AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 43-No. 1 ISSN 0892-1571 September/October 2016-Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 LEADERSHIP MISSION VISITS POLAND AND ISRAEL er, eager to share the special experi- presence of the third generation was life for centuries. BY ISAAC BENJAMIN ence together. a strong influence on the entire group. Outside of Wroclaw was the Sixteen young adults represented “Seeing all the young people on this Wolfsberg forced labor camp. Built as n the summer of 2015, supporters the American Society’s Young trip has been an inspiration. Their a series of tunnels underneath a small from the American Society for Yad I Leadership Associates as the third vitality and enthusiasm all along the mountain, it was where thousands of Vashem first began discussing a Jewish prisoners were forced into prospective mission to Poland and hard labor. As the group walked Israel. Understanding its unique sta- through the damp tunnels, Yad tus as the world’s preeminent Vashem guides recounted the story of Holocaust institution, the American Naphtali Stern, a prisoner at Society considered such a trip an Wolfsberg. Trading his rations for a exceptional opportunity to reflect on pencil stub, Stern wrote the Rosh the importance of Holocaust remem- Hashanah service from memory onto brance in the 21st century. A little scraps torn from bags of cement. more than a year later, the 31 Stern survived the Holocaust and Americans on the Leadership Mission later in life donated his cherished joined their international partners in prayer book to Yad Vashem. Later on, this unforgettable profound testament each participant received a replica of to Yad Vashem’s crucial role as the the “Wolfsberg Machzor,” its tattered World Holocaust Remembrance edges a reminder of the unimaginable Center. struggles the prisoners of Wolfsberg Fifty-five passengers were greeted faced. at the Copernicus Wroclaw Airport in t was a bright Friday morning Poland on the morning of July 6th by when the Leadership Mission trav- the large banner welcoming them to I eled to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Meeting the 2016 Yad Vashem Leadership at the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei Mission. For these friends and sup- gate, local Polish guides joined the porters of Yad Vashem, the Yad Vashem staff in leading the group Leadership Mission was a weeklong through the barracks that make up the journey to trace the Jewish experi- Auschwitz Museum. Block 27 is ence in Poland and the Holocaust specifically curated by Yad Vashem before flying to Israel for a rare, as a permanent exhibit to commemo- behind-the-scenes exploration of Yad rate the loss of Jewish life. Block 27 Vashem. holds the monumental Book of The Leadership Mission had a Names — a collection of the names of defining spirit throughout the trip: millions of Holocaust victims. Many three generations of Yad Vashem members of the group were able to supporters joining together on this find the names of their murdered rela- memorable journey. From octogenari- tives among the 4.2 million names. ans to teenagers, the group The Leadership Mission was embraced their different perspectives allowed unparalleled access at as a bond to a shared heritage. Many Auschwitz. As Dr. Mengele’s torture Mark Moskowitz, trustee of the ASYV board of directors; Ron Meier, executive director of the site, Block 10 is not open to the pub- of the participants were visiting ASYV; and Roger Sofer, of Houston, holding the Torah at the ceremony in Auschwitz. Eastern Europe for the first time. lic. As the Polish guides unlocked the way has been so moving to witness.” Others were making their first trip generation on the Leadership dusty padlocked door, several mem- he Leadership Mission began in bers were too overcome with emotion back since escaping to survival more Mission. For American Society board Wroclaw, a city once known as and trepidation to step inside to see than seventy years before. Several member Mark Moskowitz, who came T Breslau. They were led by Bente the stark hallways left untouched for generations of families came togeth- with his nephew Sam Gordon, the Kahan, a Norweigian-Jewish immi- decades. In Birkenau, one railroad grant who has spearheaded the effort car stands alone on the abandoned to restore the White Stork Synagogue tracks as a symbol of the millions of IN THIS ISSUE as the local Jewish community’s cul- deportees. For the Leadership Mission, Auschwitz guides opened Leadership Mission to Poland and Israel...... 1,9,10 tural center. Around the city are signs the usually closed sliding door of the The last Nazi hunter...... 2 of the once-thriving Jewish communi- vehicle. As they were led up the oth- Ukrainian Holocaust perpetrators are being honored...... 3 ty and its tragic destruction at the hands of the Nazis. The last stop was erwise gated-off stairwell to the At the gates of Birkenau, a name for a name...... 4 Birkenau watchtower, the expansive at the former site of the largest syna- American Holocaust survivors struggle “to finish in a decent way”...... 5 grid of barracks came into view. For gogue in Wroclaw, burned down on In Poland, searching for Jewish heritage...... 6 Jessica Glickman-Mauk, a grandchild Kristallnacht. The group recited kad- The Holocaust told from the perspective of a teddy bear...... 8 of survivors and mother of three In a Nazi legacy, a son’s love is tested by mass murder...... 12 dish at the lone surviving wall of the young children, “it was a sight I will Belgian nobles meet Jews saved by their relatives in Holocaust...... 14 synagogue, a monument to the com- never forget. I want my children to Save the date: ASYV Annual Tribute Dinner...... 16 munity that was a center for Jewish (Continued on page 10) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 THE LAST NAZI HUNTER pendent Lithuania” for collaborating these days is “one-third detective, War Criminals Master List, M-Z.” BY STAV ZIV, NEWSWEEK with the Nazis and participating in the one-third historian, one-third political From this base, the loud but jovial Holocaust, Zuroff tells Newsweek. lobbyist,” with countless hours spent Nazi hunter fields phone calls with fraim Zuroff has accomplished “I realize how difficult it could be for tracking down witnesses, poring over tips on suspects through his Emuch in his long career, but Lithuania to admit its complicity,” he archives and convincing governments Operation Last Chance initiative there’s one thing he’s particularly told Vanagaite in Our People. “It took to take action. Imagine Indiana Jones (financial rewards for information proud of: he’s the most hated Jew in France 50 years to acknowledge its and the Temple of Doom with the hero leading to the arrest or conviction of Lithuania. His Lithuanian friend Ruta guilt. Germany had no choice. But for spending 98 percent of the movie in Nazi war criminals), follows up on Vanagaite agrees: She called him a your sake and your children’s sake, his school’s library. promising leads and works with part- “mammoth,” a “boogeyman” and the the sooner you face this honestly, the Zuroff never set out to become an ners who can scour archival material “ruiner of reputations” — and that’s sooner the healing process will start.” object of contempt in Lithuania or the in the languages he can’t handle. He just in the introduction to a book they “If it took France 50 years, it will take world’s last Nazi hunter. He grew up went to Copenhagen last summer to co-authored. Lithuania 50 years as well,” said in the Brooklyn borough of New York submit an official police complaint Last summer, in a journey that Vanagaite. — Brighton Beach and Flatbush — about a Danish SS volunteer who helped cement his notoriety, Zuroff “No, it will take you 90 years,” hoping to become the first Orthodox remains alive and unpunished. Since set off across the Lithuanian country- replied Zuroff. “Because your crimes Jew to play in the NBA. Though he the number of living perpetrators has was named for his great-uncle, Efraim dwindled in recent years, Zuroff Zar, who was murdered in Lithuania increasingly spends time writing op- during the Holocaust, Zuroff’s career eds about Holocaust denial and anti- as a Nazi hunter began only after he Semitism, speaking with the press made aliyah, Jewish immigration to when these topics are in the news Israel, in 1970 and completed his PhD and giving lectures at universities and in Holocaust history. conferences. In the early 1980s, he worked in “You have to start from the premise Israel for the U.S. Justice that it’s almost impossible to prose- Department’s Office of Special cute a Nazi these days,” he says, his Investigations, which was formed in large frame folded behind his desk 1979 to probe and prosecute war and graying hair usually topped with a criminals. Since 1986, Zuroff has kippa. Many of Zuroff’s critics think it’s directed the Israel office of the Simon time we stop prosecuting Nazi collab- Wiesenthal Center, a human rights orators — most of them are dead or organization that combats anti- too old to stand trial, they say, and Semitism and is named after the some argue it’s vindictive to dwell on Holocaust survivor and legendary events so far in the past. Zuroff scoffs Nazi hunter who died in 2005. Since at such talk. “First, the passage of he operates through a nongovern- time in no way diminishes the guilt of mental organization that has no the killers,” he says, launching into his Zuroff protests at an annual procession honoring the Latvian Waffen SS unit. Like its Baltic neigh- power to prosecute, Zuroff is consid- oft-recited “Nazi Hunting 101” spiel. bor Lithuania, Latvia plays down its history of collaboration. ered a “freelance Nazi hunter.” “Old age should not protect people Coming into the profession so late, from punishment, people who com- are greater, and your ability to deal side in a gray SUV with Vanagaite, an Zuroff missed many of the big names mitted such heinous crimes. We owe with them is less. The French pre- author best known for a book about Wiesenthal and others pursued — it to the victims — that’s three. Four is pared the Jews to be sent some- women finding happiness after age Mengele, Adolf Eichmann and Karl it sends a powerful message about where, and they sent them away to be 50. Their goal: to visit some of the Silberbauer, the Gestapo agent who the serious nature of these crimes, nation’s more than 200 sites of mass murdered. Here, the Jews were mur- murder during World War II. On the dered by your people…. road, between destinations, they “You know why everyone in talked and talked, recording their con- Lithuania hates me? Because they versations. The trip formed the basis know that I am right.” of their 2016 book, Our People: THE THINKING MAN’S Journey with an Enemy, an instant INDIANA JONES best-seller in Lithuania. It also ignited a rancorous debate among uroff wants to make it very clear Lithuanians, who have long down- Zthat Nazi hunting isn’t as glam- played their country’s considerable orous as it sounds. “A lot of times, role in the Holocaust. people come up to me and say, ‘You Zuroff, often called the last Nazi have my dream job.... When I was a hunter, has spent nearly four decades child, I wanted to be a Nazi hunter,’” chasing down suspects from Australia he tells Newsweek, clearly amused to Iceland, from Hungary to the United by their ignorance. “You know — it’s States. His methods are sometimes not doing ambushes in the jungles of controversial, but his mission is right- South America.” eous: bringing to justice every Nor does it resemble the popular remaining perpetrator of one of the ’70s book and subsequent film The most heinous crimes in history. For Boys from Brazil, in which Laurence Westerners, the tiny country of Olivier spends much of his time chas- Lithuanian writer Ruta Vanagaite wrote about her own family members’ role in collaborating with the Nazis. Lithuania might seem an odd place ing Dr. Josef Mengele, played by for him to dig in, but with most Nazis Gregory Peck, and unraveling his evil led the arrest of Anne Frank and her their importance. Five is it’s important either dead or too frail to face trial, plan to use 94 clones of Adolf Hitler to family. “That I’m jealous about, defi- in the fight against Holocaust denial this Eastern European nation may be resurrect the Reich. The film doesn’t nitely,” Zuroff says, sitting in his sunny and Holocaust distortion. Six, ‘superi- the Nazi hunter’s last stand. He con- hold up particularly well, and not only Jerusalem office, surrounded by or orders’ has almost invariably been siders Lithuania one of his most because of its revenge fantasy ending books and overstuffed files, with rejected as a defense, so in other important fights because it hasn’t that features Mengele being mauled framed press clippings surrounding words, individual criminal responsibil- addressed its role in mass murder to death by a pack of Dobermans. (In him and a miniature basketball hoop ity.” He insists that if the world doesn’t during the Holocaust — its citizens reality, the “Angel of Death” drowned in one corner. This could be the work make it “abundantly clear” that all indi- killed almost all of the 250,000 Jews while living under a pseudonym in space of a genial but harried account- viduals who participate in genocide who lived there in 1941. “Not a single South America.) ant, until you look closer and notice will face consequences, people will Lithuanian sat one day in jail in inde- Zuroff says a Nazi hunter’s job that one little drawer reads “Latvian (Continued on page 7) September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 UKRAINIAN HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS ARE BEING HONORED IN PLACE OF THEIR VICTIMS Olevsk, making the first of three trips rot in a yard nearby. Shklover thanks to a tip by a local ethnic BY JARED MCBRIDE, TABLET to learn more about what had hap- recounted how he and several others German. She did not know that his levsk, a sleepy if ancient town pened there in 1941. Debarking at the stole away in the night to bury the story had ever been recorded and Odeep in the backwoods of town’s rudimentary bus station, I met bodies in secret and say kaddish. wept when I showed her his hand- Ukraine, became part of my life in the duo of Misha and Misha — two of This was not the last of the pogrom written testimony from the archives. 