AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM Vol. 44-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2018-Shevat/Adar 5778 SIX MILLION VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED Warsaw — Elderly Holocaust sur- the Yad Vashem IRemember Wall this from the Holocaust” is an online exhi- chatter. You have already said every- vivors, wearing striped scarves that year. This annual social media cam- bition staged by the Yad Vashem thing and left me no room. recalled their uniforms as prisoners of paign is a unique and meaningful World Holocaust Remembrance “On this occasion, mother watered Nazi Germany, made a yearly pilgrim- opportunity for the public to partici- Center in Jerusalem. the letter with her tears. age to Auschwitz on January 27, pate in a unique commemorative The center holds thousands of mis- “The situation is now pretty bad exactly 73 years after the Soviet army activity to mark International sives from the doomed and will grad- because we have been imprisoned in liberated the death camp in occupied Holocaust Remembrance Day. By ually publish them over the coming the so-called Jewish quarter. Also at Poland. joining the IRemember Wall, the par- months. home a lot has changed. We now live On the date now commemorated as ticipant's Facebook profile is random- In one such letter, Perla Tytelman in the bedroom [of the parents]. What International Holocaust Remembrance ly linked to the name of a Holocaust writes along with her son Samuel and do I do, you know? I have to come to Day, political leaders and Jewish the end. officials warned that the Nazi “Remember, the most impor- genocide must never cease serv- tant thing is not to take anything ing as a reminder of the evil of to heart and persevere. Then which humans are capable. we will definitely meet again.” In Warsaw, Poland, U.S. The letter was sent in the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson autumn of 1941. All three would attended a solemn ceremony at a later perish in the ghetto, a fact memorial to the Jews who died that Jozef and Rachel would not fighting the German forces in the learn until after the war. Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943. *** The head of Warsaw’s Jewish Staring at grainy video footage community read a prayer, and of Jewish children marching to Tillerson made brief remarks their freedom though the about the importance of not for- barbed-wire fences of the getting the horrors of the Auschwitz death camp, 79-year- Holocaust. old Vera Kriegel Grossman “On this occasion, it reminds us excitedly points a finger at the that we can never, we can never, screen upon identifying a dark- be indifferent to the face of evil,” haired girl in a dirty striped uni- Tillerson said. form as her 6-year-old self. “The Western alliance which “I can’t believe that happened emerged from World War II has to me. I wasn’t a child there. I committed itself to ensuring the Survivors and guests walk past the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate at the former Nazi German concentration camp on was all grown up ... it was like I Oswiecim security of all, that this would International Holocaust Remembrance Day in , Poland, Saturday, January 27, 2018. was 100 years old.” never happen again,” he said. “As we victim from Yad Vashem's Central daughter Rega from the Warsaw Archival footage shot by Auschwitz’s mark this day in solemn remem- Database of Shoah Victims' Names. ghetto to her husband, Jozef, and Soviet liberators is part of the Yad brance, let us repeat the words of our *** other daughter Rachel, who managed Vashem Holocaust memorial’s latest own commitment: Never again. Never Some of the most heartbreaking let- to flee to Siberia. exhibition, ahead of International again.” ters ever penned - written by Nazi vic- The letter reads: 'I am drawing on all Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jerusalem — In honor of tims to loved ones they would never my strength in order to survive for exploring the power of photography International Holocaust see again - have been published you. during World War II. The 1,500 photo- Remembrance Day nearly 8,000 peo- ahead of World Holocaust Day. “But you, my beloved ones, have to graphs and 13 films displayed come ple from 193 different countries joined “We Shall Meet Again - Last Letters prove your bravery, you have to prove from various perspectives, those of that you are capable of overcoming victims and perpetrators alike, and this undeserved punishment and the look to offer today’s media-saturated wanderings with strength and dignity. visitors a new angle for looking at the IN THIS ISSUE “You should be consoled by the horrors of the Holocaust. International Holocaust Remembrance Day...........................................1, 8-9 thought that this has to end some- Photography, perhaps more than We knew, but failed to stop the Holocaust....................................................3 time, and that then we will once again anything else, has come to shape our