american & international societies for yad vashem€¦ · justice or, as hermann göring...

IN THIS ISSUEShe loved him, and he died in the Holocaust...............................................2

How my grandmother helped the “Japanese Schindler” save Jews.........3

Among the enemy: hiding in plain sight in Nazi Germany..........................4

Walking in the footsteps of the innocents of Babi Yar..................................5Professional Development conference on Holocaust education................6

ASYV Young Leadeship Associates Winter Gala......................................8-9

Nazis’ descendants sing “Hatikva” to Holocaust survivors......................10

Even in the gas chambers, miracles can happen.......................................12

Did the Jew who “sparked” Kristallnacht survive the Holocaust?............14

Holocaust survivors celebrate seven decades of marriage.......................16

Vol. 43-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2017-Shevat/Adar 5777

AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEMAMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

BY ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

This year commemorates the80th anniversary of the notori-

ous Nuremberg Laws, the Nazi racistenactments that formed the legalbasis for the Holocaust. Ironically, italso marks the 70th anniversary ofthe Nuremberg Trials, which providedthe legal basis for prosecuting theNazi war criminals who murdered mil-lions of Jews and others following theenactment of the Nuremberg Laws.

There is little dispute about the evilof the Nuremberg Laws. As JusticeRobert H. Jackson, who wasAmerica’s chief prosecutor at theNuremberg Trials, put it: “The mostodious of all oppressions are thosewhich mask as justice.”

There is some dispute, however,about the Nuremberg trials them-selves. Did they represent objectivejustice or, as Hermann Göring charac-terized it, merely “victor’s justice”?Were the rules under which the Nazileaders were tried and convicted expost facto laws, enacted after thecrimes were committed in an effort tosecure legal justice for the mostimmoral of crimes? Did the prosecu-tion and conviction of a relativelysmall number of Nazi leaders excul-pate too many hands-on perpetra-tors? Do the principles that emergedfrom the Nuremberg Trials have con-tinued relevance in today’s world?

Following the Holocaust, the worldtook a collective oath encapsulated inthe powerful phrase “never again,”but following the Nuremberg Trials,mass murders, war crimes and evengenocides have been permitted tooccur again and again and again andagain. Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur,the former Yugoslavia and now Syria.Why has the promise of “never again”

so frequently been broken? Why havethe Nuremberg principles not beeneffectively applied to prevent andpunish these unspeakable crimes?Will the International Criminal Court,established in 2002, be capable ofenforcing the Nuremberg principlesand deterring future genocides bypunishing past ones?

Whether the captured Nazileaders — those who did not

commit suicide or escape — shouldhave been placed on trial, rather thansummarily shot, was the subject ofmuch controversy. Even before theend of the war, Secretary of theTreasury Henry Morgenthau had pro-posed that a list of major war crimi-nals be drawn up, and as soon asthey were captured and identified,they would be shot. PresidentRoosevelt was initially sympathetic tosuch rough justice, but eventuallyboth he and President Truman were

persuaded by Secretary of War HenryStimson that summary execution wasinconsistent with the American com-mitment to due process and the ruleof law.

It was decided, therefore, to con-vene an international tribunal to sit injudgment over the Nazi leaders. Butthis proposal was not without consid-

erable difficulties. Justice must beseen to be done, but it must also bedone in reality. A show trial, with pre-dictable verdicts and sentences,would be little better than no trial atall. Indeed, Justice Jackson went sofar as to suggest, early on, that itwould be preferable to shoot Nazicriminals out of hand than to discreditour judicial process by conducting far-cical trials.

The challenge of the Nuremberg tri-bunal, therefore, was to do real justicein the context of a trial by the victorsagainst the vanquished — and specif-ically those leaders of the vanquishedwho had been instrumental in themost barbaric genocide and massslaughter of civilians in history.Moreover, the blood of Hitler’s mil-lions of victims was still fresh at thetime of the trials. Indeed, the magni-tude of Nazi crimes was beinglearned by many for the first time dur-ing the trial itself. Was a fair trial pos-sible against this emotional back-drop?

Even putting aside the formidablejurisprudential hurdles — the retroac-

tive nature of the newly announcedlaws and the jurisdictional problemsposed by a multinational court —there was a fundamental question ofjustice posed. Contemporary com-mentators wondered whether judgesappointed by the victorious govern-ments — and politically accountableto those governments — could be

expected to listenwith an open mind tothe prosecution evi-dence offered by theAllies and to thedefense claims sub-mitted on behalf oferstwhile enemies.

A review of the trialnearly 70 years afterthe fact leads to theconclusion that thejudges did a com-mendable job of try-ing to be fair. Theydid, after all, acquitthree of the twenty-two defendants, andthey sentencedanother seven toprison terms ratherthan hanging. Butresults, of course,

are not the only or even the best crite-ria for evaluating the fairness of atrial. Furthermore, it is impossible todetermine with hindsight whether thecore leaders, such as Göring, vonRibbentrop and Rosenberg, ever hada chance, or whether the acquittalsand lesser sentences for some of theothers were a ploy to make it appearthat proportional justice was beingdone.

In the end, it was the documentaryevidence — the Germans’ own

detailed record of their aggression andgenocide — that provided the smokingguns. Document after documentproved beyond any doubt that theNazis had conducted two wars: Onewas their aggressive war againstEurope (and eventually America) formilitary, political, geographic and eco-nomic domination. The other was theirgenocidal war to destroy “inferior”races, primarily the Jews and Gypsies.Their war aim was eventually crushedby the combined might of theAmericans and the Russians. Theirgenocidal aims came very close to

(Continued on page 3)

THE MIXED LEGACY OF NUREMBERG

MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777

BY MALCOLM GAY, THE BOSTON GLOBE

He’s hovered over RobertBerkowitz’s life for decades, a

spectral promise of what might havebeen.

He’s there in the family album, acomposer looking older than his yearsin a bulky overcoat and fedora, his

mustache cloaking the scar thatmarred his upper lip. Strolling along abusy Hungarian street, he towersover Berkowitz’s mother, Pauline,who strides confidently beside hersuitor — a pianist whose collabora-tors would later be counted amongthe titans of 20th-century music.

The photo has weathered with age.It’s torn in the upper left-hand corner.No one remembers precisely when itwas taken or by whom, but it is thismoment — this instant before the war,Hitler, and the lethal machinery thattore the couple apart — that hasobsessed Berkowitz and shaped himas he followed the trail of his mother’srecollections.

“I’d hear the story about how he wascourting my mother and then how heentered the ghetto looking to try torescue her,” said Berkowitz, a Natick-based psychiatrist. That noble choice,made for love, was deadly, Paulinewould tell her son. “He lived verymuch in my head as an importantexemplar,” Berkowitz explained. “Hereally was the idealized man.”

Lajos Delej (pronounced DELL-lay)was a composer of great promise,Pauline would recount, describing themusician’s aristocratic bearing, hissensitivity as a pianist, and thecelebrity that seemed to attend himeverywhere. His works were playedon Hungarian radio, his performanceswritten up in the papers.

But then the Germans invadedHungary. Pauline was sent toAuschwitz, and Delej was neverheard from again — his young talentextinguished by Hitler’s enterprisingcruelty.

Doubt would creep in as Berkowitz,mining archives wherever he couldfind them, was unable to confirm asingle detail of Delej’s life. He beganto question his mother’s tale of musi-

cal genius and a great love lost.“That was very discouraging,” said

Berkowitz, 57, a high-caliber amateurpianist in his own right. “She said hewas so famous, playing on the radioall the time. I imagined there’d berecordings of him. I found nothing.”

Over the past year, however,Berkowitz has embarked on a revela-tory journey, reclaiming Delej’s lifewhile excavating his musical legacy.

Along the way, he’sdeveloped close tieswith members ofDelej’s American fami-ly, who have uncov-ered a trove of corre-spondence and mem-orabilia providing anintimate window intothe composer’s lifebefore the Holocaust,including a handful oflost works for solopiano.

Those pieces hadgone unplayed for

more than 75 years when Berkowitzpremiered them last spring at NewEngland Conservatory, where he is acontinuing education student.

“I can’t help but think that somethingabout this tortuous, strange journeyhas allowed me to communicatesomething about him,” saidBerkowitz. “That conduit of love thatextended from Delej to my mother,and then from my mother to me —does it not carry something that couldbe communicated in music?”

***

Life in Weimar-era Berlin hadbeen rewarding for Imre Delej

and his young wife, Leonora. As theparents of three children — Hillbrich,Livia and the baby, Lajos — theDelejs were firmly established in thecity’s more accomplished Jewish cir-cles, holding an open house eachSunday where they hosted actors,artists and physicists.

Born to an affluent Budapest family,Imre spoke fluent French and traveledfrequently. His hat factories provideda comfortable living for the family.

Still, the Delejs remained outsidersin Berlin. They never becameGerman citizens, and their dual-minority status made them particular-ly vulnerable as the Nazi Party rose topower.

The family, led by Imre, returned toBudapest in the early 1930s, but theirworld would soon unravel.

Hillbrich had already immigrated toBuenos Aires, and daughter Liviasailed for the United States in 1937.Imre lost his German factories the fol-lowing year, confiscated by the Nazis.

But even as life in Budapestbecame increasingly fraught, theDelejs took great pride in Lajos,known as “Loulou” (occasionally“Lulu”), whom they recognized earlyas a musical prodigy.

“You are surely curious about Lulu’sexam,” Leonora wrote Livia inSeptember 1938, when Delej was 14.“He played 16 compositions by heart,flawlessly!!”

Though Imre was confident warcould be avoided, the family wasdetermined to keep its precious sonsafe, and Delej began learningEnglish before his expected move tothe United States, where he hoped tosupport himself.

“Loulou would like to learn saxo-phone as his second instrument,” Imrewrote his daughter in October 1938.“This also seems to be practical for theemployment possibilities that will benecessary for him ‘over there.’ ”

Soon Delej was studying with theesteemed pianist-composer PálKadosa , who counted György Ligeti,later one of Hungary’s greatest com-posers, among his pupils.

“Mr. Kadosa found barely a mis-take,” Leonora wrote Livia inSeptember 1939. “Only in the recita-tion did he point something small outto Lulu! Do you know, my angel, whatthat means? He’s already absolutelyindependent.”

***

Robert Berkowitz knew none ofthis when he and his longtime

partner, Beverly Benedetti, visited theUS Holocaust Memorial Museum inWashington, D.C., in October 2015.

Though the couple had visited themuseum previously, running Delej’sname through its huge database ofHitler’s victims, they’d never discov-ered anything about Delej, reinforcingBerkowitz’s suspicions that his moth-er had embellished the tale.

And why shouldn’t she?Life after the war had been difficult

for Pauline, who lost her father andstepmother during their internment at

Auschwitz. Though she later marriedand immigrated to the United States,her challenges grew whenBerkowitz’s father, Ernest, entered anursing home, incapacitated by multi-ple sclerosis. With limited English andscant formal education, Pauline wasleft alone to raise their son whileworking as a seamstress in LosAngeles.

“It was my mother and me,” recalledBerkowitz, who began piano lessonsaround that time. “My mother maybehad the freedom to tell these stories,because my father wasn’t in thehouse.”

Pauline confided to her son thatshe’d met Delej during a piano recitalof a cousin — a lithe and musicallygifted young woman, the more obvi-ous match for Delej.

“From the minute he saw me, hekind of fell in love,” recalled PaulineHerzek, who today uses the surnameof her late second husband. “Fromthat moment on, he wrote me andcame to visit.”

Herzek regaled her son with tales ofDelej’s artistry. He had excelled atChopin’s “Heroic” Polonaise, soBerkowitz soon mastered a simplifiedversion of it.

“It was clear from the stories I heardthat my mother felt she was reallysupposed to marry this other man,Lajos Delej,” said Berkowitz. She

sought refuge in his memory, and thelife that could have been hers. “Hereshe was working as a seamstress . . .raising a son by herself. It’s all veryhard.”

Growing up the son of a Holocaustsurvivor had special challenges of itsown, he added.

“I could sense my mother’s sad-ness, and I think I wanted to attend to


SHE LOVED HIM, AND HE DIED IN THE HOLOCAUST.

NOW HER SON IS BRINGING HIS MUSIC BACK TO LIFE.

