2007-Sivan/Tammuz 5767

ver 200 people attended the American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Spring American and International Societies for Yad Vashem. Gladys’s involvement in OLuncheon, in tribute to a Woman’s Legacy: Not by Might, Not by Power, But philanthropic causes and her efforts to enhance the lives of the Jewish people, with Love, held on Thursday, May 3, 2007 at the Park Avenue Synagogue. This both in the United States and Israel, is seen through her support of Israel Bonds, year’s Luncheon was made especially meaningful by the active participation of Yad Vashem, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Jewish National many members of the third generation, who expressed their commitment to carry Fund (JNF), Hadassah and numerous other American and Israeli Jewish organizations. the torch for the Legacy of Remembrance. Adina Shainker Burian, Young Rita Levy of Roslyn, New York was presented with an award recognizing her ded- Leadership Associate Board Member and this year’s Spring Luncheon ication to Remembering the Past and her commitment to use her creative talents Chairperson, led the way for members of this new group. to further Holocaust Awareness and Education by Julie Schwartz Kopel, a Young Yonina Gomberg, granddaughter of Gladys Halpern and member of the third gen- Leadership Associate Board Member and member of the third generation. eration, introduced Gladys Halpern of Hillside, New Jersey, who received an award Mrs. Levy is deeply committed to Israel, Holocaust Remembrance and Jewish recognizing her Resistance and Courage in the Face of the Holocaust and her cultural preservation. Her father, Nathan Katz z’l was a Member of the Board of the Commitment to Pass the Lessons and Legacy of the Shoah to her children and American Society of Yad Vashem and the American Gathering of Holocaust grandchildren. Survivors. Mrs. Levy and her mother, Sima Katz, were founding members of the Mrs. Halpern, a Holocaust survivor, is active in numerous Jewish communal International Women’s Division of YIVO. Rita was a founding member of the San organizations. Since its inception, she has been a member of the American Society Francisco Jewish Community Federation Working Women’s Forum and has for Yad Vashem Spring Luncheon Committee and a member of the Annual Tribute served on the Strategic Planning Committee of the Brandeis-Hillel Day School. In Dinner Committee. Her husband, Sam Halpern, is the Vice Chairman of the addition she is active in many other American and Israeli organizations. “MAY YOU EACH GO "M'CHAYIL L'CHAYIL"” and Sima Katz. Nathan and Sima are out- ELI ZBOROWSKI, CHAIRMAN OF THE standing examples of the partnership of AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM which I just spoke. They rose from the ashes of the Holocaust to build a life for ommittee Chairperson, Elizabeth themselves and their family in the United Wilf; Luncheon Chairperson, Adina C States. While the German Nazi war Burian; Guests of honor Gladys Halpern machine annihilated most of their extend- and Rita Levy, and Dear Friends: ed family, it could not rob the Katzes of At our first Spring Luncheon seven their basic value system. Perseverance, years ago, we honored the noted optimism and acts of chesed which were Holocaust scholar Professor Nechama ingrained in them before the war are the Tec. At that time, Prof. Tec talked about values that they have ably passed along gender differences during the Holocaust. to their children and grandchildren. Rita She said that men and women traveled has enthusiastically embraced her par- different roads to their final destination. ents' legacy and is committed to its per- While husbands and fathers were the first petuation through her children. to suffer public humiliation and instant or the first time this year, members death, mothers and wives struggled to of the Third generation, represented keep their starving families away from F by our Young Leadership Associates, death. Together, men and women, and have taken a prominent leadership role in each in their own way, demonstrated 2007 Spring Luncheon Honorees Gladys Halpern and Rita Levy with Eli Zborowski , Chairman of this luncheon. We are grateful for the ded- enormous resilience and courage. the American Society for Yad Vashem. Park Avenue Synagogue, New York City, May 3, 2007. ication of Caroline Massel, Chair of the Ultimately, however, one's "Jewishness" new lives in new lands. While husbands engaged with our organization in Young leadership Associates; Adina rather than gender was the determining and fathers went out to make a living, Holocaust remembrance. The survivor Burian, Luncheon Chair; and Yonina factor in annihilation. wives and mothers became the backbone generation is represented by Elizabeth Gomberg and Julie Kopel, Luncheon Co- It is not surprising that following the war, of family and communal life. It was the Wilf, this year's Committee Chairperson Chairs. Our choice of a Guest Speaker survivors sought mates who had shared women that enabled families to flourish and last year's honoree, and by Gladys was also informed by our desire to be this horrific life-experience. Who else, and the tenacity of these partnerships that Halpern, whom we are privileged to honor future-oriented. Kevin Haworth is part of a other than another survivor, could possi- made possible the establishment of formal today. As a mother, grandmother, great- cadre of gifted young writers in their thir- bly understand what we had been organizations for commemorating the Shoah. grandmother and a person who has lent ties and forties who have chosen to through? In marriage, we forged partner- This afternoon's program is a celebra- her vitality to numerous communal organ- explore Holocaust themes in their work. ships that produced families and created tion of successive generations of women izations, Gladys is a role model for her We are pleased that Kevin accepted our family and for all women. invitation to share his thoughts and reflec- ince its inception, Gladys and Sam tions with us this afternoon. I would also IN THIS ISSUE SHalpern have been active with the like to acknowledge the efforts of Rachelle American Society for Yad Vashem. Grossman, our Events Coordinator who, The American Society for Yad Vashem Spring Luncheon...... 1, 8-9 Gladys owes her survival to a Christian together with the staff, is responsible for Yom Hashoah observed around the world...... 2,7 family who hid her and her mother during the Luncheon arrangements. Resisting the Nazis despite the odds...... 5 the war. As an expression of gratitude, the On behalf of the American Society for The secret life of Britain’s Ann Frank...... 6 Halperns who are Yad Vashem benefac- Yad Vashem I thank all of you for partici- To be a woman in the Holocaust...... 10 tors supported the refurbishment of Yad pating in this wonderful event. I conclude Holocaust exhibit in France a vital lesson...... 11 Vashem's Avenue of the Righteous by extending a heartfelt mazel-tov to How one man can make a difference...... 12 Among the Nations The crimes of I.G. Farben...... 13 Gladys Halpern and her family and to Rita Rita Levy is a member of the Second Teaching of Holocaust must focus on ugly truth...... 13 Levy and her family. May you each go Generation, whom we are delighted to Holocaust survivor died saving students’ lives...... 14 "m'chayil l'chayil" from strength to strength. honor today as well. She is the proud Ambitious Nazi counterfeiting plot recalled by Holocaust survivor...... 15 daughter of survivors Nathan Katz, z’l (Coverage continues on pages 8-9) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 YOM HASHOAH OBSERVED AROUND THE WORLD U.S., MANHATTAN, NY: The Holocaust vivors lighting candles with their grown The annual Yom Hashoah commemora- and read out names of members of their is a grim reminder that Jews must be grandchildren. tion attracted a multi-generational group families who perished during the tragedy. active in stopping genocide anywhere in *** of local participants, ranging from elderly the world, Sen. Charles Schumer warned U.S.,QUEENS, NY: The Queens Jewish Holocaust survivors and military veterans at a candlelit ceremony in lower Manhattan Community Council, along with the of World War II to school children from marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Queens Jewish Historical Society and communities throughout South Florida. “Thinking of the Holocaust should move Congregation Toras Emeth on April 15 Miami-Dade County is home to nearly us to fight other genocides as strongly as presented “Fighting Back: The Jewish 3,800 Holocaust survivors and more than we can,” he told more than 1,000 people – Resistance to Nazi Tyranny.” Keynote 4,800 children of Holocaust survivors. including survivors of the Nazi death speaker was Sam Bloch, a Warsaw This year’s Yom Hashoah program camps – at the Museum of Jewish Ghetto freedom fighter. Also in attendance included an intergenerational candle-light- Heritage in Battery Park. were representatives of WWII Jewish War ing; a performance by the Samuel Scheck Veterans who talked about their experi- Hillel Community Day School Choir; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lays a wreath dur- ences. Kel Molei Rachamim was chanted remarks by Yitschak Ben Gad, Consul ing the annual ceremony at the Yad Vashem by Rabbi Moshe Shur. General of Israel to Florida and Puerto Holocaust memorial marking Holocaust Rico; and a presentation by the 82nd On the same day the Young Israel of Remembrance Day in Jerusalem. Forest Hills hosted the 44th annual com- Airborne Division Color Guard and the munity-wide Yom Hashoah Commemoration South Florida Shomrim Society. Israeli leaders and foreign ambassadors and memorial service for the victims of the Prior to the program, there was a read- gathered for an evening ceremony at Yad Nazi Holocaust. The guest speaker, Dr. ing of names of Holocaust victims who Vashem, which included addresses by Robert Moses Shapiro, professor of perished during World War II. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Acting Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, and *** President Dalia Itzik, and former lawmak- author of scholarly articles and books on ISRAEL: Israelis marked Yom er and survivor Tommy Lapid. Memorial candles are lighted during Annual the Holocaust presented his work Hashoah, whose theme this year is “The Holocaust is not only a stain on the Gathering of Remembrance at lower Manhattan’s “Individualizing the Holocaust: Diaries “Bearing Witness.” The Knesset began its history of Germany, not only on the histo- Museum of Jewish Heritage. from the Lodz Ghetto.” The program also Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, ry of European peoples, but a mark of Former Secretary of State Henry included a memorial candle lighting serv- “To Each a Name” at 11 a.m. on April 16, Cain on all of humanity,” Itzik told the audi- Kissinger recalled how 13 relatives were ice by Holocaust survivors from the com- in which ministers and members of ence at the Yad Vashem ceremony. killed because they didn’t believe munity. Knesset read names of victims of the Also speaking at the ceremony, Prime Germany would carry out Hitler’s mania- *** Holocaust. Minister Ehud Olmert reminded guests cal plans. U.S., FLORIDA: In observance of Yom and viewers of the importance of remem- “It is something one can never forget,” Hashoah hundreds gathered at the bering the Holocaust, and its role in the he said. Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach on future of Israel’s existence. Death-camp survivor Ray Kaner, 78, of Sunday, April 15 to hear guest speaker Dr. “Sixty-two years have passed since the New York, recalled the horrors she wit- Judea Pearl, father of slain Wall Street end of the most gruesome battles history nessed at Auschwitz when she was 11. Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and has borne witness to. On the day of victo- “A lot of people say it never happened, President of The Daniel Pearl Foundation. ry, the entire world danced in the streets of and the only way to respond is to go and Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and mur- the capital cities. Only the Jews did not tell your story,” said Kaner, whose parents dered by radical Islamist terrorists in join in these celebrations, there was no and two brothers were killed. 2002. His name will be etched in the reason to celebrate – a third of their peo- Held for the first time at the museum at Holocaust Memorial Wall alongside the A Holocaust survivor arrives for the annual ple were wiped out.” ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memo- 36 Battery Place, the event drew more names of victims of the Nazi genocide as “Only on the day of Israel’s independ- rial marking Holocaust Remembrance Day in than 1,000 Holocaust survivors, many a 21st-Century reminder that hatred did ence did the Jews allow themselves to Jerusalem. with grandchildren in tow. not end with the death of six million Jews celebrate. In eight days we will be cele- The theme this year was of passing the during the Holocaust. Daniel’s name is the Participants, which included acting brating Israel’s Independence Day. The torch to the “third generation” – symbol- first non-Holocaust victim name to be President Dalia Itzik and Prime Minister correlation between this Remembrance ized by a procession of 36 elderly sur- added to this Memorial Wall. Ehud Olmert, went up to the main stand (Coverage continues on page 7)

BUSH DECLARED JEWISH HERITAGE MONTH RIGHTEOUS WILL RECEIVE FRANCE’S LEGION OF HONOR resident Bush proclaimed May to be ment to faith and strong ties to family rance’s Legion of Honor, the coun- by Israel as “righteous among the nations” PJewish American Heritage Month. enrich our country and set a positive Ftry’s highest civilian award, will be for their role in saving Jews from the “The faith and hard work of Jewish example for others.” conferred on about 1,000 people, includ- Holocaust. Americans have played an integral role in Jeremy Katz, Bush’s liaison to the ing some who helped save Jews from They helped save 75 percent of the shaping the cultural fabric of America,” Jewish community, read the proclamation Nazi death camps. 330,000 Jews in France under the Nazi Bush said in the proclamation. at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by the The list of the honored people was pub- occupation. “Throughout our history, Jewish United Jewish Communities, among other lished in the «Journal Officiel», the State’s Some 2,725 have been recognized in France, the largest number after Poland Americans have contributed to the groups. Also speaking at the event was Official Gazette. and the Netherlands, and 16,000 in strength of our country and the preserva- U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D- Besides the 153 “Righteous of France” Fla.), who initiated the legislation creating Europe as a whole. tion of our values. The talent and imagina- who kept Jews from being deported to the heritage month. “By contributing, during one of the dark- tion of these citizens have helped our The Democratic National Committee concentration camps during World War II, est hours of our history, to saving three- Nation prosper, and their efforts continue also issued a statement marking the others included billionaire businessman quarters of the Jews of France from to remind us of America’s gift of religious month. “For more than 350 years Jewish Francois Pinault, actor Jean-Paul deportation, these men and women freedom and the blessings of God’s Americans have been an integral part of Belmondo, and Nazi hunter Beate embody the values upon which the nation steadfast love. Jewish Americans have helping the United States grow and flour- Klarsfeld. and the republic are based,” said a state- worked to promote civil rights and build ish,” said the statement by DNC chairman The 153 are among those recognized ment from the French president’s office. bridges of mutual understanding among Howard Dean and vice-chairwoman the world’s religions. Their deep commit- Susan Turnbull, who is Jewish. BELGIAN PM APOLOGIZES FOR HOLOCAUST DEPORTATIONS FRENCH JEWS PETITION U.S. FOR ASYLUM elgian Prime Minister Guy entirely treated by the end of the year. BVerhofstadt reiterated the apology to “The sums which will not have been ore than 7,000 French Jews have law according refugee status to French the Jewish community for the deportation refunded individually will be transmitted to Msigned a petition asking for politi- Jews. “We believe that the United of Belgian Jews during the Holocaust. the Foundation of the Judaism of cal asylum in the United States because States, known for its traditional welcome Speaking at a ceremony in Brussels to Belgium,” it added. of anti-Semitism in France. to those under threat in their native mark the 62nd anniversary of the end of Verhofstadt made the apology on the “Following the barbarous murder of a lands, must open its doors to us,” the the Second World War, Verhofstadt said day when a government-backed report, titled young Jew because he was Jewish, in petition says. “it is impossible to go forward” without rec- “Submissive Belgium”, was released. The the context of the rise in anti-Semitic French communal officials reacted ognizing the role Belgian officials played report concluded that top Belgian officials acts committed by Islamic fundamental- with outrage. “This petition is bizarre, in the murder of European Jewry. collaborated with the Nazis during World ists, numerous members of the commu- stupid and out of place,” Haim Musicant, He told local Jews that he is committed War II. to “a future where this will never happen “This report indicates that the authorities nity no longer feel safe in France,” reads director of CRIF, the umbrella organiza- again.” were too flexible. Worse, in several cases, the petition, which was sent to the U.S. tion of secular French Jewish groups, The prime minister also said that the they collaborated with the deportation and Congress. The reference was to Ilan told Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper. “I don’t compensation process for the Jewish vic- the continuation of the Jews of Belgium,” Halimi, a 23-year-old Parisian Jew who feel threatened in France, and the tims would be completed by the end of the he said. was kidnapped and tortured to death last authorities are doing everything they can year. The 5,640 requests for compensa- Verhofstadt then unveiled a memorial to year by an anti-Semitic gang. to protect the Jewish community. French tion introduced by Jewish victims for the Belgians who worked to save Jews during The petition asks Congress to enact a Jews don’t need this kind of petition.” event between 2001 and 2006 would be the Holocaust. May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 FIGHTING RACISM IN EUROPE: CRIMINALIZING HOLOCAUST DENIAL ? NORWAY SUED he issue of Holocaust denial fea- group of people. some people to jail for their words would BY CHILDREN OF NAZIS Ttured prominently at a public hear- t the hearing in Brussels, Martine have saved us from the Holocaust or orwegian offspring of German ing in the European parliament on how to A Roure, a French Socialist MEP, rather would have transformed them into Nfathers were part of a “master race” combat racism and xenophobia in spoke of the “necessity of including nega- heroes,” he added. plan. A group of Norwegians who were Europe. tionism” in the EU text. “There should be a clear line to define fathered by German soldiers in World War MEPs discussed a German proposal to She said that she understood the need what should be punished. In democracy, II are suing the Norwegian authorities at push through new rules that would make to respect each member state’s history freedom of speech should always be pro- the European Court of Human Rights. Holocaust denial a crime in the whole and traditions, adding:”Recent events, tected, in any circumstances. I come from The former war children claim they suf- European Union. including in our own institution with Maciej a country which suffered a dictatorship fered widespread abuse and discrimina- While unanimous in their condemnation Giertych’s publication and I consider it very tion after the war. of those who deny the Holocaust, EU suggesting that the dangerous to allow During the war the Nazis encouraged leaders are split over whether to criminal- Third Reich did no anybody to judge what liaisons between German troops and ize such acts. more than shut Jews can be said and what Norwegian women. Two years ago, Luxembourg tried to use into the ghettos they cannot.” It was part of a plan to breed an Aryan n January, Justice its EU presidency to push through legisla- had themselves creat- master race of blonde-haired, blue-eyed European tion to unify legal standards for Holocaust ed, show that we must I babies for the Thousand-Year Reich. Commissioner Franco denial but was blocked by Italy, Britain redouble our efforts to As for the infants produced by these Frattini and German and Denmark on the grounds that the pro- ban this type of histori- affairs, most became known as Justice Minister Brigitte posed rules breached freedom of speech cal minimization which Lebensborn Children. In post-war Norway Zypries have urged and civil liberties. is a veiled form of anti- stronger EU-wide they became targets of abuse, often bul- Such legislation requires unanimity Semitism.” The European Parliament in Brussels efforts against racism lied, beaten, even locked away in mental among the 27 EU member states. It would be, however, and xenophobia. institutions, just because their fathers had Citing its particular historic responsibility for each Member State remain to decide A report by the EU Monitoring Center on been German soldiers. due to its Nazi past, Germany, which how to punish such acts. Racism and Xenophobia in Vienna shows Now, 150 war children are seeking jus- holds the six-month EU rotating presiden- Laws criminalizing Holocaust denial that’s the number of racist acts increased tice at the European Court of Human cy, has said it wants EU member states to already exist in Austria, Belgium, France, in 2006 by between 20 and 45 per cent Rights. adopt the proposed legislation as soon as Germany and Spain. depending on the member state. They are suing the Norwegian state for possible. Stavros Lambrinidis, a Socialist Greek “These alarming figures show the having failed to protect them after the war Against a backdrop of increasing racist MEP said, on the other hand, that “free- urgency of achieving a minimum of har- and for discriminating against them. attacks in Europe, a German blueprint dom of speech is most important to be monization in Europe, to include a com- Norway has, in the past, offered limited says that racist declarations or Holocaust protected. mon definition of racist and xenophobic compensation to former Lebensborn denial would not be prosecuted if they “There is no question that the Nazi behavior to be subject to criminal penal- Children but the authorities have never were expressed in a way that did not genocide started with words and incite- ties which are effective, proportionate and accepted responsibility for alleged cases incite hatred against an individual or ment to hatred but I wonder if sending have a deterrent effect,” Roure said. of harassment dating back up to 60 years.

