ELI ZBOROWSKI REMEMBERED (1925–2012) - … · ELI ZBOROWSKI REMEMBERED (1925–2012) ROCHEL AND...

IN THIS ISSUEWarsaw ghetto liquidation remembered in city...........................................................2The Boy: A Holocaust Story..............................................................................................4Chinese radio seeks Holocaust stories from former Jewish refugees........................5The man who saved 900 Jewish boys inside a death camp.........................................6Book urges Germans to quiz dying Nazi generation.....................................................7American and International Societies for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner.....8-9“Black Sabbath” and the Holocaust of Greek Jewry..................................................10The Turkish rescue nobody remembered.....................................................................11Playing to live..................................................................................................................12Dr. Seuss and the Holocaust in France.........................................................................13Pregnant in Auschwitz....................................................................................................16

Vol. 39-No.1 ISSN 0892-1571 September/October 2012-Tishri/Cheshvan 5773

ELI ZBOROWSKI REMEMBERED (1925–2012)ROCHEL AND GEORGE BERMAN

Eli Zborowski was a man of the mo-ment. Throughout his life, when he

found a need he could uniquely fulfill, hestepped in without hesitation. Whetherleading war orphans to safety, assuring thefuture of Holocaust education, or making acommercial product available, Eli rose tothe challenge. In the process, he enrichedthe lives of a great many people on fourcontinents. He was a cosmopolitan, athome in Poland, Germany, Israel, and LatinAmerica. He was at ease with politiciansand popes, workers and entrepreneurs. Inshort, Eli was a man for all seasons.

Eli’s open, liberal, and humanistic char-

acter stemmed from the environment in

which he was nurtured. He was the first

born child of Zisel and Moshe Zborowski

who lived in Žarki, Poland, not far from the

German border. Moshe Zborowski was a

very successful leather merchant and

Zisel, a homemaker. Their comfortable

one-story brick home was constantly open

to those in need. Yeshiva students came

daily to join the family for the noonday

meat meal, and there was rarely a Shab-

bat or a Yomtov that did not include less

fortunate members of the community at

the family table.

As a bright, handsome child who was the

favorite among the extended family, he

grew up feeling confident and self-assured.

His mother taught him to speak a perfect

Polish and the importance of gemilatchesed — acts of loving kindness. His fa-

ther provided him with business knowledge,

negotiating skills and moral strength. In the early fall of 1939, following a

leisurely fun-filled summer, the atmos-phere in Žarki was transformed into full-fledged war. Life was suddenly filled withdanger, uncertainty, and restrictions. Eli,only a teenager, became a member of theUnited Jewish Fighters Organization. Hisblond hair and blue eyes, a confiscatedPolish army jacket, and a false Polishpassport allowed him to pass easily as anon-Jew. He distributed the undergroundnewspaper about unfolding events to thesmall Jewish communities in southwestPoland. As he was familiar with the coun-tryside and neighboring towns, he was

later given the responsibility of seekingarms and ammunition for the resistance.Serving as a courier put him in mortaldanger. Eli’s family begged him to stop.He promised that he would, but he neverkept his promise. During the final years ofthe war, Zisel, Eli, and his two siblings,Marvin and Tzila, were hidden from theNazis by two Christian families. At thistime, Moshe Zborowski was assigned bythe Nazis to a work detail. In an attemptto escape, he was shot and was neveragain seen by his family.

Following the liberation in 1945, Elijoined a kibbutz in Warsaw, hoping tomake aliyah. Travelling in freight cars, thejourney was marked by many starts andstops. In Southern Germany they werestopped by Russians at a checkpoint andkept there for several weeks. One of thefreight cars carried a group of 100teenage war orphans whose leader hadsuddenly disappeared. Without dis-cussing this with anyone, Eli perceivedthat all the basic anchors of life had evap-orated from these children’s lives, and he

quickly stepped in to alleviate the crisis.He moved into that freight car and be-came the group’s leader, mentor, protec-tor, and father figure. He brought them tothe Feldafing DP camp, organized theminto a kibbutz, and provided them withshelter, food, and clothing. Within a yearhe arranged for the group to make aliyah.

Eli arrived in the United States in1952 with his wife, Diana, whom he

had met and married in Feldafing. Elibegan by selling camera parts door todoor in midtown Manhattan, and within adecade he became president of ShaefferPen Latin America. Diana, his loving wifefor 57 years, predeceased him in 2004.

In the mid-1970s he was responsiblefor opening the door to resumption ofdiplomatic relations between Israel andPoland following the Six-Day War. Eliwas in the forefront of Holocaust remem-brance in this country. His remarkablejourney led him to organize the first syn-agogue-based Yom Hashoah commem-oration in 1964; found the AmericanFederation of Jewish Fighters, Camp In-mates and Nazi Victims; establish theworld’s first academic chair in Holocauststudies at Yeshiva University; publishMartyrdom and Resistance, the firstnewspaper devoted to Holocaust issues;found and chair (1981) the American &International Societies for Yad Vashem,an organization that has remitted over$100 million to Yad Vashem; and estab-lish the Diana Zborowski Center for theStudy of the Aftermath of the Shoah atYad Vashem.

To ensure the memory of the Holocaustin the future, Eli spearheaded the YoungLeadership Associates of the AmericanSociety for Yad Vashem, a group that willshepherd the cause of remembrancefrom generation to generation.

He is survived by his wife, Dr. ElizabethMundlak Zborowski; his daughter Lilly;his son Murry; nine grandchildren; hisbrother Marvin; and his sister Tzila.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said,“Death is the end of doing, not the end ofbeing.” Eli Zborowski has ceased doingfor us, but he will live on in the hearts ofthe many people whose lives hetouched.

MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2012 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5773

Aceremony commemorating the liqui-dation of the Warsaw ghetto was

held in the city for the first time.It marked the 70th anniversary of the day

that the Germans began mass deporta-tions of Jews to Treblinka, on July 22,

1942. More than 250,000 people were de-ported to the Nazi death camp.

Israel’s deputy minister of education,

Menachem Eliezer Mozes, at the cere-

mony quoted excerpts from the diary of Hil-

lel Seidman, who wrote about the under-

ground yeshivas and the involvement of

Orthodox Jews in armed resistance in the

ghetto.

Pawel Spiewak of the Jewish Historical

Institute said that children were the great-

est victims of the Holocaust.

“Only 500 children survived in Warsaw

after the ‘Great Action,’“ he said.

Later, a march of remembrance passed

through the streets of Warsaw. Several

hundred people from Poland and Israel

walked on the road opposite the one on

which Janusz Korczak went with the chil-

dren from his orphanage instead of saving

himself from certain death. From Um-schlagplatz, the site of the deportation,

the marchers continued to the site of Ko-

rczak’s orphanage.

At the end of the march Rabbi Michael

Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland, said

that “We are not the same people we

were an hour ago. We have this march of

remembrance, march for life, and we

must remember not the perpetrators but

the victims.”

WARSAW GHETTO LIQUIDATION REMEMBERED IN CITY

A woman attaches a ribbon with Jewish names

onto the fence of a former Jewish orphanage in

Warsaw, Poland, during commemorations

marking the 70th anniversary of the first trans-

port of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Tre-blinka death camp.

Lithuania has concluded the firstphase of a study aimed at identifying

over a thousand Lithuanians suspected ofkilling Jews in the Baltic state during theHolocaust.

Terese Birute Burauskaite, head of theVilnius-based Genocide and ResistanceResearch Center, told Agence FrancePresse she will make a full list of sus-pected war criminals available to justiceauthorities.

“Historians have reviewed 4,268 namesmentioned publicly. Following our investi-gations, it was reduced to 1,034 people,”Burauskaite told AFP, adding she expectedthat number to double as the investigationis completed by the end of next year.

“Our historians believe there could havebeen around two thousand people (inLithuania) who murdered Jews” duringWorld War II, Burauskaite said.

“These are people who probably held thegun in their hand,” she stressed.

A five-member team launched the inves-tigation in 2010 after an Israeli Web sitepublished a list of possible war criminals,

including respected top anti-Soviet fight-ers, causing outrage in Lithuania.

Burauskaite said historians found no ev-idence that the leaders of the 50,000-strong Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistancemovement in 1944–1953 could have par-ticipated in the Holocaust.

Researchers say it is up to prosecutorsto decide whether the list will be made pub-lic.

A majority of those on it were alreadysentenced by Soviet authorities, some todeath, and Lithuania “has no informationthat any murderer of Jews is now living inLithuania,” Burauskaite said.

Under the Nazi occupation of Lithuaniain 1941–1944, around 195,000 LithuanianJews perished at the hands of the Nazisand local collaborators.

No more than 5–10% of the country’spre-war Jewish population of over 200,000survived the Holocaust.

Dubbed the “Jerusalem of the North,”prior to WWII Lithuania’s capital Vilniuswas a major hub of Jewish culture andlearning.

LITHUANIA TRACKS HOLOCAUST WAR CRIME SUSPECTS

According to a UJA study conductedlast year, 23 percent of Brooklyn’s

2.4 million residents are Jewish, includingan estimated 9,000 Holocaust survivors,the largest survivor population outside ofIsrael. Kings County is the heart of NewYork City’s Orthodox Jewish community,with enclaves in neighborhoods such asBorough Park, Flatbush, and CrownHeights. Now, New York’s most Jewishborough will also include its own Holocaustmuseum, geared towards religious Jews.

“Jewish children in Brooklyn aren’t get-ting much exposure to the Holocaust,” ex-plained the new center’s director, RabbiSholom Friedmann. “A museum in such aJewish-heavy area makes sense.”

The Kleinman Family Holocaust Educa-tion Center is anticipated to be opened nextyear as Brooklyn’s first Holocaust museum,as well as the first Holocaust museum in theworld to focus exclusively on OrthodoxJews. According to the center’s Web site,the mission of the Kleinman Family Holo-caust Education Center is “transmitting anappreciation of the spiritual and moral hero-ism” of the Jewish victims.

The center’s building is four stories highand consists of a museum, a research li-brary, and an interview room where theelderly can chronicle their experiencesfrom the war. City officials are requestingfamilies whose relatives were victims of theHolocaust to donate relics such as photo-

graphs and paperwork from the Nazi era.The museum is also collecting religious ar-tifacts from the Holocaust, including books,Torah scrolls, and ritual garments such astalleisim, or prayer shawls.

The donations were “primarily from Bor-

ough Park,” according to the center’s de-

signer, David Layman.

The faith and religious devotion of the

victims is a recurring theme that will be

shown throughout the museum. Rabbinical

rulings and responsa written in the ghettos

and camps will be on display at the mu-

seum, including a ruling which permitted

Jews in the ghettos to eat non-kosher food.

“The Orthodox were singled out. They

were more noticeably Jewish,” explained

Rabbi Friedmann.

One elderly Washington Heights woman

recently donated her German visa from

January 1939 showing that she was one of

the last Jews to escape the country.

“These facts need to be documented, so

that there is no question that this war really

happened,” said Norman Gold, 55, a

Crown Heights resident who is donating

his parents’ marriage certificate. “It is criti-

cal that the next generation is brought up

knowing about this.” Gold’s parents were

the first Jewish couple to be married at the

displacement camp in Landsberg, Ger-

many, just a few months after the Nazis

were defeated in 1945.

HOLOCAUST MUSEUM WITH FOCUS ON ORTHODOX JEWSTO OPEN IN BROOKLYN NEXT SPRING

German prosecutors have launchedan investigation into a 91-year-old

man suspected of taking part in a 1942massacre of over 300 Jews from the Zhy-tomyr ghetto in Ukraine, a local daily re-ported.

“There is suspicion that this man is guiltyof involvement in the murder of 360 peo-ple,” spokeswoman Petra Hertwig for theCottbus prosecutor’s office told theMarkische Allgemeine daily, according tothe AFP.

“We’re looking into whether there is alsomaterial for other investigations,” sheadded, without revealing details.

The man, referred to only as Herbert N.,belonged to the SS commando suspectedof having killed Jews, including womenand children, from the Zhytomyr ghetto.

In October 1942, 60 Jews from theghetto were driven in trucks to a forest ap-proximately 15 kilometers (nine miles) fromZhytomyr in central Ukraine, where six

German soldiers killed them and tossedtheir remains into a mass grave.

The following month 30 other soldiersfrom the commando massacred 300 moreJews in similar circumstances by shootingthem in groups of 60, according to thedaily.

One of the major obstacles facing the in-vestigation lies in the difficulty of roundingup witnesses 70 years after the massacre.The first witness to report the slaughter in1947 was a prisoner of war in the then-So-viet Union and died in 1971.

In 1985, the prosecutor’s office in thewestern city of Wiesbaden abandoned pro-ceedings against the head of the unit re-sponsible for the massacres amid doubtsover the truth of witness testimony, accord-ing to the AFP.

Herbert N.’s name first surfaced whenthe state body tasked with uncovering Nazicriminals was searching for witnesses inanother case.

Astudy, released recently, recorded

389 incidents of anti-Semitism in

France in 2011, compared to 466 in 2010,

making it the lowest number in ten years.

However, the number of violent anti-Se-

mitic incidents remained the same as that

recorded in 2010, and there was even a

rise in the severity of the violence.

The main source of the drop in recorded

anti-Semitic incidents was owing to the de-

cline in malicious graffiti and slanderous let-

ters. The number of recorded attacks stood

at 127, which mainly included damage to

property, vandalism, and direct violent at-

tacks. The report also recorded 144 cases

of malicious threats, threatening actions,

and curses, and 46 anti-Semitic publica-

tions. About 50% of the total number of anti-

Semitic incidents occurred in greater Paris.

Christophe Bigot, the French ambassador

to Israel, said in a press conference that the

French government has made a great effort

to defeat the phenomenon, and has taken

action via the police and educators. He

added that there is still work to be done.

Bigot also said the French government

has been waging a merciless campaign

against anti-Semitism for the last few

years. In 2003, France passed a law that

imposes harsh penalties on people who

commit racist or anti-Semitic attacks, and

in 2004 government approved a plan to

upgrade security for Jewish religious and

cultural institutions. Thorough work is also

being conducted in France’s education in-

dustry, with an emphasis on Holocaust

awareness, in cooperation with the Holo-

caust museum in Paris.

ANTI-SEMITISM IN FRANCE DROPS IN 2011, STUDY SHOWS

Nearly 1,500 Latvians paid tribute inMarch to soldiers who fought in Nazi

Germany’s Waffen SS divisions, whilenearby Russians held a counterprotest torecall war crimes committed against Jewsand other minorities.

For many Latvians the annual proces-sion from a Lutheran cathedral to theFreedom Monument in downtown Riga,the capital, is a memorial event for Lat-vian SS soldiers, known as Legionnaires,who fought for independence duringWorld War II.

However, Latvia’s minority Russians,who make up about one-third of the na-tion’s 2.1 million people, consider the cer-emony an insult to the millions whofought and died in the struggle againstNazi Germany.

“The only possibility to fight for therestoration of Latvia’s independence wasin the Legion,” said Alriks Vebers, 44, aLatvian who came to lay flowers in honorof a great-uncle who fought in the WaffenSS. “And the Latvians didn’t have a choicein the division’s name.”

Latvia, which gained its independenceafter World War I, was occupied by the So-viet Union in 1940, then by Nazi Germany ayear later, and again by the Soviets in 1944.The country regained its independence in1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed.

About 250,000 Latvians fought alongsideeither the Germans or the Soviets — andsome 150,000 Latvians died in the fighting.

Nearly 80,000 Jews, or 90 percent ofLatvia’s prewar Jewish population, werekilled in 1941–42, two years before the

formation of the Latvian Waffen SS unit— which some Latvians claim shows theunit could not have played a role in theHolocaust.

Today, Latvia’s government distances it-self from the ceremony, but many see it asa sign that Latvia has failed to acknowl-edge a dark page in its history.

“This is a state-sponsored legitimizationof fascism,” said Dovid Katz, a Yiddishscholar based in Vilnius, Lithuania, point-ing to some lawmakers’ support of the cer-emony. “The worst of European history isbeing glorified here.”

LATVIANS PAY ANNUAL TRIBUTE TO WAFFEN SS FIGHTERS

An elderly Latvian takes part in a ceremony to

honor soldiers who fought in a Waffen SS unit

during World War II.

GERMANY INVESTIGATES NAZI FOR MASSACRE OF UKRAINIAN JEWS

September/October 2012 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE

The Conference on Jewish MaterialClaims Against Germany, which ad-

ministers Holocaust reparations from Ger-many, said that it would give $272,000 for2012 to the Central Board of Jewish Com-munities in Greece for social services toNazi victims. The Claims Conference hadprovided $86,000 in 2011.

Some 5,000 Jews are living in Greece,including more than 500 Holocaust sur-vivors who have seen their living condi-tions and social services deterioraterapidly as the country struggles with thefifth year of a harsh recession.

Government pensions have beenslashed, income from property rentals hasfallen significantly, and there have beensteep tax hikes and price rises. At thesame time, state social services and med-ical assistance have been significantly re-duced.

“Today’s economic crisis has made thesesurvivors more vulnerable than ever at atime in their lives when they most needaid,” Gregory Schneider, executive vicepresident of the Claims Conference, wrotein a report on the new assistance.

“The Claims Conference is taking dra-matic and immediate action to help easetheir situation as much as possible and toprevent a crisis from becoming a catastro-phe for this vulnerable population.”

Greece’s prewar community of about78,000, most of whom lived in the northernport city of Thessaloniki, was nearly wipedout entirely in the Holocaust.

The Claims Conference also said that withthe rise of the Golden Dawn party — a fas-cist party with a Nazi swastika-like flag andHolocaust-denying leader — it also wouldfund an educational program on anti-Semi-tism for the first time in Greece.

An allocation of nearly $120,000 will goto the Jewish Museum of Greece, which isestablishing a program on anti-Semitismthat includes a traveling classroom versionof the museum’s exhibit.

“For survivors in Greece, already grap-pling with the catastrophic consequencesof the government austerity plan, theemergence of this party adds another di-mension to the upheaval that has alreadymade their old age more difficult,” Schnei-der wrote.

