“THERE IS HOPE FOR THE FUTURE” “THE VERY WORLD RESTS€¦ · equally proud that a majority of...

IN THIS ISSUEAmerican Society for Yad Vashem Annual Tribute Dinner...........................1,7,8-9,16

A map of a Lithuanian town donated to American Society for Yad Vashem............3

Rosh Hashanah 1944: A Holocaust controversy.........................................................5

Romance in the Holocaust............................................................................................6

Yad Vashem honored unheralded Holocaust hero...................................................10

A friend in deed.............................................................................................................11

Holocaust survivors seek congress’s help in court..................................................12

Austria accused of shielding Nazi suspect................................................................13

Stamp collector’s Holocaust memorial.......................................................................13

The “silent heroes” now have a voice........................................................................14

Nazi collaborator living peacefuly in Germany..........................................................15

Vol. 35-No.2 ISSN 0892-1571 November/December 2008-Cheshvan/Kislev 5769

ELI ZBOROWSKI, Founder and Chairman of theAmerican Society for Yad Vashem

Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen of dais, dearcolleagues and friends:

I wish first to offer my heartfelt congratulations to thisevening’s three distinguished honorees, who are eachin their own way the embodiment of this year’s dinnertheme – Hope. It is because they believed and hopedthat they were able to make this world a better place forall of mankind.

Selma Gruder Horowitz was born in Poland, survivedthe concentration camp, fled to the forests and was ulti-mately hidden by a Polish woman who has been desig-nated a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.Her story of courage and optimism, against all odds, istruly heroic. We are grateful for her support of the

American Society, and proud to have her as a member of our Executive Board.Fred Zeidman, Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, is a mem-

ber of a growing generation of Jews who feel a strong connection to the Holocaust as apivotal event in Jewish history, even though they do not have family members who weredirectly affected by this systematic annihilation of the Jewish people. Mr. Zeidman’s com-mitment to tikkun olam is evidenced by the dozens of organizations to which he gives histime, talents and resources. I am personally grateful to Fred for his expression of warmthand interest in the American Society for Yad Vashem.

General Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, has been a close col-league, friend and partner for the past 15 years. It is Avner’s vision, tenacity and creativity thathas enabled Yad Vashem to become the Global Guardian of Holocaust Remembrance. It isnot surprising that his contribution to Holocaust awareness has been acknowledged by aLegion of Honor presented by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and that he accepted Spain’sPrince of Asturias Award for Concord on behalf of Yad Vashem. It has been a privilege for theAmerican Society to participate with Avner in bringing his foresight to fruition.

The concept of Hope comes to us from the prophet Jeremiah, who said, “There is hopefor the future.”

Today to the date we observe the 70th Anniversary of the Kristallnacht and we cele-brate the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israel. We recall that, since November 9th,1938, the infamous Krisallnacht, we experienced increased discrimination, systematicdehumanization, ghettos, starvation and deportations to concentration and death camps.A very few of us survived, to be witness to the tragedy, coined as the Holocaust.

When the liberation came, we could not return to our hometowns, to our communities.They simply did not exist! We became Displaced Persons, many of us still housed in thecamps that once were our prisons, or in temporary makeshift communities. Yet, we madethe effort to refocus our lives and move on. Now, seven decades later, not only have weestablished ourselves and become productive members of our communities and theirinstitutions, but we are in the forefront in the support of the State of Israel.

Today’s Tribute Dinner is honoring a survivor, a witness of the tragedy and the twoChairmen, heads of the two great institutions working successfully for Remembrance.The teachings of these two great institutions and their activities for Remembrance giveus HOPE for NEVER AGAIN.

The presence of a large number of young people in this Tribute Dinner and their activerole in our activities is HOPE for a better future, HOPE for continuing teaching the lessonfrom our tragedy.

MARGARET SPELLINGS, U.S. Secretary of Education

As the U.S. Secretary of Education, it’s a pleasure forme to honor three champions of education: survivor

Selma Gruder Horowitz; Avner Shalev, Chairman of the YadVashem Directorate, and Fred Zeidman, Chairman of theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Council.

The Talmud says that “the very world rests on thebreath of a child in school.” No one lives by this sayingmore than tonight’s honorees.

I’ve known Fred for a long time, so I’d like to talk abouthim first. Fred has never been one for ceremonialassignments. Instead, he seeks out the most challeng-ing and interesting work, where he can make a real dif-ference. That’s why, in leading the U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum, Fred not only commemorates thepast, he also serves as a voice of conscience for today.

What that means is that, when you visit the museum, you learn about the tragedies of theHolocaust as well as the genocide that’s taking place now in Darfur.

I know that Fred and all associated with the museum are proud that 28 million peoplehave visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum since it opened. I know he’sequally proud that a majority of these visitors are not of Jewish descent. Because intol-erance, hatred, and fear are everybody’s problems. Fred, thank you.

Today, we mark the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht and the beginning of theHolocaust. We know that these events may seem long past, but the tensions that creat-ed them are ever-present.

Few understand this as well as survivors like Selma Gruder Horowitz. After survivingKorowice, Selma came to the U.S. and founded a highly successful company. Today, sheserves as President of East Coast Industrial Uniform, a board member of the AmericanSociety for Yad Vashem, a trustee of Yad Vashem Jerusalem, and a strong supporter ofthe U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

When we hear the story of survivors, we are powerfully aware of our moral responsibil-ity to challenge prejudice and intolerance.

That’s why the work of Avner Shalev is so critical. Thanks to Avner, the individual sto-ries of more than three million Holocaust victims are now available online, so that any-one anywhere can hear them.

Under his leadership, Yad Vashem has embraced new technologies to make sure theworld’s most comprehensive collection of Holocaust material is also the world’s mostaccessible. He has established an International School for Holocaust Studies, a newmuseum complex, and a new library to house more than 68 million pages of documen-tation, plus hundreds of thousands of books and photographs.

The more I learn about Avner Shalev, the more I see why he and Fred have been suchclose partners. Between their two organizations, Fred and Avner have helped providetraining for nearly 200,000 teachers. Think of the multiplier effect that will have. Over thecourse of their careers, those teachers will impact millions of students. I could not imag-ine a more hopeful way to illustrate tonight’s theme of “Tikvah” (hope).

I want to thank all of tonight’s honorees for all that they do to create a more hopefulfuture. I thank them for teaching young generations the values of decency and tolerance.

Their wisdom gives us hope for what we can achieve. And I know they and your chil-dren, and all of us, will continue this work long into the future.

“THERE IS HOPE FOR THE FUTURE” “THE VERY WORLD RESTS

ON THE BREATH OFA CHILD IN SCHOOL”

MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE November/December 2008 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5769

The Anne Frank House museum saidit has restored 52 photographs and

images the Jewish teenager pasted onthe wall of her room to cheer herself upwhile hiding from the Nazis.

The water-stained collageof celebrities of the day, suchas Greta Garbo and the LaneSisters, that Anne Frank cre-ated shortly after her familywent into hiding have beenseen by millions of visitors,offering them another viewinto the mind of the girl bestknown for her posthumouslypublished diary.

“Our little room looked very bare at firstwith nothing on the walls,” Anne wrote inan entry on July 11, 1942.

“But thanks to Daddy, who had broughtmy picture postcards and film-star collec-tion ... I have transformed the walls intoone gigantic picture. This makes it lookmuch more cheerful.”

One photo, of Olympic skater andHollywood star Sonja Henie, had been outof place since an earlier renovation in the1970s and has now returned to its originalspot, said museum spokeswomanAnnemarie Bekker.

An investigation of the pictures found thatmost were movie stars cut from the Dutchwomen’s magazine Libelle, Bekker said.

Other images include postcards of

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth - when she wasstill a princess – and the Dutch royal fam-ily in exile.

As Anne grew older, she pasted oversome of the glamor shots with reproduc-

tions of artwork by Michelangelo andLeonardo da Vinci.

The pictures, well over 60 years old,have been undergoing restoration for adecade. They were removed in October2007 when the wallpaper was taken downto be reinforced, and facsimiles hung intheir place until August.

They are now protected behind climate-controlled glass that Bekker said wouldguarantee their preservation for decades.The Frank family hid in a cramped secretannex above an Amsterdam canal-sidewarehouse from July 1942 until they werebetrayed in August 1944.

Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsenconcentration camp just weeks before it wasliberated in the spring of 1945.

ANNE FRANK MUSEUM RESTORES PHOTO COLLAGE

The Claims Conference willincrease its allocations in 2009 by

$23 million.The decision by the conference's

board of directors at its annual meetingin July brings the overall allocation fornext year to $193 million.

"Increasing Claims Conference allo-cations is essential to addressing thegrowing needs of Nazi victims as theyage,” said Julius Berman, the confer-

ence chairman. “These funds are forhome care, hunger relief, medicalcare, winter supplies, emergency cashgrants and other vital services to Nazivictims worldwide.”

The funds mostly represent the pro-ceeds from the sale of unclaimedJewish property in the former EastGermany. The conference also will fund$18 million in Holocaust education andremembrance projects.

CLAIMS CONFERENCE INCREASING ALLOCATIONS

Germany has compiled a list of some600,000 Jews who lived there from

1933 to 1945 and suffered discriminationby the Nazis, an index that is to be distrib-uted among leading archives to helpdescendants research the fate of theirfamilies.

The government gave the list to Israel’sYad Vashem Holocaust memorial,Washington’s Holocaust Museum, theJewish Claims Conference and theInternational Tracing Service in BadArolsen, Germany.

Germany’s federal archive drew up thelist, which the government and a founda-tion that oversaw the compensation ofNazi-era slave laborers financed to the

tune of $2.24 million. “In handing over this list, we want to

make a substantial contribution to docu-menting the loss that German Jewry suf-fered through persecution, expulsionand destruction,” foundation leaderGuenter Saathof said in a statementcoinciding with a handing-over ceremo-ny at the chancellery.

The government said the idea for thelist, drawn up over the past four years,first arose during negotiations overunpaid insurance claims dating back tothe Nazi era.

It was compiled using information heldin the nation’s federal archive, as well asmunicipal registries and deportation lists.

GERMANY MAKES LIST OF NAZI-ERA JEWS

A91-year-old convicted German warcriminal held up a Belgian pharma-

cy shop with a toy gun.The defendant had been convicted in 1968

of murdering six Jews in Gorlice, Poland dur-ing World War II and was sentenced to lifeimprisonment. He served 22 years and wasthen freed on grounds of age.

He has now been indicted inRecklinghausen, Germany for extortion forthe purpose of robbery in Eupen, Belgium.

The court heard how he took a train fromRecklinghausen to Eupen in March 2007,walked into a pharmacy and pointed the life-like toy gun at the pharmacist, 49, saying,“Give me all your money. This is no joke.”

But when a woman customer walked in,he departed with no booty.

He confirmed his war crimes, saying,“They were vile acts, and I did do them.”Some of the murders occurred in thestreet, with the Germans shooting peoplein the head at point-blank range.

However, he contended that his trial inNuremberg for the war crimes had beenunfair because no weight was given toorders from above.

He said the Belgium robbery had beenan act of protest to attract public attentionto his point of view

“I didn’t care about the money,” heasserted.

FORMER NAZI TRIED FOR ROBBING STORE

IN PROTEST OF WAR CRIMES TRIAL

Iran’s education minister looked onwhile a group of militant students

unveiled a book ridiculing Holocaustvictims during an anti-Israeli rally incentral Tehran.

The book’s cover depicted a Jew witha hooked nose, dressed in traditionalclothes, drawing the outlines of deadbodies on the ground.

Written by student members of the Basijmilitia, the book comes two years after anIranian newspaper commissioned a com-petition of Holocaust-themed cartoons.

Despite an international outcry, theIranian government later in 2006 hosted aHolocaust conference featuring a numberof revisionist historians.

Inside pages have pictures of beardedJews shown leaving and re-entering a gaschamber with a counter that reads5,999,999.

Another picture shows a hospital patientcovered in an Israeli flag and on lifesupport, breathing Zyklon-B, the poi-sonous gas used in the death camps.

The education minister, Alireza Ali-Ahmadi, was taking part in an officialrally for Qods Day – an annual eventto show solidarity with Palestinians.

In recent years – since the electionof Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as presi-dent in 2005 – the event has grownmore vocal and angry.

At a Qods Day rally in that year,Mr Ahmadinejad first said thatIsrael would be “wiped from themap”. He has since used similarly

aggressive language.Tens of thousands of Iranians attended the

annual parade, waving placards and chant -ing “Death to Israel”.

The book comes two years after an Iranian newspa-

per commissioned a competition of Holocaust-

themed cartoons.

IRAN LAUNCHES BOOK MOCKING HOLOCAUST VICTIMS

Jewish-owned art seized by the Nazisfrom 1933 onwards is featured at a

new exhibition at the Jewish Museum inBerlin. Meanwhile, Germany’s cultureminister has called for the “fair” return ofJewish art.

The exhibition consists of 15 artworksalong with documents describing theirseizure or forced sale, later changes inownership, and ultimate restitution.Valuable porcelain and book collectionsfrom Dresden’s intellectual von Klempererfamily are included in the show. TheGestapo confiscated the family’s collec-tion in 1938, placing it in Dresden’s munic-ipal art collection and the Saxony statelibrary.

Before the Second World War, NaziGermany made it illegal for Jews to ownart treasures, forcing them to sell them.Later during the Holocaust, Jewish prop-erty throughout eastern Europe was

seized by Nazi officials.Exhibition organizers said that many of

the confiscated paintings and other treas-ures had still not been recovered by thelawful heirs of the original owners.

Michael Blumenthal, director of themuseum, charged that German art col-lectors, dealers and museums had allprofited by being able to purchase art atreduced prices.

He praised Germany’s current efforts togive back the art, but said he was disap-pointed that heirs had no absolute legalright to reclaim the artworks.

At an opening ceremony, Minister ofCulture Bernd Neumann called for “fairand just” solutions in returning the workstolen by Nazi officials.

“More than 60 years after the war’s end,Germany is unrestrained in its moralresponsibility for the restitution of art loot-ed by the Nazis,” he said.

JEWISH MUSEUM IN BERLIN TRACES ART STOLEN BY NAZIS

Yad Vashem wants to stimulateHolocaust research work in Belarus,

the country's Israeli ambassador said."Time is passing," Ze'ev Ben Arie said.

"It's critical to do the work for immortaliza-tion of the names as soon as possible. Ifwe will not do something now, we willnever do it."

Belarusian volunteers have compiledthe names of 30,000 Jews that perished inthe Holocaust in the country.

About 100 volunteers work in 16 areasof Belarus to find the names of victims

using archives, and with the assistance ofmuseums and schools. The project beganin Belarus in 2006.

Approximately 800,000 Jews perishedin Belarus during World War II. Some 200ghettos were located there.

"By now, we have managed to restoreonly a small part of the names of peoplethat perished in Belarus," said AvnerShalev, the head of the executive board ofthe Yad Vashem Institute, at a meetingwith volunteers in Minsk. "We want to findout new names."

YAD VASHEM TO STIMULATE BELARUS RESEARCH

An Adolf Hitler doll has hit the shelvesin Ukraine recently, and the toy

manufacturer that produces it says thatsimilar products may follow, should thenew doll prove to be a success.

The Hitler figurine features moveablearms that enable it to reproduce the Nazidictator’s infamous salute, and con-sumers are able to choose from a varietyof outfits, including “early days Adolf” and“wartime Adolf” (A grey double-breastedtunic, black trousers and simple IronCross medal), the Daily Telegraph said.

The box containing the doll featuresHitler’s birth date and date of death. Eventhough officially the distribution of racist or

fascist materials isillegal in Ukraine, thedolls have reportedlyalready been put upfor sale in localsupermarkets.

A representativefor the toy manufac-turer did not attributeany political signifi-cance to the doll,saying it’s “likeBarbie.” She added that if the companysees high demand for the Hitler doll, it willcontinue to produce a whole series of toysinspired by the Third Reich.

HITLER DOLLS FOR SALE IN UKRAINE

November/December 2008 - Cheshvan/Kislev 5769 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE

Lithuania’s prosecutor generaldropped a war crimes inquiry of a

World War II partisan.A spokeswoman for the prosecutor gener-

al said the 2-year-old investigation of Dr.Yitzhak Arad, the chairman emeritus of theYad Vashem Holocaust memorial inJerusalem, was dropped because of insuffi-cient data. The probe interviewed 83 people.

