AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM...to me. I wasn’t a child there. I was all grown up ... it was like I was 100 years old.” Archival footage shot by Auschwitz’s

IN THIS ISSUEInternational Holocaust Remembrance Day...........................................1, 8-9

We knew, but failed to stop the Holocaust....................................................3

Wordwings.......................................................................................................4

Nazi havens in South America........................................................................6

The Italian Wallenberg.....................................................................................7

The post-Holocaust pogrom that Poland is still fighting over...................10

Holocaust suitcase packs stories of survival.............................................11

Irish aid worker who saved children from Auschwitz.................................12

Secret anti-Nazi diary gives voice to man on the street............................14

How artist beat foolproof Nazi system to save 350 lives...................................15

Vol. 44-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2018-Shevat/Adar 5778

AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEMAMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM

Warsaw — Elderly Holocaust sur-vivors, wearing striped scarves thatrecalled their uniforms as prisoners ofNazi Germany, made a yearly pilgrim-age to Auschwitz on January 27,exactly 73 years after the Soviet armyliberated the death camp in occupiedPoland.

On the date now commemorated asInternational Holocaust RemembranceDay, political leaders and Jewishofficials warned that the Nazigenocide must never cease serv-ing as a reminder of the evil ofwhich humans are capable.

In Warsaw, Poland, U.S.Secretary of State Rex Tillersonattended a solemn ceremony at amemorial to the Jews who diedfighting the German forces in theWarsaw ghetto uprising of 1943.

The head of Warsaw’s Jewishcommunity read a prayer, andTillerson made brief remarksabout the importance of not for-getting the horrors of theHolocaust.

“On this occasion, it reminds usthat we can never, we can never,be indifferent to the face of evil,”Tillerson said.

“The Western alliance whichemerged from World War II hascommitted itself to ensuring thesecurity of all, that this wouldnever happen again,” he said. “As wemark this day in solemn remem-brance, let us repeat the words of ourown commitment: Never again. Neveragain.”

Jerusalem — In honor ofI n t e r n a t i o n a l H o l o c a u s tRemembrance Day nearly 8,000 peo-ple from 193 different countries joined

the Yad Vashem IRemember Wall thisyear. This annual social media cam-paign is a unique and meaningfulopportunity for the public to partici-pate in a unique commemorativeactivity to mark InternationalHolocaust Remembrance Day. Byjoining the IRemember Wall, the par-ticipant's Facebook profile is random-ly linked to the name of a Holocaust

victim from Yad Vashem's CentralDatabase of Shoah Victims' Names.

***Some of the most heartbreaking let-

ters ever penned - written by Nazi vic-tims to loved ones they would neversee again - have been publishedahead of World Holocaust Day.

“We Shall Meet Again - Last Letters

from the Holocaust” is an online exhi-bition staged by the Yad VashemWorld Holocaust RemembranceCenter in Jerusalem.

The center holds thousands of mis-sives from the doomed and will grad-ually publish them over the comingmonths.

In one such letter, Perla Tytelmanwrites along with her son Samuel and

daughter Rega from the Warsawghetto to her husband, Jozef, andother daughter Rachel, who managedto flee to Siberia.

The letter reads: 'I am drawing on allmy strength in order to survive foryou.

“But you, my beloved ones, have toprove your bravery, you have to provethat you are capable of overcomingthis undeserved punishment and thewanderings with strength and dignity.“You should be consoled by thethought that this has to end some-time, and that then we will once againbe happy together. Our yearning foreach other knows no bounds.”

Rachel then adds her news to theletter, before saying she has to makeroom for Samuel, who is complainingthere is no space left to write.Samuel says: “I write last, so that theladies signed above have time to

chatter. You have already said every-thing and left me no room.

“On this occasion, mother wateredthe letter with her tears.

“The situation is now pretty badbecause we have been imprisoned inthe so-called Jewish quarter. Also athome a lot has changed. We now livein the bedroom [of the parents]. Whatdo I do, you know? I have to come to

the end.“Remember, the most impor-

tant thing is not to take anythingto heart and persevere. Thenwe will definitely meet again.”The letter was sent in theautumn of 1941. All three wouldlater perish in the ghetto, a factthat Jozef and Rachel would notlearn until after the war.

***Staring at grainy video footage

of Jewish children marching totheir freedom though thebarbed-wire fences of theAuschwitz death camp, 79-year-old Vera Kriegel Grossmanexcitedly points a finger at thescreen upon identifying a dark-haired girl in a dirty striped uni-form as her 6-year-old self.

“I can’t believe that happenedto me. I wasn’t a child there. Iwas all grown up ... it was like Iwas 100 years old.”

Archival footage shot by Auschwitz’sSoviet liberators is part of the YadVashem Holocaust memorial’s latestexhibition, ahead of InternationalHolocaust Remembrance Day,exploring the power of photographyduring World War II. The 1,500 photo-graphs and 13 films displayed comefrom various perspectives, those ofvictims and perpetrators alike, andlook to offer today’s media-saturatedvisitors a new angle for looking at thehorrors of the Holocaust.

Photography, perhaps more thananything else, has come to shape ourmemory of the Holocaust. The“Flashes of Memory” exhibit alsooffers a glimpse behind the lens —showing the actual cameras used, thephotographers who took the picturesand their various motivations.

“The exhibit is aimed at the brain,(Continued on page 8)

SIX MILLION VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

REMEMBERED

Survivors and guests walk past the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate at the former Nazi German concentration camp on

International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Oswiecim, Poland, Saturday, January 27, 2018.

Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778

BY MATT LEBOVIC, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Although its name later becamesynonymous with the

Holocaust, the Polish town Oswiecim— or Auschwitz, in German — oncebrimmed with Jewish culture. The riseand fall of the community’s buildingsleft behind evocative relics, a fewdozen photographs and many tales ofthe town’s special place in Polish-Jewish history.

Jews first settled in Oswiecim, westof Krakow, about 400 years ago. Bythe eve of the Holocaust, they madeup half the town’s population of10,000 people. The community put up

more than 20 synagogues, famousschools and one of Poland’s first fac-tories. Oswiecim was known as “not abad place” to live for Jews; indeed,the Yiddish name for the town wasOshpitzin, which comes from theAramaic word for guests.

Today, only the so-called AuschwitzSynagogue remains of that vanishedJewish landscape. Built in 1913, themodest shul located off the townsquare has changed hands manytimes. As it is the synagogue closest toAuschwitz-Birkenau, where the Nazismurdered more than one million Jewsduring World War II, visitors usuallycome on the same day as a tour of theformer extermination center.

During the Nazi occupation, theAuschwitz Synagogue served as amunitions depot for the German army.The deportation of Oswiecim’s 5,000Jews was accomplished in one week,during a particularly well-pho-tographed aktion. Many townspeoplepositioned themselves at windows towatch SS men march the Jews awayforever, and Oswiecim’s main land-marks — such as churches andstores — appear in snapshots takenby the neighbor-witnesses.

Following liberation in 1945, a fewJews returned to Oswiecim and heldservices at the shul again. However,by the early 1970s, the town’s Jewshad all emigrated, and “the last syna-gogue of Auschwitz” became a carpetwarehouse. Later, post-Communismrestitution laws returned the property

to a local Jewish community, whichpurchased the adjacent building andcreated the Auschwitz Jewish Center,an impressive synagogue-museumcomplex.

Although relatively few of the twomillion annual visitors to Auschwitz-Birkenau make their way into the his-toric core of Oswiecim, there are tan-talizing objects from the town’sJewish past on display at the shul-museum complex. The collectionincludes ritual objects from thedestroyed Great Synagogue, where— legend has it — the souls ofdeparted Jews performed a “deathdance” with the living.

Among artifacts presented at theAuschwitz Jewish Center, a selection

of liquor bottles from thew o r l d - r e n o w n e dHaberfeld distillery standsout.

In 1804, JakobHaberfeld opened a“steam vodka & liquor fac-tory” near a bridge cross-ing the Sola River. Anearly factory in Poland,the Jewish-owned outfitproduced vast amounts ofvodka, rum and juices.Next to the distillery was a40-room family mansion,Haberfeld House, one ofthe town’s architecturalicons.

Years before World War II, theHaberfeld family had a railroad spurbuilt to a marshy region outside town,where river gravel for the distillerywas plentiful. Later, during the Nazioccupation of Poland, the tracks wereused to bring Jews to the very end oftheir journey, the “old Jewish ramp”outside Birkenau, where SS doctorsconducted “selections” for the gaschambers.

In 1939, with Alfons Haberfeld at thedistillery’s helm, Germany invaded

Poland. At the time, Haberfeld and hiswife, Felicia, were returning from theWorld’s Fair in New York. The couplehad left their two-year-old daughter,Francziska, behind in Oswiecim, inthe care of her grandmother. Twoyears later, with Alfons and Felicia

Haberfeld trapped abroad, littleFrancziska was murdered at Belzec,the first of six Nazi death camps tooperate with stationary gassing facili-ties.

In 1967, more than two decadesafter rebuilding their lives in the

United States, Alfons and FeliciaHaberfeld made a return trip toOswiecim. The distillery was understate ownership, and Haberfeld

House was in disrepair, they notedwith sorrow. Disturbingly, a new waveof anti-Semitism was forcing Shoahsurvivors and their children to fleePoland only one generation after theHolocaust.

The trip to Poland was too much tobear for Alfons Haberfeld.“Emotionally devastated” by theencounter, he died three years later,aged 66.

During the 1990s, long after thedeath of her husband, FeliciaHaberfeld attempted to reclaim familyownership of the mansion and factory.The widow’s case did not convinceauthorities, and she lived to see the

demolition of both buildings in 2003.With the structures gone, plans toopen a Jakob Haberfeld distillery –themed hotel inside the old factory fellthrough.

A few months after demolition ballserased Haberfeld House and the dis-

tillery, archeologists broke ground atthe site of the former GreatSynagogue. Among more than 400objects pulled from the grassy slopein 2004, decorative motif fragmentsevoked the the vast, storied complex,burned down by the Nazis in 1939.

According to one tale from JewishOswiecim, the Great Synagogue wasa place where worshipers could com-mune with souls of the dead who

occasionally gathered to pray there.One night long ago, it was said, the

souls of Oswiecim’s deceased Jewsreturned to the synagogue forSimchat Torah. Hearing strange nois-es coming from the fortress-like build-ing after midnight, people went toinvestigate. Suddenly, the GreatSynagogue filled with light, and a rev-elation was made.

“[The Jews] were informed that all ofthe worshippers were the purifiedsouls of former Oshpitzin [Oswiecim]Jews who have long been in Heaven,”according to the memoirs of YakovSeifter, who grew up in the town andrecalled the tale in his memoirs.

“Later, when the Torah Scrolls werereturned to the Holy Ark, they wereinstructed that when leaving the syna-gogue no one should face the exit,but all were to exit walking back-wards, so that they should not, Godforbid, be harmed,” wrote Seifter.

That Simchat Torah “death dance,”and the occasional visit of departedsouls on Shabbat, were part of JewishOswiecim’s flavor, cultivated during400 years of struggle and accom-plishment.

“It is really good to live in Vienna,but one ought to die in Oshpitzin,”according to a Yiddish saying.Because so many esteemed rabbiswere buried in Oswiecim, Jews fromthroughout the Galicia region attempt-ed to earn a final resting place amongthem.

“Anyone who merited to be buried[there] would not suffer travails at thetime of resurrection,” wrote Seifter ofhis boyhood home, once called “a cityof Israel” in Poland.

IN THE SHADOW OF AUSCHWITZ,

JEWISH LIFE ONCE FLOWED WITH SPIRITS

Ritual objects from the Great Synagogue of Oswiecim in Poland,

on display at the Auschwitz Jewish Center.

In Oswiecim, Poland, a water well is used in front of the so-called “Auschwitz Synagogue” near the

center of town, during the interwar period.

One of several photographs taken during the deportation of Oswiecim’s Jews to death camps and

ghettos in the region during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

January/February 2018 - Shevat/Adar 5778 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

BY MENUCHA CHANA LEVIN,AISH.COM

Giorgio Perlasca saved moreJews than the 1200 saved by

the famous Oskar Schindler. LikeRaoul Wallenberg, Perlasca boldlyrescued Hungarian Jews from underthe noses of the Nazis.

Yet the heroic Giorgio Perlasca stillremains unknown.

Born in 1910 in the small northernItalian town of Como and raised innearby Padua, Perlasca belonged to afamily consisting of civil servants andarmy officers. Initially attracted to ItalianFascism, he volunteered for the armywhen Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935.Later he joined the Corps of VolunteerTroops, an Italian force assisting therebel forces of Francisco Franco in theSpanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939.In gratitude for his service, Perlascareceived a letter of thanks fromFranco’s victorious new government.

The letter instructed the Spanish for-eign service to come to his aid if heshould ever need diplomatic assis-tance. At the time Perlasca had noidea how important this letter wouldturn out to be. Upon his return hometo Italy, he found Mussolini hadaligned with Hitler’s Third Reich andintroduced its racial laws in 1938.Perlesca, who had many Jewishfriends from Padua and from his armyservice, was strongly opposed to anti-Semitism. At one time he explained, “Iwas neither Fascist, nor anti-Fascist; I

was anti-Nazi.” From then on, hereserved his loyalty for the Italianking, Victor Emmanuel III.

