K. Heidi Fishman's Blog

“La promesa de Tutti” esta aquí

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Now available in Spanish! Help me spread the word so I can teach lessons of the Holocaust to an even wider audience. We all must fight prejudice and bigotry wherever and whenever it occurs.This incredible story of hope and survival can now be enjoyed by a whole new group of readers.

Reunion

Something very special happened this week. Tutti and Popje were reunited! Popje had been living at the Museum of Jewish Civilization (MJC) at the University of Hartford for about five years. The MJC had a wonderful exhibit “Hartford Remembers the Holocaust” in which several local Holocaust survivor stories were told through pictures, documents, artifacts, and video. Schools came from around the state to teach lessons of the Holocaust on site.

Tutti with Popje after picking her up this week

Due to the pandemic the museum was shut down as the small space really doesn’t allow for groups to maintain social distancing. As a result, Popje was getting lonely and Tutti worried that she might be misplaced. It took several emails and phone calls to find the right person who was able to return Popje to Tutti, but we persevered.

For anyone who doesn’t know the backstory to the doll, let me summarize. When my mother was only nine years old my grandfather told her to never let anyone take the doll away from her. He had hidden some money in the doll’s head while the family was imprisoned in Westerbork, a Nazi transit camp in the Netherlands. The full story can be found in Tutti’s Promise. Imagine being nine years old and knowing it’s your responsibility to hold on to your family’s only money during such difficult and dangerous times. It’s amazing that she loaned the doll to the museum for as long as she did.

Mom and I talked about whether Popje should be donated to another Holocaust museum or memorial in the future. We aren’t sure yet where she will end up, but for now, she is staying with Tutti. She is safe in an archival quality box to protect her from the elements and mom has her proudly and lovingly displayed in her home.

OMG!

Last week I was invited to Louis Pizitz Middle School in Vestavia Hills, AL. This was my second trip to the school and, I hope, it won’t be my last. I met Kelly Sorrell, one of the social studies teachers from PMS, several years ago when she was attending the Belfer National Conference for Teachers at the USHMM and I was there for a book signing. We had a great conversation that has led to four consecutive years of the entire sixth grade reading Tutti’s Promise.

My first day at PMS consisted of my meeting with all 400 sixth graders over the course of five class periods. I was able to hold a writing workshop in which I walked the students through some of the research skills and techniques I used to create scenes in the book. I showed the students how to look at historical photographs for clues, the importance of talking to people who witnessed the events, and how to uncover the answers to questions in archival documents. The students listened and asked thoughtful questions. “What was the hardest part of the research?” “How long did it take to get all the information?” “Did your mother know how much danger she was in?”

The following day I had the opportunity to address the entire school during an assembly – twelve hundred students on the gym bleachers, two screens showing my slides, a microphone, and me. Just before I started speaking I asked the principal when I should wrap things up, and it turned out the time was about 20 minutes shorter than I had anticipated. I hit the big items and skipped many of the details I usually share; however, I wasn’t worried as these kids had all read Tutti’s Promise. I did spend several minutes explaining how the Germans segregated the Jews from the rest of Dutch society and I made direct references to Jim Crow. After all, I was less than ten miles from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. I let them know that Hitler had learned how to segregate people from the USA. I hinted that Alabama’s history wasn’t free of controversy. At the end of my talk I showed the students the ADL’s Pyramid of Hate and explained how genocide doesn’t start with death and violence but with words, fear of differences, and a lack of self-reflection.

Throughout the 40 minutes the students listened intently. I only heard one student talking and what she said reminded me of the impact I was making. When I stated that 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered during the Holocaust simply for being born to Jewish parents someone spontaneously said out loud, “Oh my God.” I repeated it, “OMG. Yes. OMG.”

Before I got home from my trip to Alabama there was a mass shooting in Buffalo, NY killing ten and wounding three. Police are treating it as a racist hate crime. The suspect is an 18-year-old self proclaimed white supremacist. OMG I repeat to myself. When will it stop?

I hope that as the students I met last week continue to grow and discover who they are and what kind of people they want to be that they will take some of my lessons with them – never stop learning, consult multiple sources, ask questions, help others, and above all else, be kind.