The inquiry stemmed from the publica-tion of memoirs recalling partisan activi-ties against Nazis and their collaboratorsin wartime Lithuania — activities thatLithuanian law interpreted as tantamountto genocide.

It is unknown whether the inquiry into

two other elderly former partisans, RachelMargolis and Fania Brantsovsky, also willbe dropped.

The incident in question was a Soviet-led ambush of Lithuanian collaborators inwhich 38 villagers were killed, includingchildren and a pregnant woman.

Lithuania’s consul general in New York,Jonas Paslauskas, had acknowledgedpreviously that negative publicity abroadhad generated second thoughts on theinquiry by Lithuania’s highest officials,including President Valdas Adamkus.

In August Adamkus came out with astatement indicating that he would push tohave the inquiry dropped.

LITHUANIA DROPS PROBE OF EX-PARTISAN

Romania will press ahead with plansfor a national Holocaust memorial,

said Prime Minister Calin PopescuTariceanu.

Tariceanu said work would soon com-mence at the site in the centre ofBucharest, the capital, to commemoratesome 400,000 Romanian Jews and Romakilled under a Nazi-allied regime duringWorld War II.

“The Holocaust must not be denied orforgotten, and it must never be repeated,”Tariceanu said in a written statementahead of Romania’s Holocaust memorialday, introduced four years ago.

The memorial is to use a design byRomanian-born sculptor Peter Jacobi,who lives in Germany.

It envisions a seven-meter high buildingwith a glass roof and metal beams. Lightand shadows are reflected on the floor ofblack, polished granite.

A Star of David sculpture is to be erect-ed beside the building in addition to a

wheel, which has symbolic value for theRoma minority.

“Construction in Bucharest of a memorialto victims of the Holocaust will start soon,”Tariceanu said. He gave no specific date.

Romanian authorities insisted well intothe post-communist era that what hap-pened under the World War II regimecould not be labeled part of the Holocaust.

In 2004, the government accepted thefindings of an international panel chairedby Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel thatimplicated Romanian civilian and militaryauthorities in 1940-44 in mass killings anddeportations.

Some 280,000–380,000 RomanianJews died in Romania and Romanian-occupied areas, and 25,000 Roma weredeported, about half of whom died, thereport said.

Some 800,000 Jews lived in Romaniabefore World War II. Most of the Holocaustsurvivors emigrated to Israel, and about9,000 Jews now live in the country.

ROMANIA TO BUILD HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

BY DEBBIE TUMA and JANE H. FURSE,DAILY NEWS

Roman Haller was born in a Nazi offi-cer’s basement, hidden with 11

other Jews in World War II by a Polishwoman whose selfless act is the subjectof a new play starring Tovah Feldshuh.

An appearance at thetheater by Haller, 64,served as living proofof the sacrifice by IrenaGut Opdyke, whose lifefour-time Tony nomi-nee Feldshuh portraysin “Irena’s Vow,” a playby Dan Gordon at theBaruch Performing ArtsCenter.

Seeing the story ofhis parents and hisbirth come alive on thestage “was for me areally great moment,”said Haller, who headsa foundation in Munichthat aids the restitutionof property to the fami-lies of Holocaust victims.

“All these feelings came back in mymind, about what my parents wentthrough, hiding in that basement foralmost two years.”

Irena Gut, a Catholic forced to work fora Nazi commander, agreed to become theofficer’s mistress when he found out shewas hiding Jews in his basement – shebegged him to let them live instead of con-demning them to the death camps.

One of the many harrowing moments inthe Off-Broadway play comes whenHaller’s parents discover they are expect-ing a baby.

They tell Gut they will have an abortion,so as not to endanger the lives of every-one else she is hiding.

Gut says no. “This baby will be born, because if this

baby dies, then Hitler wins and he has

killed enough children and familiesalready,” she says.

When Haller came onstage afteropening night performance to

answer questions, joining Irena’s daugh-ter Jeannie Opdyke Smith, 51, the audi-ence gasped.

“I guess they were amazed to see thislittle baby all grown up,”he said.

After the war, Irena Gutmoved to Yorba Linda,Calif., where she marriedWilliam Opdyke, a formerUnited Nations staffer,and gave birth to JeannieOpdyke in 1957.

Haller met Gut Opdykeyears later and recallstelling her, “I feel like Ihave two mothers – onethat gave me birth andone that gave me mylife.”

Haller remained in con-tact with Gut Opdyke untilher death in 2003. Whenhe came to New York toattend the premier, it was

his first time meeting her daughter. Opdyke Smith said the first time she

saw Feldshuh’s performance, “I cried myeyes out, because I finally got to see herstory come to life.”

She said her mom didn’t tell her about herwartime heroism until she was 14 years old,when Gut Opdyke was the random recipientof a call from a college student doing a sur-vey that asked whether people believed theHolocaust really happened.

“I saw my mother get animated and startyelling,” said Opdyke Smith. From thatmoment on, she said, her mom dedicatedherself to telling her story at schools,churches and organizations throughoutthe world.

“Her main mission was to tell peoplethat even one person can make a differ-ence, and that people should never giveup,” said Opdyke Smith.

HOLOCAUST BABY GETS TO WATCH FAMILY’S STORY

AS OFF-BROADWAY DRAMA

Roman Haller, 64, is child of a Jewish

couple whose crisis is part of “Irena’sVow,” a play about a Polish woman who

rescued 12 from the Holocaust.

Construction began on the LosAngeles Museum of the Holocaust

in the city’s Pan Pacific Park.The $20 million project, which broke

ground Oct. 13 and is scheduled to openin 2010, will include exhibits, a library andan archive in a 15,000-square-foot build-ing, which will be integrated with the sixstark black granite columns of the existingHolocaust Martyrs Memorial. Holocaustsurvivors, or their direct descendants, willserve as guides.

The new museum is distinct from theSimon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum ofTolerance, also in Los Angeles, whichstarted as a Holocaust museum but hasnow branched out to include genocides

and persecutions, past and present,throughout the world. By contrast, LAMHwill focus solely on the Holocaust.

Some questions have been raised in theJewish community whether money spent onHolocaust memorials and education wouldnot be put to better use fighting poverty, dis-ease and myriad other causes.

LAMH president E. Randol Schoenbergresponded that “You can ask the samequestion about money given to art andmusic. Life is more than just physical sur-vival.” He then quoted Jona Goldrich, asurvivor and major supporter of the newmuseum, that “If you built a monument onevery street corner in Los Angeles, youcouldn’t tell the whole story.”

For the first time, a museum in the for-mer East Germany, the Dresden

State Art Collections, will display worksfrom Israel’s Yad Vashem HolocaustMemorial alongside Dresden’s own per-manent collection.

Martin Roth, director of the Dresden col-

lection, said many of the artists whoseworks appear in the exhibition, scheduledto open in 2009, did not survive theHolocaust. Roth said he came up with theidea after visiting Yad Vashem, and thatthe exhibit is meant to show the power ofart in times of suffering and barbarity.

MUSEUM TO DISPLAY ART BY HOLOCAUST VICTIMS

CONSTRUCTION BEGINS ON L.A. HOLOCAUST MUSEUM

Recently, a Boca Raton resident, Mr.Larry Pomeranz, donated a 6’x 7’

hand-crafted map to the American Societyfor Yad Vashem. The map of Kudrika-Naishtot, a Lithuanian town on the borderof the former East Prussia, lists the namesof each Jewish family residing in the townbefore WWII and shows each family’sexact dwelling location. Almost the entireJewish community of Kudrika-Naishtotperished – 190 Jewish families, or 750people, were massacred in a three-dayperiod, in July and September of 1943.

Mr. Pomeranz told the American Societyfor Yad Vashem the story of the map, ownedby his great-aunt, the late Sarah Gventer.

“Sarah Gventer, z’l was my great uncleIsaac’s second wife. Some time after herpassing, in November 2006, my great-uncle and I went through boxes containingher effects and came across the mapwhich had been stored away for manyyears. The map was sent to Sarah by aMr. Ralph Goldberg, a relative and aHolocaust Survivor, who in the early1970’s commissioned a draftsman to cre-ate the map. The map lists, to the best ofMr. Goldberg’s recollection, the name ofeach Jewish family within the town, inaddition to public buildings, such as theSynagogue, directions to other cities andthe exact dates of the massacre of Jewishmen, women and children of the town.The Jewish men were killed on July 1stand 2nd, 1943 and the women and chil-dren on September 16th of that year. Themap states that it was created as a testi-mony to the atrocities, with the sole pur-pose that the Holocaust be rememberedfor future generations….”

Mr. Pomeranz continued: “I am fortunateto state that while the map’s journey enroute to Yad Vashem may have beenslow, I am privileged to have acted, albeitin a very small and insignificant capacity,as a custodian and a messenger byreturning the map to its rightful owners,Klal Yisroel. May it serve as a testimony

and serve to help families with relativeswho lived in Kudrika, Lithuania.”

Upon receiving the map, theAmerican Society of Yad Vashem

explored ways of photographing it so thatcopies would be available for educationalinstitutions throughout the United States.However, the unique size and nature ofthis map created challenges in finding asuitable photographer. Most of the labsthat the American Society for Yad Vashemapproached lacked the proper equipmentto handle and photograph this document.

However, one lab recommended speak-ing with a well known photographers’agent, Elaine Korn of Elaine KornAssociates, Ltd. Ms. Korn was deeplytouched by the story of the map andarranged for the renowned photographer,Charles Nesbit, to photograph it in hisManhattan studio. Mr. Nesbit, very muchmoved by the story himself, offered hisservices free-of-charge. Thanks to hisgenerosity, the American Society for YadVashem now holds a reproduced copy ofthe map, as well as electronic copies ofthe map on disc. Eli Zborowski, Chairmanof the Society will deliver the original mapto Yad Vashem in Israel.

A PRE-WAR MAP OF A LITHUANIAN TOWN

DONATED TO AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM

Map Kudrika-Naishtot, a Lithuanian town on

the border of the former East Prussia, donated

to the American Society of Yad Vashem by Mr.

Larry Pomeranz


B O O K R E V I E W SB O O K R E V I E W S

Every Day Lasts a Year: A JewishFamily’s Correspondence from Poland.Edited by Christopher R. Browning,Richard S. Hollander, and Nechama Tec.Cambridge University Press: New York,2007. 285 pp. $28.

REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN

When this reviewer finished readingthe absorbing volume entitled,

Every Day Lasts a Year: A JewishFamily’s Correspondence from Poland,edited by Christopher R. Browning,Richard S. Hollander, and Nechama Tec,all she could think of was how one wisedecision and luck can so dramaticallyaffect a person’s life . . .

In the summer of 1939, JosephHollander and his wife, Felicia, leftKracow. Why? As his son, Richard,writes in an early section of the book enti-tled “Joseph,” he “may have been prompt-ed by what he observed during a three-nation trip to Western Europe in 1939.The journey probably provided Josephwith an ominous glimpse of the future ofEuropean Jewry. . . . [b]y the spring of1939, there was nothing subtle about anti-Semitism in Germany; it was ugly andubiquitous.” His mother, sisters, in-laws,and nieces did not leave. The adults felt

that the Germans wouldbe no worse to themthan they were in WorldWar I . . . but as we allknow, such would not bethe case.

By the time Joseph,his wife, and a

young boy left in theircharge, landed in America– by way of luck – Kracowwas long overrun by theNazis. Thus while Josephwas fighting for his, hiswife’s, and their charge’sright to stay in America –they came as undocu-mented aliens – he foundhimself concomitantlyfighting for the survival and emigration of hisfamily in Kracow.

Moreover, even after the battle, hewaged to stay in America ended – andthat took a good while – he never stoppedfighting for them. He sent them food –anything they asked for. He got in touchwith people they asked him to find.(Friends in Kracow often begged thatfavor of the Hollander family). Josephtried to collect moneys owed his family tosomehow help them. Joseph actually

arranged for them tor e c e i v e N i c a r a g u a npapers. Perhaps that wouldhelp them emigrate. Butthe papers didn’t work, youneeded citizenship papers“validated by the Germanconsulate.”

In the meanwhile, the let-ters that are the heart ofthis book, reveal how verygrateful his family inKracow was for everythinghe did for them, even send-ing them letters. Theybring hope at a time when“every day lasts a year”,—words written by Berta,Joseph’s mother, May 26,

1941. They thank him profusely for thefood he sends, particularly after 1941.They are forever wishing him well. Theykeep him up to date on what’s happeningin the family . . . even as they keep theworst of their lives from him. They musthave thought, “Why tell him?” Josephwas already doing all he could, and theysincerely believed that somehow hewould save them.

In the end, however, in late 1941, theletters to Joseph stopped. On March

15, 1943, Joseph enlisted in the army.This made him a citizen and it also tookhim to Europe. There, he believed, hewould finally find out what had hap-pened to his family. He went looking.He went asking. He got some answersas to what happened to them . . . butthe answers were all tragic ones. Insum, none of his family survived. . . .only he. And he survived only becauseof his one exceptionally wise decisionto leave Kracow when he did, and theluck that brought him to America . . .

Before closing, this reviewer mustgive a tremendous amount of credit

to Christopher R. Browning, Richard S.Hollander, and Nechama Tec, for theirfact-filled, moving, and powerful essays,placed at the opening of this work.Without these essays, the letters that fol-low could not possibly be understood orappreciated.

Readers of M&R will find Every DayLasts a Year touching, and exceptionallyreal. Put simply, the letters speak directlyto us, reminding us of lives and hopes thatonce were . . .

Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor ofMedia & Communication Arts at PaceUniversity.

EVERY DAY LASTS A YEAR:

A JEWISH FAMILY’S CORRESPONDENCE FROM POLAND

And The Rage Is Not Yet Over. ByAharon Appelfeld. Zmora-Bitan, DvirPublishing House, 2008. Pp. 237. InHebrew.

REVIEWED BY RABBI IZRAEL ZOBERMAN

Aharon Appelfeld’s flowing wellspringof stored creativity on the Shoah

continues to both enchant and alert us.The book’s telling title, "And The Rage IsNot Yet Over", may offer a clue to theunique phenomenon of the renowned sur-vivor’s literary and emo-tional outpouring.

Paradoxically, his style ismeasured and guarded asif shielding the awesometask and challenge ofsacred remembrance in aveil of careful reflection ande x p r e s s i o n , w h i c hbehooves the Holocaust’sdepth and pain.

Some of the author’sthemes have remainedconstant. As those assimi-lating Jews who soughtrefuge in conversion toChristianity only to discoverthat neither they nor theiroffspring were exempt from the Jews’decreed fate. Or, the precious presence ofsome Christians whose deep faith and intactcharacter moved them to reach out to des-perate human beings in dire circumstances.

Ironically, Bruno Broomhart, the book’sprotagonist, was exposed to his spiritualidentity from no other than his schoolteacher, a monk, whose offer to hideBruno’s family in his convent wasdeclined. “Only the Jews stood at Mt.Sinai, and only in them are deposited thevoices and lightnings of the divine speech.To our sorrow they have forgotten it, butScriptures has not forgotten, though weshould not take lightly these denying wit-

nesses. They are destined one day torecall who they are and become what theywere elected to.” (p.24 my translation).

Bruno’s parents believed in TikkunOlam through the Communist prom-

ise. Soon enough, they too discoveredthat their Jewish roots, as well as the new-found religion of Communist ideology,would doom them. While handicapped,and thus granted special powers whichthe author masterfully creates, Bruno’sotherwise strong body through exercise,

youth and fellow inmates’embrace, allowed him to sur-vive the labor camp ordeal.With liberation he demonstrat-ed sharp business skills, andestablished a prosperous inter-national enterprise, reflectingthe drive and success of somesurvivors. His core concern,however, was caring for fellowrefugees via uplifting musicalrecitals and inspiring Biblicalreadings in an elegant setting.It was his designed plan toreeducating and reawakeningthe shaken survivors, in thespirit of his loving Christianteacher, to their true mission as

noble heirs to a royal Jewish inheritance.Bruno’s life took a critical turn whenattacked, not too surprising, by an enviousand explosive fellow refugee.

Unexpectedly and even shocking, per-haps testimony to recent realities andfears, Israel as a safe haven and newhome is being questioned per Bruno’smusing, “For myself, if to tell the truth, I’mconcerned about Aliya. At times it seemsto me that Israel is a new trap. Again allthe Jews are together in one place. Allsay that the army is strong, but somehowit seems to me that our army is fragile,susceptible to feelings and too sensitive.”(p.186, my translation).

