IN THIS ISSUEPreserving the past and guarding the future.........................................................1, 12

Six million Holocaust victims remembered................................................................2

Corner of Holocaust history told through innocent’s eyes.......................................4

My diary of a Nazi death camp childhood....................................................................6

Youngest Holocaust survivors look to next generation.............................................7

Gala of the Young Leadership Associates of the ASYV..........................................8-9

How Nazis escaped justice in South America...........................................................11

75 years after Anschluss, Nazi “shadows” haunt Austria.......................................12

How the press soft-pedaled Hitler..............................................................................13

A Holocaust pageant that was too “political” for FDR.............................................15

American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Spring Luncheon..................................16

Vol. 39-No.4 ISSN 0892-1571 March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773

The Education Department of theAmerican Society for Yad Vashem

and its Young Leadership Associates heldits fifteenth annual professional develop-ment conference on Holocaust education.This year’s conference was dedicated tothe memory of Eli Zborowski, z”l,Founding Chairman of the AmericanSociety. Our annual Dinner this year, onNovember 10th, will also pay tribute to thelife of Eli Zborowski.

The Association of Teachers of SocialStudies/United Federation of Teachers,the School of Education of ManhattanvilleCollege, and the Educators Chapter of theJewish Labor Committee/UFT JewishHeritage Committee co-sponsored theprogram this year. Participants in thisyear’s program, which included educatorsfrom all five boroughs of New York Cityand from the tri-state area, received in-service credits for completing the confer-ence. The program also included a dis-play of the educational unit developed bythe International School of HolocaustStudies, “Keeping the Memory Alive”:International Poster Competition.

Abbi Halpern, who co-chairs the YoungLeadership Associates with Jeffrey Wilf,welcomed the participants and spokeabout being part of “a family built by boththe memories of horrible losses at thehands of the Nazis as well as the strengthof the blessing of surviving.” Abbi contin-ued: “Our grandparents have instilled inevery generation of the family the impor-tance to carry on the torch that has beenpassed to us. We must always remember,we must ensure the indelible correct histo-ry; and most importantly, together witheducators like all of you, we must tell thestory and teach its lessons forevermore.”

Abbi emphasized how having suchclose contact with Holocaust survivorshas presented her with opportunities tohear survivors’ memories, particularlythose imparted to her by family memberswho survived the horrors of this period inhistory and have now dedicated their livesto ensure the Holocaust victims are notforgotten.

She added that “my husband Jeremyand I pass it on to our children as well,and our eldest daughter Brianna — the‘fourth generation’ — has already volun-teered to help. She and her siblings areblessed by still having their great-grand-parents around them, a unique privilege,experienced by very few.

“Through teaching we warn about theconsequences of extreme and baselesshatred and prejudice. We educate to pro-mote tolerance in the hope that throughour efforts, future generations will makesure that the Holocaust, a low chapter inhuman history, will not repeat itself.”

This conference, organized by Dr.Marlene W. Yahalom, Director ofEducation of the American Society, hasproven to be a strong vehicle to promotethe mission of Holocaust remembranceand commemoration through educationover the years. The conference was creat-ed in 1999, by Caroline Massel, Founding

Chair of the Young Leadership Associatesof the American Society.

Kimberly Mann, manager of theHolocaust and United Nations OutreachProgramme, spoke about the collaborativeefforts of the United Nations and theAmerican Society over the years and themany educational opportunities availablefor educators on this meaningful andimportant topic. She encouraged thoseattending the program to take advantage ofthese valuable educational opportunities.

Carolyn Herbst, Past President/PastChairperson of the ATSS/UFT, empha-sized that this conference is a valuableresource for increasing awareness andsensitivity to intolerance and injustice. Inher remarks to the conference partici-pants, she emphasized the importance oflearning from the lessons of the Holocaustand applying these lessons to teachingabout human rights issues. Carolyn

remarked on the challenge of teachingthis topic without reducing the topic tonumbers and statistics, and emphasizingthe human elements of the events — vic-tims, rescuers, perpetrators, andbystanders. Barbara Wind, Director of theHolocaust Council of Greater MetroWest,presented on Notes from the WarsawGhetto: Diaries of Emanuel Ringelblum.

Our program and theme, “HolocaustDocumentation and Memory: Preservingthe Past and Guarding the Future,” offerededucators strategies on how to incorporateHolocaust studies into their lessons plansand curricula to enable students to realizethe importance of documenting theHolocaust to meet the challenges ofHolocaust denial. The workshop topicscomplemented the theme of the program:“Sensitizing Students to Learning about theHolocaust”; “Using Survivor Testimonies inthe Classroom”; “Using Primary Sources inthe Classroom”; and “Ripples from theHolocaust — Learning About the SecondGeneration.”

This year’s program was dedicated tothe memory of the Founding

Chairman of the American Society — EliZborowski. Dr. Yahalom remarked how itwas Eli’s inspiration and vision to create aYoung Leadership division to the AmericanSociety and to have members of the sec-ond and third generation of Holocaust sur-vivor families work together toward contin-uing the legacy of Holocaust remembranceby promoting awareness through educa-tion as one way of many to honor the mem-ory of the victims who perished.

“For Eli, Holocaust education was aconversation between generations — theprewar generations of Jewish Europe, thegeneration of the Holocaust victims, andthe generations of children and grandchil-dren of Holocaust survivors, who haveaccepted the responsibility, obligation andlegacy of this mission, to partner with edu-cators like you to preserve and dissemi-nate Holocaust history through programssuch as this conference.” Dr. Yahalomalso acknowledged the inspirational lead-ership of ASYV Chairman Leonard Wilf,and how “through his dedication and com-mitment to the American Society, we areable to secure, promote, and sustainHolocaust education through our workand through programs such as theProfessional Development Conference.”

Dr. Yahalom spoke about the “impor-tance of empowering educators to trans-mit the lessons of the Holocaust to theirstudents through education. As an institu-tion, Yad Vashem is a symbol of bothdestruction and rebirth. Through educa-tion, these parallel messages are con-veyed to the community at large. One of

(Continued on page 12)

HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTATION AND MEMORY:

PRESERVING THE PAST AND GUARDING THE FUTUREASYV FIFTEENTH ANNUAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

Top row, left to right: Kimberly Mann, manager of the Holocaust and United Nations Outreach

Programme; Barry Levine, ASYV Young Leadership Associates (YLA) member; Abbi Halpern,

YLA Co-Chair; Caroline Massel, Founding Chair, YLA; Jeremy Halpern, ASYV Executive Board

member; Marlene W. Yahalom, PhD, Director of Education; and Jessica Mauk, YLA member.

Bottom Row, left to right: Barbara Wind, Director, Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest;

Carolyn Herbst, Past President/Past Chairperson of the ATSS/UFT.

Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773

SIX MILLION HOLOCAUST VICTIMS REMEMBEREDIsrael dedicated its annual memorial

day for the six million Jews killed in theHolocaust to mark 70 years since theWarsaw ghetto uprising, a symbol ofJewish resistance against the Nazis inWorld War II that resonates deeply inIsrael to this day.

At the opening ceremony at nightfall,President Shimon Peres and PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu both linkedthe desperate Jewish revolt of 1943 to thewarrior mentality that enabled the estab-lishment of Israel five years later.

“There was a never a rebellion like it.They were so few and their braveryremained as a model for so many,” Peressaid at Yad Vashem, Israel’s officialHolocaust memorial, before hundreds ofHolocaust survivors and their families,Israeli leaders, diplomats, and others.

“A clear line exists between the resist-ance in the ghettos, in the camps, and inthe forests, and the rebirth and bravery ofthe state of Israel. It is a line of dignity, ofrenewed independence, of mutualresponsibility, of exalting God’s name,” hesaid, “as a ray of hope which was notextinguished even during terrible anguish.The ghetto fighters sought life even whencircumstance screamed despair.”

Netanyahu called the uprising “a turningpoint in the fate of the Jewish people,”where they transformed from helpless vic-tims into fearless warriors.

Six million Jews, a third of world Jewry,were killed by German Nazis and their col-laborators in the Holocaust.

The 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising wasthe first large-scale rebellion against theNazis in Europe and the single greatestact of Jewish resistance during theHolocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, it

became a symbol of struggle againstimpossible conditions, illustrated a refusalto give in to Nazi atrocities, and inspiredother acts of uprising and undergroundresistance by Jews and non-Jews alike.

While the world marks InternationalHolocaust Remembrance Day on January

27, the date of the liberationof the Auschwitz deathcamp, Israel’s annualHolocaust memorial daycoincides with the Hebrewdate of the Warsaw ghettouprising.

The Israeli flag flew athalf-staff and a military

honor guard stood at oneside of the podium as poemsand psalms were read andthe Jewish prayer for thedead was recited.

Peres, an 89-year-oldNobel Peace Prize laureate,also linked the Nazi geno-cide to Iran’s suspect-

ed drive to acquire nuclear bombsand its leaders’ repeated refer-ences to the destruction of Israeland its denial of the Holocaust.

“The civilized world must ask itself... (how) it is still possible for theleadership, like that of Iran, to open-ly deny the Holocaust and threatenanother Holocaust,” he said.“Those who ignore the threat of aHolocaust against one nation mustknow that the threat of a Holocaustagainst one nation is a threat of aHolocaust against all nations.”

He spoke a day after the latestround of international talks aimed athalting Iran’s nuclear developmentprogram failed to reach an agreement.

Netanyahu also cited the Iranian threatsto destroy Israel and vowed that there willnever be another Holocaust.

“The murderous hatred against theJews that has accompanied the history ofour people has not disappeared, it hasjust been replaced with a murderoushatred of the Jewish state,” he said. “Whathas changed since the Holocaust is ourdetermination and our ability to defendourselves.”

On April 8, Israel came to a standstill assirens wailed for two minutes. Further cer-emonies included the public reading ofnames of Holocaust victims at sitesaround the country, including Israel’s par-liament.

Sunday night’s main ceremony at YadVashem included six survivors who lit sixsymbolic torches to commemorate the sixmillion dead. A video segment on eachone’s personal story was presented.

On the same day in Poland, thou-sands from across the globe

marched solemnly at the former NaziAuschwitz-Birkenau death camp to honorthe six million Jews killed in the Holocaustduring World War II.

The mournful wail of the shofar — a tradi-tional Jewish ram’s horn symbolizing free-dom — marked the beginning of the Marchof the Living, held this year for the 22ndtime since 1988 in this southern Polish townwhere in 1940 Nazi Germany builtAuschwitz, its most notorious death camp.

Eleven thousand people, including hun-dreds out of an ever-dwindling number ofelderly Auschwitz survivors, and youngJews from as far away as Australia orBrazil, along with two thousand youngPoles, passed through the infamous

“Arbeit macht frei” (Work Will Set YouFree) gate at the Auschwitz camp, beforestarting the two-mile trek to the Birkenaucamp.

“I am here because I believe that mygrandparents’ death was not in vain. Weshould live in peace and harmony,” DavidOlidolt, a 16-year-old who travelled fromIsrael, told AFP as he marched throughthe former camp grounds, this year stillcovered with a blanket of snow.

“It is really important to come here andsee — to be among the survivors,” saidMiriam White, who accompanied nearly200 Jewish youngsters from Los Angeles,California.

“I am here for one more reason —because my father was from Poland,” the

45-year-old told AFP.“Participating in the march is a tradition

at our school,” Weronika Rogas, a 17-year-old Polish student from the nearbytown of Tychy, told AFP, adding that theevent was a lesson in tolerance andrespect for cultural diversity.

Israeli army chief Benny Gantz andWorld Jewish Congress president RonaldLauder were also among the marcherswho flock to the site each year aroundApril 19, marking HolocaustRemembrance Day in Poland.

It is held in commemoration of the out-break in 1943 of the doomed Warsawghetto uprising by Jewish partisansagainst the Nazis, the first rebellion of itskind during World War II.

More than one million people, mostlyEuropean Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by Nazi Germany inoccupied Poland from 1940 until it was lib-erated by the Soviet Red Army on January27, 1945.

The site was one of six German deathcamps set up in occupied Poland, a coun-try which was home to prewar Europe’slargest Jewish community.

Many Auschwitz victims were sent to itsgas chambers immediately after beingshipped in by train. Others were worked todeath as slave laborers.

Among the camp’s other victims weretens of thousands of non-Jewish Poles,Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, and anti-Nazi resistance fighters from acrossEurope.

Upwards of 200 people, includingHolocaust survivors, also participated in asimilar march honoring Holocaust victimson the outskirts of the Lithuanian capitalVilnius, where Nazis and local collabora-tors massacred 70,000 Jews during WorldWar II.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (center) lays a

wreath during a ceremony marking Israel's annual day of

Holocaust remembrance, at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Participants walk through the gate of the Auschwitz-

Birkenau concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland, on

April 8, 2013.

Holocaust survivor Baruch Kopold lights one

of the six torches at the ceremony at Yad

Vashem.

The Dutch government has askedthe European Commission to rec-

ognize the Peace Palace and the formerNazi transit camp Westerbork as her-itage sites.

The Peace Palace in the Hague, whichhouses the International Court of Justice,was opened 100 years ago “to preventthe kind of war to which the camp sopainfully attests and must continue to doso,” the Council for Culture, a govern-ment advisory body, wrote in a recom-mendation to the Cabinet.

The Cabinet adopted the recommenda-tion and requested that the EuropeanCouncil give the two locales theEuropean Heritage Label — a designa-tion reserved for “sites which haveplayed a key role in the history and thebuilding of the European Union,” accord-ing to the European Commission.

In total, nearly 100,000 Jews, or 70percent of Holland’s pre-HolocaustJewish population, were transported

from Westerbork to Nazi exterminationand concentration camps, includingAuschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen andTheresienstadt, according to YadVashem. The premises of the formerNazi camp have been made a nationalmemorial.

According to Yad Vashem, Westerborkwas established in October 1939 by theDutch government to detain GermanJewish refugees who had entered theNetherlands illegally.

Meanwhile, the municipality in whosejurisdiction Westerbork lies, Midden-Drenthe, reportedly has rejected a planto place memorial cobblestones in frontof the homes of Holocaust victims — anongoing project taking place in munici-palities across Europe for the past 20years.

The public broadcaster NOS quotedunnamed city officials as saying themunicipality “does enough to commemo-rate the Holocaust already.”

HOLLAND SEEKS EU HERITAGE LABEL FOR NAZI CAMP

Swiss authorities turned away only3,000 Jewish refugees during the

Holocaust and not 24,500 as believed,French Nazi hunter and historian SergeKlarsfeld said.

Klarsfeld told Switzerland’s Der Sonntagnewspaper that the figure of 24,500 camefrom imprecise archive material processedby the authors of the 1999 Bergier reporton Switzerland’s Holocaust-era record.The Bergier commission, which named thefigure of 24,500, did not possess informa-tion that specified the rejection of Jews orthe reasons for denying people entry,Klarsfeld said.

Recently, the Swiss SRF television sta-tion aired a documentary that suggestedthe Swiss government turned downrefugees despite knowing of Germanleader Adolf Hitler’s extermination planand the existence of German concentra-tion camps as early as 1942, the year theNazis decided on the Final Solution.