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Hate is Our Enemy

Tuesday evening I went to the HeartStorm Farmstead where gracious owners Kim and Mike, Rabbi Raskin from Chabad of Southern VT, and Baltic Truth Holocaust Documentary, were hosting Holocaust survivor Elly Gotz, who was there to tell his miraculous story of survival. Gotz was 13 years old and living in Kovno (Kaunas) Lithuania when war broke out in 1941. His story is terrifying and he tells it with passion and heart and, dare I say, humor. Of the 160,000 Jews living in Lithuania before WWII less than 10% survived.

[image error]Elly Gotz at HeartStorm Farmstead

Mr. Gotz’s message is extremely important in today’s divided world. He talked about hate. He told us that after the war he hated Germans and wanted to kill them. He had to find a way to put aside that hate in order to live. He quoted Buddha at the end of his talk and said, “hate is like swallowing poison hoping it will kill the other person.”

I have been thinking about Mr. Gotz’s message from a psychological perspective. He had every right to hate the group of people who attempted to eradicate all Jews and decimated his country, his town, his friends, and almost his very being. But why does the average person in our society hate?

People naturally flock to those who are similar to themselves. Humans tend to fear the unknown and things that they perceive as different. This was adaptive in pre-historic times. So what do we do when we are confronted with difference? We become afraid and we react with the fight or flight response. This means we might either disparage the “other” or we shy away from them. Yet nobody wants to see themselves as mean or cowardly.  So we must make up a reason to believe that our behavior is acceptable in order to feel good about ourselves. We quickly adopt some bias that will make our internal feelings of fight or flight reasonable. There is a long list of prejudicial statements we might grab on to for this reason and we end up believing that the “other” deserves our negative attitude. From there, it is easy to see that we might dig in deeper and over time a small prejudice can blossom into full blown hate.

There are so many things that divide our society — color, politics, religion — the list goes on. We need to get better at pushing ourselves to get to know people who look, act, and sound different. When we do we tend to find out that we have more similarities than are apparent from a distance. In our modern world individual variation is actually something we should celebrate and not fear.

Let us return to Elly Gotz and our evening at HeartStorm. We were joined by the film crew of The Baltic Truth.  I looked at their website and the first thing I read was this:

“Holocaust education is not just memorizing that Hitler killed 6 million Jews but understanding how millions of ordinary people were convinced that killing Jews was required.”

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I think of the Pyramid of Hate that I have seen on ADL literature. Those biased attitudes that we develop to feel good about ourselves when we are afraid of differences can put us right at the base of that pyramid. And if we aren’t careful we will find ourselves climbing up level by level.

Jeff Hoffman and Eugene Levin at The Baltic Truth are telling the as yet untold story of how WWII played out in Lithuania, Latvia, and Belarus. They are bringing to light the fact that the people who committed the worst atrocities against the Jews were later hailed as heroes. Because Eastern Europe, and specifically the Baltic States, were behind the iron curtain for decades after the end of WWII, the stories of what happened there had been forgotten except by those who lived through the terror.

I applaud Elly Gotz for telling his story over and over to teach children about the trap of hate and I support The Baltic Truth crew for bringing more Holocaust stories to light.

To see the trailer for The Baltic Truth click HERE and then click the yellow box on the next page.

From Švihov to Vermont

I have received another interesting email.

Dear Mr. [sic] Rabbi Ilene Harkavy Haigh,
Dear Mrs. Heidi Fishman,
Last week our town has been visited by our native born Mrs. Nina Weil-Pelc again. Since 1968 she’s been living in Zurick, Switzerland. We were pleased about her wanting to see her birthplace again and being in a good health after living through a very troubled fate. Mrs. Nina had informed us about the emails she received from you recently.
The town of Švihov has a long tradition of taking care and interest in its’ history as can be found on our webpages.
Also the story of the Švihov torah is of great interest to us. When and how it got so far away beyond the ocean? We would very much like to know more about it and spread the information among our citizens…
Looking forward to your reply,
Best regards,
Vaclav Petrus, The Mayor of Svihov

I thanked the Mayor for his email and I sent him a short history of the Torah that he can share locally in the Czech Republic. Of course I wrote in English. I then translated it through Google Translate so I hope it didn’t get completely butchered. Time will tell. Below is the piece I wrote for Mayor Petrus.

