FROM HOLOCAUST TO REBIRTHelist Leon Uris by Dr. Vladislav Dering, a Polish gynecologist then liv-ing...

IN THIS ISSUEThe ASYV Annual Tribute Dinner............................................................1, 8-9Friend of the Jews...........................................................................................2To Auschwitz and back...................................................................................3Veit Harlan: The life and work of a Nazi filmmaker.......................................4Seeking the truth about a Nazi war criminal.................................................4Poland honors diplomat who saved 800 Jews during the Holocaust.........7How an astonishing Holocaust diary resurfaced in America.....................11Nazi collaborator or national hero?.............................................................12The tragedy of the Jews of Rhodes.............................................................14The day the rabbis marched.........................................................................15

Vol. 45-No. 2 ISSN 0892-1571 November/December 2018-Kislev/Tevet 5779

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEMAMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM

BY JILL GOLTZER

On Sunday, November 11, 2018,the American Society for Yad

Vashem (ASYV) gathered at thePlaza Hotel in New York City for itsAnnual Tribute Dinner, hon-oring Celina and MarvinZborowski and Adina andLawrence Burian. Over 700people attended, includingmore than 150 members ofthe younger generation, byfar the most in our organiza-tion’s history. Esteemedguests included Dr. AriBerman (president ofYeshiva University), MalcolmHoenlein (EVP of theConference of Presidents ofMajor American JewishOrganizations), our ownMark Wilf (chairman ofJFNA), Andrew Lustgarten(president of MSG), AndreaGreenberg (president andCEO of MSG Networks),Hank Ratner (former presi-dent and CEO of MSGNetworks), Titi Ayenaw (MissIsrael 2013), andAmbassador Danny Danon(Israel’s permanent repre-sentative to the UN).

The theme for the evening was“From Holocaust to Rebirth,” which,as Dinner Chair Mark Moskowitzexplained, “follows the modern histor-ical arc of the Jewish people, takingus from the depth of the horrors of theHolocaust to the exhilaration of theestablishment of the State of Israel 70years ago.” The presence of so manymembers of our Young LeadershipAssociates (YLA) is a testament to

the notion of “rebirth.” Our YLA washeavily involved in the evening’s pro-gram, beginning with Halle Wilf andJonathan Friedman, co-chairs of theYLA Tribute Dinner Committee, lead-ing our guests in the motzi. Award-winning a cappella group Six13 then

led everyone in a magnificent rendi-tion of “Hatikvah”.

Master of Ceremonies Jill Martin,ten-time Emmy award-winning

sportscaster and television personali-ty, set the tone for the evening byemphasizing the importance of pass-ing the survivors’ stories “down to thenext generation with accuracy, loveand awareness.” Ms. Martin thenintroduced Dr. Ron Meier, executive

director of ASYV, who noted that what“makes tonight extra special is thatwe are honoring the Zborowski family,who exemplify the first generation ofsurvivors, together with the Burianfamily, who are the true leaders of thesecond generation.” Dr. Meier also

shared stories about his personalconnection to the Holocaust, specifi-cally Kristallnacht (“Night of BrokenGlass”).

This evening fell exactly 80 yearsafter the events of Kristallnacht, and amere two weeks after the violent anti-Semitic attack that took place onOctober 27th in a Pittsburgh syna-gogue. Dr. Meier reminded us that aswe try to make sense of somethingthat is entirely senseless, what is cer-tain is that Yad Vashem’s sacred mis-sion is as relevant today as it was 65years ago when its gates first openedin Jerusalem. The shooting inPittsburgh was the deadliest attack onthe Jewish people in American histo-ry, and as Ambassador Danon aptlystated, “it was anti-Semitism in itsclassic and cruelest form.”

Following a video message fromYad Vashem Chairman Avner

Shalev, Jill Martin invited YLA mem-ber Laura Epstein to say a few words

about her experience on the 2018Yad Vashem Generation toGeneration Mission this past summer.Epstein talked about the four sur-vivors on the trip — Felice Stokes,Edward Mosberg, Naftali Deutsch,and Leon Green, z”l. These four indi-

viduals “opened their heartsto us and reinforced theidea of MeShoahLeTekumah — that evenafter living through theatrocities of the Holocaust,rebirth was not only a possi-bility, but in fact a reality.”

We were very fortunate tobe joined by some of ouresteemed Holocaust sur-vivors. ASYV ChairmanLeonard Wilf invited all thesurvivors in the room tostand and be recognized,and then asked everyone tojoin them as “we all stand asONE!”

Mr. Wilf thanked DinnerChair Mark Moskowitz aswell as board members RitaLevy and MarilynRubenstein for the tremen-dous work they put intoplanning this year’s dinner.He then presented the YadVashem Remembrance

Award to Celina and MarvinZborowski, who were joined by theirsons Mark and Ziggy on stage. “Itgives me enormous nachas that mychildren and grandchildren have fol-lowed in my footsteps and that theyare also involved in the organizationand the young leadership,” Marvinsaid. Celina and Marvin are bothfounding members of ASYV and areGuardians of the Valley of theCommunities at Yad Vashem.Looking out into the audience, Marvinstated, “I will continue to do whateverI can to perpetuate our memories, sothe world could never forget.”

Following the moving tribute tothe Zborowski family, Jill Martininvited board member DavidHalpern, son of Sam, z”l, andGladys Halpern, to preside overthis year’s In Memoriam. Togetherwe honored the memories of thosemembers of our Yad Vashem family

(Continued on page 2)

The American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute DinnerFROM HOLOCAUST TO REBIRTH

Dinner honorees Adina Burian and Marvin and Celina Zborowski; Chairman of the ASYV Leonard Wilf ; and Dinner honoree

Lawrence Burian.

MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779

(Continued from page 1)who have passed on since the lasttime we gathered. Eleven YLA mem-bers then solemnly stepped onto thestage carrying yahrzeit candles.Each recited the name of one of theeleven victims of the recent shootingat the Etz Chaim synagogue inPittsburgh. Surrounded by ouryoung leaders, singer and song-writer Arianna Afsar performed abeautiful rendition of “Somewhereover the Rainbow” in honor of thosewho were murdered just becausethey were Jewish.

Dinner Chair Mark Moskowitzintroduced Adina and Lawrence

Burian and presented them with theYad Vashem Leadership Award. Adinaand Lawrence were both foundingmembers of the YLA and are nowextremely active members of the ASYVboard. They were joined that night bytheir parents, siblings and four beautifulchildren. Their eldest son, Jonah,expressed the immense pride he andhis siblings have for their parents.“Seeing my parents and their commit-ment and passion for working with YadVashem…inspires both me and my sib-

lings to continue that legacy as wegrow older, to want to participate, andto get involved as much as we can.”

In accepting this well-deservedhonor, Lawrence talked about

working with his father, Holocaust sur-vivor Andrew Burian, and YadVashem to publish a book about hisfather’s experience during the war.For Lawrence, this was one of hisgreatest satisfactions. He and Adina“feel privileged to be part of an organ-ization that so wholly preserves ourpast while treasuring the foundationof our future; an organization which

welcomes and honors people of allbackgrounds and of all faiths.”

The evening’s program ended withan uplifting medley of Hebrew songsperformed by award-winning a cappel-la group Six13. Throughout the night,our wonderful honorees, Celina andMarvin Zborowski and Adina andLawrence Burian, inspired everyonewith their lifelong commitment toHolocaust remembrance and theirunwavering dedication to the ASYV.Guests sang and danced into the night,celebrating the sanctity of life, the mira-cle of rebirth, and hope for the future.

FROM HOLOCAUST TO REBIRTH

BY MENUCHA CHANA LEVIN, AISH.COM

Dr. Adélaïde Hautval was a psy-chiatrist who lived in a Vichy-

controlled area of southern France. InApril 1942, Hautval was told of thedeath of her mother, who had lived inoccupied Paris. In order to attend thefuneral, she applied for a pass tocross the demarcation line.

Although her request was rejected,Adélaïde attempted to cross over.She was arrested and taken to theBourges train station for an identitycheck. While waiting on the platform,she noticed some Germans mistreat-ing a Jewish family. Speaking calmlyto them in German, she told them toleave the family alone.

“Don’t you see that they are onlyJews?” asked the German.

“So what? They are people like theothers, leave them alone,” Adélaïdebravely insisted. Her answer landedher in the Bourges prison, where shewould witness further cruelty towardJews.

“A Jewish woman was placed in ourcell, and I discovered that she waswearing a yellow star sewn on herjacket. To attract the attention of theGestapo, I attached a piece of paperto my clothing,” Adélaïde explained. Itstated, “Friend of the Jews.”Whenever she could, she boldlydefended her friends.

When Adélaïde was being interro-gated, the Germans offered her acompromise: “Deny what you saidabout the Jews and you will bereleased.”

“But how can I say something else?Jews are like other people,” Adélaïdeinsisted.

”So you defend them? You will sharetheir fate!” the Germans harshlyinformed her. Because of Hautval’srefusal to change her attitudes, theGestapo compelled her to stitch a Starof David on her coat along with a clothband marked “A friend of the Jews.”

Dr. Hautval was sent to the Birkenaudeath camp together with otherFrench prisoners. A devout Protestantand daughter of a pastor, she washoused with 500 Jewish women, who

called her “the saint.” Utilizing hermedical knowledge to treat Jewishprisoners suffering from typhus, shesecluded them in a separate part ofthe camp to prevent contagion. By notreporting the prisoners’ illness, shesaved them from the gas chambers.

In April 1943, Adélaïde was sent toBlock 10 of the main camp of

Auschwitz, where sadistic experi-ments took place, including the steril-ization of women by injection of caus-tic products. She was supposed toassist with the “medical experiments”performed on Jewish women prison-ers without anesthetic by Germandoctors. With great courage, she

defied the criminal experimenters,refusing to enter the operating roomor to assist the surgeons. Sent backto Birkenau, she wondered what hadsaved her from execution, since theSS was known for its brutality.

When she finally discovered that anorder had in fact been given for herexecution, she was tormented by theidea that another inmate might havebeen substituted for her.

In August 1944, she was transferredto Ravensbrück, and later sent as adoctor to the Watenstett camp, anammunition factory.

After the liberation of Ravensbrück

in April, 1945 she continued to treatthe patients who were too ill to bemoved.

Adélaïde was repatriated only inJune 1945, with the last Frenchpatients. Because she was not part ofa resistance organization or network,she had difficulty obtaining a resist-ance deportee card.

A fter the war, although her healthwas impaired by her bout with

typhus and malnutrition, Adélaïderesumed her medical practice inFrance. She was awarded the Legionof Honor in December 1945 for herdedication to her fellow inmates in thebrutality of the concentration camps.

In 1946 she wrote a short book calledMedicine and Crime AgainstHumanity, which was finally published44 years later.

Then in May 1964, a libel suit wasfiled in London against American nov-elist Leon Uris by Dr. VladislavDering, a Polish gynecologist then liv-ing in Britain. He accused the authorof Exodus of defamation. Leon Urisclaimed that the doctor had participat-ed in Block 10 in criminal experimentswith Jewish prisoners.

Dr. Adélaïde Hautval was called asa witness. On the witness stand, shedeclared: “Yes, Dr. Dering did experi-

ments on at least 400 Jews.”Asked questions from the defense,

Adélaïde explained how she reactedduring her incarceration in Block 10:“I had to serve as an assistant to Dr.Wirths, a German with gray-blueeyes. He told me that I would alsohave to assist Professor Clauberg, acivilian, bald little man, wearing aTyrolean hat and boots. I was trou-bled because that is something I didnot want to participate in. Havingprobably noticed my reluctance, hequestioned me about my opinion ofsterilization. The opportunity wasunique. I think a direct questiondeserves a direct answer. I said, ‘Iam absolutely opposed to it.’”

“’Do not you see that these people(the Jews) are very different fromyou?’ I was asked again. ’I do not,and don’t stop me from saying that inthis camp many people are differentfrom me.’”

Following this testimony, one of theEnglish judges proclaimed, “Here isone the most impressive, bravewomen who has ever appearedbefore a court in this country, awoman of strong character and anextraordinary personality.”

In 1965, Dr. Adélaïde Hautval wasawarded the title of Righteous

Among the Nations by Yad Vashemand traveled to Israel to receive hermedal. Her positive attitude towardthe Jewish people remained asstrong as ever:

“The return of the people of Israelto their own country is an accom-plishment concerning not only itselfbut the world at large…. Israel hasalways played a gestative, fermenta-tive role, due to which it was hated orrespected. Its mission in the worldcontinues. May Israel remain faithfulto it. The entire history of the Jewishpeople demonstrates the primacy ofspiritual forces. Hence, its undertak-ing cannot but be successful,” shestated.

In October, 1988, after discoveringthe signs of Parkinson’s disease, Dr.Hautval sadly chose to end her life.The hospital where she worked wasrenamed Adélaïde Hautval Villiers-le-Bel in her honor.