“My mother has said: You brought back Lajos Delej to me,” said

Robert Berkowitz.

The composer Lajos Delej, pictured at right with Robert Berkowitz’s mother, Pauline Herzek,

from the family album.

January/February 2017 - Shevat/Adar 5777 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE

(Continued from page 1)succeeding. Nearly the entire Jewishand Gypsy populations within thecontrol of the Third Reich were sys-tematically murdered while the rest ofthe world — including those nationssitting in judgment — turned a blindeye.

The Nuremberg tribunal and thosethat followed it administered justice toa tiny fraction of those guilty of theworst barbarism ever inflicted onhumankind. The vast majority ofGerman killers were eventually“denazified” and allowed to live nor-mal and often productive lives.

Perhaps Henry Morgenthau wasasking for too much when hedemanded that Germany’s industryand military capacity be destroyed“forever,” and that Germany be

“reduced to a nation of farmers.” Butperhaps the Nuremberg tribunalasked too little when it implicitly expi-ated those guilty of thousands ofhands-on murders by focusing culpa-bility on a small number of leaderswho could never have carried outtheir wholesale slaughter without theenthusiastic assistance of an army —both military and civilian — of whole-sale butchers.

The Nuremberg trial was an exam-ple both of “victor’s justice” and of thepossible beginning of a “new legalorder” of accountability. Trying theculprits was plainly preferable to sim-ply killing them. But trying so few ofthem sent out a powerful messagethat the “new legal order” would belenient with those who were “just fol-lowing orders.”

The reality that, followingNuremberg, the world was to experi-ence genocide again and againdemonstrated that trials alone cannotput an end to human barbarity. Butthe fact that tribunals were estab-lished to judge at least some of thesecrimes against humanity also demon-strates a willingness to at leastattempt to prevent and punish evilusing the rule of law.

One of the most important lessonsof history is that for genocide andother mass killings to be carried outrequires the active participation ofnumerous individuals, from those whodo the actual killing to those whoincite, organize and provide themeans. The Holocaust itself requiredhundreds of thousands of active co-conspirators and millions more of

morally complicit people whoremained silent while it was being car-ried out around them. Not only weremost of these guilty participantsimmunized from prosecution, butmany were rewarded with good jobsand other economic benefits. Itshould come as no surprise, there-fore, that the Nuremberg trials did noteffectively deter subsequent masskillings. Indeed, the use of civilians asweapons of war — victims of geno-cide, mass rapes and human shields— has continued, with only a fewhandfuls of leaders and perpetratorsprosecuted and punished. The chal-lenge of Nuremberg is to construct aneffective, ongoing, legal regime thatpunishes not just the leaders, buteach and every guilty participant inthe most egregious of war crimes.

THE MIXED LEGACY OF NUREMBERG

BY ALYZA D. LEWIN, HAARETZ

The story of Chiune Sugihara —the Japanese consul in Kovno,

Lithuania, who disobeyed his govern-ment’s orders in 1940 and issuedtransit visas through Japan to thou-sands of Jews seeking to flee war-torn Europe — wasn’t widely knownuntil 1985, when Yad Vashem, Israel’sHolocaust memorial authority, hon-ored him as one of the RighteousAmong the Nations.

But I grew up hearing Sugihara’sstory because he saved my father’slife. My father, the attorney NathanLewin, is a Sugihara survivor.

I also have a family connectionto something that few others haveknown until very recently — theanswer to a long-unsolved mysterysurrounding Sugihara’s rescue of anestimated 6,000 Jews.

Why did the Dutch consul in Kovno,Jan Zwartendijk, begin issuing the“Curaçao visas” – the Dutch endorse-ments that appeared to permit travelto the island of Curaçao, Holland’sterritory off South America uponwhich Sugihara relied when issuingvisas? Why did Zwartendijk beginwriting in Jewish passports that a visawas not needed to travel to Curaçao?

The answer: my late grandmother.Peppy Sternheim Lewin, the recipientof the first Curaçao visa, is the “miss-ing link” in the story.

My grandmother was a Dutch citi-zen, raised and educated inAmsterdam. After she married mygrandfather, Dr. Isaac Lewin, shemoved to his home country, Poland.When the Nazi army invaded Polandin September 1939, my grandmoth-er’s parents and her brother were vis-iting her in Lodz, my father’s birth-place. My great-grandfather promptlyflew back to Amsterdam to take careof his business. He later perished atAuschwitz.

My grandmother’s mother, Rachel

Sternheim, and her brother, LeoSternheim, were smuggled with mygrandparents and my father, who wasthen 3 years old, over the border intoLithuania.

In Lithuania, my grandmothersought help from the Dutch diplo-

mats because her mother and brotherwere Dutch citizens and because shehad been a Dutch citizen prior to mar-rying my grandfather. She initially

asked Zwartendijk, who was inKovno, if he could issue her a visa tothe Dutch East Indies, which includedJava and Sumatra. He refused. Soshe wrote to the Dutch ambassador inRiga, L.P.J. de Decker. He also turneddown her request for a visa to Java orSumatra.

Refusing to be discouraged, mygrandmother, who was then inVilna — a short trip fromKovno — wrote to de Decker againand asked him whether there was anyway he could possibly help her familybecause it included Dutch citizens.The ambassador replied that theDutch West Indies, including Curaçaoand Surinam, were available destina-

tions where no visa was needed. Thegovernor of Curaçao could authorizeentry to anyone arriving there.

My grandmother again wrote to deDecker asking whether he could notethe Curaçao or Surinam exception inher still-valid Polish passport. Sheasked the envoy to omit the addition-al note that permission of the gover-nor of Curaçao was required. After all,she pointed out, she really did not

plan to go to Curaçao or Surinam.“Send me your passport,” de Decker

replied. So she did.On July 11, 1940, de Decker wrote

in her passport in French, “TheConsulate of the Netherlands, Riga,hereby declares that for the admis-sion into Surinam, Curaçao, and otherpossessions of the Netherlands in theAmericas, no entry visa is required.”

My grandmother then showedZwartendijk what the Dutch ambassa-dor had written in her passport andasked him to copy it onto my grand-parents’ Leidimas — the temporarytravel document they had beenissued by the Latvian governmentafter the existence of Poland was offi-

cially nullified by the Nazi invasion.On July 22, 1940, Zwartendijk agreedand wrote de Decker’s notation on mygrandparents’ travel papers. That ishow my grandparents and my fatherreceived the very first Curaçao visa.

Relying on Zwartendijk’s notation,Sugihara agreed to give my grandpar-ents (and my grandmother’s motherand brother, who were still Dutch citi-zens) transit visas through Japan ontheir purported trip to Curaçao.Sugihara issued their visas on July26, 1940.

The number of visas Sugiharaissued jumped exponentially on July29, 1940, when hundreds of Jewswho had escaped to Vilna learned ofmy grandmother’s successful effort.They crowded outside the Japaneseconsulate in Kovno (Kaunas inLithuanian), hoping Sugihara wouldissue them a visa. Sugihara workedaround the clock for a month, issuing2,139 visas, including to whole fami-lies. These enabled the refugees totake the trans-Siberian railroad fromMoscow to Vladivostok, and thentravel by boat from Russia to Japan,supposedly en route to Curaçao.

The story of Sugihara and his res-cue is told in a feature film, PersonaNon Grata, that had its premiere inOctober and is now making therounds at Jewish film festivals acrossthe country. It screened recently atthe Washington Jewish Film Festivaland was shown again in Washington,D.C., last month as part ofCineMatsuri, the Japanese FilmFestival in the Nation’s Capital.Although my grandmother’s role isone of the unsolved mysteries in thefilm, my father was asked to share hismother’s tale after a CineMatsuriscreening.

There are perhaps 100,000 descen-dants of Sugihara survivors alivetoday. It is humbling to think that itwas my grandmother’s initiative andperseverance that opened up thistravel route to safety for so many.

HOW MY GRANDMOTHER HELPED THE “JAPANESE SCHINDLER”

SAVE THOUSANDS OF EUROPEAN JEWS

The endorsement of Chiune Sugihara appears on the travel document that allowed Isaac Lewin

and his family to escape Lithuania in 1940. Nathan Lewin is the 4-year-old boy in the arms of his

mother.


Among the Enemy: Hiding in PlainSight in Nazi Germany.

By Sam Genirberg. RobertsonPublishing: Los Gatos, California,2012. 309 pp. $22.95 hardcover.

REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN

Each and every Jew that survivedthe Holocaust has a miraculous

story to tell, and by doing so adds tothe full and complete documentationof this unbelievable event in humanhistory. Thus, Sam Genirberg, in hisbook, Among the Enemy: Hiding inPlain Sight in Nazi Germany, tells ushis story and his miracle. Born inDubno, at times part of Poland and atother times part of the Ukraine,Genirberg, a teenager in 1941 whenthe war came, relates how his devot-ed mother — grown suspicious ofwhat the Nazis had in store forDubno’s Jews — encouraged him toescape. He tells us that what espe-cially aided him in his escape was thefact that with his “sandy blond hair,short nose, and green eyes,” he didn’tlook Jewish. No less important wasthe fact that he spoke a number oflanguages well — “Russian,Ukrainian, Polish, and German.” Thatsaid, Genirberg then relates, and weexperience, all the heart-poundingevents he lived through, from hisescape from his hometown until theculmination of the war and liberation.In the end, the reader cannot help butappreciate the enormous amount of

courage it took for him “to hide in plainsight,” “posing as a gentile under var-ious aliases” “conscripted for compul-sory labor” in Nazi Germany.Concomitantly, the reader cannot helpbut empathize in avery visceral sensewith the constant andfearful terrorGenirberg lived . . . asa Jew hiding in thevery nest of evil!

How, specificallythen, does thisabsorbing work add tothe documentation ofthe Holocaust? Mostimportantly, the storyof an exceptionallylucky Jewish teenagerwho, all alone, found aunique way to survivethe war boldly under-lines the fact thatJews did all they could to live, regard-less of their exceptionally limitedoptions. Indeed, oftentimes duringthose terrible years, Jews had to fearnot just the Nazis come to murderthem, but their neighbors who eagerlycollaborated with Nazis. In sum, Jewsfought for their lives in any and everyway imaginable and unimaginable.They did not “go like sheep to theslaughter”!

Then there is the important fact thatAmong the Enemy tells us moreabout the tragic fate of the twelve

thousand Jews — “men, women, andchildren” — who made Dubno theirhome. Step by step, we learn abouthow the Nazis ordered a Judenratorganized there. Then we learn how

the Nazis created aJewish ghetto inDubno, “guarded byUkrainian policemen,armed with sidearms and rifles.”Soon, we read abouthow 6,000 Jewsdeemed uselesswere separated offfrom the rest . . . andin May 1942, killed.Not long after, therest of the Jewishpopulation of Dubnowas slaughtered.Then we learn howthe Ukrainians andPoles benefited from

all this — opportunistically lootingJewish homes emptied of their inhab-itants. . . . And all this information isrelated to us by one who was there!

Genirberg also draws our attentionto other aspects of the Holocaust andthe war that should be a part of thehistorical record. Interestingly,because he spent his time inGermany, we learn how little Germancivilians actually “felt” the war.Indeed, they went about their liveseven more “comfortably.” One exam-ple of that added “comfort” was that

they fully participated in the use ofconscripted laborers (Genirbergbeing one of them). In fact, at onepoint Genirberg paints us a picture,resembling that of African slaves mar-keted in the South before the CivilWar, as German civilians came to“look over” these laborers broughtfrom all over Europe to work for themin various industries. Needless tosay, many, many Germans “benefit-ed” in one way or another with Hitlertheir leader!

Then when the Germans couldno longer deny that they were

losing the war, Genirberg tells us howhe witnessed Germans rushing toburn incriminating documents. Laterstill, Genirberg relates how he over-heard Germans wishing that theAmericans had occupied all ofGermany — yes, the Americans weremuch better to them than theRussians.... And then, later still, thereis the comment directed to Genirberghimself, who the speaker believedwas German: “Look out the window.Our country [Germany] is in ruins. . . .I tell you, my friend, there is only onething wrong with Adolph Hitler — thathe lost the war.”

Among the Enemy is a worthy addi-tion to the library of books on theHolocaust.

Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor ofMedia, Communication, and VisualArts at Pace University.

