Vol. 37-No.3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2011-Shevat/Adar 5771 INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY anuary 27 marks the anniversary of “They joined the resistance, rescued A handful of elderly camp survivors and Holocaust but failed to act, and urged them Jthe liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, those in peril, smuggled food into ghettos young Germans and Poles also gathered not to make the same mistake today. the largest Nazi death camp. In 2005, the and made wrenching sacrifices to keep in Oswiecim, southern Poland, for cere- “They knew and did not act,” Netanyahu United Nations General Assembly desig- their children alive. Their courage contin- monies marking 66 years since the libera- said. nated this day as International Holocaust ues to inspire. On this Holocaust Remem- tion of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex “Today they know, they hear, they see, Remembrance Day, an annual day of com- brance Day, let us honor these women and where German Nazis killed more than a they film,” Netanyahu said of Iran’s threats. memoration to honor the victims of the their legacy. Let us pledge to create a million people during World War II. “Will they act, will they speak, really speak, Nazi era. world where such atrocities can never be “Since World War II, across the globe attack or condemn?” repeated. there has not been a single day without “We are all aware that such a future has war. We continue to witness massacres yet to arrive. Everywhere in our world, and genocide on an ethnic, racial, religious women and girls continue to endure vio- or linguistic basis,” German President lence, abuse and discrimination. The Christian Wulff said. United Nations is fully committed to pro- “This is an appeal to youth to take re- moting and protecting their fundamental sponsibility for what is happening. Indiffer- human rights. By empowering women we ence is the worst threat to democracy and empower all of society. liberty.” “Families should never again have to en- “Here we must ask how to protect the dure the kind of evil seen during the Holo- world against crimes, hate and contempt caust. Only by working together can we for human rights. We owe it to those who Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. prevent genocide and end impunity. By perished in Auschwitz, but also to those “I expect the world will learn the lesson educating new generations about this ter- who were killed not long ago in the and act with words and deeds against the rible episode of our history, we can help to Balkans and elsewhere,” Polish President new anti-Semitism,” Netanyahu said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. uphold human dignity for all.” Bronislaw Komorowski said. n Washington US President Barack This year, due to the weather conditions n Poland the German and Polish pres- The two leaders also laid flowers at the IObama joined a list of other world lead- in New York, the observance of Interna- Iidents on January 27 urged global vig- foot of the notorious wall of death in ers in marking Holocaust Remembrance tional Holocaust Remembrance Day at the ilance to prevent crimes against humanity Auschwitz where the Nazis shot thousands Day. UN headquarters was cancelled and dead. “I join people here at home, in Israel, and rescheduled for a later date. But UN Sec- Survivor David Levin, 85, who now lives around the world in commemorating Inter- retary-General Ban Ki-moon delivered his in Germany, was 16 when he was de- national Holocaust Remembrance Day, as message that reflects on this event. ported to Auschwitz. we mark one of the darkest, most destruc- “Each year, the international community “People don’t know much about tive periods in human history,” he said. unites in memory of the Holocaust and re- Auschwitz. Reading books doesn’t teach “To remember is a choice, and today we flects on the lessons that we all must them as much as meeting witnesses who remember the innocent victims of the Nazis’ heed. It is a vitally important annual obser- survived hell. I hope this knowledge stays murderous hate – six million Jews and mil- vance,” said Ban Ki-moon. in their memory forever.” lions of other people. We are reminded to “On the anniversary of the liberation of Tomasz Kobylanski, a 21-year-old stu- remain ever-vigilant against the possibility of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest and most dent from the Jagiellonian University in the genocide, and to ensure that ‘Never Again’ notorious of the Nazi death camps, we re- nearby southern Polish city of Krakow, is not just a phrase but a principled cause. member the millions of Jews, as well as said meeting survivors was all the more And we resolve to stand up against preju- the prisoners of war, political dissidents, compelling due to the fact that there are dice, stereotyping, and violence – including and members of minority groups, such as only a few left. the scourge of anti-Semitism – around the the Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and dis- “It’s very important to be able to meet wit- globe,” Obama added. abled people, who were systematically nesses of history, all the more so that this In Brussels the Israeli Ministry of Public murdered by the Nazis and their sympa- is perhaps the last opportunity to speak Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, in coop- thizers. with them.” eration with the presidency of the Euro- “This year, we pay special tribute to the Trustees at the Auschwitz museum also pean Parliament, the European Jewish women who suffered in the Holocaust. marked the liberation anniversary Thurs- Congress, and the Holocaust Memorial of Mothers and daughters, grandmothers, Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski (R) day by launching a Facebook drive to help Yad Vashem, held an event to mark Inter- sisters and aunts, they saw their lives ir- and his German counterpart Christian Wulff raise 120 million euros to preserve the site national Day of Commemoration in Mem- revocably changed, their families sepa- (2nd R) pass the main gate of the former of the camp for posterity. ory of the Victims of the Holocaust. rated and their traditions shattered. Yet, Auschwitz death camp, in Oswiecim on January This event, the first of its kind, took place despite appalling acts of discrimination, 27, 2011. n Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Ne- Itanyahu, speaking to parliament ahead at the European Parliament. deprivation and cruelty, they consistently as they marked International Holocaust Israeli Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Af- found ways to fight back against their per- Remembrance Day at the former of International Holocaust Remembrance fairs Minister Yuli Edelstein, European Par- secutors. Auschwitz death camp. Day, called on the world to learn the les- sons of the Holocaust and act against the liament President Jerzy Buzek, European Jewish state’s arch-foe Iran. Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor, He accused the “regime of the ayatol- and Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate IN THIS ISSUE lahs” of inciting a new “genocide” against Elie Wiesel were among the participants. International Holocaust Remembrance Day...... 1, 3 the Jewish people. As part of the program, memorial can- In the Shadow of the Red Banner...... 4 Israel regards Iran as its principal threat, dles were lit by Jewish Holocaust survivors The Holocaust in Lithuania: One man’s crusade to bring justice...... 5 after repeated predictions by its hardline from Europe and Israel. The past is present...... 6 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the The main feature of the event was a How one Polish woman uncovered her town’s shocking role in the Holocaust...... 7 Jewish state’s demise. unique concert by the Ra’anana Sym- Nazis were given “safe haven” in U.S., report says...... 8 The Iranian leader has also frequently phonette Orchestra in order to present its Art’s survivors of Hitler’s war...... 9 and publicly denied the Holocaust, calling special Holocaust memorial program, ti- Holocaust orphans reminisce about the Birnbaum family...... 10 it a “myth.” tled “Alma Rosé – from Vienna to History saved from the trash...... 11 Netanyahu said world leaders were Auschwitz.” Schindler’s list: The story behind the documents...... 11 aware of the mass murder of the Jews The musical program tells the story of Scholars reconsidering Italy’s treatment of Jews in the Nazi era...... 15 being carried out by the Nazis during the (Continued on page 3) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771

NUREMBERG LAWS HANDED OVER FRENCH HOLOCAUST ROLE RECOGNIZED TO US NATIONAL ARCHIVES rance’s highest court has recog- She is also asking for material and he Nuremberg Laws, which laid the ships with non-Jews, and stopped them F nized the state’s “responsibility” for moral damages for her own personal suf- Tlegal groundwork for the execution of flying the German flag. the deportation of Jews in World War II. fering during and after the German occu- six million Jews during the Holocaust, have Under the laws people were classified as The Council of State said the state had pation. been handed over to the US National Jews if they had three or four Jewish permitted or facilitated deportations that In its judgment, the council said it be- Archives. grandparents, and those with one or two led to anti-Semitic persecution without lieved the responsibility of the state was Consisting of four pages, and signed by Jewish grandparents were described as being coerced by the occupiers. evident because it had “permitted or fa- Adolf Hitler, the anti-Semitic documents Mischling, or of “mixed blood.” But the council also found reparations cilitated the deportation from France of were appropriated by US General George Huntington Library President Steve Kob- had since been made “as much as was persons who had been victims of anti-Se- Patton at the end of the Second World War lik said: “We were aware of the fact that possible, for all the losses suffered.” mitic persecution.” after being discovered in Bavaria. Gen. Patton, who had received the docu- Correspondents say the ruling is the The state’s actions were not the result Gen. Patton disobeyed orders that clearest such recognition of the French of “direct constraints put upon it by the Nazi documents were to be handed state’s role in the Holocaust. occupying force,” it added. over to the government and spirited Between 1942 and 1944 some 76,000 The council cited “arrests, internments them out of Germany, later depositing Jews were deported from France by the and displacement to transit camps” car- them at the Huntington Library in Los Vichy government in collaboration with ried out by the French authorities, which the German occupying army. Angeles, close to where he grew up. it said were “the first stage of the depor- In 1995, former French President The library placed them in a bomb- tation of these people to camps in which Jacques Chirac officially recognized the proof vault and they were a missing most of them were exterminated.” French state’s responsibility in the depor- piece of evidence at the Nuremberg tri- However, the court also said that it did als that followed the war. tation of Jews, putting an end to decades not believe the government should be li- Prosecutors had to use photocopies, of ambiguity by successive governments. able for any further compensation claims. and the existence of the originals was “These dark hours forever sully our his- Visitors get a close view of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, “The reparations required called for in- only disclosed in 1999. tory and are an insult to our past and our promulgated by the Third Reich as the beginning of per- dividual compensation for victims, as well The library has now handed them traditions,” he said. “Yes, the criminal folly secution of Jews. as a solemn recognition of the state’s re- over to the National Archives in Washing- of the occupiers was seconded by the ments from his staff as a gift and deposited sponsibility and of the loss and damages ton, D.C., so they can be placed with the them at the Huntington, had not paid atten- French, by the French state.” rest of the war crimes trial evidence. Previous administrations had always collectively suffered,” it explained. tion in his souvenir hunting to the orders of “The various measures taken since the Archivists hope to put them on public show his commander-in-chief. blamed either Nazi Germany or the Vichy end of World War II, both in terms of com- later this year. “Had Gen. Patton not taken these docu- government, absolving the French state pensation as well as symbolic reparation, Drawn up in 1935, the laws rescinded ments, they would have been part of the of responsibility. the citizenship of German Jews and barred collection the government was putting to- The Council of State’s pronouncement have repaired, as much as was possible, them from marrying non-Jews. They also gether in order to prepare for the Nurem- came after the Paris administrative court all the losses suffered.” forbade Jews from having sexual relation- berg trials.” sought its opinion on a case brought by In 2007, a Bordeaux appeal court over- the daughter of a deportee killed at turned a ruling ordering the state railway AMISH COMMUNITY ASKS FORGIVENESS OF JEWS Auschwitz, who is seeking reparations operator, SNCF, to compensate the fam- from the French state. ily of deportees. AT KOTEL epresentatives of the Amish commu- does not represent the Amish at large, but ISRAEL TRIED TO ABDUCT ADOLF EICHMANN Rnity from the United States and rather their faction of the larger church. Switzerland paid a visit to the Western But according to an announcement issued 11 YEARS BEFORE HIS CAPTURE, REPORT SAYS Wall, where they asked the Jewish peo- by the office of Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel srael attempted and failed to abduct mann’s hiding place in Argentina nearly a ple’s forgiveness for their group’s silence Rabinovitch, with whom the group met, the IAdolf Eichmann eleven years before decade before Israeli agents captured the during the Nazi extermination of Jews in Amish delegates saw great importance in successfully capturing the Nazi war crimi- Nazi criminal in 1960. the Holocaust. coming to Israel and expressing their contri- nal, the German newspaper Der Spiegel According to documents recently re- tion, as well as declaring their unreserved reported. leased, the predecessor of today’s Bun- support of the Jewish people Eichmann, considered one of the key ar- desnachrichtendienst, or BND, knew at and the State of Israel. chitects of the Final Solution, was captured least since 1952 Eichmann’s fake name The delegation members by Mossad agents in 1960. A year later, he and the country where he was hiding. stressed that they were nei- was sentenced to death, and he was “SS Colonel Eichmann is not to be found ther seeking any kind of ges- hanged in 1962. in Egypt but is residing in Argentina under ture from the Jewish people Basing its report on classified German in- the fake name Clemens. E.’s address is nor looking to proselytize – telligence documents, Der Spiegel de- known to the editor-in-chief of the German only to support Israel for the scribed a detailed attempt to simple reason that in the past apprehend Eichmann in Austria they hadn’t. as early as 1949, an attempt Rabinovitch was presented which eventually failed due to with various tokens at a cere- bad intelligence. mony in the Hasmonean The failed operation was Representatives of the Amish community at the Western Wall. chamber, including a parch- based on a mistaken premise ment with a request for for- according to which Eichmann Part of what made the visit special was giveness in the name of the entire Amish was to visit his wife in the town that the Amish, a sect of the Mennonite community, along with a commitment that of Bad Aussee in the state of Church that largely rejects modern tech- from now on, it would loudly voice its sup- Styria. nology, do not normally use contemporary port of the Jewish people, especially in the A plane containing an Israeli forms of transportation such as the aircraft wake of the expressions of hatred by Iran- commando team was already at Adolf Eichmann. on which they made the journey to the ian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and hand in Salzburg airport in order to abduct newspaper in Argentina Der Weg [The Holy Land. It is likely that this delegation his extensions. the Nazi war criminal, but Eichmann, who Way],” an index card from 1952 stated, ac- was at that time hiding in northern Germany, cording to the paper. HATE LETTER THREATENED WAVE never showed up. Hiding in Argentina, Eichmann indeed According to the Der Spiegel report, the used the false name Ricardo Klement. OF NY SYNAGOGUE ATTACKS source for the bad intelligence was a ques- When he sent for his wife and children to hate letter threatened a wave of Police evacuated the synagogue building tionable informant, who had been em- join him in South America from Austria, the A New York synagogue bombings on and combed it for explosives, but found ployed by Austrian intelligence, as well as West German intelligence service, then New Year’s Eve, including an Upper West nothing suspicious. other intelligence agencies, and even co- still called the Gehlen Organization, Side house of worship, whose spiritual Rabbi Schwartz told the newspaper that operated at one time with famed Nazi learned of Eichmann’s hiding place but did leader, Rabbi Alan Schwartz, told The the letter was also sent to “10 or 12” syna- hunter Simon Wiesenthal. nothing to attempt to capture him, accord- New York Post, “Someone wants to gogues, although police have not con- The German intelligence documents ing to the paper. spread fear.” firmed if explicit bomb threats were made quoted by Der Spiegel added that the ar- German historian Dr. Bettina Stangneth, His Ohab Zedek synagogue – a reli- in every letter. rest itself was to be conducted by Austrian who has been researching the topic for six gious center for hundreds of New York The Post noted that the same day the let- police, with Israel having paid a chief Aus- years, said the discovery of the index card professionals, many of them singles – re- ter was discovered, New York state officials trian official 50,000 schillings as well as of- is indeed a “sensation,” according to Bild. ceived a letter, threatening to blow up the released annual statistics showing that hate fering a 1 million shilling reward. “Until now it was not known that the West house of worship on the eve of the Jew- crimes rose by 14 percent, while hate crimes The Der Spiegel report comes after the German secret service knew about Eich- ish Sabbath Friday night, which also was in New York City rose by 6 percent. Seventy German daily Bild reported that the West mann’s hiding place eight years before his the eve of the secular new year. incidents were recorded in Manhattan. German secret service knew about Eich- arrest.” January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY HIMMLER’S DAUGHTER FUNDING NAZIS (Continued from page 1) “We’re focused on finding new and inno- TO ESCAPE JUSTICE Alma Rosé, a composer and conductor vative ways to make the enormous amount einrich Himmler’s daughter devotes members in a dying organization. “It’s who established an orchestra in Auschwitz of data in our archives, accessible and Hher life to a charity which helps true I help where I can, but I refuse to dis- and died there in 1944. searchable to a global audience,” said some of the Third Reich’s most evil crimi- cuss my work.” A member of the orchestra played a special Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem. nals to escape justice. Recently it was revealed that Stille Hilfe violin that belonged to a Jew who died at 65 years after World War II ended, Gu- is funding the defense of a Dutch Nazi Auschwitz and which remains as a symbol of drun Himmler, who is now aged 81 and is living in Germany. Klaas Faber, 88, is the culture of humanity amidst the horror. a mother of two, is part of an organisation wanted by Holland to resume a life term n Jerusalem on the eve of the Interna- called Stille Hilfe – or Silent Aid. for murdering Jews and resistance fighters Itional Holocaust Remembrance Day, Her father helped to organize the murder in the war. the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in of six million Jews. Himmler would It also bankrolled the legal fight of Jerusalem and Google have announced a often arrange for his young daughter to Samuel Kunz, who died last November partnership to put the world’s largest col- come visit him wherever he was, and she aged 89 before answering for his crimes lection of Holocaust documents onto the would often go to concentration camps as a guard at Belzec death camp in Internet in order to preserve and access with him. On a visit to Dachau, Gudrun Poland. these archives. strolled around with her adoring father and Prosecutors say he was involved in mur- The Jerusalem-based archive is devoted his servants while yards away prisoners dering 433,000 people. to the documentation, research, education, Avner Shalev, Chairman of Yad Vashem (L), were beaten, starved, killed, and burned in The organization is said to have around and commemoration of the Holocaust. Its and Yossi Matias, director of Google’s research the camp crematorium. 