AND THE RAGE IS NOT YET OVER

Between My Father and the Old Fool: AHolocaust Memoir. By Maier Cahan.Adapted into English by Yosef Neumark.Mesorah Publications, Ltd. Brooklyn,2004, 274 pages. $36.78.

REVIEWED BY HILLEL GOLDBERG

Ibegin, and end, in thesame place: decimation.

The title of the appendix oft h i s a u t o b i o g r a p h y ,Between My Father and theOld Fool, reads, “TheDecimation of the CahanFamily.” Between the begin-ning and the ending, how-ever, is an odd dialogue, aconversation betweenMaier Cahan (the book’sauthor) and the Old Fool.

The “Old Fool” is aTalmudic term for the “evilinclination,” the yetzer hara.If I suffer and witnessimmense suffering, and anurge tells me to curse God,that is the Old Fool speak-ing. When my inner voice tells me steal,blaspheme, hurt or fall to despair, that isthe Old Fool speaking.

Clearly, during the Holocaust, the OldFool had a field day. This book is a mem-oir of the Holocaust on two levels: a per-sonal story of suffering, and a personalstruggle with God.

Maier Cahan struggles from within faith.In his struggles, he is brutally honest. Hesuffers too much not to be.

There is something ajar in the book title.If the struggle is “Between My Father and

the Old Fool,” who is telling the story?Shouldn’t the title read, “Between Me andthe Old Fool?” In the book, a child ofMaier Cahan presents his father’s story;the struggle continues through the gener-ations. The Holocaust wasn’t simply anevent back then, a piece of history, a

bracket enclosing theyears 1939 to 1945,s o m e t h i n g t o“remember,” limited,possible to bury. Theramifications of theH o l o c a u s t l i v ethrough the survivorsand their children,down through thegenerations. If Cahanhad a dialogue withthe Old Fool, then, ofnecessity, so didthose who came afterhim, who escaped thedecimation.

The list of the dec-imated of the

Cahan family is long, as you might imag-ine. That is not surprising. What is surpris-ing is that Maier Cahan is not on the list.As in many Holocaust memoirs, Cahan, atcountless turning points, should havebeen dead. Friends, family, acquaintanc-es – all were killed. Time and again,somehow, he survived. Cahan never quitesays so directly, but this is his ultimateweapon in his arguments with the OldFool, who, one might also imagine, did notlay down and die after the war was over.

More than forty years after the Holocaust, (Continued on page 15)

BETWEEN MY FATHER

AND THE OLD FOOL:

A HOLOCAUST MEMOIR


BY DR. RAFAEL MEDOFF

Every year, on the eve of RoshHashanah, American political lead-

ers, candidates for office, and other VIPsroutinely send the Jewish community theirwishes for a happy new year. Under ordi-nary circumstances, such greetings arewelcomed in the spirit of friendliness inwhich they are offered.

But not on Rosh Hashanah in1944. That year, while Jews aroundthe country dipped their apples inhoney to symbolize their hopes for asweet new year, the American publicreceived a vivid reminder that for theJewish people, it was, in fact, a bit-ter holiday. Readers of the New YorkTimes, the Philadelphia Record, andother major dailies opened theirmorning newspaper to find a largeadvertisement headlined “What’shappy about this New Year?”

In the center of the ad was a rivet-ing illustration of a ragged EuropeanJewish refugee child, drawn by therenowned artist Arthur Szyk.

“As the Jewish New Yearapproached, greetings and messages ofgood will” were issued by the various Alliedleaders, the ad began. The ad continued:“What’s happy about a Jewish New Yearwhich mourns millions of our people, brutallymurdered, burned alive, asphyxiated in gaschambers, thrown, still living, into burialtrenches, while the governments of ourfriendly nations dilly-dallied and split hairsabout matters of rescue?

“What’s happy about this New Year forus if one of the foremost democratic allies[Britain] … still blockades the sole practi-cal route of escape [from Hitler’sEurope]—through the Balkans intoPalestine?

“With three to four million of our brethrenalready dead, it is fair to say that good wish-es are not enough. It is fair to say that whathas happened to us will go down in historyas democracy’s greatest disgrace…

“You have the last chance to do some-

thing for a people who will not know hap-piness this New Year, nor next New Year,nor for generations… Let your govern-ment and your Congress know that vaguepromises and polite good wishes are notenough. Let them know that we canaccept New Year’s greetings only in theform of rescue – in the form of a haven –open the gates of Palestine – so that wecan live and the world can have peace.”

The ad was sponsored by the EmergencyCommittee to Save the Jewish People ofEurope, a group led by “Peter Bergson,” ayoung Zionist activist from Jerusalem.During 1943 – 44, Bergson’s group spon-sored more than 200 full-page newspaperads, lobbied Congress, and organized ral-lies, including a march by 400 rabbis tothe White House to plead for U.S. rescueof Jewish refugees.

The Bergson Group also assembled animpressive coalition of supporters fromacross the spectrum. The 1944 NewYear’s ad, for example, featured a long listof signatories, including singer EddieCantor; Harvard criminologist SheldonGlueck; poet and Academy Award-win-ning screenwriter (for A Star is Born)Dorothy Parker; Unitarian Church officialRev. Albert Dieffenbach; one of the mostprominent Orthodox rabbis in America,Eliezer Silver; Nobel Literature Prize lau-

reate Sigrid Undset; actress Stella Adler;and the governors of Pennsylvania,Indiana, and Rhode Island.

The public and Congressional pressurethat the Bergson Group mobilized helpedbring about (in early 1944) the creation ofthe War Refugee Board, a U.S. govern-ment agency to rescue refugees fromHitler. The board played a crucial role insaving more than 200,000 Jews. Amongother things, it financed the work of rescuehero Raoul Wallenberg in Nazi-occupiedBudapest.

Many more could have been saved ifthe Roosevelt administration had taken aninterest. For example, U.S. bombersrepeatedly struck German oil factoriesadjacent to Auschwitz – but no order wasever given to bomb the mass-murdermachinery.

On September 13, 1944 – just one weekbefore the “What’s So Happy About ThisNew Year?” ad was published – a fleet of96 American bombers struck German oilplants less than five miles from the gaschambers of Auschwitz. Stray bombseven accidentally hit an SS barracks andthe railway line leading into the deathcamp. Jews serving in the slave labor bat-talions there, including 16-year-old ElieWiesel, watched the U.S. planes droppingbombs nearby and prayed that the gaschambers were on their list of targets. Years later, in his best-selling memoirNight, Wiesel recalled: “We were notafraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on[the prisoners’ barracks], it alone wouldhave claimed hundreds of victims on thespot. But we were no longer afraid ofdeath; at any rate, not of that death. Everybomb that exploded filled us with joy andgave us new confidence in life. The raidlasted over an hour. If it could only havelasted ten times ten hours!” It was not tobe. The planes did not aim at Auschwitz. Itwas indeed a very bitter Rosh Hashanah.

Dr. Medoff is director of the David S.Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies,which focuses on issues related toAmerica’s response to the Holocaust.

ROSH HASHANAH 1944:

A HOLOCAUST CONTROVERSY

BY KATE CONNOLLY, THE GUARDIAN

Ahuge dumping ground for thedestroyed remains of Jewish prop-

erty plundered during Kristallnacht hasbeen found north of Berlin by an investiga-tive journalist.

The site, which is the size of four footballfields, in Brandenburg, contains an exten-sive array of personal and ceremonialitems looted during orchestrated nation-wide riots against Jewish property andplaces of worship on the night ofNovember 9 1938. It is believed the goodswere brought by rail to the outskirts of thevillage and dumped on designated land.

Yaron Svoray, the Israeli journalist whomade the discovery, said it was a happycoincidence that he had stumbled acrossthe artifacts so close to the 70th anniver-sary of the pogrom, also known as theNight of Broken Glass.

“I wasn’t fully aware of the historical sig-nificance of the find until it was pointed outto me by a historian,” Svoray told theGuardian. “We were looking for some-thing completely different when we cameacross all these items and trinkets.”

Svoray, a private detective turned jour-

nalist who has a list of wartime-relatedinvestigations to his name, was researchinga story on the nearby hunting lodge of theNazi Luftwaffe commander, HermannGöring, when the local forester,who had been a young boy atthe time of the Kristallnacht,pointed out the rubbish dump.Under mounds of earth Svorayuncovered the first items withintwo hours. “The locals of thissite have basically been livingwith this dark hidden secret for70 years,” he said.

Among the items he foundwere glass bottles engravedwith the Star of David,Mezuzahs, painted windowsills, and the armrests ofchairs found in synagogues.He also found an ornamentalswastika. His search contin-ues, under the protection ofbodyguards after threats tohis life.

Svoray has been wary of making his findpublic because the site might attract far-right treasure hunters. “There’s no treas-ure as such here, but there’s still the dan-ger of it turning into some skinhead circus

eBay special,” he said, urging the govern-ment to secure the site.

The British historian Martin Gilbert,author of Kristallnacht: Prelude to

Destruction, which illustrates how theevent paved the way for the Holocaust,marking the moment when race hatebecame sanctioned by the German state,said the size of the rubbish dump was nota surprise, considering the scale of the

destruction that took place – about 1,400synagogues, other Jewish religious estab-lishments, as well as people’s homeswere completely, or partially, destroyed.

“Most of the interi-ors of the syna-

gogues – seats, cup-boards, pulpits etc – weretaken away as loot. Mostof the interiors of ran-sacked Jewish shopswere likewise taken awayas booty by neighbors andlooters. Other interiorswere set on fire. It will beinteresting to see precise-ly what the items are.”

Tanja Ronen-Löhnberg,an educational historian atGhetto Fighters’ House, aHolocaust research cen-tre in Galilee, Israel, saidthe items’ authenticity hadbeen verified. “We don’t

want to falsify history, so we sent histori-ans who confirmed these items belongedto the time.”

The center plans to organize a projectfor German and Israeli children to searchtogether through the remains.

KRISTALLNACHT REMNANTS UNEARTHED NEAR BERLIN

Jewish shops laid waste on Kristallnacht in 1938.

Astudent from Vienna has uncovereda suspected Nazi war criminal in

Germany as a result of his research for auniversity project. Andreas Forster, 27, astudent at the Institute of Political Scienceat Vienna, taped a video interview with the89-year-old man, who allegedly recalledparticipating in the murder of 60 Jewishforced laborers in March 1945 in Austria.

After Forster made the research discov-ery, he informed his professor, politicalscientist Walter Manoschek, that the manprobably was living in the German state ofNorth Rhine-Westphalia. Forster andManoschek traveled to Germany, accord-ing to a report in der Standard of Austria,and asked the man for an interview. Hespoke with them on camera for severalhours during three interviews. The manalso was shown eye-witness reports froma trial that took place in Vienna in 1946.

Die Zeit newspaper reported that themassacre in question took place in thetown of Deutsch Schützen, Austria – thenpart of the German Reich. Some 60Jewish forced laborers were forciblyassembled and shot by German soldiersin a forest near a church. The mass gravewas discovered in 1995.

Reportedly, the suspect was a member ofthe Waffen-SS, and his name was known asof 1946. Forster conducted research aboutthe man in the Federal Archive in Berlin.Manoschek told Die Zeit online that he hadthe feeling the man “was using me as a spar-ring partner” during the interview, “to seewhat I knew, what was on the record, as if toprepare for a possible trial.” At first he said hedid not recall the shootings, but then he saidthe eyewitness reports might be accurate. Bythe end of the interview, the suspect againdenied having taken part in the massacre.

Manoschek notified the state prosecu-tor in Dortmund. Chief Prosecutor UlrichMaass, who heads the Central Office forthe Investigation of National SocialistMass Crimes, told Die Zeit that investiga-tions are being “accelerated,” with the firstheld on Aug. 15. They have not yet con-tacted the suspect, he said.

Manoschek and Forster hope to presenttheir interview in a documentary film.

STUDENT UNCOVERS

ALLEGED NAZI CRIMINAL


S U R V I V O R S ’ C O R N E RS U R V I V O R S ’ C O R N E RBY MATT SEDENSKY, AP

In the beginning, there was a boy, a girland an apple.

He was a teenager in a death camp inNazi-controlled Germany. She was a bityounger, living free in the village, her fam-ily posing as Christians. Their eyes metthrough a barbed-wire fence and shewondered what she could do for thishandsome young man.

She was carrying apples, and decidedto throw one over the fence. He caught itand ran away towards the barracks. Andso it began.

As they tell it, they returned the followingday and she tossed an apple again. Andeach day after that, for months, the rou-tine continued. She threw, he caught, andboth scurried away.

They never knew one another’s name,never uttered a single word, so fearfulthey’d be spotted by a guard. Until oneday he came to the fence and told her hewouldn’t be back.

“I won’t see you anymore,” she said.“Right, right. Don’t come around any-

more,” he answered.And so their brief and innocent tryst

came to an end. Or so they thought.Before he was shipped off to a death

camp, before the girl with the applesappeared, Herman Rosenblat’s life hadalready changed forever.

His family had been forced from theirhome into a ghetto. His father fell ill withtyphus. They smuggled a doctor in, butthere was little he could do to help. Theman knew what was coming. He sum-moned his youngest son. “If you ever getout of this war,” Rosenblat remembershim saying, “don’t carry a grudge in yourheart and tolerate everybody.”

Two days later, the father was dead.Herman was just 12.

The family was moved again, thistime to a ghetto where he shared

a single room with his mother, threebrothers, uncle, aunt and four cousins.He and his brothers got working papersand he got a factory job paintingstretchers for the Germans.

Eventually, the ghetto was dissolved. Asthe Poles were ushered out, two linesformed. In one, those with workingpapers, including Rosenblat and hisbrothers. In the other, everyone else,including the boys’ mother.

Rosenblat went over to his mother. “Iwant to be with you,” he cried. She spokeharshly to him and one of his brotherspulled him away. His heart was broken.

“I was destroyed,” Rosenblat remem-bers. It was the last time he would eversee her.

It was in Schlieben, Germany, thatRosenblat and the girl he later called hisangel would meet. Roma Radziki worked ona nearby farm and the boy caught her eye.

And bringing him food – apples, mostly, butbread, too – became part of her routine.

“Every day,” she says, “every day I went.”Rosenblat says he would secretly eat the

apples, and never mentioned a word of it toanyone else for fear word would spread andhe’d be punished or even killed. When

Rosenblat learned hewould be moved again thistime to Theresienstadt, inwhat is now the CzechRepublic – he told the girlhe would not return.

Not long after, theRussians rolled in on at a n k a n d l i b e r a t e dRosenblat’s camp. Thewar was over. She wentto nursing school inIsrael. He went to Londonand learned to be anelectrician.

Their daily ritual fadedfrom their minds.

“I forgot,” she says.“I forgot about her, too,”

he recalls.Rosenblat eventually

moved to New York. He was running a tele-vision repair shop when a friend phoned himone Sunday afternoon and said he wanted tofix him up with a girl. Rosenblat was unen-thusiastic: He didn’t like blind dates, he toldhis friend. He didn’t know what she wouldlook like. But finally, he relented.

It went well enough. She was Polish andeasy-going. Conversation flowed, andeventually talk turned to their wartimeexperiences. Rosenblat recited the litanyof camps he had been in, and Radziki’sears perked up. She had been inSchlieben, too, hiding from the Nazis.

She spoke of a boy she would visit, ofthe apples she would bring, how he wassent away.

And then, the words that would changetheir lives forever: “That was me,” he said.

Rosenblat knew he could never leavethis woman again. He proposed marriagethat very night. She thought he was crazy.Two months later she said yes.

In 1958, they were married at a syna-gogue in the Bronx – a world away from

their sorrows, more than a decade after theyhad thought they were separated forever.

It all seems too remarkable to bebelieved. Rosenblat insists it is all true.

Even after their engagement, the couplekept the story mostly to themselves,telling only those closest to them.Rosenblat says it’s because they met at apoint in his life he’d rather forget. Buteventually, he said, he felt the need toshare it with others.

Now, the Rosenblats’ story has inspireda children’s book, Angel Girl. And eventu-ally, there are plans to turn it into a film,The Flower of the Fence. Rosenblatexpects to publish his memoirs next year.