In the early days of World War II,Perlasca avoided the draft by

working as an import-export agent for

the Italian army. He traveled toZagreb, Belgrade and EasternEurope, where he witnessed viciousAxis massacres of Jews and Serbs.

In 1942, he was assigned toBudapest. He found the Hungariancapital “full of life, where nothing waslacking and the restaurants and the-aters were full of seemingly carefreepeople, many of them Jews.” Tall,well-dressed and stylish, Perlascaalso enjoyed an active social life,which came to an abrupt end in

September 1943. Italy surrendered tothe Allies and the country was split.Some aligned themselves toMussolini’s Italian Social Republic,while others supported the king, whojoined the Allies. Perlasca was arrest-ed as an enemy alien and interned ina camp near the Austrian border.Escaping in October 1943, he madehis way back to Budapest.

Life changed drastically in March1944 when the Hungarian Nazisseized power. Perlasca ran to theSpanish consulate in Budapest.Producing his vital letter from theSpanish authorities, he received aSpanish passport with his new name:Jorge Perlasca.

He soon discovered that theSpanish consul, Angel Sanz Briz, wasissuing “letters of protection” forHungarian Jews who were forced towear the yellow Star of David. Theembassy was overwhelmed withrequests from stateless Jews seekingasylum in a neutral country such asSpain, or safe passage out of Europe.

The consulate also employed Jewsas clerks and housed them in eightapartment buildings under its control.Perlasca offered his assistance. TheHungarian government then discov-ered that the Spanish officials hadbeen harboring Jews in their housesand embassy, and began raiding thehomes of diplomats. With Budapest inchaos, Ángel Sanz Briz and other offi-cials received orders to vacate imme-diately. Sanz Briz left a note for

Perlasca imploring him to leave too.Realizing that without protectionmany Jews would be killed, Perlascabravely decided to remain.

The only person in the consulatewith a Spanish passport, he went tothe Hungarian Ministry of ForeignAffairs.

Utilizing his boundless chutzpahand a letter he had forged, Perlascasucceeded in convincing the officialshe had been appointed the newSpanish consul and that Sanz Brizwas simply on leave. The Germanand Hungarian officials believed hisappointment and his warning thatSpain would retaliate if forced to turnover their refugees. Fortunately forhim, they were unable to confirmPerlasca’s new status with Madrid,and he was permitted to continueworking.

“I couldn’t stand the sight of peoplebeing branded like animals . . .. Icouldn’t stand seeing children beingkilled,” he stated. “I did what I had todo.”

Perlasca described his situation: “Atfirst, I didn’t know what to do, but thenI began to feel like a fish in water. Icontinued giving out protective pass-es and looked after the Jews in the‘safe houses’ flying the Spanish flag.As the proverb says, ‘Opportunitymakes the thief.’”

The new “consul” organized food,medical aid and protection for 5,200Jews in the consulate’s apartments.

(Continued on page 7)

THE ITALIAN WALLENBERG

WHO SAVED OVER 5000 HUNGARIAN JEWS

BY MITCHELL BARD, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

One of the reasons given for thefailure to prevent the

Holocaust, or to save some of the sixmillion Jews murdered by the Nazisand their collaborators, is that theworld was unaware of the slaughter.The Nazis were good at concealingtheir heinous crimes, but the Allieslearned early in the war about theFinal Solution. Worse, everyone knewJews were in danger before WorldWar II began; nevertheless, Westernleaders failed to act when the evi-dence was in front of their eyes.

In less than 48 hours, beginning onNovember 9, 1938, at least 96 Jewswere killed in Germany and Austria,7,500 businesses were destroyed,and countless Jewish cemeteries andschools were vandalized. A total of30,000 Jews were sent to concentra-tion camps. The pogrom becameknown as the “Night of Broken Glass”or Kristallnacht. A member of theHitler Youth admitted that afterKristallnacht, “no German old enoughto walk could ever plead ignorance ofthe persecution of the Jews, and noJews could harbor any delusion that

Hitler wanted Germany anything butjudenrein, clean of Jews.”

It was not only the Germans andAustrians who witnessed this sav-agery. The front page of the New YorkTimes (November 11) reported “awave of destruction, looting, andincendiarism unparalleled in Germanysince the Thirty Years War and, inEurope generally, since theBolshevist Revolution.” The storysaid, “National Socialist cohorts tookvengeance on Jewish shops, officesand synagogues for the murder by ayoung Polish Jew of Ernst vom Rath,third secretary of the GermanEmbassy in Paris.”

Other than condemning the vio-lence — five days later — and tem-porarily withdrawing the U.S. ambas-sador from Germany, PresidentFranklin Roosevelt did nothing. OtherWestern leaders were appalled butnot sufficiently concerned to take anyaction against Germany. They werenot roused to come to the aid of theJews even after Hitler told the Czechforeign minister in January 1939: “Weshall exterminate the Jews.”

Roosevelt was paralyzed by the cli-mate of isolationism, xenophobia andanti-Semitism. Rather than risingabove it, and taking even the relative-

ly benign step of opening America’sdoors to Jewish immigrants, the pres-ident followed public opinion andbarred our gates, condemning thou-sands to death. He went so far as tooppose Congressional legislation toallow 20,000 Jewish children into thecountry. That was before the war.After it began, the President and hisadvisers minimized Nazi persecutionof Jews to rationalize their inaction.

A precedent was set in May 1897when the U.S. ambassador to Persiainterceded on behalf of the Jews inTehran who were being subjected tomob violence by Muslims. His actionswere approved “in the interest of com-mon humanity.” American ambassa-dors in 1939–45 could have acted inthat interest, as Swedish diplomatRaoul Wallenberg did, by providingvisas or passports to as many Jewsas possible. This would have beenthe least U.S. officials could do.

U.S. officials could have warned theNazis earlier and more frequentlyabout the consequences of harmingJews, and then acted after learning ofGerman crimes. For example, stepstoward prosecuting war criminalsmight have begun before the end ofthe war to send the message thatGermans who were caught faced

serious consequences.The Red Cross could have given

greater publicity to the Nazi genocide,used its influence to obtain access tomore camps and mobilized worldopinion to crusade for an end to theatrocities. Hitler might not have beenmoved by an outcry, but the absenceof one allowed him to conclude thathis annihilation of the Jews was of lit-tle concern to his enemies.

General Dwight Eisenhoweracknowledged publicizing atrocitieswould increase support for the wareffort when he was asked if the widepublication of such information wasgoing to be useful. “I think the peopleat home ought to know what they arefighting for and the kind of personthey are fighting,” he said.Unfortunately, Eisenhower said thisafter the liberation of the camps.

Kristallnacht was the beginning ofthe end for German Jewry, andtelegraphed the fate of all Jews whowould come under Nazi control. Hitlersaw from the world’s reaction that hecould murder Jews with impunity.Less than three years later, the depor-tation of German Jews to their deathsbegan. Fewer than 10,000 of the131,800 German Jews targeted forextermination by the Nazis survived.

WE KNEW, BUT FAILED TO STOP THE HOLOCAUST

Giorgio Perlasca, September 1935.


Wordwings.By Sydelle Pearl. Guernica Editions:

Toronto, 2017. 203 pp. $20 softcover.

REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN

“For a moment, I close my eyes andimagine myself transformed into agreat white swan flying over the walland barbed wire of the Ghetto until Iarrive in a beautiful green meadowvery far away — somewhere in aHans Christian Andersen fairytale.”

Rivke from Wordwings

I’m sure that the readers ofMartyrdom and Resistance have

all seen clips of films taken inside theghettos, ironically, usually by theNazis. These clips show the inhumanconditions Jews were forced to “live”under. They show the men andwomen — often dressed in rags andstarving — forced to inhabit this hell-on-earth. Most heartbreaking of all,these clips also show us Jewish chil-dren: frequently orphaned, lost andalone, or perhaps with siblings or oth-ers like themselves, disheveled andhungry, born into an unfriendly, mur-derous world, neither understood bythem nor of their making. Sometimeswe see these little ones singing ordancing by way of begging for food orsome little money from adult passers-by in the ghetto who themselves havelittle or nothing. Sometimes we seethem simply standing there crying.Yes, we see them . . . but we neverhear them or are ever truly privy totheir thoughts or feelings....

In Sydelle Pearl’s fictional volume,

Wordwings, about a child-diarist’sexperiences in the Warsaw ghetto —twelve-year-old Rivke Rosenblum —it’s as if we suddenly hear one ofthese children speak. Moreover, Pearlallows us entry into herthoughts. Thus amongother things, we learnof her love for hergrandfather, who sellspillows he embroiderson the market in theghetto. We can feelRivke’s compassion forothers in the ghettothrough her descrip-tions of them — like thelady who sells half-rot-ten potatoes on themarket, and the beggarwith his little glove pup-pet whom she hasfondly nicknamed the“Peddler of Wind.” Werecognize Rivke’s admiration for thecourage shown by Gittel and her twinsister Ruchel, children who, becausethey don’t look Jewish, have becomesmugglers bringing needed goods(usually food) into the ghetto from theAryan side of Warsaw — a historical-ly accurate depiction. Oftentimes, itactually was Jewish children who did-n’t look Jewish that kept ghetto Jewsalive through their smuggling of food-stuffs.

Indeed, Pearl’s book gains espe-cial depth, and adds to the knowl-

edge of the Holocaust for students ofthe period, when it weaves people

who truly lived and played importantlesser-known roles in the Warsawghetto into the narrative. For exam-ple, we meet Batya, whose full namewas actually Batya Temkin-Berman, a

dedicated librarian.She had a specialplace in her heart forthe children in theWarsaw ghetto. Shewould bring thembooks to read, wherev-er they were, booksthat offered joy andnurtured imaginations,promising a tomorrow.Pearl has Rivke helpBatya in distributingthese books to the chil-dren. She also has hertell them stories —some of Rivke’s ownmaking. The story of“The Jewish Geese” is

especially wonderful. I leave that forthe readers of Wordwings to discover.

Another individual Rivke interactswith and who actually lived in theWarsaw ghetto is Gela Seksztajn, anartist. Gela taught art to the children inthe ghetto, she drew them, and shealso helped “with costumes andscenery for their plays.” For, in fact,Adam Czerniakow, the Jewish headof the ghetto, and Janusz Korczak,who cared for many of the orphanedlittle ones in the ghetto — both notedin Wordwings — were very concernedwith these children enjoying somekind of childhood.... Thus, there were

puppet shows and children’s playsdone. In Pearl’s volume we readabout Gela’s work with the children.Then, with Pearl taking the liberty of afiction writer, we also read about Gelashowing Rivke how her diary, basical-ly Rivke’s writings in the margins of abeloved book of fairy tales by HansChristian Anderson, will, alongsideGela’s drawings of ghetto children,become part of a secret archive called“Oyneg Shabes” — in truth, a docu-mentation collected by Dr. EmanuelRingelblum, recounting the history ofthe Warsaw ghetto. For in Pearl’s vol-ume, Ringelblum has asked Rivke,impressed by her work, to contributeher writings to this secret archive tobe buried so future generations willknow what happened in the ghetto....

Rivke’s reaction:“I think of my diary placed inside

one of those milk cans in this cellarand then planted in the earth. In myimagination, my words and the wordsof Hans Christian Andersen push upthrough a tiny crack in the dirt andturn themselves into wings....”

And, if you think about it, Rivke’swish came true. Wordwings hasmade it possible for her words to turnthemselves into wings, flying milesand years . . . all the way to us. . . rep-resentative of so many innocent chil-dren whose words were lost....

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

WORDWINGS

BY RACHEL E. GROSS,SMITHSONIAN.COM

The massacre started with ablood libel. That wouldn’t be

unusual, except this wasn’t the MiddleAges or even Nazi Germany — it was1946, a year after the end of WorldWar II.

A few days earlier, an 8-year-oldPolish boy named Henryk Błaszczykhad gone missing from his home inKielce, a city of 50,000 in southeast-ern Poland. When Henryk reap-peared two days later, he told his fam-ily he had been held by a man in abasement. As his father walked him tothe police station to recount his story,the boy pointed at a man who waswalking near the large corner buildingat 7 Planty Street.

He did it, Henryk said.The building, which was owned by

the Jewish Committee and housedmany Jewish institutions, was hometo up to 180 Jews. It did not have abasement. Most of the residents wererefugees, having survived the horrorsof the death camps that decimatedmore than 90 percent of the PolishJewish population. After the war, theyhad returned to their homeland with

the hope that they could leave thepast behind them. They had no ideathey were about to become the targetof anti-Semitic aggression once again— this time from the Polish neighborsthey lived alongside.

On the morning of July 4, a smallgroup of state militia and local

police approached the building toinvestigate the alleged kidnapping. Asrumors of misdeeds spread, a versionof the centuries-old “blood libel” thatJews were kidnapping Christian chil-

dren for ritual sacrifice, a mob beganto assemble. But it was the police andmilitary who started the violence,recounts Polish historian Jan T. Grossin his 2006 book Fear: Anti-Semitismin Poland After Auschwitz. Though

they were ostensi-bly there to protectcivilians and keepthe peace, officersinstead opened fireand began drag-ging Jews into thecourtyard, wherethe townspeoplesavagely attackedthe Jewish resi-dents.