25 active members – but also several and development center in Israel, announce photo collection will be made more widely Today, she lives a secretive life, always their partnership in Jerusalem on January 26. accessible for people around the world to trying to keep herself away from the gaze of search and discover the photographs on He said Google “is an integral partner in her neighbors as she runs the organization its website and share their own personal our mission, as they help us to reach new open to a select few Nazi sympathizers. stories and thoughts. Ten years ago in Ulrichsberg, northern This resource will be valuable to those audiences, including young people around Austria, she made a rare appearance at a interested in researching the Holocaust, the world, enabling them to be active in the neo-Nazi rally, representing Stille Hilfe. whether to find out more about family discussion about the Holocaust.” Young hate-mongers there were awed members whose stories are collected in Yossi Matias, director of Google’s re- to be among their idols – Waffen SS veter- the center or out of general interest. search and development center in Israel, ans as well as a handful of camp guards As a first step towards bringing the vast declared: “For some time, Google has been archive online over time, 130,000 photos working to bring the world’s historical and and the “desk murderers” who pushed the from Yad Vashem’s archive will be view- cultural heritage online. The Internet offers pens that moved the trains that fed the gas able in full resolution online. a great opportunity to preserve and share chambers. Gudrun Himmler. Google has implemented experimental important materials stored in archives.” Andrea Ropke, an authority on neo- optical character recognition (OCR) tech- Yad Vashem was established in 1953 Nazism who attended the rally, said: “But hundred secret sympathizers, who fund nology to carry out this project, making and holds a great wealth of testimonies, everyone was terrified of Gudrun. All and support its projects. previously difficult to locate documents photographs, diaries, and other documen- these high-ranking former officers lined However, it is to Germany’s discredit that searchable and discoverable online. tary material. up and she asked, ‘Where did you it seems to be turning a blind eye to the serve?’, showing off her vast knowledge group’s nefarious activities. of military logistics.” The opposition Social Democratic party YAD VASHEM WILL GET ACCESS Gudrun does not deny her involvement has also called for an investigation into its TO WWII POLISH ARCHIVES with Stille Hilfe, describing herself in a charitable status – but so far Berlin has re- srael’s Holocaust museum Yad “This is our wish and we are embarking rare interview as simply one of the few fused to act against it. IVashem signed an agreement with on a very ambitious project to identify Poland that gives it access to World War them,” Shalev said. MASS GRAVE OF HOLOCAUST VICTIMS UNEARTHED II–era documents held in archives across He said Yad Vashem has identified the Eastern European country. about 4 million of the 6 million Jews mur- mass grave containing the bodies of The find, in the Vulturi forest in Propri- The material, held in 34 state-run and dered by the Nazis. About 3 million of AJews killed by the Romanian army cani, northeast of Bucharest, is “further ev- provincial archives, mainly includes files those were Polish Jews, and Yad during the Second World War has been dis- idence of the crimes committed against produced by the Nazi German authorities Vashem still lacks names for about half of covered in a forest in northeastern Romania. Jewish civilians in Romania,” Elie Wiesel who occupied Poland during the war. But the Polish Jews and others in Eastern institute head Alexandru Florian said. some of the archives also contain materi- Europe. According to an international commis- als produced by Jews imprisoned in ghet- The agreement allows Yad Vashem to sion of historians led by Nobel Peace lau- tos, amounting to rare and precious systematically photocopy millions of doc- reate Elie Wiesel, some 270,000 wartime testimony of huge value to histori- uments and to integrate them into Yad Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed ans, according to Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem’s archives, where they will be- in territories run by the pro-Nazi Romanian Vashem chairman. come available in the coming years to re- regime during the 1940–44 period. Shalev, who was in Warsaw for the sign- searchers and the public, museum This is the first time a Holocaust-era ing, called it “a real step forward” for Holo- spokeswoman Estee Yaari said. mass grave has been discovered since caust researchers because it will give them Yad Vashem was also one of the recip- 1945, when 311 corpses were exhumed easier access to material that has often ients of the roughly 6.5 terabytes of digi- from three locations in Stanca Roznovanu, Archeologists work in a mass grave of Jews been difficult for them to see, particularly tized files from the International Tracing according to the Wiesel Institute. killed by Romanian troops during the Second “For a long period of time, no research during the communist era. Service of the Red Cross in Bad Arolsen, World War in a forest in northeast Romania. In particular, Shalev said he hopes that it Germany. The materials include docu- was done because the subject was taboo will help the museum, memorial and re- ments on concentration camps, ghettos “So far we exhumed 16 bodies, but this under the Communist regime (1945–1989) search institute in Jerusalem identify as and prisons, and files from displaced-per- is just the beginning because the mass and also for some years after the return of many as 250,000 Holocaust victims in son camps and emigration after World grave is very deep and we only dug up su- democracy in 1989,” Cioflanca said in an Poland who remain unidentified. War II. perficially,” Adrian Cioflanca, the re- interview. searcher responsible for the find, told Things improved after the Wiesel-led reporters at a news conference. commission’s report in 2004, and in 2006 LITHUANIAN COURT: SWASTIKA IS A “HISTORIC LEGACY” The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the president Traian Basescu called on his Lithuanian court has ruled that a the use of Nazi symbols by Lithuania’s ul- Study of the Holocaust in Romania and countrymen to face up to the role played Aswastika is part of the country’s his- tranationalists. Cioflanca both said they believe up to 100 by the pro-Nazi regime of wartime Roman- toric legacy and not a Nazi symbol. “Allowing the use of swastikas sends a bodies could be buried in the mass grave. ian dictator Ion Antonescu. The May 19 ruling capped a three-month clear message to those local residents case involving four men who displayed harshly victimized by the Nazis that they swastikas at Klaipeda’s national independ- are no longer welcome in their country of HITLER HOUSE SALE ALARMS LOCALS ence parade. birth,” he said. Lithuanian judges are he sale of Adolf Hitler’s family home at various times in its history housed a library, “It is not a Nazi attribute, but a valuable “again” showing bias in favor of Holocaust Tin the Austrian town of Braunau am bank, and technical institute. symbol of the Baltic culture, an ancient perpetrators rather than victims. Inn has triggered concern that it could be- Some historians have suggested turning sign of our ancestors, which had been “We urge the Lithuanian courts to over- come a shrine for Nazi sympathizers. the building into a museum. stolen from them and treacherously used turn this outrageous and contemptible de- The unassuming house where Hitler was However, Braunau's mayor Gerhard by other peoples,” one of the defense wit- cision as quickly as possible,” Zuroff said. born in 1889 has been put on the market Skiba vigorously opposes the idea, saying nesses said, according to RT, Russia’s Swastikas previously have been dis- priced at 2.2 million euros ($3.3 million). it would encourage people from all over the English news channel. played in Lithuania on May Day, and once Residents and local politicians fear that the world to visit the site. Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal in front of the presidential palace in the property could fall into the hands of far-right For the time being, the only reminder of Center’s chief Nazi hunter and Israel direc- Lithuanian capital Vilnius, according to extremists. The building is currently used by the building’s infamous past is a small me- tor, called the decision “outrageous” and news reports. Neither instance prompted an organization helping the disabled and has morial dedicated to the victims of the Nazis. likely to lead to a tremendous increase in police or legal action. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS IN THE SHADOW OF THE RED BANNER In the Shadow of the Red Banner: Soviet inculcate in the Soviet population the idea narrative underlining suffering and mar- broad spectrum of Jewish activities dur- Jews in the War against Nazi Germany. of Jewish cowardice and of their sending tyrdom. In Israel, Jewish heroism was ing the war in their entirety: the army, the By Yitzhak Arad. Yad Vashem, The Inter- non-Jews to fight for Jews. largely associated with the Warsaw underground, the partisans, the battle national Institute for Holocaust Research. In a way, it seems to me that the Nazi ghetto uprising. But the main reason why waged by the prisoners of war for survival Gefen Publishing House: Jerusalem, 2010. propaganda succeeded, at least partly, in this knowledge escaped the attention of and the development and manufacture of 384 pp. $38.00 hardcover. this respect. That Soviet Western and Israeli pub- weapons” (p. xvii). Jews excelled on the fronts of lic was the Iron Curtain. REVIEWED BY DR. KIRIL FEFERMAN he volume provides a solid back- the Great Patriotic War, as During the Cold War, the T ground describing the develop- he claim that Jews did not contribute the Soviet-German war in overwhelming trend in ments in Eastern Europe from the Tsufficiently in the war effort of their 1941–45 came to be known Holocaust research was Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 host country, or, to put it otherwise, stayed in the USSR, was known to to downplay the affinity to the German invasion of the Soviet in the rear instead of fighting, is not new masses of Soviet Jews by of Soviet and Jewish in- Union in June 1941. The author then and was never limited to Russia. Suffice it virtue of the fact that very terests in the Second studies meticulously the participation of to mention the accusations made against many of them served in the World War. Only the fall Jews in fighting in the ranks of the Red German Jewry during the First World War army, worked in military of the USSR made it Army on the fronts and in the branches and its aftermath at the official level and in plants, and, to a smaller ex- possible for Holocaust (including medical corps, political admin- public opinion. In the Tsarist Empire such tent, were involved in anti- scholars to acknowledge istration, air forces, navy, and intelli- charges were especially pronounced dur- German activities in the high-profile fighting by gence) throughout the entire war period. ing the First World War, when they were occupied territories. Yet, Jews on the Soviet side Part two covers Jewish participation in made by the country’s military and civil au- apart from a circle of those or alongside the Soviet the war industries. Arad then turns to de- thorities. with whom Jews fought and side. And Yitzhak Arad, picting the Nazi occupation of the Soviet The situation in the Soviet Union during worked to achieve the victory over Nazi himself a Jewish fighter who fought on territories and the activities of varied par- the Second World War was different. So- Germany, this was far from being clear to the Soviet side against the Nazis, and viet government never accused its Jewish many in the midst of the Soviet popula- who rose to prominence in Israel as both tisan movements operating there. This citizens of sitting on the fence. Yet, Soviet tion. a public figure and a leading Holocaust serves him as a background for the Jew- public opinion was permeated to no small Furthermore, the fact that many Soviet historian, is probably the ideal one to ish armed resistance in the occupied ter- extent by such accusations. This came Jews, whether in the occupied territories chronicle the heroic saga of Jews who ritories (underground in ghettos — the partly from traditional centuries-long per- or in those under Soviet control, strug- struggled “under the Red banner” against subject where the book is particularly ception of Jews as a nation that did best to gled and were “not led to slaughter like Nazi Germany. strong — and fighting in forests) de- refrain from getting involved in fighting. cattle” remained for years far from being Arad’s account is a truly panoramic, scribed in the next chapters. Much more perilous, however, was the clear to Western and Israeli audience. multidimensional account and encom- One of the delights of this volume is the Nazi propaganda claim that attempted to This had to do with the main Holocaust passes, to borrow his own words, “the (Continued on page 13) INSIDE IG FARBEN: HOECHST DURING THE THIRD REICH THE SHOAH Inside IG Farben: Hoechst During the Hoechst’s “pride and joy.” We read of how each depended on “expediency” or, simply Mizmor L’David Anthology (Volume I: Third Reich. economic troubles encouraged Hoechst to put, if a qualified non-Jewish replacement The Shoah). By Stephan H. Lindner. English translation merge with other chemical companies, most was handily available. Less often it de- Edited by Michal Mahgerefteh with assis- by Helen Schoop. Cambridge University prominently BASF and Bayer to eventually pended on the “personal sympathy” of a tance from Pete Freas, Michelle Langen- Press: New York, 2008. 388 pp. $65.00 become I. G . Farbenindustrie AG, better manager who might feel for a Jewish em- berg and Jack Callan. Poetica Publishing hardcover. known as I.G. Farben. Then, with the com- ployee . . . for a while . . . In the end, Company. 2010. 91 pp. $15.00. REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN ing of Hitler, we clearly see Hoechst’s (as though, the result was that brilliant Jewish REVIEWED BY RABBI ISRAEL ZOBERMAN part of IG Farben) ever-increasing collabo- chemists and researchers, in fact, cursorily hese days it’s become increasingly ration with the Third Reich, an opportunist and ruthlessly thrown out of their positions e are once more beholden within a Teasy — in some circles — to ration- action which would eventually lead to the and instead condemned by the Reich to W brief span of time to Michal alize away the brutal acts of the Nazis vis- trial at the 1947-48 American military tribu- work at the most menial labor, often com- Mahgerefteh – poet, artist, editor and pub- à-vis the Jews during World War II. After nal in Nuremberg of a number of the com- mitted suicide. Much luckier than most was lisher – Tidewater’s own woman of valor of all, they will argue, the Jews are not the pany’s and corporation’s leadership. Robert Julius Schnitzer, a Jew and a Jewish letters whose indefatigable initiative first, nor, sadly, the last to be persecuted So what did this “increasing col- chemotherapist who actually got to the and creativity are exemplary testimony to and murdered by their en- laboration” exactly mean? United States. In the U.S. he joined Hoff- what one person can accomplish to enrich emies. Look at all of It means that with the very man La Roche as head of its Chemothera- the Jewish world. human history! Look at dawn of Hitler’s reign peutical Laboratory, where he and his She offers a stage on Jewish themes to all the world today! Hoechst’s leadership and em- laboratory would win the coveted Lasker poets and authors, along with establishing a There’s plenty of perse- ployees increasingly became Prize for their “development of the active fruitful literary bond and bridge between the cution and murder to go members of the Nazi party. In agent for the treatment of tuberculosis” North American and European Diaspora around! fact, some became “enthusi- used to this day. and Israel. Michal, whose first collection of True, but none of these astic” members. For exam- ncreasing collaboration,” finally and poetry (In My Bustan) appeared in 2009 bloodlettings, not ever, ple, in 1933 Ludwig Hermann “Ihorribly, also means that Hoechst, in through her Poetica Publishing Company, is was so systematized po- was appointed head of the IG partnership with the SS, eventually “took enchanting us again with the present collec- litically, economically, and Farben plant at Hoechst. In a part in ghastly experiments and trials con- tion of poems and short stories by children socially both on a local 1935 speech he called Hitler ducted on concentration camp inmates.” and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and a national level as “a gift from Providence.” An- Thus we read how inmates in Buchenwald representing diverse and rich histories of that cold and premedi- other “enthusiastic” member were deliberately infected with typhus and background and accomplishments. tated annihilation of the was Georg Kränzlein, “a fa- died miserable deaths in order to “test” one In the book’s Introduction author Sandra Jews so ruthlessly organ- natical anti-Semite” and a di- of Hoechst’s drugs. Hoechst also “tested” Hurtes, who teaches at John Jay College, ized by the evil genius of rector at the plant who also became a in Auschwitz and Gusen/Mauthausen. shares instructively and challengingly: Hitler and his Third Reich. Indeed, Stephan member of the SS. Indeed, the SS would In his book, Lindner concludes by telling “Many contribute to the largest body of H. Lindner’s exceptionally well-researched praise “his zeal and ‘idealism.’” Interest- us that at the trial at the 1947-48 military tri- work on the Holocaust, each voice, each and conscientiously written volume, entitled ingly, Lindner notes here that Kränzlein, bunal in Nuremberg of all of IG Farben, experience, unique yet utterly and uncan- Inside IG Farben: Hoechst During the Third “even before the outbreak of the Second Hoechst included, some few individuals nily similar. But, while we carry these sto- Reich, confirms the above and much more World War . . . apparently prophesized ‘a were found guilty of crimes and received jail ries, we owe it to our parents and their very as the author specifically and intently ex- great cleansing of Jews in Europe including sentences. By 1951, however, all were free survival to move forward rather than stay amines one factory, Hoechst, part of the in Russia’ with the result ‘that within five . . . and most, ironically, were working within wedded to their past. We owe it to our- huge corporation known as I.G. Farbenin- selves to not carry on their suffering… It years Europe will have no more Jews.’” what had once been the corporation IG Far- dustrie AG — a firm that profited mightily is Michal’s hope that the sharing of experi- “Increasing collaboration” means that ben, now become a bunch of independent from its collusion with Nazism. ence will create a collective consciousness with the very dawn of Hitler’s reign it wasn’t companies freed of the guilt associated with Thus Lindner relates to us how Hoechst, so that anyone can be an educator. In this at all long before Hoechst employees who the very name of IG Farben and Nazism. a manufacturer of aniline and aniline dyes, way, we transform the burden of memory were Jewish or regarded as Jewish (many was founded in 1863. We learn of the addi- Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of into a flame that lights the world.” were converts) were increasingly “retired” tion of a Pharmaceuticals Department. This Media, Communication, and Visual Arts at A literary anthology such as this one on from their work. The actual “timing” for department would, with the years, become Pace University. (Continued on page 13) January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 THE HOLOCAUST IN LITHUANIA: ONE MAN’S CRUSADE TO BRING JUSTICE leged Holocaust criminals have turned up In the report, Jaeger notes the “essential” liament, “quite a large segment of Lithuan- BY PAUL FRYSH, CNN from Lithuania than from anywhere else in help of local Lithuanians and says 4,000 ian society is still inclined to consider Jews Eastern Europe, says Zuroff. Jews were “liquidated by pogroms and ex- as collectively responsible for the mass fraim Zuroff’s great-uncle was kid- killings and deportations of civilians, as napped in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July But prosecuting those criminals for war ecutions,” exclusively by Lithuanian parti- E well as for other atrocities committed dur- 13, 1941, by a gang of Lithuanians “roam- crimes has been a disappointment, says sans. The final count of those murdered ing the Soviet occupation.” ing the streets of the city looking for Jews Zuroff, because since its independence in starting in the summer of 1941 and ending This myth is “just the adoption of the dis- with beards to arrest.” 