There was a thriving Jewish community in Švihov since 1570. The beautiful script and fine quality parchment of this Torah are indicators of a prosperous time and place in Jewish history. The Švihov synagogue served as a place of worship for Jews from eight surrounding towns. The community had a Jewish street and their own butcher. And the Švihov Jewish Cemetery is the final resting place for over 200 people.

[image error]Švihov Synagogue, date unknown

The story of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia during the second world war is a sad one. The Nazis invaded in March 1939. They immediately forced Jewish congregations to close, took-over Jewish businesses, and seized Jewish property. Of the 117,551 Jews living in Bohemia and Moravia before World War II, it is estimated that 26,000 emigrated, 82,000 were sent to Terezín and other camps where they were murdered, and another 7,000 were murdered without being sent to camps.

In 1942 the Nazis ordered all communities in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to send ‘historically valuable’ items to the Jewish Museum in Prague. Some leaders of Prague’s Jewish community persuaded the Nazis to allow them to bring other religious treasures from the deserted communities and destroyed synagogues to the comparative safety of Prague. Švihov, along with over a hundred other small towns, sent its judaica to the city. These 212,000 items filled 40 warehouses. Several people set to work recording the items and trying to ensure that they would remain safe. The Germans allowed the Jews to catalogue the items and then proceeded to send them to the gas chambers.

If one goes to the Jewish Museum in Prague website and searches the collection with the word SVIHOV, there are 32 hits. Looking through these images is sobering. There are pictures of the interior of the Švihov synagogue taken in 1942. There are lists of the items that were sent to Prague with estimated monetary values – these include Torahs, textiles, books, shofars, gold and silver finials, candle holders, and cups. What strikes me is that within the 32 hits on the museum page there are no people – no family portraits, no mothers holding babies, and no pictures of the thriving Jewish life that existed in Švihov before the Holocaust.

[image error]Page of items catalogued from Švihov (Schwihau)
http://collections.jewishmuseum.cz/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/338134 p.39

In November 1942 the Jews of Švihov were sent to an assembly point in Klatovy and from there they were put on trains to Terezín. I have written about Terezín before. The Germans called it Theresienstadt and the vast majority of the people they imprisoned there were sent on to death camps to be gassed. This was the fate of my mother’s maternal grandparents. Another 35,000 died within the ghetto itself due to the harsh conditions. My mother and her family spent nine months there. They were among the lucky ones as they survived together. The survival rate was only 12%.

[image error]Ark containing Torah Scrolls in Švihov Synagogue 1942
Jewish Museum Prague PHOTO.JMP.F/793

One picture from the JMP stands out for me. Photo #793 shows the interior of the Švihov ark with no less than five Torahs. They look haphazardly placed. The covers aren’t actually on the scrolls but only leaning against them. There are no crowns or mantels. I imagine a local townsperson, not a Jew as they would have already been sent away, taking the picture of the ark. He or she tried to make it look ‘nice’ but didn’t actually know how to dress a Torah. That same person then may have packed the items into crates and shipped them off to Prague as requested. Our Torah was in my imagined crate and was catalogued with about 1,800 other Torahs at the museum. And there it sat until the communists took over in 1948. The communists then put the sacred Torahs that had survived the Nazis in the damp basement of the ruined synagogue of Michle, a district of Prague.

In 1963 the Artia company, run by the Czech communist government, approached an art dealer from London asking if he wanted to buy the scrolls. After a thorough examination, Ralph Yablon generously agreed to fund the purchase of 1,564 scrolls that arrived in London in February 1964. They were donated to the Westminster Synagogue. Eventually, the Memorial Scrolls Trust (MST) was formed. The MST loans the Holocaust scrolls to Jewish communities around the world.

One of our long-time congregants, Zecil Gravitz, made a generous gift so that it became possible for Shir Shalom in Woodstock, Vermont, to obtain a Holocaust Scroll on permanent loan. The Memorial Scrolls Trust made the arrangements for us to receive scroll #959, originally from Švihov. The Czech scrolls are survivors and silent witnesses. They represent not only the lost communities of Bohemia and Moravia, but all those who perished in the Shoah. We will use the Torah to worship, to remember, and to teach our local community about the Holocaust.