2003 when I came across a dozen Olevsk’s few remaining Jewish com- violence, though. In a separate inci- We ended our day in the old Jewish testimonies about vicious pogroms munity members. The younger Misha, dent later that summer, the Sich again cemetery, among crooked tomb- there at the beginning of the German- in his 40s, was the de facto head of tortured the Jews, this time in the yard stones covered in weeds. In the sanc- Soviet war of 1941 to 1945. In the tes- the Jewish community. A local of its headquarters. Trosman tuary, we found old religious manu- timonies, survivors and witnesses acquaintance referred to him as “The described how the Sich made 300 scripts and artifacts under layers of Last Jew of Olevsk.” He often helped Jews “tear out grass with their teeth” dust and dirt — the same ones that Jewish visitors pay homage to their and pull weeds with their hands. They the Jews killed next to the Ubort river families. Younger Misha talked so could hear the laughter of Sich sol- used to read. quickly and peppered his speech with diers at the headquarters as they On the bus ride back to Zhytomyr, so many rural colloquialisms that my were beaten with whips and rifles. the enormity of my experience was brain rushed to follow. Elder Misha Neither the younger nor the elder almost too much to bear. The tears of was in his late 50s; he had a kind face Misha had heard of the pogrom vio- the survivor’s daughter; the rotting and walked with a limp, struggling to lence until my arrival in Olevsk. They tefillin in an abandoned cemetery; the keep up, both physically and verbally, looked at me with dismay and disbe- black memorial that conceals the with his younger counterpart. lief as I told them what had happened identity of the dead; and the beautiful We traveled in one of the only taxis in this place that was turned into a Ubort river and Polesia forest. I knew in town to a mass grave outside children’s playground after the war. Of I had to return. Olevsk. Driving along the unpaved course, they knew the Sich had been *** road to the village of Varvarivka, I involved in the mass shooting at wice more, in 2011 and 2012, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact Varvarivka—but the preceding torture T visited Olevsk, always helped that this was the same road on which and humiliation of Olevsk’s Jewish by the younger Misha. The golden Olevsk’s Jews had been taken to their community were new to them. plaque honoring the Sich at the site of deaths. In Varvarivka, on November Together, we entered the nursery their pogroms was eventually 15, 1941 (some sources say yard. I looked down at the dirt, once a removed as a result of local political November 20), the Germans and the Poliska Sich shot the entire Jewish population — more than 500 men, Taras “Bulba”-Borovets. women and children. Between bumps describe how Jews were beaten, and bursts of speed, I tried to envision humiliated and mutilated in the center the final moments of an entire com- of town in the summer of 1941. Many munity as they took their last steps. of their tormentors and killers were We arrived at the destination — a members of the Poliska Sich, a guer- clearing among the trees on the side rilla force led by one of the most of the road. There was a small black famous Ukrainian nationalist leaders memorial enclosed in a fence and a during the war, Taras “Bulba”- small crumbling white wall surround- Borovets. Taking his nom de guerre ed by weeds overtaking the cracking from a mythical Cossack leader, cement. According to this late Soviet- Bulba-Borovets ruled Olevsk and its era memorial, “German-Fascist environs during the early months of invaders” killed “peaceful citizens” at the German-Soviet war, while this spot in 1941. There was no refer- Germans were thin on the ground in ence to the Jewish identity of the vic- this remote location. It was only after tims. the pogrom violence and further Next, we located the Sich headquar- German-Ukrainian parade in Ivano-Frankivsk on July 26, 1941. abuse of Jews at the hands of the ters in a former nursery school build- scene of horrific violence. I then upheaval. But in its stead, a new mon- Sich that the Germans took over ing in the center of town. After taking noticed a golden plaque in honor of ument was built just down the road Olevsk in September 1941 and estab- control of Olevsk in the first week of Taras Bulba-Borovets and his men on from where the pogroms took place. lished a ghetto. The Sich then July 1941, the Sich conducted its first the wall of the nursery building. The Also a pet project of Svoboda, it was patrolled the ghetto and later provided pogrom, taking 30 to 40 Jewish men Sich headquarters were located at unveiled in August 2011 with party the Germans with manpower to liqui- and women to the Ubort river to tor- this place during the first few months leader Oleh Tyahnybok in atten- date the Jewish population. ture them. In his deposition that I had of the war — when the pogroms dance. The unveiling sparked some Discovering these documents, I felt found in the archives, Tevel Trosman occurred — and a local chapter of the heated debate in the local paper over certain that such brutal pogroms must explained how the Sich treated the right-wing nationalist Svoboda party the place of the Sich in Olevsk’s his- have been included in the literature town’s Jews “to gross mockery and had wanted to honor the Sich. tory — but no discussion of the on anti-Jewish violence in western humiliation in the mud for almost half Certainly, leaders of anti-Jewish vio- pogroms in which the town’s Jews Ukraine and eastern Poland in the an hour.” Another survivor, Iakov lence and ethnic cleansing of Poles were killed. summer of 1941. Following Jan Shklover, described how Sich soldiers have been memorialized in other Thanks to the help of a local journal- Gross’s powerful 2000 book, “giggled and laughed” as they made towns and cities in Ukraine. But rarely ist, I interviewed two people, Maria Neighbors, other historians tackled him and the others stand and then lie is the irony of commemorating a per- Kolomiets and Mykola Dovhosilets, the difficult questions surrounding down in the mud, hitting them with petrator as striking as when it is done who witnessed the Sich taking local participation in the Holocaust, their rifle butts all the while. Others at the scene of his crime. Olevsk’s Jews to their deaths, with and in particular pogroms in that fate- detailed how some soldiers enjoyed Elder Misha brought me back to beatings and humiliations along the ful summer. Yet I soon realized that beating Jewish women with their Olevsk to speak with a relative of a way. I also spoke to Aleksei there was no mention of the pogroms guns. A Sich leader is reported in one survivor whose testimony I had found Makarchuk, who had been a teenager in the scholarly literature; Bulba- testimony as having mutilated his vic- in the archives. She was the daughter during the war. After telling us his Borovets, unsurprisingly, failed to tims by dragging a cart over them. By of the survivor’s second marriage story about how he escaped deporta- mention them in his memoirs. the time the pogrom ended, the Sich after the war — her father’s first wife tion at the hands of the local police Five years after I discovered the tes- had injured dozens; soldiers had mur- and children had all been murdered in and his service in the partisans, timonies, I found myself on an old dered the town baker and another Varvarivka. She told me how her Makarchuk described watching the Soviet bus traveling from Zhytomyr to local Jew, and they left the bodies to father had miraculously escaped (Continued on page 13) Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 HITLER’S FURIES: GERMAN WOMEN IN THE NAZI KILLING FIELDS Hitler’s Furies: German Women in many years the USSR, including murder as the euthanasia program were given the task of cultivating and the Nazi Killing Fields. today’s Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, expanded from Germany into defending a Polish plantation in east- By Wendy Lower. Houghton Mifflin Latvia, and Estonia — and were Poland.” ern Galicia.” Thus, she, her husband Harcourt: New York, 2014. 270 pp. indeed integral parts of Hitler’s Then there were the “legions of sec- and their three-year-old son were $26 hardcover. machinery of destruction.” “Teachers, retaries who kept the mass-murder soon living in a “white-pillared manor . nurses, secretaries, welfare workers machinery functioning.” On the one REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN . . in the midst of rolling meadows” — and wives” — they all went to service hand they “organized, tracked, and requisitioned for the family’s use. It “On September 16, 1942, [in the the German troops there and, con- distributed the massive supplies nec- was idyllic and beautiful, and Ukrainian-Polish border town of comitantly, to “patriotically” colonize essary to keep the war machine run- undoubtedly for Erna, a farmer’s Volodymyr-Volynski, Johanna] the newly won lands for Nazi ning.” However, thousands of them daughter whose only job had been as Altvater entered the ghetto and Germany. Interestingly, the more per- were also employed in district offices a house-servant, unbelievable! approached two Jewish children, sonal reasons for these young “sev- in the Nazi East, “responsible for the Before long both her husband and a six-year-old and a toddler....The enteen-to thirty-year-olds going” east dispensation of indigenous popula- she were beating and brutalizing their toddler came over to her.... were the supposed tions, including Jews, forced laborers — Ukrainians, Poles, Altvater grabbed the child by the “professional opportu- many of whom had and Jews. In 1943 they were hunting legs, held it upside down, and nities” offered, and the been placed in ghettos down Jews who somehow escaped slammed its head against the pure adventure of this and forced labor assign- extermination. He resolutely shot any ghetto wall . . . [then] she threw “liberating” experience! ments.” Some secre- and all Jews. And Erna? All on her the lifeless child at the feet of its So what, for exam- taries “not only typed up own, she came to cold-bloodedly kill father....” ple, did German nurs- liquidation orders but six hapless “half-naked Jewish boys horrifying and brutal woman — es do — “nursing that also participated in ghet- who whimpered as she drew her pis- we all somehow feel such a brought the largest to massacres and A tol.” Indeed, after the war, this last being can’t possibly exist. That it’s number of German attended mass shoot- was especially brought out in her pre- “unnatural.” We are certain that deep women directly into the ings” — Johanna trial interrogation. down all women have a maternal war and the Nazi geno- Altvater, specializing in instinct. But real life isn’t like that. cide”? Yes, on the one child-killing, was just Which brings us to the justice “doled The lines quoted above, taken from hand, according to such a one. There were out” to these women after the war . . . Wendy Lower’s unique volume enti- Lower, they cared for the “dutiful” secretaries or rather the lack of it. The only one tled Hitler’s Furies: German Women German soldiers phys- who typed up all those who paid for her crime somewhat was in the Nazi Killing Fields, makes that ically and mentally reports handed in by Erna Petri — tried in East Germany. quite evident . . . nor was Johanna injured in the fighting. They minis- Einsatzgruppen leaders highlighting But even she got out of her life sen- Altvater an anomaly. There were quite tered to their wounds and socialized their “diligence” in the murder of tence . . . many felt, through the help a few other German women like her with them, bringing a bit of home to Jews, reports accompanied by graphs of Stille Hilfe (Silent Aid), a silent — and they weren’t camp guards the front. But they also “witnessed the making things easy for the upper underground SS organization, one of either! deprivation and murder of Soviet pris- leadership to quickly comprehend whose prominent members is Gudrun In sum, Lower’s engrossing and oners of war and Jews. They worked and, of course, admire! Burwitz, the daughter of Henrich conscientiously researched book in the infirmaries of the concentration inally, and surprisingly, the worst Himmler. Petri, meanwhile, lived to be squarely focuses our attention on the camps....” “They assisted in medical Fof the lot were the wives that eighty . . . unacknowledged and rarely if ever experiments, and administered lethal came with their men to the East. Yes, this is quite a book! discussed fact that “hundreds of thou- injections.” “They stood on railway Such a one was Erna Petri. In 1942, sands of German women went to the platforms while Jewish deportees “under the auspices of Himmler’s Reviewed by Dr. Diane Cypkin, Nazi East — that is, to Poland and the locked in railway cars begged for Race and Resettlement Office, Horst Professor of Media, Communication, western territories of what was for help.” Finally, “some committed mass Petri, an SS officer, and Erna Petri and Visual Arts at Pace University. AT THE GATES OF BIRKENAU, A NAME FOR A NAME My great-grandfather Michael ben Each name a mini-redemption, as ancestry after applying for a visa to BY AVI BAUMOL, Naftali Ferber was murdered in they embody the spirit of the Jewish study in Poland — “Oh, my great- THE TIMES OF ISRAEL Berlin during Kristallnacht. My great- people — netzach yisrael lo yeshak- grandfather’s name was Moshe…”. grandparents, Binyamin and Liczu er (the eternity of Israel does not lie). Agnieszka was told she was Jewish custom at Jewish cemeteries Goldberg, from Mielec, were mur- Devora, 28, found out she was by her grandmother one day before around the world is to recite the A dered in their city and buried in an Jewish at 12 and chose to learn she died. She didn’t know what to do names of the loved ones departed. At unknown grave. My grandfather’s about her heritage, engage in Jewish with that information until she arrived hallowed places of Jewish tragedy brother, Yehoshua, murdered in life in Krakow, and proudly tell her at the JCC in Krakow and we helped such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, people Belzec, was just 27 years old, a friends and family — I am Jewish. her enter the Jewish world. often recite a list of names of their scion of the Lublin Yeshiva. My Paula found out when she was 30, And what of Agata, Gabriella, loved ones who were struck down grandfather’s aunt Rachel and her after bumping into a rabbi at the mall. Magda, Chaya, Lesziek, Pinchas, sanctifying the name of God. That is husband Chaim, son of Rabbi Nisan When asked if she was Jewish her Iwo, Iwona, Michael, Patryk, Julia, what I found myself doing on a cloudy Shenirer of Krakow, were murdered response was, “No, I am not, but my Dawid, Alicia… Friday in early June in front of 150 together with their children. Their 10 grandmother was.” She has since The list goes on and on, names of cyclists about to embark on the most cousins of varying ages were all returned to Jewish life along with her forgotten Jews who now proudly live meaningful bike ride of their lives. murdered in Tarnow, Lvov and sister, mother and nieces. Marcjanna a Jewish life. Inspired by Robert Desmond, a Buczacz. found out she was Jewish by casual- oday in Krakow, there are 600 young English Jew, who, three years he list is frightening, paralyz- ly asking her mom one day why her Jewish members of the com- ago, decided to bike from his home T ing. What would have become last name did not sound Polish. “Are munity; we believe there are thou- all the way to Auschwitz, over 