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Child Survivors of in Greater New Haven

By Martin Ira Glassner and Renee Glassner

Background

The Holocaust Child Survivors of (HCSC) was founded only a few months after the first international conference of child survi¬ vors was held in New York in 1991. Since then it has been a vital support group. Although the wounds can never be completely healed, members of the group help one another to come to terms with their past. In addition, the group has mounted a number of outreach activities in the field of Holocaust education. Activities include an active Speakers Bureau, which matches survivors with churches, schools, civic groups, and others; a book called Childhood Memories: Jewish Children Who Survived the Nazi Peril Speak, designed for and widely used in secondary schools; an award-winning video docu¬ mentary, One Out of Ten, now also in DVD format; an essay contest for sec¬ ondary school students; and a full-length book on the impact of the Holo¬ caust on survivors who were children at the time, titled And Life Is Changed Forever, by Martin Ira Glassner and Robert Krell, published in 2006 by Wayne State University Press. The majority of members of the organization, some 70 of them, live in Fairfield County, but we have identified 16 who have recently lived in the New Haven area. Separating survivors by age is justified by many studies that demonstrate clearly that children react to stress and trauma differently from adults. The older survivors who settled in the New Haven area are discussed in some detail in the article “The Holocaust Fellowship of Greater New Haven,” by Sally Horwitz, which appeared in in New Haven (Volume 8, pp. 133-139). Here we offer brief sketches of the younger sur¬ vivors, in alphabetical order.

The Child Survivors

Mark Marian Auerbach (formerly Marian Max Auerbach) was bom in Tamopol, Poland, in September 1926. He was in a number of camps, in¬ cluding Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, but managed to stay with his father « 93 and brother until liberation. He graduated from an ORT school in Germany as a dental technician. He arrived in Boston in 1949. He lived in West Haven from 1955 to 1979, then in New Haven. He was a polio research technician at Yale, then a chemical research technician at Olin Corporation until he retired in 1982. He and his wife Rhoda were also active in commu¬ nity affairs, including Holocaust education, interfaith programs, and a soup kitchen for the hungry and homeless. He died on December 15, 2006. Eva S. Benda (nee Bloch) was bom in Berlin on May 13, 1924. She moved with her mother to Prague, her mother’s home town, in 1932 and watched the German army march into Prague on March 15, 1939. In Octo¬ ber 1942 she and her mother were transported to Terezin (Theresienstadt). They lived there in relative safety and comfort for two years, until October 1944, when they were transported to Auschwitz. They were shipped from there to Oederan, near Dresden, a vast improvement over Auschwitz. In April 1945 they were providentially returned to Terezin, from which they escaped to Prague. From there they went to New Zealand, where Eva mar¬ ried Harry Benda, a survivor of a Japanese internment camp. They came to the in 1952, landing in Miami. Harry taught at several uni¬ versities and they had two children. They came to Yale in 1959. Harry died in October 1971. Eva earned a master’s degree in psychology and became a psychiatric social worker with the State of Connecticut. She retired in 1989, but still works part-time as a real estate agent. Charles Gelman was bom in Kurenits, Poland, in 1922. After the Soviets and then the Germans occupied the area, he survived by becoming a house painter for the Germans. He escaped the liquidation of Jews in the area and joined a partisan brigade, fighting with them until they linked up with the Red Army in 1944. After the war he made his way to the American zone of Germany and then to the United States, arriving on October 5, 1948. He stayed with his cousin, Eli Zimmerman, until he married Sydonie Tanen- baum in March 1955 and moved to New Haven. He had a variety of jobs but primarily he sold insurance and served as the cantor of Temple Beth Sholom in Hamden, retiring in 1987. He died on May 24, 2004. Renee Glassner (nee Rywka Losice, later Renee Gewirtzman) was bom on November 6, 1931 in Losice, Poland. She, her parents, and two broth¬ ers were at times separated but, with the help of Polish farmers, managed to hide from the Germans. She hid in a wardrobe in the home of a Polish policeman in Losice for five months, then in Koszelowka in a pit under an animal shed for one and a half years. Of the 7,000 Jews in Losice in 1939, Renee was one of only 16 who survived. She arrived in New York with her family on July 30, 1948 and went immediately to Albany, New York, where 94 $ she lived with the uncle who sponsored them. In 1967, while living in Cali¬ fornia with her husband and three daughters, she earned an M.A. in Spanish and linguistics. She has been living in Hamden since August 1968. She taught Spanish and French in North Haven High School until she retired in 1997. She became active in the Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut, speaking about her Holocaust experience to schools, churches, civic groups, and so on, and working on other projects in Holocaust education.

Holocaust survivor Renee Glassner addressing the public in her home town of Losice, Poland, May 20, 2008.

