AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 42-No. 5 ISSN 0892-1571 May/June 2016-Iyyar/Sivan 5776 SALUTE TO HOLLYWOOD BENEFIT GALA he American Society for Yad “Hollywood’s Last Survivors.” The and Janice have challenged us to do moving introduction Goldwyn stated, T Vashem (ASYV), in partnership writers inspired us with their treatment better and to be better through this “[Meyer] has never failed to speak out with the Jewish Life Foundation, host- of each survivor’s story, demonstrat- article, which shines a bright light so so that the sacrifices [of our people] ed its third annual Salute to Hollywood ing great care and respect for every that we will not forget these stories.” are not lost to the sands of time. He is Benefit Gala on Monday, June 6th, at individual name, photo and memory. Peter Flax, principal author of dedicated to effecting change in the the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Beverly The beautifully written article mirrors “Hollywood’s Last Survivors,” said, world, so that the power of love and Hills. The inspirational evening brought Yad Vashem’s personal approach to “Hearing these stories is an experi- tolerance can subdue evil.” Both of together 350 new and returning these individuals have had a supporters of Yad Vashem, the profound influence in the World Holocaust Remembrance Hollywood community and were Center. Emcee Mike Burstyn featured in The Hollywood opened the event by introducing Reporter’s article. singer Michael Libow, who led the We also had the pleasure of audience in the national anthems honoring philanthropist David and Holocaust survivor Jack Nagel Wiener. A survivor of Auschwitz, for Hamotzi, the blessing over the David built his real estate bread. Leonard Wilf, chairman of empire from the ground up with ASYV, kicked off the program by hard work and determination. welcoming all of our guests. Among David is a true leader in the those in attendance were some of community — his generosity Yad Vashem’s most esteemed sup- knows no bounds. Adam porters — Sheldon and Miriam Milstein presented David with Adelson, Patrons of the Mount of our Lifetime Achievement Award Remembrance; Fela Shapell and and the evening concluded with the Shapell family, who, along with guests singing “Happy Birthday” David Shapell, z”l, are pillars of Yad to Wiener, celebrating his 90th Vashem; and Susanne, Edward birthday, and wishing him a and Elissa Czuker. Edward and huge Mazal Tov on his marriage Elissa served as the Gala chairs the day before the event. and worked tirelessly to ensure the These three Holocaust sur- evening’s success. Presentation of the Vanguard Award to The Hollywood Reporter and its EVP and group publisher, Lynne Segall vivors, as well as the others who For many years, the Hollywood (left), and President and CCO, Janice Min (second from right). Presenters Jeffrey Katzenberg, (founder and CEO were able to join us at the gala, community has been an essential of DreamWorks Animation, second from left) and Leonard Wilf, chairman of ASYV (right). truly enhanced the evening. partner in spreading the mission of telling the story of the Holocaust, and ence I’ll never forget. They illuminate Those strong men and women sur- Holocaust education and remem- in so doing, furthers our goals of the deep truths of the past and the vived under such dire circumstances brance. Starting in 1945, the year that spreading knowledge of the Shoah to future with intimate details.” THR and and have taught us the meaning of marked the end of World War II and new audiences. its staff are true champions of Yad perseverance and determination. It is the liberation of the concentration t the gala we were delighted to Vashem’s mission to restore the on their shoulders that we are able to camps, films and documentaries A honor The Hollywood Reporter memory and dignity of six million thrive and hope for a better future. struggling with the incomprehensible (THR), its president and chief creative Jewish victims and the thousands of This message was brought home reality that was the Holocaust have officer, Janice Min, and executive vice survivors alive today. after hearing from Yad Vashem repre- been produced. president and group publisher, Lynne ith deep appreciation for their sentative Irena Steinfeldt, director of Inspiration for this year’s ASYV Gala Segall. Jeffrey Katzenberg, founder W contributions, we had the priv- the Righteous Among the Nations came from a new source in the and chief executive officer of ilege of celebrating outstanding Department. Irena recounted stories Hollywood community. Last DreamWorks Animation, presented Holocaust survivors who have worked of inspiring heroes from the entertain- December, The Hollywood Reporter them with the Vanguard Award. In his throughout their lives to further the ment industry in Eastern Europe who published its groundbreaking story, remarks, Katzenberg said, “Lynne cause of Holocaust remembrance saved Jews from the horrors of the and education worldwide. Branko Holocaust. The Righteous, along with Lustig, Oscar-winning producer of our survivors, have established a IN THIS ISSUE Schindler’s List, was presented with foundation of kindness and charity ASYV Benefit Gala in Los Angeles...... 1,8 our Legacy Award by Phil Blazer, that we can only hope to emulate for The lessons of Bergen-Belsen remain unlearned...... 2 founder and president of Jewish Life generations to come. The origins and onset of the Romanian Holocaust...... 4 Television. Branko’s personal journey Thanks to our generous supporters The Holocaust without Jews...... 5 took him from Nazi death camps to tri- and new friends in the community, this Righteous Among the Nations, at home in Israel...... 7 umph at the Oscars; in 2015 Branko was our most successful event yet in Photo highlights from the ASYV Annual Spring Luncheon...... 9 presented his Oscar for Schindler’s Los Angeles. We surpassed our A WWII vacation that saved two Jewish brothers’ lives...... 10 List to Yad Vashem. Actor Tony fundraising goal and have set new Holocaust haunts Lithuanians as painful past comes to light...... 11 Goldwyn presented Meyer Gottlieb, records for the future. We look forward When Poland eyed Madagascar as a future homeland for Jews...... 15 former president of Samuel Goldwyn to planting roots in the community and Swiss under pressure over art that Jews were forced to sell...... 16 Films, with our Legacy Award. In his growing our Yad Vashem family. Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 THE LESSONS OF BERGEN-BELSEN REMAIN UNLEARNED Holocaust touched only European inal at Nuremberg. Islamism, which had entrenched BY LYN JULIUS, Jews. He was indicted, judged and con- themselves in the Arab world over the THE JERUSALEM POST Although their suffering cannot be victed by Yugoslavia for crimes preceding decade, aimed to destroy, compared to the horrors inflicted on against humanity, arising from his piv- or at best exclude, non-Muslim n April 15 the world was mark- the Jews of Eastern Europe, Jews in otal role in the Handschar and minorities from public and political life. ing the 70th anniversary of the O North Africa were not spared the Skanderbeg SS divisions, which n 1947 the Arab League drafted a liberation of the notorious Bergen- impact of the war. Some 2,500 Libyan deported Balkan Jews from Kosovo, plan to treat its Jewish citizens as Belsen concentration camp. More I Jews were shipped by the Italian Macedonia and Thrace. But the Allies enemy aliens, before a single than 50,000 prisoners, mainly Jews, Fascist regime to the notorious Giado shrank from offending the Arabs. The Palestinian Arab had fled. died there — of starvation, overwork labor camp. One-fifth died of typhus mufti remained a hero for tens of Barely three years after the end of or disease or following gruesome or starvation. thousands. World War II, Arab League member medical experiments. Anne Frank Neighboring Tunisia came under Nazi Germany lavished money and states emulated Nazism with their was probably the most famous victim. direct Nazi control for six months. propaganda on the Arab world in the Nuremberg-style laws, criminalizing She and her sister perished of typhus Some 2,000 Tunisian Jewish men, hope of fomenting an anti-colonial Zionism, freezing Jewish bank in the camp just one month before lib- wearing the obligatory yellow star, uprising. It funded the Muslim accounts, instituting quotas, and eration. Brotherhood, established in Egypt in imposing restrictions on jobs and 1928. Its founder, Hassan al-Banna, movement. Violence and the threat of made the Nazi concept of the Jew as violence did the rest. The result was the epitome of all-embracing evil, over- ethnic cleansing of age-old Jewish laid with traditional anti-Jewish Koranic communities in a single generation. prejudice, the core of the Brotherhood’s The ghost of Nazi-inspired, anti- ideology. By the war’s end, the Jewish bigotry was never exorcised: Brotherhood had a million members. after World War II, the Arab world gave Shortly after the Belsen survivors safe haven to Nazi war criminals on had returned to Libya, the Jews of the run. They became military advisors Tripoli and outlying villages suffered a and spin doctors of Jew-hatred. vicious three-day pogrom, which Adolph Eichmann, Nazi architect of claimed the lives of 130 and made the “Final Solution,” hoped his “Arab thousands of Jews homeless. friends” would continue his battle ow was this possible barely six against the Jews, who were always Hmonths after news of the terri- the “principal war criminals” and “prin- ble extermination of the Jews of cipal aggressors.” He hadn’t man- Europe had reached the Arab world? aged to complete his task of “total The November 1945 Libyan riots annihilation,” but the Muslims could were a spillover from disturbances in still complete it for him. Egypt in which five Jews were mur- Not only has the virus of Nazi anti- dered. While some blame the clash of Semitism never left the Arab and Jewish Holocaust survivors return to Libya from concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Zionism and Arab nationalism, histori- Muslim world; it has grown exponen- were frog-marched into labor camps. ans report that the rioters in Libya did tially. Muslim immigrants have carried Among the prisoners liberated on Jews were used as slave labor in not shout anti-Zionist slogans. The the virus of Jew-hatred back into that glorious day in April were several Algerian and Moroccan work camps. mob did not even know what Zionism European countries. Saudi petrodol- hundred Libyan Jews, deported to And all the while, thousands of Jews was, a Jewish Agency report stated. It lars have financed the spread of Bergen-Belsen via Italy. A photo died in aerial bombardments as the is noteworthy that the Egyptian riot- Islamism, with its implicit anti- exists of these survivors, dangling Allied and German armies wrestled ers, incited by the Muslim Semitism, worldwide. their legs out of a railway carriage on for control. Brotherhood, targeted Coptic, Greek Eichmann would have been pleased which they had scrawled, “Going Arguably, North African states, hav- Orthodox and Catholic institutions as to see that the Arab world is effective- home” and “Back to Tripoli.” ing not yet achieved independence, According to The Jews of Libya by were not responsible for the anti- Professor Maurice Roumani, some Jewish measures adopted by the 870 out of the 2,000 Jews in Libya Vichy regime and the Italian Fascists. with British passports were deported But apart from individuals who saved to Italy as part of the “sfollamento” Jews, the sympathies of the Arab policy to send away foreign nationals. masses broadly lay with the Members of the same family could be Germans. dispersed to Morocco, Tunisia or Iraq, independent since 1932, was Algeria — then under pro-Nazi, Vichy the scene of a pro-Nazi coup in 1941, French control. leading inexorably to the Farhud, the Two transports of 300 Jews, and Iraqi-Jewish Kristallnacht. In this two- another 120, were shipped from Libya day orgy of murder, rape, mutilation to Naples then placed on cargo trains and looting, up to 600 Jews were to Bergen-Belsen, and arrived on May killed, according to British archival 25, 1944. Jews arriving from Libya in records. The exact figure will never be Bologna were taken by train to known. Innsbruck- Reichenau, part of the The Palestinian Grand Mufti of Dachau camp system, in July 1943. Jerusalem played a central role in Reaching Bergen-Belsen relatively plotting the pro-Nazi coup in Iraq. In late in the war, the Libyan Jews sur- exile in Berlin from November 1941 vived. Some were exchanged for until the end of the war, he broadcast German POWs. They received pack- anti-Jewish propaganda to the Arab ages from the Red Cross and Muslim Nazis. world. obtained some relief in their working He proved more zealous than the well as Jews. ly judenrein: there are no Jews in conditions. They even managed to Nazis in promoting the “Final It is common to view the mass exo- Libya, and no more than 4,000 in the keep kosher, exchanging cooked food Solution” to the Jewish question. The dus and spoliation of a million Jews rest of the Arab world today. The for dry bread. One Jew, Zion Labi mufti is thought to have been directly from the Arab world as revenge for Muslim Brotherhood and its local from Benghazi, started a school. responsible for 20,000 European the displacement of Palestinian Arabs Palestinian branch Hamas, al-Qaida, The deportation of Jews from Libya Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. in 1948. A more plausible explanation Islamic State and assorted Islamist to the northern shores of the At the end of World War II, the mufti is that Nazi-inspired blood-and-soil groups still carry the torch for an ide- Mediterranean gives the lie to the should have been tried as a war crim- nationalism, and xenophobic ology born in the Nazi era. widespread misconception that the May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 NEVER TOO LATE: NAZI HUNTERS TIRELESSLY PURSUE 50 ELDERLY WAR CRIMINALS court’s ruling that he could be convict- Zuroff said it was “impossible” to get her. She was holding a baby in her BY IAN JOHNSTON AND ed on his service record alone was “a prosecutions in the Baltic countries, hands,” she said. “After a few minutes ANDY ECKARDT, NBC NEWS total game-changer,” Zuroff said. “especially in Lithuania.” … [she] burst out with nerves and “Until that point … German prosecu- “They were the worst because they started to shout, ‘I cannot bear it any- n their search for justice that has tors could not try a case unless they had a vast number of collaborators,” more.’” endured for decades, the biggest I had evidence of a specific crime with he said. “They don’t like punishing “The soldiers came and took her,” challenge Nazi hunters face is time. a specific victim,” he said. their own people and would prefer to she said, despite efforts of others who The knowledge that war