CLAIMS CONFERENCE STEPS UP AID TO GREEK HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

BY HOWARD PORTNOY, EXAMINER

Areport by Britain’s Department forEducation and Skills notes that an

increasing number of schools are droppingthe teaching of the Holocaust from historylessons to avoid offending Muslim stu-dents. The report, titled Teaching Emotiveand Controversial History, also observesthat many teachers arereluctant to discuss theCrusades because thelessons frequently con-tradict what is taught inlocal mosques.

It gets worse. Thewebsite Family SecurityMatters reports:

“In an effort to counter‘Islamophobia’ in Britishschools, teachers noware required to teach‘key Muslim contributions such as algebraand the number zero’ in math and sciencecourses, even though the concept of zerooriginated in India.”

The article further notes that 30 non-Muslim students at Parkview PrimarySchool in Scotland were required to visit amosque in Glasgow. During the two-hour-long field trip, in April of 2012, the childrenwere instructed in the practice of wudhu,ritual washing to make the supplicant wor-

thy of prayer before Allah. Family SecurityMatters maintains that the students werealso instructed in the recitation of the sha-hada, the Islam declaration of faith, whichstates, “There is no god but Allah and Mo-hammed is his messenger.”

Muslim leaders are demanding that Is-lamic preachers be sent to every school inScotland to teach children about Islam, os-

tensibly in an effort tocounter negative atti-tudes about Muslims.

In London, 85 of 90schools have imple-mented “no pork” poli-cies, reflecting anationwide trend to-ward banning pork fromlunch menus, all onceagain to avoid offend-ing Muslim students.

The question thatnaturally arises is whether any of thisbend-over-backward pandering would betaking place had the hijackers who com-mandeered the four jetliners used as mis-siles on September 11, 2001 beenanything other than Muslim. Taking an al-ternate hypothesis — that the attacks hadbeen carried out by, say, murderous Zion-ists — would New York City public schoolsbe mandating the teaching of Hebrew ingrades 2 through 5?

BRITISH SCHOOLS DROP HOLOCAUST FROM HISTORY LESSONS SO AS NOT TO OFFEND MUSLIMS

Elementary school students in Scotland

visit the Bait ur Rehman Mosque.

More than 1,000 people gathered atRostov-on-Don, which 70 years ago

witnessed the worst Holocaust atrocity inRussia.

Wearing arm bands marked with a Starof David, the crowd marched to the massgrave of approximately 27,000 people ex-ecuted by German soldiers near the city in1942. Most of the victims were Jewish, ac-cording to the Russian Jewish Congress.

Leading the procession was Rabbi MeirLau, a Holocaust survivor and former chiefrabbi of Israel.

Last year the memorial site became thesubject of a legal fight between Kanner’sorganization and local government. TheRussian Jewish Congress petitioned thecourt about a memorial plaque that city of-

ficials had placed last November at thecity’s Zmievskaya Balka mass grave thatnoted “mass killing by the fascists of cap-tured Soviet citizens.” It replaced a plaquefrom 2004 that did mention the Holocaust.

A ruling on the matter is expected laterthis year, according to Matvey Chlenov, theRJC’s deputy executive director. Chlenovtold JTA that city officials wrote a memowarning that mentioning the Holocaustcould lead to “ethnic unrest.”

“We believe the new plaque is a parodymore than any case of anti-Semitism or de-liberate Holocaust obfuscation,” Chlenovsaid. “We nonetheless believe the originalplaque at Zmievskaya Balka must be re-stored. It’s a matter of basic recognition ofthe identity of the victims.”

HUNDREDS GATHER TO MARK MASSIVE HOLOCAUST POGROM IN RUSSIA

Antwerp Mayor Patrick Janssens an-nounced plans to build a monument

to commemorate the Belgian city’s Jewsmurdered in the Holocaust.

“It is unacceptable that unlike other Eu-ropean cities, the municipality of Antwerphas never erected a single monument inmemory of the history” of the Holocaust,Janssens said at a City Hall ceremonycommemorating the 70th anniversary ofthe first deportation of Antwerp’s Jews.

The city’s only monument to the Holo-caust was at the initiative of the Forum ofJewish Organizations, which representsFlemish Jews, Janssens said.

Janssens announced the plans to erecta monument and engrave into it the nameof every Antwerp Jew known to have beenmurdered in the Holocaust.

In addition, he said, the municipality willsoon unveil a memorial plaque at City Hallwith the proposed text acknowledging thecomplicity of Antwerp’s municipal authori-ties in the deportation of the city’s Jews.

According to the proposed text, thetransports were “organized by the Nazis inclose cooperation with the municipal au-thorities [which were] in charge of the po-lice. Dozens of policemen were involved.Most cooperated obediently, some exer-cised violence. A few policemen resisted,and sabotaged the August 27 transport.Others tried to save Jews.”

The text also says that more than 10,000Jews from Antwerp were deported, andthat the police were involved in the deten-tion of more than 3,000. “Almost all of thedeportees perished in Auschwitz-Birke-nau,” it reads.

Eli Ringer, honorary chairman of theForum of Jewish Organizations, called theceremony “impressive.”

He added, “Complicity of local authoritieswas a complex issue. On the one hand, therewas widespread cooperation on the part ofLeo Delwaide, who was mayor then. On theother, we have testimonies that he personallyhelped some Jews save themselves.”

ANTWERP TO BUILD HOLOCAUST MONUMENT NAMING CITY’S VICTIMS

Some 50 descedants of Nazi SS andWehrmacht took part in a “reconcili-

ation march” with Holocaust survivorsthrough Poland’s extermination camps.

Their relatives massacred the Jews, andnow they are marching together with Holo-caust survivors to commemorate thetragedy.

Over 50 members of the German dele-gation are descendants of members ofWehrmacht, police, or SS, who were di-rectly involved in the annihilation of Eu-rope’s Jews. They joined together with thesurvivors in a “reconciliation march” thatmade stops at Poland’s exterminationcamps.

The 420 participants met at theAuschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp,the starting point of the march which wentthrough Treblinka, Kielce, Warsaw, Sobi-bor, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Belzec. Amemorial ceremony was held at each ofthe sites.

At the opening ceremony, one of the de-scendants of a Nazi SS officer asked forforgiveness for her grandfather, an electri-cian who installed the electrified barbedwire fence at Auschwitz-Birkenau andwired the camp’s gas chambers.

Other descendants spoke at the openingceremony in an effort to try to begin to rec-

tify the unspeakable bitterness that dividesthe two peoples.

The idea to hold the event was raised lastyear during a convention in honor of the aidoffered by evangelical Christian groups toHolocaust victims. Deputy Speaker of theKnesset Lia Shemtov (Yisrael Beiteinu), who

was behind the Knesset convention, wasrepresenting Israel in the march.

The main ceremony took place in Warsaw.Shemtov said she was very excited to be thekeynote speaker at the event. “These are in-credible teenagers who discovered theirtragic connection with the Jewish peopleand decided to follow this truth while seekingforgiveness and absolution from the Holo-caust survivors,” she noted.

NAZIS’ DESCENDANTS MARCH WITH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

In what the Holocaust Claims Confer-ence is calling a “historic breakthrough,”

the German government has decided topay restitution to victims of Nazi Germanynow living in the former Soviet Union.

The group of 80,000 living survivors ofthe German genocide attempt had neverreceived any compensation.

Former US Ambassador to the EuropeanUnion Stuart Eizenstat, the Claims Confer-ence’s Special Negotiator, praised Ger-many for “its willingness, so long afterWorld War II, and in such challenging eco-nomic times today, to acknowledge its stillongoing historic responsibility.” The Chair-man of the Claims Conference claimed thegroup has been working for decades to getthe country to pay restitution to this groupof victims.

The compensation package comes justdays after a German court’s decision toban ritual circumcisions, halting one of themost fundamental practices of Jewish faith

and raising an uproar of protest throughoutthe Jewish world.

Estimates are that the new compensa-tion package will be worth approximately$300 million.

Most of the money will come from theHardship Fund, and will consist of one-time payments of approximately $3,150 toJews who fled the Nazis during their east-ward push. Applications for Jews fromUkraine, Russia, and other non-EuropeanUnion countries in Eastern Europe willbegin November 1.

Victims from the east will also now re-ceive as much restitution as victims fromwestern countries – approximately $370per month.

Germany also decided to relax eligibilityrules for those who receive restitution pay-ments for being forced to go into hiding. El-igibility had only been for those who wentinto hiding for at least 12 months. Now theeligibility threshold will be six months.

GERMANS TO PAY HOLOCAUST RESTITUTION TO FORMER SOVIET UNION VICTIMS

Participants in the “reconciliation march” in

Auschwitz-Birkenau.

B O O K R E V I E W SB O O K R E V I E W S MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2012 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5773

The Boy: A Holocaust Story.By Dan Porat. Hill and Wang: New York,

New York, 2010. 262 pp. $11.76 paper-back.

REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN

Photographs capture a moment.Looking back on them, though, we

instinctively “fill in” the “before” and “after”of them. In sum, we recall what was hap-pening at that particular time with that boyor girl, man or woman, with us in the pic-ture. We move on to remember where theycame from. We think about all they did intheir lives and, hopefully, are doing. In-deed, the culmination of our efforts gives“life” to the picture, regardless of whetherthose in it are in this world or the next!

But what of the photographs taken wherethose looking only see the moment? Whatof the photographs taken where no one re-ally knows, or barely knows, the people inthem — who they are, where they are,what happened to them then, earlier, orlater? Who tells the story behind these “or-phaned” pictures? And when it comes tothe Holocaust, sadly, there are so very,very many!

Dan Porat, in his unique volume entitledThe Boy: A Holocaust Story, has taken onthis burden when it comes to an iconicphotograph — an “orphaned” picture — ofthe Holocaust period. It is a photographwe have all seen. It graces Porat’s bookjacket. It is the heart-wrenching image thatforegrounds the little Jewish boy with hishands up, accompanied by other haplessJews captured and then most all — if not

all — of them killed by the relentless Nazisin their murderous liquidation of the War-saw ghetto.

How does Porat go about giving thisimage its deserved story? He traces thelives of five individuals who are either di-rectly responsible for the moment capturedby the camera, have actually been identi-fied as being in the photo-graph, or may very well bein the photograph. Amongthe five he closely exam-ines are the lives of SSgeneral Jürgen Stroop, theNazi responsible for thehellish finality of the entireWarsaw ghetto; and JosefBlösche, an SS officer, andhis SS comrade, HeinrichKlaustermeyer, who werenicknamed “the twoFrankensteins” by theghetto population. Whenthey entered the Warsawghetto, death accompaniedthem. Both Blösche andKlaustermeyer are in the photograph.Blösche is the SS man pointing a machinegun at the boy. Klaustermeyer stands“slightly behind him and to his right.” Fi-nally, Porat tries his best to identify the littleJewish boy in this iconic image.

Thus, when it comes to Stroop, we readabout how this lowly clerk, drawn to theomnipotent power offered those whojoined the Nazi party and especially its SS,attained endless promotion, recognition,and special favor in the eyes of Heinrich

Himmler because of his raw brutality. Be-cause of this special favor, Himmler sentStroop to Warsaw to supervise the head ofthe SS there, Dr. Ferndinand von Sam-mern-Frankenegg, in his liquidation of theghetto. With Stroop there Himmler knewfor certain the job would get done! And, infact, Stroop did quickly replace von Sam-

mern-Frankenegg, whowas unable to do it! Finally,Stroop, proud of his work inthe ghetto, authored the125 -page report — TheJewish Quarter of WarsawIs No More! — sent to hissuperiors. The report in-cluded fifty-two photos, in-cluding the one which is thesubject of Porat’s volumehere under review. Its cap-tion read: “‘Pulled from thebunkers by force.’” Inter-estingly, in later years thisreport would help condemnhim.

In 1939 Josef Blösche(an individual actually in

the above noted photo), a Sudeten-Ger-man and an early activist in the Sudeten-German party, eagerly jumped at theopportunity to train as a policeman in thelocal SS. Fighting Germany’s enemiessounded much more exciting than workingthe family farm or being a waiter at his fa-ther’s inn. In short, by 1941, he was amember of an Einsatzkommando in theSoviet Union capturing and soon killing“Jews, Gypsies and Soviet sympathizers.”

Not long after that, he was posted to War-saw and then the Warsaw ghetto, where“on April 18, 1942, the Gestapo command-ers assigned Blösche to a special missionwith division IV-B4 (the division headed byEichmann and responsible for the arrestand deportation of Jews).” By the timeStroop arrived in Warsaw in 1943,Blösche, known for his cruel sadism, had“wholeheartedly” participated in theghetto’s demise, most especially in numer-ous mass executions. In later years, hetoo would pay for these crimes . . .

As regards research on the unidentifiedboy in the photo, Porat writes about a boywho would have been the right age. He,too, survived terrors unimaginable. He losthis mother. He lost his father. Cared for byhis uncle and aunt, he was in Warsaw fora time. At one point, the boy, now a grownman, remembers raising his arms in fright-ened surrender to the Nazis. But is he theboy in the photo . . . now a surgeon? Evenhe isn’t sure. Then again, when it comesto the boy in the photo, does it really mat-ter? Isn’t he every Jewish child who livedduring that terrible time . . .who lived ordied?

In sum, just from these examples, onecan see that Porat goes far in givingbreadth and depth to this iconic photo. Hesurely gives it much more life and storythan it had. Indeed, he succeeds in givingthis “orphaned” picture a home with us all.

Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Media,Communication, and Visual Arts at PaceUniversity.

THE BOY: A HOLOCAUST STORY

Courage was my only option: The Auto-biography of Roman Kent.

By Roman Kent. Vantage Press, 2008.384 pp. $26.95 hardcover.

REVIEWED BY MICHAEL BERENBAUM

A new type of Holocaust literature hasemerged over the last few years: survivorsmemoirs written by men and women whowere children during the Holocaust. Thosewho were eighteen when they survived arenow eighty; those who wereyounger have now enteredtheir retirement years andhave the time to reflect andlook back. Because theywere young when they sur-vived, many had the opportu-nity to resume theirinterrupted education in theUnited States or Canada. Incoming years, it is likely wewill be reading the works ofpeople who were younger andyounger during the Naziyears. We are likely to seevivid recollections of theirhomes, somewhat less precise memoriesof the Shoah itself, and much space de-voted to its aftermath.

Survivors — adults and children –tend to divide their memoirs into

three distinct chapters: Before, During andAfter. Even in this exceptional memoir,Roman Kent follows the pattern of hispeers. His memoir is a Holocaust story andso much more.

A child of affluence, he was the son of amajor Lodz manufacturer who employedmany non-Jews in his factories and who

enjoyed friendships and good working re-lationships with them. His father’s skillsand his relationships were to preserve thefamily, at least for a time.

Roman, né Kniker, devotes the initialchapters to his life before the ghettobegan, and they are a vivid portrayal offamily life. It was a self-described happylife before. That life ended with the Ger-man invasion of September 1, 1939, whichendangered all Poles – Jews and non-

Jews – and imperiled the lifeof Jews in ways that theycould not imagine.

Invasion was followed bypersecution and then ghet-toization. In the case ofLodz, the ghetto was ruledwith an iron hand by Morde-cai Chaim Rumkowski, whothought he could save mostJews, but only if some Jewswere sacrificed in order tosave more. Unlike otherghetto leaders, Rumkowskisacrificed those most vul-nerable, those least capable

of working – the young and the old – andallowed, or even facilitated, their deporta-tion to Chelmno, the death camp wheregassing began on December 8, 1941.

To Kent’s credit, that is not the story hetells. Still a child, he was not a privilegedor even an astute observer of the ghetto,and writes compellingly of his own experi-ence within it. He has also repressed hismemories at critical points. For example,he is able to describe how his father diedin the ghetto but cannot recall his own feel-

(Continued on page 14)

COURAGE WAS MY ONLY OPTION

Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Hench-men Fled Justice.

By Gerald Steinacher. Oxford UniversityPress, 2012. 416pp. $34.95, hardcover.

REVIEWED BY ROBERT GERWARTH

On July 14, 1950, a German “techni-cian” whose forged papers declared

him to be “Ricardo Klement” arrived in Ar-gentina. Despite his disguise, the Argen-tinean authorities were wellaware that “Mr. Klement” was,in fact, Adolf Eichmann, theman responsible for coordinat-ing the eastward deportationsof millions of European Jewsto extermination camps duringthe second World War. Eich-mann was not the only seniorNazi official who managed toescape prosecution by fleeingto South America: severalother serious war criminals, in-cluding the former Auschwitzcamp doctor, Josef Mengele,had similarly evaded justiceand left behind their old lives for a fresh,carefree existence in the New World.

The story of fugitive “Nazis on the run” isnot really a new one, but it has been sub-ject to numerous elisions and distortionsever since it first came to the world’s atten-tion in the 1960s. According to the mostwidely known conspiracy theory about themass escape of Nazis to South America –first circulated by the Nazi hunter SimonWiesenthal and then popularized by Fred-erick Forsyth’s best-selling thriller The

Odessa File – these flights were organizedby a secret society of ex-SS men namedODESSA (Organization of Former SSMembers), which paid for forged visas andtravel costs with money stolen from theirJewish victims.

In his new book, Nazis on the Run, theAustrian historian Gerald Steinacher de-constructs this version of events. After sixyears of intensive research on the subject,

Steinacher concludes thatODESSA never really ex-isted as a centrally organ-ized network. Instead, heoffers a detailed and chillinganalysis of the three organi-zations that were in factlargely responsible for facili-tating the escape of Germanwar criminals: the Interna-tional Red Cross, theCatholic Church, and theAmerican CIA. Steinacheremphasizes from the startthat the motivations of thisunlikely coalition of escape

route facilitators can only be understoodagainst the backdrop of the start of theCold War, during which Communismseemed a much more pressing problemthan prosecuting former Nazis, howeverimplicated they were in the Holocaust.

The CIA’s attitude towards ex-Nazis –and in particular to former SS “intelligenceexperts” – was essentially pragmatic: afterGermany had been defeated and relationswith the USSR had begun to deteriorate,


THE CHURCH, THE RED CROSS, AND THE NAZIS’ GREAT ESCAPE


For decades, nobody really talkedabout them: the thousands of Poles,

mostly Roman Catholics, who risked theirlives during World War II to save Jewishfriends, neighbors, and even strangers.

