AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM Vol. 41-No. 2 ISSN 0892-1571 November/December 2014-Kislev/Tevet 5775 The American & International Societies for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner he 60th Anniversary of Yad Vashem Tribute Dinner We were gratified by the extensive turnout, which included Theld on November 16th was a very memorable many representatives of the second and third generations. evening. We were honored to present Mr. Sigmund Rolat With inspiring addresses from honoree Zigmund A. Rolat with the Yad Vashem Remembrance Award. Mr. Rolat is a and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Israel Meir survivor who has dedicated his life to supporting Yad Lau — the dinner marked the 60th Anniversary of Yad Vashem and to restoring the place of Polish Jewry in world Vashem. The program was presided over by dinner chairman history. He was instrumental in establishing the newly Mark Moskowitz, with the Chairman of the American Society opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. for Yad Vashem Leonard A. Wilf giving opening remarks. SIGMUND A. ROLAT: “YAD VASHEM ENSHRINES THE MILLIONS THAT WERE LOST” e are often called – and even W sometimes accused of – being obsessed with memory. The Torah calls on us repeatedly and command- ingly: Zakhor – Remember. Even the least religious among us observe this particular mitzvah – a true corner- stone of our identity: Zakhor – Remember – and logically L’dor V’dor – From generation to generation. The American Society for Yad Vashem has chosen to honor me with the Yad Vashem Remembrance Award. I am deeply grateful and moved to receive this honor. A great writer, Milos Kundera, had written that the struggle of man against power is the struggle of mem- ory against forgetting. Yad Vashem is fighting that struggle — against the power of hatred and death. It protects, it cherishes, and it bears the memo- ries of the survivors. It condemns the perpetrators and embraces the vic- tims. For many of them a record in Yad Vashem is the only trace of their existence, for not only they have been Chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem Leonard A. Wilf presents honoree Sigmund A. Rolat with the Yad Vashem Remembrance Award. killed, but so have all those who could They are joined by Barry Rubenstein, trustee and Mark Moskowitz, dinner chair. remember them. Yad Vashem lost — enshrines them not as num- Beyond my gratitude for being rec- were the last words I heard him say. enshrines the millions that were bers but as individuals. ognized here tonight, there is a I remembered those words and deeper gratefulness to Yad Vashem they guided me throughout my life, for its tireless effort to resist forgetful- but especially in the last few years. ness and perpetuate memory. For And just last month in a moving and IN THIS ISSUE that is exactly what my older brother glittering ceremony in Warsaw, the The American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner.....1, 8-9, 16 Jerzyk told me in November 1943 president of Poland and the presi- Claims Conference weighs shutting down vs. Holocaust education........2 when I was hiding in an attic after the dent of Israel helped us open the The Holocaust’s foremost unsung hero.......................................................3 big ghetto in Czestochowa was liqui- Museum of the History of Polish The Nazi doctor who got away with mass murder......................................4 dated. Jerzyk was leaving with five Jews, where our rich 1,000-year his- The day a Holocaust survivor got revenge on his tormentor....................5 other young friends to fight the tory is painstakingly and beautifully In eye of Nazi storm, Dutch Jews found unlikely refuge............................6 Germans — he was the youngest, he showcased and preserved for future Lawyers make case for giving Iraqi Jews Holocaust benefits...................7 was 18 years old. As he embraced generations. But nowhere are my Holocaust experts work to preserve WWII-era items................................10 me one last time, he told me to brother’s last words to me more evi- “Sobbing at their own funeral”....................................................................10 remember all I saw — MUSISZ dent than in my dedication to and The cyclist who saved Jews in wartime Italy.............................................11 ZAPAMIETAC! — Zakhor. Those support of Yad Vashem. Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2014 - Kislev/Tevet 5775 NAZI HUNTER IDENTIFIES CLAIMS CONFERENCE WEIGHS SHUTTING FORMER GUARDS DOWN VS. HOLOCAUST EDUCATION he Simon Wiesenthal Center T has identified dozens of former we should continue to do that. And we The debate about what to do about members of Nazi mobile death BY URIEL HEILMAN, are uniquely qualified to do so.” the Claims Conference once the last squads who might still be alive, and is THE TIMES OF ISRAEL he new vision for the Claims of the survivors dies is not new. pushing the German government for Conference hinges on the orga- Established in 1951 to secure com- special panel tasked with T an investigation. nization’s ability to get material sup- pensation and restitution from examining the governance and The Wiesenthal Center’s top Nazi A port for it from the perpetrators of the Germany, the Claims Conference has strategic vision of the Claims hunter, Efraim Zuroff, told the AP that Holocaust — namely Germany, but negotiated successfully for an esti- Conference is recommending that the in September he sent the German also Austria and companies complicit mated $70 billion for survivors and organization shift its long-term focus justice and interior ministries a list of in the Nazi genocide. If that funding survivor needs over the course of its to Holocaust education and remem- 76 men and four women who served cannot be secured, the Claims existence. brance. in the so-called Einsatzgruppen. The panel was appointed last year The Einsatzgruppen, made up of following a scandal involving the primarily SS and police personnel, fol- Claims Conference’s failure to detect lowed Nazi Germany’s troops as they a $57 million fraud scheme there that battled their way eastward in the early persisted until 2009. It also recom- years of the war, rounding up and mended cutting in half the size of the shooting Jews in the opening salvo of board’s executive committee and the the Holocaust before the death camp number of special board committees. system was up and running. The special panel did not, however, According to the U.S. Holocaust recommend any changes to the com- Memorial Museum, they had killed more position of the Claims Conference’s than a million Soviet Jews and tens of board. thousands of others by spring 1943. Consisting of board members and “In the death camps the actual act of outside experts and guided by murder was carried out by a very small Accenture consultants, the special number of people — the people who panel was charged with reviewing the put the gas into the gas chambers — administration, management and but the actual act of murder in the governance structure of the Claims Einsatzgruppen was carried out indi- Conference, which obtains Holocaust vidually,” Zuroff said. “Almost every Claims Conference representatives meet with German officials during Holocaust restitution nego- restitution and compensation from tiations in Israel in 2013. person in the Einsatzgruppen was a Germany and Austria. The central murderer, a hands-on murderer.” Conference should go out of business question the panel examined was Most of that money has come direct- Zuroff narrowed down the list of once there are no survivors left, what the Claims Conference should ly from Germany in the form of pen- possible suspects by choosing the Schneider said. do after the last of the survivors dies. sions and compensation payments, youngest from a list of some 1,100 “If we’re unable to get money from Three possible courses of action with the Claims Conference acting with dates of birth known to his organ- perpetrator governments, and the were given serious consideration: only as the processor of payments ization, out of the estimated 3,000 survivors have all died, we should shutting down; funding education and members of the death squads. close down,” he said. “We should not and verifier of claims. As each sur- remembrance projects; or shifting its All 80, born between 1920 and try to reinvent ourselves into some- vivor dies, these payments cease. focus to general Jewish educational 1924, would be very old if still alive, thing else.” The Claims Conference also has a programming, helping victims of other Zuroff said. Stuart Eizenstat, a lead Claims bucket of discretionary funding: bil- genocides obtain restitution or pre- “Time is running out,” he said in a Conference negotiator and special lions generated from the sale of heir- serving Jewish cultural sites in the for- telephone interview from Jerusalem. assistant to Secretary of State John less Jewish property from the former mer Soviet Union. “Something has to be done.” Kerry on Holocaust issues, said he’s East Germany. But that bucket, Given the Claims Conference’s suc- Because of Germany’s strict privacy optimistic about getting Germany to known as the Successor cesses at convincing Germany to laws, the Wiesenthal Center has been support the proposed new focus, not- Organization, is expected to run dry increase its funding for survivors, the unable to confirm where the suspects ing that the country already does so by 2020 at its current annual alloca- panel concluded that “to close down live, but Zuroff said that task, and deter- through mandatory Holocaust educa- tion rate of about $118 million to without attempting to leverage its mining if they’re still alive, should be rel- tion in German schools. groups that aid survivors and $18 mil- position and significant experience in atively easy for police or prosecutors.