FRIEND OF THE JEWS: HOW DR. ADÉLAЇDE HAUTVAL DEFIED THE NAZIS AND SAVED JEWISH LIVES

Dr. Hautval with naval cadets and high school students at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, 1965.

November/December 2018 - Kislev/Tevet 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE

BY TAKIS WÜRGER, SPIEGEL ONLINE

One morning in June, with thesmell of an approaching thun-

derstorm in the air, an elderly man,his hair carefully parted to one sideand wearing a freshly ironed, collaredshirt, rings the doorbell of a farm-house in the Bohemian Forest, a lowmountain range in the CzechRepublic. He has a long journeybehind him, across two internationalborders and hundreds of kilometers,the last few hundred meters of whichlead down an alley lined with peartrees. The man knows this farmhouseand the dark brown, weathered barnat the end of the gravel road. He hasbeen here before, here in the Czechvillage of Brnírov. He has returnedbecause he wants to fulfill his prom-ise.

A wrinkled woman in a cotton dresscovered by an apron peers out of theopen door with her narrowed, blueeyes. She sees the man and immedi-ately envelops him in a warmembrace, her smile so broad that youcan see where the molars are missingfrom her dentures. The two launchinto a breathless conversation inCzech.

“There you are. I’ve baked a cherrycake,” the woman says. “There youare.”

She has been expecting him. Sheknew that he would return. She knowshis story — and has known it forlonger than she has known him.

The man is Josef Salomonovic, thelittle Jew from the barn.

He presents the farmer’s wife,whom he calls “Frau Anna,” with twobars of chocolate, a bottle ofAustralian wine from the supermarketand a package of Merci pralines. Heeats a piece of cherry cake, praisingits moistness — and Frau Anna is soovercome with nervous excitementthat she spoons cocoa powder intothe cups instead of instant coffee.Salomonovic smiles and nods, joiningthe woman’s grandson for a tour ofthe chicken coop and the new out-building. Then he asks: “Is thecrooked tree still standing?”

Before Josef Salomonovic packedhis two suitcases and embarked onthis journey shortly before his 80thbirthday, he told me his life story inVienna. We had met in Auschwitz.

“ONLY SAD STORIES”

Several months later, at thekitchen table of his apartment in

Vienna’s 10th District, he is gazing atthe bits of memorabilia with which hewants to illustrate his story: a spoon,a miniature airplane and a letter withAdolf Hitler’s profile on the stamp.

He speaks for three straight days. Atthe beginning of his story, he says hewants to try to avoid making it toosad. And at one point during the threedays, when we go to a nearby restau-rant and Salomonovic orders venison

kidney ragout, he says: “I just thoughtof something. I’m going to tell you afunny story.” He listens to himself talk-ing, pauses for a moment, and thensays: “Actually, I have only sad sto-ries.”

He speaks of the years during whichthe Germans murdered 1.5 millionJewish children. He speaks of theghetto, of lethal injections and ofAuschwitz. Over and over again — orperhaps the entire time — he alsospeaks about Dora Salomonovic, hismother.

Dora Salomonovic was fromMährisch Ostrau, a town that is nowcalled Ostrava and lies in present-dayCzech Republic. Her native languagewas German, but she grew upas a Czech Jew in the AustrianEmpire. Dora went to tradeschool and fell in love with ablack-haired engineer namedErich, who was an accom-plished chess player and couldrepair anything. She marriedhim, and they had two sons,Michal and Josef, whose nick-name was Pepek. He was bornin 1938, the same year that1,406 synagogues and templeswere burned down in Germany.

Josef’s first memory is of hismother coming to him when hewas three to tell him that thefamily was taking a trip toPoland.

It was 1941, two years afterthe Germans had occupiedBohemia and Moravia. Doraand Erich Salomonovic hadbeen ordered by the occupiersto come to the Bubny train sta-tion in Prague. Prior to receiv-ing the order, the family hadrequested permission to leavethe country for Shanghai, butthe Germans refused therequest without explanation.

A friend who visited the fami-ly before their departure wouldlater write in her memoirs: “Itwasn’t possible to speak to Dora. Shelay on the couch sobbing uncontrol-lably. I tried to give her a farewell kiss,but she didn’t seem to know what wasgoing on. Erich was the only one whoseemed outwardly composed. I canstill clearly see the place in my mindwhere I told Jean, as we headedhome through the vineyard: ‘If one ofthem doesn’t hold up, it will be Dora.’”

NO MILK

On the day of their departure,Josef wore two shirts, one on

top of the other, along with a sweaterand a winter coat. On his back, hecarried a backpack with his chamberpot. His mother had carefully consid-ered which of their possessions tobring along, and decided among otherthings to bring along a small strainerwith which she would scoop skin fromthe milk after boiling it. She couldn’thave known that there would be nomilk in their future.

Josef and his family traveled withTransport E Number 815, a trainpacked with thousands of otherCzech Jews. Their destination?Litzmannstadt, the Lodz ghetto. HadJosef been able to read, he wouldhave seen the signs on the fencereading: “Jewish residential area —entry forbidden.”

The four of them were forced toshare a bed. Erich worked in aGerman metal factory and Dora in apaper factory. Michal, who was 10years old at the time, was made tostraighten out bent needles at a work-shop, while three-year-old Josefspent the day alone, from morning toevening.

“Here,” Mr. Salomonovic says inVienna, and points to a spot on a mapof the ghetto. “This is where we lived.”He has gathered up books, maps andfiles in preparation for my visit, almostas though he were presenting evi-dence to a court.

Many in the ghetto died of typhoidfever or froze to death. Some werebeat to death by the Germans andothers starved. The Jews trapped inthe ghetto received too little bread,too few vegetables, hardly any flourand no butter or meat. After a fewmonths, Josef’s baby teeth all fell out,but nothing grew in to replace them.

Josef’s father traded his watch withits glowing hands for a loaf of bread.

Before long, the ghetto was all Josefknew. He had his parents, whom heloved, and his brother, who teasedhim but whom he loved anyway. Hedidn’t, however, know that there wasa word that struck fear into the heartsof everyone around him. The word

was Sperre.During a Sperre, the Germans would

herd together all of the Jews living inone building and would take thosewhom they deemed to be “parasites”— those who couldn’t work, those whosuffered from typhoid fever, the elderlyand the children — load them intotrucks, plug all the gaps, start themotor and pump the exhaust inside.

“YOU CAN’T CRY”

Josef’s father knew a lot of peoplein the ghetto because he would

repair their valuables. On one occa-sion, he managed to piece backtogether a Chinese vase belonging toan SS guard, and thus learned of anapproaching Sperre. He then man-aged to convince a fireman he knewto come with a ladder and pry open ahole in the ceiling, into which Josefand his mother crawled. He clearlyremembers the wide gaps betweenthe ladder’s rungs.

“You can’t cry, no noise at all,” hismother told him. He didn’t understandwhat the difference was between aJew and a non-Jew, but he did under-stand the fear in his mother’s voice,and he stayed quiet.

The Germans in the Lodz ghettocombed through the apartments,searching for children that had beenhidden. Lying behind the hole in theceiling, Josef could hear the screamsas the Germans found them one byone.

In the middle of 1944, Josef foundhimself sitting on the bed in their ghet-to apartment and watching as his par-ents packed their things. Once again,they would be taking a trip at thebehest of the Germans. The journeywas short and they had reached theirdestination after just a few hours:Auschwitz. Josef could hear peoplebanging on the outside of the cattlecar he was in, and when he got out,he saw emaciated figures in blue-and-white striped suits who yelled:“Leave everything in the cars. Men tothe right, women to the left.” It was thearrival platform at Birkenau.

Josef’s father took his brotherMichal by the hand, bent down andsaid something that Josef can nolonger remember, and gave him akiss. Then he left. Josef never sawhim again. His mother took him into alow building.

“Take everything off,” a femaleguard yelled.

Josef didn’t see any other children,just women. He watched as a prison-er shaved off all the hair on their bod-ies. His mother held his hand tightly;someone was constantly crying andscreaming. And then Josef let go ofhis mother’s hand, took a couple ofsteps and saw people beating otherpeople, and then he only saw nakedwomen with no hair. He had lost hismother.

A guard stopped in front of him, akapo, a prisoner working for the SS.


TO AUSCHWITZ AND BACK

Recently Josef Salomonovic traveled to the Bohemian

Forest to visit the farmhouse where he was saved from a

Nazi death march at the end of World War II. He still

doesn’t know why he was chosen to survive.


Veit Harlan: The Life and Work of aNazi Filmmaker.

By Frank Noack. University Pressof Kentucky: Lexington, Kentucky,2016.452 pp. $50.00 hardcover.

REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN

“The claim persists thatbecause of Riefenstahl and

especially Harlan, a medium [film] lostits innocence and, in the case of JudSüss, became a weapon of massmurder.”

According to author Frank Noack inhis well-researched and thought-pro-voking volume entitled Veit Harlan:The Life and Work of a NaziFilmmaker, Joseph Goebbels,“appointed minister of popular enlight-enment and propaganda on March13, 1933, six weeks after Hitlerbecame the nation’s leader, had . . .plans for the film industry.” First off, heintended to “purge it of all Jews.”Then, no less important to Goebbels,was the need to find “artists . . . who,instead of just appearing in propagan-da plays and films, were also ready toshow their colors more explicitly bycommitting to Nazi Germany.” VeitHarlan was just such an artist — or atleast appeared to be. The evidence:In May 1933, an interview with Harlanpublished in the VölkischerBeobachter presented him as sup-portive of the new regime. Then, mostespecially, there was his film, JudSüss, an exceptionally well-made pic-ture whose central motif was anti-Semitism. Indeed, the film was so“good” that Heninrich Himmler would“order” “the entire SS and policeforce” to watch it. Himmler was con-vinced that the film would vividly

clarify to his men just what theywere fighting . . . the cunning Jew,ready to take everything from them,including their women! For that mat-ter, “in 1963 former WaffenSchutzstaffel (SS) member StefanBaretzki [would] insist” at his trial“that he had abused and killedJewish concentration camp inmatesonly after watching Jud Süss ....”

So the question is, Was VeitHarlan really an early supporter

of the Nazis? Or did the interviewerfrom the Völkischer Beobachter “twisthis words,” as Harlanwould later claim? Washe “ordered” byGoebbels to film JudSüss and make it as anti-Semitic as possible? Orwas he just an oppor-tunist eager to work andsupport his family?Should Harlan be blamedfor Jud Süss being awell-crafted film? Or arewe simply dealing herewith an “enthusiastic”artist who couldn’t helpbut harness all his artisticabilities for the production of any filmhe did? Finally, the reader can’t helpbut wonder if a film really has thepower to motivate people to murder.

Interestingly the author of this vol-ume, doesn’t give us his verdict.Instead, Noack, labeling himself a“curious investigator,” simply presentsHarlan’s entire story, letting the read-er judge the man. Thus we learnabout Harlan, the ambitious Germanstage actor and director, character-ized by reviewers in both arenas as

“provocative,” “daring” and always“lively.” We learn about his work inGerman film as an actor, and later,because of Goebbels’s “purges” inthe cinema world, his debut as a sur-prisingly fine film director and screen-writer. We read about the manycomedies, melodramas and more hedirected. And then we read, too,about Goebbels’s growing interest inhim, especially with the release of his1937 film Der Herrscher (The Ruler),where Harlan “for the first time” “com-bined melodrama with [Nazi] propa-

ganda.”

According toNoack, Goebbels

“approach[ed]” Harlanregarding the directionof Jud Süss “aroundNovember 10, 1939.”Once he “decided toaccept the offer (ororder) to direct this film,Harlan did his best,” asregards “improving” thescript and filming it. Forexample, while manywriters had alreadyworked on creating the

anti-Semitic script, Harlan’s additions“enhanced” this aspect, making itimpossible to sympathize with thelead character, Süss. In fact, asNoach notes, Harlan would create an“economic,” taut script “driven by apurpose” — proving the Jew evilincarnate. Since Harlan was con-cerned with making the film “authen-tic,” he went to Lublin, Poland, to do“research” on the Jewish community.He watched Yiddish films like JosephGreen’s Yidl mitn Fidl (1936) and

Michal Waszynski’s Dybuk (1937).He went to Prague to shoot the syna-gogue sequences in the film using“real” Jews. In sum, as regards theentire filming process, he brought allhis accumulated and, at this point,substantial talents to the production.(Noack frequently compares Harlan’swork to Alfred Hitchcock’s.) Theresult: Goebbels would write that JudSüss was “‘a very great work ofgenius. An anti-Semitic film of the kindwe had wished for.” For that matter,German audiences loved the film too!

Not surprisingly then, Harlanbecome Goebbels’s “favorite direc-tor,” and was given even more work.He received awards from the Germangovernment. The Italian governmentpresented him with the “MussoliniCup” for Best Foreign Picture. Yes,things were very good for him . . . tillthe war ended. At that point, however,he was faced with “denazification”issues alongside increasing ques-tions about his work and support ofthe Nazi regime. And that would leadto a number of trials . . . and evenmore questions.