criminals “Demjanjuk was convicted solely for think of themselves as victims of surrounded her in an unsuccessful are escaping prosecution through his service as an armed SS guard at Communism and not killers of Jews, attempt to save her. “She did not death by natural causes means their a death camp,” he added. “As a which they were. They were outstand- come back from there.” task has never been more pressing. result, this opened up a whole new ing killers of Jews.” But then came an order from Recently, German state police potential number of people to bring to vner Shalev, chairman of Yad Budapest to stop the killing, and arrested a 93-year-old man accused justice.” Vashem, Israel’s official memo- Brenners and her family were of being a guard at the Auschwitz A “Once the Nuremberg trials had rial to victims of the Holocaust, said released. They then took the train to concentration camp. Hans Lipschis is been completed [in 1949], the prose- the survivors “live with the memories Budapest that day and hid in the city the first suspect to be facing charges cution of Nazi war criminals never every day.” until it was taken by Soviet troops as part of a drive launched earlier this became a serious priority in any coun- toward the end of the war. year to track down 50 suspected try outside of the Soviet Union,” Zuroff Brenners said years later she met a Auschwitz guards who are believed to added. “The failure to do more to hold woman who said she was the child of be living in Germany. the perpetrators of the her friend’s aunt. The woman was still Holocaust accountable trying to find out how she survived. is naturally a source of Brenners said she remembered an frustration and disap- officer on a horse — who was pointment for me per- addressed as “Shanny” — overseeing sonally, as someone the massacre and the gendarmes who has devoted prac- referring to lists of names when decid- Helmut Oberlander is on the Simon tically my entire adult Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi ing who should be taken. life to that mission.” war criminals. She said “Shanny” was a nickname The Holocaust saw for Sandor Kepiro, a gendarme officer approximately six mil- “Bringing the perpetrators to justice accused of helping organize the lion Jews — about two- sends an important educational and killings. thirds of the pre-World moral message to society at large: Kepiro was given a 10-year prison War II Jewish popula- These kinds of crimes will not be tol- sentence over the Novi Sad mas- tion in Europe — mur- erated, and there are no free passes,” sacre by a Hungarian court in 1944, Hans Lipschis. dered to fulfill Adolf he said. “Although unfortunately but this was overturned after Hitler’s infamous “Final Solution.” many of the perpetrators escaped jus- Germany formally occupied Hungary Most of those involved in the murder Roma Gypsies, Slavic people such tice, nevertheless each trial sends an later that year, according to The of about six million Jews in the as Poles and Russians, Communists, important message.” Associated Press. Holocaust and still alive will now be in socialists, disabled people, Jehovah’s Germany and its allies controlled Kepiro, who lived in Argentina after their 90s, a ripe old age for people Witnesses, homosexuals and others most of Europe during World War II, the war, admitted he was present and who carried out one the most heinous were also slaughtered in large num- including Norway, France, Italy, supervised the identities of those crimes in the history of humanity. bers. Greece, the Balkans, Poland and being rounded up, but denied know- But that doesn’t stop Kurt Schrimm, Zuroff said that no one really knew deep into the then director of Germany’s Central how many people were involved in Soviet Union. Investigation Center for Nazi Crimes. the killings, let alone how many were Lydia Brenners His agency employs 20 people, still alive. was just nine years including seven focusing on the But, asked to estimate, he reckoned old when she was Auschwitz cases. that “probably not more than 10 to 15 caught up in a hor- “Someday there will be no more percent” of tens of thousands of Nazi rific massacre of Nazi criminals to go after, and then war criminals had been brought to Jews in Novi Sad in our organization will shut down,” he justice. modern-day Serbia said. “But until then, we will exhaust he Simon Wiesenthal Center by Hungarian all investigation possibilities.” T publishes an annual “most forces in 1942. After years of frustration, Nazi wanted” list, and also rates countries Nazi-allied Hungary hunters have also been given fresh based on their willingness to take had annexed the hope by a German court’s landmark action. Only the United States got the area in 1941. ruling that has made it simpler to top rating in 2013; Germany was Brenners said she prosecute cases by opening the door among five countries in the second- was forced to go to charges of “accessory to murder.” highest group. with her father, Efraim Zuroff, Israel director of the Zuroff said that “to their credit” mother and sister to Sandor Kepiro. Simon Wiesenthal Center in Germany was one of the few coun- a local theater where many Jewish ing they were killed until later, the Jerusalem, said he planned to ask tries that would bring prosecutions. people were being gathered. They news service said. German companies to help fund a In contrast, Austria, which became were taken in groups to the banks of Kepiro was tried again in Hungary renewed campaign to find the remain- part of Hitler’s Third Reich in 1938, the River Danube, where they were but acquitted in 2011, with a court rul- ing war criminals and take advantage was “horrific, terrible, the worst,” shot dead. A total of more than 1,200 ing there was insufficient evidence of the ruling, which came during the Zuroff said. civilians are thought to have been against him, the AP reported. The successful prosecution of John “They haven’t succeeded in taking killed, according to The Associated prosecution appealed, saying the Demjanjuk. action against a Nazi war criminal in Press. judges’ decision was “unfounded,” Demjanjuk, an autoworker who lived more than 30 years. It’s not because “Slowly we came nearer and nearer and so did the defense, which com- in the U.S. for years after the war, was there are no Nazis in Austria,” he [to the end of the line],” said plained the ruling had not actually convicted in 2011 of 28,060 counts of said. “There’s a country that until 20 Brenners, now 81 and living in Rishon cleared Kepiro. being an accessory to murder and years ago … got away with claiming Letzion, Israel. “Today I know it was However, Kepiro died in September sentenced to five years in prison. they were Hitler’s first victim. for killing. Then … I didn’t know, 2011, an innocent man in the eyes of Although he died a free man in a Austrians played a very leading role in maybe the older people understood.” the law, a hero to some in Hungary, nursing home in Germany — he was the murders carried out by the Third “In the row behind me, there was an but a killer who escaped justice to released pending his appeal — the Reich.” auntie of one of my girlfriends. I knew Zuroff and his fellow Nazi hunters. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS

THE ORIGINS AND ONSET OF THE ROMANIAN HOLOCAUST The Origins and Onset of the years. The source of it was the country’s “elite” — encouraged civilians took the opportunity to “puri- Romanian Holocaust. Romanian Orthodox Church, which attacks on Jewish villages. All kinds fy” their nation. In other words, in By Henry Eaton. Wayne State viewed and consistently presented the of “hostile laws” were passed making places like Iaşi with a large Jewish University Press: Detroit, Jews as Christ-killers, “demonizing” it difficult for Jews to earn a living, get population, Romanians fell upon the Michigan, 2013. 192 pp. $29.95 them. Thus, the idea of Jews using the an education, and even dream of Jews in a frenzy of “ethnic cleansing,” softcover. blood of murdered Christian children becoming true Romanians! Soldiering falsely accusing them of traitorous as part of some kind of “ritual” at for Romania during World War I made acts. Because of that, countless Jews REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN Passover also found a “ready and will- no difference. In fact, during the inter- were dragged to the local police sta- ccording to Henry Eaton in his ing” audience here. Another war years, things got tion, where the Romanians, helped by A conscientiously researched and reason for Romanian anti- even worse for the Jews the Germans, brutally tortured and engrossing volume entitled The Semitism was “the growing of Romania! It was dur- frequently murdered them. Because Origins and Onset of the Romanian number and commercial ing this time that the arch of that, many more Jews were packed Holocaust, “historians in Romania prominence of Jews in anti-Semite Corneliu onto the freight cars of two trains, have often characterized their country Moldavia in the mid-1880s.” Codreanu organized the more like “ovens,” with no food or as protecting its Jews during World Interestingly, non-Jews did Legion of the Archangel water, to travel for days condemned War II and have described wartime not notice Jewish poverty — Michael, better known as to die slowly. Nor did the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu as a savior, which was also very much in the Iron Guard, along- murder of Jews end here. Under Ion pointing out that he rejected a evidence. These anti- side other Fascist “par- Antonescu’s leadership, Romanian German plan to deport Romanian Semites only saw Jews — ties” that sprang up and commanders would carry out “one of Jews to the Belzec death camp.” foreigners in their eyes — as wholeheartedly believed the largest single mass murders of How ironic! What a mean-spirited, taking their nation’s econo- there must be a “solu- Jews during the war in and around deceptive mockery of historical fact! my “hostage” and tion” to the “problem” of Odessa on March 22–24, 1941.” Then again, Romanians are not alone “exploit[ing] it at the expense of the Jews in their country. Interestingly, “in Indeed, when it came to murdering in presenting this fairytale-like story of natives.” Finally, as they were frequent- 1930 Codreanu promised to ship Jews, Romania was quite the Nazi their country during the war years. ly pressured by world opinion, what Jews out of Romania in cattle cars as partner — even as the Germans criti- There are others who eagerly worked completely irritated the Romanians soon as he had the power to do so.” cized the Romanians’ “sloppiness,” “shoulder to shoulder” with the Nazis was the very idea that the Jews of Finally, King Carol II passed laws in “cruelty and greed” in doing the devil- and have, like them, also deftly Romania be made Romanian citizens! 1940 “similar to the Reich citizenship ish deed! manipulated the truth . . . going so far ecause of the above-noted, laws of 1935 making further drastic So why did Antonescu refuse to as to label themselves unwilling “vic- Bthroughout the years, aside from reductions in the status of Jews.” send his Jews to the Belzec death tims” of Hitler’s actions and directives. suffering from bloodthirsty outside Needless to say, it’s not at all surpris- camp? After all, it did “fit” with his “phi- So what did really happen in invaders, including the Cossacks, ing that Romania would eagerly and losophy”! I’ll let Eaton tell it in his book Romania? What is the true story? Tartars, Turks and Russians, Jews in willingly become an Axis partner. — a must-read for any study of the As Eaton tells it, anti-Semitism was Romania suffered no less from their Eaton goes on to relate how “under Holocaust. always characteristic of this nation non-Jewish countrymen. Time and the fog of war” — specifically Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of from its very inception in the mid- again the hate-filled rhetoric of the Germany’s invasion of Russia — Media, Communication, and Visual 1800s. And it would only grow with the Romanian leadership — indeed, the Romanian soldiers, police and even Arts at Pace University. WHEN POLAND EYED MADAGASCAR AS A FUTURE HOMELAND FOR JEWS In Black Earth: The Holocaust as 1920. Their task was not to prepare sides as an attack on the state. objects whose future might be negoti- History and Warning, Yale University some new campaign, but to com- he new regime enjoyed greater ated with foreign officials. Pilsudski’s historian Timothy Snyder examines memorate a past one. Jozef Pilsudski T formal powers than had electoral organization, which had the origins of the Holocaust in the (the former revolutionary and leader Pilsudski himself, since it exploited an been popular with Jews, was mind of Adolf Hitler and the geopoli- of Poland since 1926) had died the authoritarian constitution that had replaced by a party of power which tics of prewar Europe. To restore the month before, and a small bag of been conceived while he was still excluded them. “natural order” of the planet, Hitler earth from each of the battle sites was alive. Although most of his succes- This new Camp of National Unity believed, Jews had to be eliminated, to be discreetly gath- sors were not anti- (Oboz Zjednoczenia Narodowego, and to eliminate them he first had to ered for his burial Semitic by conviction OZON), created in 1937, announced render them stateless by absorbing or mound. themselves, they tried its preference for the emigration of overrunning the countries where they The end of a political to ride out the chal- about 90 percent of Poland’s Jews. lived. “The German destruction of life reopened the issue lenge from the Such policies, regarded as a loath- neighboring states,” Snyder writes, of the character of the National Democrats some betrayal of tradition and princi- “created zones where ... techniques Polish state. Pilsudski’s by adopting anti- ple by much of the Polish center and of annihilation could be invented.” In authority had been per- Semitic public policy. left, were meant to prevent the this excerpt from his book, Snyder sonal, and the old com- In so doing, pogroms organized by nationalists. writes about prewar Poland, where rades (“the colonels”) Pilsudski’s succes- The leader of OZON had a Jewish Jews made up about a tenth of the who wished to succeed sors compromised wife, something unthinkable for a population, and proposals to reduce him had to contend with the basic moral prem- Nazi. Nevertheless, by the standards the numbers of European Jews popular politics at a time ise of his politics: that of previous Polish practice, the through mass immigration to of economic depression. Poland was a state change after 1935 was fundamental Palestine or even Madagascar. Pilsudski’s old enemies, and not a race. and unmistakable. aturally, there were Polish spies the National Democrats, In 1935, responsibil- The man responsible for Jewish pol- Nin the Soviet Union in the chose to