Klarsfeld called on Switzerland to create

a new commission to examine the ques-tion of the acceptance and rejection ofJewish refugees at the Swiss border dur-ing the war years.

“The number of 24,000 is totally wrong,”Klarsfeld told Swiss public radio. “It’sunfair to let international opinion believethat 24,000 Jews were turned away fromSwitzerland and died because of thatwhen the figure of people denied entry iscloser to 3,000.”

Klarsfeld also noted that 30,000 Jewswere admitted into Switzerland at thesame time.

“It should be known how many Jewsmanaged to find refuge in Switzerland andhow many were turned away and whathappened to them.”

Klarsfeld is famous, along with his wifeBeate, for their success in tracking downthe infamous Gestapo commander KlausBarbie in Bolivia in the 1970s. The 77-year-old now devotes himself to research-ing the destiny of French wartime Jews.

SWISS HOLOCAUST RECORD BETTER THAN BELIEVED

March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

President Barack Obama visited YadVashem Friday, March 22, 2013. He

visited the Hall of Names, the Museum ofHolocaust Art, participated in a memorialceremony in the Hall of Remembrance,and visited the Children’s Memorial,before signing the Yad Vashem GuestBook. President Obama was accompa-nied by President Shimon Peres, PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu, Chairmanof the Yad Vashem Directorate AvnerShalev and Chairman of the Yad VashemCouncil Rabbi Israel Meir Lau.

In the Yad Vashem Guest Book,President Obama wrote, “We are ever

mindful of the incredible human cost of theHolocaust — an evil unprecedented in theannals of history. And yet we recognize,through this place, the triumph of theJewish people and the human spirit, andvow to be ever vigilant in preventing suchhorror from ever happening again.”

In remarks at the conclusion of the visit,President Obama said, “And to them I willgive my house and within my walls amemorial and a name, an everlastingname that shall not be cut off.

“President Peres, Prime Minister

Netanyahu, Chairman Shalev, Rabbi Lau,thank you for sharing this house, thismemorial with me today. Thank you to thepeople of Israel for preserving the namesof the millions taken from us, of blessedmemory, names that shall never be forgot-ten. This is my second visit to this livingmemorial. Since then I've walked amongthe barbed wire, the guard towers, ofBuchenwald. Rabbi Lau told me of histime there, and we reminisced about ourgood friend Elie Wiesel and the memoriesthat he shared with me. I've stood in theold Warsaw ghetto with survivors whowould not go quietly.

“But nothing equals thewrenching power of thissacred place where thetotality of the Shoah istold. We could come herea thousand times andeach time our heartswould break. For here wesee the depravity towhich man can sink, thebarbarism that unfoldswhen we begin to seeour fellow human beingsas somehow less thanus, less worthy of dignity,and of life.

“We see how evil can fora moment in time triumph

when good people do nothing, how silenceabetted a crime unique in human history.

“Here we see their faces and we heartheir voices. We look upon the objects oftheir lives, the art that they created, theprayer books that they carried.

“We see that even as they had hateetched into their arms, they were not num-bers. They were men and women and chil-dren, so many children, sent to their deathsbecause of who they were, how theyprayed, or who they loved. And yet herealongside man's capacity for evil, we also

are reminded of man's capacity for good —the rescuers, the Righteous Among theNations who refused to be bystanders.And in their noble acts of courage, we seehow this place, this accounting of horror,is in the end a source of hope, for here welearn that we are never powerless. In ourlives we always have choices. To suc-cumb to our worst instincts, or to summonthe better angels of our nature; to be indif-ferent to suffering wherever it may be,whoever it may be visited upon, or to dis-play empathy that is at the core of ourhumanity. We have a choice to acquiesceto evil or to make real our solemn vow —‘never again.’ We have a choice to ignorewhat happens to others or to act on behalfof others and to continually examine inourselves whatever dark places theremay be that might lead to such actions orinactions. This is our obligation, not simplyto bear witness, but to act. For us in ourtime, this means confronting bigotry andhatred in all its forms, racism, especiallyanti-Semitism. None of that has a place inthe civilized world, not in the classroomsof children, not in the corridors of power.And let us never forget the link betweenthe two. For our sons and daughters arenot born to hate. They are taught to hate.So let us fill their young hearts with thesame understanding and compassion thatwe hope others have for them.

“Here we hope, because after wewalk through these halls, after

you pass through the darkness, there islight — the glorious view of the Jerusalemforest, with the sun shining over the his-toric homeland of the Jewish people, afulfillment of the prophecy: ‘You shall liveagain, upon your own soil.’ Here on yourancient land, let it be said for all the worldto hear; the State of Israel does not existbecause of the Holocaust, but with thesurvival of a strong Jewish State of Israelsuch a Holocaust will never happen again.

“Here we pray that we all can be better,that we can all grow like the sapling nearthe Children's Memorial — a sapling froma chestnut tree that Anne Frank could seefrom her window. The last time that shedescribed it in her diary, she wrote: ‘Ourchestnut tree is in full bloom; it is covered

with leaves. It is even more beautiful thanlast year.

“That's a reminder of who we can be. Butwe have to work for it. We have to work forit here in Israel, we have to work for it inAmerica, we have to work for it around theworld. To tend the light and the brightnessas opposed to our worst instincts.

“May God bless the memory of the mil-lions. May their souls be bound up in thebond of eternal life, and may each springbring a full bloom even more beautifulthan the last."

Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama,

Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, and Israeli

President Shimov Peres in the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem.

President Obama lays a wreath in the Hall of

Remembrance at Yad Vashem in memory of

the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AT YAD VASHEM

AGerman casino will return a 300-year-old Dutch painting despoiled

by the Nazis to German-Jewish art dealerMax Stern’s estate, one of his beneficiar-ies announced.

“It’s the first time that a German organi-zation has returned a painting to us,” saidClarence Epstein, director of special proj-ects at Concordia University in Montreal,one of three schools to which Sternbequeathed his collection.

“It is proof that Germany is starting toaccept that righting the plundering of art-works is important and a priority for them.”

Since 2002, Concordia has sought torecover more than 400 paintings lost toStern at the hands of the Nazis through aforced sale in 1937.

Stern himself shuttered his Dusseldorfgallery in December of that year, and fledto London before settling in Canada.

The bulk of his estate following his 1987death was bequeathed to Concordia,McGill University in Montreal, and HebrewUniversity in Jerusalem.

Dutch portrait painter Juriaen Pool II’s“The Masters of the Goldsmith Guild inAmsterdam in 1701” is a large-scale paint-ing of some of Amsterdam’s most impor-tant citizens, and the ninth Nazi-looted art-work to be returned to the university heirs.

It is to be repatriated at a ceremony atthe Amsterdam Museum, which recentlyopened a children’s wing in a space thatwas once occupied by an orphanagewhere Pool was raised.

The painting itself had been moved from

Dusseldorf to the Heinemann Gallery inWiesbaden in 1937. In the years after theSecond World War it was bought by acasino in southern Germany, where it hasbeen ever since.

Epstein refused to identify the casino,which has requested anonymity.

But he said the return of the painting isthe fruit of six years of research by theMax Stern Art Restitution Project, withsupport from the Holocaust ClaimsProcessing Office of the New York StateDepartment of Financial Services.

It all started in 2004 when Sotheby’sauction house contacted Epstein’s officeregarding the status of the painting.

This eventually led to the discovery of aletter that Stern wrote in 1937 in theNetherlands Institute for Art History.

A photograph of the painting accompa-nied Stern’s letter requesting informationabout the portrait, leaving no doubt as toits ownership, according to Concordia.

This revelation convinced the casino toreturn the painting to Stern’s beneficiaries.

The Max Stern Art Restitution Project isnow focused on recovering some 40 otherpaintings it has identified as once belong-ing to one of Canada’s most important artdealers and collectors. Talks with a dozenpeople or groups, including Germanmuseums, are progressing, Epstein said.

He praised the German government forproviding resources to museums to helpidentify Nazi-looted artworks, but lament-ed “recurring problems” with auctionhouses and private galleries.

GERMAN CASINO RETURNS NAZI-LOOTED ART

TO JEWISH HEIRSThree Books of Esther kept in the

attic of a house in the Warsawghetto during World War II have beenreturned to Jewish hands.

In honor of Purim, the Shem OlamInstitute for Holocaust education, docu-mentation, and research unveiled therare holy items, which were in Polishpossession for dozens of years and

were located and brought to Israel in thepast year.

The three Books of Esther are said tobe at least 77 years old and are part of acollection of Holy Scriptures, PassoverHaggadot, and different prayer bookspreserved throughout the years in theattic of a building in the ghetto.

The building was one of the only onesto survive the war and was renovatedlater on. Yet its upper part remainedintact, apparently due to the fact thatthere was a hidden space that had not

been discovered.

Several years ago the attic collapsed,

and the holy books were found under the

rubble. A small and hidden synagogue

was also discovered on the premises

with many ritual objects.

At first the items were handed over to

the Polish police, but Shem Olam offi-

cials operating in the country

managed to get their hands

on them. Most of the books

were found burnt, but the

three Books of Esther had

survived.

“During the destruction of

the Warsaw ghetto, the

Germans likely passed by

the houses with flame-throw-

ers and set fire to the build-

ings,” says Shem Olam

Director Rabbi Avraham

Krieger. “This building was

torched too, and so was part

of the attic.”

According to Krieger, “One of the

books was in a metal cylinder, and may

even have been in the center of the fire

and nearly melted, and another Book of

Esther was found almost intact.”

Another collection of Books of Esther

obtained by the Shem Olam Institute,

along with a variety of ritual objects, was

found in the Łódź ghetto, in a building

used during the war as a conference

hall. The hall’s wooden floor broke about

a year ago, and the treasure was found

underneath.

HOLOCAUST-ERA BOOKS OF ESTHER UNVEILED

Book of Esther kept in ghetto.

Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773

B O O K R E V I E W SB O O K R E V I E W SThrough Soviet Jewish Eyes:

Photography, War, and the Holocaust. By David Shneer. Rutgers University

Press: New Brunswick, New Jersey,2012. 283 pp. $32.50 paperback.

REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN

“At its core, this book is about how thesephotographers visually told the story of awar that targeted all of them as Soviet cit-izens and as members of the ‘Jewishrace.’”

David Shneer’s volume entitledThrough Soviet Jewish Eyes:

Photography, War, and the Holocaustpromises a fascinating and unique per-spective . . . and delivers! Indeed, it pres-ents us with much more than we couldhave imagined. For even as it diligentlyexamines the work of these leadingSoviet photojournalists, and just as dili-gently tries to discover if being Jewishaffected their wartime work, Shneer’sbook goes way beyond that. In the end,it reveals just how and why the photo-graphic fact of the Holocaust as a partic-ularly Jewish tragedy was communicatedduring the war — or not communicated.

Thus, for example, we are introduced toWarsaw-born Dimitrii Baltermants (1912–-1990), a photographer who “helpedlaunch what might be called a new genreof photography: the Nazi-atrocity photoessay.” It all happened when at the veryend of December 1941, Baltermants wassent to Kerch, a small peninsula in south-

ern Russia. One of the first places to beliberated, it was also one of the firstplaces to expose Nazism’s ruthless waragainst the Jews! In sum, Baltermants’scamera documented the bestial “work” ofHitler’s Einsatzgruppe there.(Interestingly,Holocaust imagery would appear muchearlier in the Soviet world than in theWest!) In later years, still during wartime,this “dean of Soviet photog-raphers” would also gainwell-deserved fame for hiscelebration of the Russiansoldier with his “heroic pho-tograph of the Soviet armyfording the Oder River.”

We meet Evgenii Khaldei(1917–1997), originally fromeastern Ukraine, who“became one of the preemi-nent photographers of liber-ation working for the Sovietpress in Eastern Europe.”The best of his liberationphotography was taken in Budapest.Most interesting among these — for boththe story behind the photo and the photoitself — is his “Jewish Couple,” the Jewishstars on each of their coats revealing howthe Nazi world branded them and in sodoing tried to cast them out of the greaterhuman race! At the same time, accordingto Shneer, Khaldei’s photo celebrating theRussian soldier, entitled “Raising the RedFlag over the Reichstag,” was the “mostimportant photograph of the war, and

[Khaldei’s] entire career.” Moreover, “mod-eled on and serv[ing] the same function inthe Soviet Union as that of JoeRosenthal’s” iconic “Old Glory Goes Upon Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima,” it alsobecame, “like Rosenthal’s photo, the sub-ject of articles, books and even aHollywood movie” owing to the controver-sy surrounding it. (Controversy continues

to swirl around Rosenthal’sphoto.)

Then there is the “supremebattle photographer” born inTa s h k e n t , U z b e k i s ta n ,G e o r g i i Z e l m a n o v i t c h(1906–1984) — after 1934,Georgii Zelma. Before thewar, in the 1930s, he wassent to Birobidzhan, the new“home” the Soviets decidedshould be created by a newback-to-the-land Soviet Jew.Zelmanovitch’s photographsthere “celebrate[d] the people

carrying out the building” and even “high-light[ed]” their “Jewishness.” Later, duringthe war, Zelma made his name as thephotographer at Stalingrad and wasresponsible for taking the picture thatbecame “an icon of Soviet heroism:” his“photograph of soldiers charging upMamayev Hill in the center of Stalingrad,”titled “Assault.”

After reading the above, it would be veryeasy to jump to the mistaken conclusionthat each of these outstanding photojour-

nalists was equal parts Jew and Soviet;that each, when it came to the particularlyJewish part of this equation, enjoyed thesame depth of religiosity; that each feltdriven to tell the particularly Jewish side ofany story! But the fact is that even amongthese three — and Shneer writes aboutmany more in his absorbing work — thereare some more religious Jews, there aresome assimilated, and then there aresome who are very assimilated. Thatwould affect how their work was present-ed to the public. Add to this the very realpunishment power the Communist Partyhad over these photojournalists, directingthem as to what to photograph and how tocaption it for their own good, and we havea story here which is highly complex,nuanced, and eye-opening!

Finally, one of the truly fascinating

realizations the reader will take away

from reading Shneer’s work is that when

it came to identifying or, more specifical-

ly, not identifying Nazism’s obvious war

of annihilation against the Jews, sadly,

while their reasons may have differed,

the Soviet Union and the United States

were not so very different!

In short, Through Soviet Jewish Eyesshould be of tremendous interest to stu-

dents of the Holocaust and those inter-

ested in photography and photojournal-

ism as a historical development in the

Soviet Union and as a communication

tool generally.

THROUGH SOVIET JEWISH EYES: PHOTOGRAPHY, WAR, AND THE HOLOCAUST

Bending Toward the Sun: A Mother andDaughter Memoir.

By Leslie Gilbert-Lurie. HarperCollinsPublishers: New York, 2010. 357 pp.$14.99 paperback.

