Vol. 34-No.3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2008-Shevat/Adar I 5768 PRESIDENT BUSH VISITS ISRAEL’S YAD VASHEM HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL resident Bush had tears in his Peyes during an hour-long tour of Israel’s Holocaust memorial and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memor- ial’s chairman said. Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a “sobering reminder” that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith. Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red- white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims. Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem’s chairman, Avner Shalev. “Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes,” Shalev said. At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said. The U.S. had intelligence reports about the death camps during the war but chose to focus resources on the broader military effort, a decision that drew criticism years later. “We should have bombed it,” Bush said, according to Shalev. In the memorial’s visitors’ book, the president wrote simply, “God bless President George W. Bush, Yehudit Shendar, Deputy Director & Senior Art Curator, Museums Division, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, Eli Zborowski, Israel, George Bush.” Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem, and Dr. Elizabeth Mundlak-Zborowski, Cultural Director at the American & “I was most impressed that people in International Societies for Yad Vashem during the recent visit of President Bush to Yad Vashem, Jerusalem on January 11, 2008. the face of horror and evil would not for- sake their God. In the face of unspeak- was in 1998, as governor of Texas. The candles reflected 1.5 million times in a while in hiding from the Nazis in able crimes against humanity, brave last U.S. president to visit was Bill hall of mirrors. At the site’s Hall of Belgium. He was informed upon, and souls – young and old – stood strong for Clinton in 1994. Remembrance, he heard a cantor sing a died in 1944 in the Buchenwald camp. what they believe,” Bush said. Bush, during his most extensive Jewish prayer for the dead. After the war, his daughter Ingrid discov- “I wish as many people as possible Mideast trip of his presidency, was Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the ered that the Nazis had confiscated their would come to this place. It is a sobering accompanied on his tour by a small American Society for Yad Vashem was furniture and valuables but had left reminder that evil exists, and a call that party that included Rice and Israeli excited to meet President Bush in Yad behind a single item: a meticulously when evil exists we must resist it,” he Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Vashem. “I could see that he really cares crafted wooden box adorned with a Star said. At the compound, overlooking a forest about it.” of David and a seven-branched meno- It was Bush’s second visit to the on Jerusalem’s outskirts, Bush visited a li was a member of the Jewish rah, containing a collection of 99 of the Holocaust memorial, a regular stop on memorial to the 1.5 million Jewish chil- Eunderground. His job was to trans- artist’s illustrations of biblical scenes. the visits of foreign dignitaries. His first dren killed in the Holocaust, featuring six fer underground confidential documents The originals are on display at Yad to the ghettos. He was hidden, together Vashem. The memorial recently decided with his mother and siblings, for 18 to produce a special series of 500 repli- months by two Catholic families in the cas, the first of which was to be present- IN THIS ISSUE town of Zarki, Poland. “We lived knowing ed to Bush. Nazi archive allows online requests...... 3 that any minute someone could come Debbie Deutsch-Berman, a Yad The Nazi connection to Islamic terrorism...... 4 and kill us but I had hope. I also had Vashem employee whose grandfather Children of the Holocaust train...... 5 hope that the world would recognize was Deutsch’s brother, said she was A love triangle in... Bergen Belsen...... 6 proud that Bush would be given her rel- The French Anne Frank...... 7 what was done to us and that is really World remembers victims of Holocaust...... 8 the case.” ative’s artwork. Studying the Holocaust in a time of Holocaust denial and anti-semitism...... 9 Chairman of Yad Vashem Avner “These are not just his paintings, they Yad Vashem launches Arabic website...... 10 Shalev presented Bush with illustrations are his legacy, and the fact that they sur- Secret diary details Holocaust and Nazi crimes...... 12 of the Bible drawn by the Jewish artist vived shows that as much as our ene- Joy in Dachau...... 15 Carol Deutsch, who perished in the mies tried to destroy the ideas that these Memory of Holocaust victims honored through series of UN events...... 16 Holocaust. Deutsch created the works paintings embody, they failed,” she said. Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768

AJC PRAISES RESTITUTION DEAL HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SAY GERMANY UNWILLING acedonia’s plan to resolve outstand- programs. Macedonia’s tiny Jewish com- TO IMPROVE REPARATIONS DEAL Ming Holocaust property claims was munity, now a few hundred people, num- sraeli Holocaust survivors asked Germany has paid an estimated $25 praised by American Jewish Committee. bered more than 7,000 before World War II. IGermany’s finance minister to improve billion in reparations to Israeli Under the agreement with Macedonia’s AJC says it frequently raised the issue a reparations arrangement, but Peer Holocaust survivors, who, according to of restitution with Macedonia’s leaders, Jewish community, Macedonia will allo- Steinbrueck said no additional money Factor, numbered 350,000 to 400,000 cate $25 million for the construction and most recently with Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski in October, and with Foreign would be paid, they said. at their peak. It also transferred more initial operational expenses of a Survivors reasoned that the original than $700 million in goods and services Holocaust Memorial Center under con- Minister Antonio Milososki in December. In 2002, the Macedonian government 1952 accord with Israel did not account for to the Israeli government. struction in the capital city of Skopje. resolved outstanding Jewish communal their unexpected longevity or apply to tens Today, some 250,000 Holocaust sur- The center, located on returned Jewish property claims. With this new agreement, of thousands of Holocaust victims who vivors live in Israel. They are living longer property, will recount the story of the Macedonia is one of only a few countries came to Israel following the Soviet than was foreseen under the reparation Holocaust in Macedonia and will also pro- that has settled claims against private Union’s collapse. agreement with Germany, with all the vide facilities for cultural and communal Jewish properties with no apparent heirs. But Steinbrueck rejected the appeal, added expenses and high medical costs said Zeev Factor, a Holocaust survivor that implies, they say. Also, about one- HOLOCAUST AUCTION STIRS IRE who took part in the meeting. third of them are not covered by the “He said Germany reached an agree- agreement at all, because they escaped n Israeli auction house rate their parents’ suffering. ment with Israel on this matter ... and isn’t to Russia but did not technically live under drew censure for selling Yet other Holocaust sur- A willing to touch the agreement,” Factor Nazi rule, arriving in Israel after the fall of off Holocaust memorabilia. vivors were far from san- said, referring to the 1952 accord. the Soviet Union. Among hundreds of items guine about the sale, Steinbrueck told them that if German Critics inside Israel have said the coun- sold by the Ben-Ami Andres describing it as profiteering. officials conclude that problems can be try should be able to take care of its own auction house in Tel Aviv “I think it’s despicable,” resolved within the framework of the exist- elderly survivors without going to were two yellow Star of David said Yosef Lapid, a former ing agreement, then “they will be willing to Germany for more money. badges, which Jews were Israeli justice minister who is discuss it,” Factor said. After a storm of protest by Holocaust forced to wear under the now chairman of Yad The German government has said it survivors who charged the government Nazis. They were sold for Vashem’s board of gover- would be willing to discuss requests for with abandoning them, the state agreed $240 and $160. nors. Speaking on Israel additional payments if Israel submits a for- earlier this year to give the 160,000 The buyers were not identi- Radio, he added sarcastical- mal petition, but that so far, no such Israelis who survived Nazi ghettos and fied, but auction organizers ly: “When I was a child in the A yellow star of David, a patch request has been made. concentration camps a monthly stipend of said there had been interest Budapest ghetto, I had no that Jews were forced to wear Israeli Finance Minister Roni Bar-On nearly $300, in addition to tax discounts in the items from children of by the Nazis is displayed idea that the badges I was met with Steinbrueck, but did not submit a and other breaks. Holocaust survivors who before being put up for auc- forced to wear could prove formal request for additional aid, a Bar-On It also approved monthly payments voiced desire to commemo- tion in Ben Am. so valuable.” spokeswoman said. ranging from $40 to $125 for 80,000 Six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Israelis, most from the former Soviet AUSTRIA TO REOPEN CASE Holocaust of World War II, and hundreds Union, who became refugees as the AGAINST NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD of thousands of Jewish survivors emigrat- Nazis conquered Europe but never lived ed to Israel after its creation in 1948. under Nazi occupation. n a dramatic about-face, Austrian The Austrians agreed to reopen the Iauthorities have agreed to reopen the case after the Polish Institute of National case of a long-sought suspected Nazi Remembrance uncovered five new wit- SWASTIKAS REAWAKEN NIGHTMARES criminal who served as a guard at the nesses, following lobbying efforts by the IN AREAS WITH MANY HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Majdanek concentration camp. Wiesenthal Center to have the case Erna Wallisch, 85, who ranks fourth on reopened, he said. rooklyn Has Highest Number Of vivors or their children,” Hikind said. the Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-want- “This is a typical example of the lack of BJewish Survivors in Nation. Yet “It’s almost everybody.” The largest ed Nazi war criminals, has been living in a political will up until now to prosecute another hate graffiti incident shocked a populations are in the Brooklyn neigh- small apartment on the bank of the someone who was actively involved in the Brooklyn community January 2, when a borhoods of Borough Park and Danube in Vienna, with her name printed crimes of the Holocaust,” Zuroff said. “It is swastika and an anti-Semitic message Williamsburg, staff members for on the door. high time that the case be taken seriously, were found scrawled on the side door of a Liebmann and Hikind said, correspon- Austrian authorities had previously as we are dealing with someone whose Jewish senior center in Midwood. The ding to large Jewish populations. refused to prosecute her due to the hands are full of [the] blood of innocent markings were found Wednesday morn- “But you probably have to add about 10 statute of limitations, the organization’ s victims.” About 360,000 people perished ing on the Brookdale Senior Citizen percent to those numbers,” Liebmann chief Nazi hunter and Israel Director Dr. at Majdanek, which is located in a suburb Center of Agudath Israel at 817 Avenue H. said. “These numbers are dependent on Efraim Zuroff said. of Lublin, Poland. This latest hate tag is the second anti- Semitic graffiti incident in Brooklyn since the new year began. On Jan. 1, JEWISH LEADERS SEEK INFO ON BOSNIANS similar graffiti was found on a home on WHO AIDED JEWS IN HOLOCAUST 40th Street in Borough Park. Both neighborhoods have some of the high- eaders of Bosnia’s Jewish communi- Jewish manuscript known as the Sarajevo est populations of Holocaust survivors ty appealed recently for help locating Haggadah. L in New York City. Bosnians who aided Jews during World In 1492, when Spain expelled the coun- “I actually met a Holocaust survivor out- War II and have not try’s Jews, a refugee been recognized. brought the book to Italy. side the center when this was all going The search is aimed A rabbi later brought the on,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, him- at locating people Haggadah from Italy to self the son of two Holocaust survivors. who offered help Bosnia and passed it “When things like this happen, in particu- and documenting down through his family lar with survivors, they look at it and say, Brooklyn’s Assemblyman Dov Hikind stands their stories, said until a descendant, ‘This is how it all started in Germany.’ It in front of graffiti that combines swastikas and the Bosnian Jewish Joseph Kohen, sold it to didn’t start with violence. It started with an obscene hate message (not shown). Community. The the National Museum in this type of graffiti.” effort is part of a 1894. The museum kept That, he said, is why last year’s rise in voluntary registration. Some people broader project to the treasure in a safe until hate crimes, up some 25 percent from choose not to register. Orthodox Jews record the lives of World War II, when a 2006 according to police estimates, is of generally do not register.” Bosnia’s Muslim and Jewish communities Catholic museum director and his Muslim particular concern to Brooklyn’s, and the Liebmann is himself a Holocaust sur- over the past centuries. colleague saved the book from a Nazi officer city’s, high population of survivors. vivor. At 19, he was deported from Project leader Eli Tauber invited people who came to pick it up. Brooklyn is home to close to 20,000 Germany to a concentration camp in to contact the Jewish Community or The two men spirited the book through Bosnia’s Institute for the Research of Holocaust survivors, the largest grouping Vichy France, where he met his future Nazi checkpoints and carried it to a Crimes Against Humanity. of anywhere in the country, said Max wife, Hanne. The Liebmanns now live in village in the mountains above Sarajevo, This project is extremely important Liebmann, a senior vice president of the Queens. He has been with the AGJHS where a Muslim cleric kept it hidden beneath nowadays when Bosnia is full of American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust since 1991. the floor of a mosque until the war ended. It negative examples of who hates whom. It Survivors and their Descendants, a group Rabbi Aron Heineman, whose parents sends a message of coexistence, and was then returned to the museum. that registers survivors. The group’s reg- fled Germany during the Holocaust, and During Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, a Muslim we want to show to all peoples in Bosnia istry shows 18,350 survivors living in who now runs the Brookdale Senior museum director and a Serb policeman that the life of one nation with another is Brooklyn, more than three times as many Center, said that neighbors are angry risked sniper fire to reach the museum, sacred and has to be preserved, said as Queens, which, at 5,100, is the sec- about the graffiti, but confident that their take the book and hide it in a Muhamed Mesic, of the institute. ond-highest population in the city. It’s also neighborhood is still safe. National Bank safe, where it remained One of the best-known stories of about 25 percent of the roughly 73,000 “This is a multiracial block,” said until the end of the war. Bosnia Bosnian involvement in preserving Jewish registered survivors in the United States. Heineman, who added that this type of regards the Haggadah as its most impor- tradition during World War II involves “A lot of this community, it’s either sur- incident is very rare in the area. efforts to safeguard a 600-year-old tant national treasure. January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

NAZI ARCHIVE ALLOWS ONLINE REQUESTS BILDNER CENTER AT RUTGERS vast archive of Nazi-era documents was painfully slow, leading to frustration PRESENTS TALK BY OMER BARTOV Astarted accepting online requests for among victims and their families, who rofessor Omer Bartov (Brown during World War II with help from the information from victims of Nazi crimes often had to wait several years before PUniversity), one of the world’s lead- local populace. Ultimately, he revealed and people tracing relatives — a move receiving a response. ing authorities on German history, the the complete erasure of the Jews from meant to speed up an often-slow process. The International Tracing Service says Holocaust, and genocide, discussed his public memory, a blatant act of forgetting The move by the archive, based in the on its new site that it aims to process most recent book, Erased: Vanishing done in the service of a fiercely aggres- central German town of Bad Arolsen, requests within eight weeks, and have the Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day sive Ukrainian nationalism. should make it easier for people to get backlog whittled down by mid-2008. But it Ukraine (Princeton University information from the 50 million files of the warns that some more complex cases Press, 2007), at a public lec- International Tracing Service. The site, may take longer. ture in October 2007 spon- http://www.its-arolsen.org, will not, howev- Meister said it remained to be seen sored by the Allen and Joan er, allow victims or researchers direct whether allowing online applications Bildner Center for the Study of access to the files over the Internet. would result in a jump in requests. He Jewish Life, Rutgers the State Until now, people hoping for data from noted that, in the future, victims and their University of New Jersey. An the files had to submit a written request families also will be able to access files audience of approximately either directly, or through their local Red through Yad Vashem or the U.S. 200 people from both the local Cross chapter. The International Holocaust Memorial Museum, both of and Rutgers communities Committee of the Red Cross administers which have received digital copies of gathered for the Raoul the International Tracing Service. many of the documents. Wallenberg Annual Program “We wanted to make it easier for people Earlier this year, digital copies of some supported by the Leon and to reach us and the overhaul of our Web of the records were handed to the Toby Cooperman Fund. site was geared to that,” said Reto archives in Israel, the United States and Bartov described how what Professors Ziva Galili, Acting Executive Dean of Rutgers Meister, director of the service. “We Poland, in an effort to make the data more began as a deeply personal School of Arts and Sciences; Omer Bartov; and Yael thought it was our duty and obligation to accessible to more people. chronicle of the Holocaust in Zerubavel, Director of the Bildner Center at Rutgers. put out readable information and under- The fully revamped Web site also his mother’s hometown of standable news, and especially to create offers an online application for informa- Buchach in former Eastern Galicia, The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for easier access for people who can now tion for researchers and details on the became a journey across the region and the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers reach us from all corners of the world.” archive’s various divisions and the docu- back through history to explore the com- through its Herbert and Leonard For decades, processing of the inquiries ments they hold. plex interethnic relationships and conflicts Littman Families Holocaust Resource that have existed in the area for centuries. Center, fulfills its commitment to MAKE YOUR OWN HOLOCAUST MUSEUM Bartov uncovered the rapidly disappear- Holocaust education and to reducing n the center of the Projects Room at P. Perry said it was student teacher Abby ing vestiges of the Jews of western prejudice and promoting tolerance and IRoss Berry Middle School in Aebischer who suggested the eighth- Ukraine who were murdered by the Nazis inter-group understanding. Youngstown, OH rests a table, set as graders spend time studying the though awaiting the arrival of a small Holocaust, which claimed the lives of an HUNT FOR JEWISH LIBRARY STOLEN BY THE NAZIS group of diners. estimated 6 million European Jews. TURNS TO RUSSIA But no one will ever eat at that table. The Youngstown State University sec- It was set up a solemn reminder of the ondary education major said the teaching priceless collection of antique man- the Jewish Communities, includes illumi- effort of a World War II-era Jewish family staff was looking for a unit to study, and Auscripts and books that has been nated manuscripts, books and Torahs trying to retain some of its religious tradi- when the Holocaust was brought up, she missing since Nazi troops looted it from and Bibles printed in the 16th and 17th tions in a world seemingly gone mad. learned that many of the pupils knew the synagogue in Rome may be languish- century. There are works of philosophy, The table replicates one used to cele- nothing about it. ing in an abandoned Soviet military mathematics and astronomy, as well as brate Hanukkah by the family of Anne The students were given a two-week archive. religious works. A 1324 copy of a treatise Frank, which spent nearly three years in study on the Holocaust, did some reading After leads from Italy to Germany, on medicine by the Arabic scholar and hiding in an unsuccessful effort to avoid related to the subject, wrote essays and Poland, France, Ukraine and the US, philosopher Avicenna was one of the capture and incarceration by German then read and performed in a play based researchers have secured an agreement library’s gems. Nazis. on “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which with Russia to help to find the 7,000-vol- Two collections were housed in the syn- It’s part of a temporary Holocaust detailed the Frank family’s years of hiding ume library, which that dates back to the agogue complex in Romes ancient ghetto. Museum created by about 90 eighth- in an office building in Amsterdam before 16th century. One group of books was taken in October graders at P. Ross Berry, said teacher they were betrayed and arrested. There is good reason to believe that the 1943, around the time that more than Lisa Perry. “The kids loved it. They got to play the collection could be in a warehouse or 1,000 Jews were rounded up to be sent to Above the room’s doorway hangs a sign parts,” Aebischer said. other undocumented location, Dario Nazi camps, such as Auschwitz. The written in German — “Arbeit Macht Frei” The creation of their own Holocaust Tedeschi, a lawyer who has been leading other was taken that December. — which in English means “work makes Museum was an offshoot of their studies, efforts on behalf of the Italian Most of the volumes originally from the one free.” That’s also a replica of the sign she said. Government, said. He described the rabbinical college collection were later that hung over the entrance to the con- “We did the museum so the kids could decades-long hunt as trying to unravel a returned from Frankfurt, said Mr Tedeschi. centration camp at Auschwitz. see that they could be teachers them- historical mystery. But the Jewish Communities collection Hanging from the ceiling are dozens of selves,” she said, explaining that many of Enrico Letta, an Italian undersecretary, may have been taken to Raciborz, near handmade butterflies, a representation of them served as tour guides for other signed an agreement with Ekaterina Auschwitz, or to Hungen in the Rhineland. the artwork created by Jewish children in classes and parents who visited the Genieva, director of the Library of Foreign As Soviet troops pushed back the the Terezin concentration camp. museum. Literature in Moscow, to pursue the Soviet German forces, they may have taken pos- When the temporary museum closes, The pupils, alone or in teams, trail in an effort to bring the collection home. session of the collection. the butterflies will be sent to the Houston researched various aspects of the Ms Genieva, an expert in tracing docu- Mr Tedeschi said that all the earlier Holocaust Museum in Texas, which seeks Holocaust, and their work is on display in ments, was responsible for the return of the searching had hinted at an eventual desti- to collect 1.5 million of them, one for each the form of posters and photos that line Vienna Jewish communities collection. nation in Russia. Its a job of looking child killed in the Holocaust. the room. The collection, known as the Library of through archives, he said.