Needless to say, Noack’s volumeleaves one thinking . . . There is nodoubt that students of the Holocaustand cinema alike will find this bookunique and fascinating!

P.S.: Regarding a film’s capacity toincite violence, that, to this day,remains a debatable point . . . butHarlan’s Jud Süss most certainlymade matters worse for Europe’s per-secuted Jews!

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

VEIT HARLAN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF A NAZI FILMMAKER

BY ROBERT PHILPOT, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

“There’s a lot going on inLemberg,” Otto von Wächter

wrote breezily to his wife, Charlotte, inthe spring of 1942.

For the recently installed Nazi gov-ernor of Galicia, they were indeedbusy times.

His promotion to oversee the newlyconquered territory — then part ofPoland, now part of Ukraine — camein the same month the WannseeConference approved the greatestcrime in human history, the attemptedannihilation of European Jewry.

Over the next 18 months, onWächter’s watch, the Nazis deportedand murdered almost every Jew inLemberg — modern-day Lviv — andthe surrounding countryside. In total,an estimated 500,000 Jews wereslaughtered in Galicia.

Wächter’s responsibility is of specialinterest to the British attorney, aca-demic and international law expertPhilippe Sands, whose grandfather’sfamily — some 80 men, women andchildren — perished in the city.

The author of the acclaimed 2016book East West Street, Sands returnswith a new project. “The Ratline” — aBBC-backed podcast — goes insearch of Wächter’s story. A follow-upbook entitled A Death in the Vatican isset to follow in 2020.

But this is no ordinary investigationof the atrocious acts of a man who, asSands concedes in the first of 10 grip-ping episodes, many people havenever heard of. Instead, much of thedrama turns on the extraordinary rela-

tionship between Sands and hisaccomplice, Wächter’s 79-year-oldson.

Living alone in SchlossHaggenberg, a 17th-century baroquecastle one hour’s drive from Vienna,Horst Wächter is surrounded by

books, letters, documents and record-ings which, he believes, will provethat his father was a good and decentman who did his best in tragic and dif-ficult circumstances.

He is also convinced that Wächter’s

death in 1949 — indicted for warcrimes in 1946, he hid for three yearshigh in the Alps, and then escaped toRome, where he was assisted by ahighly placed Catholic bishop — wasno accident, but took place on theorders of Josef Stalin.

As the programs unfold, Horst clingsgrimly to the hope that he can con-vince Sands that Otto von Wächter isnot the man which the evidence over-whelmingly shows him to be.

“The Ratline,” described by onenewspaper as “the hunt for

the monstrous Nazi that’s got thenation hooked,” has proven to besomething of a hit. After the podcastwas launched, it swiftly soared to No.1 in Britain’s daily iTunes chart andthen remained in the top five. Onecritic deemed it “scholarly, revelatory,dramatic and intriguing.”

Its popularity is unsurprising. Asidefrom the UK’s seemingly insatiableappetite for stories related to WorldWar II, Wächter’s tale is one of love,betrayal, unspeakable crimes anddenial. It takes listeners on a journeyfrom Austrian castles to Alpine hide-


SEEKING THE TRUTH ABOUT A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL

Lawyer, humanitarian and writer Philippe Sands.


(Continued from page 3)She was a big woman in a skirt andjacket. Josef looked at her long, blondhair, and the woman kneeled in frontof him. She took him by the hand andled him back to the pile of clothes.

CHOCOLATE OR DEATH

“Get your things,” the womantold him. He heard someone

call her “Katya.” Josef saw hundredsof pairs of shoes, but he found his pairof white shoes with laces and his coatwith the spoon still in the pocket.

“This is it,” Salomonovic says inVienna, opening a worn-out perfumepackage to reveal a small, steelspoon. “It saved my life, but we’ll getto that.”

The kapo woman in Auschwitzhugged him after he had gottendressed and put something in hismouth. It was sweet and melted onhis tongue. It was the first time Josefhad ever tasted chocolate. Thewoman took him by the hand and ledhim into the barracks, where the shiv-ering women were waiting. Hisshoelaces were untied. In the ghetto,his mother had tied them for himevery morning.

Six-year-old Josef had arrived at aplace where the guards would leadsome of the children into the gaschambers and give chocolate to oth-ers. There was an orchestra thatplayed Chopin and a doctor who hadan eye collection. In the comman-dant’s garden, there were two turtlesnamed Dilla and Jumbo and a riverthat was black with ash on somedays.

In talking about Auschwitz, JosefSalomonovic pauses and says: “It’sbeyond comprehension.”

The guard led him into the barrackwith the naked women, but he stillcouldn’t see his mother. All thewomen were shaved and they wereall thin. But then a woman steppedforward, kneeled down on the wood-en floor, grabbed his shoelaces andtied them. Josef had found his motheragain.

Together, they traveled in a groupthe Germans called a “closed trans-port.” They had been chosen for labor— Auschwitz had just been a stop onthe journey. A couple of days later,their train rolled into the Stutthof con-centration camp near Danzig, todaythe Polish city of Gdansk. Josef’sbrother and father were also there, inthe men’s camp.

SOCKS FOR JOSEPH

The nights grew colder. When theSS called the prisoners into the

yard every morning at 5 a.m. to becounted, Josef would shiver from thecold. He was so small that he wouldstand between his mother’s legsbecause it was warmer. He doesn’tknow why the Germans let him live —they murdered almost all the otherchildren in the concentration camps.

After a couple of weeks, Josef’smother learned that his father had

been killed on a concrete table withan injection of phenol in his heart. Hismother went to the guard in her bar-rack and asked that Michal bebrought to her. And she requestedsocks for Josef.

Salomonovic interrupts his story,looks up briefly and laughs as thoughthere is something humorous in thevignette. “She was so brave,” hesays.

A concentration camp was a placewhere people would be beat to deathfor merely looking at a kapo. It wasnot the kind of place where prisonerscould make demands.

Still, the day after Josef’s mother

made her request, Michal came intothe barrack. He was shivering andsaid: “Father is dead.” She tookMichal into her arms and then went tothe guard. “And the socks?” sheasked.

As punishment for the question, theguard forced her to do knee bends. Arather absurd punishment when yourecall that people in Stutthof were rou-tinely killed for much less.

At night, as the others slept, Josef’smother would take him by the handand sneak into the guards’ bathroom.She would scoop water out of the toi-let bowl and have Josef drink out ofher hands. It was a risky thing to do.But a prisoner who obeyed all therules would almost certainly die, sincethe rules ensured that prisoners gottoo little to eat and no clean water todrink.

In November, Michal, Josef andtheir mother were sent by train toDresden, where they assembled bul-lets in a factory. His mother managedto convince the SS guards to tolerateJosef’s presence and got a Dutchslave laborer to write a letter to AuntBerta in Mähren to ask for food. AuntBerta was Jewish but had foundrefuge with a farmer. One night,Josef’s mother woke him up andwhispered in his ear to be quiet. Shethen gave him a piece of bread thick-ly spread with butter and sprinkledwith sugar.

In 2018, during his trip to theBohemian Forest, Salomonovic stopsoff in northern Bavaria for a visit to the

Flossenbürg Concentration CampMemorial, whose network of satellitecamps included the forced labor fac-tory in Dresden. He heads into thechapel, even though he has decidedthat there can be no God, and alsogoes into the small brick buildinglocated at the entrance to an arealabeled on the map as the “Valley ofDeath.” Inside the structure is an ovenabout as tall as a person.

“Crematorium. No explanationneeded,” says Salomonovic.

When he leaves the memorial,strands of hair are stuck to his faceand he has dark shadows under hiseyes. Salomonovic says that he is

always nauseated after coming here— and the realization dawns that heisn’t just taking this trip for himself, butalso for us. He wants us to try tounderstand what it was like back then,and if we cannot do so, then he wantsus to understand that it is beyondcomprehension.

After he’d beenin the Dresden facto-ry a few weeks, senior SS officialsconducted an inspection of the pris-oners, and Josef hid in a laundry bas-ket in an effort to avoid them. But aGerman opened the container andsaid: “The garbage must go.” Heordered that Josef be shot to deaththe next morning. It was the night ofFebruary 13, 1945, with cloudlesssky. The Allied bombers came in thedarkness.

Hand in hand with his mother, Josefheaded into the basement. He stillremembers an armed German yellingat him to keep his mouth open whenthe bombs exploded. He watched asthe blast waves shattered the win-dows. The bombs fell for two straightdays — and Josef survived, pressedclose to his mother.

When he finally emerged from thebasement, he saw the dead on thestreets and was surprised at howmuch hair they had and how well-fedthey looked. His shoes stuck to theasphalt, which had melted in the heatof the bombs. His mother was forcedto help the cleanup operation. Shegave Josef a matchbox containing fourpieces of sugar and told him: “You canonly eat them when I’m gone. Do you

understand, Pepek? Only when I’mgone.” When his mother crawled intothe basement, Josef waited above,looking at the smoking city and think-ing about how sweet the sugar wouldbe. He rubbed his fingers so often onthe matchbox that its label had beenrubbed away by the time he pulled itout of his pocket. His mother survivedthe day, and Josef, his mother and hisbrother ate the sugar together.

The SS sent them to a camp inPirna and then back to Dresdenbefore shipping them to Zwodau,another subcamp in the Flossenbürgnetwork. Josef was hungry. His moth-er showed him how to rasp a rawpotato with a spoon so that he couldeat it even without teeth.

WINTER

Josef began getting cysts on hisbody as big as strawberries and

filled with blood and pus. They hurt,particularly when he was lying down.There were no beds for the prisoners,and the cysts would burst and leak onthe wood. His mother, though, put herson on her belly so he had somethingsofter to lie on.

She spoke quietly to him and toldhim the day would come when hewould have a bed with a real mat-tress. She promised him that hewouldn’t suffer from hunger anylonger and nobody would beat himanymore.

One night, Josef started cryingbecause his cysts were bleeding andthe other inmates were saying thatthe child should leave the barrack.Outside, it was winter. Josef’s motherlaid him on her belly, but he kept cry-ing.

“Get him out,” said the other prison-ers.

His mother took Josef out the door,filled a crate with wood shavings thatshe found somewhere, tore strips offher shirt to bandage the burst cysts,wrapped her child in a blanket andlaid him in the crate.

Salomonovic still clearly remembersthat night. He stretches his handsover his head toward the ceiling as hetalks about it. He lay there, a smallchild, the pain keeping him awake. Hegot up and stared up at the heavens.

“Dear God,” he said. “Please let medie.”

He waited until dawn, and in themorning, his mother came out of thebarrack with the other prisoners, andit was time to move on. A couple of SSmen rigged up two horses to a cartand they all marched off to the south.Every now and then, a prisoner wouldcollapse from exhaustion. On oneoccasion, a woman was walking nextto Josef in a turnip field. The Germansshot her in the back.

I BEG YOU

“Ican’t go on, mother,” said Josef.So she picked him up and car-

ried him. And when she couldn’t carryhim any longer, she went over to the


Josef Salomonovic with “Frau Anna,” the granddaughter of the man and woman who offered him

shelter seven decades ago. He promised Frau Anna’s mother that he would regularly come back to

the farmhouse to check on a crooked apple tree in the yard.



(Continued from page 4)outs, from the bloodlands of EasternEurope to the beautiful piazzas ofRome.

Moreover, thanks to Horst’s willing-ness to open his family’s archives toSands, listeners get to eavesdrop onthe relationship between Wächter andhis wife. Their huge cache of lettersprovides a shocking insight into thementality of a cold-blooded killer whosigned documents consigning hun-dreds of thousands of people to theirdeaths — and who never appeared toevince any sign of doubt, regret orcontrition for his terrible actions.

Sands first met Horst when he wasresearching the origins of internation-al criminal law. That interest was bothacademic and personal: Lembergwas not only the home of Sands’sgrandfather, but also of two of thelawyers who played a critical role atthe Nuremberg trials. Hersch

Lauterpacht introduced the notion of“crimes against humanity” into theNuremberg Charter, while RafaelLemkin invented the term “genocide.”

Sands was also interested in anoth-er lawyer — Hans Frank, the gover-nor-general of occupied Poland whowas tried, convicted and executed atNuremberg for war crimes and crimesagainst humanity. Through Frank’sson, Niklas, who in 1987 published anexcoriating biography of his father,Sands was introduced to Horst.

“Horst takes a rather different atti-tude to mine,” Frank warned the bar-rister. Sands, Niklas and Horst laterjoined together for the 2015 BBC doc-umentary, My Nazi Legacy.

The charge sheet against Horst’sfather is a long one. Wächter

was born in Vienna, the son of a dec-orated World War I military hero, andan early recruit to the Nazi cause,joining the party in 1923. A lawyer, hewas involved in the coup and assassi-nation of the Austrian chancellor,Engelbert Dollfuss, in 1934.

