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

Inside the real story behind Schindler’s list..................................................2

Rescuing the Jews of Denmark......................................................................3

A survivor’s duty..............................................................................................4

Opening Italy’s “closet of shame”..................................................................7

A toy monkey that escaped Nazi Germany..................................................10

How tiny Ecuador had a huge impact on Jews escaping the Holocaust..12

Jewish woman recalls the day she gave Hitler flowers.............................13

Nelly Ben-Or risked all to play the piano....................................................14

The Jewish women who fled tyranny to become angels of the NHS.......15

Vol. 45-No. 3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2019-Shevat/Adar 5779

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEMAMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM

BY JILL GOLTZER

Every year, on January 27th, theinternational community marks

International Holocaust RemembranceDay. This day, designated by theUnited Nations in 2005, marks the lib-eration of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination campby the Red Army. The largestand perhaps most famous ofthe camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau was both a laborcamp and a center for therapid murder of Jews. Over1.1 million Jews were mur-dered in this hell on earth.

Our Young LeadershipAssociates were honored toattend the official Holocaustremembrance ceremony atthe United Nations headquar-ters on Monday, January 28th.Our members were welcomedas guests of the office ofAmbassador Danny Danon,I s r a e l ’ s P e r m a n e n tRepresentative to the UnitedNations. We had a delegationof eighteen members attendthe ceremony, including threesenior board members (AdinaBurian, Barry Levine, andMark Moskowitz) and YLA Co-Chair Rachel Shnay.

The ceremony was hosted by Ms.Alison Smale, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications,and included remarks by UNSecretary-General António Guterres,H.E. Ms. María Fernanda EspinosaGarcés (president of the 73rd sessionof the General Assembly), H.E. Mr.Danny Danon, H.E. Mr. Jonathan R.

Cohen (Chargé d’Affaires, UnitedStations Mission to the UN), andAmbassador Sandro De Bernardin(Chair, International HolocaustRemembrance Alliance). The keynotespeaker was Ms. Sara J. Bloomfield,director of the US Holocaust

Memorial Museum. In addition to thedistinguished diplomats and figuresmentioned, we had the privilege ofhearing remarks from Holocaust sur-vivors Marian Turski and IngeAuerbacher.

The theme of this year’sHolocaust remembrance and

education activities is “Holocaust

Remembrance: Demand and DefendYour Human Rights.” The theme high-lights the 70th anniversary of theUniversal Declaration of HumanRights (UDHR) and the Conventionof the Prevention and Punishment ofthe Crime of Genocide. The UDHR

was proclaimed by the United NationsGeneral Assembly in Paris onDecember 10, 1948. EleanorRoosevelt, widow of AmericanPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt, waschair of the drafting committee. TheDeclaration was created in responseto the world’s outrage at the horrors ofWorld War II and the Holocaust; itspurpose was to prevent such atrocitiesfrom ever happening again. However,as UN Secretary-General AntónioGuterres mentioned in his remarks, wehave seen countless incidents of per-secution against groups simplybecause of who they are. Numerousgenocides have taken place since theadoption of the Declaration. It is clearthat we not only can do more, but wealso must do more.

In the UN Secretary-General’sremarks, Mr. António Guterresfocused on the proliferation of neo-

Nazi groups and the frightening rise inanti-Semitic incidents worldwide.“From a deadly assault on a syna-gogue in the United States to the des-ecration of Jewish cemeteries inEurope, this centuries-old hatred isnot only still strong — it is getting

worse.” The “proliferation ofneo-Nazi groups and attemptsto rewrite history and distort thefacts of the Holocaust” makes itever more clear that we mustcontinue to educate our youthand stand together in the con-tinuous fight against hatred anddiscrimination. Everyone, notonly Jews, should be wary ofsuch trends. “Inevitably, wherethere is anti-Semitism, no oneelse is safe” (AntónioGuterres).

Before the ceremony con-cluded, cantor BennyRogosnitzky of the Park EastSynagogue in NYC recited thememorial prayers, and the PS22 Chorus, directed by GreggBreinberg, performed twomusical numbers. One of thesongs the chorus performedwas titled “Who Am I” and waswritten by Holocaust survivorInge Auerbacher.

Following the ceremony,our delegation attended

the opening of “Beyond Duty:Diplomats Recognized as RighteousAmong the Nations,” an exhibitioncurated by Yad Vashem and spon-sored by the Permanent Missions ofIsrael, Peru, and Portugal to theUnited Nations. The exhibit highlightsthe unique stories of diplomats recog-nized by Yad Vashem for choosing toact according to their consciencerather than simply follow orders.Individuals such as Raoul Wallenbergfrom Sweden and Aristides de SousaMendes from Portugal risked theirlives to help Jews by providing themwith passports, visas and travel per-mits. Sousa Mendes famously stat-ed, “I would rather stand with G-dagainst man than with man againstG-d.” Such courage and unwaveringcommitment to humanity is responsi-ble for saving the lives of thousandsof Jews.

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY: NEVER FORGET

DEMAND AND DEFEND YOUR HUMAN RIGHTS

Representatives of the American Society for Yad Vashem Jill Goltzer, Mark Moskowitz, Goldie Hertz, Adina Burian,

Barry Levine and Rachel Shnay at the UN event dedicated to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. New York,

January 27.

Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779

BY NICK GREEN, EXPRESS

Before the war, the Ponar foresthad been a picnic destination

for people from the Lithuanian capital,Vilnius. The story of the forestchanged forever in 1939 when Stalinand Hitler’s peace pact divided up thelands between Germany and Russia.Stalin took Lithuania and after theRussians took control of Vilnius, theybegan building an infrastructure withwhich to support their forces. The RedArmy needed fuel dumps and theyquickly singled out Ponar Forest as asuitable place.

A railway track connected city andforest and the vast density of wood-land offered a place to hide the fuel.The Russians set about building largecircular concrete fuel dumps. But bythe time they were ready to enterservice the war had swung inGermany’s favour and they wereabandoned.

In June 1941 Lithuania was swal-lowed up by Hitler’s advancing troopswhen he invaded Russia. It didn’t takelong for the Nazis to turn on the localJewish population. They forced theminto ghettos and quickly sealed themoff from the outside world.

The Nazi official in charge of theVilnius ghetto was Martin Weiss. Thislightweight, bookish individual wasresponsible for selecting those to bedispatched to Ponar. He quicklyrevealed a talent for brutality. He onceshot a man on the spot for trying tosmuggle fish and potatoes into theVilnius ghetto. His inhuman reputationearned him the nickname Weiss dasSchwartz or White, the Black.

When the order came to begin thesystematic murder of Jews the Nazisbegan to look for a place that wouldbe functional yet isolated. They quick-ly found the perfect location: theabandoned Russian fuel pits in PonarForest. These huge holes were closeenough to the city and yet hiddenaway. And they were deep enough tocontain thousands of bodies. Theybegan using the site as a place ofexecution almost immediately.

It was here that the SS stumbled ona modus operandi. The Jews wereshot in groups: one victim, one shoot-er. It was a way of avoiding individualresponsibility: there would only becollective guilt. It was psychologicallybetter for the murderers.

The SS, as would become typical,logged the numbers, but not theexperiences of those involved. But wedo know what happened there. Themost exposing testimony about theoperation came from a Polish journal-ist, Kazimierz Sakawicz, whosediaries were published in 2005: “July27, 1941: Shooting is carried on near-ly every day. Will it go on for ever?The executioners began sellingclothes of the killed. Other garmentsare crammed into sacks in a barn atthe highway and taken to town.”

Sakawicz witnessed how slapdashthe operation could be: “July 30:About 150 persons shot. Most of themwere elderly people. The execution-ers complained of being very tired oftheir “work”, of having aching shoul-ders from shooting. That is the reasonfor not finishing the wounded off, sothat they are buried half alive.”

On August 2 Sakawicz witnessedhow the executioners carried out theirwork: “they were all inebriated:

Shooting of big batches has startedonce again. Today about 4,000 peo-ple were driven up... shot by 80 exe-cutioners. All drunk.”

Some of the most extraordinary sto-ries to emerge from Ponar’s shootingpits came from survivors and weredescribed by Sakawicz. “Men, womenand at least one child lived despite ashot to the back of the head.”

Rachel Glicksman was only 15when she was forced into the

ghetto in Vilnius. She rememberednaked escapees from Ponar Forestfinding their way back into her city: “Atnight there was a curfew, so theyapproached houses and banged onthe windows and asked to be thrownsomething to cover themselves.That’s all — that was the only assis-tance they asked for.”

The deaths at Ponar and othershooting pits around Eastern Europe

continued even as the Nazis looked tointensify their methods of killing.Following their work at Ponar, theNazis experimented with gas vansand then finally the exterminationcamps.

As camps such as Auschwitz accel-erated their ambitions for industrial-ized murder, the pace of killings atPonar slowed. From 1942, as theGermans were getting bogged downin the East, Vilnius itself went into aperiod of relative calm and stabiliza-tion. The Germans needed many ofthe remaining Jews for slave labor.

But by 1943, it became obvious thatHitler’s operations in the East hadturned into an existentialdisaster. The Nazis mighthave been fastidious in log-ging their weekly kill totalsbut they had no desire forthe world to understand thereality of their bureaucraticlist keeping. Hitler’s dreamswere dying and there wouldbe consequences. It didn’ttake much imagination forthose in charge to realisethat a hundred thousanddecaying bodies buriedonly a few miles outside aEuropean capital would beevidence enough to hanganyone associated with it.

And so the SS began theclear up of Ponar. Paul Blobel hadbeen in charge of the murders atBabiy Yar in Ukraine. In 1941 he hadmurdered 33,000 Jewish men,women and children. In 1942 he hadbeen relieved of his duties because ofhis alcoholism. In 1943, however,Blobel was put in charge of destroyingevidence of Nazi atrocities in EasternEurope. His unit arrived in Vilnius andlooked for any Jew still alive andhealthy to help cover their tracks.They forcibly recruited young meninto Leichenkommando (“corpseunits”). Eighty prisoners were super-vised by thirty Lithuanian and Germanguards.

They were forced to exhume thecorpses, pile them high in the con-crete fuel dumps and set them alight.It was a huge and terrible job. One ofthose from the corpse units, SzlomaGol, said: “We dug up altogether68,000 corpses. I know this becausetwo of the Jews in the pit with us wereordered by the Germans to keepcount of the bodies — that was theirsole job. The bodies were mixed,Jews, Polish priests, Russian prison-ers-of-war.”

Szloma Gol found his own brother.He had been dead for two years. Hecould only identify him because hestill had identification papers with him.He had been shot in September1941.

The corpse units worked chainedtogether.

Gol described how they wereallowed to go sick for no more thantwo days. On the third day, if theywere still too ill to work, they would

be shot.The Nazis may have been in retreat

but they were capable of appallingsadism. As digging proceeded, theguards shot eleven prisoners. Theirintention: to terrorize and cow therest.

The Jews realized it would only be amatter of time before they too weremurdered so they hatched an escapeplan. They dug a tunnel from the bot-tom of one pit, under the wire.

On April 15, 1944, they made theirescape.

Forty managed to get throughbefore noise alerted the guards. Inthe ensuing chase twenty five were

killed but 15 escaped — includingSzloma Gol. Five days after theescape the remaining prisoners wereall shot. There were up to 235,000Jews in Lithuania at the start of thewar. By 1944, when the Russianspushed the Germans back across theborder, it is thought that only 2,000 to3,000 survived. The Nazis killed 97percent of them.

The final solution for many isAuschwitz: the industrialised

abattoir designed for mass murderwith minimal impact on the butchers’mental health. They could kill withouthaving “eyes on” their victims. Thiswas a terror where the murderersoperated safely insulated from thehorror. Their victims expired on theother side of a concrete wall. But theviability of their plan was set in motionhere in the quiet forest of Ponar.

Today the forest of Ponar is a reluc-tant memorial. The seven pits thatreveal the narrative of the area form aheartbreaking trail. The first pit, closeto the road and railway, would receivethose about to die. It was here thatthe terrified victims would take theirclothes off, leave them behind andthen be lead to the holding trench.Nature has now overtaken it; treeshave spread roots where the bare feetof naked men, women and childrenonce trod, waiting for death.