1991, Lithuania has failed to punish a sin- in November of that year is 133,346 — the graceful Nazi rhetoric concerning the Jew “He was taken to Lukiskis Prison — to gle one of its own Holocaust war criminals. vast majority of them Jews. and Communism ... which is one of the cor- this day the main jail in the city — and was Now, says Zuroff, Lithuania is trying to READ JAEGER REPORT nerstones of [Nazi propaganda chief Joseph] murdered shortly thereafter,” says Zuroff. rewrite Holocaust history. “Nowhere in the Goebbels’ propaganda,” says Donskis. So were his wife and two boys. world,” he says, “has a government gone onary Diary, 1941-1943: A By- Born seven years later in Brooklyn, New to such lengths to obscure their role in the Pstander’s Account of a Mass Mur- THE PROSECUTIONS York, Zuroff was named for his great-uncle Holocaust. ... Their mission is to change der was written by Polish-Lithuanian n the 1990s, soon after Lithuania re- and grew up questioning his American- the history of the Holocaust to make them- journalist Kazimierz Sakowicz, who was gained its independence, the U.S. Jus- born parents about the Holocaust. selves blameless.” living within earshot of the biggest killing I tice Department’s Office of Special What were they doing? What could they field in Lithuania, the sand pits of the LITHUANIA AND THE NAZIS Investigations, consulting with Zuroff, dis- have done? Ponary Forest. covered dozens of Lithuanians with suspi- “And my parents — they said, ‘Listen ... ithin five months of Nazi Germany’s It is a litany of unending cruelty — mostly cious wartime backgrounds living in the we went to demonstrations, we tried to do W invasion in the summer of 1941, of Lithuanians killing Lithuanian Jews. En- United States. what we could. But we didn’t really know most of Lithuania’s 200,000 to 220,000 tries from April 5, 1943, describe the mur- Nineteen were successfully prosecuted what was going on, and it wasn’t clear Jews were dead — shot and left in massive der of about 2,500 Jews who arrive in 48 for concealing their wartime collaboration what we could do.” sand pits and mass graves along with thou- train freight cars: with the Nazis during the American immi- That answer did not satisfy Zuroff. sands of ethnic Poles, the mentally ill and “A woman with a child in her arms and others. By the end of the war, the percent- with two small girls clinging to her dress: A gration and naturalization process. Since age of Jews killed in Lithuania Lithuanian begins to beat them mercilessly the United States had no jurisdiction to — 90 to 96 percent — was as with a club. A Jew without a jacket throws prosecute them for war crimes, it took the high as or higher than any- himself on the Lithuanian to defend the maximum legal action it could — stripping where else in Europe. woman being beaten. A shot is fired — he them of their citizenship. Twelve ended up “And the question is, ‘Why falls, practically at the feet of his Jewess. back in Lithuania, each with an extensive were the numbers so high?’ A second Lithuanian seizes the woman’s case file detailing the evidence gathered And here we come to a sub- child and throws him into the pit; the Jew- by OSI. ject that is very, very delicate ish woman, like a madwoman, runs to the But the Lithuanian prosecutor’s office and difficult,” says Zuroff. pit, followed by her two little children. Three showed no inclination to pursue the cases “One of the main reasons so shots are fired.” and Lithuania, for the most part, says Zuroff, many Jews were killed here is The Nazis arrived after a year of occupa- “welcomed them back with open arms.” because of the help of the tion by the Soviet Union that was so brutal Only after several years of delays and Lithuanians welcome Nazi soldiers with flowers in the summer local population — of the that many Lithuanians welcomed the Nazis significant international pressure, says of 1941. Lithuanians.” when they arrived in June 1941. Zuroff, were three of the cases prosecuted. The pace of the mass murder of Lithua- Nazi propaganda painted local Jews as In the end, no one was ever punished. “I wanted to know what the average Jew nia’s Jews — and the active participation communists in league with the Soviets, Audrius Bruzga, Lithuanian ambassador sitting in his living room in Baltimore, New of the local population — are meticulously stoking existing local anti-Semitism, and to the United States, says Lithuania facili- York, Chicago, Miami, could have known recorded in two of the most infamous doc- prompting the provisional government in tated the trials to the extent that it could. by reading the newspapers. uments of Holocaust history. Lithuania, and thousands of Lithuanians, The problem was not a lack of political will, “I wanted to try and understand how The Jaeger Report, written by Karl to help facilitate the Nazi policy of liquidat- he says, but a lack of time, because of the something like the Holocaust could have Jaeger, the SS commander of a Nazi killing ing the local Jewish population, according age of the defendants. happened.” unit that operated around Vilnius, Lithua- to Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who has “People simply died during the process,” Zuroff would go on to spend his life hunt- nia, is a matter-of-fact account of those written extensively about the region. he says, “and the others perhaps were not ing Nazis and ensuring their punishment. killed each day under his command. In reality, Jews — making up many of the found fit to stand trial. ... It takes a lot of Now the Israel director of The Simon September 1, 1941, a typical entry, lists “bourgeois” merchants and intellectuals time to put a case on.” Wiesenthal Center, he has also worked for those killed for the day as: “1,404 Jewish that the Soviets sought to “re-educate” — But others say the delays were purpose- the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of children, 1,763 Jews, 1,812 Jewesses, bore as much or more Soviet brutality as ful. The prosecutor’s office was afraid of Special Investigations, which is in charge 109 mentally sick people, one German any, says Snyder. being called unpatriotic, says Donskis, so of Nazi war crimes prosecutions. Since the woman who was married to a Jew, and And yet, even today, says Leonidas Don- it dragged out the process in the hope fall of the Soviet Union, more names of al- one Russian woman.” skis, a Lithuanian MP in the European Par- (Continued on page 14) SIX DECADES AFTER HOLOCAUST, COUSINS REUNITE hey learned English, married, had The two grew up together in Krakow, U.S. troops. He was a refugee in Italy until In January 2010, Dreier saw an Internet Tchildren, and led happy lives in new Poland, though they were not close as chil- he came to America in 1949. He first set- ad about how the American Red Cross re- countries. And for many years two cousins dren. tled in Coney Island, married, began a ca- unites war victims. thought: I survived the Nazis, but my But having lost the rest of his family in reer in construction, and raised a family. He applied. In June, the agency let him cousin didn’t. the Holocaust, Dreier became determined know it was on the case. That changed after Saul Dreier, 85, to find Weinberg. He suspected she was The center uses “meticulous” records the asked the American Red Cross to help him alive, having heard that from a mutual Germans kept to find names and birthdates find his cousin Lucy Weinberg, 82, early friend in the 1960s, but he didn’t know now stored in depositories in Poland and the last year. where she was. United States, said Chrystian Tejedor, Amer- The Red Cross’s Holocaust and War Vic- he last time he saw her was during ican Red Cross spokesman. They also use tims Tracing Center scoured records from TWorld War II, when the two cousins museum and other archive records. more than 180 Red Cross societies for were working in a Nazi labor camp in The search was complicated in that clues. Poland. Their families had been forced into Weinberg had married and changed her The ones that came through were the so- a ghetto in Krakow before being deported name, and moved from Germany to Israel cieties in Poland and the Czech Republic. to the concentration camps. Dreier said he to Canada. And finally, after Weinberg was located in watched his mother board a train that took Eventually the Red Cross made the con- Montreal, the reunion took place at Fort her “to a crematorium.” Weinberg’s two nection and Weinberg scrambled to renew Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. brothers and sister perished one by one. her passport. As Weinberg approached him, Dreier Eventually Dreier was sent to the concen- It turns out the cousins were closer all cried, “Is this Lucy? Is this Lucy?” She tration camp at Plaszow. His cousin and her along than Dreier imagined: Weinberg’s smiled at him, then he swept her into a mother were sent to the same camp, where son owns a condo in Hollywood that she long embrace that brought him to tears. they worked making pots and pans at the fa- After the mutual friend told him his has visited. “It’s been 65 years,” Dreier said. “There mous Oskar Schindler’s factory. Dreier cousin survived the camps, Dreier con- Weinberg said she was stunned to know are no words …” worked at a different factory near tacted Holocaust assistance groups, Is- there was going to be a reunion. “We saw each other when we were chil- Schindler’s, repairing airplane radiators. rael’s leading Holocaust museum, and the When asked what they planned to do dren,” Weinberg said. “Now we see each In 1944, Dreier was sent to a concentra- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, for assis- now that they’re together again, Dreier other when we are old.” tion camp in Austria that was liberated by tance. The searches came up empty. said: “Talk, talk, talk.” Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER

SEPARATED AFTER THE HOLOCAUST, REUNITED BY FACEBOOK It was a tale of World War II, concentra- away. “Half of the people died,” said Joe. separate ways. The Rosenfelds moved to he answer is that it wasn’t easy, es- tion camps, death marches, starvation “We were starving, we had no food — the United States, Meir immigrated to Is- Tpecially with Meir having changed — and Facebook. once in a while we had a little dirty water. I rael, and the friends lost touch completely. his Hungarian name, but weeks of web was shot,” he said, pointing to a scar on his “I’ve been trying to get a hold of him for searching uncovered a family tree linking BY AMY SPIRO, THE JEWISH WEEK hand. 65 years,” said Jack, now 81, who previ- Meir with his niece, Ruth Szinai-Witty. “I mid tears, laughter and hugs, three Jack, Marty and Imre Mayer were also ously hired investigators that were unsuc- didn’t think there was anyone else with that AHolocaust survivors — childhood marching to Mauthausen, from a city on cessful in tracking down his friend. name,” said Michael. The Facebook ex- friends from the same hometown of Hajdú- the Austria-Hungary border. “We were Instead the hero of the day was 15-year - change occurred last November, and the dorog, Hungary — reunited for the first there close to a year without heat,” said old Michael Rosenfeld, Jack’s great- reunion was planned for this summer, time in 65 years in New Jersey. Though Jack. “We ate soup with worms in it.” But nephew and the grandson of Marty — when Meir visited his son Gadi, who lives they have fond memories of playing on a in March 1945 they started out on a three- in nearby Montclair, N.J. soccer team together, their strongest week trek to the Mauthausen camp. Weak- “I’ve heard about these boys for years bonds developed in 1945, as they were ened from a year of hard labor and and years,” said Gadi, who was eager to struggling to survive on a three-week starvation, Mayer was struggling to con- hear stories from the two brothers. Gadi death march from the Russian front to the tinue walking. “We were without food, with- was also interested in what else Michael Mauthausen concentration camp in Aus- out water, without anything,” said Jack. “He uncovered in his searching — a Swiss tria. One of them saved the other’s life. said to me and Marty, ‘I am not going any- bank account in Meir’s father’s name. The five Rosenfeld brothers — Jack, more,’ he sat down.” For three days, Jack “The Internet connects everything to- Marty, Joe, Max and Abie — were rounded and Marty carried their friend, saving his gether,” said Michael. “Even from 65 years up in Hungary in 1944 and brought to the life, until they reached their destination. ago, even though he changed his name.” ghetto in the neighboring town of Debre- “If you didn’t continue in the march,” said And 65 years after they parted, Joe, Jack cen. Like 70 percent of Hungary’s Jews, Mayer, who now goes by Amram Meir, the and Amram were reunited at Jack’s house they were set on a train to Auschwitz. Hebraized version of his name, “then that’s Jack Rosenfeld, left, along with his brother in Teaneck, N.J. On a sunny Monday after- Somehow, they — along with their friend it, they shot you in the head.” Joseph, middle, reunites with a friend, Amram noon, surrounded by their children and and neighbor Imre Mayer — were diverted hen they reached Mauthausen, Meir, right, after 65 years of thinking he per- grandchildren and a spread of roast beef, to Vienna, where they were placed in a W they encountered the Rosenfelds’ ished while at the concentration camps. salads, and fruit, the old friends hugged forced labor camp. It was then that they other three brothers, Joe, Max and Abie, who died in 1992. “He is a genius with the and cried as they reminisced about their were separated: Jack and Marty were sent who all managed to survive the war. In computer,” said Jack. After being set to childhoods and caught up on the past six with Mayer to the Russian front, to dig May 1945, the remaining guards at the the task by his grandmother, Michael, a decades. trenches to trap oncoming tanks. Joe, Max camp rigged the barracks with dynamite, sophomore at Rambam Mesivta High “He was so excited for this,” said Lisa and Abie, the youngest brothers, remained intending to ignite it when Russian or School in Long Island, managed to locate Rosenfeld, of her father Joe. The day was behind in Vienna. American forces got close. But the night Meir’s niece on Facebook, the popular so- “very emotional” for him, said Joe. “We were there to clean debris and pick that it was set to explode, the charges mal- cial networking site. Among the three of them, they have 10 up body pieces,” said Joe Rosenfeld, now functioned, saving the lives of the almost “I sent her a message and said ‘Do you children, dozens of grandchildren and a 79. The city was under constant bombing 80,000 inmates. The next day, American have an uncle Imre Mayer?’” said Michael. handful of great-grandchildren, many of attacks from Allied forces. This work con- soldiers liberated the camp. After libera- The next day she responded, “Yes, I do,” them present for the reunion. tinued until 1945, when the surviving Jews tion, the families — which both had sur- providing Michael with his phone number “The last time I saw him was in Mau- were set on a death march to Mauthausen, vived intact with their siblings and parents in Toronto. And she also had to ask — thausen. I was 16,” said Meir, now 81. a concentration camp over 100 miles — recovered in hospitals before going their “How did you find me?” “They look the same. Identical.” THE PAST IS PRESENT Back at home, Grodin looked up Michael Czechoslovakia to Theresienstadt, a t was in Q609 that Polak hatched the BY SUSANNE ALTHOFF, Kraus and gave him a call. The two men ghetto/camp from which many were ulti- Iidea of Kamarad, or “friend.” Czech- THE BOSTON GLOBE began meeting at Kraus’s home, accom- mately transported to death chambers. speaking boys in the room would submit panied by a few of Grodin’s colleagues, Kraus was 12, and an only child. His family stories, some fictional, some true. Polak r. Michael Grodin, who’s spent the and the result over the last year has been left behind a comfortable existence – fa- would recopy them and add illustrations, past 33 years studying the Holo- D a warm relationship that goes beyond re- ther Karel had been a physician – for a and his mother would bind the pages with caust and other atrocities, stumbled on an searcher and subject. crowded collection of buildings inside string. The first issue appeared October unusual bit of history during a trip to Israel Susie Rodenstein, a lecturer in Jewish fortress walls. Incredibly, Theresienstadt 29, 1943. At Friday evening Sabbath in the summer of 2009. The discovery was education and early childhood education at came to be known for its cultural life, which gatherings, Polak would read from new a museum exhibit featuring a literary mag- editions of the magazine to entertain his azine called Kamarad – produced by the bunkmates. Kraus says Polak com- boys confined by the Nazis in Building plained when copies were borrowed but Q609 in a Jewish ghetto/camp in the for- not returned and when he couldn’t find mer Czechoslovakia from 1943 to 1944. willing contributors. “He singled me out The magazine issues, created without as one of the most diligent collaborators,” adult supervision or censorship, were filled Kraus says. with stories about wilderness adventures, The boys didn’t sugarcoat their experi- pranks, and soccer matches. The boys, ences. They wrote about the near starva- ages 12 to 14, patched together the mag- tion and illnesses experienced in azines from scraps of paper. All 22 edi- Theresienstadt and the punishment meted tions, rendered in neat penmanship, have out to everyone when someone attempted survived. to escape. They also wrote about the petty The story of Kamarad alone was enough arguments they had with one another. to pique Grodin’s interest. “This is pretty in- Kraus’s offerings included a poem about credible stuff,” says Grodin, a professor of One of the 22 issues of Kamarad. a mouse that rescues a captured lion (“It is psychiatry, family medicine, and human Hebrew College in Newton, is one of two included concerts, theater, art, and poetry not the size that matters; And even a tiny rights at Boston University. He was im- researchers helping Grodin examine Ka- readings. These were a genuine expres- mouse can be a savior”) and the serialized pressed that the boys had created an out- marad. “Mind-boggling” is how she de- sion of the inmates, but were also capital- fictional story “The Treasure of Ralph let that let them explore their fantasies and scribes the coincidence of Grodin and ized upon by the Nazis for propaganda Langdon,” about trappers looking for for- cope with the hardships of the Holocaust. Kraus both living in Brookline. “That alone purposes. Living conditions were poor, tune in the Canadian northwest. Kraus re- Then Grodin noticed something else in- made it feel like it was meant to be, that we food was scarce, and illness was common. members that he and Polak “did fantasize credible. The exhibit noted that one of the all get to discover and get to know this After staying in two different buildings, about having not an empire but a territory creators of Kamarad – believed to be the man,” she says. “I think his story and his Kraus was transferred to a room in Q609, in the northwest part of Canada near the sole survivor – was living in Brookline, experience is a treasure for us.” occupied by about two dozen 12-, 13-, and Great Slave Lake. . . . And I think that my Massachusetts. “There I was in the middle n December 14, 1942, the Nazis 14-year-old boys sleeping on three-level article was kind of a replay of this.” Roden- of nowhere, in northern Israel, and the guy Osent Kraus and his parents from bunk beds. Here Kraus was reunited with stein believes the Langdon story provided lives like three blocks from my house.” their home in Nachod in the former Ivan Polak, a friend from Nachod. (Continued on page 14) January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7

