Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2008 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5769 AMERICAN JEWS HONOR POLISH HOLOCAUST RESCUERS CHINESE DIPLOMAT WHO SAVED THOUSANDS On one occasion, Nazi officers were bil- DURING HOLOCAUST HONORED BY ROB STRYBEL, REUTERS leted in the house and German soldiers he heroic actions of a Chinese diplo- found almost no country willing to allow bedded down in the attic, separated from oles who risked their lives a half mat who saved thousands of Jews them entry. their quarry by only the thinnest of slats. T century ago by taking in fugitive from the Holocaust by issuing visas for Some of those who obtained Chinese P ike many Yad Vashem medal-hold- Jews during the Nazi Holocaust were hon- them to flee Austria are being honored in visas were able to escape to Shanghai or ers, Senderska-Rzonca has stayed ored in Warsaw in July, in what may be L an exhibition at the US Congress. made their way to North and South in touch with her beneficiaries. "Miron one of their final gatherings. Against the orders of his superiors, America, Palestine, the Philippines, Cuba Bander was just a little boy back then. He They recalled how they tucked Jews Feng Shan Ho, the Chinese consul-gen- and elsewhere. is now a successful physics professor in into odd hiding places when German sol- eral in Vienna from 1937 to 1940, California," she said. diers were on the prowl, risking the death facilitated the safe departure of Nowinski said he had been in contact penalty for themselves and their families. the Jews in the years immediate- with a rescued Jew named Bronowski "At various times we had up to nine peo- ly preceding the Second World until his death in Israel last year at 103. ple living in our flat. They had free run of War, including those sent to Nazi "We're still in touch with Janina Panski the house, but when they heard a knock concentration camps. of Tel Aviv. My dad arranged forged Aryan at the door, they would all run down to a Ho's extraordinary rescue efforts (racial-purity) documents for her, and special hiding place next to the coal bin," were not known until after his death because she didn't look Jewish she could said Waclaw Nowinski, 83. in 1997 – thanks to his reporter freely walk the streets," he explained. He was one of about 60 ageing Poles daughter's nose for news. During World War Two, Poland was the invited to the event by the U.S.-based Ho had lived after retirement in only country in German-occupied Europe Jewish Foundation for the Righteous 1973 for almost a quarter of a (JFR), all of them medal-holders of the where anyone aiding Jews risked death. century in San Francisco, Yad Vashem Institute's Righteous among In was also the only occupied country California, not far from some of the Nations decoration. whose government-in-exile set up an the people he had saved, but they Manli Ho poses next to a photograph of her father, Dr. Since its inception in 1986, the JFR has underground organization for the express never knew it. Feng Shan Ho. spent millions of dollars supporting needy purpose of aiding and saving Jews. "He did not seek publicity, he Gentile rescuers like Nowinska and Irena According to estimates, up to 120,000 did not seek recognition, he did not seek he Chinese visas were used to obtain Senderska-Rzonca, who was only 13 in Jews who could not have survived the compensation. It was enough for him to Ttransit visas from countries like Italy, 1943 when her family provided a safe haven Holocaust without help were rescued, and know that he had done the right thing," which required proof of an end destination. for a Jewish doctor's family in the eastern over 6,000 Poles were subsequently said Martin Gold, a member of the US The Washington exhibition was devel- Polish town of Boryslaw, now in Ukraine. awarded the Righteous Among Nations Commission for the Preservation of oped with the help of Ho's daughter Manli She recounted how a Jew named Dr. medal, more than any other country. America's Heritage Abroad. Ho, a former reporter with the Boston Bander asked her father if he could help There was a bittersweet note to the The commission launched the exhibition Globe newspaper, who helped unravel his wife and five-year-old son, she said. Warsaw ceremony. "On the Wings of the Phoenix: Dr Feng her father’s heroic actions. "We hid them in the dovecote, and I "Due to the rising age of the res- Shan Ho and the Rescue of Austrian Ho was among the first of a small would take food and water up to them. cuers, it will likely be the last," said Jews" at the rotunda of a Senate office number of