HITLER AS DOORMAT HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS HONORED IN BUCHAREST illions have wanted to n October 9, Romanian President Romanian-born Jew who survived the Mwipe their feet on Adolf OTraian Basescu bestowed state Holocaust. Hitler, modern Israeli artist Boaz honored on 11 Holocaust survivors in cer- The report concluded that former Arad made it possible. His work emonies in Bucharest. In ceremonies Romanian civilian and military authorities Hitler-doormat is on display at marking the Holocaust, Basescu said the were responsible for the deaths of the Tel Aviv’s Modern Art Centre. suffering of the Jews in Romania was a between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian The work of art, estimated at result of the racist and anti-democratic Jews. In addition, 25,000 members of the $ 35,000, was set in a room laws, xenophobia and a lack of civil Roma ethnic group were deported during dubbed “Nazi Hunters Room” courage. the Holocaust, about half of whom died. and contains images of the October 9 became Romania’s official Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany swastika on the walls and the day to commemorate the country’s own between 1940 and 1944. Before WWII, former Nazi leader, skinned and 400,000 Holocaust victims just four years about 800,000 Jews lived in Romania. strewn on the floor, reminiscent ago. Before then, authorities had denied About half of them were killed by of a captured bear from which a there had been a Holocaust in Romania. Romanian, Hungarian and German Nazis. carpet was made. But in 2004, Romania accepted the find- Many survivors emigrated to Israel, so Arad explained that the carpet mate goal. The carpet symbolizes the ings of a report issued by an international today the Jewish community in symbolized what Nazi hunters would have feelings of the Israelis about the commission chaired by 1986 Nobel Peace Romania counts only 11,000 members, done had they captured Hitler, their ulti- Holocaust. Prize laureate and novelist Eli Wiesel, a it was reported. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS MUSIC IN THE HOLOCAUST: CONFRONTING LIFE IN THE NAZI GHETTOS AND CAMPS Music in the Holocaust: Confronting music was simply diversionary, there were much controversy, a ghetto theatre was music for Jews was music they had to Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. songs, heartfelt songs, written and popu- established. But, there was also the Youth sing while being punished . . . or as pun- By Shirli Gilbert. Clarendon and Oxford larized in the ghetto, including, Club, where the music of such as Hirsh ishment for hours on end at the University Press: Oxford & New York, “‘Kh’shem zikh’ (I am ashamed) and Glik and Shmerke Kaczerginski – both Appellplatz. 2005. 243 pp. $35.00. ‘Shlof, mayn kind’ (Sleep, my child),” both songwriters – held sway. And their songs, This brings us to Gilbert’s chapter on by M. Shenker. They more often than not, pro- REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN Auschwitz – where music usually meant communicated moted the partisan “cause, prisoner orchestras that played “each hirli Gilbert in her conscientiously and Shenker’s anguish encouraging active resist- morning and evening as the labor contin- Swell-written book, Music in the over the death of “his ance and rousing a spirit of gents marched to and from work, and reg- Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi wife and child.” And defiance and communal ularly accompanied executions.” There Ghettos and Camps, gives us a “wide- then there were still strength.” was also “forced singing sessions, and angle” view of the role music played during other songs that eanwhile, in torture sessions in which music was used those infamous years. She accomplishes offered encourage- MSachsenhausen, a in inventive and sadistic ways.” Oddly this specifically in four chapters of this ment like, “Oyb nit camp in Germany, the con- enough, all this music seems to have work, each zeroing in on a different ghetto keyn emune” (If I do ditions were much worse made the Nazi perpetrators feel more “civ- or camp, each chock-full of information. not have faith).” than in the ghettos. Still, as ilized” about what they were doing . . . For example, in Gilbert’s chapter on the With the Vilna ghet- Gilbert points out, varied Voluntary music making was highly limit- Warsaw ghetto, we learn about the many to we find “powerful groups in the camp ed. Though there was that “famous musical activities and of the music “creat- political currents”— “enjoyed” varied privileges account” of Jewish communal singing of ed, circulated, and performed there.” most especially the vis-à-vis music. German Czech Jews “from the family camp about Indeed, the ghetto was teeming – certain- Jewish Council vs. political prisoners – commu- to be gassed in Birkenau in July 1944.” ly in the early years – with many varied the Underground – nists – were most privileged. Knowing their deaths were imminent, they types of musical entertainments for those affecting music made Interestingly, among other all began to sing – first “the Czechoslovak who could afford them. There were cafés, there. On the one things, they organized opti- national anthem, and then the Hebrew a symphony orchestra, theatres, chamber hand, the Jewish mistic communal “sing- song “Hatikvah.’” groups, choirs. Of course, the “elite” of the leadership promoted songs” “to boost . . . Needless to say, Gilbert’s work is a ghetto – the Judenrat, the Jewish Police “communal calm” as musical institutions – morale” amongst them. Polish prisoners, major addition to Holocaust study and and big-time smugglers could enjoy all of diversions – were quickly opened in the when and if they sang clandestinely, sang should be of interest to all readers of this easily. For most, though, their music ghetto. A small choir and a small orches- of “death,” “suffering,” and “Nazi defeat.” Martyrdom and Resistance. came from the beggars singing on the tra were established. With many Zionists And Jews . . . perhaps they might hear streets and by way of free concerts in the population, there was a Hebrew someone quietly sing “Ma’oz Tsur” at Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Media arranged by soup kitchens. While much choir. There was a Hebrew theatre. With Hannukkah. Sadly, more often than not, and Communication Arts at Pace University HOLOCAUST ODYSSEYS THE NAZI CONNECTION Wartime Odysseys: The Jews of Saint- and a half months. Those who survived Martin-Vesubie and Their Flight through hid in the Alps, in Catholic shelters in TO ISLAMIC TERRORISM France and Italy. By Susan Zuccotti. Yale Florence, and in Rome, as well. The The Nazi Connection to Islamic ixty years after the Nazi Holocaust, University Press. 2007. 320pp. $28.00. drama-filled account of the fortunate sur- Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al- Santi-Jewish hatred reached Another vivors is expertly transmitted through the Husseini. By Chuck Morse. iUniverse, Inc. climax at the hideous anti-Israel hate fest REVIEWED BY RABBI ISRAEL ZOBERMAN prism of nine families, with information 2003. 186pp. $ 25.95 – the United Nations Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa. There the istinguished historian, academic and provided on others as well, all attesting to REVIEWED BY GARY SELIKOW Left demonstrated their common cause author Susan Zuccotti combines all the extraordinary life and fate of those D or those, like myself, who are sick with Radical Islam by embracing hateful her impressive skills and experience to who resided, if only for a while, in that and tired of the hate-filled interna- anti-Zionist propaganda, and feverishly open yet another revealing and enriching hospitable French village under such F tional campaign to destroy Israel, and supporting the genocidal program against window into the vastness of the Holocaust’s unique and harrowing circumstances. annihilate her people, Israel. This evil festival of tragedy by focusing on I’m indebted to this informative and fas- terror and hate in Durban the remarkable saga Reinhold Beuer-Tajovsky, cinating book provides 2001 was the lowest of a small French vil- a fellow member of the an exploration of the point in human history lage close to the Holocaust Commission of roots of Palestinianism since the Nazi Holocaust. Maritime Alps. the United Jewish and anti-Israel hatred. It Haj Amin al-Husseini The village of Saint- Federation of Tidewater, for presenting me this outlines how the ongoing was born in Jerusalem in Martin-Vesubie, genocide against the book. Reinhold is a 1895, and fought in the under Italian occupa- Jews of Israel is in fact a Christian survivor of the Ottoman Turkish Army tion from November continuation of the Nazi Holocaust, who was against the British during 1942 to September 8, Holocaust against the saved by Jews. He has the First World War. In 1943, became a Jews of Europe. had a special relationship 1919, he established a vibrant home and Chuck Morse traces with one of the book’s secret Muslim Youth safe refuge to over a the story of Haj amin al- interviewees, Charles Group, al-Nadi al-Arabi, thousand non-French Husseini, the founder of Roman. Both are from which organized violence Jewish refugees from The Palestinian Vienna, Austria, and they against the British, the throughout Europe Movement, ally and met in Paris when rescued Jews of Palestine, and and of all ages in the friend of Adolf Hitler, and as children. moderate Muslims. In midst of 1,650 French a key player in the The provided photos in March 1920, he instigat- Catholics, till the Holocaust Against the Jews. Al-Husseini, the book are illuminating. ed attacks against innocent Jews praying German takeover. A the Mufti of Jerusalem, was a vicious Author Zuccotti, speaking of the survivors at the Western Wall in Jerusalem followed flight ensued of the Jews from the village enemy of the Jewish people, in the tradi- she highlights, shares: “They illustrate the by anti-Jewish pogroms by armed Arab for their very lives, again, into neighboring tion of Amalek, Haman, Torquemada, amazing resiliency and optimism of young gangs in Jaffa, Rehovot, Petach Tikva and Italy with the withdrawing Italian troops fol- Chmielniki and, of course, Hitler. His lega- people, often in distinction to their more other Jewish towns. lowing the September 8, 1942, armistice cy continues today in the PLO, Al Aqsa burdened and devastated parents. They In 1922, the British appointed al- between Italy and the Allies. It took three Martyrs Brigades, PFLP, Hamas, Islamic Husseini Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He show the independence and capacity of days over trying mountainous terrain, Jihad, Hizbullah, al Qaida, and the regimes organized a reign of terror against moder- women to take charge, make decisions, ending up in the capture within a week of of Syria, Libya and Iran, as well as the sup- ate Muslims who showed any sign of and lead their families to safety.” arrival of more than a third of the shocked porters of the genocidal hate campaign accepting the Jews, and in 1929 organ- refugees, who did not expect to encounter Rabbi Israel Zoberman, spiritual leader of against Israel on the International Left, and ized further pogroms against Jews in German forces. Followed was deporta- Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia some on the Far Right (like Pat Buchanan Jerusalem, Motza, Hebron, Safed, Haifa, tion and death in Auschwitz only after two Beach, is son of Polish Holocaust survivors. and David Duke). (Continued on page 14) January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 HOTEL AUSCHWITZ n unrepentant old Nazi officer who give the raised arm salute to his Fuehrer. qualifies for a war pension from Germany, apparently respectable gentleman living A served in some of the worst con- He agreed to a documentary being an old age pension in Spain, where he in a smart Madrid neighborhood who, centration camps gives the Hitler salute in made on him “because I want to set the worked for many years as a pig farmer aged 84, might be taken for a congenial Spain where he has hid- record straight about our and one from Italy, because it is the land grandfather, filled with goodness and den from justice for over ideals and our cause during of his birth. affection. 60 years. the Third Reich.” Being a former concentration camp “The defeat of the Third Reich was an Now Paul Maria Hafner He admits he dreams of guard is not a barrier to receiving a enormous trauma for Hafner, from which is the subject of a TV doc- seeing a “Fourth Reich” in German pension. he has not yet recovered. His convictions umentary called “Hafner’s Germany, adding: “I am only n the documentary, Hafner is brought have simply become firmer. He is not trou- Paradise” which chroni- sorry I will not be around to Iface-to-face with a survivor from bled by the accounts of the victims, or that cles his life in exile – and see it.” Dachau. National Socialism led the world to disas- how he manages to draw After WWII, Hafner found “You survived pensions from three asylum in Franco’s Spain, quite well,” Hafner countries. protected from allegations of responds matter- Operation Last Chance, war crimes and surrounded of-factly after the the campaign to round up by old comrades. Jewish victim the last Nazis in Europe This is why Spain is “para- recounts his organized by the Simon dise on earth” for him – a painful memories. Wiesenthal Centre in place that allows him to con- According to Israel, has him on their “Setting the record straight”: tinue to nurture his fanati- Hafner, there are wanted list. Hafner in his younger days. cism, and yet protects him hundreds like him Yet although Hafner, 84, from the scrutiny of interna- in Spain. continues to make outrageous statements tional justice. Gunter Schwaiger, that would put him behind bars in “No Jew was ever killed under Hitler for who filmed “Hafner’s Germany or Austria, no government has being a Jew,” he said, refusing to elabo- Paradise,” said: “He sought to prosecute him. rate on what he did when posted to the is in close contact He calls the death camp of Auschwitz, concentration camps of Buchenwald and with people who are where 1.1 million Jews were murdered, “a Dachau in Germany. indeed wanted or have been convicted ten star hotel” where “Jews were sent for Hafner is not being pursued actively by “You survived well”: Hafner’s opinion to survivors of the concentration their own protection. All that stuff about governments, although Nazi war crime in other countries camps. because of their anti- murder is Allied propaganda crap.” sleuths in Israel believe him guilty of ter. His fanaticism remains just as intact Semitic actions and declarations, or because Of Hitler he says: “I regard him as the atrocities in the two concentrations camps today as 60 years ago.” they have denied the existence of the greatest man who ever lived, the most where he worked, and on the Eastern The film is due for release in the UK in Holocaust. important person in the history of the Front, where he served as a fighting SS the spring. world.” man. “Paul María Hafner is neither a He said he gets out of bed every day to He draws three pensions because he Martian nor a diabolical being, but an First published in Daily Mail CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST TRAIN long been a sensitive subject in Germany. when she was transported out of ly refused to host an exhibition about the BY HANNAH CLEAVER, MIRROR The question remains, how could an Westerbork camp, probably to Auschwitz. mass transportation at its railway stations entire nation deny that it at least suspect- She managed to push a letter out of the in Germany. t is a train journey of terrible sadness, ed a policy of extermination when they truck in which she was being held – and But the transport minister stepped in criss-crossing Germany, wakening I and a deal was struck. memories of the relentless, orderly cruelty saw its victims packed like animals onto someone delivered it to her friend to The Train of Commemoration has been of Hitler’s Third Reich. trains at the stations they used every day? whom it was addressed. This is a journey of commemoration and Victims such as Hanni Steinbock, whose “My dearest little Netty,” wrote the on the move since November and will of reconciliation, a poignant voyage that photograph is among those displayed on teenager. “You will get this last goodbye have covered 2,000 miles when in May it will end, as it did those 60 years ago, at the Train of Commemoration. card from the train. will deliver to Auschwitz all the letters, Auschwitz. She and her older sister Sylvie grew up “We are sitting here with 40 people and photos and other evidence of the trans- Then the train, and thousands of trains in Cologne, but in 1939 when Hanni was luggage and it is very stuffy in the cattle portees collected along the way. like it, carried millions of European Jews five, they were sent to Holland where their truck. We are full of good hopes for a But even this current, acclaimed exhibi- to their deaths in the Nazi extermination mother believed, as Jews, they would be reunification in our lovely little Holland tion has not managed to escape contro- camps. safe from the Nazis. soon. Farewell, a kiss. Hertha and family.” versy. Organizers have accused the Today it carries the heart-rending mem- In a desperate attempt to hide, they he only man ever prosecuted for Deutsche Bahn of endangering the whole orabilia of those dreadful days, the photos were housed in an orphanage where a T running the death trains was Albert project by charging fees to use the tracks. and last letters of the desperate people poignant photograph of Hanni sitting at a Ganzenmuller, state secretary in Hitler’s The rail company says: “We are not legal- transported like cattle across Germany to table was taken for posterity. The sign in transport ministry and head of the ly able to waive the track use charges for the gas chambers. Dutch read “from my childhood.” Reichsbahn. His involvement was clearly the Train of Commemoration. It seems astonishing now that, 60 years But the safety of Holland evaporated demonstrated in a letter he wrote to “We are investing money in the exhibi- ago, these death trains could have when the Germans invaded in 1940 and Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the tion at the stations.” passed through ordinary German towns set up collection and deportation camps holocaust, proudly listing the regular As a result, volunteers working on the and hamlets, through suburban stations for Jewish refugees who had sought safe- transports to death camps. Train of Commemoration have called for a packed with commuters. ty there. He wrote: “Since the 22 of July, each European-wide protest against Deutsche Yet, despite the horrific slaughter wait- Hanni and Sylvie were put on a deporta- day a train carrying 5,000 Jews is