GERMANY’S FOREIGN HOW ONE POLISH WOMAN UNCOVERED MINISTRY WAS COMPLICIT HER TOWN’S SHOCKING ROLE IN THE HOLOCAUST IN HOLOCAUST ermany’s Foreign Ministry was far In a dark corner of Poland that refuses books crowd shop windows in Warsaw – Cross Park. There is a swimming pool to acknowledge its horrific treatment of unthinkable two decades ago. It is a phe- there and a building where people have Gmore involved in the murder of mil- Jews, an amateur photographer is re- nomenon that divides Poland, its towns wedding parties – on top of the old graves. lions of Jews than previously thought, ac- opening old wounds by tracing ghosts and communities, and even Markusz’s People don’t want to think about that, but I cording to a government study. in her home town. marriage. Here, amid the former killing find it scary.” A report reveals that diplomats actively fields of the Nazis, fascination contends In the cafe, a few Sokolowers study the assisted the Nazis in their campaign of BY MARK S. SMITH, THE HERALD with denial and guilt. exhibition. Like Poland’s national psyche, genocide against the Jews, contradicting atarzyna Markusz focuses her lens arkusz’s work is part of the revival. her exhibits are split. The exhibition com- post-war attempts to portray Germany’s Kand all her attention on a concrete MShe hopes soon to exhibit her work prises 68 photographs – but in each frame wartime Foreign Ministry in a positive light. slab at the far edge of a neighbor’s yard in in Krakow and the UK. Its special sig- “The Foreign Ministry actively supported Sokolow Podlaski. She squints her eyes as nificance though is here, because all measures of persecution, rights depri- she presses the shutter button. It seems she is an ordinary Polish woman, vation, expulsions and the Holocaust,” she cannot stop taking photographs of this bringing her country’s Jewish past Eckart Conze, one of four historians asked small town in the Polish hinterland. before the eyes of this ordinary town. to investigate the role played by the min- It is June and I have come here to see Among a total population of 40 mil- istry in the Holocaust, told the German Markusz’s exhibition of photographs in a lion there are an estimated 25,000 newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Son- cafe next to the town’s cultural center. The Jews in Poland today – a fraction of ntagszeitung. exhibition, entitled Missing, has focused at- the 3.5 million that lived in the coun- “The Foreign Ministry was actively in- tention on a raw nerve – Sokolow’s Jewish try in 1939 before the Nazi onslaught volved in every operation to persecute, heritage. – and none in Sokolow. Despite the strip away the rights of, expel and extermi- Markusz, a 28-year-old amateur photog- statistics, Jews loom large in the Pol- nate the Jews from the very beginning,” rapher and mother of Michal, nine, and An- ish imagination. Conze said. drzej, two, began researching the history The day before I arrive in Conze, who spent five years researching of the town for her exhibition in 2009 and it Sokolow, Malgosia Kowalska from diplomatic archives, also condemned the Katarzyna Markusz points out a terrace made using has taken over her life. Warsaw’s remnant Jewish commu- ministry during wartime as a “criminal or- gravestones from a Jewish cemetery. Like her photographs, there is an air of nity advises caution. “This is the ganization” in the German news magazine sadness about Markusz. Her husband middle of the most anti-Semitic area in there are two pictures. There are 34 pic- Spiegel. cannot fathom her obsession with the Poland,” she says. “It’s what we call tures of Sokolow from the 1920s, 1930s Conze said postwar claims that officials Jews who once inhabited this town 80 kilo- Poland B.” Poland B? “It’s how we explain and 1940s coupled with 34 of her own pho- within the ministry had resisted Nazi poli- meters east of Warsaw, one of whom was the contradictions. There are no shades of tographs, taken over the past year and, as cies were untrue. In fact, he said, the min- Joseph Rubenstein, the father of Lee Har- grey here. It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. nearly as possible, captured from the istry had often been proactive in its efforts vey Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby. In Sokolow, Poland A and B are mindsets – but they same vantage point of the earlier pictures. to carry out the will of the Third Reich lead- where Markusz’s family has lived for gen- are also geographical entities. Poland A is ccording to a 1931 census, Sokolow ership. erations, most of the Jews – with few ex- everything to the west of the Vistula river, Ahad 5,027 Jewish residents out of a The study, commissioned in 2005 by for- ceptions – were murdered in 1942, after where the people embrace new ideas. It is total population of 9,918. Many of the old mer German Foreign Minister Joschka Fis- being transported on death trains to the the bright, forward-looking part of the coun- photographs are therefore images of cher, looked at the activities of the ministry Nazis’ notorious Treblinka extermination try. But Poland B – east of the Vistula – is Sokolow’s Jewish past. Markusz’s pictures between 1933 and 1945. camp, an hour’s drive north. our dark side, full of suspicion, racism and show empty buildings and townscapes, Fischer was quoted by the newspaper as “This is what I wanted to show you,” she revenge. Anti-Semitic priests still hold hence the title – Missing. “It began when my saying that he was “horrified” by the level says, taking another photograph. husband showed me old photographs he of support and advice offered by the min- “It’s a kind of monument, but there got from a friend,” she says. “I started think- istry to help war-crime suspects escape is human ash underneath, and ing about the changes, whether they were Germany after the country’s defeat. bones.” The evidence concealed better or worse. I concluded they were “As I read this report, I became more and marks a terrible and barbarous in- worse. The old buildings were beautiful. more shocked,” said Fischer. cident that will forever haunt “But I also began to look at the faces of Among the documents was a paper from Sokolow. The slab is the site of a people in the old pictures. Many were Jews, the official responsible for Jewish affairs, mass grave, identified by Markusz and I thought, ‘These people would have Franz Rademacher, citing the “liquidation after extensive research, unex- been my neighbors and I’ll never have the of Jews in Belgrade” as a reason for one humed and undocumented. It is chance to know them.’ Sokolow was once of his foreign trips. also significant as another piece multicultural. Many people here are happy The American Gathering of Holocaust of the Holocaust jigsaw. But this the Jews have gone, but I think our lives are Survivors and Ttheir Descendants hailed town, like many in Poland, would poorer without them. Soon their buildings the report, saying it “categorically refuted” rather not remind itself that it con- will be gone, too, because developers will previous attempts to sanitize the Foreign ducts its daily life upon the grave- demolish them. The town authorities, which Ministry’s role in the Holocaust. yard of its murdered neighbors. have no love of Sokolow’s Jewish history, “Germany has taken an honest and Tears begin to well in Markusz’s have refused to protect them. Instead, they eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. She invent nationalist myths about Sokolow’s painful look at its past,” said the group’s lets the camera drop and swing pure Polish past. president Elan Steinberg in a statement. around her neck. “I’m crying for “Before the end of the year, the old Beit “This report is a pointed reminder of the them. I’m crying for me. I don’t Midrash, the place where religious Jews broad cross section of German society and know why I’m crying. I’m crying studied Talmud and Torah for more than a institutions which were implicated in the maybe because my husband hundred years, will be bulldozed and Holocaust and the brutalities of the Nazi doesn’t understand what I am something new will be put there,” she says. regime.” doing. Once he said he wanted to “There are a lot of old buildings like this. I It was also revealed that Ernst von Sokolow then and now. put me in a psychiatric hospital. I photograph them for history. But when I Weizsaecker, who was secretary of state was scared. He says it’s more than a fas- power in many towns. My great-grandfa- look at my photographs, I feel emptiness.” at the ministry from 1938 to 1943, had cination. He says it’s a sickness.” ther was a shoemaker from Sokolow. Be- You are saving history by telling the truth, pressed for the removal of German citizen- Except for the Stalinesque uniformity of lieve me, Sokolow is right in the middle of I tell her. They say truth sets you free. ship from author Thomas Mann in 1936. its residential tower blocks, parts of Poland B. Be careful.” Markusz looks straight at me. “The truth Weizsaecker, father of former German Sokolow – its old market squares and Although anti-Semitism still thrives in is, I can’t find work in Sokolow because of President Richard von Weizsaecker, was streets – remain much as they were, echo- Poland B, there have been no Jews in what I’m doing. No one will employ me.” said to be in favor of the action because of ing the multicultural town it once was. One Sokolow for two generations. The anti-Semi- One of Markusz’s pictures shows a Jew- Mann’s “hostile propaganda” against the feature of Sokolow stands out, though – its tes have no idea what a Jew looks like. ish barber, Icek Potok, outside his shop in Third Reich. proximity to the railway line, which is laden Nonetheless, Jewish communities have the late 1920s, during the relative toler- Weizsaecker, who after the war was tried with gruesome symbolism. existed on Polish soil for 1,000 years, and ance of the Jozef Pilsudski dictatorship. for crimes against humanity for alleged Besides the exhibition, I have come here although intermarriage was limited, 10 cen- Polish and Jewish pedestrians walk beside complicity in the deportation of French to try to understand modern Poland’s schiz- turies of coexistence have left their mark. the cobbled street, beneath ornate bal- Jews to Auschwitz, claimed he had always ophrenic attitude toward its past and to see One recent study notes that Poles today conies. Below the picture is the street as it worked against the Nazis. He was sen- if its notorious homegrown anti-Semitism have a 90% chance that at least one of their looks today, its smooth surface designed tenced to seven years in prison in 1949, has survived into the 21st century. ancestors is Jewish. Markusz, as far as she for modern transport. The architecture of but died two years later. Poland is experiencing an extraordinary knows, has no Jewish ancestors. the street is the same, but the building fa- The ministry’s role has long been contro- revival of Jewish interest. Not only have “The whole center of Sokolow was built cades are covered with concrete and half versial because many Nazi-era diplomats small Jewish communities sprung to life in by Jews,” she says. “Now there is nothing, the balconies are gone. continued to work for the ministry after major cities, but Krakow now holds an an- not even a sign, to say they were ever Another photograph from the winter of 1945 – many claiming they had always nual Jewish festival, and Jewish-interest here. The old Jewish cemetery is now Red (Continued on page 15) been opposed to Hitler’s regime. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 NAZIS WERE GIVEN “SAFE HAVEN” IN U.S., REPORT SAYS oration with persecutors,” says that O.S.I. search group, the National Security C.I.A. in the United States. In a chain of BY ERIC LICHTBLAU, investigators learned that some of the Archive, but even then many of the most memos, C.I.A. officials debated what to do THE NEW YORK TIMES Nazis “were indeed knowingly granted legally and diplomatically sensitive portions if Von Bolschwing were confronted about entry” to the United States, even though were omitted. A complete version was ob- secret history of the United States his past — whether to deny any Nazi affil- government officials were aware of their tained by The New York Times. government’s Nazi-hunting opera- iation or “explain it away on the basis of ex- A pasts. “America, which prided itself on he Justice Department said the re- tion concludes that American intelligence tenuating circumstances,” the report said. being a safe haven for the persecuted, be- port, the product of six years of work, officials created a “safe haven” in the T The Justice Department, after learning of came — in some small measure — a safe was never formally completed and did not United States for Nazis and their collabo- Von Bolschwing’s Nazi ties, sought to deport haven for persecutors as well,” it said. represent its official findings. It cited “nu- rators after World War II, and it details him in 1981. He died that year at age 72. decades of clashes, often hidden, with The report also examines the case of other nations over war criminals here and Arthur L. Rudolph, a Nazi scientist who ran abroad. the Mittelwerk munitions factory. He was The 600-page report, which the Justice brought to the United States in 1945 for his Department has tried to keep secret for rocket-making expertise under Operation four years, provides new evidence about Paperclip, an American program that re- more than two dozen of the most notorious cruited scientists who had worked in Nazi Nazi cases of the last three decades. Germany. (Rudolph has been honored by It describes the government’s posthu- NASA and is credited as the father of the mous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so- Saturn V rocket.) called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of The report cites a 1949 memo from the whose scalp was kept in a Justice Depart- Justice Department’s No. 2 official urging ment official’s drawer; the vigilante killing immigration officers to let Rudolph back in of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jer- the country after a stay in Mexico, saying sey; and the government’s mistaken iden- that a failure to do so “would be to the tification of the Treblinka concentration detriment of the national interest.” camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible. Justice Department investigators later The report catalogs both the successes found evidence that Rudolph was much and failures of the band of lawyers, histo- Dr. Josef Mengele in 1956, left. Arthur Rudolph, center, in 1990, was a rocket scientist for Nazi Ger- more actively involved in exploiting slave rians and investigators at the Justice De- many and NASA. John Demjanjuk in 2006, right. laborers at Mittelwerk than he or American partment’s Office of Special Investigations, merous factual errors and omissions,” but which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis. The report also documents divisions intelligence officials had acknowledged, declined to say what they were. Perhaps the report’s most damning dis- within the government over the effort and the report says. More than 300 Nazi persecutors have closures come in assessing the Central In- the legal pitfalls in relying on testimony Some intelligence officials objected when telligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi from Holocaust survivors that was been deported, stripped of citizenship or the Justice Department sought to deport émigrés. Scholars and previous govern- decades old. The report also concluded blocked from entering the United States him in 1983, but the O.S.I. considered the ment reports had acknowledged the that the number of Nazis who made it into since the creation of the O.S.I. In chroni- deportation of someone of Rudolph’s C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelli- the United States was almost certainly cling the cases of Nazis who were aided prominence as an affirmation of “the depth gence purposes. But this report goes fur- much smaller than 10,000, the figure by American intelligence officials, the re- of the government’s commitment to the ther in documenting the level of American widely cited by government officials. port cites help that C.I.A. officials provided Nazi prosecution program,” according to complicity and deception in such opera- The Justice Department has resisted in 1954 to Otto Von Bolschwing, an asso- internal memos. tions. making the report public since 2006. Under ciate of Adolf Eichmann who had helped The Justice Department itself sometimes The Justice Department report, describ- the threat of a lawsuit, it turned over a develop the initial plans “to purge Germany concealed what American officials knew ing what it calls “the government’s collab- heavily redacted version to a private re- of the Jews” and who later worked for the (Continued on page 13) MAKER OF SHOAH STRESSES ITS LASTING VALUE latched hold of him when he began to unique, almost as if it looks into the abyss Foundation Institute at the University of BY LARRY ROHTER, make his film in 1973. and penetrates it, in ways that I don’t think Southern California, which Mr. Spielberg THE NEW YORK TIMES “After I started, I could not stop,” he said, anything else has done.” founded and supports. Mr. Smith said he even after the withdrawal of his original ven at 85, Claude Lanzmann is not Since Shoah was released in 1985, of regarded the two films as “complementary, backers. “I was like a blind man during the one to rest on his laurels or shirk a course, numerous films fictionalizing vari- rather than contradictory” or antagonistic. E 12 years of the making of Shoah, like a controversy. A quarter of a century after his ous aspects of the Holocaust have been “Shoah took me into a deep, silent and horse with blinders. I could not look right or documentary Shoah transformed the way issued to critical and commercial success, reflective space and was an important left, only straight ahead into the black circle the world regarded the Holocaust, the film including a pair of Academy Award win- milestone in my learning,” he said. of the shoah.” was rereleased earlier this year in the ners: Roberto Benigni’s Life “Schindler’s List showed me it was possi- Clocking in at just over United States — an event he welcomes as Is Beautiful, of which Mr. ble to take the Holocaust to the general nine and a quarter hours, long overdue. Lanzmann is dismissive, and public and move it into thinking more Then again, Mr. Lanzmann also argues Shoah is drawn from more Steven Spielberg’s deeply about what the Holocaust was.” that Shoah is not really a documentary, than 300 hours of film. Schindler’s List, which he r. Lanzmann is similarly impatient and that “Holocaust” is “a completely im- Shoah should not be con- sees as pernicious in its im- Mwith efforts to explain the Holo- proper name” to describe the Nazis’ exter- sidered a documentary, he pact and influence. caust. “To ask why the Jews have been mination of six million Jews during World said, because “I did not “I dislike deeply killed is a question that shows immediately War II. He complains that, in contrast to record a reality that pre-ex- Schindler’s List, for many its own obscenity,” he said. The Italian Europe, where Shoah has “never stopped isted the film, I had to cre- reasons,” he said. The Spiel- writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, being