january 2013 in memoriam: vladka meed … · in memoriam: vladka meed (1921-2012) ... of the death...

TOGETHER 1visit our website at www.amgathering.orgJanuary 2013

JANUARY 2013 VOLUME 27 NUMBER 1

American Gathering ofJewish Holocaust Survivors

122 West 30th Street, Suite 205New York, New York 10001

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In Memoriam: Vladka Meed (1921-2012)By MICHAEL BERENBAUM, The Forward

Vladka Meed, one of the last, if not the last of the leaders of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, died in Phoenix, Arizona on Novem-ber 21st just before her 91st birthday.

Born Feyge Peltel in Praga (a district of Warsaw, Poland,) she joined the youth arm of the Jewish Labor Bund at age 14 and was thereafter a Bund activist through the time of the creation of the Warsaw ghetto. She joined the ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization) when it was formed after the great deportations of the summer of 1942, when more than 265,000 Jews were shipped from War-saw to their death in Treblinka between July 23 and September 21. Because of her ! awless Pol-ish and red hair, Peltel could pass as a non-Jew. She adopted the name Vladka, a name she kept even after liberation. She worked as a courier, smuggling arms into the ghetto and helping children escape out of it.

During the ghetto period, Meeds mother and brother were among those who were deported. They had succumbed to the Nazi deception that bread and marmalade would be given to all those who reported for deportation and because of their hunger, they seemingly allowed themselves to be deceived. She recalled: There was very little left to fear ... I was depressed and apa-thetic. However, despair gave way to " erce determination after she heard Abrasha Blum, a member of the Jewish Coordinating Committee that sought to unite the diverse political factions of the ghetto, give a rousing speech calling for armed resistance. Among her most important missions as a courier was to smuggle a map of the death camp of Treblinka out of the ghetto in the hope that solid information about the killing would spur a decisive response in the West.

She brought dynamite into the ghetto, which required not only courage, but also money to grease the path in and out. She was

GERMANY AND CLAIMS CONFERENCE MARK 60 YEARS OF COMPENSATION AGREEMENTS

The government of Germany committed recently, through an agreement signed with the Claims Conference, to continue compensation payments to eligible Holocaust survivors and providing funding for homecare for elderly victims.

At the ceremony in Berlin, German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schuble hosted a ceremony at which an agreement was signed that will continue to govern the Claims Conferences compensation programs and the provision of homecare funding by the German government. [see remarks by Roman Kent on p. 6]

These agreements come 60 years after the historic " rst agreements were signed in September 1952 that pledged West Germany to providing payments for certain Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Those " rst agreements, called the Luxembourg Agreements, have been followed in the ensuing decades with numerous other funds and programs to provide payments and

Stop the Massacres of Our Children: the Case for Meaningful Gun Control LegislationBy MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT

On Thursday night, December 13, my wife Jeanie and I were privileged to be at the White House and listen to President Obama recall the miraculous ! ame that brought hope and . . . sustained the faithful as he and First Lady Michelle Obama joined leaders of the Jewish community to celebrate the festival of Hanukkah.

When the president spoke about the Jewish peoples ever-lasting hope that light will overcome the darkness, that goodness will overcome evil, and that faith can accomplish miracles, I could not help but re! ect on my own improbable journey that had brought me from the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany where I was born, the son of parents who had survived the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen only three years be-fore, to this memorable candle lighting ceremony in the White

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TOGETHER 2 January 2013 visit our website at www.amgathering.org

In Memoriam: Vladka Meed (1921-2012) by Michael Berenbaum..............................1Germany and Claims Conference Mark 60 Years of Compensation Agreements........1Stop the Massacres of Our Children by Menachem Z. Rosensaft.................................1 Vladka Meed: In Her Own Words................................................................................2Convicted of Fraud, Rabbi Youlus Goes to Prison by Emily Jacobs..............................4Remarks by Roman Kent..............................................................................................6 The Legacy of the Survivors of Bergen-Belsen............................................................7Holocaust Survivors Find Each Other Again, 70 Years Later by Michal Shmulovich..9At 20 Years, Holocaust Museums Importance Continues to Grow by Maayan Jaffe...12U.S Response to a Cry For Help During World War II by Michael Berenbaum .......14Concert Based on Terezin Story to Bene" t Survivors in New York...........................15 Babe Ruth and the Holocaust by Rafael Medoff......................................................16Grandson Takes Over Search for Holocaust Survivors Savior by Hillel Kutler........17Eleonara Bergman Awarded French Legion of Honor............................................17New Director and New Head Archivist at ITS............................................................18Searches (contributing editor Serena Woolrich)...................................................19In Memoriam...............................................................................................................20

American Gathering Executive CommitteeSAM E. BLOCH ROMAN KENT MAX K. LIEBMANN

JOYCE CELNIK LEVINE MENACHEM ROSENSAFT ELAN STEINBERG, KZ

Vice PresidentsEVA FOGELMAN ROSITTA E. KENIGSBERG ROMANA STROCHLITZ PRIMUS JEAN BLOCH ROSENSAFTMENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT STEFANIE SELTZER ELAN STEINBERG, KZJEFFREY WIESENFELDSecretaryJOYCE CELNIK LEVINETreasurerMAX K. LIEBMANNRegional Vice-PresidentsVIVIAN GLASER BERNSTEINBERNARD KENTMICHAEL KORENBLITMEL MERMELSTEINSERENA WOOLRICH

TOGETHERJanuary 2013 Volume 27 Number 1

contents

TOGETHERAMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

AND THEIR DESCENDANTS122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 New York, New York 10001 212 239 4230

PresidentSAM E. BLOCHChairmanROMAN KENTSenior Vice PresidentMAX K. LIEBMANNFounding PresidentBEN MEED, KZHonorary PresidentVLADKA MEED, KZHonorary ChairmanERNEST MICHEL

Administrative DirectorELLEN S. GOLDSTEIN

Publication CommitteeSAM E. BLOCH, ChairmanELLEN S. GOLDSTEINROMAN KENTJOYCE CELNIK LEVINEMAX K. LIEBMANNROMANA STROCHLITZ PRIMUSMENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFTELAN STEINBERG, KZ

Project Director, Teachers ProgramELAINE CULBERTSON

Managing EditorPHILIP SIERADSKI

CounselABRAHAM KRIEGER

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Vladka Meed: In Her Own Words

On the evening of April 11, 1983, Vladka Meed, Chairperson of the Cultural Committee of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, introduced a moving program of Yiddish and Hebrew music and po-etry to thousands of survivors and their families in Wash-ington, DC. Her words on that occasion, published in From Holocaust to New Life (American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, 1985), re!ect her lifelong dedication to Holocaust remembrance, Jewish educa-tion, the preservation of the Yiddish language, and her unwavering commitment to human rights.

As we gathered in Jerusalem in 1981, we are together againto hear a Yiddish word, a Yiddish song, to watch a traditional Jewish danceto express the love we feel for our culture that has survived, and which has allowed us as a people to survive.

We are hereeyewitnesses of the Nazi inferno; wit-nesses to a pulsating Jewish culture that existed, and then was cut down. It was a tradition of splendor. A life full of creativity, of learning, of faith in the rights of the human being and in the righteousness of the world. A tradition cut down but never destroyed.

In this land where we live today, the spirit of free-dom for all was inscribed on the great Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The same spirit was also close to us in the world from which we came. Its sound was heard in the idealistic Jewish youth from political ranks who became the core of the resistance " ghters in the ghettos, in the forests, in the camps. They drew their idealism and their strength from the wellspring of our cultural treasures, which gave meaning and exaltation to their lives.

It was nearly half a century ago in May 1933, that Nazis ripped our great books out of libraries and set them on " re in the streets of Berlin. As if ideas could be de-stroyed by ! ames. The burning of Jewish books was a prelude to the mass graves of Ponary and Babi Yar, to the gas chambers of Treblinka where our people perished and where much of our great culture was destroyed. But even then, in those darkest days, our enemies could not destroy our spirit.

There is a legend about the Jewish martyr, the teach-er Hananyah ben Teratyon. A Roman emperor ordered him to be wrapped in the scrolls of the Torah and burned to death. While he himself was burning, Hananyah saw the words of the Torah ! y up towards the heavensthe ! ames could not consume them. Nor could ! ames de-stroy our spiritual strength.

Even in the very shadow of death, our people con-tinued to create. They studied, they wrote, they learned Torahwe even collected documentary materials to be buried in milk cans so that future historians might learn what happened to us.