Anna Stetier Goldberg (Dola Steiier) was bom on April 3, 1929 in Dro- hobycz, Poland. During the Holocaust she was a prisoner in Plaszow, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Gelenau, and Mauthausen. She arrived in New Orleans on April 3, 1949, settling in Connecticut in 1950, then in Hamden in 1988. She had one year of study at the Stone Academy of Business and has been a licensed real estate agent for 32 years. Geoffrey Hartman (Gert Haumann) was bom in Frankfurt am Main, Ger¬ many, on August 11, 1929. He was sent to England on a Kindertransport in March 1939 and lived on the estate of James Rothschild in Waddleston with 19 other boys. He was reunited with his mother and came to the United States in August 1945. He has lived in New Haven since 1949 with inter¬ vals of living elsewhere. He earned a B.A. at Queens College of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. at Yale. He is now Sterling Profes¬ sor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Yale and is a Co¬ founder and Project Director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, also at Yale. Renee Hartman was bom in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1933. Both of her parents and her sister, one and a half years younger than she, were deaf and Renee had to serve as their “ears.” In 1943 the two girls were separated from their parents, who were deported to Auschwitz. The girls were sheltered for many months on a farm. They were returned to Bratis¬ lava, where they lived precariously, often on the streets, until deported to Auschwitz in 1944. The train tracks were bombed en route to Auschwitz and their train was diverted to Bergen-Belsen where, a year later, they were $ 95

liberated by British troops. Renee spent the years 1945-1948 in Sweden, recovering from several ailments, including typhus. The girls were sent to Brooklyn in August 1948 to live with relatives. Renee is married to Geof¬ frey Hartman, and they live in New Haven. Helene Kasha (nee Guttmann) was bom in Alsace, France, in June 1936. Her parents were from Przemysl, Galicia, Poland. Almost immedi¬ ately after the German defeat of France in 1940, most Alsatian Jews, includ¬ ing Helene’s family, fled to the “unoccupied” zone in south and southwest France. Germany overran unoccupied France in November 1942 and again the family fled, this time from Lyon to Switzerland. They were among the lucky 20,000 Jews admitted into Switzerland. Helene lived with a Swiss family in Basle for two and a half years. She rejoined her parents in Alsace shortly after the war ended. She arrived in New York in 1964 and moved to Hamden in 1991, where she lived with her husband Henry, also a child survivor, and established a business doing translations, mostly in Romance and Slavic languages. Before she died in 2006, she became involved in Republican politics and conservation. Henry Kasha was bom in Warsaw in 1929. From the establishment of the ghetto in October 1940 to liberation by the Red Army on January 17, 1945, he hid in the ghetto. Toward the end he and 15 others, including his parents and a few Christians, survived in a bunker in the ruins of Warsaw, scavenging for food and other supplies. After liberation, he resumed a more or less normal life, catching up academically, marrying another survivor, and raising three sons. He became a prominent professor of physics at Yale University. He migrated to New York in 1964 and has been living in Ham¬ den since 1991. Dori Laub was bom on June 8, 1937 in Cemauti, , . In June 1942, he and his parents were deported with other Jews to Transn- istria, the formerly Ukranian territory now occupied by Romania. They were interned in an old stone quarry, where the men were forced to do hard labor. When the camp was closed, they were able to survive in the town of Obodovka until liberated by the Red Army in the spring of 1944. He and his mother remained in Romania until 1950, when they emigrated to . Dori received his medical degree there and practiced psychology. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1966. He held positions in Massachusetts be¬ fore coming to Yale as an instructor in psychiatry in 1969. He is currently a practicing psychoanalyst in New Haven and has been living in Woodbridge since 1983. He is co-founder of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust 96 $

Testimonies. He is also Deputy Director for Trauma Studies at Yale and has published widely in his field. Helene Rosenberg was bom in Warsaw on December 17, 1923. During the war she worked as a nurse, primarily in a German hospital, posing as a Christian woman, Maria Zuk. She had other jobs as well, including trading in the black market and producing false papers. She came to New Haven in June 1949 because her husband, Willie, had a friend there from his home town, Czestochowa, Poland. After her children were somewhat indepen¬ dent she worked in Macy’s for many years. Endre (Andy) F. Sarkany was bom in Budapest on October 31, 1936. In 1939 his parents rented an apartment in a Jewish neighborhood that also housed the Municipal Home for Poor Jewish Children. When the ghetto was created in the fall of 1944, their apartment house was included in it. The Home also became a full-fledged orphanage. This provided some pro¬ tection from deportation. Although his father and other relatives were de¬ ported, Andy was saved largely because of the location of the building. The ghetto was freed by the Red Army in January 1945. He immigrated to New York in January 1957 as a refugee from the failure of the Hungarian revolu¬ tion of 1956. He has an M.S. in applied mathematics and computer science and worked for 25 years for IBM. Since retiring in 1992 he has had several teaching positions and has worked for several Jewish organizations. He is currently Senior Campaign Analyst at the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, and has been living in New Haven since August 2001. Gaston Leonard Schmir (Gaston Leonard Szmir) was bom in Metz, France, on June 8, 1933. On September 3, 1939 the French government evacuated inhabitants who lived near the German border. The next day the family left for Angouleme. The Vichy government’s anti-Semitic legisla¬ tion of 1940 prompted them to leave Angouleme abruptly. In May 1943 they arrived in the village of Thones in the French Alps and were helped by members of the Resistance and by the priests of the College Saint-Joseph. In February 1944 they managed to depart Thones just ahead of the anti-Se¬ mitic Milice. On March 31 he and his nine-year-old sister Louise climbed a barbed-wire fence to safety in Switzerland. Their parents and infant brother crossed three weeks later. He arrived in New York from Lisbon in March 1946 and has lived in Hamden since 1966. Gaston received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Yale in 1958 and was appointed Professor Emeritus of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale in 1985. He has lectured throughout and Israel. Richard Sheramy lived in Wadowice, Poland, at the outbreak of World War II. During the German occupation, his father was murdered in Belzec $ 97