Michael Berenbaum, a distinguishedHolocaust scholar who has authored adozen books, has read Rosenblat’s mem-oir and sees no reason to question it.

“I wasn’t born then, so I can’t say I was aneyewitness. But it’s credible,” Berenbaumsaid. “Crazier things have happened.”

Herman is now 79, and Roma is threeyears his junior; they celebrated their 50thanniversary this summer. He often tellstheir story to Jewish and other groups.

He believes the lesson is the very onehis father imparted.

“Not to hate and to love – that’s what Iam lecturing about,” he said. “Not to holda grudge and to tolerate everybody, tolove people, to be tolerant of people, nomatter who they are or what they are.”

The anger of the death camps, Hermansays, has gone away. He forgave. And hislife has been filled with love.

Nearly every night, Martin Hornung’snightmare unfolds to the same

haunting strains. Of Auschwitz. Ofscreaming voices. Of scenes he wouldrather not relive in the light of day.

“I’m almost afraid to go to sleep,” the 86-year-old retired computer engineer said.The horrors that revisit Hornung in thedark are common among Holocaust sur-vivors, and are a reason why he refusesto enter a nursing home despite his myri-ad health problems.

Jewish organizations worldwide areworking to keep survivors out of suchfacilities, where the surroundings and rou-tines – strangers in uniforms, desolateshower rooms, medical procedures - canexacerbate flashbacks.

“It frightens them and brings themback to the Holocaust,” said Dr. JaclynnFaffer, executive director of Ruth RalesJewish Family Service, one of thegroups helping keep survivors out ofnursing homes.

Hornung wouldn’t even consider movinginto a nursing home. “I would kill myself.”

An estimated 93,000 Holocaust sur-vivors are alive in the United States,and South Florida is home to one of thelargest populations. The youngest are

in their mid-60s, but many are mucholder. There is no definitive breakdownof how many are living independentlyand how many receive assistance, butmany are living below the poverty lineand in need of help.

“Their capacity for resilience thatthey’ve shown since the war is amaz-ing,” said Paula David, a social workerwho has worked with more than 2,000Holocaust survivors in Toronto over thelast 20 years and has studied the spe-cific problems of the population as itages. “The hard part is no matter whatwe do, we can’t make it OK.”

Flashbacks can come to a survivor atany time. A fire alarm. A foreign

accent. Standing in a line. Once, Davidwitnessed a survivor begin screaming ona High Holy Day as musicians performed.The music happened to have been playedas murders took place at the concentra-tion camps.

One of David’s clients slept with hikingboots under his pillow to ensure he’d beable to run away. Another one hoardedbread in his closet so he wouldn’t starve.For Alex Moscovic, who survivedBirkenau and the horrific medical experi-ments of Josef Mengele, a flashback

came in the dermatologist’ s chair.Moscovic needed to have a dime-sizedcancerous growth removed. The doctorcauterized the area – and the patientbegan to shake uncontrollably.

“The smell - it brought me back,” the 77-year-old Moscovic said. “The only wayyou really left Birkenau was through thesmokestacks. “

Experts have seen similar reactionsfrom other populations, including

war veterans and survivors of genocide inRwanda and elsewhere. The flashbacksare only expected to get worse as thesegroups age, so caregivers are trying toimpart lessons learned from theHolocaust survivors.

For these Jewish survivors, being allowedto stay in their homes offers a measure ofcomfort and routine as so much else aroundthem changes.

The Ruth Rales group provides Hornung anurse’s aide three days a week, and he alsoreceives delivered meals. Hornung cared forhis wife – also a survivor – for 10 years asshe slipped into a haze of Alzheimer’s, whichalong with other forms of dementia, furthercomplicates the aging process of survivors.She grew so confused she would think herhusband was a Nazi guard. Once, shestabbed him in the chest.

After his wife died in 2001, Hornung wasdiagnosed with colon cancer. He’s stilllucid, but he struggles with respiratoryproblems. On a recent afternoon, hecouldn’t get through a complete thoughtwithout slipping into a hacking cough.

Ann Speier, 85, has long been retiredfrom her dressmaking job, and likeHornung, lives in Century Village in BocaRaton. It’s a popular place for survivors intheir final years. She, too, is haunted bymemories. “I try not to think, but I have to,”she said. “It doesn’t go away.”

Three days a week, her aide arrivesto take her to the doctor, to help her tothe pool and to assist around thehouse. Without the help, she said, shecouldn’t exist.

Speier’s vision is nearly gone.Everything and everyone is just a blur.But she recognizes Lila Vaughn, hercaseworker from Ruth Rales, when shearrives. She beams. She caressesVaughn’s face. And after some timepasses, the caseworker has a questionfor Speier.

“Do you want me to leave or you wantme to stay?” Vaughn asks. “I would likeyou to stay all day with me,” Speieranswers. “It’s so hard. It’s so lonely.”

ROMANCE IN THE HOLOCAUST

Herman and Roma Rosenblat in their North Miami Beach, Florida,

home. The story of the beginning of their relationship during the

Holocaust is the inspiration for Laurie Friedman’s book, Angel Girl.

HOLOCAUST HAUNTS SURVIVORS; AGENCIES TRY TO HELP


SELMA GRUDER HOROWITZ,Recipient of the Yad Vashem

Remembrance Award

Iwant to thank Eli Zborowski andThe American Society for Yad

Vashem for honoring me here tonight.My story of survival is similar to that

of many other survivors. I was in a con-centration camp, the camp was liqui-dated, I was able to escape and findmy family in the village where I hadgrown up. My family was fortunateenough to be able to pay a Polishwoman who used to work for us to hideus. We were hidden in a hole dugunder the trough in her barn. The onlyw ay to get in was by crawling on yourelbows for support. Shortly after that,the Ukrainians, who hated the Polesalmost as much as they hated theJews, burned the village to the groundand killed as many Poles as they could.We were moved by the Polish under-ground, along with non-Jewish Poles,to another Polish village. In the secondvillage, another Polish woman, anagent of God, hid us until the end of thewar. This woman, Maria Patchkowska,has been designated as one of theRighteous Among the Nations.

Although I could go into great detaildescribing the experiences of my fami-ly and me during the war, doing sowould take significantly more time thanthe time allotted to me, and, l mightadd, none of us would enjoy theevening.

The American Society for YadVashem is about looking to the past.But why do we look to the past? Not forthe sake of reliving the horrors that weexperienced, which we do in ourdreams and at all different moments.We look to the past in order to look for-ward. The theme of this evening ishope – tikva. Here with me this eveningare not only my sisters and my brother— those of my generation who sur-vived with me, but also my nieces, mynephew, and my great-niece andnephews. They and their futures arethose on whose behalf I have dedicat-ed myself in working on behalf of YadVashem, and who are the hope offuture generations of Jews. And on abroader level, my hope in being part ofthe American Society for Yad Vashemand in supporting its work is that bykeeping the memories alive and bysupporting a strong State of Israel, wewill be able to prevent the atrocitiesthat so many of us here tonight haveseen in our lifetimes from ever befallingthe Jewish people again.

“PREVENT THE ATROCITIES

FROM EVER BEFALLING

THE JEWISH PEOPLE AGAIN”AVNER SHALEV, Chairman of

the Yad Vashem Directorate andrecipient of the American Societyfor Yad Vashem Leadership Awardfor Remembrance

Iwas born in Jerusalem, part of ageneration that has strived to

build a new Jewish society in ourhomeland. We have understood ourresponsibility and accepted it.

This led to my serving as a combatofficer in the Israel Defense Forcesand, I suppose, to my being woundedin the Six-Day War, fighting for my

country. Eventually, I came to serve as Assistant to the IDF’sChief of Staff during the Yom Kippur War.

As the Chief of Staff’s assistant, my duties then involved partic-ipating in the secret ceasefire negotiations between Israel andEgypt, west of the Suez Canal, while the Egyptian 3rd Army wasencircled by our forces. I joined the Israeli delegation to what wasto be a fateful rendezvous. We arrived at the designated site inno-man’s-land, amidst gunfire, whereupon we waited… and wait-ed, and then waited more. There was no sign of the Egyptian del-egation, led by General Gamassi. Suddenly our field phone rang,and I heard the unmistakable voice of our Prime Minsiter, GoldaMeir. Literally shouting at me, she demanded to know why we hadnot already met our Egyptian counterparts. It turns out that shehad President Nixon on another line, and he was quite upset withIsrael for apparently avoiding the start of the ceasefire talks.

After I convinced Golda that we had indeed arrived at the rightspot and that the Egyptians had not, she conveyed my explana-tion to Nixon and gained his approval for us to meet Gamassi’sdelegation that evening, this time behind Israeli lines. Fortunatelythat get-together did take place and the historic bilateral negotia-

tions commenced. At the end of the formal discussions that night, I saw General

Gamassi take aside General Yariv, the head of the Israeli delega-tion, for a private talk. After the Egyptians departed, General Yarivconfided in me regarding a significant piece of information thathad just come his way: Anwar Sadat wanted to transmit a mes-sage to Israel’s leaders: I intend to achieve peace.

This news affected me deeply. I realized that if peace wouldindeed emerge from this bloody war, it would bring with it a newkind of responsibility for me to bear: The responsibility to educate.

It was as an educator that I arrived in 1993 at my next cross-roads: the decision to come to Yad Vashem. It seems to me that

my decision to take leadership of Yad Vashem was informed and influ-enced by a certain childhood memory which I shall now relate to you.

When I was a young boy in Israel, my mother used to prepare gefiltefish for Shabbat dinner. And as she did so, many times – though notalways – she would cry. I wanted to discover what had made her cry.One time I found the courage to ask my mother: “Why do you cry?What is so unique about this fish?” To this day I recall being stunnedby her answer: “Silly, I am not crying because of the fish. I am cryingbecause of my murdered grandparents, and parents and my sister,Shaindele. Cooking this fish reminds me of my Jewish home and itsShabbat that were destroyed.”

It took me some time to truly comprehend the meaning of thatexchange with my mother. But gradually I came to understand that Icould not just leave her sister, Shaindele, and her parents out there inPoland. This too was my responsibility: To make their existence partof my existence, my being and my identity. This sense of responsibil-ity led me to Yad Vashem. To teach others, in a wide and up-to-datevariety of methods and formats, about their responsibility.

We all reach critical crossroads from time to time, and makechoices. May you and yours, those who are dear to us, and all ourfellow Jews and citizens, find the wisdom and strength to choosethe path of responsibility – the only path that can ensure thefuture of our people and its civilization and that of humanity.

“THE RESPONSIBILITY TO EDUCATE”

FRED S. ZEIDMAN, Chairman ofthe United States HolocaustMemorial Council and recipient ofthe Yad Vashem Leadership Awardfor Remembrance

It is a privilege to accept this honoron behalf of myself, on behalf of

the institution I represent, the UnitedStates Holocaust Memorial Museum,and most importantly, on behalf of thesacred cause to which all of us heretonight are so deeply committed. Forit is that cause – the cause of remem-brance – which is primary; which tran-

scends any institution, and which must not only endure, but thrivein this troubling 21st century.

Almost eight years have passed since I became chairman of theU.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. When an old friend of minewas elected president of the United States, I told him this was theonly role I wanted. I suppose that’s because it’s a role for which Ifeel I’ve been training all my life.

As many of you know, I didn’t have the typical Jewish upbring-ing. Or, depending on your perspective, I had the very essenceof a Jewish upbringing. I grew up in a small Texas town – a placewith one horse and not too many more Jews. But we had enoughto form what our people always have, no matter where we havefound ourselves in the world: a community. That, in so manyways, is the Jewish experience – one that teaches us to drawstrength from each other, to kibbitz and kvetch about our differ-ences, and then eventually set them all aside for the sake of com-mon purpose. It’s an experience that tells us what we shareexceeds what divides us.

When I accepted this role, I promised the survivors who are thevery soul of our museum that I would do all I could to carry forththeir legacy. Of course, that is a weight no one – least of all me –could bear alone. The great privilege of my service at the muse-um has been to work with a staff, a council and a corps of sur-vivors and volunteers whose devotion and talent exceed anywords I might use to describe them.

Tonight, as we reflect on the significance of these troublingtimes in the context of the Kristallnacht anniversary, one cannothelp but think that the dreadful night 70 years ago was the begin-ning of the end of so much: Jewish existence in Europe; human-ity’s innocence; the ability to say “we did not know.” As of that

night, they knew. Humanity knew, and humanity turned away.Our two institutions – Yad Vashem and the United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum – exist for one powerful and endur-ing mission: to amplify the sound of glass shattering in the night.We work together in efforts that range from education, to research ,torescuing the evidence of the Holocaust, to helping other countriesconfront their past.

Our curators and scholars constantly exchange information andcollections. Our two institutions collaborate at the 25-nation inter-national task force on Holocaust education, remembrance, andresearch to ensure that other countries face their history honest-ly. We work together with the United Nations on Holocaust edu-cation and remembrance efforts worldwide.

If we do not make a difference in all these areas and more, thatpiercing sound of shattered glass might recede into the night andits lessons, its warnings, will be lost.

Now we know that Kristallnacht was not only reported in allmajor papers in the United States. It was not only front pagenews. It dominated the headlines. For a moment, it grabbed theworld’s attention. And yet, we know what happened, or ratherwhat did not happen. We might call this a failure of leadership.

The Holocaust happened for many reasons. Among them wasthe failure of leadership on so many levels and in so many

places – in Germany, in Europe, and here in the United States. It is forthis reason that the museum in Washington has taken on leadershiptraining as one of its top priorities. Because if we believe in learningfrom the Holocaust, we must start with our leaders. That’s why weeducate students from our military academies, train every FBI agent,work with diplomats from the State Department and will soon teachthe chief justices in all 50 states.

As we think about leadership today, we know a new presidentwill soon assume leadership of our nation at a most challengingtime, that he will face another type of leader such as the presidentof Iran. And, we realize that the Holocaust may be receding intime, but its lessons are only becoming more timely. And, that iswhy Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum are so important. For they were born of the past, butthey can shape the future. The past we know with clarity; thefuture remains uncertain. To navigate that future will requireresponsible leadership and the commitment of talented and ded-icated people like all of you. If these years at the U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum have taught me anything, it is that all of you –all of us – are up to that noble and vital task. Thank you again forthis wonderful honor.

“WHAT WE SHARE EXCEEDS WHAT DIVIDES US”


Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Selma Gruder Horowitz, recipient of the Yad

Vashem Remembrance Award, David Halpern, Dinner Co-Chair, and Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the

American & International Societies for Yad Vashem.

From L to R: Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem,

Elizabeth Zborowski, Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, United States Secretary

of Education Margaret Spellings, Ira Drukier 2008 General Co-Chairman, Gale Drukier, Marilyn

Rubenstein, 2008 Dinner General Co-Chair, Barry Rubenstein, Kay Zeidman and Fred Zeidman, recip-

ient of the Yad Vashem Leadership Award for Remembrance.

Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem.

Front row: Celina Zborowski and Paula Mandell. Back row (L to R): Marvin Zborowski, Stella Skura,

William Mandell.

Margaret Spellings, United States Secretary of Education, with Sharon and David Halpern, Dinner Co-

Chair.

Members of the Third Generation, including Ofra Biener, Stephanie Lowenthal, Barak Wrobel, Ariel

Zborowski, Boaz Zborowski, Eytan and Sivan Noy and friends.


Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate and recipient of the American Society for Yad

Vashem Leadership Award for Remembrance, Joseph Wilf, Ruth Zuria, granddaughter of Avner Shalev

and Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem.

Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Jay Zeidman, Kay and Fred Zeidman, recipi-

ent of the Yad Vashem Leadership Award for Remembrance, Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American

& International Societies for Yad Vashem, and Ira Mitzner, Dinner Co-Chair.

Ira Mitzner, Dinner Co-Chair. Marilyn Rubenstein 2008 Dinner General Co-Chair.Members of the American Society for Yad Vashem Young Leadership Associates (from L to R) – Barry

Levine, Dovid Feld, Rebecca Hanus, Caroline and Morris Massel and Lawrence and Adina Burian.

A view of some of the over 800 guests who attended the 2008 Annual Tribute Dinner. The Skura and Lifshitz families.


