January 2004 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 TRIBUTE TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS HELD IN WASHINGTON For the first time in 10 years, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum closed its doors to In the basement of the museum is a photo display of the recent genocide in Rwanda and the public to pay tribute to the survivors. More than 7,000 people from all over the world Bosnia-Herzegovina. Other survivors, like Dr. George Schwab, a foreign policy expert in took part in an event that celebrated Holocaust survivors’ Manhattan, emphasized the future. “It’s important not only as lives and the 10th anniversary of the opening of the United a memorial,” Schwab said, “but also as an opportunity to learn, States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and to prevent something like this from happening again.” Nearly a third of those present were survivors like Joe and Julie Hantman, whose grandfather’s family was killed Ella Brandt, who said it was an important gathering because in the Holocaust, said she was having a hard time being at the time is running out. “We are all getting older. In order to museum and had to leave a tour that her mother, a museum prevent the bigotry and hatred that still exists today, we have volunteer, gave earlier this year. Hantman revealed the tension to come out and talk about it,” said Joe. between hope and horror, which she feels when thinking about For every attendee, the experience was different. the Holocaust. “It’s challenging to feel like I can own this After 65 years of searching for someone who knew history,” she said.” I haven’t dealt with it…I have a lot to about the deaths of her parents and sister, Leah Gutman found learn.” FOR POSITION closure. Gutman, a Glenview, Illinois resident, didn’t want Hilda Stern, a passenger on the ill-fated St. Louis and an to come to the Tribute. But at the last minute, she cancelled 80-year-old survivor from Chicago area, attended out of a a trip to Israel and decided to see if she could find a lost link sense of duty to serve as eyewitnesses to the past. “We have to her family. She patiently sat at the Bialystock table in the to pay tribute. It’s the least we can do for the families we lost Survivor Village when a woman asked, “Did you know Chja and for ourselves.” Grochowska?” As time marches on relentlessly, Holocaust survivors “That,” said Gutman “was my sister.” The woman met are beginning to tell the stories they have repressed for most Chja in a ghetto after Gutman had fled to Palestine. of their post-war lives. Stern’s daughter, Debra Green, feels ONLY “I cannot wait to call my brother,” Gutman said. “To hear a responsibility to learn all she can in order carry the memory someone that knew her story, her name. There were forward. assumptions in the past, but this was news from her best Miriam Kaufman says, “Having parents and many girlfriend. Finally, I know.” relatives that are survivors made this an intense and incredible “It was an unforgettable weekend,’’ said Agatha experience. The wave of emotions went from one extreme Neumann, who emigrated from post-war Hungary to the to another. My sister is from Los Angeles, I’m from San United States in 1956. It was her first visit to the museum. Diego and we met our mother from Cleveland in “Every time I saw a corpse I couldn’t help but think that maybe Washington. Many of our relatives and their children came it was my father,’’ said Neumann, who has never verified how as well from Cleveland, Columbus, Florida and Los Angeles. her father died. “I was impressed by the many survivors I met and heard Neumann and her mother, Elizabeth Schwartz, avoided experiences from. All of them were awesome. Their a similar fate by being hidden. While at the museum, accomplishments, strides and strength gave me chills. The Neumann was delighted to meet the niece of Swedish war museum, the dinner, the speakers, the survivors, the 2G’s hero Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg most likely provided and 3G’s all made this unforgettable. I would not have missed the false Swedish passports that Neumann and her mother this experience for anything. I will treasure it forever.” had obtained at one point. Leon Shear, 76, of South Euclid, Ohio, who was 12 when the Nazis plucked him from his “I felt this time I had to go,” said Eddie Weinstein. “Because I am getting old.” family in Poland, was there. He saw his mother and sister in Auschwitz several years later just Weinstein wandered the tent, slowly, with a cardboard placard resting on his chest. It before they were gassed. His sister was just 13. He prays for people to be good to each other. read: “I am looking for people who escaped from Treblinka.” “I didn’t find one person,” said “That there will be no more wars, no more suffering.” Weinstein, whose