travel- Bahn. ing at the end of the line, only one man tion train to Sobibor extermination camp ing from Warsaw via Malkinia to Treblinka, “They are charging us around 50,000 involved in the Reichsbahn, the German and its gas chambers. and twice a week a train with 5,000 Jews euros for use of the tracks,” says Hans- rail system, was ever prosecuted for ship- They and 1,103 other people spent is going from Przemyal to Belzek.” Ruediger Minow, spokesman for the train ping Hitler’s victims to the concentration three days on the train in horrific condi- Ganzenmuller fled to Argentina after the organizing committee. camps. tions before reaching the Polish camp – war, but returned to Germany in 1955. “They have rejected all our appeals to Now, at last, they are being remem- where they were killed. In 1970, he was finally charged for his waive the charges and are treating the Train bered, their stories told on the Train of On the way, they would have passed role in the transport of millions of Jews to of Commemoration like a commercial opera- Commemoration currently touring through hundreds of town and village rail- the death camps, but the case was tion, as if it is taking a shipment of scrap Germany. way stations in Germany. dropped in 1972 after only three days in metal or cement from one place to another. It will arrive at Auschwitz in May, the Many didn’t even make it to journey’s court when Ganzenmuller suffered a heart “Deutsche Bahn has a historical responsibil- anniversary of VE Day, when Germany end, trampled to death or unable to sur- attack and was declared medically inca- ity, if not a legal one. It is an international formally surrendered to the Allies. vive the extreme heat or cold with little pable of facing trial. He died in 1996 in company which operates in a number of Pulled by a 1929 steam engine, the trav- food or water. Munich. European countries, and as such should be eling exhibition will follow many of the Desperate notes were often pushed Thousands of other rail employees kept aware of its historical responsibility. deportation routes along which Jews and through cracks in the cattle trucks when their jobs after the war, helping to build the “It is now more than 60 years since the end others marked for extermination by the they stopped, with the hope the people new German rail system and denying any of the war and the horrors of the concentra- Nazis were transported to the death who had until recently been their fellow part in the Holocaust. tion camps. Only a very few survived at all, camps. citizens would help. But the whole controversial subject blew and of them, only a tiny number are still alive. The Reichsbahn transportation of Nazi One such note came from Hertha up again last year when Deutsche Bahn - “These things are in danger of being victims, including 1.5 million children, has Aussen, a Dutch-Jewish girl who was 17 the successor of the Reichsbahn – initial- forgotten.” Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER A LOVE TRIANGLE IN... BERGEN BELSEN t a birthday party in 1943, he meets Westerbork, Jack and Ina manage to see later, and married in January 1946. “Like BY TOM TUGEND, THE JERUSALEM POST A Ina, a 20-year old beauty raised in a each other occasionally, and, under the any good Dutch Jewish girl, Ina came to wealthy diamond manufacturing family, circumstances, they are fortunate. her wedding night as a virgin,” said Jack. ’m a very special Holocaust sur- and it’s love at first sight. Jack is assigned to work in the camp They moved to the United States in vivor,” says Jack Polak. “I was in the “I The looming love affair appears aborted kitchen and Ina, who knows German 1951, and have three children, five grand- camps with my wife and my girlfriend; and when a couple of weeks later, he and his shorthand, to office work at a diamond children and two great-grandchildren. believe me, it wasn’t easy.” wife are deported to the Dutch transit plant set up by the Nazis. The family maintained friendly relations This may sound like a line from the new camp of Westerbork. At every opportunity, the two write long with Manja, who never remarried and died genre of Holocaust films with humor, but As fate would have it, two months later, impassioned letters to each other, to the two years ago in Holland. Polak (who is Jacob on his birth certifi- point that Jack’s one pencil stub A fellow prisoner in Bergen-Belsen was cate, Jack in America, Jaap to his Dutch is soon worn down to the nub. Anne Frank, and although the Polaks friends, and Jab to his wife) is just stating Since Ina works in an office, Jack never met her, Jack headed the American the facts in the documentary feature Steal begs her in one letter, “steal a support group for the Anne Frank Center a Pencil for Me. pencil for me.” for many decades. He was knighted for Another shorthand way of summarizing Manja becomes increasingly his services by the Dutch government. the storyline: Jack, an accountant in suspicious and annoyed with Eventually, the Polaks decided to write Amsterdam in the early 1940s, is married Jack’s liaison, but is generous down their experiences and their book, to Manja, but falls in love with Ina. All enough to share some of her Steal a Pencil for Me, was published in the three are deported to Bergen-Belsen, scarce bread with Ina when her United States in 2000. Manja had asked where Jack and Ina carry on an intensive rival falls ill. that the original Dutch version of the book romantic correspondence. Most concentration camp rec- not be published in Holland in her lifetime, The three survive, Jack divorces Manja, mar- ollections speak of unbearable and Jack and Ina honored her request. ries Ina, and they move to the United States. filth, degradation, and foremost “I never thought our story would be The story doesn’t end there. The film the constant hunger that obliter- made into a movie,” said Ina, but when catches up with Jack, who will be 95 on ated all other thoughts. veteran filmmaker Michele Ohayon heard December 31, and Ina, 80, at their home Jack and Ina in Westerbork. But for Jack and Ina, their love the story she put everything aside for the in Eastchester, a New York suburb, short- Ina is deported to the same place, where was even stronger. “It was this love that next five years to shoot the movie. ly after they celebrated their 62nd wed- the rules allow Jack to spend some time kept us alive,” they say. Born in Casablanca and raised in Israel, ding anniversary. with both wife and girlfriend until the 8 s the British army neared the camp Ohayon is a noted director, writer and pro- Not slowed down by some hearing prob- p.m. curfew. in early April 1945, the lovers’ luck ducer of offbeat documentaries. Her 1997 lems, Jack recalled his odd experiences A with gusto, though, as with most old mar- Soon, the trains started rolling from seemed to run out. The Nazis put Jack on film, Colors Straight Up, received an ried couples, Ina had to correct him occa- Westerbork to the concentration camps a train going east, and Ina on a train going Oscar nomination. sionally on a few historic points. and in February 1944, Jack and Manja are in the opposite direction. In directing the film, Ohayon lets her two Fame has come late to the Polaks, but sent to Bergen-Belsen. Jack says good- Ina’s train was liberated within a week lively and expressive narrators, Jack and both obviously enjoy starring in their own bye to Ina with the words, “I hope you will by American troops and she remembers Ina, carry the action, while never stooping life story. “I’m the oldest working actor in soon follow me.” marveling at the great teeth of the GIs, to sly winks or cheap humor. Historical America,” Jack remarks proudly. Three months later, it’s Ina’s turn, and wondering “whether they all went to the footage of the concentration camps and Their story, and the film, begins during the she is put in a boxcar headed for same dentist.” 1940s Holland complement the narration. Nazi occupation of Holland in 1940. While Auschwitz. At the last minute, orders are Russian soldiers freed Jack’s train a The Polaks are among the film’s most many Jews were deported and, like Jack’s changed, and the train is routed to week later, and by summer, husband, wife ardent fans. “We have seen the picture six parents, subsequently murdered, the young Bergen-Belsen in northwest Germany. and girlfriend were back in Amsterdam. times, and we always have our handker- accountant manages to keep going, though Though the regime there is much In August 1945, Jack divorced Manja, chiefs ready when we go,” said Ina. Added locked in an incompatible marriage. stricter and more brutal than in he and Ina became engaged two months Jack, “I like it better each time I see it.” HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR REUNITED WITH HER RESCUER in Polish, as she hugged Walulewicz in a “Who are you?” the Polish woman were hiding the young Jewish woman BY ETGAR LEFKOVITS, tearful reunion. asked. were facing their own difficulties. THE JERUSALEM POST his story of heroism and bravery in “I am Fiegel’s daughter,” she answered. Irena Walulewicz’s older brother had the face of evil began in September “Come in,” she responded. himself been killed by the Nazis while her n a symbolic closing of a circle, a 94- T 1941, after all the Jews from Swieciany, For the next several months, father, the one-time mayor of the town, year-old Holocaust survivor was I Poland, which is today in Lithuania, and Bushkanietz found refuge in their house, was among 50 Polish intelligentsia killed reunited last November with the elderly the neighboring villages were rounded up hiding in the mice-infested attic, or even in by the Germans in revenge for the killing Polish woman who sheltered her during by the Germans, and divided into two the pigsty, to avoid capture. of a German officer by the partisans. the Holocaust, more than six decades groups: some, like Bushkanietz and her On cold winter nights, she was some- Then one day, a Polish neighbor after the two parted ways. husband Szymon, were sent to a slave times allowed to sleep in the kitchen when denounced the Walulewiczs for hiding a The special Thanksgiving weekend labor camp after being deemed “useful,” Jew, but Bushkanietz, who was alerted by reunion, which took place at New York’s while others were immediately murdered Zofia Walulewicz, managed to escape John F. Kennedy International Airport, by the Nazis and buried in a mass grave. through a window, returning only after the brought together Golda Bushkanietz, 94, In early 1943, when the Germans decid- Germans had left empty-handed. of Tel Aviv with her Polish rescuer, Irena ed to liquidate the camp, the young She remained in the Polish home until Walulewicz, 82, of Olsztyn, Poland. Jewish couple managed to flee, with November 1943, when she joined her Walulewicz and her late mother Zofia, Szymon Bushkanietz heading for the husband with the partisans in the forest. who have been recognized as Righteous woods to join the partisans and his wife fter the war, the couple moved to Israel Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for fleeing to her home town to search for a Aand went on to have two children, seven their selfless heroism, hid Bushkanietz in hiding place. grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. their home for several months during the It was 2:00 in the morning when Before they left Poland, Bushkanietz summer of 1943, as the Nazi killing Bushkanietz knocked on the window of Irena Walulewicz reunited with Golda parted ways with the Walulewiczs, though machine marched on, even after a neigh- the home of the daughter of the town’s Bushkanietz. for years she would receive letters and bor denounced them to the Germans. pre-war mayor, whom her father had birthday and holiday cards from the The two women, who had not seen each known slightly, in the hopes of finding no neighbors were around, and once daughter of the Polish lady who had other for 62 years, were reunited by the refuge inside. quickly hid under a bed in the house for saved her life. New York-based Jewish Foundation for “I really wanted to live,” Bushkanietz hours when neighbors came by unan- “In the many years we have worked with the Righteous, a group formed two recalled in an interview before leaving nounced during the day. survivors and their rescuers, I remain decades ago that provides financial assis- Israel for the reunion. Every Sunday, when the devout Catholic awestruck by the heroism of the thou- tance to 1,200 non-Jews in 26 countries Zofia Walulewicz, the daughter of the family went to church, she was able to sands of rescuers who risked their lives to around the world who risked their lives to mayor, who was home alone with her 17- sneak out and head to the woods to meet save others,” said Stanlee Stahl, execu- rescue Jews from the Holocaust. year-old daughter Irena, who was deaf up with her husband, she recounted. tive vice president of the Jewish “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” Bushkanietz said and mute, opened the window. The Polish mother and daughter who Foundation for the Righteous. January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 THE FRENCH ANNE FRANK “WITNESS” IS A CHILLING which was initially replete with romantic BY LIOR ZILBERSTEIN, walks along the Latin Quarter, tales of first REMINDER OF THE UNIMAGINABLE YNETNEWS.COM love, conversations in the Sorbonne gar- The argument that US movie studios BY TY BURR, BOSTON.COM downplayed the Nazi threat in the years he French press has already dens, and quiet afternoons spent lazing at leading up to World War II is made not just deemed it the “literary sensation of the Luxembourg gardens. he place from which you remem- T clear but understandable. For every 2008,” but all lofty press superlatives y June 1942, however, the first fis- ber an event shapes the nature of “T “Confessions of a Nazi Spy”, (1939) or aside, the Helene Berr Journal is undoubt- sures begin to appear in Helene’s what you remember,” says historian B “The Mortal Storm”, (1940), there were edly a harrowing, captivating read. formerly picturesque life. She was forced Michael Berenbaum, one of the wiser talk- rantings from isolationist anti-Semites in This Journal is the diary of Helene Berr, to sew a yellow star onto her clothing, and ing heads in the documentary clip-show Washington a Jewish student in the Sorbonne who, was relegated to the rear car in a train she “ Imaginary about Hollywood like Anne Frank, perished in the Bergen- caught at the École Militaire Metro Station, Witness: Jewish propa- Belsen concentration a car reserved for those Hollywood and ganda. The stu- camp. She left behind wearing the yellow star the Holocaust.” dio heads, this harrowing account The event under alone. assimilators to a of her life between April discussion is the As June drew to a close, man (Harry 1942 and March 1944, central cata- Helene’s father, Raymond, Warner except- now published 60 years clysm of the 20th was arrested, questioned by ed, perhaps), later. century, the sys- the Gestapo and ultimately were loath to call This text was diligent- tematic extermi- shipped to the Drancy transit attention to ly guarded by Helene’s nation of millions camp. Her father’s detain- themselves, brother, Jacques, and of Jews by the ment crushed Helene, who especially with was intended for her Nazi war was inspired to join a French- Joseph fiancée, Jean machine. The Jewish organization that Kennedy warn- Morawiecki, who fought place from which acted as a liaison between ing them, “This alongside the Free it’s remembered detainees and their families. will be seen as French Forces in Africa. in popular cul- As time wore on, After World War II, one of the few filmmakers that your war.” As the years wore on, ture is Los Helene’s hitherto neat and showed the full horror of the death camps was the Army. t was every- Jean became a Angeles, home orderly handwriting turned Ione’s war, of renowned French diplo- of a film industry as neurotic as it is pow- course, and when it was over, US Army into a worn, addled scrawl, mat, and received the erful. On one hand has been denial, on Signal Corps filmmakers returned with and her musings became journal written by “the the other hand, kitsch. It’s remarkable horrifying evidence of the death camps – increasingly more frustrat- grey- eyed Helene from Helene Berr that good movies on the subject come out footage the made-for-TV “Imaginary ed and jaded with “things the Latin quarter.” at all. Witness” can’t bring itself to show. One of Jean ultimately returned the diary to that cannot be told” and “peoples’ lack of Daniel Anker’s film, made in 2004 for the the surprises Anker delivers, though, is Helene’s family, who saved it for years understanding and sympathy.” American Movie Classics channel, and that the Hollywood studio chiefs them- before donating it to the French Holocaust Helene was deported from Paris in belatedly turning up now at the MFA under selves toured Auschwitz, on orders from museum in 2002. 