REPORT FROM REPORT FROM YAD VASHEMYAD VASHEM

BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ, HAARETZ

ADutch policeman who joined theresistance movement after being

ordered to round up Jews posthumouslyreceived Israel’s highest honor for peoplewho rescued Jews from the Holocaust. Henk Drogt’s bravery became knownthanks to the efforts of an ElAl pilot who heard the storyfrom the hero’s son, who willreceive the honor on his65th birthday.

Drogt, who was executedby the Nazis in 1944, wasalready recognized as ahero by former U.S. presi-dent Dwight D. Eisenhower,Britain and the Netherlandsfor his role in rescuing Alliedpilots who ejected overoccupied Holland.

But Israel had neveracknowledged the circum-stances in which Drogtjoined the resistance. OnSeptember 22 his sonreceived the honor naminghis father Righteous Among the Nations ina formal ceremony in Jerusalem at YadVashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ andHeroes Remembrance Authority.

Drogt, who was not Jewish, defected in1943 with his rifle after receiving orders toarrest the remaining Jews in theGroningen area in northern Holland,where he served in the ranks of theMarechaussee, the military police. Someof his comrades who also refused theorder were arrested, and later honored byYad Vashem for their actions.

Drogt’s name was omitted from the listsubmitted to the Commission for theDesignation of the Righteous, because hehad managed to escape. It took another

20 years and the unexpected help of an ElAl pilot to complete the picture. The pilot told Haaretz that he met the son,Henk Brink, a few years ago in SouthAfrica. “I thought I’d invite him to seeIsrael and meet the guys from mysquadron, because he’s interested in avi-ation,” he said. “I also told Yad Vashem

about it, but I wasn’t sure they’d name himRighteous among the Nations.” Drogt, 23 at the time of his arrest, wasplanning to marry his pregnant girlfriend.She gave birth to Brink, the son, onSeptember 22, 1943 – one month afterDrogt’s arrest.

“The impression I received was of ayoung man, a doer rather than a thinker,who died young,” says the pilot, who isalso a reserve Israel Air Force pilot. “My connection to Drogt’s story is mostlyas an army pilot,” he added. “Ejectingbehind enemy lines is a pilot’s worst night-mare. It must have taken tremendousbravery to risk his life to help those strand-ed and wounded pilots.”

YAD VASHEM HONORED

UNHERALDED HOLOCAUST HERO

Henk Brink accepts the certificate and medal of honor of

Righteous Among the Nations on behalf of his late father, Henk

Drogt, from the Chairman of the Commission for the Designation

of the Righteous Among the Nations, Supreme Court Justice

Yaacov Turkel.

Wladyslaw Panczyszyn, a PolishRighteous Among the Nations who

rescued Jews during the Holocaust, wasposthumously honored at Yad VashemHolocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

The ceremony took place in the Hall ofRemembrance, followed by the unveiling ofthe name of the Righteous in the Garden ofthe Righteous Among the Nations.

Born in Lubaczow, WladyslawPanczyszyn lived with his parents inDrohobycz. In 1939, he married there hisJewish neighbor, Helena Reinharz. In1941, the Germans captured the areawhere Wladyslaw was living and the mur-der of the Jews began.

Wladyslaw began to work in any waypossible to help the Reinharz family. Hewould enter the ghetto to give the familymoney and food, ignoring the danger tohis own life.

When the ghetto was destroyed, theonly surviving members of his wife’s fami-ly were her sister Rosa and a brother whowas in hiding elsewhere to whomWladyslaw had been providing food.Helena’s parents and a younger sisterwere murdered.

Wladyslaw decided to take action tosave his sister-in-law, Rosa. He smug-gled her into his home and hid her in a

hole under the floor.But hiding Rosa placed the Panczyszyn

family in danger from all sides, not only fromneighbors, but also from close family mem-bers. Wladyslaw’s sister-in-law, his broth-er’s wife, strenuously objected to his mar-riage to a Jewish woman, and the familyfeared that she would inform on them.

As the risk to the family increased,Wladyslaw, Helena and their 2-year-olddaughter, Irena, moved to Boryslaw. Oncethere, Wladyslaw placed his daughter in hid-ing with a colleague from work, while Helenaand Rosa hid behind a wall that was built ina storeroom near their home.

One day a fire broke out in thePanczyszyn’s kitchen, attracting a greatdeal of attention and threatening the safe-ty of the women’s hiding place. Feelingthat she was endangering his life, Rosawanted to leave Wladyslaw’s house, buthe insisted that she remain.

Wladyslaw hid Helena and Rosa for ayear and a half, taking care of all theirneeds during that entire time.

Carmella Ben Natan and Avi Schweitzerof Israel, children of the late survivor RosaSchweitzer, and Irena Gorniak of Poland,daughter of the late Righteous and thela te su rv i vo r, He lena Re inha rzPanczyszyn, attended the ceremony.

POLISH RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS

HONORED AT YAD VASHEM

A new online exhibit of the AuschwitzAlbum has been uploaded to Yad

Vashem’s Persian website. The newexhibit contains background informationabout Auschwitz, 60pictures and shortexplanations from theAlbum itself, and sur-vivor testimonies, all inFarsi.

The Auschwitz Albumis the only surviving visu-al evidence of theprocess of mass murderat Auschwitz-Birkenau. The photos show thearrival and selection at Auschwitz ofHungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia in1944. The photos in the album show theentire process except for the killing itself.More information about the Auschwitz Album

is available here. The entire Album is on dis-play at Yad Vashem.

In January 2007, Yad Vashem launcheda site in Farsi, including 20 historical

chapters with dozens ofphotos - arranged chrono-logically, from the rise ofthe Nazis to power untilthe post-war trials. Some100,000 people visited theFarsi website thus far.

“In 2007, there were morethan 7 million visits to yad-vashem.org. Clearly, there

is widespread interest in the Holocaust. Webelieve that making credible, comprehensiveinformation about the Holocaust available toPersian speakers can contribute to the fightagainst Holocaust denial,” said Yad VashemChairman Avner Shalev.

AUSCHWITZ ALBUM IN FARSI ON YAD VASHEM

PERSIAN WEBSITE

On November, 9, at its weekly cabi-net meeting, the government

authorized the appointment of RabbiIsrael Meir Lau as Chairman of the YadVashem Council. He will succeed the lateJoseph (Tommy) Lapid.

Rabbi Lau was born in 1937 in Piotrków,Poland, the scion of a well-knownEuropean rabbinic family. During the earlyyears of the war, he was incarcerated inthe Piotrków ghetto. In October 1942, hisfather and brothers, along with the major-ity of the Jews of their town, were deport-ed to the Treblinka extermination camp,where they were murdered. Lau and hismother managed toescape the deportation.In November 1944, dur-ing a selection, RabbiLau’s mother had himstand close by his broth-er Naftali who was slat-ed to be sent to a forcedlabor camp. Lau’s moth-er was sent to herdeath, but the two broth-ers were deported to theCzenstochov forcedlabor camp and fromthere to the Buchenwaldconcentration camp.When Buchenwald wasliberated by the USarmed forces, eight-year-old Lau (nick-named Lolik) was theyoungest surviving prisoner. Following lib-eration, Lau emigrated to Eretz Israel on aship of orphaned refugee children.

Rabbi Lau has served in many rabbiniccapacities, among them Regional Rabbiof Northern Tel Aviv, Chief Rabbi ofNetanya and Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of TelAviv-Jaffe. In 1993 he was elected ChiefAsheknazi Rabbi of Israel, a position heheld until 2003. In 2005, he was re-elect-ed Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Jaffe. In 2006,Rabbi Lau was awarded the Israel Prizefor Lifetime Achievement and specialservice to society and the State of Israel.

Rabbi Lau’s autobiography, Do NotRaise Your Hand Against the Boy waspublished during the 60th anniversary ofthe liberation of Buchenwald. It tells thestory of his experiences during the

Holocaust, growing up in Israel and howthe memory of his childhood during thewar influenced him as a rabbi and com-munal leader.

“I welcome and am delighted by thedecision to appoint a man of such highcaliber Chairman of the Yad VashemCouncil, a remarkable man I have beenprivileged to know personally for manyyears,” said Yad Vashem Chairman AvnerShalev. “The issue of the Holocaust isclose to Rabbi Lau’s heart, and he sees inHolocaust Remembrance both Jewishand universal values. Rabbi Lau hasstrong, deep ties to Yad Vashem, and has

already contributed sig-nificantly to Holocaustcommemoration and itslegacy.”

“With feelings ofawe, I thank

Prime Minister EhudOlmert and the mem-bers of the governmentwho ratified the appoint-ment, for choosing meto serve as the newChairman of the YadVashem Council,” saidRabbi Lau. “As wemark 70 years sinceKristallnacht – the vio-lent outbreak thatmarked the beginning ofthe Holocaust - thisappointment is especial-

ly meaningful to me. My life experiencesecho in the walls of Yad Vashem, and arefound in the documents and exhibitstherein. I have been privileged to witnessup close Yad Vashem’s activity in Israeland around the world for many years, andI have great respect and admiration forthe Chairmen of the Council andDirectorate who preceded me. Chairmanof the Directorate Avner Shalev is thegreat visionary and builder of Yad Vashemand I am convinced, from our many yearsof acquaintance, that we will work togeth-er to continue to support and develop thisinstitution, which is unrivalled anywhereelse in the world. I am dedicated to givingmy time and energy to fulfilling the com-mandment “Remember what Amalek hasdone to you in our generation.”

RABBI ISRAEL MEIR LAU APPOINTED

CHAIRMAN OF THE YAD VASHEM COUNCIL

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau appointed

Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council


BY LENNY BEN-DAVID

Recently, the Associated Press reportedthat newly released tapes from US

president Lyndon Johnson’s White Houseoffice showed LBJ’s “personal and oftenemotional connection to Israel.” The newsagency pointed out that during the Johnsonpresidency (1963-1969), “the United Statesbecame Israel ‘s chief diplomatic ally and pri-mary arms supplier.”

But the news report does little to revealthe full historical extent of Johnson’sactions on behalf of the Jewish peopleand the State of Israel. Most students ofthe Arab-Israeli conflict can identifyJohnson as the president during the 1967war. But few know about LBJ’s actions torescue hundreds of endangered Jewsduring the Holocaust – actions that couldhave thrown him out of Congress and intojail. Indeed, the title of “Righteous Gentile”is certainly appropriate in the case of theTexan, whose centennial year is beingcommemorated this year.

Appropriately enough, the annualJerusalem Conference announced that itwill honor Johnson in February 2009.

Historians have revealed that Johnson,while serving as a young congressman in1938 and 1939, arranged for visas to besupplied to Jews in Warsaw , and over-saw the apparently illegal immigration ofhundreds of Jews through the port ofGalveston , Texas .

A key resource for uncovering LBJ’spro-Jewish activity is the unpublished1989 doctoral thesis by University ofTexas student Louis Gomolak, “Prologue:LBJ’s Foreign Affairs Background, 1908-1948.” Johnson’s activities were con-firmed by other historians in interviewswith his wife, family members and politicalassociates.

Research into Johnson’s personal histo-ry indicates that he inherited his concernfor the Jewish people from his family. His

aunt Jessie JohnsonHatcher, a major influ-ence on LBJ, was amember of the ZionistOrganization of America.According to Gomolak,Aunt Jessie had nur-tured LBJ’s commitmentto befriending Jews for50 years. As a youngboy, Lyndon watched hispolitically active grandfa-ther “Big Sam” andfather “Little Sam” seekclemency for Leo Frank,the Jewish victim of ablood libel in Atlanta .Frank was lynched by amob in 1915, and the KuKlux Klan in Texas threatened to kill theJohnsons. The Johnsons later told friendsthat Lyndon’s family hid in their cellarwhile his father and uncles stood guardwith shotguns on their porch in case ofKKK attacks. Johnson’s speechwriter laterstated, “Johnson often cited Leo Frank’slynching as the source of his opposition toboth anti-Semitism and isolationism.”

Already in 1934 - four years beforeChamberlain’s Munich sellout to Hitler –Johnson was keenly alert to the dangersof Nazism and presented a book ofessays, Nazism: An Assault onCivilization, to the 21-year-old woman hewas courting, Claudia Taylor – later knownas “Lady Bird” Johnson. It was an incredi-ble engagement present.

Five days after taking office in 1937, LBJbroke with the “Dixiecrats” and sup-

ported an immigration bill that would natural-ize illegal aliens, mostly Jews from Lithuaniaand Poland . In 1938, Johnson was told of ayoung Austrian Jewish musician who wasabout to be deported from the United States. With an element of subterfuge, LBJ senthim to the US Consulate in Havana to obtaina residency permit. Erich Leinsdorf, the

world-famous musicianand conductor, creditedLBJ for saving his life.

That same year, LBJwarned a Jewish friend,Jim Novy, that EuropeanJews faced annihilation.“Get as many Jewishpeople as possible out [ofGermany and Poland ,”were Johnson’s instruc-tions. Somehow,Johnson provided himwith a pile of signedimmigration papersthat were used to get42 Jews out of Warsaw .

But that wasn’tenough. According to

historian James M. Smallwood,Congressman Johnson used legal andsometimes illegal methods to smuggle“hundreds of Jews into Texas, usingGalveston as the entry port. Enoughmoney could buy false passports andfake visas in Cuba , Mexico and otherLatin American countries.... Johnsonsmuggled boatloads and planeloads ofJews into Texas . He hid them in theTexas National Youth Administration...Johnson saved at least four or five hun-dred Jews, possibly more.”

During World War II, Johnson joinedNovy at a small Austin gathering to sell$65,000 in war bonds. According toGomolak, Novy and Johnson then raiseda very “substantial sum for arms forJewish underground fighters in Palestine.” One source cited by the historianreports that “Novy and Johnson had beensecretly shipping heavy crates labeled‘Texas Grapefruit’ – but containing arms -to Jewish underground ‘freedom fighters’in Palestine.”

On June 4, 1945, Johnson visitedDachau. According to Smallwood, LadyBird later recalled that when her husband

returned home, “he was still shaken,stunned, terrorized and bursting with anoverpowering revulsion and increduloushorror at what he had seen.”

A decade later, while serving in theSenate, Johnson blocked the Eisenhoweradministration’s attempts to apply sanc-tions against Israel following the 1956Sinai Campaign. “The indefatigableJohnson had never ceased pressure onthe administration,” wrote I.L. “Si” Kenen,the head of AIPAC at the time.

As Senate majority leader, Johnsonconsistently blocked the anti-Israel ini-

tiatives of his fellow Democrat, WilliamFulbright, the chairman of the SenateForeign Relations Committee. AmongJohnson’s closest advisers during this periodwere several strong pro-Israel advocates,including Benjamin Cohen (who 30 yearsearlier was the liaison between SupremeCourt justice Louis Brandeis and ChaimWeizmann) and Abe Fortas, the legendaryWashington “insider.”

Johnson’s concern for the Jewish peo-ple continued through his presidency.Soon after taking office in the aftermath ofJohn F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963,Johnson told an Israeli diplomat, “Youhave lost a very great friend, but you havefound a better one.”

Just one month after succeeding Kennedy,LBJ attended the December 1963 dedicationof the Agudas Achim Synagogue in Austin.Novy opened the ceremony by saying toJohnson, “We can’t thank him enough for allthose Jews he got out of Germany during thedays of Hitler.”

Lady Bird would later describe the day,according to Gomolak: “Person after per-son plucked at my sleeve and said, ‘Iwouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him.He helped me get out.’” Lady Bird elabo-rated, “Jews had been woven into thewarp and woof of all [Lyndon’s] years.”

The prelude to the 1967 war was a terri-(Continued on page 14)

“We may be living in something ofa bubble, and I don’t mean

investment bubble – I mean reality bub-ble,” Tim O’Reilly, a guru of the globaltechnology community said. “These arepretty depressing times in a lot of ways,”he groused, showing the audience a num-ber of Facebook applications such as theone allowing surfers to toss virtual sheepat each other, or to drink virtual beer. “Youhave to ask yourself - are we working onthe right things?”

The disenchanted O’Reilly wouldprobably have liked the joint project byYad Vashem and the global storagecompany EMC, which are collaboratingon bringing more than 200,000 hours ofvideo to Israel. The images include52,000 interviews with Holocaust sur-vivors, prepared and stored by theShoah Foundation Institute, a StevenSpielberg creation at the University ofSouthern California (USC).

The testimonies will be added to a YadVashem collection of about 10,000accounts that have been filmed on videosince 1989, and some 5,000 films dealingwith the Holocaust produced all over theworld. The collections will be made acces-sible to the public.