REVIEWED BY LYNN ELBER, AP

The dark well of the Holocaust hasyielded up another wrenching

account. Bending Toward the Sun: AMother and Daughter Memoir is intimate-ly told by a Polish survivor,Rita Lurie, and herAmerican daughter, LeslieGilbert-Lurie.

Rita Lurie was bornRuchel Gamss in 1937 insoutheastern Poland, intoa home she recalls assecure and loving. Heridyll was already a falseone, with anti-Semiticassaults proliferating asNazi Germany dispersedits power across Europe.

When German troopsbegan the forced removalof Jews from Lurie’sregion, members of herextended family — including aunts,uncles, and cousins — fled their village in1942 and found shelter a few miles awaywith a Polish farmer and his fearful wife.

The group, crowded into a 4-foot-highattic that had a single window for light,reached 15 in number. They expectedonly a brief stay. Instead, they enduredstarvation, sickness, and death in thatcramped space until 1944. Despite heryoung age, Lurie’s memories of her emo-tions and moments of horror are acute.

There are parallels to Anne Frank’s

ordeal, if not her singular diary. Lurie alsowas spared Frank’s concentration campimprisonment, instead emerging from hid-ing with her shrunken family to trekthrough Europe and finally to America.While her once-dynamic father struggledin the unfamiliar new world, Lurie wasconfronted by the ill health, both mentaland physical, that were World War II’slegacy for her. As her daughter picks upthe narrative, we learn that her descen-

dants claim a share of thatcruel heritage as well.

Gilbert-Lurie recountsthe protectiveness sheand her siblings felt towardtheir beautiful but fragilemother, and how her pastfueled her fears and inse-curities as she grew up inSouthern California.

Gilbert-Lurie achievedcareer success as alawyer and media execu-tive and vowed to protecther own children from thefamily’s ghosts, but theyhaunt her daughter,Mikaela. The teenager’s

voice is part of the emotionally richBending Toward the Sun.

The book touches on intriguingdescriptions of research into how traumamay be passed on, including the theorythat fearful memories could be transmit-ted generationally through biochemistry.

Bending Toward the Sun, in which theexpected push-and-pull of the mother-daughter relationship is warped by brutalhistory, illuminates both the strength andthe fragility of that bond and of thehuman spirit.

BENDING TOWARD THE SUN

The Last Brother.By Nathacha Appanah, translated from

the French by Geoffrey Strachan.Graywolf Press: Minneapolis 2011. 208pp. $14.00 paperback.

REVIEWED BY HOWARD SELZNIK,JWEEKLY

With memories of World War II fad-ing, how can anyone understand

the experiences of a child affected by theHolocaust? How can oneimagine the feelings of a10-year-old orphanwhose journey toPalestine is interrupted bythe British and who isimprisoned on the islandof Mauritius?

Nathacha Appanahoffers a child’s perspec-tive on this sorry episodein history in her splendidshort novel, The LastBrother, told in flashbackby one of the characterswho has reached old age.

The recently publishedEnglish edition of thebook is based on the little-known story of1,500 Jewish Holocaust survivors whowere imprisoned in Mauritius from 1940 to1945 after their ship was refused entry toPalestine.

In the book, young David Stein ofPrague is sent to a prison on the island inthe Indian Ocean after being rescued froma concentration camp in Europe. Not onlydoes he not make aliyah, but David istaken even farther away from “Eretz,”

some 600 miles east of Madagascar.The British excuse: quotas on immigra-

tion to Palestine and lack of documenta-tion for immigrants. There would be noroom for David and his fellow refugeeswho, furthermore, would be illegal if theylanded.

David soon meets Raj, the son of aprison guard. Poor, confused Raj, raisedin insularity on a sugar plantation, doesn’teven know what being Jewish means. Raj

lives in splendid isolation on avolcanic island, where littlenews of the outside world fil-ters in.

As Raj narrates the story,his childhood naiveté aboutthe world shows. There is somuch unsaid. There is somuch he doesn’t know.

Throughout the book, read-ers get clues about the war’simpact on the Jews inEurope. David’s parentsprobably died in death campsor were otherwise murderedby the Nazis. But this is notstated. After all, no one canexpect a young boy to under-

stand the horrors of Jewish Europe in the1930s and ’40s.

As such, Appanah’s writing is subtle anddeftly understated, inviting the reader intothe boys’ minds. We want to shout atthem, “David’s parents were murderedbecause they were Jews! What part ofthat don’t you understand?” Either boywould probably answer, “All of it.”

Raj and David meet up again in the prison(Continued on page 14)

CORNER OF HOLOCAUST HISTORY

TOLD THROUGH INNOCENT’S EYES

March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5

BY CARMELA G. LAPEÑA/DVM, GMA NEWS

As a little girl during the Holocaust,Lotte Hershfield could not quite

understand what it was all about.At five years old, she would see bench-

es that would say “Dogs and Jews notallowed.” She remembered being terriblyfrightened by the Nazis’ big police dogwhen they came to her family’s house andtook their Jewish books away. Sherecalled her mother crying bitterly, tellingher that her father was away on a busi-ness trip, not divulging that he had beenarrested at the Breslau town hall.

In contrast, she was excited as they fledGermany on board a ship. “It was sort ofan adventure and I felt somewhat secure.I had my brother there and I had my par-ents there. I knew I was going to a newcountry, it was somewhat exciting,” saidHershfield, who was among over a thou-sand Jews who came to the Philippines.

“You saw how the doors were basicallyclosed to all of us except the Philippines,and how the Filipino people are a verywarm people, they’re a very friendly peo-ple,” Hershfield said in An Open Door, adocumentary about the Jewish rescue inthe Philippines. The documentary is thethird film in filmmaker Noel M. Izon'sWorld War II trilogy “Forgotten Stories.”

For almost nine years, she stayed in thePhilippines, which she remembered fond-ly. “I was very impressed because werode up Dewey Boulevard into Pasay.Lovely beaches, beautiful banana trees,and there were polo grounds I remem-ber… We learned Filipino songs and therewere quite a few performances, art wasvery important,” she said.

By the time the war was over, thePhilippines had become her home. “I real-ly did not want to leave. That was myhome, that was all that I knew. I was therefrom the time I was seven,” she said.

Unknown to many, the Philippines pro-vided refuge for 1,300 Jews who fledGermany after the Nazi regime passedthe Nuremberg Laws. “With the imple-mentation of the Nuremberg Laws and thedepriving of German Jews of theirGerman citizenship, this enabled the gov-ernment to confiscate businesses, confis-

cate homes, to appropriate all theirassets,” Holocaust historian Bonnie Harrisexplained in the documentary.

Filmmaker Izon noted that after Jewswere declared stateless by the Naziregime, 47 nations convened in France in1938 to deal with Jewish refugees, but notone nation during that conference changedits immigration laws to make them moreaccommodating of Jews. “They all washedtheir hands and said there was nothingthey could do,” Izon said in an interviewwith Wisconsin Public Radio.

“The Philippines was not represented.But the Philippines, because it was a

Commonwealth, held a quasi-autonomous status. And they were able tointerpret some of the immigration lawsespecially with the power given to thePhilippine President, he was actuallyallowed to issue visas directly,” heexplained.

The Nuremberg Laws were issued in1935, the same year that the Philippineswas inaugurated as a Commonwealth.Most of the Jewish rescue in thePhilippines happened between 1935 and1941, according to Izon.

Sharon Delmendo, author andCommonwealth historian, explained

that Quezon, although Catholic, devel-oped an affinity for Jews because he feltthat there was a sort of symbolic brother-hood between Filipinos and Jews.

“The Filipinos were the recipients ofracial discrimination and bigotry on thepart of many Americans, at that time whenthe Jews were similarly recipients of big-otry by the Nazis. So even though Quezonhad extremely important and critical politi-cal and economic issues to wrestle with atthis time, he was willing to take a stand tohelp the Jews,” said Delmendo, who co-produced the documentary.

Izon noted that Quezon ran for theCommonwealth presidency on a platformof opening up the Philippines to the world.

According to Izon, “When PresidentQuezon initially heard of the Jewish plightin Europe, he had said he was willing toactually reserve visas for up to a million ormore and that whatever land was neededhe would make sure that the leases wereturned over to the Jewish settlers.”

“Having grown up quite a bit of my life inthe Philippines, there truly is a genuinesense of hospitality. It’s in the DNA.People are friendly, they want to welcome

you, they want to make you feel at home.You could go to the poorest house andthey could just be having canned goods orwhatever but they’d always invite you toeat with them,” Izon said.

However, the U.S. State Departmentwas not very comfortable with such largenumbers, as they were concerned theJews might use the Philippines as a backdoor to the U.S. They were also con-cerned that the experiment would fail. Sothey decided to limit the number and, truthbe told, there was quite a bit of anti-Semitism within the American governmentat that time.

“They were not really all that interestedin any kind of experiment that involvedsaving Jews,” Izon said.

He noted that Quezon may also havehad some pragmatic reason in mind whenhe let the Jewish refugees in. That theywere a new talent pool, in terms of whatpossible contributions they could make tothe country and the economy, was not loston the Philippine government. “I don’tthink that one can be totally altruistic withthese things… but at the end of the day herisked a lot of political capital…. In factthere were some anti-Semitic factors inthe Philippine legislature and he publiclyrebuked them,” Izon said.

Quezon may not have been able to savemillions, but the rescue’s impact goes onfor generations.

“Roosevelt and Churchill saved Westerncivilization but President Quezon, and sofew people know that, of the Philippines,saved 1,200 Jewish souls. As many asSchindler and maybe even more. And thatis the epitome basically of Judaism. Itsays if you save one soul you savemankind,” Hershfield said.

DOCUMENTARY CHRONICLES HOW THE PHILIPPINES

RESCUED 1,300 JEWS FROM THE HOLOCAUST

Jewish refugees in the Philippines.

BY ROB CAMERON, DEUTSCHE WELLE

Few survivors were still alive asEurope commemorated the libera-

tion of Nazi concentration camps onJanuary 27. In Kosice, Slovakia, for exam-ple, Edita Salamonova is thought to beone of four who survived deportation.

Edita Salamonova perched on thebrown sofa in her modest 1970s apart-ment and rolled up her sleeve. A small,neat, soft-spoken woman who recentlycelebrated her 89th birthday, Edita livesalone on the 10th floor of a panelak — aCommunist-era concrete tower block —on the edges of Kosice, Slovakia’s grittysecond city.

She struggled with her blue polka-dotpinafore to expose not — as expected —the row of tattooed numbers, a permanentreminder of her arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944 - but a terrible scarhigh up on her right arm, the flesh torn andpinched and messily stitched together.

“They shot me here...” she pointed,“...and here.”

It was at this point that her voice beganto break. She was describing how one dayin the closing weeks of the war she andher sister had escaped from one of thenumerous work camps they’d been sentto in Germany, Latvia and Poland. TheRed Army was closing in, and they’dseized their chance. Unfortunately they’dstumbled across an SS patrol, who hadopened fire – injuring Edita and killing her

sister.“I thought I could protect her,” she said,

her eyes gazing at a spot on the wall. “Butshe was hit in the chest.”

Edita’s children and grandchildren areregular visitors, but mostly she’s left alonewith her books, photographs, and memo-ries of life in Kosice before the war, andwhat happened afterwards.

“Life was good here,” she said.“We didn’t differentiate by nationality.

Things started changing in ‘38, when we

became part of Hungary. Our young menwere sent to work camps. Jewish peoplebegan losing their jobs. And there was this... fear of what would happen next.”

Until 1938, Kosice had been a thrivingcity in eastern Czechoslovakia.Hungarians, Germans, Slovaks andJews — 12,000 of them, 20 percent of thepopulation — lived alongside one anotherin relative harmony.

Then came the Munich Agreement,under which Czechoslovakia was dis-

membered, and the area around Kosicetransferred to Hungary. For several yearsthe country’s Fascist leader AdmiralHorthy refused Berlin’s demands for thedeportation of Hungary’s Jews. In March1944, with Hitler’s patience exhausted,Hungary was occupied by the Germans.At the age of just 19, life for EditaSalamonova was about to change forever.

“On April 18th, 1944 — it was aFriday — there was a knock on

the door. They said, ‘Pack up your pos-sessions, tomorrowwe’re coming to pick youup,’” said Edita, her voicequavering with emotion.

“We said, ‘but whereare we going?’ Theysaid, ‘It’s nothing, it’s awork camp.’ So wethought we were goingoff to work and werewaiting outside the housethe next morning,” shecontinued.

“They took us to thePushkin synagogue. You can’t imaginethe scenes there — people crying, shout-ing, children, the sick — all crammed intothe synagogue. We survived the night,and the next day, Sunday morning, wewere marched down to the brick factory.”

Kosice’s brick factory had been trans-formed into a concentration camp for14,000 Jews from the city and surround-ing villages. From there Edita, her sister,their parents and several relatives wereloaded onto cattle wagons bound for

Auschwitz.“We travelled for three days. The train

kept stopping at various stations, andeach time they would want somethingfrom us. First it was gold, then it was furs,then ladies’ underwear. Each time some-thing,” she told DW.

“Finally, in the early hours of the morn-ing, we arrived at Auschwitz. We wereordered out — men in one line, womenanother. That was the last time we eversaw our parents. And standing there wasMengele. And he sorted us into twogroups, pointing with his stick, without aword. Left... right.”

The infamous Dr Josef Mengele wassorting the new arrivals according towhether they were fit to work. Those whowere not — including Edita’s parents —were sent to the gas chambers.

“They took us to a different part of thecamp —- Birkenau — because Auschwitzwas full. There was a woman walkingalongside us — a Czech woman, I don’tknow how she ended up with us Slovaks,”Edita remembered.

“She pointed at this huge plume ofsmoke in the sky and said, ‘That’s whereyour parents have gone.’ I said to her: ‘Forthe love of God, what do you mean, “that’swhere my parents have gone”?’ ‘Well, thatwas the crematorium,’ she explained.”

Edita - her head shaved, and dressed inprison uniform - experienced the horrorsof Auschwitz for just three days. She wasloaded into another train and sent to awork camp in Riga, Latvia, piling earth

(Continued on page 14)

PAIN REMAINS FOR SLOVAK HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR

Salamonova is one of the last survivors in Kosice.

Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773

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 RHelga Weiss was sent to four Nazi

concentration camps, along with hermother. Like Anne Frank, she kept adiary. Only now has it been published.

BY KIRA COCHRANE, THE GUARDIAN

In 1944, Helga Weiss came to termswith the idea of dying — with one

important condition. She was only 14years old and had never been stronglyreligious, but as she waited in a queue atAuschwitz she prayed she wouldn’t dieafter her mother. She couldn’t face beingleft alone.

Helga is one of only 100 children to sur-vive Auschwitz out of the 15,000 sentthere from the concentration camp atTerezín, north of Prague. Altogether,between 1941 and 1945, she and hermother were sent to four camps: Terezín,Auschwitz, Freiberg and Mauthausen.

The first was Terezín, where they spentthree years, sleeping two or three to a bedthat was really too small for one, with littleto eat and to keep out the cold. But shar-ing with her mother made the impossiblebearable. “We had only one blanket,” saysHelga. “But we covered ourselves with ourcoats. We were together and it was agreat help.”