[image error]Dedication of the Švihov Torah at Shir Shalom, Woodstock, VT 2019

Our Švihov scroll is damaged to the point that it is considered not to be kosher. It can only be unrolled to a certain point and if we were to try to open it further, we risk it tearing and splitting apart. Rabbi Haigh told me that when she examined the scroll, she could only open it so far and no further. The words on that section were some of the most important in all of Judaism. The Shema says:

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד
Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

These words are considered the most essential declaration of the Jewish faith. I asked myself why is the Torah stuck in this spot. I imagine that before being hauled off by the Germans that the local Rabbi took this Torah out of the ark. He placed it on the bema and he read these words. He recited the Shema with all his soul. He declared his faith to Hashem. Maybe he was alone in the synagogue. Or maybe his whole congregation was with him. They prayed. They wanted their G-d to hear them and to save them. But it wasn’t to be. They were taken away. In November 1942 the Germans deported all 1,269 Jews of the Klatovy district – 20 from Švihov. At least 1,206 were murdered. What was left is a Torah which remained rolled to one position for twenty years and the parchment hardened there. It represents the lost Jewish community of Švihov and the men, women, and children who wanted nothing else but to be allowed to live in peace.

References:
http://www.memorialscrollstrust.org/
https://www.ushmm.org/
https://www.jewishmuseum.cz/
https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelsk%C3%A1_synagoga
https://www.yadvashem.org/

Family Matters

Hi there. My name is Abigail Sterne and I’m a distant relative living in the UK. My great grandfather was Kamil Lichtenstern…. I have recently been translating the diary of Oskar Lichtenstern which has been in the possession of my Great Aunt Gertrude Levitt, who is the youngest daughter of Kamil, and a first cousin of Heinz and Poldi….

So starts an email I received earlier this week. I read the email several times as I had never heard of Kamil or Gertrude or Abigail. I asked myself, “Who are these ‘distant relatives’ living in the UK?” I called my mother to ask and she didn’t know either.

I have since had a lovely Facetime conversation with Abigail and we have exchanged several more emails. Abigail and I have a special connection – Okkie’s diary! If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that Oskar/Okkie is my mother’s paternal grandfather and that he survived the Holocaust with her in Westerbork and Theresienstadt. He wrote a diary about his experiences and I used it as a reference when I wrote Tutti’s Promise. How can Abigail have the diary if I have it? Did he write more than one? Or could it be that she is related to a different Oskar Lichtenstern? This is where our conversation started. I held up the diary for her to see and she did the same. They were identical from the words on the page to the yellowing of the paper. How was it possible? Okkie must have typed with carbon paper. Two copies – one for each of his sons, Heinz (my grandfather) and Poldi. Except there was one difference. Poldi’s copy, the one that Abigail was holding, had Okkie’s yellow star clipped to it. This is the star he wore in Amsterdam and Westerbork and Theresienstadt. This is the star that the Nazis forced him to wear so they could single him out as a Jew. This star represents dehumanization and discrimination.

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Abigail’s Aunt Gert is 104 years old and lives in England. She has written a memoir which I have just finished reading. It is filled with so much family history. My understanding of the Lichtenstern family has expanded greatly in just a week.

Okkie was one of seven siblings. They were all born in a small village called Slap on the outskirts of Prague. They are:

Hugo                               Mar 25, 1866 — Sept 11, 1940       Prague, CZMalwine (Saphir)             Apr 23, 1870 — 1943                      PalestineErnst                               Dec 4, 1871— Apr 6, 1936              Aussig, CZOskar                              Dec 3, 1875 — Dec 26, 1954          AmsterdamCamil/Kamil (Sterne)      Nov 11, 1878 — Oct 26, 1950         South AfricaOlga (Melnick)                July 30, 1880 — ?                            IsraelIrma (Pergamenter)        December 8, 1882 — ?                    Israel

Hugo, the only one to stay in Slap, had two daughters – their last names became Pollak and Turk. Malwine married and emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s, so her branch of the family tree continues in Israel as Saphir. Ernst had one daughter whose married name was Glauber and one son who changed his last name to Lexa. While Oskar kept Lichtenstern, his eldest son, Poldi, changed his name to Lister. Camil changed his last name to Sterne when he immigrated to South Africa in 1902. Olga married a man with the last name Melnick. Finally, Irma’s married name is Pergamenter but her only son changed that to Menter.