shown in movie theaters and on TV,” ate that reality,” out of what berg film is “much more easy he notes, wrote of the concentration camp his film has “disappeared from the Ameri- he calls “a kind of chorus of to see than Shoah, it is very guard who brusquely told him, “Hier ist can scene,” elbowed aside by more palat- emerging voices and faces, sentimental.” kein warum,” or “Here there is no why.” able fare and thus allowing mistaken of so many killers, victims “It’s false,” he added, be- The political, moral and media landscape notions to propagate. and bystanders.” cause it offers an uplifting of the world has also changed consider- “This was by no means a holocaust,” he In addition, Mr. Lanz- ending. He also questioned ably since the original release of Shoah. said during a recent visit to New York, not- mann chose not to use any the value of Mr. Spielberg’s On the one hand, entities ranging from the ing that the literal meaning of the word historical footage in his underwriting of 105,000 government of Iran to the Institute for His- refers to a burnt offering to a god. “To film. But whatever genre hours of videotaped testi- torical Review openly promote Holocaust reach God 1.5 million Jewish children have Shoah belongs to, it has The French writer and documen- monies from concentration denial; on the other, more recent geno- been offered? The name is important, and become the benchmark for tary filmmaker Claude Lanzmann. camp survivors and others in cides in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur may one doesn’t say ‘Holocaust’ in Europe. visual representations of 56 countries, asking, “Who will see this?” have lessened the Holocaust’s aura of This was a catastrophe, a disaster, and in the Holocaust. (The testimonials are currently not widely uniqueness or even its power to shock. Hebrew that is shoah.” “The words monumental and profound available to the public, but are in the “With the passage of time, memories Mr. Lanzmann is a French Jew who are overused, but in the case of this film, process of being digitized, with index, and fade, witnesses disappear, and with that joined the Resistance as a teenager and they are appropriate,” said Sara Bloom- being made accessible as a study collec- comes the whole manifestation of trivializa- later served as an editor of Les Temps field, director of the United States Holo- tion.) tion,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national Modernes, the cultural and philosophical caust Memorial Museum in Washington. Asked for comment, Marvin Levy, a director of the Anti-Defamation League. “To journal founded by Jean-Paul Sartre. “For those of us who spend our time spokesman for Mr. Spielberg, referred a most kids growing up today, Hitler could be Though no members of his own family per- thinking about this,” she added, “there is reporter to Stephen Smith, a British scholar Genghis Khan. People talk about ‘soup ished in the Holocaust, he said, the event something this film does that is utterly who is the executive director of the Shoah (Continued on page 12) January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9

IN THE NAME OF THE ART’S SURVIVORS OF HITLER’S WAR MOTHER: ASHES GO TO I can hardly express how moving this little erdieck’s office fell through the floor, and TREBLINKA BY MICHAEL KIMMELMAN, show is, unexpectedly so. Its effect ends up then the building collapsed on top. Tests THE NEW YORK TIMES being all out of proportion to the objects dis- are being done on ash from the site for re- lex Werber calmly strode toward a covered, which are, in strictly aesthetic mains of incinerated paintings and wood A patch of black stones, pulled up his he past still thrusts itself back into the terms, fine but not remarkable. They are sculptures. How the lost art came into sleeves and opened a plastic bag to headlines here in Berlin, occasion- T works of quasi-Cubism or Expressionism, Oewerdieck’s possession in the first place dump out its contents. ally as an unexploded bomb turning up mostly not much more than a foot high, sev- still isn’t clear. “Goodbye, mom,” he said, scattering somewhere. Now it has reappeared as art. eral newly cleaned but still scarred, inspiring But at least it’s now back on view. her ashes at the former site of the Tre- In January workers digging for a new the obvious human analogy. Scharff’s bust, of an actress named Anni blinka death camp in Poland, where the subway station near City Hall unearthed a The poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Mewes, brings to mind Egyptian works in Nazis murdered 875,000 Jews during bronze bust of a woman, rusted, filthy, and Celan came up, in a different context, with the Neues Museum. Karl Knappe’s World War II. the metaphor of “Hagar,” a bronze from 1923, twisted like It was Lucy Werber’s final wish: to have bottles tossed into knotted rope, has been left with its green her body cremated, her ashes taken to the ocean “at the patina of rust and rubble, making it almost Poland and sprinkled at the death camp shoreline of the impossible to decipher, save as evidence that killed her entire family, a fate she heart,” now finally of its fate. On the other hand, Freundlich’s narrowly avoided when she was a young washed ashore. “Head,” from 1925, a work made of glazed girl. They’re like the terra cotta, gnarled like an old olive tree, “She remained a child who just wanted dead, these sculp- loses little of its power for being broken. to be with her parents,” Werber said. tures, ever coming The Nazis seized the Freundlich from a “She never made it to Treblinka, but she back to us, radiant museum in Hamburg in 1937, then six probably felt that was where she needed ghosts. years later, in France, seized the artist and to go.” In a country that sent him to Majdanek, the concentration The ceremony capped an emotional for decades has camp in Poland, where he was murdered journey that forced Werber to explore his been profoundly on the day he arrived. family’s dark history and vividly illustrated diligent at disclos- Treblinka’s notorious place in the Jewish ing its own crimes psyche. and framing them The camp is perhaps the most blatant in the context of example of the “Final Solution,” the Nazi history, it makes plot to rid Europe of its Jews. It was de- “A Likeness of the Actress Anni Mewes,” by Edwin Scharff, is among the sense that the exhi- signed with the sole intention of extermi- pieces found this year during excavations in Berlin. bition was installed nating Jews, as opposed to others that had to share a courtyard with Assyrian friezes almost unrecognizable. It tumbled off the at least a facade of being prison or labor from a long-ago regime that made an art shovel of their front-loader. camps. Treblinka’s victims were trans- of totalitarian rule and with an ancient Researchers learned the bust was a por- ported there in cattle cars and gassed to frieze describing the eruption of Vesuvius, trait by Edwin Scharff, a nearly forgotten death almost immediately upon arrival. which preserved priceless objects, buried German modernist, from around 1920. It In all, the Nazis and their collaborators in the ash, that have found sanctuary in in- seemed anomalous until August, when killed about 6 million Jews during the stitutions like the Neues Museum. more sculpture emerged nearby: “Standing Holocaust. The death toll at Treblinka rcheologists have so far determined Girl” by Otto Baum, “Dancer” by Marg Moll, was second only to Auschwitz — a prison that the recovered works must have and the remains of a head by Otto Fre- A camp where more than a million people come from 50 Königstrasse, across the undlich. Excavators also rescued another died in gas chambers or from starvation, street from City Hall. The building be- fragment, a different head, belonging to disease and forced labor. longed to a Jewish woman, Edith Steinitz; Emy Roeder’s “Pregnant Woman.” Octo- Only a few dozen prisoners managed to several Jewish lawyers are listed as her ber produced yet a further batch. escape Treblinka. The Associated Press re- tenants in 1939, but their names disappear The 11 sculptures proved to be survivors cently interviewed two men who are be- from the record by 1942, when the house of Hitler’s campaign against what the Nazis lieved by experts to be the last two survivors. became property of the Reich. Among its notoriously called “degenerate art.” Several Thanks to her parents, Lucy Werber subsequent occupants, German investiga- works, records showed, were seized from managed to avoid being sent to Tre- tors now believe, the likeliest candidate to German museums in the 1930s, paraded in blinka. But the camp haunted her until her have hidden the art was Erhard Oew- the fateful “Degenerate Art” show, and in a final days, her son said. erdieck, a tax lawyer and escrow agent. couple of cases also exploited for a 1941 Oewerdieck is not widely known, but he is Born in Poland, she spent the bulk of Nazi film, an anti-Semitic comedy lambast- remembered at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust the war in the Warsaw ghetto. Her son ing modern art. They were last known to memorial in Israel. In 1939, he and his wife called her a “natural survivor” who knew have been stored in the depot of the Reich- gave money to a Jewish family to escape to Marg Moll’s “Dancer,” from around 1930, is how to sneak out of the ghetto and smug- spropagandaministerium, which organized Shanghai. He also hid an employee, Martin one of the found works in the “Degenerate Art” gle in food for her parents and baby the “Degenerate” show. Lange, in his apartment. In 1941 he helped show at the Neues Museum in Berlin. brother. In 1943, just before the family Then the sculptures vanished. the historian Eugen Täubler and his wife flee Across the street from the Neues Mu- was deported to Treblinka, Lucy’s parents How they ended up underground near to America, preserving part of Täubler’s li- seum contemporary galleries showcase paid a Polish family to hide their 9-year- City Hall is still a mystery; it seems to in- brary. And he stood by Wolfgang Abendroth the sort of work the Nazis hoped to eradi- old daughter in a cellar. Of her parents, volve an Oskar Schindler-like hero. Mean- cate but that instead give Berlin its current brother, and extended family, she alone while a modest identity as a capital of cool. This is a city survived the war. exhibition of the dis- that resembles the young masses who After the war, Lucy was put in an or- coveries has been gravitate here: forever in a state of becom- phanage in southern Poland. Later, she organized and re- ing, wary, unsure and unresolved, gener- cently opened at the married a fellow survivor, became a ally broke, but optimistic about the future, Neues Museum, teacher, and had Alex in 1955. Two years with the difference that Germany can’t es- Berlin’s archaeologi- later, the family moved to Israel, where cape its past. cal collection, the Lucy had another child and worked in a Farther down the block the Deutsches His- perfect site for these library and in book publishing. torisches Museum’s Hitler exhibition, today’s works. Raising her family in Israel, Lucy spoke version of a “Degenerate” show, means to Like the sculptures, little of her own childhood experiences. It warn viewers about succumbing to what the museum lately was only when she became ill that Wer- present German law declares morally repre- rose, all these years ber, a 55-year-old accountant, learned of hensible. How could any decent German later, from the ruins her unusual will. A longtime smoker, she have ever been taken in? the show asks. of war. In the archi- died of lung failure in May at the age of That happens to be the question the tect David Chipper- 77. Her husband died 38 years ago and Nazis’ “Degenerate” show posed about “Hagar” by Karl Knappe. From left: the original bronze; the condition is buried in Israel. field’s ingenious, modern art. Many more Germans visited Humpty Dumpty-like when discovered; and as it appears now, cleaned and on display at Berlin’s “She was a very stubborn, opinionated Neues Museum. that exhibition than the concurrent one of reconstruction of the approved German art. Maybe Oewerdieck person who knew what she wanted,” he building, it has become a popular too, a leftist and Nazi opponent, by writing was among those who went to the modern said. palimpsest of German history, bearing wit- him a job recommendation when that risked show and saw these sculptures in it. In any At first he said he was “insulted” that ness, via the evidence of the damage done his own life. case, today’s Germany has salvaged them she did not want to be buried in her home to it, to a violence that not even time and The current theory is that when fire from and has organized this display. Redemp- in Israel, close to her grandchildren. After several generations have been able to Allied air raids in 1944 consumed 50 tion sometimes comes late and in small she died, when he was sorting through erase. Königstrasse, the contents of Oew- measures. (Continued on page 12) Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM

“WE ARE ALL ALIVE BECAUSE OF HER” Grandson receives Righteous Among Righteous Among the Nations medal and Teodora hid the brothers and their them at the last moment, but the Germans the Nations medal on behalf of Teodora Ol- certificate in a special ceremony. spouses for almost two years, until in July stayed and watched over the area for the szewska, who risked her life to save eight Olszewski was honored on behalf of his 1943 they decided to join the Russian par- entire night,” he added. Jewish family members. grandmother Teodora Olszewska, her tisans in their struggle against the Nazis. ova Levin, the daughter of Hirsch mother and her brothers, who risked their After the war, the brothers returned to and his wife Michalina, both rescued BY OLGA GOURESKY, YNETNEWS.COM T lives to save Jews during the war. live in the area until finally making aliyah. thanks to Teodora’s courage, accompa- taszek Olszewski and his wife, who The offspring of the family members res- nied Staszek and his wife during Sare visiting from Lithuania, have cued by the Olszewskis also attended the their visit to Israel. been busy touring Israel’s historic sites in ceremony, and surrounded Staszek and “I met her when I was in first the past few days. “I fell in love with Israel,” his wife while they were honored at Yad grade, and now, 57 years later, we Staszek said with a smile. Vashem. meet again. My heart is beating out During the Second World of my chest,” said Staszek in excite- War, Gita Nomkin and her 13 ment, “She came to visit us in our children, who lost their father house years ago. I am Polish, but prior to the war, resided near we are very similar.” Vilna, Lithuania’s capital, Teodora Olszewska passed away which was within Poland’s bor- in 1975. Her daughter and Staszek’s ders at the time . mother, Anna, died in 2006 and In 1941 Nazi forces occupied Anna’s brother, Kazimierz, passed the area, and concentrated all Olszewski during ceremony. back in 1946. The last living member the Jewish families in two of the older generation is Staszek’s ghettos, one of which was lo- However, the Nomkins and Olszewskis aunt, Józefa, who lives in Vilna. cated in the town of kept in touch throughout the years. Levin, 64, also couldn’t conceal her ex- Szarkowszczyzna. “Near grandmother’s house there were citement. “Staszek’s family rescued my On July 18 1942 the Nazis several structures,” said Olszewski. “At family. We are all alive because of her. The liquidated Szarkowszczyzna night they hid, and in the day they sat and last survivor who gave her testimony to The Nomkin family before the war. ghetto. In the process, some ate together. One time mother was interro- Yad Vashem is my aunt, Haya, who is 89 “I am very excited because I saw things 700 Jews managed to escape to the for- gated and was told that a rumor was going years old. I am very excited by this unusual that I haven’t seen anywhere else in the est, including five of Gita’s children and around that she was concealing Jews. She closure.” world, like places with high significance to their spouses. acted as if she had no clue what they were “It’s hard to believe that the third gener- human history; the landscapes, Jerusalem Gita and her eight other children were talking about.” ation of rescuers are here and we are tour- – there are no words to describe it,” he murdered by the Nazis along with 1,200 Despite the denials, the rumors contin- ing together. It’s really the bare minimum said with exuberance. other Jews. ued to circulate, and finally the Nazis came we can do to repay them for their acts. But history also has a darker side, which The five brothers who survived – Martin, to search the bath house, which was one Thanks to Teodora we are all here today. makes Staszek’s story especially touching Hirsch, Yehuda, Yehudit, and Esther of the structures in the complex. She was an unusual character and res- and unique. Nomkin – went through many hardships “When they came there were still plates cued eight people. They are Catholics and As part of his trip to Israel, Olszewski vis- until finally reaching an old family friend: on the table from the Nomkins’ previous are very excited to tour the holy places,” ited Jerusalem, where he received the Teodora Olszewska. meal. One of the children managed to hide Levin concluded. HOLOCAUST ORPHANS REMINISCE ABOUT THE BIRNBAUM FAMILY uments to state that the children were ille- put us on a train. A death train. They put dit Boldeheimer, came to the Birnbaums BY MELANIE LIDMAN, gitimate offspring of Christian German sol- 2,500 people on there from Bergen- as a six-week-old infant with her twin. THE JERUSALEM POST diers and Jewish mothers. Belsen, and 10 percent died on the way.” Their father had been killed and their n 1944, the family was deported, along The Birnbaum family returned to Holland wenty Holocaust survivors gathered mother was unable to care for them. with more than 200 orphans they just a few months after the war ended. at Yad Vashem last November to I “I remember taking care of you!” ex- T cared for, to the Bergen-Belsen concen- They settled into a monastery with around share testimony about the rescue efforts claimed Shai when she saw Bolde- tration camp. They tried to keep the or- 40 children who had also survived, and of the Birnbaum family, a German Jewish heimer. phaned children together despite terrible continued to care for a growing number of family which cared for over 350 children “Testimonies are such a massive part conditions in the camp. orphans who found their way into the fam- during the Holocaust and in the chaotic af- of what we do,” said Estee Yaair, a ily’s care. In 1946, groups of the termath immediately following the war. spokeswoman for Yad Vashem. But the Birnbaums’ charges started com- While Yad Vashem regularly records tes- Birnbaum story stands out for the self- ing to Israel through Youth Aliyah timony from Holocaust survivors in their lessness of the family in the face of such frameworks. homes, this event allowed the museum to difficult conditions. Today, all six of the Birnbaum simultaneously gather testimony from “In almost every story of survival, children are living in Israel, as well many sides of the inspiring Birnbaum res- there’s an example of Jews helping other as dozens of survivors whom the cue story. The museum has only had the Jews survive,” said Yaair. parents shepherded through the opportunity to gather group testimonies The room was filled with family mem- tumultuous and dangerous years. eight times in the past few years, since it bers of the survivors. The six Birnbaum children were is rare for an entire group of survivors to The idea for group testimony about the at the testimony to hear the expe- all be in Israel at the same time. Birnbaum story surfaced during an event on riences of the dozens of children A deeply religious household, the Birn- Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, their parents helped to save. baums fled from Berlin to Amsterdam fol- when Reirs-Mossel lit a candle and the mu- “It’s so exciting to be here,” said lowing Kristallnacht, during which attacks seum screened a movie that showed Soni (Birnbaum) Shai. dozens of the Birnbaum children. were carried out against Jews in Germany Children in Bergen-Belsen. Photo taken by British upon “There’s Nehamia and there’s arrival in 1945. The International School for Holocaust and Austria, on November 9–10, 1938. In Opie, there’s people here I haven’t Studies decided to try and identify all of 1939, the family was moved with other “For most of the war, I was with my fam- seen in years. We don’t have the opportu- the children in the video, by bringing German refugees to the Westerbork tran- ily, but they died towards the end in nity to get together. It’s just so exciting. I them together and hearing their stories. sit camp in Holland, where they tried to Bergen-Belsen, so then I was taken in by remember almost everyone.” The testimony was organized in cooper- maintain a normal observant lifestyle as the Birnbaum family,” recalled Esther Deb- “They were angels in hell, rescuing hun- much as permitted. ora Reirs-Mossel, who was six years old dreds of children,” said Reirs-Mossel. ation with the office of the Minister for Authorities put Yehoshua and Hani Birn- at the time. “I remember they made a “Otto, his name is Yehoshua in Hebrew, he Pensioner Affairs. baum in charge of the orphans, who con- seder for us on March 29, 1945. would wait for the trains to arrive at night “I’m a member of a committee that re- tinued to arrive at the transit camp in large “I remember Ya’acov and Tzvi (two of and he would gather up all of the children searches Jews who rescued Jews,” ex- groups. the six biological Birnbaum children) that arrived.” plained Reirs-Mossel. “People usually try Deportations from Westerbork to con- baked matzot that night; they took some he survivors shared their stories of to correct me, saying, you mean Right- centration camps started in 1942. The flour and water and made these matzas. Thow they came to be under the care eous Gentiles who rescued Jews. But until family fought “like lions” to prevent each And we had a real seder and we told the of the Birnbaums and what it meant to be now, people haven’t told the story enough child’s deportation, at one point saving 50 story about the holiday of liberation and part of the community in fragmented Eu- of what Jews did to help the nation of Is- children from deportation by falsifying doc- getting out of Egypt. The next week, they rope. The youngest child rescued, Yehu- rael, and it’s very important.” January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 SCHINDLER’S LIST: THE STORY BEHIND THE DOCUMENTS Righteous Among the Nations in 1993. The Schindler documents were on display with Holocaust remembrance – Steven BY MOSHE RONEN, YNETNEWS Oskar Schindler died in 1974 at the age of in Yad Vashem undisturbed until Sahm pub- Spielberg. 