She closes her eyes, and folds her armstightly about herself.

We are in Helga Weiss’s living room onthe fourth floor of an apartment building inPrague. At 83, she still climbs the steepstairs each day and is a lively, friendlypresence, surrounded by family photo-graphs and paintings produced during hercareer as an artist. Her late husband, JíríHošek, was a musician who played dou-ble bass with the Czech Radio SymphonyOrchestra, and her son, Jírí, is a cellist, asis her granddaughter Dominika.

Helga was born in this flat and it hasalways been her home, apart from thefour years she spent in Nazi concentration

camps. It was ransacked and occupiedduring the war, but there are echoes of lifeas it was before the war. The piano in thecorner, for instance, sits where herfather’s once did.

Otto Weiss was a talented aspiringmusician, but as a soldier in the FirstWorld War, he sustained hand and arminjuries and went on to work in a bank. Hemarried his wife, Irena, and in 1929 Helgawas born. Those early years were happy.Otto encouraged his daughter musically,

but she had no obvious talent for it; her giftwas for art. She still has one of her veryearly sketch pads, which shows shechose subjects “perhaps other childrendon’t. I always painted what I saw — aman in a meat store,” for instance.

As war loomed, the eight-year-old Helgabegan to keep a diary in words and pic-tures. The first pages record the growingNazi threat: air raid alarms, arrests, theexpulsion of Jewish children from stateschools, adults — including her father —losing their jobs, yellow Stars of David thathad to be sewn on clothes, and the con-stant, claustrophobic talk of “transports.” Itwas because of the political situation,says Helga, that she remained an only

child — a decision her father made.In December 1941, soon after Helga’s

12th birthday, the authorities came for thefamily. They were sent to Terezín, awalled 18th-century garrison town, alsoknown during the war by its Germanname, Theresienstadt. Many of Helga’suncles and aunts were sent there too.Terezín was essentially a vast camp usedas a transit hub for tens of thousands ofJews sent to Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Helga and her mother had no idea whatlay ahead. They thought thewar would soon be over.“We were allowed 50 kg ofluggage, so we took just ourclothes and somethingimportant to us. I took twovery small dolls, a pad,watercolors, and crayons,”she says.

At Terezín, Otto was sentto the men’s barracks andHelga stayed with her moth-er. Later, a Kinderheim —children’s home — was setup, and though she wasfrightened to leave Irena,Helga moved into a room

with girls of her own age. Conditions wereslightly better there, and the group “triedto stay human beings and be young,” shesays. They organized dances and cele-brated birthdays and religious holidays —they once made a potato gateau as atreat, from food scraps they had managedto save.

One of Helga’s happier sketchesshows the girls gathering round a

food parcel, jostling to see the contents.But the first drawing she made is a jollypicture of two children building a snow-man — she smuggled it through to herfather, who sent back a crucial message:“Draw what you see.”

She took his advice and began to record

life in the camps. The pictures showqueues for food; a bleak, basic wash-room; a girl ill with tuberculosis; thecrowded waiting room in the emergencyclinic; people on stretchers; and breadtransported in a hearse marked “Welfarefor the young.”

Another drawing marks the birthday ofher friend Francka. The girls had beenborn in the same maternity ward, and thesketch shows them as babies in 1929, intheir shared bunk bed in 1943, and in1957, wheeling prams together. The lastdrawing is accompanied by a note to saythat Francka died in Auschwitz before her15th birthday.

Despite the horrors and strictures ofTerezín — starvation rations, disease, thelice and bedbugs that crawled across theirfaces — there was a thriving cultural life.Many musicians had smuggled in instru-ments, and one sketch shows familiesgathered around a violin trio giving a con-cert in a dormitory.

At Terezín, Helga met her first boyfriend,Ota, an orphan and chemistry student. Hewas in his mid-20s; she was not yet 15. “Itwas a half-childish love,” she says. “Wewalked together and held hands ... and Iremember the exact place in Terezinwhere we first kissed.” She beams. “Butnothing more happened than kissing.”

In September 1944, the Germansannounced that 5,000 men would be sentto build a new ghetto. Helga’s UncleJindra would be in the first group, herfather and Ota in the second. Helgadescribes the day her father left in herdiary, the corners of his mouth twitchingas he tried to smile, hands shaking as heheld her. Then he was gone.

Three days later, she and Irena left. Justin time, she got her diary and a novel andsome poetry by her father to her UncleJosef, who worked in the records depart-

(Continued on page 13)

KRISTEN ZAMBO, THE JOURNAL TIMES

Adam Paluch doesn’t remember theday he and his twin sister were

ripped from their mother’s arms by Naziguards, and in desperation, she jumpedoff a building to her death.

Taken to a Nazi death camp in 1942, thethen-three-year-old Jewish boy becamethe subject of medical experiments. These,he said, left him unable to walk — and stillwith no memory of his life before July 1944.

“I remember the liberation (that day),”Paluch, 73, said at the Racine PublicLibrary. “I remember the Russian soldiersfound me in the lavatory and put me in araincoat. Because I could not walk.”

But his twin sister, Ida Paluch Kersz, 73,recalls the memories of that separationday, speaking of them almost as if theywere razor-edged photographs.

The Jews had been herded into theghetto in Sosnowiec, Poland. “And thenthey came and took away the childrenfrom the mothers,” Paluch Kersz toldmore than 60 people gathered at theRacine Public Library.

She and her twin brother and their older

sister were ripped from their mother’sarms.

“She ran across the street to a building.We followed her, we ran after my mother,”Paluch Kersz said. “...She ran two flightsup and just as we watched, my motherjumped from the window to her death.”

Their father was fighting Nazi soldierswith the Polish Army during the Holocaust,she explained. So her aunt “snatched usaway into hiding,” she said. Yet they stillwere confined in the fenced-in ghetto.

Some time later, she was walking by thebarbed-wire fence with her aunt. A mancalled her aunt’s name from outside thefence. Her aunt ran a produce store, whichwas closed. That man had gone to deliverproduce to the store, and finding it closed,asked around. Paluch Kersz said he wastold all the Jews were in the ghetto.

Seeing the little girl with the aunt, theman asked who the child was, PaluchKersz said, because he knew her aunthad boys.

“And she told him that I am maybe nowan orphan and I’m an extra mouth tofeed,” she said. But he told her, “‘I amgoing to take this child with me.’ And hetold her, ‘I’ll never return her to you.’ So

they waited until it was night. And shehanded me over the barbed wires to(him).”

That man, who was Catholic, secretedthe little girl away, taking her by train to hishome, where he lived with his pregnantwife. When they arrived, it was ChristmasEve.

“He knocked on the door and hesaid, Josephine ... I brought you a

Christmas gift. He opened the coat and Iwas the Christmas gift,” Paluch Kerszsaid.

They christened her Irena. The couplehad been high school sweethearts, andhad run away from their home in Russiaand eloped, relocating to Poland, shesaid.

“They told neighbors that I was a childout of wedlock,” she said. “The danger tothe Polish people of hiding children wasdeath. The whole family could be shot.”

It would be about 52 years, however,before Paluch Kersz would find her twinbrother, who was sent to a Russianorphanage and adopted after soldiers lib-erated his camp.

“This is why we talk about it,” saidPaluch. “We don’t want it repeated again.”

After Paluch Kersz reunited with herfather after the war, and then moved withher husband and daughter, Ester, toIllinois, a friend sent her a Jewish newspa-per clipping about other “hidden children”who had survived the Holocaust. The arti-cle included pictures — and one manstruck Paluch Kersz. He looked just likeher grandfather. She contacted thereporter, which led her to Paluch’s phonenumber in Poland.

Paluch Kersz said that at first, Paluch did-n’t believe she was his twin. He asked forher date of birth, and told he “for sure you’renot my sister. I was born in 1942,” citing hisChristian birth certificate as proof.

“I said, ‘So does mine,’ ” she said.“Before she found me, I didn’t know I

had a sister,” said Adam Paluch, who onJan. 28 gained his U.S. citizenship, withhis twin by his side. “When she found me,I become crazy. I left Poland and camehere (in 1995). Now I can say life is beau-tiful, like in the movie.”

But the twins still are searching for theirsister, who was 10 years older.

“I believe in miracles. Miracles happen.They happened to me,” Paluch Kerszsaid.

“HIDDEN CHILDREN” FOUND DECADES AFTER HOLOCAUST

MY DIARY OF A NAZI DEATH CAMP CHILDHOOD

Helga Weiss in the Prague apartment she has lived in since she

was born, apart from the years she was imprisoned by the Nazis

in concentration camps.

March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7

BY RICK ROJAS, LOS ANGELES TIMES

She was an orphan, a 14-year-oldJewish girl, when she went to the

Berlin train station on a summer day in1939, leaving behind all that she had everknown.

She had already experienced loss: herparents claimed by illness, her brothertaken by the Nazis. Now Dora Gostynskiwas about to get on a train that would takeher and hundreds of other Jewish childrento safety — but they had to go without thecomfort of their parents.

She remembered the other children’ssobs as they embraced their parents, whohad made the agonizing decision to givetheir children a chance at life, even ifmeant never seeing them again. And sheremembered the parents who relentedwhen their child didn’t want to leave them.They walked away from the train station,and back into a world of danger.

“There was like an ocean of people andan ocean of tears,” she said.

She was escaping Nazi Germanythrough the rescue missionKindertransport, which carried about10,000 youths to Britain and elsewhere forshelter during the Holocaust. Many —more than 60%, according to various esti-mates — never saw their parents again.

As they grew older, they sought out oneanother, drawn by a wrenching, sharedexperience. They founded theKindertransport Association, and kinderfrom around the world have gatheredevery other year for the last two decades.

The kinder are among the youngestHolocaust survivors, yet even they arenow mostly in their 80s, a group thinnedby the passing years. With each gather-ing, there are whispers that it could be thelast.

At the most recent gathering, in anIrvine hotel, a much older Dora recalledthe train station on that day more than 73years ago. She recognized one of herclassmates, a girl named Fritzy Hacker.Fritzy’s mother hugged each of the girlstightly before they boarded the traintogether. “She said goodbye to the two ofus like she was my mother too,” she said.

But Dora couldn’t stop thinking abouther sister, Ida. They had applied for theKindertransport mission together. But asthey waited for word to arrive, her sisterhad turned 17. She missed being able toqualify by two months.

As the train chugged toward the Dutchborder, she and Fritzy told themselvesthey were going on a field trip. The otherpassengers wept. She thought of her sis-ter. She didn’t know if she would ever seeher again.

Dora — now Doris Small — is 89, and amother, grandmother, and great-grand-mother. She was one of the remainingkinder who had come to share their sto-ries of survival with one another and theirchildren in the hope that their history isn’tforgotten after they are gone.

“My generation is dying off,” saidMichael Wolff, who at 76 is one of theyoungest. He was 2 when his motherhanded him over to a teenage girl to carryhim to Scotland. When his father visitedhim months later, he did not recognizehim.

The conference in Irvine represented apassing of a torch to the survivors’ chil-dren and grandchildren to maintain theKindertransport story. The gathering drew

three dozen survivors, and for the firsttime, the gathering was organized by thesecond generation — “KT2,” as they arecalled. More than half of those attendingwere the survivors’ children, grandchil-dren, and even great-grandchildren.

The conference reflected the push toconnect generations, with sessions

on writing memoirs and ethical wills, andconversations in which moderatorsprompted open dialogue after years ofsilence. It was time for their children —and the world — to know their legacy.

“This is a story of survivors,” said Wolff’sson, Jeffrey, who was the conferencechairman. He said they are “strong char-acters because they had to adjust, theyhad to adapt, they had to survive.”

They were linked by traumatic experi-ence, but the gathering, in some ways,had the feel of a high school reunion.

They reconnected with people they had-n’t seen since they were children. Thekinder and their children walked aroundwith scrapbooks, flipping through pages ofblack and white photos hoping to identifythe other children on their ship.

There was also a message board,where the kinder and their descendantsleft notes in hopes of finding others on thesame voyage or tracking down those theyhaven’t heard from since the war.

Did anyone stay in Cornwall during warand after in orphanage/hostel? Pls contactLinda

And in underlined red letters: Does any-one know a Fritzy Hacker from Berlin,Germany?

Doris Small still searchesfor her friend all these yearslater.

She lives in Broomfield,Colorado, now. She’s sup-posed to use a walker, butshe tends to leave it behind.She keeps her hair a lightshade of brown. A toothy,impish grin frequently creas-es her face.

After her husband, a con-centration camp survivor,died four years ago, shebecame involved in theKindertransport Association.This was her second confer-ence, attending this timewith her daughter andgranddaughter.

It was a history once kept quiet, but shehas grown confident now in sharing herpast.

“You should have seen the heavybreaths I took,” she said, recalling themoment her train cleared the German bor-der. “I remember it like yesterday.”

They arrived in England and the chil-dren filed into a large room lined withbenches where they would be assigned totheir homes. It was the last time she sawFritzy.

A number of kinder were fortunate andwere assigned to families who acceptedthem as their own, while others went toless embracing households where theywere used as common laborers. Somewere packed into orphanages.

Dora went to live in London with an eld-erly couple who owned a factory makingmen’s trousers. They sent her to work anddidn’t enroll her in school. The days blend-ed together.

“I didn’t know what month it was,” shesaid. “Every day was the same: Monday,Tuesday....”

She woke up one day in the hospital,

possibly because of exhaustion or malnu-trition. She didn’t know how she got there,or why. “Father Christmas came throughthe hospital, and that’s how I know it wasclose to December.”

Her sister had made it to England andwas living with a family as a maid. The twosisters kept in touch through letters afterthey were separated. After Small wasreleased from the hospital, the sistersfound a little room in a rough Londonneighborhood and got sewing jobs in afactory.

After the war ended, she and Ida left forthe United States. Her sister, now 91, livesnearby in Colorado.

“I still hate tea,” Small said. “It remindsme of England.”

The Holocaust cast a shadow thathas hung over generations. Small’s

daughter, Miriam Saunders, recalledgrowing up in a German-Jewish enclaveof New York’s Washington Heights neigh-borhood where no one seemed to havegrandparents. She would wake up to herfather’s nightmare screams. She knewthere was something the adults aroundher were keeping secret.

“I didn’t know why they did the thingsthey did,” Saunders, 60, said. “They livedin fear, but I never knew why.”

It was years before Small and her hus-band spoke of the past. They joined agroup of Holocaust survivors when theymoved to Long Island and, slowly, theybegan talking. Small’s 35-year-old grand-daughter, Jenniffer Veno, said she was

nearly a teenager before her grandmothertold her about the trains that carried thechildren from their homeland and theirfamilies.

The Smalls began sharing their storiesin schools. At one school, the studentsquestioned her for almost two hours anddoted on her. “They asked for my auto-graph!” she said. “I felt like a celebrity!”

She does it because it’s therapeutic.Telling her stories, her daughter said, iswhat has kept Small sane.