1944, and was shipped to the Bergen- the co-aegis of the Boston Jewish Film General Eisenhower, in hopes that they This compelling text, written in rich, elo- Belsen concentration camp, where she Festival, faults Hollywood both for ignor- would in turn bear witness to the quent French, captivated many over the died in April, 1944, two weeks alone ing the Holocaust during the war years world. years, but it is only now that French pub- before Allied liberation. and for trivializing it later. It’s a mixed mes- In this they failed. The Holocaust lishers, Tallandier, decided to bring it to Ironically, Helene died in the very camp sage that coheres largely thanks to was rarely treated directly on light. her celebrated predecessor, Anne Frank, Anker’s archival spadework and his luck American screens until the late 1950s Helene’s story began in occupied Paris, had perished a month earlier. in securing interviews. (Continued on page 15) HOW TOP NAZIS WERE BROUGHT TO A SECRET SCOTTISH PRISON CAMP FOR BRAINWASHING hey helped bring death, destruction oners who were assessed as low threat Bain, the inventor of the electric clock. Nazi rocket scientist Schroder, who Tand terror on an industrial scale to and were eventually allowed to carry out They would know nothing of its invented the V2 pilotless bomb which an entire continent. And as Europe rebuilt unpaid work on surrounding farms. The significance as a PoW camp that held killed thousands of residents in London itself following the Second World War, high-security, top-secret area B, overseen some of the most infamous men in the alone, was treated even more they were imprisoned on a desolate by armed guards in watch towers, housed Nazi regime. mercifully during his incarceration in Scottish moor. “black” prisoners regarded as hard-line “South of Watten, it was doubtful that Caithness in 1947. Newly uncovered documents have and dangerous Nazis. anyone, with the exception of the Schroder co-operated with intelligence revealed that a Caithness prisoner-of- war The B prisoners were subjected to “de- military hierarchy, would have even known officials on sharing his knowledge camp had an extraordinary secret role as Nazification programmes” where they the camp existed.” on “the technicalities of rocket projectiles” a place where some of the most were repeatedly shown newsreels and The remote location of the camp was and as such was awarded special status, notorious figures in Hitler’s Third Reich films outlining the horrors committed key to its creation. “The landscape in despite being deemed to be a Nazi zealot were locked up, interrogated and under the name of the Third Reich and Caithness was invaluable for training and and a “public enemy.” He was eventually – where possible – subjected to “de- highlighting their defeat by Allied subsequently holding captives,” said handed over to the Americans, and Nazification”. forces. Campbell. became a respected adviser to the US Air While the existence of Camp 165 at Those deemed to be reformed could be “It could go on in secret. The farmland Force. Watten, near Wick, is known, local repatriated with the most unrepentant surrounding the camp was flat with Nazi journalist d’Alquen, who was hand- historian Valerie Campbell has obtained being transferred to stand trial, or face fur- few hiding place.” picked by Himmler to pen the official his- recently declassified Government ther interrogation elsewhere. etween 1942 and 1945, Hoppe was tory of the SS and helped popularize the files which reveal the existence of an inner A third ‘C’ category was later created for Bin charge of Stutthoff concentration idea of Jews as “vermin,” was sent to compound with the grim nickname “Little those deemed to be the greatest camp and personally oversaw the deaths Watten in 1945. He was allowed to pub- Belsen.” threat. of thousands of men, women and children lish a monthly magazine for detainees Inmates included Paul Werner Hoppe, ittle exists of the compound today, who the Nazi regime deemed to be “sub- called Der Wattener. the commandant of Stutthof concentration Lbut at its height it was a mini commu- human.” When British forces liberated the After the camp closed he was sent to camp, Poland, Dr Paul Schroder, the man nity of more than 70 Nissen huts. Most of camp, many soldiers were physically sick the US, where he became a key member behind the Nazi’s V2 flying bomb project, its infamous inmates slept in the freezing at the horrors they discovered. of the CIA, and helped devise its anti- Hitler’s personal aide and SS commander rusty shacks, which often shook in the vio- Hoppe was held at Camp Watten communist propaganda strategy during Max Wunsche, Nazi propagandist Gunter lent northernwinds. between August 1947 and January 1948 the early Cold War. d’Alquen, and U-boat captain Otto As well as detention and interrogation and it was expected that he would be exe- Viscountess Margaret Thurso, who lived Kretschmer, known as the Wolf of the rooms, there was a makeshift church, cuted on his return to Germany. Yet, near the camp, was fascinated by Atlantic. a barber’s, workshops, classrooms and – extraordinarily, the commandant escaped the revelations. Even today, many locals who worked for the low security inmates – a theatre. from a British base in Saxony and was She said: “Little did we know that the behind the barbed wire fences of the Prisoners were given outfits with a distinc- able to work unhindered as a landscape nearby Watten was Britain’s most clandestine compound are reluctant to tive diamond on the back – which it was gardener. He was finally re-arrested in secretive PoW camp. Nor did we know speak about it. claimed would act as a target if they tried 1953 and sentenced to just nine years that senior Nazi officers, some close The compound – which operated to escape. imprisonment, insisting he had been too to Hitler, were imprisoned there.” between 1943 and 1948 – was divided Campbell said: “Most people associate young to understand what happened at into two areas, A and B. Area A held pris- the village of Watten with Alexander his camp. First published in Scotland on Sunday. Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 WORLD REMEMBERS VICTIMS OF HOLOCAUST POLAND – Ceremonies marking Holocaust of World War II. ing place in many of the London’s boroughs. passing of a law by the Czech parliament International Holocaust Memorial Day German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Commemorative multi-faith services five years ago that made Holocaust were held at Warsaw’s Ghetto Monument. President Horst Koehler attended the ses- were held in Barnet, Haringey, Lewisham, Remembrance Day a memorial day in the In a letter to participants in the ceremo- sion, held in advance of international day Tower Hamlets and Romford. Czech Republic. ny, Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski of remembrance of the Holocaust. Chris Shaw, chief executive of the This day became an opportunity for all wrote that Holocaust was the crime Later Merkel said it was a “miracle” that Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: “It to remember the common lesson from the incomparable with any other in history, Jewish life had returned to Germany 63 is quite established within schools to tragedy of the Nazi “Final Solution of the according to Polish news agency PAP. years after the Nazi genocide. learn about the Jewish Question,” “It took millions of Still, during a speech Holocaust, but Klaus said. human lives, mem- at a conference in we’re beginning *** bers of the Jewish Berlin, she voiced con- to think it is the ALBANIA – Albania nation, dwellers of cern that anti- slightly older held a ceremony in many European coun- Semitism and anti-for- people who know parliament to com- tries, suffering and eigner sentiment sur- less.” memorate resistance murdered in death vive today, and that She said people efforts during World camps created by the even educated people aged between 18 War II that helped the regime of the Nazi were susceptible to and 40 may not country’s tiny Jewish Germany. All those “crude thoughts and dis- have learnt about minority escape the people were killed guised anti-Semitism.” the holocaust in Holocaust. In the UK, survivors of the Holocaust and other because they were school, but older Some 1,200 Jews, A former prisoner lays a candle during a *** genocides attended Liverpool's Philharmonic Jews,” Kaczynski said. people had a residents and refugees ceremony at Auschwitz-Birkenau to pay UN/ISRAEL – The Hall for a service, which included an address by “We want to jointly “more immediate from other Balkan tribute to the people killed by the Nazis. United Nations and the Archbishop of Canterbury. pay tribute to those link” with the countries, were hidden Israel, for the first time together, issued tortured and murdered. To do everything experiences during World War II. by Albanian families during the war, stamps to remember the victims of the for such tragedy never to happen again. The trust, which runs the national com- according to official records. Holocaust, as an Israeli official admitted For the good to win out over the evil, memoration event, has made this year’s The ambassadors of Israel and the his country and the UN have grown closer understanding over distrust, openness theme Imagine – Remember, Reflect, United States attended the ceremony in after more than 60 years of hostility. over aversion, empathy over indifference, “ React, to challenge people to imagine the parliament. The stamp was designed by the UN the president wrote. unimaginable. “The Holocaust was the defining Department of Public Information and Its website states: “It [the theme] asks moment of the 20th century. ... Most *** shows a piece of barbed wire growing into us to focus on the lives and experience of nations and their people failed to meet the USA – President Bush commemorated a flower. The design is used by both the victims and survivors of the Holocaust; of challenge. But that did not the Holocaust by condemning “the resur- Israel Post and by the UN, which has its Nazi persecution and of other genocides. happen in Albania,” said Warren Miller, gence of anti-Semitism.” own postal administration and issues its “It marvels at the head of the U.S. Commission for the Bush marked the International Day of own stamps. resilience of enterprise, cul- Preservation of American Heritage Commemoration in memory of Victims of Israeli Ambassador ture and of life itself in the Abroad. the Holocaust set by the United Nations Dan Gillerman said Israel face of destruction.” Parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli three years ago and timed for the anniver- has come out of isolation A guided walk from said the success of saving the country’s sary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. caused by the rejection of Aldgate to the Nelson Jews was a source of national pride. “I was deeply moved by my recent visit the once Arab-dominated Street Synagogue featured “But we have convened [a special ses- to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust muse- UN General Assembly. stories on the lives of sion] not only out of pride in our um,” Bush said in his statement, referring Gillerman was elected a prominent East End past but also in respect of the innocent to the culmination of his visit to Israel. vice president of the 192- Holocaust survivors. victims of one of the darkest “Sixty-three years after the liberation of nation body for the cur- An exhibition of paintings time of humanity,” Topalli said. Auschwitz, we must continue to educate rent session that began in and stained glass by Moshe Albania was occupied from 1939 to ourselves about the lessons of the September. Gallili, a Holocaust survivor, 1943 by fascist Italy, and then by Nazi Holocaust and honor those whose lives “It’s not the case any was held in Enfield and a Germany until 1944. Partisan groups who were taken as a result of a totalitarian ide- longer,” said Gillerman, of documentary on the helped liberate the country formed ology that embraced a national policy of the Israel’s isolation in Mauthausen concentration the communist party that ruled Albania violent hatred, bigotry and extermination.” the UN, which had once camp in Austria was until 1990. He added, “We must continue to con- left it seen as a “perma- Young people from 62 countries screened in Norfolk Place. About 300 Jews lived in Albania until the demn the resurgence of anti-Semitism, nent non- member.” gathered at Jerusalem's Yad collapse of communism, but most that same virulent intolerance that led to He said there have Vashem Holocaust Memorial for a *** have since emigrated to the United States the Holocaust, and we must combat big- been “improved feelings” three-day youth congress to mark CZECH REPUBLIC –The and Israel. otry and hatred in all forms, in America between the UN and the anniversary. extermination of European and abroad. Today provides a sobering Israel, and several symbolic steps have Jews by the Nazi regime should not be *** reminder that evil exists and a call that been taken to integrate the Jewish state forgotten and should remain an everlast- ARGENTINA – Politicians, Jewish leaders when we find evil, we must resist it.” into the international community. The ing memento, Czech President Vaclav and survivors marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Buenos Aires. *** assembly has adopted fewer anti-Israel Klaus said at a meeting in the Czech resolutions in recent years, and last year Senate commemorating Holocaust David Galante, a Holocaust survivor, GERMANY – Germany’s parliament elected Gillerman as one of 21 vice presi- Remembrance Day. told the crowded event at the acknowledged the country’s special dents to preside over its lengthy meetings. Today it may be more necessary to Buenos Aires National Bank that he still responsibility in The UN marked the recall the crimes against humanity com- recalls dying people saying to the battle against International Day in mitted against the Jewish population than him: Do not give up, David. At least live to anti-Semitism and Memory of Holocaust decades ago because tell the world what happened here.” racism. Victims, the third such com- of the efforts to re- Aldo Donzis, the “We remember an memoration since 2005, write the past and use president of the unthinkable crime when the body for the first its false picture for DAIA Jewish political against humanity time recognized the mas- political purposes, umbrella organiza- and a systematic sacre of an estimated 6 mil- Klaus said. tion, was among the mass murder,” low- lion Jews and minorities by The Holocaust, an speakers along with the er house Nazi Germany. international word that is Argentine ministers of president Norbert The day-long commem- not quite understandable education and justice. Lammert said dur- orative program included in the Czech language, is Graciela Jinich, the ing a commemora- the issuance of the stamps; used by Czechs to director of the Buenos German President Horst Koehler, Chancellor tive parliamentary addresses by survivors of describe what “may be Aires Holocaust muse- Angela Merkel and Harald Ringstorff, session. “After the Nazi death camps, includ- the most awful and Nearly 90% of Greece's 80,000 Jews were um, stressed that the bitter experiences President of the German Bundesrat, from left, killed during the Holocaust. Children were commemoration is a attend a commemoration in the German par- ing US Congressman Tom shameful crime in human of the last century, among those who attended a memorial serv- message for the future liament Bundestag to remember the victims Lantos; and an evening history,” Klaus said. we do not tolerate ice in the port city of Thessaloniki. generations. of the Nazi era in Berlin. concert by the Tel Aviv “However, I fear any kind of extrem- University Symphony con- whether this one foreign word could com- Estela Carlotto, the president of a ism, racism and anti-Semitism — ducted by Zubin Mehta. plicate our possibility to sufficiently realize human rights organization that tries nowhere in the world, and especially not to find children abducted during the dicta- *** and feel the whole depth of monstrosity of in Germany.” what had happened then, the monstrosity torial government of Jorge Rafael “We Germans want to do justice to our ENGLAND – Multi-faith ceremonies, of the extermination of European Jews by Videla from 1976 to 1981, said she was special responsibility,” he said. talks, dramatic performances, concerts, the German Nazi regime,” Klaus said. moved by the survivors’ persistence Six million Jews were killed in the Nazi guided walks and film screenings were tak- Klaus pointed to the significance of the and unwavering determination. January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9 STUDYING THE HOLOCAUST IN A TIME OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND ANTI-SEMITISM n January 27th, educators from the tri-state area gathered at the Pratt used in classrooms. Educators can have the voice of those people who lived OMansions in NYC for the American Society for Yad Vashem’s Tenth through the atrocities right in their classrooms by using the DVD or VHS provid- Annual Professional Development Conference. Once again, this year’s confer- ed with the curriculum. ence was co-sponsored by the Association of Teachers of Social Studies of the Workshops in the afternoon were lead by Ephraim Kaye, Director of the United Federation of Teachers. Department for International Seminars for Educators and the Jewish World at This year we were once again highlighting the Echoes and Reflections curricu- Yad Vashem Jerusalem, Deborah Batiste, Echoes and Reflections Project lum. This is a valuable education resource developed by Yad Vashem the Director for the Anti-Defamation League, Dan Tarplin Project Director of the A Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, the Anti-Defamation WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute for the Anti-Defamation League, and League, and the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Chaim Singer-Franks Training Specialist USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Education. We were pleased to welcome representative from all three institu- Visual History and Education. tions to participate in this year’s conference. They led the following workshops, 1) Jewish Resistance 2) Survivors and Remarks were also given by Caroline Massel, co-chair of the Young Liberators 3) Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Bystanders, and 4) The Children. Leadership Associates of the American Society for Yad Vashem; as well as Dr. This year there was also a special workshop for those educators who had pre- Romana Primus, the Education Chair of the Board of Directors for the American viously attended an Echoes and Reflections workshop. This workshop, titled Society for Yad Vashem. Mr. Eli Zborowski, Chairman of The American Society “Revisiting Echoes and Reflections,” gave these educators the opportunity to for Yad Vashem, also welcomed the day’s participants. Mr. Zborowski remarked discuss classroom techniques that have worked for them since getting this cur- that the American Society for Yad Vashem’s Educational Department “works to riculum in their classrooms. put a face on individual Holocaust victims in order to introduce a human element Studying the Holocaust is important to students today in a world of growing to the story. Transmitting these messages is our hope for the future.” Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. A curriculum like Echoes and Reflections The first workshop was held in the morning for all teachers to become intro- will enable students to think about the responsibilities they have as individu- duced to the Echoes and Reflections curriculum. This was lead by Deborah als when confronted with prejudice and intolerance. The holocaust provides Batiste of the Anti-Defamation League and one of the writers of Echoes and a context for looking at the dangers of remaining silent in the face of the Reflections. This introduction gave the educators a chance to get an oppression of others. The aim of the American Society for Yad Vashem host- overview of the curriculum and the different ways it can be incorporated into ing these education conferences is to transmit the lessons of this historical their classrooms. event to present and future generations. Teaching about the Holocaust in an The Echoes and Reflections curriculum is a comprehensive ten-lesson pro- age-appropriate and historically accurate manner will promote greater sensi- gram that focuses on the history of the Holocaust while using a multimedia tivity and understanding to reduce hatred, intolerance and prejudice, prevalent approach to education. This is one of the first multi-media curriculums to be in today’s society.