Those discovered by the Germans wereexecuted quickly, often with their entirefamilies. And then, under Communism,there was silence. The Jew-ish survivors would sendletters and gifts in gratitude.But the Polish state ignoredthem. The rescuers them-selves kept quiet, out ofmodesty, or shame, or fearof anti-Semitism. Some-times they worried gift pack-ages from the West wouldarouse the jealousy ofneighbors in a period ofeconomic deprivation.

“It wasn’t considered any-thing to be proud of,” saidEwa Ligia Zdanowicz, an81-year-old whose parentshid a Jewish teenage girl intheir home during the war.

That era is over.A moving gathering of

dozens of the rescuers in July in Warsawshows just how much has changed inPoland in the 23 years since Communismfell. Dozens of Polish rescuers were cele-brated and dined over a kosher lunch in an

upscale hotel where Jewish representa-tives took turns praising them in speechesfor their heroism.

The rescuers themselves deny that theyare exceptional. With each other, they dis-cuss other things, often their failing health,avoiding memories of executions andother brutality that they witnessed and

which still bring them totears.

“We did what we had todo,” said Halina Sza-szkiewicz, 89. “There wasnothing heroic about it.”

But the Jewish officialshonoring them see it differ-ently.

“You, the righteous of theworld, think your behaviorwas ordinary, but we allknow it was somethingmore than that. It was trulyextraordinary,” StanleeStahl, the executive vicepresident of the JewishFoundation for the Right-eous, the group that organ-ized the luncheon, toldthem in a speech.

Those in attendance have all been rec-ognized by Israel’s Yad Vashem as “Right-eous Among the Nations,” non-Jewssometimes referred to colloquially as“Righteous Gentiles.”

These days it isn’t just grateful Jews whoremember. The Polish state also honorsand celebrates them, as appreciationgrows for Poland’s vanished Jewish com-

munity– the largest in the world before theHolocaust. The Polish state also cele-brates their heroism now, after decades ofignoring them, considering it long overduerecognition befitting a democratic nation.

But it’s also clear that officials seize withpride on this historical chapter to fight thestereotype of Poland as an anti-Semiticcountry – a label that is painful to manyPoles and which carries some truth, butalso masks a hugely complex reality.

Many Jews today still remember anti-Semitism that their families suffered inPoland, not just from Germans – who car-ried out the Holocaust – but also fromPoles whom they had lived alongside for

centuries. Yet Poland also produced thegreatest number of rescuers. To date,more than 6,350 non-Jews in Poland havebeen recognized by Yad Vashem, morethan any other country, Israeli AmbassadorZvi Rav-Ner said.

Yad Vashem’s statistics show that afterPoland, the Netherlands has the greatest-number of “righteous” – 5,204 – followedby France’s 3,513.

Rav-Ner travels around Poland to bestowYad Vashem’s “Righteous Among the Na-tions” award on newly recognized rescuers,and he has observed how Poles have be-come less and less afraid of having theirwartime actions being made public. In ahandful of cases, people asked to have quietceremonies at the Israeli embassy ratherthan public events in their communities. Butthis is increasingly a rare exception.

“Now most are proud to have it madepublic. That’s the big change,” Rav-Nersaid. “Before, people did go to Israel andmet the people they saved, but in a hushedway. I wouldn’t say secretive, but theydidn’t make it public.”

The gathering was tinged with a sadawareness that the number of the rescuersis dwindling. At the last such gathering, in2010, 75 of them showed up, but nowthere were only about 55.

Stahl said that in the meantime, somehave died, while others are now simply tooweak to leave their homes.

OUT OF THE SHADOW, POLISH RESCUERS OF JEWS CELEBRATE HERO’S HONOR

Ewa Ligia Zdanowicz, an 81-year-

old whose parents hid a Jewish

girl during World War II.

Israeli Ambassador Zvi Rav-Ner in Poland speaks

to representatives of dozens of elderly Poles who

helped save Jews during World War II.

BY REVITAL BLUMENFELD, HAARETZ

In December 1938, just weeks afterKristallnacht in Germany, Dr. Ernst

Michaelis left his home in Silesia for ameeting of the government health councilin Berlin. Like other Jews in Germany, hewanted to get his family out of the country,and sought to immigrate to a countrywhere his medical services were needed.

“We wanted to flee to the United Statesbut that wasn’t an option. The immigrationquota had already been filled,” Michaelis’daughter, Marianna Barli, said this week.“The British didn’t permit immigration to Is-rael, even though we had family there.They said Harbin, in Manchuria, was look-ing for a doctor, and Father signed a con-tract with the local hospital immediately.”

Barli said the family boarded a luxury Ital-ian liner in March 1939 for Shanghai, butwhen they arrived they discovered theManchurian authorities had closed theirborders. The Michaelis family was insteadbrought to Tianjin, China, where physi-cians were in short supply.

China Radio International wants tobroadcast stories such as the Michaelisfamily’s story. To that end, station officialsrecently invited former residents of Chinawho now live in Israel to enter “My ChineseExperience,” a story competition.

CRI broadcasts to more than 40 nationsaround the world; its Israeli news websiteis the first official Chinese media outlet inHebrew. The station has already receivedseveral stories from Israelis describingtheir Holocaust-era experiences in China.The winner, who will be announced thissummer, will receive a “heritage” tour toChina with his or her family, courtesy ofCRI. Officials at the radio station say themain purpose of the project is tostrengthen the ties between the Chineseand Israeli peoples, as well as to document

and preserve the remnants of the largestimmigrant group in China during thewartime period.

Barli, 81, the only child of Dr. Michaelisand his wife Gertrude, was just eight whenshe arrived in China, but she still clearly re-members the colorful sights, the fragrantsmells of spices, and the unimaginablechange to her life.

“I had a happy childhood,” Barli related.“I went to a Jewish school in the city’s Eng-lish quarter, where I made friends, some ofwhom I am still in touch with. We swam inthe summer and ice-skated in the winter,”she said.

“We had lots of rice, chicken, andeggrolls at home, because our manservantwas Chinese.” As she remembers it, “TheChinese were generally very poor, andmany of them died of infection and dis-ease. Despite the factthat we were wealth-ier, they never tookadvantage of us andwere always good tous. They were gratefulto us for giving themwork: they worked inthe restaurants andcafes of the Jews andthey worked in Jewishhomes,” said Barli,who lives in Tel Avivwith her husband. They have two childrenand six grandchildren.

The Jews of Tianjin attended synagogueon the Shabbat and holidays, held traditionalFriday night dinners, ate improvised matzoton Passover and organized costume ballson Purim. During the war their numberswere reinforced by groups of Jewishrefugees from France, Germany, England,Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands.

The refugees turned to the task of recon-structing in Tianjin the community life they

led before the war. “We lived in a bubble,without newspapers or news from outside.We didn’t know what was happeningabroad,” Barli said, adding, “We knewthere was a war and that people werebeing sent to concentration camps, but noone imagined that the Germans, the cul-tured intellectuals we had known, could beso cruel. It was only after the war that werealized the extent of the killing and of theHolocaust, and we were in shock, in deepmourning. My father received a letter fromthe Red Cross that said his parents weretaken from Germany to Auschwitz, andthere it was, the entire family was obliter-ated.”

A round 28,000 European Jews foundrefuge in China during World War II.

After Japan’s invasion of China in 1937and occupation of large parts of the coun-

try, the local govern-ment was replaced bya puppet regime thatleft the marine andland access routesundefended.

“When [World WarII] broke out, the lastof the refugees beganto reach China. Thou-sands of Jewishrefugees came byboat, most of them via

Shanghai, which already had two estab-lished Jewish communities: The Baghdadicommunity, which had 1,000 members,and a Russian-Jewish community that was7,000 strong,” explained Irene Eber, pro-fessor emeritus of East Asian studies atthe Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “TheBritish, who ruled Shanghai, told the com-munities that were there, ‘We don’t havemoney to take care of the Jews, you’ll haveto take care of the ones who came,’ andthat’s what most of the Baghdadis did,

since they were richer than the Russians,”she said.

The Wertans family fled Warsaw for Vil-nius in September 1939, when war brokeout. In June 1940, when the Soviet Unioninvaded Lithuania, it was rumored that acompassionate Japanese consul inKounas, Chiune Sempo Sugihara, was is-suing transit visas to Japan to Jews, withthe aim of getting them to China. The Wer-tans left all their wordly goods behind.They traveled by train first to Moscow andthen to Vladivostok, on the Trans-SiberianRailway, before sailing to southern Japan.

“The family was happy during its stay inJapan,” Nina Admoni nee Wertans, the onlychild of Yaacov and Yehudit Wertans, relates.Admoni’s husband Nahum Admoni was headof Israel’s Mossad in the 1980s. The Wertansstayed in Kobe, Japan, for around sixmonths, before they were apprehended andforced to leave. They went to China.

Oral histories and documents, includingpersonal diaries from the period, reflect therich cultural life of Shanghai’s Jewish com-munity. “Between 1939 and 1941 therefugees created a cultural life,” Eber said.“People came without any property and,despite the difficulties, published 10 news-papers in German and four in Yiddish. Inaddition, there was theater in Yiddish andin German, in which Polish Jews whocame from Japan were particularly active.”

The situation worsened after the UnitedStates entered the war, in the wake ofJapan’s December 1941 attack on PearlHarbor, after which the Japanese securedtheir hold on large parts of China. TheJapanese imposed restrictions on theJews; in Shanghai they separated the es-tablished Jewish communities from thewar refugees and made members of theBaghdadi and Russian communities the li-aisons between the Japanese occupationgovernment and the refugees.

CHINESE RADIO SEEKS HOLOCAUST STORIES FROM FORMER JEWISH REFUGEES

Nina Admoni spent her Holocaust-era child-

hood in China.

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 R MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2012 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5773

BY STEVE LIPMAN, THE JEWISH WEEK

Posing as a member of the Gestapo,Kew Gardens resident Fred Friedmanrescued several dozen Jews in wartimeand postwar Hungary.

Slovakian-born Holocaust survivorFred Friedman, who has lived in the

same corner house in the Kew Gardensneighborhood of Queens for 46 years,turned 90 a few days before YomHaShoah.

Friedman, a retired plastics manufac-turer, spent the final years of World War IIliving in Budapest with false papers, inGerman, which identified him as Nagy Ist-van, a non-Jew. And with other false pa-pers that identified him as a member of theGestapo.

During the war, he traveled by trainaround Hungary, which was an Axis sup-porter of Germany during most of Worldwar II, to rescue endangered Jewish chil-dren and adults. To look the part of a mem-ber of the Nazi secret police, he wore aGestapo-type leather jacket, the type ofgreen Tyrolean hat with a small featherstuck in the band favored by Gestapo offi-cers, and sometimes a Hungarian-styleswastika. He carried a German pistol, butnever had to use it.

Friedman’s story mirrors that of Sa-lomon Perel, the German Jew who suc-cessfully posed during the war as amember of the Hitler Youth and was por-trayed in the 1990 German-language filmEuropa Europa. While Perel managed tosave his own life, Friedman risked hisown life to save others’.

Raised in a traditional Jewish home inPresov, central Slovakia, and educated at

a yeshiva, Friedman (original name, Ferdi-nand), made himself think as a non-Jewwhile living incognito in Budapest. “Duringthe war I was a gentile – I was a gentilethrough and through.”

After the war, while working in Budapestas a translator for the predecessor of theKGB, he continued to bring to safety Jewswho faced deportation to forced labor inRussia.

Friedman says he lost count of howmany people he saved. “Maybe it’s 60, 70.”

Some of his old friends know what hedid during and after the war, but he is re-luctant to discuss it; he has turned downfrequent requests to be honored by Jew-ish organizations.

Why did he agree to speak to The Jew-ish Week?

“My wife forced me,” he says — as alegacy for his children.

At weddings and other simchas, Fried-man’s wife, Ruth, hears stories about hisheroics from strangers, people who recog-nize him, people he saved. Sometimestheir children approach her. “People comeup to me and ask, ‘Do you know what yourhusband did for me, for my mother, for mysister? These stories will go on and on.’”

In the Friedmans’ house, which is linedwith Jewish art and Jewish books, are

a few plaques that Friedman accepted atlow-key events.

“I don’t want to get paid by human beingsif I did something” in this world, he says; inthe next world, God will judge.

“He’s a very humble person. He’s an ex-traordinary human being,” says RabbiAryeh Sokoloff, spiritual leader of the KewGardens Synagogue-Adath Yeshurun,Friedman’s congregation. “He risked hislife on more than one occasion.”

Friedman, in his early 20s at the end ofthe war, embarked upon his rescue mis-sions a few years earlier because he couldnot say no to a mother.

In 1942, when the deportations of Slova-kia’s Jews to Nazi death camps were un-derway, he smuggled himself over the

border, eventually reaching relative safetyin Hungary, after beating up a ruffian in hishometown who had threatened him; helater sneaked back to surreptitiously re-cover a stash of jewels and dollars his fa-ther had hidden in the family’s home, fundsthat supported Friedman when he lived ina rented apartment in Budapest.

With contacts in the underground, he ob-tained the realistic-looking false docu-ments — the I.D. papers to establish hisAryan identity; the Gestapo papers in casehe needed to travel around the country tohelp other Jews. “I knew I would needthem.”

In June of 1944, as the Nazi roundups ofJews in the rural parts of Hungary were es-calating, Friedman visited a young Jewishmother who was recuperating in Budapestfrom recent surgery. The mother, who livedin Debrecen, Hungary’s second-biggest

city, 120 miles from the capital, told Fried-man her two young daughters back in De-brecen faced imminent deportation, to theirlikely deaths.

He offered to help.Friedman took the train to Debrecen and

located the woman’s daughters. Travelingin the train’s third-class section, the leastconspicuous section, he delivered them —and a dozen other children and threemothers, who had begged him to help —to safe farms outside of Budapest.

“All survived” the war, Friedman says.

Along the way that day, at one trainstation, he aroused the suspicion of

a Hungarian gendarme; the group withFriedman appeared to be Jewish. Fried-man showed the police officer his GestapoI.D. “He got white.” No one who valued hislife challenged the Nazi secret police.Friedman’s group left the train station in-tact.

Later, Friedman made other trips to othercities, again rescuing children who faceddeportation. Sometimes, he “saved peopleoff the street” in Budapest, he says. Eachtime, he relied on his false papers to fendoff suspicion. Each time, he lived by hiswits and ability to pose as someone hewasn’t.

“He’s a great actor,” says his wife.Close calls?Yes, Friedman says.Scared?“Sometimes.”Why did he do it? Why did he succeed?A man of faith, he shrugs, at a loss for

words. It clearly makes him uncomfortableto cast himself as a hero or as a recipientof divine providence.

“He did what he thought needed to be(Continued on page 15)

RELUCTANT HERO

Survivor Fred Friedman saved Hungarian

Jews during the war by impersonating a mem-

ber of the Gestapo.

BY BRAD ROTHSCHILD, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

For decades, Jews around the worldhave sought out examples of non-

Jews like Raoul Wallenberg and OskarSchindler, who defied the Nazis to preventthe murder of Jews. In Israel, the Right-eous Among the Nations is Yad Vashem’shighest honor, and over 23,000 peoplehave been awarded this status since theprogram began in 1953.

The criteria established by Yad Vashemare straightforward: Jews can nominate in-dividuals who provided substantial assis-tance to save Jews, provided that saidassistance was not given with the expec-tation of financial gain.

In July, 67 years after the end of theHolocaust and over 20 years since hisdeath, Yad Vashem granted this honor toAntonin Kalina, a Czech citizen who savedover 900 boys in Buchenwald.

There is little known about Kalina. Hewas born in 1902 in the Czech town of Tre-bic and in adulthood became a Communistfunctionary. After the Nazis took overCzechoslovakia, he was imprisoned in theBuchenwald concentration camp from1939 until 1945. After the war he seems tohave lived an unexceptional life; he died in1990. During his time in Buchenwald, how-ever, Kalina distinguished himself as a truehero and rescuer of children.

In late 1944 and early 1945, as the RedArmy pushed the Germans out of east-

ern Europe, the Nazis began liquidatingtheir death camps, placing Jewish prison-

ers on brutal “death marches” toward theGerman hinterland. Countless thousandsof Jews died on these brutal marcheswestward – some died from the cold, oth-ers starved to death along the way, andothers were shot when they failed to keepup. Those who survived were put into con-centration camps scattered throughoutGermany, Buchenwald included.

Buchenwald, a camp established in 1937to imprison criminals and political oppo-

nents of the Nazi regime, swelled to over100,000 inmates in the final months of thewar.

Included in this influx of Jewish prisonerswere a large number of boys, many be-tween the ages of 12 and 16. These boyshad come from all over Europe and had al-ready undergone unimaginable horrors:ghettoization, transports, brutalization, pri-vations, starvation, and often the loss oftheir families. By the time they arrived inBuchenwald, they were already hardenedveterans of the camps, having learned howto survive under the most inhuman condi-tions. Upon their arrival at Buchenwald,thanks to Kalina and his deputies, their sit-uation improved dramatically.

Kalina had risen to a position of influ-ence in the underground, which ran

the day-to-day operations of the camp onbehalf of the Nazi SS. Kalina and his fellowprisoners decided to place the youths in aspecial barrack, far away from the mainpart of Buchenwald, deep in the filthy quar-antine area where the SS was loath to go.This barrack, number 66 in the “littlecamp,” became known as the Kinderblock,or children’s block. Antonin Kalina was theblock elder. In this capacity, he went to ex-traordinary lengths to ensure the survivalof the boys he placed there.

Unlike the other prisoners in Buchen-wald, the boys of block 66 did not have toleave their barrack for roll call – instead of

assembling with the rest of the camp twicea day no matter the conditions outside, theboys were counted inside. Also, unlike theother prisoners, the boys of 66 did not goto work. Remaining inside the bunk was atremendous advantage for the boys and afactor that certainly helped keep many ofthem alive. Conditions within the blockwere also better than in other parts of thecamp – the boys had access to blankets,and at times extra food rations.