But it never became easy. When oneclass seemed disinterested, she vowednever to speak to a class again, but sherelented because she doesn’t want herhistory to die with her. She has six great-grandchildren, ranging in age from 5 to20. It’s critical that they know.

“If I didn’t go through this and if I didn’tsurvive,” Small said, “you wouldn’t behere.”

Two generations — her daughter andgranddaughter — flanked her as sherecounted her life. They assured her thatthe youngest generation would know thattheir great-grandmother’s story of survivalis also their own.

YOUNGEST HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

LOOK TO NEXT GENERATION

Holocaust survivor Doris Small, center, with daughter Miriam

Saunders, 60, left, and granddaughter Jenniffer Veno, tells her

offspring: “If I didn’t go through this and if I didn’t survive, you

wouldn’t be here.”

Aglobal search has been launched forHolocaust refugees saved by a little-

known Portuguese diplomat stationed inFrance during the Second World War — aman described as “one of the great unsungheroes” of the era by renowned Canadianwriter Peter C. Newman, who credits themaverick consul Aristides de SousaMendes with helping his own family escapethe Nazi death chambers.

Sousa Mendes has never received thekind of attention given to Oskar Schindler.

So while the Oscar-winning 1993 filmSchindler’s List rightly shone a Hollywoodspotlight on that story, Sousa Mendes’s“courageous” actions to help at least10,000 Jewish and other refugees flee afallen France in 1940 — and possiblytwice that number or more — remainlargely under the radar, said spokesmanHarry Oesterreicher of the Seattle-basedSousa Mendes Foundation.

While hundreds of those given “life-sav-ing visas” by Sousa Mendes have beenidentified — including such notable fig-ures as the Spanish artist Salvador Daliand Curious George authors Hans andMargret Rey — thousands of otherrefugees never knew who cleared theirway to freedom, and their descendantsremain in the dark, Oesterreicher said.

That’s why the organization hasannounced what it calls “an unprecedent-ed search for the rescuees” who wereissued visas by Sousa Mendes in June1940 despite direct orders from Portugal’sgovernment at the time not to do so.

As a result, the foundation noted, hewas later tried in Portugal and “harshlypunished . . . Aristides de Sousa Mendesdied in 1954 in poverty and official dis-grace, and almost erased from history.”

The Austrian-born Newman, 11 yearsold when he and his family were makingtheir dramatic dash to immigrate toCanada amid the horrors of war, recount-ed in his 2004 autobiography Here BeDragons how the “forgotten saint” SousaMendes was key to their successfulattempt to get out of France in the wake ofthe German invasion, eventually reachingCanada.

“Lisbon did not accept Jews,” Newmanwrites in the book, “but this edict wasignored by . . . Sousa Mendes, a devoutCatholic with an enlightened attitude whohad decided to help the frightenedrefugees as a humanitarian gesture.”

Newman, a former editor of the TorontoStar and Maclean’s and one of the coun-try’s leading authors of Canadian politicaland corporate history, said he returned toBordeaux, France, a few years ago to visitthe city where his family received theirvisa from Sousa Mendes.

He made a point of searching for thehistorical marker commemorating thePortuguese consul’s “humanitariancourage” in 1940.

“The plaque is placed so high on thebuilding that it’s impossible to read it fromthe street unless you have a ladder,” saidNewman, now 82. “I don’t know if that wasdone because they didn’t want anybody toread about what happened or if it wasdone to keep the plaque from beingdefaced.”

Either way, it was symbolic of the rela-tive obscurity of the Sousa Mendes story.Newman applauded the foundation’s bidto seek out other rescuees and their fam-ilies, and spread knowledge of a hero whodied “unheralded and unrecognized.”

SEARCH BEGINS FOR

HOLOCAUST REFUGEES

RESCUED BY

“UNSUNG HERO”

Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773

YAD VASHEM: THE SHINING LIGGala of the Young Leadership Associates

YLA Board and Committee.

March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9

GHT OF THE NEXT GENERATION of the American Society for Yad Vashem

Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773

REPORT FROM REPORT FROM YAD VASHEMYAD VASHEM

BY SAM SOKOL, THE JERUSALEM POST

Yad Vashem unveiled the name of anew member of the Righteous

Among the Nations in March in aJerusalem ceremony attended by FrenchAmbassador Christoph Bigot. SergeMarignan accepted a medal and certificateof honor on behalf of his grandmother,Jeanne Albouy, who hid and protected theWulek family, refugees from Poland whohad settled in France prior to the WWII.

Survivor Claire Kohlman, now the matri-arch of a large ultra-Orthodox family inBnei Brak, was only two years old whenher father Wilhelm Wulwek was arrestedas a foreign national in 1940. After hisrelease, the Wulwek family moved to theGard district in southern France and metJeanne Albouy, whose own husband wasthen a prisoner of war in Germany.

According to Yad Vashem, Albouysearched for a safe place for the Wulwekfamily, finding them a hiding place in hercousin’s empty house in the village ofSinsans.

Wilhelm, his wife Mélanie, and their chil-dren Victor and Claire were later joinedthere by Mélanie’s brother Julius Heller.The children were registered at a localschool and the father worked at an agri-cultural job.

However, after the Nazis occupiedsouthern France in 1942, the family was in“constant danger,” according to a recount-ing of the Wulwek family story provided byYad Vashem.

When the Nazis carried out sweeps inthe adjacent village, “my parents had tohide,” Kohlman told The Jerusalem Post.

“People used to tell them [that the Naziswere coming] and they went to hide duringthe night in the fields [and] in the forests,

and Jeanne took my brother and me [intoher] house and we were sleeping there,eating there; we were hidden there by her.

“Whatever they had to eat they gave tous also.”

Speaking to an assembly of members ofher large extended clan, the Frenchambassador, and the Marignan family,Kohlman said that Albouy “showed youcan maintain your humanity” even underharsh circumstances.

“She hid us for three years and worriedabout us. Many times Nazi soldiersarrived and searched in the area, andmother and father went to hide. We werepartners to everything in their lives forthese years, and we felt like one family.Jeanne, you did the good and right thingfor years.”

“I’m very moved,” she told the Post, not-ing that now, with the passage of years,she can “understand even more thanbefore all that they did for us; that they putthemselves in danger to save us.”

Albouy and her daughter Lucette “neverasked” for recognition and “I neverthought of that,” Kohlman said. However,she believes that it was important thatMarignan submitted his grandmother’sname for recognition.

“We believe in the next world they seethat and understand that we didn’t forget,”she said.

During her time in hiding, Kohlmanrecalled, she was once confronted by aGerman soldier who began to badger herwith questions.

“I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. I waslike paralyzed. I remained like a stone,”she recalled, until “a woman came andtold him [she] didn’t speak German,” atwhich point he left her alone.

Contemporary Europeans could learn alot from her story, Kohlman believes.

When she was in school in France, she

says, she learned about the French val-ues of liberty and equality and is now sadthat these lessons are being forgottenwith the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe.

In a similar story, Marignan’s mother,around 15 at the time, was caught by

the Germans, breaking curfew, and wasinterrogated for an hour. However,Marignan said, she did not give up the factthat she was hiding Jews in her home.

“I’m very moved,” he told the Post, not-ing that “there are extreme anti-foreignermovements in Europe today,” and thatpeople should think about the heroism ofpeople like his grandmother, who riskedher life to save others who were different.

“This is something that today we shouldthink about,” he said.

Bigot, speaking with the Post afterunveiling Albouy’s name, engraved on amemorial wall, said that the Holocaustrepresented a “very tough part of our his-tory.”

“You had people with zeal who collabo-rated [and] at the same time, you hadthese people whom we honor today, who,in modesty, saved lives.”

France, at the time, he said, had “twofaces,” both of heroism and collaboration,and “this is something that still haunts ourconscience for days, years, and centuries.It’s part of us and that is why it is so impor-tant to remember to let the memory pass

to the next generation, and to know in cer-tain circumstances you have to disobey,you have to rebel, you have to listen toyour heart and not to whatever can be dic-tated to you.”

The two families had nothing in com-mon, he noted, but their “special humanbond.”

Irina Steinfeld, director of the RighteousAmong the Nations department at YadVashem, noted that only those who riskedtheir lives are eligible for this honor, evenif they helped Jews in other ways.

Last year, she noted, Yad Vashem rec-ognized over 450 righteous individualsand one can say that this “number is verybig and very small at the same time. Intaking a risk for a good deed, the right-eous are not just good people, peoplewho did good deeds. The righteous aremore than that.”

It would be “self-righteous,” she noted,to demand that everybody take suchextreme risks. “You don’t have the right todemand that people should sacrificethemselves and be willing to pay such adear price.”

“What I take away from this are thesevery special moments, these stories, butwhat I take away especially is when I lookat the people around them. You had Jewswho were persecuted, you have the peo-ple who were willing to pay a price to savethem, and then you have the perpetrators[and] people who were indifferent. I thinkthat what we should do is look at the peo-ple who are indifferent, and this is what weshould take away: not to be indifferent.”

It is important, she said, “to look aroundus and not to permit that a group of peoplewill become invisible, as the Jews did.

“People felt no obligation towards themand this is what we should take away, thatwe don’t have the right to permit people tobecome invisible.”

BY YEHUDIT SHENDAR

Just before Holocaust RemembranceDay 2012, in the wake of the nation-

al “Gathering the Fragments” campaign,Iris First (née Coezijn) came to theMuseum of Holocaust Art at Yad Vashem.She was carrying a book, and inside it anage-worn sheet of paper. “I waited a long,long time, before deciding on thismoment,” explained an emotional First,pointing at the image in the caricaturedrawing. “I kept it to myself for years andyears, hiding it from the children up on thetop bookshelf.… This is my father, this istotally my father.” The caricature is morethan a piece of Holocaust art to be addedto the Museum collection. Its uniquenessis embodied in the spine-tingling fact thatthe drawing, as well as the man who car-ried it on him, survived Auschwitz. Neatlyfolded, it was tucked inside the prisoner’sclothing until he was forced on a deathmarch and up to his later liberation. Uponmaking aliyah, the former prisoner held onto the drawing and kept it safe. Who wasthat prisoner, and what was his story?

Amsterdam, February 21, 1947: JozefCoezijn, native of the city, born in 1923,delivered a statement to Dr. SimonGoldestijn at the National Institute for War

Documentation. Just two years after liber-ation, Coezijn reported in a dry and factu-al manner his experiences during the

Holocaust. Here are some brief excerptsfrom his testimony: “I was sent to Budy,some eight kilometers from Auschwitz.There I worked at an agricultural camp.We were 500–600 people. We got beatena lot. My brother was one of those whodied from all the beatings. I stayed overhalf a year at Budy, and then I was trans-

ferred back to Auschwitz… I was put intoa kommando digging gravel, and stayedthere for about 2–3 weeks… We werethen subjected to a medical check-up, andI was sent to Golleschau. That was acement factory. We were 1,200 men. Iremained there for over a year and a half.They needed strong guys. Although thin, Iwas healthy and looked okay. We wereforced to hew rocks out of mountainslopes and load them onto wagons. Thework was impossibly difficult… I stayedthere until the Russians approached inOctober 1944. We set off on a march.After marching 90 kilometers in two days,we boarded a train. We were told that wewere going to Dachau. En route, the trainwas attacked by planes, and I jumped offtogether with a friend of mine, a guy fromFrance…. One morning, there was aknock at the door, and of course wethought that the Nazis had come — but itwas the Americans. I took the train toNamen near Dodinne, where we got offand were returned to our motherland.”

The horrifying fate that befell theJews of Holland during the

Holocaust is exemplified in all its gravity inthe story of the Coezijn family. Jozef’sfourteen siblings, aged 6–26, along withtheir 50-year-old father, were all mur-dered. Jozef (Jopi, as his friends called

him) was cast into the proverbial “pit” —the Golleschau camp, infamous for itsunparalleled cruelty amid the 40-somesatellite camps of Auschwitz — and sur-vived. During his three years of imprison-ment and bone-crushing forced labor, hestood strong as a young and healthy man,of pleasant temperament. His friends saidhe was the “joker” in their midst, and hissense of humor gave a boost to everyone.

That is exactly how he is depicted in the

caricature. A prewar photograph of him

further sharpens the amazing likeness

that the anonymous artist was able to cap-

ture with his pencil. With shaking legs, he

approaches the guard, asking to “go out

for a bit” — i.e., to the latrine marked by

the WC sign denoting its location nearby.

The airplane hovering in the skies gives

some indication to the fact that the draw-

ing dates sometime toward the end of the

war, when Allied forces converged upon

the factories in Buna, seeking to cripple

the German military industry. Jopi immi-

grated to Israel, married an Israeli-born

girl of Moroccan descent, and refused to

talk to his children about his traumatic

past. “He never told me,” says Iris. “Before

this piece of paper crumbles into pieces, I

brought it here — so that people may see,

so they might know.”

“SO THEY MIGHT KNOW”

FRENCH WOMAN WHO SAVED JEWS IN WWII HONORED

Serge Marignan, French Ambassador

Christoph Bigot, and Claire Kohlman.

March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11

BY FELIX BOHR, SPIEGEL ONLINE

After World War II, dozens of Nazicriminals went into hiding in South

America. A new study reveals how a “coali-tion of the unwilling” on both sides of theAtlantic successfully stymied efforts to huntand prosecute these criminals for decades.

All it took was a transposed number —1974 instead of 1947 — for GustavWagner to be allowed to stay in Brazil. Itwas a mere slip of the pen by the manwho had translated the German documentinto Portuguese that prompted Brazil’ssupreme court to deny West Germany’srequest to extradite the former SS officer.And yet Wagner stood accused of com-plicity in the murders of 152,000 Jews atthe Sobibor extermination camp inGerman-occupied Poland.

Josef Mengele, the notorious concentra-tion camp doctor at Auschwitz, also bene-fited from mistakes and delays becauseFrench officials with Interpol, the interna-tional police force then headquartered inParis, refused to conduct internationalsearches for Nazi war criminals. And, inthe case of SS Colonel Walther Rauff,who helped developed mobile gas cham-bers used to kill Jews, it was an officialwith the German Foreign Ministry whosabotaged his own government’s extradi-tion request to Chile for 14 months.

As a result of these breakdowns, all threeof these Nazi thugs were never tried inGerman courts after the war. Wagner, the“beast” of Sobibor, died in São Paulo,Mengele drowned in Brazil, and Rauff diedof a heart attack in Chile. Of the hundredsof guilty Nazi officials and mass murdererswho had fled to South America after the sur-render of Nazi Germany, only a handfulwere ever held to account.

How could so many criminals manageto go unpunished, even though they wereclearly guilty? It’s a conundrum that mys-tifies academics to this day.

Historian Daniel Stahl has conductedresearch in European and SouthAmerican archives in the process of writ-ing a new book entitled Nazi Hunt: South

America’s Dictatorships and the Avengingof Nazi Crimes. The work supplies a cer-tain and disgraceful answer to what haslong been suspected: that there was abroad coalition of people — across conti-nents and within the courts, police, gov-ernments, and administrations — that wasunwilling to act or even thwarted the pros-ecution of Nazi criminals for decades.