That day, Jewishmen and womenwere stoned,robbed, beaten withrifles, stabbed withb a y o n e t s a n dhurled into a river

that flowed nearby. Yet while otherKielce residents walked by, none didanything to stop it. It wasn’t until noonthat another group of soldiers wassent in to break up the crowd andevacuate the wounded and dead. Inthe afternoon, a group of metal work-

ers ran toward the building, armedwith iron bars and other weapons.The residents of 7 Planty wererelieved; they thought these men hadcome to help. Instead, the metalworkers began brutally attacking andkilling those still alive inside the build-ing.

The violence went on for hours. AsMiriam Guterman, one of the lastremaining survivors of the pogrom,put it in the 2016 documentary filmBogdan’s Journey: “I couldn’t believethat these were humans.”

All told, 42 Jews were killed that dayat 7 Planty and around the city, includ-ing a newborn baby and a womanwho was six months pregnant.Another 40 were injured. Yet beyondthe horror of those physical facts, theevent would take on a larger historicalsignificance. After the Holocaust,many Jews had dreamed of returningto their native lands. Kielce shatteredthat dream; for Jews, Poland couldnever again be home.

“[Kielce] really is a symbol of theexodus of Jewish survivors fromPoland, and a symbol sometimes thatthere is no future in Poland for Jews,”says Joanna Sliwa, a historian with


KIELCE: THE POST-HOLOCAUST POGROM

THAT POLAND IS STILL FIGHTING OVER

Archival image of 7 Planty.


BY SHELDON KIRSHNER, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

As improbable as it may sound,the Caribbean island of

Jamaica was a wartime haven forEuropean Jewish refugees fleeingFascism and anti-Semitism. Jamaica,then a British colony, began admittingimperiled Jews in 1938 and continuedwelcoming them through the early1940s. This little-known footnote inthe annals of the Holocaust couldeasily have fallen through the cracksof history. It does not thanks to DianaCooper-Clark’s book, Dreams of Re-Creation in Jamaica, published byFriesen Press in Canada.

The refugees, mainly of Polish andDutch ancestry, waited out World WarII in the Gibraltar and Up Park intern-ment camps in Kingston, the capital ofJamaica. Cooper-Clark, a professorin the departments of English andHumanities at York University inToronto, describes their experiencesthrough the prism of “hope, disap-pointment, pain, loss” and theprospect of a new life.

The author, whose interest in theHolocaust was sparked by a book sheread at the age of six about the Naziwar criminal Adolf Eichmann, believesthat about 1,400 Jews found refuge inthese makeshift camps. They leftJamaica after the war, rebuilding theirlives in countries such as the UnitedStates, Canada, Holland and Britain.

Jamaica beckoned as a place ofrefuge after the British Foreign Officeinformed the Joint Distribution Board,a Jewish organization, that Jewishrefugees could come to the island if itpaid for their upkeep for at least ayear and if the newcomers passed asecurity test ensuring they were notspies for the Axis powers.

She leaves the impression thatmany of the refugees were brought toJamaica by Portuguese ships such asthe Serpa Pinto and the SS SaoThome. Upon arriving in Kingston,they were treated like enemy aliens,their passports stamped with thenotation: “Permitted to land … butrestricted to close supervision pend-ing result of thorough investigation.”

Much to their disappointment, theywere not permitted to look for jobs.And as time elapsed, some com-plained about conditions in theGibraltar camp. One indignantrefugee went as far as to likenGibraltar to a Nazi concentrationcamp. “The comparison is an obscen-ity,” she writes, flatly dismissing theclaim. “Gibraltar camp was a confinedlocation for internees, but it certainlydid not resemble the architectures ofdoom that were the Nazi concentra-tion camps.”

Cooper-Clark adds that therefugees were fed reasonably well.They were no worse off than “the peo-ple of the island, and they were eatingbetter than many impoverishedJamaicans.” She goes on to write:“People in Europe had not seen the

kind of food served in the camp foryears, such as meat, fruit, vegetables,butter and sugar. Ersatz coffee wasall that Europeans had had for years,while … the refugees often had BlueMountain coffee, one of the best inthe world.”

Rejecting the allegation that thevenerable Jamaican Jewish

community was indifferent to therefugees, she contends that somelocal Jews were indeed helpful. Citingan example, she says that Owen KarlHenriques, a prominent business-man, worked tirelessly on their behalf.

In an interesting aside, she sketchesa pen portrait of Jamaica’s long-estab-lished, highly assimilated Jewish com-munity. Pointing out that mixed mar-riages have taken a drastic toll on its

size since the 1880s, Cooper-Clarksays the descendants of such unionsare far removed from Judaism. Shegives three examples. Chris Blackwell,a musician and recording executivewho has worked with Bob Marley andthe Rolling Stones, is related to theJewish Lindo family. Harry Belafonte,the singer, has Jewish roots. ColinPowell, the former U.S. secretary ofstate, is descended from Jews on hisfather’s side.

In another aside, she informs thereader that 65 Jews from theCaribbean islands and CentralAmerica, almost all of themSephardim, were murdered duringthe Holocaust. It’s a largely unknownfact, even to those familiar with theHolocaust.

Mexico tops this list with 23 victims,followed by Cuba (19), Curaçao (15),Dominican Republic (two), Trinidadand Tobago (one), Saint Thomas,Virgin Islands (one), Guatemala(one), El Salvador (one), Nicaragua(one) and Guadeloupe (one).Duringthis period, she says, the Nazis andtheir collaborators killed 160,000Sephardic Jews.

Much to her credit, Cooper-Clarkhas rescued this obscure episodefrom oblivion. Although Dreams ofRe-Creation in Jamaica is a work-manlike account well worth delvinginto, it’s disjointed and repetitious attimes. These defects, though, aremere quibbles when compared to thebroad sweep of her pathbreakingbook.

JAMAICA WAS A WARTIME HAVEN FOR JEWISH REFUGEES


BY OFER ADERET, HAARETZ

The marvelous story of MaliBruckenthal, who was born in

1914 in Munich and died at KibbutzHafetz Haim at the age of 103, is con-tained in testimony that she gave toYad Vashem, the Holocaust memorialin Jerusalem, in 2002. Her testimony,which also appears in a book pub-lished in 2008 by her family, reveal anextraordinary woman — resourceful,courageous, determined and faith-driven.

Amalia (Mali) Landau was born in1914 in Munich into a religiouslyobservant family. She immigrated toPalestine in 1935 and settled in TelAviv. The following year, she marriedRabbi Hillel Bruckenthal, who hadimmigrated from Poland. The couplemoved to the youth training farm, inKfar Sava, of the ultra-OrthodoxPoalei Agudat Yisrael movement,whose members were later amongthe founders of Kibbutz Hafetz Haim,east of Ashdod.

A few months later, they returned toEurope as envoys of the Zionistmovement. They were sent to the cityof Enschede, in Holland, where theyran an agricultural training center foryoung refugees from Germany whowere waiting for British-issued immi-gration certificates for Palestine. Thecouple’s first three children, all ofthem sons, were born in Enschede.

In 1940, immediately after theGermans invaded Holland, Hillel wasarrested by the S.S. Initially he wasincarcerated in a detention camp inHolland. Mali did the unthinkable, andwent to meet with the country’s Nazigovernor in order to demand her hus-band’s release. “He didn’t think I wasJewish — a Jewish woman doesn’t

allow herself to enter the lion’s den,”she said in her testimony. She after-ward explained that she brought herchutzpah from the Land of Israel,where she was already a proud pio-neer.

Subsequently she actually reachedthe camp in which her husband wasimprisoned and, amid a confrontationwith S.S. personnel, was able to meet

with him, although she could notsecure his release. Hillel was thensent to Germany. Now they couldcommunicate only by letters, whichhe sent her through the Red Cross. Inone such letter he wrote that sheshould visit her aunt “Hester” (theDutch name for “Esther”; the wordmeans “hide” in Hebrew). In otherwords, he was hinting to her that sheshould go into hiding.

Mali remained nearby with her threesons and about 70 young aspiringpioneers, for whom she was responsi-ble. She went on managing the center

for two and a half years under theNazi regime. In September 1942, shewas sent with her sons to theWesterbork camp, a departure pointfor transports to the death camps. Onthe way to Westerbork, during a stopmade by the train, she somehow con-nived to get off with the children andensconce herself in a local café,under the Nazis’ eyes. In fact, she

says in her testimony,the children later playedwith Nazi officers on thetrain.

She did not fullytake in her situa-

tion until she reachedthe camp and was herd-ed with the children ontoa truck. “Darkness, youcan’t see a thing. Isearch for my children’sheads, and say: Holdonto my skirt so we willstay together,” she relat-ed. A month later, sheand the children wereplaced on the list of priv-ileged prisoners whowere “exchange candi-dates”: Because shewas a citizen of the

British Mandate administration inPalestine, the Nazis wanted toexchange her and others with a simi-lar status for German citizens whohad been arrested by the British, inparticular women from the GermanTempler sect who lived in Palestine.

“I didn’t believe it when they told meI was going to the Land of Israel withthe children,” she recounted in hertestimony. “When someone fromWesterbork goes to a place otherthan Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen — itjust couldn’t be,” Mali said. It was, shesuggested, like someone being noti-

fied that tomorrow he was flying to themoon.

The next stop was Vienna, thecenter for transports of the so-

called exchange people from Europe.While they waited for the train thatwould take them on the next leg oftheir journey, Mali went into an emptycafé in the Austrian capital and struckup a conversation with the saleswom-an. “The café was always full of Jews.One of them wrote all the time, maybea book, another made music, andthere were merchants who had meet-ings. And now there are no Jews inVienna. Who will come to me?” sherecalled the saleswoman saying toher. To which Mali said, in rebuttal,“You are to blame, you wanted to gotogether with the Germans.”

From there she and her sons weretaken by train to Istanbul, where theexchange itself took place under theauspices of the Red Cross. Then,under British supervision, the trans-port proceeded to Palestine viaTurkey and Syria. In the leg betweenTurkey and Aleppo, Amalia and theother exchange people traveled on aluxury train. “There were even nightbeds for everyone. Everyonereceived such and such portions ofwine. People who had already beenin the ghetto for years and had noteaten, attacked the food,” she related.

Once back in Palestine, MaliBruckenthal was among the foundersof kibbutz Hafetz Haim, and after thewar, was reunited with her husband,who returned from a German POWcamp in July 1945. “He looked awful-ly bad, but never mind, he was alive,”she recounted. The couple had sixmore children in the kibbutz, whereHillel was appointed the rabbi andschool principal. Mali was the house-mother of the guest house.

“AND THEN THE NAZIS TOLD ME,

YOU’RE GOING TO PALESTINE”

Bruckenthal and her three oldest sons. They were on the list of

privileged prisoners who were “exchange candidates.”

BY DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER,AISH.COM

After 1945 the scale of the horrorof the Holocaust came to light.

Faced with unprecedented cruelty,much of the world responded withunprecedented vigor. The new term“crimes against humanity” was coinedin the subsequent Nuremberg trials,as Allied lawyers called senior Nazisto account.

Yet fewer than 300 Nazis facedjudgment in the Nuremberg trials,while up to 9,000 Nazis by somecounts were spirited away fromEurope after World War II, helped bysympathetic agents and friends. Manyfound new lives in South America. Bythe late 1940s, much of SouthAmerica, particularly Brazil, Chile andArgentina, was a haven for thousandsof Nazis eluding justice. Germanprosecutors in recent years have esti-

mated that Brazil accepted between1,500 and 2,000 Nazis, Chile took inbetween 500 and 1,000, andArgentinians welcomed up to 5,000Nazis to their country.

Many South American countrieswere home to large communities ofethnic Germans during and afterWorld War II. In many cases, thesecommunities were sympathetic to andeven welcomed Nazis, helping themto evade justice. In the mid-1980s, itwas estimated that 3.6 million ofBrazil’s 130 million citizens, one mil-lion out of Argentina’s 28 million peo-ple, and 200,000 out of 3.5 million cit-izens of Paraguay were ethnicallyGerman. “Many of them maintain thelanguage and traditions of their fore-fathers,” the New York Times noted in1985. “Because of their strong cultur-al identity, the older German farmingcommunities in southern Brazil andsouthern Paraguay have often beenaccused of harboring Nazis. In 1962,

the Chilean town of Colonia Dignidadwas found to be home to 300 familieswho’d fled Germany after World WarII, finding a welcome — and no ques-

tions asked — among their compatri-ots in South America.”

In 1955, General AlfredoStroessner, a grandson of immigrants

from Bavaria, opened Paraguay toformer Nazis. In the 1930s, Brazil hadthe biggest Nazi party in the worldafter Germany, with 40,000 members;many of these Brazilian Nazis wel-comed German Nazis after the war. InArgentina, future president JuanPeron spent part of the war, from1939 to 1941, working in Argentina’sembassy in Italy and openly admiredthe politics of Benito Mussolini andAdolf Hitler. When Peron becamepresident of Argentina in 1946, heordered the establishment of secretchannels — dubbed “ratlines” — toferry thousands of Nazis from ports inSpain and Italy out of Europe and intoLatin America.

Historian Uki Goni, in his 2002book The Real Odessa:

Smuggling the Nazis to Peron’sArgentina, documents that in 1946Juan Peron sent secret word toFrance that Nazi officials facing pros-


NAZI HAVENS IN SOUTH AMERICA

Juan Peron.