exploit popular ity for Jewish affairs icy was Wiktor Tomir Drymmer, a 1930s, some of them on a rather anti-Semitism to mount a challenge to was transferred from the Ministry of close collaborator of Polish foreign unusual assignment. On June 8, the regime that his associates estab- Internal Affairs to the Ministry of minister Jozef Beck. With a back- 1935, Polish military intelligence lished after his death. Their encour- Foreign Affairs. Jews were no longer ground in military intelligence, ordered its officers in Soviet Ukraine agement of pogroms, at the same normal citizens to be integrated and Drymmer was formally in charge of to make tours of all the battlefields of time an act of racism and a violation protected by the state, but somehow both personnel and consular affairs in the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919- of the law, was understood by both aliens: a matter for the world at large, (Continued on page 15) May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 THE HOLOCAUST WITHOUT JEWS Attempts to universalize the spe- proceedings were scandalous. “Of son to Israeli crimes, and a new pro- human history is casually manipulat- cific suffering of Jews in the Shoah course there shouldn’t be anti- gressive narrative that expunges ed by those who purport to be con- go hand in hand with efforts to de- Semitism,” said a student speaking Jewish suffering in its account of an cerned with “oppression.” But to the legitimize the Jewish state. against the measure, offering the sort amorphous, context-free misdeed — mandarins of the progressive left, the of throat-clearing assertion from which no worse, and holding no more mean- Holocaust’s meaning is always and BY JAMES KIRCHICK, TABLET anti-Semitism almost inevitably follows. ing, than any other episode of mass necessarily to be found in its “univer- n May, Israel marked Holocaust “But it’s not about one set of people.” murder — inflicted upon some gener- salism.” According to this historical IRemembrance Day, Yom The fracas took place against a alized notion of “humanity.” With interpretation, the evil of the Nazis HaShoah. As has been the custom for backdrop of resurgent anti-Semitism respect to the latter, some go so far can be located in their abandonment over six decades, a two-minute air in British higher education and poli- as to label the Holocaust an instance of the European cosmopolitan tradi- raid siren was blared across the entire tics. Earlier this year, a co-chairman of “white on white crime” that, tion and descent into bestial particu- country and citizens from all walks of of Oxford University’s Labor Party because its victims did not hail from larism and nationalism — the very life interrupted their daily routines for club quit after claiming that a large the “global South,” is undeserving of qualities that Israel, foremost among a moment of solemn reflection. number of its members “have some recognition. the nations, is charged with embody- January 27 of this year also marked kind of problem with Jews.” Sometimes, speaking of a Holocaust ing today. This sleight of hand has the the decade anniversary of the United Meanwhile, at the same convention without Jews can be innocuous, the miraculous effect of clouding the Nations–designated International where it debated the propriety of com- result of a muddle-headed utopianism causes of the Holocaust so that anti- Holocaust Remembrance Day, which memorating the Holocaust, the NUS that desperately avoids singling out Semitism is relegated to a back- member states are encouraged to elected as its president a young any one group’s suffering as having ground role, if it is mentioned at all. commemorate. Though an Israeli ini- woman named Malia Bouattia, who been worse than any other’s. When Harping on the fact of six million dead tiative, International Holocaust had previously opposed a declaration Canadian Prime Minister Justin Jews, then, becomes weirdly tribal, Remembrance Day has gradually condemning ISIS, railed against the Trudeau omitted any mention of Jews even Nazi-like; asserting Jewish peo- been subjected to the universalizing “Zionist-led media,” and advocated in or anti-Semitism in his first commemo- plehood is too close to asserting prescriptions of those who would favor of violent Palestinian “resis- rative statement for International Aryan-ness, the disastrous results of water down the particularly Jewish tance” against Israel. Responding to Holocaust Remembrance Day, it was which Europeans have been expiat- aspect of the Nazi extermination of critics in the pages of the Guardian, not due to any conscious bigotry on his ing for the past seven decades. It the Jews. Bouattia began by noting that she is part but a sort of purblind, mushy pro- doesn’t matter that there is no Israeli “the first black woman” gressivism. Still, it is distressing that the Auschwitz, or anything even and “the first Muslim” to sort of Holocaust revisionism that was approaching it; the particularism and be elected president of always the sole province of the far right nationalism of Israel is enough to the NUS; the unspoken and Arab nationalists — simultaneous- imply everything that has followed or purpose of sharing ly denying the Shoah while hijacking it at least could follow. Israel is the car- these biographical to bully Jews as “the new Nazis” — is, rier of the European disease that wise details is that it is there- in newfangled form, becoming a badge Europeans have transcended through fore impossible for her of progressive virtue. their enormous, Christ-like suffering, to be a bigot. *** and formation of the European Union. While the NUS meas- o understand the perverse logic Last November in Sweden, the ure endorsing Holocaust T of the Holocaust without Jews, organizers of a Kristallnacht com- commemoration eventu- one must work backward from the memoration chose not to invite Jews ally passed, Darta political end goal of those pushing it: lest the universal lessons of the Jewish Police controlling Lodz ghetto. Kaleja, a student at the delegitimization of the Jewish Holocaust be marred by the official Chester University, no State. For if the Holocaust isn’t about participation of the people who were The evolution of two different days doubt spoke for many of her student Jews, then Jews have no claim on its primary victims. Yet the left-wing of Holocaust commemoration and the comrades when she complained, to their history, or reason to fear ways they increasingly run counter to loud applause, that she wasn’t anti-Semitism, or the need for each other are symptomatic of the against commemorating the a state. The complaint used seizure of Jewish history and suffer- Holocaust per se but rather “prioritiz- to be that Jews abused the ing for ulterior purposes. This victim ing some lives over others. … In my Holocaust as a shakedown. displacement appropriates the most five years of UK education … not Now, the Holocaust — at traumatic experience in Jewish histo- once were the genocides of Tibet, least as much as it was a ry, pointedly erases the specificity of Rwanda, or Zanzibar taught to me crime targeting the Jews the events supposedly being com- and my peers.” This is as logically fal- above all others — doesn’t memorated, and then harshly chides lacious as it is morally obscene; in no exist at all. Jews for inserting their own particular- way does Holocaust remembrance Labeling Muslims “the new istic concerns into the discussion. At a obviate educational efforts about Jews” of Europe when anti- certain point, these phenomena other slaughters. One might expect Semitic crimes are at a post- become a continuation of a specific Kaleja to be of Muslim or Arab extrac- war high — and almost In occupied Poland, Jews were searched as a form of harass- form of oppression and erasure rather tion, given the widespread resent- entirely the doing of Muslims ment. than an antidote to “hatred.” ment in those communities toward the — is a particularly egregious form of activists who organized the rally had Imagine a remembrance of slavery memorialization of Jewish suffering. this confiscation of Jewish history and no problem with Palestinian flags or that did not acknowledge the suffering She is apparently from Latvia, howev- inversion of reality. (In many schools posters equating the Star of David to of African Americans — or a com- er, where the locals did an especially across Europe, teachers report that a swastika, both of which make annu- memoration of the AIDS epidemic thorough job of wiping out their they have difficulty teaching the al appearances at an event ostensibly omitting the experiences of gay men. Jewish neighbors without much Holocaust for fear of reprisals by called to remember the genocide of Such acts of dissociation would be prompting from the Germans. Muslim students.) So too are the Jewish people. inconceivable, the subjects of rightful The vociferous endorsement of sanctimonious reprimands by soi-dis- Erasing Jews from the history of the denunciations and outraged protests. Kaleja’s sentiments by a roomful of ant arbiters of good taste like the Holocaust makes the likening of them Yet in recent years, that is precisely left-wing students demonstrates the Atlantic’s Jim Fallows, who scold to Nazis more palatable. In the what has been going on with regard confluence of three distinct types of Jews for invoking the Holocaust to upcoming documentary film Let My to the Holocaust and its chief victims, Holocaust minimization: the Eastern contextualize contemporary anti- People Go, Marcel Ophuls promises the Jews. In April, Britain’s National European nationalist attempt to Semitic incitement. to expose modern-day Israel as he Union of Students (NUS) — which “obfuscate” the extermination of six In this era of hypersensitivity about did Vichy France in his classic, The claims to represent some seven mil- million Jews by relativizing it as just “cultural appropriation” (which, taken Sorrow and the Pity, telling similarly lion students across 600 campuses one of many “genocides” committed to its extreme, has seen college cam- “unpleasant truths.” Ophuls teamed — debated whether it should even during World War II, the traditional puses erupt in protest over yoga up with Eyal Sivan, an Israeli filmmak- commemorate Holocaust Memorial Arab-Muslim denial or diminishment classes and the serving of bad Asian er self-exiled in Paris who speaks Day. That this was a subject for argu- of the Holocaust as a grossly exag- food in dining halls), it’s noteworthy of anti-Zionist Jews as a righteous ment is absurd enough; the actual gerated event that pales in compari- how often the greatest crime in (Continued on page 13) Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER

SIBLING SURVIVORS OF SHOAH DIE WITHIN HOURS OF EACH OTHER and why the Nazis had decided to ly inside. Mizrachi doesn’t know exactly how BY BEN FISHER, persecute them,” Mizrachi explains. n the ghetto, Sophie fell in love her father escaped the ghetto, but THE JERUSALEM POST SS officers would frequent the store Iwith Eliezer Helcman, nine years notes that he was owed many favors he would have lived to 100, and flirt with the Polish girl. One SS older. She decided to trust him and by Poles to whom he sold vodka. “Sbut her mission was to take officer fell madly in love and came in while she would take care of business Eliezer, Sophie and Sol hid from the her brother up to heaven and watch daily to see her. One day, she propo- outside of the ghetto, Eliezer and Sol Nazis for six years, splitting the time over him,” Jerusalem resident Felicia sitioned the officer: “If you really love spent time together inside the ghetto between Radom and Danzig and the Mizrachi related about her 94-year- countryside in between. “In trenches, old mother, Sophie Helcman. The in ditches, in toilets, in barns, in hay,” Holocaust survivor died last month Mizrachi says. only days after Sol, the younger When the war finally ended and they brother she saved during the were liberated, Eliezer and Sophie Holocaust. The two siblings were married in Danzig. Felicia’s older buried in a double funeral in brother Andre was born in Paris after Jerusalem. the war; then the four of them came to The intertwined lives and deaths of America, where Felicia was born in Sophie (nee Adler-Fleigel) and Sol Brooklyn. took a dramatic turn in their home- After settling in Brooklyn, Eliezer town of Radom, Poland, when World and Sophie moved to New Jersey. War II broke out. Sol stayed in New York (after a year- The 17-year-old girl promised her long foray at a kibbutz), but Mizrachi parents, who were later killed along says that Sol was like an older broth- with one of Sophie’s sisters by the er to her and that the family saw Sol Nazis, that she would protect Sol, all the time. He never married and who was four years younger. never had children, something Though she didn’t look typically Mizrachi calls a “scar of the war.” Sol, Jewish and her Polish was perfect, Sophie (nee Adler-Fleigel) and Sol Helcman survived the Holocaust together and died on the same who spoke six languages, became a day some 70 years later. Mizrachi says that nevertheless, her translator and lived in the same third- mother had to wear a yellow star. She me,” she said, “there is something I and grew very close. floor walk-up apartment in Manhattan says that Sophie’s life was saved by a need you to do. I need you to get me Eliezer Zev, Felicia’s father, owned for 50 years. righteous gentile. Polish papers for a girl my age. No a liquor store in Radom, was well con- Sophie and Eliezer helped found the Sophie became friends with a Polish questions asked.” nected and was able to bribe a Polish first Orthodox synagogue, Shomrei girl who worked in her parents’ Sophie knew nothing of her friend’s officer to procure a Red Cross uni- Torah, in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, department store. plan until she received the papers that form for Sophie, which she used to which Mizrachi says was massively She was someone who “didn’t allowed her to leave the Radom ghet- fake a medical evacuation in which important in her mother’s life. They understand why Jews were different to to provide necessities for her fami- Sol was carried out on a stretcher. (Continued on page 11)