66 and was buried in Israel upon his re- lished his book in March 2010. In the book, Rosenberg criticized Spielberg, saying t is one of the most talked-about histor- the 60-year-old journalist living in Jerusalem he “earned millions from the movie” but ical documents from the Holocaust. A quest. I for the past 40 years discusses the never gave Emilie a single cent. She nine-page list consisting of 1,098 names of Emilie was also recognized as Righteous Schindler list story in great detail. added that everyone “profited” on Emilie’s Jews – 801 men and 297 women – who Among the Nations, especially because of behalf, except for her. were all saved because of the famous her initiative to save 100 Jews who were Erika Rosenberg, who now owns the Emilie came to Israel in 1992 to partici- Righteous Among the Nations honoree left to freeze to death in train cars near copyrights to these documents, read the pate in the final scene of the famous Oskar Schindler. Schindler’s factory towards the end of the book and decided to react. According to movie, where Holocaust survivors and Over the years this list became a symbol war. her, she now has proof that the documents their families visit Schindler’s grave in of courage during a very dark time for hu- In 1997 she wrote in A Memoir Where found in Schindler’s suitcase were robbed Jerusalem. After her passing, Rosenberg manity, much accredited to the successful Light and Shadow Meet, with the help of from the estate and transferred illegally to filed a suit against Universal Studios, Hollywood film Schindler’s List by director Rosenberg, that neither she nor her hus- Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. which produced the film, claiming they did Steven Spielberg. band were heroes; they just did what had not honor an old agreement signed while Now, 17 years after the movie pre- to be done. Oskar Schindler was still alive, promising miered, the sensitive question is brought fter Oskar died, Emilie was declared him 5% of the profits from a movie based up once again: Who is the rightful owner of Ato be his rightful heir by a German on his life. the real Schindler’s list in the Yad Vashem court. When Schindler’s mistress passed Deputy Prime Minister Yishai passed Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem? away sometime during the end of the along Rosenberg’s letter to the museum It’s hard to overestimate the historical 1990s, her son and neighbors discovered chairman Avner Shalev. value of the original list, also due to the an old suitcase in the attic of the house in ad Vashem spokesperson Iris successful Hollywood film. In fact, it is be- Hildesheim filled with over 7,000 docu- Rosenberg said: “Yad Vashem, a cause of this that every copy of the list is ments and pictures belonging to Oskar Y global and central institution and the official worth a lot of money. Schindler, including a rare copy of the fa- memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holo- It is then easy to understand how sensitive mous list. caust, is doing all that it can to acquire any the issue is now, in light of two separate They decided to hand over their findings documents or items from the Holocaust. legal struggles on behalf of a Jewish jour- to the German newspaper Stuttgarter They are preserved here and are accessi- nalist from Argentina who claims to have the Zeitung, which later published a series of ar- ble to researchers, students and anyone rights to two original copies of the list. ticles about Schindler and the lists, quoting who is interested. We believe that Argentinean author Erika Rosenberg be- from the documents found in the suitcase. Schindler’s list is an historically valuable friended Emilie Schindler a few years prior Following these publications, Emilie document belonging in Yad Vashem – to her death. Rosenberg assisted hired an attorney, with the help of Rosen- where millions can see it. We don’t accept Schindler in writing her autobiography and berg, and demanded all the newly found Erika Rosenberg’s claim. Yad Vashem re- after her death published a few books documents be returned to her. A German ceived the documents given to us by the about the famous couple. courthouse agreed with her and issued a newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung legally, in- When Emilie died in 2001, Rosenberg search warrant of the documents and lists Oskar Schindler and the famous list. cluding original copies of Schindler’s list.” was appointed as one of her heirs and re- at the publishing house. Aside from their historical value, the lists ceived the copyrights to all of the documents However, by the time the courthouse Rosenberg wrote a long letter to Israeli of- are also worth a lot of money. In March written by Oskar Schindler. She now claims representatives arrived at Stuttgarter ficials, including to Deputy Prime Minister Eli 2010 another original copy, though only that since Oskar Schindler was the one who Zeitung headquarters to search for the Yishai, claiming they should intervene in partial, was auctioned off online for the wrote the list, she is its rightful owner. documents, the suitcase was already on its order to return the lists to their rightful owner. price of $3.1 million. The seller, an antique In a letter she recently sent to Israeli of- way to a Lufthansa airplane about to leave She wrote that after reading journalist dealer by the name of Gary Zimet, said he ficials, Rosenberg claims the rights to doc- for Israel. Sahm’s story of how the documents were inherited the copy from heirs of Itzhak uments written by Schindler, including the The German newspaper had decided the handed over in a secret operation, she had Stern, the Jewish accountant who worked notorious list, which made their way to the proper place for Schindler’s list and the written Yad Vashem personally. This led to for Schindler during the Holocaust and is Holocaust Museum in Israel during the rest of his personal documents was in Yad a long correspondence with the museum, credited with typing Schindler’s list. 1990s in a questionable manner. Vashem. which said it had received the documents Rosenberg quickly filed a lawsuit in New The journey these documents under- Ulrich Sahm, a German journalist who legally. York in an attempt to stop the online auc- went, in a suitcase belonging to Oskar, in was Stuttgarter Zeitung’s correspondent in Rosenberg stated that this is a lie, saying tion or to transfer the money to her ac- order to reach Israel could easily be turned Israel at the time, recalled the incident this the museum’s behavior is not consistent – count. A restraining order preventing Zimet into another box-office hit. After World War week. Sahm said he had driven to Ben- on the one hand it recognized Emilie as from selling the document was issued in II, the Schindlers escaped to Argentina and Gurion Airport to release the documents Righteous Among the Nations, but on the May 2010, but a judge rejected her claim lived on a farm. In 1957, Oskar Schindler from customs: “I was very excited. These other hand it hid Schindler’s list from her. and allowed the auction to continue. The decided to abandon his wife, returning to are highly valuable historical documents.” Rosenberg went on to say that returning judge ruled that Schindler’s copyrights will Germany where he lived with his mistress He said that after a few days he handed these documents is “a matter of honor and not be violated by the auction, unless it will in the town of Hildesheim. the papers to museum chairman Avner respect, and above all – justice.” be published. Oskar Schindler visited Israel 16 times. Shalev. The harsh letter exposed the bitterness Either way, it seems this story is far from In 1962 a tree was planted in Schindler’s However, as far as Emilie Schindler was and claims made by those who were over, and we might learn the legal fate of honor in the Avenue of the Righteous at concerned – the documents had disap- close to Emilie Schindler against the man one of the most important documents of Yad Vashem, and he was recognized as peared. who made Oskar’s name synonymous the 20th century very soon. HISTORY SAVED FROM THE TRASH Finkelstein’s efforts and eventual spon- overpowering feeling of awe that one her for help, and she was right there. I LOUIS COOPER, PNJ sorship, Fuchs, his wife, Ester, and their person, Katie Finkelstein, a housewife in think that says something.” two children, Klara — now Claire — and 1939 Milton, Florida, was trying every- s a Jew living in Nazi-occupied LONDON NOT IDEAL Prague in the late 1930s, Eugene Harry, made their way safely to America. thing she could to help this family she A rague was a nightmare for the Fuchs Fuchs reached out to a cousin in Milton The family Americanized its last name to had never met. She was their only link family, according to the letters, but for help to bring his family to safety. Fox. outside of Europe — to survival — and P London wasn’t a promised land. “The situation in Prague is very grave,” The compelling story came to light re- she knew that.” “I left Prague as soon as Hitler invaded Fuchs wrote to his cousin, Katie Finkel- cently when Bagdad native and historic Wilks organized the letters and set out the country, but at first was refused entry stein, on May 30, 1939. preservationist Josh Wilks stumbled to contact the families involved. He found “Jews are being arrested, taken away, upon on a suitcase full of the transat- Fuchs’ daughter, now Claire Perskie, in into England but managed to be admitted and nobody hears from them anymore,” lantic correspondences in a pile of dis- New Jersey. She was 5 years old when after all. I have no future here. I am not al- he wrote in the letter, translated from Yid- carded belongings waiting to be taken by she fled with her mother and brother lowed to work, but if one cannot do this, dish. “Many people are committing sui- garbage collectors outside of the Finkel- from Prague in the night. Perskie didn’t one has nothing to live on,” Fuchs wrote in cide and many people are dying in the stein home. know any details of how they escaped the May 1939 letter. ghetto. Jews are not allowed to be out Wilks, 31, received permission from the the Nazis and the role Finkelstein played “I can tell you that I was able to help myself after 6 p.m. The synagogues are closed owners to take the suitcase. He felt as if until Wilks sent her copies of the letters. by borrowing a little money from my friend,” or burned to the ground.” he were reading the letters when they “I was absolutely flabbergasted,” said he wrote to Finkelstein. “It will not last long, Fuchs, who had escaped to England by were originally drafted. Perskie, now 76. “She worked so hard at but I live very frugally, I am busy learning then, asked Finkelstein for help — both “Knowing the family is Jewish, I imme- trying to get us here. It was not an easy English, and I am hopeful to leave for the immediate assistance in the form of cash diately figured they were significant when feat for her. I didn’t realize that until I U.S.A. as soon as possible. I hope to find and long-term help by way of helping I noticed the European postmarks and started reading everything. She really happiness and you will breathe easier since gain passage to America. Through the dates,” said Wilks, “I was hit with an was a wonderful person. My father asked (Continued on page 12) Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 HISTORY SAVED FROM THE TRASH (Continued from page 11) The mother and children took the train to asked to translate for him in London. Some said Green, now 87. “I know they came I hope to be successful in America.” Holland and then the ship to England. Re- letters were written in Yiddish. over. I know they were from Czechoslova- According to the letter collection, Finkel- united in London, the family sought pas- With permission of the family, Wilks took kia. I know they went to England, and then stein received help to rescue the Fuchses sage to America. In London, Perskie was the letters to be examined and researched. they came to America. (My mother) was from the Department of State, Temple sent to foster care, while her parents and He set out to find the people mentioned in their sponsor. She really was concerned, Beth El, a Pensacola attorney, and con- brother were sent to a Czech refugee I’m sure. And she did save them.” gressman — later Governor — Millard camp. With Finkelstein’s help, the Fuchses Although the Fuchses and the Finkelsteins Caldwell, who was from Milton. almost made it to America in 1941 by air- had lost contact for decades, Perskie and Finkelstein contacted Temple Beth El for plane, but Nazi air raids canceled all civil- Green have communicated several times assistance — possibly securing a position ian flights. Perskie said she didn’t learn since Wilks unearthed the letters. for Fuchs as a rabbi — but the congrega- about Finkelstein’s help until about 1942 LETTERS TO BE PRESERVED tion could offer little help. The temple’s during one of her family’s failed attempts leader, Rabbi Martin Friedman, said Fuchs to leave England. ilks wants to find a way to preserve likely did not possess the credentials to be “I didn’t know anything until we had to go W the letters in a way that will allow considered a legitimate rabbi. He also wor- to the American embassy. That’s when my them to be used to further history. ried Fuchs would have trouble gaining em- father told me that Katie had sent papers “I’m working on more research and in- ployment by a congregation sight unseen. and that we were going to be going to tend on engaging the local Jewish commu- “Please believe me when I say that I am America,” she said. “Even though Katie nity in using these letters to showcase how deeply sympathetic to his desperate plight. had papers for us, (President Franklin) the Holocaust affected a local family,” he said. He is working with the family, the Uni- ... I can only hope with you that his turn for Roosevelt closed the gate. We remained versity of West Florida, the Library of Con- a regular visa will not be delayed too long,” in England (until 1948). I believe she just gress, local historians, and others to Friedman wrote in a June 8, 1939, letter. continued, from her first attempt, trying to decide how to best use the letters. “This is not good news, I realize, and it is get us here.” Temple Beth El’s current leader, Rabbi heartbreaking not only for you but also for Not everyone in the Fuchs family survived. Leonard Zukrow, praised the letters for me, since I come in touch with many simi- “The circumstances here are very bad and Josh Wilks discovered a suitcase full of letters their historic value. lar problems.” there is no possibility to stay here longer,” describing the events in Prague just before the “It is a demonstration that Jews here did Max Bear, of the Lewis Bear Co., how- wrote Fany Fuchs, Eugene Fuchs’ mother, Nazi occupation in 1939. The suitcase was do something rather than being unable to do ever, wrote letters to Finkelstein on behalf in a March 7, 1939, letter to Finkelstein. “Be- about to be thrown in the trash when Wilks something in this situation,” Zukrow said. “It of Temple Beth El when she was trying to forehand, it is necessary that my son gets found it. also demonstrates an awareness of what create a teaching position for Fuchs in the immigration permit and when being in the letters and their descendents. He was happening in Germany and the severity America to help get him here. At the time, the U.S.A. he could bring us all there.” pored through public records. He searched of the situation for the Jewish community. Bear was president of the temple. Fany Fuchs, however, never made it to ship manifests. He called volumes of Fuch- These letters also demonstrate the connec- America. She died at the Treblinka con- IMMIGRATION FRUSTRATION ses and Foxes all over the country. tion Jews have one to another to aid each centration camp, one of several of Fuchs’ Katie Finkelstein lived in Milton until her other in times of challenge. erskie has only patchy memories of extended family who perished in the death in 1990. Eugene Fuchs died in 1964 “Certainly, such a collection is invaluable her time in Prague. Her mother, she P Holocaust. at the age of 61 in New Jersey. Ester (in) historical value as a primary source.” said, sheltered the children from much of FAMILIES REUNITED Fuchs died in 1999 at the age of 90 in New Wilks said his discovery has “re-inspired the threatening calamity. Jersey. my faith in the human spirit.” “I remember looking out of the apartment ilks discovered the suitcase of let- In addition to Perskie, Wilks found Harry “I’ve always heard about those signifi- window and seeing troops marching down W ters outside the home of Margot Fuchs, now 73, in Texas. He found one of cant events in life, or those books that the street. ... We left with no baggage. All Finkelstein, Katie Finkelstein’s daughter. Finkelstein’s daughters living near Fort change your way of thinking. These letters my mother had was a knapsack on her Margot died in 2009. The suitcase con- Lauderdale. Dorothy Finkelstein Green and this story certainly are that event for back. It happened suddenly,” she said. “I tained about 30 letters along with en- wasn’t living in Milton when the letters me,” he said. “When I find myself talking remember the trip we took in the middle of velopes, photos and even a poster were written or when the Fuchses eventu- and thinking about this, I remember the the night. I remember the train, and I re- advertising a service in London where ally came to Milton. They lived there briefly Jewish saying ‘and whoever saves a life, it member I was terrified of the boat. We Fuchs was to be the cantor. Most of the let- before settling in New Jersey. is considered as if he saved an entire were in a stateroom, and the water was ters were hand-written in English by an in- “When they came over, I was around 19 world.’ In her own way, Katie saved the above the porthole.” termediary — a Mrs. Cohen — Fuchs or 20, and I was already away from there,” world — at least for one family.”

