AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Vol. 45-No. 1 ISSN 0892-1571 September/October 2018-Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 TO HONOR, TO REMEMBER, AND TO NEVER FORGET Kristallnacht and is still in use today. as the president of the Austrian grandparents. At Gusen, Jonah BY JILL GOLTZER While at the synagogue, Holocaust Parliament, Wolfgang Sobotka. The Deutsch, IDF soldier and grandson of survivor and Mission participant highlight of the evening was meeting survivor Naftali Deutsch, shared his his past July, Yad Vashem’s Felice Z. Stokes gave testimony and the chancellor of Austria, His belief that “even after everything that 2018 Generation to Generation T shared her story growing up as a Excellency Sebastian Kurz, who has happened here and the unspeak- Mission — From Austria to Israel at Hidden Child in France. In the after- recently visited Yad Vashem. The able losses that we have suffered in 70 brought together nearly 100 noon, we held a ceremony at Theodor chancellor personally welcomed the this place…we have won because we friends from five countries, ages 16 to Herzl’s original burial site in the old group, and especially the survivors, to as a people have survived.” 97, including four Holocaust survivors Jewish cemetery on what happened the city of Vienna and reiterated that That sense of victory was evermore and over 40 young leaders. More than to be his 114th yahrzeit. Mission par- “because of our [Austria’s] historical present during our night in Linz, 80 participants came from the USA. ticipants placed seven stones and responsibility, we [the people of where we sang and danced in the From Herzl’s home in Vienna to the seven flowers from the State of Israel Austria] have the duty to fight all very city Hitler intended to make the horrors of Mauthausen and then to on the burial site, representing the forms of anti-Semitism.” To top off a cultural capital of Nazi Germany. As Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, our multi- Mark Moskowitz said, “We rocked the generational journey commemorated Linz Parliament with our rejoicing in a the tragedies and celebrated the tri- way it had never seen before.” While umphs of the Jewish people. When in Linz, we heard from the speaker of asked about the theme of the Mission, the house of Parliament, the Austrian ASYV board member Mark friends of Yad Vashem, and Mission Moskowitz said, “We’re calling it participant Peter Till. Till aptly Generation to Generation because described the bond shared by the L’dor V’dor is one of the things that is group when he stated, “We are now so important at Yad Vashem — to locked arm in arm through the com- communicate, to teach, to dissemi- mon goal of heritage and humanity.” nate the knowledge about the Following a day of solemn reflection, Holocaust to younger generations.” we enjoyed a festive Fourth of July After arriving in Vienna, we got a dinner marking the liberation of the glimpse of the historic city, including Mauthausen camp and subcamps by the famous Belvedere Palace, and the American armed forces. enjoyed the opening dinner in the fter a long day filled with beautiful Wiener Rathaus (Vienna heavy emotion, the Mission Town Hall) with Austrian dignitaries A awoke extremely early to depart and Lt. Shai Abramson, chief cantor Vienna for Israel. Just before land- of the IDF, whom we were fortunate to ing, we were warmly welcomed by have with us throughout the entire Presenting Sebastian Kurz, the chancellor of Austria, with a gift on behalf of Yad Vashem at the Federal Chancellery in Vienna. Shai Abramson singing over the Mission. Welcoming everyone on the Left to right: Dorit Novak, Yad Vashem director general; Adina Burian, Mission chair; Leonard flight’s PA system. Upon arrival, we start of this journey, Mission chair Wilf, ASYV chairman; H.E. Sebastian Kurz, chancellor of Austria. headed straight to the Kotel for a Adina Burian emphasized how “we day of meaning and exploration, the shehecheyanu ceremony. From the need both on an individual level and a seven decades of Israel’s independ- group gathered for dinner at the depths of despair and tragedy, the communal level to learn about the ence. Additionally, an eighth flower Schönbrunn Palace. Jewish people returned home to Holocaust.” These words set the was placed to represent our belief in ednesday marked the day Eretz Israel, and on this day, we stage for the coming week. the future of both the State of Israel that many Mission partici- retraced those steps and celebrated On the first full day of the Mission, and the Jewish people. W pants looked upon with both anxious 70 years of a free and independent participants explored the history of In the evening, we headed to the and nervous anticipation. Visiting state. Rachel Shnay, YLA co-chair, Jews in Vienna and visited sites Austrian Parliament, where we heard Mauthausen reminded everyone of beautifully expressed her love for including the Judenplatz and the from Martin Engelberg, the first active the very reason we embarked on this Israel and her heritage in her speech Stadttempel, which is the only syna- member of the Jewish community to journey. We visited the Mauthausen that first night. In speaking about gogue in Vienna to survive be a member of Parliament, as well and Gusen concentration camps, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, where we heard testimony from Shnay urged us to always stand up Mauthausen survivors Leon Green and proudly say, “I am a Jew, I am a IN THIS ISSUE and Edward Mosberg, and Gusen Zionist, and I am a grandchild of sur- To honor, to remember, and to never forget...... 1,8 survivor Naftali Deutsch. This was vivors, and I will never be silenced!” Shattered childhood...... 3 Leon Green’s first time back to On that inspirational note, and Sons and soldiers...... 4 Mauthausen since being a prisoner despite our exhaustion, we danced Austrian silent film is a Holocaust preview...... 5 there. He returned with his daughter, the night away with Israeli singer Invisible Jews: surviving the Holocaust in Poland...... 9 Sally, who was visibly emotional when Einat Saruf and lifted our voices to America’s last known Nazi collaborator is deported to Germany...... 10 she explained how her father was say Am Yisrael Chai! The hidden history of Shanghai’s Jewish quarter...... 11 always the strongest man she’s ever On Friday, the group headed to Yad The only refugee camp in America for Jews fleeing the Nazis...... 12 known. Other members of the second Vashem to view the two new tempo- The secret society that documented truth of the Warsaw ghetto...... 14 and third generations read aloud the rary exhibits, “Flashes of Memory” Getting Anne Frank all wrong...... 15 prisoner cards of their parents and (Continued on page 8) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 “TIME, PLACE AND RELEVANCE”: YAD VASHEM’S 10TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST EDUCATION ver 350 international leaders in out an operation to gather and deport and relevant for future generations. put life into his eyes,” she remembers. OHolocaust education, from five all the Jews located on the scattered Director of Yad Vashem’s Visual Kliger now has two children, four continents and 50 countries, gathered islands of Greece. “Despite the Center Liat Benhabib gave a fascinat- grandchildren and three great-grand- the last week of June at Yad advancements of the Allied forces ing lecture, entitled “From Newsreels children, some of whom were present Vashem’s International School for throughout Europe and the pending to YouTube: Film and the Holocaust.” at the conference. Holocaust Studies for its 10th collapse of Germany as World War II She stated: “Filmmakers try to recon- The culminating point of the 10th struct memory — and today, every- International Conference was a can- one is a filmmaker. Especially as sur- did conversation between Yad vivors pass away, I believe that film Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev and will become even more important in Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust remembrance and educa- State Museum Piotr M.A. Cywiński. tion.” These two institutions represent two n the last day of the confer- aspects of Holocaust remembrance Oence, participants had the and education: Auschwitz-Birkenau, opportunity to meet and interact with the authentic site of the murder of several Holocaust survivors from a over a million Jews during the variety of locations and backgrounds. Holocaust; and Yad Vashem, the Frieda Kliger, whose image was used World Holocaust Remembrance

Teachers participating in a workshop at Yad Vashem 10th Annual International Conference.

International Conference on was ending, it was a ‘seek-and- Holocaust Education, entitled “Time, destroy’ mission of the Nazis to mur- Place and Relevance.” der all the Jews of Europe and North The conference presented lectures, Africa.” panel discussions and interactive The former Israeli ambassador to workshops by some of the world’s the United States, MK Michael Oren, leading Holocaust historians, scholars addressed the plenary at the confer- and educators. Each day of the four- ence, pointing out how “all Jews, Participants at Yad Vashem’s 10th Annual International Conference on Holocaust Education. day conference tackled a range of especially of my generation, walk on manyl of the conference materials Center, complete with its world aspects connected to Holocaust edu- around with their own personal and posters, was in attendance. One renowned museum complex, cation in the 21st century. The morn- Holocaust.” Oren recalled that among of the only members of her family to archives and museums, and art and ings were dedicated to plenary ses- those growing up Jewish in the United survive the Holocaust, Kliger artifacts collection. Each of these sions, while afternoons included States, the Holocaust wasn’t dis- described how after liberation she institutions contributes and shapes breakout sessions allowing partici- the way the world relates to the pants to play a more active role in the Holocaust, remembers it, and teach- proceedings. The conference was held es it to future generations. During the in English with simultaneous transla- session, which was moderated by tion to French, Russian and Spanish. Director of Yad Vashem’s Director of the International International Institute for Holocaust School’s Jewish World and Research Dr. Iael Nidam-Orvieto, the International Seminars Department two shared their perspectives of Ephraim Kaye explained that the goal where Holocaust remembrance and of the conference was to “provide an education is headed in an age when international, intergenerational and there will be no more Holocaust sur- multicultural forum for an experiential vivors left to tell their stories. dialogue on how to preserve the lega- While Shalev explained how Yad cy of the Holocaust and how to face Vashem stresses the human experi- the challenges of ensuring that ence in its museums as well as in its Holocaust education is relevant for educational approach and programs, years to come.” Cywiński stated: “If the Holocaust is Many experts from Yad Vashem’s only part of history, it isn’t enough. It International School for Holocaust needs to be part of our history.” Studies, International Institute for Throughout the conference, partici- Holocaust Research and Archives pants had the opportunity to network Division presented topics related to with fellow educators from around the their areas of expertise. One of the world, thus gaining new ideas for first lectures of the conference was effective teaching methods. delivered by Yad Vashem Senior Concluded one educator from the Shai Abramson at the conference’s closing ceremony in memory of Izzy and Babs Asper. Historian and Editor-in-Chief of the United States: “The ‘cross-pollination’ academic journal Yad Vashem cussed as openly as it is today — it noticed “only sadness in people’s exchange of ideas and points of view Studies Dr. David Silberklang on the was “just beneath the surface.” He eyes.” She and her late husband were between people from different back- topic of “What Was the Holocaust.” applauded the participants for their among the first to marry after libera- grounds will only enrich the educa- Dr. Silberklang told how in the late dedication in educating and keeping tion in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp tional experiences in each of our spring of 1944 the Germans carried the memory of the Holocaust alive on December 18, 1945. “I chose to classrooms.” September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3 SHATTERED CHILDHOOD we didn’t know where else to go.” already paid the rent. of resettlement for elderly Czech BY ANDREW PEREZ, THE SUN Blocking the entrance to the factory Death began to rain down on Czech Jewish citizens, who they claimed was its director. He wore a shiny new Jews. could retire in comfort and safety. In uth Goldschmiedova Sax swastika pin on his lapel and a sour “I remember my father had a cousin, reality Theresienstadt served as a watched out her window as R look on his face. He looked Sax’s Viktor, who lived across the street transit ghetto, where the deported hundreds of Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) father dead in the eyes and told him from us,” she said. “Before the inva- Jews were evaluated and sent to soldiers marched past her house and gruffly to “Go home!” Sax said her sion, he and my father would get other camps based on their perceived down the streets of Brno, father was shocked. together every weekend and chat at a usefulness to the Nazi regime as Czechoslovakia. Even eight decades “They had known each other for local café. One day Viktor was walk- laborers, sex slaves or subjects of later, she still shivers recalling the years,” she said. “The man had ing down the street, minding his own sadistic medical experimentation. deafening stomp of the goose-step- always been so friendly and nice. But business, when a German officer “As soon as we arrived we had to ping Nazis’ black rubber boots as they all of that kindness was gone in an came up to him and called him a ‘dirty surrender our belongings,” Sax said. thundered over the asphalt ushering instant, replaced with hate.” Jew.’ Viktor spat at the officer, who “Everything was taken from us, from in a dark new era. The Sax family tried to hail a taxi took out his revolver and shot him glasses and jewelry to the gold fillings Thud, thud, thud, left, right, left. back to their apartment, but found that dead. That shook us all.” in our mouths. Then we had to line up Sax was only 11 when the Nazis the world for Jews had just turned On the night of December 5, 1941, for inspection. The Nazis wanted only invaded Czechoslovakia on March upside down. Sax and her family were awakened by the best of us. If you were sick, or too 15, 1939. Her life would never be the young or too old, they took you to the same. She would survive three con- side and shot you. They only wanted centration camps and endure one of 18- to 38-year-olds, so I had to lie the most nightmarish chapters of about my age in order to stay alive.” mankind’s history. She would look Theresienstadt was composed of into the vacant eyes of the Nazi Angel five barracks. Sax and her mother of Death. Yet Hitler, his horrors and lived in the Dresdner Kaserne, while his henchmen could not break her her father had to live in Sudeten spirit or extinguish her hope. Kaserne. Sax would not see her Born on July 6, 1928, in Moravsky father again for four years. Šumperk in Moravia, the central Sax said conditions at the camp region of Czechoslovakia, Sax was were squalid. the only child of Oskar and Erna he camp was in immense dis- Goldschmied. The family moved to repair,” she said. “The cots Brno in 1934, when she was six. “T were full of thousands of bedbugs, “Life was really beautiful and simple and you could feel them crawling on those first couple of years,” she said. Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax. you in the night. There was a lack of “I went to school, I played with “The driver refused to take us two German soldiers who told them to food and drinkable water. The toilet friends, everything a normal child home,” Sax recalled, “not because he get what belongings they could and was simply a cut-out box that was does. Our family lived comfortably. hated us like my father’s employer, leave the house. They were packed placed over a hole in the floor. It was My father, Oskar, was a businessman but because he was afraid. He was into a transport wagon with hundreds very unsanitary, to say the least.” who sold men’s socks with elastic in afraid that he would be caught giving of other Jews. Germans herded them When she arrived in Theresienstadt, them, and he was very successful. I us a ride. So, he dropped us off at the into railroad cars, cramming her fami- Sax ran into her former gym coach, was a very spoiled child, and while I train station, which still allowed Jews ly and others into a single tiny com- Fredy Hirsch, who gave her and her would feel sad from time to time to travel, and we got back home that partment. mother a valuable survival strategy. because I didn’t have a sibling, that way.” The ride was arduous and abhor- “He advised us to find a job that feeling passed quite quickly.” rent. Jews slept on the dirty floors and worked around food because you Her early life was uneventful, Sax HOME WAS NO LONGER HOME were allotted meager portions of cof- could always sneak a bite of what you recalled, but around the time she s the family rounded the corner fee, bread and soup. were working on,” she said. “He told turned 10 in 1938, she began to of their neighborhood, Sax saw When the train finally ground to a us that if you worked (around food) notice people acting strangely around A two SS officers with revolvers at their stop at its unknown destination, pris- you could get 800 calories a day, but her. front door. The family stood helpless oners were forced to walk two miles in if you didn’t you would only get 300.” “The non-Jewish neighborhood chil- on the curbside as the officers ran- the knifing winter cold to a gray train They followed Hirsch’s counsel. dren would avoid me,” she said. sacked their home, helping them- station. No one knew where they Sax’s mother worked as a potato “They were afraid to play with me. At selves to whatever they wanted, were. Nazis had driven the train in cir- peeler and smuggled bits of the the time I couldn’t understand why. I including the keys to their brand-new cles and made frequent stops to keep peeled skin back to her daughter. had always been a kind friend and car. the passengers disoriented and con- She worked her way up to a supervi- person. My parents told me that if I “A couple of days later my father fused. sory position and got more food privi- really cared about my friends I would told a customer of his who was not At the mystery train station, Jewish leges. Since taking showers was a let them go because they could get Jewish that the officers had taken his captives were pushed into a different rare luxury, Erna would save kitchen into very serious trouble being around car,” Sax recalled. “The customer train, filthier and more dilapidated wash water and Sax would bathe in me. So, regrettably, I did.” marched right up to the SS office and than the last. This ride was even potato water. THEN CAME THE DAY got the car back — not for my father, longer, Sax said, taking almost an Sax worked in the children’s garden EVERYTHING CHANGED but for himself. He told the Germans entire day. Prisoners were consumed growing vegetables. She was under that my father had given him the car.” arch 14, 1939, started out hap- with fear, dampened only by exhaus- constant supervision. Anyone caught Life was now much different for 11- pily enough. It was grandmoth- tion. Then the train finally lurched to a stealing food would get killed on the M year-old Sax, her family and the rest er Klara’s birthday, and the Sax fami- stop. Sax trudged into spot. Sax faced the wrath of the offi- of the Jewish community of Brno. ly spent all day celebrating. When Theresienstadt, where she would cers after attempting to shake an They were forced to pin cloth Stars of evening approached and the festivi- spend the next three and a half years apple out of a tree. She was lucky, David with the word Jude (German for ties wound down, the family hunkered fighting to stay alive. she said. Instead of execution she Jew) to their clothes. Jews caught near the radio to listen to some music. Theresienstadt was a concentration was placed in 24-hour solitary con- without the star risked summary exe- But instead of soothing melodies, a camp located in Terezin in German- finement with no food or water. cution. Groceries were severely loud and brash voice rattled the tiny occupied Czechoslovakia. It was While Sax and her mother found rationed, and stores could only sell to speakers, warning listeners that named for Saint Theresa, “the little ways to survive Theresienstadt, oth- Jewish customers between 3 and 5 Hitler’s armies were invading flower of Jesus,” but there was noth- ers in her family did not. p.m. All Jewish workers lost their jobs Czechoslovakia. ing divine in the Nazi “showplace” Sax’s grandmother Klara died of or had their businesses confiscated “I remember my mother waking me detention area. It would operate for cancer in Theresienstadt. Camp offi- by the Germans. They were forced up, telling me to get ready, that there three and a half years, from cials knew she was ill, but gave her into ghettos. Sax’s family was lucky to was an emergency,” Sax said. “So we November 24, 1941, to May 9, 1945. only simple pain medication as she stay in its ransacked apartment rushed into a taxi and went to the fac- Theresienstadt was used as a front, wasted away. Her uncle Vilem and his because her father’s factory had tory where my father worked because billed in Nazi propaganda as an area (Continued on page 6) Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 SONS AND SOLDIERS Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story aliens” simply because they had been was a member of a six-man IPW ity and luck would have it, became a of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis German citizens! Then, in 1942, “war (Interrogation of Prisoners of War) Ritchie Boy. An “Order of Battle” spe- and Returned with the U.S. Army to planners in the Pentagon” realized team attached to the headquarters of cialist, he was assigned to the 82nd Fight Hitler. their especial worth, opening “the first the massive U.S. First Army,” headed Airborne Division. Manny, like Guy, By Bruce Henderson. Published by facility for centralized intelligence by General Omar Bradley, “comman- was involved in the interrogation of William Morrow — An Imprint of training in the history of the U.S. mili- der of all U.S. ground forces in German POWs; but in addition, his HarperCollins Publishers: New York, tary” — Camp Ritchie, in Maryland. Operation Overlord, the invasion of German language skills helped expe- New York, 2017. 448 pp. $17.72 hard- Thus, in Sons and Soldiers we follow Nazi-occupied France.” With the inva- dite the surrender of a German lieu- cover. about a half-dozen of sion, Guy’s work tenant general and his “army group these Ritchie Boys — comprising 150,000 troops with all its REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN began. He interrogat- these selfsame Jewish- ed countless German tanks, vehicles, artillery assorted ot long ago, all that the world German refugees from prisoners for strategic equipment, and small arms . . . to a knew about Europe’s Jews dur- N the camp’s “largest information. Because single division less than one-tenth its ing World War II was that they were group of graduates” — of his talent for not strength” — a history-making event! victims. Indeed, the expression noting how their native only gathering but Because he knew some Russian, he describing them as having walked knowledge of German, “collating and evaluat- was sent to make first contact with the “like sheep to the slaughter” was, of Germany, of its cul- ing” information, he Russians — as Allies who together sadly, frequently heard. In more ture and of the Nazi had defeated Germany. Additionally, was soon writing recent years, though, an increasing “psyche” made all the Manny aided in the arrest and convic- “Special Reports” that number of books have revealed how, difference in their spe- tion for war crimes of Ludwig became important in fact, Jews courageously fought in cialization: the interro- Ramdohr, the brutal Gestapo chief at sources for Allied the ghettos, camps and forests. Bruce gation of POWs, most Ravensbrück. Ramdohr was subse- action. Additionally, Henderson’s interesting volume enti- especially Germans. quently sent to the gallows. Guy helped bring to tled Sons and Soldiers: The Untold or example, there Finally, both Guy and Manny saw, justice the German Story of the Jews Who Escaped the was Günther and Manny, was involved in the libera- F responsible for the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Stern of Hildesheim, tion and rehabilitation of the survivors murder of two Ritchie boys — this, Army to Fight Hitler tells us of more Germany, born in 1922, the eldest of German camps: Guy in Buchenwald, very much a consequence of his such courageous Jews who, little son of Julius and Hedwig Stern. As and Manny in Wöbbelin, “a transit superior intelligence-gathering abili- known to us till now, made it their Jewish persecution in Germany wors- camp for inmates evacuated from other business to fight in their own unique ties. concentration camps.” Not surprisingly, ened, the entire family had hopes of Another Ritchie Boy, Manfred way. These were the Ritchie Boys — that shocking experience made each of emigrating to America. However, Steinfeld, born in 1924 in Josbach, a “top secret decisive force.” Who them quickly and heartbreakingly real- when only one uncle was found who Germany, unlike Guy, had no one who were they? What did they do? How ize that those they had left behind in could sponsor them, and his financial could financially sponsor him in were they unique? What special abil- Germany but a few years earlier were situation — according to the American America. Still, his widowed mother, ities did they have that made them probably lost to them forever . . . immigration rules of the day — would determined to rescue her son from the invaluable to the Allied war effort? Needless to say, Sons and Soldiers only allow for one person to come, frightening anti-Semitism growing In Henderson’s work we learn that is an important work that should have Günther’s parents decided it would be around her, discovered that the they all came to America in the late a place in any history scholar’s, and hie. In 1937, upon arrival in America, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) 1930s to early 1940s, were generally especially, any Holocaust scholar’s Günther, soon calling himself Guy, was helping some “unaccompanied in their mid- to late teens, and often library! arrived alone. When the war came, all went to school and to university, and children” leave Germany. In sum, Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of were eager to fight. However, ironical- then, with the years, as luck and Manfred, called Manny, arrived in Media, Communication, and Visual ly, even though they were Jews, serendipity would have it, he became America in 1938. He, too, went to Arts at Pace University. America had labeled them “enemy a Ritchie Boy. As a Ritchie Boy, “Guy school, and he too again, as serendip- ITALY’S HOLOCAUST EXECUTIONERS REVEALED IN “HISTORIOGRAPHICAL COUNTERBLAST” The Italian Executioners: The t is largely forgotten by history that book. Three years before the revived Fascist movement.” The Genocide of the Jews of Italy. IItaly introduced anti-Jewish racial Holocaust began in conquered Soviet Holocaust was implemented in Italy By Simon Levis Sullam. Princeton laws in 1938, two years before enter- lands, Italians in all strata of society beginning in 1943, by which point the University Press: Princeton, N.J., ing the war on Hitler’s side. Jews were already isolating and persecut- population had been absorbing anti- 2018. 