AMONG THE ENEMY: HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT IN NAZI GERMANY

BY JACOB S. EDER, HNN

On July 2, 2016, the world lost —in the words of Angela

Merkel — one of the most notableindividuals of the 20th century. TheGerman chancellor referred to thepassing of the writer, scholar andhuman rights advocate Elie Wiesel,who died at age 87 over the summerin New York City. She called him a“noble reconciler” and an “insistentadmonisher,” conveying her gratitudefor Wiesel’s efforts to keep the mem-ory of the Holocaust alive. His lifetimeachievements, a long and productivecareer as a writer and scholar, and asignificant role in the establishment ofthe US Holocaust Memorial Museumin Washington (USHMM), made him amoral authority and arguably theworld’s most prominent Holocaustsurvivor. The reactions to Wiesel’spassing in the Germany of 2016, how-ever, stand in remarkable contrast tothe attitudes of West Germany’s polit-ical leadership towards Wiesel whenhe was in the process of establishinghimself as the world’s eminent cham-pion for Holocaust memorialization.

In the 1970s and 1980s, WestGerman officials were distinctly lessfond of Wiesel and greeted his advo-cacy for Holocaust memory with irrita-

tion and concern. The creation of aninstitutional infrastructure ofHolocaust memorialization — exem-plified by museums and memorials,memorial days, the establishment ofeducational and academic programs,and the 1978 NBC miniseriesHolocaust — permanently anchored

Holocaust memory into American life.Transplanting the perspective ofHolocaust victims into the popular,academic and intellectual culture ofWest Germany’s superpower ally wasdisturbing and distressing for repre-sentatives of West Germany, whowere convinced that their country hadsuccessfully come to terms with theNazi past and should not be continu-

ously confronted with its criminal his-tory.

When Jimmy Carter appointedWiesel as chairman of the President’sCommission on the Holocaust in1978, the latter officially became aprotagonist of the “Americanization”of the Holocaust and, in the eyes of

West Germans, theembodiment of a politicaland diplomatic problem.In a worst-case scenario,German officials fearedthat learning about thehistory of the Holocaust,as told from the perspec-tive of a survivor likeWiesel, might even causeAmericans to questiontheir Cold War alliancewith the Federal Republic.

Consequently, Germandiplomats and politicianscarefully monitored

Wiesel’s public statements, speech-es, writings, and work for thePresident’s Commission and later theUS Holocaust Memorial Council. Forexample, they were highly critical ofWiesel’s “emotional” language andhis efforts, based on personal experi-ence, to emphasize the responsibilityof ordinary Germans for theHolocaust.

Tensions between Wiesel andthe Federal Republic reached

their apex in the 1980s, during whichtime he chaired the US HolocaustMemorial Council. In 1984, forinstance, Wiesel vehemently rejectedWest German considerations to sellarms to Saudi Arabia, an enemy ofIsrael, calling the Federal Republic a“merchant of death” and the Germans“people without memories.” And, in1985, Wiesel emerged as the mostvocal opponent of Ronald Reagan’scontroversial visit to Germany, whichincluded a visit to the Bergen-Belsenconcentration camp memorial as wellas to a German military cemeterynear Bitburg. Since the early 1980s,the Federal Republic’s conservativeChancellor Helmut Kohl had workedtoward consigning the Nazi past tothe history books, and Bitburg wassupposed to send a powerful sign ofGerman-American friendship and rec-onciliation around the globe. The cer-emony, however, at the very leastimplied a blurring of the lines betweenNazi victims and perpetrators, whichmany, not only Wiesel, deemed unac-ceptable. In a live television interviewon the day of Reagan’s visit, he toldTom Brokaw: “The road from Bergen-Belsen to Bitburg is a very long one,


BEFORE ELIE WIESEL WAS A HERO TO GERMANS,

HE WAS REGARDED AS A NUISANCE — OR WORSE

Elie Wiesel.


BY KATE CONNOLLY, THE GUARDIAN

“It was rare for us to see him inthe mornings,” says Brunhilde

Pomsel, her eyes closed and chin inher hand as she recalls her formerboss. “He’d walk up the steps from hislittle palace near the BrandenburgGate, onto which his huge propagan-da ministry was attached. He’d trip upthe steps like a little duke, through hislibrary into his beautiful office onUnter den Linden.”

She smiles at the image, noting howelegant the furniture was, the carefreeatmosphere where she sat in an ante-chamber off Joseph Goebbels’ officewith five other secretaries, how hisnails were always neatly manicured.

“We always knew once he hadarrived, but we didn’t normally seehim until he left his office, comingthrough a door that led directly intoour room, so we could ask him anyquestions we had, or let him knowwho had called. Sometimes, his chil-dren came to visit and were so excit-ed to visit Daddy at his work. Theywould come with the family’s lovelyAiredale. They were very polite andwould curtsy and shake our hands.”

Pomsel is giving one of the first, andlast, in-depth interviews of her life; atthe age of 105, and having lost hersight last year, she says she isrelieved that her days are numbered.“In the little time that’s left to me —

and I hope it will be months ratherthan years — I just cling to the hopethat the world doesn’t turn upsidedown again as it did then, thoughthere have been some ghastly devel-opments, haven’t there? I’m relieved Inever had any children that I have toworry about.”

So what is the motivation foreffectively breaking her silence

only now, as probably the last livingsurvivor from the Nazi leadership’sinner circle?

“It is absolutely not about clearingmy conscience,” she says.

While she admits she was at theheart of the Nazi propagandamachine, with her tasks includingmassaging downward statistics aboutfallen soldiers, as well as exaggerat-ing the number of rapes of Germanwomen by the Red Army, shedescribes it, somewhat bizarrely, as

“just another job.”A German Life, compiled from 30

hours of conversation with her, wasrecently released at the Munich filmfestival. It is the reason why she iswilling to “politely answer” my ques-tions. “It is important for me, when Iwatch the film, to recognize that mir-

ror image in whichI can understandeverything I’vedone wrong,” shesays. “But really, Ididn’t do anythingother than type inGoebbels’ office.”

Often, end-of-lifestatements suchas these are suf-fused with a senseof guilt. ButPomsel is unre-pentant. As she

holds court, gesticulating wildly, with abroad grin on her face, it seems as ifshe even takes something restorativefrom her insistence that she simplyacted the same way as most otherGermans.

“Those people nowadays who saythey would have stood up against theNazis — I believe they are sincere inmeaning that, but believe me, most ofthem wouldn’t have.” After the rise ofthe Nazi party, “the whole country wasas if under a kind of a spell,” sheinsists. “I could open myself up to theaccusations that I wasn’t interested in

politics, but the truth is, the idealismof youth might easily have led to youhaving your neck broken.”

She recalls being handed the casefile of the anti-Nazi activist and stu-dent Sophie Scholl, who was active inthe White Rose resistance move-ment. Scholl was executed for hightreason in February 1943 after distrib-uting antiwar leaflets at the Universityof Munich. “I was told by one ofGoebbels’ special advisers to put it inthe safe, and not to look at it. So I did-n’t, and was quite pleased with myselfthat he trusted me, and that my keen-ness to honor that trust was strongerthan my curiosity to open that file.”

Pomsel describes herself as aproduct of Prussian discipline,

recalling a father who, when hereturned from fighting in the FirstWorld War, when she was seven,banned chamber pots from the familybedrooms. “If we wanted to go to thetoilet, we had to brave all the witchesand evil spirits to get to the watercloset.” She and her siblings were“spanked with the carpet beater”whenever they were disobedient.“That stayed with me, that Prussiansomething, that sense of duty.”

She was 31 and working for thestate broadcaster as a well-paid sec-retary — a job she secured only aftershe became a paid-up member of theNazi party — when someone recom-mended her for a transfer to the min-


BY STEPHEN ORYSZCZUK, THE JEWISH NEWS

I’ve been to Babi Yar. It is on theoutskirts of the Ukrainian capital

Kyiv. The word “yar” is Turkic in origin,and means “gully” or “ravine.” That’swhy the Nazis chose it: because itwas — is — a huge ravine. Bodiescould fill it from the bottom.

That’s what happened. Over thecourse of just two days in September1941, 33,771 Jews were strippednaked and shot by Sonderkommando4a soldiers. Most of those murdereddidn’t fall dead, however. They werealready lying in neat lines when theirlives were ended by Nazi bullets.Brought to the ravine in groups of 10to 20, they approached and, realizingthe full horror for the first time, wereforced to lie on the still warm, stillbleeding bodies of Jews who had justbeen gunned down moments earlier.As they lay there, they could only waitfor the man with the machine gun towalk along the line. Men, women andchildren were all slain. When bulletsran low, Jewish heads were lined upso that one shot would kill several. Atthe end of each day, a layer of earthwas tipped onto the dead and dying,so that the injured were buried alive.

The Nazis’ Ukrainian collaborators,

by all accounts, were busy shuffling,pushing and shunting Jews forced tostand in lines. Others brought picnicsand watched from the banks.Eyewitnesses recalled Ukrainiansloading the piles of clothing and valu-ables that the city’s Jews had beeninstructed to bring for their “resettle-ment.” There are no tales ofUkrainians doing anything heroic, oranything but help the massacre takeplace. And that’s what it was: theHolocaust’s first, and worst, mas-sacre. These Jews were not gassedin a room impersonally, but shot in thehead at close range. It doesn’t getmuch more personal than that.

I went in 2010. I was there to film,while I was editor of a now-defunctJewish TV news channel based in thecity, but my mind was elsewhere.Despite being neither Jewish norUkrainian, I have both Jewish andUkrainian blood. My grandmother, aBritish Jew who had long suppressedher Jewish identity, married mygrandfather, a Ukrainian non -Jew,only seven years after this ravinebegan to fill. I was reminded of this atBabi Yar. Did I have, within me, theblood of those whom Hitler killed andthose whom Hitler had help from;those lying in the ravine, waiting to beshot, and those who sat on the banks,

eating their picnic?It was difficult to concentrate on the

filming. In the end, I gave up andwalked the vast grassy flanks alone (Iwas the editor — the others wouldjust have to wait). I walked andwalked, through the trees, down theslopes, up to and away from theSoviet- era monument, along thewalkways. I wondered how many haddied crying. I thought about the chil-dren hugging their mothers’ thighs asthe Nazis approached. I wonderedhow, or if, those lying on the newlydead had tried to console themselvesin their last moments. I thought abouthow, in other battlefields aroundEurope, spilled blood had led to pop-pies, but that here, in Babi Yar, noteven the soil had gained. More thananything, I wondered “how.” How?How could they?

We know the logistics of “how” theyperpetrated one of history’s mostwretched crimes. Days earlier, Naziposters were plastered around thecity ordering all “kikes” to assemble ata certain time, at a certain place, andto “bring warm clothing.” The com-mander later reported back to hissuperiors, saying: “Although onlyapproximately 5,000 to 6,000 Jewshad been expected, more than30,000 Jews arrived who, until the

very moment of their execution, stillbelieved in their resettlement, thanksto an extremely clever organization.”

Over the next two years, about100,000 people were killed there,including Jews, Gypsies/Roma, cap-tured Russian soldiers, psychiatricpatients and Ukrainian nationalists,like my grandfather. In 1943, withthe Soviets pressing, the Nazisdecided to burn the evidence. Theylooted the gravestones from a near-by Jewish cemetery and used themto form the foundation of a hugefuneral pyre at the ravine, which inturn was used to burn the disinterredbodies of the Babi Yar dead. The fur-naces burned for 40 days, reducingto ash the remains of the manyunknown thousands. Still today, YadVashem has identified only a frac-tion of the dead.

If Auschwitz -Birkenau left me cold,Babi Yar left me confused, bothabout who I am, and about who peo-ple could be, and what they coulddo. If Auschwitz was industrial, thiswas insane, thousands of inhumanacts perpetrated on very humanbeings, innocents stripped naked, infloods of tears at the end of the Nazibarrel.

I won’t return, but nor will I forgetwhat happened here. Never Again.

WALKING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE INNOCENTS OF BABI YAR

JOSEPH GOEBBELS' 105-YEAR-OLD SECRETARY:

"NO ONE BELIEVES ME NOW, BUT I KNEW NOTHING"

Brunhilde Pomsel.