In the midst of that man-made hell, the souls of the tortured could not be sti! ed. Poetry still spoke through our

Acknowledging our special donors...Sam Bloch 500.00Simon & Josephine Braitman Family Supporting Foundation 2,500.00Larry Hiss 750.00

Jeffrey Kraines, MD/William P. Goldman & Brothers Foundation, Inc. 5,000.00Joel Rosenkranz and Janis Conner 500.00Elizabeth, Carol & Robert Sandy 500.00Schwarz Foundation 1500.00Seltzer Family Foundation 500.00Verhegyi Family Trust 1,000.00Weinreb-Berender Carter Foundation 1,018.00


contd from p. 1to recall that she had known nothing about dynamite and certainly not how dangerous it could be. Ignorance forti" ed her courage. After the ghetto uprising she continued sup-plying money and papers for Jews in hiding as she lived on the Aryan side, passing as a non-Jew.

Vladka recalled that she had to be care-ful that her eyes did not betray her identity. Jews trying to pass as non-Jews often re-vealed themselves unwittingly by the sad-ness in their eyes, by seeing things that other Poles had long since ceased to notice.

She taught herself to laugh a deep joyous belly laugh that gave off an aura of freedom and nonchalance that no Jew could imagine.

She retained some of the characteristics of a courier throughout her life. She would size up a situation quickly. She could get a person to talk about himself and establish a quick rap-port, revealing very little of herself but absorb-ing all essential information from the other person. She was strong and resolute. She was persistent, even stubborn.She would speak softly but her words carried weight. One sel-dom said no to Vladka and one was often subsequently grateful for the coerced yes.

In her writings she alludes to the loneli-ness and pressure of her double life only in passing: You can be my friend, she said to Benjamin Miedzyrzecki (Meed), who was also passing as an Aryan and who would later become her husband, because if I dont come back, I want someone to know that I am missing. She married Benjamin Miedzyrzecki formally in 1943.

I remember Ben telling the story of their " rst wartime marriage. Ben and Vladka were seeing each other, staying out late at night and Bens mother understood that there were no tomorrows for Warsaws Jews: one sim-ply could not wait. She took off her wedding ring and told Ben to give it to Vladka. She lifted a glass of water and said, Zol zayn mit mazl, wishing the young couple good luck.

Vladka was one of the " rst survivors to arrive in the United States in 1946 aboard the Marine Flasher, which became a transport ship for survivors. Meed traveled and spoke widely as a living eyewitness to the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In 1948 she published On Both Sides of the Wall in Yiddish, one of the earliest accounts of the uprising and still one of the most compelling. The book, long ago translated into English, remains in print 63 years after its publication.

With Ben and a group of friends from

the 1950s or even earlier and a group that in-cluded Jonas Turkow, Alexander Donat, Jack Eisner, Joseph Tekulsky and Anne Celnik and other survivors, she launched the War-saw Ghetto Resistance Organization in 1962 to commemorate those who had been mur-dered, and to raise awareness among young people and the wider public about their lives. What began as an annual memorial meeting of a couple of hundred survivors became a world-wide project drawing large audiences to annual events in all " fty states and many countries, and prominent memorial muse-ums in Washington, DC and in many metro-politan centers.

During the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Jerusalem in 1981 and the American Gatherings, in Washing-ton in 1983 and Philadelphia in 1985, Vlad-ka was in charge of the cultural events that celebrated Yiddish culture. Few performers dared turn her down and survivors had tears in their eyes as they enjoyed the culture of the world into which they were born.

Vladka and Bens home was a gather-ing place for Yiddish life. Yiddish poets

and resistance " ghters would mingle and there always would be Yiddish music. Her Julliard- trained daughter Anna would play and sing.Vladka loved to sing. Among her favorite songs were Ikh vil nokh eyn mol zen mayn heym [I would like to see my home one more time]. For her, the Shoah was not only about what the Germans did to the Jews, but about the world that the Jews had created before the Holocaust and even within the ghetto.

When her husband, Benjamin Meed, assumed leadership of the survivor commu-nity, Vladka Meed organized a teacher train-ing program, co-sponsored by the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and the Jewish Labor Committee, one of the earliest such programs. It took American teachers from public schools and Christian parochial schools and brought them to Po-land and Israel to experience a Seminar on the Holocaust and Resistancefor Vladka the story of resistance was always essen-tial. For almost 20 years, she unfailingly led the mission each summer, sitting in on each class, herding her adult students on trips throughout Israel and showing them the Warsaw she knew so well.

Meed helped produce a dedicated and informed cadre of teachers throughout the United States. These teachers are to be found throughout the country and still call them-selves Vladkas students. Central to this pro-gram were the direct testimonies of survivors, none more impressive than Vladka Meeds.

She is survived by her two children Anna Scherzer and Steven Meed, both physicians.

As a couple Vladka and Ben lived and breathed Holocaust commemoration. They sustained the survivors movement and al-ways saw themselves as part of that com-munity. When Ben was organizing the sur-vivors organization and Vladka the teachers program, their home and their professional activities were one. They had a deep love forged in danger and disaster and relied on each other. Each made a critical difference in their individual way. They never liked to sit on the dais above their people, but on the ! oor surrounded by friends and family.

Their son, Steven, summed up his par-ents lives. They made a difference and the world is a better place because they walked this earth, he said lovingly, respectfully. Each made a unique individual contribution to Holocaust remembrance and to survivors and their joint contribution was unequalled.

In Memoriam: Vladka Meed

Ben & Vladka Meed.

The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descen-dants mourns our beloved Vladka, courageous heroine of the Warsaw Ghetto, passionate advocate of Yiddish culture and, with unforgettable Ben, z"l, a pioneer in Holocaust remembrance and education.

Her legacy endures in the institutions and organizations she inspired and the Teachers Program on the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance she founded.

May her memory be a blessing to her children and grandchildren.Sam E. Bloch, PresidentRoman R. Kent, ChairmanMax K. Liebmann, Senior Vice PresidentMenachem Z. Rosensaft, Vice PresidentJoyce Celnik Levine, Secretary


lips, and music still came from our throats. Even as the smoke rose from the ovens, our children painted on scraps of paper and wrote poems about butter! ies which could no lon-ger be seen in the ghetto. While the world turned away so as not to smell the smoke from the crematoria, our people struggled to preserve their love of goodnessof human-ityof God.

In the Skarzysko concentration camp in Poland, the inmates managed to smuggle in a rams horn, which they fashioned into a shofar. As the High Holy Days arrived, and the shofar was blown, Jews facing death felt themselves enveloped in holiness.

I remember the shattering days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when above the ghetto wall one could see the huge tongue of " re reaching toward the sky. And through the dense smoke I could hear the sound of

We are herewe Jews who survived. We are here to teach, to learn, to remember, to rebuildto join hands among ourselves and with all other people in the world in cel-ebration of the continuity of life. Through our voices, our literature, our art, our music and our dance we will express what is in our hearts.

We have come a long way, and we have brought our treasure of Yiddishkeit with us. We maintain the legacy of a people who nev-er gave up, even in the darkest hours, and we shall preserve that memory for future gen-erations.

Jews defending themselves. It was my des-tiny to work closely with these young ghetto " ghters who became legendary heroes of our people. In those last days of struggle, aban-doned by the world, they still held on to their idealsto the truths rooted in Jewish tradi-tion.

We carry this heritage with us every-where. It has helped us " nd a new place for ourselves in America where we rebuilt our homes and families. Americathe in" nite variety of this great land, with its many rac-es, creeds and nationalitieshas enriched us all. And our Jewish cultural heritage has en-riched America and the entire world.

Here the Yiddish language has won worldwide recognition with the granting of the Nobel prize to our great Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singerwho, although liv-ing in America, writes about Jews from War-saw or Lodz and through them preserves the spiritual treasures of Polish Jewry.

Convicted of fraud, Rabbi Youlus goes to prisonby EMILY JACOBS, Washington Jewish Week

On Dec. 17, Menachem Youlus, a Balti-more rabbi who ran the Jewish book store in Wheaton, began serving a 51-month prison sentence at the federal correctional institu-tion (FCI) in Otisville, N.Y. Convicted of two counts of mail and wire fraud in a Manhattan federal court on Oct. 11, Youlus is slated to be incarcerated until Aug. 26, 2016.

Youlus co-founded Save a Torah, Inc. in 2004, a charity that solicited funds to rescue and acquire Torahs that had been lost in the Holocaust. He also became known as the Jewish Indiana Jones for his alleged heroic overseas adventures to rescue these Torahs.

According to the sentencing memoran-dum, Youlus deposited contributions made to Save a Torah directly into his bank ac-counts and obtained thousands of dollars in reimbursements for overseas travel ex-penses that he never actually incurred. In actuality, with the exception of isolated trips to Israel and Canada, Youlus has, to this day, never left the United States. He also pretend-ed that these Torah-saving trips caused him to go into debt, and received an additional $144,000 from the charity that he stated nev-er paid him a penny for his endeavors.

The memorandum continues to explain that Youlus earned large pro" ts by greatly in! ating the prices of these Holocaust To-

rahs that in reality, came from used Torah dealers. He also in! ated invoices to add thousands of dollars in false repair and trans-portation costs.