197 pp. $26.95 hardcover. were dismissed from ing their country’s Jews, Semitic vitriol for half a decade. their jobs, kicked out of according to Levis As in other parts of Europe, civilians REVIEWED BY MATT LEBOVIC, schools and denounced Sullam. played an essential role in not only THE TIMES OF ISRAEL in the media. As in “The anti-Jewish identifying and informing on Jews, but housands of Italian civilians Germany and the polemic was as present in sometimes arresting Jews for them- T helped the Nazis murder the Netherlands, meticulous- the Fascist press, the selves. For nearly two years, citizens country’s Jews during the Holocaust, ly kept records helped mouthpiece of the mili- served as truck drivers, transit camp according to a recently translated identify the country’s tants, functionaries, and guards or train conductors, or in Italian book. The book directly contra- 46,000 Jews, many of the higher echelons of the numerous other capacities to enact dicts commonly held beliefs that whom were put under Social Republic, as in the the “Final Solution” in Italy. Italians did not cooperate with the surveillance. papers combining “The majority of Italian executioners genocidal killing machine. In The Italian Catholicism and Fascism were not necessarily ideologically In The Italian Executioners: The Executioners, Levis and in cultural reviews,” motivated,” writes Levis Sullam. “The Genocide of the Jews of Italy, author Sullam focuses on local he writes in a chapter on genocide was widely carried out by Simon Levis Sullam examines the Holocaust history, nam- the ideological context of bureaucratic means, through police fate of more than 6,000 Italian Jews ing the leading anti- genocide. measures and actions: actions that who were tracked down, deported Semites in several cities, As in Germany, writes represented political imperatives for and murdered during the last two and quoting from radio Levis Sullam, “the key some, for others simply orders from years of World War II. The modern broadcasts, political political importance of superiors, and for yet others an history professor first published his speeches and anti-Semitic school- labelling Jews ‘foreigners’ and ‘ene- opportunity for profit or vendetta.” so-called “historiographical coun- books. mies’ was echoed in the constant rep- In Milan, wrote Levis Sullam, terblast” in 2015, helping to overturn “Jews be burnt, one by one, and etition of prejudices, accusations, and “Fascists would prowl around the city myths about so-called “good Italians” their ashes scattered in the wind,” anti-Semitic myths and the invocation in search of Jews or tips.” By “tips,” who refrained from persecuting their intoned a broadcaster on Radio of radical solutions as the mobilizing the author means information about Jewish neighbors. Roma in 1938 that is quoted in the and defining factors behind the (Continued on page 7) September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 RECOVERED IN PARIS FLEA MARKET, AUSTRIAN SILENT FILM IS A HOLOCAUST PREVIEW Based on the famous novel and dig- painstaking analog and digital significant variations between the two success and played in the biggest itally restored, City Without Jews restoration and preservation project copies of the film. Viennese theaters, but that excite- includes stunningly prescient scenes by Film Archiv Austria, the national Although Bettauer’s book has char- ment around the film petered out rela- depicting passage of anti-Jewish laws Austrian film archive. The archive acters clearly based on political fig- tively quickly. and deportations from Vienna. dedicated a team of six to the effort, ures of the day, the film is a bit looser “It was reported that Nazis stopped which cost €202,000, of which more in its characterizations. Yet, it is clear or censored some of the screenings. BY RENEE GHERT-ZAND, than 40% was raised in a crowdfund- in the film that the Christian Socialists And we know that some screenings in THE TIMES OF ISRAEL ing campaign. come to power led by the fictional 1926 in Germany were disturbed,” Jewish man is beaten up on the o mark the 80th anniversary of Chancellor Dr. Schwerdtfeger, a Wostry said. A street. Jewish husbands are T the Nazi Anschluss of Austria fanatical anti-Semite. Convinced that he fate of City Without Jews separated from their non-Jewish this year, and next’s observance of the Jews are ruining the republic, he T author Hugo Bettauer is one wives and children, and deported on the centennial of the establishment of has the National Assembly pass a law reason why the book and film have trains. A Jewish community, led by the First Austrian Republic, the forcing all Jews to emigrate by the not been forgotten. A Jew who con- rabbis carrying a Torah scrolls, restored version of City Without Jews end of the year. The Jews — religious verted to evangelical Christianity, the marches down a dark road as it is is being screened throughout Austria, and assimilated alike — leave, taking prolific and outspoken writer was banished from town. and in selected European cities. with them whatever belongings they lethally shot by a Nazi named Otto These snapshots appear to be “We can’t celebrate the 100th can carry. Rothstock. He died on March 26, Holocaust history — but they are not. anniversary of the First Republic with- Soon, everything starts to fall apart. 1925, at age 52. Commerce slows down, the cosmo- “Bettauer called out the Viennese politan cafés revert to seedy taverns, political leadership for creating an and the national currency goes into atmosphere of salonfähig, or social free fall. Realizing the terrible mistake acceptability, when it came to anti- that has been made, the National Semitism,” said Dr. Patricia Heberer- Assembly decides to pass a law wel- Rice, senior historian at the United coming back the Jews. States Holocaust Memorial Museum he hero of the film, a Jewish in Washington, D.C. T artist named Leo Strakosch, “He was trying to warn this leader- sneaks back into Vienna disguised as ship that if you remove a significant, a non-Jewish Parisian painter. He, flourishing and contributing communi- along with his non-Jewish fiancée, ty like the Jews, you are setting your- Lotte, the daughter of a sympathetic self up for failure,” she said. member of the National Assembly, According to Heberer-Rice, it’s sig- scheme to ensure the new law is nificant that Bettauer set his novel in passed. They kidnap an anti-Semitic Vienna, and not Berlin. member of the assembly and keep “He chose the setting aptly, because him away from the chamber until vot- it was indicative of the fierce anti- ing is over. Semitism in Austria. Hitler and In the book, the assembly member Eichmann were from Austria. So Jews read edict of expulsion from Vienna in the restored City Without Jews. is committed to an insane asylum. In many of Eichmann’s men were the film, he is merely knocked out for Austrian. Bettauer believed that what These are scenes from a silent Austrian film made a decade prior to out putting the finger on this point of the enactment of the anti-Jewish anti-Semitism. Jewish citizens made Nuremberg laws, and some 15 years enormous contributions to Austria. before the outbreak of World War II. They were the most loyal citizens, The 1924 film City Without Jews is and the Austrians abused this. based on a popular 1922 novel by Everyone was scapegoating the Austrian writer and journalist Hugo Jews. It was the Social Democrats Bettauer. It astutely predicted what and the Christian Democrats, and not was to come. But only partially. just the Nationalists doing it,” said The film was conceived as a satiri- Film Archiv Austria associate director cal response to the anti-Semitism Nikolaus Wostry. gaining popular and political strength “We are taking this film as a respon- in Austria during the early interwar sibility and political statement, when period. Its plot depicted the scape- anti-Semitism and the political abuse goating of the Jews for the country’s of fear is rising in Europe now,” problems and their subsequent Wostry said. expulsion. According to Wostry, the flea market But unlike in the real Holocaust, find was extremely rare, as more than these Jews were eventually reinstat- 90% of silent films worldwide have ed when the Austrians realized their been lost. Once talkies came along, Child cries as her Jewish father parts from her in the restored City Without Jews. country was suffering from the there was little interest in preserving absence of the creative and success- silent films, especially when people a while, and is shown dreaming that he depicted in City Without Jews’ was ful Jewish community. In real life, could make a profit from recycling he is trapped in a disorienting, claus- a possibility in Vienna,” Heberer-Rice Austria’s Jews were deported begin- them for their silver content. trophobic cell, with Stars of David said. ning in October 1939, and most did Another copy of City Without Jews closing in on him from all directions. Despite having made City Without not come back. Approximately one- was discovered in 1991 in the Finally, the Jews are welcomed Jews, the film’s mixed Jewish-Gentile third of Austria’s 190,000 Jews were Nederlands Filmmuseum in back with great fanfare — Leo cast and crew did not necessarily killed, and only 5,000 were in the Amsterdam. However, it was only a Strakosch, the first among them. heed the film’s warning. According to country by the end of the war. partial copy and was severely decom- “The French flea market find meant Wostry, they all had different fates. City Without Jews was originally posed. that we could now reconstruct the film Some emigrated, and some were presumed to have been lost to histo- The Paris discovery allowed Film in a way that was more political and killed during the war. The film’s direc- ry. However, a surprise discovery by a Archiv Austria to create a full version show that it was clearly an anti-Nazi tor went on to join the Nazi party. collector of a complete and relatively of the original film. It also enabled it to statement,” Wostry said. Those who made the film — let intact copy of the movie in a Paris flea discover not only differences between According to Wostry, media reports alone audiences — probably did not market in 2016 led to a yearlong Bettauer’s book and the film, but also indicate that the film was initially a grasp just how prophetic it was. Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 SHATTERED CHILDHOOD (Continued from page 3) One particular encounter proved winter cold or malnutrition. Others rationed and there was not enough family were transferred to Zamosc, a almost fatal for Sax’s aunt Elfie and were shot for holding up the line and power to warm the whole camp, Sax small village in Poland, where he, little cousin Dita. left to decay on the side of the road. volunteered to go out into the gnaw- along with his brother Zikmund and Elfie was not feeling well, and Oskar and three other prisoners ing winter freeze to lay out electrical his wife and children, were forced to Mengele was on his way to inspect slipped away prior to the death march cable in the street. dig their own graves before being bru- the women’s barracks. Mengele sent and hid for 24 hours in kettles in the n the early morning of April 11, tally shot to death. ill prisoners to the gas chambers. camp kitchen. When they slid the lids I1945, Sax and her mother were Bodies were burned in the camp’s Sax’s mother was terribly worried and off their hiding places, they found the roused from sleep by German sol- crematory. Sax said that as the bod- started to slap Elfie’s face in a desper- camp entirely empty. After taking diers, ordered to grab their belong- ies were lowered into the fires of the ate effort to bring color to her cheeks. some fresh clothes and a few sup- ings and sent outside. burners there would be an incredibly She then took a red wrapper from an plies, they fled into the mountains, “I remember as we went outside cacophonous sizzling din, followed by imitation coffee product and running at night and sleeping by day. there was a group of Nazi youth sickening silence. An acrid odor of standing there, pointing bayonets at seared human flesh wafted into the us,” Sax said. “I asked one of them air and clung to the atmosphere for how old he was and he wasn’t much the entire day. Death literally hung in older than I was.” the air. After being counted, the prisoners n October 20, 1944, Sax and were hosed down and led to trains Oher family feared their lives bound for Flossenberg, an extermina- would soon end. After three and a half tion camp. years in Theresienstadt, Sax and her The way to Flossenberg was in dis- parents were transferred to repair. Roads were pocked by bomb Auschwitz. craters and bridges damaged. An extermination camp whose sole Russians had come to liberate the purpose was death and destruction, Jewish prisoners. Hitler’s Nazi Reich Auschwitz was built in occupied was in its final days. Most German Poland in 1940. It consisted of three soldiers went on the run, taking what units: Auschwitz I (the original con- they could and going into hiding. centration camp designed to hold Those left behind dressed in the tat- Polish political prisoners), Auschwitz tered striped pajamas of the prison- II-Birkenau (a central component of ers, hoping to blend in. Hitler’s “Final Solution”) and Russian soldiers found the train car- Auschwitz III-Monowitz (a labor rying Sax and about 500 other prison- camp). An estimated 1.3 million peo- Residents of the city of Brno (in Moravia) watch as Hitler’s troops roll in. ers, offering them food, water and ple were sent to Auschwitz. At least medical supplies. She realized their 1.1 million would die by extermination smoothed the ink onto her sister’s After many arduous days on the run, Nazi captivity was over. or starvation. cheeks, which brightened them up Oskar reunited with his stepbrother “The soldiers were nice to me, giv- Sax was sent to Auschwitz I. She considerably and feigned the appear- Manfred Konka, who had managed to ing me chocolate,” she said. “Though remembered that as she disem- ance of a healthy glow. avoid the camps by bribing Nazis and not all of them were so gentle. Some barked the train and staggered Just as Sax’s mother finished apply- hiding. Konka made a living selling of the Russians felt that