FORGOTTEN

HOLOCAUST

HISTORY IS GIVEN

A NEW LIFEBY BILLY HALLOWELL, DESERET NEWS

Some Jewish historians’ person-

al stories of Holocaust plights

and survival had reportedly fallen

into obscurity due to a language bar-

rier, but they are now seeing new

light after one man embarked on a

journey to preserve and highlight the

texts.

The first-person stories that offer a

rare glimpse and perspective into the

Jewish experience during the

Holocaust were written in Yiddish,

creating a barrier for some main-

stream historians who were unfamil-

iar with the language, according to

the Jewish Journal.Yiddish joins Hebrew and Aramaic

as one of the three major languages

that have been spoken throughout

Jewish history. While its use was

rampant by the time of the 19th cen-

tury, millions of its speakers were vic-

tims of the Holocaust.

Additionally, as EncyclopediaBritannica notes, the former Soviet

Union cracked down on the use of

Yiddish, further hampering its use.

Today, though, the language is once

again thriving at universities and in

other Jewish circles.

While the historical Holocaust texts

were reportedly relatively ignored in

academic circles over the years,

Mark Smith, a 58-year-old graduate

student, embarked on an intentional

journey to bring their contents to

light.

It all started a few decades ago

when, out of interest in the Yiddish

language, he began to collect rare

works to try to preserve and protect

them.

That later led Smith, who is an

architect by trade, to take a deeper

look at the texts — the stories from

Jewish historians that he said repre-

sent “a deliberate choice” to commu-

nicate in Yiddish about what had

unfolded during the Holocaust.

“It was a worldwide community of

Yiddish speakers to whom they were

addressing themselves,” he told the

Jewish Journal.Smith, a doctoral student at UCLA,

recently completed a 536-page dis-

sertation titled The Yiddish Historiansand the Struggle for a Jewish Historyof the Holocaust.

It’s a work he believes could have

an impact on the study of the

Holocaust era, as the paper specifi-

cally takes a look at five historians

whose work had not yet been given

fair or proper attention, according to

Smith.

Those historians were Mark

Dworzecki, Philip Friedman, Isaiah

Trunk, Joseph Kermish and

Nachman Blumental. It was after sur-

viving a number of concentration

camps that Dworzecki, who was a

medical doctor, specifically felt com-

pelled to speak out and tell the sto-

ries of other Holocaust victims.

“Those who disappeared have

commanded us: Tell!” he wrote in

1948, according to the JewishJournal.

And now that these stories are

being given new light, David Myers, a

Jewish history professor at UCLA

who also oversaw Smith’s thesis

project, believes historians will now

need to amend their understanding

of the field.

“At the intersection of three areas

of Jewish scholarship — Yiddish

studies, Holocaust studies and the

history of Jewish historiography —

one encounters a group of Holocaust

historians whose works have yet to

be explored in their original context,”

reads the paper’s abstract.

Smith wrote in the abstract that

these “survivor historians” decided to

write the history of the Holocaust “in

the Yiddish vernacular of their read-

ers,” but that their work decades later

was still “surprisingly neglected.”

The abstract said the work of these

historians helps to round out under-

standings of early histories written on

the Holocaust.

Rather than an early Holocaust his-

tory focusing primarily on the perpe-

trators of the event, these overlooked

works provide first-person accounts

from the victims who experienced the

unspeakable horrors.

“Most recently, the gradual transfer

of the Yiddish historians’ work from

the community of Yiddish speakers

to the larger world of Jewish and

general scholarship has gained

these historians a degree of integra-

tion into the mainstream of Holocaust

study,” the abstract reads.

One of the reasons the work of

these historians is intriguing is that

they wrote both about the histories

surrounding the Holocaust and about

the Jewish experience, including

information about Jews’ attempts to

resist the Nazi mentality through eco-

nomic and spiritual means.

“Generally speaking, most histori-

ans who write about the Holocaust

are not also Jewish historians,”

Smith told the Jewish Forward. “Both

fields are very large, and you have to

specialize, and you don’t specialize

in both.”


(Continued from page 2)it in an important way,” saidBerkowitz. “One of the things I coulddo was become like the guy she real-ly wanted to be with. . . . My motherwill tell you that she feels I was Delej’sson.”

These days Herzek, 94, can be atouch forgetful, but she vividly recallsthat Delej once gave her a ring.Though they were not engaged (“itwas too soon”), she is convinced theywould have married had it not beenfor the war.

“We belonged to each other,”Herzek said by phone from SanDiego, where she now lives. “In myheart he always was with me, anduntil I die he will be with me.”

At Auschwitz, Herzek was amongthe nearly 60,000 prisoners SSguards forced on “death marches”while evacuating the camp as Soviettroops advanced in January 1945.When she finally returned to herhome village of Nagybánya (nowRomania’s Baia Mare), she wroteDelej hoping to resume theirromance. His mother replied that he’dperished.

“It was devastating,” said Herzek.“But you get married and you startyour life.”

Herzek later wed Robert’s father,with whom she eventually settled inthe United States.

Before leaving Europe, however,Herzek visited Delej’s home, whereshe hoped to pay her respects to hismother. She found only the family’shousekeeper, who told her Delej haddied needlessly.

“He turned himself in,” said Herzek.“His silly thinking was that maybe hewould find me. But he was in a ghet-to. You couldn’t do such things.”

Delej had vanished, leaving no traceBerkowitz could find in his years ofresearch, looking him up online, con-sulting encyclopedias, music antholo-gies and Holocaust records.

Now visiting the Holocaust museumwith Benedetti, Berkowitz againentered the composer’s name into theterminal, misspelling it — as he hadhis entire life — “D-E-L-E-Y.”

A museum employee suggested thefamily likely wouldn’t have spelledtheir name with a “Y,” recommendinghe try instead the more traditionalDelej.

Again, nothing. The staffer went back to his desk

and began fiddling at a computer. Afew minutes later he turned toBerkowitz: “Was this guy a musician?”

“I couldn’t believe it,” saidBerkowitz, who was soon printingdozens of World War II–era docu-ments. “What had been a two-dimen-sional man suddenly became a three-dimensional person. It was as if hedied all over again. I remember . . .saying to myself, maybe it’ll have adifferent ending now.”

***

When a package fromBerkowitz arrived a few

weeks later at the Manhattan home ofLivia’s son, Peter Lengyel, there wasone question: “Is Robert a kook?”asked Livia’s granddaughter, KristenLengyel, who goes by Cricket.

But the parcel, which contained aletter recounting his mother’sromance with Delej, family photos,and a trove of documents he’d discov-ered at the Holocaust museum, was

too enticing to pass up. They knew solittle of their gifted uncle.

“I knew nothing other than he’dbeen picked up off the street,” saidPeter Lengyel. “It was never talkedabout.”

Delej died when Lengyel was still achild. Though Livia had told him heryounger brother was a marvelousmusician, she rarely spoke of Delej,saying only that he’d died during thewar.

In his letter, Berkowitz, who locatedthe Lengyels online after finding anold US address in the museum files,conveyed his mother’s tale of thecomposer’s ill-fated attempt to saveher. He shared that Delej had died atBuchenwald of complications from aninfected frostbite wound on February17, 1945 — less than two monthsbefore American troops liberated thecamp. He was 21.

Finally, Berkowitz included a letterPeter Lengyel’s grandmother,Leonora, had written to theInternational Tracing Service fiveyears after Delej’s death.

“I wonder if you could help me infinding the whereabouts of theremains of my dead son,” Leonorawrote in 1950. “Is there some kind ofrecord showing where and in what

kind of grave he was buried?”“I just started crying,” said Cricket

Lengyel, who recognized Delej in thephotos and soon began going throughher grandmother’s correspondence.“To think of this young man, who hap-pens to be my great-uncle, but moreimportantly he’s [Livia’s] little brother— it opened up this whole new world.”

***

Three weeks after Germany invad-ed Poland in September 1939,

Leonora Delej wrote her daughter. “I would be happy if

he goes a year fromnow,” Leonora saidof their plans to sendLajos to the UnitedStates. “Lulu is learn-ing English diligentlyand soon we will,too.”

Meanwhile, 16-year-old Lajos Delejwas coming into hisown as a musician,giving his first publicperformance onMarch 5, 1940. Oneweek later, he dedi-cated three piecesfor solo piano to hissister, a gift on her25th birthday.

The works hadbeen all but forgottenwhen CricketLengyel discoveredthem behind thefamily piano. HadBerkowitz “neverfound us, Loulou

would be gone forever,” said Lengyel,whose grandmother died at age 100,just six months before Berkowitzwrote the family.

For Berkowitz, who has incorporat-ed the works into his repertoire,Delej’s compositions evoke a compli-cated mix of emotions.

“If Delej had lived, my mother andhe would have had children, and Iwouldn’t be alive. . . . It’s as if we havemutually exclusive world lines,” saidBerkowitz. “This music is just askingfor somebody to invest it with a partic-ular way of playing, and I think tomyself: Who better than me?”

By the spring of 1940, Delej hadbegun curtailing other activities tofocus on his music, which would sooninclude conducting as well. Still, heremained a distractable teenager, tak-ing dance lessons, swimming at thepool, and assuring Livia he wasn’tromantically interested in a fellowmusician.

“She is much older than I,” Delejwrote Livia that May. “I think now youwill be able again to sleep.”

While Delej struggled to find musicstudents of his own to earn money, intime he gave performances andworked as an accompanist throughthe Goldmark Music School, a con-

servatory created for Jewish stu-dents.

“Goldmark was a safe island forJewish pupils and teachers,” saidPéter Bársony, a violist and professorat the Franz Liszt Academy of Musicwho has written extensively onHungarian Jewish musicians duringthe Holocaust. “It was one of the fewplaces in Budapest they could work.”

Ensconced in this cultural milieu,Delej composed his first sonata: awork for piano and cello.

“It is supposed to be beautiful,”Delej, who often penned little notes atthe bottom of his parents’ letters topractice his English, wrote to Livia inMay 1941. “It is only [too] bad that youcannot hear it immediately.”

Bársony, who during his researchinterviewed the renowned Hungariancellist János Starker, said Starker toldhim Delej had written the sonata forhim.

He added that Starker, who died in2013, told him he’d once had thesonata’s sheet music. But no longer:He lost it in the late 1950s after per-forming Delej’s music at the BBC’sLondon studios.

“He was in a rush and somehow heleft the music,” Bársony said bySkype from Budapest.

At least part of the sonata appearsto have been recorded, and in 2014Warner Classics released a 10-discset of Starker performances, includingthe Delej sonata’s “Scherzo” move-ment.

“It’s a miracle that Starker lost themusic, but through his playing themusic survived,” said Bársony, whoalso interviewed Ligeti’s widow, Vera.The famed composer “considered[Delej] to be an exceptional talent, agenius,” wrote Barsony. “[H]emourned his loss his entire life.”

***

In the summer of 1941, Delej trav-eled to Kolozsvár (now Cluj-

Napoca in Romania), the city wherehe would meet Berkowitz’s mother,Pauline. He may have gone to studywith the acclaimed composer SándorVeress.

Initially, the 17-year-old Delej foundthe town’s women wanting.

“[Loulou] writes that there are no‘pretty’ women there,” Imre wrote onAugust 9, 1941. “My young boy setsalmost unrealizable demands withregard to ‘beauty.’”

But later that month, Delej’s roman-tic prospects had brightened.

“I have again fallen a bit in love, butdon’t worry, nothing life-threatening,”Delej wrote on August 24, going on todescribe his reception in Kolozsvár. “Ihad a big, big success; I was some-what worshiped; it was really uncom-fortable, and rather unpleasant. Youmust not forget that it is, after all, asmall town.”

But Delej’s talent was equally recog-(Continued on page 13)



Pauline Herzek met Delej during a piano recital, a meeting the com-

poser appears to have documented in a letter to his sister.


PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE AMEYOUNG LEADERSHIP ASS

YLA Leadership: (l. to r.) Josh Gelnick, Daniella Pomeranc, ASYV Chairman Leonard Wilf, Rachel

Shnay, Michael Shmuely, Abbi Halpern, Barry Levine.