It is clear that during the time period of the fraud, Youlus bought 24 used Torahs from those two used Torah dealers for pric-es ranging from $3,250 to $9,500, with an average cost of $5,830 per Torah. Based on bank records and Save a Torah records, it is clear that Youlus received from $7,000 to $32,714 from the charity for each Torah he provided, with most payments in the range of $10,000 to $20,000, according to the memorandum.

Youlus received the vast majority of all the money raised by Save a Torah. In total, the charity raised over $1.4 million (from over 800 donors including many congrega-tions nation-wide), although $145,235 of such contributions were never received by the charity, and instead stolen outright by Youlus, who deposited the money into his bank accounts. Of the money received, ap-proximately $1,356,772, the charity trans-ferred approximately $1,061,676 directly to Youlus by check. Thus, in total, Youlus received approximately $1,206,911 of the fraudulent proceeds.

Present at the October sentencing was Menachem Rosensaft, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, and the general counsel of the World Jewish Con-

gress. Rosensaft, whose parents survived Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, had been in-strumental in the investigation of Youlus and Save a Torah, after hearing one of Youlus tall tales.

What really triggered my reaction to Youlus was when I learned of his claim that he found a Torah scroll in 2001 under the ! oor boards of a barrack in Bergen Belsen, said Rosensaft. I knew that in May 1945, one month after the liberation of the entire camp by the British, every single barrack was burnt to the ground. At that point it be-came clear to me that Menachem Youlus was a liar. He was not an exaggerator, but an out-and-out categorical liar.

Upon learning of Youlus prison sen-tence, Rosensaft explained that while he is not necessarily happy that Youlus is impris-oned, he hopes it sends a message to others that something like this cannot happen again.

I draw no satisfaction out of the fact that Menachem Youlus is now in jail. I draw no satisfaction whatsoever off of having somewhat played a role in having him sen-tenced; on the other hand, that is the form of punishment that our society deems ap-propriate for someone who commits serious fraud like Youlus, he said. At some point, a message has to be sent to others who are inclined to want to exploit the Holocaust or any tragedy for their own personal pur-poses. They will not be allowed to get away

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assistance to Holocaust victims, established through ongoing negotiations between the Claims Conference and the government of Germany.

Through the rise and fall of Commu-nism, the reuni" cation of Germany and sub-sequent German governments, the Claims Conference has continued to work with the German Ministry of Finance to ensure that Holocaust survivors obtain a small measure of justice. These 60 years of negotiations to provide acknowledgement to Holocaust survivors has been an unparalleled historic endeavor.

Our work has never been about the money. It has always been about the rec-ognition, the validation, the acknowledge-ment of Holocaust victims, said Chairman Julius Berman. Our work for them is not done. Not yet. Together, we owe it to these heroes of the Jewish people to make their last years more digni" ed and comforting than their youth. Survivors were abandoned by the world oncewe continue to work to make sure that they will never be aban-doned again.

S p e c i a l N e g o t i a t o r Ambassado r Stuart Eizen-stat spoke of G e r m a n y s c o n t i n u e d comm i tmen t to ful" lling its historic obligation to Holocaust vic-tims, and of

the work that is still to be done. All is not " nished. The Claims Conference and the international Jewish community call upon Germany to " nish out this critical process. After enduring the worst that humanity could devise, these elderly victims many

home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors and Nazi victims, where Shoah memory and legacy are active witnesses in daily life, he said.

Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schuble spoke of the historic relationship that has developed between the Claims Conference and the government of Germany, evolv-ing from the " rst for-mal, chilly g r e e t i n g s exchanged at the begin-ning of the 1952 talks to an ongo-ing, mutual commitment to victims and to his-tory. My particular special thanks to the Jewish Claims Conference. For 60 years the Claims Conference has been the partner of Germany in the organization of help for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Since the Luxembourg Agreement and far beyond it has been the Claims Conference which has very closely followed the legislation regard-ing compensation and the corresponding application of the law, carried out payment and not least has referred again and again to where there exists a need for reform, he said.

Sixty years of the Luxembourg agree-ments are a reason to look back with a certain pride at what has been achieved together for the survivors. 60 years of the Luxembourg agreements also stand for 60 years of con" dence-inspiring partnership and co-operation of all participants, said Minister Schuble. In this work for the victims of persecution it is evident to all that the gruesome history in the National Socialist period, the suffering and injustice that was brought for millions of people, cannot be undone. No compensation can change anything in that. And even with all the efforts, most suffering can at best be eased somewhat.

frail, many more destitute deserve in their " nal years to receive the best that human-ity can provide, he said. We are inspired that Germany has committed to ensure that Holocaust survivors, in their " nal years, can be con" dent that we are endeavoring to help them live in dignity, after their early life was " lled with such tragedy and trauma. Let us help them not to be forgotten again.

Roman Kent, Claims Conference Trea-surer and Chairman of the American Gather-ing of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, opened his speech with a famous German poem by Heinrich Heine, The Lorelei, and linked it to the fate of the victims and the memories of survivors that persist. Of course, recit-ing the phrase legend of bygone ages (aus alten Zeiten), which Heine speaks about in his poetry, to me is the bygone age of the Holocaust because it was such an over-whelming, devastating part of my early life. Although the horri" c experiences that I and other survivors endured in the concentra-tion camps took place in a bygone age, the tragic memories are constantly present in my daily life still today, he said. Symbol-ically, the Luxembourg Agreement signed sixty years ago was the start of the heal-ing process for both the German nation and the Holocaust survivors. It was an of" cial acknowledgement of responsibility by the Germans, and a willingness to recompense the Jewish people in some small part, with a compensation system that would help those who survived. As imperfect and inadequate as it was, it offered some assistance in our " ght to rebuild our lives.

Amb. Reuven Merhav, Chairman of the Executive Committee, spoke of his discus-sion with German President Joachim Gauck in Israel last May. I described my natural commitment to the Claims Conference in its sustained endeavors to secure a small mea-sure of justice for over 800,000 Holocaust survivors and Nazi victims as well as up-holding the Shoah legacy in a longstanding and honest partnership with the Bundesre-publik, in every realm. Consequently the Claims Conference has become omnipres-ent in Jewish life, particularly so in Israel,

Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat

Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schuble

GERMANY AND CLAIMS CONFERENCE MARK 60 YEARS OF COMPENSATION AGREEMENTS contd from p. 1

with it. Thats true of a Menachem Youlus or any other person trying to make a quick buck out of peoples tragedies.

Rosensaft expressed hope that Youlus

sentence would allow him to repent and think about the people he affected.

I think that when he comes out, hell be given a chance to re-enter society. Ob-viously there is a price to pay, and I hope that he would stay away from being a sofer [scribe], said Rosensaft. Its an unfortu-

nate episode but at a given point you have to put it in the past. For better or for worse, Menachem Youlus wanted to be famous. This was probably not the way he wanted to become famous, but he made that choice. There was no reason for him to do this.

Convicted of fraud, Rabbi Youlus goes to prisoncontd from p. 4


REMARKS BY ROMAN KENT Chairman of the American Gathering & Treasurer of the Claims Conference

NOVEMBER 15, 2012GERMAN FINANCE MINISTRY

BERLIN, GERMANYMinister Dr. Wolfgang Schuble, State Secretary Gatzer, Honored Guests,Ladies & Gentlemen, and of course, My Fellow Survivors ..

Ich wei nicht, was soll es bedeuten,Da ich so traurig bin;Ein Mrchen aus alten Zeiten,Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

(I know not if there is a reasonWhy I am so sad at heart.A legend of bygone agesHaunts me and will not depart.)

My personal reply to the above senti-ments expressed by Heinrich Heine in his beautiful poem, The Lorelei, is that there are 6 million reasons why I am so sad; they are the 6 million Jewish victims -- men, women & children -- who cannot be with us today.

Die Luft ist khl, und es dunkelt,Und ruhig ! ieBt der Rhein;Der Gipfel des Berges funkeltIm Abendsonnenschein.

(The air is cool under nightfall.The calm Rhine courses its way.The peak of the mountain is sparklingWith evenings " nal ray.)

Furthermore, I am saddened by the fact that these 6 million Jewish victims who were murdered needlessly did not live to visualize the beauty of the surroundings so lovingly described by Heine.

In addition, how surreal it is for me to stand here today in Berlin, knowing that the shameful Wannessee Conference was held just a few short kilometers away. It was at this infamous meeting where a group of high ranking German and Nazi of" cials, most with a distinguished title such as Doctor, Minister Secretary, or General, gathered together to implement the so-called Final Solution plan. Yet, in spite of the innocent sounding name, for all intents and purposes, in plain language, the

agenda was to strategize how to most ef" -ciently murder the entire Jewish population.