Narrowly escaping arrest — he fledon a coal freighter bound forBudapest — Wächter spent time inBerlin before returning to his homecity in 1938. When Hitler addressedthe crowds in the Heldenplatz after

the Anschluss — “the most wonderfulmoment of my life,” his wife recalled40 years later — Wächter was on thebalcony just behind the Führer.Wächter then took a post overseeingthe removal of 16,000 Austrian Jewsfrom their jobs in public service.

When Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Horst’sgodfather and the Austrian Nazileader, became Frank’s deputy inPoland in 1939, he invited his oldcomrade to join him. Wächter becamethe governor of Krakow. While he wassigning orders expelling Jews fromthe city and establishing the ghettowhich incarcerated and entrappedthose who remained, Charlotte plun-dered Krakow’s national museum forGothic and Renaissance art and furni-ture, which German soldiers hauledback to the family’s palatial residence.Horst later returned some of his moth-er’s stolen booty.

In 1942, news of the first of twoindictments against Wächter broke.The New York Times reported that thePolish government-in-exile hadnamed 10 Nazis — including Frankand Wächter — collectively responsi-ble for the death of 400,000 of its citi-zens. Wächter was, according to thepaper, “especially infamous for theextermination of the Polish intelli-gentsia.”

Four years later, a second indict-ment, issued by the Central Registryfor War Criminals, followed. Wächter,it charged, was “responsible for massmurder, shooting and executionsunder his command as governor ofthe district of Galicia.”

THE NOOSE TIGHTENS

At the Department of Justice inWashington, Sands uncovered

three documents which directly impli-cated Wächter in the terrible eventswhich unfolded soon after he took uphis post in Galicia.

The first — a memorandum issuedjust days before he arrived in the city— set in motion the deportation ofeconomically unproductive Jews fromLemberg. The noose was tightenedby the second document, signed byWächter on March 13, 1942, whichplaced strict limits on the work Jews inGalicia could undertake. Two dayslater, Operation Reinhardt — thesecret plan to exterminate Poland’sJews — commenced in Wächter’s ter-ritory with the transportation to Belzecof thousands of Lemberg’s Jews.

But it was the third of the three doc-uments which is perhaps the mostdamning. It is a letter signed byHeinrich Himmler after he traveled toLemberg in August 1942. The visittook place at the height of the month’sGreat Aktion against Lemberg’s Jews,in which 40,000 were murdered afterthe Ukranian police systematicallyswept through the city arresting andtransporting Jews to Belzec.

In it, Himmler writes: “I recently wasin Lemberg and had a very plain talkwith the governor, SS-BrigadeführerDr. Wächter. I openly asked him

whether he wants to go to Vienna,because I would have considered it amistake, while there, not to haveasked this question that I am wellaware of. Wächter does not want togo to Vienna.”

As the Department of Justice’s EliRosenbaum, a 30-year veteran of USgovernment efforts to prosecute Naziwar criminals, tells Sands: “TheWächter case is the only one I’veseen where someone was actuallyoffered an opportunity to go some-where else, to cease involvement inNazi crimes, and actually turned itdown.”

Himmler certainly seemed toapprove of Wächter’s dedication. Thegovernor remained in Lemberg foranother two years, and, on his 43rdbirthday in 1944, received a greetingcard signed by Himmler. It is one ofthe family mementos — which alsoinclude an inscribed copy of MeinKampf given to his godson by Seyss-Inquart — that clutter Horst’s home.

For Sands, there is “no real ambigu-ity about the responsibility of Otto vonWächter for these actions.” The evi-dence, he believes, is “incontrovert-ible” and, had he been caught, hewould have suffered the same fate asFrank and Seyss-Inquart atNuremberg.

Horst, however, is apparently unwill-ing to accept this assessment. Hebelieves that there were two govern-ments under the Nazi regime: a civiladministration running day-to-day life,for which his troubled father worked,and an SS government, which bearsultimate responsibility for the murderof the Jews. He takes refuge in theapparent absence of any signed doc-uments in which Wächter directlyorders the murder of Jews — an argu-ment which, it is pointed out by theDepartment of Justice prosecutors,Adolf Hitler’s family could similarlydeploy.

“He acted humanely as far as hecould,” Horst tells Sands at one point.“The thing with the Jews, he was notresponsible. There were other peoplewho took care of them. He tried, youknow,” he says as his voice trails off.

THE LOVING FATHER WAS ACOLD-BLOODED KILLER

There is a surprising warmth —even, at times, joviality — in

their relationship. Sands describesHorst as “warm and generous” andcomforts him as the elderly manchokes up when reading for the firsttime a letter sent by Charlotte to theCatholic bishop who was withWächter when he died.

But underneath there crackles aninevitable tension. As Sands bluntlyputs it in the program’s openingepisode: “I believe his father bears asignificant degree of responsibility forthe murder of my grandfather’s family.He thinks I’m wrong.”

Sands is an astute and empatheticenough interlocutor to recognize thatbeneath Horst’s belief that it was

“never quite Otto’s fault,” there lies amuch more complex picture.

“His views on his father — a man henever really knew — are filteredthrough the mother he loved and, Ithink it can fairly he said, worshiped.For Charlotte, Otto was a shininglight, a man misrepresented by histo-ry, a man who didn’t necessarilybelieve in what was going on aroundhim but was powerless to stop it,”says Sands.

And yet, Sands admits that it is“immensely frustrating to talk tosomeone who is intelligent, curiousand … also open to knowing all abouthis parents’ past, yet at the same timecannot accept what seems to me tobe so clearly true.”

Maybe, he speculates, “there’ssome unconscious part of Horst thatdoes want to get to the real truth, andthat’s perhaps why he maintains hisrelationship with me.”

But what of the other relationshipwhich dominates “The Ratline” — thatbetween Wächter and his adoring

wife, a woman who shared, and neverrepudiated, his Nazi beliefs?

Thanks to Horst’s willingness toopen his treasure trove of letters anddocuments to Sands and his smallteam, it is brought back to life in theprogram.

The letters are bone-chilling. In onefrom December 1939, Wächtermoves seamlessly from telling hiswife about the “lovely” concert hestaged in Krakow to telling her about“not such nice things” which hadoccurred. “Sabotage. Nasty business.... Tomorrow I have to have another50 Poles shot.”

Ever helpful, Horst jumps in with anexplanation: “He writes ‘I have to’ …Every army did reprisal killings. Hedidn’t decide to kill them. It was somejudge from the Gestapo.”

In another, from August 1942,Wächter apologizes for his failure towrite so often. “There’s been a lot todo in Lemberg since you’ve beenaway with registering the harvest,providing workers for the Reich …and the great Jewish actions whichare currently taking place,” he writes,signing off cheerily, “Much love to the



Otto Wächter.

Hans Frank.


(Continued from page 5)Germans’ horse cart and set her sonon the back when she hoped no onewould turn around.

After several kilometers, Josefheard a thunderous noise in the air,and a German yelled: “In the ditches!Air attack!” His mother covered theheads of both Josef and Michal with ablanket and said: “Stay down. Don’tget up. Don’t say anything.”

The SS men and the prisoners con-tinued once the airplanes had gone,but Dora, Michal and Josef kept lyingthere. They waited and then jumpedup and ran into a forest. Michal wascrying out of fear. The three madetheir way over a ridge and saw a rail-way crossing in the valley below them— and a man standing there in a rail-way uniform.

“You have to help us,” Josef’s moth-er said to him once they had walkeddown to him. “I beg you.”

The man took her by the hand. Theyran up a ditch to the nearest farm-house. The farmer took one look atthe emaciated trio and rushed them tothe barn. He climbed up into thehayloft and hid Josef, Michal andDora in the straw. Later, he broughtthem bread and milk. Josef couldn’tbelieve how good the milk tasted.

After three nights, the barn dooropened and light flooded in. The farmersaid: “The Americans are here.”

Josef went to the pond in the middleof the village, where an American sol-dier gave him a miniature airplane.“Keep it,” he said.

During Salomonovic’s return to thisvillage this summer, he drives alongthe pear tree–lined alley and is quiet.“The Germans stole my childhoodfrom me,” he says at one point. “Iwant to try to find it.”

AN EXTRA LOAF OF BREAD

It is a sentence that sounds a bitlike a Steven Spielberg film, a sen-

tence that seems completely implau-sible in reality. Just as implausible,perhaps, as a place where 1.3 millionpeople were murdered simplybecause they were Jews.

When Salomonovic asks at the barnif the crooked tree is still standing, thefarm woman’s grandson nods andleads him into the garden. It is anapple tree, perhaps the most crookedtree in all of the Bohemian Forest,with the trunk winding close to theground a couple of times before head-ing upward.

When Salomonovic returned to thebarn for the first time, shortly after thecollapse of the Soviet Union, thedaughter of the farmer who had hiddenhim at the end of the war was still alive.She was an old woman, but sheremembered those days. She said thather father had come to her and told herto bake an extra loaf of bread. She did-n’t want to, but he insisted. Later, shesaid, the loaf disappeared — and thatis when she realized that they werealso feeding someone in hiding.

Salomonovic visited the woman onseveral occasions. Frau Anna, thewoman in the blue apron who openedthe door to Salomonovic, is herdaughter. There is a bond betweenthis family and Salomonovic that youcan likely only understand if you havesaved someone’s life — or beensaved. When the old woman lay onher deathbed a few years ago, hewent there and sat with her.

“The crooked tree in the garden,”the woman said, and Salomonovicdidn’t know at first what she was talk-ing about. “The apple tree. They want

to cut it down. When I’m gone, lookout for that tree for me.”

“Of course I’ll keep an eye on thetree,” Salomonovic answered.

On the night table next to the bedwas a small box with four eggs in italong with an apple from the tree.“For the journey,” the old woman said.Salomonovic kissed her on the cheekwhen he left.

Since then, he has been comingback regularly, even if the trip is

becoming more difficult for him andhe suffers from atrial fibrillation. He istaking care of the tree.

Before he heads back home, JosefSalomonovic once again goes throughthe door to the barn and climbs the lad-der to the hayloft. The floorboardssqueak under his weight. Salomonovicbends down, lifts up a handful of hayand then lets it fall again.

“Seventy-three years,” he says.The Germans stole his childhood

from him. It is nowhere to be found —and isn’t in the hayloft either.

After the war, Josef, Michal and theirmother moved back to Ostrava. Joseflearned what a peach tastes like andwhat a football is. Within just a fewmonths, his teeth grew in. But forquite some time, he continued hidinga hunk of bread under his bed.

Even now, he still eats standing upwhen he is alone. Because, he says,nobody was allowed to sit down dur-ing the death march.

In his early 30s, Josef Salomonovicfell in love with Elisabeth from Vienna,a slight woman with black hair and atwinkle in her eyes. He told his moth-er that he was getting married. Shewent into the kitchen, turned on thegas oven and stuck her head into it,but Salomonovic saved her beforeanything happened. He got married,

moved to Vienna and took a job withan engineering manufacturer.

TALKING WITH MOTHER

At the end of her life, DoraSalomonovic was blind and

lived in a care home. It turned out thatthe woman who had done so much tosave her sons had been right. Theyhad enough to eat, their mattresseswere soft and nobody beat them any-more. In the care home, Josef helpedher up and hooked his arm into hers.On this final day, they walked togeth-er one last time. It was in the hallwayoutside the rooms and they onlywalked a few slow, careful steps. Butthey walked. Dora Salomonovic diedat the age of 88 on March 28, 1992.

Michal Salomonovic still lives inOstrava. Fully 10,000 Jews livedthere before Hitler came along.Today, it is home to only 40.

Of the thousand people shipped toLodz with the Salomonovic family inTransport E Number 815, 46 survivedthe Holocaust. Today, three are stillalive: Michal and Josef Salomonovicand a woman in Munich.

After Josef Salomonovic checks onthe crooked tree, he drinks a PilsnerUrquell (“fantastic,” he says) andheads back to Vienna. Elisabeth isexpecting him with stuffed peppers,his favorite dish. He then calls hisgrown daughter on the phone to tellher that he is fine. He named herKatya after the woman in Auschwitzwho saved his life.

Salomonovic will eat his dinner,unpack his suitcase and go into hisroom. There, on the wall to the right ofhis bed, hangs a picture of his moth-er. He says he speaks with her in histhoughts every day in a language thatonly he knows.


BY MATTHEW GINDIN, PACIFIC CORRESPONDENT

The Consulate General of Israelin Toronto and the Canadian

Society for Yad Vashem held a spe-cial ceremony to honor some of theRighteous Among the Nations.

The evening was full of inspiring andtimely statements on the courage andmoral clarity of those who standagainst anti-Semitism, racism andxenophobic violence.

The honor was given to DirkKalkman and Klassje Kalkman andwas received on their behalf by PeterKalkman, Dirk and Klassje’s grand-son, and Matthew Kalkman, theirgreat-grandson. It was handed out byConsul General Galit Baram onbehalf of the State of Israel and JoshHacker on behalf of the CanadianSociety for Yad Vashem.