(Continued from page3)An intelligence network warned him inadvance of possible Nazi searches.

The diplomatic missions of fourother neutral states — Portugal,Switzerland, the Vatican andSweden — also helped save Jewishlives.

In the following months Perlascadid more than organize the hiding,

feeding and transport of thousands ofJews. He came up with a brilliant planto use an old Spanish law which gaveSpanish-born Jews full citizenshipand protection. Perlasca successfullyissued fake safe-conduct passesclaiming that Hungarian Jews wereactually Spanish-born. The passesread:

“The relatives of all Spaniards inHungary require their presence inSpain. Until we are able to reestablishcommunications and the journey backis possible, they will remain hereunder the protection of the govern-ment of Spain.”

Giorgio Perlasca teamed up withSweden’s Raoul Wallenberg, AngeloRotta from the Vatican and FriedrichBorn from the International Red Crossto vouch for Jews across Hungary.Together they helped organize andsecure the escape of thousands ofJews.

However, Raoul Wallenberg pos-sessed plentiful funds, but there wasno one to pay Perlasca a salary.When consular funds ran out, he usedhis own money, then that of the localJewish committee. Finally he had toask for funds from the families hidingin the apartments.

A fearless man, Perlasca acted as ifhe really was a protected diplomat,openly risking his own life to save oth-

ers.

One December day in 1944, hewent to the train station and

began arguing with a German officer,demanding the release of two Jewishchildren on a train headed forAuschwitz. Also present was RaoulWallenberg, the Swedish diplomatwhose similar daring acts also savedmany Jewish lives.

“A young SS major pulled out hispistol, pointing it at me,” Perlascalater recalled. “Wallenberg, standingnearby, shouted at him that he could

not treat a Spanish diplomatic repre-sentative like this. Then, at a certainmoment, an SS lieutenant-colonelarrived and asked what was happen-ing. He listened, then ordered themajor coldly to do nothing morebecause, ‘Sooner or later’, he said,‘we’ll get the children anyway.’ Theywent away, and it was then thatWallenberg told me that the SScolonel was the notorious AdolfEichmann.”

Perlasca once noticed some Nazisoldiers leading a group of Jews totheir execution. Using his bold air ofauthority, he insisted that the soldiers

release the prisoners to his care. Heoverruled their protests and eventual-ly they walked away, leaving the Jewssafely behind.

When the Red Army bombardedBudapest towards the end of 1944,the Ministry of the Interior planned tomove all Jews from the consularapartments into the ghetto, then set iton fire.

Perlasca refused to believe this hor-rific plan would be put into effect untilhe saw Jews from the Portuguese-protected apartments being marched

to the ghetto. Rushing tothe minister of the interior,he begged him to stop theplans, but his humanitari-an and religious argu-ments had no effect.

Perlasca then switchedto threats, warning that ifthe Spanish governmentwas not assured within 48hours that the Jews underits protection would besafe, all Hungarians inSpain would be impris-oned and their property

confiscated. He further added that theBrazilian and Uruguayan govern-ments would be urged to follow suit.The minister of the interior decided toabandon his vicious plan.

When Soviet troops enteredBudapest in January 1945, the Jewswere finally able to leave the apart-ments. However, the Russians forcedPerlasca to work as a street cleaner.

After a few weeks he was able toleave for Istanbul and eventuallyreturned to Italy. There, few peoplewould credit his story. “My wife didn’tsay outright that she didn’t believeme,” he recalled. “But I was sure she

was not convinced.”So Perlasca ceased speaking about

his exploits in Budapest and lived inrelative anonymity.

The full facts of his extraordinarystory did not emerge until the

late 1980s, when some HungarianJews recalled the events of wartimeBudapest at a family gathering.

“Do you remember that Spanishconsul?” someone asked.

Several did, and they placed anotice in Budapest’s Jewish newspa-per asking for other testimonies.Gradually Perlasca’s story emergedand the tributes finally began to flow.In 1989 the Hungarian Parliamentawarded him its highest honor and astatue was dedicated to him inBudapest. Israel accorded him hon-orary citizenship and dedicated a treeto him at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

As part of its Righteous Among theNations project, the RaananaSymphonette Orchestra in Israelcommissioned an original orchestralpiece, His Finest Hour, from compos-er Moshe Zorman in tribute toPerlasca. The piece had its debut at aconcert attended by Perlasca’s sonFranco and daughter-in-law LucianaAmadia.

In 1990 he was honored in NewYork by the Raoul WallenbergCommittee.

The Spanish king awarded him theOrder of Isabella and a pension.

In Italy he became the subject of abook and a feature film.

Like many Holocaust heroes, hedownplayed his valor to the end.Deploring the fuss, he asked,“Wouldn’t you have done the same? Ifyou had seen Jewish children beingshot in the streets?”

THE ITALIAN WALLENBERG

WHO SAVED OVER 5000 HUNGARIAN JEWS

Perlasca rescuing Jews at the train station at Budapest.

BY OFER ADERET, HAARETZ

About 30 Jewish families fromaround the world participated in

a special commemorative ceremonyin Germany for a relative they nevermet — Karolina Cohn, who was mur-dered in the Holocaust. A goldenmemorial “stumbling stone” wasplaced at the entrance to Cohn’sFrankfurt home after she was identi-fied as the owner of a pendant discov-ered at Sobibor concentration camp.

The stumbling stone (Stolperstein)project, an initiative of artist GunterDemnig, began about 20 years ago;stones bearing inscriptions withnames and life dates are placed atthe entrances to homes of Jews thathad been expelled and sent to theirdeath by the Nazis.

During an archaeological excava-tion of the Sobibor concentrationcamp, in what had been German-occupied Poland, a pendant was

found that bore a July 3, 1929, birth-date with the words “Mazal tov,” thecity Frankfurt, the Hebrew letter “hei”(standing for God) and stars of David.

A protracted archival and historicalstudy into people born in Frankfurt onthat date concluded that the pendanthad belonged to Cohn, who was killedat age 14. Later her relatives werelocated in Germany, Britain, the U.S.,Israel and other countries.

Karolina Cohn’s pendant wasfound at Sobibor by the Israeli

archaeologist Yoram Haimi and hisPolish colleague Wojciech Mazurek.

The two found tens ofthousands of items thathad belonged to Jewsmurdered at the camp,including jewelry, cloth-ing, cutlery and more.“The amount of items wefound buried in the earthis inconceivable,” Haimitold Haaretz.

Following Haaretz’sreport on the discovery ofCohn’s pendant, amateurgenealogists, including

Chaim Motzen of Israel, begansearching for more information abouther life. Ultimately about 100 peoplerelated to her were found.

“We proved that her name and his-tory have not been erased,” Motzentold Haaretz.

Although her pendant was found atSobibor, it is not clear whether Cohnmet her death there. According to YadVashem, she was banished fromFrankfurt to Minsk, Belarus, onNovember 11, 1941, after which alltrace of her vanished. She may havebeen murdered there, or survived andbeen banished to Sobibor inSeptember 1943, when the Minskghetto, which had been created afterthe German invasion of the SovietUnion, was liquidated.

If she did reach Sobibor, it seems shelost her pendant on the way to the gaschambers. If she was murdered inMinsk, it’s possible a family member orfriend kept the pendant and lost it at thedeath camp upon their own murder.

The ceremony, placing a “stumblingstone” by the entrance to what hadbeen her home, was funded by theClaims Conference. Cohn had livedthere with her parents and sister, whowere also killed in the Holocaust.

JEWISH FAMILIES GATHER IN GERMANY

TO REMEMBER A HOLOCAUST VICTIM THEY NEVER KNEW

“Stolpersteine” (stumbling blocks) have been laid for Karolina

Cohn and her family at a place where they once lived.

(Continued from page 1)not the heart,” said Daniel Uziel, its historicaladviser. “We are asking the visitor to lookbeyond the image and examine the wider his-torical perspective.”

Perhaps most insightful are the everydayphotos taken by the Jewish victims them-selves in various ghettos, some in the serviceof the Nazis and some in stealth in a desper-ate attempt to document the atrocities against

them to serve as future proof. For example,Zvi Kadushin, an underground photographerin the Kovno ghetto, did so at great personalrisk and produced essential documentationas a result.

“They used those images in order to presentto the Germans their usefulness, their effec-tiveness,” said Uziel. “On the other hand, theJews also seek, without permission, to docu-ment the crimes done by the Germans.”

Six million Jews were killed by GermanNazis and their collaborators during theHolocaust, wiping out a third of world Jewry.Israel’s main Holocaust memorial day is in thespring — marking the anniversary of theWarsaw ghetto uprising — whilethe United Nations designated January 27 asInternational Holocaust Remembrance Day,commemorating the date of the liberation ofthe Auschwitz death camp in 1945.

That’s the day Grossman considers hersecond birthday, since she was deliveredfrom the horrors of the camp to freedom.

“God opened the skies and sent us angelsand rescued us,” she recalled, upon seeingthe Soviet troops who later filmed her and thenumber tattooed on her arm. “I am happy itwas documented.”

Grossman’s father was gassed and inciner-ated in the camp’s crematorium, and she andher twin sister Olga were subjected to theruthless experiments of the infamous Nazidoctor Josef Mengele. She said her resist-ance to him is what kept her alive.

“I told myself what he would tell me to do, Iwould do the opposite, because he had noright to do these things to me,” she said. “Hetook away my body because he could do that,but he couldn’t take away my mind.”

Far less eager to discuss their experienceswere identical twins Lia Huber and JudithBarnea, both 80. Seeing the images, and

themselves in them, brought back memoriesboth had spent decades suppressing.

“It is buried inside our hearts and we don’ttalk about it,” said Huber. “If you want to sur-vive and continue life, you must continue andlive with what you got and carry on.”

Photos from various chapters of the Nazipersecution of Jews were scattered acrossdesks to depict the chaos in which they weretaken. But it was the displaying of Nazi prop-

aganda in the museum in particular thatposed a difficult dilemma for Yad Vashem.Vivian Uria, the exhibit’s curator, said theytried to balance this with artifacts and testimo-ny of survivors and victims who told theirpoint of view. Ultimately, though, she said thevisuals were essential and it was up to theviewer to look back at that dark era with a crit-ical eye toward all those who documented it.

“The camera and its manipulative powerhave tremendous power and far-reachinginfluence,” she said. “Although photographypretends to reflect reality as it is, it is in fact aninterpretation of it.”

Washington — On January 26, PresidentTrump marked International HolocaustRemembrance Day by mourning the six mil-lion Jews killed in the Nazi genocide.

“Tomorrow marks the 73rd anniversary ofthe liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazideath and concentration camp in Nazi-occu-pied Poland. We take this opportunity torecall the Nazis’ systematic persecution andbrutal murder of six million Jewish people. Intheir death camps and under their inhumanrule, the Nazis also enslaved and killed mil-lions of Slavs, Roma, gays, people with dis-abilities, priests and religious leaders, andothers who courageously opposed their brutalregime.

“Our nation is indebted to the Holocaust’ssurvivors. Despite the trauma they carry withthem, they continue to educate us by sharingtheir experiences, strength, wisdom and gen-erosity of spirit to advance respect for humanrights. Although they are aging and theirnumbers are slowly dwindling, their storiesremain with us, giving us the strength to com-bat intolerance, including anti-Semitism andall other forms of bigotry and discrimination.

New York — Calling on the world to “standtogether against the normalization of hate,”

United Nations Secretary-General AntónioGuterres has stressed in his message for theinternational day dedicated to honoringHolocaust victims that everyone has aresponsibility to quickly and decisively resistracism and violence.

Mr. Guterres recalled that the internationalday, marked annually on 27 January, was cre-ated to honor the memory of six million Jewishmen, women and children that perished in theHolocaust and countless others who lost theirlives as cruelty convulsed the world.

Yet, decades since the Second World War,there is still the persistence of anti-Semitismand an increase in other forms of prejudice.

Citing neo-Nazis and white supremacygroups as among the main purveyors ofextreme hatred, the UN chief said that toooften, vile views are moving from the marginsto the mainstream of societies and politics.

“Whenever and wherever humanity’s valuesare abandoned, we are all at risk,” stressedthe Secretary-General.

“All of us have a responsibility to quickly,clearly and decisively resist racism and vio-lence,” he stated, adding: “Through educationand understanding, we can build a future ofdignity, human rights and peaceful coexis-tence for all.”

For his part, UN High Commissioner forHuman Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein held thepainful day of remembrance for Holocaustvictims as forcing us “to contemplate the hor-rors to which bigotry, racism and discrimina-tion ultimately lead.”

“The sadistic brutality of the atrocities inflict-ed by the Nazi regime on Jews, Roma, Slavs,disabled people, political dissidents, homo-sexuals and others was nourished by layerupon layer of propaganda, falsifications and

incitement to hatred,” he stated, adding howthey were denigrated and smeared, “one afteranother, their rights were refused, and finally,even their humanity was denied.”

Mr. Zeid pointed to the statement of PrimoLevi, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenauconcentration camp: “It happened, therefore itcan happen again.”

“As we honor the victims of the Holocaust,”

Mr. Zeid continued, “wedge the need to prevanti-Semitism and all fogious hatred and discri

“In honoring the victwe must recognize thatother as fully equal in we be able to come togmany challenges facincluded.