Apparently, I have a whole bunch of cousins from the Lichtenstern side of the family, but only my grandfather, Heinz, and his son’s descendants kept the name Lichtenstern. A note to my cousins: if I can find you, I might be calling to introduce myself! Or better yet, if you read this, get in touch with me.

To add one more layer to the story, Abigail showed me a letter that Okkie had sent to Camil after he had been liberated from Theresienstadt, but before he made it home to Amsterdam. Here it is, with a translation (by Abigail) that is well worth the read.

[image error]Envelope Oskar to Camil[image error]Oskar’s letter to Camil p.1[image error]Oskar’s letter to Camil p.2



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He was writing to his brother in South Africa across the world from a displaced persons camp in Holland to let him know he was alive. He could barely afford a stamp. He didn’t know where he would go from there and he had no idea how he would support himself. He had already written to family (possibly Ernst’s children) in the USA to ask for help.

This letter is all about family. Who was alive? Where were they? He was trying to connect. As you can read in the letter, the possibility of seeing his son again pulled him through the worst of times. Family was all he lived for. He yearned for connection after years of uncertainty, starvation, sickness, and fear. Family pulled him through. Family was what he looked forward to. Family matters.

Švihov Torah Dedication

One month ago, I started a journey with a group of students researching a Holocaust Torah. Today, the torah was dedicated and officially took up residency at Shir Shalom in Woodstock, VT.

I want to congratulate all these students for a job well done. Thank you! With everyone putting in a little time you were able to search on-line and find all kinds of information. You worked together to record the information and then turn it into an interesting presentation.

The following is what the group said during the ceremony:

The beautiful script and fine quality parchment of this torah are indicators of a prosperous time and place in Jewish history. There was a thriving Jewish community in Švihov, which was founded in 1570 in the Klatovy District of what is now the Western part of the Czech Republic.

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This synagogue was very special because 8 towns went there to
pray. There are over 200 people buried in the Švihov Jewish Cemetery. The
community had a Jewish street and a butcher. While there had been 79 Jews
living in Švihov in 1890, by 1930 only 20 Jews were living there with many
having moved elsewhere – mostly to larger cities.

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After WWII the synagogue was used as a warehouse and a barn. Today
there are no Jews living in Švihov.

The Jewish people of Švihov lived happily until November 1942 when
they were deported to an assembly point in Klatovy. Many of the older Jews held
there died or experienced deterioration of their health as a result of the poor
conditions. Many of the deportees were moved from Klatovy to the Terezín
Ghetto.

[image error]Map of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, indicating the assembly points for Jews and showing the number of people deported.
Jewish Museum in Prague

The Terezín Ghetto was used as a
central transit camp for Czech Jews because it was a former military fortress
with numerous barracks. About 140,000 Jews in total were deported to Terezín.
Many were deported from there to other concentration camps or ghettos. 84,000
were killed after deportation, while about 35,000 died in Terezín itself due to
the bad conditions.

We know of 17 people from Švihov who
were killed during the Holocaust.

The Nazis didn’t just take the Jews. They
also took all the Judaica from the community. There are records saying that
they looted the Švihov synagogue and took many items including the following:

5 Torahs,43 Prayer books,1 Eternal light,4 Shofars,1 Megilla,13 table settings,1 Basin,1 Talit bag and 4 Talit



[image error]Interior of Švihov synagogue in 1942 – Photo from archives of Jewish Museum Prague – PHOTO.JMP.F/789

We know of two survivors who were born in Švihov: Oswald Strass and Nina Weil.

Oswald Strass was born in 1903, the son of Bernard and Rosle, and brother of Karl and Rudolf. He was married to Josefa Maier. In 1939 he was sent to a concentration camp – Sachsenhausen. From there he was sent to several other camps and managed to stay alive until liberation. After the war he hardly spoke any Czech and had trouble assimilating in Czechoslovakia. In 1949 Oswald and Josefa sought assistance from the International Refugee Organization.