since they toward the camp, she saw a full ing the improvised makeup, Mengele hunting coats, ties and shirts, and had liberated the Jews, they were orchestra of Jewish musicians playing slithered into the barracks. He was able to barter for supplies. He entitled to some of the women. Many near the notorious gateway lettering ordered everyone to strip and he graciously provided Oskar money, women were raped, but my mother that read Arbeit macht frei (Work will began what he called his “appeal.” food and lodging. helped me by swaddling me up in a set you free). She recalled the music Sax’s mother pushed Dita between Soon the men heard some glorious blanket and pretending I was a baby.” sounding so beautiful because it had her legs and the child went unnoticed. news. Russian troops had pushed Since the rails were bombed out by been years since she had heard any Erna and Elfie feared Mengele would into Eastern Europe and the the Allied forces, Sax and the rest of form of melody. She learned later that see through their ruse, but he strode German’s hellish reign would soon the passengers were forced to walk all the talented musicians were killed. by them without moving the whip. As crumble. Oskar had somehow sur- and ride open wagons back to Herded through the gates of he drifted from the building, the vived the worst cruelty mankind was Terezin. The trip took two agonizing Auschwitz, Sax was whisked away by women were told to get dressed. Elfie capable of and the searing hatred weeks. As they rounded the corner to a German officer and sent to the and Erna breathed a sigh of relief. Nazis had for the Jewish people. Yet the entrance of the citadel, survivors intake line. They would live another day. he still held out hope that his wife and could hardly contain their joy. “Everyone was forced to strip and Sax spent just over a week in daughter were still alive. Their hopes were quickly dashed. be shaved from head to toe,” she Auschwitz, but the camp burned an Meanwhile, Sax and her mother They were not yet free. Everyone was said. “I felt humiliated, having some- indelible impression into her memory. were transferred from Auschwitz to forced into typhoid quarantine, and one shave my most intimate parts. Six times she faced the barbarous another labor camp, Oederan, in they would spend the next month a The Nazis would stare at our bare Mengele with his executioner’s whip; Saxony, Germany. stone’s throw from freedom. bodies and snicker and laugh, mock- six times she survived. Life at Oederan was less demand- Time crept slowly. There is one day ing us.” “Out of the three camps I was in, ing and deadly compared to Sax remembered most clearly. Everyone was then marched single Auschwitz was the worst,” she said. Auschwitz. Prisoners were not tat- “I was in the kitchen working and file to stand before a tall man wielding “They treated us like animals. They tooed or forced to wear prison uni- someone yelled at me, ‘Ruthie, there a crop whip. Sax remembered the made us stand naked in a cold field forms. Instead, Jewish prisoners’ is someone at the gate who wants to man’s handsome gap-toothed smile, for hours at a time until we were clothes were painted with a giant talk to you,’” Sax said. “So I ran to the his neatly parted black hair and his exhausted. When we went to take white X and stripe every week. Sax gate and I saw this really thin, clean- pristinely pressed senior Nazi uni- showers, they would taunt us. They still has the long black dress her shaven man. At first I didn’t know who form. knew we knew about the gas. They mother wore, the huge X and line it was, but then the man smiled at me Sax was face to face with Dr. Josef would have us stand there for 10 min- crudely scrawled in fading white paint. and said, ‘Don’t you remember your Mengele, the sadistic “Angel of utes in utter anxiety and anticipation, Sax was now 16, and she tried to own father?’ My father had always Death.” waiting to see if water came out of the help older Jewish prisoners at the had a mustache and was very portly, “We were still naked and he would spout or gas.” camp and make a difference in her so it took me a while to recognize him. inspect every inch of us,” Sax said. own way. Her Nazi guards ordered But when I finally did, I was in shock. AUSCHWITZ FOR OSKAR “He would then point his whip either her to work at the camp’s bullet facto- All these years I had thought my to the left or to the right. If he pointed n January 18, 1945, the camp ry. When no one was looking she father was dead, but there he was, left, you were safe. If he pointed right, Owas evacuated and prisoners would commit sabotage by sneaking standing on the other side of the gate. you were sent to the gas chambers. I were marched single file back to sand into the bullet machines, making I wanted to hug him, but the gate was would survive six encounters with Blechhammer, in what was called a the German ammunition useless. In electrified. I ran to my mother yelling, Mengele.” “death march.” Many died from bitter the winter when electricity was (Continued on page 10) September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 SHE SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST WITH LUCK, FORGED PAPERS AND DARING her own sheer nerve. her ID and I could walk (out) with her, I thought, this must be how it is in hell.” BY MAUREEN O’DONNELL, At night, she lived in Plaszow, a and she agreed,” Mrs. Heller told the After her escape from Madritsch’s CHICAGO SUN TIMES forced-labor camp. During the day- Shoah Foundation. factory, she passed for Christian, time, she sewed German military uni- hen the day came, she strode using papers with false names. “I o the end of her days, Anna forms in a factory owned by Julius W past a guard. “As he was always wore a cross and I had all T Novak Heller never forgot the Madritsch, later honored by Israel for opening the gate and I was walking, I these prayer books,” she said. postcards. helping the Jewish people. He pro- heard his voice right behind me. If he In 1947, she arrived in the U.S. “The As a teen, she watched German sol- had seen me, recognized first few years in this country, when I diers march through her native (me), he would kill me,” she saw a policeman, I was looking at my Krakow, Poland “like supermen.” said. “It was his life against arm (to check) if I had my (Star of She had to wear a yellow Star of mine. He actually received 50 David) band on,” she said. David. And she had to submit to Nazi lashes for my escape.” She and her husband Henry, who doctors taking painstaking measure- “I was so terrorized,” she also survived the Holocaust, opened ments of people’s heads and bodies, said, “that when I walked with a store in Chicago, Novak’s trying “to prove that the race, Jewish this girl to maybe a block Children’s Wear. And after going to race was inferior,” she said in an oral away, I wanted to go back. I school for eight years, she earned a history by the USC Shoah just didn’t know what to do bachelor’s degree in psychology. Foundation. with myself, and she prevent- Next, she applied to the Jane Addams When the Nazis began moving ed me from doing that.” College of Social Work. The oldest stu- masses of Jews from the ghetto, post- The relatives of Mrs. Heller, dent there, she graduated after two cards — ostensibly cheerful, but in 101, who died in May, say years with her master’s degree. fact chilling — began to arrive from they’ll always wonder about Her parents Rivka and Adolf those who’d been relocated. the identity of that woman. Grinberg and her sisters Paulina and The cards were a Nazi bid to quell She could be the reason Francesca died in the Holocaust. Her the fears of those left behind. But their they even exist, said Mrs. son Tony died in 2014. In addition to prisoners used code to try and warn Heller’s granddaughter, Diana her granddaughter and her son Dr. the others. Novak Jones. Rick Novak, she is survived by her Anna Novak Heller (right, in apron) before World War II, “Between the lines would be written with her sister Francesca and dog Daisy. As the war amped up, she stepchildren, Caroline and Tom in Hebrew, words like… ‘This is the remembered how the Nazis Heller, and three other grandchildren. end,’” she said. “They were shipping tected his Jewish laborers, at one separated children from their parents, She told the Shoah Foundation, “To people to various camps to kill them.” point working with Oskar Schindler. sometimes using whips. “It was survive is meaningful, because I have Mrs. Heller survived the Holocaust At the factory, she hatched a daring screaming and terror,” she said. a family, because they will carry on for through a combination of luck, forged escape plan. “I asked one of the When their children were taken from the rest of the family who are not papers, sympathetic protectors and Polish (girls). . . if she would lend me them, the women “would be howling. … alive.” ITALY’S HOLOCAUST EXECUTIONERS REVEALED IN “HISTORIOGRAPHICAL COUNTERBLAST” (Continued from page 4) “Guides generally demanded Holocaust began early, according to an allusion to collaboration with the Jews in hiding, from which the between five and ten thousand lire Levis Sullam, fueled by the passage Germans…” denouncers could profit handsomely. per person to accompany people of a 1946 amnesty. Although half of or decades, Italy sought to portray The chapter “Hunting Down Jews in across the border, although the fee Italy’s murdered Jews were arrested Fitself as a former hotbed of resist- Florence” outlines several roundups could rise to forty thousand if the by Italians, as opposed to Germans, ance against Nazism, according to of Jews that took place in November route was particularly difficult,” he “the persecution of Jews was not con- Levis Sullam. However, he writes, the of 1943. The mass arrests were car- wrote. “They could double their earn- sidered a crime or a specific offense” resistance movement in Italy lasted for ried out by German military personnel ings by betraying their clients: they after the war. only 18 months, engaging relatively and Italian Fascists, including mem- would pocket the fee as well as the “On Holocaust Remembrance Day, few people in only parts of the occupied bers of the notorious Carita gang, reward for turning country. By way of comparison, the “one of the most vicious actors” of the them in.” Fascist movement lasted for two era, according to Levis Sullam. By the end of the decades and spread to all of Italy, “On the night between November 16 Holocaust, 8,869 enrapturing millions of followers. and 17, the infamous gang took part Jews had been Far too many of the Holocaust era’s in the raid on the Franciscan convent deported from Italy. Of leading Italian anti-Semites were in the Piazza del Carmine, where those individuals, rehabilitated after the war, according numerous Jewish women and their 6,746 were sent to to Levis Sullam. On a related note, he children had taken refuge,” he writes. Auschwitz-Birkenau, wrote, there is a tendency to focus “They were held prisoner in the con- and nearly all of them “collective memory on the saviors at vent for four days before being trans- were murdered in the the expense of the executioners.” (By ferred to Verona by truck — the gas chambers upon “saviors,” the author is referring to Fossoli [transit] camp was not yet arrival. An additional Italians who helped rescue Jews, operational — and deported from 303 Jews were killed including more than 400 men and there to Auschwitz.” in massacres commit- women who have been recognized by According to survivor accounts, “the ted on Italian soil. Israel’s Yad Vashem since 1994.) Fascists guarding the prisoners sub- In the assessment During World War II, Italian Jews at forced labor in the Italian camp In general, Levis Sullam believes at Gorizia. jected the women to sexual molesta- of author Levis that Italy moved from the “era of the tion and extortion.” Sullam, the Italian state has not done or on similar occasions, there is rarely witness” — as epitomized by Primo nother Holocaust role performed enough to atone for the role of thou- any specific mention of the roles and Levi — into the “era of the savior,” Aby at least hundreds of Italians sands of its citizens during the responsibilities of the thousands of without passing through an “era of the involved posing as “guides” to smuggle Holocaust. In comparison to Italians who all played varying but executioner.” Unlike Germany’s com- Jews across the border to safety. The Germany, he believes, there has crucial parts in the tragic process that paratively robust confrontation with its cottage industry of betraying Jews in been a lack of “self-critical gestures” resulted in genocide,” writes Levis past, wrote the author, Italy has large- this manner fills a chapter called “On recognizing what took place during Sullam. “The only exception is an ly “bypassed” the work of reckoning the Border: Jews on the Run,” in which the war. unavoidable and hasty mention of the with its homegrown Holocaust perpe- Levis Sullam outlines the lethal scam. The whitewash of Italians’ role in the racial laws of 1938, and occasionally trators. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 TO HONOR, TO REMEMBER, AND TO NEVER FORGET (Continued from page 1) n Sunday, we drove south to and “They Say There Is a Land.” We Ovisit the Ariel Sharon Training heard from Avner Shalev, chairman of Campus in the Negev, Israel’s largest, the Yad Vashem Directorate, and YLA newest training base and home to the member Sam Gordon. Gordon Yad Vashem Educational Center. We thanked Yad Vashem for serving as heard from Colonel Avi Motola, com- “the bridge that connected [him] to mander of the training base, and visit- what happened to [his] grandparents ed both the medical training simulator during the Shoah” and for helping him and the Yad Vashem interactive dis- understand that “it is now up to [his] play, entitled “The Human Image in generation to carry on this never-end- the Shadow of Death.” Later, we trav- ing, all-important duty to enlighten eled to kibbutz Hatzerim and learned and educate as many people as pos- about Netafim, Israel’s innovative and sible, both Jews and non-Jews alike.” cutting-edge water irrigation system.