And when you talk to Lithuanians inVilnius about the carnage a handful ofmiles outside their city, barely anyknow what the Germans and willingLithuanians did. It’s a forgotten blot onthe collective memory.

Uncomfortable.

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

Martin Weiss was in charge as thousands of Jewish men, women and children were herded to their

death.

One of the pits where corpses were burned.

January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

BY RHONA LEWIS, JEWISH PRESS

It was 1943. Inge Sulzbacher andher twin sister were five years old.

Members of the Danish resistancehelped them escape the Nazi round-up in Copenhagen by huddling themunder deck in a fishing boat crossingthe choppy Øresund Strait to Sweden.Shulamit Kahn wasn’t quite seven.

“Some memories are etched intoyour mind and you never forgetthem,” says Shulamit.

The Danish resistance movement,along with many ordinary Danish citi-zens, managed to evacuate 7,220 ofDenmark’s 7,800 Jews. It was thelargest action of collective resistancein the countries occupied by NaziGermany. And we haven’t forgotten it.

Jewish history in Denmark datesback to 1622, when King Christian IVsent a message to the leaders of theSephardi community in Amsterdamand Hamburg, inviting Jews to settlein the township of Glückstadt. Jewswho accepted this invitation begantrading and manufacturing operationsthere. The king built the famousRound Tower, an astronomical obser-vatory, on which the letters yud kehvav keh can be clearly seen, to showhis recognition of their contributions.During the nineteenth and early twen-tieth centuries, Jews from EasternEurope continued arriving and settledin Copenhagen, where they enjoyed awarm welcome.

Gittel Davidson, whose father was amember of the Machzikei Hadas shul,founded in 1910, shares a memory:“During the First World War, when nolulavim were available, my grandfa-ther paid the curators of theCopenhagen Botanical Gardens to beallowed to pick lulavim from the palmsin the hothouse for tropical plants,”she says.

This idyllic stability was rocked onApril 9, 1940, when Nazi Germanyinvaded Denmark. With little choice,the Danish government surrendered,and Denmark became a “model pro-tectorate.” Model meant that somesort of quasi-cordial relationship wasmaintained. While Germany sent22,000 officials to occupied France, amere 89 officials were sent toDenmark. During the early years ofthe occupation, Danish officialsrepeatedly insisted to the Germanoccupation authorities that there wasno “Jewish problem” in Denmark.

The Germans looked the other wayfor several reasons. They recognizedthat further discussion was a possiblyexplosive issue, one that had thepotential to destroy the “model” rela-tionship. In addition, the Reich reliedsubstantially on Danish agriculture,meat and butter. Despite this leeway,resistance to German rule bubbledstrongly in Denmark. In the summerof 1943, when it seemed that the warwas going against the Reich, mem-bers of the Danish resistance becamebolder. The Germans hit back. In

August, they presented the Danishgovernment with new demands toend resistance activities. The Danishgovernment refused to meet the newdemands and resigned. That sameday, the Germans took direct controlof administration and declared martiallaw. Plans for the arrest and deporta-tion of Danish Jewry got underway…and were foiled from the inside.

German naval attaché GeorgFerdinand Duckwitz leaked

word of the planned deportation toHans Hedtoft, chairman of the DanishSocial Democratic Party. Hedtoft con-tacted the Danish resistance move-ment and the head of the Jewishcommunity, C.B. Henriques.Henriques alerted the acting chiefrabbi, Dr. Marcus Melchior.

On September 29, erev RoshHashana, during Selichos, Jews werewarned by Rabbi Melchior of theplanned German action and urged togo into hiding immediately. The wordspread. The Danish underground andregular citizens — intellectuals,priests, policemen, doctors, blue-col-lar workers — worked together totrack down Jews and find ways tohide them. Some simply contactedfriends and asked them to go throughtelephone books and warn those withJewish-sounding names to go intohiding. It was a national refutation ofNazi Germany and a reaffirmation ofdemocratic and humanistic values.

“My father and eleven-year-oldbrother had gone into hiding a fewdays earlier because we’d already

heard rumors of a deportation,”recalls Shulamit. “On erev RoshHashana, when we became sure thatthe deportation was going to happen,my mother together with three chil-dren (my ten-year-old sister, myself,and my three-year-old brother) trav-eled by rail to the coast. There wewere split up among the villagersbecause the Germans were on thelookout and it was too risky for any-one to hide four of us together.”

The parents of Inge Sulzbacherfaced a terrible choice. “My father did-n’t daven in Rabbi Melchior’s shul, butthe word about the round-up spreadfast. Our table was laid for RoshHashana. Even the fish was ready,”she recalls. “My parents were afraid

(Continued on page 5)

RESCUING THE JEWS OF DENMARK

Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779

A Survivor’s Duty: Surviving theHolocaust and Fighting for Israel — AStory of Father and Son.

By Gabriel Laufer. AcademicStudies Press: Boston, Mass., 2018.401 pp. $16.06 softcover.

REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN

As the title of Gabriel Laufer’s vol-ume plainly states, A Survivor’s Duty:Surviving the Holocaust and Fightingfor Israel — A Story of Father and Sonis the tale of two men. It is the storyof Laufer’s Hungarian father, LászlóLaufer, referred to as Laci, who waslucky enough to survive theHolocaust, emigrate to Israel andpractice law there. At the same time,intertwined throughout is the author’sown story, in which he recounts hisexperiences as a Technion student, agraduate in aeronautical engineeringand then an officer in the IsraeliDefense Force. The result of this jux-taposition? One can’t help but thinkabout what the six million and theirchildren might have given the world:the scientists, the teachers, the doc-tors, etc. One also can’t help but thinkabout the difference just a few yearsmade in the history of the Jews. Foronce upon a time, during World WarII, Jews were completely powerless....And there is even more that makesthis work a unique and importantaddition to Holocaust study andJewish history generally.

For example, little has been writtenabout how the Hungarians, allied withthe Germans, treated their Jewsbefore 1944 and the Nazi takeover of

their country. Here Laufer writesabout how his father, who like manyother Hungarian Jews during thoseyears, was drafted into a Hungarianslave labor battalion. Thus, Jewsbecame the “property of theHungarian Army” . . . which could thendo with them as it pleased. Amongother backbreaking jobs, Laci, along-side others like himself, was forced tomake sure convoys carrying food andammunition got to Hungarian frontlinesoldiers, regardless of the rain-soaked, impassable roads. Thismeant “help[ing] thehorses if they couldnot pull the wagons[with these supplies]and replac[ing] them[with themselves] ifthey [the horses]were injured or ifthey died. The con-voy was to reach itsdestination at anyc o s t . ” I n d e e d ,starved and sleepinganywhere, Jewsquickly realized thathorses meant morethan they did. Notsurprisingly, many

died — from the cold, the rain, thesnow and illnesses all left untreated.

In 1944, with the Nazi takeover ofHungary, Laci, again like many otherHungarian Jews, was turned over tothem. The Nazis shipped him off toDachau and, more specifically, to awork camp near Mühldorf where oneof a few “massive” bunkers were

being built, measuring “between sixhundred and eight hundred thousandsquare feet . . . , six to eight storiesbelow ground, with only the topexposed.” The bunker at the Mühldorfsite was to hide the manufacture ofparts for superweapons Hitler claimedwould, in any “last ditch effort,” winthe war for Germany. “One of thesepotential superweapons was theMesserschmitt Me-262, the first oper-ational jet-engine-powered fighter air-plane.” Again, little has been writtenabout these bunkers and the thou-

sands of Jews whoslaved and died build-ing them, much like theJews who slaved anddied under theEgyptians building theirpyramids.

Meanwhile, theauthor’s (Laci’s son)story is of an Israeli cit-izen and soldier fight-ing for his own country,Israel. Actually, hereLaufer not only tells usof his experiencesserving during Israel’s1967 Six-Day War, but,interestingly, also gives

us an up-close picture of the war as itwas experienced by Israelis general-ly. Particularly memorable is theauthor’s description of the tiny coun-try’s “silent mobilization,” in whicheveryone determinedly and activelypulled together as one. Since Lauferwas stationed at a border kibbutz, thereader cannot help but be moved

reading of how brave kibbutz mem-bers, ready to fight the enemy at amoment’s notice, accepted the factthat their children would have to sleepin bomb shelters. That was just whathad to be done to save Israel! No lessmemorable is the author’s descriptionof the miraculous victory Israel real-ized in this war against the armies offive nations, and the joy all felt withthe return of old city of Jerusalem intoJewish hands....

On the other hand, Laufer does notshy away from noting the painfulhuman cost of the surprise 1973 YomKippur war, a war in which he alsoserved. “Two days into the war,” hewrites, “our casualties were already inthe hundreds.” Indeed, the casualtiesin the Yom Kippur war ended up being“more than the casualties of the Six-Day War and the 1956 SinaiCampaign combined” . . . even as iteventually led to peace with Egyptand Jordan.

In summary, getting back to this vol-ume’s title, Laufer notes in the fore-word of his book how it is a “duty” that“memories of our experiences [both offather and son] and their lessons” becommunicated “to our children andthe generations to follow” — just asElie Wiesel felt. As far as this review-er is concerned, the author of ASurvivor’s Duty: Surviving theHolocaust and Fighting for Israel — AStory of Father and Son has most def-initely done his duty.

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

A SURVIVOR’S DUTY

BY OFER ADERET, HAARETZ

“What did the resistanceknow?” This simple ques-

tion has been the focus of fiercedebate in Norway in recent weeks.The answer to this question, which isemblazoned on the cover of a newbook by journalist Marte Michelet,threatens to shatter Norway’s great-est myth: the heroism of the resist-ance that fought the Nazis and savedhalf the country’s Jews during WorldWar II.

At the center of the debate is a terri-ble event Norwegians would prefer toerase from the history books. OnNovember 26, 1942, a cargo shipsailed from Oslo, carrying about 530Norwegian Jews who had beenarrested with the help of the localpolice. The ship headed for Poland;the Jews were then sent to Auschwitz.The vast majority did not survive theHolocaust.

According to Norway’s received ver-sion of events, the Norwegian resist-ance did not find out about the depor-tation in time. The story goes that thedeportation was a complete surprise,

though the resistance did help hun-dreds of Jews escape to Sweden.

But documents Michelet found overyears of research reflect a more com-plex picture. It turns out that theresistance did know about the

Germans’ intention to deportNorway’s Jews, months before thearrest order was issued. Still, theresistance did not try to save Jews butrather concentrated on the fightagainst the Germans.

In her Norwegian-language book,Michelet says Helmuth James vonMoltke, the German military intelli-gence officer who opposed the Nazisand was executed by the Gestapo in1945, gave information about the

deportation plans to the resistanceand to the Norwegian government inexile in London. He did this after theJanuary 1942 Wannsee Conference,where the Nazis discussed their plansto annihilate Europe’s Jews.

Michelet also found a shelved inter-view that historian and Norwegianresistance fighter Ragnar Ulstein con-ducted with underground heroGunnar Sonsteby, the most decorat-ed Norwegian. In the interview,Sonsteby said he and his comradesknew about the deportation plan threemonths before it was carried out. “Weknew with 100 percent certainty thatthe Jews would be deported fromNorway,” he said.

In the Norwegian media, it hasbeen argued that the very fact the

interview was mothballed at theResistance Museum in Oslo couldindicate that resistance historians andheroes worked together to blur amixed past.

Ulstein, who is now 98, has criti-cized Michelet’s conclusions. “Everydecade someone crops up and thinkshe knows more than what we knew,”he told the newspaper Dagsavisen.“And with hindsight they ask why theresistance didn’t do this or that. I’mtired of this. It’s a pointless discus-sion.”

He said “Michelet doesn’t under-stand the nature of the war,” adding

(Continued on page 6)

NEW BOOK LEAVES NORWAY’S “HEROIC ROLE”

IN THE HOLOCAUST IN TATTERS

Squadron Leader J. Macadam meets three Norwegian resistance fighters in Oslo following the

arrival of British forces in Norway, May 11, 1945.

January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5

(Continued from page 3)that my sister and I would cry out andendanger the others who were flee-ing. At the urging of our upstairsneighbor, whose husband was part ofthe Danish police force, my parentsdecided to flee with my two olderbrothers and leave us with the neigh-bor. The following morning, the neigh-bor, afraid for our safety, biked awayto find us a more secure hiding place.When the Nazis arrived to follow upon the rumor that two children werebeing hidden, we were no longerthere,” Inge says.