Members of the YLA Board. Top (l. to r.): Alex Levine, Josh Gelnick, ASYV Chairman Leonard Wilf,

Daniella Pomeranc, Michael Shmuely, YLA Co-Chair Barry Levine, Alexandra Lebovits, Nadav Besner,

Harry Karten, YLA Liaison Isaac Benjamin, Susie Nussbaum. Bottom (l. to r.): Lara Meyer, Jessica

Glickman-Mauk, YLA Co-Chair Abbi Halpern, Avi Felberbaum, Michael Distenfeld, Erica Distenfeld,

Isidore Karten.


MERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM SSOCIATES WINTER GALA

Exploring the silent auction: Jaci and Gonen Paradis.

Zoe Baker and Avi Snyder are signing up to research family history with the support of Yad Vashem

archivists.


German organization March ofLife encourages young Germans toinvestigate their families’ past,break the barrier of silence anduncover the acts committed bytheir grandparents during theHolocaust. The activities includemarches in main cities around theworld under the banner “NeverAgain,” meetings with survivorsand strong support for the State ofIsrael.BY ITAY ILNAI, YNETNEWS

It was an emotionally chargedmoment: A young German

woman, the granddaughter of a Naziofficer, sitting next to a Holocaust sur-vivor and specifying what her grand-father had done to Jews during WorldWar II. There was no anger there, justa lot of sadness.

“Both sides of my family, my paternalside and my maternal side, weredevout Nazis,” Anna Reiner confesseswith a serious look on her angel face.“My great-grandfather took part inburning the synagogue in the city of

Darmstadt, Germany. Another grand-father was a policeman in the Krakowghetto. Another grandfather was in theWehrmacht, the German army, andtook part in the occupation of Belarus.”

While 25-year-old Reiner describesthe horrible acts committed by hergrandparents, Yevgenya Chaika sitsnext to her and strokes her arm, calm-ing her down. It’s quite possible thatChaika, a Belarus-born Holocaustsurvivor, ran into Reiner’s grandfatherat some point. She was only eightmonths old when Hitler’s soldiersstormed eastern Belarus and jailed allthe Jews in crowded ghettos.Together with her family members,she was tossed “like a sack of pota-toes” into a crate on a large truck,which took her to the ghetto. Shebarely survived there for four years, ahelpless baby. After the ghetto wasliberated, the family returned home,only to discover that the house hadbeen bombed and robbed.

Who knows, it may have beenReiner’s grandfather of all peoplewho threw little Yevgenya into thecrate on the truck. It may have beenhe who fired the mortar shell that

destroyed her childhood home. “Andwhat if it was him?” Chaika says inher heavy accent as she keepscaressing Reiner’s hand. “Is she toblame for what her grandfather andgrandmother did? Absolutely not. Ilove her as if she were my owndaughter.”

The unusual meeting betweenReiner and Chaika was held recentlyin the Israeli city of Netanya, as part ofthe activity of German organizationMarch of Life. About 100 Belarus-bornHolocaust survivors, wearing capsand glasses and wrapped in theircoats, faced some 10 youngGermans, tall and good-looking, thedescendants of Nazi soldiers and offi-cers. The former spoke about theirhorrible experiences in the Holocaust,and the latter told them about theirfamilies’ grim history.

Surprisingly, there was no anger inthis intergenerational meeting, just alot of sadness and a bit of comfort, forboth sides. Not a single eye remaineddry when Asia Bronstein recalled howher father was drafted by the Soviet

army and she wasforced to flee east-ward with hermother. On theway, they foundthemselves in asmall Jewish townjust as the Germanarmy arrived in thearea, encircled thetown and turned itinto a ghetto.

“That wasn’t life,just a difficult,daily survival,” sherecounted. “Thewinter of 1941 was

extremely cold, and there was noneed to shoot people. They died ofhunger, of the cold and of diseases.Every day, a wagon passed betweenthe houses and collected the bodies.Only a few survived.”

The 25-year-old Samuel Haas tookthe microphone and said, “My grand-parents were Nazis. One of themhanded out printed propaganda infor-mation, and the other three traveledacross Europe as part of their job inthe Wehrmacht army. They murdered,robbed and looted. And as a descen-dant of these people, I would like tostand on Israeli soil and say out loudthat we must not let such a thing hap-pen again. I want to expose my fami-ly’s story and support Israel and thewar on anti-Semitism.”

Haas’ comments reflect the solidar-ity at the heart of this event and theagreement that such meetings willhelp guarantee that horrible eventslike the Holocaust will never repeatthemselves.

“Anna and her friends are reachingout to us now,” Chaika says with abroad smile. “They are very goodyoung men and women. It warms my

heart that they are so cute and thatthey know it was wrong. I’m not angrywith them, absolutely not. I hope thatthey won’t be like their grandparentsnow.”

The March of Life organizationwas founded nine years ago in

a bid to commemorate the Holocaustand fight anti-Semitism. It encouragesyoung Germans to investigate their

families’ past, break the barrier ofsilence and uncover the acts commit-ted by their grandparents in theHolocaust.

“For years, no one in Germany dis-cussed what had happened only sev-eral meters from the German city cen-ters,” explains Heinz Reuss, the orga-nization’s international director. “Notonly was there no public debate, therewere no family conversations aboutthe past either. People didn’t talk aboutwhat they did in the war. We startedinvestigating our families’ past, startedasking questions. Many of us discov-ered that their grandparents were Nazicriminals. We were shocked.”

Not just in Germany, but in Israeltoo, there has been a silencing cultureabout the Holocaust for many years.The main principle of the organiza-tion, therefore, is talking. The actualdiscussion of the matter, after years ofsilencing on both sides, brings peoplecloser and releases tensions and oldhatreds. It aims to guarantee that thepast does not repeat itself.

As part of the organization, theyoung Germans meet with Holocaustsurvivors around the world, tell themabout their families’ Nazi past andseek their forgiveness, promising to doeverything in their power so that thosehate crimes do not repeat themselves.

In the meeting held in Netanya, theyoung Germans even presented aHasidic dance to the survivors andsang a modern version of Israel’snational anthem, “Hatikva,” includinga rap segment in German, which wasmet with loud applause. They thenhanded out flowers to the survivors.

“The March of Life insists that wedon’t keep silent again,” says Reuss,“that we speak publicly about whatour forefathers did. The goal is tobring together the Nazi criminals’

descendants with the Holocaust sur-vivors and the victims of theHolocaust. The meeting betweenthem is part of our message — toremember what happened not justthrough figures and data, but throughpersonal stories too.”

As part of the organization, theyoung Germans participate in marchesthat are held in main cities around the

world, alongside local citizens andHolocaust survivors, under the banner“Never Again.” So far, the organizationhas held 350 marches in 14 differentcountries. In 2018, in honor of Israel’s70th Independence Day, it plans tohold its biggest march in Jerusalem.

It would be very easy to change theorganization’s name from March of

Life to Walk of Shame. But AnnaReiner and her young friends are will-ing to swear that it’s not the shamewhich makes them learn the words of“Hatikva” and perform in front of 100elderly people in Netanya.

“It’s the responsibility,” she explains.“I am the descendant of Nazi criminals,and I am responsible for this matterand for making sure that it doesn’t hap-pen again. Before I knew all this infor-mation about my family, I had no inter-est in the Holocaust. Today, I ambreaking the silence. It’s important totalk about it and not to forget.”

Beyond the exposure of the past,the solidarity marches and the per-sonal meetings, one of the organiza-tion’s basic principles is unwaveringsupport, some would say fanatic sup-port, for the State of Israel. For exam-ple, at the end of each testimony, theyoung German pledges allegiance tothe State of Israel and vows to fightany criticism directed at the country.

One of the explanations is the factthat the organization works fromchurches across Germany and mainlyappeals to young devout Christians,deeply leaning on the Holy Scriptures.

“I believe in the Bible, I amChristian, and the Bible says that Godgave this land to the Jews,” Reinerrecites. “So I think that they have theright to fight for it. Beyond speakingabout my family’s past, an importantpart as far as I am concerned is tostand behind Israel.”

NAZIS’ DESCENDANTS SING “HATIKVA”

TO HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

Anna Reiner (right), a descendant of Nazis, and Holocaust survivor

Yevgenya Chaika.

Dancing and singing to Holocaust survivors.


(Continued from page 4)and I thought it would take centuriesfor humankind to cross it. And thepresident of the United States has justcrossed it in less than one hour.”Although it was mostly directed atReagan, the German Chancellerymet Wiesel’s vocal opposition withanger and disregard. Kohl and hisadvisors, however, believed they hadbeen correct in their assumption thatmany American Jews, especiallyprominent Holocaust survivors, theirorganizations and Jewish journalists,were determined to undermineGermany’s rehabilitation in the UnitedStates. With reference to Wiesel, Kohlstated disparagingly behind closed

doors: “Mister Wiesel, who came fromAuschwitz … is operating in this mat-ter with a particular severity againstus, to a degree that I cannot com-pletely understand, as I wish politelyto put it.”

A t this time, the leadershiparound Kohl had come to per-

ceive themselves as the victims ofAmerican Holocaust memory andwere determined to avert damage, asit were, to the country’s reputationabroad. Perhaps even more so thanduring the Bitburg controversy, theysaw Wiesel as an antagonist in thecontext of the establishment ofAmerica’s national Holocaust muse-um on the Mall in Washington. Kohland his advisors perceived the plansfor this institution as a particular slightagainst Germany, in their eyes theUnited States’ most loyal Cold Warally. To avert damage to the FederalRepublic’s reputation, German inter-mediaries tried for more than adecade to persuade the museumplanners to integrate postwar Germanhistory and the history of Germananti-Nazi military resistance into theexhibition concept. They aimed toshow that not all Germans had beenNazis during the Third Reich and thatthe Federal Republic was distinctlydifferent from Nazi Germany. ThoughWiesel agreed to set up a German-

American Committee on Learningand Remembrance to discuss issuesconcerning the museum in the after-math of Bitburg, its content was neverup for negotiation. To Wiesel, thecommittee’s task was to find “a newavenue in German-American rela-tions without forgetting theHolocaust.” He was convinced thatsuch a forum, had it been foundedearlier, could have averted the Bitburgscandal. Not only Wiesel, but alsomany other Holocaust survivors in theUnited States saw Kohl’s insistenceon the ceremony as an indicator thatWest Germany was struggling toaccept historical responsibility for theHolocaust, that the country lacked

adequate Holocaust education, andthat this created an opportunity for therevival of neo-Nazism.

Nevertheless, West German inter-mediaries tried to win over Wiesel,though without much success in theend. Among numerous initiatives andproposals, supporting Wiesel’s cam-paign for the Nobel Peace Prizeevolved as the most promising strate-gy. An advisor to Kohl noted that, inorder to convince the museum plan-ners to accommodate the Germangovernment’s suggestions, “we wouldhave to get the leading AmericanJews on our side, and for this purposeit would be ideal to support the effortsof the most prominent Jew, Prof. ElieWiesel, to receive the Nobel Prize.”Such thinking was consistent with aspecific form of West German sec-ondary anti-Semitism, which suggest-ed that Jews refused to forgive theGermans for the Holocaust, and thatthey exploited Holocaust memory forpolitical reasons at the expense ofpostwar Germany. For these reasons,but also out of fear of the allegedpower of “the influential Jews inAmerica,” a campaign by the GermanBundestag was orchestrated in sup-port of Wiesel’s bid for the NobelPrize. Needless to say, the roughly 80parliamentarians who signed the peti-tion did not recommend Wiesel

because he was America’s “mostprominent Jew,” but officially because“with great persuasion he has encour-aged people around the world toreach a higher grade of moral sensi-tivity…. It would be a great encour-agement for all, among them theGerman people, who dedicate them-selves to reconciliation.” Even thoughWiesel received the Nobel PeacePrize in 1986, the year he alsoresigned from the chairmanship of theHolocaust Council, the museum plan-ners — many of them survivors of theHolocaust — did not accommodateGerman requests for a modification ofthe museum. And it was only duringthe 1990s, after the opening of theUSHMM, that the German govern-ment abandoned its claim to a co-determination in the shaping ofHolocaust memory abroad, as well asits critical position toward Wiesel. Inthe new millennium, the Holocausthas become a paradigm for masscrime and genocide, the embodimentof barbarism and human rights viola-tions, and the fate of the Jews hasbeen transformed into a universallyrecognized point of reference forother victim groups. As a result, itsterminology, iconography andimagery have traveled and beenappropriated, politicized, used andabused outside their original historicalcontext. This universalization of theHolocaust, which we can see in theUnited States, Germany and manyother countries, has also had a signifi-cant impact on the reputation ofHolocaust survivors.