The Ellstein family. ensure that the world never forgets.” that remembering will have to be an This sense of responsibility, which active effort. On the first night in Yad Vashem and its supporters have Vienna, Professor Dina Porat, chief wholeheartedly taken on, was historian of Yad Vashem and scholar echoed and applauded by many in residence on the Mission, asked

Avner Shalev and Adina Burian. eremonies were held in the Yad We concluded the day with a deli- CVashem synagogue to honor cious dinner at kibbutz Netiv Yad Vashem’s newest benefactors, HaLamed-Heh, followed by a per- Steven Baral (USA) and Evelyn and formance by Vertigo, one of the Jaime Ellstein (Mexico). Addressing Israel’s leading dance companies. the group, Baral, the son of survivors, The group spent Monday morning at stated “Today is one of the happiest the Yad Vashem International School days of my life because I am support- for Holocaust Studies, engaging in ing Yad Vashem and because I am workshops on anti-Semitism. We also here with you on the Mission.” The paid tribute to the Wilf family for their Ellsteins were on the previous generous donation of the first building Mark Moskowitz. Mission and returned this year with of the Shoah Heritage Campus, the throughout the evening, including everyone to “please remember that three generations of their family. In Joseph Wilf Curatorial Center, which His Excellency Mr. Reuven Rivlin, just to say we will keep the memory the synagogue, we also enjoyed a will be home to all of the museum’s president of Israel. is the very first step on a very difficult wonderful and uplifting performance curators and professional staff. In his It is our responsibility and our duty journey.” Every single person who to honor, to remember, and to never participated in the 2018 Yad Vashem

Dancing at the Linz Parliament. Leon Green and Edward Mosberg. by Yonina before heading to the lively remarks at the closing dinner in the forget. To remember and to never Mission took that step and then Machane Yehuda Market. Rabbi Square of Hope that evening, ASYV forget may sound redundant, but we some. As the sun set on the 2018 Yisrael Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor Chairman Leonard Wilf reminded distinguish the two because it is not Mission, we reflected on our journey and the chairman of the Yad Vashem everyone that “There will soon come enough not to forget — that seems from Herzl’s home in Vienna to the Council, joined us for Shabbat, and a time when it will be our responsibil- too passive. Now that we are more Jewish homeland and rejoiced in the Shai Abramson led a beautiful ity to make the voices of all survivors than a generation removed from the extraordinary mishpucha formed Havdalah service after a relaxing day. heard, for us to be their voices and to Holocaust, it becomes even clearer over the last eight days. September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 INVISIBLE JEWS: SURVIVING THE HOLOCAUST IN POLAND Eddie Bielawski is probably one of the Jews of Wegrow would know as while everyone else was under- Time dragged on. Food was run- the youngest Holocaust survivors a community. ground. This endangered all of us. ning out and we were becoming with any memory of the war years. The day after Yom Kippur, I My grandmother realized that with desperate. To add to our problems, I The Bielawski family survived the remember being yanked out of bed no space, no air and no food, we developed a cough. I could control Holocaust by becoming invisible. (it was about four in the morning) couldn’t survive. So, after two my voice and not cry, but I could not Here is the story of one of many mir- and rushed down, together with my nights, she said that she was going control the cough. If anyone heard, acles. father, mother and sister, into the to stay with a farmer she knew who we were dead. What to do? was born in the town of Wegrow bunker that my father had prepared. might be able to hide her. My father opened our trap door to Iin northeastern Poland in mid- When the commotion began, my I believe that my parents knew that let some air in, and lo and behold, a 1938. Not a propitious time and grandmother Gittel came and locked she was sacrificing herself so that chicken had laid an egg right at that place for a Jewish child to be born. us in from the outside as we had we would have a chance to survive. very spot! True, there were chickens One memory that has been etched previously arranged, and then she She went out and never came back. in the area, but in all the time that indelibly in my mind is the sight of returned to her own place. After the war, we heard that some- we spent in our bunker, we never the Nazi army marching toward I remember hearing shooting, one had seen her being transported saw a chicken and certainly not an Russia. Our house was located on shouting, screaming and cries of to Treblinka. That, as we all know, egg. the main road leading to the Russian “Shema Israel” as we all sat still was a one-way trip. One story we My father took the egg, broke it frontier. Day and night they marched holding our breaths. heard was that as she was being into a glass, added sugar and made — soldiers, trucks, tanks and more Later that morning, we heard taken to Treblinka, she tried to run a “gogel mogel” (a concoction of soldiers, in a never-ending line — an Ukrainian voices. We were more away and was shot. We will never beaten egg and sugar). I drank it invincible force. I remember my afraid of the Ukrainians than of the know what really happened. My and just stopped coughing. It was father, holding me in his arms, say- Germans, if that was possible. It mother carried the burden that her one of the many miracles of our sur- ing to my mother, “Who is going to was their job to round up the Jews, mother had sacrificed herself for us vival. stop them? Certainly not the put them in horse-drawn wagons for the rest of her life. She always Russians.” and send them to Treblinka. They thought that maybe there could have Excerpt from Invisible Jews: One night, my father had a dream. were referred to by us as the “black been another way, but we all know Surviving the Holocaust in Poland In this dream he saw what he had to devils” because of the black uni- that there really wasn’t. by Eddie Bielawski do: where to build the bunker, how forms they wore, and one could to build it, and even its dimensions. expect no mercy from them. He would build a bunker under a The black devils broke the rusty wooden storage shed behind the lock and came into the small shed. house. It would be covered with They looked around and started to boards, on top of which would be bang their rifles on the ground, lis- placed soil and bits of straw which tening for a hollow sound. would render it invisible. In order to s luck would have it, they camouflage the entrance, he would Astood on the trap door and hit construct a shallow box and fill it the solid ground all around — but with earth and cover it with straw so they didn’t actually hit the trap door that it would be indistinguishable itself. I remember us just sitting from the rest of the earthen floor. Air there, helplessly holding our would be supplied through a drain breaths. We were centimeters from pipe buried in the earth. This was to death, but they left without finding be our Noah’s Ark that would save our hiding place. Was this another of us from the initial deluge. many miracles? Probably, but no It took my father about three doubt my father had done a wonder- weeks to finish the job. When he ful job camouflaging the entrance to was done, he took my mother and our bunker and filling the shed with sister into the shed and asked them all kinds of junk so that it would be if they could find the trap door. When difficult to enter and search. they could not, he was satisfied. The next day, all was quiet. We all My mother prepared dry biscuits, understood what had happened, jars of jam made out of beets, some although not to what extent. We tinned goods such as sardines, stayed put day after day in the small, some sugar and salt. We placed two stifling, damp bunker, the size of a buckets in the bunker. One bucket grave. At night, my father would go was filled with water; the other buck- out to empty the slop bucket and et was empty and would serve as bring water. the latrine. We also took down some When my grandmother Gittel blankets, a couple of pillows and returned to her room, the Ukrainians some warm clothing. We were came and ordered her and her hus- ready. band out. Her husband, Mendel For three long years, starting in Laufer, refused to leave and was 1941 when the Nazis started the shot on the spot. My grandmother deportations and mass killings, we managed to run away and hide in a hid in secret bunkers, dug in fields, nearby wheat field for a few days. under sheds or constructed in barn She then came to check on our situ- lofts. It seems that the only way that ation and stayed with us for a couple a Jew could survive in wartime of nights. Poland was to become invisible. So Our bunker, however, was too we became invisible Jews. small to accommodate all of us. It *** was crowded with the four of us — Monday, September 21, 1942 — five was impossible — so my father Yom Kippur — was the last day that sat in the shed above the trap door Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 AMERICA’S LAST KNOWN NAZI COLLABORATOR IS DEPORTED TO GERMANY he last known Nazi collaborator responsible for deaths. The Trawniki camp was part of the Trawniki Jewish victims met their T living in the U.S. was deported Palij was born on former Polish ter- “Operation Reinhard,” the Nazi opera- horrific fate at the hands of the Nazis,” to Germany in August. ritory, an area now located in Ukraine. tion to murder the approximately two the White House statement said. Jakiw Palij, 95, had lived in New He immigrated to the U.S. in 1949 million Jews residing in German-occu- But because Germany, Poland, York City for decades. He served as a and became a citizen in 1957, but pied Poland. Ukraine and other countries refused guard at a Nazi forced-labor camp to take him, he continued living in during the Second World War. limbo in the two-story, red brick home In a statement released by the in Queens he shared with his wife, White House after Palij landed in Maria, now 86. His continued pres- Germany, President Donald Trump ence there outraged the Jewish com- commended the actions of munity, attracting frequent protests Immigration and Customs over the years that featured such Enforcement for “removing this war chants as “your neighbor is a Nazi!” criminal from United States soil.” The White House statement added “Despite a court ordering his depor- that the Trump administration conducted tation in 2004, past administrations extensive negotiations with Germany to were unsuccessful in removing Palij,” secure Palij’s deportation because he the statement added. “To protect the never held German citizenship. promise of freedom for Holocaust sur- Germany’s Foreign Office said its vivors and their families, President decision to accept Palij showed the Trump prioritized the removal of Palij.” country was accepting its “moral Palij lived quietly in the U.S. for responsibility.” years, as a draftsman and then as a Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told retiree, until nearly three decades ago German tabloid Bild that those who when investigators found his name on This 1957 photo provided by the US Department of Justice shows Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi con- “committed the worst crimes on centration camp guard. an old Nazi roster and a fellow former behalf of Germans” would be held guard spilled the secret that he was concealed his Nazi service, saying n November 3, 1943, SS and accountable. “living somewhere in America.” that he spent World War II working in Opolice units shot to death Germany’s Interior Ministry and Members of New York’s a factory on a farm. around 6,000 Jewish inmates at the Justice Ministry and Chancellor Angela Congressional delegation last year Palij told Justice Department investi- camp, killing almost all of its prisoners Merkel’s office did not comment on urged the Trump administration to gators who showed up at his door in in a single massacre. where Palij would be taken in Germany deport Palij, whose citizenship was 1993: “I would never have received my Palij has said he was forced to be a and what would happen to him. Local revoked in 2003 based on his wartime visa if I told the truth. Everyone lied.” guard. media reported Palij was transferred by activities, human rights abuses and Palij later admitted to officials that “By serving as an armed guard at ambulance to a nursing home. immigration fraud. A federal court also he had attended a Nazi SS training the Trawniki labor camp and prevent- German prosecutors have previous- ruled that he had assisted in the per- camp in Trawniki in German-occupied ing the escape of Jewish prisoners ly said it does not appear that there’s secution of prisoners at the camp, Poland and then served as an armed during his Nazi service, Palij played enough evidence to charge him with though it stopped short of finding him guard at its adjacent labor camp. an indispensable role in ensuring that wartime crimes. SHATTERED CHILDHOOD (Continued from page 6) The family would get meals from a diploma in clothing design. After being sponsored by a family in the ‘Papa is at the gate!’ She was so local soup kitchen in a hotel base- “I have always loved clothes and United States, Kurt immigrated to happy to see him. He had found us by ment across from the train station. sewing, ever since I was a little girl,” America and opened a successful looking up our names through the “At first the soup was very bare, just Sax said. “My dream was to live in newsstand in Anderson, South Carolina. Red Cross list.” A friend gave Kurt a picture of Sax n June 15, 1945, after 30 days and her address. He began to write Oin quarantine, Sax, her mother her letters and a transatlantic and the thousands of other former romance blossomed. After writing a prisoners were told that they were box full of love letters, he asked for free to go. her hand in marriage. Where to go was the big question. Kurt traveled by boat all the way to Czechoslovakia was in shambles Brno to marry Sax. The newlyweds and supplies scarce. Sax and her spent their honeymoon in family would have to rebuild their lives Czechoslovakia because it took Sax from scratch. It was years before they four months to finalize her passport. were economically stable again. “We arrived in America at Ellis “Everything we owned was gone,” Island in New York City,” Sax said. she said. “The only thing I had was a “We lived there for a while and then blanket. My parents and I made our moved to San Diego (County) on the way from Terezin back to Brno. We recommendation of a friend and relied on the hospitality of strangers we’ve lived here ever since.” and what little food and shelter we Strutting through the streets of Prague, German paratroopers participate in a military parade After adjusting to a new country and after the occupation of Czechoslovakia. could get at the Red Cross stations saving every penny, Sax was able to scattered throughout broth,” Sax said. “Then, as the weeks Paris and follow in my father’s foot- bring her parents to America to live Czechoslovakia.” went by and the kitchens got more steps and work as a tailor. When I with her. Oskar and Erna opened a When they finally reached Brno, the supplies, the soup grew heartier. came to America I became a factory café and market, and lived quiet and family found its former home had been Potatoes, leftovers, canned food. It worker, but I would still always be peaceful lives in the warmth of San converted into offices for the Nazis. wasn’t much, but food is food.” sewing, creating.” Diego County. Erna Kohn died on Since Sax’s father had gotten a Jewish children were eventually While Sax was in school, she began February 27, 1982. Oskar month’s head start, he had managed allowed to return to school, and Sax to correspond with a second cousin, Goldschmied died August 10, 1988. to procure another apartment with min- completed her primary education. Kurt Sax. They had played together They died as free citizens of the imal furnishings. Its former occupants She enrolled in a local design school, as children. world, Sax said, respected in their had a daughter Sax’s age, and she where she studied the history and Kurt fled Austria at the start of World community and loved by their family wore the clothes the girl left behind. design of clothing. She earned a War II and ended up in Northern Italy. on two continents. September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF SHANGHAI’S JEWISH QUARTER “One document was the Refugees Museum in Hongkou who could enter,” writes Hochstadt. BY COURTNEY LICHTERMAN, Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung, lit- explains the situation perfectly: “No The Shanghai of the early 20th cen- JEWISHWEBSIGHT erally a ‘certificate of harmlessness,’ consulate or embassy in Vienna was tury was in many ways an energetic, showing that there were no problems prepared to grant us immigration challenging city that attracted the driv- t’s common knowledge that as with this person, such as owing taxes. visas until, by luck and perseverance en and ambitious. Shopping, theater, Hitler’s bid to rid the world of Jews I Jews needed to prove that they had I went to the Chinese consulate education, music, publishing, archi- escalated, so did the world’s refusal registered their valuables with the where, wonder of wonders, I was tecture and even film production flour- to let them in. What’s not well known authorities so they could be properly granted visas for me and my extend- ished, but as Harriet Sargeant, author is that when those borders, ports, confiscated….” ed family. On the basis of these visas, of the book Shanghai, explains, the doors, windows and boundaries Though difficult to obtain, those doc- we were able to obtain shipping assault on the city by the Japanese began shutting Jews out, in part by uments, along with proof of passage accommodation on the Bianco Mano proved too much: “Between 1937 and refusing to issue them visas, to another country and/or a visa for from an Italian Shipping Line [sic] 1941 the Japanese oversaw the Shanghai, though already swollen permission to enter another country, expected to leave in early December destruction of Shanghai. One by one with people and poverty, was the only were enough to get one out of 1938 from Genoa, Italy to Shanghai, they stripped away the attributes place on earth willing to accept them Europe. Surprisingly, even for those China — a journey of approximately which had made it great. When they with or without papers. It was an already detained in concentration 30 days.” — Eric Goldstaub, Jewish finally seized Shanghai itself in 1941, exception that, for thousands, meant camps, the door, metaphorically refugee to Shanghai. they found the longed-for city no the difference between life and death. And so, without the luxury of longer existed. The Shanghai of the options, and desperate to evade the ‘twenties and ‘thirties had gone forev- tightening grip of the Nazis, Jewish er. refugees by the thousands, as well as roubled from the crushing a small minority of non-Jews, set sail T Second Sino-Japanese War, from Germany and parts of Central Shanghai was a raw place. The and Eastern Europe, settling primarily refugee Ursula Bacon, in her book, in the Hongkou neighborhood of Shanghai Diary: A Young Girl’s Shanghai. Having been stripped of Journey from Hitler’s Hate to War- most of their assets upon their depar- Torn China, describes the scene she ture from Europe, the virtually penni- discovered upon arrival in Shanghai: less arrivals found Hongkou much “Boiling under the hot sun and more affordable than the city’s more steamed by the humidity in the air developed districts. was the combination of rotting fruit lthough they came in a slow but peelings, spoiled leftovers, raw A steady stream from the begin- bones, dead cats, drowned puppies, ning of Hitler’s rise, it was Kristallnacht carcasses of rats, and the lifeless in 1938 that catapulted the Jewish body of a newborn baby …” population in Shanghai from a few Nevertheless, many of the Two German Jewish refugee women stand behind the counter of the Elite Provision Store (deli- thousand to upwards of 20,000. Over Shanghai locals, in spite of their own catessen) in Shanghai. the course of two days, Jewish busi- hardships, welcomed their new neigh- speaking, was open, provided they nesses in Germany, annexed Austria, bors and shared what little they had, To understand the significance of could prove they would leave and what was then known as the whether that meant housing, medical this gesture, it’s important to under- Germany once released. Sudetenland (a region in what was care or just simple kindness. stand the widely held but mistaken But of course, to walk through the then Czechoslovakia with a large Gradually, with that support, Jewish belief that Jews in Nazi-occupied door, one had to have some place to Europe were never, at any point, per- walk to, and that, for most Jews, was mitted to leave. Henny Wenkart, a their biggest obstacle. Most countries Holocaust survivor featured in the made it either virtually impossible to documentary 50 Children: The enter (such as Switzerland, which Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. insisted all German Jews have a red Kraus, explained this misconception: “J” stamped in their passports), “What people don’t understand is that imposed untenable conditions on at the beginning, you could get out. refugees, or just simply wouldn’t issue Everybody could get out. Nobody visas. would let us in!” Shanghai — already home to a few In fact, until 1941, when the routes thousand Jewish immigrants who had immigrants used to get to Shanghai started slowly arriving as early as the were closed off by the war and the mid-19th century for business, or later Germans decreed that Jews could no to escape the Russian Revolution — longer emigrate from the Reich, Jews not only did not require visas for entry, in occupied Europe were not only but issued them with alacrity to those allowed to leave, but were pressured seeking asylum. In many cases, to do so through a system of intimida- newly arrived immigrants were not tion and force. Although they didn’t even asked to show passports. It was make it easy, the Nazis, eager to not until 1939 that restrictions were implement their plan to rid Europe of placed on Jewish immigrants coming its Jewish population — to make it into Shanghai, and even then these judenrein or “cleansed” of Jews — did Jewish refugees socialize in a garden in Shanghai. limitations were decided not by the allow Jews to leave under certain Chinese, but by the amalgam of for- German population) were looted, refugees began, little by little, to cre- conditions. eign powers that controlled the city at Jewish homes were destroyed, and ate lives in their new country, and “Potential refugees needed to get a the time. This body, made up of both Jewish men were arrested and taken before long, the proliferation of variety of papers approved by govern- Westerners and Japanese who want- to concentration camps. The migration Jewish-owned businesses was such mental authorities, including the ed to restrict the influx of Jews, decid- that arose out of this traumatic event “ that the Hongkou area became Gestapo, before they could leave,” ed that anyone with a “J” on their … lasted only until August 1939, when known as “Little Vienna.” Like their writes Steve Hochstadt in an email. passport would now have to apply in all the foreign powers in Shanghai Chinese neighbors, they did their best Hochstadt is a professor emeritus of advance for landing permission. decided to implement restrictions, to survive in difficult circumstances. history at Illinois College and author A plaque at the Shanghai Jewish which severely cut down the number (Continued on page 13) of the book Exodus to Shanghai. Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 THIS WAS THE ONLY REFUGEE CAMP IN AMERICA FOR JEWS FLEEING THE NAZIS they weren’t able to get on — they prised to find that the liberator who knew we were fine.” Still, many were BY NINA RENATA ARON, TIMELINE later found out that the boat had been stepped off the truck emblazoned with surprised to find their freedom in stopped by the Germans while at sea a Star of David was a woman,” reads America quite literally circumscribed. orice Kamhi’s family was in and everyone aboard was executed. Gruber’s Washington Post obituary They were prisoners of a sort, living MSarajevo when World War II A couple more miracles later, (she lived to 105). walled-in, in a strange land, though broke out. The situation for Jewish Kamhi’s family were among the She would later memorialize the this conditional freedom was infinitely families turned dire quickly. “First almost 1,000 refugees who were journey in a book called Haven — better than living under threat of there was the yellow arm bands, you accepted to the Fort Ontario also made into a CBS miniseries in death in Europe and may have even were forbidden to go to public places Emergency Refugee Shelter, in 2001 — which chronicles some of the lent inhabitants a sense of protection. … and then, little by little, they started Oswego, New York, in 1944. The harrowing and inspiring tales of sur- For some, like Kamhi, it was like a taking people away,” he told an inter- refugees, representing the neediest vival she witnessed. One was the dream. Arriving at Fort Ontario as a viewer for an oral history. The project, cases, came from 18 countries, and story of a woman named Olga, who young boy “was like being on another an initiative of the State University of planet,” he told the interviewer. “The New York at Oswego, captures the people were so different, the atmos- stories of the survivors who spent a phere, the air was so different … It rare year living in America’s only was a fairy-tale existence. We were refugee camp during World War II. still in our own environment, so to At the time, many Jews were trying speak, but we were secure, we were to get from Sarajevo to Dalmatia, no longer in danger, and yet we didn’t since parts of the Adriatic coast were have the culture shock of being controlled by Italy and, as Kamhi put thrown into the American community it, “the Italians were not anywhere which came later.” near as rough on the Jews as the any refugees decided to stay in Germans.” Kamhi’s uncle and grand- Mthe U.S. after the war ended, father went ahead of the rest of the and that adjustment to everyday family and sent a man back to retrieve American life, Kamhi said, was harsh, the others. Kamhi’s mother had to difficult and long-term. “I think all of pose as the man’s wife, and Kamhi as us, when we’re thrown into the his son, but they made it to Dalmatia American community, as much as we with fake passports. Soon after, Jewish refugees waiting for the train to Oswego, New York, on August 4, 1944. loved it, did have a tremendous Kamhi’s father and grandfather were they ranged in age from babies to gave birth in an American Jeep en adjustment to make. And I think many taken to a concentration camp, where seniors. They came to New York by route to board the Henry Gibbins in of our personalities … all of our per- they died. boat on the USS Henry Gibbins (a Italy. “I never thought I would have sonalities changed radically as a Kamhi and his remaining family two-week journey) and then to Fort another baby,” she tells Ruth, laugh- result.” made it back to Italy on a boat trans- Ontario, built during the Revolutionary ing. “I’m over forty.” But the baby was Another former Fort Ontario resi- porting Italians just after the Axis War and at the center of the small born safely, with fellow refugees dent, Leon Levitch, corroborates this power changed sides in 1943 — “the town of Oswego, close to the rejoicing that it was a good omen. quality of life in the camp in the oral Italians were soft-hearted, so a lot of Canadian border. One older man said, “Life — after all history project, saying, “Slowly, we Jews got [back to Italy],” he said — n board the Henry Gibbins was the dying … a baby boy, a Jew to take were assigned our barracks, there only to find the area where they land- ORuth Gruber, a young journalist the place of a murdered baby, born on was hot water, there was food, people ed surrounded by Germans. Jews then acting as special assistant to the our way to freedom.” were friendly, everything was begin- began to sell anything of value they secretary of the interior, who was sent “Oswego was a fairy tale for all of ning to develop in a most fantastic, had in exchange for passage out. to make the trip with the refugees. us, even though there was a barbed- unbelievable, dream-like fashion. Kamhi’s family was supposed to “When Dr. Gruber arrived in Naples to wire fence,” Kamhi said. Little by little, we began to become depart on a boat the same night, but meet the refugees, some were sur- “It didn’t mean anything because we (Continued on page 15) HOW A BEER COMPANY HELPED THE NAZIS BUILD CREMATORIA of doubt that the brothers who head- ment with firing systems led it to trace of moral objection. BY NEVILLE TELLER, ed the firm during the Nazi era, as develop a mobile waste incinerator. In rematoria with one incinera- THE JERUSALEM POST well as the engineers, officials and May 1939, with the Buchenwald con- Ction chamber were succeeded other employees engaged in this centration camp already established by those with two, then three. Mobile he city of Erfurt in the federal aspect of their business, were fully in Thuringia, and the number of dead ovens were soon followed by perma- T state of Thuringia in central aware of the purpose for which their bodies piling up, local crematoria nent crematoria inside the camps, Germany has a unique claim to fame. crematoria were intended. The com- were unable to cope, and the SS starting with Buchenwald, where It contains the only Holocaust memo- pany made no effort to hide its approached Topf and Sons. Its chief Prüfer and the Topf team were able rial housed on the site of an industrial engineer, Kurt Prüfer, to install four powerful machines manufacturing company. The story adapted the firm’s waste which together could consume behind that memorial is the subject of