At the same time, Director-General of tScientific and Cu(UNESCO), citied thstrengthen nations’ com

Recalling the possibcarries a memory that ing, she said, addingSemitism, in whatever this fight” in which evplay.

Boston — Holocaustlong been deployed tocide’s horrific immensfew people acted to sapied Europe. DurinHolocaust Remembrantion held in Boston, dcountries spoke aboefforts and their releva

“Rescue stories carrreality, and bring us bdimension we can ideHarrowitz, a HolocausBoston University and ers to address theCommittee–organized

Speaking of the neemate what happened” Italy’s consul-general to

De Santis, shared the Agnese Tribbioli, the convent in Florence whthe Nazis.

For hiding and p“Communist refugees,nized by Yad Vashe“Righteous Among the

Like dozens of coun


SIX MILLION VICTIMS OF THE

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

Survivors attend a commemoration event at the former Nazi German concentration

Auschwitz II-Birkenau on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Oswiecim, Pola

we must also acknowl-vent the recurrence oforms of racial and reli-imination today.tims of the Holocaust,t only if we regard eachdignity and rights will

gether to overcome theng humanity,” he con-

Audrey Azoulay, thethe UN Educational,ultural Organizationhe day as a call tommitment to peace.bility of the worst also

must be forward-look- that combating anti-form, “is at the heart of

veryone has a role to

t rescue accounts haveo “balance” the geno-ity, although relatively

ave Jews in Nazi-occu-ng an Internationalnce Day commemora-diplomats from severalout Holocaust rescuence to current events.ry us away from grim

back to a more humanntify with,” said Nancy

st studies professor atone of several speak-

e American Jewishgathering.d to “never underesti-during the Holocaust,

o New England, Nicola

rescue story of Mariamother superior of a

ho sheltered Jews from

protecting Jews as” Tribbioli was recog-

em as one of Italy’sNations.”

ntries, Italy commemo-

rates the Holocaust each year on January 27,the date when Auschwitz-Birkenau was liber-ated in 1945. When asked about the role ofHolocaust education in Italy, De Santisreferred to his country’s “strong literature andfilmography” with regard to the murder of8,000 Italian Jews in the death camps.

Attacks on the press, educators and other“intellectuals” were among the first actionstaken by the Nazis in occupied Poland, saidMarek Lesniewski-Laas, honorary consul-general of Poland to New England. He noted

the example of Krakow, a university city,where hundreds of professors and otherPolish leaders were murdered soon after theGerman invasion.

“By way of destruction of history, theyburned the archives in Warsaw,” saidLesniewski-Laas, whose remarks focused onTadeusz Gebethner, a well-known Polish soc-cer player who died after sustaining injuries inthe 1944 Warsaw uprising. During the war,Gebethner sheltered Jews and helped someof them flee to Hungary, efforts for which YadVashem honored him posthumously.

Despite concerns expressed about thepotential for rescue stories to obscure thetotality of what took place during theHolocaust, the accounts can be used to“widen our lens” and “think about ways tomeet the lessons of dark times today,” saidRobert Leikind, director of the AmericanJewish Committee’s New England chapterand event moderator.

“My brother and I owe our lives to thesenameless, courageous people,” said Leikind,whose father spent the war on the run fromthe Nazis in occupied France. According to

Leikind, his father would not have survivedwithout assistance from — for instance — thehead of a mosque who gave him false identi-ty papers, or countless townspeople whoturned a blind eye to his presence in some-one’s home.

“Even in times of overwhelming darkness,virtue can still survive,” said Leikind.

Switzerland — After the Second WorldWar, 90 per cent of the Holocaust survivorswere between 16 and 45 years old. Today, theyoungest survivors, who were born in the last

phase of the war, are over age 70.Some endured concentration and extermi-

nation camps, while others escaped by flee-ing or hiding.

For the majority, returning to their homelandwas not an option, so they emigrated to Israelor the United States.

It wasn’t until the investigations of theBergier Commission on dormant assets in thelate 1990s that the public became aware ofthe Holocaust survivors living inSwitzerland — most of whom traveled to thecountry only after the war.

The number of survivors is steadilydecreasing.

Switzerland — which now presides over theInternational Holocaust RemembranceAlliance that unites governments and expertsto strengthen and promote Holocaust educa-tion and remembrance globally — sponsoredthe exhibition on survivors at United NationsHeadquarters in New York.

“Portraits of Holocaust Survivors” tells thestories of individuals who are among the lastsurvivors, and how they carried on with theirlives in Switzerland after the war. The exhibi-

tion is one of several events surrounding theannual observance of the International Day ofCommemoration in memory of the victims ofthe Holocaust.

Anita Winter, President of the GamaraalFoundation, which helps alleviate financial dis-tress of Holocaust survivors, is the child of sur-vivors. Seeing the difficulty with which the sur-vivors spoke of their experiences, she feltdeeply thankful to them for sharing their stories.

According to Ms. Winter, many told her per-sonally that they felt it was their duty to speakon behalf of the six million who can no longerspeak for themselves. For her, their resilienceis amazing.

Born in 1932, Nina Weil lived in what istoday the Czech Republic. In 1942, she wasdeported to Theresienstadt and later arrivedat Auschwitz with her mother, who died at age38 of exhaustion. Ms. Weil survived a “selec-tion” by camp doctor Josef Mengele as wellas a labor camp.

Ms. Weil shared her distress: “They tattooedme: 71978. I cried a lot. Not because of thepain, no, because of the number. Because Ihad lost the name, I was just a number. Mymother said, ‘Do not cry, nothing has hap-pened. When we get home, you visit thedance school and get a big bracelet so noone sees the number.’ I never went to danceschool and never got the bracelet.”

Ms. Winter recalled an unsettling story thatMs. Weil shared with her about taking a trip tothe hospital for blood work, where a youngtechnician mistook the number she had tat-tooed on her arm at the concentration campfor her phone number.

Eduard Kornfeld survived both Auschwitzand Dachau camps. He grew up in Bratislava,Slovakia, and was arrested in 1944 while hid-ing with his brother in Hungary.

After the war, in which he lost his entire fam-ily, he arrived in Davos weighing only 27 kilos,or 60 pounds, weak and sick from exhaustion.There Swiss doctors saved his life.

Mr. Kornfeld said, “We were deported in acattle car, the journey took three days. Whenthe train suddenly stopped, I heard someoneshouting outside in German, ‘Get out!’ Ilooked out of the carriage and saw SS officersbeating people they thought were moving tooslowly. A mother wasn’t moving quick enoughbecause she was trying to take care of herchild, so the SS officers took her infant andthrew him in the same truck they put the oldand sick. Those people were sent to begassed immediately.”

Klaus Appel was born in 1925 in Berlin. Afterhis father, Paul, and his older brother, Willi-Wolf, were arrested and sent to Auschwitz, heand his sister came to England in one of thelast Kindertransport humanitarian programs.After the war, Klaus married a Swiss woman,moved to western Switzerland and worked as awatchmaker. He died in April 2017, 10 daysbefore this exhibit was launched in Switzerland.

Mr. Appel explained, “We were at homewhen the doorbell rang. They had come toarrest my father. ‘Are you Mr. Appel?’ theyasked him. ‘Then come with us.’ My fatherjust calmly turned to me and said, ‘You aregoing to school.’ That was the last thing heever said to me. I never saw him again.”

Reflecting upon Mr. Appel, who passed awayin 2017, Ms. Winter reminisced how he workedhard to share his experiences with young peo-ple, visiting schools and universities.


E HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED

n and extermination camp

and.

Images from the “Flashes of Memory” exhibit now on display at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.


(Continued from page 4)the Conference on Jewish MaterialClaims Against Germany who focus-es on modern Polish Jewish history

and the Holocaust. “That despite whatJews had endured during theHolocaust, and despite the fact thatthe local Polish population hadobserved all that, had witnessed all ofthat … Jews cannot feel safe inPoland.”

Sliwa points out that Kielce was notthe first postwar pogrom against Jewsin Poland; smaller outbursts of vio-lence took place the previous year inKrakow and the town of Rzeszow.

In the years that followed, the Kielcepogrom — like so many atrocitiescommitted or abetted by Poles duringthe war — became taboo. There wereno memorials. When Bogdan Bialek,a Catholic Pole from Białystok, movedto Kielce in 1970, he sensed immedi-ately that something was wrong. InBogdan’s Journey Bialek rememberssensing a deep guilt or shame amongresidents when it came to talkingabout the pogrom. He calls thisoppression of silence a “disease.”

Bialek became drawn to theabscess — what Jewish historianMichael Birnbaum referred to at theevent as “the looming presence ofabsence” — that seemed to behaunting the town. Over the past 30years, he has made it his mission tobring this memory back to life andengage today’s residents of Kielce indialogue through town meetings,memorials and conversations withsurvivors.

Unsurprisingly, he has encounteredpushback. The story of the Kielcemassacre — which the film piecestogether using the testimony of someof the last living victims and theirdescendants — is inconvenient. Itchallenges Poles. It opens old

wounds. But for Bialek, bringing dia-logue to this moment isn’t just aboutreopening old wounds — it is aboutlancing a boil. “Each of us has a tough

moment in his past,” he says in thefilm. “Either we were harmed, or weharmed someone. Until we name it,we drag the past behind us.”

Since the collapse ofCommunism in 1989, Poland

has gone through a soul-searchingprocess that has progressed inbursts, with moments of clarity butalso worrisome backsliding. PolishJews have come out of the shadows,establishing new communities andreincorporating Jews back into thecountry’s fabric. In the mid-2000s,reports began to emerge document-ing a curious trend: a “Jewish revival”of sorts sweeping Poland andbeyond. Polish Jews reclaimed theirroots; Polish-Jewish book publishersand museums sprung up; once-deci-mated Jewish quarters began tothrive again.

Part of that shift has been a reexam-ination of Poland’s history, Bialek saidin an interview with Smithsonian.com.“We began with no understanding atall, with a kind of denial, and over timeit’s been changing,” Bialek said inPolish, translated by Michał Jaskulski,one of the film’s directors. “These daysit’s also easier for [Poles] to see fromthe perspective of the victims, whichdidn’t happen before. And we truly cannotice how the pogrom stronglyimpacted Polish-Jewish relations.”

But there is still work to be done, hereadily admits. While Poles todaydon’t deny that the pogrom actuallyhappened, they do debate whodeserves responsibility for the atroci-ty. Conspiracy theories ran rampantwhen Bialek first moved to Kielce, andhe reports that they are still commontoday. In the film, co-director Larry

Loewinger interviews several olderresidents who claim that the riot wasinstigated by Soviet intelligence, oreven that Jews themselves staged a

massacre by draggingbodies to the scene.

Unlike the better-known massacre

at Jedwabne, whenPoles living under Nazicontrol herded severalhundred of their Jewishneighbors into a barn— and burned themalive — the tragedy inKielce was born out ofpostwar tensions.

Poland was on thebrink of civil war, its cit-izens were impover-ished, and at the timemany believed Jewswere Communists orspies. “You have tounderstand, Polandwas a pretty miserableplace in 1946,” saysLoewinger. “It waspoverty stricken. Therewere Jews floatingaround … There was a

lot of anger all over.”Yet there are clear parallels.

Jedwabne happened in 1941, directlyafter the Nazi conquest of Poland; theaccepted narrative is that the killingwas carried out by Poles under pres-sure by Nazi Germans. In Kielce, the

Polish people are equally “blame-less.” Both of these narratives allowPoles to cling to a national mythologyof victimhood and heroism. As Polishjournalist and dissident KonstantyGebert wrote in Moment, “Raised forgenerations with the (legitimate)belief that theirs was a martyrednation, many Poles found it increas-ingly hard to accept that their victim-hood did not automatically grant themthe moral high ground when it cameto their behavior toward Jews duringthe Holocaust.”

Moreover, says Sliwa, “Both ofthese events show how dangerousthese conspiracy theories are, andhow these myths about the so-called

other, the blood libel, and … equatingJews with Communism, can turn intomob-like violence.”

In a 2016 television interview,Poland’s education minister Anna

Zalewska appeared to deny Polishresponsibility for any involvement inboth of these historical events. Whenasked directly, “Who murderedKielce’s Jews during the townpogrom?” she was unable to answerthe question. She demurred, beforefinally answering: “Anti-Semites.” Shedid not admit that these anti-Semiteswere Poles. When controversy erupt-ed, Zalewska received support fromForeign Minister WitoldWszczykowski, who said her com-ments had been “misunderstood.”

“It has to do with the Polish govern-ment, the effort to in a way rewrite his-tory,” says Sliwa. “To put moreemphasis on heroism and patriotismof the Polish nation during the warand after the war. It seems like it is anattempt to take hold over, to control,how the past is narrated.”

The concern that Poland is rewritingits history feels more relevant nowthan ever. Ever since the 2015 victoryof the Law and Justice (Prawo iSprawiedliwość) party, the right-wingpopulist party led by JarosławKaczyński, the government has pur-sued what is openly referred to aspolityka historyczna, or “history poli-cy.” Journalists and historians likeSliwa, however, call it “politicized his-

tory.” Of course, she adds, “there wasdiscussion about this even beforeLaw and Justice came to rule Poland.But now they’ve taken over, it’sbecome so public and acceptable.And official, really official.”