Significantly, the block elders didn’t beatthe boys, something almost unheard ofwithin the Nazi camp system. Let there beno misunderstanding: despite the relativeadvantages, this was still a concentrationcamp full of fear, disease, hunger anddeath. But Kalina did what he could to mit-igate this reality for the boys of Kinderblock66, often at great personal risk.

As the Allied forces closed in during thewar’s frantic final days in early April 1945,the Nazis decided to eradicate Buchen-wald’s Jews. The camp’s commanders or-dered all Jews to report for assembly; theywere to be forced out on more deathmarches.

Kalina refused to comply with this order.He commanded the boys not to report tothe assembly and changed the religion ontheir badges – the Jewish boys were nowlisted as Christians – so that when the SScame around looking for Jews, Kalina told


THE MAN WHO SAVED 900 JEWISH BOYS INSIDE A DEATH CAMP

Antonin Kalina.


BY DAVID CROSSLAND, SPEGEL ONLINE

German historian Moritz Pfeifferasked his granddad what he did in

World War II, and then fact-checked thetestimony. His findings in a new book shedlight on a dying generation that remainsoutwardly unrepentant, but is increasinglywilling to break decades of silence on how,and why, it followed Hitler.

Germany has won praise for collectivelyconfronting its Nazi past, but the subjecthas remained a taboo in millions of familyhomes — with children and grandchildrendeclining to press their elders on what theydid in the war.

At least 20 to 25 million Germans knewabout the Holocaust while it was happen-ing, according to conservative estimates,and some 10 million fought on the EasternFront in a war of annihilation that targetedcivilians from the start. That, says MoritzPfeiffer, makes the genocide and thecrimes against humanity a part of familyhistory.

Time is running out. The answer to howa cultured, civilized nation stooped so lowlies in the minds of the dying Third Reichgeneration, many of whom are ready andwilling to talk at the end of their lives, saysPfeiffer, 29, who has just completed an un-precedented research project based on hisown family.

“The situation has changed radicallycompared with the decades immediatelyafter the war,” Pfeiffer, a historian at a mu-seum on the SS at Wewelsburg Castle,told Spiegel Online. “The generation ofeyewitnesses evidently wants to talk now;at least that’s my impression. Towards theend of one’s life the distance to the eventsis so great that people are ready to givetestimony.

“Immediately after the war, conversationsabout it between parents and children ap-pear to have been impossible because itwas all too fresh,” Pfeiffer continued. “Nowthe problem is that no one is listening to thatgeneration anymore. As a source of infor-mation, one’s relatives are largely being ig-nored. But one day it will be too late.”

NEW APPROACH TO QUESTIONING RELATIVES

Oral history has become increasinglypopular, even though personal rem-

iniscences are chronically unreliable asthey are distorted by time. But Pfeiffer tooka new approach by interviewing his twomaternal grandparents about what they didin the war, and then systematically check-

ing their statements using contemporarysources such as letters and army records.

No one has done this before. He juxtaposed his findings with context

from up-to-date historical research on theperiod and wrote a book that has shed newlight on the generation that unquestioninglyfollowed Hitler, failed to own up to its guiltin the immediate aftermath of the war and,more than six decades on, remains unableto express personal remorse for the civiliancasualties of Hitler’s war of aggression, letalone for the Holocaust.

His recently published book, My Grand-father in the War 1939–1945 (published inGerman only), is based on the interviewshe conducted in 2005 with his grandfather,named only as Hans Hermann K., whowas a career officer in a Wehrmacht in-fantry regiment. His grandmother Edithwas too ill to be interviewed at length, buthe analyzed many of her letters. Both diedin 2006.

Both of them supported the Nazi regime,and Pfeiffer admits that they were morally“contaminated,” like millions of ordinaryGermans of that generation. He describeshis grandmother Edith as a “committed, al-most fanatical Nazi.”

“NO ONE CAN SAY WHAT THEY WOULD HAVE DONE”

But the project wasn’t an attempt topass judgment on his grandparents,

says Pfeiffer. He only wanted to under-stand them.

“No one today can say what they wouldhave done or thought at the time,” he said.“I believe that people will learn a lot if theyunderstand how their respected and lovedparents or grandparents behaved in theface of a totalitarian dictatorship and mur-derous racial ideology,” Pfeiffer said.

“Dealing with one’s family history in theNazi period in an open, factual, and self-critical way is an important contribution toaccepting democracy and avoiding a re-peat of what happened between 1933 and1945.”

Hans Hermann K. was so good atgoose-stepping that he was briefly trans-ferred to a parade unit in Berlin. Edithjoined the Nazi Party and was so zealousthat when she married Hans Hermann in1943, she provided documentation tracingher Aryan roots all the way back to theearly 18th century — even SS memberswere “only” required to verify their racialpurity back to January 1, 1800.

During the course of his research, MoritzPfeiffer found large gaps, contradictionsand evasive answers in Hans Hermann’stestimony — regarding his purported igno-rance of mass executions of civilians, forexample.

GRANDFATHER FOUGHT IN FRANCE,POLAND, SOVIET UNION

Hans Hermann was a lieutenant in thefamous 6th Army and fought in the in-

vasions of Poland, France, and the SovietUnion, where he lost an eye in September1942 when a shell exploded near him.

His wound probaby saved his life. Shortlyafter he was evacuated back to Germanyfor treatment, his unit was sent to Stalin-grad and virtually wiped out. Only 6,000men survived out of the more than 100,000that were taken prisoner by the Red Armyat Stalingrad.

Few would disagree that Germany as anation has worked hard to atone for itspast, unlike Austria and Japan, which havecloaked themselves in denial. Germanyhas paid an estimated €70 billion in com-pensation for the suffering it caused, con-ducts solemn ceremonies to commemorate

the victims and, above all, has owned upto what was done in its name.

Companies and government ministrieshave opened up their archives to historiansto illuminate their role in the Third Reich,and a late push in prosecutions of warcriminals is underway to make up for thefailure to bring them to justice in thedecades after the war.

But millions never confronted their ownpersonal role as cogs in the Nazi machin-ery.

Hans Hermann was no different, eventhough he readily agreed to talkto his grandson.

He was born in 1921 to anarchconservative, nationalistfamily with military traditions inthe western city of Wuppertal. Hisfather, a furniture store owner, re-galed him with stories about histime as a lieutenant in World WarI, and it was instilled in him at anearly age that the war reparationsof the Versailles Treaty were ex-aggerated.

The store boomed after Hitlertook power because the newgovernment provided cheap gov-ernment loans for married cou-ples to buy kitchen and bedroomfurniture.

In the interview, Hans Hermannwas frank about his attitude to-wards Jews in the mid-1930s, when hewas in his early teens and a member of theJungvolk youth organization, which was af-filiated with the Hitler Youth.

Asked by Moritz whether he thought atthe time that the racial laws banning Jewsfrom public life and systematically expro-priating their property were unfair, he said:

“No, we didn’t regard that as injustice, wehad to go with the times and the timeswere like that. The media didn’t have theimportance then that they do today.”

“WE HAD TO KEEP OUR MOUTHS SHUT”

But Hans Hermann didn’t join the Naziparty, and said in 2005 that he op-

posed the Reichskristallnacht, the Novem-ber 9, 1938, pogrom organized by the Naziregime in which thousands of Jewishstores and synagogues were attacked andburned.

“That wasn’t right. We were angry aboutthe violence and the fire in the synagogue,that wasn’t our thing,” he said. “That wasthe SA, that was the SS, we rejected that… But we couldn’t do anything, we had tokeep our mouths shut.”

Asked about the invasion of Poland andthe executions of civilians, Hans Hermannwas evasive, at first describing relationsbetween the German army and Poles as“friendly” and saying he knew nothingabout mass shootings of Polish civilians atthe time.

When pressed by Moritz, however, headmitted he knew about killings beingcommitted by the SS, but added that theWehrmacht had nothing to do with it — atypical attitude that reflected the long-heldmyth that regular German soldiers weren’tinvolved in atrocities.

Pfeiffer said he found his grandfather’sindifference to the suffering of the Polishpopulation, 6 million of whom died in thewar, “staggering” but, again, typical of theresponse of many Germans of his genera-tion.

In 1941, Hans Hermann took part in Op-eration Barbarossa, the invasion of the So-viet Union. He was in the InfantryRegiment 208 of the 79th Infantry Division,and he said he knew nothing about crimi-nal orders such as the German army’s in-

famous “Commissar Order” — that all So-viet political commissars detected amongthe captured must be killed.

“HARDLY BELIEVABLE”

Asked about the Commissar Order,Hans Hermann said: “I didn’t hear

anything about that, don’t know it. We werebehind the combat troops who were theones taking prisoners.”

Pfeiffer refuted the claim that his grand-father’s unit took no prisoners. He foundthe war diary of the 79th Infantry Division,

which records that 5,088 Russian soldierswere captured between August 5 and Au-gust 31 alone. Between September 20 and25, a further 24,000 were taken prisoner.

Even the ones who weren’t shot dead onthe spot had a slim chance of survival.More than 3 million of the 5.7 million RedArmy soldiers captured by German forcesin World War II died, a proportion of almost60 percent.

Pfeiffer said his grandfather, as a front-line officer and company commander,would have been subject to the order toweed out the political commissars fromamong captured Red Army soldiers andhave them shot. The historian said hecouldn’t ascertain whether his grandfatherever had to make such a decision. But his-torical evidence exists that the 79th In-fantry Division carried out the order.

Also, historians have proven that the 6thArmy, which Hans Hermann’s division waspart of, carried out war crimes and mas-sacres, and assisted in the murder of33,771 Jews in the ravine of Babi Yar inUkraine at the end of September 1941.

Pfeiffer said it was “hardly believable”that his grandfather didn’t know anythingabout the mass killings.

Hans Hermann also said: “The Bolshe-vists were our enemies, that was clear andwe had to be guided by that. But those whogreeted us with salt and bread on theirdoorstep, they couldn’t be enemies, wetreated them well.” He didn’t say what hap-pened to civilians who didn’t greet thetroops with salt and bread.

“SPELLBOUND BY THE WORDSOF THE FÜHRER”

Pfeiffer’s book also presents letterswritten by his grandmother Edith that

showed her ardent support for Hitler. OnNovember 8, 1943, she wrote to her hus-band after hearing Hitler speak: “I am stilltotally spellbound by the words of theFührer that were stirring and inspiring asever! I glow with enthusiasm … One feelsstrong enough to tear out trees.”

In his interview, Hans Hermann ex-pressed criticism of the Allied bombings ofGerman cities. “How could that be possi-


BOOK URGES GERMANS TO QUIZ DYING NAZI GENERATION

Hans Hermann K. was an infantry officer in the

Wehrmacht. The picture shows him and his wife

Edith in 1942.

German infantry in Stalingrad. Hans Hermann lost an eye in

a shell explosion weeks before his unit was transferred to

Stalingrad, where it was virtually wiped out. The injury likely

saved his life.

THE AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIETHE AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIE MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2012 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5773

HONORARY CHAIRMEN

GENERAL CO-CHAIRMEN

TRIBUTE COMMITTEE

DINNER COMMITTEE

YOUNG LEADERSHIP ASSOCIATES DINNER C

DINNER CHAIRMEN

Ira DrukierMark Wilf Jeremy Halpern

Dr. Yitzhak Arad Marilyn RubensteinHon. Ido Aharoni

Julius Berman

Avner ShalevRabbi Israel M. Lau

Hon. Ron Prosor Edgar N. Bronfman

Dr. Miriam AdelsonHon. Elie Wiesel

Hon. Michael Oren

Hon. Chris ChristieHon. Kirsten Gillibrand

Ehud Arnon

Hon. Frank Lautenberg Hon. Joseph I. LiebermanHon. Charles E. Schumer

Gabi Hamani

HONORARY CO-CHAIRMEN

Sheldon Adelson Leonard Wilf Ira Drukier

GENERAL CHAIRMEN

David Halpern Eli Zborowski, z”l

Aviva & Charles Blaichman Cheryl Chase

Bella B. SekonsIra Mitzner

Mark MoskowitzRose and Sam Stern

Marilyn & Jack A. BelzStacey & Matthew Bronfman

Roberta & Irwin ChafetzJoan & Theodore Cutler

Gale Drukier

Rebecca & Michael AltmanBerne & James Bookhamer

Drs. Rochelle & Robert CherryMerry & Seymour Cohen

The Crown Family

Sharon HalpernRichard M. Joel

Seryl & Charles KushnerRita & David LevySteven Schwarz

Fela & David ShapellAnnette & Barry GoldbergElaine & Joel GoldsteinPhyllis & William MackMarilyn & Jack Pechter

Dr. Ingrid D. TauberAudrey WilfBeth WilfJane Wilf

Ruta Zandman

Karen & Harvey PollakDara & Brian Rubenstein

Rachelle & Henryk SchwarzMarcia & Dr. Yaakov Toledano

Mara & Richard Weissman

DINNER COMMITTEE CHAIRWOMEN

Gladys HalpernElizabeth Wilf

Rita DistenfeldAnna Erlich

Elly KrakowskiFanya Gottesfeld Heller

Doris GrossSelma Gruder Horowitz

Celina ZborowskiElizabeth Zborowski

Mindy MitznerLili Stawski

DINNER CO-CHAIRMEN

Rella FeldmanCheryl & Mark Grunwald

Batsheva & Murray HalpernCheryl & Fred HalpernGail & Colin Halpern

Jan & Andrew GrovemanElisa & Alan Pines

Jack HalpernDeedee & Mark Honigsfeld

Lee & Murray Kushner

Michael S. MillerTami & Fred Mack

David MitznerAnne Oster

Nancy & Larry Pantirer

TRIBUTE CHAIRMEN

Sam Halpern Stella Skura Joseph Wilf Barry Rubenstein

Rhoda & David ChaseZygmunt Wilf

Dr. Axel Stawski

Cheryl LifshitzProf. Yehuda Bauer

Dr. Lillian & Avner NavehMelvin Bukiet

Sally & Jack PomerancSam Stern

Prof. Feliks Tych

Jean & Eugen GluckRenata & Murray AlonElla & Ulo BaradDeborah & Richard BornRita & Fred DistenfeldNaomi & Andre AltholtzBernard AptakerAbe BillerElinor & Norman C. BelferDorothy BermanHalina BitenskyMark BlumAl S. BukietRose BukietSusan CrownSuzanne Czuker

Anja & Maurice GoldfeierMark PalmerIsrael KrakowskiRose MoskowitzCecile & Edward MosbergHannah & Bruce GoldmanJill GoodmanSonia & Michael GordonBeth & Benjamin HellerRose HolmDeborah Charatan & Steven HolmGloria & Henry JacobsDanielle & Harry Karten

Manya & Roman KnoblachBarbara KortConnie & Harvey KruegerGloria & Dr. Lawrence LiebermanIrina Fogel-Marcus & Dan MarcusDiana & Simon MundlakMark PalmerDora & Jack OltuskiIlona & Paul OltuskiDeborah & LawrencePomerancJason Pomeranc

Terry & Michael PomerancEvelyn & Dr. IsraelSingerGalia StawskiRosa StryglerEstera Lisker & Abi WrobelFred YeznerGalit & Ziggy ZborowskiJudith & Mark ZborowskiMurry ZborowskiFred ZeidmanAnne Zygelman

TRIBUTE CO-CHAIRMEN

Sara & Charles BedzowMr. & Mrs. Zigi Ben-HaimScott BerrieBetty BreslawSusan & Stanley ChesleyMr. & Mrs. Victor ChaltielMurray ChernickHelene & Glenn DorfmanClaire & Issac FensterSuellen & Gordon Freeman

Doretta & Jona GoldrichRachel Landau Gottstein& Barnard J. GottsteinRuth HartRuth & Mark HastenKim & Gary HeimanMartin HeinflingMeredith HellerPnina & Anatol HillerSusan & Arnold Holtzman

Doris & Simon KonoverCecile & Roman KriegsteinMr. & Mrs. Herb LeshkowitzPamela & Joseph LubeckPaula MandellEsther & David MannEva MellenLucy PantirerMr. & Mrs. Jerry PollackSari & Israel Roizman

Hedda RudoffAlan SilvermanJacqueline & DavidSimonSara & Moniek StawskiLillian & Milton SteinbergWilliam UngerJoy & Benjamin WarrenRose ZaruckiMillie & Abraham Zuckerman

Marilyn & Abe BesserMarlene Gelernter BesserLilly & Sam BlochJudy & Phillip BloomJudi & Dr. Kenneth BurnsteinJane & Alan CornellVera & Joseph EdenLewis L. FagenLynn & Erwin FischJane & Ishaia GolMoritz GoldfeierMenora & Ernst HackerMaria Herskovic

Mr. & Mrs. William HimmelrichMr. & Mrs. Allen HymowitzGustave JacobsMichael KassenSima KatzPeter J. KleinElsi LevyBrenda Weil Mandel &Lou FrockMorris MasselArdith & Charles MederickMindyleah & Sam PollakMiriam & Louis RosenbaumLillian RozmarynArlene & Jerry Sanders

Leslie & Michael AdlerBarbara & Harvey ArfaDr. Debbie & Sheldon BootinGail & Bruce BukietKaren & Michael BukietBernice CohenSherrye & David DantzkerCheri DesheEdith DruyanSarah EisnerTrudy & Sol Englander

Rochelle & Maks EtinginCharles FriedRose & Dr. Mark FriedmanSharon & Dr. Jeffrey FrielingDan HoffmanMargalith HoffmanLinda & Murray J. LaulichtFrank LevyDavid MandelbaumStanley NayerSusan & Mark NevinsShelly & Joseph Paradis

Abbi Halpern

Nadav BesnerLauren & Justin BrodyAdina & LawrenceBurianJennifer Drukier &Matthew BirnbaumAllan FriedYonina & Eric GombergRebecca Hanus

Caroline Massel

Jaci & Gonen ParadisNina & Jeffrey RubensteinJulie & Reuben KopelAlexandra LebovitsNicole & Avi LiebermanIlana LifshitzIris & Adam Lindenbaum

Jeffrey Wilf

Jessica & AndrewNicole & JosephSivan OchshornMindy & Alan ScAliza & Elie SingJennifer & Mark Keren Toledano

ES FOR YAD VASHEM ANNUAL TRIBUTE DINNERES FOR YAD VASHEM ANNUAL TRIBUTE DINNERSeptember/October 2012 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5773 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE

COMMITTEE

Aliza & Peter SavitzDr. & Mrs. Stephen SchwartzMr. & Mrs. Hans SeidmanFred SlifkaCharles SporerRudolph TesslerOlga & Herman WachtenheimRegina & David WeinbergBernice & David WeissSteven WoloskyHenry WrobelJulie & Scott ZelnickMarjorie & Aaron Ziegelman

William Z. ReichLidia & Jimmy ResnickJacqueline & Sigmund RolatMenachem RosensaftStephen SavittBella & George SavranBetty & Howard SchwartzCynthia & Jeff WisenfeldElaine & Irwin ZamoreAmy & Brad ZelnickWayne Zuckerman

w Mauk Meyer

challgerSmith

Barry Levine

Ariel & Josh WeinerCori & Jason WilfOrin WilfRachel & Jonathan WilfAriel ZborowskiLolly & Boaz Zborowski

Frank Blaichman, the only member of his im-mediate family to survive the Holocaust, was

born in the small town of Kaminonka, Poland. Hewas 16 years old when the German army invadedPoland in 1939. With German decrees and regula-tions intended to isolate and deprive Jews, youngFrank immediately began taking risks in an effort tohelp his parents and his six brothers and sisters.He used his bicycle and rode from neighboringfarms to larger cities, buying and selling goods ateach destination. Refusing to wear the Star ofDavid armband, he travelled through fields avoidingthe police and German soldiers.