THE ANGEL OF DEATH CHOSE MINIA JAY FOR THE GAS CHAMBER TWICE A Holocaust survivor twice be picked. When he turned, I turned. Auschwitz, where she soon encoun- escaped with her life after being “Mengele pointed at me and said, “I could see this woman at the door, tered Mengele. personally selected for the gas ‘You, this way.’ stopping people from escaping. If she After being liberated in 1945, Minia chambers by Auschwitz’s “Angel had seen me I wouldn’t be here today. and Rela were among 729 young of Death,” Josef Mengele. “I could see that those who had not Jewish people offered safe haven in been selected had been grouped into BY CAMILLA TOMINEY, EXPRESS Britain and were sent to the Lake fives. District in a group of 300 children who inia Jay says it was a “miracle” “A girl in one of the groups spotted became known as the “Windermere Mshe did not die at the hands of me and put four fingers up — they Boys.” the evil SS officer, notorious for carry- were one short. I don’t know how but Minia said: “We went from hell to ing out deadly experiments on prison- I managed to stand with her and then heaven. I didn’t speak a word of ers. we were all sent to work in Germany.” English but the people were so kind to Minia, 90, recalled how Mengele Minia remains close friends with the us. would be surrounded by an entourage girl, Rela, now 80 and living in Israel. “In Auschwitz you weren’t like a as he picked people to be sent to the Born in Warta, Poland, in 1925, human being. I don’t know how we crematorium complex, where Zyklon Minia was 17 when she was separat- survived it.” B, a cyanide-based pesticide, was ed from the rest of her family and sent Twice-married Minia now lives in used as a weapon of mass murder. to the Lodz ghetto in central Poland in Golders Green, north London, and “I was sent to the corner of this dark 1942. enjoys weekly bridge games at the room by the crematorium,” recalled To this day she still does not know nearby Holocaust and Jewish Care Minia, now a great-grandmother. exactly what happened to her parents center. “We were waiting to die, but then no Jakob and Freida, and five of her six “When I lost my parents it was terri- transportation arrived from the ghetto older siblings. Minia in 1954 with her daughter Denise. ble,” she said. so the guards couldn’t be bothered to For her, however, being sent to Lodz “You didn’t know if you wanted to go through the process for just a few “At that moment I could see I was was a lucky escape. survive. people and I was sent back.” not going to leave Auschwitz alive, but She said: “I didn’t want to go. I was The second time, she said, “We I was still a young girl so I decided to running back to my mother and she “Now I have got my daughter, my were selected naked and I’d lost so save myself. was pushing me, saying, ‘Go, go, go.’ grandchildren and great-grandchil- much weight you could count my ribs. “I was watching him like a hawk as I never saw her again.” dren. That’s the only thing that keeps I had tuberculosis so I knew I would he was continuing to select people. However, in 1944 Minia was sent to me going.” May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS, AT HOME IN ISRAEL The Jewish people have a debt born non-Jews and therefore free too organized and I said that I didn’t Holland but visited Israel several they can never fully repay to those from persecution by the Nazis. But feel at home with all this organization, times, including a 1980 visit during who risked their lives to save Jews they put their lives at risk by helping so I’ll go to Israel.” which she and her husband received during the Holocaust. But the Jews and later immigrated to the In the young Jewish state, she cer- the Righteous Among the Nations Jewish state has gone some way to Jewish state. Galina did so with the tainly found an antidote to over- award from Yad Vashem. She lived provide for them in their old age. woman she saved, but many others organization. Arriving on a kibbutz to until she was 97, sometimes visiting did so alone, and since the 1980s take up her first position as communi- the Goldbergs. “I always think even BY NATHAN JEFFAY, THE TOWER they have been guaranteed automat- ty nurse, she found chaos in the clin- today how she did it all,” says Hester. n a Jerusalem apartment, an eld- ic residency based on their status as ic, “even discovering medicines and “How she kept us all alive, where she Ierly woman misses a roommate “righteous among the nations.” bullets in the same jars.” Within days got the strength from.” like no other. Together, the two of Around 130 people have come to she had the place them cheated fate and formed a bond Israel via this unusual route, and the shipshape, and was that would make a Jewish woman and state treats them with reverence. The working far more a priest’s wife inseparable. poverty of Holocaust survivors is a than the required Galina Imshenik once used her sta- source of constant controversy, but hour a day, offering tus as a respectable Christian to shel- those classed as righteous among the counseling to “trou- ter a young Jewish child, Elena nations receive the country’s average bled” young people. Dolgov, during the Holocaust. salary as a monthly stipend from the She was soon Decades later, they ended up togeth- government. cycling to two other er in Jerusalem. Today, only 13 are still alive. locales to provide A set of three pictures on the wall of n the northern Israel community of medical care and their apartment tells two life stories IKiryat Tivon, one wonders what working in a hospital. and one shared fate. There is a pic- Robert Boissevain would have She toiled 16 hours a ture of the village in Belarus where thought if he saw his daughter living day at four jobs until Galina and her husband protected here. she moved to Kiryat Elena throughout the Holocaust. His decision to hide Jews for two Tivon and took a There is a picture of St. Petersburg, and a half years during the Holocaust community nurse Jaroslawa Lewicka (right) together with one of the people she rescued. where Elena lived afterwards. And cost his children dearly. They didn’t position in the mid- there is a picture of Jerusalem, which just go hungry, watching their food 1960s. Some righteous among the nations the two women made their home in shared with the fugitives, but they When she retired after decades in developed personal connections to 1992. were also told not to play with or even nursing, she made another contribu- Jews before or after moving to Israel, talk to other children, lest tion to Israel, opening a cafe near her and even converted to Judaism. their secret slip out. home that was operated entirely by Hester fell in love with a Jewish man But none of this both- people with disabilities. It made peo- on a kibbutz, married him, and opted ered Robert’s daughter ple rethink their relationship to dis- for conversion “for the sake of our Hester, who decided in abled people, and gave its staff new kids.” Other children of the “righteous” her adulthood that she skills and confidence. She helped to ended up marrying Jews. But the right wanted to help the Jewish run the establishment until it closed of the “righteous” to live in Israel is people once again. two years ago. automatic and does not require con- In the early 1960s, the he plethora of stories in version or Jewish familial connec- 27-year-old Hester, a T Hester’s family defies belief. tions. Many of them have not newly qualified nurse, There was the aunt who saved changed their beliefs and traditions bought a one-way ticket dozens of Jewish babies by carrying since relocating to Israel. and boarded a ship to them away from the Nazis one by one aroslawa Lewicka told her story Israel. “I thought that I can in a backpack, and the banker uncle Jfor this article a few days after go somewhere with my who managed to siphon off Nazi Christmas, which she celebrated at a Elena Dolgov and Galina Imshenik, Jerusalem, 2006. profession, and remem- funds and pass them to Jews in hid- church near her home in the northern bered that in 1948 lots of ing. And, of course, the story of her Israeli city of Haifa. She took part in During the war, Galina and her hus- refugees were going to Israel and I own parents and siblings. services and a festive meal. It was a band looked after Elena’s every need recalled pictures of thousands of Their role as rescuers began one potluck affair, but she feels the need and even taught her to treat them as immigrants arriving in Haifa,” she afternoon in March 1943, when to point out, for the sake of full disclo- parents. Elena’s habit of speaking says. Hester’s father phoned her mother sure, that she didn’t make anything. Yiddish was dangerous if other peo- As she speaks all these years later, Helena asking her to prepare dinner Her fellow congregants forgave her, ple were around, and the couple’s she understates the unusual nature of for guests at the Haarlem house since she is, after all, 81 years old. determination to teach her Russian her decision: “I said that if I would where the family lived. That night, the For decades, Jaroslawa lived under saved her life when the Gestapo maybe go and help people with my Goldbergs arrived. They were an eld- a Communist regime that suppressed questioned them and left with the profession where they need nurses, erly couple and a daughter aged religion. The city where she lives now impression that Galina and her hus- like Africa, why wouldn’t I go to Israel almost 30 from Russia, who had is quite a contrast, home to an annual band were Elena’s biological parents. where they also need people? So I come to Holland through Finland and multicultural winter event called Six decades later, Elena looked after went to the Israeli embassy in Holland Germany looking for safety. “They Festival of Festivals. “Now I live in Galina’s every need, nursing her and said I want to go to Israel.” came for dinner and stayed for two Haifa, which is a city of three reli- through a long illness until her death Looking back on it now, she says it and a half years,” recalls Hester, gions, Judaism, Islam and in 2011. wasn’t only about wanting to help, but adding that for some of the time the Christianity, and I go to a church with They shared the apartment in also about finding a place where she family also sheltered a Jewish dentist. a priest who prays in Ukrainian, and Jerusalem for almost 19 years. “It was felt comfortable. Hester lost a great Their neighbors were Nazi collabo- no one bothers us,” she says. a connection like a connection deal in the war. Her home was rators, heightening the need for effec- Jaroslawa arrived in Israel in very dif- between mother and daughter,” Elena destroyed and her family’s wealth tive subterfuge. Hester’s father was ferent circumstances than Hester. It says, recalling the holidays they cele- confiscated. Her father Robert was a fighting with the resistance, and her was economics, not idealism, that brated together — both Jewish and fearless resistance fighter who ended mother had to scrounge for food, brought her here. In 1989, a man she Christian. “Our festivals were her fes- up in prison and then in the concen- devise plans for when soldiers called, helped save, Avraham Shapiro, invited tivals and her festivals became our tration camps. He collapsed and died run regular surprise drills, and pre- her to visit Israel, to meet him after five festivals.” moments before liberation. serve peace in the tense household. decades, and to visit Yad Vashem, People with stories like Galina’s, As well as feeling weighed down by She sometimes served tulip bulbs where she would receive a medal as a individuals who found themselves history, Hester felt that postwar instead of potatoes, and often cycled Righteous Among the Nations. She drawn to Israel after rescuing Jews Holland wasn’t the same country. up to 75 miles — usually on metal recalls: “When I was here people start- during the Holocaust, live dotted “Holland changed after the war,” she wheels uncushioned by tires — to find ed asking me about the economic situ- around Israel, rarely telling their sto- says. “It was destroyed and the coun- food. ation back home, and it was very ries to the media. All of them were try had to have a new life. But it was After the war, Helena remained in (Continued on page 12) Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SALUTE TO HOLLYWOOD BENEFIT GALA

Leonard Wilf, chairman of ASYV; Phil Blazer, founder and president of Jewish Life Television; Legacy Award recipient and producer of the Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List, Branko Lustig; Presentation of Legacy Award to Holocaust survivor and Hollywood producer Meyer Gottlieb (cen- Ron Meier, executive director of ASYV. ter), by actor and family friend Tony Goldwyn (left) and Leonard Wilf, chairman of ASYV (right).

Ron Meier, executive director of ASYV (left) and Leonard Wilf, chairman of ASYV (right) with Sheldon and Dr. Miriam Adelson, Yad Vashem Patrons of the Mount of Remembrance, at 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, real estate developer, and philanthropist, David Wiener. Salute to Hollywood Gala.

Shaya Ben Yehudah, director of the International Relations Department at Yad Vashem, Rita Fela and David, z”l, Shapell at the 2014 Salute to Hollywood Gala. Fela Shapell and Shapell fami- Spiegel, daughter of ASYV founders Abraham and Edita Speigel, z”l, Gala Chairs Elissa and ly, Platinum Sponsors of the 2016 Gala, were in attendance at this year’s Gala. Edward Czuker. May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ASYV ANNUAL SPRING LUNCHEON his year’s sold-out Annual Spring Luncheon was held on May 18th at the Jewish that will make it important and meaningful,” Jaci said. TMuseum on 92nd Street. The event honored Jaci Paradis for her contributions The chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, Leonard Wilf, reminded to Holocaust remembrance and education and for her unwavering dedication to us of the importance of continuing to raise awareness in the next generation. “It is advancing our Young Leadership Associates. The guest speaker was Dr. Laura a wonderful thing to see so many members of the third generation joining us here Barbanel, a psychologist, who spoke about teaching the Holocaust to your children. today as we honor Jaci Paradis, an active member of our Young Leadership Jaci Paradis was presented with the American Society for Yad Vashem Associates. Jaci’s connection to Holocaust remembrance is deeply rooted. It is Achievement Award by Chairman Leonard Wilf and Executive Director Ron Meier. through dedicated people like her that I know the memories of the Holocaust will She was recognized for her ongoing commitment to Holocaust education and com- be passed on to the generations to come. memoration which are central to her family. Jaci plans to continue working with the ”In her closing remarks, Luncheon Chair Danielle Karten reminded everyone of American Societyfor Yad Vashem to reach out to third-generation families to work the importance of being involved in the American Society for Yad Vashem and in together on a plan to educate children about the Holocaust. “Making sure that the Holocaust remembrance. “We need to continue to recognize the survivors who are Holocaust remains important to my children is very important. They won’t have the still among us,”said Danielle. “Holocaust remembrance has to be part of us all and benefit of speaking with survivors to hear the stories first hand. We need to devel- we have to pass along the stories and memories to our children and they must be op a program that will help parents teach their children about the Holocaust in ways prepared to pass them along to their children."