You can see traces of this “historypolicy” in how the Kielce story hasevolved over time. Despite the factsGross and others have detailed, a2004 report by the Institute of NationalRemembrance (IPN) — a stateresearch institute that examinescrimes committed by the Nazi andCommunist regimes and routinely min-imizes Poland’s role in the Holocaust— concluded that the Kielce pogromwas the result of a “mishap.”

KIELCE: THE POST-HOLOCAUST POGROM

THAT POLAND IS STILL FIGHTING OVER

Group portrait of Polish Jewish survivors in Kielce taken in 1945. Many were killed one year later, in the 1946 pogrom.

Funeral procession for the victims of the Kielce pogrom.


(Continued from page 6)ecution at home would find a welcom-ing haven in Argentina. The “Odessa”theory, popularized in the 1972 novelThe Odessa File and the 1974 movieof the same name, was that a secretgroup of former SS officers had band-ed together and was helping formerNazi officials to escape postwarEurope. While there was no “Odessa”group, the truth was far stranger:some of the most senior officials ingovernments, the Catholic churchand aid organizations actively workedto help Nazis escape justice, oftensending them to South America.

Peron’s key point man in creatinga pipeline for Nazis was the

Argentinian Cardinal AntonioCaggiano. He passed along Peron’stop-secret message to a cardinal inFrance, who communicated withNazis living in France, helping usherthem to Argentina. Peron investedconsiderable manpower in smugglingNazis to Argentina, even setting up asecret office in Bern to help handlethe paperwork. In spring 1946, thefirst French Nazis began receivingArgentinian tourist visas and settingsail for South America.

Many of these Nazis escaping toSouth America were aided byCatholic officials. Some merely want-ed to help Catholics escape from therising Communist governments incentral Europe. Other officials, how-ever, were actively anti-Semitic anddesired to help Nazis elude justice.One of the highest-ranking Catholicofficials who aided Nazi criminals was

Bishop Alois Hudal, an Austrian-bornadmirer of Hitler. Bishop Hudalworked in Rome, ministering to AxisPOWs, and tirelessly aided war crimi-nals by providing them with falseVatican-issued identity papers allow-ing them to gain passports from theInternational Red Cross and travel toSouth America.

Bishop Hudal worked with a networkof officials throughout Europe; it washe, with the aid of a Franciscan friar inItaly, who provided false papers thatallowed senior Nazi Adolf Eichmannto sail for Argentina. Hudal’s activitieshelping “refugees” (many of whomwere Nazis evading justice) garneredhim much praise and financial sup-port. The American Catholic BishopsConference even approved a monthlystipend of $200 to Bishop Hudal tohelp him in his work.

The work of Bishop Hudal and otherCatholic officials to help Nazis fleewas an open secret. A 1947 memosent from the United States’ Italianembassy noted that “The Vatican ofcourse is the largest single organiza-tion involved in the illegal movementof emigrants” out of Europe in thoseyears.

Bishop Hudal and other Catholicofficials had a willing accom-

plice in Carl Jacob Burckhardt, presi-dent of the International Red Cross inthe years after World War II. In his2011 book Nazis on the Run: HowHitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice, histo-rian Gerald Steinacher chroniclesBurckhardt’s anti-Semitism, as well ashis penchant for helping Germans,including former Nazis. It’s hard toknow just how many former Nazis fledEurope using false Red Crosspapers; in 2012, German lawyers,after examining recently declassifiedarchives, estimated that thousands ofNazis were similarly able to obtainfalse Red Cross passports. About 800SS members were able to flee toArgentina alone using these falsedocuments.

One Nazi who fled to Argentina wasHorst Wagner, who aided in thedeportation and murder of at least350,000 Jews. Wagner’s story wouldhave remained unknown were it notfor the efforts of German family thera-pist turned author Gisela Heidenreich,whose mother Edith met and fell inlove with Horst Wagner during the

war. In 2012, Ms. Heidenreich pub-lished a work documenting Wagner’sescape from justice, BelovedCriminal: A Diplomat in the Service ofthe Final Solution. After escaping

from an Allied-run jail in 1948,Wagner followed a path dubbed the“Kloster Line,” receiving sanctuary inconvents and churches in Austriabefore heading to Rome. There,Bishop Hudal helped him obtain falsepapers and sail to Argentina.

Franz Stangl, the commander ofthe extermination camps of

Sobibor and Treblinka who oversawthe murder of nearly one and a halfmillion Jews, was another senior NaziMs. Heidenreich uncovered who fol-lowed the same path. Stangl wasaided by Catholic church officials andeventually fled to Brazil on a false RedCross passport. Stangl was eventuallyextradited to Germany in the 1960sand died in jail. Wagner met a differentfate: he was never extradited and livedto old age in the Argentinian town ofBariloche, near Patagonia where hecelebrated at weekly get-togethers inlocal beer halls, singing Nazi songswith other SS comrades who calledArgentina home.

In addition to being ideologicallysympathetic to Nazi ideology, JuanPeron also had a financial motive inbringing so many Nazis to his country.In 2005, drawing on governmentarchives that had just been declassi-fied, German journalist Gaby Weberfound that Peron systematically usedhis government to launder moneybelonging to Nazi-owned companies,whose profits would otherwise havebeen seized as part of criminal inves-

tigations. In The German Connection:The Laundering of Nazi Money inArgentina, Ms. Weber estimates thevalue of the money-laundering opera-tion at well over one billion dollars.

A Mercedes-Benz plant in the sub-urbs of Buenos Aires might have beenthe center of the program bringingGerman wealth and former Nazis toArgentina, Ms. Weber uncovered.Adolf Eichmann worked at the plant,first under his own name, and laterunder an alias. According to Ms.Weber, Eichmann might have workedas a paymaster, “financing the move-ment and flight to Argentina” of otherNazis, before he was captured byIsraeli forces in 1960, tried, and exe-cuted in 1962.

Otto Skorzeny, an SS command-er who was known as Hitler’s

favorite Nazi commando, is anothersenior Nazi figure who might havearranged for other Nazis to findhomes in South America. Escapingfrom an Allied prison in 1947 with thehelp of local pro-Nazi citizens,Skorzeny moved to Madrid, where heran an import/export agency that wasrumored to be a front for organizingthe escape of Nazis to SouthAmerica. Skorzeny made numeroustrips to Argentina, eventually workingfor a time as a bodyguard to JuanPeron’s wildly popular second wife,Eva, known as Evita.

Evita seems to have been an enthu-siastic helper of Nazis in her ownright. She was reported to have beenromantically involved with Skorzeny,and also might have been active inlaundering money from GermanNazis. In 2011, Brazilian authorsLeandro Narloch and Duda Teixeirawrote, “It is still suspected that among(Eva Peron’s) possessions, therewere pieces of Nazi treasure thatcame from rich Jewish families killedin concentration camps.”

A generation ago, thousands ofNazis eluded justice by fleeing toSouth America. Today, as a new gen-eration of historians delves intoarchives and other records, the truthabout how so much of South Americabecame a Nazi haven is being uncov-ered. It’s too late to try most of theseNazi war criminals, but their victims,and all of us, deserve to know thetruth about this dark chapter in SouthAmerica’s past.

NAZI HAVENS IN SOUTH AMERICA

Alois Hudal.

Otto Skorzeny.

BY RONDA ROBINSON, AISH.COM

Paula Neuman Gris’s 75-year-oldblue suitcase is an old friend. It

accompanied her from her childhoodhome in Czernowitz, Romania, to thekilling fields of the Holocaust to a dis-placed persons’ camp in Germanyand across the ocean to America.

The suitcase held necessities andsecrets. The journey began in 1941when all the Jews of Czernowitzreceived the dreaded order to pack

two bags and be ready to leave in twohours. It was part of the Romaniangovernment’s directive to “cleansethe Earth” of Jews.

A year previously, after theRussians had occupied her home-town of Czernowitz, they seized herfather, Simon Neuman, a men’s hab-erdasher, as a slave laborer. “Theyarrested my father because he was acapitalist. They had their own politicalagenda. He was imprisoned. At thattime, my mother was pregnant withtheir second child,” Paula says in an

Aish.com interview.Her mother, Etka Neuman, would

leave three-year-old Paula aloneevery day to visit him in prison andtake him food. Then Simon disap-peared with 10,000 Jewish menwhom the Russians deported toSiberia. What became of him fromthere is unclear.

Meanwhile, Etka bore their baby.Anti-Jewish laws and a curfew were inforce. Jews couldn’t be admitted topublic hospitals and weren’t sup-posed to leave their homes at night.

However, Etka went into labor atnight, so she risked her life andsneaked out onto the street to reachher Jewish midwife.

“My memory of that night was sheleft me alone – probably saying, ‘Ilove you, I have to leave now.’ Shelocked the door and went away. Mymemory was standing frozen as athree-year-old little girl, looking at thedoorknob all night long. It was proba-bly the beginning of a long period ofexperiencing terror and fear and the


HOLOCAUST SUITCASE PACKS STORIES OF SURVIVAL


BY MICHAEL RIORDAN, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Two young boys huddled silentlyunder a blanket in the back of a

large black car as it crossed under thegaze of the French prison guards andout the wooden gates of Rivesaltesinternment camp. It was September25, 1942.

Escaping deportation to Auschwitzand certain death in the gas cham-bers, Rene and Mario Freund, agedtwo and six years old, were drivenhigh up into the Pyrenees Mountainsto a remote village.

The boys had already faced dangerbefore, as their father had tried andfailed to smuggle them across theborder into Switzerland.

After arriving in the hills, they weremet by a priest and moved again to asmall village further away fromRivesaltes. They were to be enrolledin a Catholic school and hidden bylocal families.

Decades later Rene and Mario —now named Ronald Friend andMichael Freund — fulfilled a lifelongambition to identify their heroic libera-tor, the Irish aid worker Mary Elmes,and nominate her as RighteousAmong the Nations.

“I wanted to know who took me outof the camp, and I found a documentin the American Friends ServiceCommittee [Quaker] files that identi-fied her,” said retired NewYork–based Prof. Ronald Friend in anew documentary about Elmes.

“I owe my life to Elmes and I feelvery grateful. But I am just one ofmany who should feel the same,” saidbrother Michael Freund.

Now, thanks to the quest by the twograteful brothers, the story of her per-sonal valor has been highlighted in anew documentary, It Tolls for Thee.

The film is narrated by WinonaRyder, who herself had relatives mur-dered in the Holocaust and who wasnominated for a Grammy for heraudio version of The Diary of AnneFrank.

A DISPLACED PEOPLE

After the fall of France, the col-laborationist Vichy government

imprisoned thousands of Jews fleeingfrom the Nazis in the camp nearPerpignan.

Enduring appalling conditions, fami-lies were in dire need of the assis-tance given by the Quaker organiza-tion with which Elmes was a volun-teer. And then the Nazis ordered thetransportation of all Jews to the east.

Despite efforts by French officials to

convince inmates that they weregoing to farms and factories, theJewish prisoners knew the fate thatawaited them. Some committed sui-cide. Parents were separated fromtheir children. Elmes didn’t believe thelie either. Risking being sent toAuschwitz herself, she was deter-mined to save as many children aspossible.

Between August and October 1942,nine convoys took 2,300 Jews fromRivesaltes camp to Drancy and on toAuschwitz-Birkenau.

But Elmes saved 200 children, driv-ing many of them through the moun-tains to Catholic orphanages, andmanaging to smuggle others acrossthe border into neutral Spain.

Rene and Mario’s father, HansFreund, approached Elmes in thecamp and asked her to take his twoboys away. She agreed. The boysnever saw their father again.

HISTORY OF A HERO

Elmes was born in the city of Corkin 1908, and graduated from

Trinity College Dublin with a degree inliterature. Her academic excellenceearned her recognition from theLondon School of Economics, whichawarded her a scholarship to pursueinternational studies.

During the Spanish Civil War, shevolunteered to manage a hospital innorthern Spain, returning to Irelandafter the fall of Barcelona. However,hearing of the plight of the Republicanrefugees who fled to France, she trav-eled there to organize aid for them.

Being from neutral Ireland, she wasable to stay on in Rivesaltes afterWorld War II began, when otherswere forced to leave. She was therewhen the Jewish refugees arrived andbegan her selfless work soon there-after.

In the documentary, one of the

saved children, George Koltein,recalled escaping from Paris toFrench-controlled Vichy after policeraided their apartment building.However, they were arrested onarrival and sent to Rivesaltes.

Koltein’s father was put into a workgang, but Elmes smuggled the chil-dren out of the camp and into theorphanage of Saint Christopher inPerpignan.

The orphanage was run by anotherwoman who has also been recog-nized by Yad Vashem — LoisGunden, who sheltered the childrenamong the local orphans where policewould not find them.

“Elmes drove seven children toSaint Christopher’s that day,” Kolteinrecalled in his documentary interview.

“Mary Elmes and Lois Gundentogether formed a chain of solidaritywith the Jews,” he said. “If discov-ered, anyone attempting to rescueJewish children would be sent to thedeath camps with them.”

“I was amazed when I first heardElmes’s story, how it had remained so

unknown for so long,” director AndrewGallimore told The Times of Israel.

“Elmes did such great work for therefugees,” he said. “But she had to bevigilant not to be seen giving specialassistance to the Jews who were themost in need of it.”

