Vol. LXXXII
No. 44
Omaha, NE
4 Tamuz, 5763
July 4, 2003
SERVING NEBRASKA AND WESTERN IOWA FOR 82 YEARS
Sisters of the Shoah: Three Survivor Tales, Golden Fates and Iron Wills by LEO ADAM BIGA Three survivor tales. Three golden fates. Three iron wills. This is not just another Holocaust story. It is the chronicle of how three sisters survived, alone and together, a series of Nazi concentration camps during World War II to tell their story of human endurance. That not one or two but all three made it out alive is, as the eldest puts it today, “Impossible. I don’t know how we lived. We survived with nothing...not even our hair.” Only girls at the time, the sisters, all of whom resettled in Omaha, displayed a remarkable resolve that belied their years and that still defines them today. Their individual stories have been told, but never their combined saga. Sisters of the Shoah in name and in blood, the former Bojman girls are old women now but their spirit burns with the rigor of youth. Known by their married names--Mania Friedman, Rachel Rosenberg, Bluma Polonski--they remain defiant witnesses to the Nazi genocide that killed millions, including their parents and brothers, and that would have claimed them, too, but for their three golden fates and three iron wills. “It is sad and it is deep,” is how a teary-eyed Rachel, the middle sister, describes her and her siblings’ odyssey. It’s a legacy that’s had a pro-
Sisters Bluma Polonski, left, Rachel Rosenberg and Mania Friedman not only survived the Holocaust, but started new lives together in Omaha. found effect on their families, too. despite the nightmare his mother and For example, Rachel’s three children maternal aunts experienced “they are witnessed her frequent crying jags truly remarkable people with an and their father Carl’s obsession with incredible appreciation for life.” The the Holocaust. significance of their story, he added, is Rachel said in recent years she in the resilience and resistance their promised herself, “You’re not going to survival represents. be miserable...live as happy as you Not all survivors have fared as well. can...see the light instead of the dark. A cousin of the sisters never got over I’ve tried to help myself to live normal losing her family, including two sons, and to be like everybody else, which to the Holocaust. She committed suiI’m not. But I try.” cide. “My cousin didn’t want to live. I A son, Stuart Rosenberg, said do. I like life,” said Rachel. “In my
eyes, I have everything I want. I’m the richest person in the world.” The women today enjoy the comfortable lifestyle they made for themselves here, but the horrid memories of what brought them to America are never far away. This past Mother’s Day, the oldest sister, Mania, encapsulated the dichotomy of their lives in her heavily accented voice, “Our life is beautiful and miserable, you understand? After the war we had no family. We had nothing. How many times I said, ‘God, take me away not to suffer too much.’ We went through more than hell. But this is our life. We have to take everything. At least I have pleasure from my children. All over I have pictures of my children,” she said, gesturing at the dozens of photos adorning her refrigerator, walls, hutches and tables. “As long as I’m alive I want to see them, not hidden away in a drawer, because we have family again.” The phone rings and it’s Rose, the mother of Mania’s only granddaughter, Jennifer, whom she adores. “Oh, thank you, Rose. Happy Mother’s Day to you, too. You give me joy in my life,” Mania says. “You give me the biggest diamond that can be--Jennifer.” When Mania mentions she’s telling her Holocaust story to a visitor, the conversation abruptly ends. She (Continued on page 8)
With Report, Group Highlights Flight of Jewish Refugees from Arab World by RACHEL POMERANCE NEW YORK (JTA)--Maurice Soussa was a high school student in Baghdad when Iraq’s most prominent Jew was brought down in a ferocious frenzy. Shafiq Adas was charged with spying for the new Jewish state, Soussa said. The Ford dealer, whose five partners were all Muslim, had his property, worth an estimated at $100 million at the time, confiscated. Since no lawyer would defend the Jew, the case was heard in a military court. The next day, Adas was hanged in his own courtyard. Crowds came to Adas’ estate to gawk at the dead Jew, Soussa says. It all happened in the summer of 1948. Fifty-five years later, Soussa relayed the story at a press conference here on Monday to release a document charging Arab countries with systematic persecution of Jews amid the creation of the State of Israel. The document, published by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries--a group formed in September by a coalition of Jewish organizations--lists human rights violations in several Arab countries where Jews lost the right to vote or even their citizenship and suffered pogroms, confiscations and intimidation. Leaders of the Justice for Jews group flew to Israel to hand the report to President Moshe Katsav on Tuesday. The group will meet with Israeli government ministers later in the week. Through quotes from Arab leaders on the partition of Palestine and newspaper articles around 1948, the document builds the case that Arab countries colluded in their persecution of the Jews, hoping to force them to emigrate and steal their property. “From the sheer volume of such state-sanctioned
discriminatory measures, replicated in so many Arab countries and instituted in such a parallel fashion, one is drawn to the conclusion that such evidence suggests a common pattern of repressive measures, if not collusion, against Jews by Arab governments,” the report states. More than 850,000 Jews left Arab countries after the 1948 Arab-led war on Israel. Similar numbers of Arabs fled Israel around the same time. While Israel absorbed the Jewish refugees, Arab countries kept the Palestinians in camps and refused to give them citizenship, using their plight as a weapon in the political Iraqi Jews were airlifted to Israel in 1950 and 1952. In this struggle against the Jewish state. picture, a group of Iraqi Jews have just landed in Israel. Photo courtesy of the Babylonian History Center Today, the number of Palestinian via American Sephardi Federation. refugees and their descendants tops four million, according to the United Nations Relief should use the claims of Jewish refugees as a barand Works Agency, which provides them with serv- gaining chip in future negotiations. (Continued on page 6) ices. Palestinians demand that the refugees and their descendants be granted a “right of return” to the INSIDE: homes they fled inside Israel. Israel, which has indiReligious Streams Differ cated that it would offer the refugees compensation, on High Court Ruling ............................ page 3 sees that as tantamount to a call for the Jewish state’s destruction, since the influx of so many Arabs would Book Review/Read It & Eat .................. page 7 negate Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. Peace negotiations broke down over the right of Mel Gibson film, The Passion ............. page 12 return issue in 2000. Now, some feel that Israel