Three generations — Sara Bergman, Jaci Paradis and Miriam Booso. Ron Meier, executive director of the ASYV; Jaci Paradis, honoree; and Leonard Wilf, chairman of the ASYV.

Shelley Paradis, honoree Jaci Paradis, and Joseph Paradis. Sharon Halpern, Jaci Paradis, David Halpern and Gladys Halpern.

Danielle Karten, Luncheon chair; and Harry Karten. Daniella Pomeranc; YLA Chair Abbi Halpern; Jaci Paradis, Rachel Shnay and Jessica Mauk. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM

A WWII VACATION THAT SAVED RENEWAL OF RELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE TWO JEWISH BROTHERS’ LIVES POCKING-WALDSTADT DP CAMP wo Jewish brothers from Paris, Paris in their preventorium. he Yad Vashem Archives cur- who worked there were murdered, T Henri and André Herscovici, 11 In the summer of 1942, one of the T rently house some 125,000 their bodies flung into a large mass and 9, respectively, were sent away Herscovicis’ neighbors, a Mme. Roby, video, audio and written testimonies, grave,” said Griver. “My father decid- for a vacation in the summer of 1942. wrote to them, saying “A black time all of which enrich our knowledge and ed to move them into a Jewish grave, The vacation wouldn’t only provide lies ahead for you. Under no circum- understanding of Jewish life before, based on lists he had with him. Little them with fresh air, as their mother stances should you return here.” during and after the Shoah. by little, he made sure that the non- wanted, but it would save their lives. Seeing the Herscovicis’ despair and One such testimony, given to Yad Jews who perished were buried in a In that same period, their mother helplessness (their father had joined Vashem in 2009 by Miriam Griver, separate place, in a Christian cere- and sisters were taken to the Drancy the underground before the rest of the tells the story of her father, Rabbi mony conducted by a priest.” family was deported and Yehuda Aryeh Meisels, who survived Beyond his work with the would only be reunited the Holocaust against all odds and deceased, Rabbi Meisels worked with his sons after the went on to be an active rabbi in the hard to rehabilitate Jewish spiritual war), the Coches did Pocking-Waldstadt DP camp in life in the camp. He obtained affi- everything they could to Germany. davits and helped the She’erit provide for the young chil- In 1945, Jewish-American soldier Hapleita — the surviving remnant of dren and to protect them Sidney Chachmaister noticed a man Holocaust survivors — immigrate to from being turned over to lying prone on top of a mound of Eretz Israel. “He aspired not to leave the Nazis and their allies. corpses at the Pocking concentra- any Jew on German soil,” added Along with Henri and tion camp in Germany, weakly blink- Griver. André, the Coches helped ing his eyes. This was Rabbi On Rabbi Meisels’ initiative, a hide another 15 or so Meisels, about whom Griver, chair- memorial was established at Jewish children, along woman of Amutat Yesh (Child and Pocking for those murdered in the with another Jewish dor- Orphan Holocaust Survivors in Holocaust. In 1947, when a march of Marthe Coche, Blaindainville, 1942. mitory supervisor. The Israel) recalled: “In 1942, my father the survivors from the Pocking camp internment camp and then later to institution’s adjacent farms provided was sent to forced labor because took place, a ceremony was held to Auschwitz, where they would eventu- enough fresh supplies for all the chil- informants claimed he was hiding a inaugurate the towering memorial, ally be killed by the Nazis. dren during the war, and none of the refugee from Czechoslovakia In the which bore the names of those mur- While the Herscovici brothers were Jews faced any discrimination during summer of 1944, he was deported to dered. Aside from survivors from the saved from the immediate Nazi the three years that they remained Auschwitz, and later put on a death DP camp, the American soldiers threat, they truly owed their lives to there until the Allies liberated France. march to Flossenbürg. Two days who liberated the camp and a local Paul and Marthe Coche, the couple Paul Coche died in 1953, and later, he reached Pocking.” official were also present. After the that ran the Santé de l’Enfance pre- Marthe in 1972, and it wasn’t until After finding Rabbi Meisels and DP camp was closed, Rabbi Meisels ventorium, where the summer pro- 1999 that Henri, who had made aliya tending to him, the Americans was offered a rabbinical position in gram was that they had attended. with his father and André on the appointed him the religious authority Chicago. However, he declined “to The Coches’ institution for those Exodus 5707 in 1947, was discovered of the DP camp. “Pocking had been remain in Exile,” and emigrated to with tuberculosis, at the Château de and approached by Marthe’s children. a forced labor camp. Many Jews Israel with his family in 1949. Beaurouvre in Blandainville, was Henri Herscovici testified on the open to all those in need. Coches’ behalf, and Yad Vashem rec- The couple were defenders of the ognized Paul and Marthe Coche as STORY OF HOW US SOLDIER ideals of social equality, and altogeth- Righteous Among the Nations on May er housed almost 100 students from 5, 2003. SAVED 200 JEWS FINALLY TOLD Geneva Conventions. The command- er then put a gun to Edmonds’ head. BY ARDEN DIER, NEWSER DUTCH CHRISTIAN COUPLE HONORED “He said, ‘I’ll give you one more oddie Edmonds is the first US chance. Have the Jewish men step FOR HOLOCAUST-ERA BRAVERY Rsoldier to receive Israel’s forward or I will shoot you on the utch Christian Zionists who died 1949 at the age of 42 as a result of Righteous Among the Nations honor, spot,’” Edmonds’ son, the Rev. Chris Das a result of their unrelenting the abuse. Prior to the war, he organ- 70 years after he risked his life to save Edmonds, tells NPR. “They said my efforts to save Jews from the ized meetings to protest anti- 200 Jews. The native of Knoxville, dad paused, and said, Holocaust were recognized by Israel Semitism, which he considered a sin Tennessee, was cap- ‘If you shoot, you’ll have as Righteous Among the Nations. against God’s “chosen people.” tured in the Battle of the to shoot us all.’” The A medal attesting to the distinction, Questioned by the Nazis, he Bulge in late 1944 and commander yielded. conferred by the Jewish state through explained his theological motives but held at German POW Chris Edmonds the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, betrayed no concrete information. camp Stalag IXA, believes his dad’s move was given by Israel’s ambassador to While he was arrested and perhaps according to the Yad saved 200 lives. the Netherlands, Haim Divon, to Maya tortured, Johanna was traveling with Vashem Holocaust Edmonds died in 1985 Schipper — a granddaughter of two Jewish children and her own son museum. When the and his untold story Johanna Engelberta Schipper-Kuiper between safe houses. Her family, Nazis ordered all nearly died with him. and her husband, Klaas Abe Schipper. which was ardently Zionist, was heav- Jewish-American How it surfaced is fasci- From 1943 to 1945, the Schippers, a ily involved in her rescue operation. POWs to step forward nating: Some time after pastor and his wife from Schardam She smuggled one of the Jewish chil- on January 27, 1945, his father’s death, Chris near Amsterdam, endured between dren, whom she later adopted, from a Edmonds — the high- Edmonds read an arti- them a total of at least four house Nazi-run detention center. A wanted est-ranking noncom- This undated photograph shows searches by German Nazis and Nazi cle about Richard person, she showed up at the missioned officer at the United States Army Master Sgt. collaborators. In one search, they man- Nixon’s purchase of a Amsterdam facility, engaged the camp — ordered 1,000 Roddie Edmonds during World aged to avoid capture by hiding sever- tony Manhattan town- guards and talked her way in — per- US soldiers to do so, War II. al Jews in secret hideouts in their home house from a man haps thanks to her excellent German. and in adjacent buildings. One of them, regardless of their religion, per the AP. named Lester Tanner — who men- Ruth Lilienthal, concealed herself in a Johanna Schipper died in 1956 at “They cannot all be Jews!” a German tioned that Edmonds saved his life. closet as Nazi troops searched for her. the age of 59 from an infection that commander said, per Yad Vashem. The son then embarked on a quest to Klaas Abe was arrested twice, for developed in a wound that she sus- “We are all Jews here,” Edmonds find Tanner. Edmonds was honored several months at a time. His health tained in a vehicular accident while replied, adding soldiers didn’t need to as only the fifth American to receive deteriorated severely, and he died in bringing fake passports to Jews. divulge their religion under the the Israeli honor. May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 HOLOCAUST HAUNTS LITHUANIANS AS PAINFUL PAST COMES TO LIGHT “I want to break the silence, to open neighbors. Union in 1941. Some Lithuanians BY VAIDOTAS BENIUSIS, AFP up the wound,” Vanagaite told an Critics argue that Vanagaite, also a hailed the Germans as liberators, audience recently at a bookshop in public relations guru, exploited the hoping they would grant Lithuania a ithuanians are taking an agoniz- Vilnius, a city once dubbed the Holocaust to gain publicity and failed measure of sovereignty. ing closer look at their forefa- L “Jerusalem of the North” for its vibrant to provide any new historical informa- The Soviets returned in 1944, going thers’ role in killing Jewish neighbors Jewish life before the war. tion. on to deport and exile more than during the Holocaust, a dark chapter “A mature nation must know its his- But Zuroff, who has slammed 275,000 Lithuanians, mostly to of the Baltic country’s history that was tory so it is not repeated.” the 61- Vilnius for being slow to prosecute Siberia. Another 21,000 died in an hidden for decades. year-old author said. suspected collaborators, insists that anti-Soviet insurgency. A series of books and films has trig- wo black-and-white photo- Vanagaite’s own soul-searching is resident Algirdas Brazauskas gered national soul-searching by graphs adorn the cover of her valuable. apologized for Lithuanian col- making the point that while T P book: Jewish cyclist Isakas Nolikas There is “a good chance that it will laborators with the Nazis during his Lithuanians were the victims of Nazi who represented Lithuania in the help Lithuanian society 1924 and 1928 Olympics and because it is written not perished in 1943, and Balys in an academic way but Norvaisa, a Lithuanian lieu- in a journalistic way” that tenant who killed Jews. is more accessible to Among the emotionally readers, Zuroff, who wrenching testimony in the works at Nazi-hunting book, an elderly woman told Simon Wiesenthal Vanagaite: “Many people Center’s Jerusalem wanted to help Jewish chil- office, told AFP. dren, but they were afraid. Respected Lithuanian Not of the Germans, but of author Sigitas Parulskis their own.” was among the first to hit Lithuania was home to a a raw nerve when he community of more than focused on the genocide 200,000 Jews before World in rural Lithuania with his War II. But historians contend novel Darkness and that around 195,000 perished Partners (Tamsa ir The Paneriai memorial in memory of the 70,000 Jews of Vilnius at the hands of the Nazis and Partneriai), earning him and its environs killed by Nazis and their accomplices during local collaborators under the a local human rights World War II. 1941–44 German occupation, award in 2012. historic 1995 speech in Israel’s parlia- nearly the entire Jewish pop- Film and theater directors have also ment. ulation. focused on the Holocaust, notably the Lithuania’s parliament passed a Best-selling author Ruta Vanagaite. Today there are around movie Ghetto by Audrius Juzenas. compensation package in 2011 for 3,000 Jews living in the EU The Holocaust was either distorted Jewish communal property seized by and Soviet occupation of the country, and NATO member state of three mil- or ignored in Lithuania under five the Nazis and then kept by the Soviet at times they too were perpetrators of lion people. decades of Soviet rule. An honest regime. crimes. and their victims were Jews. A state-funded research center has examination only began after it It marked a milestone for the Baltic Best-selling author Ruta Vanagaite, identified 2,000 Lithuanians suspect- became the first republic to split from state’s tiny Jewish community, but its who co-wrote Our People (Musiskiai) ed of taking part in the Holocaust, the USSR in 1990. leader says a great deal of work is still with top Israeli Nazi hunter Efraim either by killing Jews, by sending The Soviet Union occupied needed. Zuroff, is the latest to spark difficult them to execution or by confiscating Lithuania in 1940 under Moscow’s “There has been a tremendous discussions. their wealth. The study is due to be secret pact with Nazi Germany, and amount of academic research about Writing the book turned out to be released later this year. later the Soviets deported over the Holocaust, but I think we lag deeply personal and painful when she At the same time nearly 900 17,000 Lithuanians to Siberia. behind in education,” Jewish commu- discovered her grandfather had col- Lithuanians hold the honorary title of Anti-Semitic propaganda blaming nity leader Faina Kukliansky told AFP. laborated with Nazis by working for a “Righteous Among the Nations,” the Jews for Soviet terror became rife. “The history of Lithuanian Jews commission compiling lists of Jews in awarded by Israel to gentiles who Germany then drove out the Red must become an integral part of 1941. risked their lives to save Jewish Army when it invaded the Soviet Lithuania’s system of education.” SIBLING SURVIVORS OF SHOAH DIE WITHIN HOURS OF EACH OTHER (Continued from page 6) would honor her parents and her fam- while babysitting her grandchildren Israel for burial, arriving on Monday at were one of the first Orthodox families ily killed in the Holocaust by being “liv- later that day, the assisted living facil- 1:30 p.m. in Fair Lawn. ing proof that life goes on.” ity phoned to say that Sophie was not Mizrachi’s brother had not intended “As a Jewish child in the United Some 16 years later, at 89 years doing well. to accompany the body, but after States, I couldn’t understand why my old, Sophie made aliya and joined her Mizrachi went to the home that night Mizrachi let him know that Sophie mother was sending Christmas pres- daughter. and slept in her mother’s room. The was ailing, he decided to fly to Israel. ents to Poland, with Christmas trees Mizrachi had tried to persuade her whole night, Sophie fought demons, As Mizrachi spent Saturday night and Santa Claus,” said Mizrachi, mother to move to Israel earlier, but trying to get out of bed and speaking with her mother, Sophie began to drift recalling her mother’s ongoing con- Sophie had been reluctant to leave Sol. Yiddish. Mizrachi says that Sophie again into sleepless delirium. On tact with her childhood Polish friend, So how did Mizrachi persuade struggled with the demons because Sunday afternoon, an ambulance was who had provided her with the papers Sophie to make the move? “I told her, “she felt that her brother was dying,” called for Sophie, whose condition decades before. “My mother, every the Messiah doesn’t come to Fair even though she’d been told nothing had deteriorated. couple of months, would send her Lawn, New Jersey.” of his situation. When Mizrachi saw her mother, she money. Even if she had nothing.” One day, Mizrachi got a phone call Over the next 24 hours Sophie’s realized that she was trying to hold off Mizrachi married a Sabra — a from her brother in the States, who condition ranged from feverish and dying until Sol’s body arrived. Golani Brigade soldier she met in told her that Sol, who had been diag- dehydrated to apparently fine, and a Sophie died Sunday night, just after Manhattan — and in 1995, after 40 nosed with stage IV lung cancer, was doctor placed her under observation Sol’s body and her son had arrived in years of feeling that she didn’t fit in not given much time to live. Sol’s wish that afternoon. Israel. After the double burial for New Jersey, made aliya with three was to be buried next to Eliezer, who Mizrachi went home for Shabbat, Sophie and Sol the next day, Mizrachi children and a sheepdog. Her aliya died in 1982 and is buried on Har where she received a phone call from said, “She vowed to her parents that was the result of her sensing that she Hamenuhot in Jerusalem. her brother telling her that Sol had died. she would take care of her brother has a higher calling and that she As Mizrachi absorbed the news Sol’s body was to be shipped to until the end, and she kept her vow.” Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS, AT HOME IN ISRAEL (Continued from page 7) afterwards that he had been scared ly home of two other rescuers. Deep again — they are part of the Jewish hard, especially as my parents had “that someone would step on his in the desert lies Yeruham, a small people in the good times and in the just died.” She started to find out hand.” city dominated by the families of harder times.” about state programs that help the Yael Rosen, one of the most dedicat- Jewish immigrants from Morocco and No family knows the reality of this “righteous” relocate to Israel, and ed volunteers helping the “righteous” India. Among them lived Yekaterina common fate better than the found that there was only one thing with home visits and phone calls, finds Movchan-Panchenko and Galina Shuranis. Tzipi Shurani’s parents met standing in her way: “I couldn’t afford Peotr Sanevich’s biography one of the Panchenko, two Christian widows under the most unlikely circum- the airfare.” Shapiro stepped in to whose first encounter stances: Her father was a Jewish pris- cover the expense. with Jews came in the oner in a Nazi labor camp and her Today she has enough money to aid 1940s when they helped mother lived in a house next door to relatives facing harsh economic con- save two Jewish children the fence. Latzi Shurani had already ditions in Ukraine. Like others who from the Nazis. promised himself that he would marry moved to Israel after saving Jews, The mother of seven- Irena Csizmadia when the two of she receives visits as well as practical year-old Pavel and one- them dug their way toward each and medical assistance from the and-a-half-year-old Nina other, fashioning a tunnel that ended Israeli charity Atzum, which has a had already been mur- in the Csizmadia basement, through project dedicated to helping them. “I dered by the time they which he and more than two dozen feel extremely fortunate for the fact I arrived at the Panchenko other prisoners escaped. They did live in Israel,” Jaroslawa says. “I don’t family home in what is marry, and lived together contentedly have the words to express it.” now Ukraine. Yekaterina in the Galilee. But when the second of She believes it was Christian faith and Galina were just 19 two Hezbollah rockets hit their home that pushed her family to hide Jews in and 11 respectively, but during the Second Lebanon War of their home, help Jewish refugees, Yekaterina Movchan-Panchenko receives an award honoring the they sprang into action 2006, Irena suffered a serious stroke, and take food to the ghetto of Zloczow Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in 2001. and helped keep the and the active golden years that the near their home. “It’s the Christian most moving. “It’s a story of a deep children safe, fed and healthy. pair were enjoying were suddenly torn faith that motivated me and my moth- bond that was rediscovered so many Police came knocking twice, away from them. er, and also concern for our neigh- years later,” she says. demanding to see the children, but Nevertheless, they maintained the bors,” she comments. For Peotr, moving to Israel was a Pavel and Nina were hidden in the love that blossomed in the shadow of She was only five or six when she case of repaying hospitality. He con- cellar. After surviving the war, the two hatred. Latzi died two years ago. Irena started making grocery runs to the structed a secret hiding place for two children stayed in Krivaya Ruda, is today in a home, unable to reflect on ghetto, wearing a backpack with food young Jews who arrived on his fami- where they became parents and her life, but Tzipi says, “I wish every buried under notepads and school- ly’s farm in Ukraine after narrowly grandparents. But history took couple could be like my father and work. She would slip in through a gap escaping death. He knew what could Yekaterina and Galina elsewhere, mother. They would always hold in a barbed-wire fence. Later, when happen if he helped them: An entire and shortly after the fall of the Soviet hands, and go everywhere together.” the gap was closed, she would family from a nearby house had been Union they moved to Israel and put When “righteous” who moved to brazenly enter through the gate when burned for sheltering Jews. But for down roots in Yeruham, where they Israel die, their funerals — paid for guards weren’t paying attention. “Of two years, he and his family kept lived until they died a few years ago. from state budgets — are emotional course there was fear, but the young Buzya and David safe. Yael Rosen used to work full time and dignified affairs; the starkest Germans never hit [non-Jewish] chil- Peotr heard nothing from the Jews with the “righteous,” directing Atzum’s possible contrast to the disdainful dren,” she says. This is why she took he saved for almost five decades. program to care for them. Even since treatment given to gentiles who the responsibility for the food drops: her After the fall of the USSR, however, she moved on to a high-pressure job Nazis caught and killed for helping mother had been spotted and beaten. he started making enquiries. In 1993, at a Tel Aviv museum, she still makes Jews. Rosen recalls the funeral of At home, there were several close the Israeli ambassador to the newly visiting them a priority. Asked why, one of the sisters who lived in calls, especially when Nazi officials independent Ukraine got Peotr back she responds, “It’s a huge privilege to Yeruham. “There was a priest con- hoped to make use of children who in touch with them. David suggested know these people and be involved ducting the ceremony, other people were too young to fully understand that Peotr move to Israel and he did, with them. They risked their lives to eulogizing her for saving Jews, and what was going on. Once her father together with his wife Olga, and Rosa, save Jews and there’s never enough the setting was the Negev where a hid a boy under the sofa, and he was the youngest of his six children. They that we can do for them — anything camel was walking by,” she recalled. there, playing with a toy soldier while chose to live in David’s city, we do is a drop in the sea.” “It was very surreal and very moving a real-life Nazi officer was in the Beersheva, in order to be close to She adds, “During the Holocaust, being in the Israeli desert burying house, oblivious to the danger he and him. they cast their lot with the Jewish peo- such a special woman from the his hosts were in. The child remarked The Negev also became the unlike- ple and now, they’re doing the same Ukraine.” REMEMBER THEM Poland and Germany. He was sent remarried, and his last name, son innocently, “What did we do BY LEORA EISENBERG, away to live as a farmer’s son on the Freiburg, changed to Eisenberg. He today?” THE ALGEMEINER countryside. He pretended to be an excelled in school, became fluent in tell you only the story of Adi altar boy in a church to avoid being English, and went to university. He IEisenberg. I could recount stories ix-year-old Abraham Freiburg identified as a Jude with a yellow star. received a PhD in chemistry from about my maternal grandparents, Shad fled with his mother and long He hid for months in someone’s attic, Princeton, and went on to become whose families were persecuted for entertained the notion that Tati — the speaking only through whispers. He one of the top 100 most influential being Jewish in the Soviet Union — my Yiddish word for Daddy — was only was thrown into jail when he and his chemists in the world. His son’s grandmother who was separated from missing and that they would soon find mother crossed the border to Hebrew name is Eliezer. This Eliezer her parents and put into an orphanage him. But “never again” came too late, Hungary illegally. also sang in a lovely tone-deaf way to for a while, my grandfather who had the because Abraham’s father was no The war ended, and little Abraham his daughter, me, whom he bore on war break out on his fourth birthday — longer his lively Tati who sang him to and his mother, Heline, had narrowly his shoulders and took to synagogue. both of whom survived the Siege of sleep in that endearing tone-deaf way. escaped death dozens of times. The Adi had many grandchildren, only Leningrad. I could tell you about my His father was no longer his trusted rest of the family was not so lucky. one of whom bears the Eisenberg mother who fled Russia to seek refuge confidant. His father was no longer the Some, who lived in the ghetto, were name. He is now eighty-one and is in America or about my cousin who still one who bore Abraham on his shoul- shot when walking home. Some were developing dementia. When his son has his yellow star. ders or walked to synagogue with him. rounded up in faraway places like and granddaughter took him to the How will we perpetuate their memo- Abraham learned soon enough that his Babi Yar and buried with screams still Holocaust Museum over the summer, ry? Jew hatred did not die with the father, Eliezer Freiburg, was dead, fresh in their throats. Some had num- memories flooded back. He recalled Holocaust, but neither did the Jews. murdered at the hands of a Nazi whose bers on their arms. Some came to horrific tales of death and darkness We are all the children and grandchil- face he had never seen. Israel. Some never left Poland. that survivors can know. As soon as dren of survivors, whose stories we Abraham spent the next eight years Abraham came to America and he came home, however, the memo- now hold and legacies we continue. running between Hungary, Romania, changed his name to Adi. His mother ries disappeared. Abraham asked his Remember them. May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 HEAD OF HOLOCAUST RESEARCH GROUP REVEALS SHOCKING NEW TESTIMONY FROM WARSAW GHETTO he oft-repeated notion that “which happened almost 73 years ghetto and were shooting at Nazis would “be a better place,” Daniels T Jews went willingly to the ago to this very day,” Daniels said. walking past. One of the little-known related. “They realized that this would slaughter during the Holocaust is Daniels shared the story publicly for ways the Nazis would enter the build- be their final stop and they fought completely unfounded, a Holocaust the first time with The Algemeiner: ings of the ghetto was by using a back, taking sadly a futile stand commemoration activist told The human shield, a Jew. One of the sur- before they were murdered.” In other Algemeiner, citing a number of docu- vivors told of the time that while block- cases, “Jewish women refused to be ments which were recently uncovered aded inside the room, they suddenly stripped naked, paraded and often by his organization detailing eyewit- heard a knock on the door. Sitting qui- raped by their Nazi tormentors. ness accounts of Jews fighting back. etly, the boys heard the sweet old Instead, they would attack the Nazis Jonny Daniels, founder and execu- voice of an elderly Jewish man calm- and, in some accounts, even kill the tive director of From the Depths, ly call out to them in beautiful, poetic Nazi bastards before they were mur- which works with Holocaust survivors, Yiddish: “My children, the time has dered themselves.” Jewish communities in Eastern come. I am knocking on this door ask- “One of the questions I always Europe and the Polish government to ing for safe passage. Alas, behind me heard growing up and which was preserve the memory of the stands a group of Amalek (evil peo- actually asked in one of my first inter- Holocaust, said that one of several ple). Shoot me and then kill them. views in Poland over two years ago projects he is engaged in includes Better I die by the bullet of Jewish is, ‘Why didn’t the Jews put up more translating firsthand accounts that heroes than by the bullet of evil.” The of a fight? Why did they go like sheep have sat untouched for years in young men did just that. By giving his to the slaughter?’ After a few years of Poland’s governmental archives. life, the old pious Jew saved those living the subject, speaking with sur- Daniels said his organization has young Jews fighting, allowing them to vivors, saviors and eyewitnesses, I “uncovered remarkable documenta- live another day. can unequivocally say that the Jews tion that shows thousands of According to Daniels, “this story is fought back,” Daniels said. accounts of ‘fighting back’ from eye- perhaps the most harrowing of The uncovering of these stories of witnesses” throughout the Holocaust, accounts we have ever uncovered.” heroism and survival by From the which he is working on cataloging, ther remarkable testimony Depths highlights an important issue translating and publishing. Ouncovered by From the Depths facing the future of Holocaust memo- Recently, Daniels and his team shows how many Jews worked to rialization, Daniels said. “The same came across an old Communist-era ensure that their last moments on way we are losing survivors of the document written in the late 1940s. earth would not be spent in vain. In Holocaust, so too are eyewitnesses The document turned out to be an Warsaw ghetto uprising monument at Yad one case, eyewitness accounts tell of passing away at a rapid rate,” he said. Vashem, Jerusalem. eyewitness account from a Jewish malnourished and downtrodden Jews “We have a handful of years left to male in his 20s of an emotional tale of A group of Jewish boys blockaded getting off the trains at the Treblinka interview and speak to these people survival from the Warsaw ghetto themselves in a building inside the concentration camp after being told it before it is too late.” THE HOLOCAUST WITHOUT JEWS (Continued from page 5) socialists who were targeted because power, usually under the guise of f anti-Semitism without Jews is a minority akin to anti-Apartheid of their political disposition. “anti-Zionism.” In his 1971 study Anti- Imarker of “moral pollution and Afrikaners or members of the French Emphasizing the specifically anti- Semitism without Jews, Hungarian- political disintegration,” then so too is Resistance. To capture the full enormity Semitic nature of the Holocaust, born Austrian writer Paul Lendvai the Holocaust without Jews an indica- of the Jewish State’s depravity, the two Communists worried, would work detailed the cynical ways that tor of ethical rot. The lessons of the traveled to Germany to meet with what against their political purposes, as the Communist governments incited their Holocaust are indeed universal, and Robert Mackey, the blogger then of the populations over which they ruled people against imaginary Jewish Jews — contrary to the anti-Semitic New York Times, called “young Israeli were quite anti-Semitic themselves — threats in lands almost entirely deplet- stereotype of a selfish people hungry dissidents” who had fled the Jewish and had by and large looked away, or ed of their Jewish populations — and for the world’s pity — have been at State, in the words of Sivan, “seeking even eagerly participated, as their how those conspiratorial hysterias the forefront of applying its lessons to refuge from Israel’s politics in Berlin.” latter-day manifestations of bigotry, For the dwindling true believers in a intolerance and genocide. The United postnational Europe, it is hard to imag- States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ine a story that could be more satisfy- for instance, has an entire center ing than Jews fleeing their Nazi-like devoted to the prevention of geno- nation-state for the utopia of Berlin, cide, and practically no commemora- whose residents have learned the les- tion of the Holocaust — be it a book, sons of their past as the stiff-necked a film or a religious service —lacks Jews manifestly have not. For anyone mention of contemporary struggles not quite so enamored of the EU, it is against injustice. hard to imagine a story that at once is Yet the Holocaust’s universal mean- so magnificently self-flattering, and ings are not inconsistent with an lets Europeans off the hook so com- appreciation of its singularity, both in pletely for their repulsive historical terms of process (the first and only crimes — while further enabling the time a modern state carried out an deeply ingrained anti-Semitism that industrial-scale, mechanized mass made those crimes so deadly. Hitler Youth members overseeing Jews made to scrub the streets in Vienna, Austria, 1938. murder with the aim of exterminating oday’s progressive narrative of an entire people) and victims (primari- T the Holocaust without Jews is Jewish neighbors were carried off to spoke to a deeper societal sickness ly, but not exclusively, Jews). Indeed, not altogether different from the last the gas chambers. Ever amoral, the having little to do with Jews. “The very these unique aspects of the Holocaust great leftist attempt to deny the truth Communists utilized anti-Semitism in fact that what we are witnessing is complement one other in distinguish- of the Shoah. After WWII, the Soviet much the same way Muslim regimes essentially an anti-Semitism without ing the event from any other crime Union and its puppet Communist have exploited Jew-hatred to mobilize Jews is an all the more alarming against humanity. Without independ- regimes in Central and Eastern discontented populations; from the symptom of moral pollution and politi- ently acknowledging both the univer- Europe solemnized the Nazis’ victims 1952 “Doctors’ Plot” to the infamous cal disintegration,” he wrote. “The sality and the historicity of the as “anti-Fascists,” lumping in together Slansky trial that same year to fewer Jews there are, the more the Holocaust, we will fail to understand the six million Jews who were, by dint Poland’s 1967–1968 Jewish purge, fight against racial hatred becomes what happened, and to whom — and of their birth, singled out for execu- Communist authorities raised the primarily, almost exclusively in the how to prevent such a tragedy from tion, alongside the Communists and phantom menace of nefarious Jewish interest of non-Jews.” ever happening again, to anyone. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 AZNAVOUR’S FAMILY SAVED JEWS FROM NAZIS Charles Aznavour’s family hid were involved in the command of the commander of the underground group Aznavour and his sister say there Jews in their home during the Turkish army in World War I and known as L’Affiche Rouge (The Red were days when 11 refugees were all German occupation of Paris in signed orders to expel the Armenians Poster), which was the first to carry out hiding in the family’s apartment simul- World War II, French-Armenian later served in high-ranking positions armed resistance actions against the taneously. They hid in different cor- singer reveals in new book. in the Nazi leadership and took part in Nazis. Aznavour’s family aided the ners of the house, and at night had to the annihilation of the Jews. group on many occasions and also hid sleep on the floor. BY AVNER SHAPIRA, HAARETZ Aznavour says he knew many Jews the Manouchians for several months The family prepared false papers for knew the chains/I knew the when he was a child in Paris. while they were being hunted by the them, and one of the tasks assigned “Iwound/I knew the hate/I knew “We grew up together in the Le French police and Gestapo. to the two children was to burn the the hurt/ the thirst and hunger/I knew Marais district, where many refugees The first time the family hid some- deserters’ German uniforms and dis- the fear/from one day to the next.” and immigrants — including many one during World War II was when a pose of them far from the house. So go the lyrics to Charles How aware were you of the political Aznavour’s song “J’ai Connu,” from his significance of hiding wanted people 50th studio album, released in 2011. in your family home? How aware of The song, told from the perspective of the danger were you? a Jewish prisoner in the Nazi concen- Aznavour: “My parents knew the tration camps, doesn’t describe the danger was there every day, but my singer’s direct experiences during sister and I only grasped it later. We World War II. But Aznavour, who will were ‘crazy’ young people. We were celebrate his 92nd birthday later this living out our youth and we followed in month, did have some personal aware- our parents’ footsteps. Only after the ness of some of the horrors depicted in war did we realize how great the risk the song, as the son of refugees who really was.” survived the Armenian genocide and Auron dedicates a large part of his rebuilt their lives in Paris after losing book to the activities of L’Affiche most of their relatives. Rouge — whose story is barely Although Aznavour’s life has been known in Israel, despite significant extensively chronicled, up to now he Jewish participation in it. has said very little about an especially A portrait photograph of the Aznavour family in the 1920s. Charles’ father, Mischa (center), is next The group, which was associated to his wife, Knar. humane and heroic chapter in his and with the French Communist Party and his family’s life: their decision to shelter Jews and Armenians — lived in the friend of Aznavour’s father brought whose members were mostly immi- and save Jews, Armenian deserters period between the two world wars. My his brother to them — a Romanian grants without French citizenship, and underground activists in their father’s stall in the market was next to Jew who lived in Germany, was was active in 1942–1943 as part of home during the German occupation of the stalls of some Jewish vendors. accused of subversion and was sen- the French Resistance, and carried France during the war, and their “Armenian peddlers, including my tenced to death. He had managed to out armed attacks against the French involvement in anti-Nazi activity. father, looked after the stalls of the escape to France disguised as a police and Gestapo, inflicting casual- Now Aznavour has decided to tell Jews after they were arrested in the German soldier, and he knew that the ties among the Germans. the whole story, in Hebrew, in a self- mass deportation of Parisian Jews Gestapo was after him. He found It was named after the red propa- published book, Matzilim (Tzadikim) [“the roundup”] in July 1942. So taking refuge in the family’s three-room ganda poster the authorities distrib- Ve’Lohamim (Righteous Saviors and in and hiding Jews in our home during apartment at 22 rue de Navarin, in uted against it, which included photo- Fighters), by genocide researcher the war was a very natural thing for us Paris’ ninth arrondissement. At the graphs of 10 members who were Prof. Yair Auron. The latter spoke at to do: they were our neighbors and start of the war, Aida recounts in the apprehended. length with Aznavour and his sister, friends,” he adds. “We had a life book, “We understood that the Jews The group had about 200 members; Aida Aznavour-Garvarentz, who told together. We were there for them and were going to be the victims of brutal- 67 were arrested, including 34 Jews him about their lives under the they were there for us.” ity. We looked upon the Jews with and three Armenians. Of the 23 who German occupation and what led In his three previous autobiographi- sadness and sorrow. We knew what were sentenced to death, 12 were their family, especially their father, to cal works, Aznavour made very little genocide was.” She says her parents Jews and two Armenians, including take part in rescue missions despite mention of these acts of salvation. He showed no hesitation in taking in the Missak Manouchian. the many risks. The book, which will told Auron he didn’t think they were so Jewish refugee, “even though it was When Manouchian was arrested, also be translated into French and special and didn’t want to be perceived clear that if the Nazis found this man his wife found refuge with her friends Armenian, recounts a specific case, as immodest. But the professor con- in our house, they’d kill us right away. the Aznavours, after other friends but offers a moral lesson on human vinced him of the importance of telling We told him that our home was his refused to take her in. Aznavour says behavior under conditions of wide- the story. Now the singer says, “I’m home, and we treated him warmly, his parents’ close friendship with the spread terror, and political and ideo- very proud of my family’s story and the like a good friend who had to extend Manouchians was part of the special logical violence. Above all, it is the beautiful, noble humanity of the act of his stay. For a few days, he even slept kinship shared by Armenian sur- moving story of survivors of one rescue. Nothing makes me happier in the same bed as Charles.” vivors. He has vivid memories of the genocide who, at great personal risk, than to think that my dear parents couple from his childhood — “Missak SHELTERING 11 REFUGEES felt compelled to help victims of saved people’s lives.” taught me to play chess,” he recalls. AT A TIME another. He says that although his parents BURNING THE UNIFORMS In an interview conducted by email, he two Aznavour children, who didn’t officially belong to the Aznavour emphasizes the common znavour was born in Paris on T were 16 and 17 at the start of Resistance, they aided much of the threads that bind the Armenians and A May 22, 1924, not long after his the German occupation in 1940, underground’s activity. His mother Jews. parents first arrived there. His father, pitched in to help, not knowing then helped a group transport weapons “We come from the same pain and Mischa Aznavourian, was born in that they would go on offering shelter that were hidden in a baby carriage. the same suffering, and without the Georgia in 1895 and lost his entire to strangers. But then a woman came When Manouchian was arrested, he annihilation of the Armenians in 1915- family in the Armenian genocide. His to the family, asking them to hide her sent a postcard to Aznavour’s mother, 1918, the annihilation of the Jews in the mother, Knar Baghdasaryan, was Jewish husband, whose name was telling her that her son would bring Holocaust would not have been possi- born in Izmir in 1904, and only she Simon. He had escaped from the honor to the Armenian people and ble, because the Germans learned and her grandmother out of her entire Drancy internment camp, where the glory to France. His words helped from their predecessors,” he writes. family survived the genocide. Jews of Paris were sent before being reassure his mother and planted hope He cites what Hitler told the com- The couple fled Turkey on an Italian sent to the concentration camps out- for her son’s future success. manders of the German army in ship that brought them to Thessaloniki, side of France. Auron says there were many other August 1939, on the eve of the inva- Greece, where their eldest daughter, For a while, the family also shel- Armenian families, like the Aznavour sion of Poland, as he tried to dispel Aida, was born in 1923. tered another Jew, and later on their family, who saved Jews during the their anxiety over the use of extreme The family had many Armenian apartment also served as a hideout Holocaust. Twenty-four of them have violence: “Who talks about the annihi- friends in Paris, among them a couple for Armenians who’d deserted after been recognized by Yad Vashem as lation of the Armenians anymore?” named Mélinée and Missak being forcibly drafted into the German Righteous Among the Nations, but Auron says German officers who Manouchian. The latter was the military army. there were even more. May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15