Gallimore said he finds the fact thatthese terrible events happened inFrance “incredible.”

“One of the inmates, PaulNiedermayer, asked during filminghow could this have happened inFrance — the home of theEnlightenment,” he added.

“When we were working inPerpignan,” said Gallimore, “I felt thatthe Pyrenees became a metaphor forfreedom. The Spanish Republicanscrossing one way and the Jews in theopposite direction — much in thesame way as the Mediterranean istoday.”

Meanwhile, Denis Peschanski of theFrench National Center for ScientificResearch raised in the documentarythe terrible moral dilemma that Elmesand other aid workers faced inRivesaltes.

“They knew the truth about the

trains,” he said. “But if they left, all ofthe prisoners would die.”

TIRELESS SACRIFICE

Efraim Zuroff of the SimonWiesenthal Center said the aid

workers in Rivesaltes had a uniqueopportunity to help some of the pris-oners who were already designatedto be murdered.

“On a daily basis Elmes worked tire-lessly, driving long distances scroung-ing milk and blankets for the childrenin the camp,” explained historian andfounder of the Holocaust ArtRestoration Project (HARP) MarcMasurovsky.

“Her superiors, however, who knewof her other activities, warned her notto do too much for fear that theirhumanitarian work would be halted,”he said.

But Elmes persisted. In 1943, whenVichy was finally taken over by theNazis, Elmes was arrested by theGestapo on suspicion of aiding Jewsand sent to the notorious prison inFresnes near Paris, which housed

resistance members and political pris-oners.

She spent six traumatic monthsthere, but after intervention by theIrish Consulate and the InternationalRed Cross, she was released. By thetime she was freed, there were noJews left in Rivesaltes.

After the war Elmes remained inPerpignan, where she married aFrench man with whom she had twochildren.

Her story became more widelyknown following a 1998 Mexican doc-umentary on the Spanish Civil War inwhich she agreed to be interviewed.She died in 2002.

After her death, Freund discoveredher identity and asked her family’spermission to nominate her asRighteous Among the Nations. Theyagreed, and she was recognized byYad Vashem in 2013, becomingIreland’s first recipient.

“My mother never wanted any atten-tion and she did not wish to recall thewar,” said her son Patrick Danjou.“She turned down the French govern-ment’s offer of the Legion D’Honneur.”

RESCUED CHILDREN FINALLY IDENTIFY IRISH AID WORKER

WHO SAVED THEM FROM AUSCHWITZ

Mary Elmes, who secretly brought Jewish children to be saved from Auschwitz.

Children in Rivesaltes camp during World War II.


(Continued from page 11)sense of helplessness,” recalls Paula.

Her mother made it to the midwife’s,where she spent the night. The nextmorning, she wrapped up her newbaby in a blanket and walked home.

Paula declares that her childhoodended at that point. “I became

my mother’s partner until the end ofthe war in protecting and keeping thatchild alive.”

Her mother managed to obtain an

exemption written by the town mayorand allowing them to remain in theghetto for nine months after the ordercame in November 1941 to transportJews to the Romanian-administeredterritory called Transnitria, what Pauladescribes as the largest killing field ofthe Holocaust. One-quarter of a mil-lion Jews died of execution, diseaseand starvation there.

November was the coldest monthon record in years, and many Jewspiled into cattle cars froze to death intransit. Waiting nine months for thetransport in June when the weatherwasn’t cold would give her baby sisterSylvia a better chance of survival.

Paula remembers the little blue suit-case’s role. Her mother was allowedtwo suitcases, but needed one handfree to carry Sylvia, so she took justone suitcase packed with photo-

graphs, documents, diapers, a toweland soap. In the corners Etka stuffedmoney and jewelry with which to bribeofficials if necessary, and they lefthome.

“I’m sure I must have said, ‘Can Itake my blanket? Can I take mybear?’ Instead, I had to carry a soupcan. I think that was probably the lasttime I cried,” says Paula.

Suitcases remain etched in hermemory from the eyes of a

child. She recalls masses of peoplepushing toward the transport toTransnistria. Running, she held ontoher mother’s skirt. “You had to keepmoving, otherwise you’d get tram-pled.”

With her mother performing back-breaking forced labor for the wareffort in the rock quarries ofTransnistria, Paula was the sole care-taker of her baby sister during theday. The girls learned to hide and stayquiet in the vacated hut they occu-pied. Fear and hunger left them withno energy to play, with one day blend-ing into the next, unbroken by birth-days or holidays.

“There was a very long darkness. Idon’t remember very much of itexcept sheltering my sister, waiting inan abandoned house for my motherto come back, not crying, being acaregiver to my sister, being as grownup as I could possibly be, whichmeans trying to stay brave.”

Immediately after returning homefrom work every night, Etka wouldwash the girls’ clothes in a stream. AsPaula explains, “Cleanliness wasmedicine for us, keeping off bedbugsand lice. After that my mother nursedher baby. The three of us slept in a cottogether.”

The family survived like that for twoyears, with little food and no medi-

cine. Paula learned to delay gratifica-tion. If she had a slice of bread, shenever ate it all at once. Had theGermans not retreated from theRussians, she doesn’t believe herfamily would have been able to holdout much longer under the lash ofNazism and Romanian anti-Semitism.

Their troubles were far from overafter liberation. “When we went

back to Czernowitz and discoveredthere was no one left, no one to helpus or to rejoice at our return, it was avery difficult time. We lost manythings in the war. Most of all we lost

who we were. We had been treatedlike animals.”

Her mother had kept alive the hopeof reuniting with her husband. But henever came back and was presumedkilled. So she and her two youngdaughters lived in a displaced per-sons camp in the American Zone ofOccupation in West Germany forseven years before emigrating to theUnited States in 1951.

Paula yearned to blend in as anAmerican and cast off the cobwebs ofher past. She quickly learned Englishand applied herself at school. Hermother maintained a strong sense ofJewish identity for them all. Paulaworked as a junior counselor one sum-mer at a day camp in Pleasantville,N.Y., run by the Young Men’s Hebrew

Association. She met a senior coun-selor named Bill Gris, who was arabbi’s son and her future husband.

“The real reason I married him wasI loved the smell of his family’s home,”she says jokingly. “It was clean in away we immigrants never managed toget. The food was delicious; his bub-bie did all the cooking. His bubbieloved me, so she heaped plates highfor me.”

After Bill finished Army duty, his andPaula’s suitcases would come to restin Atlanta when he took a job there.Meanwhile, Sylvia would become awife, mother, photographer and artistwho now lives in upstate New York.

Paula began reclaiming her prewarmemories at the first World Gatheringof Jewish Holocaust Survivors inJerusalem in 1981.

“That was the most incredible home-coming for all of us survivors. All of ushad the same feeling: that God had puthis Hand in the fire and had pulled outseeds to reseed the Jewish world.”

She also reclaimed her tears uponhearing “Hatikva,” the national anthemof Israel that promises a future for theJewish people. Tears also well upwhen she hears young Jewish childrensinging songs of hope. A grandmothermany times over, Paula appreciatesthe Jewish people’s optimism andresiliency, building families and con-tributing to the world after seeing theworst in humanity.

The blue suitcase traveled aroundthe world during her childhood andbeyond, until it landed in a glass dis-play case at the William BremanJewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta,where Paula is an educator. She andher husband, Bill, have lived in thecommunity 60 years, and she contin-ues to tell her story to make a youngRomanian girl’s voice heard.

HOLOCAUST SUITCASE PACKS STORIES OF SURVIVAL

The blue suitcase.

Paula Gris.

BY YORI YALON, ISRAEL HAYOM

Yad Vashem recently acquired aprogram detailing a Hanukkah

celebration that took place at theFerramonti internment camp in Italy inDecember 1944. The booklet’s coverwas stamped with the camp’s symbol;above the stamp is a Star of David witha menorah illustrated inside it. The pro-gram arrived at Yad Vashem, Israel’snational Holocaust museum, within theframework of the museum’s“Operation Picking up the Pieces” proj-ect — a national campaign to savepersonal items from the Holocaust.

The unique booklet was preservedover the years by Yehudit Yitzhak,who decided to give it to Yad Vashemfor future generations. Yitzhak’s par-ents married in Danzig, where herfather worked as a factory manager.In the spring of 1940, when her moth-er was pregnant, the couple fledDanzig and sought to immigrate toPalestine via the Italian seaport city ofTrieste in the country’s northeast.

From there the couple arrived inBenghazi, Libya, where they weresupposed to board a ship, but they

were detained and sent to Naples.Yitzhak was born in Naples inSeptember 1940. After her birth, shewas sent along with her parents to theFerramonti internment camp. Thefamily was held at the camp for near-ly four and a half years until 1945,

when they finally immigrated toPalestine and settled down in Tel Aviv.

Initially, conditions in Ferramonti,located in southernItaly, were tolerable,but they deterioratedgradually along withItaly’s situation in WorldWar II. Jews at thecamp, however, werenot harmed or deportedto death camps inPoland, and were per-mitted to receive foodpackages and practicetheir religion.

The Ferramonticamp was liberat-

ed in September 1943,but a large number of

Jews stayed there until December1945. The unique Hanukkah celebra-tion took place on December 10, 1944,after the camp had been liberated byAllied forces. The theme of the pro-gram was the move from darkness tolight and was a testament to the man-

ner in which Jews observed their holi-days even in the most trying of times.

Yitzhak, 77, still lives in Tel Aviv. Shewas 4 years old when the Hanukkahcelebration at Ferramonti took place.

“I have memories from Ferramonti,”she recounted. “The Italians let theJews have autonomy. There was asynagogue at the camp, and therewere cultural events. With that, theconditions there weren’t easy. Therewere restrictions and barbed-wirefences, and the food wasn’t nourish-ing. The area was malaria-stricken.The treatment was humane thanks tothe Italian management [of the camp].”

In Israel, Yitzhak raised a family withthree children and now has six grand-children.

Of her decision to donate theFerramonti Hanukkah program, shesaid: “[Yad Vashem] is the right placefor it to be. It’s an important asset thatneeds to be preserved and stored, sothat future generations can under-stand and appreciate life at theFerramonti camp.”

EVIDENCE OF HANUKKAH IN ITALIAN INTERNMENT CAMP REVEALED

The saved Hanukkah program from the Ferramonti internment

camp in Italy.


Friedrich Kellner’s account, start-ing from 1939, about the Naziregime’s atrocities and the unfold-ing destruction of European Jewryis being published in English forthe first time.BY MATT LEBOVIC,THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Half a century after FriedrichKellner gifted his Nazi-era diary

to a grandson in America, the clan-destine writings were published inEnglish by Cambridge UniversityPress in January.

A vociferous critic of the Nazis,Kellner used his diary to documentthe regime’s atrocities beginning in1939. The small town “justice inspec-tor” wrote 676 entries, drawing fromnumerous sources and a formidableknowledge of history. In addition to

content on the unfolding Holocaust,Kellner wrote about the regime’s useof propaganda to delude the popu-lace, and what he regarded as theAllies’ criminal mismanagement of thewar.

Kellner’s diary, which he titled MyOpposition, is seen by some histori-ans as a barometer for what “ordi-nary” Germans might have knownabout activities in the east, wheremembers of the SS and otherGermans were engaged in the massmurder of Jews, Poles and Slavs.Some of Kellner’s information camefrom sources that were widely avail-able, including the Nazi party broad-sheet and illegal radio broadcasts. Togather other accounts, Kellner ques-tioned people and sifted through gos-sip, attaching more than 500 newspa-per clippings along the way.

A potent sense of anger fills

Kellner’s diary, not only directedtoward the Nazis, but also with regardto his fellow citizens and the world forallowing Hitler to rise.

“There is no punishment that wouldbe hard enough to be applied to theseNazi beasts,” wrote Kellner. “Ofcourse, when the retribution comes,the innocent will have to suffer alongwith them. But because ninety-ninepercent of the German population isguilty, directly or indirectly, for thepresent situation, we can only saythat those who travel together willhang together.”

With indictments like that, it’s nowonder Kellner’s full diary was notpublished in Germany until 2011.

Prior to Hitler wresting power,Kellner, a veteran of World War

I, was a public opponent of Hitler andhis movement. A lifelong Social

Democrat, he delivered anti-Nazispeeches during the heady WiemarRepublic years, for which he wasoften assaulted. Following theregime’s Kristallnacht pogrom in1938, Kellner sought to bring chargesagainst some of the riot leaders. Inretaliation for these efforts, a Nazijudge ordered that he and his wife’s“bloodlines” be investigated for tracesof Jewish ancestry.

As the Nazis spread terror acrossEurope, Kellner documented atroci-ties the regime sought to hide. To putcurrent events in context for futurereaders, he made pointed referencesto Hitler’s tome Mein Kampf, on whichhe was an expert. Among othercrimes, he wrote about the “mercykillings” of disabled Germans atHadamar, and “retribution” killingscarried out against civilians in occu-pied countries.

“To let people who are completelyinnocent suffer for the deeds of anoth-er is reminiscent of the horrific deedsof wild beasts in times long ago,”wrote Kellner on October 26, 1941,following the murder of 100 Frenchcivilians by German forces in retalia-tion for the shooting of two officers.

Kellner’s accounts of the Holocaustwere concise, including his report onan early Jewish “action” in Poland.