Dirk Kalkman was a DutchReformed pastor who, together withhis wife Klassje, hid a Jewish womanin their family’s household from 1943-1945, at great personal risk to them-

selves and their children. At therequest of a fellow reverend who wasthe brother of the famous Dutchresistance worker Johannes Post, thecouple protected and concealedCatharina Six tot Oeterleek-Kuijper attheir home in Moordrecht,Netherlands.

Oeterleek-Kuijper wasa Jewish widow whosehusband had been amember of a noble fami-ly in Holland. She livedwith the Kalkman familyfor the duration of thewar, until theNetherlands was liberat-ed in May 1945. Thefamily created a falseidentity for her, callingher Tanta Ina from DenHaag, and as a result, she was ableto play a role in the Kalkman’s familylife and the community.

She died in her 90s in the city ofSoest, Netherlands, in 1978.

Many members of the Kalkman fam-ily were present at the emotional cer-emony, where Peter and Matthew

Kalmkam told the rapt crowd the storyof their righteous grandparents. PeterKalkman’s father, Wim (Dirk’s son),had long wished that his parent’sheroism be recognized, but he died in2013, before he could see hisdreamcome true. Matthew Kalkman under-

took the task after Wim died. Togetherwith researchers in the Netherlands,he was able to find evidence of whathad happened.

Peter Kalkman told the audience aharrowing tale that was recorded byhis father, Wim, who recounted thenight that the Nazis surrounded their

neighborhood and searched house byhouse for hidden Jews and membersof the resistance. Dirk Kalkman washiding Tanta Ina, as well as tworesisters, who were squirrelled awaybeneath the floorboards, through atrapdoor underneath a large carpet.

Wim Kalkman remembered beingquestioned by Nazis about anyonebeing hidden in the house, while theystood directly above the hidden menand in front of Tanta Ina, who wasseated with the rest of the family onthe couch. Wim Kalkman’s sister, whowas also in the room, had diphtheria,which frightened the soldiers, makingthem rushed and sloppy. They leftwithout finding anyone and, as aresult, the Kalkman family and theirendangered friends survived.

“The State of Israel, the homeland ofthe Jewish people, sees honoringthese courageous individuals andtheir acts of human decency andmercy as an almost sacred duty,” saidBaram. “The people of Israel andJews the world over will forever begrateful to them for bringing light andhope during mankind’s darkest hour.”

RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS HONORED IN VANCOUVER

Matthew Kalkman, left, and Peter Kalkman.


PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ANNUAL TRIBUTE DI

Honorees Celina and Marvin Zborowski.

Jack and Paula Gora with grandsons Sam (l) and Jonathan (r).

Dinner Chair Mark Moskowitz.

Robert A. Book, Chairman of the ASYV Leonard Wilf, Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, and

Mark Wilf.

Honorees Adina and Lawrence Burian.

Celebrating life.


INNER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM

Master of Ceremonies Jill Martin.

Marvin Zborowski with grandsons Michael (l) and Jeremy (r).

Executive director of ASYV Ron Meier; Steven Baral, ASYV board member; honoree Adina Burian;

Director of Institutional Advancement — Western Region ASYV William S. Bernstein.

Yityish “Titi” Aynaw, Miss Israel 2013.

Andrew Burian with granddaughter Erin.

ASYV board members and past YLA co-chairs Abbi Halpern and Barry Levine.

Arianna Afsar.


(Continued from page 6)children. Lots of love.” Two weekslater, the Jews are in Wächter’sthoughts again. “Things are goingvery slowly in the garden, unfortu-nately,” he tells Charlotte. “There’snot much labor around. The Jewsare being deported in increasing

numbers and it’s hard to get hold ofpowder for the tennis court.”

In the last years of her life,Charlotte began a great effort —taken up on her death by Horst — toredeem her husband’s reputation.

She recorded hours of tapes aboutthe couple’s lives, interviewedfriends, and sat down with a Germanjournalist who was interested inWächter’s mysterious death inRome.

Never revealed before, the tapesshow how Charlotte aided and abet-ted Wächter as he evaded justice byhiding high in the Austrian Alps alongwith a young SS officer he hooked upwith when the two men found them-selves in Italy at the war’s end.

Emboldened, the couple and someof their children spent an idyllicmonth together in the summer of1948 in a rented hut. Wächter evenrejoined the family in Salzburg thatChristmas, although fear of exposureled him to leave for Italy in the newyear.

In April 1949, Wächter arrived inRome. He traveled under a newidentity: Alfredo Reinhardt, the sur-name eerily — but maybe deliberate-ly — echoing the operation againstthe Polish Jews.

THE HEART OF THE RATLINES

Wächter’s letters reveal that,among others, he had the

assistance of “a religious gentleman”who told him that his “case was well-known to him.” That man was BishopAlois Hudal, a Nazi sympathizer,anti-Semite and fanatical anti-Communist who ran a German sem-inary in Rome and was close to thelate Pope, Pius XI.

Hudal was at the heart of the rat-lines — the effort to assist Nazi warcriminals in escaping capture andferret them to safe havens such asArgentina. Wächter was soon shel-tered at Vigna Pia, a monastery andorphanage. Flicking through its guestbook, Sands easily identifies the

names of other notorious murderers— such as Walter Rauff, the inventorof the mobile gas chamber — whostayed there.

By July 1949, Wächter’s fortuneshad taken a turn for the better.

He had, somewhat bizarrely, man-aged to find occasional work as afilm extra — he appeared in thedramatization of the Verdi opera LaForza del Destino — and planningfor his escape from Europe wasunder way.

But, hours after enjoying lunch anda swim in Lake Albano with a man heidentified to Charlotte as “an oldcomrade,” Wächter fell desperatelyill. He died in the arms of Hudal dayslater, telling the bishop he had beenpoisoned. Charlotte arrived in Rometo find her dead husband’s black-ened body, “all burnt inside, he waslike a Negro.”

Sands unmasks the “old comrade”as Karl Hass, one of the ringleadersof the notorious 1944 Ardeatine mas-sacre. With the help of declassifiedCIA files, he further reveals thatHass was, by 1949, the chief sourcefor an American spy ring — ProjectLos Angeles — which used formerNazis, Vatican officials and neo-Fascists to gather information on thethen-growing Communist threat inItaly. Another of its sources wasHudal.

Hass apparently made an offer attheir lunch which Wächter refused. Itseems unlikely that Wächter — a vir-ulent anti-Communist — would haveturned down an offer to work for theAmericans. CIA files offer a tantaliz-ing clue: Hass was also suspectedby some “close acquaintances” of

being a Soviet double agent.The tapes underline Charlotte’s

desperate but futile attempt to castWächter’s actions in a more heroiclight. “He always took pleasure indoing what he thought was the rightthing to do,” she attests. “Until thevery end he refused to compromisehis conscience but sometimes hejust couldn’t do what he thought wasright.”

“Everyone has light and darksides,” Wächter’s wife suggests atanother point. “We should only seethe good things in everyone.”

T hese words might carry anounce more weight if

Charlotte’s diaries did not exposeher as an unrepentant Nazi. Afterwatching TV coverage of the 40thanniversary of the Anschluss inMarch 1978, she writes: “I’m gladand thankful to God that I was able tolive through this time.”

Central to Charlotte’s effort is thenotion that Wächter was murdered. Itis this to which, perhaps more thananything else, Horst hangs ondoggedly throughout the programs.

It is possible, as Horst appears tobelieve, that Hass poisonedWächter, perhaps after he turneddown an approach to join him inworking for the Soviets. It is alsopossible, the thriller writer John leCarré tells Sands, that Jewish“vengeance teams” tracked downand murdered Wächter. Le Carré,who was a British intelligence officerin Austria after the war, admits thathe “admired” such efforts to exactthe justice so many had escaped.

A further explanation offered by aUK-based liver specialist, thatWächter succumbed to a fatal boutof Weil’s disease after swimming inthe filthy waters of the Tiber, doesnot meet Horst’s desire for his fatherto have met a rather more meaning-ful and heroic end.

But this detective story palesbeside the great mystery: What kindof man does Horst really believe hisfather was?

Buried — probably unintentionally— among the family papers heallows Sands to riffle through, thereis a 2007 email from Horst to his newnephew: “Attached are the two let-ters from your grandfather that I’vecompared with Himmler’s diary. Theyincriminate him more than any otherdocuments I have encountered. It’sno use. He knew everything. Saweverything. And agreed in principle.A sad uncle Horst.”

Confronted by Sands, Horst clamsup and mutters, “I wouldn’t say thatmy father killed 800,000 Jews orsomething like that.”

All of which leaves his Englishfriend, whose grandfather’s familywas murdered seven decades ago inLemberg, to wonder: How many istoo many?


Horst Wächter talks about his father SS officer Otto Gustav von Wächter’s actions during the

Holocaust in What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry rep-rimanded a diplomat who over-

stepped his authority to save thou-sands of Jews from the Holocaustand deprived him of royal honors,new research shows.

The research into the treatment ofJan Zwartendijk, who was honoraryconsul of the Netherlands in whattoday is Lithuania, is part of a Dutch-language book published recently onhis actions, titled The Righteous, bybiographer Jan Brokken.

Zwartendijk served in Kaunas asconsul at the same time that ChiuneSugihara was there to representImperial Japan.

Largely eclipsed by Sugihara,Zwartendijk was the initiator andchief facilitator of the rescue of morethan 2,000 Jews by the two diplo-mats. Sugihara gave the refugees,who were fleeing German occupa-tion, transit visas that enabled themto enter the Soviet Union. But theywould have been unusable hadZwartendijk not given them destina-tion visas to Curaçao, then aCaribbean island colony of theNetherlands. Some of those rescuedby Zwartendijk nicknamed him “theangel of Curaçao.”

Both men acted without approvalfrom their superiors. UnlikeSugihara, Zwartendijk risked his ownlife, as well as those of his wife andtheir three small children, who wereall living under Nazi occupation.

Yet Zwartendijk, who died in 1976,was “given a dressing down” after hisactions became known by a topForeign Ministry official, JosephLuns, who later became the head ofNATO. Zwartendijk’s children saidtheir father was deeply offended byhow he had been treated.

Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a Dutch law-maker, said in a statement that theForeign Ministry should apologize forhow it had treated Zwartendijk,whom Israel in 1997 recognized as aRighteous Among the Nations.

“Jan Zwartendijk deserved a stat-ue, not a reprimand,” the ANP newsagency quoted Sjoerdsma as saying.“High time for an exoneration andapology to his descendants. I hopeForeign Minister Stef Blok does it.”

The ministry declined to commenton whether it is considering an apol-ogy. A spokesperson told the newsagency that Zwartendijk’s actions“are without blemish” and added thatthe Dutch state co-funded a monu-ment celebrating his actions inLithuania.

The book also suggests that anunnamed ministry official intervenedwith the Dutch royal house to pre-vent Zwartendijk from being knightedfor reasons unrelated to the war —he was a senior executive at theDutch Philips electronics firm — forhis stepping out of line during WorldWar II.

DUTCH DIPLOMAT WAS PUNISHED

FOR SAVING JEWS IN THE HOLOCAUST


Hidden for 70 years, a new invalu-able contribution to Holocaust lit-erature — the diary of ReniaSpiegel — was rediscovered insidea desk in New York.BY ROBIN SHULMAN,SMITHSONIAN.COM

On January 31, 1939, a 15-year-old Jewish girl sat down with a

school notebook in a cramped apart-ment in a provincial town in Polandand began writing about her life. Shemissed her mother, who lived faraway in Warsaw. She missed herfather, who was ensconced on thefarm where her family once lived. Shemissed that home, where she hadspent the happiest days of her life.

The girl’s name was Renia Spiegel,and she and her sister, Ariana, werestaying with their grandparents thatAugust when the Germans and theRussians divided Poland. Their moth-er was stranded on the Nazi side; herdaughters were stuck across the bor-der, under Soviet control. During thenext few years, their father, Bernard,disappeared and, later, was eventual-ly presumed killed in the war.

Over the course of more than 700pages, between the ages of 15 and18, Renia wrote funny stories abouther friends, charming descriptions ofthe natural world, lonely appeals toher absent parents, passionate confi-dences about her boyfriend, and chill-ing observations of the machinery ofnations engaged in cataclysmic vio-lence. The notebook pages, blue-lined and torn at the edges, are asfinely wrinkled as the face of the oldwoman the girl might have become.

Her script is delicate, with loops at thefeet of the capital letters and sweetlycurving lines to cross the T’s.

Readers will naturally contrastRenia’s diary with Anne Frank’s.Renia was a little older and moresophisticated, writing frequently inpoetry as well as in prose. She wasalso living out in the world instead ofin seclusion. Reading such differentfirsthand accounts reminds us thateach of the Holocaust’s millions ofvictims had a unique and dramaticexperience. At a time when the

Holocaust has receded so far into thepast that even the youngest survivorsare elderly, it’s especially powerful todiscover a youthful voice like Renia’s,describing the events in real time.