The collection at USC is archived onanalogue recordings with limited accessi-bility. Only the catalog of movies and a rel-atively few minutes of video are availableon-line. “The USC has robotic systemsthat pull out recordings requested by

users. The process takes a few minuteseach time,” relates Yad Vashem CIOMichael Lieber. “After receiving a dona-tion from Sheldon Adelson and EMC,we decided to fly the material to Israelin a consolidated storage system,although transferring so much materialis rather unusual.

As part of the project, a number of EMCrepresentatives came to the ShoahInstitute to copy all of the testimonies overa period of a few weeks – more than 200terabytes – to archive systems that werethen flown to Israel.

The movies are now available forVideo on Demand viewing at the

Yad Vashem viewing center, foundedthree years ago. Lieber says that the cen-ter’s top priority is to get the material ontothe Internet. “Initially, we will useYouTube, so we can at least post sectionsof the interviews” he promises, noting thatYad Vashem would prefer to put the entire

archive on line, but technological, legaland especially financing problems makethis a difficult task.

Lieber says that Yad Vashem computerscontain about 500 terabytes of archiveddocuments, pictures, voice and videofiles. “We are operating an enormous dig-itization system,” he concludes. At present, movie searches can be per-formed based on a limited number ofsearch keys: names, dates and places. Inaddition , there are some rudimentarytags that the Holocaust fund has added tothe movies, allowing viewers to skipbetween sections of the movie.

The movies currently have no tran-scripts. Lieber says that Yad Vashem isconsidering the possibility of making useof voice search tools, but although theyhave consulted with a number of leadingtechnology companies in the field, no sat-isfactory solution has been found. “Thetype of material we are dealing with pres-ents difficult hurdles for voice recognitionsoftware, because of the emotionality inthe material and the plethora of lan-guages. Programs that do an excellent jobtranscripting news reports have a lot ofdifficulty when operated on the types ofinterviews that we are dealing with.Witnesses telling their story can suddenlyhalt under a deluge of memories. In thesecases, the system, which analyzes breaksin speech, separates the first part from thecontinuation. For the viewer, the sectionends at the height of the tension.

STEVEN SPIELBERG HOLOCAUST ARCHIVE “MAKES ALIYAH”

Steven Spielberg.

A FRIEND IN DEED

Lyndon B. Johnson

Belarus remembered its Jews whoperished in the Holocaust on the

65th anniversary of the annihilation of theMinsk ghetto.

Belarusian President AlexanderLukashenko took part in memorial cere-mony held at the Yama memorial complexin Minsk, where many of the ghetto vic-tims are buried. “A small part ofBelarusian Jews survived (the war). Theywere killed only because they wereJewish,” Lukashenko told.

The president promised that Belaruswould remember the Holocaust victims.He declared that a great memorial will becreated on the site of the formerTrostenec death camp was located,where thousands of Jews and people ofother nations were killed by the Nazis.“New generations haven’t forgotten whathappened in the middle of the last centu-ry,” Lukashenko said.

The head of the Belarusian Jewish com-munity, Leonid Levin, told JTA that theceremony is the first time that theBelarusian government has paid so muchattention to the memory of Holocaust vic-tims. “Mourning ceremonies take place allover the country. It is the first time thatpeople speak openly about the tragedy ofthe Belarusian Jews,” Levin said.

More than 800,000 Jews were killedin the country during World War II.About 100,000 Jews perished in theMinsk ghetto.

BELARUS REMEMBERS

MINSK GHETTO VICTIMS


BY JAMES BARRON, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Abe Dresdner remembers the train ride,remembers being “jammed in, stand-

ing for days and days” in a boxcar. It wasAugust 1940 in Vichy France. He was 11.

“We had no food, no nothing,” said Mr.Dresdner, who had fled his nativeBelgium, only to be captured by Frenchauthorities and put on the train. “They tookall our belongings, our suitcases, exceptfor what we were carrying in our pockets.”

The train was bound for Rivesaltes, avillage in southern France where there

was a squalid camp for foreign Jewsrounded up by the Vichy government.

For seven years, he and some 600other survivors of Nazi Germany andVichy France have been trying — so farunsuccessfully — to hold the nationalFrench railroad accountable in federalcourt in Brooklyn. Now they have turnedto Congress, pinning their hopes on a billthat would permit their class-action law-suit to go forward.

They filed suit against the railroad,Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer,in 2001, stating in court papers that therailroad had carried more than 72,000Jews and thousands of others to Nazicamps. The court papers also said therailroad must have been aware of thehorrendous conditions on the trainsbecause it cleaned and disinfected thecars after taking the prisoners to the

camps. Of 2,166 passengers on onetrain, for example, 536 died on a three-day trip to the Dachau death camp inGermany, according to the lawsuit.

The railroad countered that it could notbe sued in American courts because ofthe Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of1976. The law was passed to prevent for-eign governments from being sued inAmerican courts and to give the force oflaw to principles that the federal govern-ment and the courts had long followed.The railroad also said it was entitled toimmunity under American laws in effectduring World War II.

Judge David G. Trager of FederalDistrict Court dismissed the case, sayingthe railroad was an entity of a foreign stateand covered by sovereign immunity underthe 1976 statute. In 2003, a federalappeals court reversed Judge Trager’sdecision and sent the case back to thelower court after ruling that the question waswhether the State Department of the 1940swould have sanctioned the litigation.

The railroad appealed to the SupremeCourt. The high court took the case, butsent it back to the appeals court in 2004after ruling on another case, one thatinvolved the heir to an Austrian Jewish artcollector who was suing the Austrian gov-ernment for the return of six Klimt paint-ings that her family had owned before thewar. The court said the heir’s suit againstAustria and its national museum couldproceed. A week after issuing that deci-sion, the Supreme Court instructed the

appeals court to apply it to the railroadcase, which was dismissed.

“The evil actions of the French nationalrailroad’s former private masters in know-ingly transporting thousands to deathcamps during World War II are not sus-ceptible to legal redress in federal courttoday,” the appeals judges wrote.

The survivors went back to the SupremeCourt in 2005. The justices declined tohear the case.

Harriet Tanen, a Manhattan lawyer whorepresents many of the survivors in thelawsuit, said the 2004 decision was dis-turbing because it left them with norecourse. “The railroad has never deniedwhat it did,” she said. “They’ve just said,‘You can’t sue us.’ That’s wrong.”

The Senate bill, introduced bySenators Charles E. Schumer and

Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, is tai-lored specifically to the railroad case. Thebill says that American courts “are andshould be a proper forum” for the railroadcase. A similar bill was introduced in theHouse.

“S.N.C.F. has continued to evaderesponsibility through minutiae and loop-holes in the law,” Mr. Schumer said. Thebill says the immunity law “was not intend-ed to bar suit against the S.N.C.F.”

Andreas F. Lowenfeld, a professor atthe New York University School of Law,who argued the railroad’s appeal in 2003,called the proposed change in the immu-nity law “an attempt to get, in effect,another bite.”

“The basic idea is this litigation doesn’tbelong in the United States,” he said — apoint that he said the appeals court hadmade clear. He added that officials of therailroad had “made an elaborate historicalstudy, and they have made a variety ofcompensation and payments” in France.

In 2006, a French administrative court inToulouse ordered the railroad to pay$80,000 to relatives of four people whohad been taken by train to a transit campat Drancy, near Paris, from which Jewswere sent to Nazi concentration camps.That was the first time the state and rail-road had been found liable for their role indeporting French Jews. Also in 2006,many survivors’ and victims’ families filed

another lawsuit in New York seeking com-pensation from France for property takenfrom Jews.

Not all of the plaintiffs in either of theNew York cases had been railroad pas-sengers themselves. One of them,Mathilde Freund, 92, said her husband,Fritz, had been arrested when he left theirhiding place near Lyon. He was impris-oned and taken by train to Compiègne,France, where he was held for severalmonths before he was moved, again by

train, to the Buchenwald camp, inGermany. Mrs. Freund said he was killedthere on Jan. 31, 1945.

“He was so hopeful that he would sur-vive,” said Mrs. Freund, who lives on theUpper West Side. “He wrote me lettersand cards from Buchenwald. The last cardI received was only seven lines. He washopeful he would return and we wouldhave a wonderful life.”

Another survivor, Ruth Schloss, ofWoodside, Queens, said, “The railroadforced my parents to be deported; theyknew what was going on.”

As for Mr. Dresdner, he escaped fromRivesaltes and was smuggled to Italy,where he hid in monasteries untilPresident Franklin D. Rooseveltannounced that 1,000 Jewish refugeeswould be admitted to the United States.Mr. Dresdner was sent to Oswego, N.Y.

Mr. Dresdner, who lives in Brooklyn,accused the railroad of trying to prolongthe case. “In another 10 years, there won’tbe any survivors to talk to,” he said.“They’re trying to wait this out.”

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

SEEK CONGRESS’S HELP IN COURT

Ruth Schloss in Woodside, Queens, left, and at age 13 with her parents, who were sent to

Auschwitz. The railroad “knew what was going on,” she says.

Mathilde Freund, with her husband, Fritz.

Her husband, who had served in the French

Army, was killed in the Buchenwald concen-

tration camp in Germany in 1945.

More than 60 years after World WarTwo ended, Nazi hunters are running

out of targets and increasingly becoming his-torians who shine a harsh light on dark fam-ily secrets. “It’s hard to keep prosecutorshere,” said Kurt Schrimm, who leadsGermany’s department for prosecuting Naziwar crimes. “I tell them when they start thatthe prospects of prosecution are slim.

The suspects are getting older. It’s moreabout finding out and explaining whathappened.”

For many Germans, the search forNazis in their family ends in the smallwestern town of Ludwigsburg.

Hundreds of thousands of index cardsfill the cellar of the former prison. Eachcard carries a name and often a list ofwar-crime prosecutions. A librarian leafsthrough the indexes, looking for namesput forward by callers researching familymembers they may have never known.For Schrimm, the face of one such bewil-dered teenager is as vivid a memory asthat of her grandfather, JosefSchwammberger — the “most brutal Nazi”

he ever put behind bars.The Austrian’s purges in a Polish ghetto

included shooting 40 children in anorphanage and offering a false amnesty toJews living underground only to orderthem stripped and executed.

After paying 500,000 Deutschmarks toan informant, Schrimm tracedSchwammberger to Argentina, whichextradited him in 1987.

In his initial interviews, Schwammbergerappeared to be a gentle, grandfatherly fig-ure. He told Schrimm he had turned to“the Pope” for help in escaping theadvancing allied forces.

Over the course of his trial, he emergedas a sadist who once encouraged his dogto maul a man to death.

During the hearings, Schrimm received avisit from a 17-year-old girl: “His grand-daughter had read it in the newspapers andwanted to know firsthand if it was true,”Schrimm recalls. “She was totally shaken.”

Correcting history has also becomean important part of Eli

Rosenbaum’s work. Head of the U.S.

Office of Special Investigations,Rosenbaum has unmasked Nazis whosettled inconspicuously into suburbanAmerica, as well as knocking prominentcitizens off their pedestals.

When Rosenbaum discovered ArthurRudolph around 1980, the architect of theSaturn V rocket that put man on the moonwas one of America’s most celebratedadopted sons.

But during the war, Rudolph had manageda “hell-like” underground factory in Germanywhere slave workers built the V2 rocket,Rosenbaum says. Prisoners were tortured,killed and, on one occasion, forced to watcha mass hanging of inmates.

After the war, Rudolph and others werehired by the U.S. military and brought totheir new home under a secret programcalled Project Paperclip, formerly knownas Operation Overcast.

In German archives, Rosenbaum dis-covered a report signed by Rudolphdescribing a visit to an aircraft factoryusing forced labor. “He writes that this isgreat from the security perspective and

recommends they use camp inmates tobuild the V2.”

Disgraced, Rudolph surrendered hisU.S. citizenship and returned to Germany.“I remember he died on New Year’s day,”says Rosenbaum. “He spent many years try-ing to rehabilitate his name.

Bringing war criminals to justice isgetting ever tougher but Schrimm

rebuts criticism from Nazi-hunting institu-tion the Simon Wiesenthal Centre thatconvictions are too low. “The results arebad and they are going to get worse,” hesays. “They will have more cause for dis-appointment next year. “But that is noreflection of our competence or willing-ness. I can’t pull witnesses out of a hat.”

Setting history straight, however, offerssome compensation. Schrimm recalls ameeting with a frail Jewish woman he vis-ited in New York who had lost her family toSchwammberger’s executioners. “I’ve toldthe story to my children and my grandchil-dren, she said. “I’ve waited 45 years forsomeone from Germany to express aninterest in hearing it. Now that you havecome, I can die in peace.”

NAZI HUNTERS TURN HISTORIAN


BY MATTHEW HEALEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES

When Ku Klux Klan violence spikedacross the South in the 1970s,

and a hitherto unknown group inCalifornia began publicly denying that theHolocaust had ever occurred, KenLawrence decided to fight back — usinghis skills as stamp collector.

Painstakingly, over 30 years, heresearched and assembled a collection ofpostal memorabilia documenting the rangeand depth of horrors of what he termed “theNazi scourge.” He gath-ered items that showed notjust the persecution ofJews and Communists butalso other groups deemedundesirable by the Nazis,like gypsies and the dis-abled, not just in Germanybut across Europe.

The award-winning col-lection, containing some250 letters, postcards, postal documents,leaflets and other materials, has nowbeen sold to the Spungen FamilyFoundation in Illinois. That foundation, inturn, has sought to expand the collectionand continue to use it for the educationalpurposes that inspired Mr. Lawrence, ofSpring Mills, Pa.

Daniel Spungen, a board member andspokesman for the foundation, saidrecently that his acquisition of the collec-tion represented a “life-changing” experi-ence for him. He is retiring from his jobwith the family business, a manufacturerof ball bearings, and devoting himself tofurther development of the collection,which includes rare letters from concen-tration camp inmates, postal documentsillustrating Nazi activities and a Hebrewscripture re-used by a German soldier as

a parcel wrapper. In addition to being displayed online, the

collection will be shown to the public,beginning next year in Skokie, Ill., at thenew headquarters of the Illinois HolocaustMuseum and Education Center, whichwas set up in part as a reaction to neo-Nazi activities in that suburb of Chicago inthe 1970s. The center advocated suc-cessfully for an Illinois state law requiringeducation about the Holocaust in schools.

The collection will also travel around thecountry, including stops in Santa Barbara,Calif., and Billings, Mont.

Mr. Lawrence, a longtime civil rights

activist and writer, began gathering thematerials in 1978 “in response to thesudden appearance of Holocaustdeniers.” He recalled in an interviewrecently that he used to show his firstacquisition, a 1943 letter from 21-year-old Eduard Pys, who had arrived at theAuschwitz concentration camp on thevery first transport in May 1940, to chil-dren in Mississippi and tell them, “DavidDuke says this never happened.”

Having little money to spend on hiscollection, Mr. Lawrence used his con-tacts with writers and activists inEastern Europe to solicit additionalmaterial. One item is a telegram from amember of a wartime Communistresistance group that was given to himby a friend in East Germany.

“I wanted to show all the victims and all theresisters, through their mail,” Mr. Lawrencesaid. “I tried to include every sort of anti-Naziactivity, and treat them all heroically, whetherthey liked each other or not.”

He continued to trail the Klan and neo-Nazis around the United States, offering hiscollection at community centers, schools andchurches as evidence of what could happenif white supremacists prevailed.

Eventually, in 1992, Mr. Lawrencestarted exhibiting his collection to

fellow stamp collectors as well, garneringawards at philatelic gatherings from Ohioto Washington to South Korea. His collec-tion includes rarities like an envelope froma letter sent from Dachau in 1933, shortlyafter the concentration camp opened; acertified-mail receipt for a prayer booksent to a Jew in a French camp; a postalchecking account receipt with a crudeanti-Semitic cartoon indicating paymentfor a Nazi propaganda newspaper; the onlyknown letter from Rabbi Leo Baeck, leaderof German Jewry, when he was held in theTheresienstadt ghetto; cards from two previ-ously unlisted camps in Romania; and mailsent to a Nazi doctor on trial for war crimesat Nuremberg in 1945.

Mr. Lawrence described the biblicalscroll used as a parcel wrapper, whichrecounts part of the tale of David andGoliath, as “the most viscerally disturbingitem” in the collection. “Some scholarshave told me it is among the most impor-tant surviving evidence of Nazi desecra-tion,” he said.