Of course, reciting the phrase legend of bygone ages (aus alten Zeiten), which Heine speaks about in his poetry, to me is the bygone age of the Holocaust because it was such an overwhelming, devastating part of my early life. Although the horri" c ex-periences that I and other survivors endured in the concentration camps took place in a bygone age, the tragic memories are con-stantly present in my daily life still today.

For how could it be for me, a survivor of Auschwitz, to forget even for one mo-

ment the horri" c experiences endured in the concentration camp. Just witnessing the atrocities committed at the gate entering Auschwitz-Birkenau is more than enough to keep me awake at night until the end of time.

The brutality and bestiality that occurred daily in the concentration camp are indel-ibly etched in my mind. How can I erase the sight of the living skeletons, still alive, just skin and bones? How can I ever forget the smell of burning ! esh that constantly " lled the air? Auschwitz was a place that many of us came not knowing each other in life, but many of us left together in the form of white, blue smoke emanating from the chimneys. The heartbreaking sobbing of the children, as they were torn from their mothers arms by the inhuman action of their captors, will ring in my ears until I am laid to rest.

And so The Lorelei ends with .

Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingenAm Ende Schiffer und Kahn;Und das hat mit ihrem SingenDie Lorelei getan.(I think that the waves will devourThe boatman and boat as one;

And this by her songs sheer powerFair Lorelei has done.)

And thus the waves of Nazism devoured 6 million Jews. Unlike in The Lorelei, some of us were fortunate enough not to be swal-lowed up by the waves of prejudice and ha-tred. Today, those remnants of the pre-war Jewish community are known as Holocaust survivors.

The proud nation of Germans, with an illustrious heritage in all " elds of culture, science and philosophy among others, rep-resented by names such as Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Schiller, Mahler and many Nobel Prize recipients, unfortunately in the last century added another name to its proud her-itage, that of Adolf Hitler.

Yet, I a survivor who received a Doc-torate degree from Auschwitz, Flossenburg and other camps, standing here in the New Berlin speaking to the German government of today and a new generation of Germans, emphatically stress that I do not hold you re-sponsible for the deeds of your forefathers. You, the new generation, just like we sur-vivors, miraculously re-built our past lives. Just one look at Berlin today tells the story from ruins emerged a forward-looking modern city.

And thus we survivors and the Germans of today are forever united . Both of us do not want our past to be our childrens future. Therefore, we dare not forget the millions who were tortured and killed. For if we were to forget, the conscience of mankind would then be buried alongside the victims.

Symbolically, the Luxembourg Agree-ment signed sixty years ago was the start of the healing process for both the German na-tion and the Holocaust survivors. It was an of" cial acknowledgement of responsibility by the Germans, and a willingness to recom-pense the Jewish people in some small part, with a compensation system that would help those who survived. As imperfect and inad-equate as it was, it offered some assistance in our " ght to rebuild our lives.

As recently as December, 1999, stand-ing by his side, I heard President Rau state to us. I know that for many it is not re-ally money that matters. What they want is for their suffering to be recognized as suf-fering, and for the injustices done to them to be named injustices. I pay tribute to all who were subjected to slave and forced labor under German rule and, in the name of the

Roman Kent

Contd on pg. 13


On November 30, 2012, on the 60th anniversary of the inauguration of the Memorial Site of Bergen-Belsen, the following Legacy of the Survivors of Bergen-Belsen was issued. Written by Sam E. Bloch, President of the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Associations, and also signed by Ariel Yahalomi, President of the Irgun Sheerit Hapleta in Israel, Arieh Korets, President of the Lost Transport Victims Memorial Society, and other representatives of survivor organizations throughout the world, it was followed by a response from Jochi Ritz-Olewski and Menachem Rosensaft on behalf of the sons and daughters of the survivors.

For more than six de-cades, Ber-gen-Be lsen has been recogn ized as a symbol of the worst crimes in the history of hu-

mankind. The victims graves commit us to eternal remembrance.

The mass graves, the cemeteries, the monuments, and the archives bear witness to the greatest suffering followed by the miracle of physical, spiritual and cultural rebirth of the Jewish and other survivors in this place after their liberation.

Many survivors of Bergen-Belsen have made very signi" cant contributions to the commemoration of the victims of National Socialist persecution over the de-cades since the liberation. It is the sacred obligation of our generation to document the Nazi crimes in their fullest scope so as to warn the world of the dangers of hatred and the consequences of indifference. But our numbers are waning.

We entrust our experiences of the hor-rors of Bergen-Belsen to those who will come after us. We are con" dent that our children and grandchildren will continue our work. In the future, however, others in this and the coming generations, in par-ticular those who take upon themselves the task of remembrance within Germany, will also be essential for the preservation and transmission of our memories.

We have been grati" ed to see how the history of Bergen-Belsen and those who had to suffer in this place has been researched and presented over recent years. This process must not be allowed to come to a halt.

We, the representatives of the organiza-tions of Bergen-Belsen survivors, and of the wider community of survivors of Bergen-Belsen, therefore call on the authorities and

society of the Federal Republic of Germa-ny and of Lower Saxony to ensure that the memory of Bergen-Belsen, the Holocaust and all Nazi crimes must be actively and last-ingly shaped beyond our lifetime. The traces of the erstwhile camp must be permanently secured, and the physical evidence of the crimes committed here must be preserved. The historical knowledge of what happened at Bergen-Belsen and of the causes of the de-structive terror of National Socialism must be broadened through ongoing research and transmitted to future generations by means of educational initiatives.

It is by confronting the past that we can we develop the strength to resist the margin-alization and persecution of groups and indi-viduals. This readiness to thoroughly exam-ine historical events is the basis on which the full recognition of the inestimable value of mutual respect, the rule of law and democ-racy can be built. Only if the evidence of the crimes does not fade can remembrance ful" ll its most important purpose and serve as the foundation for a life lived in mutual respect.

This is our legacy for a peaceful future in Europe and the world.

Declaration by Children of SurvivorsBorn in the Displaced Persons Camp of

Bergen-BelsenBoth of us, Jochi Ritz-Olewski and Men-

achem Rosensaft, were born in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen. Our fathers were liberated there, together with more than 15,000 prisoners who were brought to the Wehrmacht barracks at the end of the war. Shortly afterwards, the DP Camp became the largest Jewish community in Germany, and subsequently for the past 62 years the bar-racks have been in the custody of the Brit-ish Army. With the imminent departure of the British Army, we insist that this area of fundamental historical importance will be protected and that those buildings of particu-lar symbolic value together with the Jewish cemetery of the DP camp will be integrated into the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Site.

THE LEGACY OF THE SURVIVORS OF BERGEN-BELSEN

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SAVE THE DATE Sunday

APRIL 7, 2013 at 2:00 PM

2013 Annual

Gathering of Remembrance

In observance of Yom HaShoah

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Temple Emanu-Elof the City of New York

Fifth Avenue and 65th Street New York City

Sam E. Bloch


April 2829, 2013 Washington, DC

!!"R#$%&"#&&()*(+,"P-(."/""#012),3$)."DC"4!!4564 47

N#32$)#&"8+2*%3("3$"H$&$-#%03"/%+929$+0""#):"$+&:"#+"II";(3(+#)0

APRIL"4< N#32$)#&"8+2*%3("D2))(+."#012),3$)"C$)9()32$)"C()3(+."#012),3$)."DC Free for survivors and World War II veterans Presentation of the Museums highest honor, the Elie Wiesel Award

APRIL"4=""O>()"H$%0("#3"31("M%0(%?" Free for everyone; lunch included (with advance registration) The Museum will be closed to the public

PLEA/E"JOIN"@/ in paying tribute to Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans as we mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and thank all those who have made our global impact possible. Bring your family and join with Elie Wiesel and thousands of others for this historic occasion.

Highlights include: Tribute ceremony honoring survivors, veterans, and rescuers Family research with Museum staff Artifact review with curators and opportunity to donate family collections Special programs, tours, and family activities throughout the Museum Afnity tables where those from the same prewar town, ghetto, or camp can reunite

The registration deadline is March 15. Please register early to reserve your seat. Visit %01??B$+,F)(9(+#,#2) or call B


By MICHAL SHMULOVICH , The Times of Israel

In the fall of 1939, a group of 150 Czech Jewish teenagers said goodbye to their fami-lies and friends, and boarded a train to Den-mark. For many, it was the last time theyd see or hug their parents because their families, the ones who stayed behind in then-Czechoslovakia, for the most part, perished.

At the ages of 14 to 16, the youngsters had started a new life. Their escape was planned by the youth division of the Jewish Agency (Aliyat Hanoar, or Jugend Aliyah) in af" lia-tion with Zionist youth groups like Maccabi Hatzair as well as a Danish peace league and several Jewish communities.