Wordwings.......................................................................................................4 be happy together. Our yearning for memory of the Holocaust. The Nazi havens in South America........................................................................6 each other knows no bounds.” “Flashes of Memory” exhibit also The Italian Wallenberg.....................................................................................7 Rachel then adds her news to the offers a glimpse behind the lens — The post-Holocaust pogrom that Poland is still fighting over...................10 letter, before saying she has to make showing the actual cameras used, the Holocaust suitcase packs stories of survival.............................................11 room for Samuel, who is complaining photographers who took the pictures Irish aid worker who saved children from Auschwitz.................................12 there is no space left to write. and their various motivations. Secret anti-Nazi diary gives voice to man on the street............................14 Samuel says: “I write last, so that the “The exhibit is aimed at the brain, How artist beat foolproof Nazi system to save 350 lives...................................15 ladies signed above have time to (Continued on page 8) Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 IN THE SHADOW OF AUSCHWITZ, JEWISH LIFE ONCE FLOWED WITH SPIRITS to a local Jewish community, which Haberfeld trapped abroad, little tillery, archeologists broke ground at BY MATT LEBOVIC, purchased the adjacent building and Francziska was murdered at Belzec, the site of the former Great THE TIMES OF ISRAEL created the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the first of six Nazi death camps to Synagogue. Among more than 400 an impressive synagogue-museum operate with stationary gassing facili- objects pulled from the grassy slope lthough its name later became complex. ties. in 2004, decorative motif fragments synonymous with the A Although relatively few of the two n 1967, more than two decades evoked the the vast, storied complex, Holocaust, the Polish town Oswiecim million annual visitors to Auschwitz- after rebuilding their lives in the burned down by the Nazis in 1939. — or Auschwitz, in German — once I Birkenau make their way into the his- United States, Alfons and Felicia According to one tale from Jewish brimmed with Jewish culture. The rise toric core of Oswiecim, there are tan- Haberfeld made a return trip to Oswiecim, the Great Synagogue was and fall of the community’s buildings talizing objects from the town’s Oswiecim. The distillery was under a place where worshipers could com- left behind evocative relics, a few Jewish past on display at the shul- state ownership, and Haberfeld mune with souls of the dead who dozen photographs and many tales of museum complex. The collection the town’s special place in Polish- includes ritual objects from the Jewish history. destroyed Great Synagogue, where Jews first settled in Oswiecim, west — legend has it — the souls of of Krakow, about 400 years ago. By departed Jews performed a “death the eve of the Holocaust, they made dance” with the living. up half the town’s population of Among artifacts presented at the 10,000 people. The community put up Auschwitz Jewish Center, a selection of liquor bottles from the world-renowned Haberfeld distillery stands out. In 1804, Jakob Haberfeld opened a “steam vodka & liquor fac- tory” near a bridge cross- ing the Sola River. An early factory in Poland, the Jewish-owned outfit produced vast amounts of In Oswiecim, Poland, a water well is used in front of the so-called “Auschwitz Synagogue” near the vodka, rum and juices. center of town, during the interwar period. Next to the distillery was a 40-room family mansion, House was in disrepair, they noted occasionally gathered to pray there. Haberfeld House, one of with sorrow. Disturbingly, a new wave One night long ago, it was said, the Ritual objects from the Great Synagogue of Oswiecim in Poland, on display at the Auschwitz Jewish Center. the town’s architectural of anti-Semitism was forcing Shoah souls of Oswiecim’s deceased Jews icons. survivors and their children to flee returned to the synagogue for more than 20 synagogues, famous Years before World War II, the Poland only one generation after the Simchat Torah. Hearing strange nois- schools and one of Poland’s first fac- Haberfeld family had a railroad spur Holocaust. es coming from the fortress-like build- tories. Oswiecim was known as “not a built to a marshy region outside town, The trip to Poland was too much to ing after midnight, people went to bad place” to live for Jews; indeed, where river gravel for the distillery bear for Alfons Haberfeld. investigate. Suddenly, the Great the Yiddish name for the town was was plentiful. Later, during the Nazi “Emotionally devastated” by the Synagogue filled with light, and a rev- Oshpitzin, which comes from the occupation of Poland, the tracks were encounter, he died three years later, elation was made.