The Philatelic Foundation, a nonprofitorganization, has produced a DVD docu-mentary about the collection, and Mr.Lawrence, who is being retained by Mr.Spungen to advise him on further develop-ment of the collection, is planning a book.

Last year, after a chance encounter withMr. Spungen at a collectors’ event, Mr.

Lawrence agreed to sell him his collection. “Ifelt like I had taken the collection as far as Icould. And I’m 65,” Mr. Lawrence said.

A well-known stamp auctioneer hadadvised Mr. Lawrence to keep the collec-

tion intact rather than breaking it up to sell.Mr. Spungen said he had originally

planned to use part of his fortune to buyan “Inverted Jenny,” one of the rarest ofAmerican stamps, which has an airplanemisprinted upside down. But he said hechanged his mind when he saw Mr.Lawrence’s collection.

“I admit I knew next to nothing about theHolocaust, and now I’m playing catch-up,”he said in a recent telephone interview.Among the items he finds most compellingare a piece of mail documenting sex slaveryat the Buchenwald concentration camp andfake British banknotes made by Jewish slavelaborers during the Nazis’ program to under-mine the British economy.

Mr. Spungen said that while the collectionas a whole was insured for a million dollars,and the scroll used as a parcel wrappercould be worth as much as half a million dol-lars on its own, “the educational value tofuture generations is incalculable.”

STAMP COLLECTOR’S HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

A fragment of a pillaged Hebrew scroll, used by a German soldier

to wrap a parcel for mailing.

A letter and a post card sent from Ukraine to

Austria.

BY WILLIAM J. KOLE, AP

Milivoj Asner caused a stir just by show-ing up at a soccer game: The frail 95-

year-old is ranked No. 4 on a leading list ofmost-wanted Nazi war crimes suspects.

Now Austria's most notorious far-rightpolitician, former Freedom Party leaderJoerg Haider, has touched off an evenbigger scandal by praising Asner as a"treasured" neighbor who should beallowed to live out his days in peace.

"This could only happen in Austria,"Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for theSimon Wiesenthal Center, told TheAssociated Press.

Officials in southern Austria, where Asnerlives openly despite being indicted for crimesagainst humanity in his native Croatia, con-tend the retired police chief is mentally unfitfor questioning, extradition or trial.

But Asner's recent appearance at a "fanzone" near his home in the southern city ofKlagenfurt – where he reportedly looked fitand lucid as he and his wife watched Croatiaplay in the European Championship – hassome questioning whether this alpine coun-try with a tortured World War II past is shield-ing him from justice.

Asner stands accused of persecutinghundreds of Jews, Serbs and Gypsiesand dispatching them to their deaths inWWII-era Croatia, which was ruled by aNazi puppet regime.

"Austria has the habit of closing itseyes," renowned Nazi hunter SergeKlarsfeld told French television.

The Asner case, he said, is fresh proof

the country is a safe haven for suspectedwar criminals.

Haider's impassioned defense of Asnerhas only reinforced that impression.

Haider, who broughtthe Freedom Party

into Austria's coalition gov-ernment in 2000 on a plat-form tinged with anti-Semitic and xenophobicundertones, is the gover-nor of the province ofCarinthia where Asnerlives.

"He's lived peacefullyamong us for years, andhe should be able to liveout the twilight of his lifewith us," Haider told then e w s p a p e r D e rStandard.

"This is a nice family.We really treasure this family," he wasquoted as saying.

Such praise is unconscionable, said Zuroff,who has been pressuring the Austrian gov-ernment to arrest Asner and hand him overfor trial as part of "Operation: Last Chance" –an effort to bring aging top suspects to justicebefore they die.

"This is clearly a reflection of the politicalatmosphere which exists in Austria andwhich in certain circles is extremely sym-pathetic to suspected Nazi war criminals,"Zuroff said.

Asner, he added, "has never showedany remorse for actions which affectedthe fates of hundreds of people."

Asner's indictment alleges he activelyenforced racist laws while police chief inthe eastern Croatian town of Pozega in1941-42, and sent his victims to a Croat-

run death camp. TheWiesenthal Center ranks himNo. 4 on a list of 10 top Nazifugitives.

Asner has maintained hisinnocence, and in an interviewaired on state-run Croatian tel-evision, declared: "My con-science is clear."

"I am ready to come to facethe court in Croatia, but I'mnot in the best health," Asnersaid, adding that if the judgeswere honest, "they wouldhave to acquit me."

He acknowledged he partici-pated in deportations ofSerbs, Jews and Gypsies, but

insisted the deportees were sent to theirhomelands and not to camps.

Austria's Justice Ministry said it isreviewing a request from Zuroff to make afresh assessment of Asner's physical andmental state and prove he is sufferingfrom dementia as experts have ruled inthe past.

Without a new evaluation declaring himphysically and mentally fit, "our hands aretied," said ministry spokesman ThomasGeiblinger.

Croatia demanded Asner's extraditionin 2005, the year he was formally

indicted. But the Austrians demurred, firston the grounds that he was an Austrian

citizen. Later, they claimed the statute oflimitations for his alleged crimes hadexpired.

Austria eventually conceded that Asnerwas not an Austrian citizen, which normal-ly would have opened the way for hisextradition. But in 2006, independentexperts declared Asner mentally unfit, andthey did so again in April.

Among those challenging that assess-ment is Gerhard Tuschla, a reporter forAustrian public broadcaster ORF. Tuschlasaid he recently interviewed Asner, whobegan living under the name GeorgeAschner after fleeing Croatia for Austria in1945, and found him to be "a jovial,whiskey-drinking old man."

"We suspected from the very beginningthat he might have been faking it-makinga specific effort to appear as unfit as pos-sible," Zuroff said. "That might be easierto fake than physical issues."

Austrian authorities have angrily deniedthey are giving Asner safe haven.

Manfred Herrnhofer, a federal courtspokesman in Klagenfurt, said officials aremerely trying to comply with complicatedextradition guidelines "and in no way are pro-tecting a suspected Nazi war criminal."

"Austria is a constitutional state, notGuantanamo. We don't toss our principlesoverboard for political gain," he said.

The affair comes just as Austria takes overthe chairmanship of the Task Force forInternational Cooperation on HolocaustEducation, Remembrance and Research – a25-nation panel dedicated to maintaining thememory of Nazi atrocities.

AUSTRIA ACCUSED OF SHIELDING NAZI SUSPECT

Milvoj Asner.


(Continued from page 11)fying period for Israel , with the USState Department led by the historicallyunfriendly Dean Rusk urging an even-handed policy despite Arab threats andacts of aggression. Johnson held nosuch illusions. After the war he placedthe blame firmly on Egypt: “If a singleact of folly was more responsible forthis explosion than any other, it was thearbitrary and dangerous announceddecision [by Egypt ] that the Strait ofTiran would be closed [to Israeli shipsand Israeli-bound cargo].”

Kennedy was the first president toapprove the sale of defensive US

weapons to Israel , specifically Hawk anti-aircraft missiles. But Johnson approvedtanks and fighter jets, all vital after the1967 war, when France imposed a freezeon sales to Israel. Yehuda Avner recentlydescribed on these pages prime ministerLevi Eshkol’s successful appeal for theseweapons on a visit to the LBJ ranch.

Israel won the 1967 war, and Johnsonworked to make sure it also won thepeace. “I sure as hell want to be carefuland not run out on little Israel,” Johnsonsaid in a March 1968 conversation withhis ambassador to the United Nations,Arthur Goldberg, according to WhiteHouse tapes recently released.

Soon after the 1967 war, Soviet pre-mier Aleksei Kosygin asked Johnson atthe Glassboro Summit why the US sup-ported Israel when there were 80 mil-lion Arabs and only three millionIsraelis. “Because it is right,” respondedthe straight-shooting Texan.

The crafting of UN Resolution 242 inNovember 1967 was done underJohnson’s scrutiny. The call for “secureand recognized boundaries” was critical.

The American and British drafters of theresolution opposed Israel returning all theterritories captured in the war. InSeptember 1968, Johnson explained, “Weare not the ones to say where othernations should draw lines between themthat will assure each the greatest security.It is clear, however, that a return to the sit-uation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace.There must be secure and there must berecognized borders. Some such linesmust be agreed to by the neighborsinvolved.”

Goldberg later noted, “Resolution242 in no way refers to Jerusalem ,

and this omission was deliberate.” Thishistoric diplomacy was conducted underJohnson’s stewardship, as Goldberg relat-ed in oral history to the Johnson Library. “Imust say for Johnson,” Goldberg stated.“He gave me great personal support.”

Robert David Johnson, a professor ofhistory at Brooklyn College, recently wrotein The New York Sun, “Johnson’s policiesstemmed more from personal concerns –his friendship with leading Zionists, hisbelief that America had a moral obligationto bolster Israeli security and his concep-tion of Israel as a frontier land much likehis home state of Texas . His personalconcerns led him to intervene when he feltthat the State or Defense departmentshad insufficiently appreciated Israel‘sdiplomatic or military needs.”

President Johnson firmly pointedAmerican policy in a pro-Israel direction.In a historical context, the American emer-gency airlift to Israel in 1973, the constantdiplomatic support, the economic and mil-itary assistance and the strategic bondsbetween the two countries can all be cred-ited to the seeds planted by LBJ.

A FRIEND IN DEED

Anew memorial center in Berlin paystribute to the thousands of German

gentiles who risked everything to saveJews from persecution by the Nazis anddocuments the stories of those whosometimes spent years in hiding.

The “Silent Heroes” memorial centeropened to the public amid a new focus inrecent years on the legacy of the “goodGermans” — individuals who resistedHitler, were labeled as traitors by theNazis and were oftenshunned after the war.

“Their accomplishmentswere totally forgotten, andthis is an initiative to bringthem back into our memory,”said Johannes Tuchel,director of the GermanResistance Memorial CenterFoundation, which is behindthe new memorial.

About 5,000 Jews wereable to survive the war inhiding in Germany. It is notclear how many peoplewere involved in helpingthem, Tuchel said.Research suggests that foreach person in hiding, about 10 peopleaided him or her.

Peter Michalski, whose family went intohiding in 1944, said it was a long overduetribute to the Germans who helped peoplelike him escape death.

“Where would you be now if these peo-ple hadn’t existed?” he asked contempla-tively while looking at an exhibit focusingon his family’s plight. “The answer is sim-ple: We wouldn’t be.”

The three-room exhibition has many multi-media displays in English and German —audio accounts, touch-screen computersfocusing on 18 aspects of survival, and com-puters with more details on those in hidingand their rescuers. There are also personalphotos, diaries and letters.

The best-known subject is OskarSchindler, whose story was told by StevenSpielberg’s Oscar-winning film “Schindler’sList,” which showed his efforts to shield

1,000 Jews from Nazi camps by hiring themto work in his factories.

Some of the lesser-known stories arejust as moving.

Michalski looked slowly at the photos ondisplay, picking out his parents — Lilli andHerbert Michalski — as well as himselfand his brother, Franz.

Lilli Michalski was born Jewish butconverted to her husband’s

Catholicism. Because of that, she was

able to initially escape deportation to adeath camp, even though the Nazisbegan rounding up many of her relativesin 1941. But by 1944, the risks hadbecome too great and the family went intohiding. Several Germans aided them,most prominently a colleague of Herbert’snamed Gerda Mez, who eventuallyhelped them leave.

Michalski said it was important that peo-ple like Mez are recognized, so others cansee their sacrifices. “These people are nolonger alive but their relatives still are.”

Yad Vashem memorial recognizes morethan 22,000 gentiles across Europe whohelped Jews escape the Holocaust as“Righteous among the Nations.” Amongthem more than 450 Germans.

It is also not known how many peoplewere caught sheltering Jews, which couldhave meant execution or deportation to aconcentration camp.

THE “SILENT HEROES”

NOW HAVE A VOICE

Visitors view exhibits at a new memorial center honoring

Germans who sheltered Jews.

The Jewish Museum in Prague isabout to return a modern art collec-

tion, stolen by the Nazis during theHolocaust, to the descendants of the orig-inal owner. The art works were collectedby Prague Jewish lawyer Emil Freundwho was deported to Poland by the Nazisin 1941and died in the Lodz ghetto a yearlater. The heir to the 32 paintings, MrFreund’s great-great nephew, who wastraced by the museum, would not be enti-tled to the art pieces under Czech law, butthe director of the Jewish Museum inPrague, Leo Pavlát, says that where pos-sible, all stolen property must be returned.

“As a Jewish institution, we feel a duty todeal squarely with all rightful owners orthe children of those who could be entitledto acquire objects stolen by the Nazis dur-ing the war. Of course, we wouldn’t like tokeep anything that doesn’t belong to us,and that’s why we do all we can to ascer-tain possible owners of the objects wehave in our collection.”

The Jewish Museum’s curator, MichaelaHájková, who initiated the search for EmilFreund’s relatives, says that besides thevalue of the individual paintings, the artcollection is also precious in that it showswhat kind of art people collected beforethe Second World War.

The 32 paintings to be returned to EmilFreund’s heirs are only a fragment of theoriginal collection. Mr Freund’s entireproperty was confiscated and only someof the paintings in his possession werehandpicked for the war-time, Nazi-con-trolled Jewish museum in Prague.

“In 1942 or 1943, Dr. Polák and Dr.

Hana Volavková, who were Jewishscholars working for the Central JewishMuseum at that time, were able toselect some art for the collection of thatmuseum. That was obviously not opento the public, as it was meant to beused for Nazi propaganda purposes.”

In the 1950s, the paintings were trans-ferred into the National Gallery, where

they remained until 2000. Just monthsbefore they were to be returned to theJewish Museum in Prague, however, 13of the 32 paintings were declared part ofthe country’s national heritage by theCzech Culture Ministry.

That means, among other things, that the13 paintings in question cannot be sold oreven taken out of the country without theministry’s approval. The Director of theJewish Museum in Prague, Leo Pavlát,believes this was a calculated decision.

“I think it’s absolutely unfortunatebecause I think that once the objects con-fiscated by the Nazis have their owners,these objects should be given back in anycase and without any restrictions. That’swhy we protested, in a legal way, againstthe decision to declare the paintings weare talking about cultural assets of theCzech Republic. We even sued theCulture Ministry, buy we lost the case, andso now we cannot change the decision ofCzech justice.”

The heirs of Dr Emil Freund are expect-ed to collect their heritage by the end ofthe year. Meanwhile, the Culture Ministryhas offered to buy the 13 paintings, pro-tected as cultural monuments, reportedlyat a fair price.

ART COLLECTION TO RETURN

TO ITS RIGHTFUL OWNERS

The faded papers hint at stark detailsin the lives of Nazi concentration

camp inmates.Letters secretly carried by children

through the sewers of Warsaw, Poland,during the 1944 uprising. A 1933 cardfrom a Dachau camp commander outlin-ing strict rules for prisoner mail. A 1943letter from a young man, who spent timein Auschwitz, to his parents.

The more than 250 World War II postaldocuments — cards, letters and stamps— have been acquired by an Illinois foun-dation from a private collector and willsoon be on permanent display in a muse-um in suburban Chicago.

“These artifacts underscore the verypersonal dimension to this catastrophe, “said Richard Hirschhaut, executive direc-tor of the Skokie-based Illinois HolocaustMuseum and Education Center, where theexhibit will be housed next year when themuseum opens.

“It now will reach an exponentially largeraudience and serve as a genuine tool foreducation and learning,” Hirschhaut said.

The Holocaust memorial exhibitbelonged to longtime postal memorabiliacollector and activist Ken Lawrence ofPennsylvania. It was called “The Nazi

Scourge: Postal Evidence of theHolocaust and the Devastation ofEurope.”

The Florence and Laurence SpungenFamily Foundation, based in Northbrook,Illinois, recently bought the collection andhas added to it.

“The insured value of the collection is $1million, but the educational value to futuregenerations is incalculable, “ said DanielSpungen, a board member of the founda-tion, in a statement.

The exhibit includes a handwrittenBible scroll in Hebrew that was used

by a German soldier to mail a package.There are also documents sent to a Nazidoctor on trial for war crimes atNuremberg.

Lawrence, the former vice president ofthe American Philatelic Society, meticu-lously collected the documents for morethan three decades. His project wassparked by claims that the Holocaustnever occurred.