They were taken in by ordinary Dan-ish families; they lived in foster homes and worked on farms. Why farms? It was more than a means of escape. One of the goals of the youth groups was to prepare a class of Jewish land-tilling pioneers for future settle-ment in the State of Israel. (The plan worked. Many of those who made their way to Man-date Palestine or Israel ended up working in natural sciences or on the large farms of kib-butzim in the north.)

In Denmark, life was relatively good for the Lucky Ones: They were spared the fate of so many other Jews during the Holocaust, and they didnt need to wear a yellow star. Nonetheless, they were refugees, and as the war raged on, the Nazis were ever-present.

They grew to be like a tight-knit family. Those who lived in the southern farming re-gion of Sjaelland, for example, met at least once a week in the city of Naestved, offering each other a modicum of stability and conti-nuity in a sea of change.

Some became best friends, and others met their future spouses in the group.

But in 1943, the Nazis suddenly an-nounced that the 7,000 Jews in Denmark were no longer free. Until then, Germany had somewhat respected Danish institutions,

calling the nation a protectorate. Now the Jews were to be arrested and deported. Many of the youngsters were smuggled out on tiny " shing boats to Sweden, which was neutral and many Danes risked their lives to get them out. Other Jewish teens were chosen to go to Palestine.

The group was shattered. In an era when mass communication was not yet the norm, the friendships were instantaneously lost. They moved on. Many began over, again, in South Africa, Israel, the US, Canada, or Britain, never knowing what became of their childhood companions. With the years, the memories started to fade. Until last year, when a relentless and meticulous Prague-based journalist, Judita Matyasova, began piecing together the histories of this extraor-dinary group, setting into motion a reconnec-tion process for many.

At a bright and airy house in Neve Ilan outside Jerusalem, six of the former refu-gees, and relatives of others who passed away or couldnt make the voyage, met for an emotional reunion. For most of them, it was one of the " rst times they reopened the chapter of their World War II past when staying alive meant leaving their families, and when childhood was ! eeting and mass killing raged.

At the gathering, two recently reunited friends Anne Marie Nemka Steiner (ne Federer) and Judith Shaked sat outside, on a big deck overlooking the Judaean hills. They laughed as they sipped their black teas. They spoke in low tones, the way sisters do when theyre sharing a secret, and their heads were tilted toward one another. Their conversation ! owed, nonstop, as if not a year had gone by since they last saw each other.

I havent seen her in about 70 years# ex-

claimed Shaked. Nemka was her best friend in Denmark, but they hadnt had any contact since they parted ways, when Shaked came to Palestine and Nemka escaped to Sweden. But we were so close Really, we were, Shaked said, adoringly looking up at her friend.

FLYING IN FROM SOUTH AFRICA, Linda Finethe daughter of Edita Moravcova (known by her diminutive, Dita), one of the refugees who had passed away put it this way: It wasnt easy [for the teens parents], you know Some families had several kids around the ages of 15 who were active in the Jewish youth groups [which planned the childrens escape] but they could only send one child on the train to Denmark. Can you imagine having to make such a choice? Knowing your other [children] may die?

Other families at the reunion con" rmed Fines heartbreaking account of events, and the impossible choices people had to make.

Dita was wise beyond her years. Her mother had died when she was only 9. She was 14 when she left Prague. She sold her mothers jewelry collection to pay for the train fare, and went to the Jewish Agency youth of" ce on her own to arrange the details of her escape.

After Denmark and Sweden, Dita came to Palestine, where she worked as an air hostess for a Czechoslovakian airline. Unbeknown to her, she helped smuggle documents for the Stern Gang via those ! ights. She was ar-rested by the British, and wrote in her diary that she had felt used by her own people, Linda Fine recounted.

I think thats one of the reasons she didnt stay in Israel, Fine added. After all she had been through, escaping the Holocaust, it was painful for her.

Dita experienced wonderful years in Denmark, but the cost of being saved carried bittersweet memories, the reuniting refugees said.

The brave ones were our parents, said Dagmar Pollakova, one of the six survivors at the intimate gathering. They were so brave to say goodbye to us, only children, never to know if they were going to see us again. In fact, most of them didnt.

Dan H. Yaalon (a Hebraicized version of his Czech name, Hardy Berger), an erudite geologist formerly of the Hebrew University, whose son Uri hosted the reunion, said the memory of saying goodbye to his mother is the most vivid of all his memories.

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FIND EACH OTHER AGAIN , 70 YEARS LATER

contd on p. 11

Some of the teenage Jewish Czech refugees in Denmark in the fall of 1941 (photo credit: Courtesy, archive of Judita Matyasova)


House.Less than 24 hours later, President

Obama spoke to the nation with tears in his eyes about the shooting of 20 children and six staff members of the Sandy Hook Ele-mentary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The murdered children, he said, are our children. And were going to have to come together and take meaningful action to pre-vent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

O n c e again, we had been con-fronted with darkness, with evil, and with the somber re-alization that faith can only a c c o m p l i s h

miracles if it is accomplished by decisive action, our action. Can we say, President Obama asked on Sunday, December 16, at the moving interfaith prayer vigil in New-town, that were truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happi-ness and with purpose? His answer to this most basic and yet most searing question captured the imperative confronting us as a nation. We cant tolerate this anymore, he declared,

These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. . . . If theres even one step we can take to save another child or another parent or another town from the grief thats visited Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try.

The problem, of course, is that the Na-tional Ri! e Association categorically rejects any legislation or regulation that might keep assault and semiautomatic weapons out of the hands of deranged killers. In a December 21, 2012, press conference and a Meet the Press interview two days later, NRA Execu-tive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPi-erre refused even to consider any limitation whatsoever on unrestricted access to assault weapons or high capacity ammunition.

LaPierre is so far outside the mainstream that Rupert Murdochs New York Post, hard-

ly a mainstay of liberal thinking, referred to him on its front page as a Gun Nut and NRA loon. The New York Daily News called him the craziest man on earth.

And yet the NRAs clout is such that dis-tressingly few Republicans have been will-ing to deviate from its gospel. Appearing on Meet the Press immediately after LaPi-erre, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was evidently unwilling to say even a single word that might invoke the NRAs displeasure and instead seemed most concerned about his own continued ability to purchase yet another AR-15 semi-automatic he already owns at least one. His NRA-dominated colleagues on the Republican side of the Congressional aisle also appear to be marching in lockstep.

In contrast, a number of pro-gun Demo-cratic US Senators have spoken out loudly and unambiguously. Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he had been summoned by his con-science in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings to change his position, and that he would support legislation banning assault weapons and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The power of the weapon, he said, the number of bullets that hit each child, that was so, to me, just so chilling, it haunts me. It should haunt every public of" cial.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) believes that %there are an awful lot of folks who, like myself, whove got an A rating from the NRA that are willing to say, Enough. Weve got to " nd a way that you can respon-sibly own " rearms in the country but put ap-propriate restrictions on some of those tools of ... mass killings. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.VA), who describes himself as an A-rated, lifelong member of the National Ri! e Association and a proud defender of the Sec-ond Amendment, wrote in the Washington Post that,

I support a sensible, comprehensive process that can lead to reasonable solutions regarding mass violence. I will weigh the evidence for any proposals put before me, in-cluding ways to address high-capacity maga-zines and military-style assault weapons, im-prove mental health treatment, and transform a culture that glori" es violence.

Which is not to say that there are not some principled Republican conservatives like MSNBCs Joe Scarborough who told his Morning Joe audience in an eloquent monologue last Monday that, Entertain-

ment moguls dont have an absolute right to glorify murder while spreading mayhem in young minds across America. And our Bill of Rights does not guarantee gun manufac-turers the absolute right to sell military-style, high-caliber, semi-automatic combat assault ri! es with high-capacity magazines to who-ever the hell they want. It is time for Con-gress to put children before deadly dogmas. Its time for politicians to start focusing more on protecting our schoolyards than putting together their next fundraiser.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has called for gun control to be part of a large,

national discussion together with mental health issues, substance abuse, and the de-sensitizing depiction of violence by the me-dia and in video games. And US District Judge Larry Alan Burns, a gun-owning con-servative who was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, called for far-reaching legislation in a Los Angeles Times op-ed:

Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Dont let people who already have them keep them. Dont let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I dont care whether its called gun control or a gun ban. Im for it . . . . There is just no reason civilians need to own assault weapons and high-capacity maga-zines. Gun enthusiasts can still have their venison chili, shoot for sport and competi-tion, and make a home invader ! ee for his life without pretending they are a part of the SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden.

But Scarborough, Christie and Burns are clearly the exceptions. The always con-temptible Rush Limbaugh descended to a new low even for him when he actually scoffed in the wake of the Newtown tragedy. I just got two e-mails, he brayed on his ra-

Stop the Massacres of Our Childrencontd from p. 1

contd on p. 11


Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Al-lison. God has called them all home.