In this process, Elie Wiesel, whocommanded unrivaled attention

among Holocaust survivors aroundthe globe, became a moral authorityand a celebrity, also in Germany. In2000, Wiesel gave the official addressto the Bundestag on the occasion ofHolocaust Remembrance Day, and in2009, he returned with BarackObama and Angela Merkel toBuchenwald, from which he had beenliberated in 1945. Today, Germanyacknowledges its criminal history, andits leaders have changed their mindsabout Wiesel. Indeed, the country’spolitical leadership actively acceptshistorical responsibility and openlyidentifies with its past. It is thus not atall surprising that Germany’s politicalelites today admire and revereWiesel, and that Merkel, PresidentJoachim Gauck and many othershave embraced his moral messageand praised his achievements as anadvocate for Holocaust memoryemphatically on the occasion of hispassing. One should not forget, how-ever, that Germany’s coming to termswith the Nazi past was a difficult, con-tradictory and long-winded process,which is also reflected in the country’sambivalent attitudes towards ElieWiesel.

BEFORE ELIE WIESEL WAS A HERO TO GERMANS,

HE WAS REGARDED AS A NUISANCE — OR WORSE

President Shimon Peres seen awarding Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel the Presidential

Medal of Distinction, at a ceremony in New York City, November 25, 2013.

Anne Frank may not have beenbetrayed to Nazi occupiers, but

captured by chance. A new study pub-lished by the Anne Frank Housemuseum in Amsterdam says thatdespite decades of research, there isno conclusive evidence that theJewish diarist and her family werebetrayed to the Netherlands’ Germanoccupiers during World War II, lead-ing to their arrest and deportation.Ronald Leopold, Executive Director ofthe Anne Frank House museum, saidin a statement that new research bythe museum “illustrates that otherscenarios should also be considered.”

One possible theory is that theAugust 4, 1944, raid that led to Anne’sarrest could have been part of aninvestigation into illegal labor or falsi-fied ration coupons at the canal-sidehouse where she and other Jews hidfor just over two years. Anne kept adiary during her time in hiding thatwas published after the war andturned her into a globally recognizedsymbol of Holocaust victims. She diedin the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentra-tion camp at age 15, shortly before itwas liberated by Allied forces.

The new research points to two menwho worked in the building onAmsterdam’s Prinsengracht canaland dealt in illegal ration cards. Theywere arrested earlier in 1944 and sub-sequently released, Dutch recordsshow. The arrests also are mentionedin Anne’s diary. Such arrests werereported to an investigation divisionbased in The Hague, and the reportsays that, “During their day-to-dayactivities, investigators from thisdepartment often came across Jewsin hiding by chance.”

Another possibility raised by thereport is that the raid was part of aninvestigation into people beingallowed to work to prevent them beingcalled up as forced labor and sent toGermany. “A company where peoplewere working illegally and two salesrepresentatives were arrested fordealing in ration coupons obviouslyran the risk of attracting the attentionof the authorities,” the report says.

It adds that, “The possibility ofbetrayal has of course not beenentirely ruled out by this, nor has anyrelationship between the rationcoupon fraud and the arrest beenproven,” and says further research isnecessary. “Clearly, the last wordabout that fateful summer day in 1944has not yet been said,” it adds.

ANNE FRANK

WASN’T BETRAYED?


A new documentary chronicleshow a Holocaust survivor escapedthe gas chambers, a lethal injec-tion and a death camp, and lived tokeep a promise to her father.BY JUDY MALTZ, HAARETZ

Suzanna Braun (nee Weisz) wasbarely 16 when she walked into

a gas chamber at Auschwitz, togetherwith her mother and sister. A rare mal-function saved their lives.

“There were about 30 of us in there,and I remember thinking this was theend,” she recalls. “There was nowater coming out of the shower, butthere was a faint smell of gas. Thatwas it, though. Just a faint smell. Andsuddenly, after a few minutes, thedoors were opened, and we were allherded out. We understood thatsomething wasn’t working like itshould be.”

That was in June 1944. About half ayear later, in a different death camp,Braun stared down death again, sur-viving what should have been a lethalinjection of strychnine. But this time itwas her own ingenuity, not luck, thatsaved her. When her turn in linecame, she rotated her wrist so thatthe needle only pricked her skin. “Iwatched as one inmate after anotherdied instantly after getting the injec-tion shot directly into a vein,” sherecounts. “I had remembered learningat some point that when somethinggets injected directly into the vein ithas a much more powerful effect, so

instinctively I turned my arm around.”After the injection, Braun lifted a

bale of hay and used the baling wireto bore a hole completely through herforearm, in the hope of forcing out thepoison. Somehow or other it worked,and using the same primitive tech-nique she saved two other prisonersnear her in the line and her belovedolder sister, Agi. Braun shows a visitor

the scar on her arm from her crudeself-surgery of 70 years ago.

Recently, Braun retraced part of thehorrific journey that began in April1944 when the Nazis occupied herhometown of Kosice, the second-largest city in what is now Slovakia,and put an abrupt end to what hadbeen a very privileged childhood. Sheinsisted that her daughter, son-in-lawand two grandchildren accompany

her.This trip back in time is the subject of

a documentary A Story in Third Person.The driving force behind the project ispublic relations professional ElishevaBraun-Lapidot, Braun’s only child.

“When my mother talks about whatshe went through, it’s so painful, theonly way she can do it is if she talksabout it happening to someone else,”

Braun-Lapidot says by way of explain-ing the title of the 75-minute documen-tary, which was directed and edited byIsraeli filmmaker Yarden Karmin.

Suzanna and Agi grew up in a spa-cious home in Kosice, aCzechoslovakia town that had about12,000 Jews before the war. The sis-ters were raised largely by au pairs.Their father was a jurist, their mothera scion of an aristocratic Hungarian

Jewish family. In 1938 Kosice wasceded to Hungary. In April 1944, rightafter the Nazis occupied the city, theJewish students were singled out,given their final report cards and toldnot to return to school. Two monthslater the family was transported toAuschwitz by cattle car.

“Iremember getting off the train atAuschwitz, and the first thing I

saw was the smoke coming out of thechimneys and Dr. Mengele standingthere wearing white gloves,” recallsBraun. “I also remember seeing threepeople who had been hanged. Theywere all hanging from their feet.”

The women and children werepushed into one line, the men intoanother. “That was the last time I sawmy father,” says Braun. “I never got tosay goodbye to him.”

She did, though, fulfill an importantcommitment she had made to him justbefore the family left Kosice. “My sis-ter Agi, who was four years older thanI, had been ill, and my father mademe promise that I would look after herno matter what happened,” recountsBraun. “And I did.”

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the first ofnumerous stops for the two sistersbefore they eventually found their wayback home in October 1945. But thetrip Braun took with her family lastsummer ended at the infamous deathcamp.

“As strange as it sounds,” saysBraun-Lapidot, “Auschwitz and Birk-


EVEN IN THE GAS CHAMBERS, MIRACLES CAN HAPPEN

Suzanna Braun at her home in Jerusalem with an old album of family photos.

BY ELI HONIG, CJN

As an infant, hidden in occupiedFrance during the Holocaust,

whose father and his father’s familyperished in Auschwitz, I grew up witha haunting legacy. Over the years, Iwrestled with many aspects of thishistory.

My mother was five months preg-nant with me, and she was left withher two little girls, when my father wasarrested in the first nationwideroundup of Jews in France, on July16, 1942. When I was much older,she told me that once, prior to hisarrest, she had removed her yellowstar and travelled to Paris from thetown of Château-Gontier, where ourfamily was in enforced residence.When she arrived she was caught ina large police dragnet of prostitutesand placed in a jail cell with them.Three days later, she was releasedand returned home.

Late in my mother’s pregnancy, twoSS or Gestapo officers came by car tothe small town to arrest her and hertwo girls. In a last act of desperation,she blurted out that she was about togive birth. Since she was very heavywith child, and since the officers real-ized what a childbirth would do totheir Mercedes, they retreated, sayingthat they would return. Through the

remarkable mind-numbing efforts ofthe extended Christian Counord-Gardon family, they failed in their mis-sion. I was born, and they placed usin different hiding places for the dura-

tion of the war.The Germans, realizing that their

“prey” had eluded them, started hunt-ing for us. They even interviewed mymidwife, who told them that Mme.Honig was so desperate that sheprobably jumped into the nearbyMayenne River with her children.When in 1980 I visited the people whohad risked life, limb and torture tosave us, I was told that the Germansdredged the river for three days in

search of bodies, thereby allowing formore time to execute our escape.

Ihave in my possession a copy of aletter from the chief of the French

police in Château-Gontier to the com-

missioner of police for the province ofMayenne, stating that Mme. EstherHonig disappeared with her three chil-dren (names, and places and dates ofbirth included), and that he had noidea which direction she took. But heassured his superior that as soon ashe found the whereabouts of the “fugi-tives” he would let him know. The let-ter was dated November 24, 1942. Somy mother was labeled a fugitive, andby extension I was too, at the age of

three weeks.When I was 50 years old, I visited

my mother in Montreal, and togetherwe watched a video of the Holocaustinterview that she had at the LivingTestimonies Project at McGillUniversity. There and then I finallylearned the reason for her surrepti-tious nighttime trip to Paris, whereshe was arrested and eventuallyreleased. She was going to an under-ground clinic to have an abortion!When she stepped out of the jail, shedidn’t know where to go. One direc-tion led to the clinic and the otherdirection led to home. Then she saw aGerman soldier across the street, andshe said to herself that what shecould do with two children, she coulddo with three. And she left forhome — and I was born.

The revelation that I was almostaborted reeled me. But it was mymother’s courage, and the realizationthat I ended up being the vehicle forthe saving of my mother and my twosisters, not to speak of me, that hashaunted me for years. Now I realizethat for almost two years, we all hadnear-death experiences, though onlymy mother was aware of the true dan-ger at the time. As an infant, I couldhave no understanding of what tran-spired then. Yet it was surely thenear-death experiences that haveshadowed me in my cognitive years.

A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE IN FRANCE CIRCA 1942

Two young women wear the Star of David in Paris.


(Continued from page 7)nized in Budapest, where after hear-ing the young composer play his“Intermezzo” (a work whose where-abouts are today unknown), his pianoteacher György Faragó was soimpressed, he vowed to record it.

Even as Delej’s celebrity grew, thefamily began working feverishly tosecure his passage to the UnitedStates.

Livia had reserved him a spaceaboard the SS Serpa Pinto, whichduring the war ferried thousands ofrefugees from Lisbon to the UnitedStates.

“It seemed like everything was inorder,” said Michael L. Miller, head ofthe Nationalism Studies program andcofounder of the Jewish Studies pro-gram at Central European Universityin Budapest. “The problem was that

he also needed transit visas throughGermany, France and Spain.”

Miller, who has been translating theDelejs’ correspondence as part of abroader book project on HungarianJewry, said the family’s plight wascomplicated by US immigration poli-cy, which would tighten considerablyafter the Pearl Harbor attack.

“They had to get affidavits and tick-ets and all sorts of things,” Miller saidvia Skype from Budapest. “Thingswere going slower than they wanted,but things were going in the rightdirection. They never lost confidencethat he was eventually going to get toAmerica.”

Imre and Leonora envisioned theentire family would eventually bereunited in the United States. Still,they repeatedly had to extend theirson’s ticket as they tried to arrangesafe passage.

Two days after Delej missed aSeptember 1941 embarkation date,Imre wrote his daughter: “The SerpaPinto departed punctually on the 12thfrom Lisbon. The ship should havetaken Loulou. Only half an eye islaughing that he’s still here, while jus-

tifiably 1½ eyes cry.”In that same letter Delej’s mood is

light, as he finally confesses that he’smet someone.

“In Kolozsvár it was perfect, simplyexcellent,” wrote Delej. “I met a girl;we write to each other weekly.”

Three months later Hungary,pressed by the Axis powers, woulddeclare war on the United States.

***

So was the girl from KolozsvárRobert Berkowitz’s mother?