[image error][image error]Oswald and Josefa Strass – ID cards found on Arolsen-Archives.org

Nina Weil spent time in three
different concentration camps. Nina came to Theresienstadt as a 10-year-old.
When she was sent to Auschwitz the number 71978 was tattooed on her arm. She
says in remembrance of that time, “I cried a lot. Not because of the pain, no,
because of the number. Because I had lost my name. I was just a number.”

After the war ended, Nina was taken to
a Catholic orphanage in Prague and then later to a Jewish Boarding School. She
lived in Prague until the Soviets invaded in 1968, when she and her husband
moved to Switzerland.

[image error]Portrait of Nina Weil from website https://www.last-swiss-holocaust-survivors.ch/en

The
scroll is well over 200 years old, probably, mid 18th century.  One
indicator is the way in which the panels are sewn together in a way that was in
style before 1800. At some point there was a repair by a scribe who was no
longer even familiar with the old style, or he would have resewn it in the old
way, but he used a post 1800 “blind stitch” style.

[image error]One panel of the Švihov Torah

Before
circa 1850 there was much more variation is exact layout of Torahs than ones
written later. The number of lines per column, 52, indicates it was written
before 1850 as well. We have noticed that there are different column-widths,
and this probably reflects efficient usage of pieces of certain size skins. 

The
script itself has a distinctive element that strongly suggests it was written
locally, in Bohemia/Moravia aka former Czechoslovakia.  That is the upper
right “yud” of the aleph reaches high, clearly above the top line of
the letter. Moreover, the fairly consistent 90-degree upright angle of the
pen is a German element. So, it is a German-Czech script. 

[image error]Close up of the Švihov Torah

According to scribe, Kevin Hale, because of the damaged condition of this torah, it is not considered kosher. However, as Rabbi Hale wrote to me, “a torah, kasher or not, is to be loved, revered, learned from, and of course danced with.  And this torah teaches what every torah teaches, …while at the same time bearing witness to a beautiful world that is otherwise lost.”

[image error]L’dor v’dor: students passing the Švihov Torah during the dedication

Individuals
from Švihov who were murdered during the Shoah:

Marta Bickova born 1908Alfred Eisner born 1867Emil Kohn born 1894Kraus, first name unknown, born 1890Kraus, first name and year unknownKraus, first name and year unknownOlga Krausova born 1910Lio Shabat born 1891Shabat, first name and year unknownFrantisek Stern born 1903Bertha Wachtl born 1928Helene Wachtl born 1895Richard Wachtl born 1885Rudolf Wachtl born 1887Vera Eva Wachtl born 1925Wachtl, first name and year unknownAmelia Weilova born 1905

A Sacred Trust

What do you do when you get an email from your rabbi with the subject line, “HELP”? I say, “I’m not sure I can, but I’ll give it a try.” This is how another project started.

The congregation I belong to, Shir Shalom in Woodstock, VT, has been gifted the permanent loan of a Holocaust Torah through the Memorial Scrolls Trust and the generosity of a long-time congregant, Zecil Gravitz. The rabbi has asked me to lead the oldest Sunday school class in researching our new scroll. What do I know about the Torah? It is a scroll of parchment inscribed with the Five Books of Moses. I don’t read Hebrew – I barely know the Hebrew alphabet. I never had a bat mitzvah. I never learned to read from the Torah nor did I learn the lessons it holds. My son, Joshua, has been studying at a yeshiva in Jerusalem for a year and a half. He studies the Written Torah and the Oral Torah daily. He is learning about Jewish law and customs and takes every opportunity he can to tell me what he is learning. We have conversations over whatsapp – and I learn small bits and pieces. But I am no Torah scholar. I am not even up to the abilities of a young kheyder student (think Torah primary school). The Torah is sacred. There are rules to how it is to be handled. I don’t know anything about those either. So why me?

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When I spoke to the congregation last year on Yom HaShoah Rabbi Haigh was moved by my presentation and impressed with my research. She came to me because I know where to find archives that might hold secrets about our Torah. And she trusts me to lead the teens on this search.