Add to them six-year old Veronica Mos-er-Sullivan who was killed last July in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. And then there were six-year old Arye Sandler, three-year old Gabriel Sandler and eight-year old Miriam Monsonego who were gunned down last March by an Islamist terrorist in Tou-louse, France, together with Arye and Ga-briels father, Rabbi Jonathan Sandler. And let us not forget the 20 children killed by Palestinian terrorists on May 15, 1974, in the northern Israeli town of Maalot. And the seven children murdered on August 9, 2001, in the Sbarro pizza restaurant suicide bomb-ing in Jerusalem. And my brother, Benjamin, and all the Jewish, Sinti and Roma children butchered by the Nazis. And the children killed by terrorists in Northern Ireland, by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and in the genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia and elsewhere. The list of the children whom civilized society has failed is endless. We will never be able to list all their names.

Our " rst task, President Obama said poignantly, is caring for our children. Its

our " rst job. If we dont get that right, we dont get anything right. Thats how, as a so-ciety, we will be judged. Vice President Joe Biden, whom the president named to head an interagency task force on gun violence, ob-served that, even if we can only save one life, we have to take action. They are both, of course, absolutely right.

We cannot change the past. We cannot bring back to life a single murdered child. But all of us, regardless of party af" liation or political orientation, can and must do ev-erything in our collective power to stop the carnage of our children in the future. That future must begin now, and meaningful, ef-fective gun control has to be at the top of our list of priorities. Otherwise the anger we voiced and the tears we shed after the New-town massacre will be bereft of meaning.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft, who was born in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen, is general counsel of the World Jewish Congress and vice president of the American Gathering of Jew-ish Holocaust Survivors and

Their Descendants. He teaches about the law of genocide and war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia, Cornell and Syracuse universities.

dio program on December 18. I have three nieces. . . . You know what they say? Dear Uncle Rush: With all thats going on, do you think you should buy more guns? Every-body elses daughters are saying, Get rid of your guns. My nieces are asking me if I have enough# Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.

Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh? I began this article with a contemplation

of my own family history. My " ve-and-a-half year old brother, my mothers son, was murdered in an Auschwitz gas chamber. More than a million Jewish children, includ-ing all the children in my parents respec-tive families, were killed by the Germans and their collaborators during the Holocaust. Thousands upon thousands of them were machine gunned to death by SS men at kill-ing sites such as Babi Yar in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and Ponary near Vilnius in Lithuania.

At the Newtown vigil, President Obama read out the names of the 20 Sandy Hook El-ementary School children whom our society had been unable protect:

Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine.

Stop the Massacres of Our Childrencontd from p. 10

I was 10 when my father passed away, Yaalon said. It was the " rst time during

the conversation that raw emotion peeped through his otherwise jovial appearance. Then, just a few years later, I had to say goodbye to my mother, a widow, and depart for Denmark, he said, tears welling up.

He was able to communicate with his mother for a period, via the Red Cross letter forms, which only had space for 25 words,

but that soon stopped as the Nazis took con-trol of Denmark.

Some of the teens did " nd their parents after the war they were the happy excep-tions. Dina Kafkova found her father, one of the few Jews who escaped from Prague in 1941.

Kafkovas daughter, Barbara Rich, a law-yer from London who ! ew in to represent her mother at the gathering, said she wished her mom was still alive so she could ask her more about her wartime experiences.

You know how kids are, your parents are in" nitely boring when youre a teen And my mother never spoke about the war, said Rich. Perhaps it wasnt as acceptable to speak about the Holocaust as it is now. Or, maybe the experiences a remnant from a previous life were still too fresh, and speaking about them proved too pain-ful.

This meeting in Israel was instigated by a random chain of events: Years ago, while Kafkova befriended a stranger at a London tube station, a woman who, many years later, noticed an ad in a local Jewish pa-

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FIND EACH OTHER AGAIN , 70 YEARS LATERcontd from p. 9

per. That ad was taken out by a man named Yaalon asking if anyone had information on Czech Jews who had lived in Denmark dur-ing the war. When the ad was passed on to Kafkova, she closed a gap that had spanned over 40 years. Although she had known him by his Czech name, Berger, Kafkova recog-nized Yaalon right away, and she wrote to him.

They got in touch, and she even came to Israel for a visit but the entire group was still not yet aware of who else was out there.

This [reunion] would have meant the world to her, Rich said of her mother.

Matyasova (who works without funding) says the effort to reconnect the members of this group and capture their untold stories not just for their sake, but for their liv-ing family members, and for generations to come is far from over.

A few individuals, or even one individ-ual, is more than just a number, she said at the meetup. There are more Czech teens who were saved by Denmark during the war, and I want to " nd them all.

A few of the teenage Czech Jewish refu-gees enjoying the Danish winter in the early 1940s (photo credit: Courtesy, ar-chive of Judita Matyasova)


Contd on pg. 13

By MAAYAN JAFFE, Baltimore Jewish Times

This year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum marks 20 years of in-spiring our nation about the history of the Holocaust and the dangerous behaviors that led to it.

To mark its 20th anniversary, the Mu-seum will hold a historic gathering of Ho-locaust survivors and World War II veter-ans in Washington this April. A four-city tour beginning in December will lead up to the event and demonstrate the continu-ing relevance of the Holocaust in the 21st century.

Until April and for those who dont make the event in the spring the mu-seum is offering 20 actions that people can take to help promote Holocaust education and remembrance and to work to prevent future genocides (see ushmm.org/never-again).

As the museum prepares to launch its programming, the Baltimore Jewish Times caught up with museum director Sara J. Bloom" eld to talk about USHMMs new-est projects and initiatives. Bloom" eld, who serves as an adviser to museums around the world and is a member of the International Auschwitz Council and on the board of the International Council of Museums/USA, told the JT that USHMM, with close to two million visitors per year, is just as relevant today as it was 20 years ago when it opened.

JT: Most organizations celebrate on the 10th and 25th. Why the 20th?

Bloom" eld: For us, the 20th is really important because it marks the beginning of the moment of intergenerational trans-fer. Over the next coming years, we will be losing more of the eyewitness genera-

tion. We want to use the moment to honor survivors, salute World War II veterans and send a message to young people about the importance of carrying on the [messages of the] survivors to new generations ahead.

As an institution, we are asking the ques-tion, What will the Holocaust mean in the 21st century? We want to ensure it is not just another important part of history, but that it really becomes the pivotal event in hu-man history that continues to teach us very important lessons about humanity.

Is this a change? Is the museum evolv-ing?

I have been here 26 years; I came in the years the museum was being created. Our goal in those early years was to build a build-ing. Now, our goal is to build a global [Inter-net] enterprise. In those days, we werent even imagining going out to states. And now, in some ways, we are in all 50 states.

I think the other big change is that [with technology] the world has become a more ex-citing but also a more dangerous place. Issues of hate and genocide and anti-Semitism are very much present today. In some ways, we are more meaningful now in the 21st century than we were in the 20th. [The Holocaust] speaks so profoundly and urgently to some of the most pressing issues of our own day.

What role do you think the museum has played in the nations Holocaust education?

We see our responsibility as being a leader in the " eld of Holocaust education. We feel it is our responsibility to encourage Holocaust education, set standards for Holo-caust education and to provide materials that can be used in any kind of classroom setting a seventh-grade literature class or an 11th-grade history class. We have materials that are ! exible and can be adjusted to all sorts of classroom settings. We also publish guide-lines for teachers standards for things we think are indications of best practices, based on years of our own experiences learning things that work and things that dont work.

How do you get the materials to the teachers?

We identify master teachers around the country. These are teachers who have a com-mitment to the profession of education and Holocaust education, speci" cally. We invest in these teachers. We have a group of mas-ter teachers from around country that serve as leaders in their own states and school sys-tems and serve as supports and mentors in

the " eld. This is our way of ensuring quality Holocaust education throughout the country.

Do people still want to learn about the Holocaust?

There is still enormous interest from teachers and students on the high school and college levels. Our concern is how to respond to that interest with really quality education.

Can young people still connect?We obviously work with survivors a lot

and introduce younger people to survivors and World War II veterans. That is what brings the history alive. We have inten-sive programs with the D.C. school system and in Maryland and Virginia. This show that the subject matter continues to be very pow-erful and relevant for these young people. You can also look at the Holocaust in popu-lar culture; the Holocaust continues to be a focus of movies and books. Anne Frank is still incredibly popular. I think the reason is that it touches on such profound issues about human nature, our propensity for issues of hatred or abusive power.

As more and more survivors are dy-ing, in what unique ways will the museum ! ll that void?

We have a lot of testimonies, but noth-ing is like the chance to meet a real survivor. We have 90 survivors who volunteer for the museum and sit in the museum and talk to kids, and we know we wont be able to do that forever. The big question for us is how we maximize opportunities with the survi-vors while we have them. We do know that part of what the survivors bring and we can never replicate it is that authenticity. When the survivors are gone, it will be our collections that will bring an authentic take on history. The artifacts are what people " nd so meaningful the shoes and the suitcases and the railroad car.