EL SALVADOR SEEKS MEDAL FOR DIPLOMAT REMNANTS OF PRE-HOLOCAUST JUDAISM WHO HELPED JEWS DURING WWII ON THEIR WAY TO RIGHTFUL HEIRS he Salvadoran government said it the facts surrounding the efforts by Castellanos, the heirs. If the heirs cannot be found, the Twill seek a posthumous medal for who died at age 86 in his homeland in 1977. BY AMIRAM BARKAT, HAARETZ company intends to sell the items and diplomat Jose Arturo Castellanos, who Castellanos is also listed as one of the allocate the money to organizations for undreds of thousands of books and gave citizenship certificates to as many as diplomats who acted as a savior to Jews many thousand Judaica items, aiding needy Holocaust survivors, and 40,000 Jews during the Holocaust. by the International Raoul Wallenberg H which belonged to Holocaust victims and institutions commemorating the Representing a tiny country almost half a Foundation, named after a Swedish diplo- were distributed to public and private bod- Holocaust’s remembrance. world away, Castellanos authorized Salvadoran mat missing since January 1945 after sav- ies in Israel in the 1950s, may now be In the first years after WWII, tens of citizenship papers to Jews throughout Europe, ing tens of thousands of Jews. reclaimed and returned to their heirs. thousands of items that belonged to making it harder for the Nazis to deport them for The Yad Vashem title is granted by the The state-owned Company for Locating Holocaust victims were transferred to execution. authority’s public committee, led by a and Retrieving Assets of Holocaust Israel by the Jewish Restitution Assistant Foreign Minister Eduardo Calix told retired Supreme Court judge. Castellanos Victims intends to round up the cultural Successor Organization (JRSO), which that a two-year investigation helped establish would be the first Salvadoran to receive it. treasures and attempt to restore them to had been set up by the Jewish Agency, their rightful claimants. the Joint Distribution Agency, the World HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS KEEP MEMORIES ALIVE It has recently transpired that more than Jewish Congress, Agudat Yisrael and 5,000 Judaica items, hundreds of works of other organizations. s people filed out of the temple million Jews murdered in Nazi concentra- Most of the items JRSO handled came gathering, Ada Feingold stuck tion camps. art and about half a million books, includ- A from a huge buried treasure of looted around and insisted on being heard. Participants also took time to celebrate ing scriptures and valuable tomes that Jewish property that was discovered by “I am a survivor,” said Feingold, 83, of the Holocaust Survivors of South Florida’s were owned by Holocaust victims, are in the United States Army in salt mines near Plantation. “I wanted to commit suicide, 25th anniversary. Israel. Wiesbaden in central Germany. but I said no. I’m going to live; I’m going to Miriam Fridman, the group’s president, Some of these items are being held by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem tell the world what happened.” said it was founded because many sur- official state institutions, such as the Israel said that a university delegation headed “I’m a survivor, too,” said Bernard vivors had no friends or siblings when National Museum and the Jewish National by Professor Gershom Shalom and chief Cytryn, 79, of Coconut Creek. “I was liber- they retired to the community from New and University Library, and the rest are librarian Dr. Shlomo Shunami brought ated by the American Army.” York and other places. held by private bodies, like museums and “We have a common bond because of some 500,000 books with JRSO’s help to They were among 400 people, men and synagogues throughout the country. our tragic past,” Fridman said. “We try to women mostly in their 80s, who attended The Company for Locating and Israel, but only half of them remained in get together and have an atmosphere and Retrieving Assets of Holocaust Victims the Jewish and University Library, while a Yom Hashoah commemoration at support each other.” Sunrise Jewish Center/Temple Sha’aray says that according to the law, it has to be the rest were distributed among syna- She said it’s extra special when they given all these items so it can try to locate gogues around the country. Tzedek in Sunrise. have a chance to meet at a big event, The Jewish Federation of Broward such as Yom Hashoah. County’s Community Relations Committee “We must continue to work together and AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM and the Holocaust Survivors of South spend time together,” Fridman said. “Our AND JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS Florida held the event to honor all motto is ‘Never again,’” she said. “We Holocaust survivors and remember the six should not be forgotten.” CELEBRATE ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY IN LAS VEGAS n May 13 at the the ballroom to dance to MANY ISRAELI JEWS FEAR ANOTHER HOLOCAUST OVenetian Hotel in Israeli music, eat, and learn n the eve of Holocaust race to develop the weapons needed to Las Vegas, Jewish organ- about the different organi- ORemembrance Day, the Anti- do so – most do not recognize other izations from Las Vegas zations in attendance. Defamation League conducted a survey nations today as fertile ground for the and around the country There was much interest in among Israeli Jewish youth, asking birth of another anti-Jewish genocide. gathered to celebrate the work that the American them if they felt another act of genocide But a new study showed that acts of Israel's 59 years of exis- Society for Yad Vashem against their people was possible in violence and intimidation against Jews tence. The American Society does. Many people were today’s world. worldwide doubled in 2006 over the was represented at this festiv- curious about the different About one-third of the 500 respon- previous year. ity by Ilana Apelker, Mr. & Mrs. Blau, standing, and Ilana programs and exhibits that dents said they believe another The countries that experienced the Education Coordinator, and Apelker, Education Coordinator of the the Society has to offer. Our Holocaust is a very real possibility. sharpest rise in anti-Semitism were in Shraga Mekel, Development American Society for Yad Vashem at hope is that connections Apart from Iran – whose present lead- Europe, home of the first Holocaust, Director. the Israel Independence Day were made with those who ership has openly stated its desire to according to the Stephen Roth Institute Throughout the day Celebration on May 13, 2007. at the can help further the goals of annihilate the Jewish state, and is in a for the Study of Anti-Semitism. people passed through Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. the Society. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS AUSCHWITZ REPORT OUR HOLOCAUST Auschwitz Report. By Primo Levi, with its conditions but to fathom its raison Our Holocaust. By Amir Gutfreund. glass windows. The powerful imagery and Leonardo De Benedetti. Edited by Robert d’être, as well. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Toby Press, symbolism on display at Beth David S. C. Gordon. Verso, 2006. 128 pp. $17.95. evi was born July 31, 1919, into a 2006. 407 pp. $15.72. Synagogue also appears in this wonder- highly assimilated and cultured bour- fully haunting debut novel. Joy is coupled REVIEWED BY STANISLAO G. PUGLIESE L REVIEWED BY ADAM SHARON geois Jewish family in Turin, Italy. He with sadness; celebration is mixed with lthough best known for his seminal spoke no Hebrew until late in life, did not n my hometown of Toronto, Holocaust mourning. A work, “Survival in Auschwitz,” Primo observe the dietary laws and only occa- Isurvivors migrated to the Downsview Take the opening pages, for instance. Levi’s searing memoir was actually his sionally visited the Moorish-style syna- neighborhood to begin their new life in Grandpa Lolek is introduced, described as second attempt to grapple with the enor- gogue in his native city on the High Holy Canada. Staples of a typical Jewish com- the parsimonious elder with a sorrowful mity of Nazi extermination camps. After Days. Like most Italian Jews, he was munity slowly emerged. Jewish schools past who resides in Haifa. He is a miser the Auschwitz system of camps was dis- shocked when the fascist regime pub- were founded, kosher whose penchant for frugality was covered by the Soviet lished a “Manifesto of the Racial bakeries opened and syn- born during a different era on the Army on January 27, 1945, Scientists” in the summer of agogues were built and European continent. Empty bot- Levi and another Turinese 1938. The following autumn, the grew, including Beth tles are collected and returned to Jew, Leonardo De regime promulgated a series of David B’nai Israel Beth reclaim deposits. Mostly deplet- Benedetti, a 46-year-old anti-Semitic laws patterned on Am, known for its massive ed liquid soap in his bathroom is medical doctor, were the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi stained glass windows diluted and refilled with water. charged by Soviet authori- Germany. When, in September behind the rabbi’s pulpit. Tea bags are used repeatedly ties to draft a report on the 1943, Italy switched sides dur- The art at Beth David before being inspected by sanitary and medical ing World War II and found itself included typical biblical Grandpa Lolek, who would esti- organization of Auschwitz. occupied by the Allies in the symbols and modern-day mate the bag’s vitality and The Russians’ motives — South and the Nazis in the rest images of an Israeli flag notwithstanding their of the country, Levi threw in his decree its fate. It’s a process and IDF soldiers, coupled chaotic but essentially lot with a left-wing anti-fascist watched by Amir and Effi, the humane portrait in Levi’s movement, the Action Party. with Holocaust motifs. children of Holocaust survivors second memoir, “The Before firing a shot, he was cap- Synagogues set ablaze (like author Gutfreund himself), Truce” — were not entirely altruistic: They tured and interned in Italy. In February are meant to symbolize Kristallnacht. whose childhood was pockmarked with wished to document the unspeakable 1944, he was sent to Auschwitz. (Of the Deportation trains head toward incidents of such oddities. crimes of the Nazi regime not just for pos- 650 men, women and children on his Auschwitz-Birkenau and the infamous olek and his Holocaust survivor terity but also for propaganda purposes. transport, only 24 survived.) He survived gates marked “Arbeit Macht Frei.” A cre- Lfriends live in a neighborhood of Cambridge University’s Robert Gordon, through a fortuitous combination of his matorium and concentration camp bar- Haifa, but they are stuck in a netherworld a prolific writer on Levi’s significance, has extensive knowledge of chemistry, the racks are noticeable. Yellow Stars of defined by trauma. Food is never thrown edited what he rightly calls the “ur-docu- humanity of a precious few other prison- David dot the area beneath the Holy Ark. out at home. Why? “Because people died ment of that exceptional voice of reason,” ers and simple luck. His memoir of life in The number 6,000,000 stands out. for a single potato. Because people the “Auschwitz Report.” For historians, the the extermination camp, “Survival in As a youngster, it felt odd attending turned their parents in for a morsel of cab- report is an invaluable primary source; for Auschwitz” (“If This Is a Man”), has friends’ bar mitzvah ceremonies and, bage. Because people were so starved readers struggling to make sense of the claimed its rightful place among the mas- more recently, their weddings at Beth that they ate wooden planks in their huts Holocaust, it is much more. It is a disturb- terpieces of Holocaust literature. David Synagogue. For behind the joy, in Buchenwald.” ing look into the psychology and patholo- Although it can be argued that the images of hell were on display. And yet, Amir and Effi spent one summer with a gy of the concentration camp universe by Holocaust was the central event of our while reading Our Holocaust by Amir family at a kibbutz playing an invented two men who struggled not only to survive (Continued on page 12) Gutfreund, I kept recalling those stained- (Continued on page 14) KRISTALLNACHT: PRELUDE TO DESTRUCTION Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction. By Jewish tuberculosis patients were turned vivors, to immerse us in Kristallnacht and who tried to help. Countess Maria von Martin Gilbert. HarperCollins, 2006. 314 out of their “home for consumptives,” its aftermath, including Jews’ frequently Maltzan, for example, whose brother was pp. $21.95. which was subsequently demolished. desperate efforts to escape Germany and in the SS, turned her aristocratic bearing his is grimly familiar ground, but find refuge elsewhere. We read of the ter- to good effect when she surreptitiously REVIEWED BY MICHAEL R. MARRUS T Gilbert has found some new materi- rorization of young and old, men and rescued victims: “The Countess made vernight on Nov. 9-10, 1938, al, consisting mostly of women, rich and poor, distin- contact with members of the Swedish OGerman and Austrian Nazis descriptions and recol- guished and obscure — all of Protestant Church in Berlin, who were launched a coordinated, riotous assault lections by people who them simply because they systematically smuggling Jews out of on Jews across the expanded German lived through Kristallnacht. were Jews. Oskar Prager, then Germany. She forged visas, ration books Reich — burning synagogues, destroying One of the world’s most 9, saw a Nazi storm trooper and other documents, and drove veg- stores, looting houses, beating Jews and prolific historians — he wreck the family apartment and etable lorries full of refugees out of Berlin.” sending thousands to concentration is the author of more crush his birthday wristwatch; In Warzburg, at a Jewish teachers’ semi- camps. The next morning, the boots of the than 80 works, includ- Ilse Morgenstern remembered nary, the caretaker — apparently a storm storm troopers and the Hitler Youth ing his most important the Nazis’ seizing the family trooper himself, wearing a brown shirt uni- crunched the resulting broken glass, giv- achievement, his mag- piano; and, in an extraordinary form — warned the youngsters “to dress ing the name Kristallnacht (“Night of isterial, multi-volume but in some sense typical reac- quickly and run away, because ‘they’ were Broken Glass”) to the terrible events that biography of Winston tion, Batya Emanuel, who was burning, looting and destroying syna- prefigured the Holocaust of European Churchill — Gilbert 13 at the time, recalled her gogues and Jewish homes and shops.” Jewry. “For the perpetrators of the brings to bear the his- father’s futile reaction: “Here From Berlin, the senior British diplomat in destruction,” writes Martin Gilbert in his torical method that has was Papa striding into the Germany, Sir George Oglivie Forbes, new history of that dreadful night, “the served so well in the room, with the telephone, telegraphed home on November 13: “I name reflected their sense of both triumph past. “I’m not a theoreti- which was kept in our parents’ can find no words strong enough in con- and contempt: triumph at what they had cal historian — seeking to guide the read- bedroom at night, tucked under his arm, demnation of the disgusting treatment of destroyed, laughter at the thought of the er to a general conclusion,” he once told and he was in braces, without a waistcoat so many innocent people, and the civi- sound of breaking glass. Yet fear and dis- the Jerusalem Report. “I’m quite content and jacket. I don’t think I had ever seen lized world is faced with the appalling tress were inflicted on every German Jew to be a narrative chronicler, a slave of the him not fully dressed before. He nodded sight of 500,000 people about to rot away that night.” More than a thousand Jewish facts.” But as anyone who has attempted curtly in my direction, plugged in the in starvation.” places of worship were destroyed; 91 to write history knows, the facts don’t quite phone and dialed: ‘Is that the police? I More than 330,000 German and Jews were murdered; 30,000 Jewish men speak for themselves, and chronicles wish to inform you that the synagogue at Austrian Jews escaped one way or anoth- between the ages of 16 and 60 were don’t automatically provide accounts as the back of Rutschbahn 11 has been er by the outbreak of the war in 1939. arrested; 30 Jews apparently committed fluent and absorbing as Gilbert at his best. broke into and is being vandalized at this Kristallnacht records what they suffered, suicide in Vienna; in Bayreuth, the home Unlike much of the Holocaust, very moment — you are sending your how they managed to get away and what of Wagnerian opera, 60 Jewish men and Kristallnacht occurred under the noses of men? Thank you.’ “ they remembered about it. Most pertinent- women were locked in a cowshed; in newspaper reporters and foreign diplo- Tellingly, Gilbert’s witnesses register not ly, it also records how ordinary people Frankfurt, half of the town’s 43 syna- mats, who painstakingly recorded what only the outrage, the cruelty and the bru- responded to the catastrophe. gogues and houses of prayer were gutted; they saw. Gilbert assembles their tality but also the generous responses of and in the small community of Bad Soden, accounts, together with those of the sur- some Germans and foreign diplomats First published in the Washington Post May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 RESISTING THE NAZIS DESPITE THE ODDS were only partly rediscovered after the war. children were banned from public schools. that the writer BY EDWARD ROTHSTEIN, THE NEW his epic is briefly alluded to in the And reflecting later years are artifacts Primo Levi said YORK TIMES Timportant exhibition “Daring to from even darker times, including false he often heard as Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust,” documents used by Jewish women who a survivor: “Why he discipline and determination are on display at the Museum of Jewish were couriers secretly bearing information did you not half-brilliant, half-mad: in 1940, in T Heritage in association with the Ghetto from beyond the walls of ghettos and escape? Why did Warsaw, the Polish-Jewish historian Fighters’ House in Israel. Mr. Ringelblum camps. Also on view are a violin, a stage you not rebel?” Emanuel Ringelblum decided that the is mentioned here, and facsimiles of the set, school notebooks: all relics of a Mr. Mais’s entire experience of Jewry under Nazi rule buried documents (now housed in resilient Jewish life nurtured at the brink of answer is that should be thoroughly documented. The Warsaw) are shown, but they are primari- extinction. (“When the children will come Jews did, again internment of Jews within the Warsaw ly demonstrating that in extreme times out of the cage,” one survivor recalls and again There ghetto, he wrote (with chilly irony), “pro- resistance to tyranny takes many forms. being told, “they should be able to fly.”) were more than vided even greater opportunity for devel- One is the enterprise of Oyneg Shabbes: There is even a pillowcase given to a 90 Jewish fight- opment of the archive.” documentation. Lithuanian woman by Rivka Gotz, who ing organizations A competition was established to defied the Nazi ban on Jewish childbirth in European select writers, teachers and intellec- and smuggled her newborn son, Ben, out ghettos and tuals; they would study topics like The Jewish partisans of the Shavli ghetto in a suitcase, placing three rebellions community life, education, crime, Abba Kovner, left, and him under the woman’s secret care. The at the hellish youth, art and religion, while helping Shmerke Kaczerginski pillowcase now comes from Ben Gotz’s were among the libera- centers of the to smuggle information into the collection. tors of Vilna, Lithuania, Nazi death-king- ghetto. Comprehensiveness and Such is the evidence of resistance of in 1944. dom: at Sobibor, objectivity were meant to eclipse one kind or another: creating institutions Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. But surrounding horrors, documenting in the face of oppression; following reli- also, Mr. Mais suggests, “visitors to our them for the future. The secret proj- gious observances that were the object of exhibition will be challenged to re-evalu- ect was called, in heavily sardonic Nazi repugnance; continuing cultural life ate their understanding of what consti- code, Oyneg Shabbes, using the with defiant pride; risking life to bring new tutes resistance.” Yiddish words for a celebration wel- life into being. It is not until late in the exhi- This is the show’s greatest strength, and coming the Sabbath. A forged work document for Tema Schneiderman, who bition that visitors see the first guns used also its greatest weakness. It is a strength “To our great regret, however, secretly delivered news and ammunition to ghettos. She by Jewish partisans or can read the first because to demonstrate how all of this only part of the plan was carried died in Treblinka. accounts of their sabotage as they darted involved resistance, the exhibition must out,” Mr. Ringelblum writes, explaining from forests like gnats in the face of the Others forms of resistance are reflected convey just how extraordinary the circum- with hyperbolic understatement: “We German war machine. in objects that in ordinary times have no stances were: the gradually tightening lacked the necessary tranquility for a plan distinctiveness: a ritual slaughterer’s knife he exhibition’s curator, Yitzchak grip that held European Jews; the impres- of such scope and volume.” Writers were used at great risk to butcher kosher chick- TMais, former director of the Yad sions that couldn’t fully foreshadow what executed; some were exiled for slave ens in Denmark so they could be smug- Vashem museum in Jerusalem and a was to come; the human impulse toward labor; and, in 1942, hundreds of thou- gled into Germany in the 1930s; a blue- curator of the planned Illinois Holocaust hope being slowly stifled. “How does one sands of ghetto residents were deported and-white wrestling sash from 1934 Museum in Skokie, explains in a valuable respond,” an introductory film asks, “when to death camps. Before the ghetto was awarded to Jewish contestants no longer companion volume to the show (which the future is unknown?” consumed in the final conflagrations of an permitted to compete with their fellow also includes many difficult-to-find first- “Who can you turn to?” asks the label armed rebellion, Mr. Ringelblum’s archive Germans; a girl’s 1938 report card from a hand accounts) that his intention was to text. “Who will speak for you when your was buried in tin boxes and milk cans that school founded by Jews in Berlin after Jewish address the kinds of accusatory questions (Continued on page 12) IN BALTICS, TEACHING ABOUT SHOAH SOMETIMES TOUCHES RAW NERVES Approximately 220,000 of the 250,000 the exception? In Latvia, which has about people were killed there. BY MICHAEL J. JORDAN, JTA Jews in Lithuania were killed, and 90,000 200 sites where Jews were killed, some Complicating the picture is that while of 100,000 in Latvia. Only seven of the youth are in the dark about what hap- Lithuania, for example, had one of nside the Vilnius Zveryno High School, estimated 1,000 Jews survived the pened or feel disconnected from it, says Europe’s highest rates of collaboration Ithe Lithuanian teens greet a guest to onslaught in Estonia. Gita Umanovska, executive director of the with the Nazis, Yad Vashem has honored their Tolerance Center as they would a Teaching children about those atrocities Riga Jewish community. 693 Lithuanians as “Righteous Gentiles” teacher — standing at attention. may mean implicating their own grandpar- “Maybe in their town of 3,000, 1,000 among the more than 21,700 so recog- Striking Holocaust images painted by ents and denting national pride that was Jews were killed in the woods,” nized. From Latvia, 103 righteous have the teens cover the blackboard: mostly allowed to grow only with independence Umanovska says. “Maybe they don’t been identified; from Estonia, three. watercolors of Jews deported, torn from 16 years ago. know, or don’t want to know. They may A memoir of more than 100 Lithuanian loved ones, trapped behind barbed wire. ritics charge that some in these feel it happened over there, but we’re over ghetto and camp survivors, “With a In the back of the classroom, a cabinet Csmall ex-Soviet republics tend to here; it’s not a part of my history, my town, Needle in the Heart,” cites countless has become a permanent exhibit, its deal with this complexity with a instances of ordinary folks helping Jews. doors opened to reveal a miniature con- form of Holocaust denial: not deny- In addition, the Baltic states endured their centration camp built of wood, clay and ing the Holocaust per se, but own wartime trauma: The Soviet “libera- paper. rejecting local culpability and pin- tors” deported hundreds of thousands of “We need to learn our country’s history ning blame entirely on the people to Siberia, and executed or impris- and what our ancestors did — it was very Germans. Indeed, in contrast to oned many others. More attention to cruel,” says Ruta Vastakaite, speaking, other European countries, no Baltic crimes against Jews might not resonate like her classmates, in near-flawless nation has ever imprisoned a local here, nor would puncturing these nations’ English. Nazi war criminal. own sense of victimization. “Some thought they were better than the “You have to be very savvy about he Holocaust itself was a taboo Jews,” Linas Budrys adds, “and that Jews the Holocaust education being Ttopic for a half-century. Soviet prop- should have no rights.” taught,” says Efraim Zuroff, director aganda would refer generically to the “Only when we know our own history of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “Soviet victims of fascism,” never the can we prevent it from happening again,” Nazi-hunting office in Israel. “Jewish victims.” Ieva Kerzaite concludes. Five years ago the office The students of Vilnius Zverynas High School stand with Once the Soviet regime crumbled, the The words are an encouraging sign con- launched “Operation Last Chance,” their teacher and principal in front of some of their Baltics joined fellow Eastern European sidering that not a single student in the which offers cash rewards for infor- Holocaust-themed artwork. countries in saying the right things: apolo- class is Jewish. That’s not surprising in a mation leading to prosecutions of gizing for the Holocaust and vowing to country that before World War II was a war criminals from the Baltics and other my family.” In some cases, the govern- commemorate it, resolve issues like resti- center of Jewish life but which today has countries. ment isn’t helping. tution and prosecution of war criminals. no more than 5,000 Jews. “Is local complicity an important compo- President Vaira Vike-Freiberga has Holocaust education essentially was a As in the neighboring Baltic states of nent?” Zuroff asked. “Or are they engag- apologized for Latvian participation in the precondition for any country presenting Latvia and Estonia, Holocaust education in ing in Holocaust deflection, dealing only Nazi slaughter, but an official Latvian his- itself as a decent, modern society with Lithuania is a tricky business. Not only were with the easier part — what Germany and tory book — produced in 2005 — hopes of joining exclusive Western clubs the Jewish populations in the Baltic coun- the Nazis did?” described Salaspils, the country’s main like the European Union or NATO. tries decimated by the Nazis, many of their One more question can be added: Are concentration camp, as a “corrective The Baltic countries joined both organiza- own countrymen took part in the killings. the Vilnius Zveryno students the rule or working camp.” In reality, some 50,000 (Continued on page 14) Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER ESCAPE FROM THE HOLOCAUST: THE SECRET LIFE OF BRITAIN’S ANNE FRANK her neighbor’s kitchen table. Jewish children wore made her uncom- he days which followed brought the BY IAN HERBERT, THE INDEPENDENT There would have been no story to tell fortable, but her parents had been assidu- T same bewildering existence which had not Ms Rappoport’s mother, Millie ous about keeping the family’s true the two young Jewish brothers experience he fragments of the story were there Spadik, whose own parents first arrived in predicament from her. It was as her par- when hidden in an upstairs room in all along, bundled into a shoebox T Liverpool by passenger ship in the early ents locked the front door and quickly ush- Charlotte Gray. Mme Collomb made her which lay, unopened, in a spare room at 1900s to escape the Russian pogroms, ered her into the small family bedroom new child a bed under the kitchen table, Suzanne Rappoport’s apartment in decided to leave her home in Newcastle- with them, bundling her under the bed, protected from view by a long, thick che- Leeds. There were the postcards her upon-Tyne for France after an unhappy that it became clear something was seri- nille tablecloth, and she occupied her with father had sent, asking after her but pro- marriage. She settled in Paris, where she ously wrong. “Mother was sobbing, pacing a pair of slippers made from old dusters. It viding no word of her mother; the studio had met Josek Rappoport, a Polish tailor. backwards and forwards and tearing her was Suzanne’s job to polish the floor with photograph of the three of them taken a The last family photograph, taken at the hair out,” Ms. Rappoport recalled. “From them. “I loved skating around the slippery few weeks before they were separated; Studio Jean Guy, under the bed, I kitchen on them,” Ms. Rappoport recalled. and the immaculate, handwritten note she marked their daugh- saw clumps of it “She knew how to distract me.” had penned, aged no more than nine, ter’s sixth birthday – falling to the floor. But it soon became unsafe for a child, telling how she longed to see them both 23 July 1942. She knew what was whose existence was well known, to be again. “Je serai bien contente de revoir hat occurred coming.” After the confined so close to home. Mme Collomb ma chere petite maman et mon cher petit next remained front door was bro- tapped into a network which was hiding papa,” reads the letter. She never did. W firmly in the past until Ms. ken in, the children in rural France and sent her to Ms Rappoport was born of an immigrant Rappoport, now 70, con- Rappoports were the village of Mondoubleau in the Loire British mother and has spent her entire cluded it was time to ordered into their Valley, whose role in hiding children has adult life in England. But its defining event revisit it. Her decision to sparse little kitchen been documented. It was here that the occurred on a warm August afternoon in go back stemmed from a and were packing reality of her parents’ absence and her German-occupied Paris, in 1942. The chance conversation bags in front of the own grim existence – with hours hidden French police were collaborating with the about her parents with small Salamander from view in a cellar – began to dawn on Nazis in the round-up of non-French Jews one of her neighbors in stove, under the her. Though she did not know it, those into - those who had come to France but were Leeds, Barbara Govan, eye of the police- whose care she had been entrusted did not born there – for deportation. Among whose Screenhouse men, when Mme not share Mme Collomb’s empathy. A let- them were her parents. Productions company Collomb rushed in. ter, written from a family in Mondoubleau Ms. Rappoport would have been taken, Suzanne's parents both died in the death camps. has produced the “She said: ‘What’s to Mme Collomb and recently recovered too, were it not for the courage and sheer Timewatch documentary. “I felt that I my child doing in this apartment? I’ve from the Leeds shoebox, reads: “I’m sorry audacity of the woman across the third needed, while I still could, to find out what been looking everywhere for her. She to put you in a difficult position over floor landing, Mme Yvonne Collomb, who had happened to my parents – and to my dragged me out by the arm before I could Suzanne, but I can’t look after her. I can’t removed the child from the flat – even as grandparents, who were also taken that react,” Ms. Rappoport said. “She got away be stuck at home for a child.” French police waited for her parents to summer,” Ms. Rappoport said. “There with it. The police left the building with my Suzanne was moved to a farmhouse in pack a case each – and then helped con- were so many fragments of memory. parents but never came looking for me.” the Auvergne, where her yearning to see ceal her from the Nazis and their collabo- That’s how it must be with an experience Ms. Rappoport now believes that her Mme Collomb, as well as her parents, was rators for over three years. Though other like that.” parents and their neighbor had rehearsed evident in an emotional a letter to Ms British Jews are known to have been She was at her father’s shoulder, as he this script in readiness for the moment. Collomb.” among France’s 30,000 Hidden Children, sat watching the pigeons in the sunshine “Mme Colomb had sent her daughter out Correspondence from southern Poland who escaped the Nazis in circumstances through the window of their third-floor to play at the Butte de Chaumont park that told Mme Collomb that the prospects for captured by Sebastian Faulks’ novel apartment, when they both heard the day,” she said. “I also found my parents’ the child’s parents were grim. Several Charlotte Gray, Ms Rappoport was the sound of the French policemen on the sideboard in her apartment, and items like postcards from Suzanne’s father con- first to tell her story, in a BBC Timewatch wooden staircase at 58 Rue de Belleville. their Japanese tea set, which puzzled me. firmed he was in the Auschwitz camp at documentary which takes her back to the The child was not immediately anxious: I now think it might have been their Birkenau, where at least 1.1 million Jews apartment block where, 65 years ago, she there had been a curfew for her that sum- advance payment to her for the task she and 75,000 Poles perished. His prisoner was concealed in a makeshift bed under mer and the yellow star she and other was prepared to undertake.” (Continued on page 12) ISRAELI CITIZENSHIP FOR THE SAVIOR OF JEWISH CHILDREN uring World War II, Andree Geulen- a few hundred have been granted hon- ceremony. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t The five-day conference coincided with DHerscovici saved more than 300 orary citizenship by Israel. be here today. You are like a mother to us all.” Israel’s official Holocaust Remembrance day. Jewish children in Belgium, risking her “She belongs to this unique club of After the war, Geulen-Herscovici mar- The group, which includes some 160 sur- own life to hide them from the Nazis. At an courageous and honorable human ried a Jewish survivor and raised two chil- vivors, has been sharing its survival stories emotional ceremony, Israel honored the beings,” said Avner Shalev, dren of her own. But after many years of keeping mum. Harel 86-year-old woman, granting her hon- director of Yad Vashem. “This she also maintained said doing so together with the woman who orary citizenship and reuniting her with is another way for us to say contact with some of saved them made it more significant. dozens of the people she rescued. thank you.” her Jewish children, “When you meet the woman who is In 1942, the Brussels teacher witnessed The soft-spoken Geulen- many of whom later responsible for you being alive,” he said, a Gestapo raid on a school to arrest Herscovici played down her immigrated to Israel. his voice trailing, “it’s very emotional.” Jewish children. She then joined a rescue heroics. “What I did was merely “And since then I have Dozens accompanied Geulen-Herscovici organization and for more than two years my duty. Disobeying the laws of never been alone. as she strolled slowly though the muse- collected children and hid them in the time was just the normal Through every moment um. Many shed tears as she neared an Christian homes and monasteries under thing to do,” she said in French. of my life, you have exhibit and pointed to a black and white assumed identities. Her actions altered the lives of been with me and I love photograph on the wall showing her along Throughout the war, she looked over hundreds of children, many of you all like I love my with two children in her arms. them, keeping a secret record of their whom reunited with her recent- own children,” she said. “That’s Jackie,” she said, motioning to one original names. At the end of the war, she ly, along with their own children of the kids. gathered them once again and returned and grandchildren. Shaul Harel, 70, was one Andree Geulen-Herscovici. of those children whom She said she remembered them all, down many to their surviving relatives. enri Lederhandler was to each one’s serial number in her diary. In 1989, Geulen-Herscovici was recog- Hnine in the spring of 1943, when Geulen-Herscovici saved from the gas cham- bers of Auschwitz. “Even in the darkest hour of humanity nized by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Geulen-Herscovici took him in. He said he there were still a few rays of light,” said memorial as a Righteous Among the still vividly remembers the first meeting To honor her and others like her, the Belgian Ambassador to Israel Danielle del Nations – an honor granted to non-Jews with the lovely young woman who would Israeli doctor organized an international Marmol. “Andree Geulen-Herscovici was who risked their lives to save Jews during become his guardian angel. conference in Israel for the Belgian chil- one of those.” the Holocaust, including Oskar Schindler “You saved us, you rescued us from the dren hidden during the Holocaust, of and Raoul Wallenberg. Among these, only fingernails of the Nazis,” he said at the which there are an estimated 3,000. First reported by Associated Press May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 FILM RECOGNIZING MAN’S WORK FINDING NAZI WAR CRIMINALS he Simon Wiesenthal Center hosted criminals he unearths. Labeled “the man into a meeting between the War Crimes court, Wiesenthal’s most high-profile T a Philadelphia premiere of “I Have who could not stop thinking about the guilt Section of the U.S. Army and former Nazi cases include Franz Murer, “The Butcher Never Forgotten You: The Life and of other people” by a contributor in the prison guards. Amazed to see the of Wilno;” Gustav Wagner, the comman- Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal.” Directed by documentary, Wiesenthal’s obsession German guards shackled and answering dant of Sobibor; Erich Rajakowitsch, in Richard Trank and narrated by actress was apparent in the documentary, but so questions regarding their activities in the charge of the “death transports” in Nicole Kidman, “I Have Never Forgotten were his reasons. Holland; Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo You” was a stirring tribute to the life of “Survival is a privilege which entails obli- officer who arrested Anne Frank; Hermine Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor gations. I am forever asking myself what I Braunsteiner, a housewife living in and a self-trained investigator who can do for those who have not survived. Queens, N.Y., who had supervised the brought thousands of Nazi war criminals The answer I have found for myself (and killing of hundreds of children at to justice. which need not necessarily be the answer Majdanek; and Franz Stangl, the com- “I Have Never Forgotten You” chronicles for every survivor) is: I want to be their mandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor the life of a man who relentlessly pursued mouthpiece. I want to keep their memory concentration camps in Poland. his Nazi torturers with a passionate fervor alive, to make sure the dead live on in that Stangl, who Wiesenthal patiently and obsession. Unable to return to a “nor- memory,” said Wiesenthal, in his book, researched for three years, was finally mal” life after his liberation from Justice, Not Vengeance. located in Brazil in 1967. Remanded in Mauthausen concentration camp in upper he documentary opens with footage West Germany for trial, when asked Austria, Wiesenthal was driven to follow a T from Mauthausen, one of the sever- whether he plead guilty or not guilty, lifelong obsession in his quest for justice. al concentration camps Wiesenthal Stangl replied “not guilty.” Wiesenthal A relentless researcher with a talent for endured during his capture, and the loca- remarks grimly in his documentary, “The ferreting out war criminals, Wiesenthal’s tion from which he was liberated on May judge should have asked him that ques- lifelong passion would suggest a man rav- 5, 1945. Found lying helplessly in a bar- tion 6,000,000 times.” Stangl was sen- aged by hate and driven by revenge to racks surrounded by the dead, and weigh- tenced to life imprisonment and died in seek his torturers, yet “I Have Never ing less than 100 lbs., Wiesenthal barely prison. Forgotten You” reveals a man who pur- survived to be liberated by an American A portrait of Simon Wiesenthal and his wife Stangl, about whom Wiesenthal says, sues former Nazis in the name of justice, armored unit. Wiesenthal’s first documen- Cyla, 1936. “Had I done nothing in my life except but more importantly, for the friends, 89 tation of the atrocities committed by the concentration camps, Wiesenthal immedi- catch this man, I would not have lived in family members and fellow sufferers and Nazi guards survives in volumes of ately offered his services. Underweight, vain,” was one of two on Wiesenthal’s casualties of the Holocaust. sketches he drew while imprisoned. weak and completely untrained, U.S. offi- most-wanted list. Adolf Eichmann, chief of “I Have Never Forgotten You” is not an “I drew what I was seeing every day,” cials placated the excited Wiesenthal and the Gestapo’s Jewish Department, and easy documentary to watch, nor does it said Wiesenthal. “I wanted to leave some- unofficially “commissioned” him to submit implementer of “The Final Solution” was soften the brutality of the Holocaust, but thing behind to document the horrors I information. Wiesenthal’s first list of 99 the other. After over a decade of relentless although the images on the screen depict saw every day.” Nazi offenders, explicitly detailed and research, Wiesenthal aided Eichmann’s horrible criminals, murderers and tortur- Wiesenthal’s first small efforts to expose painstakingly categorized, incited a pas- ers, the purpose of the film is to memori- the crimes of Nazi guards through his sion and obsession that ended only with capture in Buenos Aires in 1959. He was alize the commendable work achieved by sketches were magnified greatly following his death in 2005. brought to Israel for trial, and Wiesenthal throughout his lifetime to his release. One day during the struggle Credited with providing information to executed on May 31, 1961 for mass murder. honor the lives lost at the hands of the to regain his health, Wiesenthal walked bring nearly 1,100 Nazi war criminals to (Continued on page 14) YOM HASHOAH OBSERVED AROUND THE WORLD (Continued from page 2) Jews” and “maintained his neutral position million Jews — half of them from Poland, he read out in parliament. “We know that Day, and the following celebrations is throughout the war.” which before World War II had Europe’s anti-Semitism and racism paved the way direct,” Olmert continued. Yad Vashem issued a statement in biggest Jewish population – who perished for the Holocaust, the most inhumane Lapid spoke of the need to act against response to the protest urging the Vatican in the Holocaust. The march has been event in our history.” modern genocides. to open its wartime archives and offering held since 1988, and is aimed at stilling Hungary’s main right-wing opposition “Even after the Holocaust, we witnessed to change the picture caption on Pius if the voices of Holocaust deniers. It is open party Fidesz, which normally walks out genocide in Biafra, Cambodia, Rwanda, new evidence comes to light indicating to people of all faiths. when Gyurcsany speaks, remained in and we must cry out against the genocide resistance to the Nazi genocide. *** parliament during the speech out of currently being committed in Darfur in *** GERMANY, STUTTGART: Thirty-four respect for the memorial event. Sudan — and the world is sitting on its POLAND: Holocaust survivors led Jews who died serving as slave laborers Hungary began remembering the victims hands and sends a few sacks of flour, not prayers on Yom Hashoah as thousands of for the Nazis were honored with the dedi- of the Holocaust on April 16, when so much in order to feed the hungry, but people remembered victims of the Nazis cation of gravestones in a ceremony at Gyurcsany joined Jewish leaders and rather to calm its conscience,” he said, Final Solution at the the US Army airfield where other politicians on a torch-lit march according to Ha’aretz. annual March of the their mass grave was Lapid, also chairman of the Yad Vashem Living at the Auschwitz- through Budapest. recently discovered. The marchers – including Efraim Zuroff, council, added a warning regarding “an Birkenau death camp in More than 200 mourners the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s chief existential threat to the Jewish people on southern Poland. were on hand for ceremo- Nazi-hunter – made their way from a the part of the Iranian president.” Some 8,000 people, ny to mark International Holocaust memorial museum to the On Monday at 10 a.m. Israel time, from teenagers to elderly Holocaust Remembrance downtown Dohany Synagogue, the sirens wailed throughout the country for Holocaust survivors, Day, dedicating the grave- largest synagogue in Europe. The syna- two minutes, with Israelis standing silently assembled in this south- stones to the anonymous gogue sits at the edge of the Jewish ghet- to remember the victims. ern Polish town for the victims of the *** annual March of the Echterdingen concentra- to that was set up during the Second The Vatican backed off a threat to boy- Living. After the wail of a tion camp that were dis- World War. ram’s horn signaled the cott a Holocaust memorial event in Israel. covered in September Soviet troops liberated the ghetto on start of the march, the The Holy See’s 2005 during construction January 18, 1945, releasing around marchers began walking ambassador to Israel, work at the airfield. 70,000 Jews from their captivity. the three kilometers from Archbishop Antonio Benjamin Gelhorn, a sur- Approximately 30,000-40,000 Jews sur- the infamous “Arbeit Franco, attended the vivor of the Nazi camp vived outside of the ghetto, kept safe with macht Frei” gateway that evening inaugura- system who spent three the help of foreign diplomats and ordinary tion of Holocaust leads out of Auschwitz, to Young Israelis hold each other as a months at Echterdingen, citizens. Martyrs’ and Heroes’ the ruins of the gas cham- Jewish prayer for the dead echoed said the kaddish prayer of However, around half of the 200,000 Remembrance Day bers of Birkenau. across Birkenau during the annual mourning to close the cer- Jews living in Budapest prior to the out- at Yad Vashem Six survivors intoned the “March of the Living.” emony. break of war perished during the conflict, despite an earlier kaddish, the Jewish many of them sent to concentration threat to stay away prayer of mourning, from a podium at the *** camps or lined up on the banks of the from the event. railhead at the Birkenau annex of the HUNGARY: In Budapest, Hungarian Danube and shot. The Vatican has camp where Nazi guards selected new Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany on April The papal nuncio in In total, over 400,000 Jews were sent to been irked by a pic- arrivals at the World War II death factory: 17 called for all members of parliament to Israel, Monsignor some were sent to immediate death in the sign a “zero tolerance” manifesto against death camps from Hungary in 1944, main- Antonio Franco. ture in a new wing of the Jerusalem gas chambers, others to miserable exis- hate speech as parliament marked ly from other towns and villages. museum that shows its wartime pope, tences as slave laborers. Holocaust Memorial Day. Much of the butchery was carried out Pius XII, with a caption saying that he The kaddish brought to a close a two- ‘Words and acts can give birth to vio- under the direction of Nazi-aligned “abstained from signing the Allied declara- hour ceremony at the end of the March of lence, but can also set an example,’ Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, which tion condemning the extermination of the the Living, a tribute to the estimated six Gyurcsany wrote in the manifesto, which came to power briefly in 1944. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767

Eli Zborowski , Chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem , Gladys Halpern 2007 Hono Dr. Rochelle Cherry, Ph.D., Kevin Haworth, Guest Speaker, Gladys Halpern, 2007 Honoree, Eli Zborowski, Chairman and Yonina Gomberg, granddaughter of Gladys Halpern and member of the Third Generation of the American Society for Yad Vashem and Rita Levy, 2007 Honoree, at the Annual Spring Luncheon, May 3, 2007. “HER TRIUMPH OVER HITLER IS A FAMILY COMMITTED TO JUDAISM”

YONINA GOMBERG, GRANDDAUGHTER OF GLADYS HALPERN AND MEMBER OF THE THIRD GENERATION he life of my grandmother, Gladys Landau Halpern, has always Tinspired me. She had a happy childhood in the small town of Zolkiew, Poland until she and her family were forced to live in the Zolkiew ghetto. In January 1943, her father, Ephraim Landau, sent her out of the ghetto and into hiding in the home of the righteous gen- tile Marian Halizcki. Tragically, the day she left the ghetto was the last day she saw her father. My grandmother was soon joined by her mother, Sala, and two of Sala’s sisters. They spent eighteen months in hiding, starving and overwhelmed with fear, waiting for the Nazis to come. Thank G-d that day never came and on July 26, 1944, she, her mother and aunts were liberated. In 2003, sixty years after my grandmother went into hiding, many members of my family and I accompanied my grandparents, Gladys and Sam, who has his own miraculous story of survival, to Poland and the Ukraine. Chills rushed up my spine as I stood in the small R room where my grandmother hid. The realization that this was where Friends and family of Gladys Halpern, seated in the front row right, who attended the 2007 Annual Spring Luncheon hon- my elegant grandmother existed with fear and hunger for eighteen oring Gladys Halpern. months was overpowering. My whole life I had known how my grand- mother survived the Holocaust, but it was only then that I began to comprehend what she experienced, although I know that I will never fully understand. Over the course of that trip, I spent much time won- dering how my grandparents, and many survivors like them, were able to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of Hitler’s destruction. And yet, that’s exactly what they did. Despite all that she endured, on June 30, 1946, my 17-year-old grandmother married her beloved Sam. Together, they had the courage to create a family, beginning in 1948 with the birth of my father Fred in Europe, followed with the birth of his three brothers, David, Jack and Murray, in the United States. The theme of this afternoon’s luncheon is: A Woman’s Legacy – “Not by Might, Not by Power, But with Love.” This defines the way my grandmother lives her life. Rather than have a heavy heart, filled with hate and anger, my grandmother focuses on love. Just as she was taught by her mother, my grandmother is a loving and devoted wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She is a true eshet chayil, whose generosity and kindness towards her family, friends, and even perfect strangers, is something I strive to emulate. Her revenge, her triumph over Hitler is that she and my grandfather raised a family committed to Judaism, to Israel and to Holocaust remembrance. With gratitude to Hashem and to the Halizcki family who saved her, it is my privilege today to join you in paying tribute to a most deserving Lilly Bloch, Paula Orlean Mandell, Eli Zborowski , Chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, Stella Skura and woman, a pillar of strength for our family, my grandmother, Gladys Halpern. Elizabeth Zborowski at the Annual Spring Luncheon, May 3, 2007. G May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9

“TELL THE STORY – "SO YOU'LL KNOW."

