27 January 2020 Jewish News
www.jewishnews.co.uk
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75th Anniversary Commemorative Edition a year, Szturmann protected Rudnik and shared her food rations with her. All four family members survived the Holocaust. After the war they emigrated to the United States. In the 1950s and early 60s thety wrote to the Berlin Senate so that their rescuers would be honoured for saving Jews. Dr Helmy remained in Berlin and was finally able to marry his fiancée. He died in 1982. Frieda Szturmann died in 1962. Like many other cases, this story did not end with the official recognition. Following media reports about the honouring of Dr Helmy, an Israeli relative of Anna Boros-Gutman contacted Yad Vashem and connected the authority to Anna’s daughter, Carla. Carla provided photos showing her and her mother visiting Dr Helmy and his wife in Berlin in 1969, and documents she had found in her mother’s belongings revealing that Dr Helmy had used every possible means to protect Anna: he even got her a certificate from the Central Islamic Institute in Berlin, headed by the Mufti of Jerusalem, attesting to her converting to Islam, and a marriage certificate (in Arabic), saying she had wed a fellow Egyptian in a ceremony held in Dr Helmy’s home. A few months after the recognition, Frieda Szturmann’s grandson, who had read about the award in a German paper, contacted Yad Vashem. He said his grandmother had never wanted to talk about her courageous act, and that during the entire period, his father, Frieda’s son, was serving as a German soldier at the front. On 18 March 2013, Yad Vashem recognised Dr Mohamed Helmy and Frieda Szturmann as Righteous Among the Nations. Dr Helmy was the first Arab to be given the title.
TEN BRITISH POWs
In one extraordinary story, 10 British prisoners of war saved the life of a 16-year-old Jewish girl. In January 1945, Sarah Matuson (later Hannah Sarah Rigler) was among the inmates of Stutthof concentration camp who were taken on a death march towards the Baltic coast. The group of 1,200 women, including her sister, Hannah, and mother, Gita, were staggering in the snow, dressed in rags, with only clogs on their feet, with no food and under the heavy blows of the SS guards. Hundreds of women died on the way and only about 300 reached the village of Gross Golmkau (Golebiewo in Polish) 19 miles south of Gdansk. Sarah’s family was from Lithuania. Her parents had travelled to Palestine, where her older sister Hannah was born in 1925. But their immigration did not work out and the family moved back to Lithuania. They settled in Shavli (Siauliai), where Sarah was born in 1928. Sarah’s father was arrested with a group of other Jews soon after the German occupation in the end of June 1941. He was never seen again. The mother and two daughters were forced into the Shavli ghetto.
Despite the difficult conditions and the continued killing operations, they managed to survive until the summer of 1944, when they were taken with the remaining Jews of Shavli to Stutthof. As the Soviet army approached, they were taken on the death march. Sarah’s mother pleaded with her daughter to try to escape. It was painful to leave her mother, but finally Sarah decided to look for food for them. She managed to leave the line of prisoners unnoticed and found refuge in a barn, where she collapsed. It was here that she was found by the group of British prisoners of war. The men had been captured in 1940 in France, and had been transferred to the east, interned in a camp close to the Baltic coast, where they were engaged in various tasks in the German farms of the area. Finding Sarah, who was starved and exhausted, one of the prisoners of war, Stan Wells, gave her some food and then brought her to the other prisoners wrapped in an old army coat. Shocked by her poor physical condition, they decided to help her. The British POWs smuggled Sarah into their camp – Stalag 20B in Gross-Golmkau — where they hid her in a hayloft. They took turns to care for her. They brought food, tended her frostbite, applied paraffin to her hair against lice, and nursed her back to health. The danger of discovery was great: just outside their living quarters was a police station. The horses used by the police were housed in the same barn, and Sarah was hidden in the hayloft above them. Eventually, the POWs were moved. On the eve of their evacuation into Germany, they arranged for a local woman to take care of Sarah until the arrival of the Red Army. After liberation, Sarah found she was the only member of her family to have survived. She eventually settled in the US. In memory of her sister, she added the name Hannah to her own. For many years she tried to find her rescuers, but it was only 25 years after the end of the war that she managed to renew the contact. On 2 November 1988, Yad Vashem recognised Stan Wells, George
Fatima and Vesel Veseli (seated) with the Mandil family in Kruja, Albania
Hammond, Tommy Noble and Alan Edwards as Righteous Among the Nations; on 15 March 1989, it recognised Roger Letchford; on 11 October 2011, it recognised Bill Keeble, Bert Hambling, Bill Scruton, Jack Buckley and Willy Fisher.