As the situation became more desperate, Frankwas determined to keep his freedom. Encouraged by his family, he sought refugein the forests and soon found other Jews determined to fight. He had never held aweapon.

Always on the move, and after succeeding in acquiring weapons, the group be-came a remarkable guerilla force. After ridding their area of German collaborators,they engaged in acts of sabotage: hit-and-run attacks against German supply linescarrying military essentials to the eastern front – disrupting Nazi communication –protecting over 300 hidden Jews. By age 21, Blaichman became the youngest Lieu-tenant and Platoon Commander of his unit, which remained under Jewish com-mand until liberation.

Cesia Pomeranc was born in Vlodovo, Poland.Cesia, along with her brothers Yurik, Jack

and Abie, escaped to the woods from a Nazi workcamp. They too joined a Jewish fighting force op-erating in the Lublin area of Poland. Cesia andFrank met when their two partisan units joinedforces. Following liberation they married and soonemigrated to the U.S. Frank became a builder anddeveloper. They have two children and six grand-children.

In the 1980s the Blaichmans, along with EliZborowski, z”l, spearheaded the effort resulting inthe building of the Jewish Fighters Monument atYad Vashem.

Blaichman delivered the keynote address at an unveiling ceremony that includedthe then Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin and U.S. Secretary of State GeorgeSchultz.

In 2009 Frank Blaichman published Rather Die Fighting, which chronicles his andhis wife Cesia’s harrowing and moving story.

The American Society for Yad Vashem (ASYV) was foundedin 1981 by a small group of survivors, spearheaded by Eli

Zborowski, z”l, its founding Chairman. The ASYV is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization whose goal is to work in partnershipwith Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remem-brance Authority in Jerusalem, and support Yad Vashem’s effortsin the areas of commemoration, education, research, capital im-provement, and special projects through its development effortsand ongoing cultural and educational programming.

Today, the Society draws support from the contributions of Jew-ish survivors, community members, and major philanthro-pists, and also relies on a cadre of volunteers who givetheir gift of time. Over the years, the Society and itsthousands of supporting members have been animportant contributing partner to most major YadVashem projects, including the new museum,while continuing to provide vital operating sup-port.

ANNUAL TRIBUTE DINNER

The Society’s major endeavor is its AnnualTribute Dinner, which draws more than 1,000

guests, including business and cultural leaders, gov-ernment officials, and members of the diplomatic corps.In conjunction with the dinner, the Society publishes a com-memorative photo journal which pays tribute to the vibrancy ofJewish life in prewar Europe and to the collective accomplish-ments of Holocaust survivors in the United States and Israel.Each year, the Society bestows Remembrance Awards on twodistinguished individuals or couples who have made outstandingcontributions to the Cause of Remembrance.

EDUCATION

The Society’s Education Department, in collaboration withYad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies,

sponsors seminars and conferences for teachers involved in

Holocaust education. In addition, it offers student internships,professional development conferences and a Speakers Bureau.

PUBLICATIONS

The American Society for Yad Vashem publishes the bi-monthly newspaper Martyrdom and Resistance, which it

inaugurated in the fall of 1974. It is the first and oldest continu-ously published periodical devoted to the Holocaust in the USA,and has become a valuable resource for scholars and re-searchers. Its unique quality lies in the combination of news andfeatures about all aspects of the Holocaust and resistance, in-

cluding book and film reviews, reports about educa-tional programs, and an overview of survivor

activities.YOUNG LEADERSHIP ASSOCIATES

The Society’s Young Leadership Associ-ates (YLA) was inaugurated in 1997.

Caroline Massel is its Founding Chairper-son. Current Chairpersons are Jeremy andAbbi Halpern and Jeffrey Wilf. The YLA hasan active board and a growing membership

of young people, among them children andgrandchildren of survivors. The YLA has under-

taken the task of developing ongoing programsfostering Holocaust education and remembrance, and

has branched out nationally with these programs.STATEMENT BY ASYV CHAIRMAN

ELI ZBOROWSKI, Z”L

“The American Society for Yad Vashem is the first amongHolocaust organizations to have built an infrastructure

which extends not only to the second generation of survivors,but now to the third. Working together with our children, grand-children, and their friends, we will surely perpetuate this uniqueinstitution that Abba Eban described as ‘one of the most signifi-cant landmarks in the moral history of mankind.’”

FRANK AND CESIA BLAICHMAN

ABOUT THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM

REPORT FROM REPORT FROM YAD VASHEMYAD VASHEM MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE September/October 2012 - Tishri/Cheshvan 5773

BY LEAH GOLDSTEIN

On 18–21 June, 355 educators from54 countries worldwide gathered at

Yad Vashem for the Eighth InternationalConference on Holocaust Education.Over half of the participants at the bian-nual conference were graduates of edu-cational seminars at the InternationalSchool for Holocaust Studies.

“The goal of the conference was differ-ent from any other preceding it,” ex-plained Director of the InternationalSchool Dorit Novak. “The Holocaust isbeing instrumentalized more than ever toaddress a range of issues not necessarilydirectly related to it, which opens the doorto diminishing, equating, and manipulat-ing its history and memory. We thereforefelt an urgent need to ‘get back to the ba-sics,’ to teach the fundamental aspects ofthe event, in order to equip educatorswith the knowledge and tools necessaryto deal with these current trends.”

“Yad Vashem is challenged by the factthat people today use the word Holocaustin many different ways,” said Yad VashemChairman Avner Shalev. “We must goback to the core issues of the Shoah:what actually happened in the ghettos,the camps, and during the ‘Final Solu-tion,’ how the Nazi party instituted an at-mosphere of hatred and dehumanization,and what were the Jewish – and non-Jewish – responses to it all. Only then

can we use this knowledge to promotethe protection of human rights, the pre-vention of genocide, and the fight againstintolerance – all of which are importantand relevant topics in today’s world.”

The conference was divided into threedays, each one focusing on specific ob-jectives.

Minister of Education Gideon Sa’aropened the conference, and Yad Vashem

Chairman Avner Shalev presented a lec-ture on “Educational Challenges in the21st Century.” The first day was thendedicated to learning, with some 25 ex-perts from Yad Vashem’s International In-stitute for Holocaust Research as well asprominent Israeli academics presentingthe main topics in Holocaust education,including the history of anti-Semitism,

Nazi racial ideology, armed resistance,rescue attempts, the death camps, andpostwar trials, as well as the roles of faith,literature, and art in the Holocaust.

Day two concentrated on teaching, with81 workshops (nine in Spanish) focusingon how to make the core issues relevantin the classroom. “The participants re-ceived the latest and most effective ped-agogical tools in the field in order to make

the Holocaust a relevant andsignificant issue in their teach-ing,” explained conference di-rector Ephraim Kaye, Director ofInternational Seminars for Edu-cators at the InternationalSchool for Holocaust Studies.“In addition, eighty percent ofthe presenters were YadVashem graduates, who illus-trated to their peers the mostsuccessful examples of what ac-tually works in the classroom.”

T he final day was directed

toward “special interest

groups”: Holocaust and Jewish

museum directors; Jewish educators in

formal and informal Jewish education;

and teachers of Holocaust curricula on

the college level. One of the panel speak-

ers was the Rev. James LaMacchia, As-

sociate Chaplain and Religious Studies

teacher at Saint Mark’s School in Mary-

land (USA). “Many US secondary schools

only offer a unit on the Shoah scattered

among such courses as American History

or World Literature,” explained LaMac-

chia. “Because it is easy to trivialize and

diminish the Holocaust in a ‘culture of vic-

timization,’ educators are challenged to

present the Shoah in all of its complexity,

so that students understand its absolutely

unique character and continuing reso-

nance in world history and politics. De-

spite an ever-expanding curriculum, we

educators must take the time to present

the social, political, economic and cultural

factors and events that led to the Shoah.”

LaMacchia also stressed the success

of utilizing survivor testimony in Holo-

caust education, explaining that it “allows

the students to connect the history to real

people whose lives were directly affected

by the events.” In fact, the final session

of the conference was devoted to this

very issue, with nine Holocaust survivors

offering participants the chance to hear

their personal stories and ask pertinent

questions about their firsthand experi-

ences during the war. Internationally

renowned author and Holocaust survivor

Dr. Samuel Pisar gave the final keynote

speech, which included sections of

Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3,

Kaddish, combined with Pisar’s composi-

tion, “A Dialogue with God.” The lecture

was in memory of Benefactors of the In-

ternational School and the conference

Izzy and Babs (Ruth) Asper, z”l.

TELLING THE STORY, TEACHING THE CORE

Participants at one of the 81 professional workshops held

during the three-day conference.

BY DR. NIKOS TZAFLERIS

“I had barely arrived – I was wearingmy Sabbath clothes – when theystarted beating us… They dealt out somany blows that people fainted; thenthey would lift them up, pour water overthem, and start again.”

So recounted Holocaust survivorYitzhak Nechama, a victim of the

notorious “Black Sabbath” of the Jews ofSalonika (Thessaloniki), at the 1961 trialof Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.Nechama’s testimony was the only onegiven at the trial concerning Greek Jewryduring the Holocaust. During the proceed-ings, several relevant pictures were pre-sented to Nechama. At one point hepaused. “That is me,” he said, pointing tothe picture of a young man being forcedto crouch and hold out his arms. “If youcould have seen me… the state I was inafter those ‘exercises,’ the blows I got,why – I do not know. I didn’t do anythingto them, I didn’t owe them anything, andthey gave me a bloody thrashing. And notonly me, but my family too.”

“Black Sabbath,” which took place 70years ago in July 1942, marked the begin-ning of the end of the once-thriving Jewishcommunity of Salonika, which had lastedhundreds of years and in its heydayboasted the largest Sephardic communityin the world. In fact, Jewish settlement inthe Greek peninsula can be dated back tothe third century BCE, and there is muchevidence for a continuous presence of theJewish Diaspora in Greece for many years

before the destruction of the Second Tem-ple in 70 CE.

Throughout the years, Jews in Greeceformed one of the most diverse and multi-cultural communities in Europe. Wealthyentrepreneurs, Jewish scholars, and great

rabbis lived side by side with humble labor-ers and craftsmen.

After the expulsion of the Jews fromSpain in 1492, the ancient Greek-speakingRomaniot culture blended with theSephardim, as many Sephardim foundshelter in the peaceful lands of the wel-coming Ottoman Empire. These Jewsspoke Ladino, a language based on an old

Castilian Jewish dialect, and formed sev-eral communities, mainly in the BalkanPeninsula and Northern Africa. As yearswent by, they began to settle in Salonika,a major port city on the Greek Peninsula,establishing a remarkably large and vibrantSephardic community. It was then that Sa-lonika became known as “Mother of Is-rael,” “Little Jerusalem,” “Jerusalem of theNorth,” and “Jerusalem of the Balkans.”

A t the beginning of the 20th century,

Salonika’s Jewish citizens num-

bered almost 80,000. By the 1930s, how-

ever, the Jewish population had somewhat

declined to almost 56,000. After the inva-

sion of the Fascist Axis powers in

1940–41, Greek Jews fought bravely side

by side with their gentile compatriots, first

against the Italians, and then the Ger-

mans. Colonel Mordehai Frizis was the

first ranking officer of the Greek army to die

during the fierce battles with the invading

Italians, and hundreds of other Greek Jews

gave their lives or were wounded for their

homeland during the six-month fight in the

mountains of Albania.Following the German conquest of

Greece, experts of the well-known Son-derkommando Rosenberg scoured thecountry, seizing precious manuscripts,valuable heirlooms, priceless collections,and other important objects belonging tothe Jewish communities that had lived andthrived in Greece for hundreds of years.

The country was then divided into three

occupational zones: under the Germans,

the Italians, and the Bulgarians. The Italian

zone was the largest, but the lootings and

anti-Semitic activities were confined to the

German-controlled area, including Sa-lonika. The Jews living under German oc-

cupation experienced the same

discrimination by the Nazi regime as other

Jewish communities in Europe: property

confiscation, public humiliation, forced

labor under horrendous circumstances,

torture, and execution as “Communists.’

But the most disturbing of all measures

was initiated by the Wehrmacht on 11 July

1942, a Sabbath day. The Wehrmachtcommander of northern Greece, General

von Krenzski, ordered all the Jewish males

aged 18 to 45 years to assemble at Eleft-

heria (Freedom) Square to be registered

for forced labor. The registration turned out

to be a theater of deliberate and pitiless

humiliation of some 9,000 Jews. Many dif-

ferent Wehrmacht units participated, forc-

ing the men to form lines under the

blistering sun for hours, forbidding them to

wear any kind of head covering.

“They were having fun,” Nechama re-

called. “SS policemen would come and push

people out of the line, hitting them and fool-

ing around. And at the windows, other Ger-

mans were taking photos and applauding.”

The Jews of Salonika were ultimately de-

ported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. There,

some 50,000 Jews from Salonika – almost

the entire Jewish community – would be

murdered, and the “Jerusalem of the

Balkans” lost forever.

The author is a research fellow from theAristotle University of Thessaloniki at YadVashem’s International Research Institute.

“BLACK SABBATH” AND THE HOLOCAUST OF GREEK JEWRY

Yitzhak Nechama being humiliated during the

“Black Sabbath” in Salonika.


BY ARON HELLER, AP

When Israeli archaeologist YoramHaimi decided to investigate his

family’s unknown Holocaust history, heturned to the skill he knew best: He beganto dig.

After learning that two of his uncles weremurdered in the infamous Sobibor deathcamp, he embarked on a landmark exca-vation project that is shining new light onthe workings of one of the most notoriousNazi killing machines, including pinpointingthe location of the gas chambers wherehundreds of thousands were killed.

Sobibor, in eastern Poland, marks per-haps the most vivid example of the “FinalSolution,” the Nazi plot to wipe out Euro-pean Jewry. Unlike other camps that hadat least a facade of being prison or laborcamps, Sobibor and the neighboringcamps Belzec and Treblinka were de-signed specifically for exterminatingJews. Victims were transported there incattle cars and gassed to death almostimmediately.

But researching Sobibor has been diffi-cult. After an October 1943 uprising at thecamp, the Nazis shut it down and leveledit to the ground, replanting over it to covertheir tracks.

Today, tall trees cover most of the formercamp grounds. Because there were so fewsurvivors — only 64 were known — therehas never been an authentic layout of thecamp, where the Nazis are believed tohave murdered some 250,000 Jews over

an 18-month period. From those few sur-vivors’ memories and partial German doc-umentation, researchers had only limitedunderstanding of how the camp operated.

“I feel like I am an investigator in a crim-inal forensic laboratory,” Haimi, 51, saidnear his home in southern Israel, a day be-fore departing for another dig in Poland.“After all, it is a murder scene.”

Over five years of excavations, Haimihas been able to remap the camp and has

unearthed thousands of items. He hasn’tfound anything about his family, but amidthe teeth, bone shards, and ashes throughwhich he has sifted, he has recovered jew-elry, keys, and coins that have helpedidentify some of Sobibor’s victims.

The heavy concentration of ashes ledhim to estimate that far more than 250,000Jews were actually killed at Sobibor.

“Because of the lack of information aboutSobibor, every little piece of information issignificant,” said Haimi. “No one knewwhere the gas chambers were. The Ger-mans didn’t want anyone to find out whatwas there. But thanks to what we havedone, they didn’t succeed.”

The most touching find thus far, hesaid, has been an engraved metal

identification tag bearing the name of LeaJudith de la Penha, a 6-year-old Jewish girl

from Holland who Israel’sYad Vashem Holocaust me-morial confirmed was mur-dered at the camp. Haimicalls her the “symbol of So-bibor.”

“The Germans didn’t dis-criminate. They killed littlegirls too,” he said. “Thisthing (the tag) has beenwaiting for 70 years forsomeone to find it.”

Haimi’s digs, backed byYad Vashem, could serveas a template for futurescholarship into the Holo-caust, in which the Nazis

and their collaborators killed about 6 mil-lion Jews.

“I think the use of archaeology offers thepossibility of giving us information that wedidn’t have before,” Deborah Lipstadt, aprominent American Holocaust historianfrom Emory University, said.

She said that if the archaeological evi-dence points to a higher death toll at Sobi-bor than previously thought, “it is not out of

sync with other research that has beendone.”

Haimi’s basic method is similar to whathe does at home, where he does digs forIsrael’s antiquities authority in the south ofthe country — cutting out squares of landand sifting the earth through a filter. Be-cause of the difficult conditions at Sobiborand the sensitive nature of the effort, he isalso relying on more non-invasive, high-tech aids such as ground-penetrating radarand global positioning satellite imaging.

Based on debris collected and patternsin the soil, he has been able to figure outwhere the Nazis placed poles to hold upthe camp’s barbed wire fences.