A diary is an especially potent formin an age of digital information. It’s a“human-paced experience of howsomeone’s mind works and how theirideas unfold,” says Sherry Turkle, aprofessor at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology who studiesthe role of technology in our lives.Throughout many continuous pages,she says, diary authors “pause, theyhesitate, they backtrack, they don’tknow what they think.” For the reader,she says, this prolonged engagementin another person’s thinking producesempathy.

The history we learn in school pro-ceeds with linear logic — each chainof events seems obvious and inex-orable. Reading the diary of a personmuddling through that history is jar-ringly different, more like the confus-ing experience of actually living it. Inreal time, people are slow to recog-nize events taking place around them,because they have other priorities;because these events happen invisi-bly; and because changes are incre-mental and people keep on recalibrat-ing. The shock of Renia’s diary iswatching a teenage girl with the stan-dard preoccupations — friends, fami-ly, schoolwork, boyfriend — come toan inescapable awareness of the vio-lence that is engulfing her.

* * *

Renia began her diary feelingalone. Her gregarious, saucy 8-

year-old sister Arianawas an aspiring filmstar who had movedto Warsaw with theirmother so she couldpursue her actingcareer. Renia hadbeen sent to live withher grandmother,who owned a sta-tionery store, and hergrandfather, a con-struction contractor,in sleepy Przemysl, asmall city in southernPoland about 150miles east of Krakow.Ariana was visitingher at the end of that

summer when war broke out. The sis-ters fled the bombardment ofPrzemysl on foot. When theyreturned, the town was under Sovietoccupation.

Two years later, just as theGermans were preparing to invadethe Soviet Union, Renia had her firstkiss with a green-eyed Jewish boynamed Zygmunt Schwarzer, son of adoctor and a concert pianist. Renia,Zygmunt and Maciek Tuchman, afriend of Zygmunt’s (who now goes by

the name Marcel), became a kind oftrio. “We were tied to one another andliving each other’s lives,” Tuchmanrecalled in a recent interview at hishome in New York City.

Just two weeks before her 18thbirthday in June 1942, Reniadescribed understanding“ecstasy” for the first timewith Zygmunt. But as herromance intensified, so didthe war. “Wherever I lookthere is bloodshed,” shewrote. “There is killing, mur-der.” The Nazis forcedRenia and her Jewishfriends and relatives to wearwhite armbands with a blueStar of David. In July, theywere ordered into a closedghetto, behind barbed wire,under watch of guards, withmore than 20,000 otherJews. “Today at 8 o’clockwe have been shut away inthe ghetto,” Renia writes. “Ilive here now; the world isseparated from me, and I’mseparated from the world.”

Zygmunt had begun work-ing with the local resistance,and he managed a fewdays later to spirit Renia and Arianaout of the ghetto before an Aktionwhen the Nazis deported Jews to thedeath camps. Zygmunt installedRenia, along with his parents, in theattic of a tenement house where hisuncle lived. The following day,Zygmunt took 12-year-old Ariana tothe father of her Christian friend.

On July 30, German soldiers discov-ered Zygmunt’s parents and Reniahiding in the attic and executed them.

An anguished Zygmunt, who hadheld onto the diary during Renia’sbrief time in hiding, wrote the lastentry in his own jagged script: “Threeshots! Three lives lost! All I can hearare shots, shots.” Unlike in most otherjournals of war children, Renia’sdeath was written onto the page.

Ariana escaped. Her friend’s father,a member of the resistance, traveledwith Ariana to Warsaw, tellingGestapo officials inspecting the trainwith their dogs that she was his owndaughter. Soon Ariana was back inher mother’s custody.

Her mother, Roza, was one of thoseastonishingly resourceful people whowas marshaling every skill and con-nection to survive the war. She’d got-ten fake papers with a Catholic name,Maria Leszczynska, and parlayed herGerman fluency into a job as assis-tant manager of Warsaw’s grandesthotel, Hotel Europejski, which hadbecome a headquarters forWehrmacht officers. She’d managedto see her children at least twice dur-ing the war, but those visits had beenbrief and clandestine. The womannow going by the name Maria wasfearful of drawing attention to herself.

When Ariana was spirited out of theghetto and back to Warsaw in 1942,Maria turned in desperation to a closefriend with connections to the arch-bishop of Poland. Soon the girl wasbaptized with her own fake name,Elzbieta, and dispatched to a convent

school. Taking catechism, praying therosary, attending classes with theUrsuline sisters — never breathing aword about her true identity — thechild actress played the mostdemanding role of her life.

By the end of the war, through aseries of bold and fantastical moves— including a romance with aWehrmacht officer — Maria foundherself working for the Americans inAustria. Almost every Jew she knewwas dead: Renia, her parents, herhusband, her friends and neighbors.One of her sole surviving relativeswas a brother who had settled inFrance and married a socialite. Heinvited Maria and Elzbieta to join himthere — and even sent a car to fetchthem. Instead, Maria procured visasfor herself and her child to have afresh start in the United States.

After burying so much of their iden-tities, it was difficult to know whichpieces to resurrect. Maria feltCatholicism had saved her life, andshe clung to it. “They don’t like Jewstoo much here either,” their sponsortold them when they landed in NewYork. Ariana-cum-Elzbieta, nowknown as Elizabeth, enrolled in aPolish convent boarding school inPennsylvania, where she told none ofher many friends that she was born aJew. Maria remarried, to an American,a man who was prone to making anti-Semitic comments, and she nevertold her new husband about her trueidentity, her daughter later recalled.When she died, she was buried in aCatholic cemetery in upstate NewYork.


HOW AN ASTONISHING HOLOCAUST DIARY RESURFACED IN AMERICA

Renia during harvest time with Ariana and their mother in

Zaleszczyki, 1936.

This photograph of Renia, at age 17, was taken in the winter

of 1941 in Przemysl.


BY ANDREW HIGGINS, THE NEW YORK TIMES

For the tiny village of Sukioniai inwestern Lithuania, the exploits

of General Storm, a local anti-Communist hero executed by theSoviet secret police in 1947, havelong been a source of pride. The vil-lage school is named after him, andhis struggles against the Soviet Unionare also honored with a memorialcarved from stone next to the farmwhere he was born.

All along, though, there have beenpersistent whispers that GeneralStorm, whose real name was JonasNoreika, also helped the Nazis kill

Jews. But these were largely dis-counted as the work of ill-willed out-siders serving a well-orchestratedcampaign by Moscow to tar its foes asFascists.

Blaming Russian propaganda, how-ever, has suddenly become a lot moredifficult thanks to Mr. Noreika’s owngranddaughter, Silvia Foti, aLithuanian-American from Chicagowho has spent years researching abiography of her revered relative andwent public in July with her shockingconclusion: Her grandfather was afierce anti-Semite and Nazi collabora-tor.

Her unequivocal verdict has stirredemotional debate inside Lithuaniaand prompted a flood of “told you so”reports by state-controlled newsmedia outlets in Russia.

“It was terribly shocking,” Ms. Fotisaid in a telephone interview of herfinding that her grandfather was akiller, not a hero. “I had never heardabout any of this Nazi stuff.”

It was also shocking for JolandaTamosiuniene, a teacher and librarianat the J. Noreika Basic School inSukioniai, where Mr. Noreika wasborn at the end of the hamlet’s onlystreet in 1910.

What shocked her, however, wasnot Ms. Foti’s discovery that hergrandfather was complicit in theHolocaust — that was not really newsto locals — but that a member of apatriotic émigré family had gone pub-lic and turned a private family matter

into a public national shame.“We have all heard things about

what Noreika did during the war,” Ms.Tamosiuniene said. “He obviouslytook the wrong path. But his grand-daughter should have kept quiet.Every family has its ugly things, butthey don’t talk about them. It is betterto stay silent.”

Keeping things in the family mightbe a natural self-defense mechanismin a small, traumatized country that,since it first gained independencefrom Russia in 1918, has been occu-pied once by Nazi Germany and twiceby the Soviet Union.

But the silence has only played intoRussian claims of a cover-up and casta long and sometimes unfairly dark

shadow on a country justifiably proudof its success in building a tolerant,democratic nation on the ruins left bythe collapse of the Soviet Union at theend of 1991.

Virtually nobody in Lithuania isdenying the Holocaust or the role in itof local people. Its horrors are taughtin schools and denounced by officials.And lately there have been growingcalls, at least from a younger genera-tion less scarred than its elders bymemories of Soviet oppression, for anhonest accounting of the role playedby some national heroes like Mr.Noreika.

Indeed, on a recent visit to Vilnius,the capital, Israel’s prime minister,Benjamin Netanyahu, praised thecountry for taking “great steps to com-memorate the victims of theHolocaust” and for its “commitment tofighting anti-Semitism wherever itrears its ugly head.”

Ms. Foti’s research into her grandfa-ther helped prod the mayor of Vilniusinto asking the country’s guardian ofofficial history, the Genocide andResistance Research Center, to takea fresh look at whether Mr. Noreikamerited his status as a national hero— and whether a plaque in his honorat the library of the LithuanianAcademy of Sciences in Vilniusshould be taken down.

But at a time of rising nationalismacross Europe and heightened ten-sions with Russia, Mr. Noreika has

managed, despite repeated protests,to stay secure on his pedestal.

Appeals that he be toppled havemet resistance from nationalists andthe many Lithuanians whose relativeswere deported to remote Sovietregions by Stalin or tortured by theK.G.B. intelligence service, crimesthat blur the far greater crime of theHolocaust and often make them loathto condemn the actions of those whoresisted Soviet power.

“They have built up a whole nation-al narrative around fightingCommunism that they cannot dis-mantle,” said Grant Gochin, a SouthAfrican of Lithuanian descent whohas calculated that he lost 100 familymembers to the Holocaust inLithuania, dozens of them in territoryunder Mr. Noreika’s control during theNazi occupation.

For many citizens of Lithuaniaand the two other Baltic coun-

tries, Estonia and Latvia, the all-important memory of the war and itsaftermath is of the 200,000 peopledeported to Siberia and Kazakhstanfrom 1941 to 1949 and of the tens ofthousands who took to the forests atthe end of World War II in a doomedfight against rule from Moscow.

For others, particularly those withfamily memories of the Holocaust,this is an undeniable calamity but onefar less horrendous than the system-atic extermination of more than200,000 Jews in Lithuania alone from1941 to 1945.

“Every nation has to have itsheroes. I understand Lithuanians onthis. But how can we have heroes like

Noreika?” said Pinchos Fridberg, 80,a retired professor and the only Jewleft in Vilnius who was born in the citybefore the Nazis invaded in 1941.

Clouding Lithuanians’ judgment, Mr.Fridberg said, has been a deep fearof Russia and a widespread assump-tion that anything that puts their coun-try in a bad light must be Russian dis-information, or at least worthy ofskepticism because it comforts theKremlin.

“Whatever someone says or does,so long as they are against Russia

they are heroes,” Mr. Fridberg said.When a group of prominent public

figures in Lithuania signed a petitionin 2015 demanding the removal of theplaque honoring Mr. Noreika on thelibrary in Vilnius, the Genocide andResistance Research Center protest-ed that “the contempt being shown forLithuanian patriots is organized byneighbors from the East.” In otherwords, Russians.

Portraying opponents of Moscow asFascists has been a feature ofRussian propaganda for decades.After the end of World War II in 1945,Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians andUkrainians who resisted their incorpo-ration into the Soviet Union wereinvariably tarred by Moscow as Nazicollaborators or their ideologicalheirs, no matter their record or views.

President Vladimir Putin has furtherstoked this narrative, repeatedlysmearing Russia’s opponents athome and abroad as Fascists as heestablishes reverence for Russia’shuge role in defeating Hitler at thecenter of his campaign to revivenational pride and his country’s statusas a great power.

Dovid Katz, an American authorityon Yiddish who lives in Vilnius,

said the best response to Russianpropaganda would be for countries likeLithuania and Ukraine to draw a clearline between heroes and criminals intheir accounts of the war. Instead, hesaid, they have often gone into a self-defeating defensive crouch.

“Just because Russia says some-thing for the wrong reasons does notmean it is automatically wrong,” said

Mr. Katz, who runs a website focusedon the Holocaust.

Mr. Noreika spent the last months ofthe war in Nazi detention, a fact thathis defenders cite as evidence that hewas never really pro-Nazi. But hisprincipal claim to hero status is thatthe Soviet Union convicted him oftreason and executed him for his rolein organizing anti-Communist resist-ance while working as a lawyer inVilnius at the Academy of Sciencesfollowing the war.


NAZI COLLABORATOR OR NATIONAL HERO? A TEST FOR LITHUANIA

A monument for Jonas Noreika in Sukioniai, Lithuania, the town where he was born.

A carved log depicting Moses with the Ten Commandments on a hill in Plateliai, Lithuania, that

was the site of the mass murder of Jewish men during World War II.


(Continued from page 10)Elizabeth grew up to become a

schoolteacher. She met her husband-to-be, George Bellak, at a teachers’union party, and she was drawn tohim partly because he too was a Jewwho had fled the Nazi takeover ofEurope — in his case, Austria. But fora long time, Elizabeth didn’t tellGeorge what they had in common.The fear of exposure was a part of hernow. She baptized her two childrenand didn’t tell even them her secret.She began to forget some of thedetails herself.