Most Jews hid for several daysand even weeks, uncertain of

their fate. “The villagers I stayed withspent much of the day in the fields,”says Shulamit. “When we finally satdown to a meal at the oval table, I wastoo afraid of the dog under the table toeat much. I didn’t cry, though,because I already had the wisdom ofadults and knew that crying wouldn’thelp me.”

On October 2, the Swedish govern-ment announced in an official state-ment that Sweden was prepared toaccept all Danish Jews. Some histori-ans credit Danish physicist NielsBohr, whose mother was Jewish, forSweden’s willingness to help. Twodays before the announcement, Bohrhad been spirited to Sweden on hisway to the US to work on the then top-secret Manhattan Project. He refusedto continue his journey until he hadpersuaded King Gustav V of Swedento provide asylum. On October 3, astatement read in all Danish churchessaid: “We shall, if occasion shouldarise, plainly acknowledge our obliga-tion to obey God more than man.” TheDanish people kept their word.

“After a few days, my mother arrivedto take me to the fishing boat,” saysShulamit, who had been separatedfrom her mother. “A large coal truckarrived, and we were packed in like

sardines. Something was thrown overus. My brother was put to sleepbecause we couldn’t risk a sound,”she says.

The trip over the choppy winterØresund Strait lasted about an hour.Some Jews were transported in largefishing boats of up to 20 tons, but oth-ers were carried to freedom in row-boats or kayaks. Seventy-five yearshave passed, but the voices of thosewho made the passage can’t hide thefear that they felt. “I remember beg-ging Hashem in Danish to help us

across. I’d have liked to pray inHebrew, but I comforted myself bytelling myself that Hashem couldunderstand all languages,” saysShulamit. Inge, together with her twinsister, made the night crossing lyingon the packing shelves under decksurrounded by the smell of fish.

“When we docked, a soldier in ablack uniform picked me up to carryme off the boat. I was terrified, as Ithought he was a Nazi,” she says.Luckily, Inge’s father, who came downto the landing spot every night insearch of his daughters, found thegirls. “My mother later said that myfather never cried… except for thetime that he was reunited with us,”

says Inge.At a time when the average monthly

wage was less than 500 Danisg kro-ner, most fishermen charged on aver-age 1,000 Danish kroner per personfor the transport. Some cashed in andcharged up to 50,000 kroner. TheDanish resistance provided much ofthe financing, in large part fromwealthy Danes who donated largesums of money; the Jews themselvesprovided the rest. In total, the rescueis estimated to have cost around 20million kroner.

The Nazis, unaware that theirprey had slipped away, began

their hunt. In Copenhagen the depor-tation order was carried out on RoshHashana, the night of October 1,when the Germans assumed that allJews would be gathered at home.The SS organized themselves intofive-man teams, each with a Dane, avehicle and a list of addresses tocheck. Most of the teams found noone. Although tens of Jews managedto escape detection and remained inhiding, the Germans captured 483Jews and deported them toTheresienstadt. Demark did notremain silent. Danish civil servantspersuaded the Germans to accept

packages of food and medicine forthe prisoners and also persuaded theGermans not to deport the DanishJews to extermination camps. As aresult, although fifty-three Jews diedin the camp, the survival rate washigh.

In Sweden, Shulamit and her familyspent the following 20 months in aresort hotel converted into a refugeecamp. Inge and her family remainedin a small house on the outskirts ofStockholm. At the end of the war, theDanish Jews returned to their homesin Denmark. “Our nanny had takencare of our apartment in ourabsence,” says Shulamit. “All thatwas missing was the matzah.Because of the years-long war, myfather had stored some matzah on thetop of a cupboard, as he wasn’t surethat the following year we’d haveaccess to matzah. Our nanny hadgiven this matzah to an elderly Jewishwoman who refused to go into hidingso that she could eat matzah onPesach,” says Shulamit.

Ninety-nine percent ofDenmark’s Jewish population

survived the Holocaust. The incredi-ble rescue is commemorated in sev-eral places worldwide. InCopenhagen, a stone memorialstands in the courtyard of theMachzikei Hadas shul. In the USHolocaust Museum and at YadVashem, authentic fishing boatsused in the rescue bear witness. Asdoes a stop on the Jerusalem LightRail. As you pass through BeitHaKerem, you’ll hear the stop atKikar Denya being called out. At thestop, you’ll find eateries, shops, abank and a monument shaped like aboat. An inscription on the monu-ment reads: “Danish courage andSwedish generosity gave indelibleproof of human values in times ofbarbarism. Israel and Jews every-where will never forget.”

RESCUING THE JEWS OF DENMARK

The memorial at the shul.

BY JUDY SIMON, ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS

Rabbi Joseph Polak was threeyears old when the Holocaustended. His survival story is stillunfolding.

W e have heard, read andwatched many stories of

people’s experiences in theHolocaust. We have encountereddetailed descriptions of the persecu-tion these adult survivors endured.But what we often forget is the sto-ries of the children born during theShoah. These children never had anormal childhood, never experi-enced a normal family life. Thesesmall ones had to deal with returningto the world after their terribleordeal, a world in which their ownparents were horribly changed inevery way. The child survivors tell adifferent story.

Rabbi Joseph Polak, born in 1942,saved his family in utero, by delay-ing their deportation to Westerborkby a year. In Westerbork, there wasa surreal experience of normalcy, ofgood food, of excellent health care.But it was the gateway to almost cer-tain death, as every Tuesday morn-ing, a train was filled with Jews whowere taken east.

Rabbi Polak’s family ended up inBergen-Belsen, where the small boyplayed hide-and-seek among thepiles of corpses. In 1945, when hewas three, his family was aboard the“Lost Transport,” which journeyed toTroebitz, where Rabbi Polak’s fathersuccumbed to his illness and wasburied. At this point, the child wasadopted by a Dutch family, as hismother was too sick to care for him.

Rabbi Polak’s first vivid memorywas of the meeting with his motherin a hospital in the Hague. “I remem-

ber that everything in the room waswhite. I saw a woman in the bed.They must not have told me that Iwas going to meet my mother,”Rabbi Polak recalls. “Hello madam,”he greeted the strange lady. “Don’tsay ‘hello madam,’ say ‘helloMother!’” he was told. Mrs. Polakfirst had to prove that the child washer son. And then she gave him asmall red siddur (prayer book) and apair of tzitzit (ritual fringed garment).She told her young son, “You are aJewish boy. These are things a Jewneeds every day.”

Rabbi Polak describes his entryinto school in Montreal as a

six-year-old who didn’t even knowhow to play, let alone make friends.He asked his mother to stop speak-ing to him in Dutch. It was only manyyears later that he discovered thatfully two thirds of the boys in his sev-enth grade class were child sur-

vivors like himself. They had workedso hard on fitting in, on silencing thepain of their past, that they didn’teven realize that they were in themajority.

In meetings with older Holocaustsurvivors, Rabbi Polak describesthe painful negation of who thechild survivors are. Many adult sur-vivors told the children, “You don’treally understand. You were just akid. You know nothing about whathappened there.” This denial oftheir experiences made theyounger survivors feel like fakes,like liars. Now that virtually allHolocaust survivors alive todaywere children at the time of the hor-rors, they talk about their experi-ences with one another. “We feel aneed to tell, to share our stories.We are the last witnesses to whathappened. We were there,” heexplains.

CHILD OF THE HOLOCAUST, SURVIVING EVERY DAY

Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779

(Continued from page 4)that the resistance didn’t have con-crete intelligence about the deporta-tion, while the atmosphere was one ofrumor under “the fog of occupation.”

A BUSINESS IN EVERY RESPECT

Still, Michelet discovered docu-ments and testimonies about

anti-Semitism that was common inthe resistance. She also learned thatdespite the resistance’s decision notto help the Jews, some activists real-ized the economic potential in rescu-ing them.

Thus, groups in the resistance thatneeded money to finance their opera-tions against the Germans helpedsmuggle Jews to Sweden simply forlarge sums of money. The rescueoperation emerges in her book as abusiness in every respect, one thatleft the surviving Jews impoverished.Wealthy people who could pay weresaved, and those without means weresent to Auschwitz.

Norwegian historians are confirmingthe findings and are revealing equallydamning details about groups withinthe resistance that competed to saveJews for money. Archival documentsshow that in a number of cases peo-ple in the resistance informed on theircolleagues to the Germans, jealous oftheir profits. The price was paid, ofcourse, also by any Jews who werebeing hid by the group that wasinformed on.

Michelet faces criticism from estab-lishment historians, especially thoseof the Jewish Museum in Oslo andthe Resistance Museum in Oslo, whohave cast doubt on her findings and

attacked her professional integrity.But a former president of the Jewishcommunity in the Norwegian capital,Ervin Kohn, has defended her, notingthat most of her revelations wereknown to the Jewish community,

adding that the Norwegian “heroismnarrative” began to crack years ago.

A TREE AT YAD VASHEM

At the center of this narrative wasthe notion that the Norwegian

nation was a victim of the Nazis.Collaborators with the Germans weredepicted as a treacherous minorityand punished. Most people weredepicted as having resisted theGermans, with resistance membersdepicted as national heroes.

After the Nazi invasion in April 1940,the king and the government fled toLondon, while in Norway a puppetgovernment was established thatoperated at the behest of Nazi

Germany. Half of Norway’s Jews,about 800 people, were sent to thedeath camps, with the help of theNorwegian authorities. Most of themwere deported on a ship that left Osloin the fall of 1942.

But the resistance smuggled hun-dreds of Jews — half the community— across the border to safety inSweden. A tree has been planted inthe underground’s honor at YadVashem.

Most of the resistance’s glory stemsfrom the daring operation to blow upthe heavy water production plant theNazis used as part of their nuclearweapons program. The commanderof that operation, JoachimRonneberg, who died in last Octoberat 99, was a national hero.

But over the years it turned out thatthe number of Norwegians who volun-teered for the German army was fargreater than the number who fought

in the resistance.In 1996, discussion began on the

Jewish property that was stolen andnationalized by the authorities duringthe war. Amid public pressure, a gov-ernment commission was set up toexamine the issue; a majority in thecommission ruled that the governmentwas not responsible for the Nazis’crimes, and the compensation could besymbolic. But the government adoptedthe minority opinion and paid repara-tions to the Jewish community.

Later it emerged that it was theNorwegian police who carried out themass arrests of the Jews, not Germansoldiers, and many Norwegianshelped the police or turned a blindeye. In 2012, Norway’s prime ministerofficially apologized for the roleNorwegians played in the arrest anddeportation of Jews. A few monthslater the Norwegian police also apolo-gized, followed by the national railcompany in 2015.

In 2014, Michelet published herdebut book, whose title translates asThe Ultimate Crime: Victims andPerpetrators in the NorwegianHolocaust. It immediately sparked acontroversy. Michelet said she beganto research the topic when she movedinto an apartment in Oslo once ownedby Jews who were deported formNorway and murdered at Auschwitz.

Yet the national narrative continuedto glorify the resistance’s role in sav-ing Jews. Michelet’s new book WhatDid the Resistance Know? is threat-ening to take even that credit away.The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladethas called it “the most important bookof the year.”

NEW BOOK LEAVES NORWAY’S “HEROIC ROLE”

IN THE HOLOCAUST IN TATTERS

Anti-Semitic graffiti on a Jewish store in Norway during the Holocaust.

BY DOVID EFUNE, THE ALGEMEINER

Ihave long known that my grand-mother witnessed Kristallnacht.

But it is only recently that I havecome to learn the details of her har-rowing experience.

Now Esti Kalms, my grandmothergrew up as Esther Weinstock onLilienbrunngasse, a small street inVienna’s 2nd district, just south ofthe River Danube. In March 1938,nine months before the pogrom,Austria was incorporated into NaziGermany through the infamousAnschluss, and Adolf Hitler wasgreeted by adoring crowds on theHeldenplatz when he triumphantlyarrived in Vienna.

The area where my grandmotherlived was home to a significantOrthodox Jewish community, along-side non-Jewish neighbors. Thestreet was relatively narrow forVienna, lined with fairly large apart-ment blocks, all four stories high.“From your window you could look

into the windows of the houses oppo-site,” my grandmother told me. Therewere a few stores on the block and asynagogue that was housed directlybelow her apartment.

It was the family’s proximity to thesynagogue that made her a front-row observer to the events of thatbrutal night, when more than onehundred Jews were murdered, thou-sands deported to concentrationcamps, and hundreds of synagoguesand Jewish-owned stores weredestroyed in the anti-Semitic frenzy.

My grandmother was nine yearsold at the time. She recalls huddlingsilently at the window of their apart-ment with her siblings, her mother,who sold knitted goods for a living,and her father, a kabbalist and localrabbi, and “hearing a lot of noise out-side in the street.”

The road below was dimly lit, andin their apartment all lights wereswitched off. “We were told to standwell back from the window, so as notto be seen from the street,” she said.“We thought we would be next.”

Down below she saw a group of sol-diers and “a lot of the contents of theshul that was one flat below us in themiddle of the street.”

“We were obviously quite scared,”she added.

And then a vivid recollection: “In themiddle of it all there was one SS manholding up a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll)and kicking downwards with his boot totry and tear it, to destroy it.”

“How stupid is he,” she remembersthinking. “He thinks it’s made out ofpaper and I know it’s made out ofparchment, why doesn’t he realizehe’s not going to tear it.”

The scroll didn’t tear, and shortlyafterward the family moved awayfrom the window.

T he following day she walkedalone to her mother’s shop. On

her way there she passed by a largesynagogue that they had oftenattended growing up. “I saw thedestruction of that shul and I had towalk into the middle of the road toget past because of the destructionand the rubble,” she said. “You could

see the inside of the shul right out-side in the street. That made a bigimpression on me.”

“I was extremely puzzled,” shesaid. “I didn’t know that this had goneon all over the place, and whateverelse had gone on that night. It tooktime to seep through.”

Shortly afterward she told her par-ents that she wanted to leave thecountry, and a month or so later sheleft for England on theKindertransport with two of her sis-ters and one of her brothers. Both ofher parents, my great-grandparentsDovid and Chaye Ides Weinstock,perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Reflecting back on that fateful night,I asked why she felt the memory ofthe Nazi with the Torah scroll hadremained so lucid all these years.

“It was in fact a microcosm,” shesaid. “It symbolizes how we are inde-structible, really. Just as the writtenword on the Sefer Torah, on theparchment, couldn’t be destroyed inthe way he wanted to destroy it, we’llgo on forever.”

“WE’LL GO ON FOREVER”

January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7

BY SAVIONA MANE, HAARETZ

Hidden in the guts of StazioneCentrale, Milan’s impressive

train station, which was inauguratedduring the Fascist era and nowserves 120 million railway passen-gers per year, is the point whereFascist Italy converges with NaziGermany: Platform 21. This is theplatform where postal items wereloaded onto freight trains, heading totheir destinations around Europe.This is also where Jews, and non-Jewish dissidents, were loaded ontocattle cars heading to their destina-tions around Europe: the camps ofFossoli, Bolzano, Mauthausen,Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück,Flossenbürg and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Twenty such transports leftfor the concentration and deathcamps, from December 1943 toJanuary 1945, while on the upperfloor, passenger trains continued torush toward European cities.

Platform 21 was transformed into aHolocaust memorial in 2013. In itsheart, a few of the original cars arestanding along a short track, whichends in an exposed space, from whichthe train cars with their human cargowere brought up to the station level —out of sight. At the entrance to thememorial — above which the rumblingof trains coming in and out makes oneshiver — a huge inscription reading“Indifference” greets visitors.

“Indifference is worse than vio-lence,” says Liliana Segre, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor and anewly appointed senator, who insist-ed on inscribing that word on thehuge stone.

Segre was one of 25 Jewish chil-dren under the age of 14, out of a totalof 776 deported children, who weredeported from Italy to Auschwitz andsurvived. She was 13 when sheboarded a train that departed fromPlatform 21 for Auschwitz on January30, 1944, with her father. But for her

and over 7,500 other Italian Jewsdeported to the death camps, thejourney to hell had begun many yearsbefore, on November 17, 1938, whenBenito Mussolini’s Racial Lawsagainst Jews went into effect.

The racist laws had been precededby publication of the “Manifesto ofRace,” which was signed by 10 seniorscientists in July 1938, purporting togive it a scientific basis. Signed with-out hesitation by King VittorioEmanuele III, the statutes were meantto ban Jews from society and humili-ated them. They included a series ofprohibitions that became increasinglyrigid, up through the spring of 1945.They ranged from bans on intermar-riage, schooling in public institutions,working in state entities, membershipin the Fascist Party and participationin the “free” professions, to prohibi-tions on ownership of real estateabove a certain value, renting outrooms to non-Jews, peddling andtrading in wool, to forbidding involve-

ment in the realms ofmusic, theater, acrobat-ics, management ofdance studios, alongwith owning radios,being listed in thephone books, publish-ing death notices andraising carrier pigeons.

The sky fell on about50,000 Italian Jews, theoldest Jewish commu-nity in Europe, about 10percent of whom wereregistered in 1933 withthe Fascist Party. All ofa sudden, well-estab-lished, patriotic familieswith deep roots in thecountry, who saw them-selves as Italian inevery respect — someof whom had even livedthere for hundreds ofyears, like Segre’s fore-

bears — were stripped of all civilrights. In the fall of 1943, along withthe invasion of German forces andthe establishment of the ItalianSocialist Republic of Salo, came thephysical persecution as well.

Segre, who was born in Milan inSeptember 1930, was eight years oldwhen the Laws were enacted. “A veryhappy, serene, slightly naughty littlegirl, upon whom my father and grand-parents heaped endless love,” saysSegre, who lost her mother at a ten-der age.

“I grew up in a secular, you couldsay atheist family, in which there wereno religious symbols and which didnot celebrate (Jewish) holidays,” sherecently told Haaretz during an inter-view in her Milan home, where aHanukkah menorah stands out today,adding, “I wasn’t even aware that Iwas Jewish.”

The revelation of her Jewish identitycaught her by surprise. It was the dayher father informed her that she hadbeen expelled from school — the very

same school that her children andgrandchildren would later attend.

“This word, ‘expelled,’ was a ter-rible word in my eyes,” says

Segre, a tall, elegant woman whospeaks gently, with restrained intensi-ty, devoid of pathos. “I didn’t under-stand why. I didn’t understand whatI’d done wrong.”

For the first time in her life, the mis-chievous and happy girl felt “different”from her friends, most of whom faded

slowly out of her life. Even herbeloved teacher did not seek to com-fort or embrace her when Segre wasexpelled, and made do with a com-ment about not having been the onethat legislated the racist laws. A per-vasive feeling of abandonment andloneliness grew in her family, whichcould not find comfort in the localJewish community, with whom theydid not have ties.

“Some Jews understood what washappening and left Italy, some under-stood but lacked the means to leave,and others, like my family, didn’t wantto leave because they didn’t believewhat had happened could ever hap-pen, and stayed until it was too late,”Segre recalls.

Indeed, when she and her fatherAlberto tried to escape to Switzerlandin December 1943 — after believingthey had secured the grandparents’safety — it was already too late. Swissborder police sent them back to Italy,whereupon they were arrested andsent to San Vittore prison in Milan, andwere then, after 40 days, loaded ontoa cattle car destined for Auschwitz.Alberto and his own parents, who weresubsequently arrested, were murderedin the death camp. Liliana, who lookedolder than her 13 years, was sent toforced labor in a weapons factorynearby, and survived.

“You only survive by chance inAuschwitz, by luck, not because youare clever or smarter,” she says. “Butyou can never escape fromAuschwitz, as Primo Levi said.”

The persecution of Italian Jews

increased gradually. Six years beforethe Racial Laws, Il Duce claimed in aninterview with a Swiss Jewish journal-ist, Emil Ludwig, that there was noanti-Semitism in Italy, and evenpraised the Jews. “As citizens, ItalianJews have always behaved properly,and as soldiers they fought bravely,”he said.

Until the establishment ofMussolini’s Salo Republic and theNazi invasion, in autumn 1943, the

Fascist racist laws did not threatenthe lives of Italy’s Jews.

“Mussolini was an anti-Semite‘inside,’ but not an unbridled

one like Hitler,” says Michele Sarfatti,an Italian historian who specializes inJewish history under Fascist rule.

“He was a pragmatic leader. On theone hand, he could write articlestinged with anti-Semitism and attackthe ‘racist fraternity betweenBolshevik Jews in Russia, liberalJews in London and capitalist Jews inNew York’ — a classic anti-Semiticspeech. On the other hand, he had noproblem conducting close relationswith Jews like [journalist and socialistpolitician] Claudio Treves orMargherita Sarfatti,” Mussolini’s loverof 20 years, who shared his Fascistideology and wrote his first officialbiography, Dux.

“It is true that until his regime wassolidly established, Mussolini was notreluctant to use violence or to allowFascist bullies’ attacks on the streets,but after 1925 he wasn’t interested instreet violence as was prevalent inGermany. With few exceptions, therewas no burning books or Kristallnachtin Italy,” says Sarfatti. “Under the newFascist order, oppressing Jews andopponents of the regime was sup-posed to be done by the police, with-out killing, without establishing violentcamps like Dachau.”

The situation changed drastically onSeptember 8, 1943, a month and ahalf after Mussolini was deposed andincarcerated, on the very day the new

(Continued on page 11)

OPENING ITALY’S “CLOSET OF SHAME”

Italian Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre is seen as a little girl with

her dad in August 1937.

A visual representation of Racial Laws targeting Jews from Italy’s Fascist period: heading reads

“Jews cannot...”

Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu led a plethora of world

leaders observing International

Holocaust Remembrance Day on

January 27.

Netanyahu marked the occasion by

welcoming three Holocaust survivors to

his office, recounting their stories and

warning against the rise of anti-

Semitism in Europe today.

“Anti-Semitism from the right is not a

new phenomenon there,” he said. “What

is new in Europe is the combination of

Islamic anti-Semitism and the anti-

Semitism of the extreme left, which

includes anti-Zionism, such as has

recently occurred in Great Britain and in

Ireland. What a disgrace. We condemn

all forms of anti-Semitism as such.”

“During the Holocaust, the Jewish peo-

ple were completely helpless,” noted the

prime minister. “Today the state of the

Jews is among the strongest and most

advanced in the world. First and fore-

most, we have restored to our people the

strength to resist that we lost in exile. In

contrast to the terrible helplessness of

our people then, today we strike at those

who seek our lives and hurt all those who

try to hurt us. At the same time, we do not

forget our dead, our enemies and our res-

cuers.”

Detailing the experiences of his sur-

vivor guests, Moshe Haelyon, Mordecai

(Motka) Weisel and Malka Steinmetz,

Netanyahu said, “We are honored with

the presence of Moshe, Malka and

Motka, Holocaust survivors that I just

met before the meeting.

“Moshe survived the death camps and

the death march. Malka lost her five sis-

ters in the crematoria and has a number

burned onto her arm. Motka, whose

brother fell at Latrun, interrupted an SS

officer who whipped his back. The

penalty for such an offense was imme-

diate death, but he somehow survived.

By this unbelievable act of heroism, he

served as an example to thousands.

The story spread among thousands,

and he served as an example to thou-

sands, and to us. The moving stories of

the revival of Moshe, Malka and Motka

are the story of our revival.”

“At the same time,” the prime minister

concluded, “we honor the memory of the

righteous among the nations. Today in

Jerusalem a plaque was unveiled in

memory of Japanese Consul [Chiune-

Sempo] Sugihara, who saved thousands

of European Jews during the Holocaust.

We bow our heads in

his memory.”

Netanyahu was

joined by US

President Donald

Trump, who pledged,

“We remain commit-

ted to the post-

Holocaust imperative,

‘Never Again.

“‘Never Again’

means not

only remembering —

in a profound and

lasting way — the

evils of the

Holocaust,” he elabo-

rated, “but it also

means remembering

the individual men

and women in this

nation, and through-

out the world, who

have devoted their

lives to the preservation and security of

the Jewish people and to the betterment

of all mankind.”

Trump continued, “The Third Reich,

and its collaborators, pursued the com-

plete elimination of the entire Jewish

people. Six million J

ically slaughtered in

Nazis also enslav

Slavs, Roma, gays,

ities, religious leade

courageously opp

regime. The brutalit

was a crime agains

children. It was a cr

ity. It was a crime ag

“On Internatio

Remembrance Day

hearts the memor

woman and child wh

tured or murde

Holocaust,” the pre

remember these m

those who perished

vived — is to strive t

fering from happenin

or indifference to the

ter in the history of h

es all men and wom

invites repetition of t

Trump’s statemen

story of the first Am

the aftermath of t

April 27, 1945,” sai

soldier of the 12th A

the United States

astonishing words

United States: ‘Alth

talk about what I ha

I will never forget

Aaron A. Eiferman’s

ing to a new position

they came across a

historic account, li

descriptions, lacked

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRAN

WORLD PAYS TRIBUTE TO THE

Survivors of Auschwitz walk to place candles at the International Monument to the Victims of Fascism at the former

Nazi German concentration and extermination camp KL Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, on

International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

A man places a stone at the Emanuel Memorial Tree, which is a weeping willow tree with the names of Hungarian

Jews killed during the Holocaust, in the garden of Dohany Street Synagogue during a commemoration marking the

International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Budapest.

The monument for the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes during t

Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust in Warsa

January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9

ews were systemat-

n horrific ways. The

ved and murdered

people with disabil-

ers and others who

posed their cruel

ty of the Holocaust

st men, women and

ime against human-

gainst God.

onal Holocaust

y, we hold in our

ry of every man,

ho was abused, tor-

ered during the

esident stated. “To

men and women —

and those who sur-

to prevent such suf-

ng again. Any denial

e horror of this chap-

humankind diminish-

men everywhere and

this great evil.”

t also included the

merican witnesses to

he Holocaust. “On

id Trump, “a young

Armored Division of

Army wrote these

to his wife in the

hough I may never

ve witnessed today,

what I have seen.’

s division was mov-

n near Dachau when

a prison camp. His

ike all subsequent

d the words to ade-

quately convey the horror and the suf-

fering that occurred at Dachau and in

the other concentration and death

camps of the Holocaust.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May

issued on Twitter a picture of a hand-

written statement that read, “In a world

where hatred of oth-

ers is becoming

increasingly com-

monplace, we can

choose to stand as

one against those

who peddle it.”

May also pointed to

contemporary anti-

Semitism, asserting,

“At a time where

Jews are being tar-

geted simply

because of who they

are, all of us of any

faith can come

together in their

defense.

“And as the Shoahbegins to drift to the

edge of living memo-

ry, we can once

again commit our-

selves to remember-

ing those who were murdered, and to

ensuring that such a human catastro-

phe is never permitted to happen

again,” she added.

In his own statement, Canadian

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called

the Holocaust “a stark reminder of the

dangers of hatred and discrimination,

and the irreversible consequences of

inaction and indifference.

“On this day, we repeat the vow, ‘Never

Again’ — not as a phrase, but as a prom-

ise to remain vigilant against the threat of

genocide,” he pledged. “We must pre-

serve the memories of those who lived

through the horrors of the Shoah, so that

our generation — and those to come —

will never forget their stories.”

Turning to his own country, Trudeau

admonished, “We must also acknowl-

edge Canada’s own history of anti-

Semitism, and its devastating results. In

November, the Government issued a

long-overdue apology for Canada’s

inaction and apathy toward Jews during

the Nazi era. Our country’s disgraceful

‘none is too many’ immigration policy

doomed many Jews to Nazi death

camps, including hundreds of Jewish

refugees aboard the MS St. Louis. No

words will ever erase this tragedy — but

it is our sincere hope that this apology

will help ensure the lessons we have

learned are never forgotten.

“We are not immune to the effects of

ignorance and hate,” the prime minister

added. “The threats of violence, xeno-

phobia and anti-Semitism still exist

today. The murder of eleven Jews at the

Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh —

one of the deadliest attacks against

Jews in North American history — is

fresh in our minds. The Government will

continue to stand with the Jewish com-

munity in Canada and around the world,

and call out the anti-Semitism, hatred

and racism that incites such despicable

acts.”

French President Emmanuel

Macron simply tweeted a picture of

a memorial candle with the words “light

of remembrance” in French.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro

Sánchez also took to Twitter in honor of

the occasion, saying, “We shall not for-

get the barbarism of anti-Semitism,

racism and intolerance.”

In Germany, Foreign Minister Heiko

Maas warned in an opinion column that

Germany’s “culture of remembrance is

crumbling” owing to “pressure from the

extreme right.” On Saturday, Chancellor

Angela Merkel had declared “zero toler-

ance” for anti-Semitism and remarked,

“People growing up today must know

what people were capable of in the past,

and we must work proactively to ensure

that it is never repeated.”

NCE DAY: NEVER FORGET

E VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

the ceremony on the occasion of the International Day of

aw.

Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi lays a wreath during a ceremony at the Hall of Remembrance at the

Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, January 27, 2019.

Former prisoners place candles and flowers at the Death Wall to mark the 74th anniversary of the liberation of

Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779

BY URI BERLINER, NPR

The monkey’s fur is worn away.It’s nearly a century old. A well-

loved toy, it is barely four inches tall. Itwas packed away for long voyages,on an escape from Nazi Germany, toSweden and America. And now, it’sthe key to a discovery that trans-formed my family.

The monkey belonged to my father,Gert Berliner, who as a boy in Berlinin the 1930s rode his bicycle aroundthe city. Clipped to the handlebarswas the toy monkey.

“I liked him,” recalls my dad, who isnow 94. “He was like a good luckpiece.”

In pictures from his young days inBerlin, my father looks confident, atad rebellious with a wry smile. But hislife was about to be eviscerated. TheGestapo would steadily crush everyaspect of Jewish life in the city.

It exploded in a wave of violence —in November 1938 — on Kristallnacht.Jewish shops, schools and homeswere smashed and burned byGerman civilians and Nazi stormtroopers. Thousands of innocentJewish men were rounded up.

“I do remember,” my father recalls. “Iwent out on the street ... a lot of glass;you heard fire sirens; synagogueswere set on fire.”

Escape routes from Germany van-ished. One that existed was for chil-dren, the Kindertransport. Jewish andQuaker organizations led a rescueeffort, a kind of Underground Railroad,to help save children from the Nazis.Thousands of children were sent ontrains, often placed with foster families.But there were no takers for their par-ents. The children had to go by them-selves, alone. Most went to England.My father’s destination: Sweden.

In 1939, at the age of 14, he had tosay goodbye to his parents, Paul andSophie Berliner. He boarded the trainin Berlin, bound for the city of Kalmar,on the Baltic Coast. He had a smallbag and there wasn’t much he could

bring. But stashed away in his suit-case was the toy monkey, his talis-man.

The monkey wasn’t useful. But hetook it with him anyway. He was wor-ried, fearful about his parents. But hehad reached shelter, taken in by agenerous, kind family. My dad’s firstimpression of Sweden was the air.Free from the violence of Berlin, hecould exhale. “Suddenly you couldbreathe,” he recalled. “It was like theair was different.”

But his parents’ fate remained uncer-tain. Eventually their letters stoppedcoming. Paul and Sophie Berlinerwere captured by the Gestapo andsent to Auschwitz on a train, Transport

38, on May 17, 1943. Theywere murdered there.

After the war, my fathermoved to the United States.He left Sweden for New Yorkas a young man of 22. He wasan orphan. He had no siblingsand he was alone. Again, hepicked the toy monkey tocome with him. But by now itwas something different: themost tangible connection tohis childhood, to a fleetingmoment of innocence.

My dad has lived mostly inNew York, working as a pho-tographer and artist, withstints in New Mexico and Italy.And for more than half a cen-tury, his toy monkey went withhim. But it lived in drawers,existing only in a private

space, so private that I never evenknew about his childhood toy, and allthat it symbolized.

It was just one of the many things Ididn’t know about my father’s past.

Throughout my childhood and wellinto my adult years, we rarely dis-cussed what he’d been through, themurder of his parents, how alone hemust have felt as a young refugee.How it affected his life, our relation-ship. He was a distant father. And Iwas a distant son, much of our timetogether beset by halting, uncomfort-able silences.

What I did know is that our family —on the Berliner side — was verysmall. There were just three Berliners:my dad, me and my son, Ben. At leastthat’s what we thought.

And then two things happened —with the toy monkey at the center ofboth events.

In 2003, an archivist from theJewish Museum Berlin named

Aubrey Pomerance visited my dad athis apartment in Manhattan. My dadhad met Aubrey before and liked him.This time, Aubrey was there to ask afavor. Did my father have somethingfrom when he was a Jewish child liv-ing in Nazi Germany? Something thatvisitors to the museum could relate topersonally?

My dad was torn. His wife, Frances,

didn’t want him to part with the mon-key. She had a good point. It was themost intimate object he had left fromhis childhood. But eventually hedecided that the toy monkey shouldgo back out into the world where itwould do more good as a little ambas-sador to history.

And so the monkey returned toBerlin, this time living in a museum,not on a young boy’s bicycle. Aubreysaid it is likely that millions of visitorshave seen the nameless monkey invarious exhibits at the museum overthe years and been exposed to myfather’s story.

One of those visitors was ErikaPettersson. In 2015, she was at themuseum with her boyfriend, Joachim.At one point Erika wandered to anexhibit with images about the lives ofJewish children during the Nazi years.It had some wooden boxes with lidsyou could lift to learn about the kids.

She opened one of them. It was theonly one she opened. “And there wasthis toy monkey and a picture of asmall kid, a Jewish kid named GertBerliner,” she recalled. “And I thought,

that’s a coincidence. My mom’s nameis Berliner.”

Erika didn’t think that much about it.But her mother, Agneta Berliner, did.Erika and Agneta are Swedish. Andthey had a family connection toGermany and Berlin. Agneta couldn’tget it out of her mind. She went onlineand found that my father has a web-site with his photography.

“And there was an email address,”she said. “I was hesitating a bitbecause I thought maybe this is just astranger. But then I was so curious. Isent an email and said, ‘Could it bethat we are relatives?’ “

My dad read the message and it ledto a call. “Suddenly because of themonkey, I have a phone call, some-body in Sweden of all places, saying,well I think you’re my cousin.”

Agneta Berliner and her sister,Suzanne Berliner, and Suzanne’s sonDaniel arranged to meet my dadwhen he was in Berlin at an openingexhibit of his photography.

And so it all came together.It turns out that my father’s dad,

Paul Berliner, had a brother namedCarl. Carl Berliner had two sons, andCarl sent them to Sweden for safety,too. But they didn’t get out ofGermany on the Kindertransport.They were sent to work on isolatedfarms deep in the Swedish country-side. Those boys were my dad’scousins. But they had lost touch witheach other.

Now, some 80 years later, a bondhas been reestablished with the

help of a tattered toy monkey. In thesummer, I traveled to Sweden to meetmy newfound relatives and to retracemy father’s steps. I met Agneta andher family on Sweden’s solstice holi-day, Midsummer Eve, and we cele-brated together with a traditionalSwedish feast lasting well into theevening. There were the famousmeatballs, salmon, toasts withschnapps and a beautiful cake withmore strawberries than I’d ever seenin my life. Even though we had justmet, it felt good to be around my new-found relatives. To be part of a larger

family — a family that hasn’t just sur-vived, but has grown and thrived.

My dad didn’t make the trip. So wecalled him in New York — Erika,Agneta and me all on speaker, fillinghim on our visit. It was a bittersweetcall. At 94, my dad doesn’t get outmuch. He’s alone a lot in the apart-ment with time to reflect.

“You get old,” he says. “I walkaround with a cane, shaky. You havetime. You sit in a chair, an easy chair,and start thinking about your past,what happened.”

What happened to his parents, tohim and to our family is still hard toabsorb. But one little thing from thepast also delivered a big surprise. Myfather packed that monkey in a suit-case when he fled for his life nearly80 years ago.

It turned out he had to give up thattreasured piece of his history to dis-cover something new about the past.“It’s a gift,” he says. “In my old age, Ihave discovered I have a family.”

A TOY MONKEY THAT ESCAPED NAZI GERMANY

AND REUNITED A FAMILY

Gert Berliner packed this toy monkey in a suitcase when he

fled for his life nearly 80 years ago. It’s now part of the col-

lection at the Jewish Museum Berlin.

In 1939, at the age of 14, Gert had to say goodbye to his parents, Paul and Sophie Berliner.

January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11

(Continued from page 7)government announced the signingof an armistice between Italy and theAllies, and the very day the Italiansfound out that their king and primeminister had deserted them and fledto territories held under Allied con-trol. Within days, Nazi forces enteredthe beleaguered country, releasedMussolini from jail, installed him asthe head of a puppet state in north-

ern Italy — the Socialist Republic ofSalo — and embarked on imple-menting the Final Solution.

According to Sarfatti, nearly7,500 Jews out of some 50,000

were deported to death campsbetween September 1943 and Italy’sliberation in April 1945. Over 5,900 ofthem were exterminated, over 800survived, and another 300 were mur-dered on Italian territory.

“He exchanged the lives of Italy’sJews for Nazi support for his regime.After his release from jail, he couldhave said ‘enough, I’m old and tired’— without the Nazis executing him— but his hunger for power was sostrong that he was ready to sacrificenot only Italy’s Jews, but also theregions of Trento and Trieste for it,”says Sarfatti.

The historian adds that Mussolini“had known since 1942, perhapswithout all the details, about thecamps, about the acts of massslaughter in the Soviet Union, aboutthe use of gas. As one who used gashimself in the conquest of Ethiopia,he knew very well what the use ofgas meant.”

In the fall of 1945, at age 15, Segrereturned home to Milano — afteralmost a year in Auschwitz, thedeath march to Germany, and fourmonths in a DP camp where, sherecalls, she ate “day and night” andgained 10 kilos every month. Uponher return, her maternal grandpar-ents, who had found refuge in a con-vent in Rome, were granted custodyof her.

“They saw a fat, clumsy, ugly, diffi-cult, wounded, grumbling girl,” shesays. “It was hard for them, and Iwanted them to accept me as I was…. They were good people, they

loved me, and I loved them, but Iwanted to live with Susanna, themaid who had lived in our home 47years and loved all of us deeply. Shehad saved the family pictures and mygrandmother’s jewelry for me. Uponher death, she left her money to apriest to pray for us for 10 years.”

Slowly, Segre began to readjust todaily life, studies and love. In 1951she married Alfredo Belli Paci, a

Catholic who was sent, along withsome 600,000 other Italians, to aconcentration camp for refusing toserve the Republic of Salo.

“He understood me when he sawthe tattoo on my arm,” she once saidin an interview. “He wasn’t shocked.He didn’t flee.”

With him she raised their three chil-dren, and she was by his side untilhe died 10 years ago.

“We met on the beach. We fell inlove within days. It was a beautiful l

Like many Holocaust survivors,Segre kept silent for many

years. “There were no words, it wastoo powerful, too tragic. We didn’twant to talk, and they didn’t want tolisten.”

At 60, after the birth of her grand-children, she felt that she had topass her personal testimony on tothe next generations. Since then,she has visited schools across Italytelling her story and the story ofItalian Jewry.

“None of us will be left in 10 years,and the Holocaust will become a linein history books, and later not eventhat,” she says.

Segre’s appointment by PresidentSergio Mattarella as senator for life(“I am aware of age limitations,” shesays, smiling) gave her immediatemedia exposure, and essentiallyturned her into a living, breathingsymbol of a period that Italy hasrepressed for 80 years — a repres-sion historian Anna Foa has called“collective amnesia.”

“Italy never opened its closet ofshame,” says Segre. “After the war,suddenly there were no fascists.Everyone suddenly becameChristian Democrats, Communists… but Italy was Fascist, just like

Germany was Nazi. The people weredeeply in love with these theories.”

A fter the liberation of Italy inApril 1945 by Allied troops and

the subsequent introduction of ageneral amnesty, “the state actedlike racism and anti-Semitism hadnever been here,” says historianSarfatti. “Everything was forgotten.”

“Besides a few senior leaders whowere tried and executed, no one wasforced to do soul-searching or toanswer for his part in the Fascistregime. Everyone returned to thefold, sometimes to the exact samerole,” he adds.

Under such conditions, he adds,“Italy was incapable of, nor did itwant to engage in any profound reck-oning. Even today, from a distance of80 years, it remains very hard.”

But it seems that in recent yearssomething has started to change. In2000 the parliament declared thedate of the liberation of Auschwitz,January 27, as Holocaust MemorialDay. In 2003, it unanimouslyapproved a law to establish aNational Museum of Italian Judaismand the Shoah in Ferrara; it openedin 2017. In 2013, Platform 21, whichwas for years consigned to oblivionin the national consciousnesstogether with the Racial Laws, wasconverted into a Holocaust memori-al. In 2014, the City of Rome gavethe green light to build a Holocaustmuseum in Il Duce’s official resi-dence, Villa Torlonia.

Recently, the laws were among thesubjects included, for the first time, inmatriculation exams. In 2018, whichmarked the 80th anniversary of theenactment of the anti-Semitic legisla-tion, the media had been addressingthe topic nonstop, drawing a directcorrelation between the laws and theHolocaust. There is almost no news-paper or current events program that

doesn’t discuss these subject, thatdon’t seek an interview with SenatorSegre or one of the few remainingsurvivors.

“I’ve already heard some com-plaints of an ‘overdose,’” Segre says.“People tell me, ‘Enough with the 80years.’ On the one hand, it’s positive.On the other, many are sick of it bynow. We are indeed a tiny minority.People think we are a million, or amillion and a half, but we’re barely40,000” out of a total population ofmore than 60 million.

Besides the widespread media cov-erage, 90 universities around Italyissued a first-ever apology for theirpart in expelling thousands of Jewishstudents, lecturers and employeesfrom their institutions in order to com-ply with the Racial Laws. Sarfatti doesnot applaud this initiative.

“Apology creates pathos in society,and that’s okay, but it must beaccompanied by practical steps, withresearch grants, relevant school cur-ricula [studying the Racial Laws isn’tmandatory], restoration of Jewishnames that were replaced by Fascistnames,” he says. “In the medicaldepartment of the University of Bari,for example, there is an auditoriumnamed for Nicola Pende, one of the10 signatories on the scientists’ man-ifesto. Let them remove his namebefore they apologize.”

Despite the racist laws, despite themurder of her family, despiteAuschwitz, Liliana Segre, who lives

not far from Platform 21 and the jailwhere she was held for 40 days atage 13, says today that she doesn’tfeel betrayed by Italy and theItalians.

“Were the French (Jews) betrayedby France? The Germans byGermany? The Poles by Poland?”she says. “Who can we exonerate ofthis inborn anti-Semitism?”

OPENING ITALY’S “CLOSET OF SHAME”

Italian Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre in her house in Milan, Italy, October 2018.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini performing a fascist salute as he reviews German Nazi Youth vis-

iting Rome in October 1936.

Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779

BY RICH TENORIO, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

While many countries did lessthan their all when Jews

sought refuge from the Holocaust, thetiny South American nation ofEcuador made an outsize impact.

Named for the equator, the formerSpanish colony became an unlikelyhaven for an estimated 3,200 to 4,000Jews from 1933 to 1945.

Few of these refugees knewSpanish upon arrival, and many couldnot quite locate their new home onthe map. Yet some émigrés achievedsuccess in diverse fields, from sci-ence to medicine to the arts, helpingEcuador modernize along the way.

Last summer, Ecuador-based aca-demic and author Daniel Kersffeldpublished a book in Spanish aboutthis little-known story, La migracionjudia en Ecuador: Ciencia, cultura yexilio 1933–1945. (It translates toJewish Immigration in Ecuador:Science, Culture and Exile1933–1945.) Kersffeld calls it the firstacademic study of Jewish immigra-tion to Ecuador in over two decades.

The author surveyed 100 biographi-cal accounts in writing the book. In anemail interview, Kersffeld said thataround 20 of the individuals he pro-filed hold significant importance forEcuador’s economic, scientific, artis-tic and cultural development.

They include Austrian refugee PaulEngel, who became a pioneer ofendocrinology in his new homeland,while maintaining a separate literarycareer under a pseudonym; concen-tration camp survivor Trude Sojka,who endured the loss of nearly all ofher family and became a successfulartist in Ecuador; and three ItalianJews — Alberto di Capua, CarlosAlberto Ottolenghi and Aldo Muggia— who founded a precedent-settingp h a r m a c e u t i c a c o m p a n y ,L a b o r a t o r i o s I n d u s t r i a l e sFarmaceuticos Ecuatorianos, orLIFE.

Kersffeld’s book began as a smallerproject in which Ecuador’s AcademiaNacional de Historia (NationalAcademy of History) asked him toresearch the origins of the LIFE labo-ratories.

Kersffeld learned that LIFE’s co-founders had been expelled fromItaly in 1938 after the passage of dic-tator Benito Mussolini’s anti-SemiticRacial Laws. He found they repre-sented a wider story in Ecuador from

1933 to 1945 — “a larger amount ofJewish immigrants who were scien-tists, artists, intellectuals or in dis-tinct ways linked to the high cultureof Europe.”

The growing menace of Hitler andMussolini spurred Jewish immigrationto Ecuador, supported by the smalllocal Jewish community. PresidentJose Maria Velasco Ibarra promotedthe country as a destination forGerman Jewish scientists and techni-cians suddenly unemployed becauseof Nazi anti-Semitism.

But, Kersffeld writes, “the fact is thatuntil the mid-1930s, few emigrantshad chosen Ecuador as their destina-tion country,” with most coming after1938. Ecuador views 1938 as thebeginning of its Jewish community.

Marked by the Amazon and theAndes, Ecuador could not haveseemed a less likely destination. Thatchanged after the Kristallnachtpogrom in Germany and Austria in1938, the Racial Laws in Italy thesame year, the occupation of much ofCzechoslovakia in 1939 and the fall ofFrance in 1940.

Ecuador became “one of the lastAmerican countries to keep

open the possibility of immigration inits various consulates in Europe,”Kersffeld writes. “One of the last alter-natives when all the other ports ofentry to American nations werealready closed.”

The consul in Stockholm, ManuelAntonio Muňoz Borrero, issued 200passports to Jews and was posthu-

mously inducted in 2011 as his coun-try’s first Righteous Among theNations at Yad Vashem.

Another consul, José I. BurbanoRosales in Bremen, saved 40 Jewishfamilies from 1937 to 1940.

But Munoz Borrero and Burbanowere both relieved from their dutiesafter the Ecuadorian governmentlearned they were helping Jews.Burbano was transferred to the US,while Muňoz Borrero stayed inSweden and unofficially continued hisefforts.

Recently, the Ecuadorian govern-ment honored Munoz Borrero when itrestored the late diplomat as a mem-ber of its foreign service.

According to Kersffeld, in theperiod covered by the book,

there was anti-Semitism inEcuadorian embassies and con-sulates in Europe, and in Ecuador’sMinistry of Foreign Relations. Jewshad to pay fees to enter the country— although these decreased withtime — and conform to an occupa-tional profile. And another president,Alberto Enríquez Gallo, issued adecree of expulsion for Jews who didnot comply with immigration require-ments, although it never took effect.

Kersffeld writes that Ecuador’s gov-ernment maintained relations, “some-times hidden,” with Nazi Germany.( B u r b a n o ’ s g r a n d d a u g h t e r ,Ecuadorian anthropologist MariaAmelia Viteri, provided a biographical

statement about her grandfather,according to which Nazi Germanyoffered military aid to Ecuador duringa war with neighboring Peru in 1941.)Kersffeld also writes that cells andother groups linked to the German farright operated in Ecuador.

But overall, Kersffeld calledEcuador’s immigration policy “lessrestrictive than that which developedin other countries of the region in thesame era.”

Given a new chance, Jewish immi-grants would write South Americansuccess stories.

Kersffeld called the LIFE laborato-

ries “truly unique,” noting that diCapua, Ottolenghi and Muggia madeLIFE into “one of the most outstand-ing businesses in Ecuador,” able toexport medications to much of LatinAmerica while performing advancedscientific research that discoverednew bacteria and viruses.

Other immigrants also made animpact in medicine. Austrian nativeEngel led the first endocrinologicalstudies in Ecuador while pursuing lit-erary fame under the pseudonymDiego Viga, while German-born JuliusZanders — who had been imprisonedat Dachau after Kristallnacht — didpioneering work as a veterinarian andinvolved himself in Jewish communitylife.

Kersffeld credited Jewish immigrantdoctors with introducing develop-ments to Ecuador such as radiologyand Freudian psychoanalysis.

Journalist Benno Weiser used hisinvestigative skills to denounce hisnew country’s relations with NaziGermany and inform fellow citizensabout World War II. Later in life, hebecame a citizen of Israel, where hereported on the trial of infamous NaziAdolf Eichmann and served as anambassador to the DominicanRepublic and Paraguay. His brother,Max Weiser, became the first hon-orary consul of Israel in Ecuador.

In arts and culture, Kersffeld said,Jewish immigrants brought educa-tional training from Europe and con-

nections to luminaries such asThomas Mann and Marc Chagall.

Hungarian refugee Olga Fischbecame a celebrated collector ofEcuadorian indigenous handicrafts;her own acclaimed works are in thecollections of the Museum of ModernArt, the Smithsonian and the UN.Fellow artist Sojka “brought a person-al testimony of the horror of the Nazigenocide to her artistic works,”Kersffeld writes, noting that virtuallyall of her family, including two daugh-ters born six years apart, died in theHolocaust.

(Continued on page 15)

HOW TINY ECUADOR HAD A HUGE IMPACT

ON JEWS ESCAPING THE HOLOCAUST

Jewish immigrants on a farm 30 kilometers south of Quito.

Jewish immigrant Al Horvath brought radio transmitter technology to the Amazon jungle in

Ecuador while helping Shell Oil look for petroleum there in the 1940s.

January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

BY MAYA OPPENHEIM, INDEPENDENT

Hanna Oppenheim’s parentswould have kept her at home if

they had known she would spend theday surrounded by Adolf Hitler and hisSA Brownshirts.

Her teacher would also have beenhighly unlikely to choose the nine-year-old girl to present the Nazileader with a gargantuan bouquet offlowers in front of a piazza full of peo-ple in Munich.

“I do not think my teacher wouldhave chosen me, because she wouldhave been aware of the fact I wasJewish and she would not have want-ed to expose me,” the 94-year-oldtells The Independent.

“My classmates chose me. I remem-ber being very pleased to be picked. Itseemed a tremendous honor. It neveroccurred to me that I ought not topresent the flowers.”

It was November 9, 1933 and mygrandma, who was forced to leaveHitler’s Germany soon after the flowersaga, was about nine and a half.

“Hitler had been in power for 11months and he had decided to returnto Munich — the home of the Nazimovement — for a special ceremonyto commemorate the 10th anniver-sary of 1923 [the Munich Putsch].”

All of the state elementary schoolsin Munich had gathered atFeldherrnhalle — a building that is stillstanding to this very day.

“The piazza was full of kids and Iremember being pushed forward bythe crowds,” the nonagenarian, whowas known as Hannelore back then,says. “As a little girl, the bouquet offlowers felt far bigger than me. Iremember walking up the steps infront of a massive crowd, feeling astrange combination of terror andexcitement.

“Of course, he didn’t know I wasJewish; nobody in the crowd did apartfrom my teacher and the other chil-dren. I distinctly remember a soldieron the left of Hitler taking the bouquetoff me. All this time, the Führer juststood there and didn’t shake myhand. I remember a stern face anduniform. I then stepped back into thewarmth of my classmates.”

Her parents were more than a little

surprised when she got home andthey asked about her day. After all,they had already started makingpreparations to leave Germany.

“They were very taken aback, to saythe least; it was a total shock tothem,” she says. “By this time, theyknew we were leaving Germany andthey were closing down the business,preparing their various documentsand saying their goodbyes. My par-ents had noticed lots of changessince Hitler’s rise to power. Havingread Mein Kampf, they were fullyaware of Hitler’s intentions.”

Otto Frank, her father, was a timbermerchant, and he had noticed tradegetting steadily worse since the NaziParty’s rise to power.

“His orders became few and farbetween, as applications for buildingcontracts were rejected from compa-nies he had done business with foryears,” she tells me. “My father alsonoticed that business letters were notsigned as in the old days — ‘yoursfaithfully’ — but as ‘mit deutschemGruß [with German greeting], HeilHitler.’”

Dr. Max Meyer, her uncle, had beenwriting the family weekly letters fromJerusalem, where he had alreadyemigrated. The letters warned thefamily to get out of the country.

“At the time, Max was regarded as aterrible pessimist, like a prophet whoprophesizes the end of the world,”she says. “While my father was prob-ably not as much of a pessimist, hewas also a great realist and couldalso see that itwas time toleave. Althoughit was still onlythe beginning.”

But she her-self remainedoblivious towhat was hap-pening to thecountry and hadno idea shewould soon beleaving or thatthe Nazi Partywould go on tomass-murdersix million Jews.She was too young to read the dailypaper her parents had delivered tothe flat and did not listen to the radio.Her parents also chose not to discussthe political situation in front of her.

“There was a feeling that if I’d heardit was a vile system at home, I mighthave felt resentful or rebellious inschool,” she says. “So while they pre-pared their exit, I continued to readHans Christian Andersen andGrimm’s Fairy Tales, none the wiser.”

Her only encounters with Hitlercame through school and in the formof indoctrination. There was a pro-Hitler brainwashing session once aweek called Heimatkunde (“Study of

Your Home Country”), and she stillhas an exercise book which containsevidence of it.

The notebook is replete withstuck-in pictures of Hitler and

his storm troopers and sketches shedid of German flags, eagles and evenswastikas. An essay inside the booktalks about the huge cost of repara-tions that had to be paid after the FirstWorld War and issues of inflation andvast unemployment. “Out of thisdreadful crisis, one man will liberateus — Adolf Hitler,” it concludes.

“At the end of the war, Adolf Hitlerreturned to Munich,” it continues. “Hesaid: ‘I want a decent government, Iwant every German to be able towork: out of farmers, city dwellers,laborers we will make a German peo-ple. Germany needs to be powerfulagain’.”

“I thought, I’m just doing my schoolwork. Hitler’s greatness was instilledin us,” she says.

But Ms. Oppenheim does remem-ber one day at school called the HitlerFeier (celebration) that her parentsdid not allow her to go to. She saysshe remembers a small boy whomshe walked to school with every daycoming to fetch her, but her not beingallowed to go with him.

“He rang the bell as usual,” sherecalls. “I went down and I said ‘I’mnot coming today’ and he said ‘Why?’and I said ‘Because I’m Jewish.’ I doremember the ensuing silence. Hesaid, ‘Well, it’s not your fault that youare Jewish.’ The following day he

came to pick me up. He was a niceboy.”

Soon after the day of the flowers, atthe beginning of December 1933, hermother took her out of school. Therewas an epidemic of measles and shedidn’t want her to get ill because theywere due to leave at the beginning ofJanuary.

“I spent a lot of that month ice-skat-ing, and I had the whole lake tomyself because all the other kidswere at school,” she recalls. “One dayon the way back from the ice rink, Iran into some children, who askedwhy I hadn’t been at school. They toldme that the teacher, Frau Gruber, had

left my drawing up on the blackboard,choosing not to wipe it off because Iwas leaving.

“I’m not sure how I passed a wholemonth with no school, but I don’t thinkI was lonely; I had several friends.Although there was one particular girlwho was no longer allowed to playwith me. Her name was Inge and welived in the same block; she was verypretty with blue eyes and blonde hairthat was plaited on the top of herhead. After Inge joined the League ofGerman Girls and her brothersbecame part of Hitler Youth, she nolonger came to play with me.”

Meanwhile, her parents packed uptheir possessions, and removal mencame to put the belongings in contain-ers to travel by ship. To say theirgoodbyes, her parents threw a hugeparty with all of their friends, Jews andGermans alike. Before long, she wasboarding a train and traveling east outof Germany.

“The minute we crossed theGerman border, my father sat medown on his knee,” she says. “Heexplained why we were going toJerusalem. He said Germany was nolonger safe and Jews would no longerbe able to lead a normal life. Despitethe fact that we had lived in Germanyfor generations, he said we had toleave while we still could. As a younggirl, it was only then that I grasped allof the things which had been hiddenfrom me.”

They took the train through theBalkan countries, passing throughYugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey andGreece before getting a boat fromAthens to Jaffa and finally arriving inJerusalem.

“Days after we moved in, I startedschool, and within weeks I couldspeak Hebrew fluently,” she says. “Imade friends quickly and settled intothe Mediterranean climate. From thenon, a totally different life began.

“When the war broke out, I was 15and old enough to realize how badthe situation was. Things had beengetting progressively uglier since theday I met Hitler. People had disap-peared and been dragged intocamps. All the things my father hadthought would happen, happened.But they were infinitely worse thananybody could have imagined, withthousands and millions of peoplebeing gassed.”

From Jerusalem, they followed thenews closely. “We had Jewish friendsand relatives in Germany and learnedthat the Oppenheimer side of the fam-ily had been taken to Bergen-Belsen,”she remembers. “The parents, thethree children and two sets of grand-parents were all taken away. In theend, the parents and two sets ofgrandparents died and the three chil-dren survived, Eve, Rutzi and Paul.You feel sad about the ones you knewand the millions you did not know.”

JEWISH WOMAN RECALLS THE DAY

SHE GAVE HITLER FLOWERS

A photo of 10-year-old Hanna in 1934 — the

year she and her family fled Germany for

Jerusalem.

A one-million-mark note alongside an essay about Hitler.

Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779

BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ, JTA

Like countless world-classpianists, Nelly Ben-Or began

playing piano at the age of five andnever stopped.

That discipline helped Ben-Or, 86,become an international concertpianist and the person most widelyrecognized for adapting theAlexander technique for posture andmovement improvement for musi-cians.

But unlike for most of her peers,much of Ben-Or’s musical training inher native Poland took place while herfamily was hiding in Nazi-occupiedWarsaw, where her mother, AntoninaPodhoretz, time and again riskedeverything to afford her daughteraccess to the then scarce instrument.

Ben-Or, who now lives in Londonand still teaches master classes inpiano and the Alexander technique,unfolds the story of her unlikely sur-vival in an English-language autobi-ography that was published last year,titled Ashes to Light: A HolocaustChildhood to a Life in Music.

The frank and short account tacklespersonal issues like the author’sbouts of depression and her unpro-voked cruelty toward one of her musicteachers after the war. It was cele-brated as a “brilliant and deeply mov-ing personal account” by JonathanVaughan, a director of the prestigiousGuildhall School of Music & Drama.

Rabbi Andrew Goldstein, the presi-dent of Britain’s Liberal Judaismmovement, called it “an inspiringstory, beautifully written” in a forewordhe penned for the book.

The strength of Ben-Or’s storystems partly from the author bearingwitness to momentous wartimeevents, including the Warsaw ghettouprising. But its uniqueness lies inhow it marries opposites, such asbetrayal and heroism, hunger andartistic creativity, and survival andself-sacrifice.

Throughout the packed 180-pagenarrative, one character — the piano— makes repeated and unlikelyappearances.

The instrument features in Ben-Or’searliest memories, from her childhoodhome in Lwow, which was part of

Poland before World War II, now Lvivin Ukraine. She recalls that when shewas six, German soldiers carried offthe piano on which she had practicedin her family’s living room.

“I shivered in fear and despair, hud-dled against my mother’s body as Iwatched them taking away the instru-ment which had become for me sucha wonderful source of magic,” Ben-Orwrites.

Her family was about to lose muchmore than their prized possessions.

Ben-Or’s father, Leon, was takenaway and, she later learned, killed atthe Janowska concentration camp.

Her mother and older sister wereable to obtain false “Aryan” identities,but they became homeless, exchang-ing one hiding place for another. Hersister was left to hide on her own.Ben-Or and her mother scrambled toleave Lwow for Warsaw, where theyhad a better chance of surviving.

Through one of many twists of fate,the pair missed the last train toWarsaw. They ended up leaving ashitchhikers aboard a military train fullof Nazi SS officers. One SS man eventucked in Ben-Or with his green armycoat when she feigned sleep on thelong journey, she recalls in the book.

That civilian train they missedended up being searched. SeveralJews traveling under false identitieswere caught and sent to be murdered,Ben-Or’s mother later learned.

In Warsaw, mother and daughterbecame subtenants of a Polish work-ing-class family, the Topolskis. Theirhosts quickly caught on that Ben-Orand her mother were Jewish but, at

great personal risk, did not reportthem. Still, neighbors became suspi-cious, forcing the two Jews to seek anew hiding place. Ben-Or’s motherfound employment as a maid with awealthier non-Jewish Polish family,the Kowalskis.

That’s where Nelly, then seven oreight, again saw a piano.

“My desire to get to that instru-ment and play it made me

nag my mother” to ask the Kowalskisfor permission to play, Ben-Or writes.But doing so would have blown theircover as a working-class maid andher daughter, her mother feared.

“Musical gifts were sooften associated with theJewish people,” Ben-Orwrites.

But “a part of my moth-er wanted me to keepplaying,” Ben-Or told JTAin an interview at herhome near London,where she keeps twopianos in a study full ofbooks and orchid plants.Antonina relented, butonly on the condition thatNelly pretend not to knowhow to play, recalledBen-Or, a frail-lookingwoman with lively eyes.

At the height of World War II, whenthe Nazis were hunting and executingpeople on the streets just below herhome, Ben-Or was playing music on agrand piano that brought her briefhope of normalcy.

Noticing her talent, the Kowalskissuggested that Ben-Or join theirgranddaughter’s weekly piano les-sons, to which her mother reluctantlyagreed. The teacher suggested thatBen-Or attend a music school, butAntonina vetoed it.

“The fewer people who noticed me,or you, the safer we were,” Ben-Or’smother told her.

As a little girl, “playing the piano forchosen periods in the day becamemoments of paradise on Earth,” Ben-Or recalls. The teacher insisted thatNelly play at a students’ concert, andshe was allowed to play, becomingthe talk of the block for a while.

But her mother’s fears turned out tobe justified. Soon after the concert,rumors that Antonina and Nelly were

“not who they pretended to be” start-ed circulating among the neighbors,forcing the two to leave yet anotherhiding place, Ben-Or writes.

They were rounded up in Germanarmy operations targeting Warsaw cit-izens who had joined a massiveresistance operation that followed thedoomed uprising of Jews inside theWarsaw ghetto.

In yet another narrow escape, Nellyand Antonina eventually werereleased in the countryside becausethe concentration camp where theGermans had planned to place themwas full. Penniless and hungry forfood, the two found shelter in a pig stythat locals had made livable forrefugees like them from Warsaw.

But even there, “my ear caught thesound of piano from a neighboringhouse,” Ben-Or writes in her book. Itwas the home of the piano teacher inthe town of Pruszkow, and again Ben-Or’s mother reluctantly allowed herdaughter to play. The teacher allottedthe girl half an hour each day.

“I went on eagerly from one piece ofmusic to the next, playing anythingthat was available,” including JohannStrauss waltzes considered toodemanding for eight-year-old pianopupils, Ben-Or writes.

“Yet today, as a concert pianist, I amconvinced that I owe to that unorthodoxbut invaluable experience of pianoplaying,” she writes. It helped her holdon to her humanity and hopefulness inhours of despair and panic, she says.

After the war, Ben-Or was enrolledin a school for gifted musicians. Sheand her mother emigrated fromPoland to Israel in 1950. A decadelater, Ben-Or went to study in Englandand stayed. She married in 1964. Sheand her husband have a daughterwho lives in London.

The book describes her develop-ment as an artist and her experiencesas a survivor in three countries.

“It seems as if my voraciousappetite for academic and musicalprogress was partly a reaction to theyears of repression,” Ben-Or writes.“It was as if the darkness of the waryears had been lifted, and the brightlight and fresh air of freedom filled mywhole being with the need to receiveas much as possible of all that I hadmissed before.”

NELLY BEN-OR RISKED ALL TO PLAY THE PIANO

Nelly Ben-Or sitting by one of her two pianos in her London

home.

The killing only stopped whenthere was no one left to murder.

From August to October 1942, 1.2million Jews were slain in the Nazideath camps, an almost inconceiv-able 15,000 people per day, a newstudy suggests.

This is more than previously calcu-lated, and is a rate that surpassesrecent genocides such as the onethat occurred in Rwanda in 1994. Infact, roughly 25 percent of allHolocaust victims were murderedfrom August to October 1942, which

were quite likely the deadliest threemonths in human history as theGerman killing machine was at itsmost lethal.

Study lead author Lewi Stone, amathematical biologist from Tel AvivUniversity and Australia’s RMITUniversity, used railway transporta-tion records to reach his conclusions.The “special trains” that transportedthe victims were kept on strict timeschedules, on which the Germanshad detailed records of each trip.

Overall, some 480 train trips were

made from 393 separate Polishtowns, destined for death camps suchas Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.The purpose of those three was strict-ly mass murder, unlike camps such asAuschwitz, which also served asforced labor camps.

“Apart from very few exceptions, vic-tims who were transported to the deathcamps were rapidly murdered uponarrival in the gas chambers, thus givingthe system perfected by the Nazis allthe characteristics of an automatedassembly line,” Stone told Newsweek.

Stone estimates that the Nazis’ mur-der campaign could have continuedat this pace had there been more vic-tims still living in German-occupiedPoland. Instead, the murder ratetapered off in November 1942 as aresult of there being essentially “noone left to kill,” Stone said.

He also said the numbers show “theNazis’ focused genocide with the goalof obliterating the entire Jewish peo-ple of occupied Poland in as short atime as possible, mostly within threemonths.”

THE HOLOCAUST’S DEADLIEST MONTHS

January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15

(Continued from page 12)Kersffeld said that all of the biogra-

phical accounts he researched “rep-resent distinct variations about howthe tragedy of the Holocaust had animpact on the history of Ecuador. Ineach case, I was interested to seehow the Holocaust was reflected inthese biographies, as well as thetragedy marked by European anti-Semitism, persecution, exile.”

In each case, he said, he was alsointerested in examining “the imprintleft by European totalitarianisms onan important group of scientists,artists and intellectuals who had toleave behind their families and com-munities of origin to begin a new life ina country as different as Ecuador.”

The subject of Holocaust-eraJewish immigration to Ecuador hasbeen experiencing increased atten-tion in recent years.

In 2015, Brooklyn-based filmmakerEva Zelig released a documentary

about the subject, An UnknownCountry. An Ecuadorian-born daugh-

ter of Holocaust refugees, Zelig inter-viewed survivors and their descen-dants for the film, including Engel’s

daughter and Muggia’s son (who isnow an oncologist at NYU). She trav-eled back to the country of her birthwhile working on the film.

Zelig has not read Kersffeld’s book.However, she said that Holocaust-era

Jewish immigrants to Ecuador “creat-ed a modern climate that moved thecountry forward.”

“Those who succeeded did spectac-ularly well,” Zelig said. But she notedthat while some succeeded, othersfailed because “they did not under-stand the country, the economy of thecountry, what they should do and not

do to move forward.”

A fter World War II, Zelig said,many Jews left Ecuador, “espe-

cially after quotas became availablefrom the US.” Today, she said, theEcuadorian Jewish community num-bers only about 800.

“I think most [Jews] who went toEcuador saw it as a stepping-stone,”she said. “Nobody knew where it wason maps.”

But, she said, “I feel tremendous grat-itude. A lot of exiles felt very grateful toEcuador having opened its doors.”

“People [who watch the film] are say-ing, ‘Oh, I didn’t know, amazing, I did-n’t know about this,’ whether they’reJewish or non-Jewish,” Zelig said.

Kersffeld himself said that there hasnot been much scholarship on Jewishimmigration to Ecuador, contrastingthis with what he calls successfulstudies in other Latin American coun-tries. He said that his investigationhas sparked interest in the subjectacross the globe — from LatinAmerica to the US to Israel.

HOW TINY ECUADOR HAD A HUGE IMPACT ON JEWS

ESCAPING THE HOLOCAUST

Ecuador’s Jewish-exile community in the 1940s at the Equatorial monument in Quito, Ecuador.

BY STEPHEN ORYSZCZUK, JEWISH NEWS

In a room at the Royal College ofNursing’s historic Cavendish

Square head office, I sit quietly wait-ing for a talk to begin. In front of me isa 98-year-old Vienna-born Jewishwoman, just back from visiting herdaughter in Brighton.

Her name is Margaret, still sharp asa pin despite her years. She came tothe UK just before the war andbecame a nurse. She is here to listento Dr. Jane Brooks from the Universityof Manchester, who is researching thecontribution of the 914 young Jewishwomen like Margaret who fled NaziEurope to become trained nurses,midwives and probationers here.

Of these, 130 were Czech and 784German or Austrian. Brooks says theywere incredible — and underappreci-ated.

“Much has been written about malerefugees who were doctors, lawyers,scientists and businessmen, andthere is a growing body of researchon women who entered Britain ondomestic service visas,” Brooks says.

“But little has been written about thissmall but arguably significant cohortof women.” Margaret nods in agree-ment.

The late Walter Laquer, Holocausthistorian and former director of theWiener Library, called this “a remark-able generation” who made their markin the countries they made theirhomes,but also internationally.

Brooks says the European Jewishwomen who came to nurse were nodifferent.

Annie Altschul, studying math andphysics in Austria to prepare for ateaching career, fled to the UK whenwar broke out, becoming a nannybefore entering nursing.

She later pioneered psychiatricnursing research and became theUK’s first professor of mental health

nursing and a staunch advocate ofvoluntary euthanasia. Her reports arestill among the most globally cited.

Lisbeth Hockey, daughter of a gov-ernment architect in Vienna, wastraining as a doctor when — as a non-Aryan — she was forced to leave uni-versity.

She was brought to the UK by theQuakers, worked as a governess forthe Wedgwood family, and then

entered the London Hospital as a stu-dent in 1938, later becoming the coun-try’s first director of nursing research.

“I’d wanted to be a doctor and triedto get into medicine here, but therewas no way because I was a woman,”she recalls in her oral history, nowarchived at the RCN.

“In those days, it was very rare forwomen to get into medicine. I alsowasn’t a British subject and had nomoney, so there were three condi-tions which just made it totally impos-sible.” The Wedgwoods advised herto try nursing instead. “I would neveradvise a person who wanted to be adoctor to go into nursing.... However,I did follow that advice,” she says.

There are many other examples

such as Marion Ferguson, first directorof nursing studies at Bedford College;Charlotte Kratz, an early pioneer of thedepartment of nursing at the Universityof Manchester; and IngeloreCzarlinski, who arrived on theKindertransport in July 1939 and latersupported the birth of Prince Charles.

“These and countless others sup-ported the newly formed NHS andcreated vital spaces for themselves inhospitals and in public health work,”says Brooks.

Progress was not easy. TheJewish Refugee Committee,

established in 1933 in London, set upa nursing and midwifery subcommit-tee to help Jewish refugees becomenurses, but in 1940 the national moodchanged.

Amid fears of fifth columnists andenemy invasion, nurses, includingAltschul and Hockey, were dismissedas “enemy aliens.”. The nurses fromDalston Hospital, known as TheGerman Hospital, were interned.

Pressured by matrons, the HomeOffice allowed some to return to theirjobs, but for some Jewish refugeesthe snub could not be forgotten.Among them was nurse Kitty Schafer,dismissed from her beloved job atEast Croydon General Hospital,because it was close to the airport. “Itook everything personally and wasextremely upset,” she recalls.

Brooks says: “Paradoxically, it wasthose refugees least wedded to nurs-ing who sought new positions whenrestrictions were lifted, whereas thosewho felt a real love for the work weretoo saddened by the actions of thegovernment.”

THE JEWISH WOMEN WHO FLED TYRANNY

TO BECOME ANGELS OF THE NHS

Left: Annie Altschul, born in Vienna in 1919, trained as a mental health nurse in Mill Hill and pio-

neered psychiatric research. Her reports are widely cited. Right: Lisbeth Hockey, expelled from

Vienna, became the UK’s first director of nursing research in Edinburgh.

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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

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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.

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.

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

For further information about the Eli Zborowski Legacy Circle,

please contact

Robert Christopher Morton,

Director of Planned Giving at ASYV, who can be reached at:

212-220-4304; cmorton@YadVashemUSA.org

ELI ZBOROWSKI LEGACY CIRCLE

Page 16 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE January/February 2019 - Shevat/Adar 5779