Discussion continues during lunch break.

Ephraim Kaye, Director of the Department for International Seminars, Yad Vashem; Ilana Apelker, Education Programmer, American Society for Yad Vashem; Caroline Massel, Young Leadership Associates Co-Chair, American Society for Yad Vashem; Dr. Elizabeth Zborowski, Cultural Director, American Society for Yad Vashem; Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American Society for Yad Vashem.

Caroline Massel, Young Leadership Associates Co-Cahir, American Society for Yad Vashem; Ephraim Kaye, Yad Vashem Jerusalem; Dan Tarplin, Anti-Defamation League, Chaim Singer- Franks, USC Shoah Foundation; Deborah Batiste, Anti-Defamation League; Carolyn Herbst, Teachers participating in discussion. ATSS/United Federation of Teachers; Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American Society for Yad Vashem. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM FOR DUTCH EDUCATORS, GERMAN ARCHIVES’ OPENING YAD VASHEM LAUNCHES ISLAMOPHOBIA CAN BE ARABIC WEBSITE A TEACHING AID FOR HELPS ISRAELI MAN TRACK n January 24, 2008, Yad Vashem HOLOCAUST STUDIES Olaunched a new website about the HIS FATHER’S DEATH IN HOLOCAUST Holocaust in Arabic. Although relatives of Nazi victims had The Arabic website follows the success- BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ, HAARETZ previously been allowed to examine the ful launch of a website in Farsi last year. BY ANSHEL PFEFFER, HAARETZ hen teaching Holocaust studies to archives, the records are now open to Both sites are accessible at www.yad- W Dutch Muslim teenagers in he last time 74-year-old Moshe Bar- researchers around the world, and have vashem.org. Amsterdam, Mustafa Daher says he first TYoda saw his father, Avraham been digitally transferred to the Yad The website includes the historical nar- has to defuse his pupils’ own hostility Kastner was about to be sent to a Nazi Vashem archives, making it easier for rative of the Holocaust, concepts from the toward Jews and Israel. labor camp in Slovakia along with other family members to conduct more precise Holocaust, academic articles, artifacts, “If I don’t capture their interest, then I residents of his Czech village. searches and find out exactly what hap- maps, photos, archival documents and an have done nothing. So I use the rising The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum pened to their loved ones. online video testimony resource center all Islamophobia to help them connect to the archives have a record of Kastner being fter searching the International translated into Arabic, as well as a special persecution of the Jews,” the seasoned sent to the camp on March 27, 1942, but A Tracing Service records, Bar-Yoda multimedia presentation of the Auschwitz educator says. there the documentary trail ended. discovered that his father’s name appears Album, with Arabic narration, stories of “For example, I tell them that when the Although a witness testified before the on the list of the dead whose bodies were Righteous Among the Nations – including Nazis suspected someone was Jewish, rabbinate in 1948 that Kastner had been incinerated at the Majdanek death camp Muslims from Turkey and Albania – and they would pull down his pants to see if he killed in a concentration camp during the in Poland on September 7, 1942, six the movie We Were There, which docu- was circumcised. Then I remind my Holocaust, Bar-Yoda, a journalist and months after the two last saw each other. ments a joint visit of Arabs and Jews to Muslim students they are also ‘snipped.’ Jewish Agency emissary, did not know Now, Bar-Yoda said, he can finally com- Auschwitz. The site also contains informa- So they, too, would’ve ended up in a con- any of the details and had no record of his memorate his father’s passing on his tion on the study of Arabic in centration camp,” says Daher. father’s death – until now. yahrtzeit the day of his death, instead of on Theresienstadt, and the Yad Vashem Judith Whitlau, who teaches groups Last month, Bar-Yoda became the first the day designated for those who do not exhibit, BESA: A Code of Honor: Muslim about the Holocaust at the Dutch Theater Israeli to receive information about the know the day of their loved one’s death. Albanians who Rescued Jews during the in Amsterdam, says she has to contend fate of family members via Yad Vashem “After having said kaddish for him for 60 Holocaust. with another analogy. since Germany’s International Tracing years on the general kaddish day on the “The Arabic-speaking public is substan- “Some point to media reports from the Service at Bad Arolsen opened its World fast of Asara B’Tevet, now I have a specif- tial, and providing an easily accessible occupied territories, and they want to War II archives to the public at the end of ic yahrtzeit,” said Bar-Yoda. “And while it and comprehensive website about the know what exactly Israel itself is doing to November. doesn’t comfort me or make me happy, Holocaust in Arabic is crucial. In light of internalize the Holocaust’s lessons as it The tracing service says it serves vic- there is a kind of satisfaction here, that I the Holocaust denial and antisemitism preaches others should do.” tims of Nazi persecutions and their fami- can move forward.” that we are witness to in Arabic countries, Daher and Whitlau are taking part in a lies by documenting their fate through the Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev we want to offer an alternative source of week-long seminar for 21 teachers at the archives it manages. The archives include said Bar-Yoda’s tale shows how the newly information to moderates in these coun- Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and more than 50 million references that con- expanded collection of records can help tries, to provide them with reliable infor- Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, the first tain information about more than 17 mil- the families of Holocaust victims. mation about the Shoah,” said Yad run by Yad Vashem for Dutch educators, lion people. (Continued on page 14) Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. with one day devoted to discussions about teaching Holland’s Muslim minority about the Shoah. But not all the teachers in the group FROM FATHER TO DAUGHTER have Muslim students. Franca Verheijen teaches at an affluent school in Leiden, THE ILLUSTRATED BIBLE OF CAROL DEUTSCH some 35 minutes by train from ty to German hands. However, miracu- and townscapes executed in a naïve Amsterdam. There, drawing parallels BY YEHUDIT SHENDAR AND lously one item was left untouched: a between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism style. In his youth, Deutsch had received can be counterproductive. ELIAD MOREH-ROSENBERG large, meticulously crafted, wooden box an Orthodox Jewish education. Before the adorned with a Star of David and a seven- German occupation, he had served as “If I make this connection, some stu- nder assumed identities, two-year- branched menorah. The box’s Hebrew dents usually reject the analogy, saying old Ingrid Deutsch and her grand- president of the Jewish community in the U and English inscription testified to its con- that unlike the Muslims, the Jews never mother, Regina Braunstein, had spent 18 seaside resort of Oostende, on Belgium’s tents: a collection of engaged in terrorism,” she says. months in hiding with a Catholic family in northern coast. Recently biblical illustrations Another charged issue for the teachers is Florenville, a town in the Belgian province tracked-down letters sug- labored over by the the question of complicity. Some 100,000 of Luxembourg. The two had had no word gest that Deutsch, in the artist Carol Deutsch Dutch men and women belonged to the of Ingrid’s parents, Fela and Carol framework of his official during a period of 12 country’s Nazi party during the war, openly Deutsch, for over a year. duties, doggedly strove to months between collaborating with German authorities. In the last postcard he sent, for Ingrid’s preserve Jewish tradition 1941 and 1942. Despite this, Meir Villegas Henriquez, fourth birthday in the winter of 1943, Carol and strengthen Jewish Under the stressful from the Hague-based Jewish non-profit had written, “Father is very proud that his education. conditions of curfew he biblical series Center for Information and Documentation Ingrid is being such a good, sweet little on Israel (CIDI), said he wouldn’t want to and persecution, the found in the Antwerp girl. Love and kisses, Daddy.” Carol and T see a whole chapter in the school curricu- artist had produced apartment was Deutsch’s Fela were detained by the Gestapo and lum on Dutch Nazis. an oeuvre that proud- most significant work on sent to the Mechelen transit camp. “We’re here to educate, not blame,” the ly affirmed his Jewish Jewish themes. The paint- Ingrid and Regina returned home to delegation organizer said. One advantage identity – a patrimony ings abound in subjects, Antwerp in early 1945, after Belgium had Dutch teachers have over colleagues he devoted to his symbols and motifs drawn been completely liberated from German abroad, they all agreed, was the diary of young daughter. from Jewish sources, and occupation. A long time passed before Anne Frank. reflect a deep commitment they obtained information about Ingrid’s The 99 strikingly Her story, which is mandatory reading in painted gouaches to the tradition of Torah Dutch elementary schools, is still very parents. The tidings were bitter: Fela and Ornamented wooden box for storing depict the biblical study at the literal, exegetic useful in helping young pupils connect, Carol Deutsch had been deported on Bible illustrations, Antwerp, 1941-1942. scenes with a unique and mystical levels. the teachers said. According to Transport B22 in September 1943 from iconography and palette, reflecting the The biblical illustrations Deutsch Henriquez, Frank’s image is so indelibly Mechelen to Auschwitz, where Fela was bequeathed to his daughter exhibit excep- artist’s boldness and originality. The illustra- etched into Dutch psyche, that it can murdered. Carol had been transferred to tional vitality and constitute a stalwart tions combine Art Nouveau ornamentation sometimes overshadow current problems. Sachsenhausen and from there to expression of defiance to everything for with stylistic influences of the Bezalel “When our organization, CIDI, released its Buchenwald, where he had died of which the Nazis stood. This father’s inti- School, echoes of Deutsch’s 1936 visit to annual report last month on a 64-percent exhaustion in December 1944. mate and intellectual bequest to his the Land of Israel. In contrast to many other hike in anti-Semitic incidents, the study When Regina and her granddaughter daughter, donated to and displayed at Yad European artists, Deutsch places his bibli- received less exposure than the decision arrived at their apartment on Vashem’s Museum of Holocaust Art is to fell the tree outside Anne Frank’s hiding Consciencestraat, they discovered that cal figures in their native settings, illuminat- thus instilled in the collective legacy. Here, place,” he complained. the Nazis had confiscated their furniture ed by the special light of the Holy Land. visitors can appreciate the illustrations’ artis- “Her story is a big frame of reference, and valuables as part of the Möbelaktion, Carol Deutsch was a disciple of the well- tic quality first-hand and grasp the power of but the Netherlands still has a Jewish pop- a campaign of systematic looting known Belgian painter James Ensor, and the Jewish spirit and tradition that inspired ulation which is facing some challenges.” designed to transfer stolen Jewish proper- was particularly noted for his portraiture them. January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11

POLAND INVESTIGATES HAREDI HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE COMMUNIST-ERA Farbstein said some of the memoirs Ukraine, over whether it was permitted to ANTI-SEMITISM BY MATTHEW WAGNER, were surprising. For instance, Rabbi pose as a Christian to save one’s life. The oland wants to prosecute the THE JERUSALEM POST Ya’acov Avigdor, who eventually ended up rabbis debated whether Christianity was a Communist officials who used anti- in the US, reprinted his halachic treatise form of idol worship, and therefore posing P compilation of rabbinic literature Semitic propaganda in the late 1960s, driv- Helek Ya’acov, in 1950 with a long intro- written immediately after World War as a Christian was forbidden, even at the ing some 20,000 Jews into exile. A duction. A good portion of it is devoted to II that was recently released in CD-ROM price of giving up one’s life. The court Prosecutors from the state-run Institute of form is breaking misconceptions about ruled that not only was it permitted to pose National Remembrance, charged with the haredi approach to the Holocaust. as a Christian, it was also an act of brav- investigating the country’s communist past, Called “History of the Shoah in Rabbinic ery, since the reason for doing so was to announced Thursday that it had document- Literature’s Introductions,“ the CD-ROM preserve the Jewish people. ed evidence of anti-Semitic articles and contains prefaces and introductions to In another introduction, Rabbi Moshe speeches of former government leaders. about 100 books written by rabbis who Natan Lemberger of Hungary recounts how The maximum sentence for those found survived the Holocaust. The Conference he risked his life to obtain oil to light a guilty of propagating anti-Semitism crime on Jewish Claims Against Germany fund- hanukkia. He later debated whether it was is two years. ed the project. permitted to endanger his life for the oil. The institute plans also to conduct inter- “The common perception among Dr. Havi Dreifuss (formerly Ben- views with Jews who fled Poland in 1968- researchers of the Holocaust has been Sasson), a Mandel scholar at The Hebrew 69, when some Communist leaders used that the haredi community as a whole, and University of Jerusalem’s Scholion the 1967 Arab-Israeli War as a pretext to Institute, said study of the Holocaust in the rabbis in particular, remained silent about Haredi visitors look at a display in the Yad solidify power in an anti-Zionist campaign to haredi community had developed in the Holocaust,” said Esther Farbstein, an Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum. purge the party of its perceived critics. recent years. educator who teaches Holocaust studies rebuffing claims of Jewish passivity during Most of the Jews who fled applied for exit “Yad Vashem has created a special and trains teachers at Jerusalem College the Holocaust. He goes to great lengths to papers and fled the country at that time department for the haredi community and (Michlala Yerushalayim) and is the author explain why physical resistance was were Holocaust survivors and their children. textbooks dealing with the Shoah are of Hidden in Thunder: Perspectives on impossible. As part of the government anti-Zionist being learned in haredi schools,” he said. Faith, Halachah and Leadership during “This was at a time when even secular campaign, Jews were frequently fired However, Dreifuss said, the haredi the Holocaust. Israelis were just beginning to talk about from their jobs and accused of pro-Israeli “At first it was thought that rabbis who it,” Farbstein said. approach to history was fundamentally views, often pushed to publicly denounce had gone through the Holocaust simply ecular Zionists have made efforts to different from the secular approach. Israel. refrained from relating their experiences,” Semphasize the isolated incidents of “In haredi society, history is used as an Nearly all countries in the former com- she said. “They did not consider it appro- physical rebellion during the Holocaust, educational tool,” he said. “As a result, munist bloc broke off ties with Israel after priate for a rabbi, who is a public figure, to even setting Holocaust Remembrance historical truths that have negative mes- the 1967 war and adopted anti-Israel and write a personal memoir.” Day on the anniversary of the Warsaw sages are not taught. But unfounded or sometimes anti-Jewish policies. “But we soon began to discover a hid- Ghetto uprising. In contrast, haredim have false stories that have positive pedagogi- Former Polish Communist