25 T of my extended family? How would we Russian? No, we are Jewish, did sands. In Warsaw, several thou- days, the JCC Krakow Ride for the the Jewish world have been different I never tell you…?” Today she is sands, and in other cities in Poland Living was created to memorialize if these named did not represent deeply involved in Jewish life in — we could reach tens of thousands. the past, but also to celebrate the death and destruction? Poland and around the world. This Ride for the Living symbolized survival of Jews throughout But then I continued with another Damian’s grandfather bequeathed a for Jewish Poland that while we Communism and the revival of list of names, this time not commem- treasured piece of jewelry to his cherish the names of those lost to Jewish life — in Poland of all orating the tragic past; rather they grandson with strict instructions not to the Jewish people, we nevertheless places. Not just in Poland, but in signaled rebirth, return, revival! open it until his demise. After the have the opportunity and therefore Krakow, down the road from the Each name represented hundreds, Christian funeral, Damian and his the great responsibility to ensure that largest Jewish cemetery in the world. if not thousands of young and old mother opened up the package to find those Poles who do have Jewish And so I began like every other Poles who miraculously found their a Magen David. Today he wears it roots — their names are not lost to person in front of such loss — recit- way back from being lost to Judaism. proudly. Serge found out his Jewish the Jewish people forever. ing names: September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 MORE THAN SEVEN AMERICAN HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS DECADES LATER, STRUGGLE “TO FINISH IN A DECENT WAY” MONACO APOLOGIZES Mann, adding that many survivors live even decades after what many FOR DEPORTING JEWS BY MATT LEBOVIC, under the communal radar. Sof them experienced as a frosty THE TIMES OF ISRAEL Nearly 300 survivors are served by reception, thousands of Holocaust BY CAROL J. WILLIAMS, JF&CS, according to Marsha Frankel, survivors again find themselves in LOS ANGELES TIMES espite recent funding infusions director of elder care services for the need of assistance with their basic to provide care for aging onaco committed the D Boston agency. About five survivors needs. Holocaust survivors, the dwindling “irreparable” injustice of are added each month, said Frankel, “We have a lot more people that are M community’s basic needs will outpace deporting Jews to Nazi camps during who estimates there are 2,500 in the in need now, especially from the [for- earmarked resources in the years World War II, Prince Albert II said in area. Because some are “fearful of mer Soviet Union],” said Arbeiter. ahead, according to experts. belated apology for the action 73 seeking help,” connecting survivors to “Home care is the greatest need, along Out of the just under 100,000 years ago that sent scores of resi- appropriate services can be challeng- with food and medicine,” he said. Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide dents and refugees to their deaths. ing — even when there is funding, For more than half a century, who reside in the US, more than Many of the 66 people handed over said Frankel. Arbeiter has advocated on behalf of 30,000 live below poverty threshold to Nazi occupiers in neighboring “We see the will to live and the survivors in the US and other coun- France had sought refuge in the prin- resilience,” said Frankel of survivors tries, including Germany, where he cipality that was neutral in the first she has worked with for almost two received the Order of Merit in 2008 for years of the war. decades. “Many of them face acute his work on Jewish-German relations. But on the night of August 27, chronic medical conditions and pover- A volunteer adviser for survivor serv- 1942, Monaco authorities rounded ty,” she said. ices at JF&CS, Arbeiter has seen the up Jewish residents and delivered Labeling the survivors’ needs as community’s needs increase as more them to the Nazis. At least 24 other “very intense,” Frankel said her members reach advanced ages. Monegasques living in the Riviera agency’s goal is to help them remain “There are a lot of survivors who principality or in the surrounding at home for as long as possible. This need a little help to be able to finish in French countryside were deported requires access to services ranging a decent way,” said Arbeiter. “We during the war, according to a gov- from food delivery to transportation, have got to have the tools to help ernment report released this year. with home health care being “a very these people,” he added. Only nine of the 90 who were deport- expensive service to provide,” she As put by Mann, “JF&CS has to ed survived their Nazi detention. said. make a ‘Sophie’s Choice’ on a daily “We committed the irreparable in “If we can help people stay at home, basis as to who gets services. The handing over to the neighboring they are feeling safe, with a sense of problem is going to increase, not authorities women, men and a child dignity and respect from the commu- decrease, over the next decade,” he Holocaust survivor Stephan Ross, founder of who had taken refuge with us to the New England Holocaust Memorial, partic- nity at large,” Frankel said. said. Some people called them “green- In New York City, for instance, up to escape the persecutions they had ipating in the 2016 Yom HaShoah commemo- suffered in France,” Albert said at a ration in Boston, Massachusetts, organized by horns,” and not many made efforts to 30,000 survivors — about half of the the Jewish Community Relations Council of learn about the wartime experience of community — live in “deprivation, iso- ceremony in which a monument to Greater Boston. survivors transplanted to the US, lation, and poverty,” according to the victims was unveiled. “In dis- recalled Israel “Izzy” Arbeiter, a sur- Stuart Eizenstat, special adviser on tress, they came specifically to take standards, according to the National vivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and long- Holocaust issues to US Secretary of shelter with us, thinking they would Jewish Population Survey (NJPS). time leader of New England’s survivor State John Kerry. In an interview with find neutrality.” And as the survivor community ages, community. AFP last year, Eizenstat said about Albert said the acknowledgment of a larger segment will need increased orn in central Poland’s Plock, one-third of survivors in Israel cope wrongdoing by the wartime authori- assistance with health care and other Arbeiter’s parents and brother with poverty, and these rates ties “is to ask forgiveness,” address- basic needs. B were murdered in the Nazi death approach 90% in some former Soviet ing his apology to Jewish community Responding to the dire situation, the camp Treblinka. In leaders in attendance, including the Claims Conference announced it will 1939 the town’s principality’s chief rabbi and commit an additional $500 million Jews numbered renowned Holocaust researchers toward Holocaust survivors’ home some 10,000 and Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. health care needs, and lift the cap on made up 26% of The government review of funded hours of care per survivor. the local popula- Monaco’s World War II relationship For Boston-area survivors, new fund- tion; by war’s end with the Axis powers was ordered by ing will also come from sales of the only 300 survived. Albert and concluded this year with English translation of Hitler’s Mein In 1946, Arbeiter recommendations for establishing a Kampf manifesto. After decades of married his wife restitution program to return the controversies tied to its stewardship of Anna, with whom property seized from the deported the book, Boston-based publisher he had survived a Jews to their heirs. Nine compensa- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt recently forced labor camp tion claims have already been decided to direct royalty proceeds from and imprisonment approved, the government reported. Mein Kampf to programs run by Jewish at Auschwitz. Holocaust survivor Israel Arbeiter, a long-time leader in the community “We welcome the desire of the prin- Family & Children’s Service (JF&CS) Within two years, (right) with his wife, Anna Arbeiter (center), participating in the 2016 cipality to properly examine its role for local survivors. Yom HaShoah commemoration in Boston. Anna gave birth to during these dark days of the Nazi Totaling about $60,000 a year, Mein a daughter and the family made their Union countries. occupation,” European Jewish Kampf royalties will only cover a mod- home outside Boston. In the US, the government has start- Congress leader Moshe Kantor said est portion of the survivor communi- “We were not very welcomed by the ed to fund social service grants in a statement. ty’s needs. Locally, the gap between Jewish community after the war,” said specifically for aging Holocaust sur- The Klarsfelds had encouraged these needs and available funds has Arbeiter in an interview with The vivors. Some European countries Albert’s late father, Prince Rainier, to hit up to $150,000 annually, according Times of Israel. have made reparations available to examine the wartime leadership’s to Rick Mann, a JF&CS volunteer and The historian Barbara Burstin wrote victims of the Nazis living outside actions. Albert took up the mission chair of the Jewish Community about resettlement efforts: Europe, but these funds are usually after succeeding Rainier, who died in Relations Council’s (JCRC) “Americans, both men and women, one-time infusions, as opposed to 2005 after 56 years as head of the Holocaust outreach committee. did not understand or appreciate what sustainable, ongoing support. House of Grimaldi. “I had very little idea of the severity these ‘greeners’ had been through, “There isn’t going to be an opportu- It was Rainier’s predecessor, of the problem being faced by local and the survivors soon learned, if they nity to make this right if we do not act Prince Louis II, who reigned during survivors until very recently,” Mann had been so inclined, not to talk about soon,” said Mann. “We will be left feel- World War II, though under succes- told The Times of Israel. “There are their experiences except among ing the pain of not having helped sive Italian and German occupations hundreds in greater Boston who are themselves.” when our help was needed,” he said. in the war’s latter years. in need of essential services,” said Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 IN POLAND, SEARCHING FOR JEWISH HERITAGE aroused and so did that of my sister, We looked for the market at an otherwise blank wall. BY JOSEPH BERGER, Dr. Evelyn Hartman (my wife’s need Zelaznej Bramy (the Iron Gate), The new Polin Museum, too, with its THE NEW YORK TIMES for a family visit to Australia made the where her brother stumbled across an inventively illuminating survey of the timing ideal). abandoned sack of prunes that fed thousand-year history of Poland’s hen I was growing up, my We started our trip in Warsaw, most them during the monthlong bombing. Jews, seems a monument of atone- mother filled me with visions W of which was leveled in the The market has been shifted, but it ment. As we entered, Jewish students of her hometown, Otwock in Poland, September 1939 blitzkrieg and in the was bustling with stalls of fresh straw- from several countries stood outside describing it as a kind of Brigadoon retaliations for 1943 and 1944 upris- berries, sausages and flowers, a far singing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national without actually using that American ings. The Poles have recreated, brick cry from wartime and Communist-era anthem. word. by brick, the picturesque Old Town, austerity. On the ride southeast to Otwock, I It seemed like an enchanted spot where we had lunch with Maria At the shelling’s tail end, my mother could not help but recall that my graced by tall pine trees, lush lilac Bukowska, a Polish Mary Poppins retreated to an aunt’s home at 26 mother walked 17 miles from Warsaw bushes and bracing air. In an era who cared with such tenderness for Franciszkanska, closer to the Vistula lugging the remainder of her prunes when anti-Semitic discrimination my Alzheimer’s-ridden mother. At the River, on her brother’s theory that to make sure her father, Joshua seemed laced into the national fabric, they would be nearer a Golant, a struggling Hebrew teacher, the Jews of Otwock managed to source of water they could and the three small children still living squeeze much sweetness out of their drink. My mother described at home, Esther, Chana and Shimele, hardscrabble lives through timeless the building’s terrified ten- were unharmed. religious habits and the pleasures of a ants huddled in a courtyard. Jakub Lysiak, our resourceful guide, resort that attracted bourgeois vaca- My sister and I saw a took us to where 17 Lesna Street, my tioners and Hasidim. pleasant street where all the mother’s childhood home, stood. On My sister and I recently visited the prewar buildings had been this country lane hacked out of the town for the first time. It was lilac sea- replaced by ascetic apart- pine woods, there are still wooden son and the pine trees were still tall, ment blocks. There was no houses in a gingerbread style known the air as bracing. But we found with Number 26. What was left of as Swidermajer after Otwock’s Swider palpable certainty that the Jews are the addresses we searched River. But my mother’s address no all gone — there were 10,000 of them for was a four-story plain longer exists. — and only a few traces are left of the gray building at 16 At the priests’ residence we met the touchstones of my mother’s girlhood. Krasinaskiego where my Rev. Jan Swierzewski, who informed All four synagogues, including those parents and I, their infant us that an Otwock priest, the Rev. where her father was a cantor on son, lived in 1946 after Ludwik Wolski, had been honored as Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, were returning to Poland from “righteous” by Yad Vashem in destroyed by the Germans. The their wartime refuge in the Jerusalem for saving Jewish children wooden “villa” where her family had a Soviet Union. by issuing baptismal certificates. cramped apartment had been They stayed a few months, The wooden public schoolhouse for replaced by a retirement home for fleeing when news broke of Jewish children that my mother priests. Even the cemetery where her the Kielce pogrom that left attended until seventh grade — mother was buried when our mother 42 Jews dead, and making Christian children had a separate one was only six was an overgrown sham- their way to the Allied dis- — was demolished years ago. The bles of crooked, broken headstones. The author, right foreground, with his parents, Marcus and placed persons camps. Like Cukiernia Lapaty bakery that provid- In our father’s hometown, Borynya, Rachel Berger, and