story of escape from the Polish extermination camp has been documented “Look what happened in Chechnya,” said Shear. “Look what’s happening in Yugoslavia. Look in a book, Quenched Steel. what happens anywhere in the world, look around, in Asia, that people are still killing because they “It was totally overwhelming,” said Rabbi Jay Miller of San Mateo, Calif. He happened have a certain belief, because what they don’t want others to learn. It’s not 1940. We’re talking to be in Washington and was one of the few in attendance whose family had not been directly 2004.” affected by the Holocaust. “It’s an incredible lineage we all share,” said Helen Burstin of Washington, who came with At one of the oral history sessions, Marlene Rubenstein and her children, all from her parents, both survivors. “It’s a remarkable thing to walk into this tent and see 6,000 people Illinois, learned the full story of her mother, Lola Nortman, a Holocaust survivor. “She’d connected to survivors.” never told her story,” said Rubenstein. “It was incredible.” At times the event resembled a wedding, with survivors and their families dancing the hora Hannah Rath, 80, from University Heights, Ohio, was taken from Hannover, Germany to Israeli folk music in the Survivor´s Village. Later, there was a sing-along in Yiddish with into forced labor. Her mother was picked for death. “It should never be forgotten,” she said, members of the Folksbiene Theater of New York. “and I hope it won’t. But it’s never the same. That is why we speak to young people. They According to the most recent census by the Israeli government, there were 140,000 to should know what can happen in a generation, what can happen with a dictator like Hitler. It’s 160,000 Holocaust survivors alive in the US in 1997. That total has decreased as the generation in the history books, but I don’t know how much they will [care] when we are all gone.” ages. “History dies,” said Freda Pollack, a New Jersey native and daughter of a survivor. “History Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, who helped bury a time capsule on the museum grounds, called becomes cold unless people, survivors, pass forward their stories.” Pollack had just lit candles the reunion a “victory over forgetfulness,” saving the six million Jewish Holocaust victims from in the Hall of Remembrance with her mother, Eva Kostre, who survived Auschwitz. “a second death.” For Herbert Kammer, the message has always been tolerance. As one of the “hidden “Your presence—our presence—here today is our answer to this silent question,” he said. children,” he lost his parents when he was sent to France to escape the Nazis. “We have kept our promise. We have not forgotten you.” American Gathering of NON-PROFIT Jewish Holocaust Survivors U.S. POSTAGE PAID 122 Weast 30th Street, Suite 205 NEW YORK, N.Y. New York, New York 10001 PERMIT NO. 4246 TOGETHER 28 TOGETHER 1 Message from TOGETHER President Benjamin Meed EARCHES The word “Amcho!” carries a very special meaning. VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 Our special family understands what it meant then. It meant JANUARY 2004 Roman Bornsztajn and my mother, Mina, My parents’ families come from Galicia. in Hungary. He was the sixth of nine one of our own whom we could trust.That was a lot in • • • • • • nee Flattau, Bornsztajn. My mother had My mother from Tomasow-Lubelski and children, born with the name Andras those trying times. c o n te n t s SStill Searching two sisters, Anna and Franna.The latter Tribute to Holocaust Survivors.................................................................................1 my father from Tyczyn, a small town Fleischner. His father, Bela Fleischner, was When darkness descended on the Jews of Europe, there was married and a dentist who died of Message from Benjamin Meed.................................................................................2 Bulletin Board outside of Rzeszow. (Poland). killed in Gyor. His mother, nee Kammer was, in each of our hearts, a torch, a beacon, however dim, typhus in Auschwitz close to the end of the Anna Salton Eisen Stuart Eizenstat’s Address..........................................................................................3 Piroska, was born in Bratislava, then a part of determination and hope. We maintained the spirit to Compiled by Serena Woolrich war. Also lost was Edmund or Mundek Dallas, TX of Hungary. She was deported to Auschwitz, Remarks by Elie Wiesel, Fred Zeidman and Ruth B. Mandel.................................4 hold onto life, a spirit of resistance and defiance. ([email protected]) Flattau, a brother to my mother. My along with two of her daughters, Zsuzsa Remarks by Vladka Meed..........................................................................................5 In our struggle for life, there were not too many who helped us.