incinerator into a mobile 9,000 bodies a day. Work at Karen Bartlett’s new book Architects oil-heated cremation oven. Buchenwald was followed by of Death. An initial order for three Dachau, then Mauthausen, then The company concerned was J.A. mobile ovens followed, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Topf and Sons, a firm founded in the and the firm was set on the Following the notorious Wannsee late 19th century to engage in the path that led to its full-scale conference in January 1942, where brewing of beer, based on Johannes involvement in the leading Nazis agreed to implement Andreas Topf’s patented firing system Holocaust. Hitler’s Final Solution, the mad, for heating malt, hops and water. In As the network of con- amoral business proceeded at an her meticulously researched account, centration camps grew — even more furious pace. Buchenwald Bartlett traces, step by step, how this crematorium. and with it SS demands for In high-level SS meetings at typical small-time German firm was involvement — indeed, it stamped its ever more efficient systems of dispos- Auschwitz to consider the design and transformed into a major supplier to Topf logo prominently in the iron of the ing of corpses — Prüfer dedicated functioning of the gas chambers in the SS of the crematoria and gas gas ovens, achieving a sort of immor- himself to developing technical Bunkers 1 and 2, Prüfer offered to chambers used in the Nazi death tality when post-war newsreels filmed improvements to his ovens, and Topf design and supply eight-chamber camps to exterminate millions of the crematoria that fueled the expanded its manufacturing capacity incinerators for each bunker. human beings. Holocaust. accordingly. Most of those engaged in This willing immersion by the Topf Bartlett shows beyond any shadow During the 1930s, the firm’s involve- this gruesome business exhibited no (Continued on page 14) September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 AT FORMER NAZI DEATH CAMP SOBIBOR, A POST-HOLOCAUST CONSTRUCTION BOOM corpses were burned and the ashes camps at Belzec and Treblinka, the and engaging, for both Poles and inter- BY MATT LEBOVIC, buried in pits. Until this spring’s trans- mass graves of Sobibor were not cov- national tourists. Among museum THE TIMES OF ISRAEL formation of the site, small human ered in layers of asphalt, concrete or highlights will be victims’ belongings bone fragments rose to the surface boulders during the decades since unearthed by the Polish-Israeli exca- or the first time since SS men whenever the ground thawed, dis- the Holocaust. vation team, including children’s metal Fdismantled and plowed over maying visitors. With the exception of a rotund “ash nameplates, jewelry with Hebrew Sobibor in 1943, significant construc- mound” monu- inscriptions, and a ceramic mug frag- tion is under way in the most sensitive ment, the relative ment featuring Mickey Mouse. parts of the former Nazi-built death barrenness of the ven with construction taking camp, where up to 250,000 Jews “extermination Eplace at Sobibor during the next were murdered during the Holocaust. area” helped two years, archeologists hope to keep On the heels of a decade-long Poland’s excavating at — for instance — the archeological dig, ground was broken Wojciech site of a prisoner-built escape tunnel, this spring on a long-anticipated Mazurek and and in the area of “the ramp,” where museum and visitor center. The struc- Israel’s Yoram victims were delivered to the dis- ture is emerging atop former barracks Haimi — lead guised “transit camp.” In the months in which Jews of all ages were forced archeologists at ahead, workers will erect a pavilion to hand over their belongings, Sobibor since around the gas chamber ruins undress, and run toward “showers” 2007 — uncover unearthed by Haimi and Mazurek in that were actually gas chambers. artifacts and 2014, and a long, winding memorial Set to open in 2019, the museum- information about wall with survivors’ testimony will be memorial complex will contain an the crematoria on built to encircle the mass graves. unprecedented precise map of A “Palestine” pendant that belonged to a Jewish victim murdered at the which more than In October, Sobibor will host a Sobibor’s Holocaust-era features Nazi death camp Sobibor, unearthed during excavations. 200,000 corpses gathering to mark the 75th anniver- based on new research. The prisoner Under the supervision of rabbinical were “eliminated” in the open air. sary of the prisoner revolt. The com- revolt that took place on Sukkot in authorities, the graves were covered Sobibor has been relatively slow to memoration may be the first of its October of 1943 will be recounted, with permeable geotextile and a layer add modern facilities, including a kind to take place without survivors along with the Nazis’ efforts to obliter- of white crushed marble. Surrounding parking lot for buses. Close to the Bug of the former death camp. By the ate evidence of genocide following the jagged-edged necropolis, a bor- River and Poland’s border with time the museum opens in 2019, that escape 74 years ago. der of larger, dark-colored stones was Ukraine, it is a drive of several hours personal artifacts will play a larger The other major change to take added to demarcate graves that were from both Warsaw and Krakow. role than ever in supplementing the place at Sobibor in recent months extensively pillaged after 1945. Planners hope their efforts will make testimony of eyewitnesses, of whom was at the mass graves area, where In contrast to the former Nazi death coming to Sobibor more convenient, fewer remain alive each day. THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF SHANGHAI’S JEWISH QUARTER (Continued from page 11) close to repeating itself. Shortly after even more critical concerns. Jews living there today. Eager to return hey established newspapers, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Suddenly, curfews were imposed. to Europe or start new lives on other T synagogues, retail businesses, Colonel Josef Meisinger, chief repre- Passes to exit and enter the ghetto continents, most Jewish refugees left restaurants, schools, cemeteries, sentative of Nazi Germany’s Gestapo were required. Food rations were Shanghai at the end of World War II guilds, social clubs and even beauty to Japan, approached the Japanese implemented. It was not uncommon and with their departure began the dis- pageants. They practiced medicine, authorities in Shanghai with “The for 30 to 40 people to sleep in the mantling of the culture and lives they started hospitals, got married, had Meisinger Plan,” a scheme to rid the same room (reports of up to 200 peo- had established in China. babies and held bar and bat mitzvahs. city of its Jewish population by starva- ple in one room exist) and “bathroom” Although the nearby apartment They learned to cook in coal-burning tion, overwork or medical experiments. facilities in general consisted of little buildings that once housed both ovens and to haggle with street ven- Although the Japanese ultimately else than literal pots emptied by local European Jews and Chinese alike dors. rejected that plan, starting in February laborers each morning. Still, refugees are still in use, given Shanghai’s One Hongkou resident remembers current construction boom, it’s not the time and place with great fond- unthinkable that these monuments, ness. The artist Peter Max, who too, could soon meet the wrecking would later become known for his sig- ball. The White Horse Inn, a nature “psychedelic” works of art, Hongkou café opened by Viennese came to Shanghai with his parents refugees in 1939 that became not after fleeing Berlin. Like many of the just a meeting place but something Jewish families who immigrated to the of a symbol of normalcy for the dis- city, Max’s father started a business: placed Europeans, was demolished in this case, a store that sold almost ten years ago for a road Western-style suits. It was, Max widening project. Other businesses recalls, an auspicious choice, as of the era, once so crucial to the Chinese men were just beginning to Jewish experience in Shanghai, are favor them over their traditional now represented only by rescued Mandarin clothing. signage that hangs in the courtyard “On the ground floor of our building of the neighborhood’s Shanghai From left: Jewish refugees Harry Fiedler and Heim Leiter pose next to a potato vendor in was a Viennese garden-café,” Max Shanghai; a Jewish refugee poses on Tongshan Road in Shanghai. Jewish Refugees Museum. recalls, “where my father and mother The museum, which includes the met their friends in the early evenings 1943, they did require that every bolstered themselves by remember- Ohel Moishe synagogue, a center of for coffee and pastries while listening Jewish person who came to Shanghai ing that, in spite of these conditions, Jewish life and worship for the to a violinist play romantic songs from after 1937 relocate to Hongkou, a rela- in Shanghai, they were the one thing Hongkou refugees, has become the land they had left behind. The tively small area that already had an they could not be in Europe: safe. something of a touchstone of this community of Europeans that gath- existing population in the hundreds of etween the dismal state of the extraordinary circumstance of histo- ered and grew below our house kept thousands. Bstill-impoverished city and the ry, but between the exodus of the me connected to our roots.” Although much of the city’s Jewish beginning of the Chinese Communist original Jewish population after the The people of that community lived population was already living there, Revolution in 1949, the city’s postwar war and the city’s lack of interest in their lives as normally as possible until the crush of one population on anoth- Jewish population eventually dwindled preserving this chapter of its past, 1942, when the history they had come er also dealt a brutal blow, with both to just a few hundred people, although one has to wonder if it will soon be so far to escape came dangerously disease and lack of food becoming there are said to be a few thousand the last monument to it standing. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 THE SECRET SOCIETY THAT DOCUMENTED THE TRUTH OF THE WARSAW GHETTO on the role of telling the world the hor- members of Oyneg Shabes, like turned in family members for small BY ROB GLOSTER, J. WEEKLY rific truth of the Holocaust. Oskar Schindler, were instrumental in favors from the Gestapo.” Ringelblum and his group are the preventing the Nazis from eradicating Grossman made several trips to he 13,000 Jews who fought to subjects of Who Will Write Our the Jewish legacy in Poland. Warsaw to read through the archive in the death in the Warsaw ghetto T History, a film which is based on the “In their action of writing, it was win- the basement of the Jewish Historical uprising are celebrated 75 years later similarly titled 2007 book by Samuel ning in some ways,” she said. “It real- Institute (JHI), where the diaries and as heroes who refused to surrender to Kassow. ly was being able to assert them- other documents were kept until a the overwhelming firepower of the The 94-minute film, which includes selves and to not let the Nazis win.” permanent exhibit opened there last Nazis. footage from the ghetto and narration Grossman said her film is more rel- November. That exhibit includes But another group of Jews in based on the writings of those who evant today because of the battle some of the original pages, as well as Warsaw also carried on a heroic contributed to the archive, as well as between truth and propaganda going one of the milk cans stashed beneath on now in many parts of the world. the basement of a school. That makes “the issue of who tells the The movie is told from the perspec- story” crucial, she said. tive of Rachel Auerbach, one of only Dorota Liliental, a Polish actress three members of Oyneg Shabes to who plays the role of a soup-kitchen survive the Holocaust. She spent worker in the dramatized portions of years leading the effort to search for the movie, said the archive and the the archive, parts of which were film are important because they tell unearthed in 1946 and in 1950. the story from the perspective of uerbach, a journalist who went those who suffered. A on to oversee witness testimo- “I’m really, really happy this film was ny at Israel’s Yad Vashem from 1954 made,” Liliental said in an interview at to 1968, was assigned by the Polin Museum of the History of Ringelblum — who led the Jewish Polish Jews in Warsaw. “History usu- social service agency in the ghetto Jowita Budnik as Rachel Auerbach, one of only three members of the secret Oyneg Shabes group ally is written by those who survive — to run a soup kitchen. Her obser- to survive. and those who win, reenactments by professional actors, and their vision struggle, without guns or Molotov includes the final thoughts and might be distorted. cocktails. Using pens, typewriters and prayers of people who knew they And here we have paper as their weapons, they secretly were doomed. history written by chronicled life in the ghetto — and “We hope to extend what the dead.” those hidden memories became the Ringelblum set out to do, which is to long with sto- basis for much of what we now know let the Jewish people incarcerated in ries of hero- about life within the ghetto’s walls. A the ghetto and ultimately murdered in ism and self-sacri- The 60-member group, led by histo- Treblinka speak for themselves,” said fice, the archive rian Emanuel Ringelblum, met on Roberta Grossman, the film’s director tells of everyday life Saturday mornings and called itself and founding partner of Katahdin for the half-million “Oyneg Shabes,” Yiddish for “Joys of Productions, an L.A.