Her son certainly likes to think so.“That must be about his meeting

with my mother,” Berkowitz said,adding, “I’ve been knocking at a doorshaped like that face my whole life.My mother has said: You broughtback Lajos Delej to me.”

Still, the dates are a little fuzzy.Herzek doesn’t recall the precise year

she met Delej, but she believes theycourted for a year or more before shewas sent to Auschwitz in 1944.

Did they actually meet three yearsearlier, during the 1941 trip? Familycorrespondence offers little insight,winding down after Imre’s death in1942.

What remains are a few pieces ofephemera — newspaper clippingsand a concert program from thatJune, when Delej accompaniedStarker in his sonata and presentedother works, now lost. Delej won arecital award in 1943, and thatDecember the German pianist WalterGieseking was deeply moved byDelej’s performance of his composi-tion “The Flame,” which is also lost.“The famous musician loved the pieceso much that he inserted it into hisrepertoire,” reported a Budapestnewspaper.

The Germans invaded in March1944, after Hungary tried to negotiatewith the Allies. Under SS influence,the Hungarian government orderedthe country’s rural Jews into ghettos,deporting an estimated 440,000 —many to concentration camps — but

leaving roughly 200,000 Jews in thecapital.

That July, the Swedish diplomatRaoul Wallenberg arrived inBudapest, where (joining other diplo-mats) he began distributing certifi-cates of protection, or schutzpasses,to the city’s Jews. Wallenberg helpedestablish the so-called internationalghetto, an archipelago of safe housesfor Jews bearing protective papers.

The Delej home became one ofWallenberg’s safe houses, andLeonora and Lajos were issuedschutzpasses.

In October 1944, however, theGermans organized a coup by the far-right Arrow Cross party, initiating theslaughter of hundreds and forcingmany others into increasingly brutallabor.

“All those Jews who managed tosurvive in Budapest are now in dan-ger,” said Miller. “The Jews in the safehouses are threatened. Jews are shotinto the Danube. This is the worstphase of the Holocaust in Budapest.”

Leonora evaded capture by hidingat the base of an elevator shaft,assisted by the family’s housekeeper.

As Soviet troops advanced onBudapest, Hungarian authoritiesforced Jews without protective certifi-cates into a fenced-off ghetto, whileothers remained in the internationalghetto.

One week later, on December 8,Delej wrote his mother for the lasttime.

“My dear mommy,” he wrote in ahurried scrawl. “We arenow heading in thedirection of theJózsefváros train sta-tion, and there is no wayto know. Do not despair.Really look after your-self. It is a real pity that Idon’t have my gearhere. Unfortunately, Ihave no food either. But,we’ll manage somehow.Mommy, don’t be afraidof anything. Ourguardian angel will notabandon us. I kiss youwarmly. Living just foryou, Your Loulou.”

On Christmas Day1944, authorities trans-ferred Delej toBuchenwald.

Did Delej turn him-self in to authori-

ties in hopes of findingHerzek, as the house-keeper said, or was hepicked off the street, as the Lengyelsheard? The letters are silent. Eitherway, Delej appears to have beenforced into labor sometime after theGermans invaded in March 1944.

“They took our poor little thing to theAlbrecht barracks, and from there thewretched ones no longer let him out,”

Leonora wrote on May 17, 1945. “Maythe good God send him home soon,because this horrible waiting is slowpoison. . . . I bemoan Lulu’s piano,which has been shattered into a thou-sand pieces.”

Delej is not mentioned again untilJune 1946, when Leonora placed anotice in a newspaper:

“Who knows about him? OnDecember 15, 1944, Lajos Delej wastaken from Budapest to Buchenwald,and from there he apparently arrivedsick at a nearby camp in January-February. Whoever knows anythingabout him, please inform his mother.”

The saga of Delej goes almost silentafter that.

Bársony’s research indicates thatsome of Delej’s compositions wereplayed on Hungarian radio in the1950s, but so far only the recording ofthe Scherzo has been recovered.

Listening to the movement now,Delej’s nephew, Peter Lengyel, isoften overcome.

“I think it’s the most beautiful thingI’ve ever heard,” he said. “God onlyknows how great he could havebeen.”

James Conlon, music director of theLos Angeles Opera, said Delej’sdeath is part of a multigenerationalcultural loss.

“The history of 20th-century music iswritten with an enormous omission,”said Conlon, who founded the Los-Angeles based Orel Foundation tobring attention to Nazi-suppressedcompositions. “Part of the loss is what

could have been. What could this per-son have become?”

Berkowitz doubts they will everrecover the rest of Delej’s sonata.Still, he holds out hope that descen-dants of musicians listed in the earlyprograms may eventually step for-ward.



Robert Berkowitz and his mother, Pauline Herzek.

Concert programs from the early 1940s, when Delej performed

with musicians who would later be counted among the luminaries

of 20th-century music.


(Continued from page 12)enau was kid’s stuff compared to theother things my mom went through,later on. She would not agree to goback to the other places.”

After surviving the gas chambers,Suzanna, Agi and their mother weretossed into a truck with several dozenother women and driven more than1,000 kilometers, to Estonia, wherethey were ordered to begin marchingsouth. On the road, their mother,Elizabeth (Elisheva’s namesake), wasshot dead. Devastated by the loss,young Suzanna was unable to speakfor a month.

Their next stops were a number ofsmaller, lesser-known concentrationcamps in Latvia and Poland, whereAgi became progressively more ill.

After they escaped from a camp nearDanzig, Suzanna dragged her oldersister around on a sled for days in thebitter cold, searching in vain for shelter.By the time Russian forces drove theGermans out of that part of Europe,Agi had developed gangrene in herlegs. Suzanne got her to a hospital,where Agi’s feet were amputated.

“Through everything I went throughuntil then, I never shed a tear,” recallsBraun. “The one and only time I brokedown is when the orderly droppedAgi’s two feet into a tub and told me totake them down and discard them in apile of limbs.” Concerned that Agi wasnot receiving proper medical care atthat particular hospital, Braunremoved her from the facility, and thetwo sisters went by train to Russia.They stayed for eight months, untilAgi was fully recuperated.

Suzanna and Agi eventually emi-grated to Israel. They lived next

door to each other for many years,until Agi’s death. Braun recentlymoved into a retirement home over-looking the hills of Jerusalem and herone regret, she says, is that her sisterdid not live to see how tastefully shedecorated her apartment. “How Iwould have loved to show heraround,” she says, sighing.

Because of the damage to her leftarm from the strychnine injection,Braun was never able to resumepiano playing, her great passion as agirl, but in recent years, after a longcareer teaching kindergarten, she hasfound a creative outlet in needleworkand other crafts.

As she tells her story, Braunremains true to the title of the film,sharing the horrific details in a dry,matter-of-fact tone as if everythinghad happened to another person.

Until the very end. That is, until shegets to the part about the journey withher family last summer. “There I waswalking again in Auschwitz-Birkenau,but this time with one grandchild oneach side of me holding my hand,”she recounts.

And then Braun begins to cry.

EVEN IN THE

GAS CHAMBERS,

MIRACLES CAN

HAPPEN BY OFER ADERET, HAARETZ

Did Herschel Grynszpan, whoseNovember 1938 killing of a

German diplomat in Paris served asthe “excuse” for the Nazi pogrom thatcame to be known as Kristallnacht,survive World War II?

An archive photo from 1946, foundrecently in the Vienna JewishMuseum, raises the possibility thatGrynszpan, who was assumed tohave died in a concentration campduring the war, actually survived it.

The photo, found in the museum bychance, shows a group of Jews in adisplaced persons camp inBamberg, Germany, on July3, 1946, demonstrating forthe right to emigrate toPalestine. The only personfacing the camera looksstrikingly like Grynszpan,who would have been 24 atthe time.

German journalist and his-torian Armin Fuhrer, who in2013 wrote a book calledHerschel: The Assassinationby Herschel Grynszpan onthe 7th of November 1938and the Beginning of theHolocaust, believes it isGrynszpan in that photo.

“It’s highly likely that thispicture indeed showsHerschel Grynszpan,”Fuhrer wrote in the Germannewspaper Focus inNovember, after he wasasked by the museum to give hisopinion. “This photo is a real surprise,because Grynszpan’s fate was neverclear. The question of whether he sur-vived the war and the Holocaustremained open. Until now.”

The photo was found in the collec-tion of Eliezer Breuer, a representa-tive of the religious Poalei AgudatYisrael organization, who was sent tothe displaced persons camp to helppave the way for Holocaust survivorsto come to Palestine. The picture alsoshows an American policeman point-ing a gun at the demonstrators. It isn’tknown if Breuer took the photo or if ithad been given to him by someoneelse.

On back of the picture it says, “Jewsprotesting against the closure of thegates of [Palestine] in 1946. Americanmilitary policemen are keeping orderwith drawn weapons. I protested thisand with the help of this picture thepolicemen were punished. The drawnpistols raised ire and difficult memo-ries bordering on mass hysteria.”

The photo had never been pub-lished, and bounced around betweendifferent locations until it reached theVienna museum in the 1990s as partof a collection of some 30 photo-graphs documenting Jews in the DPcamps. It didn’t attract much attentionat the museum either, until its chiefarchivist, Christa Prokisch, recently

stumbled across it and recognized aperson she thought was Grynszpan.

“It didn’t seem as if the photogra-pher photographed Grynszpan delib-erately or recognized him, eventhough Grynszpan’s picture madeheadlines all over the world in 1938,”Fuhrer wrote.

Recently, Britain’s Guardiannewspaper reported that the

picture had undergone a scientificexamination involving comparisons toactual photos of Grynszpan, and con-cluded that there was a 95 percentlikelihood that it was indeed him.

If Grynszpan were still alive todayhe would be 95.

“It’s not out of the question,” Fuhrertold the Guardian. “He could be livingunder an assumed name in Israel orthe United States.”

However, in the past, relatives whosurvived the war and emigrated toIsrael have ruled out that possibility.

In an interview with Haaretz in 2008,Grynszpan’s niece, Malka Grynszpan(the daughter of his brotherMordechai, who died in 1996), said:“Our main proof that he did not live isthat he did not make contact with us.He was so attached to his family thatit is unreasonable to think he wouldnot have looked for us.”

Grynszpan’s father, Sendel, whotestified at the Eichmann trial in 1961,said he had found no proof that hisson was alive.

Grynszpan was born in Germany in1921 to Jewish parents who hadimmigrated from Poland. When hewas 15 he moved to Paris. OnNovember 7, 1938, he shot to deathErnst vom Rath, the third secretary atthe German embassy in Paris. Themurder provoked Nazi Germany tolaunch a pogrom in Germany onNovember 9–10 that became knownas Kristallnacht, in which synagogueswere destroyed, Jewish stores werelooted, some 100 Jews were killedand tens of thousands were sent todetention camps. Most historiansconsider Kristallnacht to be the prel-

ude to the Holocaust.The motive for the shooting remains

unclear. The most accepted explana-tion is that Grynszpan attacked theGerman official in revenge for the suf-fering caused to his parents and otherJews who were being expelled fromGermany. But there are some whobelieve he had a romantic attachmentto Vom Rath, and shot him when herefused to save his parents or helplegalize his own status in Paris.

Initially, Grynszpan was arrested

by the French; in 1940, when the

Germans invaded France, he was

transferred to Berlin and then to the

nearby Sachsenhausen concentra-

tion camp. The last official confirma-

tion found in Nazi archives that he

was alive is from September 1942.

After that, there is no trace of him.

Many historians assume that

Grynszpan died in the camp, either

from illness or at the hands of the

Nazis. But there have always been

rumors that he survived the Holocaust

and was living in Paris, in Hamburg or

even in Israel. Some have claimed

that he had a family and lived under

an assumed identity for fear of being

assassinated.

In 1960, a German court pro-

nounced Grynszpan dead, paving the

way for his surviving relatives to get a

pension from Germany.

Fuhrer told the Guardian that the

photograph “raises more questions

than answers. Not least, what did he

do with the rest of his life, and per-

haps more importantly, how did he

manage to survive the Nazis — was

he protected, and if so, by whom?”

Archivist Prokisch told the British

newspaper that discovery of the

photo might prompt people to come

forward with new information, but “we

might not like the answers we get,”

she said. “For someone of his promi-

nence to have survived, as very few

others did, the suspicion has to be

that he collaborated with the Nazis in

some way.”

DID THE JEW “RESPONSIBLE” FOR SPARKING

KRISTALLNACHT SURVIVE THE HOLOCAUST?

Herschel Grynszpan in a 1938 photo, left, and, most likely, in the 1946 photo that recently surfaced in the archives

of the Vienna Jewish Museum.


(Continued from page 5)istry of propaganda in 1942. “Only aninfectious disease would have stoppedme,” she insists. “I was flattered,because it was a reward for being thefastest typist at the radio station.”

She remembers her pay slip, onwhich a range of tax-free allowanceswas listed, alongside the 275-marksalary — a small fortune comparedwith what most of her friends wereearning.

She notes how life for her vivacious,red-haired Jewish friend, EvaLöwenthal, became increasingly diffi-cult after Adolf Hitler came to power.Pomsel was also shocked by thearrest of a hugely popular announcerat the radio station, who was sent to aconcentration camp as punishmentfor being gay. But she says that large-ly, she remained in a bubble, unawareof the destruction being meted out bythe Nazi regime on its enemies,despite the fact that she was at thephysical heart of the system.

“Iknow no one ever believes usnowadays — everyone thinks

we knew everything. We knew noth-ing, it was all kept well secret.” Sherefuses to admit she was naive inbelieving that Jews who had been“disappeared” — including her friendEva — had been sent to villages inthe Sudetenland on the grounds thatthose territories were in need of beingrepopulated. “We believed it — weswallowed it — it seemed entirelyplausible,” she says.

When the flat she shared with herparents was destroyed in a bombingraid, Goebbels’ wife, Magda, helped tosoften the blow by presenting her witha silk-lined suit of blue Cheviot wool.“I’ve never possessed anything as chicas that before or since,” she says.“They were both very nice to me.”

She recalls her boss as being “short

but well kept,” of a “gentlemanly coun-tenance,” who wore “suits of the bestcloth, and always had a light tan.” “Hehad well-groomed hands — he proba-bly had a manicure every day,” shesays, laughing at the thought. “Therewas really nothing to criticize abouthim.” She even felt sorry for himbecause of the limp he had, “which hemade up for by being a bit arrogant.”

Only occasionally did she get aglimpse of the the man who turnedlying into an art in pursuit of the Nazis’murderous goals. She was terrified tosee him on stage at Berlin’sSportpalast delivering his infamous“total war” speech in February 1943.She and a colleague had been givenringside seats, just behind MagdaGoebbels. It was shortly after theBattle of Stalingrad, and Goebbelshoped to get popular support to pullout all the stops to fight the threatsfacing Germany. “No actor could havebeen any better at the transformationfrom a civilized, serious person into aranting, rowdy man …. In the office hehad a kind of noble elegance, andthen to see him there like a ragingmidget — you just can’t imagine agreater contrast.”

The details Pomsel chooses to focuson may reflect the way she has editedher own story so that she feels morecomfortable with it. But it is also con-ceivable that a combination of igno-rance and awe, as well as the protec-tion offered by the huge office complexin the government quarter,,,,,,,, reallydid shield her from much of reality.

It was the day after Hitler’s birthdayin 1945 that her life as she knew it

came to an abrupt halt. Goebbels andhis entourage were ordered to joinHitler in his subterranean air raid shel-ter — the so-called Führerbunker —during the last days of the war. “It feltas if something inside me had died,”says Pomsel. “We tried to make surewe didn’t run out of alcohol. That wasurgently needed in order to retain thenumbness.” She lifts an index fingeras she takes pains to tell events intheir right order, recalling howGoebbels’ assistant GüntherSchwägermann came with the newson April 30 that Hitler had killed him-self, followed a day later by Goebbels.“We asked him: ‘And his wife as well?’‘Yes.’ ‘And the children?’ ‘And the chil-dren too.’” She bows her head and

shakes it as she adds: “We weredumbstruck.”

She and her fellow secretaries setabout cutting up white food sacks andturning them into a large surrenderflag to present to the Russians.

Discussing their strategy ahead oftheir inevitable arrest, Pomsel told hercolleagues she would tell the truth,“That I had worked as a shorthandtypist in Joseph Goebbels’ propagan-da ministry.” She was sentenced tofive years’ incarceration in variousRussian prison camps in and aroundBerlin. “It was no bed of roses,” is allshe will say about that time. It wasonly when she returned home thatshe became aware of the Holocaust,she insists, referring to it as “the mat-ter of the Jews.”

She quickly resumed a life not dis-similar to the one she had had, whenshe found secretarial work at the statebroadcaster once again, working herway up to become the executive sec-retary to its director of programs andenjoying a privileged life of well-paidwork and travel before retiring, aged60, in 1971.

But it would take her a full sixdecades after the end of the warbefore she made any inquiries abouther Jewish school friend, Eva. Whenthe Holocaust memorial was unveiledin 2005, she took a trip from her homein Munich to see it for herself. “I wentinto the information center and toldthem I myself was missing someone,an Eva Löwenthal.” A man wentthrough the records and soon trackeddown her friend, who had been deport-ed to Auschwitz in November 1943,and had been declared dead in 1945.

“The list of names on the machineon which we found her just kept onrolling nonstop down the screen,” shesays, leaning her head back, the fin-gertips of one hand tracing the line ofher necklace.

Goebbels and his wife, Magda, with Hitler.

JOSEPH GOEBBELS' 105-YEAR-OLD SECRETARY:

"NO ONE BELIEVES ME NOW, BUT I KNEW NOTHING"

BY BENJAMIN GLATT, THE JERUSALEM POST

Ayear prior to the start of theSecond World War, prominent

banker Baron Friedrich Carl vonOppenheim convinced two of hisfriends, the Jewish owners of a metalfactory, to move their families andtheir metal operation to Amsterdamfrom Cologne.

Even though their firm was takenover by von Oppenheim’s bank duringthe war, the Lissauer and Griessmanfamilies lived and worked inAmsterdam in relative peace duringthe first few months of the war. But asthe long arm of the Nazis began toreach all of Western Europe, theywere in grave danger of being deport-ed and sent to concentration camps.

On September 7, 1940, an officialNazi bus escorted by two Germanmilitary vehicles commanded by Nazi

officers arrived at the Lissauers’house, and the two families — 11people in total — boarded the bus.They drove through occupiedBelgium and France, and finally theNazis reached their final destinationat the Spanish border, dropping offthe two families and returning home.Once in Spain, the Lissauers andGriessmans took a train to Portugaland traveled to Brazil via ship.

“Basically, they were escorted tofreedom by Nazis. How was this pos-sible?” von Oppenheim’s grandson,Florian von Oppenheim, asked at amemorial in the Israeli Consulate inShanghai in 2015.

He explained that through hisgrandfather’s high-level connectionswith the German Central Bank, vonOppenheim was able to get them exitvisas, convincing the bankers that theonly way the metal company would beable to pay back their massive loanswas through frozen funds the families

had in the United States.“This was all an elaborate ploy, and

the funds were never sent toGermany,” he said.

After saving the lives of the two fam-ilies, von Oppenheim continued towork to save the lives of more people,demonstrating to the Nazi authoritiesthat the metal company was crucialfor the German war effort, and itsworkers — almost exclusively Jewishrefugees, most of whom had no expe-rience at all in the metal business —needed to remain in the vicinity of themetal operation.

The ploy worked for a few years,but only a dozen were able to

survive. And as von Oppenheim contin-ued in his efforts, the Gestapo caughtup with him, framing him and throwinghim in jail on charges of treason with adeath sentence over his head. Hemanaged to survive in prison, and wasfreed by the Americans before theNazis could execute him. After the war

he returned to the banking business,and he died in 1978.

But not only did von Oppenheimperform acts of kindness during thewar; his legacy lives on in aHolocaust education fund. Today, theBaron Friedrich Carl von OppenheimChair for the Study of Racism,Antisemitism, and the Holocaust,founded and funded by the vonOppenheim family of Cologne, annu-ally awards two or three postdoctoralfellowship grants.

“Whenever I reflect on my grandfa-ther’s actions, he helped save 11lives from two families,” said Florianvon Oppenheim. “This is a drop inthe ocean compared to the six millionwho were murdered. But for those 11individuals and their descendants —it’s everything.”

On October 10, 1996, Yad Vashemrecognized Baron Friedrich vonOppenheim as Righteous Among theNations.

THE BANKER WHO USED NAZIS TO HELP SAVE JEWS

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Martyrdom & Resistance

Ron B. Meier, Ph.D.,

Editor-in-Chief

Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A.,

Editor

*Published Bimonthly by the American 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 AmericanFederation of Jewish Fighters, CampInmates, and Nazi Victims**deceased

FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION:

A PLANNED GIFT TO ASYVEmpower, educate and strengthen our

future by making an endowment gift to the

American Society for Yad Vashem. Your

legacy will help to support Yad Vashem in

Jerusalem and keep the memory of the

Shoah, its victims, survivors and heroes

alive forever.

You can make a generous contribution

through a bequest in your will by desig-

nating ASYV as a beneficiary of a

Charitable Remainder Trust or Charitable

Gift Annuity. You can also contribute

through a life insurance or retirement plan, by naming ASYV as a beneficiary of a

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Our ASYV staff are here to help you accomplish your estate planning goals.

For more information or assistance with your estate plan, please contact Chris

Morton, Director of Planned Giving: [email protected] or by phone at:

212-220-4304, extension 213.

BY MARGARET BURIN, ABC NEWS

Having virtually grown up in laborcamps, the teenagers were

both wasting away when their eyesfirst locked in the Czestochowa campin Poland.

“I lost my mind,” Sigi says.“When I saw her, the whole world

was turning around me. I saw a pair ofbeautiful eyes and I heard bells ring-ing.”

It was New Year’s Eve1944, 18 days before thecamp was liberated by theRed Army.

“I had no interest in girls,because I was a skeleton,”Sigi says.

“There was a pair ofbeautiful eyes looking atme, with a smile like I neversaw in my life.”

He approached her andthey talked.

Before returning to hisbarracks he gave her a kisson the cheek.

“I remember the firstkiss,” Hanka says as sheputs her hand on her face.

That is exactly what she did on thatfirst day, because, she says, shewanted to hold onto it forever.

Sigi had stood out in an environ-ment where the inhumane conditionshad left most people shells of their for-mer selves.

“At that time, the people in the campwere terrible,” she says.

“He was very gentle.”Over the coming days this new love

was tested.Sigi had been working in the muni-

tions workshop making bullets for theNazi German army.

He says he had been sabotagingthe factory line — making bullets toosmall for the gun barrels.

When he received word that theGestapo was looking for him, hefound a hiding spot in a nearby aban-doned construction site.

He says only Hanka knew where hewas hiding.

“She was the only person I couldtrust my life with,” he says.

Hanka says she risked her life tokeep him alive — smuggling himsmall pieces of her bread ration and ablanket that she had made to keephim warm on -15 degree nights.

Then one night, she came for a sec-ond visit.

This time she was smiling and hadher arms out.

The camp was being liberated.“They’re gone,” she told him.

“We are free.”The next day they were married.

The year after, Hanka gave birthto the first of their two daugh-

ters, Evelyne, the first baby born toHolocaust survivors in Sigi’s hometown of Katowice after the war.

Having moved to Australia in 1971,it wasn’t until their 50th weddinganniversary that the couple had aproper wedding, in their daughter’s

Melbourne backyard.“We’ve achieved a lot,”

Sigi says.“We’ve got so many

grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“She charmed me. Thatwas that, the rest washistory.”

Unlike Hanka and Sigi,only a handful of theirclassmates survived theHolocaust.

Their great-grandson’sschool, Bialik College, iscurrently collecting 1.5million buttons to honorthe children who weremurdered under the Naziregime.

Sigi is donating 180 buttons to theproject this month, to represent thefamily he lost in the Holocaust.

The doting couple, aged 91 and 93,have already had their gravestonesprepared, side by side, for when theyleave this world.

The inscription also commemoratestheir immediate family who werenever given a grave.

“We are inviting the souls of ourexterminated family to rest in ourgrave.”

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS CELEBRATE

SEVEN DECADES OF MARRIAGE

Melbourne couple Sigi, 93, and Hanka, 91, say after all of these years they are still

very much in love.

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