RITA LEVY hank you, Julie, for that kind introduction. Thank Tyou to the American Society for Yad Vashem and Eli Zborowski for this special honor. And thank you, Rochel Berman, for always knowing how to make things happen. Mazel tov to my co-honoree today, Gladys Halpern. A well-deserved kovet. I want to thank you all for being here today, my family, my friends, and especially my Mom’s “chavertes.” You know, when I was a little girl, I thought all the women of mom’s generation had names like Chyeneleh, Chialeh, Tzileh and Sonyechkeh. I thought that every family spoke a second language inside the house, and that everybody’s parents either hosted or went to parties every Saturday night. Wasn’t that true for all of you? As I got older, of course, I discovered that our home was different, my parents were different, and so was I. My parents are Holocaust survivors. I could never real- ly make the connection between the parents with whom I lived and the Holocaust stories I read and learned about Eli Zborowski , Chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem , Rita Levy 2007 Honoree in school. and Julie Schwartz Kopel, Young Leadership Associates Board Member and member of the I didn’t really understand and internalize the connection Elizabeth Wilf 2007 Spring Luncheon Third Generation. until right before my wedding. I was looking over the Committee Chairperson, opening the Annual guest list and asked my father, “Who are all these peo- Spring Luncheon. ple? In Cleveland? In Chicago? I don’t know them. Why are you inviting them to my wedding?” And he answered me by telling me specific stories about each of them and their experiences together during the war. He explained that they made a vow to each other that IF they survived this war, that they would always share each other’s sim- chas, no matter where they ended up in the world. So you see, the milestones in our lives were precious and value-laden beyond the mere celebration of the moment. Every occasion became significant, not to be taken for granted. My wedding was a reason for all of you to celebrate. My simcha was your simcha. Remember Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary party? How many of you said, “This is like it’s a party that’s celebrating my own anniversary”? When Rebecca, at 9 years old stood in front of over 200 of you to sing a medley of songs in honor of her bubbie and zaydie, she was excited, but, understandably nervous. I told her, “You will never perform in front of an audience that loves you more.” Rebecca and Matthew understood that their bat and bar mitzvahs were occasions to, once again, share their simchas and affirm life and keep the promise that my par- ents made with their “chevreh” — if you survive, you will Levy 2007 Honoree and Sima Katz second row right with friends and family who attended the Annual Spring Luncheon honoring Rita Levy. share each other’s simchas. At Rebecca’s bat mitzvah we took the opportunity to not only enjoy the occasion, but to honor the Lithuanian Christian family (whom we recognized at Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations) who hid my grandfather, parents, aunt and uncle and cousins. Local television stations and newspapers ran the story. We were able to tell the story of what happened to the world. And then Dad wrote his story in a book, “Teach Us to Count Our Days.” As he said in his forward, he wrote the book…” so you’ll know.” In his book, Dad also said that tzedakkah was always a hallmark of his life. In order to continue the legacy further, my husband, David and I will be working with Yad Vashem to endow an educational program that will embody these inter-generational values passed down from my parents to us and to our children, and, we hope, to theirs. Share your good times, give tzedakkah, but always remember and never forget: tell the story —“so you’ll know.” That’s what I want to keep doing — tell the story — not just my parent’s story, but all of your stories—Chialeh’s, Basha’s, Asia’s, Gusta’s — so others outside this room will know. And in a world in which people deny or mini- mize or FORGET the lessons of the Holocaust, it is my hope and desire that MY generation of moms — the Susan’s, Debbi’s and Cindy’s, will continue the legacy ys and Sam Halpern, Jean Gluck and Eli Zborowski , Chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem at the 2007 Annual Spring Luncheon. and further the mission of Yad Vashem — “so you’ll know.” Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM “SPOTS OF LIGHT: YAD VASHEM WELCOMES ITS DECISION TO BE A WOMAN IN THE HOLOCAUST” TO TRANSFER COPIES OF ARCHIVES to their devastatingly extreme circum- TO MEMBER STATES BY YEHUDIT INBAR stances. Some of these responses were ad Vashem welcomes the digitizing archival information and mak- unique; others turn out to have been typi- he Holocaust was an historical YInternational Tracing Service (ITS) ing it user-friendly. In the near future, cal of many. Torn between dual commit- event — an act of murder and vio- International Commission’s decision to Yad Vashem will send an expert group T ments — to their families (husbands and lence that the Nazis and their accomplices transfer digital copies of the Bad Arolsen of archivists and technical profession- children) and their elderly parents — they Archives to member states of the als to Bad Arolsen.” unleashed against the Jewish people, often also assumed responsibility for International Commission. The transfer n May 2006, the International paved with horrifying brutality. In certain other needy groups, looking out for them- will allow the states to prepare for the Commission of the ITS decided to respects however, men, women and chil- I selves in only the most extreme cases. opening of the Archives, while ratification open the archives at Bad Arolsen; how- dren followed different paths to death. manuel of the relevant agreements (adopted May ever this decision depends on the ratifi- “Spots of Light: Ringelblum, 2006) is pending. Once all 11-member cation of all 11 member states (France, To Be a Woman E the historian who states have ratified, the archives will be Greece, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, in the Holocaust” established the opened to researchers. Thus far, seven United States, Poland, Germany, attempts to “Oneg Shabbat” countries have ratified the agreements. Holland, United Kingdom, and Israel.) reveal the human Archives in the Chairman of Yad Vashem Avner Shalev Israel, a member of the International story that lurks Warsaw ghetto, welcomed the agreements. “I am delight- Commission, will receive the informa- behind the histor- wrote in his diary: ed to see this project moving forward, and tion via Yad Vashem, which has already ical account, giv- “The future histori- look forward to welcoming a delegation of begun to study the material. At the end ing special voice an will have to senior archival and technical profession- of the study process, Yad Vashem will to the unique dedicate an als from the ITS to Yad Vashem. Together be able to evaluate the requirements experiences of appropriate page with Yad Vashem staff, the delegation will necessary to make the Bad Arolsen the millions of to the Jewish explore the best methods to facilitate the information accessible. Yad Vashem’s women who were woman in the war. opening of the vast and complex collec- Archives currently contain some 70 mil- targeted, pur- She will take up an tion at Bad Arolsen to historians and lion pages of documentation – including sued, abused important page in researchers. Yad Vashem looks forward 20 million pages scanned from the ITS and murdered Women and children during the deportation of the Jewish history for to being able to share its experience in in the 1950s. during the Jews of Szydlowiec to the Treblinka death camp, her courage and Shoah. September 1942. steadfastness. By Nazi ideology YAD VASHEM CALLS ON UN SECRETARY GENERAL her merit, thousands of families have viewed women generally as agents of fer- managed to surmount the terror of the TO STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR tility and, accordingly, targeted the Jewish times.” hairman of the Yad Vashem Council some 400,000 men, women and children woman for extermination, in order to Jewish women in the Holocaust: applied Joseph (Tommy) Lapid and have been murdered, and some 2.5 mil- thwart the rise of future generations. For C their intellect in places that deprived them Chairman of Yad Vashem Avner Shalev lion people have become displaced. Tens their part, Jewish women in Europe at that of their minds and brought strength to sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban of thousands of women have been raped, time inhabited a largely conservative and places where none was to be found. And Ki-moon urging him to do everything in his and many thousands of sick and wounded patriarchal society, with men heading the in places where they and their families power to stop the genocide in Darfur. “It is die due to lack of medicines. household and women discharging tradi- were not given the right to live, they not sufficient for the international commu- “As the heads of the Jewish people’s tional roles at home or helping to make a walked each step towards death imbuing nity to issue condemnations, and state- central organization for commemorating living. In place of external leadership every additional moment of life with mean- ments via the United Nations, while this the Holocaust – a genocide that took roles, Jewish women assumed those that ing and significance. Khartoum-sponsored genocide is taking place while the world was silent – we called for the “affirmation of life:” the We wish to hear their voices and tell place. Concrete steps must be taken; we feel a special obligation, as we discussed attempt to survive and keep others alive, their stories. must do everything to ensure that the with you during your recent visit in whatever situation they found them- “Spots of Light: To Be a Woman in the Security Council will decide to send troops to Yad Vashem, to raise the alarm on selves. Holocaust” opened at Yad Vashem’s to Darfur who will be able to restore secu- Darfur. In order to uphold the values “Spots of Light” does not retell in detail Exhibitions Pavilion on 6 April 2007. rity. Every day that passes adds thousands and commitments spelled out in the UN the horrors these women experienced of names to the list of dead,” they wrote. Charter, we urge you to use the full during the Holocaust, except as back- The author is Director of the Museums For more than three years, genocide moral authority of your office to do every- ground information to the goal of the exhi- Division at Yad Vashem, and Chief under the sponsorship of the Khartoum thing possible to put an end to bition: the broad and diverse range of Curator of the exhibition, “Spots of Light: government has been taking place in the horrific crimes taking place in Darfur,” actions and responses of Jewish women To Be a Woman in the Holocaust.” Darfur. Since the beginning of the crisis, wrote Lapid and Shalev.

ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS "ALONE IN THE DRAWER" PAYS TRIBUTE life stories, sometimes for the very first tive proposal was publicized, Yad TO HOLOCAUST VICTIMS BY MALKA TOR time. Vashem received no less than six hun- ad Vashem’s documentation dred relevant referrals in Israel, and the aris’ top Roman Catholic leader and “I say to myself: ‘What exactly Yenterprise began with the under- Oral History Section is currently making Pover 600 French pilgrims squeezed do you want? … There are many ground ghetto archives and has contin- extensive efforts to organize and through the hallways at Israel’s Holocaust people who don’t know anything.’ ued in recording studios established by assemble home-based documentation memorial as they paid tribute to the vic- And this puts me back into the Yad Vashem throughout Israel — for teams. The interviews will be added to tims of the Nazi genocide. same special box that I’ve been residents and tourists alike — in cooper- the collection of some 44,000 written, Almost 10 years after the Catholic living in… alone in the drawer.” ation with other organizations, such as audio and visual testimonies in the Yad Church in France officially apologized for Kalman Bar On of Yugoslavia, Ginzach Kiddush Hashem and Yad Vashem Archives for permanent preser- its silence during the Holocaust, the Auschwitz survivor. LeZahava. However, many survivors vation. In addition, they will be accessi- Archbishop of Paris, Andre Vingt-Trois, are now unable to get to the studios due ble to visitors at the new Visual Center, placed an orange and green wreath at a espite the feeling common among to advanced age and failing health, so which will also house tens of thousands large stone memorial for the 6 million Jews Dsurvivors that “someone who was- on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2006, of testimonies collected by the who were killed during the Holocaust. n’t there could never understand,” in a national testimony-collection cam- Survivors of the Shoah Visual History During meetings at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, he spoke about the recent years more and more survivors paign in the homes of the survivors Foundation (established by Steven importance of remaining hopeful while have contacted Yad Vashem to give oral themselves was announced. “The recol- Spielberg) from Israel and around the remembering the tragedy. testimony, perhaps due to a sense that lections of the people who personally world. “Without hope, the remembrance of crime time is running out. These remnants of experienced the horrors of the Shoah Yad Vashem urges all Holocaust sur- is the despair of man,” Vingt-Trois said. Europe’s prewar Jewish community are have crucial educational and moral vivors and their families to contact the “Keeping the memory with hope, this is faith.” seeking to perpetuate the memory of Oral History Section to schedule an importance,” explained Chairman of the Vingt-Trois’ visit to Jerusalem sent an the vibrant Jewish world that was Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev. interview, and help realize the words of important message that Christians, Jews destroyed and the families that per- “They represent an essential vehicle for the prophet: “Tell your children of it, and and Muslims all need to come together in ished, as well as their personal survival imparting the memory of the Holocaust.” let your children tell their children, and remembering the genocide, Iris Rosenberg, experiences: they are telling their entire In the first two weeks after this innova- their children another generation.” (Joel 1:3) a Yad Vashem spokeswoman said. May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 HOLOCAUST EXHIBIT IN FRANCE A VITAL LESSON Gestapo called me in to identify my pened. In fact, that is happening already.” until five years later. Halaunbrenner’s BRETT KLINE, JTA father’s body. I was 10 years old. What Klarsfeld sent an invitation to the Iranian mother was among the many who testified can I say?” embassy. against Barbie in a trial that made interna- lexander Halaunbrenner easily He looks around at the crowd of people “It is obvious that Iranian President tional headlines. Barbie died in prison in 1991. Afinds his two kid sisters, Mina and invited to opening day of the exhibit, near- Ahmadinejad never took a class on the Claudine, in a group photo taken in an Barbie had been recruited by U.S. coun- ly all of them are elderly. They examine Shoah,” he said wryly. “I would like to terintelligence services in 1947 in improvised summer camp called Izieu the photos and documents, and compare bring this exhibit to Iran, but I don’t think near Lyon in 1944. Germany, and moved to Bolivia a few family notes and train convoy numbers that will happen.” years later with U.S. government help. The children hidden at Izieu were round- from the Drancy intern- he thousands of ed up by the Lyon Gestapo led by Klaus Michal Gans visited the exhibit from ment camp north of Tdocuments list Kibbutz Beit Lohamei Haghetaot in Israel, Barbie on April 13, 1944. Mina and Paris to Auschwitz. deportees city by city, and Claudine were gassed at Auschwitz along where she is the international department “Are the children and by district in Paris. It will be director of the Ghetto Fighters Museum. with more than 30 other children from the the permanent collection of grandchildren of all Gans is proposing a project to French summer camp. these people going to a museum on the site of Talmud Torah classes and Jewish schools The photo is among thousands of pho- continue passing the the Des Milles internment for parents holding their children’s b’nai tographs, official documents, lists and per- message about the camp near Marseilles. mitzvah in Israel. sonal testimonies that make up the exhibit on Shoah to the French, “You notice that the “We associate the bar mitzvah with the deported children at the Paris City Hall. the Europeans and the children are all dressed memory and name of a child who was Halaunbrenner’s father and brother Americans?” up in the photos,” deported in a ceremony that takes place were killed by Barbie’s Gestapo in Lyon. A Halaunbrenner asks. Halaunbrenner said. at the museum,” she explained, noting that baby sister and his mother survived sepa- “Frankly, the answer for Holocaust survivor and activist Alexander “The photos come from rately in hiding. Halaunbrenner was with the most part is no. Halaunbrenner stands in front of part of an family archives. Neither several such ceremonies have taken place. his mother. People have other exhibit he helped organize of deported French the parents, children or She brings 30 high school teachers to “It breaks my heart every time I tell the things to do. They have Jewish children, at the Paris City Hall in the photographers the Ghetto Fighters Museum every year stories of my family and the Shoah,” said lives to live.” March 2007. could imagine that from France, Italy and Belgium. So far, Halaunbrenner, now 75, as he surveys the larsfeld, well known in Europe for these beautiful families would all be killed 250 teachers have done the weeklong large rooms at City Hall filled by the exhibit. Ktracking down Nazi war criminals not long after.” program on the kibbutz. In all, 11,400 French children were including Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Photos show Halaunbrenner’s mother “We had a similar program in the States, deported, 6,000 from Paris. Lyon,” says school groups have signed up with Klarsfeld’s wife, Beate, in La Paz, but it ended many years ago,” Gans said. Halaunbrenner has been the flag-bearer to visit the exhibit. Bolivia. They traveled to Lima, Peru, and “The key to teaching lessons from the for the past 35 years at ceremonies held On Jewish radio here, Klarsfeld was then La Paz to identify Barbie, whom the Shoah is in getting middle school and high by the Association of Sons and Daughters asked about bringing Jewish school Klarsfelds had tracked there living under school students to come to exhibits like of Jews, which organized the City Hall groups to the exhibit, and says of course the alias Klaus Altmann. this one here in Paris. exhibit. The organization was founded they should come. Originally documented in Klarsfeld’s “Gallic French and Arab and African and is still headed by famed Nazi hunter “But the most important thing is to bring 1985 “Les Enfants d’Izieu,” or “The French kids must come with school Serge Klarsfeld. groups of French French and Magrebi Children of Izieu: A Human Tragedy,” the groups to see the photos and documents. “I have been an activist for all these Arab French kids,” he said. “If they don’t story now covers the walls of Paris City Hall. Otherwise they will never be able to years to teach young people that it really come and see the physical proof of the Barbie was brought back to France in believe what they learn in class, if they did happen,” Halaunbrenner said. “The Shoah, they will stop believing that it hap- February 1982, but his trial didn’t start learn