diplomatic rescuers who took They were later joined by the father." one of the organizers. building on Capitol Hill. "extraordinary steps at some personal Ho, born in Yiyang, Hunan Province and risk to themselves" to save the Jews, CZECH HOLOCAUST VICTIMS REMEMBERED IN TEREZIN who became fatherless by age seven, had Gold said. witnessed firsthand the Anschluss, the Most of the Jews who escaped were crowd of 1,000 people, headed by plates on the graves that are to replace annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938 refugees from Poland or residents of ACzech Senate chairman Premysl the total 824 bronze plates stolen there and the subsequent imposition of Nazi Lithuania. Sobotka, paid respects to all the inmates earlier this year. racial laws and terror unleashed on Jews. Ho was posthumously bestowed the title of the war-time Terezin Unlike the bronze plates, Many Jews sought to leave Austria, but of "Righteous Among the Nations." ghetto and the local they will not attract metal scrap Gestapo prison. thieves. BULGARIA ACCEPTS BLAME FOR 11,000 HOLOCAUST DEATHS The Terezin mourning The thief, who has been ceremony was held for the detained, inflicted a damage of resident Georgi Parvanov, during a what we have done to save Jews, we 61st time. more than $150,000 on the Pvisit to Israel, took responsibility for do not forget that at the same time "This year is strange. Due National Memorial in Terezin. the deaths of 11,000 Jewish residents of there was an anti-Semitic regime in to a thief, bronze plates with He faces up to eight years in Thrace and Macedonia, areas that were Bulgaria, and we do not shirk our the names of the people prison, if found guilty. annexed to Bulgaria in April 1941. responsibility for the fate of more than who perished here are The Terezin prison and ghet- Acting under Nazi orders, Bulgarian 11,000 Jews who were deported from missing on a number of to and the Litomerice concen- police arrested Jews in those territories Thrace and Macedonia to death graves," Terezin National tration camp made up the and deported them to Treblinka in 1943. camps," Paranov said at the Israeli Memorial's director Jan largest complex of its kind in The history of those Jews often has been president's residence in Jerusalem. Munk said. the Nazi Protectorate of played down in the face of the saving of Parvanov, a member of the socialist Munk said this barbarous Bohemia and Moravia. Some 48,000 Jews in Bulgaria proper by the –- formerly Communist – party, is the act had provoked a tremen- 220,000 people from all over country's religious and political leaders. first Bulgarian leader to accept respon- dous wave of solidarity. Poignant statue on grounds Europe passed through it dur- "When we express justifiable pride at sibility for the deaths. "We must not be reconciled of infamous concentration ing the war. with the theft. On the other camp Thereisenstadt. Only about one third of them HUNGARIAN ARMY OFFICER WHO SAVED JEWS hand, we have seen a positive response and lived to see the end of the war. Some of help. Sculptor Oldrich Hejtmanek will make the prisoners died in Terezin, others in DURING WWII COMMEMORATED AT EU PARLIAMENT the new plates free," Munk said. extermination camps. Hungarian army officer, who saved the where he joined his son. He died in 1966 The staff of the Czech Terezin National The Terezin Memorial was established Alives of around 2000 Jews in Budapest of a trauma after a fall. Memorial pasted the first 115 new resin in Terezin's Small Fortress in May 1947. from Nazi persecutions during the last During the commemoration event at the months of World War II, was commemorated EU parliament, under patronage of NAZI CAMP GUARD LOSES U.S. CITIZENSHIP at the European Parliament in Brussels. Hungarian MEP Andras Gyurk, whose Captain Laszlo Ocskay, family members also saved U.S. appeals court revoked the citi- While Geiser served at Sachsenhausen, who was recognized as a Jews in WWII, and B’nai Azenship of a Pennsylvania man who more than 3,000 prisoners were murdered “Righteous Among the B’rith Brussels, Leslie J. worked as a Nazi concentration camp guard. or died from brutal treatment, including Nations” by the Yad Pardon, a 83-year-old Israeli The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals hard physical labor. Many prisoners died Vashem in Jerusalem in who was among the people affirmed a ruling by the U.S. District Court from exhaustion or disease; many were 2003, acted consistently saved by Ocskay, saluted his in Pittsburgh revoking the U.S. citizenship shot or hanged. against the policies of the heroism and dedication.