We have another decade or so to collect all of this evidence. This will help us tell the story with power and authenticity when the survivors are gone. The objects in our collec-tions will be the sole authentic witnesses of the Holocaust.

Are there any other new initiatives?The biggest initiative for our future is

building what I call this global digital educa-tional platform that will give us the chance to bring Holocaust awareness and understand-ing to a worldwide audience anyone, any-where, anytime. We have a website in 14 dif-

At 20 Years, Holocaust Museums Importance Continues To Grow

USHMM Director Sara Bloom! eld


ferent languages and really want to expand on using digital media in a multilingual way to bring the history of the Holocaust to popula-tions all over the world countries in the Is-lamic world, of course, but also to places like Europe. It is really important that in the lands where the Holocaust happened they continue to see the Holocaust as an important part of their identity. And then, we also want it for parts of the world that are growing in in! u-ence, like China, Brazil and Russia.

Who are your main target audiences?The Holocaust was the failure of [Germa-

nys] leadership and citizenship. So, our two most important target audiences are leaders and young people. We also do a lot of lead-ership training programs for the military, ju-diciary, law enforcement, FBI and clergy. We have been training Baltimore City police since 1999. In these programs, these professionals look at how their own profession behaved during the Holocaust and in the 1930s leading up to the Holocaust, which leads to important discussions among these professionals about their own moral obligations today.

Still, not everyone believes in the Holo-caust. How do we respond to the deniers?

The worlds leading expert on Holocaust denial, Deborah E. Lipstadt, is a member of our board. However, deniers are not people that are interested in a discussion about his-tory. Holocaust denial is just another form of anti-Semitism. You cant have a rational debate with a hater. We dont deal with deniers directly; we dont dignify them. We dont want to give them a platform. Our big concern is the people they might in! uence, and the best response to that is effective Ho-locaust education.

And what about those who say Jews didnt ! ght back hard enough?

It is very easy to condemn people in hindsight. No one understood in the 1930s. The Nazis came to power in 1933 and started [the mass] genocide in 1941. No one could have predicated what was going to happen.

It was such an unprecedented event. It would have been unrealistic for people to grasp what was about to happen. So when you look at Jews in Germany, you have to remem-ber that they had been well assimilated and treated far better in Germany than in countries like Poland or Russia, where there was a lot of violence against Jews, or even France with the Dreyfus affair. If you looked at Europe at

the beginning of the 20th century, you would not have singled out Germany as the place to have mass violence against the Jews.

Also, we cant assume people had com-munications like we have today. Reports came back, sure, and people found them unbelievable as would be natural. Some people understood what was happening, but they made the choice to stay with their fami-lies rather than leave and risk " ghting in par-tisan units. I think to make judgments that condemn Jews who didnt fully understand or respond is not to look at history carefully. There was a lot Jewish resistance; we have two exhibitions on that in the museum.

We are in 2012. Across the world, we know there are other holocausts going on. How can the U.S. Holocaust Museum play a role in stopping those genocides?

When Elie Wiesel created the vision for this museum, he did feel it was very impor-tant the museum prevent future genocide. He wanted to try to do for other victims and potential victims what was not done for the Jews in the 1930s. His vision was if we can save lives in the future that would be the most powerful memorial to the Jews who died in Europe. We do have a genocide prevention program, and our job is to raise awareness. We dont advocate for any particular policy, but we do want to raise awareness. For ex-ample, we raised awareness about Darfur; we were one of the " rst institutions to call it genocide and then the U.S. government agreed with that assessment. At the museum, we point out that as horri" c an unprecedent-ed as the Holocaust was, after 1945 we have experienced Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.

Final sentiments. What do Jewish Times readers need to know?

The most important thing, and the reason why I think this museum so belongs on the National Mall in Washington, is that it is this global organization really speaking to all of humanity. We focus on not just that the Ho-locaust happened, but on why it happened. Surely it was preventable, and in encourag-ing people to think about that, we try to re-mind them that it happened in one of the most advanced regions of the world. The people of Germany were highly educated, very sophis-ticated, led by a democratic constitution with rule of law and freedom of expression all of the things we think in a democracy will protect us from our darker side as human be-ings. The Holocaust reminds us that today, in any society, the unthinkable is always think-able.

At 20 Years, Holocaust Museums Importance Continues To GrowContd from pg. 12

German people, beg forgiveness.As I gaze at the Berlin of today, so beau-

tifully re-built after the war, I also look be-yond the brick and mortar. I see its present inhabitants, the New Germans, those with compassion, understanding, and knowledge of the evils of Nazism. During the many years of our negotiations, I have witnessed the willingness and desire to correct past wrongs and to extend a helping hand to sur-vivors, particularly the ones in need.

For sixty years the Luxembourg Agree-ment has been periodically amended to con-form to the changing situation with regard to the needs of survivors. The Article II Fund is one of the best examples. Just as in past years, I am con" dent that the German gov-ernment will continue to be ! exible enough to recognize the additional needs of the ag-ing survivors, whose numbers rapidly dimin-ish year by year, homecare becoming the dominant issue.

At this time I would like to offer thanks to Minister Schuble for supporting the re-quests of the Claims Conference, and also express special appreciation to State Secre-tary Gatzer for his role in understanding the urgent needs of the aging Holocaust survi-vors.

However painful, we survivors and the German nation, must always remember the Holocaust in order to prevent it from ever happening again to us or to any other people. To overcome prejudice, hatred and human-rights abuses, it is essential that we educate future generations. Thus, it is our mutual obligation to instill in our children and the generations to come, what can happen when prejudice and hatred are allowed to ! ourish. Our children must be taught the importance of tolerance and understanding, both at home and in school, for tolerance cannot be as-sumed it must be taught. It is our shared re-sponsibility to emphasize to one and all that hate is never right, and love is never wrong. After all we are all one people, and we all live on one planet.

REMARKS BY ROMAN KENTContd from pg. 6


By MICHAEL BERENBAUM, JewishJournal.com

A prosecutor by training and a histori-cal novelist by avocation, Gregory J. Wal-lance has written books of historical " ction and historical non" ction. In Americas Soul in the Balance: The Holocaust, FDRs State Department and the Moral Disgrace of an American Aristocracy (Greenleaf Book Group Press: 2012), a highly readable, brief account of the dramatic interplay between the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury dur-ing the Holocaust over the fate of the Jews of Europe, Wallance tells quite a story and masterfully documents the well-deserved in-dictment of the World War II-era U.S. State Department.

The evidence he musters is well known to scholars, yet he brings fresh eyes to this material and introduces a factor that oth-ers have raised merely in passing the issue of class and of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) es-tablishment, which was then at the peak of its power. The WASP supremacy would soon change, however, as the sons and daugh-ters of American ethnic groups came of age during the middle decades of the 20th cen-tury, and with the election of John F. Ken-nedy, who always remembered that he was an Irish Catholic, a scorned outsider to the WASP establishment. Beginning with the JFK presidency, we witnessed a broadening of the American establishment with the entry of Catholic and Jews and, somewhat later, African-Americans and women, and now Asians and Latinos.

Wallance takes us inside the corridors of the State Department, then housed in what is now the Old Executive Of" ce Building, across from the White House. He captures the tragic tension between Sumner Welles, the undersecretary of state with deep person-al ties to the president, the man in the State Department most sympathetic to Jews, and

his boss, Cordell Hull, a former senator and politician with deep Southern roots mar-ried to a woman of Jewish ancestry who, frankly, was not up to the task of being a wartime secretary of state. At the peak of the German annihilation of the Jews, a sexual and racial scandal destroyed Welles career. On a presidential train, he is reported to have solicited sex from an African-American por-ter. Hull did not get mad at his insubordinate subordinate, he got even.

Wallance also takes us a ! oor above to the high level of the American State Depart-ment bureaucracy, where men and they were then virtually all men of similar background, class and education were quite certain that they perhaps even they alone knew what was in the best interest of the nation, without interference from outside ag-

itators and special inter-ests, such as Jews, who were concerned about the fate of their breth-ren and not just about the pursuit of war. He also takes us back to the prep school of Groton, where they were taught the values of national service and also of WASP supremacy, even before getting their Ivy League education.

He details the fail-ure of the State Depart-

ment to turn over Gerhard Riegners tele-gram to Rabbi Stephen Wise, informing the head of the World Jewish Congress of the Fi-nal Solution to the Jewish Problem because of the fantastic nature of the allegations and the impossibility of our being of any assis-tance if such actions the murder of the Jews were taken, as if it were better not to know than to know and be unable to be of assistance.

Historian Walter Laqueur had it right: With regard to rescue, the pessimists won. They said that nothing could be done, and nothing was done. The optimists, those who believed in rescue, were never given a chance. They may have failed, but to not at-tempt rescue was to ensure failure.

Wallance depicts the famous confronta-tion between the State Department and the Treasury Department over the issuing of a license to transfer foreign currency, and thus ransoming the Jews. It was this confronta-tion, and the State Departments effort to

thwart the rescue, that led young Treasury Department of" cials to draft their Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government to the Murder of the Jews. Among the accusations in the report, it said the State Department had: used Govern-mental machinery to prevent the rescue of these Jews; taken steps designed to pre-vent these [rescue] programs [of private or-ganizations] from being put into effect; surreptitiously attempted to stop obtaining of information concerning the murder of the Jewish population of Europe and tried to cover up their guilt by: a) concealment and misrepresentation; b) the giving of false and misleading explanations for their failures to act and their attempts to prevent action; and c) the issuance of false and misleading statements concerning the action which they have taken to date. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. condensed this re-port, softened its title and took it to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944. The result was the War Refugee Board with Morgenthau as chairman which " nally had the power to do something about rescue.

Throughout the book, Wallance does not let the reader lose sight of what these great men of history did not consider, namely that the decisions they made and the policies they pursued impacted real people, desperate people men, women and children. Ruth Glassberg, then a young child, is his narrator, and her story is riveting.

With his skill as a writer evident, his sense of the scenery and the dialogue, Wallance takes us into the corridors of power. We meet Gerhard Riegner, then a young of" cial of the World Jewish Congress operating in neutral Switzerland who " rst learns of the Final So-lution of death camps and of Zyklon B.

We are introduced to his informant, who has high contacts in the German govern-ment as a major industrialist and travels to Switzerland " rst to reveal the plans to attack the Soviet Union and then a second time to speak of the murder of the Jews. He is a source of absolutely signi" cant and incred-ible information. It took 40 years for Edu-ard Schultes name to be known, as Riegner had promised him anonymity. We are taken to Polands embassy in the United States, when Jan Karski, the great Polish courier, told of the demands of the Jews he met in the Warsaw ghetto to Felix Frankfurter and Ambassador Jan Ciechanowski in prepara-tion for his meeting with FDR.

U.S. response to a cry for help during World War II

Contd on pg. 15


We feel that we are literally in the room as Randolph Paul, general counsel of the Treasury Department, along with John Pehle and Josiah DuBois Jr., confront Secretary Morgenthau with their " ndings and their insistence on action. Wallances narrative is not imagined, but based on the diary of one of the participants. Thirty years ago, I examined DuBois most personal papers and attempted to describe the scene in Mor-genthaus of" ce and also the moment when Donald Hiss showed DuBois the missing link in the evidentiary trail that sealed his case against the State Department. My hat is off to Wallance for the sheer pleasure of reading his depiction.

He is less prone to blame Jewish institu-tional politics and the divisions among Jew-ish leadership than David Wyman, and plac-es responsibility directly in the hands of an establishment that failed the test in the Jew-ish peoples greatest hour of need. Wallance is quick to emphasize the distinct and con-trolling way in which Roosevelt controlled his cabinet and played off the interpersonal rivalries. Not all blame comes from FDRs desk, and Wallance credits the war effort.

Wallances judgment is balanced. He al-lows his case to build brick by brick, story by story, document by document. He is careful to stress that the State Department of today shares little in common with its World War II predecessor, both in class and in background a point that is easily forgotten by many, as the State Department and the Department of Defense and the White House now may hold in their hands the fate of the rebuilt Jewish community in Israel.

One may read more scholarly accounts of this period, but it is unlikely one will read a more vivid account that is both respon-sible and detailed without being too dense or drowning the guts of the story in myriad facts. Imagine a prosecutor presenting his case and a novelist writing his story. Consid-er Wallances mastery of detail and ability to present such detail in a compelling manner. The reader will not be disappointed.

U.S. response to a cry for help during World War IIContd from pg. 14

When the gifted Czech conductor Ra-fael Schchter arrived in Theresienstadt, he found himself in a shadow world where sick and starving prisoners were allowed to pur-sue every variety of arts and letters. Becom-ing chief organizer of the Administration of Free Time Activities, Schchter conceived a daring act of de" ance. Using a single score and one legless piano, he taught a chorus of 150 Jews to sing Giuseppe Verdis Requiem Mass. Sixteen times, before the last singers were sent to Auschwitz, they sang a Latin text proclaiming Gods certain punishment for the wicked and redemption of the inno-cent. Their last performance was in the pres-ence of high-ranking Nazi of" cials and rep-resentatives of the International Red Cross.

How this group of Jews in the antecham-ber to death came to sing a Catholic Mass is the central ques-tion of a two-hour, multi-media concert drama, De# ant Re-quiem: Verdi at Ter-ezin, which will be given its only New York performance on April 29, 2013, in Av-ery Fisher Hall at Lin-coln Center. Elie Wi-esel and Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat are Honorary Co-Chairs of the event.

The proceeds of this concert, pre-sented by UJA-Fed-eration of New York, Selfhelp Community Services, Inc., and The De" ant Requiem Foundation, will bene" t the UJA-Federation Community Initiative for Holocaust Survivors. This initiative makes grants to area-wide and community based agencies in New York that help sur-vivors maintain their independence, comfort and dignity. The services provided include emergency cash assistance, coordinated case management and entitlements counseling, transportation, legal advocacy, social gath-erings for survivors, end-of-life care, and second-generation caregiver support.

De# ant Requiem was created by Mae-stro Murry Sidlin, who discovered Raphael Schchters story in 1994 and interviewed

the few surviving chorus members. He used their video testimony, photo resources, and sections of a Nazi propaganda " lm depicting Terezn as a retreat for the Jews to shape a drama that incorporates a full performance of Verdis masterwork. The piece has been per-formed to critical acclaim everywhere it has played, from Washington, D.C. to Budapest, from Atlanta to Jerusalem, and in Terezn it-self. The performances are organized by The De" ant Requiem Foundation, chaired by Ambassador Eizenstat, who led the negotia-tions during the Clinton Administration for $8 billion in recoveries from European banks and insurance companies, and the restitution of Nazi-looted art and property to bene" t survivors and families of victims.

The evening will include a special pre-concert reception with Maestro Sidlin and Ambassador Eizenstat to honor Ernest W. Mi-chel, Executive Vice President Emeritus of UJA-Federation of New York, and former chairman of the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Mr. Michel survived Auschwitz to become one of the foremost leaders of the Ameri-can Jewish community. Privileged to spend his life very publicly in the service of the Jewish people, Ernie Michel

never left behind his identity as a survivor, and remains to this day a strong proponent of UJA-Federations efforts on behalf of the more vulnerable survivors in New York and Israel.

Tickets for De# ant Requiem go on sale on February 4, 2013, through the Lincoln Center box of" ce at 1.212.721.6500. An ar-ray of sponsorship opportunities at various levels of support, including ticket packages and an invitation to attend the pre-concert reception may be viewed on the UJA-Feder-ation website at http://ujafedny.org/de" ant-requiem. For more information, kindly be in touch with Jessica Chait of UJA-Federation at 212.836.1269, or [email protected].

Concert Based on Terezn Story to Bene! t Survivors in New York


Babe Ruth and the Holocaust By RAFAEL MEDOFF, Jerusalem Post

Seventy years ago, the names of 50 German-Americans appeared in a full-page advertisement in ten daily newspa-pers in denunciation of the Hitler policy of cold-blooded extermination of the Jews of Europe. The most prominent signatory was George Herman Babe Ruth.

Babe Ruth is remembered for his home runs on the " eld and his hot dog binges and other peccadilloes off the " eld. But as the American public is about to discover, there was another Babe Ruthone who went to bat for women and minorities, including the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1942, Allied leaders received a steady stream of reports about the Germans mas-sacring tens of thousands of Jewish civil-ians.

Information reaching the Roosevelt administration in August revealed that the killings were not random atrocities, but part of a Nazi plan to systematically anni-hilate all of Europes Jews. In late Novem-ber the State Department publicly veri" ed this news, and on December 17, the US and British governments and their allies issued a declaration acknowledging and condemning the mass murder.

But aside from that Allied statement, the Roosevelt administration had no inten-tion of doing anything in response to the killings. There was no serious consider-ation of opening Americas doorsor the doors of British-ruled Palestineto Jewish refugees. There was no discussion of tak-ing any steps to rescue the Jews. As quick-ly as the mass murder had been revealed, it began to fade from the public eye.

Dorothy Thompson was determined to keep that from h a p p e n i n g . And Babe Ruth would help her.

Thompson (1893 -1961 ) was the " rst American jour-nalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany. She was once described by Time magazine as one of the

two most in! uential wom-en in the United States, second only to Eleanor Roosevelt. In the autumn of 1942, Thompson con-tacted the World Jew

january 2013 in memoriam: vladka meed … · in memoriam: vladka meed (1921-2012) ... of the death...

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