Party general den treasure of memoirs that were not tended to emphasize the spiritual courage cal or religious meaning will be.” secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka, who died written as separate books,” she added. of Holocaust victims. Dreifuss said the introductions included in 1982, had openly referred to Jews an “Rather, they were written as a preface or Avigdor also recounted the long discus- in the compilation were written by rabbis “imperialistically Zionist fifth column,” an introduction to legal treatises, exegesis sions that took place in a rabbinic court in immediately after the war, which gave which became a part of the party rhetoric or homiletics.” Drovitz, a town located in modern-day them particular importance. following the war. CHILD HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS MEET IN ISRAEL For Gorman, the memories were so tice,” she explained, citing their recent ini- His father died 11 years ago. BY ARON HELLER , AP painful she could not speak about her tiative to speak out on the Darfur genocide “The torch has been passed from my childhood for 50 years. She said she kept as an example. father to myself. It’s my job that his n 1939, 5-year-old Erna Blitzer left s Holocaust survivors grow older story, and others’ stories, are not for- France with her parents and older sis- them even from her husband and two I and their numbers diminish each gotten,” he said. ter for a vacation to visit relatives in sons until a news report about German A year, the organization has begun includ- For Gorman, whose father and sister Poland. They never made it home. skinheads pushed her to break her ing their children and grandchildren in the died years ago, the conference is an She was on the run from the Nazis for silence in the early 1990s. gatherings. opportunity to connect with those who can the next five years. During that time, she Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis Seltzer said Holocaust survivors and relate to her childhood. watched her mother die. Her father was during World War II, including 1.5 million their children often did not discuss the “I needed someone to understand me. I forced to witness the execution of his children. wife’s entire extended family and then bury them. Erna and her older sister survived by hiding in a barn in Ukraine, where they could not bathe for nearly two years. “When I was 10, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t walk,” she said. “I was a shell filled with lice and vermin.” Early November in Jerusalem, Blitzer, now Erna Gorman, joined dozens of other child Holocaust survivors to share stories and keep the memories alive. Participants at the conference also included the chil- dren of survivors, many of whom grappled with their parents’ pain as they grew up. About 800 survivors, along with their children and grandchildren, attended the A group of Holocaust survivors, and relatives of Holocaust survivors visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. annual gathering of the World Federation past as a means of mutual protection: The needed someone to fill in the gaps. I need- e call ourselves the last living wit- of Jewish Child Survivors of the parents didn’t want to tarnish their chil- ed to mesh my life together,” she said. nesses,” said Stefanie Seltzer, Holocaust. “W dren’s youth, and the children didn’t want Gorman, who lives in the Detroit area, 69, president of the umbrella organization, A cacophony of languages — English, to hurt their parents by pressing the started the Michigan chapter of the child which includes 64 groups of child survivors Hebrew, French, Yiddish — filled the painful memories. Now, the lines of com- survivors organization and now shares from more than 20 countries. “It seems so lobby of the Jerusalem hotel where partic- munications have improved. her stories with her family and others. unreal that we lived through this. It’s amaz- ipants attended lectures, workshops and The annual conference now bears the But for years, she longed to reunite with ing that we are here at all.” discussions aimed at reuniting long-lost all-inclusive title of “Holocaust survivors, a long-lost childhood friend with whom friends and guaranteeing their dramatic Seltzer, who was hidden by a Polish second and third generations, spouses she hid in Ukraine, and whose picture she tales outlive them. prostitute during World War II, established and families.” still carries in her purse. “Most of the children did not survive,” the organization in 1985 as a support net- Isaac Kot, 52, from Boston, said he Before her visit, Gorman tracked down said Gorman, 73. “Those of us who did work for survivors. Today, it includes thou- felt a responsibility to take part. His the woman in Israel and they got together were all helped by a Christian, by some- sands of members. Lithuanian father survived the ghettos for the first time in more than 60 years. one. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. At “We used to focus on our trauma, on our and the camps and then fought in the “We looked at the picture and we looked Auschwitz, the children were taken direct- experiences. Now it’s on projects of edu- resistance before emigrating to the at each other and we just knew,” she said, ly to the gas chambers.” cation, memorialization and social jus- U.S., where he remained mostly mum. tears welling in her eyes. Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 SECRET DIARY DETAILS HOLOCAUST WIESENTHAL CENTER AND NAZI CRIMES LAUNCHES “OPERATION: LAST CHANCE” keeping a secret diary, including eyewit- IN SOUTH AMERICA BY HELEN KENNEDY, DAILY NEWS ness accounts of atrocities and numerous much, “but it’s actually a lot [considering] newspaper clippings of events of the day. orty years ago, Scott Kellner’s BY HAVIV RETTIG, THE JERUSALEM POST the late date and bureaucratic obstacles,” soldier on vacation here said he ... FGerman grandfather gave him a says the center’s chief Nazi hunter, Efraim watched as naked Jewish men housands of Nazis estimated to sacred trust: the secret diary he had kept “A Zuroff. “The problem is not finding these and women were placed in front of a long, still be hiding in South America throughout World War II, detailing Nazi T people, but getting them into a courtroom. deep ditch and upon the order of the SS some 62 years after the fall of the Nazi atrocities. Political will is turning out to be more difficult Kellner is on a crusade to put a copy in were shot by Ukrainians in the back of regime may soon be brought to light as than finding information and catching the the hands of Iranian President Mahmoud their heads and they fell into the ditch. they become the next target of [suspects].” Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the Then the ditch was filled with dirt even as the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Holocaust as a “Zionist myth.” he could still hear screams coming from “Operation: Last “I see in him a would-be Hitler,” said people still alive in the ditch,” he wrote on Chance.” Kellner, 67, who spent 40 years translat- Oct. 28, 1940. According to ing the diary. By 1945, 676 entries filled 10 note- the center, which “My grandfather saw it as his duty to books. announced the write the diary against the terrorists of his To Friedrich Kellner’s distress, his son, launch of the time, and I see it as my duty to use that Fred, became an ardent Nazi, so he operation this shipped the teenager to week, the South New York to keep him American phase out of Hitler’s army. In will probably be New York, Fred Kellner the final major married a Jewish effort to locate woman, but soon aban- and bring to jus- doned her and their tice Nazis in hid- Most wanted Nazis: Upper row, from left: Alois Brunner, Aribert Heim, Ivan three kids. He eventual- ing scattered Demjanjuk, Milivoj Asner Bottom row, from left: Sandor Kepiro, Karoly ly killed himself. around the Zentai, Algimantas Dalide, Harry Mannil. Unable to deal with hile “the atmosphere is different three kids alone, Scott world. now, and there is less willingness Kellner’s mom left “Operation: Last Chance” offers W [than in the past] to give shelter to exposed them at a children’s money in exchange for information that Nazi war criminals” on the part of South home and became a helps find and prosecute former Nazis. It carnival dancer. was first launched in Lithuania, Latvia America’s center-left governments, “most In 1960, Scott Kellner and Estonia in July 2002, and spread to have not been willing to undertake compre- went AWOL from the countries throughout Europe, including hensive investigations to find Nazis,” Zuroff Anti-Nazi Friedrich Kellner and part of the diary he kept. Navy to go find the Germany, Poland, Hungary and Croatia. complains. Even so, “if we find the Nazis, today, they will extradite them.” diary in the fight against today’s terrorists. German grandparents It has brought forth some 488 suspected The truth is a weapon,” Kellner said. he never knew. When he located them, Nazi war criminals, of which 99 names Though it will probably be the last stage of Kellner’s grandfather, Friedrich Kellner, his grandfather showed him the diary he were submitted to local law enforcement the operation, it is an important one, “given was an evangelical Lutheran and member still kept hidden. in the countries where the suspects the large number of Nazi war criminals and of the anti-Nazi Social Democratic Party “When my grandfather stood against resided. The result so far has been three collaborators who escaped to South who risked much by denouncing Hitler at Adolf Hitler, not enough people stood with arrest warrants, two extradition requests America,” says Zuroff, who believes the political rallies. him,” he said. “I hope more people will and dozens of continuing investigations. operation “has the potential to yield impor- When the war began in 1939, he began take a stand against Ahmadinejad.” The final number may not sound like tant results.”

LOST HOLOCAUST SCORES GIVEN NEW LIFE MASS MURDER AS PARTY ENTERTAINMENT? Historians dispute the claim by a murdered everywhere at the time." Across the German Reich, Jewish prison- ike a detective, Albrecht Dumling British journalist that Nazi fanatics The murdered Hungarian Jews were ers were being driven westwards by their scours basements and dusty attics L attending a party near the Austro- forced laborers en route from Hungary to captors, who were fleeing Soviet forces. digging up the past. He travels the world Hungarian border in March 1945 killed Austria to build fortifications against the hunting for music hidden during Those incapable of carrying on were the Holocaust. 200 Hungarian Jews as an "additional advancing Red Army. But they were too killed. The killings at Rechnitz fit in with For nearly twenty years, this Berlin- entertainment" laid on by the hosts. sick and weak to carry on. that pattern. based music director has spent his The massacre did happen, though, and Garscha said that according to docu- hen the preparations for the exe- days finding works that died along with the circumstances surrounding it ments from an official investigation into W cutions had been made, at around their creators, and bringing them remain unclear. the case after the war, the victims were 11 p.m., local Nazi party chief Podezin back to life. row has broken out among histori- among thousands of Hungarian Jews who gathered a group of loyal Nazis who were During World War II, Germany’s Third Aans about one of the most spectac- were forced to work on the "Southeast at the party and ordered them to drive with Reich enforced a prohibition of all ular Nazi crimes committed in Austria. On Wall" fortifications along the Austro- him to a barn and kill the Jewish prison- music from Jewish composers. As musi- the night of March 24 to March 25, 1945, Hungarian border from autumn 1944 ers, according to the investigators. His cians were sent to concentration camps, some 200 Hungarian Jews were mur- onwards. orders were carried out. their scores were buried for safekeeping. dered in the Austrian town of Rechnitz n March 24 a train brought 600 of Litchfield's version can only be “We try to do some sort of justice to peo- near the Austro-Hungarian border. The Othese forced laborers from the town explained by speculation that those ple who have suffered so much bodies of the victims still haven’t been of Köszeg in neighboring Hungary to the accused of the massacre were lying when injustice under the Nazis,” says Dumling. found. town of Burg in the Burgenland region of they said Podezin had ordered them to He founded his organization, Musica The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Austria. Some 30 percent of them were commit the atrocity – by way of covering Reanimata, after seeing an opera, newspaper last week published an essay sick and weak and were transported to up the alleged connection to the party. “Kaiser of Atlantis,” written and staged by by British journalist David Litchfield, in Rechnitz where they arrived in the early Podezin disappeared in 1945 – presum- Victor Ullman while he was a which he claims that several guests at a evening. ably with the help of the countess. The prisoner in the Terezin concentration party held by Countess Margit von Meanwhile the countess was making bodies of the victims were apparently camp. Batthyany, born Thyssen-Bornemisza, in the final arrangements for her "followers' buried by 18 other Jewish prisoners who Dumling decided he wanted to give Schloss Rechnitz castle were offered the festival" which started at 9 p.m. The were themselves murdered the following other musicians a second chance. He chance to murder the Jews as an "addi- advancing Soviet Red Army was close to evening. admits that not all the works are master- tional entertainment" laid on by local Nazi Rechnitz. It wasn't unusual for Nazi offi- The case has been a political issue in pieces, but many carry compelling party chief Franz Podezin. The guests cials to hold raucous parties before the Austria for decades because many stories. accepted the offer, Litchfield wrote. impending defeat. Rechnitz residents boycotted the investi- He shares the story of composer But several historians are now disputing The killing of the Hungarian Jews in gation. One withness was even murdered Siegfried Borris, a Jew given shelter by a Litchfield’s version of events. Berlin-based Rechnitz had already been decided in 1946, and other witnesses died in mys- prominent Nazi official’s wife in Germany. anti-Semitism researcher Wolfgang Benz before the party began, according to the terious accidents. In the meantime, a Borris gave the couple’s daughter music says Litchfield is spreading "murmurings investigation by public prosecutors after commemorative society called Refugius lessons throughout the war, concealing and hearsay." 