ALBANIAN PROMISE
The Mandil family came from Yugoslavia, where Moshe owned a photography shop. When the Germans invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, the family fled to the Kosovo province that was under Italian control, where Jews were relatively protected. Towards the end of the summer of 1942, the fugitives were moved deeper into the Italian-controlled area – into Albania – where most of the population was Muslim. The family – Moshe and Ela Mandil and their children, Gavra
and Irena – settled in Tirana. As he was looking up photography shops, Mandil chanced upon a store owned by one of his former apprentices, Neshad Prizerini. Not only did Prizerini offer Mandil work, but he also invited the family to stay at his home. In the shop, Mandil met Prizerini’s apprentice, 17-year-old Refik Veseli, who had been sent by his parents from their village, Kruja, to learn the trade of a photographer. After the German invasion of Albania the situation became dangerous for Jews, and Veseli suggested that the Mandils should move to his parents’ home in the mountains. Four of the Veselis would be honoured for their actions. Veseli and the Mandils set out on a long journey by mules over rocky terrain. They took side roads, moving at night and hiding in caves during
Numbers of Righteous Among the Nations per country Albania 75 Armenia 24 Austria 110 Belarus 660 Belgium 1,751 Bosnia 47 Brazil 2 Bulgaria 20 Chile 2 China 2 Croatia 118 Cuba 1 Czech Republic 118
Denmark* 22 Ecuador 1 Egypt 1 El Salvador 1 Estonia 3 France 4,099 Georgia 1 Germany 672 Greece 355 Hungary 867 Indonesia 2 Ireland 1 Italy 714
Japan 1 Latvia 138 Lithuania 904 Luxembourg 10 Macedonia 10 Moldova 79 Montenegro 1 Netherlands 5,778 Norway 67 Peru 2 Poland 6,992 Portugal 3 Romania 66
Russia 209 Serbia 139 Slovakia 602 Slovenia 15 Spain 9 Sweden 10 Switzerland 49 Turkey 1 Ukraine 2,634 United Kingdom 22 USA 5 Vietnam 1 Total: 27,362
the days to avoid detection by the German military. In Kruja, Moshe and Ela were hidden in a small room above the barn, while their children mingled with the Veseli children. Later, Refik’s brother, Xhemal, brought another Jewish family from Tirana: Ruzhica and Yosef Ben Yosef, and Yosef’s sister Finica. The two families stayed with the Veselis in their mountain village until liberation in November 1944. After the war, the Mandils returned to Yugoslavia, where Moshe reopened a photography shop. They invited Refik to live with them and to continue his training as a photographer. He stayed with the Mandil family until their emigration to Israel. In 1987, Gavra Mandil, Moshe’s son, wrote to Yad Vashem with his story. He said he felt an obligation in the name of all those saved in Albania to pay tribute to the Albanian people and to his rescuers in particular. The remarkable assistance afforded by Albanians to the Jews was grounded in the Albanian cultural concept of besa. Besa is a code of honour which means “to keep the promise”. One who acts according to besa is someone to whom one can trust one’s life and the lives of one’s family. Apparently this code sprang from the Muslim faith as interpreted by the Albanians. On 23 December 1987, Yad Vashem recognised Vesel and Fatima Veseli and their son, Refik, as Righteous Among the Nations. They were the first Albanians to be recognised. On 23 May 2004, Yad Vashem also recognised Hamid and Xhemal Veseli.