Here’s what I know:

Our scroll came from Švihov, a small town near the western border of today’s Czech Republic not far from Germany. It has been assigned a number (#959) by the Memorial Scrolls Trust. It will serve as an inspiration for Holocaust education for the Shir Shalom community and beyond.

What is a Holocaust Torah? The Nazis looted the Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia in 1942 and brought all the sacred items from the synagogues to the Jewish Museum in Prague, including approximately 1,800 Torahs. The Germans envisioned a museum documenting how they eradicated the world of the Jews. However, these scrolls do not only represent history. They represent lost Jewish communities. They represent the families who worshiped by listening to the reading of these scrolls every week. They represent the boys who were called to become bar mitzvahs near their thirteenth birthdays and those who never had that chance. They represent the 77,297 Jews (66%) of Bohemia-Moravia that were murdered during the Holocaust. And they represent the enduring vitality of the Jewish people.

The Rabbi has entrusted me with a sacred task. I have accepted it with trepidation, curiosity, enthusiasm, and honor, knowing that I will not be alone in the undertaking.

A Book Proposal

When am I going to write another book? People ask me that a lot. I usually hesitate to answer because the next book just hasn’t germinated yet. I know I should write more, but that isn’t the stuff books are made of. I don’t want to write a should. I want to write something that gives me so much energy and momentum that it will carry me through the long process of researching, writing, and re-writing that I know will be needed.

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One idea has been to write the non-fiction version of the Metal Jews of Westerbork. This would get down to the nitty-gritty details of what my grandfather and his colleagues were doing to try to keep as many Jews in Westerbork as possible, so they didn’t get sent to the death camps. I have a friend, Myriam Daru*, who has been researching this line of inquiry. There is a LOT of information and it involves black marketeers and economics and so many different people that I have trouble keeping the facts straight. The idea of writing this book feels like starting a dissertation – and I don’t want to write a dissertation. I already did that a long time ago.  

The title of my dissertation is Exploring the Self-in-Relation Theory: Women’s Idealized Relationships-of-Choice and Psychological Health. I spent two (or was it three) years ‘dissertating.’ Back then I turned dissertation into a verb because it was such an active part of my life. It wasn’t a thing; it was all I did. My dissertation was my partner, my lover, my existence. We even had arguments and break ups and periods of not talking and then getting back together. The Self-in-Relation Theory (Relational-Cultural Theory) is based on the work of Jean Baker Miller. The theory says that women engage in relationships that make them feel energized and connected and give them more zest in life.

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Having written one book I know that an author has a very real relationship with the story and its characters. A book isn’t just a thing. When you step onto the page you start a relationship. It is a commitment. If you can’t make a commitment, then that book won’t come to life. It needs your full attention and needs to be nurtured and fed. It is only possible to do that well if you can fully engage and that means that the research and the manuscript must be something that gives something back to the author as well. It can’t be one-sided or the relationship won’t grow and the book won’t become fully developed.

Last week it hit me like a thunderbolt. I haven’t started writing The Metal-Jews because that book isn’t giving me zest. I just can’t engage. Why am I starting a relationship with something that isn’t right for me? I need to end this relationship before it even starts and move on. There is something else out there for me.

I was on the train to NYC when the idea sparked. This idea came to me full throttle. This one makes me want to start writing – now! No more procrastination. I’m ready to stop thinking about writing and jump in. This will be a book of short stories of how the Latin American passports forged by the Polish diplomats and their Jewish partners saved lives. This is the book that I, as a trained interviewer, can sink my teeth into. This is the book that makes me want to dive in. How many families can I find and interview? How many will let me write their story? I see this as a book of inspiration. A book that will bring a tear and make the reader say, “Wow!” The reader will see how a few good men made the difference in the lives of people that were in the worst of circumstances.

Consider this my proposal. I am on one knee. Will you share your family story with me? Will you read this book?

*Myriam has posted some of her research on Academia.edu. I will post the link here when I get it.

Searching for Stories

My mother tells how Heinz Lichtenstern, her father, escaped a transport to Auschwitz in 1944. Notified that he, along with all men aged 16 to 55 then in Theresienstadt, would be leaving soon, he had said his tearful goodbyes to his family. At the transport, before boarding, Heinz once again showed the family’s Paraguayan passport. This time it worked and he was excused. My grandmother kept the small piece of pink onion skin on which were neatly typed his name, camp number, and the word “ausgeschieden,” or “withdrawn.” As the families of most of the men that were transported were sent on subsequent transports to Auschwitz, use of the passport saved not only Heinz, but in all likelihood his wife and two children. I exist because this passport existed.