“A soldier on leave here said he per-sonally witnessed a terrible atrocity inthe occupied part of Poland,” wroteKellner in 1941. “He watched asnaked Jewish men and women wereplaced in front of a long deep ditchand, upon the order of the SS, wereshot by Ukrainians in the back of theirheads, and they fell into the ditch.Then the ditch was filled in asscreams kept coming from it.”

A few weeks later, Kellnerwrote about “Jews beingtransported somewhere” and“treated worse than animals”along the way. In anotherentry, he reported on thedeportation of specific Jewishfamilies from his town.

“This cruel, despicable, andsadistic treatment against theJews that has lasted now sev-eral years — with its final goalof extermination — is thebiggest stain on the honor ofGermany,” wrote Kellner onDecember 15, 1941. “They willnever be able to erase thesecrimes.” (This is much prior toformal implementation of theFinal Solution.)

This clandestine reportingof facts was not enough

for the inflamed justice inspec-tor, who also dared to criticizethe regime outside of his diary.For this, Kellner was labelled a“bad influence” on the popula-tion of Laubach by its mayor.He was threatened withimprisonment in a concentra-

tion camp along with his wife, Pauline,and plans were drawn up to punishhim after the Final Victory.

“He should be made to disappear,”wrote Nazi official Ernst Monnig in areport on Kellner. Despite constantdanger, the diarist continued to seekout friendly ears. Seemingly fearless,he sometimes gathered up anti-Nazileaflets dropped by the Allies in orderto place them strategically aroundtown.

Following the liberation of Germany,Kellner was appointed deputy mayorof Laubach, where he helped withdenazification and to revive the SocialDemocratic Party. He died in 1970,long before his My Opposition diarymade it to readers’ attention.

In 1968, with two years left to live,Friedrich Kellner gave his diary to anAmerican-born grandson, RobertScott Kellner.

“I could not fight the Nazis in thepresent, as they had the power to stillmy voice,” Kellner told his grandsonat the time. “So I decided to fight themin the future.”

According to Robert Scott Kellner, aretired English professor, the diary

was his grandfather’s attempt to pro-vide future generations with a weapon“against any resurgence of such evil.”As the book’s translator and editor,Kellner has also worked on a docu-mentary film about his grandfatherand several museum exhibitionsbased on the diary.

For more than 30 years afterFriedrich Kellner’s death, few peopleoutside of the family saw the crisplypenned pages of My Opposition. Thewritings got a big break in 2005, whenthe George Bush Presidential Libraryexhibited portions of the diary for pub-lic viewing. That endorsement helpedbring about the German publication ofthe diary, which Der Spiegel said pre-sented a “challenging” but essentialnarrative of wartime Germany.

January’s publication of MyOpposition in English is another mile-stone in his grandfather’s legacy,Kellner told The Times of Israel.

Seventy-eight years ago, FriedrichKellner addressed the issue of “blam-ing Jews” in one of his early diaryentries. As was his habit, the activistrefuted the regime’s lies and accusedhis neighbors of complicity.

“To keep the people from directingtheir rage at their actual oppressor,rulers in every age have used diver-sionary tactics to shield their ownguilt,” wrote Kellner in 1939.

“The entire action against the Jewswas no different from throwing down apiece of meat for the beasts. ‘TheJews are our misfortune,’ cry out theNazis. The correct answers of thepeople would have been, ‘No, not theJews, but the Nazis are the misfor-tune for the German people,’” wroteKellner.

SECRET ANTI-NAZI DIARY GIVES VOICE

TO MAN ON THE STREET

The April 25, 1943, entry in Friedrich Kellner’s wartime diary.

Friedrich Kellner in 1934.


BY BEN GRAHAM

Chilling notes from an Auschwitzinmate forced to help the Nazi

murder squads have finally beendeciphered — almost 75 years afterthey were written.

Marcel Nadjari, a Greek Jew, wasone of 2200 members of theSonderkommando — Jewish slavesof the SS who had to escort fellowJews to the gas chambers. They alsohad to burn the bodies, collect goldfillings and women’s hair, and throwthe ashes into a nearby river.

Aged 26, he penned his accounts oflife in the infamous death camp in1944, and only now have they beendecoded thanks to digital imaging,according to the BBC.

“Often I thought of going in with theothers, to put an end to this. Butalways revenge prevented me doing

so. I wanted and want to live, toavenge the death of Dad, Mum andmy dear little sister,” he wrote.

Historians say Nadjari stuffed his13-page manuscript into a Thermosflask, which he sealed with a plastictop. He then placed the Thermos in aleather pouch and buried it.

“The crematorium is a big buildingwith a wide chimney and 15 ovens.Under a garden there are two enor-mous cellars. One is where peopleundress and the other is the deathchamber. People enter it naked andonce about 3000 are inside it islocked and they are gassed. After sixor seven minutes of suffering theydie,” he wrote.

His accounts also provide intricatedetails of the sickening ways theNazis disguised the gas chambers asshowers.

“The gas canisters were always

delivered in a German Red Crossvehicle with two SS men. They thendropped the gas through openings —and half an hour later our workbegan,” he wrote.

“We dragged the bodies of thoseinnocent women and children to thelift, which took them to the ovens.”

According to the BBC, the noteswere found by a Polish forestry stu-dent during digging at the site — 36years after they were buried.

Russian historian Pavel Polian saidonly 10 percent of the notes could bedeciphered when they were firstfound.

The ink had faded over time and thetext was virtually impossible to read.

“The inmates obviously discussedhow many trains had arrived,” MrPolian told the BBC.

“Nadjari’s desire for revenge standsout — that’s different from the other

accounts. And he pays much moreattention to his family. For example,he specifies who he wants to receivehis dead sister’s piano.”

According to the Institute ofContemporary History in Munich,Nadjari was one of the few inmates tosurvive Auschwitz. He was thendeported to the Mauthausen concen-tration camp in Austria as the ThirdReich collapsed.

After the war, he married and in1951 moved to New York. He alreadyhad a one-year-old son, and in 1957his wife Rosa gave birth to a girl,whom they named Nelli — afterNadjari’s late sister.

In prewar Thessaloniki he hadworked as a merchant. In New Yorkhe made a living as a tailor.

Nadjari died in 1971, aged 53 —nine years before his Auschwitz mes-sage was discovered.

NAZI DEATH SQUAD’S SHOCKING SECRETS REVEALED IN BURIED NOTE

BY MATT LEBOVIC, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

During the years in which102,000 Dutch Jews were mur-

dered by the Nazis, a German-bornJewish artist helped rescue hundredsof children from the clutches of geno-cide.

As an expert forger of identitypapers, Alice Cohn worked with aUtrecht-based resistance group whilein hiding. Their production of so-called “wild papers,” including ID andration cards, saved up to 350 Jewish

children from the Nazis. During thewar’s final year, Cohn’s handiworkhelped prevent young Dutch menfrom being sent to Germany as forcedlaborers.

Cohn’s story and the saga of Dutchidentity cards during World War II is asubject of an exhibit at the NationalHolocaust Museum in Amsterdam.

According to the museum, one moti-vation for highlighting Cohn’s effortswas to help correct the “prevailing, butincorrect, image that Dutch Jews hada passive role during the war.” Duringthe Holocaust, 102,000 Dutch Jews

— the majority of the community —were murdered at Nazi-built deathcamps and elsewhere in the Reich.

Born in Breslau in 1914, Cohn stud-ied cabinetmaking until the Naziscame to power in 1933. When Jewishstudents were banned from takingexams or submitting final projects,she moved to Berlin for a year ofschool in graphic arts. The situationfor German Jews continued to deteri-orate, so Cohn fled to the Netherlandsin search of a secure future.

Settling in Amsterdam on a stu-dent visa, Cohn learned Dutch

and received commissions to designcinema posters. Onthe eve of the war, shewas creating children’stoys. Unbeknownst tothe new Dutch citizen,the Nazis were aboutto catch up with her.

Of all the countriesoccupied by Germanyduring World War II,the Netherlands hadthe most robust prewarpopulation registry.The system’s successwas attributed to JacobLentz, a Dutch officialwho created the so-called “foolproof” per-sonal identity card.During the Nazi occu-pation, Lentz refined

his system to help authorities issuenew cards throughout the country.

In addition to a high-tech design anduse of the bearer’s fingerprints, Dutchidentity cards were backed up in acentral registry. This made it possibleto confirm whether or not a suspi-cious-looking ID had been forged. Atthe exhibit on Alice Cohn’s life, she iscontrasted with the population-count-ing expert Lentz. While Cohn usedher artistic skills to help save lives,Lentz — conjuring “the banality ofevil” — deployed his organizationalskills to implement the Nazis’ agenda.

Beginning in 1941, all Dutch menand women were ordered to carry IDcards with them. For Jews, a largeblack “J,” for Jew, was stamped onboth sides of the card. By the summerof 1942, authorities began using theregistry to arrest and deport Jewsfrom the Netherlands. Suddenly, thedemand for altered or completely fal-sified identification exploded, includ-ing the need to crack Lentz’s “hermet-ic” system.

Before she went into hiding, Cohnfound a position with Amsterdam’sJewish Council as a doctor’s assis-tant. With the job providing her a nom-inal degree of freedom, she was ableto smuggle a Jewish child — 3-year-old Lonnie Lesser — out of a buildingwhere Jews were incarcerated priorto deportation. After seeing the childsafely into hiding,Cohn made her ownway to a “safe”address in Utrecht,south of Amsterdam.

During two yearsof hiding in an atticnear Utrecht’sWilhelmina Park,Cohn accomplishedwhat had beendeemed impossible:She forged identitycards able to with-stand scrutiny.

According tothe museum,

Cohn and her group of co-resisters,called “The Utrecht Children’sCommittee,” managed to save 350children from deportation and murder.The group also forged ration couponsneeded by “underground” people inhiding to obtain food. During the lastyear of the war, many new “wildpapers” were needed to help youngDutch men evade forced labor inGermany.

After liberation, Cohn learned thatall of her relatives from Breslau hadbeen murdered, including her par-

ents. Like other Jews among theNetherlands’ surviving remnant, shehad to build a new life from scratch.

As fate had it, Cohn began obtainingfabrics from a Liechtenstein-basedmerchant named Rudolf Bermann.The materials he provided helped hercreate, for instance, puppets with gri-macing faces and vibrant costumes.What began as an exchange of fab-rics blossomed into love, and, in1947, Cohn left the Netherlands tojoin Bermann as his wife inLiechtenstein.

Recently, some 17 years after Cohndied at age 85 in Liechtenstein, shewas posthumously awarded the“Jewish Rescuers’ Citation” for Jewswho helped save fellow Jews duringthe Shoah. Cohn’s daughter and son,Evelyne Bermann and Michael

Bermann, were presented with thehonor during the Amsterdam openingof the exhibit on their mother’s life. Sofar, 171 women and men from eightcountries have been honored byJewish organization B’nai B’rith in thiscapacity.

“There are many people who wereable to escape deportation throughfake identity cards,” said exhibit cura-tor Annemiek Gringold. “The peoplewho had the skills and the courage tocarry out this vital work remain large-ly unknown until today.”

HOW ARTIST BEAT FOOLPROOF NAZI SYSTEM TO SAVE 350 LIVES

Alice Cohn poses in front of the building in which she hid from the

Nazis, in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Some of the Nazi-era forgeries that artist Alice Cohn worked on for the

Dutch resistance.

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Martyrdom & Resistance

Ron B. Meier, Ph.D.,

Editor-in-Chief

Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A.,

Editor

*Published Bimonthly by the American Society

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

New York, NY 10110(212) 220-4304

EDITORIAL BOARD

Eli Zborowski**

Marvin Zborowski

Mark Palmer

Sam Skura**

Israel Krakowski**

William Mandell

Sam Halpern**

Isidore Karten**

Norman Belfer

Joseph Bukiet**

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

The American Society for Yad

Vashem was founded in 1981 by a

group of Holocaust survivors and led

by Eli Zborowski, z”l, for more than

thirty years. Recently approved by the

Board of Directors of the American

Society for Yad Vashem, our Legacy

Circle is being named in memory of Eli

Zborowski, z”l, who was greatly

respected for his work and accom-

plishments on behalf of Yad Vashem

and is missed by all who knew him.

The Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle is

open to and will recognize anyone who includes Yad Vashem

in their estate plans. This can include a bequest by will, fund-

ing a Charitable Remainder Trust or Charitable Gift Annuity,

donating a paid-up life insurance policy or contributing an

interest in an IRA or retirement plan, or making ASYV the ben-

eficiary of a Charitable Lead Trust. Individuals can make gifts

of any size, through a broad range of programs and invest-

ment vehicles that can accommodate those of modest means,

as well as those with substantial wealth.

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

By including Yad Vashem in your estate plans, you assure a

future in which Holocaust remembrance and education will

serve as a powerful antidote to denial, hate and indifference.

For further information about the Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle,

please contact

Robert Christopher Morton,

Director of Planned Giving at ASYV

212-220-4304; [email protected]

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ELI ZBOROWSKI LEGACY CIRCLE

Documents

AMERICAN & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETIES FOR YAD VASHEM...to me. I wasn’t a child there. I was all grown up ... it was like I was 100 years old.” Archival footage shot by Auschwitz’s