anything at all.” HOW ONE MAN CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE HOLLAND RETURNS ART ny little plaques I was overwhelmed. No BY JOHANNA J. NEUMANN one simply walks by them, inevitably one STOLEN FROM A JEWISH COLLECTOR stops and reads the name. I have arei von Saher, daughter-in-law of Minister-President Jan Peter Balkenende t is often said that one man can make watched people go by, always trying to Jewish art dealer Jacques has revoked a court decision from 1952 a difference and indeed in this case M I avoid stepping on the Stolpersteine. Goudstikker, has successfully reclaimed and promised compensation. the man is Gunter Demnig, an artist from ost of the money for this project is works first stolen by Nazi officials and “We’re losing a substantial part of our Cologne. About 15 years ago, Mr. being raised from Germans. then quietly appropriated by the Dutch collection,” says Alexander von Demnig decided that large monuments to M Among those who have made this project government. The case sets a ticklish Grevenstein, director of Maastricht’s the victims of Nazi Germany were imper- their main focus is Peter Hess, coordina- precedent for museums in Holland. Bonnefanten Museum. He has had to give sonal, cold and quite tor of the project and Jews once led a happy life in Holland. up almost 40 works that once belonged to meaningless since there Johann-Hinrich “Is there any other country where you can Goudstikker. But more important than the were no names of the indi- Moeller. These people eat your Passover lamb so peacefully, Goudstikker case is the precedent the rul- vidual victims mentioned. are devoting their lives where you can break as many twigs off ing may set. After all, Dutch museums are Therefore, he decided to to ensure that the hor- trees to build your Pesach hut?” asked stuffed full of works appropriated from pri- create his own very per- rible events of the poet Karl Gutzkow in his 1834 novella vate owners. sonalized monuments. He Holocaust will not be “The Sadducee of Amsterdam.” acques Goudstikker escaped from created the Stolpersteine forgotten. The question was rhetorical; everyone Amsterdam on May 14, 1940, four – stumble stones. J By now more than at the time knew Holland to be a strong- days after the German invasion, in order Each stone is a brass 10,000 plaques have hold of tolerance, which is why so many to seek asylum in England. But his luck plaque measuring 4 by 4 been hammered into Sephardim Jews settled there. But 100 didn’t hold. Traveling on the SS inches and Gunter the sidewalks of 202 years later, the refugees who returned to Bodegraven, he fell into a cargo hatch and Demnig hand-engraves German cities and Holland from Nazi concentration camps in broke his neck and his small, black note- each plaque with a few towns. the East weren’t always greeted with quite book was found on his corpse. In it, he bare facts. Person’s Over the years many the same openness and acceptance. In had listed the name of every oil painting in name, name of the place survivors have returned to some cases, in fact, Dutch Jews returning his collection. they were deported to and Germany in order to be from Nazi camps were told the property Two months later, the Goudstikker col- finally the date they were present at the laying of they had left behind would be used to pay lection — the most important in Holland — murdered. The stumble the stumble stones for off back taxes that had not been paid was “Aryanized.” Formally, it became the stones are then set per- their parents, grand- while they were out of the country. property of German banker Alois Miedl. manently into the sidewalk parents or other rela- Dsi Goudstikker, widow of the Jewish art But 779 paintings were instantly claimed outside the place where David Neumann in front of the house tives. These are peo- dealer Jacques Goudstikker, was lucky. by Hermann Gring, and the rest landed on the individual lived. In he grew up in Noerdlingen. He is kneel- ple who for the most When she returned after 1945, The the auction block. some cases Stolpersteine ing in front of the Stolperstines of his two part never wanted to Hague declared the remains of the Miedl paid 550,000 guilders for his com- have been set in front of grandmothers, an aunt and an uncle. set foot on German Goudstikker collection — originally 1,113 pany’s new assets while Gring paid 2 mil- an orphanage, an old age home or even soil again, but these memorial plaques paintings — enemy property. lion guilders. The actual value of the col- in front of the court house in Hamburg, in were important enough to them to be The paintings had fallen into the hands lection is still a matter of debate, but all memory of a number of Jewish judges present. In our own family, four of Nazi honcho and Hitler confidante can agree that it was far more than Miedl who were murdered by Nazis. In front of Stolpersteine were laid in front of the Hermann Gring. But she was allowed to and Gring shelled out. Legally, though, the the orphanage in Hamburg are 34 stones, house my husband’s two grandmothers, keep her house in Amsterdam and her case is a difficult one; the paintings were one for each of the children who were an uncle and an aunt had lived in castle near Breukelen — and she was still neither rightfully purchased nor were they deported, together with their teachers and Noerdlingen. well-off enough to buy back some of the stolen outright. caretakers. To quote Mr. Demnig’s own words: more important paintings. One of the principle questions is This project is one of the most meaning- “This is my life’s work. I will continue for Half a century later, the Goudstikker’s whether the deal was made under duress. ful memorials one can imagine. The first as long as I am able. Giving names back have finally been able to reclaim the rest After all, Goudstikker was not an art col - time I was in Hamburg and saw the shin- to the dead is a way to keep them alive.” of the collection. The government of (Continued on page 13) Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767

QUEENS COLLEGE STUDENTS RESISTING THE NAZIS DESPITE THE ODDS FORGE BONDS AT (Continued from page 5) It is as if the exhibition were shying one doesn’t fully grasp how drastically HOLOCAUST MUSEUM government turns enemy and neighbors away from too much complication. Almost interpretation shaped response; the parti- turn away?” “Is it better to lie low or stand unmentioned, for example, are the moral sans were a turning point as much as a ore than 100 students from tall?” And another question: “To stay or to go?” quandaries faced by Jewish leaders who continuation. MQueens College this April went on hen the scale of the Nazi ambition even at best had to weigh the communal In a 2001 PBS documentary, a trip to The United States Holocaust W starts to become clear, it is benefits of cooperation with the commu- “Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Memorial Museum. beyond comprehension. The show nal costs of resistance. In one of the Partisans,” Kenneth M. Mandel and The Queens College Hillel planned this includes numerous fragments of inter- show’s short videos, a survivor year’s “Hillels of New York Trip to The views with survivors that capture those recalls being called before communi- United States Holocaust Memorial impressions. One woman recalls the post- ty leaders when they learn of her plan Museum.” The trip, sponsored by the cards arriving from relatives whom the to escape. They cite the massacres David and Linda Taub family, has been Nazis had just relocated “East”; they are that would follow. She is asked, “Who sending Jewish and African-American full of carefully phrased optimism and arti- gave you the right to buy your freedom students to the Holocaust museum in ficially cheery description. But after the at the price of others?” Washington, D.C. annually for over a Nazi-supervised pap, one card ominously hat dilemma is unexplored. decade. adds: “Very T That would mean examining The program is designed to unite soon we are the idea of resistance more inten- Jewish and African-American students going to sively; making more distinctions, not through the mutual historical experience visit Uncle fewer. Why, for example, did it take of persecution and suffering, said trip Mavet”. so much time for Jewish resistance organizer Itiel Katz. “It’s also to inform Mavet, in to erupt into outright refusal and Children studying in a clandestine school in the Kovno people,” Katz said, noting that “it’s inter- Hebrew, rebellion? In the show’s companion Ghetto, 1941-1942. esting to take a group with no connec- means book, the historian David Engel suggests Daniel B. Polin tell the story through inter- tion at all [to the Holocaust Museum, death. that at first Jews saw the Nazi phenome- views with 11 partisans who become rec- when] we assume its crucial to other But the non as a recurrence of earlier traumas, as ognizable individuals recounting an aston- people.” exhibition’s part of the cycle of Jewish historical expe- ishing past. Some of those same figures Students from various campuses with- polemical rience. Jews, after all, had received full appear in this exhibition’s videos, but they in the New York metropolitan area partic- focus is also German citizenship only in 1871, so if they are stripped of context and speaking in ipated in the trip. After visiting the muse- a weak- were deprived of benefits in 1933, it was snippets. We don’t learn enough about um, students listened to a presentation The show at the Museum of ness, for it more a regression than a cataclysm. them to fully understand their achievement. from Lynn Williams, an African-American Jewish Heritage includes this ends up The sense of repetitive cycles was rein- This makes the exhibition less powerful woman who works as a professional 1932 photo taken in Kiel, turning forced by the literal medievalism of than it might have been. But at a time educator for the museum. Her presenta- Germany. resistance German oppression: the ghettos, the yel- when Nazism has become a denatured tion was followed by a sit-down dinner. into a catchall concept that applies to any low stars, the governing Jewish councils. metaphor for any political system deemed Queens College student Yoni Markowitz refusal to submit completely. There is an These historical echoes, Mr. Engel sug- unpleasantly powerful, and when the con- said about the event, “It was incredible, element of truth here, but also a needless gests, made Jews less likely to see clear- cept of resistance has been perverted into it helped everyone realize how bad desire to encompass every act of pride ly what was happening and made resist- meaninglessness by terrorist groups things were, and then you think how bad and survival within the idea of resistance. ance less likely. boasting exterminationist goals, this show things are in Darfur.” He also comment- The result is almost too reassuring: Jews, Those who did see, like the partisan begins to re-establish the sense of scale ed on the event’s success in bringing the label text tells us, “recognized that Abba Kovner, took very different actions. that once made Nazism so horrific and together students with different back- their most precious resource was hope,” In 1941, at 23, he said that the German resistance so difficult. grounds. “It’s cool because it’s together and, “They acted imaginatively to shield goal was the “absolute, total annihilation” The exhibition “Daring To Resist: with different schools, different religions; their communities from despair and pro- of the Jews. This put the entire situation in Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust” will we built bonds since we went through mote the will to resist.” a new context. Unfortunately, in this show be on display through July 2008. this experience.” AUSCHWITZ REPORT ESCAPE FROM THE HOLOCAUST... (Continued from page 4) are in contrast to the “heroic” virtues of (Continued from page 6) Mme Collomb’s collection of evidence - time, Levi did not want to be known as a heroism, courage and strength as tradi- number – Birkenau 3776 – is at the top of passed to Ms. Rappoport in 1969 when “Holocaust writer”; he aspired to the sim- tionally conceived, and can be collectively the cards in which he reports: “I’m digging she went to France in search of documen- ple title of “writer” without any adjective considered a complete ethical system for coal. I’m in good health. How is my child? tation to assist her application for a British (“Holocaust,” “Italian” or “Jewish”). the post-Auschwitz moral universe that Of my wife, I’ve heard nothing.” passport – has helped her to discover esides his Holocaust masterpieces, we now occupy. We can now perhaps get oung Suzanne, like dozens of more than she hoped to learn and prompt- BLevi wrote poetry, essays, science a glimpse of the origins of Levi’s “ordinary YFrance’s hidden children, received ed her to ensure that the French woman, fiction and a novel concerning Jewish par- virtues” in “Auschwitz Report.” The text no word of her parents’ fate. who died in 1992, is remem- tisans in World War II. In addition, first appeared in Italian in a prominent She wept when a child, bered for her heroism. Yad although he was painfully shy and medical journal, Minerva Medica, in Fernandres, who had shared Vashem, Israel’s memorial to adamant about protecting his privacy, Levi November 1946. It is, Gordon writes, “a her predicament in the the victims of the Holocaust, graciously granted hundreds of inter- disturbing and compelling document, full Auvergne, was suddenly has already agreed to name views, including two eloquent conversa- of unexpected, often absurd detail and taken home to Marseilles by Mme Collomb as one of the tions with Tullio Regge (the physicist) and unfamiliar perspectives.” her parents. Her years in hid- Righteous Among the Nations, Ferdinando Camon (a writer). For Levi Nor should we forget that at the same ing brought several close who saved Jewish lives during was too modest, at least publicly. His tes- time that Levi and De Benedetti were escapes – she was caught in the Holocaust, and her name is also to be placed on France’s timony was not only, as he stated, “to bear reworking the report, Levi was secretly the crossfire of a resistance witness,” but also to search for an ethical Mur des Justes, which writing “Survival in Auschwitz” (similar in attack on a German muni- line of conduct and moral reasoning acknowledges those who tone to the “Report”) and penning searing tions train on one occasion – based on classical humanism, but cog- defied the Nazis. It is now poetry that laid bare his pain and trauma. but eventually, after the war nizant of humanity’s changed moral status known that Mme Collomb Gordon, who will be the keynote speaker had ended, she returned to after Auschwitz. He once revealed to an Suzanne Rappoport. saved others including a M. at a two-day international conference at Mme Collomb, only to find interviewer, “I am a centaur,” insisting that Hofstra University in April to commemo- Hubermann, another neighbor, who hid in his role as a scientist, chemist and techni- herself within days on a ship to her mater- her broom cupboard. rate the 20th anniversary of Levi’s death, nal grandparents in Newcastle. “After cian was complementary and not contra- perceptively notes that the report is no “The police never came looking for me dictory to his status as a writer and everything, it wasn’t what I wanted,” she at Mme Collomb’s house that day and mere dry scientific description: Rather, it said. “I was returning to a strange country humanist. As he remarked in an interview has captured the essence of the extermi- whether I was on the arrest list is a mys- where I didn’t speak the language. As tery I shall never know the answer to,” Ms. with the American writer Philip Roth: “In nation camp universe, reduced to its core soon as I was old enough, I left my family Rappoport said. The horror that she was my own way, I have remained an impurity, of “physiology and pathology.” for London.” spared is perhaps best understood by the an anomaly, but now for reasons other Judiciously translated by Judith Woolf, “Forget what happened,” her grandpar- letters written by other Parisian children than before: not especially as a Jew but who notes that “the language of medicine as an Auschwitz survivor and an outsider- ents told her, leaving her to reach her own before they were herded away on trains, breaks down when confronted with the writer, coming not from the literary or uni- conclusions about her parents’ fate. And that summer. “My heart is heavy and I deliberate squalor and carelessly mocking versity establishment but from the indus- to this day, the precise details about them can’t tell you all I am feeling,” said 15- brutality of what passed for medical serv- trial world.” are unclear. Though Ms. Rappoport has year-old Jacques Befelor before departing ices, the “Report” leaves us to contem- In an earlier work, “Primo Levi’s located them both at the Shoah Memorial Paris on what was known as Convoy 15 to plate how science and reason could be so Ordinary Virtues: From Testimony to in Paris, where 76,000 Jews deported Auschwitz. “We are rushing to prepare for perverted and yet can once again, after Ethics,” Gordon demonstrated how Levi’s from France are remembered, the dates a long, sad journey and it drives us mad the fall, be called upon to guide us. writings constitute a complete ethical sys- and places of their deaths are still that we are to be separated. This is the tem based on “ordinary virtues.” These First published in Forward unknown. end.” May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 ITALIAN COURT REJECTS LAWSUIT THE CRIMES OF I.G. FARBEN transportation. But most of all, it had a BY NAZI WAR CRIMINAL BY DENNIS BEHREANDT ready source of labor in the unfortunates “Even the threat of a lawsuit made a lot who were interred at the Auschwitz con- uring WWII, I.G. Farben, a synthet- BY JOE GOLDMAN, JTA of publications nervous, and journalists centration camp. This, Ambros thought, ic-fuels manufacturer for the shied away from the subject of the cave D would be the place to build the new I.G. n Argentine researcher and journal- German war machine, was a major sup- massacre and other matters involving the Farben facilities. The new division would ist said he feels “a strong sense of porter of the Nazi regime and a willing co- A SS in Italy during the war,” claims Goni, be named I.G. Auschwitz. I.G. manage- relief” after a three-year battle in Italian conspirator in the Holocaust. who has written a number of books inves- ment appointed Ambros head of the courts ended with a Nazi war criminal’s March 8, 1943 was the day when the tigating the connection among former Auschwitz Buna facility and appointed lawsuit against him being thrown out. Nazi S.S. came for Norbert Wollheim and Argentine President Juan Peron, the Heinrich Buetefisch head of the Auschwitz Uki Goni was referring to a Milan court’s his family. With his wife and his three- Vatican and the hundreds of Nazi war synthetic-oil plant. Under their leadership, March 23 decision to reject a claim by year-old son, Wollheim was sent to the criminals fleeing postwar Europe who I.G. would wholeheartedly participate in convicted Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, Grasse Hamburgerstrasse “collecting found safe haven in Argentina and neigh- the brutal genocide of Jews and others who had sued Goni and his Italian pub- camp,” a way station on the blood-stained boring countries. whom the Nazis considered undesirable. lisher for 50,000 euros — more than path to the Nazi’s “final solution.” A few n the most recent suit, Priebke sought The only difference would be that I.G. $67,000 — for libel. The court not only days later, the family was sent to not only monetary damages but a ban Farben would work the prisoners to death tossed out Priebke’s claim as unfounded I Auschwitz. Wollheim would never see his on Goni’s most recent book, “The Real rather than kill them directly in the gas but assessed him legal family again. “On arriving at the station