his brother, Joshua, about 1949, when they lived in a displaced persons camp. tens of thousands of other ed a memorable torte of chocolate across the border in Ukraine, we elegant Literatka Cafe I confirmed Jews, they gave up on Poland. marzipan for her school’s graduates learned firsthand that we come from that what I thought was Jewish food So my mother’s Warsaw is no is now a commercial building. poor hill people — Berger means — an earthy mushroom soup and longer there, but we took time to lmost all evidence of the pres- “mountain person” — who subsisted meat-filled ears of dough that I call enjoy contemporary Warsaw, which is ence of Jews has vanished. on farming and lumber from A kreplach and Poles call pierogi — is a cosmopolitan city that can rival They were herded into a ghetto, Carpathian spruces. We spoke to an actually Polish food. other European capitals in charm, starved and brutally beaten, the men 86-year-old woman who remembered y mother, Rachel Golant intriguing shops and fine restaurants humiliated by having beards cut off. when the sprawling village had 300 Berger, lived in Warsaw from like Dawne Smaki on Nowe Swiat, Most were sent to Treblinka, among Jews; she even vaguely recalled the M age 14, when her father sent her where we ate pierogi while a woman them very likely (my mother never Bergers. But we understood more there to help put food on the table, played Chopin. knew for certain) my grandfather and firmly how painful recounting the past until she was 20, when the Germans s important to us, it is a city that his family. must have been for our father, who invaded in September 1939. In a has made an effort to under- Two spots are still suffused with lost his parents and six sisters to the A memoir she hand-wrote in old age, score its tragic Jewish past and memory. Hidden deep in a wood is Nazis. He not only did not speak she described the pleasures of shop- rebuild. A New Yorker, Michael J. the tumbledown cemetery. We spent about those sisters: he couldn’t even ping for shoes on chic Marszalkowska Schudrich, 60, is officially Poland’s an hour looking for the gravestone of tell us how beautiful the Carpathian Street, attending Yiddish plays at the chief rabbi and has reignited Sabbath my grandmother before giving up. countryside was. 2,000-seat Nowosci Theater, catching services at the Nozyk Synagogue, a Another is a small but ambitious Our parents’ hometowns had reced- American movies, and savoring the surviving classic, with financing by the museum that contains artifacts from ed into a dim past. Nevertheless, we, cerebral hubbub at clubs for writers, Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Otwock’s Jewish heyday, found in like many others now making this par- socialists and Zionists. Culture. houses where Jews had lived: a High ticular kind of roots journey, were Marszalkowska Street has been Helise Lieberman, another New Holy Days prayer book, a white Yom enriched by the trip because we dis- rebuilt and is still a modish boulevard. Yorker, started a Jewish school 20 Kippur robe, a letter from a Zionist covered a new Poland. Jews, some of But the clubs and theaters were years ago with financing from the organization. them impassioned American expatri- destroyed. Ronald S. Lauder Foundation. It has We asked the museum’s director, ates, have planted the seeds of a When the bombing began, my 240 students, half of them non- Sebastian Rakowski, why he was reviving community in Warsaw and mother’s half-brother Simcha advised Jewish. A modest community center interested in preserving Jewish Krakow, and an astonishing corps of her to avoid basement shelters — has been set up by the American traces, and he replied that he could Polish gentiles have made it their mis- they might collapse — and dodge with Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. not allow Jews to disappear from the sion to rediscover a people that had him through the city’s parks. My sister Ms. Lieberman, now director of town’s collective memory. His own been so entwined with their own. We and I visited the two parks she Taube’s Warsaw office, pointed out mother was born in 1944 “and she met a dozen such trailblazers who named, Krasinski and Saxon bricks inlaid in sidewalks demarcating didn’t know there were Jews in enlightened us about Jewish rem- Gardens, both throwbacks to a state- the Warsaw ghetto’s wall and a mon- Otwock.” nants and helped us locate cemeter- ly Warsaw past. Lilacs were in bloom, ument to the Umschlagplatz (German There was one other spot where for ies and repurposed synagogues. ducks paddled in a pond, lovers for collection point), the square from my sister and me ghosts walked: the I had seldom thought about actually kissed on benches. It was hard to which 300,000 Jews were shipped by venerable Otwock train station with its visiting Poland, but after my mother’s imagine the human corpses and freight cars to Treblinka. With muffled bold clock tower. After the war, my death in 2009 my curiosity seemed horse carcasses my mother saw. sorrow, we read the Yiddish names on (Continued on page 12) September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 THE LAST NAZI HUNTER (Continued from page 2) as Vanagaite tells Newsweek; the for- Racinskas, heatedly disputes that over. assume they can get away with mass mer for their suffering under the charge and says he “100 percent sup- The Nazi hunter’s pursuit of Lileikis murder. Soviets and the latter for eventually ported, supports and will support” didn’t win him any Lithuanian friends. As the last remaining perpetrators breaking free of the USSR and aiding Zuroff’s primary goal of bringing “That old person was already half- die off, persuading an entire society to in its demise. With that mindset, it’s Holocaust perpetrators to justice, dead,” says Vanagaite, who lived next admit its ghastly role in the Holocaust hard for a nation to accept that its cit- though he calls Zuroff’s aggressive door to Lileikis after he’d returned to is the last Nazi hunter’s latest — and izens could also have been perpetra- methods “counterproductive.” Vilnius and remembers seeing him in most difficult — battle. tors of genocide. Even those who par- Zuroff says Racinskas’s proclama- his wheelchair. “I was upset like ticipated in mass murder might be cel- tion of support is “pure fabrication. I everybody else. I said, ‘If he did IT’S COMPLICATED ebrated as national heroes for their do not remember a single statement something wrong, then he soon will he United States Holocaust anti-Soviet activities. or any effort by the commission to be dead and go to hell.’” She remem- T Memorial Museum estimates In his book Operation Last Chance: encourage or support the efforts of bers seeing Zuroff on TV, talking that 90 percent of Lithuania’s Jews One Man’s Quest to Bring Nazi the Wiesenthal Center to help facili- angrily about Lithuania, and recalls were murdered during the Holocaust, Criminals to Justice, Zuroff recalled a tate the prosecution of Lithuanian wondering what “this foreign, strong, and some estimates go much higher. 1991 dedication ceremony for a mon- Nazi war criminals.” big Jew” wanted from her country’s No country has an impecca- old people. ble record when it comes to Nearly two decades later, she came prosecuting perpetrators of the to understand what Zuroff wanted and Holocaust, but some have why it was so important that he get it. made commendable efforts. And then she became the Nazi The U.S., after years of doing hunter’s unlikely, and arguably most nothing, denaturalized dozens significant, ally in Lithuania. of Nazi collaborators. FRENEMIES AND NEIGHBORS Germany, birthplace of the Holocaust, is still prosecuting s they say, the birds shouldn’t death camp guards and fore- “Ashit in their own nest.” sees continuing such work for Vanagaite, smiling behind a pair of another decade. cat’s-eye glasses, sips coffee as she lmost immediately after calmly explains why some A Lithuania declared inde- Lithuanians hate her for talking about pendence, Zuroff started push- their grisly crimes against Jews, as ing the country to prosecute well as those likely committed by her Holocaust criminals, appearing own family. “So I am the bird — on television and petitioning because my name is Vanagaite; the government to pursue legal vanagas is a hawk — who has been action. As Vanagaite put it in shitting in our own nest,” she contin- Our People, “[He] came to ues. Then she adds sardonically, “But spoil the wedding.” Despite his those people who were killers? They persistence, only three people were not shitting. I am shitting [by As Nazi Germany annexes Lithuania on the Baltic Coast, Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler is accompanied by have been tried for Holocaust writing] about it.” Wehrmacht military leaders and aides as he marches down the streets of Memel, or Klaipeda, to view the last crimes in independent addition to his Third Reich, March 23, 1939. Lithuania — and the Regardless of which estimate you ument in Paneriai — a suburb of possibility of any more facing use, the Jewish death rate there was Vilnius where roughly 70,000 Jews judgment seems remote. In one of the highest in all of Europe. were killed. Gediminas Vagnorius, 2001, Kazys Gimzauskas, a And there’s a sickening twist to this then the prime minister of Lithuania, deputy in the Saugumas (the already-gruesome tale: in countries claimed the Holocaust lasted only Lithuanian equivalent of the like France and the Netherlands, Nazi three months and reduced the scope German Gestapo), became collaboration typically meant identify- of Lithuanian participation, saying “a the first Nazi collaborator ing, gathering and preparing Jews to group of criminals cannot outweigh convicted in an independent be deported to concentration camps, the good name of a nation, nor can it former Soviet republic, but by but collaborators in Lithuania also did rob it of its conscience and decency.” then the court ruled him too ill much of the killing — usually by Perhaps those comments can be to be incarcerated. In 2006, shooting their neighbors and watch- shrugged off as the growing pains of Algimantas Dailide, another ing their bodies collapse, one on top a newborn nation, but even today the member of the Saugumas, of another, into pits dug in the forest. Museum of Genocide Victims in was convicted and sentenced Lithuania’s crimes against its own Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, focuses to five years. However, a people during World War II seem almost exclusively on Soviet crimes court in Vilnius ruled that he irrefutable, but the country’s collective and resistance; its first and only would not be imprisoned memory has been muddied by sever- exhibit on the Holocaust wasn’t added “because he is very old and al factors. For one, there is its long until 2011. does not pose danger to soci- history of foreign occupation, particu- Zuroff and Dovid Katz, a longtime ety.” larly by the Soviets, who took over ally of the Nazi hunter and founder of Zuroff helped scare the twice — first in 1940, then again in the web journal Defending History, third, Aleksandras Lileikis, a When Lithuania ceded Klaipeda to Germany, thousands of 1944, when the Red Army pushed the claim that some in Lithuania are push- Saugumas commander, back Jews like this family fled. Here, German crowds gather to jeer as the refugees pack up a cart. occupying Nazis westward. Lithuania ing what they call the “double geno- to Lithuania from Norwood, did not declare independence from cide” theory, which equates Soviet Massachusetts, where he had been Vanagaite, who was born in the Soviet Union until March 1990, crimes against Lithuanians to Nazi living for many years, working at a Lithuania, graduated from the after nearly half a century of crimes against Jews. They accuse a Lithuanian encyclopedia publishing Moscow Theater Institute and has Communist rule. Another is that, in state-appointed research group—the company. Lileikis was stripped of his worked as a theater, TV and event line with much of the right-wing think- prodigiously named International U.S. citizenship in 1996 after the U.S. producer, as well as a journalist and ing all over Europe between the world Commission for the Evaluation of the Department of Justice charged that political PR consultant. She published wars, many Lithuanians associated Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet he had “concealed his involvement in one book that dealt with elder care Jews with Bolshevism — a strain of Occupation Regimes in Lithuania — the mass murder and other persecu- and another, a best-seller in her coun- anti-Semitism stoked by Nazi propa- of promoting the double genocide the- tion of Jews and others” when apply- try, about women thriving as they age. ganda. Decades under the Soviets ory, even by putting both Soviet and ing for immigration. Lileikis was indict- Not long before she met Zuroff also led many Lithuanians to see Nazi crimes in its title. The commis- ed by a Lithuanian court but died in Vanagaite organized a program called themselves as “victims slash heroes,” sion’s executive director, Ronaldas September 2000 before his trial was (Continued on page 11) Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 THE HOLOCAUST TOLD FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A TEDDY BEAR A teddy bear accompanied Fred prize for a children’s or young adult’s near The Hague. When I was six, on Holocaust, and I grew up as a regular Lessing in his wanderings from book on the topic of the Holocaust. October 23, 1942, our family was on a American kid. Toward the end of the one hiding place to another during This prize was established by the late list of Jews who were to be transport- 1980s, children who had been in hid- World War II and became a symbol Sandra Brand in memory of her only ed for ‘resettlement in the East,’ which ing started coming out and telling their after being loaned to Yad Vashem. child, Bruno, who perished in the in retrospect meant death camps. My stories, giving interviews and meeting Now the subject of a children’s Holocaust. The book is now being parents decided to go into hiding each other. book, Lessing reveals how he was translated into Italian. instead of getting on that train. “The first such meeting took place in persuaded to let someone else tell Argaman has aimed the book at “It was an ordinary day, I played with 1991, in New York. My wife and I were his story. children aged six to eight. She my brother upstairs, a technician was supposed to board a plane for New describes it as “a story of a friendship repairing a stove in the kitchen and York. We were on our way out of the BY DAFNA ARAD, HAARETZ between a boy and his brave teddy our mother called us. From her voice house when she asked if I’d taken red’s teddy bear is not the most bear, in the shadow of a terrible war.” we could tell it was something impor- everything. I then said — wait a Fimpressive in the world; it’s not She hopes it won’t be read only tant, frightening and serious. She minute! I felt like I had to take my little even the most impressive in before Holocaust Remembrance Day. hugged us and said, ‘You are Jewish teddy bear with me. It was like in Jerusalem. Its fur is tattered, its gray She enjoyed a long correspondence children but if anyone hears that 1942, when I grabbed it just before they’ll kill you.’ This was the first time leaving the house. It drew a lot of in my life that I heard I was Jewish. attention by other former children at She asked us to pretend we were just the meeting. Even though none of us going out, not taking anything with us, were still children, they all identified and told the technician we’d be back with my teddy bear. Since then it has soon. We never returned home. joined me everywhere I’ve been invit- “I didn’t listen to her and took my lit- ed to speak. tle teddy bear with me. It was the only “Although many years have passed thing I took and the only thing I had for and I’m an adult who knows exactly the next three years besides the what happened in the Holocaust, clothes on my back. The teddy bear when I tell my story I have to remem- survived the war years with me.” ber that I was only a child then, which In the book the teddy bear’s head is why I took my teddy bear with me. I flaps around until it’s better attached. agreed to lend it to Yad Vashem after What really happened? I was told the exhibition would last “He was already missing a head only a few months. I didn’t want to when I first took him into hiding after a part from him, but Bear and I decided An illustration from Iris Argaman's book Bear and Fred, with "heartrending" illustrations by Avi dog pounced on him and tore it off. I he should go. When he reached Ofer. was with many Christian families Israel, a new chapter began in his life. head sporting eyes stitched together with Lessing and, after he agreed to while I hid, going from one to the Since the exhibition continued for with red thread. It’s skinny, faded, let her write the book, decided to visit other. My parents changed my name many years, my brother Ed bought dirty and nameless — and yet it the teddy bear in Jerusalem. and dyed my hair, they obtained me a stand-in bear.” became Yad Vashem’s “Mona Lisa.” She describes that meeting in the forged documents for us, and we pre- HARSH REALITIES This little toy has symbolized the book’s epilogue: “On a rainy winter tended to be Christians. For the first memory of the Holocaust for millions day, I went to Jerusalem, to Yad two and a half years I was alone with essing stops and goes to a of children who survived, commemo- Vashem, in order to meet the bear. numerous families. That was a very Lbaby’s high chair, from which he rating the million and a half who per- Dark clouds filled the sky and heavy difficult period for me. While I was hid- pulls out a fat and woolly teddy bear, ished. rain fell. I reached the hall in which it The teddy bear belongs to a Dutch was on display, wet and shivering with survivor, Alfred (“Fred”) Lessing, who cold. The meeting was very moving moved between hiding places during for me. I stood in front of the little World War II. He later moved to the teddy bear, who stood alone in a United States, with his teddy bear glass case, and I couldn’t move. I accompanying him wherever he went. whispered words only he could hear. I In 1996, the teddy bear reached gave him regards from Fred, and told Israel alone and was showcased at him I’d write his story so other chil- Yad Vashem as part of an exhibition dren would get to know him and real- called “No Child’s Play,” which was on ize how charming and special he display for 17 years. was.” Curator Yehudit Inbar once said that HOLOCAUST LECTURER when the teddy bear arrived in Israel and was taken out of a gigantic box, it he teddy bear probably has a lot looked like a fetus. She burst into T to say on the subject. But since tears upon seeing it, and when she it’s an inert object, Argaman connect- told the dispatcher about the teddy ed me instead to the story’s other bear’s history, he started crying too. hero, Fred Lessing. He’s an 80-year- Fred Lessing's teddy bear on display in the "Children in the Holocaust: Stars Without a Heaven" exhibition at Yad Vashem. Since it was put on display, many old Holocaust survivor, married with tearful world leaders have been pho- four children and seven grandchil- ing with a family in Amsterdam I suf- the stand-in one. I exit the room and tographed next to it. dren, who lives in Birmingham, fered from diphtheria; my mother return with a sad Japanese teddy The story of this emotional journey Michigan. In a Skype interview, he came to visit and sewed a new head bear I had bought my daughter after opens Hadoobi shel Fred (“Fred’s repeated the story of himself and his for the teddy bear.” reading the book. I couldn’t help it. Teddy Bear,” but Bear and Fred in beloved teddy bear, in the manner he Lessing, who retired last year, was a Is it important for you that every English), a new book by Iris Argaman. uses when talking to children in lec- psychotherapist and lecturer in phi- child has a teddy bear to help it con- This children’s story about the tures about the Holocaust that he’s losophy, “but much of my identity is tend with harsh realities? Holocaust is told from the perspective been giving for decades. one of a Jewish Holocaust survivor. “It doesn’t have to be a teddy bear. of a teddy bear. It was published ear- “In 1940 the Germans invaded I’m a total atheist and grew up in a My daughter had a blanket she called lier this year by Hakibbutz Holland. I was four years old and secular family with no signs of Jewish Mynie, which served the same pur- Hameuchad, with heartrending illus- don’t remember much about those culture around me, but I was Jewish pose my teddy bear did for me. An trations by Avi Ofer. days. My mother, father and three since Hitler said I was. For 40 years object from one’s past is very impor- Last June, it won Yad Vashem’s brothers lived in Delft, a beautiful city after the war, no one talked about the (Continued on page 13) September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 LEADERSHIP MISSION VISITS POLAND AND ISRAEL

American Society for Yad Vashem Chairman Leonard Wilf (left) and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev (right) present Israeli President Reuven Rivlin with a replica of the Yad Vashem curators highlight the document archival process. (From left to right) Shira Stein, Wolfsberg Machzor at a ceremony at the President’s Residence. Jessica Glickman-Mauk, Rags Devloor, Rev. Mark Jenkins.

Mark Moskowitz (right) and his nephew Sam Gordon pause to reflect on Sam’s first visit to American Society for Yad Vashem Chairman Leonard Wilf and his family tour the Galicia Jewish Auschwitz. Museum in Krakow. (From l. to r.) Harrison Wilf, Jenna Wilf, Leonard Wilf, Halle Wilf, Beth Wilf.

Touring the Wroclaw city square on the first day of the Leadership Mission. (Front row) Jessica Glickman–Mauk, Sam Gordon, Mark Moskowitz. (Back row) Yvonne Celia, Dan Celia, Robert Kucinski, Elena Kucinski, Halle Wilf, Jenna Wilf, Beth Wilf, Leonard Wilf, Young Leadership Associates on the Leadership Mission observe the Hall of Names on a private Rags Devloor, Joseph Paradis, Rev. Malcolm Hedding. tour of the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 LEADERSHIP MISSION VISITS POLAND AND ISRAEL (Continued from page 1) Leadership Associates, told stories of halls of the Museum. justice; Chairman of the Committee never forget what happened, and I his grandfather’s childhood in front of Yad Vashem has earned its moniker for the Designation of the Righteous hope they experience this one day.” pictures of a young Mosberg on dis- as World Holocaust Remembrance Jacob Turkel; and Dutch diplomats in At the end of the day, the delegation play in the exhibit. Center with its renowned departments the Yad Vashem synagogue for the gathered for a service to mark the Elie Wiesel, z”l, once said, “Yad for education, Holocaust research presentation. The group watched on visit. Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, director Vashem is the most important center and victim databases, among others. as the descendants of the of the Auschwitz Museum, offered of Jewish memory in the world simply The group was introduced to each Kamphiuses and the woman they welcoming remarks before the group because it is in Jerusalem.” As the division’s director as they presented sheltered from danger shared an participated in a beautiful candle-light- group mourned the passing of Yad their work and their goals. Treated to emotional embrace. It was one of sev- ing ceremony. American Society Vashem’s honorary chairman just one candid conversations with internation- eral ceremonies throughout the board member Adina Burian, visiting week earlier, American Society ally respected leaders in their fields Leadership Mission that brought Poland for the first time with her eld- Chairman Leonard Wilf invoked the like Dr. Eyal Kaminka, the Lily Safra many to tears. est son Jonah, 16, read a touching international icon’s words as the guid- Chair of Holocaust Studies, or Dr. The magnitude of the trip brought the letter from her father-in-law Andrew ing inspiration for the whirlwind sec- Haim Gertner, the Director of Yad delegation together. Sharing hugs, Burian, who survived Auschwitz. The ond leg of the Leadership Mission in Vashem Archives, allowed the group tears and intimate memories with oth- group joined together for a final spirit- Israel. to better grasp the extent of Yad erwise perfect strangers quickly creat- ed singing of “Hatikvah,” passing a Just hours after group’s arrival in Vashem’s global influence. ed a close-knit delegation. The group Torah scroll around and proudly wav- Jerusalem, Israel’s President Reuven Only a fraction of Yad Vashem’s relished being in the Jewish homeland, ing the Israeli flag. In closing the cer- Rivlin welcomed the Leadership vast collections of documents, arti- an opportunity so many Holocaust vic- emony, American Society Executive Mission to Israel in a private audience facts and art are displayed for the tims yearned for but were murdered Director Ron Meier addressed the at the President’s Residence. general public at any one time. A before they had the chance. Throughout the three days in Israel, prominent Israeli performers joined the Leadership Mission to celebrate their spiritual journey. The voices of Rami Kleinstein, Israeli Defense Force Cantor Shai Abramson, Dudu Fisher and others brought the group together several times in spontaneous dance. The final evening of the Leadership Mission provided an opportunity to reflect and look forward. Over dinner, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, the South African Rev. Malcom Hedding and American Society Chief Development Officer Eillene Leistner represented three contingents as they each laud- ed the delegation for its commitment to Yad Vashem’s mission of continued remembrance in the 21st century. In the Valley of the Communities, the largest project the American Society has taken on at Yad Vashem, Israeli Leadership Mission participants at Auschwitz. Minister of Education and Minister of the Diaspora Naftali Bennett praised crowd: “As we stand here with the President Rivlin commended the del- guided tour of the temporary exhibi- the delegation’s younger generation Israeli flag, preparing to bring in the egation’s commitment to Yad Vashem tion “Children in the Holocaust: Stars in a theme that continued throughout Shabbat, it is a sign that we have stating, “You not only guard a tragic without a Heaven” was supplemented the evening. Mark Moskowitz offered overcome.” and heavy burden of memory, but you with a trip below ground to Yad his remarks as the only member to A special guest was waiting for the are also architects of the future of the Vashem’s climate-controlled Artifact have been on Yad Vashem’s 60th group as they arrived in Kraków for Jewish people.” American Society Collection. Over the years, more than Anniversary Mission in 2014. As the Shabbat: Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, the Chairman Leonard Wilf echoed 30,000 items have been donated to chairman of the Council of Yad President Rivlin and noted that his Yad Vashem by Holocaust survivors son of survivors, he recalled his fami- Vashem and former chief rabbi of wife Beth and their three children or their families. Director Michael Tal ly spending Holocaust Remembrance Israel. At Kabbalat Shabbat in the were able to join him on the and his team, armed in white gloves, Day every year at Yad Vashem, a tra- ornately restored Tempel Synagogue Leadership Mission. Addressing the highlighted the collection, showcasing dition he proudly still observes. and throughout Shabbat, the great delegation, Wilf said, “Together, we complete prisoner uniforms, stuffed Shalev concluded the evening rabbi and famed orator spoke about carry forward the lessons of the teddy bears with secret compart- addressing the different contingents suffering through the Holocaust as Holocaust into the 21st century as ments and family photo albums that that had come together on this emo- one of the youngest children to sur- leaders within the Yad Vashem family. were miraculously kept intact. Dr. tional journey, from different nationali- vive, and about his divinely inspired Our resolve to never forget is bol- Gertner led the group on a tour of the ties, religions and backgrounds. “Yad life in Israel since. stered by our shared experience on archives. For Michael Shmuely of Vashem is committed to a future in The American Society has a notable this Leadership Mission.” New York, viewing the original blue- which Holocaust remembrance presence in Kraków. American In Poland, the Leadership Mission prints for Auschwitz had particular remains relevant and the continuation Society Chairman Leonard Wilf’s fam- focused on the atrocities of the resonance. “We just came from see- of meaningful commemoration of the ily has generously contributed to the Holocaust, and the rich Jewish culture ing the crumbling crematoriums of Holocaust is guaranteed for genera- Jewish community of Kraków, includ- and history that were interrupted and Auschwitz, and these blueprints show tions to come — and you are that ing the Remah Synagogue, one of destroyed. In Jerusalem, the the world what we saw and what the future.” two in Krakow with a regular minyan. Leadership Mission was treated to an Nazis planned to do. I am so glad Yad As the evening came to a close, the American Society Founder and Yad intensive exploration of Yad Vashem’s Vashem has these documents pro- 55 participants danced together, Vashem Benefactor Edward Mosberg diverse roles in Holocaust remem- tected.” singing “Am Yisroel Chai” and waving grew up in Kraków and has generous- brance. Many in the group, like Gail The delegation was privileged to the Israeli flag. They left the 2016 ly supported the restoration of several and Colin Halpern, are longtime sup- witness a moving Righteous Among Leadership Mission as witnesses to synagogues