Stahl believes that the motives for beingpart of what he calls a “coalition of theunwilling” differed widely. West Germandiplomats sabotaged the hunt for Nazisout of solidarity. French criminal investiga-tors feared that cooperation might exposetheir own pasts as Nazi collaborators. And

South American dictators refused to extra-dite former Nazis out of concern that trialsof war criminals could direct internationalattention to the crimes their own govern-ments were then committing.

It wasn’t hard for this coalition to torpedothe hunt for Nazis. Countless players — inpolitics, the judiciary, the government, andthe administration — had to work togetherin order to arrange and execute successfulcriminal prosecutions. Indeed, a small mis-take or minor procedural irregularity wasenough to foil the arrest of the criminals.

Stahl leaves no doubt that the WestGerman judiciary was especially guilty ofserious lapses. His findings confirm that itneglected to forcefully pursue Nazi mur-derers for decades.

Walther Rauff, for example, was able totravel between South America andGermany after the war as a representativeof various companies. But he never ran

into any difficulties because his name did-n’t appear on any lists of wanted criminals.It wasn’t until 1961 that the public prosecu-tor’s office in the northern city of Hanoverissued a warrant for Rauff’s arrest onalmost 100,000 counts of murder.

Finding Rauff’s address in Chile wasn’ta problem, and the German ForeignMinistry instructed Ambassador HansStrack in Santiago to request extraditionof the Nazi war criminal. But Strack, whohad also worked at the Foreign Ministrybefore 1945, ignored the instructions fromthe ministry in Bonn and allowed the caseto drag on for 14 months.

It wasn’t until after justice officials inHanover notified federal colleaguesthat they were “extremely discon-certed” over the fact that theembassy was treating the case“with such hesitancy” that the gov-ernment disciplined the recalcitrantambassador. Strack, a known oppo-nent to redressing the crimes ofNazi Germany, finally applied forRauff’s extradition, which led to hisarrest in late 1962.

But by then, it was too late to pun-ish Rauff because murder cameunder the statute of limitations in

most South American countries at the time.Chile’s supreme court denied Germany’srequest to extradite the former SS colonel.Despite international protests, Rauff contin-ued to live as a free man in Chile fordecades.

In other cases, a lack of cooperation byInterpol thwarted the pursuit of Nazis.Stahl uncovered one particularly revealingdocument, the minutes of a meeting ofInterpol’s executive committee from May1962. A short time earlier, the WorldJewish Congress had asked Interpol toparticipate in the global search for Naziwar criminals. Interpol’s then-secretarygeneral, Marcel Sicot, responded angrily.Why should war criminals be prosecuted,the Frenchman is quoted as asking in theminutes, “since the victor always imposeshis laws, anyway? No international entitydefines the term ‘war criminal.’” In fact,Sicot regarded the criminal prosecution of

Nazi crimes as “victor’s justice.”

In 1960, there were rumors that JosefMengele, the concentration camp doc-

tor known as the “Angel of Death,” washiding in Brazil or Chile. The GermanJustice Ministry advised the FederalCriminal Police Office to conduct a man-hunt — but without involving Interpol.Officials in Bonn were apparently trying toavoid bothering international investigatorswith the case, but Mengele’s hiding placewas never found.

Stahl attributes Interpol’s failure to arrestNazis and their collaborators to the wartimepast of many French police officers. “Ashenchmen of the Vichy regime, (they) col-laborated with the Nazis until 1944,” Stahlwrites. “They stood opposed to the criminalprosecution of Nazi crimes.”

Stahl also notes that one of the majorobstacles in the hunt for Nazi criminals wasthe fact that South American dictatorswanted to cover up their own crimes. OnJune 22, 1979, the German ambassador inBrasilia wrote that the extradition of some-one who had committed war crimes almost40 years earlier would “bolster thedemands of those who insist that all crimesshould be prosecuted, including thosecommitted by the military and the police.”

In Germany, a new generation hadentered the government bureaucracy —one that wasn’t afraid to use unconven-tional means to put Nazi criminals behindbars. In 1982, the Munich public prosecu-tor’s office initiated proceedings to applyfor the extradition of Klaus Barbie, the for-mer chief of the Gestapo in Lyon, France.Fearing that Barbie could be acquitted inGermany for lack of evidence, JusticeMinistry officials asked their ForeignMinistry counterparts to hint to Bonn’sFrench allies that “they should also seekBarbie’s deportation, specifically fromBolivia to France.”

When Paris agreed, the Foreign Ministryinstructed the German embassy in LaPaz, the Bolivian capital, to “encouragesuch a development with suitable means.”

In early 1983, Barbie was deported toFrance. The notorious “Butcher of Lyon”died in a hospital in that city in 1991.

President Peres receives chillingjournal in Polish language, published70 years after start of Warsaw ghettouprising. Another diary describesactivity of anti-Nazi resistance groups.

BY NOAM DVIR , YNETNEWS

“At night, we will be led to Treblinka.It’s the last time I see the blue

sky.” A copy of a rare diary from theHolocaust was presented to President

Shimon Peres at the Ghetto Fighters’House Museum.

The document was published in honorof the 70th anniversary of the “Januaryuprising,” which took place at the Warsawghetto and served as the first significantact of resistance against the Nazis.

During the ceremony the presidentreferred to the Warsaw ghetto uprising,which erupted in April 1943, as “one of theJewish people’s greatest acts of bravery.”He added that he was “overwhelmed bythe inconceivable courage.”

The diary’s author, a Jewish lawyer bornin 1906, describes routine life in theWarsaw ghetto:

“The body of a woman shot last night bya Ukrainian is lying in one of the halls. Herfour-year-old son crawls next to her body.He touches his mother’s bleeding body andpulls her hair. Her stiffness amuses him. Hepushes a finger into her half-open mouth,touches the glazed eyes that cannot see.Suddenly he starts crying. A pitiful cry.”

After a selection process atUmschlagplatz, the Warsaw squarewhere Jews gathered for deportation tothe concentration camps, the writer wassent to Treblinka in April 1943. His fateremains unknown.

Ahead of the move to Treblinka, hewrote in his diary:

“I look at the clear sky of the month ofApril. At night we will be led to Treblinka.When the dawn breaks, I will no longer bealive. It’s a simple calculation — this is thelast time I see the blue sky between theclouds.”

Of his murdered family he wrote:

“April 19, 1943. In a week I will be37 years old. Oh, well, what dif-

ference does it make? I am told that mymother has been shot. I’m not shocked.She suffered for nine months, surviving

the death of her daughter, the death of herhusband, and the need to hide in stinkingand suffocating holes.

“I suddenly realize that I wasn’t sensi-tive enough toward her, that the ghettorobbed me of my softness and sensitivi-ty, and that the cruelty controlling every-thing has been absorbed into me like x-rays.”

The 28-page diary, which was written inPolish, arrived at Ghetto Fighters’ Housein the 1970s and was kept in the archivesfor years, waiting to be translated and

interpreted. Segments from another diary were also

read during the ceremony. It was writtenby an anonymous fighter, who accordingto archives sources belonged to theJewish Combat Organization or the revi-sionist Jewish Military Union.

The fighter’s diary describes the construc-tion of bunkers and the preparations of theresistance forces which fought the Nazis.

“Wednesday, April 28, 1943. The 10thday in the bunker. The bombings andshooting have stopped. And the peopleare bathing, handing out coffee, andcooking food. Everything is being donequietly, in complete silence, and in accor-dance with the instructions of the bunkerleader. We must survive. We are fightingfor justice and for the right to live.”

These two documents are part of thecollection of Adolf Avraham Berman, whowas a resistance activist and coura-geously collected pieces of informationduring the war, together with his wifeBatya.

The two kept the collection after thewar until they arrived in Israel, wherethey handed the documents to the muse-um. The diary has been posted on themuseum’s website to allow free accessto the wide public.

RARE HOLOCAUST DIARY UNVEILED

Twenty-eight pages in Polish about Holocaust.

Chilling testimony of life in Warsaw ghetto.

HOW NAZIS ESCAPED JUSTICE IN SOUTH AMERICA

Rauff with a Chilean police officer after his 1962 arrest.

Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773

(Continued from page 1)the ways in which we provide teacherswith enrichment about this subject is toprovide resources to teach about this sub-ject, but also to offer connections betweenthis subject and other fields of study. Inthis way we hope to raise awareness andmake the information more relevant tostudents. As educators we are aware howthe events of the Holocaust include a widearray of challenges to teachers and stu-dents because of their complexity, horror,content, and obligation to remember thatthe subject presents.“

She added that “our own awareness ofHolocaust survivors should include thechanging image of Holocaust victims whosurvived and who perished. For thosewho perished, we need to consider howthey want to be remembered. For thosewho survived, we should realize how theyhave been transformed from victims toheroes. They are our eyewitnesses to his-tory, and their resistance efforts are sym-bols of the strength and of the resilienceof the human spirit.” As one way of honor-ing survivors who emerged from thisdestruction, Yad Vashem designated thetheme of this year’s commemoration ofthe Holocaust as Defiance and Rebellionduring the Holocaust: 70 Years Since theWarsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Dr. Yahalom told the participants that “aseducators, by sharing the responsibility ofteaching the lessons of this event to futuregenerations, you make a positive andmeaningful contribution to Holocaust edu-cation and remembrance, since yourefforts help secure the historically validmemory of this event for the future.Documenting the Holocaust and preserv-ing its memory is the driving force behindHolocaust history. As educators we areaware how the events of the Holocaustinclude a wide array of challenges to teach-ers and students because of the complexi-ty, horror, content and obligation of remem-brance this subject presents. To meetthese challenges, we offer teachers con-nections between this event and contem-porary issues. In this way, we hope to raiseawareness and make the information moremeaningful and relevant to our students.“

She concluded that when we teach stu-dents about the Holocaust, we try to pro-vide a human perspective. “Studying theHolocaust allows us to see the range ofhuman behavior: the beauty and the hor-ror, the hope and the despair, the thought-fulness and the thoughtlessness, and thekindness and cruelty of which humanbeings are capable.”

For more information about ASYV edu-cational programs and events and itsYoung Leadership Associates, contact Dr.Marlene Warshawski Yahalom, Director ofEducation — mwy@yadvashemusa.org.

HOLOCAUST

DOCUMENTATION

AND MEMORY...

Pedagogical workshop for participants:

"Sensitizing Students to Learning about the

Holocaust."

BY MATT LEBOVIC, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

As a little girl in 1940, Gita Kaufmanescaped Vienna with her family at

the last possible moment.Austria had been under German control

for two years, following the bloodlessAnschluss, or union, of March 12, 1938.The annexation was a boon to Nazi anti-Jewish policy, as the largely affluentJewish community of Vienna fell intoGerman hands.

Jews had lived in Austria since Romantimes, and almost 200,000 called the

alpine republic home before the Anschluss.Vienna, the capital and crown jewel of theformer Austro-Hungarian empire, wasadored by native Jews such as Herzl,Freud and Buber. Fellow Austrian AdolfHitler notoriously despised the city for itsdecadence and racial impurity.

Kaufman remembers an early childhoodin Vienna filled with classical music andvisits from relatives throughout Europe. Allthat changed 75 years ago Tuesday,when the Nazis turned their sights onAustria’s Jews.

Immediately after the Anschluss, Jewslost employment and were stripped ofproperty, civil rights, and dignity. To damp-en protest, the Nazis sent 6,000 ofAustria’s leading Jewish citizens toDachau and Buchenwald, where mostdied.

Largely unknown to Kaufman at thetime, her father worked ceaselessly to getthe family out of Austria. No Jewish emi-gration “list” was too obscure for him topursue, as illustrated by his correspon-dence with family members around theworld.

The wartime letters from 11 members ofKaufman’s family form the basis of hernew documentary, Shadows From MyPast.

Written between 1939 and 1941, the let-ters document the Kaufman family’sescape to the US, as well as efforts tosave relatives trapped in Nazi-occupiedEurope. Kaufman’s parents were Polishcitizens, and most of their relatives wereleft to their fate in Poland.

“These letters from my family membersall over Europe made their shadows realas I read them,” Kaufman told The Timesof Israel. “The letters came back to myparents during the years after the war,having traveled the world looking for peo-ple who were no longer alive.”

Kaufman did not know of her father’sefforts to save her family at the time, butshe remembers the situation for Austria’s

Jews becoming progressively worse. Oneyear after the Anschluss, Kaufman’sfather — Nachman Weinrauch — wasarrested by the Gestapo.

Kaufman describes her father’s arrestand torture in the documentary, includinghow Gestapo agents beat him and forcedhim into the frozen Danube River. A retiredkindergarten teacher and youth orchestraconductor, Kaufman will never forget thepowerlessness she felt during those finalmonths in Vienna.

“Making this film made me realize whata loving and intelligent father I had,”Kaufman said. “He saved our family with

his connections and his letters, and I didnot understand that growing up. He wasquiet and hard of hearing, and people didnot always appreciate him.”

On the same day the Weinrauch familywas to be deported to Dachau, the price-less US entry visas arrived.

Within months of the family’s 1940escape, most of central Europe had beenconquered by Germany, and the firstJewish ghettos were established. Thedeath camps had yet to open, butKaufman’s letters from relatives trappedin Poland show they knew what was instore for them.

“Don’t give the family any rest,” Polishrelatives wrote to Kaufman’s mother, CeleWeinrauch, about their situation.Desperate to flee Poland, family membersrecounted ongoing atrocities against Jews— in veiled terms to avoid the censor.

“It was hair-raising that a big familycould be so indifferent,” Kaufman said ofher frustration reading the pleas fromPoland alongside responses from “com-placent” family members in the US, somewritten after intended recipients had beendeported.

Kaufman spent more than a decademaking Shadows, a labor of love for herand late husband Curt Kaufman, whodirected the film. Juxtaposed with the let-ters and old family photographs are twodozen interviews Kaufman conducted inAustria.

Her most famous subjects were two ofAustria’s post-Holocaust icons — KurtWaldheim and Simon Wiesenthal.

Kaufman grilled former Nazi officer andUnited Nations chief Kurt Waldheim aboutAustria’s claim to have been Hitler’s “firstvictim.” With Mauthausen camp survivorand Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, sheasked about Austrians’ disproportionateparticipation in the genocide.

Both Waldheim and Wiesenthal havesince died, giving a sense of the film’sdecade-long production.

From the archbishop of Vienna to abevy of politicians and artists, Kaufmanleft no stone unturned in asking nationalfigures about their country’s role in theHolocaust, on camera.

Austria’s current president, HeinzFischer, addressed the topic during hisinterview with Kaufman.

“On the one hand, Austria and Austrianswere victims,” Fischer said. “On the otherhand, they were also contributors, andmany Austrians were involved in thecrimes and the terror of the Nazi system.”

Fischer is one of several Austrian lead-ers who helped advance Kaufman’s film,including by introducing an earlier, “lesscinematic” version into Austrian schools in2010. Entirely based on the family lettersand without interviews, the German-lan-guage documentary was the brainchild ofKaufman’s husband.