FRANCE TO PAY INTO WHEN POLAND EYED MADAGASCAR COMPENSATION FUND FOR US VICTIMS OF AS A FUTURE HOMELAND FOR JEWS HOLOCAUST (Continued from page 4) ulation balance in Poland. The dele- after Hitler came to power, some rance is to pay $60 million to the Foreign Ministry. He was also the gate from the Jewish Emigration 50,000 of them settling in Palestine. mainly American victims of the head of its emigration office, charged Association thought that 400 families Their arrival reduced the demograph- F Holocaust who were transported by with arranging the exit of citizens. might settle. The agricultural expert ic advantage of local Arabs, who tend- Poland’s official position was that from Palestine thought that even this ed to consider Palestine as part of train from France to Nazi death European maritime empires should was too much. The inhabitants of some larger Arab homeland. Thinking camps during the Second World either permit Poland access to Madagascar rejected any settlement that a continuation of Jewish immigra- War. resources in their overseas colonies from Poland. French nationalists, for tion could lead to the success of The two countries issued a joint or allow Polish citizens to migrate to their part, were concerned that the Zionism, Arab leaders organized polit- statement announcing the coming such places. This analysis had a force Polish colonization project would suc- ical action: first riots in April 1936, into force of a compensation agree- that went beyond Jewish policy. At a ceed and that the island would then the formation of strike commit- ment drafted in December 2014 after time when rural unemployment become Polish. Meanwhile, the pro- tees and a general strike that lasted years of legal wrangling. The settle- exceeded 50 per cent, Warsaw was Madagascar propaganda of the through October. This meant that ment creates a fund to compensate pushing for the right of all of its citi- Polish regime backfired: when told 1937 was the moment of truth for the thousands of non-French citizens, zens to emigrate. In the case of Jews, that the island was suitable for colo- European states with a declared inter- their spouses or descendants who Polish diplomats pointed to the dra- nization, Polish nationalists demand- est in the future of Palestine: Great were not covered by a settlement pro- matic consequences of frozen migra- ed “Madagascar only for the Poles!” Britain, Nazi Germany and Poland. gram that France put in place in 1946. tion routes. Before the First World London at first reacted to the Arab “The United States will administer War, roughly 150,000 Jews left disturbances with a proposal for the and distribute this amount to eligible Europe each year; in the 1930s the partition of Palestine. When this led to figure was a small fraction of this. In further political chaos, the British “trying to find an outlet for its surplus restricted Jewish immigration to a population” the Polish government quota. As the world was seen from had “in mind the Jews first of all.” London, Palestine was only a tiny part he question of the settlement of of the vast Arab and Muslim territories T European Jews was a general of the British Empire. Pleasing Jews European one, in which Poland occu- over Palestine could mean alienating pied a position somewhere between Muslims throughout the Near East the Nazi one (Jews must be eliminat- and southern Asia. ed, and emigration seemed the prac- Berlin specified in 1937 its own atti- tical way to achieve this) and the tude toward Zionism and a possible Zionist one (Jews had a right to a State of Israel. Palestine had state, which would have to be created appealed to the Nazi regime as a from an existing colony). place where Jews could settle so long The question of where European as this had no clear political implica- Jews might settle had been open The offices of Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer in tions for the Near East. But in spring since the 19th century, and very dif- Gdansk, circa 1935. An anti-Semitic poster in 1937 the German consul in ferent sorts of politicians and ideo- the window reads “Die Juden sind unser Jerusalem was concerned lest the Ungluck!” (“The Jews are our misfortune.”) logues proposed the same places. creation of a State of Israel from The Shoah memorial in Paris, which lists the 76,000 Jews deported from France during the The island of Madagascar, a colonial eck and Drymmer expressed a Palestine weaken Germany’s position Holocaust. French possession off the southeast Bspecial interest in the future of in the world. The German foreign min- African coast in the Indian Ocean, Palestine, a former Ottoman posses- ister circulated the official position to Americans, Israelis and other for- was introduced to the discussion by sion that was under British authority. all embassies and consulates that eigners and their families who were the anti-Semite Paul de Lagarde The decline and fall of the Ottoman June: Jewish statehood in Palestine not entitled to make claims under the (actually a German named Empire had been a lesson for many was to be opposed, as a State of existing French program,” the state- Boetticher) in 1885. This idea could European statesmen. Whereas Hitler Israel would become a node in the ment by the State Department and be considered with greater or lesser tended to see the creation of Balkan world Jewish conspiracy. the French foreign ministry said. hostility or sympathy. It had support- nation-states from the Ottoman The Polish position differed from “In turn, the United States will ers in Great Britain and, of course, Empire as a positive example of mili- both the British and the German. ensure an enduring legal peace for among Germans, including the Nazi tarism, Poles understood the same London favored Jewish statehood (at France with regard to Holocaust leadership. Only in French could one history as national liberation that some distant and undefined point) but deportation claims in the United say “Madagassez les Juifs,” but not would spread from Europe to Asia. opposed much further Jewish migra- States,” it said, alluding to lawsuits all of those who considered the idea Whereas European territories taken tion for the time being. Berlin opposed brought in the US against the French in France were enemies of the Jews. from empires after the First World Jewish statehood, but wanted Jews to state rail company SNCF. Zionists also considered Madagascar, War generally became nation-states, leave Germany as soon as possible although most rejected it. Asian territories tended to become for some distant and undefined place. Requisitioned by the Nazi regime in Polish authorities also allowed them- part of the French or British empires, Warsaw wanted both massive emi- Germany, SNCF trains transported selves to be tempted by the prospect of sometimes in the form of “mandates” gration of Jews from Europe and a 76,000 Jews across France to the colonizing Madagascar. The idea of from the League of Nations. These Jewish state in Palestine. In public the death camps from 1942 to 1944. settling Madagascar with Polish citi- were places judged not ready for sov- Polish foreign minister and other About 3,000 survived, according to zens was first raised in 1926; at that ereignty, and thus allotted to the great diplomats called upon the British to the rail company. time the idea was the emigration of powers for political tutoring. ease immigration restrictions and cre- Lawsuits brought in US courts Polish peasants from the overpopulat- Palestine, taken from the defunct ate a Jewish National Home as soon nearly cost SNCF its commercial ed countryside. A decade later, after Ottoman district of South Syria, was as possible. The Poles had very spe- contracts in the United States. There Pilsudski’s death, the idea returned in a such a mandate. Although the territo- cific ideas of what such an entity have been calls for SNCF itself to Jewish variant. Beck proposed the emi- ry had a rather small Jewish minority should be: “A Jewish, independent compensate US victims. But the gration of Polish Jews to Madagascar when the British took control in 1920, Palestine, as large as possible, with French foreign ministry argued in to French prime minister Léon Blum in British policy presented Palestine as access to the Red Sea.” This meant December that the SNCF was an October 1936, and Blum allowed the a future Jewish National Home. This both sides of the River Jordan; in pri- instrument of the deportation but had Poles to send a three-man exploratory was in line with the hopes of Zionists, vate, Polish diplomats even raised never been held responsible. delegation to the island. who hoped that one day a deal for full with British colleagues the issue of “It is the responsibility of French The representative of the Polish statehood could be struck. the Sinai Peninsula, in Egypt. In government thought that about Hitler’s Jewish policy forced all of 1937, the Polish armed forces began authorities to assume the conse- 50,000 Jews could be settled immedi- the powers to clarify their position on to offer arms and training to the quences,” it said, noting that SNCF ately — a significant number, but not the future of Palestine. About 130,000 Haganah, the main Zionist self- was not part of the negotiations that one that would have affected the pop- German Jews emigrated in the years defense force in Palestine. led to the compensation agreement. 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 May/June 2016 - Iyyar/Sivan 5776 May/June 2016 - 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 claim fluchtgut case has, in fact, aris- cannot be treated the cannot be treated , Switzerland. “The Jewish fluchtgut en in the UK. In March 2012, Fluchtgut “Each case has to be looked at indi- A Even though the UK “ Swiss lawyer who specializes in Nazi- the sale voluntary? looted art. “Was it have happened without the Would Nazi regime? Did the seller get the money? Did he get a fair price?” was ultimately rejected by the court, the could appeal to an independ- claimants in Switzerland, no in Britain; ent panel Another of Lauder’s such body exists. demands is that Switzerland establish such a commission. Ossmann, a says Olaf vidually,” the Spoliation Advisory Panel issued the Spoliation 14 a recommendation on a claim for watches and clocks at the British Museum that a Jewish refugee had in London in 1939. sold at Christie’s condi- found the Though the panel tions of the sale met the minimum it said for a forced sale, requirements the price was not under value and that the moral strength of the claim to warrant restitution was insufficient or compensation. same way as art that was sold in same way as art Austria,” says Marc Germany and of collections at Fehlmann, the head Historisches Museum the Deutsches in Berlin and the former director of the in Oskar Reinhart Museum Winterthur refugees who sold art in Switzerland had full access to the proceeds, and Why Switzerland was a free country. the about isn’t Ronald Lauder talking art that was sold by refugees in the US and the UK?” (1889). Music fluchtgut 212-220-4304 and art lost (1889), still before the war.” The painting, on Karl Johan Street hangs in the Kunsthaus. Glaser sold it “for a ridicu- lously low price,” says David Rowland, the New lawyer York–based who represents Glaser’s heirs. “And, of course, he used the funds to flee Europe. The flee Europe. problem has been that the Swiss have fluchtgut MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Music on Karl Johan Street Music on Karl Johan Street painting in its collection in in its painting The Swiss culture minister Isabelle bequest to ASYV, please contact Jonathan Gudema at please contact ASYV, bequest to Edvard Munch, decades. The heirs of the Jewish art The heirs of the Jewish decades. for instance, historian Curt Glaser, Kunsthaus about a approached the fluchtgut the 1990s. Suspended from his job and evicted from his Berlin apartment, in Glaser had escaped Nazi Germany the After 1933 for Switzerland. he broke out, War Second World pleaded with the Kunsthaus director to rescue an Edvard Munch painting still in Berlin by purchasing it. Glaser wrote saying he would view any offer perspective than “from a different due to Nazi persecution, and called for the latter term to be applied. Many in the Swiss museum community and art trade oppose that. tinction between been unwilling to recognize cases.” Chassot pointed out last year that the country is the only one to draw a dis- 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 claims in (flight assets) fluchtgut THAT JEWS WERE FORCED TO SELL FORCED TO JEWS WERE THAT fluchtgut SWISS UNDER PRESSURE OVER ART OVER UNDER PRESSURE SWISS

ressure is growing on Swiss ressure is growing museums to accept that works

The argument has simmered for One of Lauder’s demands was that Whereas the German government Lauder said he had turned his atten- P the same way as claims for looted art. “Could it possibly make any differ- the off was taken ence if the painting Jewish owner wall by a Nazi or if its was forced to sell that same painting to one of Hitler’s art dealers for almost nothing?” he asked in his speech at Kunsthaus. Zurich’s Switzerland treat — art sold by Jewish refugees to fund new lives after their escape or to start losing the rest of their possessions, their homes and their livelihoods under the Nazis. Curt Glaser sold his Munch painting, which was trapped in Berlin, for a in Berlin, for sold his Munch painting, which was trapped Curt Glaser “ridiculously low” price to the Zurich Kunsthaus during the Second War. World has pledged to return any art in hoard that had been “lost due Gurlitt’s to Nazi persecution,” Swiss museums have traditionally rejected claims for what they term tion to Switzerland after Cornelius tion to Switzerland after Gurlitt bequeathed his entire collec- tion — some of which had been loot- ed from Jews by the Nazis — to the The museum Bern Kunstmuseum. has said it will refuse to accept any or unclear Gurlitt works with tainted provenance, and that they will remain in Germany for further research. of art sold by Jewish refugees to help them escape from the Nazis were forced sales, and that the works should therefore be returned to their in Zurich last month, heirs. Speaking the president of the Ronald Lauder, Congress, proposed a Jewish World as plan of action, which he described “long overdue.” BY CATHERINE HICKLEY, HICKLEY, CATHERINE BY THE ART NEWSPAPER Page 16