- and Berkeley- Jews crammed into the Sabbath,” to hide its true intent. based nonprofit documentary produc- the ghetto and Members collected more than tion company that produced this film dealing with 35,000 pages of diaries, letters, pho- Andrew Bering as Israel Lichtenstein preparing first cache of docu- as well as her previous films, includ- hunger, disease Who Will Write Our History tos and newspapers, as well as items ments in . ing Above and Beyond (The Birth of and Nazi brutality. such as food ration cards and Nazi- the Israeli Air Force) and Hava Nagila Grossman said she realizes many vations of the starving Jews who mandated armbands, burying them in (The Movie). viewers glaze over when they came there for food became the metal boxes and milk cans — many of “It was also a way for people to encounter “another film about the basis of much of her writing, in Polish which were recovered after the war. make some sense of what their expe- Holocaust,” but said Ringelblum’s and Yiddish. Oyneg Shabes members were riences were, and to make some story is unique. Among the writings on display at determined to tell the world what life meaning of their suffering,” said “I believe this is the most important the JHI is the last will of one of the was really like in the ghetto, and not Grossman. unknown story of the Holocaust. four people who buried the archive in to allow Nazi propaganda films — he executive producer was There is nothing that compares to the 1942. which depicted the Jews as dirty car- Nancy Spielberg, who told J. Oyneg Shabes,” she said. “I don’t know what fate awaits me. I riers of lice and typhus — to tell their T that her understanding of the “Ringelblum made sure there were all don’t know if I’ll be able to tell you story. And when they became aware Holocaust only really began when her different perspectives, so there are what happened next. Remember: my of the mass murder of Jews in con- filmmaker brother, Steven Spielberg, stories about brutal Jewish police and name is Nachum Grzywacz,” he centration camps, the group also took made Schindler’s List. She said the Jewish prostitutes and people who wrote. HOW A BEER COMPANY HELPED THE NAZIS BUILD CREMATORIA (Continued from page 12) who committed suicide, the leading to the wall, and the Nazi genocide by the Russian judicial system. engineering division in a wholly Topf managers stood trial — Sander project had run out of time. Excuses, justifications, evasions and immoral enterprise infected the firm. explained that his crematoria were he first investigation into the untruths were swept aside. All three Fritz Sander, a long-standing and designed “on the conveyor belt princi- T Topf company’s involvement in confessed to the charges laid against highly respected Topf employee, was ple, with bodies carried into the ovens the Holocaust was conducted by the them and were found guilty without manager of the furnace construction continuously by mechanical means.” US Counter Intelligence Corps the even standing trial. All were sentenced division. Jealous of Prüfer’s obvious No such crematorium was ever con- day after the liberation of Buchenwald to 25 years of hard labor. Prüfer died in success in developing ever more effi- structed, but by 1943 Prüfer was in April 1945. US officers had seen prison in 1952. The other two were cient methods of corpse disposal, he already hard at work planning the the Topf logo displayed prominently released after nine years. decided to apply his own mind to the expansion of the Auschwitz death fac- on the ovens. In July, the city of Erfurt In Architects of Death, Bartlett problem, and dreamed up a stomach- tory. His design for a sixth crematori- was transferred from American to describes in fascinating detail how a churning “corpse incineration oven for um was based on continuous com- Soviet control, and subsequently perfectly ordinary manufacturing firm mass operation” and applied for a bustion industrial ring ovens, using a three Topf managers were indicted for came to ignore the total immorality of patent. central fuel source and reducing costs “criminal responsibility for their partic- the business it sought, engaged in nterrogated by the Soviet authori- by up to 70%. By the time the firm ipation in the horrific acts of the and encouraged. In parts, it does not Ities after the war — for, with the might have been ready to put the proj- Hitlerites in the concentration camps,” make for a pleasant read, but it is exception of one of the Topf brothers, ect into effect, Germany had its back and subject to rigorous investigation undoubtedly a salutary one. September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 THIS WAS THE ONLY REFUGEE CAMP IN AMERICA FOR JEWS FLEEING THE NAZIS (Continued from page 12) the European refugee situation had into the human rights crisis unfolding was intended to signal Roosevelt’s accustomed to this fairy-tale kind of been slow. In fact, the U.S. had dras- abroad, and the Treasury had even intention to turn the tide of the life. Sure, we resented the fence, but tically cut immigration during the war approved the funds, but they were American response — he even visit- inside the fence was not so ominous years. Many have argued that stalled along the way by other organs ed the camp, to the delight of many anymore.” President Roosevelt didn’t feel moti- of government.) living there — but it was also a stop- Levitch, an aspiring musician, was vated to help the imperiled Jews Dubois exposed this situation. His gap measure. A news report from delighted to find “scads of old, bro- because he’d already won the Jewish report catalyzed the creation of the 1944, which can be heard in Haven ken-down upright pianos” around the vote. That all changed when Josiah E. War Refugee Board in 1944, and Fort from the Holocaust, an hour-long abandoned army camp. Along with a Dubois, a U.S. Treasury Department Ontario was named a safe haven radio program, sums up the refugee fellow refugee, a Viennese piano predicament. “To save their lives, they tuner, he set about scavenging for have been admitted to the United tools and fixing them so that the camp States,” a female broadcaster says could have music. Others describe dourly. “Legally, it’s dubious whether pleasant visits from curious towns- they are here at all. Though they are people, especially girls eager to get a our friends, they are not enjoying look at foreign boys, with whom they American freedoms. They cannot mingled through the fence. move outside a restricted area. When My own grandmother describes hostilities cease, they must go back to driving up with other relatives from Europe.” New York City with baskets full of food This idea may have been convenient and cheerfully passing salamis and for the U.S., but, as it happened, more other comestibles through the wire than half of the refugees in Oswego fence to Yugoslav cousins who’d had immigration cases pending by the miraculously landed upstate. time the war ended. As strange and But a camp is a camp, and in spite novel as the experience had been, of being spared the horrors of war, most were keen to stay and make a life refugees at Fort Ontario observed the Jewish refugees arriving at at Fort Ontario, Oswego, New York, on August 5, 1944. in the country that had taken them in, stark contrast between their locked-in lawyer from New Jersey, blew the shortly thereafter. The board also rather than return to the devastation at lives and those of the free New whistle on the widespread obstruction worked to secure safe havens in other home. When the shelter finally closed Yorkers surrounding them, to say of American visas for Jewish countries, including Switzerland and after the war, many were granted tem- nothing of the even more extreme dis- refugees. In a document titled Report Sweden, and began to work in porary or permanent status. Some parity between their new American to the Secretary on the Acquiescence earnest to help. They sent 300,000 went to live with American relatives. reality and their lives before the war. of This Government in the Murder of food packages (disguised in Red Those without them warily began ‘’In America, I looked out at the rest of the Jews, Dubois shamed the State Cross boxes) into concentration American lives on their own. the world and I saw normal people Department for conspicuous inaction camps and urged the media to detail While Fort Ontario is remembered with everyday lives, and I felt in some cases and outright obstruc- for the American public the horrors of as a special place, a symbol of even- deceived,” former Fort Ontario resi- tion in others. (Dubois’s frustration Auschwitz and other camps. Four mil- tual reckoning, it only barely offset the dent Walter Greenberg told the New was born of the failed release of lion Jews had died by 1944, but the overwhelming human toll extracted by York Times in 2004. 70,000 Jews from Romania — the efforts of the War Refugee Board the Nazis. Even those spared in he camp was established in U.S. had been poised to buy their saved tens of thousands of lives. Oswego would have to reconcile their T June 1944, but it almost didn’t freedom for a $170,000 bribe. It would he creation of the Fort Ontario own fates with those of the millions exist at all. The American response to have been a significant intervention T Emergency Refugee Shelter killed during the war. GETTING ANNE FRANK ALL WRONG After World War I, Congress had refugee with close relatives in Europe cousin, Laura Delano Houghteling, BY RAFAEL MEDOFF enacted restrictive immigration quo- could come to the U.S., on the remarked at a dinner party that tas. The combined quota for Germany grounds that the Nazis might hold “20,000 charming children would all eenage Holocaust diarist Anne and Austria was 27,370 annually — their relatives hostage in order to too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly Frank died in Bergen- Belsen a T far fewer than the hundreds of thou- force the refugee to undertake espi- adults.” FDR himself refused to sup- month earlier than was previously sands of German and Austrian Jews onage for Hitler. port the bill. known, according to researchers at seeking haven from Hitler. That’s right: Anne Frank, Nazi spy. Anne and Margot Frank, and thou- the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Sadly, the administration went uring the period of the Nazis’ sands of other German Jewish They say their new finding is signifi- above and beyond the existing law, to mass murder of the Jews, from refugee children, were kept out cant because it dispels the wide- D ensure that even those meager quota late 1941 until early 1945, barely ten because they were considered unde- spread notion that Anne lived almost allotments were almost always under- percent of the quotas from Germany sirable. One year later, however, until the day of the Allies’ liberation of filled. American consular officials and Axis-controlled European coun- President Roosevelt opened our the camp. abroad made sure to “postpone and tries were actually used. A total of near- country’s doors to several thousand But the real question is not how postpone and postpone the granting ly 190,000 quota places sat unused — British children to keep them safe close Anne came to seeing the victo- of the visas” to refugees, as one sen- representing almost 190,000 lives that from the German blitz. And an appeal rious Allied troops. The real question ior State Department official put it. could have been saved, even within the by Pets magazine in 1940 resulted in we should be asking is why the Frank They created a bureaucratic maze to existing quota system. several thousand offers to take in family’s repeated attempts to emi- keep refugees like the Franks far from That same year, refugee advocates British purebred puppies endangered grate to the United States before the America’s shores. in Congress introduced the Wagner- by the war. But there was no room for war were rebuffed. Otto Frank, Anne’s father, dutifully Rogers bill, which would have admit- Jewish children. The Frank family, like many Jewish filled out the sm all mountain of ted 20,000 refugee children from The reason why Jewish children, families, fled their native Germany required application forms and Germany outside the quota system. including Anne and Margot Frank, did shortly after Adolf Hitler’s rise to obtained supporting affidavits from Anne Frank and her sister Margot, as not survive was not just because of power. They settled in neighboring the family’s relatives in German citizens, could have been their bad luck that the Allies arrived at Holland. In 1939, with world war Massachusetts. among those children. Bergen-Belsen a few weeks too late. looming on the horizon and Hitler’s But that was not enough for those Even though there was no danger It was also because of a conscious persecution of Jews intensifying, the who zealously guarded America’s that the children would take jobs away decision by the Roosevelt administra- Franks began thinking about moving gates against refugees. In fact, in from American citizens, nativists and tion to prevent all but a small number to America. 1941, the Roosevelt administration isolationists lobbied hard against the of Jewish refugees from finding haven But the Roosevelt administration even added a new restriction: no bill. President Franklin Roosevelt’s in America. was in no mood to take them in. aAmerican & International Societies for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE U.S. POSTAGE 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID SMITHTOWN, N.Y. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO.15

Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org Society Editor (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for New York, NY 10110 NY York, New Ron B. Meier, Ph.D., Ron B. Meier, EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL *Published Bimonthly by the American by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance Eli Zborowski** Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski** Mandell William Sam Halpern** Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer** Joseph Bukiet** American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased September/October 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5779 2018 - Tishri/Cheshvan September/October for more than

z”l, , who was greatly z”l

MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE The Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle is The American Society for Yad for American Society The Vashem was founded in 1981 by a was founded Vashem survivors and led group of Holocaust by Eli Zborowski, approved by the thirty years. Recently American of the Board of Directors our Legacy Vashem, Yad Society for in memory of Eli Circle is being named Zborowski, respected for his work and accom- Vashem Yad on behalf of plishments and is missed by all who knew him. ELI ZBOROWSKI LEGACY CIRCLE LEGACY ELI ZBOROWSKI 212-220-4304; [email protected] Director of Planned Giving at ASYV, who can be reached at: ASYV, Director of Planned Giving at Robert Christopher Morton, For further information about the Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle, For further information about the Eli Zborowski The Talmud “I did not find the world desolate when I entered it. As my I entered it. “I did not find the world desolate when By including Yad Vashem in your estate plans, you assure a in your estate Vashem Yad By including please contact who will come after me.” fathers planted for me before I was born, so do I plant for those fathers planted for me before I was born, serve as a powerful antidote to denial, hate and indifference. serve as a powerful antidote to denial, future in which Holocaust remembrance and education will future in which Holocaust remembrance as well as those with substantial wealth. as well as those with substantial ment vehicles that can accommodate those of modest means, ment vehicles that can accommodate of any size, through a broad range of programs and invest- of any size, through a broad range eficiary of a Charitable Lead Trust. Individuals can make gifts Lead Trust. eficiary of a Charitable interest in an IRA or retirement plan, or making ASYV the ben- or retirement plan, or making interest in an IRA donating a paid-up life insurance policy or contributing an life insurance policy donating a paid-up ing a Charitable Remainder Trust or Charitable Gift Annuity, Gift or Charitable Remainder Trust ing a Charitable in their estate plans. This can include a bequest by will, fund- plans. This can include a bequest in their estate open to and will recognize anyone who includes Yad Vashem Yad includes open to and will recognize anyone who Page 16