* * *

But her past was not finished withher yet. In the 1950s, when

Elizabeth and her mother were livingin a studio apartment on Manhattan’sWest 90th Street, ZygmuntSchwarzer tromped up thestairs, Elizabeth recalls. He hadalso survived the war and alsoresettled in New York City, andhe was as handsome andcharming as ever, callingElizabeth by her childhood nick-name — “Arianka!” He carriedwith him something precious:Renia’s diary. There it was, thepale blue-lined notebook, con-taining her sister’s words, herintelligence and sensitivity, andher growing understanding oflove and violence — deliveredto this new life in America.Elizabeth could not bring her-self to read it.

No one alive today seems tobe able to explain the mysteryof how, precisely, Renia’s diary hadmade its way from Poland toSchwarzer’s hands in New York—notElizabeth, Tuchman or Schwarzer’sson, Mitchell. Perhaps ZygmuntSchwarzer had given it to a non-Jewish neighbor for safekeeping backin Poland; perhaps someone discov-ered it in a hiding spot and sent it tothe International Red Cross for rout-ing to the owner. After the war, pho-tos, personal items and documentsreached survivors in all sorts of cir-cuitous ways.

What’s known is that by the timeSchwarzer appeared with the diary,he’d survived Auschwitz-Birkenau,Landsberg and other camps. In a tes-timony recorded in 1986, now on fileat the United States HolocaustMemorial Museum, Schwarzer saidthat Josef Mengele, the famous deathcamp doctor, personally examinedhim — and decided to let him live.Another time, he said, he was to beput to death for stealing clothes whena girlfriend showed up to pay a dia-mond for his release.

His camp was liberated in the springof 1945. By the autumn of that year,his son says, he was studying medi-cine in Germany under former Naziprofessors. He married a Jewish

woman from Poland. After he finishedschool, they emigrated to Americaunder the newly created DisplacedPersons Act, the country’s first pieceof refugee legislation. After a stint inthe U.S. Army, he had a happy careeras a pediatrician in Queens and onLong Island. His two children remem-ber him as gregarious, brilliant, funnyand kind, the sort of person whowanted to taste every food, see everysight and strike up conversation withevery passerby, as if surviving the warhad only amplified his zest for life.

But as he gained more distancefrom the past, his internal life grewdarker. By the 1980s, he often won-dered aloud why Mengele hadallowed him to live. “What did he seein me?” he asked Mitchell. “Why didthis man save my life?”

He had made a copy of the diary,and his basement office became ashrine to Renia. Her photograph hungon his wall. He would lay out photo-copied pages of her diary on brownleather medical examination tablesand spend hours poring over them.“He was apparently falling in love withthis diary,” his son recalls. “He wouldtell me about Renia. She was thisspiritual presence.”

Zygmunt Schwarzer’s wife, JeanSchwarzer, had little interest in herhusband’s heartache — she reactedto the long-dead girl like a living rival.“My mother would say, ‘Ach, he’s withthe diary downstairs,’” said Mitchell.“She wasn’t interested in all of whatshe would call his ‘meshugas,’ hiscrazy crap.”

But Tuchman, Schwarzer’s child-hood friend, understood the need toreconnect with the past later in life.“We were clamoring for some attach-ment and the desire to see a commonthread,” he explained recently.Survivors often sought out artifacts asa kind of anchor, he said, to feel that“we were not just floating in theatmosphere.”

Zygmunt’s son Mitchell took up themantle of investigating that lost world.He traveled to his parents’ home-

towns in Poland and the camps andhiding places where they survived thewar, and spoke publicly about theirstories. He became a professor ofarchitectural history, publishingBuilding After Auschwitz and otherarticles about the Holocaust andarchitecture.

Zygmunt Schwarzer died from astroke in 1992. Before his death, hehad made a last contribution toRenia’s diary. On April 23, 1989, whilevisiting Elizabeth, he wrote one of twoadditional entries. “I’m with Renusia’ssister,” he wrote. “This blood link is allI have left. It’s been 41 years since Ihave lost Renusia.... Thanks to ReniaI fell in love for the first time in my life,deeply and sincerely. And I was lovedback by her in an extraordinary,unearthly, incredibly passionate way.”

* * *

After Maria died in 1969,Elizabeth retrieved her sister’s

journal and stashed it away, eventual-ly in a safe deposit box at the Chasebank downstairs from her airy apart-ment near Union Square inManhattan. It was both her dearestpossession and unopenable, like theclosely guarded secret of herJewishness. Her French uncle hadalways told her: “Forget the past.”

One day, when her youngest child,Alexandra, was about 12 years old,she said something casually deroga-tory toward Jews. Elizabeth decided itwas time Alexandra and her brother,Andrew, knew the truth.

“I told them I was born Jewish,”Elizabeth said.

By the time Alexandra grew up, shewanted to know more about the diary.“I had to know what it said,” saidAlexandra. In 2012, she scanned thepages and emailed them, 20 at atime, to a student in Poland for trans-lation. When they came back, shewas finally able to read her deadaunt’s words. “It was heart-wrench-ing,” she said.

In early 2014, Alexandra andElizabeth went to the Polish consulate

in New York to see a documentaryabout a Polish Jewish animator whohad survived the Holocaust. Elizabethasked the filmmaker, TomaszMagierski, if he wanted to read hersister’s wartime diary.

Out of politeness, Magierski saidyes. “Then I read this book — and Icould not stop reading it,” he said. “Iread it over three or four nights. It wasso powerful.”

Magierski was born 15 years afterthe war’s end, in southern Poland, ina town, like most every other Polishtown, that had been emptied of Jews.Poland had been the country wheremost of Europe’s Jews lived, and itwas also the site of all the major Nazideath camps. At school, Magierskihad learned about the Holocaust, butno one seemed to talk about the miss-

ing people, whether because ofgrief or culpability, official sup-pression or a reluctance todredge up the miserable past.It seemed wrong to Magierskithat not only the people weregone, but so were their stories.

“I fell in love with Renia,” hesays, in his gentle voice,explaining why he decided tomake a film about her. “Thereare hundreds of thousands ofyoung people and children whodisappeared and were killed,and their stories will never betold.” This one felt like hisresponsibility: “I have to bringthis thing to life.” He began vis-iting town archives, old ceme-teries, newspaper records andthe people of Przemysl, turning

up information even Elizabeth had notknown or remembered.

He also created a poetry competi-tion in Renia’s name and wrote a playbased on Renia’s diary. Actors fromPrzemysl performed it in Przemysland Warsaw in 2016. The leadactress, 18-year-old Ola Bernatek,had never before heard stories of theJews of her town. Now, she said, “Isee her house every day when I go toschool.”

For Renia’s family, though, the goalwas publishing her journal. The bookwas published in Polish in 2016. Itwas not widely reviewed in Poland —where the topic of Jewish Holocaustexperience is still a kind of taboo —but readers acknowledged its powerand rarity. “She was clearly a talentedwriter,” Eva Hoffman, a London-based Polish Jewish writer and aca-demic, said of Renia. “Like AnneFrank, she had a gift for transposingherself onto the page and for bringinggreat emotional intensity as well aswit to her writing.”

The night her diary was printed,Magierski stayed in the print shop thewhole night, watching. “There was amoment where I became cold,” hesaid. “She’s going to exist. She’sback.”

HOW AN ASTONISHING HOLOCAUST DIARY RESURFACED IN AMERICA

Left to right: Zygmunt Schwarzer with friends and cousins on the San River in Przemysl in the summer of 1940;

Zgymunt’s medical school ID photo from Heidelberg; Zgymunt after his liberation from Lager Buchberg in Bavaria in

the spring of 1945. Later in life, his son says, he obscured the tattooed numbers on his arm.


According to tradition, Jews livedon Rhodes even before thedestruction of the Second Temple.The community survived bloodlibels, poverty and a world war, butin 1944 the Nazis sent the remain-ing Jews of Rhodes to Auschwitz,killing all but 200.BY ARIEL BOLSTEIN, ISRAEL HAYOM

It was a quiet evening in the old cityof Rhodes as I strolled through the

crooked alleyways, which were emptyand looked as if they hadn’t changedsince the Middle Ages. Suddenly, Iheard scraps of a conversation thatbounced off the stones. It wasn’t inGreek or in any other language spo-ken by the tourists that visit this Greekisland. When I got closer to thespeakers, I saw two elderly people sit-ting on a low step leading to a court-yard. Now I could hear the wordsclearly, and there was no doubt —they were speaking Ladino.

When I approached them, I saw inthe moonlight that one of them had anumber tattooed on his arm. Thenumerals were faded. That is how Imade the acquaintance of SamuelModiano. When he was 13 and a half,Samuel (Sami) and his family werecaught and sent to Auschwitz. He waslucky enough to be tall, and he waschosen for hard labor rather than thegas chamber. Sami survived, and afterthe war he found himself in Italy. Likeall the Jews of Rhodes who survivedthe war (other than one woman, one ofhis cousins), Sami didn’t move back tothe island. But some inexplicable forcekeeps drawing him back to where hisfamily lived for generations.

Many descendants of RhodianJews, who are known among them-selves as “Rhodeslis,” visit the islandevery summer. Maybe it’s the illusionthat time has stood still in the ancientstreets that tempts them back. Youdon’t need an overactive imaginationto picture how it would have beenhundreds of years ago. Isaak Habib,who was born to Jewish parents fromRhodes after the war, travels herefrom his home in South Africa for atleast five months of the year. Habib isa driving force behind the preserva-tion of the legacy of Jews of Rhodesand the rebuilding of the KahalShalom synagogue. He oversees themaintenance of it and directsresearch into the community’simpressive history, with its ups anddowns. Isaak’s own family historyreflects what befell the island’s Jewsover the past century.

This is the oldest extant synagoguein modern-day Greece, although itshould be noted that the Jews of theisland do not characterize themselvesas Greek Jews. They differentiatebetween Rhodes and mainlandGreece, which annexed Rhodes onlyafter World War II.

Rhodes was home to Jews prior toSpain’s expulsion of its Jewish citi-zens in the 15th century, but little is

known about their way of life. Oral tra-dition holds that Roman-era Jews set-tled on the island following thedestruction of the Second Temple in70 C.E., and some say even beforethat.

About 100 years ago, the Jewishcommunity on Rhodes numberedabout 6,000. The widespread povertyon the island prompted mass migra-tion to the U.S., South America, andEuropean colonies in Africa. By theend of the 1930s, about two-thirds ofthe island’s Jews had left. It soonbecame apparent that they had savedthemselves from the hell that waslooming.

The Germans occupied Rhodesand the rest of the Aegean

Islands in September 1943 after Italystopped fighting alongside Hitler. Formonths, the Germans did nothing tothe local Jews. There were no publichumiliations, they weren’t forced towear yellow Stars of David on theirclothing, and they weren’t shepherd-ed into a ghetto, as the Jews ofThessaloniki were. The relative quiet,which wasn’t disturbed until theBritish began bombing the island(killing some of the Jews whoremained), kept the local communityignorant of the fate that awaited them.

A year ago, Habib discovered that inApril 1944, the Italian police on Rhodeshanded lists of the Jewish populationover to the Germans. The lists them-selves were discovered in the syna-gogue two years ago. Habib’s workersdid not see them as important, and onlywhen they were carefully reviewed didthey turn out to be a detailed registryprepared in 1938 — including heads ofhouseholds “belonging to the Jewishrace,” along with the families’ address-es and the number of people living ineach home.

On July 18, 1944, the local newspa-per reported that all Jewish men aged16 and over would be required toappear the next day at a buildingused as the headquarters of theItalian air force. The paper reportedthat they would be assigned workduties. The men obeyed. A day later,

women were instructed to appear to“receive instructions.” The womenwho arrived at the building were givenbitter news — if they did not return thenext day with their children and valu-ables, their male relatives would beexecuted. Habib’s mother wrote thatthey were not given a choice: “Wewere only women and girls, and wewent directly in to our deaths.” Thewomen and children joined the men,and everyone was held in the air forceHQ for three days.

At 2 p.m. on July 23, the Germansset off the island’s air raid sirens. Theresidents, as expected, ran for shel-ter, leaving no witnesses. TheGermans led the Jews to the port of

Rhodes and loaded them onto hugetransport barges to start their journeyto Auschwitz.

The ships that would take them therest of the way were waiting at theisland of Samos because the efficien-cy-minded Germans wanted to add atransport of Jews from Kos. On July31, the vessels docked in Athens, andthe Jews were moved to the Haidariconcentration camp. The men wereseparated. On August 3, the infamouscattle cars pulled up, and the Jews ofthe Aegean Islands began the laststage of their awful journey, a 13-daytrip to the largest industrialized deathmachine in history.