Curt Kaufman — like his wife — wasan artist who worked in many forms,

including children’s books and visual arts.In 1987, he authored the criticallyacclaimed children’s book Hotel Boy, afrank look at child homelessness. He cre-ated illustrations and wrote the story withhis wife, who could relate to being tem-porarily homeless.

Kaufman credits her husband with“always being ahead of his time,” and giv-ing her the confidence to become a writer.Her experience combining text and illus-trations with him for children’s bookshelped her envision the Shadows screen-play, Kaufman said.

“This film would never have been madewere it not for Curt,” she said. “He had thevision and pushed me to do it. He taught

himself film editing to get this done.”Just as the documentary entered final

editing in December of 2011, CurtKaufman passed away. He had beendiagnosed with esophageal cancer fivemonths earlier, giving the couple little timeto reflect on four decades of marriage,much less complete the film.

“I thought it was the end of the film whenCurt died,” Kaufman said.

Since her husband’s death, she hasworked to finish the documentary as a tes-tament to his legacy. A film intended torecall her lost family in Europe broughtKaufman closer to their memory and — inthe past year — to her late husband aswell.

Kaufman also updated the film to reflectnew trends in European anti-Semitism,asking several interviewees to comparethe political atmosphere for Jews follow-ing the Anschluss and today.

“Unemployment in Europe might bringthis dark period back,” Jorg Haider, theformer chairman of the right-wing AustrianFreedom Party, told Kaufman, rather non-chalantly.

Other interviewees pointed to thegrowth of Vienna’s Jewish community andits new institutions as potential lightningrods for anti-Semites.

75 YEARS AFTER ANSCHLUSS,

NAZI “SHADOWS” HAUNT AUSTRIA

Members of the Weinrauch family, including future filmmaker Gita, center, remained in Vienna

until after World War II was underway.

Kaufman’s childhood ID bears the swastika.

March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

(Continued from page 6)ment at the camp. He bricked them into awall to hide them.

Helga and her mother were sent toAuschwitz, where they joined the

notorious queue as they arrived: olderwomen and mothers with young childrento the left, those deemed able to work tothe right. To survive, it was essential toend up on the right. Prisoners who knewthe fate that lay ahead on the left whis-pered warnings: “Don’t say you are tooyoung, don’t say you are ill — say you areable to work. Don’t say you belong togeth-er, that you are mother and child,” remem-bers Helga.

She resolved to say she was older than14; her mother would pretend to beyounger. In fact, the SS man didn’t askquestions and sent them both to the right.“He pointed — I don’t know if it was luck,fate, a miracle. I have friends who are stillalive — they are the same age as I am —but their mothers were [sent to the left]. SoI was lucky twice. Not only that I was notsent, but that I was together with mymother.”

Next day, at roll call, the women wereaddressed in German. “The speech wasvery long — I asked my mother to trans-late. She said, ‘Oh, he says we are in anextermination camp.’”

Helga laughs explosively, a sound stillfull of shock and incredulity. They hadn’tknown about the gas chambers, the deathcamps. “We arrived and saw smokingchimneys — we thought it was a factory.”

Other prisoners enlightened them — thesmoke was rising from the camp cremato-rium. They were told to strip naked and

their heads were shaved. Helga didn’t rec-ognize her own mother until she heard hervoice.

Her 10 days at Auschwitz were worsethan the three years at Terezín, but Helgasuspects it was harder still for her mother.She remembers being outside, shavedhead freezing, and Irena reaching over to

cup her bare scalp. It was all the comfortshe could offer.

From Auschwitz, they were sent toFreiberg, a sub-camp of Flossenbürg con-centration camp, where they worked asslave labor for five months, polishingaeroplane parts. Then came a 16-daytransport by rail to Mauthausen in Austria.Irena was so weak she could hardly stand

and both suffered from frostbite, lice, andconstant, raging thirst. Rumors flew aboutthe war’s end and some women escaped,but Helga couldn’t be sure her mother wasfit enough to try. In one four-day periodthey had nothing to eat but two potatoes,half a cup of tea and two spoons of sugar.

Along the route, news arrived that Berlinhad fallen.

At Mauthausen, they went without foodfor five days. Had there been just one moreday before peace was declared, Helga sus-pects her mother would not have survived.Days later, on May 5, 1945, the camp wasliberated by the Allied forces.

She and Irena returned home to Pragueand began to look for Otto. His name did-n’t appear on the registration lists for anyof the camps other than Terezín. In thefirst months, they found it unbearable tobe alone together in the flat, which was sofull of memories of their life togetherbefore the war. In the evenings theywalked the streets together until it wastime to sleep.

Helga continued her Terezín diary,recording everything that happened afterthey moved on. It’s written in the presenttense because she was still caught up inthe experience, she says.

The diary has been published as shewrote it in the 1940s, as it was found atthe bottom of a drawer. The sheaf of yel-low papers was given to VenetiaButterfield, a British publisher who heardabout it in 2010 when Helga came toLondon for a concert to commemorateTerezín.

In the prologue of the book, Helgaexplains that although “the writing is child-

ish, the style prolix, naïve,” she felt edito-rial changes would have affected theauthenticity of the story. “May readerstreat this diary charitably and accept it forwhat it is,” she writes; an important recordof life in the concentration camps, whichadds to the memories of other childdiarists, including, of course, Anne Frank.

Irena didn’t want Otto to be declareddead, but after a year the certificates

were sent out, regardless. Helga believessomeone may have known what hap-pened to him, but didn’t want to tell them.Some stories just weren’t passed on. HerUncle Jindra, for example, was sent fromAuschwitz to Mauthausen and experi-enced such cold that his legs had to beamputated. He died as a result. His wifeknew he had died and where, but wasnever told those details.

There was no question of Helga and hermother living apart after the war. Irenaremained single and when Helga married,her husband shared the apartment withthem. Irena helped with Helga’s son anddaughter, and lived until she was 84. Lastyear, Helga’s daughter remarked thatIrena had never smiled. “I never thoughtabout it, but maybe she didn’t. Maybe shehad no reason.”

The legacy of the war has affected herchildren, she says. Her daughter can’tbear to hear of anything ugly, and her sonis “terribly anxious,” she says. “When I amalone, I have to contact him twice a day.”

But one of her granddaughters hasbeen exploring her Jewish roots, and it isprobably this younger generation that willbenefit initially from Helga’s extraordinaryjournal of survival.

Helga with her parents, Irena and Otto, and

her paternal grandmother, Sophie.

MY DIARY OF A NAZI DEATH CAMP CHILDHOOD

BY RAFAEL MEDOFF, JNS.ORG

“There is at least one official voice inEurope that expresses under-

standing of the methods and motives ofPresident Roosevelt — the voice ofGermany, as represented by ChancellorAdolf Hitler.”

That incredible statement was the open-ing line of a flattering feature story aboutthe Nazi leader that appeared on the frontpage of the New York Times in 1933, andwas typical of some early press coverageof Hitler, who rose to power 80 years agoon January 30.

Hitler’s ascent caught much of the worldby surprise. As late as May 1928, theNazis had won less than 3 percent of thevote in elections to the Reichstag,Germany’s parliament, and the Naziparty’s candidate for president receivedbarely 1 percent of the votes in March1929. But as Germany’s economic andsocial crises worsened, the Nazis rose to18.3 percent of the vote in the parliamen-tary election of July 1930. They doubledthat total two years later, becoming thelargest party in the Reichstag.

Negotiations between the Nazis andother parties then produced a coalitiongovernment, with Hitler as chancellor. TheNazis celebrated with a huge torchlightparade through the streets of Berlin on thenight of Hitler’s appointment, January 30,1933.

Relatively little was known in Americaabout Hitler, and many leading newspa-pers predicted that the Nazis would notturn out to be as bad as some feared.

An editorial in the Philadelphia EveningBulletin on January 30 claimed that “therehave been indications of moderation” on

Hitler’s part. The editors of the ClevelandPress, on January 31, asserted that the“appointment of Hitler as German chan-cellor may not be such a threat to worldpeace as it appears at first blush.”

Officials of the Roosevelt administra-tion were quoted in the press as say-

ing they “had faith that Hitler would act withmoderation compared to the extremist agi-tation [i]n his recent election campaigning...[They] based this belief on past eventsshowing that so-called ‘radical’ groups usu-ally moderated, once in power.”

In the weeks to follow, however, eventson the ground contradicted those opti-mistic forecasts. Outbursts of anti-Jewishviolence were tolerated, and often encour-aged and assisted, by the Nazi regime.

In early March, for example, the ChicagoTribune published an eyewitness accountof “bands of Nazis throughout Germanycarr[ying] out wholesale raids to intimidatethe opposition, particularly the Jews.”Victims were “hit over the heads with black-jacks, dragged out of their homes in nightclothes and otherwise molested,” withmany Jews “taken off to jail and put to workin a concentration camp.”

The following month, the New YorkEvening Post reported that the Nazis hadlaunched “a violent campaign of murder-ous agitation” against Germany’s Jews:“An indeterminate number of Jews... havebeen killed. Hundreds of Jews have beenbeaten or tortured. Thousands of Jewshave fled. Thousands of Jews have been,or will be deprived of their livelihood. All ofGermany’s 600,000 Jews are in terror.”

The Hitler regime was determined toeliminate the Jewish community fromGerman society. During the Nazis’ firstweeks in power, violence and intimidationwere used to force Jewish judges, attor-

neys, journalists, university professors,and orchestra conductors and musiciansout of their jobs.

A law passed on April 7 required thedismissal of Jews from all govern-

ment jobs. Additional legislation in themonths to follow banned Jews from awhole range of professions, from dentistry

to the movie industry. The governmenteven sponsored a one-day nationwideboycott of Jewish businesses, with Nazistorm troopers stationed outside Jewish-owned stores to prevent customers fromentering.

Nevertheless, in July 1933, nearly sixmonths after Hitler’s rise to power, theNew York Times ran a front-page featureabout the Führer that presented him in aflattering light. For Hitler, it was a golden

opportunity to soften his image by praisingPresident Roosevelt, as well as a platformto deliver lengthy justifications of his total-itarian policies and attacks on Jews.

The article, titled “Hitler Seeks Jobs forAll Germans,” began with Hitler’s remarkthat FDR was looking out “for the bestinterests and welfare of the people of theUnited States.” He added: “I have sympa-thy with President Roosevelt because hemarches straight toward his objective overCongress, over lobbies, over stubbornbureaucracies.”

The story was based on an interviewwith the Nazi leader by Times correspon-dent Anne O’Hare McCormick. She gaveHitler paragraph after paragraph toexplain his policies as necessary toaddress Germany’s unemployment,improve its roads, and promote nationalunity. The Times correspondent lobbedthe Nazi chief softball questions such as“What character in history do you admiremost, Caesar, Napoleon, or Frederick theGreat?”

McCormick also described Hitler’sappearance and mannerisms in a strong-ly positive tone: Hitler is “a rather shy andsimple man, younger than one expects,more robust, taller.... His eyes are almostthe color of the blue larkspur in a vasebehind him, curiously childlike and can-did.... His voice is as quiet as his black tieand his double-breasted black suit.... HerrHitler has the sensitive hand of the artist.”

Whatever her intentions, articles likeMcCormick’s helped dull the Americanpublic’s awareness of the dangers ofNazism. The image of a pro-Americanmoderate undermined the chances formobilizing serious international oppositionto Hitler during the early months of hisregime.

HOW THE PRESS SOFT-PEDALED HITLER

Cartoonist Keith Temple, in the New OrleansTimes-Picayune, echoed the naive but wide-

spread belief in the West that conservative lead-

ers in the German political and industrial com-

munities would restrain Hitler’s radicalism.

Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773

(Continued from page 5)onto trucks. After several months thereshe was sent to a different camp, inPoland.

There she remained until January 1945,when the Germans — panicked about therapid Soviet advance — ordered thecamp’s evacuation. Somehow Edita, hersister, and two friends managed to hideunderneath bales of straw. The nextday — the camp deserted — they made arun for it, heading across frozen fields tothe next village. They had the misfortuneof running into an SS unit, a stroke of badluck that left her sister dead and Editabadly wounded.

Delirious from fever and in urgent needof medical treatment, eventually Edita fellinto the hands of Red Army soldiers, whofound her a doctor. She spent several longmonths recuperating in hospital inLubawa, Poland, before finally making atortuous journey home to Kosice — sick,emaciated and with no news of her fami-ly — in September 1945.

The only other ones to survive were hercousin, and her brother — who had alsobeen through the camps, and who burstinto tears when he saw her. Everyone elsewas gone.

Today, Edita Salamonova is part of adwindling Jewish community in Kosice,numbering a few hundred people, with a

few dozen Holocaust survivors amongthem.

Interest in the fate of Kosice’s Jews wasreignited last summer when Britain’s Sunnewspaper tracked down Laszlo Csatary,

the Hungarian police commanderaccused of setting up the ghetto andorganizing the deportations, living peace-fully in Budapest.

It’s conceivable Edita might be called totestify against him if he’s extradited toSlovakia. But it’s not likely, as Csatary isnow 97 and could die at any moment.

Edita herself is indifferent to his fate. Asshe says, nothing will bring back her par-ents. Or, most painful of all, her sister.

PAIN REMAINS FOR SLOVAK

HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR

Csatary may never have to face justice for his

role in deporting Jews.

(Continued from page 4)infirmary and develop a deeper bond.Although they are from different parts ofthe world and speak different languages,they have much in common.

Both have tragically lost family, David inthe Holocaust and Raj in a typhoon andflood. Both come from unstable, fragileplaces, David from anti-Semitism thatcrushes Jewish life and Raj from an islandwhere severe weather crushes buildingsand people. Both are confined, David in aprison camp, and Raj in his drunken andabusive father’s household. Both arerefugees from the absurdities of the adultworld.

It’s no surprise that they concoct a planto escape. Unfortunately, their journeythrough the Mauritian forest ends abruptlyand tragically. Only Raj survives, and hedoesn’t understand why. In his old age,Raj develops survivor’s guilt and tells hisstory in flashback to show how that syn-drome developed.

Raj finally finds closure at age 70, curedof polio but convinced that God cursedhim with fragile health for his role inDavid’s death. David never reaches“Eretz,” but Raj vows to keep his memoryalive: He promises to tell his son the storyso that David, and the Holocaust, will beforever remembered.

CORNER OF HOLOCAUST HISTORY TOLD

THROUGH INNOCENT’S EYES

BY NISSAN TZUR, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

The first Polish film to portray thecountry’s gentiles committing

crimes against their Jewish neighbors hashit movie theaters, generating both enthu-siastic praise and threats of violenceagainst one of the stars.

Aftermath, written and directed byPolish filmmaker Wladyslaw Pasikowski,is based on the events of the infamousJedwabne massacre of July 1941, inwhich nearly all of the town’s Jews werebeaten to death or burned alive. Longblamed on the occupying Nazis, theslaughter was later revealed to be thework of ordinary Polish citizens.