in Kazimierz, Krakow’s porters and had visited the Holocaust the Nations ceremony honoring Jan the Polish Jewish experience historic Jewish quarter. At the historic History Museum previously. This visit Willem Kamphuis and his destroyed by the Nazis, and as com- Pharmacy Under the Eagle, in the to the Mount of Remembrance was daughter Klaziena Kamphuis-Vink of mitted global ambassadors for Yad Kraków ghetto, Mosberg’s grandson concentrated on the Yad Vashem Holland. The delegation joined Avner Vashem and its unique impact on Barry Levine, co-chair of the Young experience outside of the hallowed Shalev, retired Israeli Supreme Court Holocaust remembrance. September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 THE LAST NAZI HUNTER (Continued from page 7) Shoah-mobile” to do the research that and former customs officer who was as a spokesman for the Lithuanian “Being a Jew,” which explored Jewish would become Our People. They vis- the sole survivor of a 1991 Soviet State Security Department insinuated, culture and traditions and culminated ited dozens of mass murder sites, attack on the Medininkai border post Vanagaite says. Vanagaite was par- with 700 schoolchildren visiting the local museums and towns related to that killed seven during the struggle ticularly incensed by critics who fault- Lithuanian mass murder site in their family histories. They asked for Lithuanian independence. For ed the book for not including more Paneriai. The project closed with a locals to point them to old monuments that, he is considered a national hero, positive elements of Lithuania’s conference on Holocaust education. and killing sites that were often so his support helped legitimize Our actions during the war, like the “I was told by all Lithuanian partici- untended and difficult to find — some People. Lithuanians who saved Jews. “I was pants that by no means should I invite still marked with Soviet-era plaques, a For a couple of months after the so pissed off that I said, ‘OK, you Dr. Zuroff, because they would refuse few unmarked — and interviewed book’s release, “it was the main dis- know, this book is about the to come and sit in the same audi- locals old enough to remember the cussion at the dinner table,” says Holocaust, about the murder of the ence,” she says. “So then I got curi- war or at least share stories they’d Vanagaite, “[but] society is very split.” Jews. I’m very sorry that it’s so nega- ous” and invited him anyway. heard from older relatives and neigh- Many young people embraced Our tive. I’m sorry the Jews didn’t smile bors. They snacked on gra- People, while some older Lithuanians when we were killing them.’” nola bars and lox sandwich- were deeply offended. Others old BACK TO WORK es, always on the lookout enough to have witnessed the atroci- for kosher food — no easy ties were strangely comforted by the t was clear from the beginning task in a country now home book’s revelations. “They realize that “Ithat absolute justice and restitu- to only about 5,000 Jews. what happened in the village, what tion could never possibly be “I know it will be very con- happened in the neighborhood, was achieved,” Zuroff wrote of Lithuania in troversial,” said Vanagaite not an exception,” says Vanagaite. “It his introduction to Our People. “In ret- of the book, speaking didn’t happen just next door. It hap- rospect, I do not regret the path I before Our People was pub- pened everywhere.” chose, but I frankly underestimated lished. “I have lost already a “Few books have ever been off to the difficulties I would face.” couple of friends because… such an outrageous start in For Zuroff, the hunt for Nazis and because they think I’m Lithuania,” one blogger wrote in the the fight against Holocaust distortion betraying my people, days after its release. For five weeks, are seemingly endless, but both are betraying my country, and it was the top seller at a major part of a mission he can’t imagine [they say] maybe Jews are Lithuanian bookstore chain and it was abandoning. “I comfort myself that at paying for this [project].” in the top 10 as this story went to least I did not betray the victims and Some members of her fam- print. Zuroff and Vanagaite have violate their memory,” Zuroff wrote. “If ily are angry that she wrote signed with a Polish publisher and are the price for that is the enmity of local Zuroff helped drive Aleksandras Lileikis from the U.S. back about relatives and have working to secure deals to publish in public opinion, so be it.” to Lithuania to face trial. Lileikis was stripped of his U.S. cit- As he continues to field calls, pur- izenship in 1996. refused to read the book. English and other languages. It may feel like “shock The book bolstered Zuroff’s vile rep- sue leads and push governments to Zuroff couldn’t make it that day, but therapy,” she says, “but I think it’s a utation in Lithuania, and in some prosecute, Zuroff must also grapple the two met before the conference to healing book.” quarters, it made Vanagaite the coun- with the ways in which his job is film a video address. For decades, Their journey clearly shocked even try’s most despised daughter. She inevitably changing. He feels there is the Nazi hunter had been treated with Zuroff, who says that as a Nazi was giving an interview to a TV crew still justice left to be served — for his hostility in Lithuania, but suddenly hunter, “you have to make sure it’s at her home one day when they sud- great-uncle, for the tens of thousands here was a woman, small in stature never personal, because then you’ll but with an outsized personality, will- get consumed by the job, you’ll get ing to admit to her family’s likely destroyed.” For years, he was mostly involvement in the Holocaust. (A case successful in this regard, but the road file in the Lithuanian Special Archives trips with his Lithuanian co-author revealed that Vanagaite’s grandfa- were “emotionally horrifying,” he ther, who opposed the Soviet occupa- says. “I felt for the first time...that the tion of Lithuania in 1941 and was Shoah had taken over my life.” deported to the gulag upon its return “When the pair arrived at in 1944, had been part of a commis- Linkmenys, the shtetl where Zuroff’s sion that compiled lists of Jews during grandfather and great-uncle once the Nazi occupation. Her aunt’s hus- lived, he stood among patches of band, who used to send her letters, raspberries in the clearing where jeans and records from America, had Jews had been ordered to lie face been the chief of police in Panevezys down on the ground before and, Vanagaite therefore assumes, Lithuanians showered them with bul- helped organize the killing of Jews. A lets. As he did at each site they visit- “desk murderer,” she calls him in the ed, he stopped to say kaddish, a book she wrote with Zuroff.) prayer of mourning. “I do not know But it wasn’t until after the confer- what to do, so I move away a bit and ence, when Vanagaite attended a wait for him,” Vanagaite wrote of that smaller seminar for history teachers moment. “And then I hear a strange Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor Yitzhak Kagan visits the Chamber of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. who might be selected to participate sound. Very strange indeed. I hear in training at Yad Vashem, that she the Nazi hunter crying.” denly demanded to see her birth cer- of Jewish victims in Lithuania, for the gave more thought to Zuroff’s version tificate to prove she was, in fact, millions of Jews throughout Europe TRIAL BY HISTORY BOOK of the story. She couldn’t stop ques- Lithuanian (and not Jewish), she who perished during the Holocaust tioning what she had learned from uroff and Vanagaite launched says. She’s also been told to “go back and for those who have become vic- Soviet-era textbooks — the same nar- Ztheir book the day before to Israel,” and she had to explain to a tims of subsequent genocides. ratives she says her children were International Holocaust concerned taxi driver that she doesn’t With a burden so great, what would taught years later that minimized or Remembrance Day in January, gath- carry a weapon to protect herself, success look like? The world’s last ignored Lithuanians’ role in the mass ering the press inside Submarine, a despite the many vitriolic comments Nazi hunter feels that he has to keep murder of Jews. She wanted to know small sandwich shop in the center of about her and the book on the pushing for prosecutions and more, and she was willing to work Vilnius. According to Vanagaite’s Internet. acknowledgment, hoping that every with the “boogeyman” to reach other research, the building was for a peri- Some suggested the book was small victory — like finding Vanagaite Lithuanians. od the headquarters of the Lithuanian funded by Jews or the Kremlin. and publishing a best-seller in a coun- A few months later and after several “special unit” that murdered Jews. Others claimed it discredits the try that had recoiled at his efforts for more conversations, Vanagaite and Among those present at the press Lithuanian partisan movement and years — will bring the world a little Zuroff set out in a car she dubbed “the event was Tomas Sernas, a priest serves Putin’s propaganda machine closer to “never again.” Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 IN POLAND, SEARCHING FOR JEWISH HERITAGE (Continued from page 6) In Borynya, one scythe-bearer took and leave or they will kill all of us.’ ” Hebrew to better understand mother returned to search for rela- us to her 86-year-old toothless grand- Then in 1942 there were mass execu- Judaism. tives. At that station, someone told mother, Jaroslawa Kachaj. She was tions. In one, two dozen Jews were “The Hasidim tell me I have a her the Jews had all been slaugh- 12 when the Germans occupied forced to sing while marching in pro- Yiddish soul,” he said. tered. She never left the platform, and Borynya, and remembered Jewish cession and then were shot in front of As we made several such stops on took the next train back to Warsaw. neighbors: the Stuhlbauchs, open graves. our return to Krakow, we came to grips Between two visits to Otwock, we Liebermans and, yes, Bergers, who “There was a large woman named with what we had known abstractly: traveled to Treblinka. It is a haunted lived in three houses on the other side Stuhlbauch,” the grandmother told us. that Poland had been almost depleted place because nothing of the death of town. “They took her away in a convoy. She of Jews both by the Nazis, the postwar camp remains, though a tiny museum From her and others we gathered a saw me and started crying. I saw pogroms and the Communist persecu- has a model camp that explains how collection of disjointed facts. One another woman, they took away her tions. There are 20,000 Jews left in a speedily all of its 900,000 victims Berger, perhaps my father’s uncle, clothes. She had only a nightgown. country that once had 3.3 million, were dispatched in gas chambers. owned a tavern. Another was a talent- She was killed by a well.” according to Ms. Lieberman. What has taken the place Tetiana Wolczanska, a Yet shards of Judaism are being of the actual camp resem- tempestuous retired restored. Part of the effort is no doubt bles a kind of Stonehenge, schoolteacher who said aimed at tourism. In medieval Krakow, a field of stone markers she lived in a house once largely intact, there are a half-dozen arrayed almost higgledy- owned by a Jew, led us on ancient synagogues, some that hold piggledy like a ravaged a half-mile climb up a services, a well-preserved cemetery cemetery, each marker steep wooded hillside, and a street with a dozen cafes that bearing the name of a requiring several crossings serve gefilte fish and matzo ball soup locality whose Jews were of a narrow stream, to a while gentile klezmer bands play deported there. We found sloping meadow topped by Yiddish chestnuts. While charming, it the stone for Otwock, laid an electric pole. was hard not to think of it as a Jewish pebbles atop and recited “In that field the Jews Disneyland without actual Jews. kaddish, the Jewish prayer were killed,” she said. Yet cynicism aside, such efforts for the dead. My sister and I looked remind people that Jews were To see what a concentra- up, struck by the field’s entwined in Poland’s soul. As in tion camp was actually like quiet innocence. Here, Warsaw, a New Yorker, Jonathan The remains of hundreds of barracks where Jewish prisoners lived. Only the required visiting Auschwitz- chimneys remained after the Nazis destroyed the barracks at the war’s end. too, we said kaddish. Ornstein, has led a revival, setting up a Birkenau, which we did Painful as it was, the Jewish community center that boasts while in Krakow. We do not know of ed seamstress. The mayor was moment again allowed my sister and 550 members, some of them people any relatives who ended up there. But named Friedman. The old woman’s me to share our legacy and brought who have discovered that they had we viewed with anguish the tiered father was hired to sell merchandise us closer together; in our version of a Jewish grandparents who harbored bunks where 1,000 slaves per bar- on the Sabbath. A kindly Jewish roots trip, the bond we achieved along them with Christian families and then rack — there were 350 barracks — physician, Dr. Ungst, tended to all. the way, as my sister said, was “one perished. were jammed in nightly; the heaps of Alex Denisenko, our Ukrainian- root we actually found.” “Poland has had periods of shoes, glasses, even prosthetic legs speaking guide, later sent me a 1929 On our way back, we stopped in estrangement and persecution,” Mr. that the Germans collected in their Polish business directory, and sure Turka, Borynya’s biggest neighbor, Ornstein told us. “Let’s take advan- demonic meticulousness; and the enough it had names Mrs. Kachaj and were heartsick to see that one tage of a good period.” grim gas chambers. mentioned. An M. Berger owned a synagogue was being used as a While we were there, the center A few days later, we made the trek lumber business, and “spirits” were sawmill, another as a car repair shop. held a triumphant “Ride of the Living” to the hometown of my father, Marcus sold by an N. Berger. Other towns- Yet in Poland such buildings seem to along the 55 miles from Auschwitz to Berger, in what was then Poland but people pointed out a modest evangel- be cared for with more dignity. In Krakow, with 70 cyclists taking part to is now Ukraine. And trek it was. While ical church and told us that it had Lesko, Poland, a well-maintained underscore the hopeful future of Poland is a 21st-century nation, the been the site of the synagogue, 17th-century synagogue draws Poland’s Jews. One was Marcel slice of Ukraine we saw is mired in the where no doubt my father was bar tourists even if it is used as an art Zielinski, an 80-year-old Montreal 19th, with roads so rutted it took three mitzvahed. gallery that sells Christian icons. So man. He last walked the route as a hours to drive some 30 miles. Cows When the Nazis arrived in 1941, does an even more elegant 18th-cen- 10-year-old liberated from Auschwitz and horses drew carts of supplies; Borynya’s Jews were subjected to tury synagogue in Lancut, where bib- and hunting for his parents. roosters and stray dogs wandered beatings and indignities, with lical passages decorate the walls sur- When he arrived on his bicycle in about; ramshackle bungalows with Ukrainian policemen assisting. A girl rounding a Baroque four-pillared his Day-Glo green outfit alongside his corrugated roofs and outhouses are named Chaika, the grandmother said, bimah, or platform from which prayers son and two granddaughters, his face common; and gardens are pruned by came to her house pleading for bread. were led. A synagogue guide, a jubilant grin, it was hard not to be women with long scythes. “My mother said, ‘Please eat quickly Miroslaw Kedzior, taught himself overcome. IN A NAZI LEGACY, A SON’S LOVE IS TESTED BY MASS MURDER for complicity in the murder of murder of the Jews, even as Sands and his Nazi associates. There’s his BY URIEL HEILMAN, JTA Poland’s three million Jews. presents him with increasingly clear father with Heinrich Himmler, the SS Horst von Wachter is the son of Otto and disturbing evidence of it. military commander. Under another t’s hard not to get emotional von Wachter, an Austrian who served Sands, whose grandfather is from photo, the scrawl reads “A.H.” — for watching the superbly rendered A I as the Nazi governor of Galicia (now the area that fell under Wachter and Adolf Hitler. Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did. Lviv, Ukraine) and died in hiding in Frank’s command, and who lost most “I was transported back 70 years to But unlike with many Holocaust doc- 1949 while under the Vatican’s pro- of his family during the Holocaust, the heart of an appalling regime, but umentaries, the overwhelming feel- tection. narrates the story of what happens Horst was looking at these images ings aren’t sadness and loss, though Frank, an author and journalist, is when a son’s love for his father col- with a different eye from mine,” Sands there are those, too. They are exas- well known in Germany thanks to his lides with the immutable facts of histo- narrates. “I see a man who’s probably peration and anger. controversial 1987 best-seller, The ry. been responsible for the killing of tens In the film, British Jewish lawyer Father: A Settling of Accounts, which oth Frank and Wachter — who of thousands of Jews and Poles. Philippe Sands tells the story of two detailed his revulsion toward the man knew each other as children Horst looks at the same photographs men, both the children of high-ranking B who became known as the Butcher of and have remained friends — were and he sees a beloved father playing Nazi figures. Poland. In his wallet, Frank keeps a born in 1939. Wachter describes an with the children, and he’s thinking Niklas Frank is the son of Hans photograph of his father’s corpse idyllic childhood shattered by that was family life.” Frank, Hitler’s lawyer and the gover- taken right after he was hanged. Germany’s defeat in 1945. In his By contrast, Frank’s memories of nor general of Nazi-occupied Poland. By contrast, Wachter holds his own home, he shows Sands a family photo his parents are mostly bitter. The cou- The elder Frank was hanged in 1946 father in high esteem, refusing to album that intersperses shots of fam- ple had a loveless marriage, and his after being found guilty at Nuremberg acknowledge his role in the mass ily outings with photos of his father (Continued on page 15) September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 THE HOLOCAUST TOLD FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A TEDDY BEAR (Continued from page 8) objects since they are dirty, but I sug- “That’s a question that comes up all he’s sad to be alone, that the world is tant for children. This is the first object gest that they shouldn’t. These are the time. Eighty percent of Holland’s scary and that he’s lucky that I’m his one chooses to connect with. My very precious items for children.” Jewish population didn’t survive. All best friend. Fred whispered those teddy bear couldn’t talk, but it had a Iris Argaman told me that it wasn’t my classmates were murdered. A mil- things, and while talking to me he truth and meaning that nothing else easy for you to agree to her writing lion and a half Jewish children per- stroked his face with my paw. had. When I hid among different fam- this book. ilies, my teddy bear reminded me of deliberated for a long time over “Ithat issue. I was warned by other survivors not to let anyone else write my story or illustrate it, since you never know what they might do to it. Ultimately I wrote Iris a long letter, telling her I couldn’t be part of it since I was the only one who could accurately relate my story — it’s important to me that testimonies aren’t exaggerated or stray from things as they happened. After sending the e-mail I went to bed. “The next morning I changed my mind. I wrote her again, saying that on the previous day I’d written as a survivor but that day I was writing as a teacher. I believe in education and Fred Lessing visiting Bear during the "No Child’s Play" exhibition at Yad Vashem in 1997. in the importance of children learning about the Holocaust, and that if I’m ished. Obviously you don’t show Sometimes Fred shed small and not writing a children’s book about the small children history books. The pre- warm tears and I wiped them away.” Holocaust I’ll support her. Iris was vailing wisdom here is that you don’t Who is the target audience for such An illustration from Iris Argaman’s book Bear glad, and her illustrator did an amaz- expose children under 13 to it. In con- a sad book? and Fred. ing job. When I saw the cover I real- versations I have with children I ris’s book is suitable for any age ized that he understood that teddy always try to avoid the scary aspects “Ibecause of the teddy bear. It my mother and family, and it was bear, with an illustration showing me of the Holocaust and tell my story in a doesn’t mention the word Holocaust. important as a symbol. It also consti- looking after it and it looking after me. very personal way, adapted to the At the end of the book the war is over tuted a way of expressing love and It’s so deep. The book is wonderful audience.” and only then do you find out there consolation. After the war it reminded and moving. My son cried when he In one of the book’s pages Iris writes was one. I’m surprised by your calling me of my childhood during the read it.” in the teddy bear’s name: “Every night it sad: it has a happy ending. It’s one Holocaust, making it a very important Is it important to explain the Fred would whisper that he misses of the happy stories about an entire object. Many parents throw out such Holocaust to children? his father, mother and brothers, that family that survived the Holocaust.”

UKRAINIAN HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS ARE BEING HONORED IN PLACE OF THEIR VICTIMS (Continued from page 3) summer. Moreover, the Sich force has torical memory. The driving force of pogrom leaders has been unveiled in pogrom by the Ubort river. Makarchuk caught the interest of the Ukrainian this policy of whitewashing nationalist Uman; a Ukrainian nationalist pogrom interrupted as we were ending the parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. This activities during the war is the Institute leader — and importantly, decorated interview, “I want to add something past April it passed a resolution to cel- of National Memory, led by nationalist Wehrmacht soldier who aided the else … down by the river, they forced Germans in suppressing the Warsaw the Jews to eat grass like sheep. … uprising — Petro Diachenko, was cele- They were beaten with rods and brated by the Rada last year; and the made to go into the water, then drink Kyiv city government just voted to name the water. This was done by the ban- a street after far-right-wing nationalist derovtsy [the Sich]. I saw this with my leader, Stepan Bandera, to name a few own eyes. I saw this with my own initiatives. “Decommunization” and the eyes.” His memories matched details invocation of Western or European val- I had found in the testimonies written ues serve as cover for this nationalist more than 60 years earlier about the memory manipulation. July pogrom. There has been too little debate about The memory of Bulba-Borovets and these policies in Ukraine. Ironically, his Sich has figured prominently in many Ukrainians might believe that Olevsk and regional politics over the Bulba-Borovets and his Sich offer a safe past five years. In the city of Rivne choice for memorialization because they there are plans to build a new monu- are traditionally considered less radical ment for Bulba-Borovets as com- than competing nationalists. But they mander of the Sich, not to mention would be wrong. The Jews of Olevsk, this summer’s bike race named after tortured and tormented throughout the the Sich. Olevsk itself has more summer of 1941, and eventually shot by Jews of Yampol, Ukraine, near the Dniester River, being deported to Transnistria, July 1941. Most plans, including naming a park after of the deported Jews were murdered in the following days by Einsatzgruppe D and by Romanian the Germans and the Sich together, the Olevsk Republic or Bulba- army units. deserve to have their voices heard Borovets; naming a square after before new monuments are raised in Bulba-Borovets; and creating an ebrate the 75th anniversary of the activist Volodymyr Viatrovych, who honor of those who killed them. If the exposition about the Sich in a local founding of the Poliska Sich. believes the OUN-UPA (the Ukrainian Ukrainian government is so keen on museum (with plans to build a sepa- This development on the national Insurgent Army) only saved Jews building new memorials, I would sug- rate museum in the future). There stage should come as no surprise to during the war and did not participate gest one at the Ubort river that lists the have been celebrations of the Sich anyone following the Poroshenko in any pogroms. These ideas are names of the murdered, why they were throughout the Volhynia region this government’s divisive policies on his- being realized quickly: a monument to killed, and by whom. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 BELGIAN NOBLES MEET JEWS SAVED BY THEIR RELATIVES IN HOLOCAUST tion. We owe a deep debt of gratitude deported to Germany. Four of the Pacimora’s father, Moiszek, was one BY GREER FAY CASHMAN, to all those who worked toward saving mothers felt there was nothing they of the heroes of the resistance and THE JERUSALEM POST our lives and providing us with a safe could do to change the situation. after the war was decorated by the hey are directly or indirectly haven.” The only mother who thought differ- king. Pacimora brought his medals and T related to most of the royal Both Rivlin and Prince Michel ently was Pacimora’s mother, Frida, ribbons as proof. He also brought an houses of Europe and can trace the referred to Elie Wiesel, who died who was also in the resistance and inscribed medal that was given to his lineage for more than a millennium. recently, as the voice of Holocaust delivered food to Jews in hiding. She mother by Israel’s founding prime min- Led by Prince Michel de Ligne, 35 of memory. was the only mother who came to ister, David Ben-Gurion, during a visit them, representing four generations to Belgium in 1948. Pacimora paid his from several countries, are currently personal debt to Belgium by serving in in Israel to close a noble circle. They the Belgian army. are descendants of Eugène, the 11th or Prince Michel, this is his sec- prince of Ligne, and his wife, Fond visit to Israel. The first was Philippine, who during the Second in the mid-1970s, when Israel still had World War hid hundreds of Jewish control over Sinai. He spent two and a children in Beloeil, the de Ligne fami- half months in Israel on that occasion, ly castle, which is widely known as traveling from the extreme north to the Versailles of Belgium. the extreme south. Eugène and his wife were recog- Two of his aunts, Yolande de Ligne nized by Yad Vashem as Righteous and Ginette vam der Straeten Among the Nations in June 1975, Ponthoz, who personally took care of long after their deaths. the children during the war, would Their descendants have come to have loved to come to Israel, he said, plant a tree at Yad Vashem in their but both are in their 90s and the jour- memories and to meet some of the ney would have been too strenuous children they saved, who now, as sen- for them. ior citizens, are living in Israel. His sister Princess Anne de Ligne Six of those Jewish children accom- spent a month as a volunteer at panied the de Ligne family on its tour Prince Michel de Ligne (front left) and descendants of a Belgian royal house meet President Kibbutz Nir David in the Beit She’an of the country and also accompanied Reuven Rivlin (front right) and Jews saved by the family during the Holocaust, Jerusalem. valley in northern Israel. She was 20 it to the President’s Residence to Rivlin said that Wiesel was “perhaps protect her child. At first he was sent years old at the time and had studied meet with President Reuven Rivlin. the greatest example of the strength to Waterloo for five months and then agriculture in Germany and Belgium, Only three people knew about the of the human spirit — a man who to Beloeil, where no one mentioned and thought it would be a good idea to Jewish children separated from their gave the Holocaust a face and the the word “Jew.” get some hands-on experience in parents and sheltered at Beloeil, and victims a voice.” “We Jewish children became very Israel. they remained silent, Prince Michel lbert Pacimora, who came on good Christians,” he recalled, “the What impressed her most during stated. A aliya with his wife two years girls more so than the boys.” The that time was an elderly woman who One of the survivors, Avraham ago and now lives in Ramat Poleg, youngsters had to recite their cate- endlessly peeled potatoes in the Kapotka, speaking on behalf of the was with four other children when the chism every day, “and if we didn’t do kitchen, and, when asked if she was- children who had been saved, said: Nazis began rounding up Jews in it properly, the nuns would give us a n’t bored, replied: “I’m doing this for “We were alone. We didn’t know if or Brussels. wallop on the ear. I can still feel it after my country.” when we would see our parents A member of the Jewish resistance all these years. On this particular visit Prince Michel again, but we were in a safe and quiet called the mothers of all five and “At the time we thought they were became enamored with Jerusalem, place, and we thank Prince Michel for warned them that their children were cruel — but they saved our lives, and told The Jerusalem Post, “I wish I preserving the memory of our salva- in danger of being either killed or while other Jewish children died.” could come back and work here.”