That led him to his major breakthrough— the mapping of what the Germanscalled the Himmelfahrsstrasse, or the“Road to Heaven,” a path upon which theinmates were marched naked into the gaschambers. He determined its route by thepoles that marked the path. From that, hedetermined where the gas chamberswould have been located.

Along the way, he and his Polish partnerWojciech Mazurek, along with some 20 la-borers, have stumbled on thousands ofpersonal items belonging to the victims:eye glasses, perfume bottles, dentures,rings, watches, a child’s Mickey Mouse pin,a diamond-studded gold chain, a pair ofgold earrings inscribed ER — apparentlythe owner’s initials — a silver medallionengraved with the name “Hanna.”

Marek Bem, a former director of the mu-seum at Sobibor, said the first excavations


A new French book attempts to grap-ple with a Turkish operation to save 476Jews from France during the Holo-caust. Many of those rescued spurnedtheir saviors thereafter, and the episodehas virtually been lost to history.

BY BENNY ZIFFER, HAARETZ

Iwaited for my meeting with French au-thor Ariane Bois in the lobby of the Dan

Accadia Hotel in Herzliya, like someonewaiting to meet a long-lost relative – al-though, officially, as I learned from readingher biographical details on the Internet, weare not really related. Nonetheless, a slightchange in historical circumstances couldhave easily led to our paths crossing atsome point.

Ariane Bois was born, just as I was, toa Jewish couple from Turkey whose fam-ily was half-Sephardi and half-Ashkenaziand who, when the Ottoman Empirebegan to collapse, decided to seek shel-ter in Europe.

Whereas my family opted for Vienna,Berlin, and Paris, her family chose onlyParis, settling in one of the city’s poorerneighborhoods in the 11th and 18th ar-rondissements. From the mid-1920s untilWorld War II, these neighborhoods werelargely inhabited by Ladino speakersfrom the Middle East who brought theircolorful customs and lifestyle from the“old country.”

The Holocaust would totally erase theseprimarily Jewish neighborhoods.

The Turkish government was adamantabout protecting 476 souls, a small fractionof the country’s ill-fated Jewish community,which numbered tens of thousands andwhich had seen France as a safe place ofrefuge. However, France abandoned theseJews and Turkey demanded that those476 people be placed under its aegis,thereby granting them immunity from theNazi decrees.

Those Jews who possessed a valid Turk-ish passport were permitted by the Frenchauthorities to return to Istanbul by rail incars that bore the Turkish crescent andstar. The journey across Europe wasfraught with danger and its successfulcompletion hinged on the fact that Turkeystuck to its position that all its citizens, re-gardless of origin or religion, were equaland deserved protection.

Ariane’s grandfather, her grandmotherand her mother – who was 10 at the time –were among the passengers on these res-cue trains, which are largely unknown inthe annals of Shoah history. One of thereasons why this mission is not givengreater historiographical prominence is thefact that, for many years, Sephardi Jewswere not considered among the victims ofthe Holocaust.

Today, 70 years after this little-knownrescue operation, Bois has created

a monument to it in her novel, Le Monded’Hannah (Hannah’s World), recently re-leased by French publisher Robert Laffont.The book, written in a seemingly effortlessmanner, is actually the product of painstak-ing archival research that took the authorseveral years, including interviews withpeople who traveled on those trains to Is-tanbul. On the basis of the research andthe interviews, she constructed the plot ofher novel which, while fictional, faithfullydepicts the spirit of that era.

Turkey recently revived the story of therescue trains, as part of its bid to cozy upwith the European Union in hopes of ad-mittance. Two products of those efforts arethe impressive Turkish documentary film,The Turkish Passport, which was screenedat the recent Cannes festival, and a novelthat appeared somewhat earlier by Turkishauthor Ayse Kulin.

Kulin’s historical fiction, Last Train to Is-tanbul, is commonly thought to have exag-

gerated the dimensions of the operation.Her story recounts the actions of a coura-geous Turkish diplomat who, according tolocal legend, was the Turkish version ofRaoul Wallenberg (the Swedish diplomatwho was instrumental in the rescue of tensof thousands of Hungarian Jews from thedeath camps during the Holocaust). Thislegend is viewed by many with a consider-able degree of doubt, and to this day, YadVashem in Jerusalem has refused to rec-ognize that Turkish diplomat as one of therighteous gentiles who saved Jews duringthe Holocaust.

Bois’ story is much more modest in itsheroic depictions and is thus far more per-suasive.

The testimony that she obtained fromJews who traveled on the Turkish

rescue trains to Istanbul and who returnedto France after the war is far less dramaticthan in Kulin’s novel. As can be seen inHannah’s World, many of the passengerson these trains had no inkling as to thegravity of their situation and consideredtheir repatriation to Turkey as somethingthat was natural.

Bois describes how a number of Jewishwomen who were passengers on one ofthe rescue trains from Paris took advan-tage of a stop in Vienna because of a mal-function, got off the train and took aleisurely stroll through the Prater gardens.The children on the trains considered theentire journey to be a thrilling adventure.

Only when they returned to Paris afterthe war did these lucky Jews becomeaware of the dimensions of the Holocaustfrom whose claws they had been rescued.Their homes were now occupied byFrench citizens who were amazed to seethe returnees. Several violent episodeserupted between the latter and the squat-ters, who claimed that they had every rightto live in the homes of the Jews who were

absent during the war. In fact, one some-times even heard the following cynicalstatement from the Jews’ French neigh-bors: “While you were vacationing in Istan-bul, we were suffering over here.”

Hannah’s World recounts a tale that, upuntil now, has not been told properly or hasbeen distorted for a variety of reasons.This is the tale of Jews who, in the periodof the Holocaust, were given a new leaseon life thanks to the Turkish government.But this is actually a story of loyalty and be-trayal. The rescued Turkish Jews neverconsidered it their basic obligation to thankTurkey for rescuing them; furthermore,when the war ended, they abandoned thecountry that had saved them and returnedto France. None of them ever said to them-selves: “We are alive today thanks toTurkey.”

Ironically, France – the country that be-trayed them and, with satanic cynicism,handed them over to the Nazi murderers –was the place they longed for and wherethey hoped to resume their lives and inte-grate into society.

Bois is a striking example of a Jew ofTurkish origin who has successfully inte-grated into French society. Nonetheless,she notes how the Jewish anxieties thather family passed on to her are vividly ap-parent in her day-to-day behavior. For ex-ample, she always makes sure that shenever leaves the house without identifyingdocuments, lest she be apprehended evennow and sent to a death camp. In addition,whenever she enters an elevator, her heartskips a beat because she always remem-bers the story her mother told her whenshe was a child about a wheelchair-boundneighbor whom the French police threwdown the elevator shaft when the Naziswere rounding up the Jews.

Bois has attempted to heal thesewounds of memory in her book.

THE TURKISH RESCUE NOBODY REMEMBERED

ISRAELI ARCHAEOLOGIST MAPS HOLOCAUST DEATH CAMP SOBIBOR

Israeli archaeologist Yoram Haimi talking to young people from the

Dror School in Israel.


BY MONI BASU, CNN

Zhanna Arshanskaya Dawson’sname is etched on the wall of a

stark underground memorial in Ukraine,next to those of her sister, Frina, theirparents and grandparents. She was pre-sumed dead, like the 16,000 other Jewsfrom Kharkov who perished under theNazis in the winter of 1941.

Only, Dawson survived, as did her sis-ter.

They lived through the Holocaust,saved solely by their musical genius.Dawson’s son Greg believes his motherand aunt are the only two Jewish sur-vivors from Kharkov.

He came upon their names at the me-morial in 2006 when he visited Ukraine towrite a book about his mother, Hiding inthe Spotlight. After the war, she made asuccessful life for herself as an accom-plished pianist in the United States, andhad kept silent on her history for manyyears until her sons had grown up.

Seeing her name came as a shock toGreg Dawson. He remembers his fingerfreezing upon the Russian lettering; shiv-ers shooting up his spine.

How narrowly she had escaped death,he realized.

“JUST LIVE”

Dawson’s love affair with the piano

began when she was 5. A year

later, she performed Bach’s Invention

Number 1 in public.

Her father, Dimitri Arshansky, a candy

maker by trade, ordered a shiny new

Bechstein piano from Germany and en-

couraged both his daughters to study

music at the local conservatory. A profes-

sor there introduced little Zhanna to

Chopin’s “Fantasy Impromptu.” She was

determined to perfect her playing of the

piece.

But life as she knew it stopped with

World War II. The Nazis invaded Kharkovin 1941. Only 14 then, Dawson remem-

bers seeing bodies of Jews hanging from

lampposts.

On a frigid December day, German sol-

diers stormed into the house at 48 Kat-

sarskaya Street, rounded up her entire

family and shoved them into a long line

of Jews forced to march out of the city.

It was the last time she saw her house.

The only possession she was able to take

with her was the sheet music sitting on

her piano. “Fantasy Impromptu.”

“I couldn’t have possibly left it,” she

says, thinking back to that wretched day.

She didn’t need the written notes to play

it; she knew it by heart. But it had her

teacher’s scribbles on it. And it was her

favorite piece of music.

The Nazis forced Kharkov’s Jews to

walk 12 miles outside the city in the bitter

cold and snow. Occasionally, a mother

would push her young child toward the

crowd watching the exodus, in hopes that

someone would have sympathy and res-

cue the child. If her actions were de-

tected, the Nazis shot her on the spot,

Dawson remembers.

Her family was taken to an abandoned

tractor factory designed to hold 1,800

people. The Nazis forced 13,000 Jews

into the barracks without warmth or food.

Many people died there.

“It was inhuman,” she recalls in her

son’s book. “The sight of women the age

of my mother and grandmother made me

shake in shame for the Germans.”

The day after Christmas, the Jews wereordered to prepare for transportation.Dawson says her father knew they wereall going to die when he saw the trucksgo north. There was nothing to the north.It was a road to Dobritsky Yar, a road tothe unthinkable.

Dobritsky Yar had two giant pits like theones at Babi Yar near the city of Kiev,where the Nazis killed 34,000 Jews in twodays, most machine-gunned in the back.

Dimitri Arshansky pulled out his goldpocket watch and flashed it in front of ayoung Ukrainian guard. He told the guardhis family wasn’t Jewish; to please let hislittle girl go.

Dawson says her father realized that hecould not save both his girls — two ofthem running would be too much commo-tion. He knew Zhanna, the adventurous,free-spirited one named after Joan of Arc,had a chance to survive. As the guardtook the bribe and looked away, she fellout of line and ran like the wind.

“I don’t care what you do,” her fathertold her. “Just live.”

PLAYING FOR THE ENEMY

A few days later Dawson was re-united with her sister. To this day

she does not know how Frina escapedthe death march. Frina has never spokenof it or about anything else from that time.Dawson believes her sister was too trau-matized to talk about it.

With the help of friends, the two girlsmade it to an orphanage and were ableto obtain fake, non-Jewish identities. Forthe rest of the war, they were no longertheir father’s daughters.

“My name is Anna Morozova. I am fromKharkov. My sister Marina and I are or-phans. Our father was an officer in theRed Army and was killed in action. Ourmother died in the bombing of Kharkov.”

Dawson said it so many times duringthe rest of the war that it echoed end-lessly in her head.

A piano tuner at the orphanage heard herplay one day and offered her and Frinajobs with a musical troupe that entertainedthe Germans. It was a frighteningprospect, but Dawson kept thinking of herfather’s last words — just live. They playedfor Nazi generals and in front of Germanaudiences in the city of Kremenchug:Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Liszt,Brahms, Chopin.

Years later people asked her how shecould have done what she did. Was it notlike the musicians who played as Jewswalked into gas chambers in the concen-tration camps?

“I was playing for the memory of myparents,” she says. “I was playing to sur-vive.”

And her music, she says, was the onlyspot of beauty in that bleak atmosphere.

Music provided a psychological cocoon.Without it, her spirit might have broken.

There were moments when she fearedthey would be found out for who they re-ally were and shot on the spot or sent toa gas chamber. One time, the Germansoldiers put the onus of proof that thegirls were Jews on the people who rattedthem out.

“We were a precious commodity for theGermans,” she said. “We were morevaluable alive than dead.”

Months turned into years of hiding inplain view.

When the Germans began retreating,they took the musical troupe with them,

back to Berlin. There, the Jewish Arshan-skaya girls walked past Gestapo head-quarters and even Adolf Hitler’s bunkerafter the Allied bombing began.

When the war finally ended in 1945,they were taken to a displaced personscamp run by a young American officer,Larry Dawson, who had a passion formusic. Dawson’s brother David was anaccomplished viola player.

Larry Dawson arranged for a concert.Zhanna and Frina were to play for sur-vivors of Dachau, the notorious concen-tration camp near Munich.

Zhanna Dawson remembers how nerv-ous she was on the evening of April 13,1946. After years of playing for theenemy, she was finally going to performfor her own people.

“These were such special people.”In front of the stage at the Landsberg

Yiddish Center sat 1,200 Jews.Gaunt. Ragged. Weary.They exploded with applause and

bravos, even though Dawson knew thattechnically, it was the worst she had everplayed.

“This was a celebration,” she says. “Itwas the only time I didn’t care how Iplayed. I thought again of what my fathersaid. ‘Just live.’ Just play.”

Soon after, Larry Dawson put the Ar-shanskaya girls on the first U.S.-boundship of refugees from Germany. They ar-rived at Manhattan’s Pier 64 on May 21,1946, to begin their lives anew. By then,Zhanna was 19; Frina, 17.

Both won scholarships to the JuilliardSchool. Zhanna fell in love with DavidDawson, married him, and left Juilliardbefore finishing her degree to join him inBloomington, Indiana. She began per-forming and teaching music at the univer-sity. She had two sons and raised themwithout ever uttering a word about herpast.

PRECIOUS PIECES OF PAPER

Greg Dawson had no idea that hewas Jewish until he was grown up.

His mother says she never spoke ofsurviving the Holocaust because she

wanted her sons to experience normal,carefree childhoods. She didn’t want toburden anyone.

But in the spring of 1978, when GregDawson was working as a reporter at theBloomington newspaper, NBC began air-ing a four-part miniseries called Holo-caust. Until then, many Americans knewlittle about one of the world’s grimmestperiods of history; perhaps they had readThe Diary of Anne Frank.

Dawson wanted to write something forthe newspaper and asked his mother totell him more about her memories as aRussian who lived through the war.

“What she gave me was a life anddeath story of epochal dimensions thatleft me in disbelief,” Greg Dawson wrote.

He was getting to know his mother allover again.

In the 1990s, his daughter, Aimee,asked the same question of ZhannaDawson. Aimee was 14 then, and for aschool project, she wanted to know whather grandmother’s life was like when shewas that age.

Zhanna Dawson penned an eloquentletter from Atlanta, where she had movedafter her husband’s death. After that, shebegan speaking publicly about her lifeand no longer kept secrets. Except one.

She had lied about her date of birth allthose years ago so that the orphanagewould take her in — Russian orphanagesdid not accept children over the age of14. Instead of revealing her true birthdayof April 1, 1927, Dawson had changed itto December 25.

Her sons celebrated mom’s birthday onChristmas day, until 12 years ago, whenshe came clean.

“I thought it was an April Fool’s joke atfirst,” Greg Dawson says.

“But I never changed the year,” saysZhanna. And she was proud to share abirthday with pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff.

She has recordings of her own con-certs. And she loves to listen to music.She has expanded from classical to jazzand even popular piano music. Liberace,she says, can play like the best of them.

She cannot stand to watch television ormovies with violence. She has neverseen any movies about the Holocaust,not even Schindler’s List or The Pianist,Roman Polanski’s film about Polish mu-sician Wladyslaw Szpilman’s survival inthe Warsaw ghetto. Too painful to watch,Dawson says.

However, she participated in the ShoahVictims’ Names Recovery Project, whichaims to memorialize each Jew killed inthe Holocaust by recording their namesand stories. On her family’s page arephotographs of her mother, Sara, and fa-ther, Dmitri, and also of Prokofiy and Yev-dokia Bogancha, the couple who helpedDawson and her sister after they escapedthe death march.

Through all these years she kept thefive sheets of music of Chopin’s “FantasyImpromptu” that she tucked under herclothes and that have survived with her.

“How she preserved five sheets ofmusic is beyond me,” Greg Dawson says.“You know how perishable paper is.”

The sheet music was Zhanna Arshan-skaya Dawson’s treasure; it kept hergoing all those years when there was solittle hope for survival. It is safely lockedaway now in a bank safety deposit box,something for newer generations of herfamily to look at — and remember a sur-vivor.

PLAYING TO LIVE

Zhanna Arshanskaya Dawson escaped a death march by playing music.


(Continued from page 4)the CIA was willing to give exit visas andnew identity papers to middle-rankingNazis in exchange for valuable intelligenceinformation on the new Soviet enemy.

Even more intriguing is the role playedby the Red Cross. In a genuinely freshcontribution to the subject, Steinacher es-tablishes that the International Red Crossissued about 25,000 new identity docu-ments to men whose past was often morethan dubious. Although this assistance pri-marily came from individual Nazi sympa-thizers within the organization, Steinacherargues that all senior members of the In-ternational Red Cross knew about the mis-appropriation of identity documents. Inparticular, he demonstrates that the twopresidents of the International Committeeof the Red Cross in the post-war decades,Carl Jacob Burckhardt and his successor,Paul Ruegger consciously decided to turna blind eye to the frequent abuse of RedCross identity documentation, largely be-cause of their latent anti-Semitism andanti-Communism.

The Catholic Church’s involvement inthe escape of ex-Nazis is, by com-

parison, well known. It has long been es-tablished that individual Nazi sympathizerswithin the clergy, such as Bishop AloisHudal in Rome and the Archbishop ofGenoa, Giuseppe Siri, actively supportedthe flight of Nazi war criminals. However,Steinacher disputes the Vatican’s insis-tence that these men were misguidedblack sheep within an otherwise unblem-ished institution.

Instead, Steinacher argues that the “aidprogram” for ex-Nazis within the Churchwas systematic and intentional, and that ithas to be understood in the context of theCatholic Church’s post-war crusade for are-Christianization of Europe.