1945 which cited testimony from one of has been established in Rechnitz. Its his Jewish identity. Winfried Garscha of the respected the accused men. head, Paul Gulda, suspects that Litchfield Decades later, Dumling united Borris’ Documentation Centre of Austrian In addition, the driver who was to take wanted to attract attention with his sensa- daughter with the Nazi’s daughter Resistance: "It was indisputably a mass the victims to their execution had been tional version of events. for a public performance of his work. It murder, but it didn't arise from a party ordered for 9 p.m. At 10 p.m. other forced was a tearful meeting for them both. whim. People incapable of marching were laborers were taken to dig mass graves. First published in Spiegel online. January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13 FOOTPRINTS OF HOLOCAUST IN A BATTLE FOR LOST ART Hungarian courts. furniture, tapestries, sculpture, maybe Mrs. Nierenberg’s quest, narrowed to 11 BY PETER APPLEBOME, And it added another chapter to a dark 2,500 pieces at its peak. paintings she inherited, now valued at $15 THE NEW YORK TIMES story that reminds us that sometimes histo- In 1944, the Hungarian government million to $20 million, of course, is a tiny ry plays out like “Schindler’s List,” and began systematically cataloguing and whisper compared to the horrific roar that omething wonderful happened to sometimes, well, Mrs. Nierenberg hopes seizing the valuables of Hungarian Jews. was Auschwitz. She is a rich woman in a Martha Nierenberg in October 2000, S she’s around to see how it finally plays out. The Herzog collection was mostly hidden gorgeous modern home, full of other kinds when a trial court in Hungary said some- ’m 83; I guess they’re hoping they in the cellar of one of the family’s facto- of art — her husband’s photographs, thing very obvious. A fortune in artwork can wait me out,” said Mrs. ries, then found and taken directly to Adolf taken around the world, African masks, an had been stolen from her family at the “I Eichmann’s headquarters at the Majestic time of the German invasion of Hungary in Nierenberg, whose family, one of the rich- eclectic assortment of paintings. Hotel in Budapest for his inspection. Many 1944, which also ushered in one of the est and most powerful in Hungary before But, along with other claims large and pieces were shipped off to Germany, with most horrific chapters of the Holocaust. the war, fled the Holocaust in 1944. With small, it’s one of the most important Much of the art was hanging in plain view her husband, Ted, she went on to found a few left in Hungarian museums. Most of remaining claims asking for simple justice in the country’s two most prominent in the face of one of history’s most dread- museums. It should be given back to her, ful injustices. As always, there are legal the court said. The ruling was the second issues as precise as pinpricks. What is the in her favor, and it seemed definitive. effect of a 1959 payment of $169,827 by She went to Hungary to see the magnif- the Foreign Claims Settlement icent paintings by El Greco, Courbet, Van Commission of the United States for art- Dyck and others. There were celebrations work and real property to Mrs. and grand plans. After decades without Nierenberg’s mother? Exactly what futile hope of recovering the art, after frustrating but symbolic efforts should the family years of negotiations toward an amicable have made during Soviet rule to have settlement after the fall of the Soviet voided any statute of limitation issues for Union, it seemed a reminder that justice filing claims? could be slow, but when it arrived it was a Still, the United States Commission on blessed thing. Security and Cooperation in Europe, But, alas, it never arrived. The which has advocated on her behalf, man- Hungarian government, eager to keep the aged to cut to the chase in a letter last art, appealed the ruling. That led to new week. “Why would the Hungarian govern- trials and new arguments, each more ment insist on retaining custody of artwork Nierenberg at her home in Armonk, N.Y. Artwork that belonged to her family was stolen when stolen by the Nazis when it could return it legalistic and narrow than the one before. Germany invaded Hungary in 1944. So when she got more news recently it to its rightful owner?” the commission was not wonderful, but it was not unex- the Dansk housewares company, which the family escaped from Hungary, but the asked in a letter to Hungary’s foreign pected. Another Hungarian appellate was later sold. “Part of me is frustrated. world they knew was obliterated. affairs minister, Dr. Kinga Goncz. court in Budapest, ruled in favor of the Part is angry at the government there. It’s rom April 16 to July 19, 1944, half “Whether a court actually orders the the Jews of Hungary, some 427,000 government. It found that the government been a long time, but you keep on.” F return of these paintings or not, we urge people, were sent to Auschwitz. The had acquired the art through “prescrip- The collection dates to her grandfather your government to return to Mrs. Baron Mor Lipot Herzog, a banker in pre- slaughter moved Winston Churchill to Nierenberg without further delay the paint- tion,” the principle that by possessing the write to his foreign secretary, Anthony war Budapest. He assembled one of ings that were stolen from her family,” the property for long enough, it had gained Eden: “There is no doubt that this is prob- ownership of it. It was the fifth ruling in the Europe’s great private collections of art ably the greatest and most horrible crime letter said. case. It left Mrs. Nierenberg and her allies and the greatest in Hungary — works by ever committed in the whole history of the In the face of a nightmare of history, convinced that if she were ever to find jus- Velázquez and El Greco, modern art by world.” Maybe it’s been topped since. where justice can never be done, it doesn’t tice, it would not come through the Renoir, Monet and other Impressionists, Who knows? seem like so much to ask. But maybe it is. FIGHT FOR “HONOR” HUNGARY REFUSES TO PROSECUTE REVEALS A NAZI’S PAST NAZI WAR CRIMINAL document his experiences in tracking that same year, Kepiro was cleared by a MIKE LEIDIG, THE OBSERVER down partisans. BY ETGAR LEFKOVITS, Nazi-dominated military tribunal, which he couple spent 1942 rowing, din- THE JERUSALEM POST acquitted him and restored his rank. He former member of Hitler’s SS has ing out and staying in – and Urban went on to become the highest-ranking gone to court, claiming his reputa- T he Los Angeles-based Simon A fell pregnant. But Eick was posted to gendarmerie officer in the city and partic- tion has been ruined by a book – not Wiesenthal Center has renewed its Warsaw to guard the Jewish ghetto, the T ipated in the deportation of Jews to because it exposed his part in the call for Hungary to immediately prosecute Nazi way station for their extermination Auschwitz, the Wiesenthal Center said. Holocaust, but because it accused him of a top Hungarian war criminal who was camps. Urban had hoped they would After the war, Kepiro escaped to Austria abandoning a woman he had an affair never punished for his role in the mass marry, but Eick spurned her for a Polish where he lived for three years. Kepiro with when she became pregnant. murder of thousands of people during woman. For his illicit liaison, he says he then moved to Argentina, where he lived Erich Steidtmann, 92, was furious to be World War II, despite being convicted of was court-martialed, and ordered to serve for nearly half a century before returning portrayed as a philanderer. He launched war crimes more than six decades ago. on the Eastern Front. Nowhere does for- to Budapest, where he was tracked down a lawsuit in Leipzig saying his “honor had The organization’ s chief Nazi hunter, mer art teacher Urban refer to Eick as by the Wiesenthal Center. been besmirched” in the book An Dr. Efraim Zuroff, has lambasted as “a Steidtmann, but he recognized himself. travesty of justice” the Hungarian author- ast year, in a controversial ruling, a Ordinary Life He alleges Urban’s baby was not his Hungarian court decided not to In the resulting legal battle, he has ities’ delay in prosecuting Sandor Kepiro, L but “a cuckoo’s egg.” He added: “To claim 94, despite his past conviction in a enforce Kepiro’s six-decade-old convic- revealed himself as the last known sur- this of a captain of the uniformed police is tion. vivor of the SS squads to wipe out the Hungarian court for war crimes commit- such a reprehensible act that even at 92 I ted in World War II. The Hungarian government subse- Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. As the pub- have a right to protect my reputation.” quently opened a new murder investiga- lisher of the memoir and its author pre- “The problem, is they are acting as if In trying to preserve his reputation as they have all the time in the world, but we tion in the case last year. pared their defense, they found pictures an “honorable serviceman” ‘Eick’ outed really don’t have time,” Zuroff said. “What has to happen for justice to be of him at the center of one of the worst himself as the bodyguard of Juergen Kepiro was convicted in 1944 for his achieved?” Zuroff asked at a memorial crimes in history. Stroop, tasked by Hitler with destroying role in the murder of 1,246 civilians in the service in Serbia for the victims of the Steidtmann’s story surfaced because the ghetto after the Jews rose up in city of Novi Sad in January 1942, when 1942 mass murder. he happened to read the book by Lisl January 1943. Over four months, 13,000 he served as a gendarme with an “How is it possible that someone as Urban. A Sudeten German, she was a people were shot or burned to death and Hungarian army unit, the Wiesenthal obviously guilty as Kepiro, someone who secretary for the Gestapo in Prague, the remaining 50,000 sent to death Center said. was convicted for his role in 1944 by a described by her as a “hotbed of frivo- camps. After details of the massacres in the Hungarian court, is still a free man, walk- lous sexual encounters,” one of which Steidtmann was exonerated in a post- region – which Hungary had annexed as ing the streets of Budapest?” Zuroff said. she had with an SS man she nicknamed war trial as having “minimal involvement” a prize for its collaboration with Nazi Kepiro has denied the allegations against Eick, a police officer who, he claimed, in crushing the uprising, but the Simon Germany – were revealed, Kepiro was him, asserting that while he was present was drafted into the fighting arm of the Wiesenthal Centre in Israel is now press- sentenced in 1944 to 10 years in jail for at the Novi Sad massacres, it was SS. He was sent to Prague from the ing for him to be retried, claiming the trial his role in the killings. Hungarian soldiers – and not gendarmes Eastern Front for recuperation, and to did not know of his closeness to Stroop. But after the Nazi invasion of Hungary like him – who did the shooting. Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 YOKO ONO’S GLASSES “JEW” HAS BECOME CURSE WORD AMONG GERMANS GO TO HOLOCAUST SHOW erman schools are failing in educat- crematoriums of Auschwitz, the students students in both east and west Germany,” oko Ono has donated a pair of her Ging students about the Holocaust, a took more interest in the types of pipes said Gottfried Cosler, a Frankfurt-based Yown glasses to a Liverpool exhibi- new study by a political education center used to pump in the lethal Zyklon B gas, Holocaust scholar. tion to raise awareness of the Holocaust. has found, as German youth, who one and not the fate of the Nazis victims,” a Robert Sigel, a historian who con- The artist and widow of murdered historian said use the word “Jew” as a teacher was quoted as saying. tributed to the study, is of the opinion that Beatle John Lennon has also given a common curse in daily discourse, are In their words, this generation’s students students are taking a great interest in the £10,000 gift towards the staging of a num- increasingly distant from the suffering of are less sensitive to the horrors of the Holocaust, but that the methods in which ber of events surrounding National the victims of Nazism. Holocaust than any before. the subject is taught today are in need of Holocaust Memorial Day. According to a study commissioned by he research also examines the role improvement. Yoko Ono said: “It is an honor to be part the Federal Agency for Civic Education, a Tthat immigrants have played in the Susan Orban, a historian at Yad of such a symbolic piece of artwork which political education center known by its changing attitudes towards the Shoah. Vashem, says that the Holocaust should will help people to learn how important it is German acronym BPB, history courses no Experts are quoted in the study as saying be taught using methods that have proved never to forget the horrors of the longer manage to teach Germany’s that there is a marked rise in the number successful in the past. Holocaust and to challenge hatred and younger generation of the horrors of the of Muslims in Germany, many of whom “Today’s kids live in different times than prejudice wherever it arises. Nazis. see the teaching of the Holocaust as a that of Anne Frank,” Orban said. In order In the report, which appeared in the veiled endorsement of the policies of the to bridge the generational gap, she sub- German educational magazine Focus- state of Israel. mits a different approach, “for example, Shula, teachers are quoted as saying that “Out of fear of the students’ reactions, asking them to imagine that they have to they are having trouble impressing upon many of the teachers avoid teaching this abruptly leave their homes and start a school children the horrors of the chapter of history in order to not be new life elsewhere.” Such a method, Holocaust, and have stated that their tools viewed by some students as supporters of according to Orban, would speak more for teaching about the Shoah are not Israel.” directly to the children’s hearts and minds effective. “The word ‘Jew’ has turned into one of than descriptions of the horrors of the con- “The entire time we stood before the the most common curse words among centration camp. NAZI VICTIMS’ FUND PAYS MILLIONS They dated back to the 1940s and had EPCAP to return the funds to victims of BY ANGUS CRAWFORD, BBC NEWS details of money held in British bank the war and Yvonne made an application accounts belonging to her grandfather. for compensation. British scheme to return money Yvonne said they explained stories she In 2007, after years of letter writing she belonging to victims of the Nazis has A heard as a child growing up in Israel. received what she described as “a six fig- “That is why I am supporting this project paid out more than £21m, or 10 times its “My parents didn’t get any money when ure sum.” and I’m very pleased and very proud that budget. they were getting married. It was all She said the money corrects a mistake Liverpool is the focal point for National The Enemy Property Claims abroad,” she said of talk of missing family of history. Holocaust Memorial Day.” Assessment panel (EPCAP) was set up to Yoko’s glasses will form part of the monies. Lord Archer of Sandwell, chairman of help people who lived in enemy countries Yvonne’s grandfather was a successful the Epcap, said the panel went out of its RESPECtacles display at the Town Hall. and whose British bank accounts were Organizers hope thousands of people Jewish businessman living in Eastern way to compensate the families of frozen. will join Yoko Ono and other celebrity Europe and before war broke out, he had Holocaust victims and even extended its It was meant to end three years ago, but donors and hand over unwanted specta- stowed much of his money in British own mandate from 1999 to 2004, when it is still receiving applications. cles to the display. It will mirror one of the banks. officially ended. The monies include a “six-figure sum” poignant collections of personal belong- While he survived the war and later emi- “We bent over backwards to allow ings on show at the Nazi death camp paid to a woman whose Jewish grandfa- grated, he, like many Holocaust survivors, claims,” he said. “The government set Auschwitz. ther had his savings seized. never recovered his savings. aside £2m... but we’ve now compensated The project’s message is that everyone, “When my mother died, we cleaned the artime trading-with-the-enemy people to the extent of just under £22m.” particularly young people, can play their part house [and] I found some papers [that] W laws meant the property belong- The panel is still receiving about 20 new in genocide prevention simply by having, looked very funny,” said Yvonne, who ing to anyone living in an enemy country claims a year and continues to consider showing and insisting on respect for other does not want her real name used. was confiscated and would not be given them on an ad hoc basis. In total, 400 human beings and for their differences. The mysterious-looking documents, back. claims were successful. Organizers have already collected 1,000 found by chance, could only be read when After the war, assets confiscated from Greville Janner, Lord Janner of pairs of glasses to start off the collection. held up against a mirror. affected countries were shared out among Braunstone who campaigned for the Following the exhibition, the collected “They were photographed in a mirror, British people whose own assets had scheme to be set up in the first place, said glasses will be donated through Vision Aid black paper and white letters,” Yvonne been confiscated by the enemy countries. the reparations paid by UK taxpayers are Overseas to those with poor eyesight in said of the papers. In 1999 the British government set up a matter of justice. the developing world.