DUTCH MAN AND DAUGHTER WHO HID JEWS DURING HOLOCAUST HONORED n July Yad Vashem held a ceremo- decided to halt her studies in order to transferred to the adjacent children’s Although Henny and Manfred never Iny posthumously honoring Jan learn a trade; she trained to be a home, where she helped the children dared venture outside except to hide Willem Kamphuis and his daughter seamstress. before their deportation. out in the nearby forest when immi- Klazenia Kamphuis-Vink, from Holland, Henny suc- nent danger loomed, the neighbors as Righteous Among the Nations. cessfully became suspicious of the Kamphuis During World War II, the two hid a escaped from home, and in February 1944, the situ- Jewish couple, Henny and Manfred the children’s ation became more dangerous, par- Kurt Lowenstein, in their home and home together ticularly because some of the neigh- saved them from the Nazis. with her future bors were Dutch Nazi party members. The medal and certificate of honor husband, With the help of the local resistance, were presented to Anthonie Vink, son Manfred Kurt Henny and Manfred were taken to of Klazenia Kamphuis-Vink and Loewenstein. another hiding place, where they grandson of Jan Willem Kamphuis. Shortly there- stayed through the end of the war. Henny Dünner was born in 1918 in after, the two Shortly before their liberation, while the city of Cologne, Germany. Her found a hiding still in hiding, Henny gave birth to their father, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Dünner, was place in the son, James. the local rabbi. Henny attended the The extended Vink and Loewenstein families gather in the Garden of the home of Jan Meanwhile, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer local Jewish Yavne School until her Righteous Among the Nations following an emotional ceremony in Yad Willem Dünner and his wife had been arrest- Vashem’s synagogue. studies were cut short when her par- Kamphuis, a ed together with their children and ents decided to send her and her sib- In the spring of 1943, Henny was widower who lived together with his deported to Bergen Belsen. lings to family living in Amsterdam. arrested and taken to Hollandsche daughter, Klazenia, in Driebergen Fortunately, the family was part of a This was shortly after the rise to Schouwburg, the Jewish theater that near the city of Utrecht. prisoner exchange for German power of the Nazis, and Henny’s par- served as an assembly point for Jews Despite the danger, Jan Willem and Templars from Mandatory Palestine ents felt that their children would be who had been arrested and were Klazenia opened their home to and thus survived the war. One of safer if they left Germany. awaiting deportation. There, she told Manfred and Henny. For eight Henny’s sisters, Ruth Dünner, was In 1939, Henny’s parents joined the authorities that she had experi- months, the couple hid in a small sent to Auschwitz and murdered their children in Amsterdam. Henny ence caring for children and was room in the attic of the house. there. September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 FOR SAM SHAMIE, A PLEDGE IS A PROMISE ed by the Holocaust, and it wasn’t a their oldest daughter Natalie’s bat Endowment Fund. Jackie, now 14, BY ISAAC BENJAMIN major focus.” Over time, he discov- mitzvah. At Yad Vashem, the family once asked her father why their gifts ered that “many Sephardic Jews were learned about an 11-year-old girl, also are always from the Shamie family; n the spring of 2008, Sam Shamie in fact oppressed and persecuted dur- named Shamie but no known relation, why aren’t the children’s names Iand his family visited Yad Vashem ing the war.” Having visited the Yad born in Aleppo, exiled to Greece and included? Sam responded with a in Jerusalem. On a guided tour, the Vashem campus several times, he eventually murdered in Auschwitz. challenge to his daughters that they family of four explored the museum makes a point of always seeking out Natalie Shamie participated in the continue his legacy of charity and that and the various exhibitions and insti- stories of Sephardic communities Museum’s B’nai Mitzvot program, eventually, they choose causes to tutions dedicated to the Holocaust. affected by the Holocaust. marking her bat mitzvah with the attach to their names. Moved by the experience, Sam was memory of the young girl who never hamie actively supports the near- inspired to make a $200,000 pledge reached the pivotal age of 12. Sby Detroit Holocaust Memorial to the American Society for Yad During that same visit, Sam had an Center but believes that the Yad Vashem. Partnering with Yad experience that still brings tears to his Vashem experience is unique. “To me, Vashem, Shamie and his wife Nancy eyes. Yad Vashem is different. The rich diver- dedicated their pledge to digitizing “We were at the Children’s Exhibit sity of stories, the magnitude of the Yad Vashem’s 130,000-piece photog- where you see the thousands of exhibits. It thoroughly touches so many raphy collection. Just as the new dig- shoes from the concentration camp. I people.” As the world’s preeminent ital library was emerging online, how- watched my younger daughter, Jackie Holocaust education center, Yad ever, the great recession set in. deep in thought. This is a girl who is Vashem remains a priority for Shamie. As a real estate developer in metro- very stylish and absolutely loves This dedication brought Sam politan Detroit, Shamie was admitted- shoes. She was staring down at her Shamie into the American Society for ly hit hard. “It really hurt me financial- brand-new sneakers and then at the Yad Vashem New York office in early ly,” said Shamie. The long-time sea of black shoes in front her. She April. Eight years after the recession Michigan resident saw his business was just stunned by the magnitude of upended his life, he hand-delivered a and the entire Detroit market decimat- Sam Shamie. the sea of shoes belonging to children check completing his pledge. “I have ed by the crash. The Shamies were As a proud Jew, he has become her age who were murdered. ‘All of always remembered this pledge and forced to suspend their support during passionately committed to spreading these people were killed just because have always hoped to fulfil it. This is their tumultuous journey back to sta- Holocaust awareness. His ambition is they were Jewish?’ she asked. She fulfilling an obligation.” He needlessly bility. clear: “I don’t want the world to forget was overwhelmed,” Shamie shared. apologized for the delay, but support Throughout his personal troubles, what happened to my people, your Just as teaching his own family the from the likes of Sam Shamie never Shamie always remembered his com- people, our people… Ever!” lessons of the Holocaust is important needs an explanation. Their dedica- mitment to Yad Vashem. Born into the Sam and Nancy have embraced this to Shamie, so is educating others. As tion to Yad Vashem makes Sam and Syrian Sephardic community in adage as a Shamie family value. a philanthropist, he has made Nancy Shamie and family stand out Brooklyn, the son of immigrants from Their children have received the in- Holocaust education a priority. The as an inspiration to us all. Aleppo, Shamie didn’t know much depth Holocaust education their Shamies are part of the Yad Vashem Find out more about the ASYV about the Holocaust growing up. father never had. Along with studying Legacy Circle, having designated Yad Legacy Circle by contacting Chris According to Shamie, “Many Syrian the Holocaust in school, the family Vashem in their estate to establish the Morten at (212) 220-4304 or Jews didn’t have family directly affect- traveled to Yad Vashem to celebrate Nancy and Sam Shamie & Family [email protected]. IN A NAZI LEGACY, A SON’S LOVE IS TESTED BY MASS MURDER (Continued from page 12) or us, the facts are irrefutable. believed Hitler would change his poli- month of that speech, 75,000 local father wanted a divorce. But Frank’s FOtto von Wachter established tics.” Jews were killed. mother appealed to Hitler, who for- the Jewish ghetto in Lviv, then known everal pivotal scenes anchor the In the third, the three men visit the bade the divorce until after the war. as Lemberg. He ran the transporta- Sfilm, each intensifying the effort killing field in Galicia where some Hans Frank obliged. tion that shipped Jews off to concen- to get Wachter to come to terms with 3,500 Jews were shot by the Nazis “My father loved Hitler more than his tration camps. He passed up his father’s crimes. In one, a panel and Sands’ own family members met family,” Frank says. Himmler’s offer to return to his native discussion with Sands, Frank and their fate. Wachter wanders around, Frank recalls visiting the Krakow Vienna, choosing to stay put and see Wachter, the audience turns on maddeningly resisting all efforts to ghetto as a young boy with his moth- admit his father’s culpability in the er, who went to “shop” for furs mass murder. because she knew the Jews could not “There must be tens of thousands of refuse whatever price she named. Austrians lying [dead] around here, Frank is unsparing in his assessment too,” Wachter argues. “I see this as a of his father. battlefield, you see.” “My father really deserved to die at he film has its flaws. We’re told the gallows,” he says. T practically nothing about Frank The film intersperses interviews with and Wachter apart from the war, Frank and Wachter with film and pho- including what they do for a living or tos from the war. Some of the archival anything about their spouses or chil- material is astonishing, including dren. But these shortcomings aren’t footage of Hitler and other top Nazis. central to the narrative. Sands goes with Frank to the cell at Near the end of the film, the three Nuremburg that held his father until men attend a memorial ceremony for the day of his execution. The three Ukrainian nationalists who fought the men visit the remains of the syna- Soviets during World War II. They talk gogue where Sands’ own family likely with a middle-aged man who wears a spent their last Shabbat before the swastika around his neck and tells synagogue was burned to the ground Horst von Wachter, left, and Niklas Frank with Philippe Sands, rear, at the site of a mass grave out- them how proud he is of his division’s by Nazis under the command of side Zolkiew, Ukraine. wartime legacy. Wachter’s father. his job through. Wachter for his unapologetic admira- Then they run into an elderly World All along, Wachter cannot bring him- For Wachter, none of it is enough to tion of his father. Wachter squirms in self to acknowledge his father’s change his fundamental belief that his his seat but holds firm. War II veteran. When the man is told crimes, offering one excuse after father was a good man who played In another, the three men visit the who Wachter’s father was, he shakes another and relying on vague gener- but a bit part in the Nazi regime. hall in Lviv where in 1942 Frank’s Wachter’s hand enthusiastically, telling alities to rebut evidence that he bore “He was absolutely somebody who father announced the implementation him his father was a decent man. responsibility for the deaths of tens of wanted to do something good,” of the Final Solution, crediting Wachter, pained for so much of the thousands of Jews. Wachter says. “His fault was that he Wachter’s father for his work. Within a film, finally seems at ease. He smiles. American & International Societies for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE U.S. POST 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO. 9313

Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org Society Editor (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for New York, NY 10110 NY York, New Ron B. Meier, Ph.D., Ron B. Meier, EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL *Published Bimonthly by the American by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased September/October 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5777 2016 - Tishri/Cheshvan September/October 212-220-4304 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE bequest to ASYV, please contact Chris Morton at please contact ASYV, bequest to helps keep the memory of the Six Million alive... keep the memory of the Six Million helps For more information, or for help with proper wording for the Please remember us in your trust, will, estate plan or with the Please remember us in your trust, will, estate planned gift. It’s your legacy... to your family, and your people. and to your family, your legacy... It’s planned gift. A bequest to the American Society for Yad Vashem Yad American Society for bequest to the A Page 16