One of Habib’s grandfathers died inthe suffocating car. The rest got offthe train at Auschwitz. Some 600youths were taken away for labor, andthe rest were killed within the space ofthree hours. Fewer than 200 RhodianJews survived the camps. After thewar, Habib’s mother wrote a memoirof what she experienced and sent it toan acquaintance in Italy. She nevertold her family or children what sheendured, but years later her memoirwas found.

That is how Habib learned about hismother’s torturous experiences,which included Dachau and Bergen-Belsen.

The terrible story of the end of theJews of Rhodes is not lacking in sto-ries of rescue. The Turkish consul onthe island, Selahettin Ulkumen, saved

42 Jews, claiming that they wereTurkish citizens. Ulkumen did nothesitate to approach the Gestapo andused Turkey’s neutrality to demandthat they be let out of the air forcebuilding where they were being held.The Germans complied. One of thelucky 42, a year-old baby at the time,continues to visit Rhodes from hishome in the U.S. every year.

Acommemorative plaque in theRhodes synagogue courtyard

tells another kind of story and lists allthe local Jewish families who weremurdered in the Holocaust. Among themany Spanish names (Alhadeff,Soncino, Capeluto, Ventura,Benbenisti), I find the name of a singleAshkenazi family. How could that be, ifRhodes was never home to any Jewsof Ashkenazi origin? Habib tells me thestory of the Pentcho, one of the shipsthat carried illegal Jewish immigrantsinto Mandate Palestine in violation ofthe British embargo. In May 1940,about 500 Jews, mostly members ofthe Betar Zionist movement, tried toescape Europe on board the Pentcho,which sailed from Thessaloniki.

After three months at sea, the ship’sheater exploded, and it wrecked onthe boulders offshore of the smallAegean island of Chamili. Some 10days after the wreck, and an Italianpatrol plane spotted the survivors,whose food and water was nearlygone, and carried them out toRhodes. The Jewish refugees fromEurope were put up in tents erectedon a soccer field. Some perishedbecause of the cold and the harshconditions. Two others died while try-ing to reach Palestine, and the restwere eventually transferred to a con-centration camp in southern Italy.

The possibility of being sent to Italy,which was Germany’s ally, seemed adeath sentence. So when the Pannfamily, whose father had a professiondeemed vital on the island, was givena chance to remain on Rhodes, theywere seen as fortunate. The familywas happy to accept the invitation tostay. Sadly, the Europeans deportedto Italy were unharmed, but the Pannfamily was sent to Auschwitz with therest of the island’s Jews and werekilled there. A miraculous rescuewound up leading to their destruction.

Jewish communities with roots onRhodes exist throughout the world,and in some surprising places —including the Democratic Republic ofthe Congo, where Habib was bornand raised. At its height, that commu-nity numbered some 2,000, but as theyears went by, nearly all the Jews left.

Bit by bit, most Jews of Rhodiandescent seem to be making their wayto Israel. Habib sees his future here.

”Rhodes holds so much Jewish his-tory,” he says, gazing at the ancientsynagogue.

”That’s the past, happy and sad. Butthe past is gone … and now all thatremains is to be happy that we’vestarted to control the fate of the Jews.In Israel, of course.”

THE TRAGEDY OF THE JEWS OF RHODES

The Kahal Shalom synagogue in Rhodes.


(Continued from page 12)

After regaining its independencewith the breakup of the Soviet

Union, Lithuania canceled the convic-tion and declared Mr. Noreika a heroicmartyr, ignoring his role as an officialunder Nazi occupation, which resultedin the slaughter of about 95 percent ofthe more than 200,000 Jews living inLithuania when Hitler invaded.

Today the country is dotted withHolocaust grave sites and memorials.One of the biggest stands in a forestoutside the western town of Plunge,where Mr. Noreika served as com-mander of the Lithuanian ActivistFront, an openly anti-Semitic groupthat was fiercely hostile to an initialSoviet occupation in 1940 and

cheered the Nazis as liberators thefollowing year.

Plunge’s entire Jewish population ofmore than 1,800 was murdered withindays of the invasion, mostly by localpeople.

Eugenijus Bunka, the son of a pre-war Jewish resident who survivedbecause he fled to the Soviet Union,said Mr. Noreika probably didn’t killJews himself but still bore responsibil-ity as an administrator who signedorders seizing their property andordering their “isolation.”

“I hear all these people shoutingabout defending our patriots, but thepeople who have another view are allsilent,” he said, pointing to one of thepits where Plunge’s Jewish residents

were buried after being shot or beat-en to death by their neighbors.

When Ms. Foti started researchingher book on her grandfather 18 yearsago, she expected to produce a glow-ing tribute.

“My grandfather was going to be thewhite knight in shining armor, a purehero from beginning to end,” she said.“I had always heard how he had doneso much for Lithuania and had died atthe early age of 36 at the hands of theK.G.B.”

Instead, after digging up wartimedocuments with her grandfather’s sig-nature relating to the treatment ofJews and talking to relatives and oth-ers during research trips to Lithuania,she realized that he had been an

accomplice in mass murder. Mr.Noreika, she said, did not pull the trig-ger himself but was a “desk killer.”

She said he oversaw the slaughterin Plunge, where his family movedinto a handsome home seized from itsJewish owners, and also in the near-by town of Siauliai, where he servedas county chief under the Nazis start-ing in late 1941 — and where themain government building now has aplaque in his honor.

“Lithuanians have been raped threetimes — by the Communists twiceand by the Nazis once,” Ms. Foti said.“All they know is that they were raped,that they are the victims. They haveno more room in their psyche for anyother victims.”

NAZI COLLABORATOR OR NATIONAL HERO? A TEST FOR LITHUANIA

BY RAFAEL MEDOFF, THE ALGEMEINER

In an era that has seen more than400,000 people take part in a

Women’s March on Washington, itmay not sound very impressive that400 rabbis marched in the nation’scapital in 1943. But numbers alonedon’t always tell the whole story.

The rabbis’ march took place threedays before Yom Kippur in 1943. Theten days between Rosh Hashana andYom Kippur are among the most hec-tic periods for a pulpit rabbi, who hasmajor sermons to prepare and count-less logistics to arrange for the mostwell-attended services of the year.

So there was no small inconvenienceinvolved for the rabbis who answeredthe call of the political action commit-tee known as the Bergson Group andthe Orthodox rescue advocates of theVa’ad ha-Hatzala to come toWashington to plead for the rescue ofEurope’s Jews.

And their journey was likely mademore than a little jittery by the factthat, just one month earlier, a newhigh-speed train on its way from NewYork City to Washington had derailedand killed 79 passengers.

Nevertheless, more than 400 rabbisput down their books, left their com-munities and congregations, andheaded for Washington. Most camefrom the New York City area, but oth-ers traveled from as far away asChicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati,Pittsburgh and Worcester,Massachusetts.

As the station master shouted,“Clear the way for those rabbis!” theprotesters emerged from WashingtonUnion Station and made their waytoward the cluster of buildings knownas the Capitol.

It was not only their numbers, butalso their stature, that was notewor-thy. The marchers were led by RabbisEliezer Silver and Yisroel Rosenberg,co-presidents of the Union ofOrthodox Rabbis. There were notableHasidic rebbes, such as the BoyanerRebbe, Rabbi Shlomo Friedman, and

the Melitzer Rebbe, Rabbi YitzchokHorowitz. And there were a number ofyounger rabbis who would soonbecome leaders of their generation, inparticular Moshe Feinstein andJoseph B. Soloveitchik.

Acolumnist for the Yiddish-lan-guage newspaper Der Tog (The

Day) was impressed by the reactionof passersby. As the rabbis in their“long silk and gabardines and roundplush hats, moved alongPennsylvania Avenue … there [were]absolutely no snickers, no smirks onthe faces of the onlookers,” he wrote.“They did not gape or guffaw asalmost any crowd in a Central or EastEuropean land most decidedly wouldhave. They watched in wondermentand in respect. The traffic stopped,and here and there a burgherremoved his hat. I myself saw many asoldier snap in salute.”

Fear of East European–style anti-Semitic mockery was actually a largepart of the reason that the rabbis’march was so unusual. It was, in fact,the only march in Washington for therescue of the Jews during theHolocaust years. Many AmericanJews, as immigrants or the children ofimmigrants, were extremely anxiousto be seen as fitting in. They worriedthat noisy Jewish protests might beperceived as un-American.

In fact, one Jewish member ofCongress, Representative Sol Bloom(D-New York), reportedly sought topersuade the rabbis to cancel themarch on the grounds that “it would

be very undignified for a group ofsuch un-American looking people toappear in Washington.” The Jewishcommunal leader Cyrus Adler oncereferred to that attitude as “the ghettocrouch” — the phenomenon of Jewswalking with their heads bowed so asnot to draw the attention of non-Jews.

The rabbis were greeted on thesteps of the Capitol by Vice PresidentHenry Wallace and members ofCongress. After brief remarks, therabbis proceeded to the LincolnMemorial to recite prayers and singthe national anthem.

Then they marched to the WhiteHouse. While most of the rabbis wait-ed across the street in Lafayette Park,their leaders approached the gates ofthe White House to ask if PresidentRoosevelt could “accord a few min-utes of his most precious time.” Theywanted to present him with a petition

calling for the creation of “a specialagency to rescue the remainder of theJewish nation in Europe.”

A White House staffer informed therabbis that the president was unavail-able “because of the pressure of otherbusiness.” Actually, FDR’s schedulewas clear that afternoon. But a presi-dential meeting would have conferredlegitimacy on the protesters’ pleas forUS action. And Roosevelt’s policywas that there was nothing that couldbe done to help the Jews, except towin the war.

That move backfired. “RabbisReport ‘Cold Welcome’ at the

White House,” declared a

Washington Times-Herald headlinethe next morning. A leading Jewishnewspaper columnist angrily asked:“Would a similar delegation of 500Catholic priests have been thus treat-ed?” The editors of the Jewish dailyForverts (Forward) reported signs ofa new mood among some AmericanJews: “In open comment it is voicedthat Roosevelt has betrayed theJews” — a shocking sentiment in acommunity that repeatedly cast 90%of its ballots for FDR.

The publicity from the march helpedgalvanize a Congressional resolutionurging the creation of a rescueagency. A Roosevelt administrationofficial gave wildly misleading testi-mony at the hearings on the resolu-tion. The embarrassing publicity thatfollowed, combined with behind-the-scenes pressure from TreasurySecretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr.,and his aides, convinced PresidentRoosevelt to establish the WarRefugee Board.

Although handicapped by the smallsize of its staff and the measly levelof funding it received from theRoosevelt administration (privateJewish groups supplied 90% of itsbudget), the War Refugee Boardaccomplished near-miracles in itsbrief existence. It provided funds tohide Jewish refugees, bribe Nazi offi-cials and move tens of thousands ofJews out of the way of the retreatingGerman armies. It also recruitedRaoul Wallenberg to go to Nazi-occu-pied Budapest and financed his res-cue missions there. Historians calcu-late that the Board played a crucialrole in saving the lives of some200,000 Jews in Europe during thefinal 15 months of the war.

There is no straight line from therabbis’ march to Raoul Wallenbergpulling Jews off trains bound forAuschwitz. But the march was animportant part of the series of eventsthat eventually led to that outcome.Seventy-five years ago, the rabbisproved that you don’t always need400,000 people in the streets ofWashington to have an impact —sometimes 400 will do the trick.

THE DAY THE RABBIS MARCHED

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Martyrdom & Resistance

Ron B. Meier, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief

Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A.,

Editor

*Published Bimonthly by the American Society

for Yad Vashem, Inc.500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor

New York, NY 10110(212) 220-4304

EDITORIAL BOARD

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

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

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The American Society for YadVashem was founded in 1981 by agroup of Holocaust survivors and ledby Eli Zborowski, z”l, for more thanthirty years. Recently approved by theBoard of Directors of the AmericanSociety for Yad Vashem, our LegacyCircle is being named in memory of EliZborowski, z”l, who was greatlyrespected for his work and accom-plishments on behalf of Yad Vashemand is missed by all who knew him.

The Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle isopen to and will recognize anyone who includes Yad Vashemin their estate plans. This can include a bequest by will, fund-ing a Charitable Remainder Trust or Charitable Gift Annuity,donating a paid-up life insurance policy or contributing aninterest in an IRA or retirement plan, or making ASYV the ben-eficiary of a Charitable Lead Trust. Individuals can make giftsof any size, through a broad range of programs and invest-ment vehicles that can accommodate those of modest means,as well as those with substantial wealth. By including Yad Vashem in your estate plans, you assure a

future in which Holocaust remembrance and education willserve as a powerful antidote to denial, hate and indifference.

“I did not find the world desolate when I entered it. As myfathers planted for me before I was born, so do I plant for thosewho will come after me.”The Talmud

For further information about the Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle,please contact

Robert Christopher Morton, Director of Planned Giving at ASYV, who can be reached at:212-220-4304; [email protected]

ELI ZBOROWSKI LEGACY CIRCLE


FROM HOLOCAUST TO REBIRTHelist Leon Uris by Dr. Vladislav Dering, a Polish gynecologist then liv-ing...

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