GERMAN ARCHIVES’ OPENING THE NAZI CONNECTION TO ISLAMIC TERRORISM HELPS ISRAELI MAN (Continued from page 4) elled on the Nazi Party were set up in Egypt, he was installed as a guest of honor who Tel Aviv and Jaffa, as well as Jews living Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. frequently met with Hitler, and was present TRACK HIS FATHER’S DEATH in the countryside. The ancient Jewish n August 1995, a graduating class of at the 1942 Wannsee Conference where (Continued from page 10) community of Hebron was destroyed. IPalestinian Authority cadets, who the “Final Solution” to the Jewish question “This story demonstrates how the tens fter the massacre of the Hebron would later engage in the mass slaughter was adopted. Al-Husseini organized SS of millions of documents collected by the A Jews, al-Husseini disseminated of Jewish men, women and children, Brigades of Muslims from the Caucasus, Yad Vashem archives, in conjunction with photos of the slaughtered Jewish corpses marked the occasion with a Nazi-style the Middle East and Bosnia, including the the millions of new documents that have with the claim that the dead where actual- straight Sieg Heil salute. Fawzi Salim al- infamous Hansar Brigades of Bosnian recently arrived, and will arrive from the ly Arabs killed by Jews! This type of blood- Mahdi, a commander of Fatah’s Force 17, Muslims, which killed thousands of Serbs, International Tracing Service archive in libel is today frequently used against Arafat’s elite Praetorian Guard, which Roma and Jews. He is reported to have Germany over the next two years, will be Israel by the Palestinian Authority by the would play a key role in suicide bombings, visited Auschwitz and urged the SS able to help individuals fill in the picture Axis of Islamists and the International was known as Abu Hitler, because he guards there to be more diligent in their about the fate of their loved ones in the Left, and is widely disseminated in the named his two sons Eichmann and Hitler. work of extermination. In 1943, he inter- Holocaust.” media and universities worldwide. As In 1936, al-Husseini made contact with ceded with Hungarian authorities to pre- Yad Vashem had previously received Morse points out, “The preposterous and the German Nazis, and with their backing vent 900 Jewish children from being many documents from the International quite bizarre proposition presented today launched the Arab revolt, in which thou- shipped to Palestine. The children were Tracing Service, but will be bolstering its is that the State of Israel and its armed sands of Jews were butchered to the chill- instead sent to Auschwitz, where they per- collection over the next two years. Bar- forces are deliberately and knowingly ing cry of ‘Itbach al Yahud’ (‘Kill the Jews’). ished. After World War II, al-Husseini Yoda had looked through the Yad Vashem killing innocent Palestinian Arabs.” Such In 1937, al Husseini met with Adolf escaped to Egypt and organized the Arab archives, which include microfilm of some propaganda serves the same purpose Eichmann in a cordial meeting that would war effort to destroy the tiny fledgling 20 million documents received from the today as it did in the time of al-Husseini, cement the al-Husseini-Hitler alliance. State of Israel. He formed a band of Arab tracing service at the end of the 1950s. not to mention mediaeval times, namely Eichmann reported glowingly of the “nation- terrorists, called the Jihad Muqqadas, However, the Majdanek document did not as a means of fanning the flames and al and racial conscience” among the Arabs who launched attacks on Jewish civilians. reach the Bad Arolsen archives until the hatred, and stoking the fires of genocide, of Palestine, who hung swastikas and por- Until his death in 1974, and his succes- mid-1960s. against the Jews. traits of Hitler in their homes. sion by his nephew Yasser Arafat, al- Family members of Holocaust After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, That year, the mufti fled from the British Husseini continued to devote his life to the victims can request information on al-Husseini proceeded to set up a to Lebanon, and thence to Iraq. After destruction of Israel. the fate of their loved ones at Palestinian Arab Youth Group, known as the organizing a failed pro-Nazi coup in Iraq, The evil of al-Husseini and Hitler lives on in www.yadvashem.org. Nazi Scouts. Other Arab organizations mod- al-Husseini fled to Nazi Germany, where the terror and Propaganda war against Israel. January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 JOY IN DACHAU daughters were burned in the Amalekites’ erudite analysis of Jewish books before, figures who survived Dachau, their BY SHIRA LEIBOWITZ SCHMIDT, furnace. Of all the rabbis of Lithuania, not during, and after the Holocaust. hunger for food is blatant. More difficult to THE JERUSALEM POST one remains.” Before the Holocaust, the bookcase discern is their hunger for books. As I sat His youngest daughter had been born in formed the heart of Jewish homes. The here I sat in the Holocaust archives in those archives I held in one hand an the Kovno ghetto “with a birthmark on her study, and even care, of religious books of Yeshiva University. I started to cry order for victuals: sardines – 4,000 cans; T back, a yellow Star of David.” He had hid- was given priority. You don’t place any- as I picked up one page from the box chocolate – 5,000 bars; rice – 2,000 lbs.; den in a bunker with her, his middle thing on top of a book, do not sit on it, and labeled “1945” from the section on the prunes – 1,000 lbs.; farina – 2,000 lbs. daughter, and others. Tragically the infant you kiss it if it falls. A person carrying Orthodox Va’ad Hatzolah Rescue In the other hand, I held the order for died in his arms when she cried and was books in a narrow passage has the right of Committee’s activities in the Displaced books: Pessah hagadot – 1,000; daily smothered for fear of giving away every- way. Rescuing books from fire and water Persons (DP) Camps. The librarian prayer books –3,000; Bibles – 800; mish- one else, and the middle daughter was takes precedence over other valuables. thought I must have come across a nayot – 800, and smaller numbers of more brutally taken away. His wife and eldest Before the war, the Nazis bragged about description of starvation, or the death of a esoteric works. child were mur- destroying Jewish child, and came to see what was on the I could envision Slapobersky, who dered else- books. Those volumes page that I was holding. established a yeshiva and rabbinical court where. While in they did not burn, “What is so emotional about that?” she in the DP camp, lobbying for books slave labor, he beginning in 1935, asked incredulously. because the scarce monetary resources was forced to they collected in had to be divided among competing “That” was an order form for books for make tefillin “Operation Rosenberg,” the DP camps in Germany. But it repre- needs: medicine, food, clothing – and straps into shoe in which they confis- books. sented a whole world lost – and the strug- cated over a million straps. “How great was the yearning and thirst gle to regain it. I recollected this episode “All that has books, storing them in for books. The books from overseas did as January 27, World Holocaust Memorial happened to me a five-storey concrete not arrive quickly, and if a book did come, Day commemorating the liberation of is not fit to write structure in Offenbach hundreds of hands reached out for it,” Auschwitz, approached. on a paper,” he for what was to be wrote another Dachau rabbi, Shmuel Not all Jews were liberated that day. said. proof of the urgency Rose. After the liberation of Auschwitz, the war The letter from Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945. to extirpate not just The survivors prevailed upon the and the killing of Jews continued. Dachau Dachau continues. “For now the the Jews, but Judaism, as represented American authorities, with the assistance was liberated only on April 29, 1945. Hitler Americans are supporting us, and flesh by its books. died a day later, and the Axis surrendered and skin have formed on the dry bones uring the worst moments in the of the Joint Distribution Committee, to on May 8. Auschwitz was liberated early, with which we were left.” Ddeath camps, Jews took risks to publish several Talmud tractates for use in since it was in Poland; Dachau, in A sad letter, but not remarkable. At least obtain books, or even pages of books. the DP camps. The title page was illustrat- Germany, much later. so I thought until I read Esther Farbstein’s David Weiss Halivni, a scholarly 16-year- ed by an image of a wagon loaded with That archived list of books reflected the analysis, which mines this short epistle to old, saw an Auschwitz guard lunching on bodies for the crematoria, along with a ris- tragedy and hope of those survivors. plumb the critical role of books for this a sandwich wrapped in a page of the ing sun over Jerusalem, and the phrase: I had embarked on my own archival lonely scholar, and, by extension, for his Shulhan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law). “They almost wiped me out, but I did not research on survivors after reading the lonely people. “I fell at the feet of the guard; the mere abandon your commandments.” magnum opus of Esther Farbstein, ith a historian’s keen eye, letters propelled me. With tears in my In that modest letter postmarked from Hidden in Thunder: Perspectives on Faith, WFarbstein zeroes in on key sen- eyes, I implored him to give me this page Dachau, Rabbi Slapobersky left us a Halachah and Leadership during the tences that unlock the past and future of from a book I had studied at home. The record of how much joy – “great joy” – one Holocaust. In the final chapters, which Rabbi Slapobersky: “We have no religious page became a rallying point. We looked book brought him after liberation. In addi- deal with liberation and life in the DP books here. Just the other day an forward to studying it whenever we had tion, re-instilling the love of learning in the camps, she analyzes a short letter written American rabbi brought us some tractates free time.” camp yeshiva, he served as a religious in the summer of 1945 by a survivor in of Talmud, and I felt great joy.” “Lliberation found the Jews cut off from court judge and was especially involved in Dachau two months after his liberation. If one volume was the occasion for great their entire previous world – and bereft of freeing agunot (women whose husbands Rabbi Mordechai Slapobersky had writ- joy in the Dachau DP camp, I could imag- the Hebrew book,” observes Farbstein. had been lost in the inferno), enabling ten to his brother in Jerusalem, describing ine the ecstasy that the order form I was Ironically, the first books to arrive were them to remarry. his plight. “Thank God, I am alive. God holding was able to bring: it meant whole from the Offenbach collection. There were He moved to Israel in 1946, where he has rescued me from the lion’s mouth. But shelves of religious books had been req- even Torah scrolls in Offenbach, still open married a survivor and served as rabbi in what am I when I am the only one left of uisitioned for the survivors. to the Torah portion that had been read a moshav near Rehovot. He and his sec- my entire family? I haven’t heard from my Farbstein uses Slapobersky’s phrase – the week the scrolls were confiscated. ond wife did not have children. Rabbi wife and eldest daughter. My other two “I felt great joy” – as a springboard for an When we view photographs of famished Slapobersky died 1967.

“WITNESS” IS A CHILLING REMINDER AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM OF THE UNIMAGINABLE MOURNS THE DEATH OF MILES LERMAN (Continued from page 7) everyone approved. “The idea that we can iles Lerman, who helped found the His initiative also led to the creation of the and early ‘60s, with the release of “The re-create the event . . . is in many ways a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Diary of Anne Frank” and “Judgment at desecration,” says writer-professor Thane M and for three decades was a vital contrib- Jewish Resistance, a part of the museum’s Nuremberg.” (Sadly, the film doesn’t Rosenbaum. utor to its success, died on January 22 in Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. mention Sam Fuller’s 1959 B movie Counters historian Neal Gabler, Philadelphia at the age of 88. Lerman was born in Tomashov, “Verboten!,” one of the first to incorporate “Hollywood is the means by which most A Holocaust Poland, in 1920. In 1942 he escaped newsreel footage of Nazi atrocities). In the people, for better or worse, come to terms survivor and par- from a slave labor camp after killing his studios’ defense, even death-camp sur- with the Holocaust.” In the post- tisan fighter dur- guards with a shovel. Lerman went on vivors didn’t want to talk about what they’d ”Schindler” universe, the question isn’t ing World War II, to join a resistance group formed by experienced. whether to tell the story, but which story to Lerman was other escapees, and for the next two It was the upstart TV networks that first tell, and how to tell it. “Imaginary Witness” involved with the years waged a guerrilla campaign broke ground. “Judgment,” was originally touches on some of the films that have Holocaust muse- against the Nazis. a “Playhouse 90” presentation (with the since come out, including Roman In June 1944, Lerman was liberated by um almost from words “gas chambers” bleeped out so as Polanski’s 2002 “The Pianist” but not Tim the Soviet army and returned to Poland. its inception. not to offend the sponsor, a utilities com- Blake Nelson’s “The Grey Zone,” made He and his wife, Chris, also a survivor, President pany) and Anker unearths a mind-blowing the same year and perhaps the most immigrated to the United States in 1947 Carter appoint- 1953 “This Is Your Life” episode featuring unblinking stare into the machinery of and settled in Vineland, N.J., where ed him to an Holocaust survivor Hannah Bloch Kohner state murder put on film. Lerman became successful in the home advisory board – reality TV to singe your eyeballs. That’s an omission, as is the failure to heating oil business. s “Imaginary Witness” tracks the confront “Holocaust fatigue” – the dilution of the president’s Commission on the By the time Lerman stepped down as Agradual emergence of the Holocaust of impact that comes when a profound Holocaust, which recommended creating chairman of the Holocaust museum, it had in pop culture through the ‘60s, ‘70s, all subject surges in commercial popularity. the museum in Washington. Lerman was grown into a major Washington tourist the way to the inevitable apotheosis of “It’s not that it was bad; it just wasn’t good subsequently appointed to the governing stop, having attracted some 14 million vis- 1993’s “Schindler’s List,” Anker switches enough,” says Gabler, recounting some council by three American presidents, itors in its first six years of operations. The gears. Can the unknowable be put on critics’ response to the NBC miniseries. and served for a total of 23 years. overwhelming majority were non-Jews film? Should it be? Elie Wiesel blasted the That challenge matters more than ever. Lerman is credited with leading the Besides the museum, Lerman was 1978 NBC miniseries “Holocaust,” as a By far the worst thing that could happen to early fund-raising efforts and negotiating involved in the construction of a memori- trivialization, but the clips of a later minis- Holocaust movies is for them to become international agreements that helped the al in Belzec, Poland, where some half- eries, 1988’s “War and Remembrance,” familiar. One could argue they already museum acquire artifacts for its perma- million Jews were murdered, including are shocking in their explicitness. Not have, even if this documentary doesn’t. nent exhibition. members of Lerman’s family. Page 16 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2008 - Shevat/Adar I 5768 MEMORY OF HOLOCAUST VICTIMS HONORED THROUGH SERIES OF UN EVENTS ad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ highest ethical code in the country. International Day has become an ongoing n Vienna, UN staff marked the Day at Yand Heroes’ Authority, Jerusalem; The other segment, “Carl Lutz and the process in an outreach program, whereby Ia solemn ceremony which brought American and International Societies for Legendary Glass House in Budapest,” people worldwide were taught the lessons together representatives of the Jewish Yad Vashem, New York; Carl Lutz highlights the work of the Swiss diplo- and horrors of the Holocaust and made to community, the Romanis and other Foundation, Budapest; The Permanent mat who issued certificates of emigra- become part of the army of goodwill, com- affected groups, as well as politicians, Mission of Albania, Hungary and tion to tens of thousands of Jews, thus mitted to the words “never again.” the diplomatic community, students and Switzerland to the United Nations come saving many of them from near-certain s part of the activities to mark the civil society. together to organize an exhibit opening extinction. A Day, General Assembly President A key feature of the event was the Srgjan Kerim took part in an event at the unveiling of a reproduction of a series of Consulate General of Italy in New York at postcards depicting life in a labor camp,

Kiyotaka Akasaka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem, Norman Gershman, Photograher who documented the Albanian Muslims featured in the BESA Inc, and Dr. Elizabeth Mundlak Zborowski, Cultural Director at the American Society for Yad exhibit along with Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem, at the opening of BESA – A CODE OF HONOR: Muslim Albanians who Saved Jews Vashem, Inc and Dr. Elizabeth Mundlak Zborowski, Cultural Director at the American Society for During the Holocaust exhibit at the United Nations. New York City, January 29, 2008. Yad Vashem at the opening of BESA – A CODE OF HONOR: Muslim Albanians who Saved Jews. and reception in observance of the Ambassador Dan Gillerman of Israel which he read the names of the Jews originally created by Holocaust victim Karl International Day of Commemoration in voiced appreciation for the fact that the deported from Italy and the former Italian Schafranek in Eisenerz, Styria in 1940. Memory of the Shoa. Assembly’s resolution designating the territories. They are now on display for the first time The Holocaust demonstrated that since being smuggled out of the camp. human beings are capable of great cruel- The exhibition also included paintings by ty, but also of great courage and strength Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the face of evil, Secretary-General Ban Adolf Frankl, as well as by Dvora Barzilai Ki-moon declared today at the opening of from the Exhibition “Shalom Peace Pace.” a new United Nations exhibit focusing on In Brazil, an observance was held with the courageous men and women who President Jose Inacio Lula da Silva and helped rescue Jews during World War II. the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, César Maia. “Today, we honor the victims and sur- In Madagascar, a permanent exhibit on vivors of the Holocaust and those who the Holocaust will be unveiled at the UN protected and saved lives,” Mr. Ban said Information Centre. in a message, delivered by Under- The Holocaust and the United Secretary-General for Communications Nations Outreach Program also coor- and Public Information Kiyotaka Akasaka. dinated a video conference for stu- The two-part exhibit, entitled “The dents with the UN information centers Holocaust – Stories of Rescue,” tells in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and the story of individuals who stood up to Lomé, Togo, and educators at the rescue Jews “when so many others “Memorial de la Shoah” in Paris. In turned a blind eye, or collaborated in Tokyo on 29 January, an educational the murder of Jews and other minori- workshop targeting young students ties,” stated Mr. Ban. focused on the links between the One segment, “BESA – A Code of Holocaust and human rights issues. Honor,” features an account of Muslim This year’s observance focuses on the Albanians who rescued Jews during the need to ensure the protection of human Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem, Inc and Dr. Holocaust. Their courageous actions Elizabeth Mundlak Zborowski, Cultural Director at the American Society for Yad Vashem seated rights for all, and coincides with the 60th were grounded in BESA, a code of among the dignitaries and over 400 guests who attended the opening of BESA – A CODE OF anniversary year of the adoption of the honor, which still today serves as the HONOR: Muslim Albanians who Saved Jews During the Holocaust Exhibit at the United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Martyrdom & Resistance International Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. Eli Zborowski, Editor-in-Chief MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE U.S. POST Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Editor 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR, PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. *Published Bimonthly by the NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 PERMIT NO. 10 International Society for Yad Vashem, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor New York, NY 10110 (212) 220-4304 EDITORIAL BOARD Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura Israel Krakowski William Mandell Sam Halpern Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org