Fearing the emergence of a “godless”Europe full of pagans and Communists,the Church was willing to help Nazi war

criminals – many of them lapsed Protes-tants who had left their church in the 1930s– if they converted to Catholicism.Steinacher’s argument that the Vaticanpursued a systematic policy of “de-Nazifi-cation through conversion” to Catholicismis unlikely to gain him many friends inRome, but he provides plenty of evidencefor his theory.

Steinacher’s painstaking reconstructionof the main escape route (which led fromInnsbruck across the Alps to Genoa orRome) underlines the heavy involvementof the Catholic clergy. Along the way, nu-merous monasteries provided shelter formen on the run, and 90 per cent of theNazis that escaped used that route beforethey embarked on a passage to SouthAmerica.

A rgentina, in particular, became thepreferred destination for Nazi

refugees. According to Steinacher’s esti-mate, at least 350 high-ranking Nazis es-caped to Argentina. The Argentineandictator Juan Perón even hoped to attractup to half a million Germans after the war,notably military experts. New immigrantsprimarily had to fulfill two qualifications:they had to be skilled laborers or academ-ically trained experts; and they were not al-lowed to be Communists. Ex-SS officersusually fulfilled both criteria. A Nazi pastwas not a requirement for an immigrationvisa to Argentina, but it was certainly noobstacle either.

Steinacher’s book focuses on Argentina,but it also offers intriguing new perspec-tives on other “safe havens” in Latin Amer-ica, Africa, and the Middle East. Thepostwar journey of former SS colonel Wal-ter Rauff, who invented the mobile gasvans used to kill thousands of Jews alongthe Eastern front, exemplifies the transna-tional dimension of Nazi escape routes:after the war, he was first hidden by BishopSiri of Genoa, before fleeing to Damascusin 1947. In late 1949, he used Red Cross

documentation to move to Ecuador, wherehe worked for the Bayer pharmaceuticalcompany. In the early 1960s, Rauff retiredto Santiago de Chile, where he diedpeacefully in 1984.

North Africa and the Middle East alsoproved to be very popular destinations forex-Nazis, most notably after the fall ofPerón’s regime in 1955, which made Ar-gentina a much less hospitable place forthem.

At least three dozen Nazi refugeesfound a new home in Egypt, Saudi Ara-bia, and Iran, where active participationin the Holocaust was not always seen asa terrible thing. But there were also indi-viduals who were not prominent Nazi per-petrators who found new lives abroaddue to employment opportunities; one ex-ample being the Austrian engineer, Wal-ter Hassler, presented in the book as anexample of a skilled laborer in demandafter the second World War.

During the war, the Nazis had estab-lished links with influential Muslim circles,including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,who actively supported the German cru-sade against the Jews. After the war, suchconnections continued. The former Naziagitator Johann von Leers, for example,was recruited by Nasser to offer his “know-how” for anti-Israel campaigns sponsoredby the Arab League.

Although much has been written in thepast three or four decades about the es-cape of senior Nazi personnel from prose-cution in postwar Europe, Steinacher’sbook stands out as the first “total history”of this complex topic.

He uses a wealth of sources – memoirs,secret service papers, the files of the RedCross and the Pontificia Commissione diAssistenza – in order to substantiate hisprovocative but ultimately well docu-mented claims. In so doing, he has raisedthe bar for all future studies on this subject.

THE CHURCH, THE RED CROSS AND THE NAZIS’ GREAT ESCAPE

(Continued from page 11)began at the site in 2001, with severalstages before he invited Haimi to join in2007. He said the mapping of the 200-yardlong Himmelfahrsstrasse opens the door for looking for the actual gas chambers.

“We are nearer the truth,” he said. “It tellsus where to look for the gas chambers.”

Haimi is not allowed to take any of theitems out of Poland, but he consults regu-

larly with Yad Vashem’s International Insti-tute for Holocaust Research, which helpshim interpret his findings and gives themhistorical perspective.

Dan Michman, head of the institute,said Haimi’s research helps shed light onthe “technical aspects” of the Holocaust.It also grants insight, for example, onwhat people chose to take with them intheir final moments.

“His details are exact and that is an im-portant tool against Holocaust denial. It’snot memories, it’s based on facts. It’s hardevidence,” he said.

Yoram Haimi holds a metal identification tag

bearing the name of Lea Judith de la Penha, a

6-year-old Jewish girl from Holland who was

killed at Sobibor.

ISRAELI ARCHAEOLOGIST

MAPS HOLOCAUSTDEATH CAMP SOBIBOR

BY RAFAEL MEDOFF, JEWISH JOURNAL

Seventy years ago, 15-year-old AnnieKriegel was sitting in her Paris high

school classroom, taking an exam, whenher mother suddenly burst into the roomand warned her not to come home — theNazis were preparing to round up and de-port any Jews they could get their handson.

More than 3,000 miles away, the car-toonist known as Dr. Seuss was settingpen to paper to alert America about whatwas happening to the Jews in France.

Annie found a place to stay that night.The next morning, as she later recalled,she was making her way towards the city’sJewish quarter when, “at the crossing ofthe rue de Turenne and the rue de Bre-tagne, I heard screams rising to the heav-ens.” They were “not cries and squawkssuch as you hear in noisy and excitedcrowds, but screams like you used to hearin hospital delivery rooms. All the humanpain that both life and death provide. Agarage there was serving as a local as-sembly point, and they were separating themen and women.”

Stunned, the teenager sat down on anearby park bench. “It was on that benchthat I left my childhood.” (Kriegel’s experi-ence is recounted in Susan Zucotti’s 1993book, The Holocaust, the French and theJews.)

Over the course of the next two days,more than 13,000 Jews were rounded up

in Paris by the Germans, with the activecollaboration of the Vichy French govern-ment headed by Nazi supporter PierreLaval. The majority of those arrested werecouples with children. They were held forfive excruciating days in the Velodromed’Hiver stadium, in the summer heat with-out food or water. Eyewitnesses describedit as “a scene from hell.” Then they weredeported by train to the gas chambers ofAuschwitz.

The brutal details of the roundup processwere amply reported in the Americanpress. The New York Times described the“scenes of terror and despair” in the streetsof Paris, including suicides, Jewish pa-tients dragged violently from hospital beds,and children violently separated from theirparents. Unfortunately, the article was rel-egated to page 16.

Theodor Geisel, who drew editorial car-toons for PM under the pen name “Dr.Seuss,” was outraged by the news fromFrance and decided to use his cartooningskills to help publicize the plight of theJews.

T he future creator of such belovedclassics as The Cat in the Hat and

Green Eggs and Ham employed starkand disturbing imagery in his July 20 car-toon. He drew a forest filled with corpses

hanging from the trees, witha sign reading “Jew” pinnedto each body. Adolf Hitler,with extra rope draped on hisarm, and Vichy leader PierreLaval were shown singinghappily.

The first words of the Hitler-Laval song, “Only God canmake a tree,” were takenfrom “Trees,” a famous AlfredJoyce Kilmer poem about theunique and eternal beauty oftrees. The killers’ secondline, however, “To furnishsport for you and me,” was alyric concocted by Hitler and

Laval to celebrate their “sport” of massmurder.

In one important respect, Seuss’s car-toon was prescient: unlike many of his con-temporaries, he correctly perceived thatFrance’s Jews were doomed to be killed.At the time of the roundups, the Germansclaimed the Jews were being sent for“work in the East,” and the deportees’ true

destination was generally unknownabroad.

One senior U.S. diplomat in France, S.Pinkney Tuck, urged the Roosevelt admin-istration to take in 4,000 Jewish childrenwho had been separated from their par-ents, on the grounds that they should beregarded as orphans since the Naziswould not let their parents survive. ButState Department officials complained thatTuck was exceeding his authority, and Un-dersecretary of State Sumner Welles as-sured American Jewish Congress leaderRabbi Stephen S. Wise that the deporteeswere just being relocated for “war work.”

Dr. Seuss drew many anti-Nazi cartoonsduring his years at PM, but for reasons thatare unclear, he never returned to the sub-ject of Hitler’s Jewish victims.

The dangers of fascism seem to havehaunted Seuss for many years to follow,however. Reworking a scene of a tower ofturtles from one of his 1942 cartoons, heused the framework of what was ostensiblya child’s fable to inveigh against totalitari-anism in his 1958 best-seller, Yertle theTurtle and Other Stories. Yertle is the kingof a turtle pond who exploits his fellow tur-tles in order to increase his power and per-sonal glory. Furious when he realizes themoon is higher than he is, Yertle com-mands his subjects to form themselvesinto a tower so that he can stand on themand reach the sky.

Seuss said later that Yertle was meant tosymbolize Hitler, and the story was a warn-ing against fascism.

DR. SEUSS AND THE HOLOCAUST IN FRANCE


(Continued from page 4)ings at the time. He was numb then; andhe remains anaesthetized more than 65years later.

There are two special stories aboutKent’s life in the ghetto, each of them

a gem in its own right, and they are en-hanced by the larger context in which weread them. “Lala’s Story” is the title of achapter about the relationship between ayoung boy and his dog, a dog who hadbeen his companion in freedom and whowas moved across the street into his fa-ther’s former factory when the Jews weresent to the ghetto. And yet, on her own,Lala followed the family into the ghetto.

The second independent segmentcaught me by surprise. Several years agoI lectured at the University of Oregon andwas approached by a professor of Land-scape Architecture. He had taken an inter-est in the Holocaust and was writing abook on the subject. Smugly, I wonderedwhat landscape architecture had to do withthe Holocaust. He explained that hewanted to know if I knew of any gardensthat were planted during the Holocaust, es-pecially in ghettos – where food wasscarce and resources negligible.

David Marwell has argued that “just be-cause Jews were powerless, that does notmean that they were passive.” Growing agarden is an act of defiance, the assertionof courage and dignity even in – especially

in – the most dangerous of times. To growa garden one had to find land and seedsor cuttings, tend the garden, and protect itfrom others who would steal the crops.That was no easy task in situations wherehunger was pervasive and where manywere dying of starvation. More importantly,one had to believe in spring, that onewould live to see the harvest – one had tohope, even against one’s better judgment.

When I read Kent’s book, I found the an-swer. Roman Kent and his brother grew agarden in Lodz; he cultivated it and pro-tected it. I learned time and again that indifferent ghettos and under the most im-possible of circumstances, some Jewstried to grow their food – and succeeded,albeit for just a time. Kent’s chapter on thegarden is must reading. It will open youreyes to human initiative, to the capacity ofsome people to resist physical and psy-chological degradation.

Kent’s chapters on Auschwitz are notparticularly vivid, especially in contrast toother segments of the book. His ability torepress is evident; so too is the numbnessof his experience. What makes thesechapters powerful is not the oppression hefaced, a suffering that was common to allinmates, but the bond he shared with hisbrother Leon and the degree to which theKniker brothers stood with one anotherand supported each other throughout theirordeal.

Because he was so young when he sur-vived, the story of his arrival and resettle-ment in the United States is gripping. Itportrays in great detail the insensitivity ofJewish organizations and institutions to theneeds of the people we now call survivors.In those days they were called refugees,and Kent captures the inability of Ameri-cans – Jews and non-Jews alike – to un-derstand the Holocaust and to grasp itssignificance.

Kent writes about his marriage to a fellowsurvivor, the promise of love, the glow ofchildren, the blessing of grandchildren, allthe elements of life. He movingly describeshis love for his brother, with whom he hadshared the ordeal of Auschwitz and the an-guish of adjustment to life in America. Hewrites painfully of his brother’s illness,which is but a foretaste of what happenswhen illness afflicts his son Jeffrey after anaccident.

A lmost one-third of the book is de-voted to Kent’s philanthropic life, his

early activities with the Anti-DefamationLeague, and his travels on behalf of theJewish people. Kent is now President ofthe Jewish Foundation for the Righteous,which provides support to those non-Jewswho rescued Jews. He is Chairman of theAmerican Gathering of Jewish HolocaustSurvivors, where, together with the lateBenjamin Meed and the current president,Sam Bloch, he helped organize Gather-

ings in Washington, Philadelphia, andelsewhere, giving a public voice and forumto the American survivors.

As treasurer and chief negotiator for theConference on Jewish Material ClaimsAgainst Germany (the Claims Conference),Kent describes, as no one else can – andno one else has – the efforts of survivors toachieve justice – partial, inadequate and aslate as it is – in the last years of their lives.

Few have written in such detail – namingnames and describing the politics of thischapter of contemporary Jewish history.Fewer have written with such courage andwith so deep a sense of justice. This partof the book will be studied by historianswho want to make sense of the belated ef-forts at restitution and of the internal strug-gles that pitted Holocaust educational andmemorial institutions and projects againstimpoverished, sick, and starving survivorsaround the globe.

Courage Was My Only Option is sure tobe a controversial book, but such contro-versy should be welcomed because it un-masks many of those guilty of less thanethical behavior and provides the neededdisinfectant of sunshine on negotiationsand efforts that, until now, have beenshrouded in secrecy.

Michael Berenbaum is a Professor ofJewish Studies and the Director of the SigiZiering Institute.

COURAGE WAS MY ONLY OPTION

Propped up by a shovel that acts ashis cane, Vladimir Katriuk putters

about his wooded lot in rural Quebec, lov-ingly caring for his bees and appearing tohave few worries other than this season’shoney yield.

But a prominent Jewish human-rightsorganization insists there’s much more tothe cordial 91-year-old beekeeper — whothey allege is one of the world’s mostwanted Nazi war criminals.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center recentlyranked Katriuk No. 4 on its top-10 list ofsuspected former Nazis, after a newstudy alleged he was a key participant ina village massacre during the SecondWorld War.

An academic article alleged that, in1943, a man with his name lay in waitoutside a barn that had been set ablaze,operating a stationary machine gun andfiring on civilians as they tried to escape.The same article said the man took awatch, bracelet, and gun from the body ofa woman found nearby.

Katriuk spoke recently with The Cana-

dian Press at his small farm in Ormstown,

just under an hour’s drive from Montreal.

He has denied any involvement in war

crimes in the past.

“I have nothing to say,” Katriuk said of

the accusations, after putting down a

beekeeper’s smoker and replacing a

mesh veil with a floppy ball cap.

“When we talk about bees, that’s differ-

ent. When we talk about my own affairs,

that’s something else. I’m sorry.”

Asked how he felt about having his

name on the list of worst surviving Nazis,

Katriuk paused. He reached into a box

and pulled out a piece of a beehive: “You

see?” he said. “Here they have started to

make the royal cell [for a queen bee].”

The otherwise chatty Ukrainian-Cana-

dian, who moved to Canada in 1951,

claimed he wasn’t aware his name was

added to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s

list.

When pressed again about the allega-tions, he replied: “Let people talk.”

A neighbor described Katriuk as a quietman who keeps to himself in the sparselypopulated area, only a few kilometers fromthe U.S. border.

“He’s a quiet guy. I don’t think he mixesin the community ever,” said the man, whodid not want to be named.

The neighbor acknowledged that localsare aware of the allegations about Katriuk,

which have made many news headlinesover the years.

The Federal Court ruled in 1999 that Ka-triuk lied about his voluntary service forGerman authorities during the SecondWorld War in order to obtain Canadian cit-izenship.

The court concluded Katriuk had been amember of a Ukrainian battalion implicatedin numerous atrocities in Ukraine — includ-ing the deaths of thousands of Jews in Be-lorussia between 1941 and 1944.

But in 2007 the Canadian governmentoverturned an earlier decision to revokeKatriuk’s citizenship, due to a lack of ev-idence.

Groups that have long been calling onthe government to strip Katriuk of his citi-

zenship now hope that fresh details pub-lished in a recent journal article will helpchange Ottawa’s mind.

The article alleges Katriuk was di-rectly involved in the March 1943

massacre that “annihilated” the German-occupied village of Khatyn in Belorussia,which is now Belarus.

Soldiers allegedly herded villagers into abarn and lit the roof on fire with a torch, ac-cording to witness testimony published in

the article titled “The Khatyn Massacre inBelorussia: A Historical Controversy Revis-ited.”

“One witness stated that Volodymyr Ka-triuk was a particularly active participant inthe atrocity: he reportedly lay behind thestationary machine gun, firing rounds onanyone attempting to escape the flames,”said the article, authored by Lund Univer-sity historian Per Anders Rudling.

Rudling, whose research was publishedin the spring 2012 issue of HolocaustGenocide Studies, attributed these detailsto KGB interrogations released for the firsttime in 2008.

After these new allegations surfaced,B’nai Brith Canada urged the Canadian

government in a letter to reconsider its po-sition on Katriuk.

David Matas, the organization’s seniorlegal counsel, said Canada’s history indealing with suspected war criminals hasbeen “bleak.”

“It was easier after [the Second WorldWar] to get into Canada if you were a Naziwar criminal, than if you were a Jewishrefugee,” Matas said.

A spokeswoman for Immigration MinisterJason Kenney said the government “re-mains committed to identifying and remov-ing people involved in war crimes, crimesagainst humanity, and genocide fromCanada, including revisiting new evidenceon previously examined cases.”

Efraim Zuroff, co-ordinator of the organi-zation’s Nazi war crimes research project,said the most-wanted list also includes an-other Canadian: Helmut Oberlander, who’sranked at No. 10.

Oberlander’s case is also in limbo, thegroup says.

Zuroff said the biggest problem in bring-ing suspected Nazis to justice is not findingthem or the evidence — but a lack of polit-ical will in many countries to see thatthey’re prosecuted.

“What’s the chance of a 90-year-old Naziwar criminal committing murder again?Zero,” Zuroff said in a phone interview fromthe Jerusalem area.

“All they have to do is wait it out. Peopleare going to die soon anyway and they’llspare themselves the expense, the embar-rassment and the problems — logisticallyor whatever — of prosecuting one of theirown [citizens].”

Katriuk thought his own time was up lastfall, when an ulcer burst in his stomach.

“I was almost finished,” said Katriuk.He added that he received five liters of

blood during his two-week stay in hospital.He hinted that one day he might tell his

story — but he didn’t say when.“When it’s time to talk, I will talk,” he said.

“Right now is not the time for me to talk.”