and later his mother and sister were murdered in Auschwitz. He was trans¬ ported to several labor and concentration camps in eastern and southern Germany. He was liberated by the U.S. Army near Bad Tolz, Bavaria. He arrived in the United States in December 1946 and shortly thereafter en¬ listed in the U.S. Air Force. He was stationed at Air Force Headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany. Upon returning to civilian life, he earned B.S. and M.B.A. degrees at New York University. He worked in financial manage¬ ment for many years for a multinational corporation, from which he retired several years ago. Nira Rubin Silverman has also been known as Stefania Zarkower and Adelaida Iwanczuk. She was bom near Lwow, Poland, on February 10, 1940 while her parents were fleeing the Germans. She and her parents lived with her maternal grandmother in Zbaraz, Galicia. Two years later mother and daughter began traveling around Poland by train, truck, and bus after was her father shot by the Germans. Her peripatetic life is a blur even now, marked by hiding, shooting, bombing, false papers, illness, Catholic schools, and a new father. She and her parents moved to Paris, then Israel, then New York, arriving in 1954. Since 1971 she has lived in North Haven. She graduated from New York University Medical School and is now a der¬ matologist. Giorgina Vitale (nee Giorgina de Leon) was also known as Maria De- giorgis and Maria Alpozzo while in hiding with her family in villages near Turin, Italy, where she was bom on February 11, 1926. She and her fam¬ ily spent two years (1943-1945) in Piea d’Asti, where the villagers did not reveal until after the war that they had known that the family was Jewish. It was not until May 2007 that Piea was finally recognized as a town of Righteous Gentiles. She arrived in New York in February 1949 and lived in New Haven until June 1976. Unfortunately, her husband Luciano died of ALS in 1972. Since then she has lived in Branford. She has a B.A. in Com¬ parative Literature from Southern Connecticut State University and taught Italian at Berlitz for several years. Then she worked for the Jewish Federa¬ tion of Greater New Haven in several capacities, including Director of the Women’s Division. She is now active doing volunteer work, traveling, and enjoying her family. Comments

This is a small and quite unscientific sample of child survivors, yet it demonstrates clearly the variety of countries, ages, and experiences to be found among its members. How can we account for the generally high level of achievement of Holocaust survivors in Greater New Haven? 98 $

Surviving after surviving the war required a return to functioning in a long-forgotten world, one where food was available and danger had reced¬ ed. Once children became aware of the possibility of becoming “normal,” their determination to achieve normality was unrelenting. They set aside their experiences as if there were a compartment reserved for grief and bad memories and went about the business of learning at a ferocious pace. Most had lost many years of schooling and caught up or surpassed their grade level within only a few years, often in a brand-new language. (Glassner and Krell, p. 8) Another of the most commonly cited reasons for the success of child survivors is their own resilience. “Virtually no child had a chance to sur¬ vive without the assistance of adults. Fate, luck and the help of strangers all played a role, but the children who lived took actions that contributed to their survival, and they displayed remarkable resilience in constructing their postwar lives.” (Glassner and Krell, p. 2) But now, child survivors are facing new problems: physical, financial, psychological, and so on. This latter stage of life presents a new danger to the child survivor’s well¬ being and makes it important for the aging “children” to gather in groups and at conferences in order to confront the past in the presence of people who have had similar experiences. They alone understand each other. They alone are able to encourage each other to relate their stories and to share them with family. The unburdening of the child survivor’s traumatized self has resulted in a recent outpouring of published memoirs. (Glassner and Krell, pp. 9-10) An example of gathering in groups is the HCSC, an active organization that provides services and comradeship to its members. On a larger scale, the authors recently attended the 19th Annual International Conference in Jerusalem of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Ho¬ locaust, along with some 800 others, including non-survivor spouses and offspring, and we can testify to the value of such activities. And a small example of the memoir genre — though it is much more than that — is our book And Life Is Changed Forever, which contains the stories of 21 child survivors from 13 countries, plus psychosocial analyses, maps, photo¬ graphs, and other features. In these and other ways we are honoring the one and a half million Jew¬ ish children murdered by the Germans and their allies. If the child survivors have accomplished so much, imagine how much the murdered ones could have achieved if they had been allowed to do so. They could have contrib¬ uted hugely to the development of a better world — or, as it is expressed in Hebrew, tikkun olam.