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It was only a few years ago that the origin of that passport, and many others like it, was discovered. It was produced by the Polish legation in Bern, Switzerland, led by Polish Envoy Aleksander Ładoś and his colleagues, counselor Stefan Ryniewicz, Polish Consul Konstanty Rokicki, and the Jewish attaché Juliusz Kühl. Current estimates are that 8 to 10 thousand Jews were named on the passports they produced between 1940 and 1943 (most passports, like my grandfather’s, named an entire family on the one document). These diplomats worked in concert with two Jews, Chaim Yisroel Eiss of Agudat Israel, and Abraham Silberschein of RELICO. Even when their scheme came to the attention of the Swiss authorities they persisted, at great risk to themselves.

The current Polish Embassy in Switzerland has meticulously put together a list of several hundred individuals thought to have obtained these passports and to have survived. Sadly, not all passports reached their intended holders. And tragically, not all of those who did receive the passports survived. Most, but not all, of the passports, including the one for my mother’s family, bear Rokicki’s unmistakable handwriting.

Efforts are now underway to see the three non-Jewish members of the Polish Legation—Ładoś, Ryniewicz, and Rokicki—jointly recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. As of this writing only Rokicki has been so honored.

I am attempting to support the nominations of Ładoś and
Ryniewicz by soliciting additional testimony from survivors. As I do not feel
it is reasonable to cold call survivors, I have instead been calling relatives,
mostly their adult children (2Gs). I am truly honored that they have been
willing to share their family stories with me.

My husband used the term ‘Holocaust fatigue’ the other day. He meant that it’s normal for people to want to have a break from remembering. It is a heavy burden to carry the Holocaust in your thoughts at all times. We don’t need to always have the Holocaust in mind as we go through our individual daily lives. The important thing is that society remember. The Holocaust must stay in our collective conscious. We must make sure our young are taught about the Holocaust, ideally through multiple exposures across their schooling. We must allow those who wish to speak up, to have a voice. We must drown out the deniers with a chorus of individual stories.

There are events of such overbearing magnitude that one ought not to remember them all the time, but one must not forget them either. Such an event is the Holocaust.

The Rabbi of Bluzhov, Rabbi Israel Spira
in Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust by Yaffa Eliach, 1982

It has been interesting calling people so far. The passport web has many threads and they connect so frequently that my mind tends to spin. Some children have not known that their parents were on the passport list while others were aware of the family’s passport but had not yet heard the story of the Polish Legation. One person I called ended up being a relative, a second cousin of my sister-in-law. Another person had a relative that worked in Holland in the scrap metal trade. Those of you who have read Tutti’s Promise will recall that Heinz was a scrap metal commodities dealer in the Netherlands.

One amazing coincidence came when I contacted Mordecai Paldiel, former Chair of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem. I had been given his contact information by a curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum who felt Mordecai might be helpful in my quest to see Egbert de Jong (my grandfather’s friend who made arrangements for the passport from the Netherlands) named as Righteous Among the Nations. When I explained to Mordecai about the Polish diplomats we sought to honor, he told me Stefan Ryniewicz had personally vouched for Mordecai’s own family when they were interned in a Swiss refugee camp in 1940!! I almost fell out of my chair, and I can’t print the phrase Dave used, but I can report he said it frequently for 20 minutes or so.

Once again, I am so honored to speak with all of these people. By keeping the stories alive, and by discovering new ones, my hope is that we can educate our young not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Stories are powerful, and we need to continue to share them. Thank you!

[image error]Me with my grandparents, Margret and Heinz Lichtenstern – 1988

Note: European Union privacy law forbids institutions, such as the Polish Embassy in Bern, from electronically saving contact information of private individuals. Thus, if you wish to discuss something with them, you will need to reach out yourself. I myself am using paper notes. If your family had a Latin American passport and I have not spoken to you, please contact me. I trust we’ll find a common thread and have an interesting conversation about our family histories.