QUEBEC BEEKEEPER ACCUSED OF NAZI WAR CRIMES

Vladimir Katriuk gestures at his honeybee farm in Ormstown, Quebec Katriuk, alleged to be one

of the world’s most wanted Nazi war criminals, is living a quiet life keeping bees and selling honey

in rural Quebec.


(Continued from page 6)done,” says Rabbi Sokoloff, who hasknown Friedman 15 years. “There’s aninner drive … to make a difference.” Then,in Europe, now in the States, “he wants torebuild, to rebuild what was lost in the war,”the rabbi says.

Judith Lazar, who at age 3 was amongthe children he shepherded to safety fromDebrecen in 1944, was too young to re-member Friedman, but she grew up hear-ing about him from her mother and otherJews who knew him then. “[Her mother]was crazy about him, about how coura-geous he was.”

Lazar, a longtime Lubavitch emissary inMilan whose son is Rabbi Berel Lazar, thechief rabbi of Russia, says she’s heard anow-legendary story of how an innocentremark she made on the Hungarian trainput the whole group under Friedman’s carein danger, and how his quick thinkingsaved the day.

She was a little girl and she blurted out,“I don’t have a Jewish star, but my motherdoes.”

The other passengers looked at thegroup with suspicion. Obviously, Jews.Was he? “If I were Jewish, I’d have to wear

a star,” like the Jews, Friedman said to thechildren in a voice loud enough for every-one to hear. Then, in the version of thestory passed along to Lazar, putativeGestapo member Friedman added, “I’mtaking these little [he used a crude Hungar-ian term for women, a word that normallywould not pass his lips] to a place wherethey will kill these dirty Jews.”

The danger passed.In Lazar’s family alone there are eight

children (all of them Lubavitch emissaries)and more than 50 grandchildren and sevengreat-grandchildren. “We owe our lives tohim,” Lazar says. “Who knows how manyothers” are alive because of Friedman?

Lazar says her children know Friedman’sstory. “I told them what he did and howcourageous he was.”

Friedman, who came to the UnitedStates in 1948, is an active member ofAdath Yeshurun in Kew Gardens, usuallywalking the several blocks to shul forShabbat services Saturday morning.

Often, he says, he will go back in the af-ternoon if someone in the congregation in-vites him to a Shabbat meal betweenMincha and Maariv. “I cannot say no,”Friedman says.

RELUCTANT HERO

(Continued from page 6)them that block 66 had no more.

Thanks to Kalina’s efforts, when the Alliesliberated Buchenwald on April 11, 1945,over 900 Jewish boys survived. When theywere freed, the boys lifted up Antonin Kalinaand carried him on their shoulders.

After the war, Kalina returned to hishome in Czechoslovakia and lived

out the remainder of his life in obscurity.His boys began new lives in Israel, theUnited States, Australia, and Europe; butthey always remembered the Czech manwho risked his life in order to save theirs.For years, however, Kalina’s heroism wentunrecognized, partially because Kalina, ahumble man, never sought out publicity forhis actions. Likewise, for years many of theboys whom he saved didn’t talk about theirexperiences during the Holocaust.

Several years ago, some of the survivingboys, now around 80 years old, along witha historian from Michigan State University,Kenneth Waltzer, initiated a process tohave Kalina recognized as RighteousAmong the Nations. The impetus for seek-ing recognition for Kalina was the filming

of the documentary Kinderblock 66: Returnto Buchenwald, which tells the story of fourboys who go back for the 65th anniversaryof their liberation from the camp. The filmalso tells the story of Kalina and highlightshis role in the rescue of the children in thecamp. Two of the film’s subjects, NaftaliFurst of Haifa and Alex Moskovic ofFlorida, played leading roles in the nomi-nation process.

In July, Kinderblock 66 played to a fullhouse at the Jerusalem Film Festival. Fol-lowing the screening, Irena Steinfeldt, theDirector of Yad Vashem’s RighteousAmong the Nations Department, stood be-fore the rapt audience and announced thatYad Vashem had granted Kalina the recog-nition he so richly deserved. For the sur-vivors and their descendants, it was abittersweet moment – a long-standingoversight had been corrected, but thereare no surviving members of Kalina’s fam-ily to accept his honor.

Today, as we remember heroes likeRaoul Wallenberg and Antonin Kalina, wemust consider other unsung heroes of theHolocaust for whom there may be no oneleft to tell their story.

THE MAN WHO SAVED 900 JEWISH BOYS INSIDE A DEATH CAMP

(Continued from page 7)ble, against the civilian population!” Hemade no mention of German bombing at-tacks on Rotterdam and Coventry in 1940.

He was taken prisoner by American forcesin Metz, France, in October 1944 and didn’tsee his wife again until March 1946.

Pfeiffer concluded that his grandfatherwasn’t lying outright in his interviews, butmerely doing what millions of Germanshad done after the war — engaging in de-nial, playing down their role to lessen theirresponsibility.

It led to the convenient myth in the imme-diate aftermath of the war that the entirenation had been duped by a small cliqueof criminals who bore sole responsibility forthe Holocaust — and that ordinary Ger-mans had themselves been victims.

Germany has long since jettisoned thatfallacy. But Pfeiffer admits that his bookdidn’t answer a key question about his lov-ing, kind grandparents who were pillars ofhis family for decades.

“Why did the humanity of my grandpar-ents not rebel against the mass murdersand why didn’t my grandfather, even in hisinterview in 2005, concede guilt or shameor express any sympathy for the victims?”

“MORAL INSANITY”

When asked whether he felt that heshared any of the collective guilt

for the Holocaust, Hans Hermann said:“No. That is no guilt collectively. No groupis leveling this collective guilt, it’s differen-tiated today, in historical research as well.

The individual guilt of people and groupsis being researched.”

Pfeiffer writes that his grandparents wereinfected by the same “moral insanity” thatafflicted many Germans during and afterWorld War I: “A state of emotional coldness,a lack of self-criticism, and absolute egotism

combined with a strongdeficit of moral judgment, aswell as the support, accept-ance, and justification of cru-elty when the enemy wasaffected by it.”

Those are damning words.Pfeiffer said his grandpar-ents’ generation probablyhad no choice but to sup-press their guilt in order tokeep on functioning in thehard postwar years when alltheir energy was focused onrebuilding their livelihoods.“It was a necessary humanreaction,” said Pfeiffer.

The Vergangenheitsbe-wältigung — the confrontation with thepast — got a much-needed push with the1968 student protests.

For many, the atonement didn’t comefast enough. German author Ralph Gior-dano referred to the “Second Guilt” in abook he wrote in 1987 — the reluctance toown up to the crimes, and the ability ofNazi perpetrators to prosper in postwarWest Germany.

Pfeiffer hopes his book will encourageother children and grandchildren of eyewit-nesses to follow suit. “I think conversationslike the ones I carried out will bring rela-tives together rather than drive a wedgebetween them,” he said.

Pfeiffer’s original intention had been justto write a family history for personal use.After he interviewed his grandfather, heedited the transcript and presented it to thefamily at Christmas in 2005.

“NON-VERBAL ADMISSIONS OF GUILT”

But he had noticed omissions in hisgrandfather’s testimony and had

asked him to submit to a second, more rig-orous interview in summer 2006. HansHermann agreed. Unfortunately, Moritznever got the chance to conduct it. Edithdied in June that year after a long illness.

Overcome by grief, Hans Hermann diedsix weeks later.

Asked how he thinks his grandfatherwould have reacted to his book, Pfeiffersaid: “I think he would have initially beenshocked about the unsparing presentationof his life story and wouldn’t exactly havebeen delighted at my critical commentsand conclusions.

“But I think he would have spent a longtime examining it and would acknowledgethe factual analysis and the fact that I wasn’ttrying to discredit him or settle any scores.”

Pfeiffer sees a big difference betweenwhat the dying generation is able to artic-ulate and what it is actually feeling. He de-tected what he called “non-verbaladmissions of guilt” in his grandfather’s be-havior.

After the war, Hans Hermann encour-aged his daughter to learn French andhosted French pupils on exchange pro-grams. He also supported the Europeanintegration policy of Konrad Adenauer andCharles de Gaulle, and avoided going toveterans’ reunions.

In 2005, he was outraged at first by a re-search report Pfeiffer co-wrote at the Uni-versity of Freiburg about the involvementof the Wehrmacht in war crimes. A fewweeks later, however, he told his grand-son: “I have thought a lot about it — andthere’s some truth to it.”

BOOK URGES GERMANS TO QUIZ DYING NAZI GENERATION

Wehrmacht soldiers tearing down a barrier at a border crossing

between Germany and Poland on the first day of the war.

German prisoners of war being marched

through Aachen, in October 1944, the same

month that Hans Hermann was taken prisoner

in Metz.

French President François Hollandepaid tribute at a commemorative cer-

emony to thousands of Jewish people whowere rounded up and detained in aParisian cycling stadium by the Vichy gov-ernment 70 years ago.

“We owe it to the Jewish martyrs of theWinter Velodrome to tell the truth aboutwhat happened 70 years ago,” Hollandesaid, speaking from the site where the “Veld’Hiv,” or the Winter Velodrome cycling sta-dium, once stood in Paris’ 15th district.

“The truth is that this crime was commit-ted in France, by France,” he said. Hol-lande laid a wreath during the ceremony,and a commemorative plaque was alsoerected.

In one of the darkest chapters in Frenchhistory, more than 13,000 Jews wererounded up in their homes on July 16 and17, 1942, and detained by police on ordersof the Vichy government, which was collab-orating with the Nazis. The Vichy regimewas the French government at the time.

Unmarried Jews and couples withoutchildren were detained in Drancy, a suburbnorth of Paris. Families were detained atthe Winter Velodrome in Paris for five daysin insufferable conditions, with childrenseparated from parents, before they weresent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau deathcamp.

“These women, these men, these chil-dren could not have expected the fatewhich was reserved for them. They couldnot have even imagined it. They trusted inFrance,” Hollande said.

Hollande also vowed to fight anti-Semi-tism and Holocaust denial, calling for moreefforts to educate younger generationsabout the Winter Velodrome incident.

“There cannot be a single school wherethis story is not fully heard, respected, andreflected upon,” he said. “For the FrenchRepublic, there cannot be — there will notbe — memory that is lost. I will see to itpersonally.”

In total, some 76,000 French men,women, and children were deported toNazi extermination camps during WorldWar II, Hollande said. Only 2,500 cameback to France.

FRENCH PRESIDENTMARKS ANNIVERSARY

OF HOLOCAUST DETENTIONS

Inte

rna

tion

al S

oc

iety

for Y

ad

Va

sh

em

MA

RT

YR

DO

M A

ND

RE

SIS

TAN

CE

50

0 F

IFT

H A

VE

NU

E, 4

2n

d F

LO

OR

NE

W Y

OR

K, N

.Y. 1

011

0-4

29

9

NO

N-P

RO

FIT

OR

G.

U.S

. PO

ST

PA

IDN

EW

YO

RK

, N.Y

.P

ER

MIT

NO

. 9313

We

b s

ite:

ww

w.y

ad

va

sh

em

usa

.org

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 ZborowskiMark Palmer Sam Skura**Israel KrakowskiWilliam MandellSam HalpernIsidore Karten**Norman BelferJoseph Bukiet**

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


BY JOE O’CONNOR, NATIONAL POST

Miriam Rosenthal was four monthspregnant, starving, bone-tired, cold,

filthy, and afraid when an SS officer in bigblack boots and a crisp uniform appearedbefore the barracks in Auschwitz with aloudspeaker in hand.

All pregnant women line up, he barked.Line up, line up — your food portions arebeing doubled.

“Can you imagine?” Miriam asks. “Evenwomen who were not pregnant steppedforward. I was standing with my youngercousin, but I wouldn’t go. She says,‘Miriam, what are you doing?’

“Something was holding me back.Someone was watching over me. I feelmaybe my mother, maybe God. Two hun-dred women stepped forward and 200women went to the gas chamber. And Idon’t know why I didn’t step forward.

“I have asked rabbis. I have asked somebig people and no one can give me an an-swer. If you believe in God, then God didit. If you believe it was my parents, then itwas my parents, which is what I believe.

“They were such good people, generous,kind. And maybe for their sake, maybethat’s why I didn’t step forward. I haveasked myself this question so many timesas I lay in bed upstairs.”

We are sitting in the dining room of a tidyhome in north Toronto. Tears are welling inMiriam Rosenthal’s eyes. Talking aboutthose long-ago days “rips at her guts.” Sheremembers everything. “Every step.” Everyhorror. Her body is shot through with arthri-tis, her legs barely work, her neck aches,she is 90, but Miriam remembers.

“I don’t have dementia yet,” she says,smiling.

Not stepping forward at Auschwitz was abeginning, not an end. There were othermysteries of fate that, in the dying monthsof the Second World War in the deadenedlandscape of Nazi Germany, broughtseven pregnant Jewish women together inKaufering I, a sub-camp of Dachau, whereseven Jewish babies would be born.

The Germans murdered over a millionJewish children. Like the sick and the old,they were viewed as useless mouths tofeed and often among the first killed. Somewere used in medical experiments, butnewborns were typically murdered at birth.

Almost seven decades after the war, theseven Jewish babies of Kaufering — threeboys, four girls — are still alive, scatteredabout the globe, the youngest living sur-vivors of the Holocaust.

“Here is my miracle baby now,” Miriamsays, pausing mid-sentence, grinning atthe appearance of her 67-year-old “baby,”Leslie.

“And here is my miracle mother,” LeslieRosenthal chimes back.

Miriam Rosenthal was born MiriamSchwarcz in Komarno, Czechoslovakia, onAugust 26, 1922, the youngest of 13 chil-dren. Jacob, her father, was a gentlemanfarmer.

“I was spoiled,” she says. “I had a beau-tiful life. I was always asking my motherwhen is it my turn to get married?”

A matchmaker from Miskolc, Hungary,met with Miriam and her mother, Laura.Flipping through the woman’s book of eli-gible bachelors, Miriam spotted her “ClarkGable,” a movie-star-handsome cattle bro-ker’s son named Bela Rosenthal. Theywere married in Budapest on April 5, 1944.Miriam pinned a red rose on her lapel tocover the yellow Star of David.

The honeymoon was brief. Within afew short months, Bela was sent to

a slave labor camp, Miriam to Auschwitz.She was later transferred to Augsberg,Germany, to work in a Messerschmitt fac-tory. All the while, her belly grew.

Two men from the SS appeared at thefactory one day, with snarling Germanshepherds, demanding to know who thepregnant women were. They asked a sec-ond time.

“I had to raise my hand,” Miriam says. “Iwas showing, and if I didn’t put up my handall those other women would be killed.How could I not put up my hand? The girls

wept for me. The SS took me and put meon a passenger train, which was very un-usual. There was a woman, a civilian, andshe said: ‘Frau, what is with you? You don’thave hair. The clothes you are wearing.What are you, from a mental hospital?’

“She didn’t have a dream, this Germanwoman, of all the horrible things the Ger-mans were doing. I told her I am not froma mental hospital, I am going to Auschwitz— I am going to the gas. She looked at melike I was crazy, opened her purse andgave me some bread. I ate it so fast. I wasso hungry.”

The SS guards had been out smokingand returned, telling Miriam she was one“lucky Jew,” that the crematoriums atAuschwitz were “kaput.” Instead, she wastaken to Kaufering I, a satellite camp nearDachau, hand-delivered to the gates andidentified by a number tattooed on her leftforearm, still visible today.

“They said, ‘Adieu, Frau, good luck toyou.’ Can you imagine?” Miriam says. “I

went into this camp and I was led to abasement and guess who was there?”

Six other pregnant women: crying,laughing, holding one another, chatteringin Hungarian, bundling themselves in thehope that they might actually survive.One by one the babies came, deliveredby another inmate, a Hungarian gynecol-ogist whose only instrument was a pail ofhot water.

A capo, a Jewish woman charged withoverseeing the women, smuggled a stoveinto the room, keeping the expectantmothers warm during the freezing wintermonths of 1945. The Germans discov-ered the stove and beat the capo bloody,ripping into her flesh with their trun-cheons.

“I have looked for this woman since,”Miriam says. “After the beating she toldus, ‘Don’t you worry, girls, the stove willbe back tomorrow.’ ”

It was.Leslie Rosenthal was the last of the

Kaufering babies, born February 28,1945.

“He was beautiful, blond hair, blueeyes,” Miriam says. “An SS came

in and was surprised and said he looksAryan and he asked me if the father wasan SS man.

“I told him no, the father was my hus-band.”

American troops wept when they liber-ated Dachau in late April and discoveredthe babies — new life in a graveyard ofbones. Miriam said goodbye to her “campsisters” and headed home to Czechoslo-vakia. Bela had also survived and returnedto Komarno, broken sandals on his feet,held there by a string.

“I could see him coming, running fromafar, and I shouted, ‘Bela, Bela.’ I wasn’tsure it was him, and he was running andcalling my name,” Miriam says.

“I can’t describe that feeling of when hesaw our baby, when he saw Leslie for thefirst time. We cried and cried and cried.”

The young family moved to Canada in1947. Bela found work in a mattress fac-tory, but his real gift was talking. He was aman of words, and faith. The Rosenthalsleft the big city for Timmins and Sudbury,where Bela served as rabbi before their re-turn to Toronto in 1956. They ran Miriam’sFine Judaica, a gift shop, on BathurstStreet, for over four decades, raised threechildren, and had grandchildren — andgreat-grandchildren. Bela died a few yearsback. He was 97.

Life in Canada wasn’t always easy,Miriam says. There were up and downsand there was always the past, painfulmemories haunting the periphery, darkshadows amid the light.

Miriam has a recurring nightmare wherethe SS come and take Leslie away. Butwhen she looks over at him now, sitting be-side her on a warm August afternoon, herface brightens, because she knows howher war story ends.

PREGNANT IN AUSCHWITZ

A postwar photo of Miriam Rosenthal.

ELI ZBOROWSKI REMEMBERED (1925–2012) - … · ELI ZBOROWSKI REMEMBERED (1925–2012) ROCHEL AND...

Documents

Transcript of ELI ZBOROWSKI REMEMBERED (1925–2012) - … · ELI ZBOROWSKI REMEMBERED (1925–2012) ROCHEL AND...