MAKER OF SHOAH IN THE NAME OF THE MOTHER: STRESSES ITS LASTING VALUE ASHES GO TO TREBLINKA (Continued from page 8) who visited both the Warsaw Ghetto and (Continued from page 9) vate ceremony at Treblinka, where he re- Nazis,’ or if you don’t like the dogcatcher, a death camp and brought news of the her belongings, he began to understand. traced the path of the incoming prisoners. he’s ‘the Gestapo.’ That undermines the Holocaust to England and the United Inside her black leather wallet he found a Before shutting down the death camp, significance of the tragedy, which is why States in 1943. single black-and-white photo of her father the Nazis attempted to destroy all evi- the re-release of Shoah offers a very im- He is now at work on another satellite as a young man. dence of their atrocities. The structures portant and significant opportunity to re- film about the Theresienstadt “model Jew- “That explains everything,” Werber were destroyed and the ground was focus.” ish settlement” that the Nazis constructed said, tears welling in his eyes. “She was plowed and planted over. Grabbing and keeping the attention of a in Czechoslovakia as a propaganda tool, probably ridden with guilt, feeling that she Today, all that remains are a series of generation raised on YouTube snippets and said that he hoped that all four could should have died there with her family. A concrete slabs representing the train may be a challenge. child who loses her parents at age nine tracks, and mounds of rocks and gravel But Jonathan Sehring, is traumatized for life. I suppose she felt with a series of memorials and stone president of IFC Enter- this intense need to join them.” tablets representing lost communities. tainment, which is dis- With a heavy heart, he executed her Access to the site is open, so Werber tributing the film, will. First he negotiated the release of her didn’t draw attention. points to his com- body and had it cremated by a private On the September day he scattered the pany’s successful pro- company that keeps its crematorium’s lo- ashes, skies were clear and sunny. motion of other cation secret because the act is so taboo “It was quiet and beautiful and that both- long-form movies con- sidered “difficult,” in- in Israel — it violates Jewish law and also ered me,” he said. “I expected it to be dark cluding the recent conjures up images of the Holocaust and dreary and to project death, but it didn’t.” Carlos, about the ter- ovens. Regardless, he said he felt “sadness, rorist called Carlos the Then, along with his sister and his son, but also relief” to have fulfilled his Jackal, and Che, he departed to Poland, packing the ashes mother’s last wishes. about Che Guevara A scene from Shoah features residents of the Polish town of Oswiecim 40 in his suitcase. It was a tricky operation. A German television crew recorded his (which both clocked in years after the war. He wasn’t sure about the legality of trav- actions, and he doesn’t intend to ever re- at more than four hours). eventually be included in a DVD package eling with human remains and was afraid turn to Poland, a place he calls “one big Since the initial release of Shoah, Mr. with Shoah. he would be turned back if he made his cemetery for Jews.” Lanzmann has also made three satellite “Most of those I interviewed are now intentions clear upon arrival in Poland — In lieu of a real grave, Werber called the films, none longer than about an hour and deceased,” he said. “But Shoah the film is so he told no one from start to finish. footage his mother’s true “tombstone.” a half. The most recent of these is The not dead. I don’t know what you think, but During the five-day trip — his first time “I’m at peace with myself. It’s an un- Karski Report, issued this year, in which for me, every time I sit to watch my film, I back in Poland since he departed as an in- usual, creative tombstone and it suits he goes back to the testimony of Jan say I will stay two minutes, but I always fant — he returned to his home town of her,” he said. “She was definitely a spe- Karski, the Polish underground courier stay longer. The film has no wrinkles.” Bielsko-Biala. But the highlight was the pri- cial person.” January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 NAZIS WERE GIVEN “SAFE HAVEN” IN U.S., IN THE SHADOW OF THE RED BANNER REPORT SAYS (Continued from page 4) (Continued from page 8) After Mr. Richard’s death, David Sobel, a It describes how investigators used let- verve with which its author knowingly de- about Nazis in this country, the report found. Washington lawyer, and the National Se- ters and diaries apparently written by Dr. scribes the Jewish fighting. He does not In 1980, prosecutors filed a motion that curity Archive sued for the report’s release Mengele in the 1970s, along with German write in numbers — although his conclu- “misstated the facts” in asserting that under the Freedom of Information Act. dental records and Munich phone books, sions rely heavily on statistics, Arad admits checks of C.I.A. and F.B.I. records re- The Justice Department initially fought to follow his trail. that in too many cases such data are con- vealed no information on the Nazi past of the lawsuit, but finally gave Mr. Sobel a fter the development of DNA tests, troversial or simply unavailable – but de- Tscherim Soobzokov, a former Waffen SS partial copy — with more than 1,000 pas- Athe piece of scalp, which had been scribes in details hundreds of examples of soldier. In fact, the report said, the Justice sages and references deleted based on turned over by the Brazilian authorities, Jewish heroism. Department “knew that Soobzokov had ad- exemptions for privacy and internal delib- proved to be a critical piece of evidence in In the Shadow of the Red Banner corre- vised the C.I.A. of his SS connection after erations. establishing that Dr. Mengele had fled to sponds to no small extent with previous he arrived in the United States.” Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department Brazil and had died there in about 1979 books by Yitzhak Arad, in particular with (After the case was dismissed, radical spokeswoman, said the department is without ever entering the United States, his History of the Holocaust in the Soviet Jewish groups urged violence against Mr. committed to transparency, and that redac- the report said. The edited report deletes Union (two volumes in Hebrew and one Soobzokov, and he was killed in 1985 by a tions are made by experienced lawyers. references to Dr. Mengele’s scalp on pri- volume in English). In my opinion, part of bomb at his home in Paterson, N.J.) The full report disclosed that the Justice vacy grounds. this background information could be omit- The secrecy surrounding the Justice De- Department found “a smoking gun” in 1997 Even documents that have long been ted from the present volume, without jeop- partment’s handling of the report could establishing with “definitive proof” that available to the public are omitted, includ- ardizing its integrity. pose a political dilemma for President Switzerland had bought gold from the ing court decisions, Congressional testi- I feel a certain amount of discomfort be- Obama because of his pledge to run the Nazis that had been taken from Jewish vic- mony and front-page newspaper articles cause in such a big (in all senses) book most transparent administration in history. tims of the Holocaust. But these refer- from the 1970s. Yitzhak Arad did not tell us explicitly how Mr. Obama chose the Justice Department ences are deleted, as are disputes A chapter on the O.S.I.’s most publicized he gauges the Jewish contribution to the to coordinate the opening of government between the Justice and State Depart- failure — the case against John Demjan- Soviet military effort; below the average, at records. ments over Switzerland’s culpability in the juk, a retired American autoworker who the average, or over the average. Nor did he Nazi-hunting report was the brain- months leading up to a major report on the was mistakenly identified as Treblinka’s he provide a clue to the question that child of Mark Richard, a senior Jus- issue. Ivan the Terrible — deletes dozens of de- T haunted me: why did the Jews fight the tice Department lawyer. In 1999, he Another section describes as “a hideous tails, including part of a 1993 ruling by the way they did? Was it only fighting against persuaded Attorney General Janet Reno to failure” a series of meetings in 2000 that United States Court of Appeals for the begin a detailed look at what he saw as a United States officials held with Latvian of- Sixth Circuit that raised ethics accusations the Nazis, because understandably, they critical piece of history, and he assigned a ficials to pressure them to pursue sus- against Justice Department officials. had no choice? If so, what about the first career prosecutor, Judith Feigin, to the job. pected Nazis. That passage is also That section also omits a passage dis- period of the war, when the news of Ger- After Mr. Richard edited the final version in deleted. closing that Latvian émigrés sympathetic man mistreatment of Jews did not reach 2006, he urged senior officials to make it So too are references to macabre but lit- to Mr. Demjanjuk secretly arranged for the Jewish soldiers and civilians? public but was rebuffed, colleagues said. tle-known bits of history, including how a O.S.I.’s trash to be delivered to them each Despite my concerns and questions, In When Mr. Richard became ill with can- director of the O.S.I. kept a piece of scalp day from 1985 to 1987. The émigrés rifled the Shadow of the Red Banner offers a rich cer, he told a gathering of friends and fam- that was thought to belong to Dr. Mengele through the garbage to find classified doc- and comprehensive history of Jewish con- ily that the report’s publication was one of in his desk in hopes that it would help es- uments that could help Mr. Demjanjuk, tribution to the Soviet victory. The author three things he hoped to see before he tablish whether he was dead. who is currently standing trial in Munich on should be particularly praised for a wide died, the colleagues said. He died in June The chapter on Dr. Mengele, one of the separate war crimes charges. range of sources in several languages and 2009, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder most notorious Nazis to escape prosecu- Ms. Feigin said she was baffled by the an updated bibliography. In short, this is a Jr. spoke at his funeral. tion, details the O.S.I.’s elaborate efforts in Justice Department’s attempt to keep a wonderful and well-written study of a criti- “I spoke to him the week before he died, the mid-1980s to determine whether he central part of its history secret for so long. cally important case that continues to have and he was still trying to get it released,” had fled to the United States and might still “It’s an amazing story,” she said, “that impact both for the Jewish audience and Ms. Feigin said. “It broke his heart.” be alive. needs to be told.” beyond its borders. THE SHOAH (Continued from page 4) / when all the living and dead climbing the the complex Shoah theme presupposes a ropes and ladders / between heaven and variety of perspectives and responses. earth are judged?” Surprises, even disturbing ones – after all Arizona writer Linda Pressman’s short the Shoah is so very disturbing – might be story with its arousing title, “Holocaust Va- in store depending upon one’s back- cation,” takes us on a family trip with her ground, experience, and inclination, as in parents-survivors from Illinois to Toronto to the following explosive verse by professor visit a relative, a survivor too. She ponders Bronislava Volkova from Indiana Univer- with dark humor concerning her parents’ sity: “Who but God could, however, / stand vacation target, “where can they go to find to watch such misery and cruelty being in- the most tragedy?” flicted even on the guilty / much less so on Though Michal Mahgerefteh’s Sephardic the innocent!” Vancouver’s poet Christy family was not directly touched by the Hill reveals her ambiva- Holocaust, she gives voice along lence of inner conflict with others, including myself, which touches core issues: whose lives resonate with the lin- “I do not want to remem- gering impact of an epic event, in ber. I do not want to for- a uniquely educational volume get.” connecting us across a threaten- The late Yehuda ing abyss to the victims’ own Amichai, Israel’s poet lau- voices of song and supplication, reate and a native of Ger- meaning and doubt, silenced by many, captures the Jewish life-negating forces. The literary life-affirming spirit of quest to engage a critical and “Amen” in the midst of un- complex past will surely endure, told historical brokenness even as we’ll do well to harken to of stones and lives culmi- the implicit present warning in nating in the Shoah. He the offered quote sealing this bids us to turn “The Jewish searing anthology, by Israel’s time bomb of pain and rage” into “an amen Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: and love stone.” “No one yet knows what awaits the Jews Norman Gordon, who taught physics, is in the twenty-first century, but we must charging that already in 1942 German civil- make every effort to ensure that is it better ians, the U.S. State Department, and than what befell them in the twentieth, the American Jews knew of European Jewry’s century of the Holocaust.” fate, yet they all failed to intervene. He ac- Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is the spiritual cusingly laments, “What will you tell the leader of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Mashiach / on the night of transcendence Virginia Beach, Virginia. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 THE HOLOCAUST IN LITHUANIA:ONE MAN’S CRUSADE TO BRING JUSTICE (Continued from page 5) THE MUSEUM OF GENOCIDE VICTIMS Soviet brutality continued when the Red fered ... no matter who they were — what that the suspects would die or become old Army re-conquered Lithuania in 1944, and nationality, what religion.” he state-funded Museum of Geno- and sick enough to be declared unfit to the almost 50 years of Soviet rule that fol- Asked whether Jewish Lithuanians, who cide Victims in Vilnius, Lithuania, is stand trial or serve time. T lowed were brutal by any standard. so obviously suffered a genocide, should an impressive structure. In a country of rel- “Basically the country failed because not be included in Lithuania’s Museum of atively humble means, it stands out for its a single [war] criminal was brought to jus- Genocide Victims, Bruzga says, “It should size. Its stated objective is to “collect, keep tice. It’s as simple as that,” says Donskis. be perhaps looked into ... I don’t see why and present historic documents about Contrast Lithuania’s record with that of not,” but then adds, “It could be one mu- forms of physical and spiritual genocide Croatia, which, as a newly minted nation, seum, it could be two or three museums.” against the Lithuanian people.” brought Dinko Sakic to trial in 1998 for The Holocaust in Lithuania, says Bruzga, But the story of the more than 200,000 crimes committed during World War II has to be considered in the context of Jews killed in Lithuania by the Nazis and their while commander of the Jasenovac con- “other developments and crimes that sur- local collaborators is not part of the museum. centration camp. round it.” Instead, the museum memorializes After Zuroff tracked him down, Sakic was Still, Bruzga says huge questions about Lithuanian victims of Soviet occupation extradited from Argentina and convicted by the Holocaust in Lithuania remain: during World War II. a Croatian court for taking part in the mur- “Why were there a number of Lithuani- As one Lithuanian put it, “We have to learn der and torture of thousands of Jews, ans who took part, some of them willingly, our own history, before we learn their [the Serbs, Gypsies, and anti-Fascist Croats. in the murder of Jews who were citizens of Jews] history,” implying the murdered Jews The court sentenced him to 20 years in Efraim Zuroff’s namesake, his great-uncle, was their own country — the same people living were not Lithuanians — but they were. murdered after being kidnapped in Lithuania prison, the harshest penalty under Croat- in the same land and actually in the same Jews have been a constant and integral during the Holocaust. ian law at the time. neighborhood? ... What unleashed that part of Lithuania for hundreds of years. Be- “The Sakic case was really a watershed But did Soviet crimes amount to geno- kind of monstrosity?” event in the history of Croatia and some- fore the war, the city of Vilnius was known cide, as the name of the museum sug- “Before we take many skeletons out of thing that really changed the tenor of the as the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” Jews made gests? the closet, we will not get a catharsis. And public discussion about the Holocaust and up more than a third of the city and con- Donskis calls the idea “profoundly em- perhaps we will not be at peace with our was a wake-up call for Croatian society,” tributed to its intellectual and creative elite barrassing.” past and ourselves,” says Bruzga. says Zuroff. and to its complex, vibrant social fabric. “Historical and political evidence doesn’t Donskis is more specific: For Zuroff, the Sakic case is a success The question of excluding Jews then be- support the theory that the Soviet Union “It will be impossible for Lithuania to not because it put an old war criminal in jail comes “a question of whether you’re embrac- exterminated Lithuanians on national or come to terms with its history ... until the — though that was necessary — but be- ing your own citizens or not,” says Snyder. ethnic grounds.” country’s elite admits that the provisional cause it helped ensure an honest reckon- Donskis agrees. “Instead of accepting the Lithuanians who chose the Soviet regime government of Lithuania in 1941 collabo- ing of Croatia’s past. Holocaust as the tragedy of Lithuania, many “were welcome in the Red Army. They rated with the Nazis and acted against Germany has also gone to great lengths people are still inclined to regard the Holo- were welcome among Soviet bureaucrats. Lithuanian citizens. Unfortunately, the pro- to face its ugly past. caust to have been something external.” In- They had splendid careers. And we know visional government ... is praised up to the “They, more than any country,” Zuroff stead, the nation focuses on the the horror that the Lithuanian Communist Party was skies in Lithuania. says, “have tried to make atonement for of the Soviet occupations of Lithuania. led by [non-Jewish] Lithuanians. That’s “It is a disgrace.” the Holocaust and have paid billions of dol- The crimes of the Soviets in Eastern Eu- why the concept of genocide is simply not For Zuroff, Lithuania missed its best oppor- lars in reparations — although it’s not only rope and in Lithuania in particular are not applicable here.” tunity for catharsis by failing to punish even the issue of money but it’s also the issue as well known in the West as they should Ambassador Bruzga is more circum- one of its own citizens for Holocaust crimes. of education against extremism, xenopho- be, says Snyder. spect. “We do not equate one pain to an- “The Lithuanians squandered the best bia, the banning of Nazi symbols. ... You In the first occupation, from the summer other pain, one loss to another loss. But we chance they had to get that burden of guilt can’t say Germany is not making an hon- of 1940 to the summer of 1941, the Soviets would like to take a broader, a holistic view off of them. And now it’s going to take them est effort to face its past.” deported, jailed, and murdered anyone on what happened at that time in Lithuania 100 years to get rid of it. The only way they But you can say it, says Zuroff, about deemed a threat — ethnic Lithuanians as — and how it could happen that those will succeed is through education, docu- Lithuania. well as Poles and Jews. crimes were committed and people suf- mentation, research — and a lot of pain.” THE PAST IS PRESENT (Continued from page 6) camps, dying at one of them. Kraus, then By 1951, he ended up in New York City, marad contributions. “The journals and the more than mere entertainment. “In the almost 14, was spared from the death where he studied architecture at Columbia stories and the articles give you insight to pages of this story,” she says, “he’s able to chambers when Dr. Josef Mengele se- University. He married and raised a family things we never could have gotten insight play out this scenario where you can get lected him to go to a neighboring men’s in Brookline, where he lives with his 74- to, especially because many of the people