at Odessa,” published in chambers. costs of nearly Auschwitz,” Wollheim recalled at the English by Granta t I.G. Auschwitz, the S.S. guaran- $11,000. Nuremberg Trials, “I was separated from my Books of London and teed the company access to 10,000 Priebke is known for wife and child and have not seen them since.” A later by Italian publisher slave laborers under Nazi control. At first filing lawsuits, and Wollheim was one of the “lucky” ones. Garzanti Libri as this seemed to satisfy the I.G. manage- Italian newspapers and Along with about 220 other men, he was “Operazione Odessa.” ment. “Our new friendship with the S.S. is magazines rejected separated from the other prisoners who While the book men- proving very profitable,” Ambros informed many other articles for were condemned to immediate death in tions him only in pass- Fritz ter Meer. Relations soon deteriorated fear of being sued by the gas chambers. Instead, he was taken ing, Priebke claimed it between I.G. and the S.S., however, lead- Priebke or his lawyer, by truck to the Monowitz camp, a special wrongly accused him of ing I.G. executives to claim — ludicrously Lorenzo Borre, Goni labor camp within the sprawling Auschwitz torturing people in the since they were using slave labor — that said. system of death camps. There, with the Argentine journalist Uki Goni. Gestapo’s Rome head- the Nazi masters of Auschwitz didn’t Priebke was discov- others, his head was shaved; he was dis- quarters, of participating in the selection understand “the working methods of … ered in 1995 living in Bariloche, a city in infected, tattooed with his prison ID num- of Jews to be sent to their death at the free enterprise.” If the I.G. Farben notion Argentina’s western Andes Mountains, by ber, and immediately put to work. “I came Ardeatine Caves and of acknowledging of “free enterprise” was to succeed, they an ABC-TV team of reporter Sam to the dreaded ‘murder detail 4,’ whose that he escaped justice when he fled to would need to build their own concentra- Donaldson and producers Harry Phillips task it was to unload cement bags or con- Argentina. tion camp. “In July 1942,” wrote Justice and Delilah Herbst. structional steel,” Wollheim recalled. He The Milan court ruled that Priebke’s first Department official and I.G. Farben prose- He was deported to Italy, where he was had ceased to be a private citizen. He was two claims were unfounded due to evi- cutor Joseph Borkin, “the I.G. managing found responsible for the deaths of 335 no longer even the property of the Nazi dence at the trial at which he was given board voted to solve its Auschwitz labor people in what has come to be known as state. Instead, the deed to his life was the life sentence. The third charge was problems by establishing its own concen- the Ardeatine Caves Massacre. Priebke held by the owner and operator of the rejected due to evidence Goni provided of tration camp.” Though owned and operat- and a group of SS officers rounded up Monowitz camp, the notorious German ed by I.G. Farben, the new camp, Jews and Italian partisans in Rome, led Priebke’s entry papers to Argentina. industrial conglomerate I.G. Farben. Monowitz, would be run on Nazi forced- them to the caves outside the city, and “He entered the country under a false By 1937, I.G. Farben was entirely labor principles: “All the inmates must be shot and killed them with bullets to the name, Otto Pate, using a Red Cross pass- Nazified. Carl Bosch had been replaced fed, sheltered and treated in such a way back of the neck. port and under the auspices of the as head of the company in 1935, and now as to exploit them to the highest possible Priebke was given a life sentence, Vatican’s pontifical commission,” Goni those members of the I.G. board who did extent, at the lowest conceivable degree which he has been serving under house said. “If he did all that to hide his real iden- not yet belong to the Nazi party eagerly of expenditure.” It was a death sentence arrest in the home of his attorney, Borre. tity, taking the same path as so many joined. Conversely, any Jewish members almost as inescapable as the gas cham- He has become an assiduous reader of other war criminals, it was obvious that he of I.G.’s leadership were purged. The mar- ber. Work groups would march into the articles about himself, and he and Borre was escaping as a war criminal.” riage of I.G. Farben with the Nazi state factories in the morning, and carry back have become infamous for their spate of Priebke can appeal to Italy’s Supreme was complete. The consequences would the corpses of those who had died of lawsuits. Court, but Goni said that was highly unlikely. be chilling. exhaustion in the afternoon. “I.G. reduced TEACHING OF HOLOCAUST “I.G. AUSCHWITZ” slave labor to a consumable raw materi- he increased demand for both syn- al,” noted Borkin, “a human ore from MUST FOCUS ON UGLY TRUTH Tthetic fuel and the synthetic rubber which the mineral of life was systematical- known as Buna that I.G. Farben produced ly extracted. When no usable energy death camp, where roughly 1.5 million required the construction of additional remained, the living dross was shipped to BY MARTIN KIMEL men, women and children perished, about facilities. The Nazis summoned I.G. offi- the gassing chambers and cremation fur- 90 percent of them Jews. The Nazis s the son of Holocaust survivors, cials Fritz ter Meer and Otto Ambros to a naces of the extermination center at A I’m glad that Oprah Winfrey has couldn’t have done what they did, there secret meeting to discuss the situation, Birkenau, where the S.S. recycled it into chosen Elie Wiesel’s Night for her book and elsewhere, without the active partici- after which Ambros was sent on a scout- the German war economy — gold teeth club and is planning to make her recent pation or acquiescence of far too many ing mission to Auschwitz. Ambros found for the Reichsbank, hair for mattresses, visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with Mr. ordinary people. that the proposed site had ready access and fat for soap.” Wiesel an educational experience for mil- In addition, life-affirming stories from the to coal, rivers, and both road and railroad (Continued on page 15) lions of her viewers. Holocaust are not, in my view, how that terrible time is most relevant to today. The At a time when the president of Iran denies HOLLAND RETURNS ART the existence of the Holocaust, the world failure of the United States and other needs all of the good education it can get countries to come to the aid of European STOLEN FROM A JEWISH COLLECTOR Jewry earlier in the war has its parallel in about one of the darkest events in history. (Continued from page 11) Towards the end of the war, Spanish the world’s general apathy to the ongoing The Holocaust is a daunting subject to lector but an art dealer. He had always authorities seized 22 valuable paintings genocide in Darfur. teach, in part because its ugliness is considered his paintings as merchandise that he had deposited in a shed in the port he Holocaust’s lessons about man’s unpleasant to contemplate and in part meant for the market. of Bilbao. More paintings were later found potential for unmitigated cruelty, his because what happened at Auschwitz- T Furthermore, Goudstikker’s widow, who in the safe of a Swiss bank. ability to dehumanize the “other,” to be Birkenau and elsewhere defies compre- held a 15 percent share of his business, Banks didn’t play a pretty role in the indifferent to the suffering of his neighbors hension. had explicitly approved the sale of the expropriation of the Jews, including Dutch – these also find reflections in the later There are positive stories to be found paintings. Still though, the buyer in this banks. Though they claim to have fol- genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda and concerning the Holocaust and its after- case, Hermann Gring, raises eyebrows. lowed a policy of passive resistance, the in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia. math – of righteous Christians who risked He was, during World War II, an active opposite was in fact true, says Gerald their lives to save their Jewish neighbors The Holocaust’s general lessons about art dealer and one of the nation’s most Aalders, a historian at the Netherlands during the war, of resilient survivors such the dangers of any kind of racism or big- voracious collectors. By 1945, he had Institute for War Documentation in as my parents, who left Poland years after otry speak directly to us. These lessons bought about 1,800 works for his private Amsterdam. the war and made successful lives for must be studied, taught and remembered. collection. But he also ruthlessly exploited Almost all major banks purchased themselves in America. These stories But the Holocaust was largely, though his substantial political weight in order to Jewish artworks and stocks at cut-rate deserve telling. But they’re only a small not exclusively, about one very specific put pressure on his business partners. prices, including the predecessors of the part of what happened. kind of racism – anti-Semitism – which, Jewish art dealers and collectors who two largest banks active in the Netherlands Last fall, I made a pilgrimage to unfortunately, still poses a grave threat sold on his conditions could expect to be today, ING and ABN Amro Bank. Auschwitz-Birkenau. There isn’t much more than 60 years after the liberation of allowed to flee the country. uplifting about the massive Birkenau (Continued on page 15) The banker Alois Miedl profited too. First published in Der Spiegel Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 FILM RECOGNIZING MAN’S WORK IN BALTICS, TEACHING ABOUT SHOAH... (Continued from page 5) Lithuanians during the Holocaust — those FINDING NAZI WAR CRIMINALS tions in 2004. But backing up words with who killed, those who turned a blind eye (Continued from page 7) addition to a 1981 documentary produced action has lagged, leading some to ques- and those who helped Jews in some way Wiesenthal’s work continued through by the Wiesenthal Center, titled tion the sincerity of the mea culpas. — but admits to treading carefully when the various obstacles time and the Cold “Genocide.” Wiesenthal has written sever- Lithuania has no specifically designed broaching the first two categories with stu- War presented to a researcher of a war al books, most notably, The Murderers Holocaust-studies course. Instead, les- dents. that was slowly becoming outdated. When Among Us, a book of his memoirs, pub- sons are folded into the broader history “I don’t know whose grandfather did Wiesenthal’s association with the U.S. lished in 1967. curriculum for students in the fifth, 10th what, but I can guess: If there’s a usually War Crimes Association ended in 1947, Despite his various awards, Wiesenthal and 12th grades. very active student, then we talk about the he opened the Jewish Historical maintained a humble position in life, tak- The Holocaust chapter starts with Holocaust and his activity disappears, I Documentation Center ing payment only from “Destruction of the Lithuanian Jewish tell them, ‘Don’t hate your grandfather if Community.” Subsections highlight telling he killed somebody because he’s still your in Linz, Austria until the films and books he anecdotes from the era: a Lithuanian grandfather and you love him.’ But if he 1954. Later, he published. He lived his police officer’s letter to superiors explain- killed someone, then it’s a fact and we reopened the Jewish final days in a modest ing how they killed Jews; a police report have to say this. It’s a tragedy for that Documentation Center, apartment in Vienna with questioning what to do about a priest who family.” this time in Vienna. his wife, until her death in wouldn’t let killers of Jews into his church; Others trying to connect with students Although Wiesenthal’s 2003. a newspaper advertisement proclaiming are the Holocaust survivors themselves passion brought thou- “I am not a Jewish that Lithuanians who help Jews would — like Kaunas-born Fania Brancovskaja- sands of felons to jus- James Bond or Don share their fate. Jocheles, 84, who escaped the Vilnius tice, he suffered for his Quixote,” said Wiesenthal. Yet the chapter runs just six pages. ghetto alone. Her mother, father and sister work at the hands of the “I am only a survivor who “It wasn’t treated as something separate, were among 50 relatives killed. public. Neo-Nazis and pays with his work for just a part of history,” Benjaminas In recent years, Brancovskaja-Jocheles Nazi sympathizers criti- the privilege to remain Krumas, 23, recalls of his high school les- has shared her story with classes in cized his work and alive.” sons in Kaunas, known to Jews as historic Lithuania. She also has traveled to n August 2000, Rabbi made personal threats Kovno and home to a ghetto liquidated by Germany and Austria to recount her expe- Marvin Hier accepted against Wiesenthal, his Simon Wiesenthal at the Western Wall I the Nazis in 1944. “Perhaps the teacher riences. the Medal of Freedom wife Cyla, and daughter in Jerusalem. had her own point of view on it or was Despite such campaigns, observers say on Wiesenthal’s behalf, Pauline. A police guard afraid to discuss it more. But we learned the Baltic countries remain prone to anti- the U.S.’s highest civilian honor, present- was mounted around Wiesenthal’s house, more about it from our grandparents.” Jewish eruptions, especially in the media ed by President Clinton. Wiesenthal was and friends and family encouraged the Indeed, history teachers like Arija or on the Internet. only the sixth foreign citizen in the history researcher to leave Vienna. Melaikiene play a pivotal role. Both the That’s most evident in the torrent of vit- of the U.S. to receive this honor. At the “A soldier must stay on the battlefield, “ Ministry of Education and the Lithuanian riol unleashed amid stalled negotiations to presentation, Hier gave President Clinton said Wiesenthal. “It is my duty to continue.” Jewish community recommended the return Jewish property or bring accused a letter on Wiesenthal’s behalf. In the let- Cyla, who suffered from nervous break- Tolerance Center that Melaikiene founded Nazi-era war criminals to justice. ter, Wiesenthal wrote, “My cause is jus- downs, also pleaded with her husband to at Vilnius Zverynas. “Excluding the good efforts of hundreds of tice, not vengeance. My work is for a bet- move to Israel, or to any other country. It was seven years ago that Melaikiene teachers and historians devoting their ter tomorrow and a more secure future for “I know you are right, I said to Cyla,” said had an epiphany. She had assigned her time to the memory of the Holocaust, the our children and grandchildren who will Wiesenthal in the documentary. “But all students to draw up family trees as a level of reaction and distrust is so great, follow us. As a firm believer that each of the people we lost - your mother, my springboard to discussion of Lithuania’s I’m shocked by the reality 16 years after us are accountable before our creator, I mother, our family, friends and all I saw various regions and names, as well as Lithuanian independence,” says believe that when my life has ended, I dying in the death camps - if I gave up, I other topics. Emanuelis Zingeris, the lone Lithuanian shall one day be called to meet up with would be betraying them. So I asked her - One girl, by the name of Finkelsteinaite, Jewish parliamentarian, who is among the those who perished and they will undoubt- ‘Could you live with a traitor?’” turned in her assignment with half the tree lobbyists for restitution. edly ask me, ‘What have you done?’ At everal films have been produced, lopped off. With the carrot of Western integration that moment, I will have the honor of step- based on Wiesenthal’s life, includ- “Everyone had died in 1942 or ‘43,” digested, the stick has vanished as well. S ping forward and saying to them, I have ing Paramount Pictures’ 1974 film, “The Melaikiene recalls. “At first I thought she Lacking that leverage, Jewish activists never forgotten you.” Odessa File,” and Twentieth Century was too lazy to draw a real family tree. like Baker say they now rely on a network Fox’s 1978 film, “The Boys from Brazil,” in First published in The Evening Bulletin Then I realized what had happened.” of Baltic politicians, historians and teach- Melaikiene speaks of three categories of ers like Melaikiene. HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR DIED SAVING STUDENTS' LIVES OUR HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 4) window into the author’s motivations and “He himself was killed but thanks to him, game called Buchenwald: “The rules of offers a small surprise. BY YIGAL HAI, HAARETZ his students stayed alive,” an Israeli stu- the game were simple: No eating.” The final chapter ends with the deaths dent who survived the massacre told n Israeli lecturer who saved several That changed when adolescence set in of Gutfreund’s characters, a natural coda Army Radio. students before he was killed in the and the two boys “abandoned the Shoah.” to an unnatural life lived by the subjects of A Librescu, 76, had known tragedy since Virginia Tech massacre was a Holocaust But as the generation of survivors begins the novel. Yet this chapter, titled “Yariv” childhood. survivor who later escaped from to age and pass away, Amir’s tortured and named for Gutfreund’s son, sets the Communist Romania. hen Romania joined forces with memories and the stories he’s been told tone for future generations who must con- Relatives said Liviu Librescu, an inter- W Nazi Germany in World War II, he creep to the surface. As much as he might template life after the survivors pass was interned in a labor nationally respected want to, he can never forget. away. Gutfreund is forced to reconcile his camp, and then sent along aeronautics engineer Thus ends “1993: Our Laws,” the first family’s past with Yariv’s future. What kind with his family and thou- and a lecturer at section of Our Holocaust, the anchor of of life does the author want for Yariv and sands of other Jews to a Virginia Tech for 20 the book’s three sections. The chapter is how will the Holocaust shape future gen- central ghetto in the city of years, saved the lives packed with various characters, narra- erations of Gutfreunds? Focsani, his son said. of several students by tives, peculiar tales and troubling imagery, The same question can apply to the Hundreds of thousands of blocking the gunman creating a choppy and disjointed plot – a younger congregants of Beth David Romanian Jews were killed before he was gunned literary tool used to convey a sense of Synagogue looking to create a healthy by the collaborationist down in the most hor- madness. new world for their children, yet remain regime during the war. rific shooting in US his- In contrast, the subsequent chapter, truthful to their parents’ and grandparents’ Liviu Librescu Librescu later found work tory, which coincided “1991: Grandpa Yosef’s Travels” is fluid, experiences during the Holocaust. Will at a government aerospace company. But with Holocaust Remembrance Day. linear and ripe with rich descriptions. As (and should) a day come when the his career was stymied in the 1970s Thirty-two people and the gunmen were Grandpa Lolek rested in a hospital bed, stained glass at Beth David Synagogue is because he refused to swear allegiance to killed in the campus. unwell, Grandpa Yosef, another family no longer palatable for the worshipping the Communist regime, his son said, and Librescu’s students sent e-mails to his member of sorts, tells an unbelievable crowds? he was later fired when he requested per- family recounting how he blocked the gun- story of survival during the Holocaust For Amir Gutfreund, Our Holocaust is an mission to move to Israel. man’s way and saved their lives, said his when he was forced on a horrific journey attempt to make peace with his family’s In 1977, according to his son, then- son, Joe. with an SS officer from town to ghetto to Holocaust experiences. And yet, a nag- prime minister Menachem Begin person- “My father blocked the doorway with his concentration camp to liberation. ging question remains. “Who will tell the ally intervened to get the family an emigra- body and asked the students to flee,” he Gutfreund must have heard this story stories?” the author asks, when the gener- tion permit, and they left for Israel in 1978. said. “Students started opening windows many times. How else could he recount ation of survivors pass away. Perhaps the Librescu left Israel for Virginia in 1985 and jumping out. We intend to look into this.” this information in such particular detail? answer is Amir Gutfreund. “My father was a senior researcher,” he for a sabbatical year, but eventually made Rather than answer this question and added. “In his field, he was number one.” the move permanent. spoil the conclusion, the afterword offers a First published in The Jewish Press May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15