A joint production between Poles andfilmmakers from Russia, Holland, and

Slovakia, the fictional Aftermath tells thestory of a Polish man who returns homeafter many years abroad to discover adark secret about his family’s past — hisbrother’s participation in an anti-Jewishmassacre. Although the town’s name andother details have been changed, themovie is widely understood to be aboutJedwabne, and won the Journalists’ Prizelast year at the Gdynia Film Festival,Poland’s most important movie event.

More than 200,000 Poles attendedscreenings in the first two weeks after thefilm’s release, a solid outcome for a coun-try of Poland’s size.

Vividly reimagined by the film, theJedwabne massacre was carried out withGerman encouragement, but wasplanned and performed by Poles. Of thetown‘s roughly 1,600 Catholics, an esti-mated 50 percent of the men participatedin the killing — first by beating, stabbing,and bludgeoning Jedwabne‘s 1,600 Jews,then by locking the survivors in a barn andburning them alive.

For decades, a plaque in the townclaimed Germans had carried out the vio-lence — a claim everyone who remained

in Jedwabne knew to be false. But in2001, Jan Gross, a Princeton historianwith Polish-Jewish origins, publishedNeighbors, in which he presented evi-dence that the massacre had beenplanned and perpetrated by Poles ratherthan Nazis. The revelations caused bitterrecriminations and significant soul-searching across Poland, a country thathas long chosen to overlook its citizens’sometimes spirited participation in theHolocaust.

Days before Aftermath went into widerelease, the film’s Warsaw premiereattracted an impressive number of publicfigures, who praised the film anddescribed it as a step forward in Poles’acknowledgement of their history.

Critics largely agreed, with GiuseppeSedia, in a review for the Krakow

Post, likening its productionvalues to those of “the bestHollywood thrillers,” and say-ing the movie effectively mir-rors Poles’ complex relation-ship with their wartime past.

“The tormented relationshipand lack of mutual understand-ing between [the brothers] canbe read as metaphor for thePolish-Polish war” over how toremember the period, hewrote.

Reactions among the gener-al public have been decidedlymore mixed, with someextolling the film‘s willingnessto take on a shameful episode,

and others arguing that it paints an unfairportrait of average Poles.

Some have gone as far as to threatenone of the film’s stars, claiming Aftermathslanders Poland. Maciej Stuhr, who playsone of the brothers, has said he’s beenstruck by a wave of hostility since themovie’s release. Online attacks have dis-missed him as “a Jew, and not a Pole any-more,” and have even included threatsagainst his life.

“I knew that there would be a storm — itwas inevitable,” he told Polish news chan-nel TVN24. “We’re not dealing with thistragic history, and that’s what the film isabout.”

Pasikowski, the film‘s director, hasremained largely silent since the film’s open-ing, declining to give interviews and relyingon a statement provided at the premiere.

“[The story] is one of the most painfulchapters in Poland’s history,” he toldreporters. “We already have a huge num-ber of movies on the horrors committed bythe Germans and the Soviets, and I thinkit’s time to show the terrible things we didourselves.”

POLES RELEASE FILM ADMITTING

RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANTI-JEWISH MASSACRE

Aftermath star Maciej Stuhr claims he has received death

threats after playing a Polish Catholic who learns about the

wartime slaughter of Jews in his hometown.

BY DAN EVEN, HAARETZ

One of the most controversial sub-jects in academic research on the

Holocaust is the trauma’s impact onfuture generations. A new study carriedout by Haifa University argues thatHolocaust trauma signs can be identifiedamong third-generation grandchildren.

The study, carried out by Dr. MiriScharf and Prof. Ofra Mayseless fromHaifa University’s Education Department,detects unprocessed, indirect signs ofpost-trauma, or problems in communica-tion and interaction systems, amongsecond- and third-generation descen-dants of Holocaust victims.

The study is based on in-depth inter-views conducted with 196 Israelis whoare second-generation descendants,and are considered functioning adultswho do not suffer from psychologicaldisturbances, and their children, third-generation descendants, a group with anaverage age of 18. The researchersidentified three experiential patterns ofdistress that are liable to be passeddown from generation to generation.

THREATENING REALITY

Initially, the research discerned a ten-dency to focus on matters connected

to survival. Second-generation partici-pants in the study testified that theirHolocaust survivor parents were emo-tionally engaged in a survival struggle inwhich the world was viewed as a threat-ening reality filled with unexpectedevents; the parents continually preparedthemselves for the unknown.

Some participants in the survey saidthat their parents were overly protective,and prevented them, when they werechildren, from going out on outings orvisiting friends.

Many participants recalled that theirparents were worried that they (the chil-dren) would suffer harm, or die sudden-ly. As a result, many second-generationparticipants developed fears about harmbeing caused to their parents, or abouttheir parents’ deaths. In addition, fearsamong the parents were expressed viapreparation for some future calamity —parents would hoard food and otheritems, and would make efforts to feedtheir children so that they would gainweight and be immune to danger.

The study argues that these survivalconcerns are often passed down fromgeneration to generation, and can nowbe documented among teenagers whobelong to the third generation.

These teenagers testified that the sur-vival worries of their second-generationparents focused mainly on anxietiesabout hunger and the development ofdisease. According to the researchers,despite the fact that second-generationdaughters mainly considered their par-ents’ anxieties a nuisance, some of thempassed down the very same anxieties totheir own children.

LACK OF SUPPORT

T he researchers compiled testimo-ny provided by second-generation

participants, relating to the perceivedlack of emotional support given to themby their parents. Some participants inthe study reported that their parentswere unable to develop warm, support-ive relationships, when they neededsuch support in their childhood years.

Survivor parents were perceived bysome second-generation children asbeing inaccessible, cold, and distant.And even though these second-genera-tion participants described their par-ents’ inaccessibility as being problematic,

(Continued on page 15)

NEW ISRAELI STUDY FINDS SIGNS OF

TRAUMA IN GRANDCHILDREN

OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

March/April 2013 - Adar/Nissan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15

BY DR. RAFAEL MEDOFF, THE JEWISH PRESS

Seventy years ago, 40,000 NewYorkers watched as Jewish activists

and Hollywood celebrities joined hands tobring news of the Holocaust to the vaunt-ed stage of Madison Square Garden. Buta requested message of greeting fromPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt neverarrived, because the White House decid-ed the mass murder of the Jews was too“political” to touch.

In January 1943, a Gallup poll askedAmericans, “It is said that two million Jewshave been killed in Europe since the warbegan. Do you think this is true or just arumor?” Although the Allied leadershiphad publicly confirmed that two millionJews had been murdered, the poll foundonly 47 percent believed it was true, while29 percent dismissed it as a rumor; theremaining 24 percent had no opinion.

The failure of the news media to treatthe Nazi genocide as a serious issue con-tributed to the public’s skepticism. Tosome extent, editors were following thelead of the Roosevelt administration,which, after issuing a condemnation of themass murder, made no effort to publicizethe tragedy or aid Jewish refugees.

Ben Hecht, the newspaper columnist andAcademy Award–winning screenwriter,responded in the way he knew best: hepicked up his pen and began to write.

With his outsized dramatic sense in highgear, Hecht authored a full-scale pageantcalled We Will Never Die. On a stage fea-turing forty-foot-high tablets of the TenCommandments, it would survey Jewish

contributions to civilization throughout his-tory, describe the Nazi slaughter of theJews, and culminate in an emotionalrecitation of Kaddish, the traditionalJewish prayer for the dead, by a group ofelderly rabbis.

“Will it save the four million [Jews stillalive in Europe]?” Hecht wrote on the eveof the opening. “I don’t know. Maybe wecan awaken some of the vacationinghearts in our government.”

Hecht was involved with a small groupof Jewish activists led by Hillel Kook, aZionist emissary from Palestine who oper-ated under the pseudonym PeterBergson. The Bergson Group bookedMadison Square Garden for the eveningof March 9 and set about trying to con-

vince the established Jewish organiza-tions to cosponsor We Will Never Die.

Bergson’s well-meaning attempt atJewish unity flopped. A meeting of repre-sentatives of several dozen Jewishgroups, hosted by Hecht, deteriorated intoshouting matches. It was an example of

what the historian Henry Feingold hasdescribed as the sad tendency of someJewish organizations to “allow themselvesthe luxury of fiddling while Jews burned.”

Hecht succeeded, however, in persuad-ing some of Hollywood’s most prominentJews to volunteer their services. ActorsEdward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, SylviaSydney, and Stella Adler assumed thelead roles; Kurt Weill composed an origi-nal score; Moss Hart agreed to serve asdirector; and famed impresario Billy Rosesigned on as producer.

It was Rose who decided to approachRoosevelt. Through White House

adviser David Niles, Rose asked the pres-ident for a “brief message” that could beread aloud at the pageant. Nothing bold orcontroversial, of course — something thatwould say “only that the Jews of Europewill be remembered when the time comesto make the peace.”

Rose assured the White House, “Thereis no political color to our MemorialService.”

But apparently even the very mention ofthe Jews was “political” in the eyes of offi-cial Washington. White House aideswarned the president that sending therequested message would be “a mistake.”Despite Rose’s assurance, “it is a fact thatsuch a message would raise a politicalquestion,” Henry Pringle of the Office ofWar Information advised.

What Pringle meant was that publicizingthe slaughter could raise the “political ques-tion” of how America was going to respondto the Nazi genocide. And since Roosevelthad decided the U.S. was not going to takeany specific steps to aid the Jews, raisingthat question would be embarrassing.Hence Rose was informed that the “stressand pressure” of the president’s schedulemade it impossible for FDR to provide thefew words of comfort and consolation theBergson Group sought.

None of this deterred the irrepressibleBen Hecht and his comrades from makingsure the show would go on. More than20,000 people jammed Madison SquareGarden on the frigid evening of March 9.Since there were so many people gath-ered on the sidewalks outside who wereunable to enter the packed hall, the castdecided to do a second performanceimmediately after the first. The secondshow, too, filled the Garden.

Editor and children’s book author Miriam

Chaikin, who at the time was a member ofthe Bergson Group’s office staff, attendedthe first performance. “The atmospherewas electric,” she recalled. “People in theaudience were stunned by the pageant —and by the whole idea of Jewish issuesbeing presented in such a place. In those

days, it just wasn’t done. It really broughthome the suffering of Europe’s Jews in avery powerful way, which really shookpeople up.”

“If there was a dry eye at MadisonSquare Garden Tuesday night, it wasn’tmine,” wrote reviewer Nick Kenny in theNew York City daily PM. “It was the mostpoignant pageant we have ever wit-nessed.”

The Bergson Group did, in fact, take theshow on the road. In the months to follow,We Will Never Die was performed beforesellout crowds in Chicago, Boston,Philadelphia, and Washington. All togeth-er, more than 100,000 Americans attend-ed the performances.

More than 200 members ofCongress, numerous members of

the international diplomatic corps(“ambassadors from everywhere,” Hechtcalled them), six justices of the SupremeCourt, and Eleanor Roosevelt attendedthe Washington event. It was not the firsttime the famously independent first ladyfailed to toe the president’s line.

Mrs. Roosevelt was so moved by theperformance that she devoted part of hernext syndicated column, “My Day,” to thepageant and the plight of Europe’s Jews.For millions of American newspaper read-ers, it was the first time they heard aboutthe Nazi mass murders.

Shattering the wall of silence surround-ing the Holocaust was the first crucial stepin the process of mobilizing the Americanpublic against the slaughter. Throughout1943, Bergson and Hecht organized aseries of public rallies, full-page newspa-per ads, and Capitol Hill lobbying effortsthat culminated in the introduction of acongressional resolution urging the cre-ation of a U.S. government agency to res-cue Jewish refugees. The public contro-versy caused by Congressional hearingson the resolution, combined with behind-the-scenes pressure from TreasuryDepartment officials, convinced PresidentRoosevelt to establish that agency, theWar Refugee Board, in January 1944.

The War Refugee Board’s activities,which included financing the rescue workof Raoul Wallenberg, helped save thelives of an estimated 200,000 people dur-ing the final 15 months of the war.Seventy years ago, We Will Never Diehelped set in motion the process that ledto the saving of those lives.

A HOLOCAUST PAGEANT THAT WAS

TOO “POLITICAL” FOR FDR

Hundreds of performers, including Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson, helped raise aware-

ness of the Holocaust as it unfolded by joining the cast of We Will Never Die.

The program cover for We Will Never Diebrought a Hollywood flair to real-life events.

(Continued from page 14)some of them were perceived by their

own children as being remote and cold.

Out of 30 women in this second-gen-

eration group who testified that their

parents were cold and distant, 20 of

them have teenage children who com-

plain of similar experiences with their

parents. The same dynamic was report-

ed by 14 children of 30 second-genera-

tion fathers.

Finally, the researchers identified a

tendency among second-generation

participants to try to please their par-

ents, and make them happy; this trait

has been passed along to third-genera-

tion teenagers.

As the researchers put it, “the child’s

need to worry about his or her parents’

happiness represents a way of trying to

draw closer to his or her parents.”

PROBLEMS AREN’T EXTREME

T he authors conclude that this new

study reinforces findings in previ-

ous research studies about the genera-

tional transference of Holocaust trauma.

Yet, while the personal narratives pro-

vided by second-generation participants

feature reports of deep emotional dis-

tress, this study did not find extreme

behavioral problems among the third-

generation teens. Scharf and

Mayseless claim that their findings have

important implications with respect to

the mental health of second- and third-

generation descendants.

They say that health care profession-

als should be aware of ways in which

trauma is passed along through genera-

tions. The findings were published in

November 2011, in the Qualitative

Health Research journal.

Scharf notes that “Holocaust trauma

includes extreme, difficult experiences,

and it bears mention that survivors did

everything they could to cope with these

experiences.

“A strong majority of them managed to

raise exemplary children and grandchil-

dren, and I am full of admiration for

them.”

The issue of intergenerational trans-

ference of trauma is controversial in

academia. In the 1980s, preliminary

findings about the impact of the

Holocaust upon the third generation

were presented by Dr. P.A. Rosenthal, a

child psychiatrist from New York, and

his wife Dr. S. Rosenthal.

The two called on the psychiatric com-

munity to develop a psychohistorical

approach to care for third-generation

descendants of Holocaust survivors.

A research study conducted five years

ago at the Ruppin Academic Center

argued that eating disorders among

third-generation female students can be

linked to eating problems suffered by

their second-generation mothers, and

also to the extent to which their grand-

parents exposed them to Holocaust

realities.

But a study published in June 2008 by

a team of Israeli researchers, headed

by Haifa University’s Prof. Avi Sagi-

Schwartz, cast doubt upon the influence

of the Holocaust upon third-generation

descendants.

NEW ISRAELI STUDY

FINDS SIGNS OF TRAUMA

IN GRANDCHILDREN OF

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

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Martyrdom & Resistance

Eli Zborowski, z”l,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) 220-4304

EDITORIAL BOARD

Eli Zborowski**

Marvin Zborowski

Mark Palmer

Sam Skura**

Israel Krakowski

William Mandell

Sam Halpern

Isidore Karten**Norman Belfer

Joseph Bukiet**

*1974-85, as Newsletter for the AmericanFederation of Jewish Fighters, CampInmates, and Nazi Victims**deceased