justice for injustices and sometimes even camp, where he was assigned to run er- year-old wife, Ilana. who would have been his age during this violent vengeance by the story’s hero on rands and do other jobs. Kraus eventually All 22 editions of Kamarad ended up at time period have either repressed, sup- people who have hurt him or killed people was sent to other camps and forced to par- Beit Theresienstadt, a nonprofit organiza- pressed, or just don’t have complete mem- close to him.” ticipate in death marches. When the war tion formed on an Israeli kibbutz by those ories because they were young,” “You don’t have to be an analyst” to in- ended, Kraus, nearly 15, returned to his who survived Theresienstadt. It’s a mys- Rodenstein says. “But now he’s able to terpret Kraus’s story, Grodin says, when hometown of Nachod and attempted to re- tery who saved the magazines. read the materials that he and his friends you consider that he was a child confined build his life. “After surviving the war,” he or at least 15 years, Israeli re- wrote, and it has in some cases been able by hostile forces, writing about faraway Fsearchers have recognized Kamarad to bring back some memories. . . . I think lands. as something worth preserving and study- he’s really enjoying discovering what he “It certainly gave us something creative ing. An Israeli woman, Ruth Bondy, wrote was about at that age and what the things to do,” Kraus says. “Maybe that was the a 1997 book about the magazine, and in were that were of import to him.” most important thing at that time. We were 2005 Kamarad was featured in a film Studying Kraus’s Kamarad contributions, not prepared that the war would take many broadcast on Israeli TV. In 2003, a group Grodin says, “reinforces the fact that peo- more years. We were not thinking about of Israeli schoolchildren studied the mag- ple cope in their own way, that it’s a big death, because at that time I don’t think we azine and created a 23d issue. In re- mistake to tell people how to cope, that were that aware what awaited us in the so- sponse, the eighth-grade class at the group experience is very helpful, that trying called East, because nobody talked about Hasten Hebrew Academy in Indianapolis to survive as an individual is hard, that chil- Auschwitz.” in 2004 created its own issue of Kamarad. dren have an incredible capacity to try to n December 15, 1943, after a year “They were into it,” says Marcy Ekhaus, an put together something that is safe for in Theresienstadt, Kraus and his Michael Kraus is joined in his home by Boston academy administrator whose son, then a O them. parents were sent by the Nazis to the con- University professor Dr. Michael Grodin, who student, participated in the magazine proj- “The boys used the magazine to fight centration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in is studying Kamarad. ect. “It was certainly impressive to them their boredom and calm their anxiety,” Poland. Kraus left behind more stories that says, “many of us were traumatized by the that [the original Kamarad boys] were chil- Grodin adds. “Children played in order to he’d written for Kamarad, and they ap- fact that we lost our parents.” During the dren their own age.” maintain a sense of normalcy, this is my peared in future editions, but magazine war, Kraus had kept a diary, but it was con- But aside from the Indianapolis project, production stopped after the 22d issue, on fiscated in Auschwitz. Once back in Na- the existence of Kamarad has not received sense, as well as to be creative and ex- September 22, 1944. The last article con- chod, he re-created the journal, and four much attention in the United States. And change ideas of an imaginary escape in cludes with the line “to be continued.” A years ago he donated it to the Holocaust Grodin knows of no one else who has order to dull their suffering.” short time later, Polak was also trans- Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. studied the magazine as an example of Grodin recognizes how valuable it is to ported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Polak would Kraus says he thinks of himself “as a childhood resiliency. his research that a contributor of Kamarad die in the Holocaust, as would most of the scribe, or as somebody who perhaps While in Israel this summer, Susie Ro- is still alive and living so close to him. Ro- boys who contributed to Kamarad. thought that something should be left to denstein, whose late father was a Holo- denstein, too, is eager to continue the After six months at Auschwitz, Kraus’s posterity.” caust survivor and was confined in meetings with Kraus: “We walk out every father was sent to the gas chambers and In 1948, Kraus emigrated to Canada, the Theresienstadt, visited Beit Theresienstadt time inspired and wanting to know and un- his mother was transferred to two other land of his and Polak’s childhood dreams. and asked for copies of all of Kraus’s Ka- derstand more.” January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 HOW ONE POLISH WOMAN UNCOVERED SCHOLARS RECONSIDERING ITALY’S HER TOWN’S SHOCKING ROLE TREATMENT OF JEWS IN THE NAZI ERA Jewish history, and that organized the IN THE HOLOCAUST BY PAUL VITELLO, THE NEW YORK TIMES panel discussion. (Continued from page 7) The Eastern Front was collapsing. The he whitewash was possible, in part, talians took everything from Ursula Korn 1940 – by which time Poland’s anti-Semi- Germans began to destroy the evidence of because by comparison with the hor- Selig’s family during World War II, includ- T tism had increased with fury in the years their terror and in late spring withdrew from I rors inflicted by Nazi Germany, the Italian ing a hotel the family owned on the Riviera before the Nazi invasion – reveals two fur- Sokolow. “The old man told me the Ger- government was “not as lethal,” said Guri and the money they carried after fleeing Ger- coated Polish policemen at the entrance to Schwarz, an adjunct professor at the Uni- mans dug up the remains of the 200 Jews many’s persecution of Jews in 1938. the Sokolow ghetto. A Jewish resident versity of Pisa. It did not sanction physical in the pit,” says Markusz. “He said they Italians also saved her family from al- peers over a brick wall marking the bound- abuse of Jewish citizens, did not execute rolled out logs and had a fire for two most certain death in Nazi concentration ary of the ghetto. The caption on Markusz’s anyone in the internment camps estab- weeks, turning bones and decomposed camps, Mrs. Selig said, hiding them in a photograph – the same scene but without lished for Jews in southern Italy, and did flesh into ash. That was the end of Jews in succession of secret shelters in Italy be- the wall – reads simply: “This place is eas- not begin to send Jews to Nazi concentra- Sokolow. The last tomb, the last grave.” tween 1938 and 1944, often at the risk of ily recognizable today.” tion camps until the German occupation in look around this town in the middle of the Italians’ own lives. I ask her what kind of reaction there has 1943, he said. Inowhere and imagine the flames and The two faces Italy displayed toward been. “Mostly positive,” Markusz replies. Of the 45,000 Jews counted in Mus- the odor of death. The old man’s story Jewish citizens and refugees just before “Some people have old photographs of solini’s census of 1938, about 8,000 died doesn’t quite make sense, I say. The Ger- and during World War II have become the Sokolow, and they want to show them to mans wouldn’t have dug up the remains focus of recent historical research that both in Nazi camps. About 7,000 managed to me. Others don’t like it. But my success is themselves. Markusz asks me to explain, undermines that country’s wartime image flee. About 30,000 lived in hiding before that I have made people think about Jews and I suggest Sokolowers dug up the as a nation of benign cap- again and the history of their town.” What grave under German orders. The Germans tors, and rekindles memo- about the mass grave? “I discovered it never did the dirty work. ries of heroic Italian after I took these pictures,” she says. “Let’s “Maybe it’s true,” says Markusz. “People individuals. go – I’ll show you.” don’t want to know bad things about Poles. Mrs. Selig, 85, who has e enter Rynek Szewski, or Shoe- They want to hear that Poles were brave.” lived in Manhattan since makers Market. This is nice, I say. W Some were, I say. 1950, offered her double- “It’s not nice – look,” says Markusz, run- “I think Poles feel guilty they didn’t save edged testimony after a panel ning her hand along the jagged edge of a more Jews, so they make up history,” she discussion on the new schol- 3-foot-high stone terrace in front of a row continues. “The other truth people don’t arship at the Museum of Jew- of shops. “Look at the stones. The Ger- want to admit is that when survivors re- ish Heritage, in Battery Park mans made this terrace from gravestones turned to Sokolow after the war, they were City — days before Jews from the Jewish cemetery. I want to pre- not welcome.” And what about the Poles commemorate Kristallnacht. serve the gravestones, but the town au- who hid Jews? “Three Sokolowers re- The new findings contra- thorities are not interested.” ceived medals for saving Jews. There dict the conventional belief I recognize the markings of Hebrew writing should have been more. We lost so many that Italians began to en- in the stone. Not long ago, Markusz tells me, people here. force anti-Semitic laws only gravestones like these were used to pave “The pictures I’m taking, I hope they build after German troops occu- the roads of Sokolow. “Look,” she says, bridges between Poles and Jews. I’m try- pied the country in 1943, pointing at the terrace. “Someone has van- A photo of Harry Arlin, with his parents, Emily and Leo Armstein, ing to save the Jews by saving their his- and then reluctantly. In a dalized it and gravestones were stolen from in the Ferramonti di Tarsia concentration camp. tory.” spate of studies, many of it. I went to the police when I saw this last The following day I am in Warsaw again, them based on a little-publicized Italian being liberated by Allied troops, Mr. week, but they don’t care either.” back in Poland A. Over lunch in the city’s government report commissioned in 1999, Schwarz said. Next we enter an area that was the cen- Stary Miasto, I ask Malgosia Kowalska researchers have uncovered a vast One of those hiding was Mrs. Selig, who ter of the ghetto. The Nazis established why she thinks anti-Semitism remains rife wartime record detailing a systematic dis- was among about 100 people in the audi- Sokolow’s ghetto in 1939 in two streets in Poland. enfranchisement of Italy’s Jews, beginning ence for the discussion. around the main synagogue, cramming “Imagine it’s 1939 and the Germans in the summer of 1938, shortly before the “It is a very complex situation,” she said, about 5,000 people into it. In the summer have not yet arrived,” she says. “Let’s say Kristallnacht attacks in November. when asked afterward about her feelings of 1941, the ghetto was bricked off and it’s Sokolow. All your life you have lived in That year, Mussolini’s Fascist govern- closed. Later, 2,000 refugees from the toward wartime Italy and Italians. Thirteen this town. For whatever reason, you may ment forbade Jewish children to attend Lodz and Kalisz regions were also forced years old when her family fled Berlin and not like the Jews, but you live with them. public or private schools, ordered the dis- into it. Starvation and death were rife. settled in northern Italy in 1938, she said All your life you bought bread from the missal of Jews from professorships in all A year later, the Germans began deport- her experience in Italy over the next eight Jewish baker. Sometimes he even gives universities, and banned Jews from the ing Jews to an unknown destination. Be- years ran the spectrum from the despair of you credit when times are hard. civil service and military as well as the tween September 22 and 25, 1943, destitution to the exhilaration of freedom. “You see the Jewish milkman and cast banking and insurance industries. inhabitants of the ghetto were forced into “They took everything from us,” she said. your eye on his beautiful daughter. Another Ilaria Pavan, a scholar at the Scuola Nor- the town square. “My father and mother were quite wealthy day, a Jewish tailor fixes your clothes, and male Superiore in Pisa, said a series of in- Many attempted escape but were shot or when they arrived in Italy. But when they you smile at his little son and pat him on crementally more onerous laws in 1939 handed over to the Nazis by collaborating came to the United States after the war, he the head as you leave his shop. and 1940 revoked peddlers’ permits and Poles, according to testimonies logged at had to work as a night watchman, and she “Then, the Nazis come. They do terrible shopkeepers’ licenses, and required Jew- the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in had to work in the garment district.” things to the baker. Perhaps, right before ish owners of businesses — as well as Jerusalem. On the other hand, as she said during a your eyes, they murder the milkman’s stock or bond holders — to sell those as- Over those four days, 5,800 Jews were question-and-answer period after the presen- beautiful daughter. Perhaps the little son of sets to “Aryans.” Bank accounts were or- transported in sealed cattle wagons to Tre- tation, “I would not be here if not for Italians. the tailor is shot in the head in front of you. dered turned over to government blinka, where they were murdered upon ar- “An Italian woman hid me, an Italian And what do you do? Nothing. Maybe you authorities, ostensibly to prevent the trans- rival. priest put me in a convent where I wore a can’t do anything – maybe you can and fer of money out of the country. “It wasn’t only Germans who participated nun’s habit, and an Italian boy risked his don’t. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe it’s im- There is little record of the sums involved in the ghetto liquidation, but also Latvians life to bring us food,” she said. possible to help. Either way, you do noth- in the confiscations and forced sales of and Ukrainians,” says Markusz. “One old Harry Arlin, 83, an audience member Jewish-held property between 1938 and man told me the soldiers were always ing, and you feel terrible about it. who said his family was interned in an Ital- 1943, said Ms. Pavan, who was a member drunk and killed children in a special way “What else do you feel? You feel guilty. ian camp for several years, also stood to of the official government commission – not with a bullet to the head, but they So how do you explain this? You hate describe his experiences, saying, “If the charged with investigating the anti-Semitic took them by the feet and shattered their them, even when they’re gone. You tell Italians hadn’t taken us to their camp, we plundering. But between 1943 and 1945, heads on walls. yourself they deserved to be murdered, when the Italian government was under would have been sent to the Germans’ “The old man said the girls were very that they are the guilty ones – even the lit- the direct supervision of German over- camp, and we would have been killed.” beautiful, and that he was still sad they tle son of the tailor – to preserve your own seers, the looting of property of Jewish Ital- Michele Sarfatti, the author of several were gone. The Germans used these peo- sanity.” ian citizens and Jewish refugees who had books on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism, ple to clean the ghetto after liquidation, and So how can Poland move on from this? fled to Italy in hopes of sanctuary, she said, said a higher portion of Italy’s Jews sur- also for labor in the surrounding villages “It faces the truth and its fears,” says totaled almost $1 billion in today’s values. vived the war than their counterparts in and farms. One night, they were made to Kowalska. After the war, encouraged in part by most other European countries. dig a pit – right here. They were no longer “That’s why Katarzyna Markusz’s work is Italy’s American occupiers, Italians em- But Italian culpability for the persecution useful to the Germans. They had to strip so important. If you ask me, the whole braced a spirit of national reconciliation of Jews remains relatively unknown, and naked. They were then shot into the pit and country needs therapy.” that “allowed the construction of a sani- largely unacknowledged by Italians, Pro- covered with earth, probably by Poles from Even Markusz? “Why else would she be tized collective memory,” said Alessandro fessor Pavan said. “People were made Sokolow, under German orders.” doing these things in her town and making Cassin, the publishing director of the Cen- destitute, people were turned into ghostly Nonetheless, on January 6, 1944, Soviet all these wonderful photographs? She tro Primo Levi, a research institute in Man- nonentities in their own country,” she said. troops pushed across the Polish border. feels guilt, like the rest of Poland.” hattan that promotes the study of Italian “This is also true.” International Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE U.S. POST 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 NEW YORK, N.Y. Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org PERMIT NO. 9313 ** ** Editor International Society Eli Zborowski, (212) 220-4304 Editor-in-Chief for Yad Vashem, Inc. Vashem, Yad for EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORIAL New York, NY 10110 NY York, New *Published Bimonthly by the Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Krasnyanskiy, Yefim 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor Avenue, 500 Fifth Martyrdom & Resistance *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American *1974-85, as Newsletter for the Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp In- mates, and Nazi Victims **deceased Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura** Israel Krakowski Mandell William Sam Halpern Isidore Karten Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet

January/February 2011 - Shevat/Adar 5771 - Shevat/Adar 2011 January/February , or call Madelyn Cohen, Director , or call www.yadvashemusa.org . MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE & RESISTANCE MARTYRDOM Join our Team! Jerusalem, Israel , as a fundraiser for both organizations. both organizations. for , as a fundraiser Running – Remembering –Running – Remembering Caring The Jerusalem Marathon – March 25, 2011 – March The Jerusalem Marathon first Jerusalem Marathon first ASYV/Blue Card Jerusalem Marathon Team Jerusalem Marathon Card ASYV/Blue Gabi Hamani Mark Moskowitz Marshall Huebner and Caron Trakman Trakman Huebner and Caron Marshall Gabi Hamani Mark Moskowitz Team CaptainTeam Captains Team Chairman Marathon If you cannot participate but wish to support the event, please consider making a contribution on behalf of contribution consider making a please to support the event, but wish participate cannot If you Please help support the work of Holocaust Remembrance and Caring for Holocaust survivors. We are cur- are We survivors. Holocaust and Caring for Remembrance of Holocaust Please help support the work As part of the program in Jerusalem, we are planning a visit to Yad Vashem with a private guide and reception, with a private Vashem Yad planning a visit to are in Jerusalem, we As part of the program We are very excited to announce that The American Society for Yad Vashem and The Blue Card, an organi- and The Blue Card, Vashem Yad for Society The American announce that to excited very are We corporate and individual donations both charities, through possible for as as much money raise is to Our goal The Jerusalem Marathon is the first event of this kind. It is expected to host about 10,000 runners from about 10,000 runners host to of this kind. It is expected event the first is The Jerusalem Marathon at website please visit our information, more For of Outreach, at 212-220-4304. at of Outreach, the rently accepting applications for runners, and welcome any and all contributions and sponsorships to help us and sponsorships contributions any and all welcome and for runners, accepting applications rently our goal. reach as well as a special reception with the mayor of Jerusalem, Mr. Nir Barkat, who plans to run in the marathon. to run in the marathon. who plans Nir Barkat, of Jerusalem, Mr. with the mayor as a special reception as well zation that helps needy Holocaust survivors in the U.S., have formed a team of runners that will participate that team of runners formed a U.S., have in the survivors helps needy Holocaust that zation in the sponsorships. and personal around the globe. around Page 16 Page