He has since showcased the collectionacross the country, garnering awards.

The exhibit, which can also be viewedonline, will travel to Billings, Montana, inDecember and Santa Barbara, California,later in the winter

FROM AUSCHWITZ TO CHICAGO,

DETAILED HOLOCAUST LETTERS SURVIVE


(Continued from page 4)Cahan dedicated a Torah scroll in memo-ry of his family. Dancing. Banqueting.Inspirational speeches. It was quite anevent. The hour grew late, and Cahan feltas if he would float away.

Suddenly, a familiar voice said to him,“Maier, think about it for a minute.” It was theOld Fool. “All these beloved people to whomyou’ve dedicated this Torah scroll, why didthey deserve to die? Wouldn’t it have beenbetter if they were all alive to share this cele-bration with you today? Better for them andbetter for you. For whom is it better that theyare dead? For whom is it better that they suf-fered so horribly?”

The Old Fool had dogged Cahan evenin 1988, forty-three years after liberation.What was Cahan’s counterargument?

“For a moment, my anger flared, butthen I leaned back and listened to thestrains of the music. In my mind, I wasonce again dancing in the street, holdingon tightly to the Torah and crying like achild, and I no longer heard the Old Fool.Life, I decided, was a choice betweenanger and joy. I chose joy.”

Happy ending. But I cheated. I gaveno evidence of how agonizingly dif-

ficult it was for Cahan to reach thatmoment of joy. His memoir is no story-book. The brutality he survived is impossi-ble to grasp. One evening he was beatenso badly that one cannot understand howhe went on. At one point, he makes threefriends. All of them suffered unspeakably,but at least they had each other. An infini-ty later, dragging himself across a field ofbodies, Cahan trips over his three deadfriends. Not only was his family decimat-ed, but so were the people whom he metin various camps and other places of tor-ture who helped him survive. By the timethe war ended, Cahan was not only bereftof the support system he had had before

the war, but he was also bereft of whatev-er slim support he had had during the war.

Subtly interwoven in this narrative is atotemic reminder of all that Cahan oncewas, and still hoped to be; at once a sym-bol and a concrete weapon against theOld Fool. This was tefillin.

A death train passed. It carried theJewish faces of Vishiva, of Sighet, ofStrimtua, of Satmar, of Dragomiresti, ofBayna, of Grossverdan. As the train cameslowly into the bend, there were out-stretched hands. And voices, moans,groans, wails. And the choking smells ofunwashed bodies, of stagnating feces andpuddled urine. Suddenly, a black objectcame flying through the air. It was onetefillin; the wheel of the train had crushedone side of it. Cahan picked it up gently,kissed it, caressed it.

“I crumpled to the ground as the tearsgushed from my eyes and great heavingsobs wracked my body,” writes Cahan. “Icried for the poor, miserable passengersof the train, innocent victims of theunspeakable evil that had broken loosefrom the nethermost bowels of Hell andwas running rampant among my people. Icried for my father, my stepmother, mybeloved brothers and sisters, my grand-parents, my uncles and aunts, mycousins, for all the people that had popu-lated my life and were now stuffed intothese cattle cars on their way to anunthinkable destination.”

Still, he hugged the crushed tefillin. Itwas unusable, and he buried it with digni-ty. He felt strangely comforted.

At the time, Cahan was still in pos-session of his father’s pair of tefillin.

They were all that remained of his father,but, perhaps precisely because of thattragic account, they meant more to Cahanthan even the inherent sacredness of thetefillin themselves. One, or maybe a sec-

ond, infinity after the train had passed,Cahan found himself a prisoner, withguards beating him and everyone aroundhim. “Toss all your personal belongingsinto the pit!” the SS officer shouted.Cahan resisted. No luck. His backpack,containing his father’s tefillin, his last linkto his father, was tossed in.

“So look what you’ve come to, Maier.”He heard a familiar voice. It was the OldFool. “Apparently, your God has no furtherneed for you….He didn’t even let youkeep your tefillin. Why are you still so loyalto Him if He doesn’t care about you?”

“I wanted to respond with a sharpretort,” writes Cahan. “I wanted to devas-tate the Old Fool with ridicule and sar-casm, but he was gone. He had cleverlyfaded away after delivering his seditiouslittle speech.”

Later, in a concentration camp, wherethere was neither soup nor vegetable norflour, Cahan and his friends figured out away to exchange their puny rations for apair of tefillin. They did so at the cost ofnot only their rations but also of theirhealth and their bodies. They werewhipped and punched when they werediscovered with the tefillin, which a Nazitrampled until they were nothing morethan a shapeless black mass.

“So what do you have to say now,Maier?” It was the Old Fool again.

And again, in another camp, still later,there was a man lying on the ground, awasted shadow of a man. His eyes “helda look of resignation and such profoundpeace that I knew he was halfway to thenext world,” writes Cahan. The man pulledfrom his pocket, with great effort, anobject wrapped in rags. It was a pair oftefillin. In secret, Cahan and a frienddonned the tefillin in the forest, at pain ofdeath. Then his friend fell sick and Cahanhelped him put on tefillin. When Cahan

returned from work, his friend’s bed wasempty. “I felt as if part of me had died,”thought Cahan. “Somehow, I had consid-ered the discovery of the tefillin a portentof good things.” Meanwhile, where werethe tefillin? They were gone.

At the last moment, just before the warwas over, Cahan astonishingly met hisUncle Shloime. The relief and joy weremixed with a choice, dictated by theGermans: Stay in the camp or go on theroad, and whoever will go on the road willbe given two loaves of bread, margarineand even some fruit jam. Those who staybehind will receive nothing. Shloime tookthe rations and went. Cahan stayed.

“Uncle Shloime, I’ve had too manybrushes with the Angel of Death on theroad. I’m staying here. Whatever hap-pens, happens.”

Uncle Shloime went, after tearfulfarewells.

Cahan survived. Shloime did not.

Somehow, after liberation, Cahanlearned the fate of his relatives, his

friends, his collaborators, and it was all thesame. Somehow, he located his sister’s oldapartment, thoroughly vandalized.Somehow, amid the debris, he found a crum-pled photograph, and removed the cakedmud and dirt. It showed his sister huggingher baby, smiling from ear to ear. Now dead.

“I kissed the photograph and burst intotears. I had cried often during the previousyear. I had cried in pain, in agony, in frus-tration, and in sorrow. But now I cried withan emotion I could not identify. Perhaps Icould say it was a sense that I myself haddied a little through all my suffering andthe loss of my most beloved, and that forthe rest of my life I would only be a shad-ow of what I should have been.

“I slipped the photograph into my pock-et, squared my shoulders and left.”

BETWEEN MY FATHER AND THE OLD FOOL:

A HOLOCAUST MEMOIR

BY ASSAF UNI, HAARETZ

ALithuanian citizen convicted of col-laborating with the Nazis and perse-

cuting Jews during World War II is livingpeacefully in a small town in Germany.

As a member of the Nazi-sponsoredLithuanian Security Police, AlgimantasDailide arrested Jews who were trying toescape the Vilna ghetto and handed themover to the Germans. He lied about hiswartime activities on his U.S. immigrationapplication after the war, was stripped of hisAmerican citizenship in the 1990s, and wasordered deported in 2003, following aninvestigation and legal proceedings that last-ed more than a decade. Dailide fled arrestand settled in Kirchberg, Saxony, where hehas been living ever since.

Dailide is in ninth place on the theSimon Wiesenthal Center’s most recentlist of the 10 most wanted Nazis. A Vilniuscourt convicted him of war crimes in a trialthat began in 2005, but he has remainedfree. Last month, a high court in Lithuaniaruled that he would not go to prison, part-ly because of his frail health.

Dailide, 87, lives with his wife in a mod-est apartment at Torstrasse 13, across thestreet from the town hall. His name is onthe mailbox and intercom at the entrance.Dailide’s German-born wife, whom he metin 1945 after escaping Lithuania, has rela-tives in Kirchberg, a town of 7,000 in whatwas formerly East Germany.

Dailide’s conviction for war crimesrelied on documents and testimony

concerning a certain October 1941 night,when Dailide arrested 10 Jews who wereattempting to escape from the ghetto, andanother occasion on which he arrestedtwo Polish Jews. What happened to thosehe arrested is not known, but it is safeto assume they were murdered, alongwith 94 percent ofLithuanian Jewry, whichnumbered 220,000 peo-ple before the war.

Dailide’s name surfacedin documents found inLithuania’s archives, whichwere examined after theBaltic state won independ-ence. The Vilnius courtrejected Dailide’s protestations of innocence,and ruled he had lied in his testimony.Despite that, the court refrained from sen-tencing him to prison, as is permissible bylaw. The prosecution appealed this leniency,but the appeal was rejected. Jewish organi-zations say this is typical of Lithuania’srefusal to punish Nazi collaborators.

Efraim Zuroff, who heads theWiesenthal Center’s Israel office, calledthe court’s failure to sentence Dailide toprison scandalous, “and attests to themanner in which the Lithuanian govern-ment refuses to deal with the past.” More than a dozen Lithuanian collabora-tors have been tried, but not one has gone

to prison, a fact Zuroff says contributes torising anti-Semitism in the Baltic country.

Last month, Dailide opened the door tohis apartment and invited this Haaretzcorrespondent and a local reporter tocome in. Dailide’s wife, who suffers fromAlzheimer’s and cancer, was reclining inher bedroom. Taking care of her is one ofthe reasons Dailide has remained free. He

said he uses a tubeto feed her.

Dailide insists heis innocent. Thedocuments usedagainst him aremisleading, he con-tends, based on acolleague’s erro-neous record in

October 1941. In the other case, he hadsigned an arrest warrant on behalf of apoliceman who was illiterate, he said.

He recounted his escape to Germany in2004, when he was afraid U.S. authoritieswere going to arrest him. “I took my car,packed a few things and fled the house. Islept in motels and used phone cards tocontact my family. A neighbor drove mywife to meet me periodically. A priest fromCleveland contacted a priest in Toronto,who agreed to put me up. I didn’t usecredit cards, I put our house up for sale,and I managed to cross the border intoCanada using my Lithuanian passport. Mywife met me in Toronto, and we flew from

there to Frankfurt, took a train to Zwickauand arrived in Kirchberg.”

He claims he suffers from chronic backpain and arthritis, and that he takes med-ication for high blood pressure.

A spokeswoman for the Lithuanian courtsaid in response: “A medical board thatconvened for two years ruled thatDailide’s state of health does not allow forhis incarceration.”

She said she would need to checkwhether the court had refrained from reex-amining him.

How is it that someone convicted ofcollaborating with the Nazis can live

in Germany?A German lawyer who specializes in

immigration cases explained that theEuropean Union’s Nice Treaty giveseveryone – even if convicted – the right tochoose where to live. The treaty stipulatesthat Germany can deport an EU citizenonly if he or she is causing “significantdamage” to the public. Dailide apparentlydoes not meet this criterion.

Dailide’s neighbors became familiar withhis story six months ago when a localpaper ran a photo of the house under thebanner, “War Criminal in Kirchberg.” Astore owner in the adjacent building saidshe was shocked at first, but calmed downafter she inquired into the details.

“He didn’t shoot anyone, right? So hecollaborated, so what? Everyone collabo-rated in that period,” she said.

NAZI COLLABORATOR FLED ARREST, LIVING PEACEFULLY IN GERMANY

Algimantas Dailide

Martyrdom & Resistance

Eli Zborowski, Editor-in-Chief

Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Editor

*Published Bimonthly by the

International Society for Yad Vashem, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor New York, NY 10110

(212) 220-4304

EDITORIAL BOARD

Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski

Mark Palmer Sam Skura**

Israel Krakowski William Mandell

Sam Halpern Isidore Karten**Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet**

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

International Society for Yad Vashem

MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE

500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299


NON-PROFIT ORG.U.S. POST

P A I DNEW YORK, N.Y.PERMIT NO. 10Web site: www.yadvashemusa.org

Isend greetings to those gatheredfor the 2008 American and

International Societies for Yad VashemAnnual Tribute Dinner.

The Holocaust is a powerful reminderof what happens when good anddecent people ignore acts of evil.Across Europe, millions of people wereforced from their homes into concentra-tion camps and many innocent liveswere taken by acts of hatred and preju-dice. It is impossible for us to makesense of such violence and suffering,yet it is important to remember theseatrocities, honor the courage of the vic-tims, and confront anti-Semitism andintolerance wherever it is found.

I appreciate the American andInternational Societies for Yad Vashem,this year’s honorees, and all those ded-icated to preserving the legacy of wit-nesses, survivors, and victims of theHolocaust. Your good work demonstrates that great suffering can awaken even greaterlove and that we must never take freedom for granted.

Laura and I send our best wishes. May God bless you, and may we never forget.

To everyone attending the AnnualTribute Dinner of the American and

International Societies for Yad Vashem Isend heartfelt greetings. I would also like towarmly congratulate this year’s honorees,Selma Gruder-Horowitz, Fred Zeidman andAvner Shalev, all of whom have made anoutstanding contribution to Holocaustremembrance.

Seventy years ago today, on the night ofNovember 9, a campaign of hate anddestruction was launched against Jews rightacross Germany. The Shoah was an unpar-alleled crime against humanity. It cannot andmust not ever be forgotten.

Germany is fully conscious of its responsi-bility. Anti-Semitism, hatred and intolerancemust be nipped in the bud wherever they arefound. The German Government is likewisestrongly committed to upholding Israel’simmutable right to live in peace and security.The fact that today, sixty years after thefounding of the State of Israel, the ties between Germany and Israel are closer than everbefore is to me a cause of joy and gratitude.

I offer my best wishes to everyone at the Annual Tribute Dinner in New York, as well as tothe Yad Vashem Societies, for the continued success of the splendid work they are doing.

It gives me great pleasure to send warmgreetings to the American &

International Societies for Yad Vashem onthe occasion of your Annual Tribute Dinner.

Sixty years ago this year, the State ofIsrael was born out of the ashes of theHolocaust which ravaged the vibrant andglorious Jewish communities of Europe.The scattered and battered remnants ofEuropean Jewry slowly began to recoverfrom the horrors inflicted upon them, andbegan to rebuild their destroyed lives.

They did so with hope and optimism, andwith the establishment of the State of Israel in1948, the Jewish people were guaranteed thatthey would never again suffer such atrocities –we now have a homeland and a sanctuary.

While we celebrate the hope of a brighterfuture for the Jewish people, we must stillnever forget the Holocaust and the eventsand cultural norms which allowed it to occur.Yad Vashem plays a critical role in ensuringthat the lessons of the Holocaust are taught and passed on to the younger generations,educating them about the past so that it is never repeated. The support and dedicationof the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem help make this possible.

The date of 9th November is of symbolic yettragic significance. This day reminds of the

disastrous events of the Kristallnacht, the Nightof Broken Glass. It marked the beginning of thesystematic eradication of Jews, and served as aprelude to the Holocaust that was to follow. InPoland, the memory of the tragedy of the entireJewish People has remained extraordinarilystrong and vivid. The Holocaust atrocity took aheavy toll of three million of our Jewish citizens,and hundreds of shtetls disappeared from themap of Poland forever. Those people, who hadbeen creating and enriching Polish culture forcenturies, were bestially murdered.

However, this year we also celebrate the 60thanniversary of the establishment of the State ofIsrael. The country, created and built by thosewho survived, is a strong and stable state today.For the generations to come, Israel constitutes aguarantee that this tragedy, which tried soseverely the Jewish People during the WWII,shall never happen again.

Unfortunately, the contemporary world is infected with the anti-Semitism disease.Almost all governments and societies in the world have to face it. Therefore, the tragedyof Holocaust shall become the ultimate, most important lesson for future; it is also a chal-lenge posed to education of young generations all over the world.

GEORGE W. BUSH: “GREAT SUFFERING CAN AWAKEN EVEN

GREATER LOVE”

EHUD OLMERT:“WE NOW HAVE A HOMELAND

AND A SANCTUARY”

ANGELA MERKEL:“GERMANY IS FULLY CONSCIOUS

OF ITS RESPONSIBILITY”

DONALD TUSK:“TRAGEDY OF HOLOCAUST SHALL BECOME

THE ULTIMATE LESSON FOR THE FUTURE”

“THERE IS HOPE FOR THE FUTURE” “THE VERY WORLD RESTS€¦ · equally proud that a majority of...

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