TEACHING OF HOLOCAUST AMBITIOUS NAZI COUNTERFEITING PLOT MUST FOCUS ON UGLY TRUTH (Continued from page 13) RECALLED BY HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR Auschwitz-Birkenau. one point he weighed less than 40 kilos. my superior, so to speak. He said, if we Today, a virulent hatred of Jews per- IAN WILLOUGHBY, ALEXIS ROSEN- In the end, ironically, it was the reason print those dollars we’ll drag the war out. vades much of the Muslim world. Iranian ZWEIG, PANORAMA for Adolf Burger’s arrest which led to him, We have to sabotage it. But that’s easier President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threat- unlike his wife Gisela, surviving the gas said than done.” ens to wipe Israel off the face of the map mong the films premiered at this chambers. One day he was called out of Dollars were harder to counterfeit than while a major Iranian newspaper solicits year’s Berlin Film Festival was a A his cell, and braced himself for a beating. pounds, and Burger and his co-prisoners cartoons mocking the Holocaust. German-language picture called Die Instead he was treated with unexpected did manage to drag out the process of Unfortunately, this Jew hatred isn’t limit- Falscher – The Counterfeiter. It is based civility by the camp commandant. successfully producing fake greenbacks. ed to radical Islam. Respected Arab on the remarkable memoirs of Adolf “He looked at me and said, ‘are you Mr Until, that is, they were told to do so with- imams preach that Jews are the descen- Burger?’ He called me, a prisoner, mister. in six weeks or face a firing squad. But by dents of “pigs and monkeys.” Our ally I stuttered that I was. You’re a typogra- that time the Soviets were close to Berlin. Saudi Arabia generally bars Jews from pher? I said yes, I was. He stood and said, The counterfeiting group were put on a entering the kingdom. Ordinary Iraqis Mr. Burger, tomorrow you go to Berlin. We train bound for the Austrian Alps, to one of have blamed horrific truck bombs on the Jews. need people like you, typographers, in a the Nazis few remaining strongholds in Malaysia, whose former prime minister, printing plant. You’ll work like a free man the last days of the war in Europe. Crates Mahathir Mohamad, blamed practically again. I couldn’t believe a word of what he of fake money were dumped along the everything on the Jews, banned the film said. Because at Birkenau there was an way. version of Schindler’s List for a time order NN – Nacht und Nebel, Night and Adolf Burger expected he and his co- because it portrayed Jews sympathetically. Fog. That meant that whoever went to prisoners would be executed, but after a In the United States, New Jersey’s poet Birkenau could never leave.” period of some confusion they eventually laureate in 2002, Amiri Baraka, suggested dolf Burger had just been recruited found themselves abandoned by the that the Jews knew about the 9/11 attacks A into a remarkable Nazi operation Nazis on May 5, 1945. He and the other in advance. The list goes on. run by SS Major Bernhard Kruger. The counterfeiters were free. They had sur- Classic European anti-Semitism was aim of Operation Bernhard was to coun- vived. largely rooted in the Catholic Church’s terfeit huge amounts of English pounds Incredibly, it was a good three decades now-repudiated teachings that the Jews and US dollars, flood the countries with before Adolf Burger told his story; he says killed Christ. Islamic anti-Semitism is dif- the notes and thus cause their economies he published his memoir The Devil’s ferent, but it often draws on the same Adolf Burger to crash. Workshop in the 1970s in response to “inspirations” for its anti-Jewish stereotypes. He was transferred to the growing Holocaust denial. He also began Burger. Along with 140 other Jewish con- For example, Hamas’ 1988 charter and Sachsenhausen concentration camp near giving lectures about his story in centration camp prisoners, he survived Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf both cite the Berlin, where he and Germany, and has done so the war after being enlisted to take part in forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as around 140 other Jews for almost two decades an ambitious Nazi counterfeiting plot proof that Jews are bent on world domina- with similar skills now. aimed at crashing the economies of the tion. (In 2001, a popular multipart docud- worked in top-secret Six years ago, The Devil’s Allies. rama based on the Protocols was broad- conditions. Workshop caught the atten- Burger, now 89, has been living in cast throughout the Arab world during “The windows were tion of two German film pro- Prague for six decades, though he was prime time.) painted over so nobody ducers, who commissioned born in Slovakia’s High Tatra mountains. A The Arab media – which are mostly gov- could see in. When a screenplay based on it. book printer by trade, he was living in the ernment-controlled – also traffic in the they took us to wash Sitting in his suburban capital, Bratislava, when Slovakia became blood libel that Jews ritually kill non-Jews. once a week – they home in Prague in 2007, a Nazi puppet state under Monsignor And the Arab press routinely publishes were afraid we would Adolf Burger says he Jozef Tiso. Today, at home in the Prague vicious, anti-Jewish cartoons that could die – the whole camp, approves of the film The suburb of Sporilov, Adolf Burger recalls his have sprung directly from the pages of the prisoners and SS men, Counterfeiter - and outlines arrest by the Gestapo. Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer. Few had to go indoors. his reasons for consenting “The only underground organization in Muslims are taking to the streets to Nobody was allowed to to it. Slovakia in those days was the protest those cartoons. see us, not even the “In my opinion, it’s a good Communist Party. They recruited me to As for the controversial Muhammad car- Sachsenhausen camp film. And the reason I help Jews by printing counterfeit birth cer- icatures, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah commander. Only secret agreed to it, without condi- tificates or documents showing they had Sachsenhausen Ali Khamenei, has called their publication service.” tions, when the producers been Roman Catholics in 1938. I did that by a Danish newspaper a Zionist plot When Adolf Burger says the Nazis didn’t approached me was because the English for three years before they arrested me (what isn’t?). want him and his co-counterfeiters to die, barred any investigation into the whole and my wife the day before my 25th birth- These are not uplifting facts. But if he means in the short-term, before their affair at the Nuremberg Trials. To this day day, on August 11 1942. We were plan- Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Holocaust work was complete. people don’t know that they counterfeited ning a celebration, but that didn’t happen.” teach us anything, they teach us that peo- “We 140 Jewish typographers were not so much money. Now when this film A few days later they were sent on a Nazi ple of good will must face unpleasant meant to survive. We should have been comes out everybody will learn that the transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Burger truths and stand against anti-Semitism liquidated. But things turned out different- Nazis weren’t just murderers – they were managed to avoid one mass execution, but and other forms of virulent racism and big- ly. After we’d made 31 million pounds ster- ordinary counterfeiters. That’s what I was deliberately infected with typhus as otry, wherever they appear. ling they then wanted dollars. There was wanted to achieve, and that’s what I have part of a so-called medical experiment. At one Jew called Jakobson from Holland, achieved.” First published in Baltimore Sun THE CRIMES OF I.G. FARBEN (Continued frompage 13) I.G. Farben to secure a large quantity of Hitler, historian Antony C. Sutton points death of those victims of the Holocaust tetraethyl lead from Standard Oil. out a surprising and disturbing number of who perished at the hands of I.G. Farben. THE UGLY WEB OF I.G. FARBEN Standard Oil complied in a move that, American financial and industrial firms As for I.G. companies, several continue in that contributed immensely to the funding operation. Bayer AG, the producer of I.G. Farben was not solely the creation according to Borkin, “materially strength- that supported the rise of Nazi regime. “Bayer Aspirin,” is perhaps the best known of German industrialists. Unwittingly, ened Hitler’s hand.” Summarizing his research, Sutton wrote: of the I.G. companies remaining in opera- American industrialists and financiers fter the United States entered the “The evidence suggests that some mem- tion. Bayer notes on its website that dur- played a role in the creation of conglomer- war, Standard’s cooperation with A bers of the Wall Street elite are connected ing WWII “forced laborers from the occu- ate. Through its relationship with I.G. I.G. Farben became a scandal. In Senate with, and certainly have influence with, all pied countries of Europe were brought to hearings, Senator Robert LaFollette of Farben, Standard Oil would play an impor- significant political groupings in the con- work” at Bayer/I.G. Farben locations but Wisconsin was blunt in his criticism of the tant role in the arming of the Wehrmacht. temporary world socialist spectrum — says that this was true of “German indus- company. Standard Oil, he said, “was According to Borkin, in the mid-1930s, Soviet socialism, Hitler’s national socialism, try as a whole.” Bayer also states that found by the Antitrust Division of the realizing that Germany would need the and Roosevelt’s New Deal socialism.” “concentration camp prisoners were not capacity to manufacture tetraethyl lead, a Department of Justice to be conspiring ONGOING LEGACY employed in the Lower Rhine sites” where crucially important fuel additive needed with I.G. Farben … of Germany. I.G. Bayer’s operations were located. Other for high-performance engines, the Farben, through its maze of international fter the World War II, I.G. Farben former I.G. companies that remain in oper- German firm sought help from Standard. patent agreements, is the spear-head of Awas broken up into its constituent ation include BASF, AGFA, and Hoechst By 1938 German ambitions in central Nazi economic warfare.” companies and several Farben officials, AG. The latter merged with a French firm Europe meant that both the Wehrmacht Standard Oil, though, was not the only including Fritz der Meer of the I.G. manag- to form Aventis, the world’s third-largest and Luftwaffe would need access to well-known U.S. firm to do business with ing board and Otto Ambros and Heinrich pharmaceutical company. greater amounts of leaded fuels. To avert I.G. Farben and the Nazis. In his valuable Buetefisch, were sentenced to terms in a shortage, the Nazi Air Ministry asked study Wall Street and the Rise of Adolf prison for their role in enslavement and First published in The New American Page 16 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2007 - Sivan/Tammuz 5767 WITH JEWISH ROOTS NOW PRIZED, SPAIN STARTS DIGGING governments to study archaeological find- reminders of their presence. past, the leaders say. BY RENWICK MCLEAN ings and ancient documents that may val- Spain had the most vibrant Jewish pop- “A contradictory element in all this is that idate a region’s Jewish heritage. ulation in Europe before the expulsion of a new anti-Semitism is also developing in pain has sometimes been slow to 1492, and it produced one of the most Spain,” said Jacobo Israel Garzón, the recognize its own treasures. Miguel But Mr. Castaño and other scholars say S the revival has in some influential cultural lega- president of the Federation of Jewish de Cervantes was slipping into obscurity cies in Jewish history. Communities in Spain. “It uses the Israeli- after his death until he was rescued by for- ways gone too far. They contend that some local It was here that Hebrew Palestinian conflict as its source, but it eign critics. El Greco’s paintings were was reborn as a language passes very quickly from anti-Israelism to pulled from oblivion by the French. governments, eager to attract well-heeled tourists suitable not just for prayer anti-Semitism.” Now, 500 years after expelling its Jews and liturgy but for poetry Mr. Israel said the number of Jews in and moving to hide if not eradicate all from the United States and Israel, are making claims and other secular pur- Spain today was still small, 40,000 to traces of their existence, Spain has begun suits, contributing to the about their Jewish heritage 50,000. But he said the population was rediscovering the Jewish culture that advent in Spain of what that are not supported by growing steadily thanks to immigration, thrived here for centuries and that schol- has been called a golden particularly from North Africa, where so ars say functioned as a second Jerusalem historical evidence. age of Jewish literature, many Jews fled after the expulsion 500 during the Middle Ages. “History is being exploit- philosophy and science in years ago. “We’ve gone from a period of pillaging ed,” Mr. Castaño said, citing the 10th and 11th cen- Many of these returnees still speak a the Jews and then suppressing and ignor- Oviedo near the northern turies. form of the Judeo-Spanish language of ing their patrimony to a period of rising coast and Jaén in the south “In the minds of her their ancestors and have maintained their curiosity and fascination,” said Ana María as particularly egregious sons and daughters, traditions. “There is tremendous nostalgia López, the director of the Sephardic examples. “People are try- Sepharad was a second for Sephardic Spain in the Jewish world, Museum in Toledo, a hub of Jewish life ing to reproduce what has Synagogue in Toledo. Jerusalem,” Jane S. particularly in the ancestors of the before the Jews were expelled or forced occurred in Toledo. Gerber wrote in her book “The Jews of expelled Jews,” Mr. Israel said. “But even to convert to Christianity in 1492 during Everyone wants their medieval syna- Spain: A History of the Sephardic the Inquisition. gogue.” in the souls of the Jews who were not Experience.” expelled there is the sense that with the Cities and towns across Spain are Toledo, with two intact medieval syna- “Expulsion from Spain, therefore, was searching for the remains of their gogues, including the Tránsito Synagogue end of Jewish Spain something very as keenly lamented as exile from the Holy important was lost.” medieval synagogues, excavating old from the 14th century, is something of an Land,” she said. Jewish neighborhoods and trying to iden- exception in Spain, where the expulsion of “Spain is now opening the way for the Still, despite the new enthusiasm for study of that lost footprint,” he said. tify Jewish cemeteries. Scholars say they the Jews was followed by a campaign to Spain’s Jewish heritage, intolerance are overwhelmed with requests from local destroy, disassemble or obscure obvious toward Jews here is far from a thing of the First published in The New York Times ESTONIA’S FIRST SYNAGOGUE SINCE WORLD WAR II OPENS ou can burn down Stoor and Tonis Kimmel. Construction of “We both, Estonians and Jews, have “Ya building but you the 1.4 million euros building, which start- lived among foreign people and under for- can’t burn down a prayer,” ed in 2005, was financed by donations eign power, but kept our language and culture Israeli Deputy Prime from Alexander Bronstein and the US- in order to mold it into statehood,” he said. Minister Shimon Peres based George Rohr family foundation. “In the final year of the Nazi occupation said at the inauguration of Rabbi Moshe Koltarski, from the New of Estonia (in 1944), a Soviet air raid set the synagogue. York Chabad Lubavitch, represented the fire to the Jewish synagogue in Tallinn. “We can be proud today Rohr family at the ceremony. that this synagogue has Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip been built to serve the made a personal donation for the project. needs of the Jewish com- he synagogue’s prayer hall seats munity here and be for the T180 people, with additional seating benefit of all,” he told the for up to 230 people for concerts and gathering of Estonian and other public events. Israeli officials, as well as In his address, Estonian President Jewish leaders from Toomas Hendrik Ilves drew parallels Estonia and abroad. between the histories of the Estonian and Estonia's chief rabbi Shmuel Kot: "Now we Peres and Estonian From L to R: Israel’s chief rabbi Yona Metzger, Israeli deputy Jewish people. will start building a Jewish life here." President Toomas Hendrik Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Estonia’s President Toomas Before WWII, about 5,000 Jews lived in Ilves cut the red ribbon at Hendrik Ilves, main donator Alexander Bronstein and Estonia’s Estonia, mostly in Tallinn. Many fled to the the front of the syna- Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and Russia’s chief rabbi Berel Lazar Soviet Union and those that remained were gogue, located 16 Karu are prictured during the inauguration ceremony of the newly-built murdered by the Nazis. Street in central Tallinn, Beit Bella synagogue in Tallinn. after three Torah scrolls were brought said the inauguration of the Beit Bella syn- The same air raid also set fire to the inside by Israel’s chief rabbi Yona Metzger agogue filled a void in Estonia. Estonia national theatre, a key landmark and main donator Alexander Bronstein, “Until today, Estonia was the last EU of Estonian culture.” amid music and dancing. member state not to have a proper syna- The towering glass and concrete build- Russia’s chief rabbi Berel Lazar and Pierre gogue, which is required for a full Jewish ing, arching under old trees just off a busy Besnainou, president of European Jewish life,” he said. View of the new Beit Bella synagogue in street of Tallinn, houses the first kosher Congress, also attended the ceremony. The synagogue, which mixes modern Tallinn. The last synagogue, built in 1883, was restaurant in post-war Estonia and the Estonia’s chief rabbi Shmuel Kot, the design and traditional architecture, was destroyed in the war during the Soviet bomb- only mikvah, a ritual bath for women. country’s first rabbi since the Holocaust, designed by Estonian architects Kaur ing of the Estonian capital. Around 3,000 Jews live today in Estonia.

Martyrdom & Resistance International Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. Eli Zborowski, Editor-in-Chief MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE U.S. POST Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Editor 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR, PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. *Published Bimonthly by the NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO. 10 International Society for Yad Vashem, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor New York, NY 10110 (212) 220-4304 EDITORIAL BOARD Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura Israel Krakowski William Mandell Sam Halpern Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased