IN THIS ISSUEI was a child of Holocaust survivors............................................................................4Holocaust heroine’s survival tale..................................................................................5French railroad sued over Holocaust...........................................................................6How Belgium sacrificed its Jews to the Nazis............................................................7The American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Spring Luncheon............................8A tale of three women – and a lost family.................................................................8-9Report from Yad Vashem.............................................................................................10Was Churchill anti-Semitic?........................................................................................12Allies may have known of Holocaust plans...............................................................14Jewish artist creates memorial for Kielce pogrom...................................................15Hilel hosts Yad Vashem’s “No Child’s Play” exhibit in Florida................................16

Vol. 33-No.4 ISSN 0892-1571 March/April 2007-Adar/Nisan 5767

On March 11, 2007 over one hun-dred educators gathered at the

Pratt Mansions in NYC for the AmericanSociety for Yad Vashem’s Ninth AnnualProfessional Development Conference.Once again, this program was co-spon-sored by the Association of Teachers ofSocial Studies of the United Federationof Teachers. Remarks on behalf of the

president, Levi Anthony, were deliveredby Ms. Carolyn Herbst, past president ofATSS/UFT. Remarks were also given byCaroline Massel, co-chair of the YoungLeadership Associates of the AmericanSociety for Yad Vashem; as well as Mr.Eli Zborowski, Chairman of TheAmerican Society for Yad Vashem. Mr.Zborowski remarked that the AmericanSociety for Yad Vashem’s EducationalDepartment “works to put a face on indi-vidual Holocaust victims in order to intro-duce a human element to the story.Transmitting these messages is ourhope for the future.”

This year, we were once again high-lighting the Echoes and Reflections cur-riculum. This is a valuable education

resource developed by Yad Vashem,The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’Remembrance Authority, the Anti-Defamation League, and the USC ShoahFoundation Institute for Visual Historyand Education. We were pleased to wel-come representatives from all three insti-tutions. We were also very excited abouthaving teachers from eight different

states represented at this year’s confer-ence.

The educational conference startedwith remarks from Shulamit Imber,Director of Pedagogy of the InternationalSchool for Holocaust Studies of YadVashem Jerusalem. Her remarks, regard-ing the education philosophy of YadVashem, were found “insightful, com-pelling and passionate” by some confer-ence participants. Other workshops dur-ing the day were also led by Dan Tarplin,Project Director of the A WORLD OFDIFFERENCE® Institute, DeborahBatiste, Project Director for Echoes andReflections, and Stephanie McMahon-Kaye, Coordinator of the Desk forInternational Seminars in English at Yad

Vashem Jerusalem. They led the follow-ing workshops: 1) The Final Solution 2) Jewish Resistance 3) Survivors andLiberators 4) Perpetrators, Collaborators,and Bystanders and 5) The Ghettos.

The Echoes and Reflections curricu-lum is a comprehensive ten-lesson

program that focuses on the history ofthe Holocaust within the context of con-temporary issues. For example, it dealswith cultural diversity, genocide, andintolerance. This year’s conference triedto show educators how to utilize thisinnovative curriculum in their class-rooms. The aim of the American Societyfor Yad Vashem hosting these educationconferences is to transmit the lessons ofthis historical event to present and futuregenerations. Teaching about theHolocaust in an age-appropriate and his-torically accurate mannerwill promote greater sensitiv-ity and understanding toreduce the hatred, intoler-ance and prejudice preva-lent in today’s society. Whatalso sets this particular cur-riculum apart from others isits use of testimonies. This isone of the first multi-mediacurricula to be used in class-rooms. Educators can havethe voice of those peoplewho lived through the atroci-ties right in their classroomsby using the DVD or VHSprovided with the curriculum.As Shulamit Imber stated, it is so muchmore than just the words that these sur-vivors use, it is the way their voicessound, they look in their eyes, and theposture of their bodies.

Studying the Holocaust is important tostudents today in a world of growingHolocaust denial and anti-Semitism. Acurriculum like Echoes and Reflectionswill enable students to think about theresponsibilities they have as individuals,when confronted with prejudice and intol-erance. The holocaust provides a con-text for looking at the dangers of remain-ing silent in the face of the oppression ofothers. As Pastor Martin Neimoller said:

“When the Nazis came for the communists,I remained silent;I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,I did not speak out;I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,I did not speak out;I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,there was no one left to speak out.”

The educators who attended thisconference will be able to show

their students the importance of socialawareness, so that the words “NeverAgain” will ring true. As one participant

noted, “Emphasizing the human elementof the Holocaust allows for more thought-ful learning.”

Many people can remember theirteachers, they can remember the lessonthey were taught. It is our hope that theteachers who attend the AmericanSociety for Yad Vashem’s EducationalConferences will be remembered for thelessons that they are transmitting. It isour hope that they will go on and inspiretheir students, teaching them tolerance,understanding, and unity.

For more information regardingupcoming educational activities, pleasecontact our office at 212-220-4304.

TEACHING TOLERANCE, UNDERSTANDING, AND UNITY

From left to right: Shulamit Imber, Director of Pedagogy of the International School for HolocaustStudies of Yad Vashem Jerusalem; Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American Society for Yad Vashem;Carolyn Herbst, past president of ATSS/UFT; Elizabeth Zborowski, Cultural Director of theAmerican Society for Yad Vashem; Caroline Massel, co-chair of the Young Leadership Associatesof the American Society for Yad Vashem at the 9th Annual Professional Development Conference.

Conference participants looking over the curriculum at the 9thAnnual Professional Development Conference.

Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767

In a tribute ceremony on November 29,Yad Vashem honored its longstanding

friends and partners at the Conference onJewish Material Claims Against Germany(Claims Conference) for their steadfastsupport of Yad Vashem’s activities formore than 50 years.

Yad Vashem and the ClaimsConference are now intending to enterinto a new strategic partnership that willallow Yad Vashem to embark upon large-scale commemorative and educational

projects. “As the importance of passing onthe legacy of the Holocaust grows overtime, and with a view to the coming years,when the eyewitnesses will no longer beamong us, we must look towards securingHolocaust remembrance for future gener-ations,” said Avner Shalev. “By supportingHolocaust education, research and docu-mentation, the Claims Conference is ful-filling the last wishes of the Holocaust vic-tims, expressed in the many letters andmessages they left behind.”

CLAIMS CONFERENCE HONORED FOR PARTNERSHIP AND SUPPORT

ETGAR LEFKOVITS, THE JERUSALEM POST

Yad Vashem lambasted a group ofvisiting German Catholic bishops for

comparing the situation in the Palestinianterritories with the Holocaust, calling thecontentious remarks “political exploitationand demagoguery” and a gross distortionof history.

The sharp condemnation by Israel’sHolocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’Remembrance Authority followed reportsin the German press ofcomparisons made bysenior German bishopsbetween conditions inthe Warsaw Ghetto dur-ing World War II andcurrent conditions inRamallah, resultingfrom Israeli militaryactivities.

“The remarks illus-trate a woeful igno-rance of history and adistorted sense of perspective,” YadVashem Chairman Avner Shalev wrote ina letter to Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who ledthe Conference of German CatholicBishops on a 10-day visit to Israel and thePalestinian territories.

“Making analogies between the massmurder that was part of the plan to annihi-late the Jewish people, carried out underthe German Nazi regime and the currentsituation in Ramallah, and using wordswhose rhetorical power is immense, doesnothing to help us understand what isgoing on today; such words only furtherpoison the atmosphere making it thatmuch more difficult to find workable solu-

tions to deeply entrenched and thornyproblems.

“These unwarranted and offensive com-parisons serve to diminish the memory ofvictims of the Holocaust and mollify theconsciences of those who seek to lessenEuropean responsibility for Nazi crimes,”he wrote.

The German bishops’ bitterly con-tentious comparisons stunned YadVashem officials, who had hosted the sen-ior Christian leaders just hours earlier.

“In the morning, we sawthe pictures at YadVashem of the inhumaneWarsaw Ghetto, while inthe evening we were inthe Ramallah Ghetto,”Bishop Gregor MariaFranz Hanke reportedlysaid.

Another visiting bishop,Joachim Meisner, whoserves as the Archbishopof Cologne, reportedly

described the conditions at Israeli securitycheckpoints as “something done to ani-mals, not to humans.”

In his letter, the head of Yad Vashemnoted the words of the late Pope JohnPaul II when he visited Yad Vashem inwhich he said “no one can diminish thescale” of the Holocaust.

“I urge all people to keep the Holocaustout of cheap political exploitation anddemagoguery,” Shalev wrote.

“Such use of the Holocaust misrepresentsboth today’s reality as well as that of theShoah; it distorts historical facts and context,and trivializes the memory of the Holocaust’svictims and events,” he concluded.

GERMAN CLERICS ENRAGE YAD VASHEM

German bishops during visit to YadVashem.

The German government plans topay compensation to Holocaust sur-

vivors who worked in Jewish ghettos setup by the Nazis. Weekly magazine DerSpiegel said the government was makinga second attempt to pay damages to sur-viving workers from the ghettos, who,unlike slave laborers compensated since2000, generally earned a small,albeitoften negligible, wage. In 2002, the

German parliament passed a law to grantthese survivors a small pension, but thedrive proved unsuccessful, due to bureau-cratic complications in processing theclaims. In view of this, German ChancellorAngela Merkel has now instructed theGerman finance ministry to settle theclaims in a non-bureaucratic manner, andset up a fund based on the model used forthe slave labor victims, the magazine said.

GERMANY TO COMPENSATE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

The so-called Holocaust Foundationof Iran demanded from Austria,

Germany and Poland that they submitdocuments related to the massacre ofJews during the Second World War.

The head of the Foundation,Mohammad-Ali Ramin, told IRNA that thedocuments were needed for the “fact-find-ing commission” to clarify the real extentof the Holocaust and the number ofJewish victims.

The fact-finding commission wasformed during a Holocaust conference inTehran last December, which had beenattended by controversial historians chal-lenging the extent of the mass killings ofJews by the German Nazi regime.

The conference had prompted wide-spread international criticism, and Ramin

is well-known for his anti-Semitic stand-points and sympathies for neo-Nazigroups. He has, however, no official posi-tion in Iran’s political system.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hadbranded the Holocaust as a “fairy tale”and demanded the relocation of Israel toeither Europe or America.

Ahmadinejad had not attended theHolocaust conference in Tehran, but wel-comed the formation of the fact-findingcommission at a reception of the partici-pants.

Ahmadinejad had blamed the West forallegedly prohibiting any investigation intothe Holocaust, while accepting insultsagainst Muslim Prophet Mohammed inform of cartoons as part of freedom ofexpression.

IRANIAN HOLOCAUST FOUNDATION DEMANDS DOCUMENTS ON JEWISH MASSACRE

Amonument to Holocaust victims andhundreds of graves have been

defaced with swastikas in a Jewish ceme-tery in Odessa, southern Ukraine, localpolice said.

Unidentified people desecrated theHolocaust monument withred swastikas and with aninscription: “Congratulationson the Holocaust.”

“There are also swastikason hundreds graves, up toone thousand according todiverse information,” BoleslavKapulkin, a spokesman for Odessa’s Jewishcommunity, told reporters.

“It’s a planned operation as the monu-ment and the cemetery are in two differentlocations,” he said.

He said such incident is rather rare in

the city, which is home of a large Jewishcommunity since centuries.

The monument was erected at the sitewhere thousands of Jews were killed andburned by the Nazis between 1941-1944. It is reported that police launched a probe

into the “hooliganism.” But Avraham Wolf,

chief rabbi of Odessa andsouthern Ukraine, toldEJP he rather believesthat this act is “purelyanti-Semitic.”

Ukrainian sociologistsrecently expressed concern about a risein xenophobic attitudes in the country overthe last years.

Ukraine is home to about 450,000 Jews,one of the largest Jewish community inthe world.

HOLOCAUST MONUMENT AND JEWISH GRAVES DESECRATED IN ODESSA

AU.S. judge ordered the deportationof a Wisconsin man who acknowl-

edged his past as an SS death campguard.

Josias Kumpf was stripped of his citi-zenship in 2005 after it was establishedthat he concealed his SS past when emi-grating from Austria to the United States in1956. Last year, U.S. authorities launcheddeportation proceedings against him, andimmigration judge Jennie Giambastianiissued the order in January. According to

a Justice Department release, Kumpfacknowledged his role as a guard at“Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp inGermany; at an SS labor camp inTrawniki, Poland, where 8,000 Jewishmen, women, and children were mur-dered in a single day, as part of a two-daymass-murder operation involving 42,000victims at three camps.”

Kumpf, who says he never participatedin the killings, plans to appeal. If deported,he has chosen to go to Germany.

JUDGE ORDERS SS DEPORTATION

Yad Vashem secretly taught a groupof Jordanian educators about the

Holocaust. Ya’acov Yaniv, a member of Yad Vashem’s

main school of Holocaust studies, told themedia that a seminar was held at theJerusalem museum for about a dozenJordanian Muslim educators in 2006.

Yaniv told Yediot Achronot that he initiatedthe project after a chance conversation with

high-ranking Jordanian officials, and wassurprised that they didn’t reject the idea.

“They were not at all familiar with thesubject of the Holocaust,” Yaniv said.

“They did not know its influence onIsraeli society and really knew almostnothing about us.”

The seminar was given in Arabic and inEnglish, and included a meeting with aHolocaust survivor.

YAD VASHEM TEACHES JORDANIAN EDUCATORS

AFrench court ruling has reopenedthe country’s wartime record and

revived a question that has shadowed itfor years: Who should be held responsiblefor the mistreatment and deportation ofFrench Jews during World War II?

An administrative tribunal in Toulouse,France, ruled that the state-owned rail-road, the SNCF, was liable for its part intransporting some 76,000 Jews to transitcenters in France and then on to Nazi

concentration camps.The railroad did nothing to stop the

operation, the court found, and on its owninitiative, chose to cram its passengersinto cattle cars in “abominable” conditions,with no food or water, for trips that lasteddays.

It was the first time a French court hadcondemned a government institution,rather than an individual, in connectionwith Holocaust crimes.

FRANCE TAGS A NAZI COLLABORATOR: THE RAILWAY

Half of the 20 tombstones in theJewish cemetery of Swidin were

broken March 1, according to AlbertStankowski of the Foundation for thePreservation of Jewish Heritage inWarsaw.

“This was done during the same time asthe Claims Conference was visiting inPoland, and I have no doubt that the actagainst the cemetery was related,” hesaid. Stankowksi was referring to a ClaimsConference meeting with the governmentabout compensation for Jewish propertystolen by the Nazis and communists. “The articles in the press gave readers thefeeling that the Jews were coming to take

their property away, and an evangelicalpriest in the town thinks the people whodid this to the cemetery were reacting tothat,” he said.

It was the third time in five years that thecemetery was attacked. Last year, whenthree tombstones were damaged,Stankowski asked the regional prosecutorto investigate.

“The prosecutor told us it was the windthat caused the problem. So I brought it toa higher prosecutor and the case was stillunder investigation when this destructionhappened, he said. “But I can tell you thatthe police have shown no interest inreally investigating the case.”

VANDALS IN EASTERN POLAND BADLY DAMAGED HALF OF THE TOMBSTONES IN A JEWISH CEMETERY

March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

Lawyers for the Vatican Bank —including Pope Benedict’s personal

attorney — have argued that genocidecommitted in Croatia during the SecondWorld War by a Nazi regime was permis-sible under international law.

In the ongoing lawsuit Alperin v. VaticanBank, the Vatican Bank has filed a motionset for hearing in November which arguesin part that the Vatican Bank is immunebecause the Nazi-backed Croatianregime did not violate international law byslaughtering 500,000 of its own citizens –Serbs, Jews, and Roma (Gypsies) in anethnic cleansing campaign.

The Vatican Bank stands accused of thepost-war laundering of the profits of geno-cide –- including dental gold taken fromthe victims of the Nazi-backed Croatianregime known as the Ustasha.

Attorneys for the Holocaust survivorsare outraged that the Vatican Bank sug-gests genocide and plunder are permissi-ble acts under international law. JonathanLevy, one of the attorneys for theHolocaust survivors, questions whetherthe Pope is even aware of what the bank’sattorneys are proposing: “On the onehand, the Vatican is quick to condemnIsrael and Serbia in recent years, but inessence, says its O.K. to butcher 500,000people, steal their belongings and stash itin the Vatican Bank...Pope Benedictshould be concerned that the moralintegrity of his Papacy is being under-mined in a Federal Court.”

The lawsuit has been ongoing since1999. Despite growing evidence of theVatican Bank’s complicity in criminal acts,the lawsuit has been resisted tenaciouslyby the Vatican Bank.

VATICAN LAWYERS CLAIM NAZI REGIME VIOLATED NOLAW IN GENOCIDE OF 500,000 SERBS, JEWS AND ROMA

Thirty-two members of the YadVashem Friends Societies in Spain,

Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico partici-pated in an informative and moving week-long seminar at the International Schoolfor Holocaust Studiesat Yad Vashem. This isthe first seminar forFriends Societies ofYad Vashem, and wasinitiated by theAssociation of YadVashem in Mexico.Participants met withYad VashemChairman AvnerShalev, had the oppor-tunity to explore thenew museums at YadVashem, as well as theVisual Center andLearning Center, andto hear about newprojects and initiativesfrom senior Yad Vashem staff. During theseminar, participants also heard interest-ing lectures on antisemitism, Holocaust

denial, Holocaust education, theRighteous Among the Nations, technologyin the service of memory, and met withHolocaust survivors, and family who hadbeen reunited thanks to the Central

Database of ShoahVictims' Names.

Among the partici-pants were JudgeDaniel Rafecas ofArgentina who hasbeen active in combat-ting neo-Nazis in thatcountry, and DrStephanie KurianFastlicht, president ofthe Association of YadVashem in Mexico whoshared some of theirexperiences with theparticipants.

A number of partici-pants are teachers inthe Jewish schools.

The International School for HolocaustStudies is currently active in 22 countriesand 11 languages.

YAD VASHEM AND FRIENDS FROM SPANISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES

UNITE FOR HOLOCAUST SEMINAR

March-April 2007 has been desig-nated Names Recovery Month by

Yad Vashem. The month, including bothPassover and Holocaust RemembranceDay (April 16), will be marked by localcommunity campaigns to recover namesof Holocaust victims. Thousands ofJewish communities will engage in thishistorical grassroots initiative.

Names Recovery Month is part of theoverall 11th hour campaign calling uponpeople to memorialize Jews murdered inthe Holocaust by recording their names,and when available, photos and otherbiographical data on Pages of Testimony.It has taken upwards of five decades todocument over 3.1 million names cur-rently listed in the online CentralDatabase of Shoah Victims’ Names.“Millions more names may be lost forev-

er,” warns Avner Shalev, Chairman ofYad Vashem. “Jewish communities playa key role by actively reaching out to thegeneration that best remembers before itis too late.”

Thousands of posters and tens of thou-sands of Pages of Testimony are beingdistributed to synagogues, Holocaustcenters, Jewish community centers,agencies, federations and schools glob-ally in preparation for Names RecoveryMonth.Communities are enlisting volun-teers to assist survivors and their familiesto complete Pages of Testimony.

Since the Names Database went onlinein November 2004, there have been over11 million visitors, from 215 countries.Some 465,000 names and biographicaldetails and nearly 5,000 photos havebeen added to the Database.

NAMES RECOVERY MONTH LAUNCHED IN ADVANCE OF HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Acourt in Magdeburg, Germany con-victed five men of sedition for throw-

ing a copy of Anne Frank’s Diary onto abonfire last year at a community partyorganized by neo- Nazis.

The men were each handed a suspend-ed sentence of ninemonths’ imprisonment.The court in Magdeburgalso convicted the men,aged 24 to 29, of insultingthe memory of the dead.

The Summer SolsticeParty last summer in thesmall town of Pretziencaused uproar inGermany after it wasrevealed that the townmayor and police were also present andsaw nothing wrong in the book and a USflag being burned amid applause by torch-waving neo-Nazis. Local policemenclaimed they had never heard of Frank.

Denying the Holocaust is punishable in

Germany with up to five years’ jail as sedition.The men stood in a circle holding flam-

ing torches and shouted “It’s all alien,” asthe flag and book were hurled into theflames. Judge Eicke told the accused thatburning Frank’s book and calling it “alien”

was the same thing as pub-licly approving theHolocaust.

“You insulted AnneFrank’s human dignity,” hetold them. “That is overtracism.” He said the bonfirewas an echo of a publicburning by Nazis in Berlin in1933 of books which theyintended to censor.The director of the AnneFrank Centre in Berlin,

Thomas Heppener, welcomed the rulingand praised the judge’s “spectacularspeech” to the accused. Judge Bruns dis-missed the defense case that the menhad just felt oppressed by Germany’s evilpast as “utter drivel.”

GERMAN COURT CONVICTS FIVE MEN FOR BURNING ANNE FRANK’S DIARY

Anne Frank

Construction on the long-awaitedMuseum of the History of Polish

Jews will begin in the Polish capital nextfall, and the museum’s doors are expect-ed to open within three years.

Warsaw’s chief architect, MichalBorowski, confirmed that work on the mul-timillion-dollar multimedia facility wouldfinally begin after more than a decade ofpreparation.

The museum will be built in an area ofthe city that was the center of Jewish lifeprior to World War II, but was then trans-

formed by the Nazis into the WarsawGhetto. It will focus not only on theHolocaust, but also on the 800 years ofJewish life in Poland that the Holocaustobliterated. Poland’s Jewish communitynumbered some 3.5 million prior to WorldWar II. However, the vast majority died inthe Holocaust.

Financed by the Polish government,Warsaw City Council and private donors,the project will cost some $55 million. It isexpected to attract some 250,000 to500,000 visitors each year.

POLISH JEWRY MUSEUM TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN WARSAW

Columbia is one of our nation’s mostprestigious institutions of learning. But

now, it’s facing the ugliest of allegations. “It’s a disgrace,” said Oklahoma Prof.

Stephen Norwood, a holocaust expert.“Horrifying. Outrageous.”

Norwood, considered an expert of NaziGermany and the Holocaust, earned hisdoctorate in history from Columbia.

Norwood claims that at the height ofAdolf Hitler’s power in the mid 1930s, asthe Third Reich removed Jewish profes-sors and students from its universities,Columbia “enhanced” Hitler’s regime bysending a school delegate to Germany tocelebrate Heidelberg University’s 550th

anniversary, a celebration attended by topNazi officials.

“They displayed gross insensitivity tobarbaric acts,” Norwood said. “They werein a position to bring Nazi crimes to widerattention. They failed to take that opportu-nity.”

Norwood lays the blame at the feet ofthen University president Nicholas MurrayButler — ironically, a former Nobel PeacePrize recipient — who he said hosted aGerman ambassador at Columbia shortlyafter the Nazis came to power in 1933. “They were used by the Nazis on severaloccasions to enhance Nazi prestige,”Norwood said.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY BONDED WITH NAZIS

ATunisian farmer was the first Arabnominated for Yad Vashem’s

Righteous Gentile designation. Ha’aretz reported that the efforts of

Khaled Abd al-Wahab, a Tunisian farmerwho died in 1997, were discovered by his-torian Robert Satloff.

Some 60 Muslims are among the morethan 20,000 Righteous Gentiles alreadynamed by the Holocaust museum andmemorial in Jerusalem, but no Arabs.

Satloff, executive director of theWashington Institute for Near East Policy,attributed this partly to historians’ lack ofresearch in the area, and also to some

Arab rescuers’ desire not to be found,since the Holocaust, which made plain theJews’ need for their own state, hasbecome a touchy subject in the Arabworld.

Survivor Anny Boukris told Satloff howWahab hid her and 24 relatives on hisfarm.

Boukris, who was 11 at the time, wrotethat Wahab risked his life when hestopped a German officer from raping hermother.

Satloff traveled to the farm and inter-viewed witnesses, who verified Boukris’testimony.

ARAB NOMINATED AS RIGHTEOUS GENTILE

Afund for victims of the Nazi annexa-tion of Austria is looking for the own-

ers of thousands of artworks lying innational museums, which are waiting tobe returned to their mainly Jewish ownersor their heirs.

Hannah Lessing, the secretary generalof the Austrian National Fund for the vic-tims of National Socialism, told AgenceFrance Presse that 2,600 artworks out of10,000 have already found their rightfulowner since the works were listed on theInternet several months ago.

The works include paintings, manu-scripts, musical scores, sculptures, andfurniture.

The works for whom owners cannot be

found will be auctioned off, and the bene-fits given to survivors of the NaziHolocaust, Lessing said.

The fund, which was created in 1995, isthe main agency in Austria dealing withthe restitution of stolen artworks. It dealsnot only with property which needs to bereturned, but also distributes money tocompensate the victims of Nazism.

So far, the fund has paid out a total 180million euros, or about 5,000 euros toeach Austrian survivor of the Holocaust. It has also paid compensation to Austrianswho were thrown out of their homes bythe Nazis, as well as holders of life insur-ance, bank accounts and stolen savingsaccounts.

AUSTRIA SEEKS HEIRS FOR ARTWORKS STOLEN BY NAZIS

Participants in the first Yad Vashem semi-nar for members of Friends Societies ofYad Vashem with Yad Vashem ChairmanAvner Shalev, (front row, fourth fromright), MK Rabbi Michael Melchior(front, fifth from right) and Perla Haza,Director, Iberoamericana Desk, InternationalRelations Division, Yad Vashem (front left)

Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767

B O O K R E V I E W SB O O K R E V I E W SHiding in the open. By Zenon Neumark.

Valentine Mitchell, 2006. 216 pp. $23.50

REVIEWED BY TOM TUGEND

Whole libraries are filled withaccounts of the Holocaust, with

eyewitness reports by victims, perpetra-tors and bystanders, together with analy-ses by historians and fictionalized ver-sions by novelists.

Rarer are accounts by those, mostlyyoung Jewish menand women, whotook their fates intotheir own hands,passed over to the“other” side to sur-vive as clandestine“Aryans” or resist-ance fighters.

One of the morereadable and con-vincing of such rec-ollections is byZenon Neumark, a retired aerospaceengineer, who waited until his late 70s towrite his story.

Neumark was barely 15 when Naziarmies occupied his native Lodz inSeptember, 1939. He was 20, and living inVienna, when Soviet troops liberated himin April 1945.

During those long years, he lived as aPolish Catholic with forged papers,escaped from two forced labor camps,joined two resistance groups, wasbetrayed by some friends and saved bysome strangers, among them Jews, Polesand ethnic Germans, and helped others tosurvive.

To assure his own survival, Neumarkenjoyed certain advantages. He wasyoung and strong, could pass as a non-Jew, spoke fluent Polish without Yiddishinflections, was immensely resourcefuland had a great deal of luck.

His greatest fear and nemesis were notthe Gestapo or Polish anti-Semites, but

gangs of blackmailers, which infestedWarsaw and other cities, robbing hiddenJews of their last belongings anddenouncing those who sheltered them.

Living as a Polish worker, Neumarkdraws a detailed picture of “normal” dailylife under Nazi occupation, and a vividportrait of the Viennese, who within a fewdays after their city fell to the Red Army,were back at their theaters, concert hallsand ballrooms.

While Neumark did not experience thehorrors of the concentration camps, hedescribes unsparingly the bloody slaugh-ter of Polish underground fighters duringthe 1944 Warsaw uprising, one year afterthe heroic Jewish defense of the ghetto.

He devotes three chapters to his workwith two non-Jewish Polish resistancegroup, one left-wing, the other right-wing.

Neumark acknowledges that not allJews could have followed his

escape choice and undertake the lonelyrisks of seeking daily shelter, food andwork, while facing constant exposure.

But many who were otherwise equippedto take the risks were deterred by thecomforting presence of family and friendsin the ghetto, a reassuring daily routine,and an inability to imagine what was instore for them.

In the end, those who took their chancesvastly increased their odds for survival. InWarsaw alone, according to the best sta-tistics, 28,000 Jews lived outside the ghet-to on the Polish side, either in hiding orwith false papers. Of these, 41 percentsurvived the war, compared to only 3 per-cent of camp inmates.

Neumark is an engineer, not a profes-sional writer, and the book is much thebetter for it. He tells his story without liter-ary embellishments, honestly andstraightforward, and with self-deprecatinghumor.

“Hiding in the Open” is part of the excel-lent London-based Library of HolocaustTestimonies, whose eminent editorsinclude historian Sir Martin Gilbert.

HIDING IN THE OPENScorched: A Collection of Short Stories

on Survivors. By Irit Amiel. Translatedfrom the Hebrew by Riva Rubin.

The Library of Holocaust Testimonies.Vallentine Mitchell, London, 2006. 93 pp.

REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN

In all the years this reviewer has cri-tiqued books for M&R – more than fif-

teen years – she has never felt the needto comment on the title of a book. But,this book’s main title deserves comment.It is so very right. The Holocaust was aroaring fire that ruthlessly consumed itsprey. And even those it didn’t consume,but merely touched, were Scorched!

Additionally, in all the years this review-er has critiquedbooks for M&R, shehas generally cri-tiqued non-fictionworks. But, likeThe Library ofH o l o c a u s tTestimonies thathas published thiswork under the aus-pices of VallentineMitchell, and haspreviously only published non-fiction,Scorched: A Collection of Short Stories onSurvivors by Irit Amiel, is a deservedexception. For, indeed, the slim volume isexceptional. Its stories are unforgettable,poignantly told, simple, yet powerful, eachand every one . . .

Thus, for example, Scorched beginswith a piece entitled, “Leaf from a Diary.”Here, a woman remembers how, at theage of eleven, she was smuggled out of aPolish ghetto – never to see her father,her mother, or her childhood again. Sheremembers the look of the mournful streetthat autumn day. She remembers howher father tried so very hard to tell her, ascasually as he could, that they had to getto the Jewish Hospital “as soon as possi-

ble.” She remembers the shots fired by aUkranian soldier as they went on theirway, mortally terrified, to the appointedgetaway place. Finally, since that day,she revealingly and sadly notes, she hasnever felt “at home” in her life again . . .

Interestingly, in “Batya,” a woman bornBasie, orphaned as a child in Auschwitz,“appears” to all the world “un-scorched.”She gets to Israel with an adoring com-panion, Aaron, also a survivor. She mar-ries him. They have a family. And yet,something is very wrong. Something spir-itual . . . A something is missing that can-not be retrieved and trying doesn’t help.The end is sad and real and not “pretti-fied” for those looking for “happily everafter” endings.

Meanwhile, in “ContemporaryTangle,” the child of a survivor feels

the consequences of a parent’s “scorch-ing.” Set in Israel, Naomi joyfully comesto visit her son, Boaz, in Eilat. He is seri-ous about a beautiful, blond young lady,Ruth, who looks Danish. But Ruth isGerman, and sees the numbers tattooedon Naomi’s arm. How will it end? WillBoaz and Ruth marry? What about howNaomi feels? Will the love Naomi bearsfor her son mitigate her feelings vis-à-visRuth? The story is gripping, and the end,thought-provoking. In fact, it makes onewonder what they would do.

Surely, Irit Amiel’s own memories andthe memories of the many she spoke to,all survivors and witnesses of theHolocaust, ground this volume and makeit valuable. Surely, too, the fact that allsurvivors were “scorched” – some more,some less – and that Ms. Amiel brings tothe fore the consequences of that experi-ence in so many ways, makes this workeven more valuable to us.

Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Mediaand Communication Arts at PaceUniversity.

SCORCHED: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES ON SURVIVORS

I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors. ByBernice Eisenstein. McClelland & Stewart,2006. 187 pp. $32.99

REVIEWED BY STAN MACK

In the old days, that is, when I wasyoung, life for the book reader was

simple. There were books, and there wereillustrated books. Of course, there werealways pulpy comic books, but they weremainly adventure stories for boys, andwere generally considered a disposableitem. Today, bookstores trumpet a newsection, “Graphic Novel.” Okay, but whatexactly is a graphic novel?

Over the past several years, a numberof books — notably Art Spiegelman’sHolocaust saga Maus and MarjaneSatrapi’s Iranian political memoirPersepolis — have broken new publishingground by using comic-strip formats to tellserious stories. They, combined with theaggressive campaign by comic-strip devo-tees to have comic strips accepted as alegitimate art form, have caught the atten-tion of publishers fighting to keep compet-itive in the new multimedia universe.Witness the transmogrification of my oldpal, the pulpy comic, into the serious,

adult graphic novel, which apparently hasto look like an uptown comic book. Ordoes it?

Ihave in front of me I Was a Child ofHolocaust Survivors. It’s a memoir in

which Bernice Eisenstein examines herlove for and anger toward her parents,who met inA u s c h w i t z .She speaks ofher tormentgrowing up inToronto as thechild of sur-vivors whosere la t ionsh ipwith their chil-dren may wellhave beenpermanent lyscarred by their horrendous experiences.She searches for connections to her par-ents’ past, a past they will not look at,never mind interpret for her. Her goal is toget closer to an understanding of whatthey lived through and, in the process, tofind some peace for herself.

There is a large body of literature towhich this book belongs. However, there’s

something different here. The book isfilled with the author’s cartoony drawings,comic strips and word balloons in a wildarray of sizes, shapes and layouts.

Eisenstein’s book is not a comic book-ygraphic novel (a meaningless term, any-way, since many of them are not novels).Nor is it an illustrated book (the traditionalbook illustration elaborates on a particularmoment in the narrative, but doesn’t movethe story forward). We could, instead, callhers a hybrid, but there aren’t any shelvesin the bookstore labelled “hybrid.” Thisbook is in the language of the author, awriter and an artist, who has chosen aparticular way to tell her story. Must wechase around looking for new genrelabels to fit each variation of words andpictures?

For argument’s sake, allow me to rede-fine a graphic book. It is a novel, memoir,history or documentary that tells its storyequally in words and visuals, and does aricher job than either art form would byitself. By this definition, each “graphic”work would be evaluated in terms of itscombined power to inform and move thereader, rather than by its adherence to thepurity of a grid system.

Now, we can look at Eisenstein’s bookfor what it is, rather than for what it isn’t.She presents some of her story in a tradi-tional narrative. One example: Shedescribes how, growing up, she traded onher status as the child of survivors to gainattention and privileges — and evendates.

At the same time, her drawings commu-nicate some ideas faster and better thanwords. In one drawing that sprawls acrossa spread, she draws herself as a child,artist’s brush in hand, speaking to thereader. She’s pointing to her drawing ofher mother, grandmother and aunt, nowlooking matronly and well-fed in 2002, dis-playing the consecutive numbers brandedonto their arms at Auschwitz.

The problem with artists who bothwrite and draw is that they may do

one better than the other. In Eisenstein’scase, I sometimes struggled with her sen-tences. She seemed to feel compelled toadd extra words, possibly in the belief thatwe might otherwise miss the message.“How is one able to regain connection,belonging, when all that was as innocentas being alive has been taken away,” she

(Continued on page 13)

I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5

The recent publication of some27,000 pages of secret CIA docu-

ments has brought to light new detailsregarding the close ties between the polit-ical elite in post-war Germany and leadingNazis who survived the collapse of theThird Reich.

The publication is a result of a 1999 USlaw, which had been opposed by the CIA,that regulates the release of US govern-ment documents concerning German andJapanese war crimes. The historianTimothy Naftali from the University ofVirginia, who has seen the documents,discovered that the West German govern-ment under Konrad Adenauer had knownthe secret whereabouts of AdolfEichmann since at least 1958 and hadcovered this up. The CIA had also shieldedthe Nazi mass murderer from prosecution.

The documents published by the CIAmake clear that both the German andAmerican governments had shieldedEichmann for a long time in order to pro-tect the Nazi elements that they weredeploying against the Soviet Union in theCold War.

A memo to the CIA by a German secretservice operative on March 19, 1958,noted that, according to reports, Eichmannhad been living in Argentina since 1952under the pseudonym Ricardo Clement.

Eichmann escaped from an Americaninternment camp in 1945. He then lived inGermany for several years, using forgedpapers. In 1950, he, like many otherNazis, went to Argentina along the so-called rat line, receiving help from theVatican. Somewhat later, he was joined byhis family, and they lived undisturbed inBuenos Aires.

The references to Eichmann were notfollowed up by the German or Americansecret services because it was feared hemight divulge information about HansGlobke, a lawyerin Hitler’s InteriorMinistry and theauthor of a com-mentary on theNazi’s notoriousNuremberg racelaws. Followingthe war, Globkebecame an under-secretary of statein Germany, andwas regarded asthe grey (in reality, brown) eminence ofthe Adenauer chancellorship.

WHO WAS GLOBKE?

Unlike Eichmann, the lawyer HansGlobke had not fled abroad after the

Second World War, but had risen tobecome an undersecretary of state andsecurity advisor to Chancellor Adenauer.He was regarded as the Chancellor’sright-hand man, and was responsible forthe fact that numerous old Nazis gainedprominent posts in the Federal Republicof Germany (West Germany). Adenauerstood by Globke throughout his term inoffice, which ended in 1963.

Globke came from a rich Catholichousehold, studying law after the FirstWorld War. He attained his doctorate in1922 and three years later was deputychief of police in Aachen. In 1929, heentered the Prussian Interior Ministry, andby 1932 had already risen within theReich Interior Ministry, where he was

active until 1945. In this position, he wasthe co-author with William Stuckart of thefirst commentary on the Nuremberg racelaws. After the Nazis had seized Slovakiain 1939 as a so-called protectorate,Globke was involved in the elaborationthere of the Codex of Jewish Law, aeuphemism for the expropriation andrepression of the Jewish population.

After 1945, Globke denied having anyclose involvement with the Nazi regime.But he was by no means a mere fellowtraveler, as he claimed. Working in thePrussian Interior Ministry even beforeHitler came to power in 1933, Globke hadordered that Efforts by Jewish persons tomask their Jewish origins by changingtheir Jewish names cannot therefore besupported.

People who sought assistance from himfor their relatives during the war wereharshly rejected and threatened againstcontinuing to support Jews and Poles.Globke could not deny his authorship ofthe commentary on the Nuremberg racelaws, printed by the C.H. Beck publishinghouse ([Commentary on the German RaceLegislation], Munich and Berlin, 1936).Globkes text contains among other thingsthe following remark: The dramatic declinein feeling for the purity of blood in thedecades before the radical change [Hitlerscoming to power] appears to urgentlydemand social intervention. He also wrote:“The Jews must resign themselves to thefact that their influence on the organizationof German life is gone forever.”

Globke also classified the degrees ofJewishness in his commentary: The three-eighths Jew, who possesses one full-Jewish and one half-Jewish grandparent,

is considered as a half-breed with a full-Jewish grandparent, the five-eighths Jew,with two full-Jewish grandparents and onehalf-Jewish grandparent, is a half-breedwith two full-Jewish grandparents.

After the Second World War, Globkemaintained that he had merely comment-ed on the laws, and claimed that he boreno responsibility for their development orimplementation. This was a lie. His supe-rior, Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick,who was condemned to death in the 1946Nuremberg trials, had issued the followingtestimonial on Globke in 1938: Seniorgovernment advisor Globke is unques-tionably among the most capable andmost efficient officials in my ministry.

Adenauer’s right-hand man was involvedin the elaboration, formulation and applica-tion of laws whose consequence was thefinal solution of the Jewish question i.e.,genocide in Auschwitz and elsewhere.

THE CIA, THE ADENAUER AND THE NAZIS

Globke was, however, only one ofmany. The names of the high-rank-

ing officials, judges, state lawyers, SSmen and Nazi party members of the ThirdReich who continued their careers in theFederal Republic of Germany, more orless without interruption, would fill vol-umes. Here are only some.

Hermann Josef Abs was a member ofthe executive board of the Deutsche Bankfrom 1938 to 1945. Among other things,he was jointly responsible for theArianization (expropriation) of Jewishbusinesses and banks. After the war, hewas deeply involved in the setting up of

(Continued on page 13)

POSTWAR GERMAN GOVERNMENT AND CIASHIELDED NAZI CRIMINALS

Adolf Eichmann

BY ADAM EASTON, BBC

Irena Sendlerowa recently celebratedher 97th birthday in her small room in

a Warsaw nursing home. Among the flower-bearing well-wishers

were a number of people who owe theirlives to this tiny, courageous woman.

They were among the estimated 2,500Jewish children Mrs. Sendlerowa and asmall group of social workers rescuedfrom the Warsaw ghetto during World War II.

She is a Polish Catholic who risked herlife to save Jews during the Holocaust.

For doing so, she was awarded the titleof Righteous Among the Nations by YadVashem, Israel’s Holocaust remembranceauthority.

Unlike her fellow Righteous, Germanindustrialist Oskar Schindler, who wasimmortalized in Steven Spielberg’s filmSchindler’s List, few people have heard ofIrena Sendlerowa.

RISKS

When the war broke out Warsawwas home to 1.3 million people, of

whom 380,000 were Jews, making it thelargest Jewish community in the worldoutside New York. The Nazis movedquickly to identify and isolate the city’sJewish population.

Jewish-owned businesses had to be clear-ly marked and Jews had to wear armbandswith the Star of David. Then, on 15 November1940, Warsaw’s German Governor LudwigFischer officially created the ghetto.

More than 10 miles of brick walls, up to

10ft high and topped with broken glass, hadbeen built to segregate Warsaw’s Jews.

Within a couple of months, almost400,000 people were confined to an arearoughly the size of New York’s CentralPark in appalling condi-tions.

At the time, IrenaSendlerowa was a 30-year-old nurse whoworked for the city’shealth and care depart-ment. Since 1939 shehad been taking enor-mous risks giving Jewsfood and shelter. Thepenalty for helpingJews in Nazi-occupiedPoland was death. Itwas a threat that wasoften carried out.

But she recruited agroup of her social workercolleagues to rescue chil-dren from the ghetto.

“I was brought up to believe that a personmust be rescued when drowning, regard-less of religion and nationality,” she said.

Mrs. Sendlerowa and a colleague, IrenaSchultz, were allowed to enter the ghetto,using special work passes. They smug-gled children out in ambulances, throughthe sewers, or through a courthouse onthe edge of the ghetto, which had a pas-sage leading to the “Aryan” side.

TORN APART

In July 1942, the Nazis began the massdeportation of Warsaw’s Jews to the

Treblinka death camp in north eastPoland. During that summer, 300,000were murdered.

Persuading parents to part with theirloved ones was particularly traumatic.

Mrs. Sendlerowa could give no guaranteethe child would survive.

“That was when we witnessed infernalscenes. Father agreed but mother didn’t.Grandmother cuddled the child very ten-derly and, weeping bitterly, said ‘I won’tgive away my grandchild at any price’.

“We sometimes had to leave such unfor-tunate families without taking their chil-dren from them. I went there the next dayto see what the whole building had cometo and often found that everyone hadbeen taken for transport to the deathcamps,” she said.

The children were first taken to emer-

gency safe houses, where they weretaught basic Catholic rituals to pass asPoles until a family could be found to takethem in.

“I once carried such a tearful, broken-hearted little boy to other guardians whenhe asked me, crying and sobbing, ‘Pleasetell me how many mums can you have, forthis is the third one I’m going to’,” shesaid.

EXECUTION FOILED

In December 1942, the Polish under-ground set up Zegota, the Council of

Assistance for Jews. Mrs. Sendlerowabecame the head of its children’s depart-ment. She had noted the names of all ofthe rescued children on cigarette papersand sealed them in two bottles.

In April 1943, several thousand of theremaining Jews in the ghetto rose upagainst the Germans. Armed with handguns, grenades and home-made bomblaunchers, they held an SS brigade at bayfor three weeks. By mid-May the ghettowas a giant field of rubble.

Mrs. Sendlerowa continued her work,but on October 20, 1943, she was arrest-ed at her home. She was taken to thenotorious Gestapo headquarters in centralWarsaw and tortured. During the ses-sions, they broke her legs and feet, butshe refused to reveal any names.

“I still carry the marks on my body ofwhat those ‘German supermen’ did to methen. I was sentenced to death,” she said.

Zegota managed to foil the plan afterthey bribed a Polish-speaking German

(Continued on page 14)

Irena Sendlerowa with Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American andInternational Societies for Yad Vashem, during his visit to Poland inFebruary/

HOLOCAUST HEROINE'S SURVIVAL TALE

Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767

S U R V I V O R S ’ C O R N E RS U R V I V O R S ’ C O R N E RBY TIM SHUFELT

Growing up in Hungary following theSecond World War, Eva Dojc said

each Christmas her father would drag atree into their courtyard apartment, mak-ing sure all the neighbors could see. Itstood in a corner, undecorated, for a cou-ple of weeks until her father dragged itback out again.

When the family escaped to Canada inthe fall of 1956, nine-year-old Eva askedher father whether they would be getting atree.

“No, we don’t need a tree,” her fathersaid. “We’re Jewish.”

Ms. Dojc’s father, who was forced into alabor camp during the war, lost his parentsand one of his sisters in the Holocaust.Her mother survived Auschwitz, but hermother’s parents, two brothers and twosisters were killed. After liberation, withthe oppression and massacres fresh intheir minds, her parents concealed theirethnicity and religion for fear of furtherpersecution.

Ms. Dojc said she has adopted a similarinstinct over time.

“The antenna is up,” said Ms. Dojc, oneof the organizers of a conference inToronto for adult children of Holocaust

survivors. “When you’re vulnerable, whyincrease your vulnerability?”

Another organizer, Margie Levitt, also achild of Holocaust survivors, said sheagrees.

Ms. Levitt said she was prompted tochange her behavior by an incident thattook place 21 years ago this monthaboard an Italian cruise ship. On Oct. 7,1985, heavily armed Palestinian terroristshijacked the Achille Lauro near Egypt.Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewishretiree from New York, was shot andthrown overboard, along with his wheel-chair.

“Up until then I always wore a littlemezuzah that was given to me when I was12,” Ms. Levitt said. “I took it off that dayand never put it back on.”

Paula David, a social worker at theBaycrest Wagman Centre, a long-termcare facility in Toronto that houses one ofthe largest populations of Holocaust sur-vivors in North America, said that thosesentiments echo those of other survivorfamilies.

“If you have intimately experiencedoppression, ranging from personal insultsto someone wanting to annihilate you, youare going to be cautious of how you pres-ent yourself,” Ms. David said. “You don’thave an automatic sense of trust, and

many have experienced anti-Semitism tovalidate that feeling.”

Ms. Dojc said there are certain triggersthat should be avoided in the company ofsurvivors, like references to “showers.”The sight of dogs can also conjure uppainful memories for some.

One should also keep a close eye onpossible health problems. In many of thecamps in Europe, the sick were automati-cally killed. “So maybe they don’t tell youthey’re sick until it’s too late,” Ms. Dojcsaid.

The conference held a panel discus-sion on returning to places in

Europe where Jews were persecuted andmassacred.

Ms. Levitt, for example, said in 2001 shereturned to Poland, where her motherspent three years in a slave labor campthat produced munitions.

“In Krakow, I saw beautiful iron works,like the Star of David, and beautiful syna-gogues.... There was a square withrestaurants serving Jewish food. It’s allJewish. The only thing missing were theJews,” she said, clutching a tissue. “It washaunting.”

Her father’s two brothers survived theHolocaust, but her mother lost her entirefamily, Ms. Levitt said, examining theframed pictures in her Forest Hill home.

She picked up a framed black-and-whitephoto of a naked baby sleeping. “Thatwas my mother’s nephew. He was six orseven when he was gassed.”

The conference, held every threeyears, provides a forum for survivor chil-dren to forge bonds, Ms. David said,adding that they share a sense of com-munity that others might find difficult tounderstand.

“Most of them feel quite privileged andquite lucky to be in this world. The plan in1945 was that this whole generationwould not exist,” she said.

But Ms. Levitt is eager to dispel thestereotype that survivor children areemotionally damaged or dysfunctional.

After she was born, her father’s twoyounger brothers lived with her until shewas six years old.

“So here I was, an only child born afterthe war to four survivors. I was neverspoiled materially, but with love andaffection,” Ms. Levitt said. “I have alwaysknown what’s important in life,” she said.

Ms. Dojc said the literature on the sub-ject, mostly case studies of people intherapy, can be misleading.

“The people that never go for help, theydon’t write case studies about,” she said.

First published in the National Post

HOLOCAUST STILL HAUNTS CHILDREN OF SURVIVORS

BY MARY PAPENFUSS

Ernest Hirsch was a scared 9-year-old in a French children’s home the

last time he heard from his mother. The boy had been rescued from the

French internment camp Rivesaltes in1941, but his parents were still trappedthere when his mother, Lisa Kirchheimer,wrote that they were about to be moved.

“She said not to worry; that we wouldsee each other again. She said she lovedme,” recalled Hirsch, a retired operationsresearch analyst who lives in Orinda.

Shortly after Hirsch got that letter, hisparents were forced onto a train headedfor death. When they arrived at Auschwitz,“they were marched directlyto the gas chambers andkilled,” he said.

Hirsch, 75, is one of morethan 100 Americans whohave joined a groundbreak-ing legal action here againstthe French railway SociétéNationale des Chemins deFer (SNCF), which transport-ed thousands of Jews duringWorld War II to transit hubson their way to their deaths.It’s the same state-ownedtrain system that now carries commutersto their jobs. Some 76,000 Jews in Francewere transported to Nazi death camps;only 2,500 of them survived.

In a first-of-its-kind ruling last summer,62 years after the war ended, an adminis-trative tribunal in Toulouse, France, finedthe SNCF and the French republic$80,000 for their role in transporting aJewish family. The railway is appealing.

French attorneys have filed the firstwave of more than 200 new complaints

against the railroad, half of them from sur-vivors who now live in the United States.

“This is a critical issue for the French —and the world,” said CorinneHershkovitch, one of the Paris attorneysinvolved. “It’s not only an issue of money,but one of responsibility. What role did theSNCF play in this crime?”

The case could be one of the last signif-icant legal actions on behalf of Holocaustsurvivors, many of whom have alreadydied of old age. Germany and Germanbusinesses have paid billions of dollars —much of it the result of court cases — ininsurance claims, restitution for seizedproperty and bank accounts, as well ascompensation to slave laborers and vic-tims’ families. European insurance com-

panies and Swissbanks have beensued for failing tohonor obligations tosurvivors of theirJewish customers.Four years ago, theU.S. SupremeCourt threw out a1999 California lawrequiring insurancefirms licensed to dobusiness in thestate to account for

World War II-era policies they or their affil-iates sold in Europe from 1920 to 1945.

The Toulouse finding is the first suchruling against the French republic or

one of its agencies. In 2001, Frenchbanks reached a multimillion-dollar settle-ment with Holocaust victims in a suitbrought by a New York law firm. TheFrench government also voluntarily paysa pension to current and former Frenchresidents orphaned by Nazi atrocities.

Like Hirsch, retired engineer Manfred

Wildmann, 76, of Menlo Park, was freedfrom a French camp and taken to a chil-dren’s home. His parents also died atAuschwitz. The day he left them, he said,“I remember sitting on a truck with otherkids. My mother was standing below, crying.”

The path was cleared for the latest law-suits with a ruling in June concerning rel-atives of European Parliament memberAlain Lipietz, who were shipped to a tran-sit hub outsideParis, but were freedby the Allies.

The judges heldthat SNCF adminis-trators failed toprotest the trans-ports — and failed toprove they wereunder duress not toprotest. The rulingsaid the railwaymoved family mem-bers in a manner“incompatible withhuman dignity,” without food, water or“minimal hygienic conditions.” It alsonoted that Lipietz’s relatives were trans-ported, as deportees typically were at thetime, packed into a cattle car — yet theSNCF billed for passengers at third-classrates, and continued to charge the Frenchgovernment even after the country wasliberated from Nazi domination.

The suits have deeply divided theFrench Jewish community. SNCF officialsargue that the agency had no choice butto follow the orders of the Germans andthe collaborationist Vichy government. It’sa position supported by some French his-torians, who have also expressed concernabout a backlash against the Jewish com-munity.

Paris attorney Arno Klarsfeld, son of

famed French Nazi hunters Serge andBeate Klarsfeld, wrote in Le Monde news-paper following the June decision that thedeportations were an “authoritative act ofstate from which the SNCF could notshrink.”

For Abe Dresdner, 78, of Brooklyn,whose family managed to survive

the war, the “French were as bad as theGestapo.” French police and rail workers“stole everything from us except theclothes on our backs,” he said.

Others in the suit, like Wildmann, aremore ambivalent about the culpability ofthe French railway, but believe the litiga-tion may serve to shed light on the issue.“I don’t know how much freedom theFrench (running the SNCF) had tochoose,” he said.

A similar case against the French rail-road was filed several years ago in NewYork, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruledthat the French agency was protected bythe Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.Ironically, the SNCF does not have thesame protection in France. American lawdoes allow exceptions, including suitsseeking restitution for stolen property.

“That means you can sue in a U.S. courtif Mommy lost her handbag when she wasforced on the train in France, but not if shelost her life at Auschwitz,” said New Yorkattorney Harriet Tamen, who is represent-ing some 500 clients against the SNCF ina class action case seeking restitution forstolen property.

Meanwhile, time for payback is runningout for Holocaust survivors.

“My baby sister is one of the youngestsurvivors and she’s already 67,” saidDresdner. “We’ve been waiting a long time.”

First published in the San FranciscoChronicle

FRENCH RAILROAD SUED OVER HOLOCAUST

Ernest Hirsch of Orinda, one of morethan 100 Americans participating in aFrench suit, was rescued from a Frenchinternment camp as a boy.

New York attorneyHarriet Tamen is seek-ing restitution for stolenproperty for 500 clients.

March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7

BY CHRIS JOHNSON, JTA

Over 60 years of winter snow, sum-mer drought and millions of visitors

have taken a heavy toll on the former Nazideath camp.

Just as survivors visiting the camp dwin-dle each year, so time is bearing down onthe prison buildings, the rusting barbed-wire fencing and rem-nants of the gas cham-bers left behind whenthe Germans fled inJanuary 1945.

Evidence of the vic-tims — hair, specta-cles, children’s toysand other belongings— is also falling topieces, eaten away byinsects and mildew, itsdisappearance givingslow support to those who try to deny theHolocaust ever happened.

Unless conservation is stepped up,there may soon be little left of the biggestgraveyard in Europe, where up to 1.5 mil-lion men, women and children, mostlyJews, were slaughtered.

Now, new management at the camp,covering 470 acres on two sites nearOswiecim in southern Poland, is acceler-ating work and hiring more staff to slowthe deterioration and save the site as alesson for future generations.

“If there is one place in the world thatshould be kept as a reminder of the con-sequences of racism and intolerance, it isthis one,” said Piotr Cywinski, who tookover as director of Auschwitz inSeptember. “But it gets more difficultevery year.”

One of the many problems facingCywinski and his 260 staff members at thesite, now a museum, is that Auschwitz

was not built to last. The concentrationcamp known as Auschwitz was actuallytwo camps, and both are suffering seriousproblems.

“NOT STONES — BONES”

Auschwitz I, a stone and brick-builtPolish military base used by the

Nazis to house Polish political prisoners,was hastily enlargedwith forced labor ,usingthe cheapest possi-ble materials afterGermany invadedPoland in 1939.

Auschwitz II Birkenau,two miles away, was aspecially built killingfactory thrown up in1943 for the massmurder of Jews, gyp-sies, homosexuals

and other minorities.Linked directly to Europe’s railway net-

work by a special siding to speed up themurders, the Nazis used it to expeditetheir plans for a “Final Solution” to “theJewish problem.”

Parts of the Birkenau site are built fromthe remains of demolished Polish villagesand stable blocks and these have sur-vived. But many other buildings havealready disappeared.

Most wooden huts were removed afterthe war for use as temporary shelters. Andthe strongest of the buildings, the con-crete gas chambers and crematoriums,were blown up by the guards before theirretreat. These ruins have collapsed,undermined by rising ground water, flood-ing and erosion.

The area around the gas chambers iscordoned off with tape, but still accessibleto the public, some of whom clamber overthe rubble. Some visitors even removerelics and artifacts.

The ash pits, where the remains ofmany victims were dumped, lie open tothe elements and the ground, trampled byvisitors. The area around them is studdedwith what look like tiny white stones.

“Not stones — bones,” explains JarekMensfelt, a linguist and senior guide at themuseum. “Tiny fragments of humanbones. It is terrible that tourists can treadon human remains.”

Cywinski is acutely aware of the defi-ciencies of the museum, but is con-strained by money and the physical limita-tions imposed by the scale of the site.

HAIR AND SHOES

Various grandiose ideas — includingone for a giant dome — have been

rejected on grounds of cost, and becauseany major construc-tion would destroysome of the areaand alter it.

S m a l l e r - s c a l eenclosures to pro-tect the buildingswould be possible,but even thesewould be expensiveand would have tobe agreed by all thegroups that protectthe site.

“Tens of millionsof dollars, more,would be needed todo all the work,”said Cywinski. But money is not the mainproblem: the Polish government has pro-vided large sums and there are a numberof international donors.

Time itself is the enemy, eroding the siteand its contents.

“Conservationists are like doctors: wecan extend life, but not for eternity,” saidCywinski, who opposes any suggestion

that decaying original artifacts should bereplaced by copies.

Faded and frail, two metric tons of hairshorn from victims is piled up in one cellblock: once blonde plaits, black pony-tailsand auburn curls, it is gradually decayingand now looks like gray wire wool.

CRY OF DESPAIR

The museum has had more luck withits 80,000 shoes, mostly odd. Chief

conservationist Rafal Pioro and his staff of38 invited school children to help cleanand polish some of them.

But there are so many, most still have tobe stored in a warehouse without air-con-ditioning. Slowly, most are falling apart.

“The work is endless and painstakingand can be heart-rending,” said Pioro.

“When we were workingon the children’s shoes,some of us were crying allthe time.”

Workers at Auschwitzare struggling to slow theaging of the camp andkeep it as a lesson on theevils of anti-Semitism.

They aim, in the wordsof a plaque near the gaschambers, to keepAuschwitz as “a cry ofdespair and a warning tohumanity.”

Israel Gutman, a formerAuschwitz prisoner andadviser to the Yad

Vashem holocaust institute in Israel, isdetermined the camp will be conserved aslong as possible, whatever the cost.

“There are still people who claim theHolocaust never took place,” he said.“Auschwitz must be preserved for as longas possible, because it gives those peoplea chance to go there, to see the real gaschambers.”

FIGHT AGAINST TIME TO PRESERVE AUSCHWITZ

Millions of “selected” Jews and otherunwanted humans (children, elderly, crip-pled and others unfit for slave labor) weregassed and cremated in Auschwitz’ infa-mous crematoria.

The main entrance to Birkenau viewed fromthe unloading ramp.

BY ADI SCHWARTZ

The first question that must be askedis, why this has taken so long. About

three weeks ago, 62 years after the end ofWorld War II, a committee of historiansappointed by the Belgian governmentpublished a comprehensive report on therole of the Belgian authorities in the perse-cution and deportation of the Jews duringthe war. In other words, the committeewas appointed to investigate the extent ofthe Belgian state’s collaboration with NaziGermany.

“Most Belgians are unaware of the grav-ity of the persecution experienced by thecountry’s Jews,” stated the BelgianSenate in its 2002 decision to establishthe committee. “Why was it necessary forhalf a century to elapse in order for us todiscuss this part of our past? It is theSenate’s duty to preserve the memory ofthe genocide, relying on facts that cannotbe questioned. This is our obligation to thecoming generations.”

What, in truth, can possibly explain thisdelay? Professor Dan Machman, chiefhistorian of Yad Vashem and a specialiston the Holocaust in Belgium and Holland,says Belgium began dealing with theHolocaust later than other nations, but itsstate-commissioned report is an excep-tion to the rule. He says that such reportshave only been published in Romania,Switzerland and Lichtenstein thus far, andsimilar research is currently underway inthe Baltic states. However, in France, for

example, no such project has beenlaunched.

Machman explains that one of the rea-sons the Belgians held off from dealingwith the issue was the fact that KingLeopold III remained in the country duringthe German occupation,unlike the Belgian gov-ernment, which wentinto exile in London. Thisfact gave rise to ques-tions about his collabo-ration with the Germans;he relinquished hiscrown after the war tohis 20-year-old son,Baudouin.

“The king problem”remained a very

sensitive issue inBelgium, and historianspreferred, therefore, toconcentrate on theGerman occupiers andnot to deal with theBelgian collaborators. Inthe matter of the Jews, says Machman,the Belgians emphasized acts of savingthe Jews and participation in the anti-Naziunderground.

King Leopold’s mother, Queen Elizabethof Bavaria, even received the title ofRighteous Gentile from Yad Vashem in1964 for her intervention on behalf of sev-eral hundred Belgian Jews with Belgiancitizenship (a small minority in the Jewishpopulation). Today, says Machman, it is

not at all certain she would have receivedthis honor, as her intervention on behalf ofa small group of Jews with Belgian citizen-ship could have been seen as giving theGermans license to deport all the restwithout citizenship.

In total, 25,000 Jews werekilled, 44 percent of the totalnumber of Jews living inBelgium on the eve of theGerman occupation.

The title given to the 1,100-page report is “La BelgiqueDocile” (“Obedient Belgium”),and its conclusions stateexplicitly that “the Belgianstate adopted an obedientapproach, and collaboratedin a manner unbefitting ademocratic country, in vari-ous but critical areas, in adevastating policy toward theJewish population.”

The editor of the report,historian Rudi Van Doorslaer,says he and his colleagues

identified three crucial moments thatmarked the Belgian authorities’ attitudetoward the Jews. The first was in theautumn of 1940, about six months afterBelgium surrendered. In November of thatyear, the occupation regime orderedBelgium to register all the Jews in thecountry. In terms of the BelgianConstitution, this order was illegal, as itdiscriminated against citizens accordingto their religion.

According to Van Doorslaer, theBelgians saw the Jews as foreign-

ers, as 95 percent of the community didnot have Belgian citizenship. “This actionhas no explanation apart from that it wasan intentional decision that derived fromthe fact that the Jews were consideredforeigners,” states the report. VanDoorslaer says much of the Belgian elitewas tainted with xenophobia and anti-Semitism and the war led them to prefer“the Belgian interest,” which ostensibly didnot include the protection of Jews, byvirtue of the fact that they were non-Belgians. Paradoxically, states the report,even though the Jews were the most obvi-ous group harmed by the German enemy,the Belgian authorities related to theJews as though they were themselvesthe enemies.

In the wake of this registration came along series of instructions and orders, theaim of which was to separate the Jewishpopulation from the rest of society. InDecember 1940, all of the Jews who heldofficial positions were fired from their jobs.In July 1941, the Belgian internal affairssecretary-general ordered the word “Jew”added to identifying documents. From thatmoment on, states the report, “the transi-tion from passive collaboration to activecollaboration was accomplished withgreat rapidity.” In October 1941, theauthorities declared illegal those text-books that were edited by Jews, and inDecember 1941, Jewish children were

(Continued on page 14)

HOW BELGIUM SACRIFICED ITS JEWS TO THE NAZIS

King Leopold III with his firstwife Astrid.

Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767

Deeply committed to Israel, Holocaust remem-brance, and Jewish cultural preservation, Rita

Levy and her family have been active in SanFrancisco, New York, Washington DC and Jerusalem.They were founding members of the United StatesHolocaust Museum in Washington DC and theMuseum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Herfather was aMember of theBoard of theA m e r i c a nSociety of YadVashem and theA m e r i c a nGathering ofH o l o c a u s tSurvivors. Ritaand her motherwere founding members of the International Women’sDivision of YIVO. Rita was a founding member of theSan Francisco Jewish Community FederationWorking Women’s Forum and served on the StrategicPlanning Committee of the Brandeis-Hillel DaySchool.

Rita’s husband, David, is currently Vice President ofthe Board of the Sid Jacobson Jewish CommunityCenter. There she has been involved in cultural activ-ities, such as the Literary Committee and Jewish FilmFestival and chaired the Israeli Crafts Fairs. TheLevy’s are active supporters of Hadassah, UJA, theirsynagogue, Temple Beth Sholom of Roslyn, includingits Yom Hashoah Committee, and, of course, YadVashem.

Her children, Rebecca and Matthew, have visitedIsrael many times, including a UJA-led mission

on the occasion of Israel’s 50th anniversary, wherethey danced in celebration with their grandparents.Matthew has participated in the 2004 and 2005Maccabi Games. Rebecca attended the 2005International Gathering of Holocaust Survivors,Children and Grandchildren at Yad Vashem inJerusalem. She has participated and performed atnumerous Yom Hashoah ceremonies in WashingtonDC and in New York. She has also performed with theFolksbiene Yiddish Theater’s “Kids and Yiddish.”

Rita has an MBA from Columbia University. Sheand her husband work together in the family’s realestate business.

She accepts this award in memory of her late father,Nathan Katz (z”l) and in honor of her mother, SimaKatz. She has always been proud to be their daugh-ter and is committed to continuing their legacy throughher own family.

The story of Gladys Halpern is one of courageand truly speaks of a Woman’s Legacy to her

family and the cause of Remembrance. Gladys is thedaughter of Sala and Ephraim Landau, and was bornin the town of Zolkiew, near Lvov, Poland.

Initially imprisoned in the Zolkiew Ghetto, Gladysand her mother escaped and were hidden by a fami-ly who has been recognized as Righteous Among the

Nations at YadVashem, Jerusalem.Sadly, her father per-ished when theZolkiew Ghetto wasliquidated on March25, 1943. Gladys isone of only a few sur-vivors on both sidesof her family. She sur-vived along with hermother and two of hermother’s sisters.

After the war ended,Gladys and her mother made their way to WesternPoland. During this time she met, Sam, who wouldlater become her husband. Sam and Gladys weremarried in Germany in 1946. Gladys and SamHalpern currently reside in Hillside, New Jersey. Theyhave four adult sons and are proud grandparents andgreat grandparents.

Gladys Halpern is active in numerous Jewishcommunal organizations in the United States

and Israel. Since its inception, she has been a mem-ber of the American Society for Yad Vashem SpringLuncheon Committee and a member of the AnnualTribute Dinner Committee. In addition, Gladys,together with her husband Sam, are Benefactors ofYad Vashem, and have been honored by IsraelBonds for their support of Holocaust RemembranceActivities. She is an active member of many Israel-related and communal organizations, including theHolocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the JewishHeritage Museum in New York City, the JewishNational Fund (JNF), American Israel Public AffairsCommittee (AIPAC), Hadassah and the JewishFederation of Central New Jersey, Jewish FamilyServices of Central New Jersey, and Israel Bonds.Through their involvement in these many organiza-tions, Gladys and Sam have shown their family theimportance of supporting the cause of Remembrancefor generations to come.

Gladys and Sam Halpern are benefactors of YadVashem, Jerusalem and through their support madepossible the refurbishment of the Avenue of theRighteous Among The Nations.

Kevin Haworth was born inBrooklyn, NY in 1971. He earned

his B.A. in English from Vassar Collegeand his M.F.A. in Fiction Writing fromArizona State University.

His first novel, The Discontinuity ofSmall Things, was awarded the SamuelGoldberg Prize for best Jewish fictionby a writer under 40. It was also recog-nized as runner-up for the 2006 DaytonLiterary Peace Prize. A two-time residentof the Vermont Studio Center, he is also awinner of the David Dornstein Prize forYoung Jewish Writers and the PermafrostFiction Prize.

He currently resides in Athens, Ohio with his wife, Rabbi DanielleLeshaw, and their two children, Zev and Ruthie. He teaches writingand literature at Ohio University.

GLADYS HALPERNResistance and Courage

in the Face of the Holocaust

RITA LEVYRemembering the Past,

Ensuring the Future

GUEST SPEAKER KEVIN HAWORTH

SCHELLY TALALAY DARDASHTI, THE JERUSALEM POST

Non-stop sleuthing produces a storythat twists at every turn: Wilno,

Warsaw, the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, aRighteous Gentile, a hidden slip of paperin a candlestick, the Exodus, Americanuncles, an illustrious rabbinical family andmore.

Enter Warsaw teacher MariannaHoszowska, 23, who volunteers to assistmembers of the Children of the HolocaustSociety; Maria Kowalska (MashaFajnsztejn), 68, a toddler saved by herRighteous Gentile nanny StanislawaButkiewicz; and former Londoner,researcher Patricia (Trisher) Wilson, 59,of Ra’anana.

In September 1941, two-year-old MashaFajnsztejn and her parents Yakub andChana (Zusmanovicz) went into the Wilnoghetto with their extended families, includ-ing her cousin, Daniel (Fajnsztejn) Avidar,then aged nine. Chana made contact withMasha’s nanny, Stanislawa, somehow

managed to bring the toddler out to herand returned to the ghetto.

Chana told the family that she had givenMasha to the nanny, along with money,jewelry and a pair of candlesticks with herbrothers’ names and American addresseshidden inside.

Masha tells thestory in her cousinDanny Avidar’sKiryat Ono home:Stanislawa went toone brother, whorefused to help.Another brotherwouldn’t or couldn’thelp, but sent herto a cousin in a for-est 23 kilometersaway, who built aspecial shelter forMasha if the Germans came. A priestgave her a new name – Maria Budkiewicz– and papers, and they lived in the forestfor three years.

Stanislawa likely gave the candlesticksand jewelry to the priest who helped her.

Although she tried to retrieve them, shewas always told to come tomorrow, andunderstood they would not be returned.

The nanny, who never married, had aphotograph of Masha’s parents, toldMasha she was Jewish and that no one

had survived.Maria marriedand Stanislawawent to live withher in ZielonejGory, 60 kilome-ters from Berlin.She died in 1990at 88, and in1992, was pro-c l a i m e d aR i g h t e o u sGentile.

Danny was inseveral camps:

Kaiserwald (Riga), Stuthof near Danzig,on a two-and-a-half-month death march toStettin, and was saved by the Russians.After the war, he and his siblings returnedhome to see if anyone had survived: Noone had. They asked about Masha and

Stanislawa; someone remembered theylived in a nearby village, and they ran tolook, but the nanny had just left. “Wesearched and searched and found noth-ing,” recalled Avidar.

Not finding anyone alive, he and his sib-lings came to Palestine on the Exodusemigration ship, and his sister DinaFajnsztejn Srolovich submitted YadVashem Pages of Testimony (PoT).

Marianna had discovered a PoT indicat-ing that Dina Fajnsztajn Srolowicz of Haifahad completed pages for Chana andJakub (her first cousin); for her own par-ents Mordechai and Miriam Fajnsztajn,siblings Rywka and Batia; Jakub’s par-ents, Abraham and Ida Fajnsztajn; andher uncle, philosophy professor DanielFajnsztajn, wife Rachel and three chil-dren.

In her October 27, 2006 posting to aJewish genealogy discussion group,

Marianna wrote, “Maria didn’t know abouther [Dina] and the family members untilyesterday,” adding that Maria was travel-ing to Israel the following day with the

(Continued on page 9)

A TALE OF THREE WOMEN – AND A LOST FAMILY

Danny Avidar and his cousin Masha Fajnsztajn.

March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9

(Continued from page 8)Children of the Holocaust Society. “Do anyof you know Ms. Dina Srolovicz or anyonefrom her family?” Maria, she said, would behappy to meet Dina or her children.

Wilson got to work and located twoPoTs from 1957 and 1982. She

turned to Bezeq Online, but Dina wasn’tlisted. In Haifa, a short list of Srolowiczappeared and she decided to call eachone.

One man wasn’t related, but knew Dinaand her husband, with whom he had served in the army. He remembered theyhad a shop. He retrieved a 1999 phonebook with the number.

Wilson called, no one answered; sheassumed the shop had closed. She e-mailed Marianna that she would call thecemetery to see and ask aboutnext of kin. The cemetery con-firmed Dina had died; her daugh-ter Elana had arranged the funer-al, and provided the number. Shesent the number to Marianna,who she immediately called fromPoland. Elana answered, but nei-ther knew the other’s language.She was suspicious, reluctant togive information, and hung up.

Meanwhile, Marianna hadfound another PoT from 1982,signed in English by Fruma Nir,for her mother Berta (Batia)Fajnstajn – Dina’s sister – daugh-ter of Mordechai and Miriam.

Wilson contacted KibbutzMa’anit, Fruma’s residence, andthe secretary confirmed she wasthere. “This is about theHolocaust and I don’t want toupset her,” said Wilson. “Are there chil-dren?”

“Yes, her son, Ohad, who is working inthe fields now. Here are both phone num-bers.” Before she could call, the phonerang – it was Ohad. “He was so excitedthat there was a possibility – that after allthese years, someone might be alive,”she recalls. “Where is Masha? I’ll go gether and bring her to my mother.”

Wilson e-mailed Marianna for the itiner-ary, and the phone rang again. An olderman said, in English, “My name is DannyAvidar and my great-nephew just calledme. Fruma is my niece, and the page oftestimony was for my late sister. I cannotbelieve what you are telling me –- mycousin is alive?”

“Yes, I believe we have found yourcousin Masha.”

“That’s impossible. Not a chance. Thelast time I saw her was in 1941.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Wilson replied.“How old are you, Danny?”

“In my 70s.” “I want you to sit down.” “Where in Poland does Masha live?” “That’s why I’m asking you to sit down.

Masha isn’t in Poland, she’s here, inIsrael.”

Utter silence. “Where is she? I want to go to her. I

want to bring her. I’m going to get my car.” “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find

out.” Marianna e-mails that the group is at the

Dead Sea, and Wilson calls the hotel. ButMasha speaks neither Hebrew norEnglish and Wilson cannot talk in Polishor Yiddish, so a friend who speaks Englishtranslates.

“I’ll return to Tel Aviv on Monday and flyto Poland on Tuesday,” she says.

“Your relatives are anxious. They can’twait until Monday and want to see younow. May I give them your number?”

Avidar calls the hotel. A short time later,he calls Wilson, adding that he suddenlyremembered his Polish. “My daughter will

take me to the Dead Sea Friday morningto see Masha. I can’t wait until Monday.”

He says that when he was asked abouthis family, he always said “My family is mycousin Masha and she is two years old.That’s all I remembered.”

They went to the hotel and found thePolish group by the water. He asked ifthey knew Masha.

“Yes, see those women coming out ofthe water? One is Masha.”

Avidar walked up to a woman, and said,“You are Masha!”

“How do you know?” “You’re the image of your father.” “I was two, you were nine. How do you

know?” “I remember,” said Avidar. “There were no words,” he later

recalled. “We put our arms around eachother and cried.”

They talked for nine hours: “The hardestpart was telling her how her parents hadperished,” said Avidar.

He said everyone would come to the TelAviv hotel on Monday night: his sisters,the children, the grandchildren.

Avidar told Wilson, “What can I say toyou? There are no words for what youhave done. All I can say is that you will bein my heart forever.”

The Wilson household settled downagain. Marianna e-mailed about a

Polish newspaper story and that PolishTV wanted to make a documentary, andshe had presented a program aboutMasha’s experience. Once again, Wilsonthought the story was finished.

In February, Avidar called aboutMasha’s March trip, that Polish TV is mak-ing a documentary, has filmed in Polandand is coming to Israel. “You must come,”he tells Wilson.

When this writer called Avidar to confirman interview with Masha at his home, hesaid “There’s something I’ve never toldanyone,” and told about the candlestickwith the names of the brothers hiddeninside. Chana had said, “If we don’t sur-vive, there are American relatives who willtake her.”

I called Wilson with these new clues andshe immediately started tracking thebrothers, utilizing online resources.Chana Zusmanowicz Fajnsztajn camefrom Ashmiany (50 miles from Wilno). Shehad two brothers who went to America.The immigration doors closed in 1923, sothey must have arrived before. Chanawas born in 1914; presumably, the broth-ers were older.

Wilson went to stevemorse.org, andsearched for New York arrivals. Two fit thedetails. Aron Zusnamowitsch arrived in1902 from Ashmiany, married, a cantor.The other was Socher (Yissachar)Zusmanovitz, arrived 1906, single, age17, from Ashmiany, going to Lewin

cousins. Who would use Zusmanovich in the

golden medina? thought Wilson andbegan looking for shortened names.Naiman or Hyman Zusman popped up in1906, going to his grandfather Leib.Unfortunately, Leib or Hyman/Naimancannot be traced, nor Socher.

Aron’s trail was easy to follow: he isZusman in Milwaukee, naturalized 1905, a“minister,” married to Hattie, four children.

In 1920, in the same neighborhood, he’sa “Jewish pastor,” married to Yochevedwith more children.

In 1930, she found son John, and sonSamuel in Illinois. She looked for Aron forhours, until she saw Ziesman, “rabbi of achurch,” married to Jane, with the samechildren. Could family still be alive inWisconsin? Wilson went to the OnlineWhite pages.There were Mendel, Danny,and Isidore.

She called Mendel; a feeble voiceanswered.

“Are you Mendel, son of Aron ofAshmiany?”

“Absolutely right – but you should callmy brother Isidor in Milwaukee.”

Wilson picked a random number, reach-ing dentist Dr. Richard Zusman’s voicemail. She left a detailed message, askinghim to e-mail, call or fax. At 1:15 a.m.,Wilson gave up and fell into bed. It’sPurim and the first e-mail is from the den-tist, who confirms his father Isidore, 92, isAron’s son. Coincidentally, his sisterShelly Isaacs is now visiting BeitShemesh – here’s her phone number.

“I hoped she wouldn’t think this was aPurimshpiel,” thought Wilson as shedialed.

Isaacs was stunned as she listened toWilson’s details. A call to her mother con-firmed that Aron was one of two brothers.

On Tuesday night, Isaacs was returningto Milwaukee, and as Danny Avidar andMasha were going to Yad Vashem thatmorning, they arranged to meet and takepictures.

At the Hall of Names, there was Avidar,arms around Masha, and Shelly Isaacswith Danny’s sister Rachel.

The family visited the RemembranceHall, and the walls of Righteous Gentiles.Avidar pointed out Stanislawa’s name andtold how she had saved Masha.

Masha came from Poland, feels herselfCatholic and thought the family in Israelwouldn’t accept her. It was explained thatshe was Jewish. Her grandchildren haveeven been to Israel via the Birthright-Taglitprogram. They said they feel Catholic, butin their hearts Jewish because their moth-er is Jewish. Masha understands that sheis Jewish.

Wilson is at her computer every dayexcept Shabbat, trying to connect peoplearound the world. “I go to bed every nightand say ‘Thank you for another day, forhelping me, and let me help someone elsetomorrow,’” she says.

“The circle is closing,” says Avidar,whose great-grandfather was Chief Rabbiof Hamburg, and grandfather was a rabbiin Koenigsberg. He rapidly sketches afamily tree for Wilson, who’s now lookingfor clues to Meier in Paris; Yosef inLondon; and Galia, an Antwerp pharma-cist. Other children studied at the MirYeshiva, at the university in Odessa.

The Polish cameraman asked Wilsonfor help as they left Yad Vashem. “Mywife’s family is Jewish, an uncle came toIsrael. Can you help me find him?” Shegave him the websites for JewishGen, forYad Vashem and other essential sites, ashe scribbled them on an envelope.

As he got into the car, he said sadly,“You know, even today Polish peopledon’t like Jews.”

A TALE OF THREE WOMEN – AND A LOST FAMILY

From left: Shelly Isaacs, Patricia Wilson, MashaFajnsztajn, Hall of Names Director Alexander Avrahamand Daniel Avidar in the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem.

STEPHANIE L. FREID, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“Ihave nightmares of being chased byguards into the barbed wire fences.

Or I’m hiding in cupboards from the Nazis.Sometimes I visualize how I would surviveif forced into a desperate situation. It hasmolded my entire identity.”

Liora Blum, a South Africa native, is sit-ting in a dimly lit Tel Aviv apartment,speaking, along with others like her. Theydidn’t directly experience the camps orghettos, but as second-generationHolocaust survivors, they are traumatizedby their parents’ pasts.

Intergenerational trauma is beingpassed along from immediate Holocaustsurvivors to their offspring, says ChaniOron, director of Israel’s Central RegionSupport Organization for Second andThird Generation Holocaust Survivors.And, according to Oron, festering issuesstemming from parents’ time spent in hid-ing or in the camps and ghettos surface atthe group sessions she moderates.

“Holocaust survivors endured incrediblehumiliation and struggle for survival; therewas starvation, violence, fear and horrorduring the war and then, after being liber-ated, they came to new countries to startover. The second generation experienceda mix of shame for their parents’ lackinglanguage and social skills mixed with guiltover what the parents had endured,” Oronexplains.

Illustrating the point, New Jersey nativeShirley Karsevar says, “Growing up in ahousehold with the energy of parents whowent through severe trauma was totallydifferent than other households. When Iwas a teenager, a friend showed me pic-tures of her father’s bar mitzvah party —an upscale, black tie affair. I did the mathand suddenly realized that at the verysame time her teenage parents weredancing to Benny Goodman, mine werestarving in the camps.”

Karsevar’s exposure to her parents’trauma came early; she remembers hermother began talking about life duringWorld War II when Karsevar was 4. “I’vemet people whose parents never talkedabout it and I’m like: ‘Lucky you! Theyspared you. They gave you your child-hood and let you have your life,’ “Karsevar tells the group.

London natives Nina Hecht and TriciaWermuth co-founded Second GenerationIsrael in English in 2005. Both women’sfathers survived the camps, but lost par-ents and siblings.

As both can attest, children of survivorsoften suffer from a sense of lost child-hood, tremendous pressure to achieve,and guilt.

In a majority of households, survivorparents didn’t discuss their experiences.“Pasts were shrouded in silence. In caseswhere entire families perished, a silentparent — the sole link to lineage – meantunanswered questions and gaping holesfor the next generation,” Oron explains.“The children feel tremendous guilt for notknowing about their roots.”

Stephen Smith, co-founder of Britain’sHolocaust Museum, and an expert ongenocide, says, “The problem is one ofhumanity. Genocide never happens bychance; it is slow, deliberate, and alwayspreventable. It is important we rememberall the victims ... To ensure that the racismand victimization committed during theHolocaust and other genocides are nei-ther forgotten nor repeated.”

Faced with Holocaust denial and Iranianthreats to eradicate Israel, SecondGeneration Survivors are alarmed over apotential repeat.

SURVIVORS’ DESCENDANTSDEALING WITH IMPACT

Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767

REPORT FROM REPORT FROM YAD VASHEMYAD VASHEM

BY KORIE WILKINS, FREE PRESS

Wally Czubatyj always heard thestory of how his parents saved the

life of a young Jewish girl during WorldWar II.

But the heroic efforts of his parents,Danyla and Rostyslawa, became all themore real when he accepted an awardfrom the Israeli Consul General on theirbehalf. His parents are credited with risk-ing their lives to save Hela Rapaport dur-ing the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in the1940s.

”My mother would have loved to see thisday,” said Czubatyj. She died lastFebruary. His father is also deceased.A Jewish friend asked Czubatyj’s parentsin 1942, asking for help sheltering theteenage girl. Czubatyj said his mothercould not refuse.

The Rapaport family had been expelledfrom their home in the city of Radechov inthe Ukraine.

”My parents, to me, always seemed verymeek and mild,” said Czubatyj. “I wouldn’thave thought my parents would do some-thing like this. But they did. My mother

said she did it because it was the rightthing to do. They had to do it.”

The Israeli consul, Baruch Binah, saidthe Czubatyj family took a great risk inharboring Rapaport, who was later reunit-ed with her sister and moved to Israelafter the war. They could have been killedif the girl’s true identity was discovered.”We remember those who have commit-ted the crimes,” he said. “But we alsoremember those few who rose to the high-est human level of courage and benevo-lence-like your parents did.”

Czubatyj was given a certificate and amedal, as his parents were given the titleof “Righteous Among the Nations,” thehighest award given to non-Jews by theIsraeli government and the Yad VashemHolocaust Memorial. Rabbi CharlesRosenzveig, founder of the HolocaustMemorial Center in Farmington Hills, saidthe Czubatyjs become the sixth people inMichigan given the honor.

In 1944, the Czubatyj family left Ukraineto escape Communism, settling inMichigan in 1950.

”This is such a huge honor,” he said. “Itmeans so much to my family.”

SON OF SAVIORS OF A JEWISH GIRLACCEPTS HOLOCAUST AWARD

BY JENNY HAZAN, CJN

George Brady never imagined hewould accept an award for chil-

dren’s Holocaust literature at the YadVashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.But the Czechoslovakian-born survivor ofAuschwitz did just that in October of lastyear.

Along with his 22-year-old daughter,Lara Hana, and Tokyo-based teacher FumikoIshioka, Brady accepted the2006 Yad Vashem Awardon behalf of first-timeCanadian author KarenLevine for Hana’s Suitcase.

The 2002 book wasselected from among 10children’s books, which,other than Hana’s Suitcase,were written originally inHebrew by Israeli authors.

Hana’s Suitcase is thestory of Brady’s younger sister, Hana,who, in 1942 at the age of 10, was killedat Auschwitz, and the Japanese educatorwho told her story to the world. “Never inmy wildest imagination did I ever expectthat this would happen,” says Brady, aplumber in Toronto for more than 40years. “Not just these awards, but thiswhole story – it’s like a dream.”

The award is the culmination of a storythat began when Hana was murdered.The only thing the little girl left behind wasa suitcase, on which was written hername, her birth date and the Germanword waisenkind, which means orphan.

The mysterious suitcase found its wayinto the hands of Japanese schoolteacher Fumiko Ishioka, co-ordinator ofthe now-defunct Tokyo HolocaustEducation Resource Center. Ishioka, whohad written letters to several Holocaustmuseums around the world requestingchildren’s artifacts for her modest collec-

tion at the centre, received the suitcase,along with a baby shoe, a little sock, ababy sweater and a can of Zyklon B gas,from the Auschwitz Museum in Poland inMarch 2000.

“Although there is a Holocaust museumin Hiroshima, Holocaust education is avery new subject in Japan. In the historytextbooks, the Holocaust is only describedin a few lines. As a result, most studentsin Japan have never even heard the word

‘Holocaust’ before,” saysIshioka, who estimates thatsince the center in Tokyoclosed three years ago,she has been able to bringa traveling exhibit aboutthe Holocaust to more than200 schools in Japan,reaching some 60,000 stu-dents.

“Hana’s Suitcase”was the natural

choice to win this award,”says Haim Gertner, direc-

tor of teacher training at the InternationalSchool for Holocaust Studies at YadVashem.

“One of the main pillars of the school’seducational philosophy is that when youare teaching about the Holocaust, youhave to focus on one individual. You haveto save the soul of one person among thepile of bodies. You have to see a face, andbe involved with a particular person’sstory,” he says.

“Not only does Hana’s Suitcase focuson one face, but it follows the process bywhich one educator came to discover thatface. The story is unbelievable. It’s inter-esting and it’s touching, and it’s veryimportant.

“Now that the generation of the sur-vivors is disappearing, we have to givetools to the next generation. This book isan important educational tool that reallypresents the Holocaust in a touching andsensitive way,” Gertner says.

HANA’S SUITCASERECEIVES YAD VASHEM AWARD

BY AMIRAM BARKAT ANDYULIE KHROMCHENKO

In an unusual documentation projectaunched five months ago, more than

1,000 elderly immigrants in assisted livingfacilities have provided testimony abouttheir experiences in World War II. JewishAgency Chairman Ze’ev Bielski submittedthe first batch of testimonies to YadVashem Chairman Avner Shalev. Officials at the Holocaust MemorialAuthority said that the new testimonies

have great research value, especiallybecause they come from areas in the for-mer Soviet Union about which there hasbeen relatively little information regardingthe Holocaust.

Siemion Rosenfeld, 84, from Belarus,joined the Red Army in 1940. In August,1941, he was taken prisoner by theGermans, sent to a concentration camp inMinsk, and from there to the Sobibordeath camp in Poland. “They don’t talkenough about the escape from Sobibor,”he says, “it was like the Warsaw GhettoUprising, only Sobibor was wiped off theface of the earth, and now there is aplowed field there.”

Rosenfeld is one of 80 POWs who tookpart in the uprising. Only five survived,and live in Israel. After the uprising, he hidout in Polish forests for 10 months, and in1944 returned to the Red Army. He wasbadly wounded in the course of his mili-tary service, and upon recovery, rejoinedhis platoon, which reached Berlin. “One ofthe walls of the Reichstag bore my signa-ture,” he says proudly in his testimony. Maria Katzap, 90, resides in an assistedliving facility in Be’er Sheva that belongsto Amigur, a Jewish Agency subsidiary.Katzap grew up on the Jewish farmingcollective, Emmet, that was established inthe southern Ukraine by the worldwideJewish Joint Distribution Committee. InMarch, 1942, the Germans conquered thearea and, shortly thereafter, Katzap’s fam-ily were executed.

“When I fled the ghetto with my friend, Ididn’t want to leave my sister behind,” sherecounts, “but she told me she has noth-ing to live for. She’s 36 and won’t be hav-ing children and that I’m young and willsurvive. ‘You have to go and tell what hap-pened to us here,’ she said to me.” Only after she immigrated to Israel did sheconsent to tell her story in public. “I livedin a region where there were not manyJews and I was afraid of how my storywould be received,” she says. Now shefeels that she has complied with her sis-ter’s order, albeit belatedly.

About a third of the three million Jewswho lived in the Soviet Union were killedin World War II. A considerable number ofthese were soldiers serving in the RedArmy, but hundreds of thousands weremurdered by the Nazis, who conqueredUkraine, Belarus and western Russia.

Dr. Guy Miron of the InternationalInstitute for Holocaust Research at YadVashem says that relatively little data hasbeen collected on the Holocaust in theseregions: “It stems first of all from the factthat the murder there was perpetrated in avery short period and through the method

of mass executions in killingpits. The second reason isthat most of the Jews whosurvived from those areaslived behind the Iron Curtain.”

Some 6,500 elderly folkslive today in Amigur

housing and 90 percent ofthese are new immigrantsfrom the former Soviet Union.Amigur director YuvalFrankel says the testimonycampaign was spurred byrandom conversations withimmigrants during VE Daycelebrations. “This is the

most important holiday in the year forimmigrants from the former Soviet Union,”Frankel says. “At every such event, wewould hear stories from the immigrantsabout their experiences during the war,and we thought these things must be doc-umented before it’s too late.” Indeed, twoof the immigrants died just days after writ-ing their testimony.

Frankel says the immigrants were reluc-tant to speakabout theHolocaust, or“the catastro-phe” as theyterm it. “Bearin mind thatthe private dis-aster of SovietJews was sub-sumed by thee n o r m o u sprice exactedby the war,which took thelives of 20 mil-lion Soviet citi-zens.”

Many of thei m m i g r a n t swho refusedinitially to cooperate eventually changedtheir minds, once they realized the impor-tance of testimony for future generationsand as part of the campaign againstHolocaust denial. “Yad Vashem was pret-ty skeptical at first,” Frankel says, “butwhen they saw what was involved, theirattitude changed completely, and recentlythey asked us to distribute to the immi-grants 2,000 testimony pages, to trythrough them to obtain new names ofJews who were killed in the Holocaust.”

Frankel is calling on other public hous-ing companies that provide assisted livingfacilities for immigrants to join the initia-tive.

Yad Vashem is calling on anyone withadditional information to telephone 02-644-3752.

“THEY DON’T TALK ENOUGHABOUT THE SOBIBOR ESCAPE“

Group portrait of people who took part in the uprising ofSobibor (picture taken in 1944)

Sobibor chapel used as theLazarett for shooting elderlyor infirm arrivals. Behindthis building the victimswere shot into a long pit.

March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11

BY MARILYN H. KARFELD

In the summer of 1942, nearly 500 mid-dle-aged men, new recruits in German

Reserve Police Battalion 101, agreed toshoot Jews in the head, brutal one-on-onekillings, even though their commandingofficer offered to assign them to a less dif-ficult job.

Over the next nine months, these menkilled 89,000 Polish Jews. Only 10 or 12policemen asked to be relieved of theduty, and none was punished, writes his-torian Christopher R. Browning inOrdinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

Why did some Germans and Polesagree to become murderers, while othersrefused, or at least hesitated? How manyGerman police were involved in killingJews and never were held accountable fortheir crimes? What about the fate of thecollaborators?

These are among the unansweredconundrums that remain from theHolocaust, says David Silberklang, aBrooklyn-born senior historian at YadVashem, the Holocaust RemembranceAuthority of Israel.

Over 60 years have passed since liber-ation of the Nazi concentration camps inEurope. In that time, scores of scholarshave researched and written about thepersecution and killing of Europe’s Jews.The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem holdstestimony and short biographies of overtwo million victims, about a third of the

Jews who perished.Yet, despite the voluminous research,

there are countless unanswered ques-tions from the Holocaust, saysSilberklang.

Since 1953, Yad Vashem has beengathering pages of testimony about theJews who were killed. Just over half of thevictims have been identified thus far.Perhaps a million more names will even-tually be collected.

“The Nazis obliterated the rest, theirlives and their deaths,” says Silberklang.

Other puzzles include the victims’response to the Holocaust, Silberklangsays. Why did some Jews try to savethemselves from mass deportations andnear-certain death, going into hiding ororganizing Jewish resistance, while othersdid not?

The date of the decision to launch the“Final Solution” also eludes scholars, saysSilberklang. Did Hitler ever actively orderthe extermination of all the Jews ofEurope? While some scholars argue thathe must have made that determination,others insist there was no formal decision.Instead, they theorize that the FinalSolution policy evolved over time.

In July 1941, Poles, not German Nazis,killed 1,600 Jews, their fellow towns-

people, in the small community ofJedwabne. These were their school-mates, well-known shopkeepers andfamiliar tradesmen. In his 2001 bookNeighbors: The Destruction of the PolishCommunity at Jedwabne, Poland, Jan T.

Gross tries to explain why.“Was Jedwabne a singular or represen-

tative event?” asks Silberklang. “Was itunusual, what these Poles did? We don’tknow. We don’t know enough to reach aconclusion.”

To this day, the editor of the journal YadVashem Studies points out, no book tellsthe comprehensive story of the Holocaustin Poland, where three million Jews werekilled. An 84-year-old scholar in Israel hasbeen working on such a book for over 25years.

“He’ll never finish the book,” Silberklangmaintains. “The problem is, he’s one ofthe few people in the world with the nec-essary language skills and knowledgeabout Poland. If he can’t finish, who can?”

By the end of 2007, Yad Vashemexpects to publish its Lexicon of the

Ghettos, a compendium of articles detail-ing over 1,000 Jewish ghettos establishedby the Nazis and their collaborators duringWorld War II. The project, which begantwo-and-a-half years ago, has requiredthe labor of a team of researchers.

Silberklang, who serves on the project’seditorial board, says experts with the abil-ity to read and ensure the accuracy of theghetto lexicon are very hard to find.

Furthermore, there were hundreds, ifnot thousands, of Jewish communities inPoland for which there is no research.“There is information but no analysis, nolooking at patterns. We’re in diapers.We’re just beginning.”

Similar questions remain about theJews in Greece, Romania and the former

Soviet Union. Cutting-edge research hasset the framework of what needs to beinvestigated, but there is so much thatscholars simply have not explored.

For example, Silberklang says, there isno book on Greece in the Holocaust, inpart because of the Greek government’sreluctance to allow scholars completeaccess to its archives.

In the republics of the former SovietUnion and Russia itself, the task is per-haps more daunting. Despite some inter-views with local people, Silberklang says,there are so many small killing sites thatstill remain unknown.

While the number of books published onthe Holocaust grows every year,Silberklang insists that there is no short-age of research topics for interested stu-dents to pursue.

With the collapse of communism 16years ago, the defunct Soviet Unionopened its archives throughout most of itsformer republics. In Moscow’s SpecialArchive, documents are housed in a build-ing five stories tall, with nine more storiesunderground, says the Yad Vashem histo-rian. The Soviets didn’t destroy a singlepiece of paper.

According to Silberklang, ShmuelSpector, the late Yad Vashem scholar, vis-ited the Moscow archive in 1992 and said:“If scholars live to be 120, work six days aweek, 12 hours a day, it would take them100 years just to turn the pages, let alonedigest anything.”

First published in the Cleveland JewishNews

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FROM HOLOCAUST CAN FILL VOLUMES

The Nazis were masters at stealingart from Jewish collectors and deal-

ers. Recently, many works have finallybeen returned — but the legal path can betricky. A new manual entitled “Nazi LootedArt” aims to make restitution easier.

In the painting, the grande dame ofimpartiality embodies the unbiased rule oflaw: eyes bound, flowingrobe, scale dangling fromher left hand. But CarlSpitzweg’s masterpiece“Fiat Justitia,” which formspart of the German presi-dent’s art collection, is any-thing but a symbol of jus-tice — quite the contrary.

The piece was sold at acut-rate price by its Jewishowner in the mid-1930s tofinance his escape attemptfrom Nazi Germany. Sevendecades later, his descen-dants have still not beencompensated for its loss.

But that may soonchange. In recent yearsthere have been growing efforts to findand compensate families of art collectorsdisappropriated by the Nazis during WorldWar II. And an important new contributionto that project was revealed in BerlinTuesday: a new book called “Nazi LootedArt: A Handbook to Art RestitutionWorldwide” — with Spitzweg’s “Justitia”gracing the cover.

Over 500 pages long, the encyclopedictome is filled with case studies of valuableartworks either being taken from their

owners by the Nazis, or sold at below-market prices to finance escapes. Butmore than that, the book provides adetailed, country-by-country look at thelaws in place intended to help descen-dants get their art back — in effect, aninstruction manual for those dispossessedby the Nazis.

“This book gives the victims the possibil-ity to take legal action without having tohire a lawyer,” says Gunnar Schnabel, aBerlin property lawyer who co-authoredthe book with Monika Tatzkow, a Berlinhistorian who specializes in tracking downlost art.

“There have already been hundreds ofpictures returned in recent years,” hesays. “But there are likely hundreds morein the basements of museums inGermany, Austria, the US and elsewhere.”

NEW HANDBOOK HELPS DESCENDENTS RECLAIM NAZI LOOT

“Architectural Capriccio,” by Bibiena Giuseppe Galli, will bereturned to its rightful owner by the Courtauld Institute of Art inthe UK.

BY OREN DORELL, USA TODAY

Bill Gray was working as a studentintern at the Simon Wiesenthal

Center in Jerusalem when he decided touse the Internet to find fugitive Nazis.

Within a few hours he found five, all liv-ing in the USA.

“To think of the horrible crimes thatthese people committed,” said Gray, 24, aHarvard student from Munster, Ind. “Andto think that they were living in the UnitedStates for so long, so happily.”

The Nazis whom Gray found werealready known to the Justice Department.Some had been deemed too ill to prose-cute, and Justice is taking a second lookat the others, the center said.

Gray’s use of Internet-based searchengines and databases, such as votingrecords, comes at an important time. TheWiesenthal Center is making an intensepush, known as “Operation: LastChance,” to find fugitives of the Holocaustand bring them to justice before they die.The center, renowned for finding scores ofex-Nazis, is also seeking collaborators,camp guards and leaders of paramilitarygroups who helped round up and kill Jewsand others during the Holocaust.

The effort has rolled across Europe andcollected hundreds of allegations andnames from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,Poland, Romania, Austria, Hungary andGermany. This year, the program willexpand to Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

The suspects are all older than 80, soany time saved by using the Internet iscritical.

“It helps make my job easier,” says theworld’s chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff,director of the Wiesenthal Center’s

Jerusalem office. “It helps me get up-to-date whereabouts on the current sus-pects.”

The questions that surround peopleidentified as suspects are seen in

the case of Sandor Kepiro, an officer in aHungarian police unit that rounded up andmachine-gunned more than 1,000 Jews,Serbs and Gypsies in Novi Sad, aYugoslav area occupied by Hungary in1942. Kepiro was convicted in the mas-sacre, but freed by Hungary’s fascistregime shortly after his trial in 1944. Hefled to Argentina. In 1946, the communistgovernment of Hungary tried him again inabsentia, and sentenced him to 14 years.He returned to Budapest in 1996 and hasdenied taking an active part in the execu-tions.

Due to Operation: Last Chance, author-ities are now deciding whether he shouldbe re-arrested.

Zuroff says that over the years he hastracked down more than 2,000 peoplesuspected of Holocaust crimes. He hopesthat the new methods will help locate anotorious fugitive: Aribert Heim.

Heim was a doctor at the Mauthausenand Buchenwald concentration campswho was suspected of killing hundreds ofinmates. He slipped from U.S. detentionand was practicing gynecology inGermany until 1962, when state prosecu-tors issued a warrant for his arrest, and hedisappeared. A reward of more than$250,000 has been offered for Heim, whoZuroff believes is hiding in South America.

Gray says it should not matter that thesuspects are old.

“If they’re healthy, I think that these bas-tards have to pay for what they’ve done,”he says.

NAZI HUNTERS PICK UP THE TRAIL ONLINE

Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767

BY RAFAEL MEDOFF, DIRECTOR OFTHE DAVID S. WYMAN INSTITUTE FORHOLOCAUST STUDIES

Anewly-discovered unpublished arti-cle by Winston Churchill, written in

1937, claimed that Jews were “partlyresponsible” for the mistreatment thatthey suffered.

Does the article prove that Churchill wasanti-Semitic? And does it matter if hewas?

The article, titled “How the Jews CanCombat Persecution,” was found recentlyby Cambridge University historian Dr.Richard Toye in the Churchill archives. Init, Churchill denounces the “cruel andrelentless” persecution of the Jews. Buthe then criticizes German Jewishrefugees in England for their willingnessto work for less pay than non-Jewishlaborers, which – he claims – caused anti-Semitism.

Churchill’s article also justifies anti-Semitic responses to Jewish moneylend-ers: “Every Jewish moneylender recallsShylock and the idea of the Jews asusurers. And you cannot reasonablyexpect a struggling clerk or shopkeeper,paying 40 or 50 per cent interest on bor-rowed money to a ‘Hebrew Bloodsucker,’to reflect that almost every other way oflife was closed to the Jewish people.”Churchill biographer Martin Gilbertbelieves the article may have been writtennot by Churchill himself, but by his ghost-writer. Even if true, that does not reallyabsolve Churchill, since a public figure

must bear responsibility for what he per-mits to be written in his name. This partic-ular article was authored in 1937 and thenwithdrawn from consideration by Churchillthree years later, following a dispute overwhich publication would use it. It isunknown if Churchill had second thoughtsabout the article’s contents.

Some of Churchill’s earlier statementsabout Jews and communism indulged inanti-Semitic stereotypes, such as refer-ring to the Russian Bolshevik leadershipas “Semitic conspirators” and “JewCommissars.” Yet Churchill genuinelysympathized with pogrom victims andstrongly endorsed Zionism.

Churchill was not the only public figurewhose sometimes less than flattering pri-vate views about Jews were accompaniedby support for Zionism.

A recently-discovered account of a 1939conversation between President FranklinRoosevelt and then-Senator BurtonWheeler quoted FDR as saying, “You and

I, Burt, are old English and Dutch stock.We know who our ancestors are. Weknow there is no Jewish blood in our veins ...”

Arecent book about the owners ofThe New York Times, by scholars

Susan Tifft and Alex Jones, quoted FDRcomplaining about a “dirty Jewish trick”which he claimed the Times’ owners had

used to keep their newspa-per within the family. It hasalso long been known thatRoosevelt told French mili-tary leaders in North Africain 1943 that limits shouldbe placed on local Jewsentering some professions,lest there be a recurrenceof “the understandablecomplaints which theGermans bore towards theJews in Germany”...Harry Truman, too, hadsome less than pleasant

things to say about Jews. A Truman diaryfound four years ago included this pas-sage: “The Jews, I find, are very, very self-ish. They care not how many Estonians,Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs orGreeks get murdered or mistreated asD[isplaced] P[erson]s as long as the Jewsget special treatment. Yet when they havepower, physical, financial or political nei-ther Hitler nor Stalin has anything on themfor cruelty or mistreatment to the under-dog.”

It is difficult to know if the private state-ments by Truman, Roosevelt or Churchillabout Jews affected their public positionson Jewish issues.

Truman urged the British to admitHolocaust survivors to Palestine, but henever seriously pressured London to doso. He is fondly remembered for grantingdiplomatic recognition to the State ofIsrael minutes after the state was created,although he refused to send Israelweapons to defend itself against theinvading Arab armies.

Roosevelt expressed sympathy for theJews being massacred by the Nazis, butrefrained from taking meaningful steps tohelp them. On occasion, FDR told theBritish they should open Palestine to Jewsfleeing Hitler, but he was never willing toreally lean on Churchill to do so.Churchill supported the Zionist causethroughout his career, often vigorously soand in the face of fierce opposition withinhis own cabinet. Yet, when it matteredmost, his support was more in the realmof rhetoric than action. As prime ministerduring the Holocaust period, Churchill leftin place the harsh White Paper policy thatkept all but a handful of Jews from enter-ing Palestine, thus trapping them inHitler’s inferno.

Prof. Henry Feingold has asked, “Is itconceivable that a policy that severelycurtailed Jewish immigration and landsales in Palestine... [at a time when] todeny its availability meant that death wasalmost certainly the alternative... was notat least partly motivated by anti-Semitism?”

We may never know the answer to thatquestion, but in the end, it may not evenmatter. Whatever his motives, Churchill’spolicies spoke for themselves.

First published in The Bulletin

Winston Churchill Franklin D. Roosevelt

WAS CHURCHILL ANTI-SEMITIC – AND DOES IT MATTER?

BY SHAHAR ILAN

The best-known scene in ElieWiesel’s book “Night” is apparently

that of the execution. Three prisoners, twoof them adults and the third a little boy,were hanged at the Buna camp inAuschwitz after being implicated by theGestapo in the discovery of a weaponscache. The adults died immediately. Butthe little boy, who did not weigh much,hovered between life and death for morethan half an hour.

“Where is God?” someone standingbehind Wiesel asked, and Wiesel relatesin the book that a voice from inside himreplied: “Here, He is. He is hanging hereon the gallows.” More than eight millioncopies of “Night” were sold in the UnitedStates alone. Oprah Winfrey chose it forher Book Club, and articles appeared say-ing the hanging scene never happened inreality, or that there was no child there.The leading questioner of the scene’sveracity was Prof. Raoul Hilberg, one ofthe world’s preeminent Holocaust schol-ars. Hilberg told Haaretz correspondentDaphna Berman that he was convincedthe hanging had taken place but that “Idon’t know whether there was a childthere.”

Hilberg bases his claim, inter alia, on thetestimony in the Auschwitz archives nam-ing the three persons hanged but doesnot mention that one was a child. InHilberg’s opinion, the question of whetherthere was a child among them is of greatsignificance to Christian readers becausethe scene in which two adults and a childare hanged represents for them the cruci-fixion of Jesus Christ. In an interview I hadwith Wiesel he said that “everything writ-ten in ‘Night’ is factual. Even the silence

between the words is factual. God forbid,everything in this book is true.” He addedthat he had met the brother of the boy whowas hanged in the United States. Subsequently, Rabbi Dov Edelstein, asurvivor of Auschwitz, contacted Haaretz.“I was present at the hanging of the twoadults and the boy,” he says. Edelstein, a Conservative rabbi, is now apensioner who lives at Alfei Menashe andis a member of the Hod VehadarConservative congregation in Kfar Sava.He had been the rabbi of Conservativecongregations in Michigan, Wisconsinand Georgia. He says: “I remember theexact details. There is no doubt about this.I am a living eyewitness. The story isabsolutely true.”

In the article, I mentioned that the num-ber tattooed on Wiesel’s arm is A-77133.Edelstein notes that “there are 155 num-bers between his number and mine.” Hesays: “Every day when we returned fromwork, the minute we returned, everyonewent to his own block. On that particularday they told us no one was to go away.We went to the Appelplatz, the huge roll-call square in the center of the camp. Inthe middle of the Appelplatz was a struc-ture with three wooden posts that resem-bled the goals on a football field. I saw itand didn’t understand what it was. “We waited and waited and meanwhilethe orchestra played,” he recalls.“Suddenly I saw three figures approach-ing under a heavily armed SS guard. Theybrought them to the three strange struc-tures that I couldn’t identify and then therewas a ceremony. We had to put our hatson and take them off.” Edelstein says that“the Nazis told us what the three haddone. They had stolen explosive materialsfrom work and blown up the crematoria at

Birkenau. I think they even killed some SSmen,” he adds. “I was a youngster then,about 16-plus. It was the first time I hadseen a hanging, and it was extremelyshocking to see the young boy beinghanged. After that, I saw a great many.”Edelstein does not remember how longthe boy remained alive.

THE HOLY VIOLIN

Avery mystical scene in “Night” takesplace toward the conclusion of

World War II, during the death march thatset out from Auschwitz. At night, in a placecalled Gleiwitz, Juliek, one of the mem-bers of the camp’s orchestra, pulled outhis violin and played a fragment of a con-certo by Beethoven: “The sound of theviolin in this dark shed, where the deadwere heaped on the living...How could Iforget that concert given to an audience ofdying and dead men?” Since then, Wieselwrites, he always thinks of the deathmarch when he hears a Beethoven con-certo.

The violin scene has also been doubted.In this case, the question is whethersomeone would have been bothered totake with him such an awkward and heavyinstrument as a violin in the horrific condi-tions of the death march. Edelstein saysof the death march: “We walked on foot allnight and people fell down dead. Anyonewho couldn’t walk was shot. Simply got abullet. The way was strewn with body afterbody.” He continues: “The story about theviolin sounds possible to me. The orches-tra used to play for us every day. For amember of the orchestra, the violin wasmore than holy, it was the greatest treas-ure in the world. It had saved his life whenhe was in the camp. He had stayed aliveby virtue of the violin. It created a deepemotional bond.”

Edelstein says that in the commotionthat existed on the day they left for thedeath march, it was reasonably possibleto have been able to secretly remove aviolin from the camp.

The survivors of the death march weretaken on the train for 10 days from Polanduntil they reached Germany. They got nofood and lived merely off snow. Theylooked like skeletons and Wiesel relatesthat the residents of the German villagesthrough which they passed stared at themin astonishment. From time to time, thetrain would stop so that the bodies of thedead could be thrown from the wagons.

BATTLES FOR BREAD

One day, when they stopped, aGerman laborer pulled a piece of

bread from his bundle and threw it in thedirection of the train. Wiesel tells how inthat wagon people began attacking eachother like wild dogs, tearing each otherapart and biting each other. The laborersgathered round and suddenly startedthrowing pieces of bread into the differentwagons, he says. These onlookerswatched as “the skeletons” began literallykilling one another just to get a piece ofbread.

Wiesel recalls how an old man crawledout of the wagon on all fours with a pieceof bread in his hand. His son attacked himand took the food away from him. Twoother people fell on the son and when thetumult was over, the father and son weredead.

Edelstein, who does not know Wieselpersonally, also was in one of the wagons.“Wiesel believes the laborers threw thebread because they wanted to have funand see how the Jews would fight over it.

(Continued on page 15)

“I AM A LIVING EYEWITNESS”

March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

(Continued from page 4)writes. And, “If it is impossible for the truth to be held in one’s pocket, I always filledmy own with objects that could facilitatepassage to a place and a time.”

But sometimes, Eisenstein’s sentencestighten and her description comes throughsharp and clear, as when she envisionsher father as John Wayne, tying his horseto a piece of barbed wire and saunteringinto Auschwitz to howl away the menacingguards and free the prisoners. She’s full ofconfidence when she adds to her draw-ings the part-Yiddish, part-English dia-logue spoken by her parents and their sur-vivor friends. She leaves silencesbetween the voice balloons and lets us fillin the transitions from our own experi-ence. In one comic-strip section, sherecalls the Yiddish-speaking world inwhich she grew up. The panels are dis-jointed, impressionistic and nonlinear —and warm, human and effective.

Her figures float, boneless, not quiteweighted down by gravity. They have adistinctive look and the cartoonish styleallows her people to look simultaneouslyfunny, poignant and noble. Though someof her drawings looked rushed — I want-ed her to go back and improve them —

they put a friendly arm around our shoul-ders and draw us in. Especially attractiveare the small number of colored drawings.The final painting hints at how much morepowerful this book might have been hadmost of the art been in color.

With her words and pictures workingtogether, Eisenstein captures the insularworld her parents shared with their groupof other Holocaust survivors. Together,they presented a closed circle that, for theyoung Eisenstein at least, was an emo-tional barrier it has taken years to sur-mount. Some of her descriptions willhaunt me: At a Toronto bar mitzvah circa1960, we meet Carola, sheathed andshiny in her tightly fitting brocade dressand lacquered hair, moving with specialgrace on the dance floor. And then theyounger Carola, falling through the air,having just jumped from a rumbling freighttrain that is transporting her family andneighbours to almost sure death atTreblinka. I Was a Child of HolocaustSurvivors may be marred by some weakwriting and drawing, but BerniceEisenstein’s story is an important additionto the graphic memoir/history/documen-tary library.

First published in The Globe and Mail

I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

(Continued from page 5)the Federal Republic of Germany, includ-ing his role, between 1948 and 1952, aschairman of the board of the Kreditanstaltfür Wiederaufbau (Loan Corporation forReconstruction), and afterwards as afinancial adviser to Konrad Adenauer andexecutive board member of the DeutscheBank.

Theodor Maunz, who under Hitler wasan influential constitutional lawyer, wrotethe first commentary on the 1949 post-warGerman constitution. He did so with hisstudent, Roman Herzog, who laterbecame president of the Federal Republicof Germany. This commentary by Maunzand Herzog is still cited today. Maunz hasalso provided legal advice to the self-pro-claimed Hitler admirer Gerhard Frey, whofounded the German Peoples Union andpublishes the German National andSoldiers Newspaper. Maunz has writtenarticles for this neo-fascist newspaper.When the first German Bundestag (post-war federal parliament) met, more thanhalf of the deputies had been members ofHitlers NSDAP (Nazi Party) prior to 1945.In the Foreign Ministry in 1952, two-thirdsof the senior officials were former NSDAPmembers. Among section heads, thenumber was four-fifths.

Hans Filbinger, a member of theChristian Democratic Union (CDU) afterthe war, and formerly a member of theNSDAP, resigned in 1978 as state premierin Baden-Württemberg when it wasrevealed that he had authorized the deathsentence in several trials as a naval judgeduring the Second World War.

Hans Speidel, who had been a profes-sional soldier since World War One,becoming a major general in theWehrmacht under Hitler, was a militaryadvisor to Adenauer and played a centralrole in the formation of Germany’s post-war Bundeswehr (Armed Forces). He diedat 86, a highly decorated officer, havingbeen awarded the Knight’s Cross in 1944and elevated to the rank of four-star gen-eral in 1957.

Without the cooperation, or at leastapproval, of the US government and its

intelligence services, the Adenauer gov-ernment could not have proceeded in thisway. The thousands of pages newlyreleased from the American nationalarchives also cast light on the work of USagencies. The material makes clear thatthe US maintained a vast spy network offormer Nazis during the Cold War.

Probably of greatest significance wasReinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s chief of

the military secret service on the Eastern Front.From 1942 to 1945, he led the espionagedepartment in the Army gen-eral staff. Immediately afterthe war, Gehlen and hisentire organization, consist-ing of SS or SD (SS securityservice) people, were placedin the service of theAmerican secret service, theOffice of Strategic Services(OSS), predecessor to theCIA.

Gehlen was assigned todevelop Germany’s for-eign secret service, to bedirected against theSoviet Union. “It wasimportant to use everyswine, as long as he was an anti-commu-nist,” the former boss of CIA operations inthe Soviet Union, Harry Rositzke, wrote.He added, “The necessity of recruiting fel-low combatants required a not-too-criticallook at their past.” Thus, Germany’s for-eign secret service (BND) absorbedwhole departments from the Nazis securi-ty service.

At first, the Adenauer government wasnot informed of the CIA’s collaborationwith Gehlen, who had his first contact withthe new federal government only at theend of 1950. It was Hans Globke whomade the first official contact with the gen-eral, who was working with his agents inPullach, near Munich. "I immediatelyfound a good contact and gained theimpression that he correctly saw the sig-nificance of my organization," wroteGehlen on this first meeting with Globke.

Gehlen led the BND till his retirement inMay 1968. Even in 1970, between 25 and

30 percent of BND employees were for-mer members of the SS, the Gestapo orthe Nazi security service.

Therefore, it was natural that the CIAwas interested in covering up for Globkein 1960.

In January 1963, Adenauer was askedby a US press agency correspondentwhether it had been an error to make peo-ple like Hans Globke one of his closestcollaborators. Adenauer answered, “Ihave heard this question and also other

names again and again. Butnote this well, my dear sirs,one needs capable and reli-able people in order to devel-op a democratic state.Democracy lives by the will,the readiness and the abilitiesof people to secure liberty andmorality within the legalorder.”

This seems to haveremained the attitude of

German governments to thepresent day. The historianNaftali complains, It is very dif-ficult to illuminate international

history from only one side. It is a genuinedisgrace that the Federal Governmentrefuses to publish its information on thistopic. I do not understand why Berlin doesnot want to release the BND files on theEichmann case. Why not? I would be verycurious to see what information the WestGerman government had aboutEichmann, and how the decision wasreached about what should happen withEichmann, taken in the highest circlesbetween Adenauer and Globke.

The German establishment has no inter-est in this chapter of German history beingdebated once again in public. The newexposures about Eichmann and Globkehave received little coverage in theGerman press. They are all the moreinconvenient at a time when the Germangovernment is again engaged in militaryoperations around the world, and is pro-moting “a healthy patriotism” on the basisof 60 years of “experience with democracy.”

POSTWAR GERMAN GOVERNMENT AND CIASHIELDED NAZI CRIMINALS

Reinhard Gehlen

Nearly the entire collection of a long-closed archive of Nazi death camp

records will be ready for research within ayear.

The archive’s director said he was seek-ing approval at a meeting in theNetherlands of its 11-nation governingbody to prepare the documents for inter-national access.

Reto Meister, head of the InternationalTracing Service, which runs the archive inthe German spa town of Bad Arolsen, saidthe core documents – incarcerationrecords, death catalogues, concentrationcamp registries and transportation lists –will be digitally scanned and ready fortransfer to Holocaust institutions withintwo months.

“It’s been going even faster than antici-pated,” Mr. Meister said before the start ofthe two-day meeting in The Hague.

But the 11-nation governing committeemust give its approval for the complextechnical preparations for transferring dig-ital copies to organizations such as theUS Holocaust Memorial Museum inWashington and to Israel’s Yad Vashemmemorial in Jerusalem.

The entire collection of 30 to 50 millionpages, filling 16 miles of shelf and cabinetspace in six buildings, will be 95 per centscanned by the end of the year, Mr.Meister said.

After years of pressure from survivors,the member countries of the governingInternational Commission agreed lastMay to unlock the archive to scholars. Butthat decision, amending a 1955 treaty,must be ratified by all 11 countries, whichnormally could take many years.

The United States, Israel and Polandhave completed the process. Officialssaid they believe Germany, theNetherlands, Luxembourg, Britain andGreece will ratify the agreement beforethe next meeting in two months.

The Tracing Service has handled 11 mil-lion inquiries for personal information inthe last 60 years, but survivors have com-plained it has taken as long as three yearsto receive answers, and often, the infor-mation was minimal.

HOLOCAUST RECORDS“READY FOR RESEARCH

WITHIN A YEAR”

BY ASHLEY PERRY, EJP

Alack of political will by the post-WWIIUS government led to a slowdown

in the return of goods stolen from Jews bythe Nazis, according to a new research onHolocaust restitution.

In the study, “Restitution of HolocaustEra Assets: Promises and Reality” by for-mer CIA economist Sidney Zabludoff, theauthor claimed that while the US instruct-ed its occupation forces to impound muchof the property, as the Cold War began inthe 1950s “restitution became one ofmany back-burner post-war issues thatevolved into mundane discussions andactions lasting for years.”

Zabludoff added that the EasternEuropean governments were also toblame. “The issue disappeared with theregimes’ nationalization of residences andbusinesses, as well as financial institu-tions and insurance companies, that heldmuch of the Jewish wealth,” he wrote. Despite numerous international agree-ments made during World War II andimmediately thereafter, Zabludoff wrote,

at least 115-175 billion dollars remainunreturned.

No obligation was felt to deal with theextraordinary circumstances created bythe Holocaust,” concluded Zabludoff. While the issue of Holocaust restitutiondied down for many decades, it resur-faced in the 1990s. According toZabludoff, this was a result of the “duplic-ity of the Swiss banks” which held manyaccounts of Jews since WWII, “the com-ing of age of the ‘third’ generation after theHolocaust,” and “the increased availabili-ty of archival material in Russia andEastern Europe after the demise of theSoviet Union.” Although there was muchactivity on behalf of restitution by majorJewish organizations and the US andIsraeli governments, the study concludesthat “only about three percent of theunpaid Holocaust assets was restoredduring the ten years since 1995.

According to Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld,editor of the Jewish Political StudiesReview, although some of the propertywas destroyed during the war, much is stillbeing held by European governments andindividuals.

LACK OF WILL HAS LEFT HOLOCAUST-ERAPROPERTY UNRETURNED

Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767

(Continued from page 6)expelled from the schools. In June 1942,Jews were prohibited from working asdoctors.

The second crucial moment featuredin the report took place in the sum-

mer of 1942 when the Jews were deport-ed to the East - toAuschwitz. Since 1940,Van Doorslaer says, therehad been administrativecollaboration with theNazis; the Belgians carriedout the Germans’ instruc-tions. In the instance of thedeportations, however,there was a clear differ-ence between Brusselsand Antwerp, the twolargest cities in Belgiumwhere most of the Jewishpopulation was concen-trated. The report statesthat the Brussels police did not take part inrounding up and deporting the Jews,whereas in Antwerp the police helped theGerman forces close off streets to carryout the deportations. One out of a total ofthree deportations, on the 28th and 29thof August 1942, was even carried out in itsentirety by the Antwerp police. In thisdeportation, 1,243 Jews were caught andsent to the death camps.

The explanation for this differencebetween Brussels and Antwerp derives,

according to Van Doorslaer, from the long-standing division of Belgium between theFlemish north and the Francophonesouth. On the Flemish side, he says, therewas more collaboration, both passive andimpassive. This difference did not derivefrom any love of Jews, he explained, but

rather from patriotic andnationalist sentiments.

The third crucial momentdescribed in the report

occurred at the end of thewar. At that stage, theBelgian legal system wasweighing whether to tryGerman collaborators. It wasdecided, for example, thatthe Antwerp police who par-ticipated in the deportation ofthe Jews would not be tried.Van Doorslaer says the issuewas too sensitive, because ifthe police officers bore

responsibility then so did their command-ers - and if the latter had superiors, thenthe entire system was responsible.

This possibility meant opening aPandora’s box at a very delicate momentin Belgian history. “The Belgian statedecided at the end of 1945,” states thereport, “that the Belgian authorities boreno legal or other responsibility for the per-secution of the Jews.”

First published in the Haaretz

HOW BELGIUM SACRIFICED ITS JEWSTO THE NAZIS

Queen Elizabeth of Bavaria.

(Continued from page 5)officer with a large backpack full of dol-lars. On the drive to her execution sitethe officer knocked her unconscious. Hestopped the car and left her bleeding onthe roadside.

“It is beyond description to tell youwhat you feel when traveling to your ownexecution and, at the last moment, youfind you have been bought out,” shesaid.

The following day, unaware the execu-tion had not taken place, the Germanauthorities put up posters all over thecity announcing she had been shot. Mrs.Sendlerowa read them herself.

She went into hiding and continued towork for Zegota. Several weeks later,her mother died. SS officers turned up atthe funeral, demanding to know whereher daughter was.

On August 1, 1944, the Polish under-ground rose up against the Germans inthe Warsaw Rising. As the street fightingraged, Mrs. Sendlerowa buried the bot-tles containing the children’s names in acolleague’s garden. Against overwhelm-ing odds and with precious little helpfrom Poland’s allies, the undergroundfought on for 63 days before finally capitulating.

When the Red Army liberated Warsawin January 1945, she dug up the bottlesand handed over the lists to the JewishCommittee. The information was used to

return the hidden children to any surviv-ing relatives.

MODESTY

One of the rescued was ElzbietaFicowska, who now heads the

Children of the Holocaust Association inWarsaw. As a five-month-old baby, shewas smuggled out of the ghetto in awooden tool box on a lorry truck carryingbricks.

“To me and many rescued children,Irena Sendlerowa is a third mother.Good, wise, kind, always accepting, sheshares our happiness and worries. Wedrop in for Irena’s advice when life pres-ents us with difficulties,” she said.

Another of those rescued was MichalGlowinski, now a literature professor.

“If being a saint is a complete devotionto a cause, bravery and altruism, then Ithink Mrs. Sendlerowa fulfils all the con-ditions. I think about her the way youthink about someone you owe your lifeto,” he said.

But like many of the Righteous, MrsSendlerowa is modest about herachievements.

“Let me stress most emphatically thatwe who were rescuing children are notsome kind of heroes. Indeed, that termirritates me greatly. The opposite is true.I continue to have pangs of consciencethat I did so little,” she said.

HOLOCAUST HEROINE’S SURVIVAL TALE

American and British WWII militaryintelligence authorities may have

been aware of Adolph Hitler’s “FinalSolution” plan for the “eradication” of theJews of Europe as early as 1942, accord-ing to documents just declassified underthe Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of1998.

According to a National Archives pressrelease, by March 20, 1942, a surrepti-tiously obtained document appears in thefiles of the United States Coordinator ofInformation (COI), a predecessor to theCentral Intelligence Agency, clearly dis-cussing the Nazi intent to eradicateEuropean Jewry. The document is a trans-lated copy of a dispatch filed by a Chileandiplomat on November 24, 1941.

The document sheds new light on thelongstanding question of how much theWestern powers knew of the Holocaust.According to Thomas H Baer, “Warningsfrom the allies to the Jews of Europe of aplanned genocide never came. The Nazimurders depended on secrecy and sub-terfuge. Warnings would not have stoppedthe Holocaust, but they could have savedlives.” Baer is a public member of theInteragency Working Group (IWG), agroup that coordinates the government-wide effort to declassify federal recordsrelated to Nazi and Axis war crimes,

Another IWG member, ElizabethHoltzman, added, “This recently declassifieddocument helps pinpoint how much officialswithin our government knew about theHolocaust and when they knew it. The nextquestion is why our government — not tomention the British — did nothing inresponse. It is unbearable to think that plansto ‘eradicate’ a Jewish population were amatter of such indifference.”

THE CHILEAN DISPATCH

During German occupation, Praguewas no longer a capital of a country,

and most foreign diplomats had departed.The former Chilean consul, GonzaloMontt Rivas, however, was able toresume his post because of friendly rela-tions between Nazi Germany and neutralChile. His location and good connectionsprovided a unique vantage point for dis-cerning the Nazi agenda and actions inNazi-occupied territories, a perspectivenot afforded to most Western diplomats.

Prompting his dispatch was a decree tobe issued by Nazi Germany on November25, 1941, announcing that Jews who hadleft Germany and were living abroad couldnot be German subjects (they had lost theircitizenship by laws issued in 1935) and thatall remaining assets of these Jews auto-matically were forfeited to the Reich.

The diplomat wrote to the Chilean gov-ernment, translating part of the decreeand making the following observationsabout Nazi policy in general:

“The Jewish problem is being partiallysolved in the Protectorate [ReichProtectorate of Bohemia-Moravia], as ithas been decided to eradicate all theJews and send some to Poland and oth-ers to the town of Terezin, whilst lookingfor a more remote place.

“The German triumph [in the war] willleave Europe freed of Semites. Those[Jews] who escape with their lives fromthis trial will certainly be deported toSiberia, where they will not have muchopportunity to make use of their financialcapabilities.

In proportion to the U.S.A. increasing itsattacks on the Reich, Germany will expe-

dite the destruction of Semitism, as sheaccuses international Judaism of all thecalamities which have befallen the world.

“The exodus of the Jews from the Reichhas not had the results prophesied by theenemies of Germany: on the contrary:they have been replaced by Aryans withobvious advantage to everything and ineverything, except in the usury line inwhich they are past masters.”

The West received partial informationabout the Holocaust from a multitude ofsources, but Montt’s November 24, 1941dispatch came to the West in early 1942,which was very early in the flow of infor-mation. The report, was one of a set ofdespatches from Chilean diplomats inEurope to the Chilean Foreign Ministry inSantiago that were acquired by Britishintelligence and shared with Americanintelligence during the war.

THE DECLASSIFICATION EFFORT

Since 1999, the Nazi War Crimes andJapanese Imperial Government

Records Interagency Working Group(IWG) has overseen the identification,declassification review, and release of for-merly classified U.S. Government recordsas required by the Nazi War CrimesDisclosure Act. Under the auspices of theIWG, U.S. Government agencies havedeclassified more than 3 million pages todate. The records are available forresearch at the National Archives. In itsrecent passage of the Japanese ImperialGovernment Disclosure Act of 2000,Congress endorsed the IWG’s effort to fin-ish the European war crimes phase andmove into the Japanese and Far Eastphase and thus complete the full task setforth in the Disclosure Act.

ALLIES MAY HAVE KNOWN OF HOLOCAUST PLANS

DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS REVEAL FACTS OF HITLER’S “FINAL SOLUTION”Leaders of the Claims Conferenceand the World Jewish Restitution

Organization (WJRO) met with the PrimeMinister of Poland and the Speaker of theSejm, the Polish Parliament, to press forlegislation on the restitution of privateproperty stolen during the Holocaust.

At the meetings in Warsaw, PrimeMinister Jaroslaw Kaczynski committed tolegislation by the end of the year, but indi-cated that compensation will be based on15 percent of the value of the confiscatedproperty. The Claims Conference andWJRO will be working intensively in aneffort to ensure the best possible law bepassed and that the program be estab-lished rapidly.

Poland is the only major country in theformer Soviet bloc that, in the 18 yearssince the fall of Communism, has nottaken any measures to help former prop-erty owners or heirs recover private prop-erty stolen since 1939 that is still withinthe country’s borders.

The Claims Conference is working incoordination with groups representingnon-Jewish former property owners wholost their assets under Communism. Thegroups are PUWN (Polska UniaWlascicieli Nieruchomosci – Polish Unionof Real Estate Owners) and theLandowners Association of Poland.

In September, 2006, the government ofPoland submitted draft legislation propos-ing compensation for confiscated privateproperty. However, it did not provide forthe return of any actual property, excludedthe substantial and valuable propertieslocated in Warsaw from its reach, andoffered limited compensation at best.

CLAIMS CONFERENCEPRESSING POLAND

FOR RESTITUTION LAW

March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15

(Continued from page 12)I don’t agree with him at all,” he says. “I

remember the faces of the laborers. Theyappeared to be in shock and were at theirwits’ end; they were people who hadnever seen such a sight in their lives.There was rationing at the time, and thiswas their daily ration of bread. You would-n’t throw away bread like that. I was sur-prised at Wiesel for seeing them in such anegative light.”

Ten thousand prisoners, including“kapos” and commanders of the blocks,participated in the Rosh Hashanah prayerservice, held in the Buna forced laborcamp at Auschwitz in 1944, Wiesel relatesin “Night.” The hazan chanted “Blessed bethe name of the Eternal,” and the crowdresponded with the benediction. This, forWiesel, was not a prayer service like anyother. “Why, but why should I bless Him?”he asks in the book. “In every fiber of mybody, I rebelled. Because He had hadthousands of children burned in His pits?Because He kept six crematoria workingnight and day, on the Sabbath and onfeast days?” On that day, Wiesel relates,“I had ceased to plead. I was no longercapable of lamentation. On the contrary, I

felt very strong. I was the accuser, Godwas the accused... We stayed for a longtime at the assembly place. No one daredto drag himself away from this mirage.Then, it was time to go to bed and slowlythe prisoners made their way to theirblocks. I heard people wishing one anoth-er a Happy New Year!”

WAS THERE A PRAYER?

Edelstein confirms the scene of thehanging but is totally in disagreement overthat of the prayer service and the possibil-ity that 10,000 people would gather inAuschwitz openly to hold a forbiddenprayer service.

“Even the imagination cannot conceiveof such a service,” he says. “I wonderwhat could have happened to Wiesel thathe would write such a thing. It’s simplyhallucinatory. He must have been dream-ing.”

Edelstein who also wrote a book abouthis experiences in the Holocaust, cites theopposite kind of example. On the eve ofYom Kippur, when the Kol Nidrei prayer isrecited, he says, “we got together with theutmost secrecy, and quietly, in whispers,recited our prayers.”

“I AM A LIVING EYEWITNESS”

When the Germans occupiedTarnopol , Poland (now Ukraine )

in 1941, Bronia Felberbaum and her par-ents, Sophie and Jacob, were taken to theghetto in Velyki Birky. Jacob knew manyChristian families in Velyki Birky and wasable to make contact withHelen Balyk. Helen prom-ised to hide the family onher parents’ farm, provid-ed the Felberbaums wereable to get there.

One day, the Gestapoofficer for whom Bronia’smother worked as a maidtold her the ghetto wouldbe liquidated that night.He allowed the entire fam-ily to spend the evening athis home. The next day,the Germans burned theghetto to the ground,killing everyone inside.Those who tried to escapewere shot.

After hiding for several days in differentbarns, the Felberbaums reached the farmof Helen’s parents, Franciska and JosefBalyk. The Balyks hid and cared for theFelberbaums. Josef built a hiding placenext to the stable. The Balyks’ daughter,

Lucia, and granddaughter, Vira, wouldbring food to the family each day. It wasnot easy for the Balyks to obtain food, butthey never let the Felberbaums go hungry.

After liberation, Bronia’s family movedback to Tarnopol, which became part of

Ukraine. Immediately after lib-eration, the borders wereopen but Jacob refused toleave the Balyks. They hadbecome family.

Following Jacob’s death in1958, Bronia and her motherleft Ukraine as part of therepatriation agreement withPoland. In 1960, they came tothe United States. Franciskaand Josef Balyk died yearsago.

As Bronia wrote to YadVashem, “While my parentshave died, I am forever grate-ful to these kind, noble peo-ple, who risked everythingthey had to take in three

Jewish strangers, when no one elsewould.”

Lucia passed away in July 1998. Vira isin her 70s and lives in Romanivka, in thesame house where her family hid theFelberbaums.

PROFILE IN COURAGE

Vira Vertepna Stochanskawith her husband.

BY RUTH ELLEN GRUBER, JTA

The American son of Holocaust sur-vivors is creating Kielce’s first per-

manent public memorial to Poland’s mostinfamous episode of postwar violenceagainst Jews.

The monument, designed by New York-born artist Jack Sal, is to be unveiled July4, the 60th anniversaryof the so-called Kielcepogrom, an attack by aPolish mob that killed42 Jewish Holocaustsurvivors and injuredanother 50 or so.

The Kielce pogromwas the worst of aseries of Polish attackson Jewish survivorsreturning to their homesafter the Holocaust.Kielce had 27,000 Jewsbefore the war, but onlya few hundred survived.

Sparked by rumors that the returningJews had killed a Christian child to use hisblood for ritual purposes, the pogrombecame a landmark in fostering the imageof ingrained Polish anti-Semitism, andsparked the mass emigration of some100,000 Polish Holocaust survivors.

Nine people were hastily tried and exe-cuted for the murders by Poland’sCommunist authorities, but the pogromremained a festering and bitterly divisivememory for decades.

Many Poles refused to accept that ordi-nary people could have carried out suchcarnage and blamed the attack on provo-

cation by Soviet-backed secret police.Public discussion of the affair during theCommunist era was virtually taboo.

The Polish government made an officialapology for the pogrom 10 years ago, onthe 50th anniversary of the attack, but dur-ing that ceremony, Nobel laureate ElieWiesel bluntly raised the issues and ques-tions that had blighted the memory ofKielce for half a century.

“True, the killing was perpetrated byhoodlums,” he said. “But what about thesoldiers who reportedly took part in them?And what about the others, the onlookers,the bystanders? And where were the‘solid citizens’ of the town? How many ofthem even tried to stop the massacre?

“What happened in this place showedthat normal citizens could be as cruel asthe killers of any death camp,” he said.“Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec,Chelmno” were “German inventions;Kielce was not. Kielce’s murderers werePoles. Their language was Polish. Theirhatred was Polish.”

The affair has remained a touchy issue.

Privately placed plaques on the buildingon Planty Street commemorate the vic-tims, but Kielce itself had not erected apublic memorial. Monuments placed atthe former synagogue honor the morethan 25,000 Holocaust victims from thecity, as well as Poles who saved Jews dur-ing the war.

Partly because of the reluctance to deal

openly with the issue over the years, Sal,who describes himself as a conceptualartist, calls his monument to the pogromvictims “White/Wash II.”

The memorial will be shaped like abig number seven, lying on its side,

as if fallen, to recall both the address onPlanty Street and the month of July — thelocation and time of the pogrom.

More than 750 square cement blockswill make up the exterior surface. Forty-two of them will be covered with leadsheets and placed at random across theface of the work, representing the 42 vic-tims.

Next to the seven, there willbe a column bearing a com-memorative plaque withinscriptions in Polish, Englishand Hebrew. The entire sur-face of the monument will bepainted with a white lime-wash, which will be main-tained by the city.

This recalls that beforethe war, Jews in Kielce wereactive in the quarrying andmanufacture of lime, Salsaid.

The Kielce monument is notthe first time that Sal has dealt with theHolocaust in his work, and he readilyacknowledges that his family history hasinfluenced him.

Sal’s father, born in Lithuania, was liber-ated from Dachau after surviving theHolocaust in numerous Nazi concentra-tion camps. His mother, born in what isnow Ukraine, survived the war by hidingwith her parents in the forest for twoyears.

The two met after the war’s end in a dis-placed persons camp near Munich andeventually moved to New York, where Salwas born in 1954.

In 1998-2000, Sal created a sculpturalinstallation in Munich, outside the apart-ment building where his newly marriedparents lived after the war.

The work, sponsored by the MunichPublic Art Commission, entailed a bronzecast slab, approximately the size of twolarge paving stones, with its surface most-ly covered by scored markings. Theremainder was smooth, as if it had beenwiped clean — or eradicated.

JEWISH ARTIST CREATES MEMORIALFOR KIELCE POGROM

A group of mourners at the burial site of the Jews killed in Kielce.

Mourners and local residents shovel dirt into the mass grave ofthe victims of the Kielce pogrom during the public burial.

American heirs to a property empireconfiscated by the Nazis said they

would fight for restitution fromKarstadtQuelle after the German retailer con-tested a court order to compensate them.

Karstadt, one of Germany’s leadingretailers, sold the Berlin real estate thatonce belonged to the Wertheim family in2000 for 145 million euros ($183.5 million).

In August, a German court orderedKarstadt to pay the proceeds to theJewish Claims Conference (JCC), whichrepresents Wertheim heir BarbaraPrincipe and her family.

“I am here to hold Karstadt accountablefor its conduct,” the 73-year-old Principetold a news conference at a Berlin hotelbuilt on land at the center of the dispute.

Following the court decision, Karstadtsaid they would exhaust all legal avenues

to contest the ruling, even if that meanttaking it to the highest European court.

Principe said she was saddened by thefirm’s response.

“It is clear to me that Karstadt do notseriously expect to win,” she said. Her twograndsons would continue the fight if shecould not do so herself, she added.

Originally named Wertheim, Principe wasa young girl when her family were forcedinto exile in the 1930s and the Nazis confis-cated their business and property.

After WW II, the real estate was award-ed to retailer Hertie by the occupyingauthorities.

During the Cold War the property inquestion lay in no-man’s land betweenEast and West Berlin.

In 1994 KarstadtQuelle bought Hertie andassumed ownership of the disputed territory.

JEWISH HEIRS URGE KARSTADT TO PAY COMPENSATION

Martyrdom & ResistanceEli Zborowski, Editor-in-Chief

Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Editor*Published Bimonthly by the

International Society for Yad Vashem, Inc.500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor New York, NY 10110

(212) 220-4304EDITORIAL BOARD

Eli Zborowski Marvin ZborowskiMark Palmer Sam SkuraIsrael Krakowski William MandellSam Halpern Isidore Karten**Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet**

*1974-85, as Newsletter for the American Federation of JewishFighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims**deceased

International Society for Yad VashemMARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299

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BY ILANA LIPSON, THE DIRECTOR OFMARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONSAT THE SAMUEL SCHECK HILLELCOMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL

Through children’s toys, games, art-work, diaries and poems, South

Florida families recently learned about theHolocaust in way that spoke directly to theyounger generation. This display of chil-

dren’s treasures is Yad Vashem’s “NoChild’s Play” exhibit, which showcases thecreative results of imagination tainted by fearand loneliness, magnified by innocence.

In February, The Samuel Scheck HillelCommunity Day School, the largest

Jewish day school in thesoutheastern UnitedStates, hosted the region-al premiere of “No Child’sPlay.” The week washighlighted by an openingnight welcome from EliZborowski, Chairman ofthe American andInternational Societies forYad Vashem. Mr.Zborowski spent the fol-lowing two days withHillel’s middle and highschool students, walkingthrough the exhibit andsharing his story of sur-vival and struggle.

“Rarely can our childrenso easily relate to theirhistory, yet “No Child’s Play” directly con-nected them to their past,” said Dr. AdamHolden, Hillel’s head of school. “Hillel isgrateful to Yad Vashem and Mr. and Mrs.Zborowski; the time, images and storiesthey shared made an inspirational, ever-lasting imprint on our students.”

Unlike other Holocaust exhibitions,“No Child’s Play” does not focus on

statistics or physical violence. Instead, itprovides a glimpse into what children’slives were like during the Holocaust andhow everyday items became sources ofcomfort and companionship.

F rom early childhood through highschool, Hillel is a Jewish community dayschool structured to cultivate and inspirestudents’ interests and talents and to pre-

pare them for college admission. Byengaging students in meaningful culturaland religious experiences, Hillel strives todeepen their commitment to Judaism, theJewish people and the State of Israel.

The American Society for YadVashem has recently expanded its

Cultural and Education Departments, andwe are pleased to be able to offer severaltraveling exhibits to your community uponrequest. We are currently working withseveral schools which will be showing theNo Child's Play exhibit. This exhibit isavailable for 2-3 week showings. Theother two exhibits currently available arethe Auschwitz Album and Tolkatchev Atthe Gates of Hell. The Auschwitz Albumdocuments one of the last Hungariantransports to arrive at Auschwitz, and

shows in detail the intake process theyexperienced at the camp. The TolkatchevExhibit depicts through a series of paint-ings created by Private Zinovii Tolkatchev,a Jew in the Russian Army, the images hesaw upon his arrival at the camp.

Our Education Department holds anAnnual Educators’ Conference in NewYork City. We are currently looking toexpand our reach nationwide, so thatschools across the country will haveaccess to Yad Vashem's one-of-a-kindeducational tools.

If you want more information on theavailability of any of the exhibits, pleasefeel free to contact Elizabeth Zborowski at212-220-4304. For Educational materialsor programming, please contact IlanaApelker at 212-220-4304.

HILLEL HOSTS FLORIDA PREMIERE OF YAD VASHEM'S “NO CHILD'S PLAY” EXHIBIT

Eli and Elizabeth Zborowski (center) presented to Hillel’s Dr. AdamHolden (left) and Rabbi Michael Druin a gift of an Israeli postagestamp of the image of a survivor’s teddy bear.

Hillel parent Stefanie Wolf walked through the“No Child’s Play” exhibit with her daughtersShoshi and Alexandra.

Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the AmericanSociety for Yad Vashem, addressing people gath-ered at the opening of the “No Child’s Play”Exhibit. Also pictured, Rabbi Michael Druin.

BY ROBERT NOLIN

Occupying a corner in an orderlyexhibit hall, stark under a bank of

spotlights, the old Nazi boxcar seemedrobbed of much of its menace.

Instead, the focus fell on the triumph ofthe old men and women who milledaround the rusting railcar. They were theHolocaust survivors who lived to recountthe inhumane cruelty of being transportedto death camps on railcars just like this one.

“It’s painful,” said Philip Eisenberg, ofPembroke Pines. “When I look at it, Ichoke up.”

The 83-year-old retiree spent 18 daystraveling in the same type of boxcar in1945. More than 100 other people werepacked into the car. Only six climbed out alive.

Eisenberg’s tale was similar to that ofmany among an estimated 500 Holocaust

survivors who convergedat the end of Februaryon the Broward CountyConvention Center towitness the formalunveiling of the Nazi-erarailcar.

Historians have yet toconfirm whether thedecaying railcar with thefaint black swastikaactually ferried victims tocamps in Germany andPoland, but it servesnonetheless as a grim reminder of horrorfrom another age.

“I was on a car like that when they tookus to Auschwitz,” said Leo Adler, 85, ofHallandale Beach. “I was in the car foreight days.”

Death rode the car as well. There wasno food or water, and a bucket served for

sanitation. As deaththinned the ranks ofthe roughly 100 peopleinside, the living usedthe bodies of the deadas benches. Even theGerman troops whoopened up the carwere surprised to findonly 22 alive, Adlersaid.

The railcar, itspaint faded and

peeling, will serve as ateaching tool. It will be partially restoredfor visitor safety and on public view onceit is installed on unused railroad tracksabout a half block from the HolocaustDocumentation & Education Center thatwill open next year in Hollywood. It’s oneof eight such railcars in the United States.

Museum officials organized the unveil-

ing, which they estimated was attendedby about 1,000 South Floridians. Therewere speeches about Holocaust remem-brance and Jewish songs and prayers.Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust histori-an who procured the railcar from Gydnia,Poland, came from Los Angeles to attend.“Look at that car and understand its sheerhorror,” he said. “Appreciate the valor andanguish of those who were in it and imag-ine the unbridled, absolute evil of thosewho put the Jews in this car.”

Audience members blinked back tearsor simply wept outright, as LeoShniderman of Aventura, recalled a days-long trip in a similar rail car in 1944. Thejourney ended at a death camp, where hismother was torn from his arms to suredeath. “This car comes from a worldupside-down,” Shniderman said.

First published in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

BOXCAR TRIGGERS PAINFUL MEMORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

Boxcars like one shown in the picturewere used by Nazi to transport Jews tothe death camps.